“Because of Your Beard I Can Talk to You”: Rabbi Froman as Crisis Mediator between Israelis and Palestinians

Abstract

The subject of this essay is the role Rabbi Menachem Froman played as a mediator in crises between Israelis and Palestinians against the background of his interreligious vision of peace and attempts to implement it. Rabbi Froman was very active in this matter and initiated various schemes to promote reconciliation between the Israelis and Palestinians, both in his discussions with religious leaders of the two peoples as well as with politicians in Israel and around the world. The network of contacts and the open discourse that the rabbi developed in order to promote his vision enabled him to serve as a mediator during numerous crises that arose in the Middle East, in general, and Israel in particular. This essay sheds light on Rabbi Froman’s attempts at mediation throughout the years, including the outline of a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict he crafted with the other side. This essay is primarily based on archival materials and newspaper articles about the rabbi that were revealed after his death in 2013. The essay also chronologizes Rabbi Froman’s attempts to serve as mediator for the Israeli and Palestinian leadership and the “jihad for peace” he advocated.

1. Introduction

When speaking of conflict resolution, or the importance of the mediator in these matters, the discourse often remains theoretical or philosophical. One can point to three main theoretical approaches regarding conflicts and their creation. First, there is the liberal conception of conflict as an unhealthy, pathological matter. The proponents of this view consider man to be inherently good; therefore, a situation of conflict between individuals, peoples, or nations represents a contradiction to human nature, and must be eliminated. The two other conceptions theorize conflict as inherent to social change: one, as an inevitable consequence of social change; the other, as a means for catalyzing such a change. For our purposes, social change is defined as a change in the structure of social power and the distribution of resources used to generate influence. According to both of these structural approaches, some conflicts are so protracted, so stubborn and difficult to resolve, that the foundations—the structure upon which they rest—must be changed, including the actors involved, the topics discussed, and the resources being contended, among others (Ramsbotham et al. 2011, pp. 25–32).

In the case of the Middle East, one can point to the conflict between the Israeli-Jewish world and the Arab-Islamic world. Although ostensibly a political dispute—a conflict between two peoples over land and the right of the State of Israel to exist—the conflict is actually multi-faceted, concerning facets that are territorial, national, religious, political, and more, so that it is difficult to understand its origins.1 This difficulty creates a corresponding difficulty in resolving it, since such a resolution must involve, as aforementioned—according to the structural approaches—changing the structure of the conflict and uprooting it completely.

Rabbi Menachem Froman once viewed the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as fundamentally religious in nature, and therefore resolvable by changing its structure, detaching it from the national-political context, and addressing relations between Judaism and Islam. In his view, the Holy Land was God’s land, and as such its inhabitants were merely guests. He believed that since all the religions of the Middle East share a common foundation, namely a belief in the same God, religion can serve as the basis for understanding and dialogue among the region’s peoples and pave the way for peaceful co-existence in their shared land (Ben-Haim 2013; Little 2007, pp. 16, 346, 442). On this basis, he recognized the right of the Palestinians to the land: his Israel, their Palestine.

2. Rabbi Menachem Froman: State of Research

Froman’s unique approach represented an opportunity to change the reality of the conflict, and his activities were both public and influenced the lives of numerous people, but very little has been written academically about his efforts to bring peace to the Holy Land. David Little (2007) wrote one of the earliest biographical sketches of Froman. He recounts Froman’s early life as a secular Jew, his life-changing participation in the Six-Day War, and his subsequent enrollment in the religious-Zionist yeshiva par excellence, Merkaz HaRav. Froman’s unique blend of secular humanism and religious tenets such as “Love thy neighbor” were imbued with the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook who taught that “the inner spark of divine light shines in all the different religions,” which resulted in Froman’s concept of a peaceful, “humane state” (Ibid., pp. 341–43). Like others under the tutelage of Rabbi Kook’s ‘ultra-nationalist’ son Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, Froman took up residence in a West Bank settlement following the Yom Kippur War, naïvely believing that his presence would be welcomed by his newfound Palestinian neighbors. Unlike his peers, Froman’s painful interactions with Palestinians during the First Intifada led him away from the notion of unilateral Jewish sovereignty over all the land, and towards methods of co-sovereignty and existence—what he called, “a humane state (medina enoshit)”. (Ibid., pp. 344–45). Little’s essay focuses mostly on Froman’s religio-political vision. It documents his early networking with Palestinian leaders and interfaith events during the Oslo Period and Second Intifada; identifies his method of “creating positive one-on-one interactions with spiritual men and women of other religious traditions”; and documents his Track Two religious diplomatic efforts to quell the violence of the Second Intifada, including meeting Yasser Arafat, signing the Alexandria Declaration of 2002, and establishing a joint council of clerics to put the religious factors driving the conflict front and center (Ibid., p. 348).

Atalia Omer (2019) focuses on categorizing (and critiquing) Rabbi Froman’s political theology.2 In her effort to articulate a potential American Jewish post-Zionism, Omer builds on Magid’s description of Froman’s ideology as “a form of ‘settler post-Zionism’”.3 She situates Froman’s alleged post-Zionism in Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook’s “Hegelian” modernist dialectical reading of Zionism as having no intrinsic value, but rather serving to “broaden and deepen the spiritual purpose of Judaism”.4 She typifies Froman’s model as a diasporic–nativist hybrid, on account of his willingness to adopt Palestinian citizenship to maintain his physical connection to the land. For Omer, Froman represents an example of where “religious remaking destabilizes the dominant narrative about political sovereignty” (Ibid., pp. 258–61).

Roth (2021) briefly profiled Rabbi Froman as among the first “Jewish-Israeli Insider Mediators” who undertook to establish a relationship with the spiritual leader of Hamas Sheikh Ahmad Yassin while he was still sitting in an Israeli prison in 1991 (Roth 2021). Roth offers a general overview of Froman’s biography and peace work, including informally cooperating with Sheikh Abdallah Nimer Darwish, the founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel, to advance ceasefires and hostage exchanges with Hamas in 1994 and 2006, respectively; connecting top religious and political leaders to discuss religious peace; quickly condemning Jewish acts of violence against Muslims; and seeking to create a religiously based peace movement that has continued through the efforts of his family, students, and acolytes (Ibid., pp. 56, 72–73).

