Rabbi Haim Drukman, Leader of Religious Zionism, Dies at 90
Rabbi Haim Drukman, the spiritual leader of religious Zionism and one of founders of the settlement movement, died Sunday at the age of 90 after contracting the coronavirus earlier in December. He had been treated at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Kerem in Jerusalem in the days leading up to his death.
Drukman was born in 1932 in the Polish town of Kuty, in what is now Ukraine. He fled the Holocaust to Palestine in 1944, leaving his parents behind and only reuniting with them after World War II.
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He became a member of the Knesset in 1977 for the National Religious Party and served a stint as deputy minister of religious affairs. He left the Knesset in 2003.
He was a leading light in the settlement movement, founding the Gush Emunim settler group in 1974. He also served as an educational leader – including as founder and head of the Ohr Etzion yeshiva (seminary), one of the hesder yeshivas that combine Torah study with military service.
Senior Israeli officials paid tribute to Drukman and his life’s work, following his death. President Isaac Herzog praised him for “devot[ing] his life to the cause of the State of Israel and the Jewish people,” while Prime Minister Yair Lapid eulogized him as “a person who loves Israel.”
Rabbi Drukman is survived by his wife, Sarah, their nine children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He was to be laid to rest on Monday at noon in Masu’ot Yitzhak in southern Israel.
