Innovator in Israel

A rabbi's place, believes Brigadier-General Shlomo Goren, 49, is at the head of his congregation--at all times and under all circumstances. As chief rabbi of the Israeli army, Goren has had ample opportunity to practice that belief. His bushy white beard flapping in the wind, he dashed through sniper fire in Arab-held Jerusalem to become the first Israeli soldier to reach the Wailing Wall during last year's Six-Day War with the Arabs. Clutching the Torah scroll and ram's horn that are the symbols of his religion, he also led his troops to the tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem and to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. He would have been the first Israeli to cross into Gaza had not an Arab tank shell blasted his command car out from under him. "Goren," says a Tel Aviv grocer who served under him, "is a gever"--a man's man.

Goren is also a brilliant Talmud scholar whose unorthodox approach to Orthodox Judaism has caused some concern in Israel's ultraconservative chief rabbinate, which demands strict observance of ancient Halakah (religious law) and fears him as a "reformer." Last week, however, by a vote of 46 to 41, a council of rabbis and civic representatives elected him chief rabbi of Tel Aviv's Ashkenazi (European) Jews, the second most powerful rabbinicai post in the Jewish nation. The election makes Goren the man most likely to succeed Isser Unterman, 82, as Ashkenazi chief rabbi of all Israel.

Fire on the Sabbath. The son of Polish immigrants who went to Jerusalem when he was a child, Goren was a Talmudic prodigy who became Palestine's youngest ordained rabbi at the age of 16, a year later published a scholarly study of the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides. He joined the Zionist underground in 1936, was a sniper in Jerusalem during the Palestine war. and became chief rabbi of the Israeli army when it was formed in 1948. Throughout the fighting, Goren also played an active role in a rabbinical committee assigned to study the modernization of Halakah. The committee's findings proved too controversial even to be published, let alone adopted, in Israel. One closely reasoned recommendation by Goren held that the Biblical proscription against the use of fire on the Sabbath should not prevent Orthodox Jews from using electricity, since modern physics had proved that electricity is not fire.

The Final Authority. Goren insists that he is an "innovator" rather than a "reformer." Among his innovations, though, are decisions that to many other Orthodox rabbis seem to be in open contravention of Halakah. As chief military chaplain, he allowed his troops to work and fight on the Sabbath, and even drive trucks if it was necessary for the security of the state. Although suicide is a sin for Jews, Goren also ruled that captured soldiers could kill themselves rather than risk revealing military secrets under torture. He also believes that Israel's Independence Day should be regarded as a religious rather than a secular festival.

In his new post, Goren will be the final authority on all questions of ritual observance for Ashkenazi Jews of the city. He has already made it clear that he intends to push for a modernization of Halakah, and has even suggested that a Sanhedrin, or senate of rabbis, be convened to do the job. "The chief rabbinate's foremost task is to find solutions to problems faced by the state within the framework of Jewish law," Goren said last week. "Judaism does not need reform, but it certainly needs a reinterpretation of the sources for modern times."

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