Schvarcz and Billig (2022) offer the most recent analysis of Froman and his “peace camp’s” political theology, which seems to defy conventional categories. They argue that Froman’s theology and politics were intertwined in such a way as to demand “a continuous and transformative Judeo-Muslim dialogue for its own sake” that constituted a new theological language and made co-existence in the West Bank not a compromise, but the ideal. Unlike pragmatists such as Rabbi Michael Melchior, Froman asked Israelis to “stand outside of ourselves” in an effort to breed a “theological inner transformation of both conflicting sides” (p. 565). Froman’s Judeo-Muslim politics and theology served each other by placing pluralism front and center: that both groups’ religious and political ideals are true, and that neither supersede the other. Froman sought to transcend “the narrow sense of nationalism” by drawing on the teachings of Rabbi Kook and the model of the European Union to advance simultaneous, overlapping Israeli and Palestinian sovereignties (“constitutional pluralism”) that could keep the Israeli settlements intact, and in-so-doing, advance a “theological messianic vision” of universal peace that began in a shared capital of Jerusalem and ended in world salvation.5

Shemer (2021) also traces Rabbi Froman’s complex theology and the way it undergirded his views on Israeli–Palestinian dialogue and peace. As a man who grew up in a secular family and was drawn to observant Judaism later in life, Froman sought to reconcile the contradictions in values of secular Labor Zionists and religious Jews. This effort brought him back, time and again, to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook who argued that “the sacred and secular combine to affect the spirit of man…,” that secularism introduced “freedom” into the religious discourse, and that the combination of the two offered the potential to build something new. Froman believed that the unique circumstances of the People of Israel settling in the Land of God justified the rapprochement of Jews and Arabs on the basis of Hillel’s dictum, “what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man”. On theological grounds, he simultaneously supported the creation of a Palestinian State while remaining a lifelong supporter of ‘Greater Israel’. For Froman, only religious leaders, faith, and language could sustain a political peace process. He met with Muslim clerics of almost every persuasion, affiliation, and citizenship in order to find common religious foundations for human co-existence within “the obligation of God’s servants to fulfill His will,” and whose “most beautiful name is ‘Peace’”. He similarly sought out contacts with senior Israeli and international political leaders to help him reach otherwise inaccessible figures. Shemer’s article ends with some examples of Froman’s efforts to operationalize his philosophy through public statements, acts of solidarity, and educational initiatives. The final example addresses his role as a mediator in the kidnapping of Nachshon Wachsman in 1994 (Shemer 2021, pp. 495–503). The purpose of the present article is to expand on Rabbi Froman’s efforts as a crisis mediator using previously unavailable primary sources now accessible through the National Library of Israel.

3. Menachem Froman: A Short Biography

Menachem Froman was born to a secular family in Kfar Hassidim, a mixed community of secular and religious people. His father was born into the Gerrer Hassidic community, but subsequently ‘left the path’. The world of religion was always present in Froman’s life, but it was not actually close to him. Prior to being drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), he worked as a shepherd at Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin in northern Israel. In the IDF, he served as a paratrooper and as a member of the Nahal unit stationed in Kibbutz HaOn near Lake Tiberias on the foothills of the Golan Heights, adjacent to what was then the border with Syria. His childhood and youth forged a fundamental connection between Froman and the Land of Israel, further instilled by directly working the land (Zameret 2013).

With the outbreak of the Six-Day War in June 1967, Froman left the kibbutz and fought in the battles over Jerusalem with his paratrooper brigade, eventually becoming one of those who liberated the Old City and the Western Wall. At the conclusion of the war and his army service, Froman left the kibbutz to begin studying general philosophy and Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As a student he began studying the writings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov with a group of friends. Zvi Zameret, a fellow student and a lifelong friend, recalled that the writings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov captivated the both of them, and together they began to study in depth. These were the first steps that led Froman to become a thoroughly religious man over the next two years (Ibid.).

He subsequently began studying at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, where he became acquainted with Hanan Porat and Eli Sadan, all of whom later became members of the Gush Emunim movement6 and pioneered the renewal of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria. At the same time, Froman was invited by the then-elderly head of Mercaz HaRav Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook to live in his house and serve as his beadle. Froman accepted this invitation. His faith increased and so did the time he dedicated to studying the holy scriptures of Judaism. In a slow but steady process, he abandoned his prior way of life as a shepherd in the kibbutz and a fighter in the paratroops and wrapped himself up in his studies until he was ordained as a rabbi.7 However, throughout this entire time, Rabbi Froman championed an approach of ‘both’. His familiarity with the two worlds that comprise Israeli identity—Judaism and Zionism—and his view that they do not contradict each other, but rather complement and enrich each other, led Froman to the conclusion that the two peoples residing in God’s land also do not contradict each other’s existence.

4. The Challenges of Froman’s Peace Vision

Froman faced three substantive challenges to his method: the Islamic challenge, the political challenge, and the settler challenge.8 The Islamic challenge to Rav Froman’s work is that under Islam, the entirety of the land must remain exclusively as a waqf or other Islamically designated territory; therefore, where was the room for Israeli Jews? Rav Froman viewed the conflict—and solution—as inherently religious: that a religious accord must precede and frame a political one. Froman engaged and sought to harmonize contradictory maximalist positions: he lived in a West Bank settlement and staunchly defended his God-given right to do so, yet famously refused to enter his new caravan until a sticker stating “The Land of Israel for the People of Israel” was removed from the door, because the People of Israel were not the only ones who belonged to the land (Shemer 2021, p. 497). He also engaged Muslim maximalists, even those violently opposed to the State of Israel: he wrote the Grand Mufti of Syria Ahmad Hassoun asking him to arrange a meeting with the clerical heads of Hamas and Hezbollah; he wrote to senior Islamic figures such as Yusuf Qaradawi using classic Muslim-Arabic expressions; he adopted his interlocutors’ terminology of Israel as the “Zionist State.” (Shemer 2021, p. 499). In his missives, Froman overcame the political reality by appealing to Islamic-Jewish acceptance of the superiority of the same God whose highest name for both is ‘peace’; he argued that clerics should be the ones guiding politicians; and, in the case of Sheikh Hassoun, suggested that if religious leaders met, they might be rewarded by “believers that instead of killing each other will try to outdo each other in their dedication to Allah.”9 At the same time, he contended that people of religion are better able to agree to compromises on many (though not all) fundamental issues, because, “religious people know that there is a vision, and religious laws that link the vision to reality, and in this matter our jurists and also their Arab colleagues are willing to compromise and be flexible.”10 Even though Muslim and Jewish ideals may be different, Froman contended that the pious of each faith are accustomed to compromising on their vision to address reality as it is. Although he advocated for ideally simultaneous Muslim and Jewish sovereignty over the whole of the land in line with maximalists, he understood that Islamic law had a place for non-Muslims under its aegis, and he made clear that he was prepared to live as a dhimmi in a future Palestinian state so that he could continue to settle the Land as God commanded the Jewish people to do (Shemer 2021, p. 498).

