Bet El Highlight: Our students run FAST!

"I was privileged to lead in the Jerusalem Marathon the student of the Bet El IDF Prep Academy, where I myself learned. We set a goal of running 10km in 50 minutes and we did it in 49. It's true what the Zohar writes: "There is nothing that stands before the will."   -The son-in-law of Rav Yehuda Dana, who serves as a regional security coordinator in Judea and Samaria.

Israel News Analysis: HaRav Tzvi Yehuda zt"l

by Yaakov "Ketzaleh" Katz

[Based on an article that originally appeared in Hebrew in Besheva and translated by Hillel Fendel]

The tremendous blossoming of the Jewish return to Judea and Samaria can be credited to Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook's vision and leadership.

We have just marked 37 years since the passing of our great teacher and rabbi, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook, of saintly blessed memory. He was a Torah genius, an expert in Kabbalah, a saintly and righteous tzaddik, and a giant leader enwrapped totally in the Torah of Israel. He enveloped himself day and night in "the four cubits" of Jewish Law and love of Israel, and in the editing and publication of the works of his holy father, HaRav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, the first modern-day Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land. He raised generations of Torah scholar students, giants in Gemara and Halakhah, and experts in the light of Redemptive Torah, blessed with understanding and knowledge of the depth of the unique period of the beginning of our Redemption in which we live.

I would like to illuminate another aspect of the multi-faceted leadership personality of Rav Tzvi Yehuda. I was privileged to see it in action in 5735 (1975), after the first attempts to settle the Sebastia area in Samaria. These took place under the leadership of the late Rabbis Moshe Levinger and Chanan Porat, and Rabbi Menachem Felix and Benny Katzover – joint founders of the "Gush Emunim" Torah settlement movement.

Rav Tzvi Yehuda received a letter at that time from none other than IDF military commando hero Meir Har-Tzion – described by Moshe Dayan as "the best soldier ever to arise in the IDF." Har-Tzion asked the Rav, as the spiritual leader of Gush Emunim, to send him someone who could plan meetings and lectures by Gush Emunim representatives in the mostly-secular kibbutzim and communities in northern Israel. As an admirer of Gush Emunim, he desired to have it presented to the northern residents in a clear and forthright manner.