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Rabbi Eliyahu Yosef She'ar Yashuv Cohen (Hebrew: אליהו יוסף שאר ישוב כהן) (born November 4, 1927) is the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Haifa, Israel.
Biography
She'ar Yashuv Cohen is an 18th-generation descendant in a family of rabbis and Torah scholars. The name "She'ar Yashuv" (Hebrew: שאר ישוב) is based on the eponymous son of the prophet Isaiah (see Isaiah 7:3). His father was Rabbi David Cohen who was known as the "Nazir of Jerusalem." His mother was Sarah Etkin, among the founders of Omen, a religious women's organization that became the Emunah movement. She'ar Yashuv Cohen's parents were cousins.
Cohen attended Talmud Torah Geulah and studied at the yeshivot "Torat Yerushalayim," "Mercaz Harav," and "Etz Hayyim." According to family tradition, Lubavitcher Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson hid in She'ar Yashuv Cohen's grandfather's house after the Bolshevik Revolution. In his youth he became close to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Rabbi Yeshayahu Hadari, co-founder of Yeshivat Hakotel, said at a conference of the Ariel Institute that after Shabbat Kook used to attend the melaveh malkah at the home of the Rabbi Cohen, and his son (She'ar Yashuv) would play the violin.
She'ar Yashuv and his sister were encouraged to become Nazirites, but they chose not to follow in their father's path, apart from remaining vegetarians. When he was growing up, She'ar Yashuv's hair was not cut, he wore canvas shoes, and he followed the Nazirite practices of his father. At the age of 16, a special Beit Din of Jerusalem rabbis convened in his house to release him from the Nazirite vow. Even today, out of an idealism for the holiness of life, he does not eat meat or fish, nor does he drink wine.
She'ar Yashuv is married to Dr. Naomi Cohen, daughter of Rabbi Dr. Hayyim Shimshon (Herbert S.) Goldstein, President of the Union of rabbis of America, and granddaughter of the philanthropist Harry Fischel. His sister is Tzafiya Goren, wife of Rabbi Shlomo Goren. He and Naomi have a daughter.
Military activism
In 1948, while was studying at Mercaz Harav, She'ar Yashuv joined the Brit Hahashmona'im (Hasmonean Covenant) underground resistance movement, which fought against the British mandate, and he was an active member of the Haganah. With the support of his father and the Rosh Yeshiva of Mercaz Harav, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, he led a group of youths who fought as part of the Hish in the Israeli War of Independence, and helped to found the first military-religious core group that developed into a Yeshivat Hesder.
During the Israeli War of Independence, Cohen defended Jerusalem and Gush Etzion, where he fought with Etzel for the Old City of Jerusalem. He accompanied convoys of soldiers to Jerusalem and Gush Etzion, and also fought to defend the Gush. He was severely injured in the fighting to defend the Old City, and when the Jewish Quarter fell, he was captured by the Arab Legion of the Jordanian Army. Together with the survivors of Gush Etzion and the defenders of the Jewish Quarter, he was taken to Amman and then to the prison camp in "Mifrak." In prison, his leg was operated on, but he remained handicapped. He became one of the leaders of the POWs, and earned the respect of both British and Arab commanders in the camp.
Cohen served in the IDF for seven years and reached the rank of sgan aluf (lieutenant commander). He participated in talks with the Jordanians on returning the remains of Jews killed in Gush Etzion during the war. He also participated in an IDF delegation of to the United States, and served in senior positions in the army rabbinate, including army chaplain and chief rabbi of the Israeli Air Force.
Cohen volunteered to fight in the Yom Kippur War and served as rabbi in the group that crossed the Suez Canal.
Political and public office
Cohen holds an honors degree in Law from the law faculty of Hebrew University. He specialized in legal advice on rabbinic rulings. He researched Israeli law and its harmonization with the laws relating to the Land of Israel. Afterwards, he served as the deputy mayor of Jerusalem in the Mafdal (NRP) party, and continued in this role after the city was unified in the Six Day War in 1967.
After the death of Rabbi Yehoshua Kaniel in 1975, Cohen replaced him as Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Haifa, a position he holds to this day. He is also President of the Harry Fischel Institute for Talmudic Research and Torah Law. He founded the Midrasha HaGevoha LaTorah ("Advanced Torah Institute") and the Ariel Institute in Jerusalem. In 1983 and 1993, he was a candidate for position of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, but gained relatively few votes. He is a senior rabbinical adviser to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. He is the president of the "Sons of Zion" Union and a member of the Haifa University Board of Trustees.
Interfaith dialogue
Rabbi Cohen is active in interfaith dialogue. He was awarded Israel's Sovlanut award (tolerance) in 1991. He serves as a chief of the senior council for dialogue between the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Vatican, and recently became Chair of the council for dialogue between Judaism and Islam; he acts as an emissary of the Israel Chief Rabbinate to interfaith meetings.
In October 2008, Cohen attended a Church synod in Rome where he presented the Jewish view of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. He later used the occasion to oppose plans to beatify Pope Pius XII.