Froman’s vision also garnered critique on the other side: how could a rabbi living in a settlement on Palestinian land legitimately present himself as a force for peace? Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank were living under military rule for the benefit of Israelis such as himself. From Froman’s perspective, the Jews’ return to the Holy Land—and his return to the Judean Hills—was a divine act in line with God’s promise to the forefathers of the Jewish People; he was uncompromising on Jewish settlement and access to the Temple Mount, but at the same time, argued that Jerusalem should be “the world capital of peace”, ruled by the religious figures of the three religions (Ibid., pp. 501–2).

The foundation of his approach was intentionally chosen as one shared by Islam and Judaism, which he linked to the essence of the Torah: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man.”11 From within this worldview and while defending the integrity of his rights, he drew on his family’s experience in the Holocaust to advocate eloquently for an independent Palestinian State, that “this joy must be lived by my brothers, my neighbors, the Palestinians.”12 Contrary to being the obstacle to peace, Froman argued that the religious devotion of Jewish settlers was exactly what was needed to forge common understanding with the likes of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, whom Froman famously quoted as saying, “Because of your beard I can talk to you.” (Shemer 2021, p. 500).

The respective religious challenges aside, perhaps the greatest challenge to Froman’s work was the Israeli political establishment. Despite having achieved accords with Hamas officials and others that could have served as viable elements for resolving several crises, the Israeli government never seemed to have seriously considered his offers (or those communicated through him). The reasons are unknown, but we may speculate: at its simplest, Rav Froman was seeking direct negotiations between Hamas and the State of Israel, which was against Israeli policy; they may have thought that at best he was being naïve, and at worst being manipulated by Yassin; either way, he was a non-state actor with no representative power on any side. More deeply, the Israeli government at this time was run by secular leaders who disagreed with Froman’s fundamental religious starting point: his agenda greatly differed from the prevailing liberal international (and Israeli) consensus, and he was dismissed as one crazy religious person talking to other crazies. Perhaps the deepest and shallowest speculations met at the skin-deep level. Rav Froman looked strange; he took public meetings wearing a large white fur hat and tefillin; he lived in an exotic, dangerous, and little-understood part of Israel; and he did some things unthinkable to almost any Israeli, such as driving a private car into Gaza. He was unpredictable, a free radical who operated outside all existing systems and protocols (and touted this); therefore, there was no basis on which to trust him, his methods, his vision for the future, or any guarantees he claimed enemies of the State of Israel had given him.

5. Discourse in the Name of God: Froman’s View of the Religious Mediator

As mentioned in the introduction, Rabbi Menachem Froman insisted that religious people were the key, rather than an obstacle, to reaching an understanding between the parties, yet many failed to grasp his point. In this context, Rabbi Froman once said in an interview that “… since they are religious, the usual Israeli consciousness says, radically, that whether it is a Jew or an Arab, he is a terrorist, or a settler and a terrorist, and there is no chance for peace with them. This is a misunderstanding of the phenomenon of religion.”13 In his view, because people of faith both seek a utopian goal and recognize present-day reality, and understand that the gap between the two cannot be immediately closed, they are more willing to compromise as an intermediate step to achieving their long-term vision. They know that they will not live to see their vision fulfilled, and they see compromises as an opportunity to introduce small changes into the winding path of history of which they are a minuscule part. For Froman, understanding the thought patterns of religious people provided an opportunity to come together on the basis of a shared faith to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and between Jews and Muslims (Ibid.). An unusual episode that confirms this approach was relayed by Froman, who said that in one of his meetings with Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, a leader and founder of the Hamas, the Sheikh stated that “You and I could have made peace in five minutes. Why? Because we are both believers.” (Shani 2012).

Froman’s ability to converse with a figure such as Ahmad Yassin is far from a given. Yassin was seen by many Israelis as the very embodiment of the devil: someone who had caused the death of innocents and endless bloodshed. However, Froman saw in him an opening for discourse, as a person with whom he shared a way of worshiping God. In an interview with the ultra-orthodox news website ‘BeHadrei Hadarim’, Froman was asked why Sheikh Yassin agreed to meet with him, even though he lives in a settlement. He answered simply: “Not even though, but because. We the settlers are religious people and we speak the same language. And that’s what he told me, ‘because of your beard I can talk to you’…” (Medina 2004). For Froman, the common ground was simple and all-encompassing. On another occasion he relayed the following: “Once Mahmoud al-Zahar14 asked me with a touching naïveté, ‘How can you agree to a secular state? Why do you not oppose it?’ To this type of person you must explain the doctrine of Rabbi Kook, that the secular world has positive things, too…”15 For Froman, these conversations elegantly demonstrated the ability of a religious figure to serve as a mediator between the people who are usually presented as the heart of the problem, and whose very ways of life nourish the conflict and sabotage peace: a Jewish settler and leaders of the Hamas.

