Elazar Shach
Elazar Menachem Man Shach was a Haredi rabbi who headed Lithuanian Orthodox Jews in Israel and around the world from the early 1970s until his death in 2001. He served as chair of the Council of Sages and one of three co-deans of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, along with Shmuel Rozovsky and Dovid Povarsky. Due to his differences with the Hasidic leadership of the Agudat Yisrael political party, he allied with Ovadia Yosef, with whom he founded the Shas party in 1984. Later, in 1988, Shach criticized Ovadia Yosef, saying that, "Sepharadim are not suitable for leadership positions", and subsequently founded the Degel HaTorah political party representing the Litvaks in the Israeli Knesset.
Biography
Elazar Menachem Man Shach was born in Vabalninkas, in northern Lithuania, to Ezriel and Batsheva Shach. The Shach family had been merchants for generations, while the Levitans were religious scholars who served various Lithuanian communities. As a child, Shach was considered an illui and in 1909, aged 11, went to Panevėžys to study at the Ponevezh Yeshiva which was then headed by Isaac Jacob Rabinowitz. In 1913 he enrolled at Yeshivas Knesses Yisrael in Slabodka.When World War I began in 1914, Shach returned to his family, but then began traveling across Lithuania from town to town, sleeping and eating wherever he could, while continuing to study Torah. During this period he suffered considerable deprivation, living with inadequate sanitation and being compelled to wear tattered clothing and worn out shoes. He reportedly sequestered himself in an attic for two years not knowing where his parents were. In 1915, following the advice of Yechezkel Bernstein, Shach traveled to Slutsk to study at the yeshiva there.
In 1939, Shach went to Vilna, where he stayed with Chaim Ozer Grodzinski. Later that year, Shach's mother and eldest daughter died. In early 1940, Shach's maternal uncle, Aron Levitan, helped him get emigration visas to the United States, but after consulting with Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik and Grodzinski, Schach decided to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine. Shach later served as a rosh yeshiva in Jerusalem.
Pedagogic and rabbinic career
At Lomzha Yeshivah in Petach Tikvah, Shach served as the main Talmudic lecturer, while Rabbi Moshe Shmuel and Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky delivered specialized lectures in Talmud.Several years after the re-establishment of the Ponevezh yeshiva in Bnei Brak, Shach was invited by Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman to become one of its deans, and, after discussing the proposal with Soloveitchik, he accepted the offer. Shach served in that capacity from 1954 until his death.
Shach received semikhah from Isser Zalman Meltzer, and served as chairman of Chinuch Atzmai and Va'ad HaYeshivos. In the mid-1960s, Samuel Belkin offered Shach the position of senior rosh yeshivah at Yeshiva University in New York, which he declined. Shach's wife died in 1969 from complications connected to diabetes. From 1970 until his death, Shach was generally recognized by Lithuanian Haredim and other Haredi circles as the Gadol Ha-Dor. During his lifetime, Shach was a spiritual mentor to more than 100,000 Orthodox Jews.
Political career
Shach fought those who deviated from what he believed was the classical Haredi path. At the behest of Aharon Kotler, Shach joined the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah. When Zalman Sorotzkin died in 1966, Shach became president of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, before later resigning from the Moetzes after the other leading rabbis refused to follow him. Shach wrote strongly in support of every observant citizen voting. He felt that a vote not cast for the right party or candidate was effectively a vote for the wrong party and candidate. This theme is consistent in his writings from the time that the State of Israel was established.File:PikiWiki Israel 9440 harav-shach.jpg|thumb|230px|Shach, seated right, looking down at book. Yosef Shalom Eliashiv and Chaim Kanievsky are to his left.
Shas ran for the 11th Knesset in 1984, and Shach called upon his "Lithuanian" followers to vote for it in the polls, a move that many saw as key political and religious move in Shach's split with the Hasidic-controlled Agudat Yisrael. While initially, Shas was largely under the aegis of Shach, Ovadia Yosef gradually exerted control over the party, culminating in Shas' decision to support the Labor party in the 13th Knesset in 1992.
