Haim Drukman, spiritual leader of religious Zionism, dies aged 90
Jerusalem, Dec 26 (EFE).- Mourners on Monday gathered in the southern Israeli village of Masu’ot Yitzhak to pay their respects to rabbi Haim Drukman, the spiritual leader of religious Zionism who died at the age of 90.
After decades of influencing Israeli political affairs, Drukman, the mentor to finance minister-designate and leader of the Religious Zionism party Bezalel Smotrich, succumbed to Covid-19 on Sunday.
“The nation of Israel and the entire world lost one of the spiritual giants of our generation, a righteous man, a man of education, a man whose whole mind is dedicated to the Torah of the Land of Israel, the people of Israel and the Land of Israel,” Smotrich wrote on Twitter.
Prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu sent his condolences to the rabbi’s family: “the state of Israel lost a great spiritual leader, and I lost a personal friend whom I respected very much.”
Born in 1932 in Poland, Drukman migrated to British Mandate Palestine in 1944.
He was one of the students of rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the spiritual leader of Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), the movement that had settlements established in the occupied West Bank after the 1967 war.
Drukman got into politics in 1977 and served as a Knesset lawmaker for 14 years.EFE
sga/smq/jt