In May 2010, after a mosque in the village of Lubna al-Sharqiyya in the Binyamin Region had been set afire by ‘Price Tag’16 activists, Rabbi Froman quickly visited the place and issued a complete and unequivocal condemnation of the act. At the same time, he laid out his complete conception regarding the conflict and its resolution. Upon hearing the pain and anguish of the residents of the village surrounding him, saying that “nothing can be done”, Froman replied with a heartfelt smile and said, “There is! To rebuild…to build.”17 In his view, “There is no difference…whoever harms a mosque, it is as if he harmed a synagogue—there is no difference.”18 Words such as these are not heard every day nor uttered by everyone, much less a settler; however, Froman’s belief that the land belongs to the God of both peoples meant for him that any harm caused to a place of either’s worship could not be allowed to pass in silence.

Froman viewed the violence in the Holy Land as the work of Satan and his sons; therefore, the role of a religious leader, and all believers, was to combat Satan’s designs on earth by bringing peace among men. He explained this idea in his own words: “Satan is who causes wars between people, between man and wife, between neighbors, and between nations. This is the work of Satan. One must fight Satan […] if we banish the sons of Satan then the land will be blessed […] we will have peace here.”19 For Froman, the ideas that God’s most beautiful name is “Peace”20 and that “God is the Greatest” (“Allahu Akbar”) made peace the most exalted goal, and therefore the highest duty of religious figures—Jewish and Muslim—to best serve God by constantly striving for it. To fulfill this goal, he viewed himself as a bridge between the peoples and nations living on the land.

The aforementioned mosque arson occurred during a period of entrenched political stalemate in which the Palestinian authority boycotted Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, products manufactured in the West Bank, and even Palestinians working for Jews, whether in a settlement or factory where Jews and Palestinians worked together. Given this background, Froman admitted that he was very surprised to receive an invitation from the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fiad, to come to the burned mosque and speak to the residents of the village as someone who represented a different way. He noted to a Ynet reporter that in his view, “The Palestinians see that there is no Palestinian state and that hurts them very much, so I was invited as a sign that there is a way. They understand that the negotiations are stuck, and the Americans are leading them nowhere and maybe they really want to try a new way.” (Mangazi and Waked 2010). This episode suggests that, at least to a degree, Froman managed to position himself as someone who represented a bridge between the peoples, even in the most difficult times when there was no political horizon and the hopes for a peaceful future seemed further and more impossible than ever.

6. Translated into Action: Froman’s Body of Work as a Crisis Mediator

Rabbi Froman was a man of words and vision who wished to initiate a discourse between the Israeli and Palestinian nations outside of the official political framework, and, as much as possible, outside official channels. Nonetheless, he did at times find himself assuming the official role of mediator, whether once as an official representative of the State of Israel, or more often in a self-appointed fashion in which he presented the compromises he had reached with his Muslim counterparts to Israeli decisionmakers in the hope that they would become official agreements. The following section chronologizes several prominent events in which Rabbi Menachem Froman attempted to mediate between the parties.

7. The Madrid Conference (1991)

The first and only time Froman served as an official representative of the State of Israel was in the discussions held at the Madrid Conference in 1991 with Arab states and the Palestinians. In this case, he was part of the official delegation of the State of Israel, led by Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir and de facto headed by Elyakim Rubinstein.21 The conference led to unprecedented direct discussions with the Arab governments, which had been the goal of every Israeli government since the founding of the state. Although Froman did not officially participate in any negotiations after this conference, it paved the way for the peace agreement signed with Jordan, and, three years later, direct negotiations with the Palestinians that led to the Oslo Accords.22 The conference also formed the basis of a connection between Froman and Rubinstein that he would seek to utilize later.

In February of 1994, Israeli authorities closed the Cave of the Patriarchs to Jews after the massacre of Muslim worshipers there by Baruch Goldstein. At the time, Elyakim Rubinstein was serving as assistant to Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin, and shortly before the signing of the peace agreement with Jordan in October of that year, Froman wrote to him. He asked Rubinstein to submit a request to the prime minister for a “green light” to officially continue discussions he had begun with Islamic elements that would enable the re-opening of the Cave of the Patriarchs to Jews that included designating it an extra-territorial site under the joint auspices of Israeli and Palestinian police.23 Here, Froman was asking permission from the Israeli prime minister to serve as an official mediator between the State of Israel and Muslim religious figures on the basis of the discursive channels he had constructed over long years of conversations. He viewed such a religious discourse as an opportunity that politicians were unable to offer their constituents.

In light of the Oslo Accords that had now been underway for almost a year and the upcoming peace agreement with Jordan, Froman argued in the same letter that evacuating settlements would not bring the hoped-for peace; instead, he suggested that “pro-Jordanian” elements be included in the peace process, by which he appears to have been referring to the Islamic Movement in Israel, which at the time advocated for Jordanian control over the Temple Mount. In Froman’s view, concluding an agreement with Islamists regarding the Cave of the Patriarchs in parallel to the peace process, while integrating their brethren in Israel into official negotiations with the Palestinians, could incentivize them to commit to the process and any subsequent agreement, and transform sites that had been a locus of tension between the nations into symbols of peaceful co-existence (Ibid.).

Jordan and Israel would sign their final peace agreement in October, 1994. One of the clauses in the accord includes an item that “the parties will act jointly to promote interreligious relations between the three monotheistic religions in order to work toward religious understanding, ethical commitment, freedom of religious worship, tolerance, and peace.”24 Rubinstein, who was highly involved in the process of the agreement, attributed this reference to Jordanian Crown Prince Hasan Bin Talal, who was, and would continue to be, an advocate for Muslim-Jewish tolerance and joint action against Islamophobia and antisemitism.25

A year after the peace agreement was signed with Jordan, Froman received a letter through Israel’s interreligious department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: a fatwā (religious ruling) issued by a Jordanian imam, Abd al-Kader al-Sheikh, claiming that “The Messenger did not pray in al-Aqsa and the Jews have rights in Palestine” and that the Jews settled in the Land before the Palestinians.26 This ruling was issued from the Aisha Mosque in the Abdoun neighborhood, where the Israeli embassy was now being built. The fatwā may have resulted from Jordanian or Israeli diplomatic pressure, but its exigency suggests the utility of religious approbation for the larger political accord, and demonstrates how religious rulings and figures were conceived of as a bridge between nations.

