Rabbi Avraham Ravitz Z”L

Rabbi Avraham Ravitz passed away early Monday, January 26  in Jerusalem’s Hadassah-Ein Kerem University Hospital at the age of seventy five.  A fine rabbinic scholar, brilliant orator and long-time Torah activist, he served for more than twenty years as a member of the Knesset representing the Degel HaTorah party (now united with Agudath Israel). The funeral took place Monday afternoon. Thousands, family, friends and followers, rabbis and Rashei Yeshiva as wells as leaders of other political parties such as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Bibi Netanyahu of Likud followed the coffin from Bayit Vegan where Rabbi Ravitz lived to Har Hamenuhot where he was buried.
Rabbi Ravitz’ father, Rabbi Aryeh Leib Ravitz, studied at the Yeshiva of Slobodka. In the 1920s he came to the Land of Israel with a select group of fellow students to continue his studies in the Yeshiva in Hebron. He was in Hebron during the 1929 Arab massacre. After his marriage, Rabbi Aryeh Leib Ravitz settled in Tel Aviv, where he served as the rabbi of the Montefiore neighborhood and Av Beth Din of the city.
Rabbi Avraham Ravitz was born in Tel Aviv in 1934. Avraham studied in Tel Aviv’s Sinai Talmud Torah and in Yeshivot Ketanoth.  After his Bar Mitzvah, he joined the Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem.
During the last year of the British mandatory rule in Palestine,  young Avraham Ravitz was a member of the anti-British Lehi underground (Lohamei Herut Yisrael —  Fighters for Israel’s Freedom) also known as the “Stern Group.” At first, the thirteen year old put up posters and distributed leaflets. Later he was appointed a member of the  committee which sought to recruit members for the organization.
The Stern Group was dissolved some time after the establishment of Israel. Rabbi Ravitz then found himself in another activist group. Rabbi Ravitz and religious friends who were with him in Lehi, wondered: We have a Jewish State! But is it really Jewish? Why are there public desecrations of the Shabbat all over the country? The group he was with called itself Brith HaKanaim and protested and campaigned against Hillul Shabbath.  Some of its members went even further. They burned cars which were driven by their owners on Shabbath and cinemas which were open on the holy day.
Later, Rabbi Ravitz became active in another group. In the first years of the State many Jewish children from the lands of the Diaspora came to Israel with their parents or were brought to the county by Youth Aliyah. Many of these children were pressured by certain organizations and youth leaders to abandon religious observance. An organization came into being which set itself the task to protest against the attempts to rob these children of their religious observance and to take any action possible to save them and restore them to our faith. The  organization  which is still active was initially called Hever HaPe’ilim (activists) and later renamed Yad L’Ahim. One of its pillars is Rabbi Sholem Dov Lifshitz, a man who did very much to return to our religion new immigrants who had been led astray.
Rabbi Ravitz was  a leading figure in this organization. He himself has described one of its great operations.
In Ein Shemer, near Pardes Hannah was a camp in which hundreds of Yemenite children were concentrated. Rabbi Ravitz and members of Pe’ilim infiltrated into the camp several times and befriended the children. The children did not wear any Kippot nor Tzizit. Many of them still had sidelocks (Pe’ot). The sidelocks of others had been cut off.
Rabbi Ravitz and his friends decided to take action to strengthen the religious feelings of the children and to show their unobservant instructors that they would not succeed in their endeavors to estrange them from our faith. They decided to buy Kippot and Tzizit and put them on the children.
Rabbi Ravitz left immediately to Bnei Brak to talk to the Hazon Ish. The Hazon Ish gave him 5 Lirot and said : “Buy Kippot and Tzizit for the Yemenite children.”
Rabbi Ravitz continued on  to Tel Aviv. He wasn’t sure what to do. Five Lirot were not enough to buy the many Tzizit and Kippot he needed. Should he buy only Kippot. He told his dilemma to a friend he met in the street. When the friend heard that Ravitz was in the possession of money he had  received from the Hazon Ish, he said to  him: “I will help you buy what you want on condition that you give me the money you received from the Hazon Ish.”
They bought a very large number of Kippot and Tzitzit. Rabbi Ravitz returned immediately to Pardes Hannah. At night, he and his friends crawled with the Kippot and Tzizit under the fence into the camp. Going from tent to tent they put the Kippot and the Tzizit on the children, who were full of joy and gratitude to Rabbi Ravitz and his comrades.
One can imagine the shame felt by their irreligious instructors when the following day they saw the children wearing with pride the Kippot and the Tzizit.
(To be continued)

