Shlomo Goren (; 3 February 1918 – 29 October 1994) was a Polish-born Israeli rabbi and Talmudic scholar. An Orthodox Jew and Religious Zionist, he was considered a foremost rabbinical legal authority on matters of Jewish religious law (halakha). In 1948, Goren founded and served as the first head of the Military Rabbinate of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a position he held until 1968. Subsequently, he served as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv–Jaffa between 1968 and his 1972 election as the Chief Rabbi of Israel; the fourth Ashkenazi Jew to hold office. After his 1983 retirement from the country's Chief Rabbinate, Goren served as the head of a yeshiva that he established in Jerusalem.
While serving in the IDF Goren fought in three of the Arab–Israeli wars, and wrote several award-winning books on halakha.
Early life and education Goren was born into an Orthodox Ashkenazi Jewish family in the town of Zambrów, Poland. His parents, Avraham Goronczik and Haya Tzipora, emigrated in 1925 to join the Yishuv in what was then the British Mandate for Palestine. His family was among the founders of Kfar Hasidim, an Orthodox Jewish village located near the city of Haifa, where Goren grew up.
As a young boy, he was sent to Jerusalem to study at the Etz Chaim Yeshiva. Later, when he was 12, he became the youngest student to enter the Hebron Yeshiva, where he was identified as a Judaic prodigy. His first book, dealing with korbanot (ritual sacrifices) at the former Temple in Jerusalem, was published when he was 17. At the same age, he received rabbinic ordination.
From 1940 until 1944, Goren was enrolled at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied philosophy, mathematics, and classics.
Military career
He volunteered for the Haganah in 1936, and was a chaplain for the Jerusalem area following the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, during which he tested for and qualified as an IDF paratrooper. Goren was also a chaplain of the Carmeli Brigade at this time.
Following Israel's independence, Goren was appointed as the head of the IDF's Military Rabbinate with the rank of major-general, a position he held until 1968. He used the opportunity to help establish and organize the military chaplaincy's framework, streamlining processes to get soldiers accommodations for kosher food and prayer services. Goren personally wrote a new prayerbook to accommodate the different prayer styles used by various Jewish ethnic subgroups serving in the IDF.
In October 1949, Goren was given permission by Jordanian officials to search the site of the four destroyed Gush Etzion communities in the aftermath of the May 1948 Kfar Etzion massacre. His investigation of the site located many bodies that had not been properly buried, despite the claims of Arab officials that they had been interred three days after the conclusion of the battle. An estimated half of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem lined the path of the procession on November 17, 1949, in which the bodies of the victims were buried in a common grave on Mount Herzl, nearly 18 months after they had been killed by Arab forces.Morris, Benny. "Before the Kidnappings, There Was a Massacre", Tablet, June 25, 2014. Accessed June 19, 2026. "Later that year, in October-November 1949, Goren (who eventually became Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi), after agreement was reached with the Jordanians, was allowed to tour the bloc and 'found the bones of the dead scattered in the trenches, around the firing posts and under the demolished structures. … The Red Cross announcement that the Arabs had buried the bodies three days after the end of the battle was inaccurate.'... The remains of the Jewish fallen from the Etzion Bloc (as well as from two other battlefields that had remained in enemy hands) were taken to Israel and buried on Nov. 17, 1949, in the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem. About 50,000 people, half the population of Jewish Jerusalem, lined the roads as the funeral procession wended its way to the cemetery."
Goren served in the Suez Crisis of 1956 and the Six-Day War of 1967, following which he was promoted to the rank of general. On 7 June 1967, when Israeli troops captured East Jerusalem from Jordanian control, Goren gave a prayer of thanksgiving, which was broadcast live to the entire country. Shortly afterwards, blowing a shofar and carrying a Torah scroll, he held the first Jewish prayer session at the Western Wall since 1948. The event was one of the defining moments of the Arab–Israeli conflict, and several photographs of Goren surrounded by soldiers in prayer have since become famous among Jews in Israel and worldwide. The most famous of these photographs shows Goren blowing the shofar against the background of the Western Wall.
Controversies
Goren attracted many admirers through his passion for Religious Zionism and his combining of Zionist activism with a commitment to Judaism and Jewish scholarship. However, his uncompromising personality later resulted in him becoming a polarizing and controversial figure in Israeli politics. Goren called the vehement attacks against him a "moral and religious scandal".
The Langer Controversy In November 1972, Goren presided over a panel of nine dayanim to review the case of Sgt. Maj. Hanoch Langer, and his sister Miriam, who had been declared mamzerim, and therefore ineligible for marriage to an Israelite by a Beit Din in Petah Tikva.
The Langer children had been designated as mamzerim because their mother had married their father, without having been divorced from her previous husband, thus committing adultery according to Jewish law.
Fearing a review of the case would prompt the secularists in the government, such as Gideon Hausner of the Independent Liberal Party, to press for the introduction of civil marriage in Israel to break the rabbinate's exclusive control over marriage, Goren controversially reversed the ruling.