In 1998, Froman wrote directly to Prince Hassan to make the connection even more explicit, and in effect, reverse its direction. In this letter, which he composed in English, Froman recalled that Judaism does not proselytize, yet it adheres to a Messianic vision that “the whole world will unify G-d fittingly, and that all mankind will subject their hearts to him.”27 He pointed out the following contradiction: “How will we arrive at this universal vision if our religion is restricted to our family?” He went on to suggest that “it is conceivable to come to the conclusion that Islam will disseminate the doctrine of the Unity of G-d throughout the world,” and since rabbis “through all generations” considered Muslims to properly attribute to God a Unity without blemish, he came to the remarkable conclusions that “it is possible to think about a procedure, where the Jews, throughout the world would support the promulgation of the glad tidings of the True Unity by Moslems [sic].” He went on to decry the ongoing conflict between Muslims and Jews, which he considered the de-unifying work of Satan, and the “anti-Islamic prejudices” enflamed around the world due to terrorist attacks against “Jews in the holy land in the name of Islam.”

Froman contended that political peace is not possible without involving Muslim and Jewish religious leaders, who are obligated to act not only for political purposes, but to achieve the shared religious objective of unifying God’s good name “in the hearts of men.” To this end, he proposed that the Hashemite Dynasty, who descended from the Prophet, would be a truly fitting source to initiate “negotiations between Islam and Judaism” by providing the forum to assemble religious leaders to discuss how to translate and operationalize traditional concepts in the modern day, and propagate the Unity of God around the world. For Froman, religion not only could serve as a bridge between nations: a nation could also serve as the ultimate bridge between religions.

After the Madrid Conference, Froman never again served as an official representative of the State of Israel, but he continued to operate independently—attempting time and again to garner the backing of the Israeli authorities and foreign actors. To his great sorrow, in the vast majority of the cases, Israeli decisionmakers refused to recognize his discourse with his various Islamic, Palestinian, and Arab interlocutors, and they, in turn, could not deliver the peace he so fervently sought.

8. The Wave of Terror and the Kidnapping of Nachshon Wachsman (1995)

Following the Madrid discussions at the beginning of the decade and the understanding in the Arab world that Jordan and Israel were on their way to signing a peace agreement, the 1990s ushered in numerous political initiatives to reach a settlement with the Palestinians. Concurrent with these initiatives, which ultimately led to the Oslo Accords in 1993, a widespread wave of terrorist attacks began in Israel: buses and entertainment venues were blown up, and suicide bombers exploded in the midst of the civilian population. The attacks were intended to derail the peace efforts and were committed primarily by Hamas members, representing the Muslim-religious Palestinians. Rabbi Froman’s open and honest conversations with key figures in the leadership of the Hamas and the Palestinian authority had made him a potential mediator who could negotiate directly with them during times of crisis. The attacks reached new heights in 1994, a year after the Oslo Accords were signed. A significant escalation was signaled by the kidnapping of IDF soldier, Nachshon Wachsman,28 which occurred in close proximity to other attacks that scarred the Israeli psyche, such as the Dizengoff Street bus bombing and the Beit Lid Junction double-bombing in January, 1995.

After the kidnapping, Nachshon Wachsman’s parents turned to Froman, asking him to speak with his acquaintances in the Hamas and try to reach an agreement to release their son. Froman, who could not stand idly by, shared in an interview many years later that he had reached a telephone agreement with Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior figure in the Hamas political leadership, according to which Nachshon Wachsman would be released in return for the release of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin from Israeli prison. However, when this agreement reached the hands of the prime minster at the time, Itzhak Rabin, he replied that he (Rabin) does not make deals with the Hamas. (Makover-Belikov 2010).

During the same period, Froman also actively sought an agreement with his contacts in the Hamas to stop the violence. He managed to reach a draft agreement, according to which in return for discontinuing the terrorist attacks and the bloodshed, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin would be released from prison and a central place would be afforded to men of faith in the Arab-Jewish discourse, meaning a discourse based on religious commonality (Tzidkiyahu 2013). In hindsight, this point may possibly appear to be inconsequential, but at the time, the discussions between Israel and the Palestinians were conducted entirely with the secular PLO members, who were not even in the country in the beginning of the process—they were in diaspora in Tunisia. Given this background, this clause in Froman’s agreement acquires greater significance, as it required the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the religious bodies among the Palestinians, to commit to a process of dialogue with Israel.

While the senior figures of the Hamas and Palestinian authority decided to accept Froman’s deal, Israel ignored it. Furthermore, while the Palestinian leadership was reviewing the offer presented to it, Israel sent Mossad agents to liquidate Hamas leader Khaled Mashal—a botched assassination attempt that embarrassed Israel. Froman’s archive reveals that Froman himself submitted a draft of the agreement to Dori Gold, who was an advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the time. In the letter he sent to Gold, Froman argued that releasing Yassin in return for a hudna should be considered since the alternative of further violence could be worse.29 However, Froman’s arguments fell on deaf ears, and not for the first time. Besides the urgency of his words and the fact that the letter was sent as a follow-up to a previous conversation held between the two, the letter also reveals that this was not Froman’s first attempt to reach Netanyahu through one of his close associates. Froman had turned to Netanyahu before he was elected prime minister and presented him with an argument regarding the urgency to form a different policy toward the Hamas, one that aimed to bring peace. Netanyahu’s reaction, Froman wrote, was to “Tell Froman to wait until we assume power.”30 Further on, Froman noted that he was still waiting, even though Netanyahu was now already prime minister.31 A year later, in October 1997, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was released in a prisoner swap deal, concluded after two Mossad agents were caught in the aforementioned assassination attempt of Khaled Mashal (Mishal and Sela 1999, p. 159).

In both of the above cases, which occurred concurrently, Froman’s guiding principle was to encourage the Hamas people to relinquish their combative stance, and although he successfully reached understandings and agreements with them, the Israeli government refused to accept these offers, arguing repeatedly that it did not make agreements with terrorist organizations.32 This refusal by Israeli decisionmakers every time he wished to push through an official process of dialogue between the parties did not prevent Froman from continuing to advocate and implement his vision.

