An Interview With Rabbi Zevulun Charlop

Editor’s note: In the course of his interview with Ari Lamm, Rabbi Charlop made extensive reference to two letters that his grandfather, R. Yakov Moshe Charlop wrote to R. Avraham Yitzchak Ha-Kohen Kook, and to a letter that his father, R. Jechiel Michael Charlop  received from several Rabbinic leaders of the old Yishuv.  R. Charlop was gracious enough to share these letters with us.  They can be found on the pages following this interview.  We would like to thank R. Charlop for presenting these letters to the readership of Kol Hamevaser.  

As the grandson of a renowned talmid haver of R. Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, could Rav Charlop share his perspective on the legacy of his grandfather, the legacy of Rav Kook, as well as on the broader issue of the centrality of Eretz Yisrael in our lives?

I have been asked whether we should still retain “Reshit Tzemihat Ge’ulatenu” (the beginning of the redemption) in the Tefillah li-Sh’lom Medinas Yisrael.  I remember that R. Moshe Tzvi Neria zt”l, who was very close to my grandfather, Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlop zt”l, and was one of his premier talmidim, excised Reshit Tzemihat Ge’ulatenu from the Tefillah le-Medinat Yisrael after the Oslo Agreement, and Israel began retreating, or at least advocating retreat from parts of Judea and Samaria.   However, I don’t feel that I can stop saying it, or that anyone should stop saying it, even in the face of disappointment and foreboding.

May 14, 1948 (5 Iyyar 5708) is indelibly impressed on my memory:  How we Bronxites trumpeted the fact that there were more Jews in the Bronx (660,000) than there were in the newly founded State of Israel (600,000).  Today, the Bronx has barely 35,000 Jews, while Israel (ba”h) has a population of over 7.2 million, about 5.5. million of who are Jewish.  I think that by all current calculations and statistics, Israel has, in the last year, superseded America as the world’s largest Jewish community.  It has been the center of a kibbutz galuyos the likes of which we have never seen before.  After the Babylonian captivity only about 40,000 Jews heeded the call to return to Israel and rebuild the Temple.  And in the centuries that followed, we do not hear of great masses of Jews that came later.  The Jewish population in Eretz Yisroel at its height, more than 400 hundred years later, hardly reached 5 million.

…And now, after only 60 years, we have reached that number and perhaps surpassed it.

In light of this, in light of tremendous economic and scientific progress, and most importantly, in light of the tremendous resurgence of authentic Torah learning, one wonders whether at any time, even during the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods, there has been so much Torah learning – at least quantitatively if not qualitatively.

I want particularly to address two kinds of disappointments, and anchor my comments on a letter written by my grandfather to Rav Kook, and on a letter received by my father from haverim with whom he learned in Jerusalem.  As is well known, my grandfather, Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlop zt”l, was a talmid chaver of Rav Kook zt”l.  My grandfather – born in Israel and never to leave for the duration of his life – was reared in the same environment in which most Yerushalmi Jews of the yishuv ha-yashan were born and raised; he was integral to that yishuv and part of its neshama.  At a very early age he gave the highest shiur in Yeshivas Etz Hayyim, which was the leading makom Torah in Eretz Yisroel.

Somewhile in his early twenties, he became seriously ill. The doctor prescribed a period of rest in Jaffa.  It was then that he met Rav Kook who was recently appointed rabbi of Jaffa.  The first Shabbos afternoon he spent in that port city, he went to hear Rav Kook’s derasha.  As my grandfather listened to Rav Kook speak for the first time, their eyes locked.  Their legendary relationship grew from that initial encounter.

 Near the end of the First World War, when hunger stalked the streets of Jerusalem, owing much to R. Yitzhak Yeruham Diskin zt”l, son of that Gaon ha-Ge’onim R. Yehoshua Leib Diskin zt”l, a small complement of young, outstanding talmidei hakhamim was formed – attached to the Yeshivas Ohel Moshe in the Old City.  Its chief purpose was to keep these talmidim from starving in those desperate days, and thereby ensuring the survival and perpetuation of Talmud Torah.

