June 3, 2005/Iyar 25 5765, Volume 57, No. 40
Making miracles in the Promised LandHead of Israel yeshiva visits Phoenix, discusses disengagement
VICKI CABOT
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 Rabbi Chaim Drukman welcomes a Jewish boy at his bris. Photo courtesy of Ohr-Etzion B'nei Akiva Yeshiva |
"I received my life as a present," says the rabbi simply. "And I have to do something with it."
Drukman is the rosh yeshiva, head of the school, of Ohr-Etzion B'nei Akiva Yeshiva, an Israeli educational institution founded in 1977 that combines both Torah study and military service. He was in Phoenix recently to speak about his work and to share his perspectives on the proposed Gaza withdrawal at a lecture sponsored by the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of Greater Phoenix. Ohr-Etzion is located in Mercaz Shapira, just south of Tel Aviv and about an hour's drive from the Gaza border.
On first meeting, Drukman looks the part of a soft-spoken rosh yeshiva: dark suit, crisp white shirt, long grey beard, kippah.
And yet, as he warms to a visitor's interest, his clear blue eyes brighten, his English, still heavily accented from his native Poland, becomes more animated, his gestures more vigorous.
Drukman quickly relates his story.
He tells how his family survived during the war, hiding in a room in his uncle's home. How they were almost discovered when storm troopers charged through the town. How his parents affected a treacherous escape in the dead of night to Romania. How he traveled to Israel with a childless couple when his parents could not get papers. And how he reached Israel, an 11-year-old boy alone, and was miraculously reunited with his mother and father two years later.
At each juncture in the telling, he punctuates the story with, "I got my life."
Drukman went on to study and receive smicha, ordination, as an Orthodox rabbi. And also serve in the army.
He decided early on that both were necessary.
"We are privileged to have our state to live in, the state of Israel," he says simply. "And the state of Israel unfortunately needs to be defended."
The army assures its physical existence, he says.
Torah study assures its spiritual existence.
"We need Jewish studies to continue as an ancient nation," he says.
Drukman has worked for many years in Bnei Akiva, a Zionist religious movement, both in Israel and the United States where he served as a shaliach in a number of major Jewish communities, before taking the position at Ohr Etzion. He was a member of the Knesset from 1977-1989, where he also served as deputy minister of the Religious Affairs Ministry and a member of the Security and Foreign Affairs Committee, the Education Committee and the Aliyah and Absorption Knesset committees. He currently serves as the chief judge at the Special Court for Conversions, a post he has held since 1990.
He describes the yeshiva, which adjoins Kiryat Malachi, one of the communities connected to Phoenix through the United Jewish Communities partnership program, as one of 40 of its kind in Israel.
The school has 900 students, ages 14 and up, and offers a number of different programs, including a military academy, one of only two in Israel, that combines military and Torah education and prepares students to become military officers.
"It is the first military school in Israel since the fall of the second temple," says the rabbi.
Its Yeshivat Hesder, another module, is a five-year program that allows students to do active duty in the Israel Defense Forces while completing their yeshiva education. Hesder is the Hebrew word for arrangement. Most of the students in the Hesder program, now numbering 350, receive advanced degrees after completing their army service.
Ohr Etzion also has a cadre of some 70 married couples who live, study and teach in nearby Kiryat Malachi, providing a wonderful resource for the new immigrant population there. Programs include a Talmud Torah for children and a Torah center for adults.
There is also a women's program that offers a one-year study component for women to come and learn about Judaism.
Drukman's mission has been to reach out to the new immigrant populations, including the Russian youth and more recently the Ethiopians.
The Or M'Ofir, leaders of the Ethiopian community, program provides a five-year educational sequence for at-risk Ethiopian boys. It begins with a pre-army preparatory module, continues with contact and support during military service and progresses to a return to the yeshiva after army to complete studies for certification as teachers and rabbis in the Ethiopian community.
While he believes he sees the miracle of Israel unfolding in the hearts and minds of his students, Drukman is troubled by the current political situation in Israel.
He lays out a cogent argument against the proposed Gaza withdrawal, due to begin later this summer.
He questions the uprooting of some 10,000 Jews who have lived in the affected areas for 37 years.
"Children, grandchildren have been born there," he says.
He worries about the diminished security.
"When they go out of Gaza, who will go in?" he asks. "The terrorists. And where will they shoot, north," in the direction of Mercaz Shapira.
Several years ago his driver was felled by a terrorist's bullet when Drukman was in the car. He points out a young man in the yeshiva's promotional video; he was killed in another attack.
Drukman also doubts the benefit to Israel in future negotiations with the Palestinians.
"To give parts away, why?" he asks.
And, he adds, the disengagement is anti-democratic, suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was elected on a platform that declared its intention to shore up the settlements in Gaza, not dismantle them.
"We are speaking about a Jewish area," says Drukman. "Jews live there."
He says that giving up the land is giving up to the terrorists.
"And if we give in, they won't stop."
Drukman offers no alternative plan, but it is clear that he believes that Israel's amazing story will prevail.
He and his wife have nine children and 50 grandchildren.
That is Israel's strength, its future.
He lapses into Hebrew to relate the story of the patriarch Jacob who tradition says passed over the Jordan with only a stick and returned with a multitude.
So, says Drukman, "I came by myself and baruch Hashem, bless God, I have 50 grandchildren."