9. Working for Jews outside the Holy Land (Arrest of Jews in Iran, 1999)

Froman also harnessed his connections to mediate when Jews were victims of injustices outside of Israel. Thus, for example, in 1999, thirteen Jews from the city of Shiraz in Iran were arrested on charges of spying for Israel and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Froman aimed to use his connections in order to bring about their swift release. In a letter addressed to Shmuel Ben Shmuel, Head of the Diaspora Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Froman wrote about his intention to meet with the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had links to the “Spiritual Forum of Jerusalem” of which Froman was also a member. Froman explained that he aimed to meet with Nazarbayev in order to convince him to leverage his good connections with Iran to help obtain the release of the imprisoned Jews.33 In this letter, Froman also explained that interreligious dialogue can help resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict and also improve relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Froman set off to his meeting bearing letters from rabbis in the United States and Europe as well as the Chief Rabbi of Israel in order to act in the name of a religious-Jewish mandate rather than an Israeli one. On the same basis, Froman sought to connect with the representative of Iran in the UNESCO, though it is unknown whether he ever sent this letter or received any kind of response.34

10. Recruiting the Rabbinate to Assist His Efforts

Froman’s efforts were rejected by Israeli decisionmakers time and again; his efforts to bring about a dialogue with the Palestinians came to naught. Nonetheless, Rabbi Froman did not despair and continued to meet and converse and attempt to change reality in his way. It was actually the religious elements within Israel that first understood the advantages of the channel of dialogue that Froman had established. The Chief Rabbinate viewed him as a mediator who could connect them with Muslim religious figures. This added a practical dimension to Froman’s approach of making peace through religious figures. In October 1997, for example, a month after Hamas’s spiritual leader Ahmad Yasin was released in the aforementioned prisoner swap, Froman visited the Gaza Strip with Sheikh Darwish in order to relay a message from Chief Rabbi Bakshi-Doron. When he gave the letter to Yasin, Froman said, “The leaders of the religion of Israel and the leaders of the religion of Islam perhaps will solve some of the problems that are difficult to be solved by the political channel”.35 Froman’s presence in Gaza, which abounded with pictures of terrorists such as Yahya Ayyash, sent a message calling for peace, for the sake of a non-violent future. Several years later, in 2001, after three Palestinians were murdered by a Jewish terrorist cell, Rabbi Froman was dispatched to Yasser Arafat on behalf of Chief Rabbi Bakshi-Doron in order to submit an official letter of condemnation. This letter was accompanied by a call to convene religious figures for a dialogue with the goal of acting to stop the bloodshed. Froman managed to reach an agreement with several representatives regarding a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians.36 Although the agreement was not officially binding, it represents the actualization of Froman’s philosophy that religious figures can conduct dialogue and achieve mutual understandings that are key to political moves. This was the case in other situations in which members of the Chief Rabbinate sent messages to Muslim religious leaders around the world through Rabbi Froman due to the connections and dialogue that he had assiduously developed.37

11. The Alexandria Summit (2001): The High Point of the Religious Figures

This period, the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002, saw the realization of Froman’s vision, or at least a sense that the advantages of a religious figure serving as a mediator were being recognized. The Alexandria Summit was convened in the beginning of 2002; it was the first official implementation of the vision of interreligious peace, with representatives of all three monotheistic faiths meeting each other. The goal of the summit was to formulate principles of action for peace, and at its conclusion, seventeen religious leaders signed the First Alexandria Declaration, comprising seven clauses that defined the points of agreement and principles that would serve as the basis for implementing the vision of interreligious peace. The preamble stated that the signing leaders declared their commitment to “put an end to the violence and bloodshed that deprive us of our right to life and dignity.”38 They demanded to preserve the sanctity of all the holy sites and guarantee freedom of religion; to recognize that the Creator brought both peoples to live in the same land, which is a fact that His believers must respect; and that any political resolution must be “in the spirit of the word of God and his prophets.” (Ibid.)

Other than Rabbi Froman, the signatories included Rabbi Michael Malchior, the Israeli deputy foreign minister at the time; the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron; the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar and one of the greatest and most revered Sunni authorities in the world, Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi; Inspector of the Sharia Courts in Palestine at the time, Sheikh, Taissir Dayut Tamimi; Sheikh Talal Al-Sadr, a minister and cabinet member in the Palestinian government; as well as municipal rabbis from Israel, muftis from Palestinian cities, and several bishops representing the various churches operating in the Holy Land.39 The fact that the summit took place despite the seriously violent events of the Second Intifada and the growing mistrust between the nations, and nevertheless succeeded in bringing together senior leaders from the Jewish and Muslim worlds, seemed to prove the feasibility of Froman’s approach.

Several months after the summit, Froman wrote a letter to the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, suggesting that Froman and Sheikh Talal Al-Sadr journey to Arab states and speak with local religious leaders in order to sway them to issue religious rulings in favor of peace. Froman argued that such a religious legal basis for peace would provide Arafat with the Arab support he needed for any agreement with Israel.40 Once again, Froman offered himself, and the religion in whose name he acted, as a mediator between nations in order to provide the foundation for the activities of the politicians.

The Alexandria Summit made waves and was seen as a success at the time,41 with some people even requesting follow-up and complementary meetings for other religious figures who believed in the path presented in the summit. For example, the Archbishop of Canterbury Andrew White invited Froman to participate in such a meeting, which was meant to transpire two months after the original summit for the benefit of religious figures who had been unable to attend. The meeting was supposed to be held in Jerusalem, which in Froman’s view had a special standing as the capital of peace. In addition, Froman was invited to participate in another consultative conference slated for October that year in London supported by the British government. This conference was taking place on the background of the growing violence in Israel as the Second Intifada reached new heights and Israel embarked on a military operation to eradicate the terrorism emanating from Palestinian cities. The conference aimed to renew the commitment to the principles put forth in the Alexandria Declaration, while referring in particular to ending the violence. Another issue was the consolidation of a future strategy for establishing a permanent interreligious committee that would be involved in political and security-related negotiations.42