The Jewish Press, Friday, February 13, 2009

(Continued from last week)

Members of Pe’ilim were active all over the country. They befriended children of new immigrants, established summer camps and schools for them, where they taught them Torah. They opened prayer houses in new settlements, warned new immigrants not to surrender to the pressure and threats of non-religious groups and instructors and not let their children be registered in non-religious schools. In case they were already enrolled in non-religious schools, parents were told not to spare any effort to have them transferred to a religious institution. They publicized — for all Israel to know — the “non-Kosher” methods employed by these groups to rob Jewish children of their Torah heritage. Pe’ilim also fought Christian missionaries.
The leaders of Pe’ilim worked in close co-operation with Gedolei Yisrael, such as the Hazon Ish, Rabbi Velvel Soloveitchik of Brisk, Rabbi Aaron Kotler and others. When Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Etz Chaim in Jerusalem learned of the activities of Pe’ilim, he called upon Yeshiva students to join them.
It was during his activities as a leader of this organization that Rabbi Avraham Ravitz visited the U.S. for the first time to acquaint American Jews with the work of Pe’ilim and raise funds on its behalf. At the time I interviewed Rabbi Ravitz for the “Jewish Press” introducing him to our readers. I did not meet with him since then, but always read newsreports about him. After his death, the Hebrew Haredi press in Israel — especially the weeklies HaMishpacha and BaKehilla — published very interesting articles about him.
Rabbi Ravitz was also called the father of the Teshuva movement.
In the wake of the Six Day War, the Land of Israel witnessed a Jewish religious renaissance. Jews who grew up without observing the Mitzvot and the study of Torah felt a great desire to learn about their religion and to study Torah. Religious Jews were ready to assist these Ba’alei Teshuva. Religious settlements and Yeshivot adopted non-religious Kibbutzim, providing them with lecturers and teachers. Individual Jews conducted classes. Ravitz, who was at that time head of Yeshiva Merom Zion, was a much sought after teacher. He taught Ba’alei Teshuva in various localities. In Tel Aviv he taught once a week a class of men and a class for women. The men he taught Gemara, the women  — Maimonides’ Shemonah Perakim. Those classes were held on the roof above the studio of an Israeli artist, who was a Ba’al Teshuva.
One of Rabbi Ravitz’ students was  Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. After Rabbi Ravitz’ death  Olmert issued a statement, the first paragraph  of which read: “Rabbi Avraham Ravitz, member of the Knesset, was a personal friend of mine for tens of years. Long before he thought of entering politics and serving as a member of the Knesset, he gave me of his time teaching me sayings of our sages of the Talmud and the Midrash. I drank his words with great thirst.”
Rabbi Ravitz also greatly influenced artists and actors who had become Ba’alei Teshuva, such as Uri Zohar.
It was during this period that Rabbi Ravitz asked the heads of Jerusalem’s Or Same’ach Yeshiva to open a special department for Israeli Ba’alei Teshuva. They did so and Rabbi Ravitz  became active there.
I must add here that according to a fine newspaper article about Rabbi Ravitz, his activities among Ba’alei Teshuva began not after the Six Day War of 1967 but after the Yom Kippur War of 1973 when “he realized that the disillusionment engendered by Israel’s near defeat had introduced a new paradigm into secular society, a new willingness to hear the chareidi side of the story.”
(To be continued)

