Rav Herzog
Rabbi Kaganoff
Rav Yitzhak Halevi Herzog
By Rabbi Yirmiyohu Kaganoff
The yahrzeit of Rav Yitzhak Halevi Herzog (1888-1959) is on the 19th of Tamuz. As I have already written articles on aspects of his life, this article will discuss neither his election as Chief Rabbi of Israel nor his research on techeiles.
Rav Herzog was born in Łomza in Russian Poland, the son of Rav Yoel Leib and Liba Herzog. His father was a talmid chacham of note, and very Zionistic. He had intended to attend the first Zionist conference called by Theodore Herzl, but at the last minute, he was unable to attend because of illness in his family. The Herzog family moved to Leeds, in the United Kingdom, where Rav Yoel accepted a rabbinic position. Many decades later, Rav Yoel Herzog was appointed rav of the largest and most prominent Ashkenazi community in France.
The younger Rav Herzog never attended yeshiva. His early Torah learning was with his father, and, from that point on, he was self-taught. After mastering Shas, Shulchan Aruch etc. at a young age, he corresponded with many of the gedolim of his time, including Rav Chayim Soloveichek of Brisk (after whom he named his older son), the Ridbaz (whom he considered his greatest rebbe other than his father, and after whom he named his younger son, Yaakov), Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk (the Ohr Somay’ach), Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer (the Even Ha’ezel, Rosh Yeshiva of Slutkz and later Eitz Chayim in Yerushalayim), Rav Chayim Ozer of Vilna, and many others.
When Rav Yoel Herzog moved to Paris to assume his rabbonus, the son accompanied his parents and attended the Sorbonne. He later returned to the United Kingdom to complete his doctorate at the University of London. A brilliant linguist, he was proficient both in many ancient languages and in numerous modern languages. His multi-disciplinary doctoral dissertation, which has since been published, was on the source of techeiles, which he felt was a sea snail.
Upon completing his academic studies in 1916, Rav Yitzchak Herzog assumed the position as rabbi of Belfast, Ireland. During his years in Belfast, he had occasion to travel to London for a rabbinic meeting where he met Rav Avraham Yitzchak Hakohein Kook, Rav Shemuel Hillman (his future father-in-law, then a dayan in London) and his future rebbitzen. In 1919, Rav Yitzchak and Rebbitzen Sarah Herzog moved to Dublin, still part of the United Kingdom, where he had been appointed the Chief Rabbi. Rebbitzen Herzog, a well-respected askan and baalas chesed and tzedakah in her own right, was later honored with the naming of Herzog Hospital, a highly regarded rehab hospital in Yerushalayim.
The Herzogs had two sons, the older of whom, Chaim, became a general, politician, ambassador to the United Nations and president of the State of Israel. Two of Chaim’s four children also became famous in Israeli government: Michael served as ambassador to the United States and Yitzchak (named for his grandfather) headed the Labor party in the Knesset, was leader of the opposition, chairman of the Jewish Agency and is the current president of the State of Israel.
The younger son, Yaakov, was a musmach of Machon Harry Fischel and at one time was offered the position of Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom. Professionally, he was a member of the Israeli diplomatic corps, where he served with much distinction. He was an advisor on foreign policy to the Prime Minister (chief of the United States division), minister at the Israeli embassy in Washington D. C., and was the Israeli ambassador to Canada and, later, the director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office. He held secret talks with King Hussein of Jordan in a London clinic that opened the way to peace between Jordan and Israel, established secret contacts with Lebanese Christians and became a personal friend to President Kennedy and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. While ambassador to Canada, he became most famous for his public debate with the highly anti-Semitic but well-respected British historian, Arnold J. Toynbee, who had called the Jewish people a "fossil" and compared Israel's actions in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War to the actions of the Nazis against the Jews in the Holocaust. After he demolished Toynbee in the debate, Toynbee’s wife, who had witnessed the debate, publicly rebuked Toynbee for having participated in the debate to begin with, so poor was his showing. Unfortunately, Yaakov Herzog passed away prematurely of a stroke at the age of fifty.
Let us return to when the two Herzog brothers, Chaim and Yaakov, were still little boys in Ireland. Rav Herzog supported the Irish republican cause during the Irish War of Independence. He personally befriended and sheltered Eamon de Valera (later to become President of Ireland) when he was a refugee from the British army and police. When the Irish Free State earned its independence, Rav Herzog became the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland, a position he kept until he moved to Eretz Yisrael.
During his twenty years as a rav in Ireland, Rav Herzog was offered numerous prominent positions, including the Chief Rabbi/Chacham Bashi of Saloniki, then the largest Jewish community in the world; the presidency of Yeshiva University; and the Chief Rabbi of France. He turned down all the offers, saying that he wanted to leave Ireland only if he could move to Eretz Yisrael.