Even years later, when it seemed that the Alexandria Summit had come to nothing, as well as the subsequent meetings and conferences, Froman refused to despair and continued to promote his vision. In 2012, a decade after the summit, Froman arrived at a meeting at Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen’s office, accompanied by several rabbis, including Rabbi Michael Malchior, Rabbi Tzuriel Krispil, and Adina Bar-Shalom, daughter of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, as well as Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish. This was a rare meeting meant to restart the dialogue between the nations. The purpose of the visitors was to receive Abu Mazen’s blessing for a meeting of Palestinian sheikhs and Jewish rabbis living in the Holy Land to promote a dialogue between the nations and people living on the land (Cohen 2012). The purpose of bringing along Adina Bar-Shalom, the daughter of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, was to placate Abu Mazen following Rabbi Ovadia’s oft-repeated harsh words against the Palestinians and the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.43

Rabbi Froman explained that Bar-Shalom came to the meeting because “She is closest person to her father and knows his heart better than the journalists whose words you live upon. Rabbi Yosef is not what the journalists say. Rabbi Yosef is bringing his weight to bear on the Israeli public and the Israeli government.” (Cohen 2012). Apparently, the conciliatory words bore fruit, as at the conclusion of the meeting Abu Mazen said to Adina Bar-Shalom, “Praise be to God, tell your father that I send my warmest regards.” (Ibid.)

12. The Kidnapping of Gilad Shalit (2006)

Gilad Shalit44 was an IDF soldier who was kidnapped in June 2006 by Hamas operatives. Immediately after his kidnapping, Froman sought to engage in unofficial negotiations in order to represent the State of Israel and reach an agreement with the Hamas by working together with the journalist Khaled Amairi, who represented the Hamas in the media (Ettinger 2008). Froman related that he went to Amairi’s village to see what could be done, and Amairi told him that “after the Israeli government released hundreds of people for Tannenbaum,45 we cannot make do with less.”46 However, Froman kept trying. Eighteen months later, Amairi returned, and this time the proposal included an agreement to halt the mutual hostilities and release Palestinian prisoners and Gilad Shalit, who was still in the hands of the Hamas. According to Amairi, the proposal that they had formed was presented to the most senior level of the Hamas government in Gaza and had received complete and total approval, but it was not embraced by Israel. In an interview to the NRG news site, Rabbi Froman described his efforts to reach an agreement with the Hamas and the lack of readiness on the part of the Israeli government and its refusal to listen:

Omeiri [sic] transmitted the agreement to Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza and to Khaled Mashal in Damascus, came back to Israel and said to me: “There is readiness to discuss the principles with your government”. I immediately passed the document on to Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, and Binyamin Netanyahu. But they were unwilling to even consider it. They were like a brick wall. They said “How is it even possible to sit with the Hamas and negotiate?” (Ibid.)

When the Israeli government shunned him, Froman began to seek out alternative channels for dialogue to advance the return of the kidnapped soldier. His attempts continued throughout the entire period and increased as time passed, and the official channels failed to achieve anything. In this context, he even managed to recruit President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to his efforts during a meeting the two held in 2010 (discussed below). According to Froman, the idea of discussing the matter with Erdoğan was that “civil circles including rabbis can do things that governments cannot; for example, if Gilad Shalit is held by the Hamas, which is a religious movement, it is possible that religious figures, with whom they share a language and chemistry, can achieve something that the German mediator cannot.” (Eisenbach 2010). Here, Froman harnessed the trust that he had gained among the region’s nations as someone who operates with clean hands, devoid of any foreign interests, to promote peace in God’s land and initiate a move on a religious basis. However, in this case, too, the Israeli government was unwilling to accept the endeavor and continue it in an official framework.

13. Operation Cast Lead (2008)

In December 2008, Israel embarked upon Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, with the goal of “changing the security situation in the South. […] hit the military infrastructure established by the Hamas […].”47 The operation was conducted with Gilad Shalit still in the hands of the Hamas, and in fact Rabbi Froman’s repeated attempts to return the kidnapped soldier actually changed direction with the beginning of the operation. At this time, Froman aimed to achieve a ceasefire that would include Shalit’s release. In a letter he sent to Dan Shapiro, the United States ambassador in Israel, Froman noted that he was in contact to attain a ceasefire with Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, the head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, and Dr. Nasser al-Din Shaer,48 a senior member of the Hamas Political Bureau imprisoned in Israel at the time who had previously served as Minister of Education in the Hamas government and also as deputy to Ismail Haniyeh in the first Hamas government. However, the Israeli leadership refused to accept the understandings Froman had reached and make them official.49

14. Against All Odds: The Froman–Erdoğan Meeting (2010)

Froman’s stubborn insistence to pursue his path and his belief in the power he had as a religious figure gained him an unprecedented achievement: a meeting with Erdoğan, the prime minister of Turkey, on 3 June 2010. The meeting was held four days after IDF soldiers conducted a raid on the Marmara ship, which was part of a six-ship flotilla that had sailed from Turkey with the goal of breaking the Israeli naval blockade in Gaza. The military operation that terminated this effort caused a grave crisis in the relations between Turkey and Israel, thereby turning the Froman–Erdoğan meeting into an impressive achievement that raised some questions at the time, such as the following: Why would the Turkish prime minister take the trouble to meet with a settler rabbi, at the height of the political crisis with Israel? Why did this meeting take place despite the grave events? As it turns out, their meeting had been preceded by correspondence and several preliminary visits to Turkey, in which Froman met supporters of Erdoğan and sought a way to meet the person he considered capable of delivering peace from God to the Holy Land.50

In a letter he sent to Erdoğan, apparently in 2010 before the downturn in relations between Turkey and Israel, Froman wrote, “Allah gave the People of Israel a place within a Muslim region. Therefore, in order for my people to live in peace and flourish, they must learn to live in peace with the Muslim world […] Turkey, led by yourself, should mediate between the People of Israel and the Muslim world.” (Ibid.) In the same letter, he explained that Turkish Islam, as he had come to understand it, was “a moderate and peace-loving Islam”; therefore, it was Turkey, headed by a man of faith, that was most suited to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians and between Jews and Muslims living in the Holy Land. Froman proposed that Erdoğan meet with him and a Palestinian sheikh (the letter mentioned Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Bukris) as representatives of the two peoples living in the land who would “request the Turkish prime minister to mediate between the two peoples.” (Ibid.)

