'To Be Holy but Human': A look into the life ‘hesder yeshiva’ creator Rabbi Yehuda Amital - review

Written by American theologian Jonathan Edwards in 1741, the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was the catalyst for the First Great Awakening (religious revival in the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s). Like Edwards’ other works, the sermon combines vivid imagery of the sinner’s everlasting torment in the burning fires of hell. It was an extremely stern sermon that left listeners petrified and in tears.

Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, who led the yeshiva together with Rav Amital, appears in many of the stories. He grew up in the United States and is better known among Anglo-Israelis than Amital, who didn’t speak English, visited the US less often, and is therefore not as well known among Americans. Thus, through this book, Taragin provides the English-speaking world with significant insights into the thoughts of this great man.

The book is divided into two sections: “Stories” and “Teachings.” In more than 50 chapters, Taragin combines a unique set of memories of his rebbe with stories exploring his worldview.

Taragin calls Amital “the Menachem Begin of rosh yeshivas.” Begin took the political route, Amital the theological one – but both were shaped by the drama of 20th-century Jewish history. Both lived through some of the most significant events in that history – the Holocaust, the War of Independence, the Six Day War, and the post-1967 era.

Born in Romania, Amital survived a Nazi labor camp and made it to Israel in 1944 at the age of 20. He fought in the War of Independence, and afterward began teaching at Yeshivat HaDarom in Rehovot.

ONE OF Amital’s many accomplishments was that he was instrumental in creating the hesder yeshiva, a program combining Talmudic studies with military service in the Israel Defense Forces. Although it is now conventional, the concept of hesder yeshiva was revolutionary at the time.

In 1968, he founded and became the rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, one of the premier hesder yeshivas, where he served and taught there until his retirement in 2008.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” is a phrase attributed to Albert Einstein, although he is not known to have said it. It can, however, be applied to Amital, as it was his core religious approach. Such simplicity does not contradict the complexity of his thoughts.

That simplicity, which should not be confused with naivety, combined with his insistence on making one’s religious observance authentic, made him a rare leader.

Some yeshiva heads take an elitist approach. Their yeshiva may attract the best and the brightest, who look at their rosh yeshiva with admiration and wonder. This can create a gap and make them unapproachable – and, at worst, create a personality cult. That was an approach Amital abhorred.

As Taragin makes eminently clear in the many insightful vignettes in this excellent book, the beloved rosh yeshiva saw himself as a man of the people. Even though he was a peer of many of the great yeshiva leaders of his time, he felt equally at home speaking with the non-scholarly lay people in his local synagogue.

REGARDING THE book’s title, being both holy and human seems to be an intractable goal. To be holy means to be removed from the world and metaphorically converse with angels. To be human means to be involved with the mundane and interact with the commoner. The two have inherent tension; navigating these often contradictory worlds can be a struggle.

Not only did Amital effectively navigate it, but he also taught generations how to do it, which is an incredible legacy. The challenge between being holy and human is nuanced, and nuance is a trait some religious leaders lack.

Amital’s ability to grow stemmed from two core traits. First, he was deeply attentive to reality. Ideologues often fall into the trap of molding the world to fit their ideas rather than reshaping them to align with the world’s evolving landscape.

That can be seen within some in the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) world, where they categorize the Israeli government’s attempt to draft some yeshiva students as a decree to shut all the yeshivas. It’s an erroneous idea that is not based on the reality Amital strove to stay in.

Another core trait of his was his ability to change his opinion, which was grounded in his inner strength and confidence. When people have a strong sense of self – ideally rooted in a deep relationship with God – and a secure inner identity, they are not defined by their opinions or positions. Their identity is stable enough to allow their views to evolve without fear of losing themselves.

Conversely, those who derive their sense of self from rigidly held opinions often find change unbearable, as it threatens the core of their perceived identity.

Amital taught his students that true strength lies not in unyielding rigidity but in the courage to adapt while remaining deeply anchored in one’s essence.

The term Religious Zionism does not reflect how broad is the spectrum that it encompasses. While Amital was certainly a Religious Zionist, he did not share the messianic fervor that many in the camp of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook do.

Through numerous stories in the book, Taragin shows how Amital took a much more conservative approach to viewing events from a cataclysmic, messianic viewpoint.

Much of what Rav Kook wrote about a world full of harmony took place before the Holocaust. Taragin also explains that since Israel’s first Ashkenazi chief rabbi didn’t live through the Holocaust, his visions would likely have been tempered post-Holocaust, which is the approach Rav Amital took.