When the senior Rav (Yoel) Herzog passed away in 1935, he had left a tzava’ah requesting that he be buried in Eretz Yisrael. Rav Yitzchak Herzog followed his father’s wishes and personally conveyed his father’s remains to Eretz Yisrael. This was the younger Rav Herzog’s first visit to Eretz Yisrael, and it was at this time that the position of Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv was open. While he was in Eretz Yisrael, Rav Herzog was interested in the position, and his son Chaim, then still observant, advocated strongly on his father’s behalf. Rav Herzog gave many shiurim while visiting Eretz Yisrael and met many of the country’s great talmidei chachamim and gedolei Yisrael, but did not get the position. The position was awarded to Rav Moshe Avigdor Amiel, at the time the rav of Antwerp, Belgium, who was the candidate of the organized Mizrachi party. (By the way, the candidate who placed third in the election was Rav Joseph Ber Soloveichek of Boston and, later, of Yeshiva University.)
Shortly thereafter, Rav Avraham Yitzchak Hakohein Kook, rav of the new yishuv, passed on, and his position was up for election. I have previously written at length on this election and the fact that Rav Herzog won the election (over Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlap, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Merkaz Harav) by only a few votes. The Herzogs moved to Eretz Yisrael at the first opportunity, although their younger son, Yaakov, remained in England where he completed his secular education.
By 1936, Rav Herzog was well established in Eretz Yisrael. He testified in front of the Peel Commission in London and participated in the London Conference of 1939 between Jews and Arabs from Mandatory Palestine, convened by the British government. During the Arab Revolt, he, together with other rabbonim, called for avoidance of acts of revenge. Rav Herzog also acted to unify the Jewish settlers in Eretz Yisrael. He attempted to mediate between Chaim Weizmann and Zeev Jabotinsky, encouraging them to cooperate, and took measures to establish unity among the religious leaders in Palestine. He visited Irgun prisoners who were being held by the British in Eritrea (Africa), in order to encourage them.
From 1936 until his death in 1959, he was Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine and of Israel, after its creation in 1948. He was deeply disappointed that the new state did not follow halacha as its basic civil law, something that he had assumed it would. He was the author of the prayer on behalf of the State of Israel currently recited weekly by many congregations the world over, and was also instrumental in many now- assumed aspects of Israel=.[DB1] His responsa have been published as Shu’t Heichal Yitzchak and he authored two books (of a planned five) entitled, Main Institutions of Jewish Law.
In May 1939, shortly before the Second World War, the British issued the White Paper of 1939, restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine. After leading a procession through the streets of Jerusalem, on the steps of the Hurva Synagogue he turned and said: "We cannot agree to the White Paper. Just as the prophets did before me, I hereby rip it in two." Thirty-six years later, on November 10th 1975, Chaim Herzog, then Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, repeated his father's gesture, physically ripping up the UN resolution that Zionism is racism.
During World War II, Rav Herzog travelled the world in attempts to have the allies do something to save Jewish lives, including meetings with politicians throughout Europe and with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. After the war, Rav Herzog set out on a rescue mission to find Jewish children who survived the Holocaust by being placed with Christian families and to return them to the Jewish people. He also entered abandoned Jewish homes throughout Europe, collecting genizah and other items of Judaica that had survived the war. The Central Committee of Polish Jews gave him a Torah scroll found under the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto, to bring to Eretz Yisrael.
Rav Herzog travelled throughout devastated Europe meeting with religious and state leaders, requesting their help with his mission. He even met with the not-so-pious pope (known as Pius XII), who turned a cold shoulder, refusing to return any Jewish child who had been baptised, even if forcibly or by adoptive Christian families. Rabbi Berel Wein often told how moved he was as a teenager when he heard Rav Herzog tell the story and then break down into uncontrollable crying over the neshamos lost to Yiddishkeit forever. Rav Herzog authored a kinah (lament), which he penned after witnessing the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto. He began his return to Eretz Yisrael from Poland via a Red Cross train traveling to Prague, bringing with him 500 orphaned children whom he had managed to save from both Holocausts, physical and spiritual.
In 1947 and early 1948, Rav Herzog worked diligently to prepare a comprehensive program for the institution of halacha as the civil legal system in Israel. Throughout his lifetime, Rav Herzog wrote many articles and books, in addition to the above-mentioned Main Institutions of Jewish Law, discussing what should be the judicial system in the Jewish state.
Rav Herzog, described by one journalist as no less than a “phenomenon of knowledge,” had a broad range of interests and areas of expertise. “So great was the scope of his activities that to the outside observer it may seem as though they were accomplished by many different people in different fields, not by one.” He attracted an eclectic group of friends and acquaintances — rabbonim such as Rav Yechiel Michel Tukachinski; prominent secular Jewish leaders; politicians, such as Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York and Eamon de Valera, leader of the Irish Revolution; and even the catholic Archbishop of Ireland.
Notwithstanding his own prominence as a Torah scholar and his position as Chief Rabbi of the nascent State of Israel, he often suppressed his own halachic position in order to create consensus and avoid machlokes. (This is in noted contrast to some later holders of the august position.) For example, when the Chazon Ish opposed introducing zebu cattle to Eretz Yisrael, Rav Herzog rescinded his psak accepting them, notwithstanding that such prominent chareidi authorities as Rav Vosner agreed with Rav Herzog.
Rav Herzog passed away in 1959 and is buried in the Sanhedria Cemetery. He was succeeded by Rav Issar Yehuda Unterman. Thus, the first three rabbonim of the new yishuv were, in order, Kohein, Levi, Yisrael.
[DB1]Strange to state this without any examples. Please provide, if possible.