Froman proposed holding the meeting and beginning a peace process between the two peoples, mediated by Erdoğan, without waiting for the Israeli government (and presumably also the Palestinian government) to agree, as this was a measure that corresponded to both peoples’ desire for peace, “and the governments will follow the people”. (Ibid.) Froman noted twice in this letter that if they were to meet face-to-face, it would be apparent that he and Erdoğan were very close ideologically based on their faith in God.

Such letters eventually brought about the meeting between Erdoğan and Froman in June 2010, at a very low point in relations between Israel and Turkey. Before entering the meeting, Froman noted to the Israeli reporters who had arrived to cover the unusual event (considering the Marmara incident) that according to what he had learned about Erdoğan in their correspondence, “He wants to present Islam at its best and bring peace to the region and especially the Holy Land.” (Nir 2010). Froman turned to Erdoğan due to the renewed faith that the entire Muslim world had appeared to adopt toward him, which for Froman seemed like a bridge between Islam and the West rather than an obstacle. Accordingly, a Turkish-mediated discourse between Jews and Muslims living in Israel–Palestine would be widely accepted by the Muslim world.51 In an interview conducted after the meeting, Froman also indicated that it was important for him to conduct the meeting precisely because of the events that preceded it, in order to “rescue the relations with Turkey. He [Erdoğan] is indeed walking a tight line, but he is not breaking it, so as not to cancel the economic and security cooperation.”52 In other words, Froman came to the meeting with Erdoğan as a self-appointed mediator, but with a very clear identity as an Israeli living in a settlement in Judea and Samaria, knowing that as a believing man, Erdoğan would not refuse to receive him after their correspondence. In a meeting that lasted 45 minutes in Erdoğan’s Ankara office, Froman presented his faith-based peace plan to the Turkish president. The meeting did not achieve much, but according to Froman, he succeeded in harnessing Erdoğan to the regional peace effort and the release of Gilad Shalit.53 Froman’s inability to accomplish the same with the Israeli leadership doomed his success with Erdoğan.

15. Back to Basics: Dialogue between People

The common thread of Froman’s efforts is that he aimed to speak directly and candidly with the person in front of him, regardless of that person’s rank or office. He wished to drive a simple dialogue between people. In his view, if people would learn to live peacefully in their homes, they would be able to live peacefully with their neighbors; and if all the people would learn to do so, then there would be peace among all the nations. After he passed away in 2013, hundreds of his mourners clapped their hands at his grave. This is an uncommon sight at funerals, but it was a clear manifestation of Froman’s worldview: the connecting of opposites, of the right hand with the left, a connection that produces the sound of joy (Sheleg 2013).

Connecting opposites and dialogue among people also guided Froman’s many meetings with his Palestinian neighbors in an attempt to establish a shared life in the land upon which they lived together. For example, following a years-long drought in Israel, Froman initiated a meeting with representatives of the three religions, who gathered in November 2010 to pray together for rain. The prayer was held in a dried-up spring in Gush Etzion. It recognized the connection of all the inhabitants to the land and was based on the understanding that the land belongs to God, and all of his children must wish for the good of the land and pray for a year blessed by rains that would revive the parched earth. It seems that in this case, in which honest, authentic prayers were offered up in Hebrew and Arabic, the mediator, as Froman conceived of the term, was none other than God himself, who brought his believers to pray together (Y. Cohen 2010; Atali 2010).

Similarly, Froman routinely issued fierce condemnations of all acts of violence. He unequivocally condemned the ’Price Tag’ operations, and when olive trees were uprooted in a violent, nationalistic act, Froman hurried to the targeted village to take part in the olive harvest and ruled that according to Halacha, it is forbidden to steal or uproot olive trees. When a mosque was torched, Froman arrived with new Korans and diligent young men who helped their neighbors restore the ruins. Although Froman forged a path that was unique and different for the Middle East, he never strayed beyond the religious-Zionist camp. The journalist Emily Arousi, a former spokeswoman for the Yesha Council,54 testified that “His actions were indeed controversial, but his words were heard. He isn’t preaching outside the camp but within it. Froman is educating hundreds of students who are everywhere and they are the backbone of religious-Zionism.”55

16. Conclusions

This essay presented Rabbi Menachem Froman’s attempts to mediate in crises related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Froman believed that the conflict is fundamentally a religious one, and as such the solution is in the hands of religious figures, whom Froman viewed as experts in the matter. In his conception, the land belongs to the God in which both nations believe, the name of this God in both Islam and Judaism is “Peace”, and therefore His land should be the land of peace. This line of thought was unique to Froman and led him to the insight that in order to best worship God, he must strive with all his might to achieve peace: peace between people, neighbors, and nations. Based on such a belief, Froman saw himself as a mediator fulfilling his religious obligation to work for peace and build bridges between the peoples living on the land, both Jewish and Muslim.

Froman unequivocally identified religion as the source of the conflict in order to resolve it once-and-for-all. He sought to change the structure of the conflict by shifting the locus of power from politicians to religious figures in order to enable them to bring peace to the Holy Land. Froman served as an official representative of the State of Israel only once in his life, during the Madrid Conference (1991).

Froman continued to attempt to bring peace and build bridges between Muslims and Jews entirely with his own initiative as a self-appointed mediator. He succeeded in gaining impressive achievements with his Muslim counterparts, some of whom were bitter enemies of Israel, such as Ahmad Yassin and Mahmoud al-Zahar, as well as political leaders such as Abu Mazen and Erdoğan. Despite reaching understandings and draft agreements with his Palestinian counterparts, no one on the Israeli side picked up the gauntlet. The political leadership on both the Right and the Left repeatedly rejected his attempts at mediation. This was the case in the kidnapping of Nachshon Wachsman, the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, and in his attempts to conclude a ceasefire during Operation Cast Lead. Despite his failure to sway the politicians to adopt his vision, Froman continued to attempt to talk, mostly during times of calm, but also in times of violence, tension, and bloodshed. Froman never saw the peace for which he so yearned during his life: he passed away in 2013 after a lengthy struggle with cancer. However, he educated a generation of religious-Zionist youth who recognize the need to talk, respect the other, and refrain from violence. He left his mark as someone who did everything in his power to bring about peace and mediate in conflicts large and small.