The Jewish Press, Friday, February 20, 2009

During the 1970s and 1980s, Rabbi Avraham Ravitz and his friends at Agudath Israel strove to organize a separate faction  in Agudah or a sister organization, which would be comprised of Litvaks. The latter,   they believed would better  represent Eretz Yisrael’s new Torah world than the leadership of the time. Their attempts were not too successful. When Rabbi Elazar M. Schach organized “Degel HaTorah,” he requested that Rabbi Moshe Gafni, who was later to become,the  number two of Degel Hatorah and represented “Degel HaTorah” in the Knesset, to head the new organization.
Rabbi Gafni did not accede to the request. He believed he was too young; he had just finished studying at the Kollel of Ofakim, and did not feel worthy  nor capable enough to lead the organization. He recommended to Rabbi Schach that he choose Rabbi Ravitz for the position.
“There is a man who is very gifted,” he said. “He has done much to spread Torah and is determined to do much more . He studied in the Hebron Yeshiva and his conduct is completely that of a Litvak. He is the right person to lead ‘Degel HaTorah.’ The name of the man is Rabbi Avraham Ravitz. In my view there is no one as suited as he to head the new Torah organization.”
Rabbi Schach asked Rabbi Gafni to provide him with more details about Rabbi Ravitz’s personality and activities. When Rabbi Gafni presented him with these, Rabbi Schach offered the leadership of “Degel HaTorah” to Rabbi Ravitz who consented to accept it immediately.
Rabbi Gafni was to relate years later that many people had called him a fool for not having accepted Rabbi Schach’s request to lead “Degel Hatorah”.
“I answered then, that never did I regret, even for a moment, my refusal of the request and my recommendation of Rabbi Ravitz. ‘Degel Hatorah’ is greatly respected and occupies an honorable place in the world of Torah as well as in the political life of the State of Israel. This is no doubt  that that is due in a great measure  to the personality of Rabbi Ravitz, his wide Torah knowledge, his excellent speeches and well founded policies. Neither I nor thousands like me would have ever been able to achieve this for our party.”
Rabbi Ravitz was elected to the Knesset for the first time in 1989. During his more than twenty years of service, he occupied important posts: He was Deputy Minister of Education, Deputy Minister of Housing and Construction and Deputy Minister of Welfare and Social Services. He also served as  Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and chairman of the Knesset’s Finance Committee.
He achieved much in various areas and was especially successful in promoting the establishment of religious neighborhoods and towns in various parts of the country. He persuaded the government and municipalities to provide additional classrooms for orthodox children and youths. He was a persuasive speaker. He did not philosophize, but asked Knesset members to consider facts and statistics!
Thus in a speech in the Knesset in the beginning of the year 2000, when he demanded the building of more classrooms for Chareidi pupils, he declared “2130 families with 15,000 children, Kein Yirbu, live in the Jerusalem Shuafat project which I promoted when I was Deputy Minister of Housing and Construction. As of today, not even one classroom for boys has been built” (Shuafat is today, called Ramat Shelomo, named for the late Rabbi Shelomo Zalman Auerbach ztl”
Rabbi Avraham Ravitz was respected and liked by Knesset members of all parties.
Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, who visited Rabbi Ravitz in the hospital several days before the latter passed away, said of him: “There is no doubt that he was one of the prominent leaders of Chareidi Jewry, I worked with him when I was Prime Minister and when I was in the opposition.”
President Shimon Peres declared at the funeral of Rabbi Ravitz, “He was often a bridge between the Lithuanian Torah world and mainstream Israel, a man opposed to coercion, preferring persuasion through teaching. He was a man who combined Torah scholarship with universal wisdom and knowledge. When arguing with him one was careful, out of respect, not to denigrate his opinion.
(Continued next week)

The Jewish Press, Friday, February 27,  2009