Yisrael Meir Lau

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Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau addresses the United Nations

Yisrael (Israel) Meir Lau is currently the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Israel. He previously served as the Israeli Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi from 1993 to 2003.

1 Childhood
2 Public life
- 2.1 Presidential Candidacy
3 Family
4 Quotes
5 Footnotes
6 External links

[edit] Childhood

Lau was born in 1937, in the Polish town of Piotrkow Trybunalski. His father, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, was the last Chief Rabbi of the town and died in the Treblinka death camp.

Lau was freed from the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945. There are reports that he was the youngest prisoner liberated from the camp.¹ His entire family was murdered with the exception of his older brother, Naphtali Lau-Lavie, his half brother, Yehoshua Lau-Hager, and his uncle already living in Israel.

Lau immigrated to Israel with his brother Naphtali in July 1945, and he was ordained a rabbi in 1971. He is married to the daughter of the former Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv. He wrote a memoir about his experiences in the Holocaust entitled "Do Not Raise Your Hand Against the Boy", released in 2000, on the 55th anniversary of Buchenwald's liberation. The book became a best-seller in Israel.

[edit] Public life

On June 9th, 2005, he was reinstalled as the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv after having occupied this position previously from 1985 until 1993, when he was appointed Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, a position which he held until 2003.

Lau has often been characteized as the "consensus rabbi", and has close ties to both Haredi and Modern Orthodox Judaism, particularly in regards to his politics, which have been characterized as moderate Zionist. One report described him as "too Zionist to be considered haredi."² He is respected internationally by Jews and non-Jews alike, and is one of the few figures in the Haredi world who has managed to gain the trust and admiration of both the Sephardic and Ashkenazic population.

Lau has also received some negative attention for his stances and remarks on non-Orthodox denominations of Judaism. When Lau was awarded the Israel Prize in May 2005, there were protests from the Masorti and Reform movements in Israel, who demanded that he use the occasion to apologize for some of his past statements and positions, particularly his opposition to the recommendations of the Neeman Committee, a government body created in the late 1990s to attempt to find a compromise to various controversies relating to Jewish conversion. Rabbi Uri Regev, the Executive Director of the World Union for Progressive Judaism went so far as to say that Lau was undeserving of the prize, citing an 1997 editorial in which Lau allegedly compared Reform Judaism to Hezbollah.³ Non-Orthodox leaders noted that given this information, it seemed particularly ironic that Lau was being honored for, in the words of the Prize Committee, "bridging rifts in Israeli society". Lau's spokespeople refused to comment, saying the fact that he had been approved by the (presumably heterogeneous) Prize Committee spoke for itself. ⁴

[edit] Presidential Candidacy

In the spring of 2006, the Israeli media began reporting that Rabbi Lau was being considered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert a candidate for the position of President of the State of Israel. The term would begin after July 2007, when current President Moshe Katsav's term expires. ⁵ Though Lau has denied to comment on whether he is in fact running or not, the news has already generated controversy. Some critics in the Israeli media have raised concerns that Lau is more focused on maintaining his image as a progressive than in actually implementing such positions in the rabbinate's policies, specifically highlighting major issues such as agunot, civil marriage, the status of Shabbat, and other divisive topics that continue to be relevant to many in the secular community vis-a-vis the Chief Rabbinate, which under Lau's leadership usually sided with the Orthodox perspective.⁶ Another criticism raised was that to have a rabbi, particularly a high-ranking one, could further blur the line between religion and the state, and push Israel closer to becoming a theocracy, both in fact and public perception. ⁷ Several prominent members of Israel's gay community also slammed Lau's possible candidacy, writing a letter to Olmert asking him to retract his support of Rabbi Lau.⁸ The letter cited a recent interview in which he criticized an upcoming Gay Pride parade in Tel Aviv, calling it an "unfortunate event" which distorted Tel Aviv's image. Lau added, "I fail to understand the source of pride here. Why do they have to display their personal preferences in public?" Lau also raised concern with same-sex couples, saying, "it pains me to see that an abnormal way of life is replacing the family unit." The letter authors, which included a former MK, linked comments like Lau's to violence against gays by Orthodox Jews, such as a June 2005 incident in which a haredi teenager stabbed three marchers in a gay pride parade in Jerusalem.

The Reform and Conservative movements in Israel also commented, saying that they consider Rabbi Lau an "unsuitable" candidate to represent the country's Jews. Rabbi Uri Regev said that during Lau's tenure as a public figure, he "missed no opportunity to express an adversarial, hurtful, and dismissive approach toward non-Orthodox branches of Judaism." Another Reform rabbi added, "Does anyone in Israel think it is possible to appoint a president who is not on speaking terms with most of the Jews in the United States?... when he's president, [will] the U.S. Jewish community, which is mainly Conservative and Reform, ... be banished from the President's Residence?"⁹ A prominent Reform activist accused Rabbi Lau of being more concerned with fulfilling Judaism's ritual requirements than focusing on pressing ethical questions such as discrimination in Israel or genocide in Darfur, a common perception and criticism of Haredi Judaism held by non-Orthodox movements¹⁰. The Reform movement in Israel has declared its intention to challenge each Presidential candidate on his or her attitude towards non-Orthodox denominations of Judaism.

[edit] Family

Lau is the father of Rabbi David Lau, the Chief Rabbi of Modi'in, and uncle of Rabbi Dr. Binyamin Lau, an educator and activist in the Religious Zionist movement, as well as Amichai Lau-Lavie, the founder and artistic director of the Jewish ritual theater company Storahtelling.

[edit] Quotes

"Let’s sit down together, and let’s live together. We always knew how to die together. The time has come for us to know also how to live together."- Lau, calling for religious pluralism and dialogue in Jerusalem, February 14, 1999.¹¹