My father, R. Yechiel Michel Charlop zt”l, only sixteen years old then, was selected to give the chabura to these budding Torah luminaries.  Among this group, in addition to my father, were several other talmidim of my zeide, R. Yaakov Moshe Charlop – including R. Amram Blau zt”l, R. David Ha-Levi Jungreis zt”l, and R. Yaakov Yerucham Ha-Levi Katzenellenbogen zt”l, figures whom later generations would never think to identify as talmidim of my zeide, or colleagues of my father.

Indeed, around 1924, my father – then serving miles and miles away from Jerusalem as rabbi in Omaha, Nebraska – received what must be reckoned today, in the passing of decades and generations, a memorable letter from Rav Dovid ha-Levi Jungreis, who later became the Rav and av beis din of the Edah HaChareidis of Jerusalem.  Appended to the letter were personal, handwritten messages by R. Amram Blau, who was to become the head of the Neturei Karta and the fiercest antagonist to Zionism, and R. Yaakov Yerucham Halevi Katzenellenbogen, whose role was no less noteworthy as a no-holds-barred opponent of that movement of Jewish national rebirth.  The letter was published, not long ago for the first time, in the Torah journal Moriah.  In the introduction to this letter, the editors of Moriah describe the senders – Rabbis Jungreis, Blau and Katzenellenbogen –as talmidim of R. Yaakov Moshe, as we indicated before.

The letter was in response to one written by my father, commenting on an article recently published by R. Jungreis.  As a postscript to this letter R. Amram Blau, incredibly, asks my father, whom he refers to as yedid nafshi, to help him (and presumably Rabbis Jungreis and Katzenellenbogen) in building a moshav outside Jerusalem devoted to Talmud Torah and working the land – Torah ve-Avodah.

As a counterpoint to this correspondence is an even more remarkable postscript in one of my zeide’s letters to Rav Kook in which he describes a series of private meetings between himself and Professor Chaim Weitzmann.  These meetings took place either immediately or shortly after the British broke the grip of the failing Ottoman Empire and General Allenby marched into Jerusalem.   My grandfather tells of urging Professor Weitzmann to go see Rav Kook upon his return to London (where, at the time Rav Kook served as rabbi), and strongly encourages Rav Kook to make every effort to see Weitzman.  In that selfsame letter, my zeide recounts the discussion he had with Professor Weitzman focusing upon the bedrock need for Eretz Yisroel to be a land of kedusha, to which Weitzman responded “ani dogel la-zeh,” “I [too] stand for this!”

These letters carried great hopes and, most importantly, the glimmering possibilities of their fulfillment.  Can you imagine those who eventually became the Neturei Karta building moshavim in Medinas Yisroel for the purpose of Talmud Torah and working the land?  Can you imagine Professor Weitzmann being dogel for a land of kedusha?  Yet somehow, all of this went tragically awry, and it is a bekhi le-doros – a lament, a cry, for the generations.

Nevertheless, I still believe that we are living in a time of extraordinary nissim embodying, albeit not always as robustly as we might wish, the aschalta de-ge’ulah.  My grandfather already used the term aschalta de-ge’ulah is in a letter he wrote several days after the United Nations voted on the partition plan.  He was upset by the partition, because the very idea of partition, the very idea that Jerusalem or any other part of Eretz Yisroel is not ours, was anathema to him. Nevertheless, he wrote to my father that this is undoubtedly aschalta dege’ulah.  Indeed, while we have been faced with many disappointments, we must put history in perspective and realize that the path of ge’ulah may not be smooth, but is certainly in forward motion – perhaps sputteringly forward, but always forward nonetheless.

Rabbi Zevulun Charlop is the Max and Marion Grill Dean of RIETS

Ari Lamm is the interviewer for Kol Hamevaser

On the following pages:

Pages 12-13: Letters sent from R. Yakov Moshe Charlop to R. Kook towards the end of the First World War.  

Page 14: End of a letter sent from R. David Ha-Levi Jungreis, R. Amram Blau, and R. Yaakov Yerucham Ha-Levi Katzenellenbogen  to R.  Jechiel Michael Charlop.