ב"ה ערש"ק פרשת יתרו תשע"ה

“Radicals, Rebels, & Rabblerousers”: 3 Unusual Rabbis #2 - Rabbi Menachem Chai Shalom Froman (Teko’a, 1945 - 2013)

jrosenfeld@lss.org ____

Sponsored by Mrs. Dorothea Kreiger in memory of her aunt, Gertrude Brown לע"נ גולדה בת יצחק הכהן

האיש משורר, האיש אהבה,האיש מנחם שלבש לבן וכרך שבע כריכות מידי בקר

שחבק את האויבים שחיך גם אם כל היער עשוי רובים

On Death, Looking Back at His Life 1. Interview with Yehoshua Breiner, Walla! News Org.; 3/4/13

אתה פוחד מהמוות? "יש רגעים ויש רגעים. אבל הוא קיים, אני לא מתעלם ממנו. זה מה שיש"

Are you afraid of death? “There are moments, and there are moments. But it exists, and I do not ignore it. This is what

we have here.” ____

איך אתה מרגיש? "אתם באים אליי אחרי לילה קשה מאוד, היו בו נסים גדולים. אסור להיאבק בכאבים, חייבים לזרום איתם אחרת הכאב רק הולך וגובר. זה מה שיש, זו המציאות ועם זה צריך לחיות. ככה זה במציאות

הפוליטית וככה זה עם המחלה"

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How do you feel? “You are coming to me after a very difficult night, there were great miracles. It is forbidden to

fight with these pains, we must flow with them, otherwise the pain just grows and overcomes

us. This is what there is, this is the reality that we must live with. Such is the political reality,

and so too with the disease.” _____

גם היום במבט לאחור הוא לא מתחרט על דרכו השנויה במחלוקת. הפגישות עם יאסר ערפאת ברמאללה, השיחות האישיות עם אחמד יאסין, הנסיעה לטורקיה כדי לדון עם ארדואן בפרשת המרמרה ­

כל מי שנחשב בעיני רבים לאויב, זכה לביקור ממנו והוא לא מתחרט על כך. "היה לי קשר אישי מיוחד מאוד עם ערפאתאני קראתי לו אל­חכם אבו עמאר, שזה רב בערבית, והוא קרא לי שייח' פרומן. היה לו חוש הומור מיוחד לערפאת, אבל ברור שגם היה עסוק בשפיכות דמים. בימיו האחרונים במוקטעה הוא התחנן שאבוא אליו אבל התמהמהתי ובסוף לא נפגשנו. הוא לא היה נלסון מנדלה, אבל זה מה שהיה ולכן אתו צריך היה לעשות שלום. כבר בימים ההם ידעתי מה יקרה, כי זו ארץ החמסין והחמאס. ראיתי איך הפלסטינים הולכים ומתחזקים בדת וידעתי שזו ההזדמנות. כך גם עם אבו מאזן. גם ארדואן, הוא לא איש אינטליגנט אלא פרימיטיבי, כמונו. איש שגדל בשכונות הכי קשות. זה מה שיש. גם היום הייתי נפגש עם מחבלים כי אלה הפרטנרים שלנו

לשלום"Even today, in retrospective, he has no regrets over his controversial path. The

meetings with Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, the conversations with Ahmed Yassin, the journey to Turkey to discuss the Mavi Marmara with Erdogan ­ anyone who is seen in the eyes of the consensus as an enemy merited a visit from him, and he does not regret

this. “I had a very special personal connection with Arafat, I called him al-Hakham Abu ‘Amar,

which means Rabbi/Leader in Arabic, and he called me Sheikh Froman. Arafat had a very

unique sense of humor, and yet it was also clear that he was involved in murder. In his final

days, in the Muqata, he pleaded with me to come visit him, but I hesitated and in the end we

never met there. He was no Nelson Mandela, but that is what there was, and therefore it was

with him whom peace had to be made…” _____

פרומן תמיד נחשב לעוף מוזר בעיני רבים "מה לא עבר עלינו, איומים ברצח, חרמות, אבנים. יום אחד אפילו ריססו כתובות גרפיטי על הבית וכתבו "סניף אש"ף בתקוע. אנשים לא מבינים שרק עם התנחלויות אפשר לעשות שלום כי הם

האצבעות שלנו שנוגעות בפלסטינים… שלום לא מבססים על חזונות ועל חלומות יפים ככל שיהיו. שלום עושים עם מה שיש…"

Froman was always considered a ‘strange bird’ in the eyes of the public. “Wow, what we haven’t gone through, death threats, excommunications, stone-throwing.

