Israel Matzav

R. Hanan Porat z"l

Rabbi Hanan Porat (right in perhaps the most famous picture of him) passed away on Tuesday in his home in Kfar Etzion. He was 68 and had battled cancer.

Rav Porat was among the leaders of the Jewish return to Gush Etzion after the Six Day War. He was among the founders of Gush Emunim, which led Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria after the Yom Kippur War.

At the same time, he taught in several yeshivas, including Yeshivat Har Etzion, Yeshivat Hakibbutz Hadati in Ein Tzurim, and the Beit Orot yeshiva in Jeursalem

He established the Techiya Knesset faction along with Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, Geula Cohen and Elyakim Haetzni, and served in the tenth Knesset. He later joined the National Religious Party (Mafdal) and was elected through that party to serve in subsequent Knessets, in which he held a variety of roles, including head of the Knesset’s Constitution and Law Committee.

Earlier this year Rav Porat gave an interview in which he spoke about his wartime experiences, his ideology, and his illness. He told interviewer Yinon Magal, “I don’t believe that life ends with death. It undergoes a change.”

In August Rav Porat received an award for Jewish Creativity for his books and poetry.

Here's a video of an interview with R. Porat (I'm not sure it's the one referred to above and don't have time to check right now) with English subtitles.

Let's go to the videotape.



I met Hanan Porat when I was a yeshiva boy in 1980. He came to speak to us after a terror attack in Hebron in which a friend of mine was killed. It's hard to believe that Hanan Porat is gone from this world. Y'hi zichro baruch (may his memory be blessed).

More here.

Labels: Hanan Porat

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:31 PM