Rabbi, paratrooper, settler, peacemaker

The wisdom, vision, and courage of Menachem Froman

Menachem Froman (1945-2013) was an Israeli Orthodox rabbi, a former Israeli paratrooper, a leader of the Israeli settler movement, and a peacemaker and negotiator with ties to controversial Palestinians such as the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat (1929-2004), and the late founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin (1936-2004).

Rabbi Froman’s vision, Yossi Klein Halevi writes in a remembrance, was that “however improbably, it was religious Jews who were best positioned to make peace with the Palestinians and the Muslim world generally.” The peace process as we have known it, Froman argued, has been largely driven by political actors who tend to be liberal or non-religious. In the Rabbi’s mind, that’s why the peace process has failed. Klein Halevi continues:

He taught me that, in order to make peace with the Muslim world, one needs not only to honor Islam but to love it — cherish its fearless heart, the power of its surrender, the wisdom of its frank confrontation with human transience. Once we went together to a mosque in Nusseirat, a refugee camp in Gaza. It was the time before the second intifada, when such adventures were still possible. We’d been invited by a community of Sufi mystics to join their zikr, the dance that combines chanting and breathing with vigorous movement. For nearly an hour we danced together with our Muslim fellow believers in God. “Allah!” Rav Menachem repeatedly cried out in devotion.

After the zikr, we sat with members of the community, and Rav Menachem explained why he had come here. Two thousand years ago, he said, my people sinned and were expelled by God from this land. But now God has brought us back, and I want to learn from my Muslim brothers who didn’t leave here how to worship God in this land.

It was an extraordinary moment: A rabbi — from a West Bank settlement! — was telling Palestinian refugees that God had brought us back to this land. And they listened to him because he had come to learn from them, because he was speaking to them as one religious person to another, because he made no apology for Jewish indigenousness.

Given the ongoing bloodshed in Israel and Gaza, and the absence of any clear path to peace, I thought now would be a good time to remember Rabbi Menachem Froman, his voice, and his vision.