Just days after Yom
Yerushalaim (Jerusalem Liberation Day) and Yom Hevron (Hebron
Liberation Day), a ceremony marking the fourth year since the passing
of Rabbi Moshe Levinger, and the 40th anniversary of the
entry and resettlement of Beit Hadassah, inside Hebron proper, was
held Wed. evening at Beit HaShalom, between Kiryat Arba and Hebron.
Speakers included,
the Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Arba-Hebron, Rav Dov Lior, Rosh HaYeshiva
of the Kiryat Arba Hesder yeshiva, Yeshivat Nir, Rav Eliezer Waldman,
and Deputy Foreign Minister Tzippi Hotovely.
Hundreds attended,
included Rabbanit Miriam Levinger, and Daniella Weiss, former
activist of Gush Emunim in the 1970’s, former mayor of Kedumim in
Samaria, and currently t
he
Secretary General of the Nachala Settlement Movement. So
too, former mayor of Kiryat Arba, Malachi Levinger (Rav
Levinger’s son),
and current mayor, Eliyahu Liebman, were
there. His
father, Rabbi Menachem Liebman, was among the founders of Kiryat
Arba.
For those who don’t
know, Rabbi Levinger (student of Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook), was the
founding father of the Jewish resettlement of Hebron after the 1967
Six Day War, and a leader of the Gush Emunim settlement movement of
the 1970s and 1980s.
In the spring of
1968, he put an advertisement in an Israeli newspaper, for a Passover
Seder in Hebron, at an Arab owned hotel that he had rented out.
Refusing to leave after Passover, he and his group negotiated with
the IDF and the government, first moving to the Military Headquarters
building (the Memshal), and eventually getting the Israeli government
to agree to develop an empty hilltop, what became Kiryat Arba, where
about 7,500 Jews live today.
Eleven years later,
in the spring of 1979, his wife Miriam, along with several other
women and children, entered the till then, abandoned Hadassah
Hospital building. It had been unused since the infamous 1929
massacre on the Jewish community of Hebron, by Hebron’s Arabs.
After which, the British authorities expelled the surviving Jews from
Hebron “for their own good.”
After a protracted
struggle with the Israeli government to get the women out, the
government agreed to the development of Jewish resettlement within
the city of Hebron itself. Which has led to nearly a thousand Jews
living in Hebron today.
Wikipedia
inaccurately states in its entry for ‘Rabbi Moshe Levinger,’ “In
April 1979, Levinger’s wife, Miriam, and Sarah Nachshon [wife of
painter Baruch], led a march to the center of Al-Shuhada Street in
Hebron, and occupied the Al-Dabboia building, which had been a police
station used during the Ottoman era.”
Yet, in its entry
for ‘Beit Hadassah,’ Wikipedia states accurately, “Originally
named Hesed L’Avraham clinic, Beit Hadassah was constructed in 1893
with donations of Jewish Baghdadi families and was the only modern
medical facility in Hebron. In 1909, it was renamed after Hadassah
Women’s Zionist Organization of America which took responsibility
for the medical staff and provided free medical care to all [both
Jews and Arabs].”
The building was
always Jewish, not as “Palestinian” apologist Wikipedia states.
Rav Lior referred to
Caleb, and his “different spirit,” the spirit of Hebron. He
reminded the audience of how Caleb spoke up against the other spies,
and said, “let’s go up and conquer it, for we surely can”
(Numbers 13:30).
Rav Lior also spoke
about the spiritual Gevurah (strength) of the women in camping out in
Beit Hadassah under difficult conditions, and compared them to the
daughters of Zelophehad in the Torah, who fought for their rights in
the land. Seeing that Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) was going to
be divided by tribe, and there was no son from their father, they
demanded from Moshe, that they should inherit their father’s
portion. Moshe not knowing what to do, asked God, who answered that
they are right and should have a portion in the land (Numbers
27:1-11).
One story Rav
Waldman told, was about former president George H.W. Bush, who spoke
about his New World Order in the Middle East. When asked for his
response by the media, Rav Waldman said, Bush, thought he could take
parts of the Land of Israel away from us, through his “peace
process” ideas and New World Order. But Bush forgot, who already
had made a “New World Order,” the God of Israel, through His
redemptive process of bringing the Jewish people back to Eretz
Yisrael, and in particular, after 1967, returning the Jewish nation
to Judea and Samaria.
Deputy Foreign
Minister Tzippi Hotovely, praised Miriam Levinger, Sarah Nachshon,
and the other righteous women, for setting an example to her
generation of women, fighting for the Jewish people’s right to
Eretz Yisrael today. She said she hoped that this government of
Israel (after the elections) would apply Sovereignty to Judea and
Samaria, and that all future governments of Israel would put to rest,
the idea of dividing the land, and giving away part of it to others.
There were also
tours of the Beit HaShalom building, and a model apartment to see.
The building is in its final stages of renovation, seventeen
apartments are still available for purchase in it.
It was an emotional
night, reminding us all, what resettling the land means, as the
ceremony came to a close, the song, “V’Shavu Banim L’Gvulam,” (and Your
children will return to their borders – Jeremiah 31:17), played in
the background.
(c)
2019/5779 Pasko
