Will Palestine’s first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi be homeless? If haredim linked to former haredi leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv prevail, he may be.
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook in 1924 Palestine
Will Haredim Steal The Home Of Pre-State Israel’s First Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi?
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Will Palestine’s first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi be homeless?
If haredim linked to former haredi leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv win a decades-long court battle, he may be.
Elyashiv is a long-time hater of Israel’s chief rabbinate and the Zionist Orthodox movement.
The building in question is located in downtown Jerusalem, surrounded by much newer, much taller, buildings of steel and glass. For about a decade, it was the home of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine and the leading rabbi of the Zionist Orthodox movement, who passed away in 1935. At one point, Mercaz HaRav, the first Zionist Orthodox yeshiva that carries Kook's name, used the building as its home.
The house was built in 1923 with money donated for that purpose by an American philanthropist, Harry Fischel. Fischel, an architect and builder, donated millions of dollars to Jewish and Orthodox causes in the US and and in Israel, including the money that allowed Yeshiva University in New York to open a graduate school. He was at one point the acting president of Yeshiva College and YU’s beit midrash, rabbinical school study hall, still bears his name.
Fischel wanted to give the chief rabbi a more presentable home – Kook was then living in a one-room apartment.
To get the money for Kook's house to Palestine, Fischel used an Ashkenazi charity, Va'ad Haclali-Knesset Yisrael (VH-KI), as a conduit. VH-KI's involvement is the basis for the haredi attempt to steal the property today.
Even with almost 90 years of unbroken occupation by the Zionist Orthodox and Fischel’s strong support for Kook and the chief rabbinate, haredim recently won a victory in beit din, rabbinic court, that allows them to charge the Zionist Orthodox rent.
The fight over the property started in the wake of Kook’s death in 1935. Fischel sent the money through VH-KI on condition that the building would never be sold, and that it would remain the home of the current Ashkenazi chief rabbi forever, and there is an agreement stating this.
But this agreement was made before the state was founded, and the chief rabbis who followed Kook did not make use of the home. Instead, it served as a museum for Kook's heritage and as, for a brief time, the home of Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, named after Kook.
VH-KI has other property in the Jerusalem that it reportedly uses to house poor haredim. It has tried for decades to take ownership of Kook’s house by claiming it is not fulfilling its actual purpose – which despite the VH-KI agreement with Fischel to the contrary, VH-KI claims is to help the poor.
For decades, VH-KI petitions were rejected by rabbinic courts.
But then in 2007, the now haredi-controlled Supreme Rabbinic Court awarded ownership of the building to VH-KI. The Zionist Orthodox group using the building a museum and heritage center for Rabbi Kook could remain in the building, but now, for the first time, it would have to pay rent for the building Fischel gave to Kook.
The Supreme Rabbinic Court ruling, made by Rabbi Avraham Sherman. Sherman is a former Zionist Orthodox rabbi who became haredi. He is a close disciple of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. About the same time Sherman awarded the home to VH-KI, he issued a widely pilloried ruling at the urging of Rabbi Elyashiv, voiding all Zionist Orthodox conversions to Judaism done by the state’s official conversion court.
The Zionist Orthodox group claims the ruling was changed after Sherman signed it, and has filed a formal complaint with the State Judicial Ombudsman.
Sherman also has another conflict of interest. He is married to Kook’s niece.
VH-KI’s attorney, Rephael Stub, told Ha’aretz that despite these irregularities, the Zionist Orthodox claim that VH-KI wants to take over the building because of its now astronomical real estate value is without merit.
Besides, Stub told Ha’aretz, Zionist Orthodox don’t have any true connection to Kook’s legacy or to his family, while Sherman does.
Sherman is widely considered by experts and laypeople alike to be the most extreme and idealogical judge on the Supreme Rabbinical Court. Sherman openly speaks of his ties to Elyashiv, who in turn has been fighting a decades-long battle of his own against the Chief Rabbinate and the Rabbinic Courts.
Elyashiv backed Rabbi Yona Metzger, a man with both heterosexual and homosexual sexual abuse allegations made against him and who had allegedly used his position as Chief Rabbi of North Tel Aviv to extort money from couples on their wedding nights. Metzger also was not a rabbinic judge, a prerequisite for doing the job as chief rabbi.
Elyashiv knew all this but backed Metzger’s run anyway, getting Metzger elected in a backroom deal.
When asked why he did so, Elyashiv responded, “to restore the glory to the chief rabbinate.”
Like Sherman, Metzger was a former Zionist Orthodox. He became a follower of Elyashiv and pledged fealty to him before the election in return for Elyashiv’s backing.