As we approach the exalted heights of Shavuot, instead of writing about the Torah, I will write once again about a man who was total Torah – Rabbi Moshe Levinger, an indefatigable fighter for Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel.
On his trip to New York to encourage families to move to Israel, while I was working at the Aliyah Center on Park Avenue, he invited me to spend Shabbat at his home in Hevron. In those days, the Jewish settlement in Hevron numbered no more than a dozen families. I got off the bus in Kiriat Arba and walked down the steep winding descent to the ancient city of our Forefathers, where Avraham, Yitzhak, and Yaacov are buried in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, along with Sarah, Rivkah, and Leah. Back in those days, there were terrorist killings now and then, but a Jew could walk in relative safety alone through the Arab casbah and surrounding Arab-filled streets, largely because of the stature of Rabbi Levinger and the respect and awe he inspired as he strode bravely through Hevron with a determined stride and confident smile that broadcasted, “This is a Jewish city and we are the owners of the house.”
That Friday afternoon, when I reached the Levinger house in the midst of the Arab casbah, the image I encountered will never be erased from my memory. Rabbi Levinger sat on the steps of his home, polishing his shoes in the honor of the approaching Shabbat. First of all, I had never seen a rabbi polishing shoes. Certainly not a Biblical looking figure like Rabbi Levinger, who, in the eyes of an assimilated Jew returning to Judaism, was like Moshe Rabainu and Joshua ben Nun. That Shabbat, in the Land of Israel, in the reborn city of Hevron, where Jewish life was returning out of the ruins of destroyed Jewish homes, where the flag of Israel waved proudly over the barbed-wired, casbah rooftop, against a starry sky, in defiance of the constant wailing of mosque loudspeakers and the cries of Arabs to drive the Jews into the sea, that Shabbat with Rabbi Levinger and his family was like studying the entire Talmud in one day – an infusion of pure Judaism, as Judaism is meant to be lived, not in comfortable Diaspora homes, doing everything we can to get along with the goyim, but in the Land of our Forefathers, even at the risk of our lives.
The impression that Shabbat had on me was overwhelming. There was no doubt in my mind – this was the real Judaism. This was the real Torah. This was the real place to be. In the great light of that Shabbat in Hevron with Rabbi Levinger, I understood that if I wanted to get closer to G-d, and go higher and higher, then taking a part in the rebuilding of the Torah and Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael, in whatever way I could, that was my mission in life, as it should be for every Jew – just as it says in the Torah, again, and again, and again.
Years later, Jewish cars, traveling from Jerusalem to Hebron along the old route through Beit-Lechem, would invariably be stoned. The Army did nothing. Jews were maimed and killed. Still the Israeli government did nothing. Finally, Rabbi Levinger began to sit alone on the roadside at Dehaisha, the most violent Arab refugee camp on the way to Hevron. The army had to send a jeep to protect him. He slept in a tent. Several days I joined him. Most of the time, he studied and taught classes to groups who would stop by in solidarity with his protest. Several times a day, he would stroll by the refugee camp without fear, his Uzi slung over his shoulder, to patrol the road on his own. Finally, the army was forced to set up a permanent camp there, and soldiers replaced Rabbi Levinger on patrol.
That year, Rabbi Levinger decided that the religious Zionist party, the Mafdal, was being too wishy-washy on the issue of settling the Land, and too willing to surrender to Arab demands. So he decided to run for the Knesset. I made the TV spots for his campaign. Here’s one that someone put up on Youtube.
The clip has Russian subtitles, because we were trying to attract the votes of the Russian olim. The Knesset banned Rabbi Kahana from running in the election that year (the Likud feared he would steal votes from them), so we emphasized the right to self-defense to draw Kach supporters toward Rabbi Levinger. But of course, the media, and the religious Zionist establishment, did everything they could to sabotage his campaign.
There are many stories I could tell, but I’ll conclude with only one. After his first stroke, some two years ago, when he was restricted to a wheelchair, he would come every Friday morning to an old-age home in Jerusalem, where he would sit with the elders and sing songs of Eretz Yisrael with them, and then teach them from the Torah portion, in honor of the Shabbat. Each time I joined him there, I was amazed at his humility. After all, he was a big Torah scholar. Even after his stroke, his mind was sharp and his retention of his Torah learning was vast. He was famous. He had led the drive for renewed Jewish settlement all over Yehuda and Samaria. Yet here he was, sitting with a group of simple old people in a nursing home, cheering them up, joining them to light Shabbat candles, teach some Torah, and sing popular old songs of Zion, not thinking about himself or his image for a minute, continuing to do whatever he could to help Jews, even though he was confined to a wheelchair, yet with the very same fervor and selflessness which marked his fight for the right of Jews to live in our Homeland. Torah is not merely to be studied. Torah is to be lived. Rabbi Moshe Levinger was a living Torah, in its most complete expression, the Torah of Eretz Yisrael. May his memory be for a blessing.