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Thousands Pay Last Respects to Religious Zionist Icon Rabbi Haim Drukman
Thousands of mourners attend the funeral of Rabbi Haim Drukman in Merkaz Shapira on Dec. 26, 2022, a day after the 90-year-old spiritual leader of religious Zionism succumbed to complications from COVID-19. (Screenshot)

Thousands Pay Last Respects to Religious Zionist Icon Rabbi Haim Drukman

Ten of thousands of Israelis descended on the southern Israeli community of Merkaz Shapira on a rainy Monday afternoon for the funeral of Rabbi Haim Drukman, a spiritual leader of religious Zionism and one of founders of the settlement movement. The rabbi 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.

Senior Israeli officials flocked to pay tribute to Drukman and his life’s work. Speaking at his funeral, President Isaac Herzog eulogized the religious leader as “one of the greatest rabbis of Israel and the greatest student of Rabbi Akiva of our generation.” 

The rabbi’s daughter, Rabbanit Bruria Binnenfeld, remembered her father as “a giant, a giant of Torah, a giant of grace, a giant of dedication,” the Israeli media reported.

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.

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.

Rabbi Drukman is survived by his wife, Sarah, their nine children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

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