On the eve of the November 1988 election, Shach officially broke away from Agudat Israel. His primary complaint was the joining up with PAI, after this partnership has been rejected in previous election campaigns. Other complaints included Hamodia publishing a series of articles based on the teachings of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn. Shach criticized The Rebbe for his presumed messianic aspirations. Shach wanted the Aguda party to oppose Lubavitch; however, all but one of the Hasidic groups within the party refused to back him. Shach and his followers then formed the Degel HaTorah party to represent the non-Hasidic Ashkenazi Haredim.
Following a visit by Shach in Jerusalem to the leading rabbis and halachic decisors of the day, Yosef Shalom Eliashiv and Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, in order to seek their support for the new party. Rabbi Auerbach refused to lend his support.
In a speech delivered prior to the 1992 elections, Shach said that Sephardim were not fit for leadership and aroused great anger among Sephardi voters. Following the elections, Shach instructed Shas not to join the government, while Ovadia Yosef instructed them to join; this precipitated an open rift between the parties. Shach then claimed that Shas had "removed itself from the Jewish community when it joined the wicked...".
Around 1995, Shach retired from political activity.
Views and opinions
Shach was opposed to Zionism, both secular and religious. He was dismissive of secular Israelis and their culture. For example, during a 1990 speech, he lambasted secular kibbutzniks as "breeders of rabbits and pigs" who did not "know what Yom Kippur is". In the same speech, he said that the Labor Party had cut themselves off from their Jewish past and wished to "seek a new Torah". Labor Party politician Yossi Beilin said Shach's speech set back relations between religious and secular Israelis by decades. Other secular Israelis, including residents of the kibbutz Ein Harod, were said to have found the speech inspirational, so much so as to bring them closer to religious practice.In 1985, four years after the Labor Party supported a liberalized abortion law, Shach refused to meet with Shimon Peres and said he would not speak with a "murderer of fetuses".
In Haaretz, Shahar Ilan described him as "an ideologue" and "a zealot who repeatedly led his followers into ideological battles".
Shach never seemed concerned over the discord he provoked: "There is no need to worry about machlokes , because if it is done for the sake of Heaven, in the end, it will endure... One is obligated to be a baal-machlokes . It is no feat to be in agreement with everybody!"
Shach was also critical of Western democracy, once referring to it as a "cancer", adding that, "Only the sacred Torah is the true democracy."
Position on army service
In May 1998, following talk of a political compromise which would allow Haredim to perform national service by guarding holy places, Shach as well as many other Orthodox leaders told their followers in public statements that it is forbidden to serve in the army, and that "it is necessary to die for this". This is a case, Shach said, in which, halachically, one must "be killed, rather than transgress". This position was expressed in large ads placed in all three of Israel's daily newspapers on May 22, 1998. Shach is quoted as saying that, "Any yeshiva student who cheats the authorities and uses the exemption from service for anything other than real engagement in Torah study is a rodef ", and that "those who are not learning jeopardize the position of those who are learning as they should".Position on territorial compromise
Shach supported the withdrawal from land under Israeli control, basing it upon the halakhic principle of pikuach nefesh, in which the preservation of lives takes precedence over nearly all other obligations in the Torah, including those pertaining to the sanctity of land. Shach also criticized Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "a blatant attempt to provoke the international community", and called on Haredi Jews to avoid moving to such communities.Shach often said that for true peace, it was "permitted and necessary to compromise on even half of the Land of Israel", and wrote that, "It is forbidden for the Israeli government to be stubborn about these things, as this will add fuel to the fire of anti-Semitism". When Yitzchak Hutner was asked to support this position, he refused, saying that, "agreement to other-than-biblical borders was tantamount to denial of the entire Torah".