On January 28, 2009, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel broke off official ties with the Vatican indefinitely in protest over the Pope's decision to lift the excommunication of controversial bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the Society of Saint Pius X. Shear Yishuv Cohen, chairman of the Rabbinate's commission, told The Jerusalem Post that he expected Williamson to publicly retract his statements before meetings could be renewed.
Rabbi Cohen later reconciled with Pope Benedict in March 2009.
Views on disengagement from Gaza
In an article in Makor Rishon (March 2005), he wrote:
The State of Israel is dear and beloved to me as the first flowering of our redemption . Especially for this reason, I cannot avoid... expressing my clear position that the "State of Israel" is not the supreme value in our lives, in terms of being a goal unto itself. There are more important demands that take priority over this, since surely everyone who seeks to be in the State of Israel aims to protect them and guard them...
Rabbi Cohen continues with an appeal to then-prime minister Ariel Sharon:
It is asked: Why uproot the settlements? Why can they not exist in a Palestinian state... and continue to observe all the commandments of inhabiting the Holy Land, as our fathers and forefathers did throughout the generations...?
During the evacuation of Gush Katif, Cohen strongly criticized the government of Israel: "Whoever uproots Jewish settlements in the land of Israel and God forbid will even cause destruction of synagogues and uprooting graves, will not be cleansed in this world nor in the afterlife... this is the highest form of evil and cruelty..."
He later added, "I cannot consider an act more cruel and more evil than what the government of Israel did this week in Gush Katif, like this with one hand. The act of demolition of a synagogue is something that is unheard of among nations of the world... There is no sin greater than this."
In an interview with Haaretz newspaper, he said: The religious precept to settle the Land of Israel is one that stands by itself, even in the absence of the State of Israel and Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. We upheld the precept to settle the land even when the Turks and the British ruled the land. Why can we not continue to live there even when the State of Israel withdraws its sovereignty from the soil?
I hear the voices. I dwell among the people. People are finding it difficult to swallow the new reality. When the government of Israel raises its hand to uproot Jewish settlements from the Land of Israel, it loses by its own actions the whole purpose and point of the state's existence. It is impossible to ignore this. The state is an instrument of holiness, not holiness itself, an instrument of a precept, not a precept. Even Rabbi Soloveitchik wrote that he would not lend a hand to unreserved subjugation to the state. That is idolatry. When the state behaves like a state of all of its residents, and not as a Jewish state, the attitude changes. I respect it as I do any other government, but it is no longer the "beginning of our redemption". The practical significance is that we might no longer be able to continue to recite the prayers and blessings of Independence Day.
Published works (Hebrew)
- חקרי הלכה - קובץ תשובות, פסקים וקונטרסי הלכה דברים שכתב, חיבר ופרסם במשך שנות כהונתו ברבנות העיר חיפה
- שי כהן - שעורים, תשובות, ברורים וחקרי הלכה, הארות במשפט התורה ובמחשבת ישראל
- משנת הנזיר - עיקרי משנתו ותולדות חייו של הרב דוד כהן (אביו של הרב שאר ישוב כהן), מתוך יומניו, עם מבואות ופרקי זכרונות
- בסתר המדרגה - דברים מתוך משנת מרן נזיר אלקים הרב דוד כהן ומבואות לשיטתו
- יונתי בחגוי הסלע - חיבור שחיבר לעילוי נשמת אמו, הרבנית שרה כהן
- שלשה שותפים - להארת דמותם של: רבו הרב אברהם יצחק הכהן קוק, אביו הנזיר הרב דוד כהן ואמו הרבנית שרה כהן
References
- http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/rabbinicveg.html
- [http://www.hebrewbooks.org/j462 HaPardes, Iyar 1983, page 29.
- Plans to make Pius XII a saint opposed by Rabbi
- Chief Rabbinate cuts ties with Vatican
- Pope Benedict and Chief Rabbi Cohen--friends again
- [http://www.yeshiva.org.il/midrash/video/ViewVideo.asp?id=4970 From a lecture by Rabbi She'ar Yashuv Cohen on the evening before the disengagement plan was carried out in 2005.]
- [http://www.yeshiva.org.il/midrash/video/ViewVideo.asp?id=4974 From a lecture by Rabbi She'ar Yashuv Cohen during the implementation of the disengagement plan.
- http://www.jafi.org.il/education/actual/conflict/disengagement/mizrahi.html
- http://www.jafi.org.il/education/actual/conflict/disengagement/mizrahi.html
External links (Hebrew)
- "שיעורי הרב שאר ישוב כהן" - שיעורי וידאו של הרב שאר ישוב כהן מתעדכנים מדי שבוע
- שיעור בוידאו של הרב שאר ישוב כהן - ישראל ואומות העולם
- "מראה כהן", כתבה על הרב בעיתון "בשבע" גיליון מס' 205 (כ"ג במנחם-אב ה'תשס"ו, 17 באוגוסט 2006).
- מאיר ושרה אהרוני, אישים ומעשים בחיפה והסביבה, ינואר 1993.