Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel, right, is interviewed at the Chabad Lubavitch’s National Jewish Retreat in Weston by Rabbi David Eliezrie, a member of the retreat’s organizing committee.
Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel, sat down with a Jewish Journal reporter for a post-Shabbat interview last week at the Chabad Lubavitch's National Jewish Retreat.
The six-day program at the Hyatt Bonaventure in Weston featured Jewish scholars and authors and was attended by more than 900 Jews from around the United States.
Lau and his two brothers were the only members of his family to survive the Holocaust. He was eight years old when he arrived inPalestine in 1945.
He attended a yeshiva and became an ordained rabbi. Lau was the chief rabbi of Netanya and then Israel's chief rabbi, a position he held from 1993 to 2003. He currently is chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.
Lau's new book, "Out of the Depths," recounts his experiences in the Holocaust, including his internment in Buchenwald, and his arrival in Palestine.
He tells how he became chief rabbi of Israel and discusses his meetings with world leaders including Pope John Paul II, U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Jewish Journal: You met with Pope John Paul II more than once. What sort of relationship did you have with him?
Lau: He was a pope who understood very well the situation of the Jewish people because he faced the Holocaust with his very eyes. He understood the tragedy.
He was the pope who brought a diplomatic relationship between the Vatican and the state of Israel. It happened in 1994.
I met the pope of today also, in Yad Vashem, Benedict XVI. But there is quite a great difference between them. The pope of today was a child in Hitler youth. As a young man, he was in the Wehrmacht, in the Nazi army. I don't blame him for that. He was born in Germany. In those years, everyone should join those movements but he was brought up on the other side of the barricade.
JJ: The other day [in an interview with Rabbi David Eliezrie, a member of the retreat's organizing committee,] you touched on compulsory military service for the haredim. How do you feel about that?
Lau: [The Tal Commission] made some conclusions how to behave, what to do. They know the needs of the army, everything. The government and the Knesset should adopt them. If there are some details you have to correct, okay.
One thing I can assure you, that enforcing service is not a way which is acceptable. It will not work. If it is in a dialogue with all the leaders involved, they understand very well the needs of the Israeli society, the needs of the state. And they want their students to be a positive and constructive part of Israeli society.
The centers of Torah learning mainly in Europe collapsed during World War II. We have to take care that this candle will not be extinguished.
JJ: There have been numerous conflicts between the haredi community and secular Jews in Israel. What do you think can be done to improve the relationship between the two?
Lau: It starts in the education, not in politics. The politicians, they come at the end of the story. But the issue starts from the very early childhood, to know one about the other, to speak one to the other. We have a lot of experiences how it can be done and it is being done.
[In] the most difficult and heroic units of the army, the majority of the officers are religious. They have a motive to defend the homeland taken from the bible and a devotion to the people of Israel. All these Jews have to be responsible, one for the other.
There are some places and fields that there is integration. They combine together Jews of all kinds, especially in times of strain with our neighbors. All of a sudden you forget all the differences, all the debates. You don't see the split, only the consensus. They have to teach themselves, if we can die together, why can't we live together?
JJ: Does this apply to recognizing other movements in Israel, like the Reform movement?
Lau: Look, there is no real Reform movement in Israel. It's more in the media than in reality. There is one Reform temple [in Tel Aviv]. In the same time, the number of the Orthodox shuls is 545.
What is the issue? Did we break a glass of the window in a Reform temple? Is there a fight? We want unity.
JJ: And how about the status of women in Israel?
Lau: There's no problem with women in Israel. In America there was never a lady president, not even a deputy president. We had already a prime minister and a president of the Supreme Court, ladies. And a speaker of the Knesset, a lady. Candidate for another presidency, a lady. Foreign office ministers, two ladies, Golda Meir andTzipi Livni. We have a problem? Seven members of the cabinet are ladies. Don't worry.