Goren's reversal was fiercely opposed, primarily by the Agudat Yisrael and Rav Ovadiah Yosef. Some prominent rabbis, however, such as Rav Soloveitchik and Rav Yosef Eliahu Henkin, came out in support of Goren. There is significant doubt that Rav Soloveitchik agreed with Rav Goren. He is said to have told Rav Moshe Feinstein that he disagreed with the heter.
Halakha and the Israeli state Goren spent most of his term as Chief Rabbi of Israel attempting to reconcile Jewish religious teachings with modern problems of the state, including advancements in technological progress and various high-profile conversion cases. Goren often clashed with his more conservative rabbinical colleagues.See http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=28315&pgnum=36&hilite= and https://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=12319&st=&pgnum=26 and https://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=33389&pgnum=8 and http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=47045&st=&pgnum=82
One example of Goren's desire to adapt Halakha to changing realities in science was his controversial stance on Kiddush Levana, the monthly blessing over the new moon marking the first day of a Jewish month. A prayer customarily added after the blessing contains the words "just as I dance before you and am unable to touch you." Goren said that since the Americans landed on the Moon in 1969, this line should be changed to reflect that it is, in fact, possible to touch the Moon.
Religious Zionist activism Third Temple in Jerusalem
Goren repeatedly advocated for building a Third Temple on the Temple Mount from the 1960s onward, and was associated with various messianic projects involving the Temple Mount. He was well known for his controversial positions concerning Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount. On 15 August 1967, two months after the Six-Day War, Goren led a group of fifty Jews onto the Temple Mount, where, fighting off protesting Muslim guards and Israeli police, they defiantly held a prayer service. Goren continued to pray for many years in the Makhkame building overlooking the Temple Mount, where he conducted yearly High Holiday services. His call for the establishment of a synagogue on the Temple Mount has subsequently been reiterated by his brother-in-law, the former Chief Rabbi of Haifa, She'ar Yashuv Cohen.
Goren was sharply criticized by the Israeli Defense Ministry, who, noting Goren's senior rank, called his behavior inappropriate. The episode led the Chief Rabbis of the time to restate the accepted laws of Judaism that no Jews were allowed on the mount due to issues of ritual impurity. The secular authorities welcomed this ruling as it preserved the status quo with the Waqf, the Islamic authority. Disagreeing with his colleagues, Goren continually maintained that Jews were not only permitted, but commanded, to ascend and pray on the mount which is the holiest site in Judaism.
The actual question of Goren's radicalism remains controversial. One widely repeated story about Goren claims that shortly after the Israeli capture of the Temple Mount, the rabbi either argued that Israel should destroy the al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, or simply said that it would have been a "good thing" if they had been accidentally destroyed.Haaretz, 31 December 1997, also cited in Nur Masalha, The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel, Zed Books, London 2007 p.79 Goren's close assistant Rabbi Menachem Ha-Cohen, who was with Goren throughout that historic day, denied ever hearing Goren make such a remark. Goren himself personally denied this charge several times. Goren made a speech later that year to a military convention, recorded and later broadcast on Israel's army radio,Broadcast of 31 Dec 1997 in which he said of the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque that "Certainly we should have blown it up. It is a tragedy that we did not do so."Nur Masalha, The Bible and Zionism:Invented Traditions, Archeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel, Zed Books, London 2007 p.79
After retiring from official duties as Chief Rabbi, Goren opened and lead the Idra Yeshiva near the Western Wall. The yeshiva changed and was renamed after Goren's death.
Illegal excavation sites In the summer of 1983, Goren and several other rabbis joined Rabbi Yehuda Getz, who worked for the Religious Affairs Ministry at the Western Wall, in touring a chamber underneath the mount that Getz had illegally excavated, where the two claimed to have seen the Ark of the Covenant. The excavation was shortly discovered and resulted in a massive brawl between young Jews and Arabs in the area. The access tunnel to the chamber was quickly sealed with concrete by Israeli police.
Opposition to the Oslo Accords Goren also made headlines after his term as Chief Rabbi had expired. He was deeply opposed to the Oslo Accords and in 1993 declared that it was halakhically forbidden to dismantle any settlements in the Biblical Land of Israel, and encouraged any soldiers ordered to do so to refuse. In 1994, he announced that Halakha made it a duty for Jews to kill Yasser Arafat, because he endangered Jewish lives.Shlomo Goren, 77, Is Dead, by Eric Pace, New York Times, Oct. 30, 1994. Accessed March 2020.
Condemnation of Jewish terrorist attacks Goren has spoken out against Jewish terrorism. In 1982 he and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef officially condemned a shooting attack on the Temple Mount by an American immigrant which resulted in the death of two Muslims and the wounding of several others. In a joint statement released by the Chief Rabbis, they declared that "We and the entire Jewish people attack and deplore the criminal act of murder in every possible way. Through this abominable act [Alan] Goodman has removed himself from the Jewish people...".
Educational activities Goren was a manager of a Kollel, where he met and educated Rabbi Joel Landau. Landau helped him in managing the Kollel.