One day they even sprayed graffiti on our house, saying ‘Fatah branch: Teko’a.’ People don’t

understand that it is only with the settlements that it is possible to achieve peace, because

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they are our extension that comes in contact with the Palestinians… peace is not based on

visions or some type of beautiful dreams. Peace is made with what there is…” _____

On Rabbanut; Political Rabbinism 2. R. Menachem Froman, Sochki Aretz [Yediot: 2014]; p. 20, 22

This point of view, which opposes the identification of the Rabbinic establishment with some religious political body, for sure seems very strange and hard to understand nowadays,

especially for someone who hails from the Religious­Zionist public. One who knows it on the inside, for sure knows of many Rabbis who do not associate with any political organization. However, on the level of the media, it is clear that a given Rabbi will identify with a specific

religious party, and how is it even possible to believe it when a Rabbi would say that he is not connected to a religious party any more than a secular one!? Is it at all possible to return to

the state of things where a Rabbi can transcend politics, a Rabbi who hold interesting positions of conscience that does not identify solely with one party or another?

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...The foremost thing is that the religion of Israel does not require a person to have a particular

standpoint. Because we are talking about a connection to the infinite, [Judaism] itself is infinite. [Rav Kook] emphasized often that all of the spiritual­political camps that existed in his time ­ the national, the socialist, the liberal ­ they all have a place in the world of faith. Just as God is called ‘The Place of the World’, so too His religion is ‘The Place’ of all spiritual­political

worlds…

On the Relationship of Observant to non­Observant Jews 3. ad loc., p. 25­26

It is true: God’s seal is Truth. A true connection will not be created with just a superficial

smearing of mortar. In any event, are the words of the Maharal not fitting for us, that peace transcends truth? God’s name is… Peace. God desired to create the world with the attribute of strict justice, and saw that the world cannot stand, and then He went and synthesized the

attribute of mercy (which is the attribute of love… God’s name is ­ love)...

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...the question is are we going to be able to create that synthesis? Is there a chance for love? In other words “the one whom He loves, He will reproach.” There is a connection between love and admonishment . There is room to see the connection between the words of our Rabbis, that no one in our generation is capable of properly admonishing, and the fact that

senseless hatred is what caused the destruction of the Temple… Within all this the question we started with arises ­ is there a possibility of a synthesis between

the religious and secular cultures? From a theoretical point of view, for sure there is...

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What Orthodoxy Must Learn from Secularism 4. ad loc., p. 29­30

Perhaps there are religious people for whom it is important to impart this simple lesson. However, to my knowledge, this is not the main thing that the religious community is

supposed to learn from the encounter with the secular community. The main thing for religious people is the encounter/meeting with freedom. The main thing that the secular community is able to project to the religious, are not its values, per se, but rather the freedom from whence those values develop. Not the encounter with the real (yesh), but rather with the void (ayin).

…for the main aspect of the religious individual is not the halachot, the examples and apologetica, but rather the questions, the doubts, the perversions (=sin), the heresies,

the fears, and the faiths they hold… For sure [Amos Oz] is correct ­ religion is important! It is forbidden for us to relinquish and give up on clear values and decided­upon halachot. When we walk through the

night, our legs need to follow a clear path… but along our way, we must halt our march and wonder, with the whispering wind: where are we in this world? From where do we

come, and where are we going?

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On Existentialism 5. ad loc., p. 34 fn. 19

The complete heresy, and the faith which negates corporealism completely therefore stand on one side of the barrier, whereas on the other side stands the ‘belief in Man’ (that is to say the belief that Man can create meaning and make sense of his life and actions) and the belief in

the Lord that is well known. As we have said, the only device of the believer (and perhaps Mankind in general) to the

question of the existential void is humility. The meaning of ‘humility’: to recognize our fate, to accept it, and to flow from one event to the other ­ external or internal, to live with the ‘jumps’,

those that are incomprehensible, as a dance. This is in my eyes the deeper meaning of ‘acceptance of [divine] judgement’, which truly means to touch the Divine goodness.

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On Criticism & Contrarianism 5. ad loc., p. 43

It is possible to say that there are three types of people. The first is the one who is entrenched

within reality. He walks along the path that has been cleared for him, fully invested in the values he has received. The second is the one who criticizes that which he received, and negates that cleared path ­ looking down upon the first individual. But what path should the first person follow? After all the criticism and negation, will he remain empty, without anything

real to grasp hold of? Will his actual life remain a jumping from one matter to another, bouncing around like some super­ball? For after all, this second type of person, whose entire

life is nothing but criticism, is still nevertheless connected to what exists around them… however, a person is also free to choose a third type: the ‘Free Man’...

Mystico­Politics 5. ad loc., p. 39

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