When Rav Levinger, obm, and Rav Waldman came for a consultation with Minister Yigal Alon, they were treated to an unexpected rebuke and a short, pointed lesson on practical Zionism.
With the approach of the anniversary of the day of liberation of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Golan, we conducted discussions with a number of key figures in the settlement enterprise; we aroused memories from the first days and we wondered how much the vision of sovereignty occupied the pioneers of Judea and Samaria in those days, days of the first steps of the settlement enterprise.
Rav Eliezer Waldman
Rav Eliezer Waldman, Head of the Nir Yeshiva in Kiryat Arba, tells, in an interview with Sovereignty, of the short “lecture on ethics” of practical Zionism that he received, together with Rav Moshe Levinger, obm, from Minister Yigal Alon.
“We were a group of friends that learned together at Merkaz Harav (a national-religious yeshiva in Jerusalem, Israel, founded in 1924 by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook). Immediately after the Six Day War we were sure of what the Almighty wanted from us, why he liberated the heart of the Land of Israel – so that we would restore Jewish life to the Land of Israel, and we began to plan the ascension to Hevron. Heading this process was Rav Levinger, ZTL, and we acted together”, relates Rav Waldman.
When we were faced with the reality that the government did not want to give us permission to ascend and settle in Hevron, we did not know what to do. We turned to our friends from the movement for the Greater Land of Israel that had been established after the war, which included members both from the Right and from the Left, and we asked for a consultation. The members from the Left suggested to us to meet with Minister of Labor in the government of Eshkol, Yigal Alon, who was known to have a very warm spot in his heart towards the Land of Israel; we should consult with him on how to obtain permission from the government”.
Following the advice from the Left, Rav Waldman and Rav Levinger were sent to a meeting with Minister Alon, who surprised them with his resolute response to the question that they presented to him. “We went to him, we spoke and when he heard that we needed advice on how to obtain governmental permission to ascend to Hevron, he rebuked us and said: ‘You want the government’s permission? Are you crazy? This is not how Zionism works. We don’t wait for permission. If we had waited for permission of the Zionist movement, the distinctive communities such as Hanita, Kineret and others, would never have been established. The Zionist way is to determine facts on the ground and the permission will come later, and I will help you with this”.
These words of the minister from the Labor movement were etched on the hearts of the new pioneers. “This opened the path to continue with the planning, and this is what we did. He helped us in the following phases and not in the beginning phase”. Regarding the actual implementation of these phases, the rav says: “After a year and a half when we were in the building of the military administration in Hevron, the government set up a committee of ministers to find a place for the Hevron pioneers and they set Yigal Alon at the head of the committee. And he, together with the committee, chose the hill on which Kiryat Arba is located today. The actual building began in 1970”.
Regarding the vision of sovereignty, Rav Waldman explains that the task of building is what engaged the group that renewed the settlement in Judea and Samaria and the distant view toward the entire vision accompanied them only from a distance. “During that time we were not occupied with the problem of sovereignty. I think that the fundamental principle that guided us was that any place where there Jews live, there will be sovereignty. Clearly, we would not live under foreign rule. The settlement enterprise itself would bring about sovereignty”.