Dov Lior

A 1987 profile reported that Lior was born in Poland and arrived in Israel in 1947 aboard the Exodus. It said his parents had died of hunger while refugees in Russia during World War II. Before studying at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, he attended a yeshiva in Kfar HaRo’eh; the profile described him as a favored student of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook.[1]

The profile, published when Lior was 54, also recorded sharply different assessments of his political and religious outlook. Lior said he opposed people taking the law into their own hands, while critics argued that some of his positions risked blurring distinctions between civilians and terrorists.[1]

In 1987, Lior was appointed chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron. The contemporary profile described this as the first appointment of a government rabbi representing Hebron in the modern Israeli state and reported that he shared direction of Kiryat Arba’s hesder yeshiva with another rabbi.[1]

Lior also held leadership roles in Religious Zionist rabbinic organizations. In 2005, he was identified as chairman of the Yesha Council of Rabbis; he urged replacing the Yesha Council’s leadership with religious leadership, criticizing the existing leaders as weak in the struggle over the disengagement from Gaza.[4] He was later identified as chair of the Rabbinic Council of Judea and Samaria.[10]

Lior left the Kiryat Arba chief rabbinate in 2014, at age 80, and moved to Beit Orot on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. An assistant said he considered it appropriate to step down at that age and that settling in eastern Jerusalem was close to his heart.[11] Reports also described him as influential among national-religious politicians. A 2014 account said he backed Otzma L’Yisrael before the 2013 election after splitting from Tekuma; the party did not cross the electoral threshold.[11]

Lior became a prominent advocate for Jewish access to certain areas of the Temple Mount. A 2009 account says Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef appointed Lior and two other rabbis in 1982 to examine areas where Jewish entry might be permitted, although the subcommittee produced no report.[2] In 2007, Lior joined dozens of Religious Zionist rabbis on a two-hour Temple Mount visit coordinated with the Waqf and Jerusalem police. The visit was described as reflecting a shift away from the broader halakhic consensus that had previously opposed entry.[10]

The rabbis who permit limited access nevertheless prohibit approaching the raised area around the Dome of the Rock, which they identify with the sanctuary’s holiest compound. The INSS account describes a route for Jewish visitors and prayer at least 12 meters from that raised area, citing reverence for the sanctuary as the reason for the restriction.[3] The issue remains contested within Jewish law and religious practice.

Lior’s views also addressed conversion and the authority of the Chief Rabbinate. A letter reproduced on Sefaria, headed “Letter of 8/10/15,” lists him as a signatory and identifies him as Chief Rabbi of Hevron. The joint signatories called for the Chief Rabbinate to remain the national authority on halakhic decisions and conversion, opposed private conversions and mass conversion of minors, and said they would recognize only conversions certified by the Chief Rabbinate.[5] The letter states that “Private conversions deal a severe blow to our national unity in this country and shake the very foundations of our definition as a Jewish state.”[5]

In 2008, Lior said soldiers should refuse orders to evacuate Jewish settlements, which he characterized as forbidden under Torah law. He also opposed employing Arab workers or renting homes to Arabs in Israel.[12] In the same interview, he argued that civilians could be harmed if that were necessary to stop terrorists’ fire and no other option existed; the report attributed to him the view that Jewish law did not require consideration of innocent civilians during combat.[12]

In 2010, Lior opposed a Jewish woman receiving sperm from a non-Jewish donor, even if that were her only route to pregnancy, and recommended adoption to infertile couples. The report attributed to him a claim that a child conceived with a non-Jewish donor would inherit negative traits he associated with non-Jews.[13] In a separate discussion of vegetarianism, he argued that compassion for animals was premature while people remained uncompassionate toward one another. He connected eating meat with the possibility of sanctifying material life when eating served a holy purpose; animal-rights and environmental organizations criticized his position.[14]

Lior also took a strong position on women’s employment and public roles. The Jewish Review of Books reports that he supported Rabbi Avraham Levanon’s view that women seeking influence in public affairs in their settlements should encourage their husbands to run for office. Lior framed the issue around women’s employment, arguing that a woman should work outside the home only if there was no other choice. The publication says his pamphlet Giluy Da’at, which set out this position, was distributed in thousands of synagogues around Israel.[15]

Lior’s statements about Arabs, Palestinians, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drew substantial criticism. At a 2011 gathering in Migron, he reportedly called Arabs “wolves” and “savages,” said peace with them was impossible, and argued that the Land of Israel belonged only to the Jewish people. He also linked international isolation and antisemitism in Europe to demolitions in Migron.[16]

At a 2014 event honoring three Israeli teenagers who had been kidnapped and murdered, Lior said Israel would not reach peace with the Palestinians because there was no one with whom to make peace. He characterized Arabs as inclined toward war, described Arab states as unsuited to democracy, and called for Palestinians to be encouraged to emigrate to countries in the Arabian Peninsula.[17] Following a 2013 Temple Mount tour, he called reclaiming the site a responsibility of his generation and spoke of sending Arabs to Saudi Arabia.[18]

Lior’s position on settlement evacuations was also part of his public role. He supported soldiers who refused orders to evacuate Gaza settlements in 2005.[11] In 2008, he urged soldiers not to participate in evacuations, describing them as prohibited by Torah law.[12] A separate allegation that he had ruled that soldiers evacuating outposts should be treated like Nazis was disputed: CAMERA reported that Lior’s bureau chief said he had never made that ruling.[19]

In a 2008 incident involving Federman Farm, which CAMERA described as an illegal outpost near Kiryat Arba, security forces demolished the site. Lior attended a ceremony held hours later to lay a new cornerstone for rebuilding it. He reportedly compared the family’s removal from the farm with his own family’s removal from their home in Poland, recalling that they had no time to prepare and could not take their clothes.[19]

Beyond his formal offices, Lior became a prominent authority within Religious Zionism and the settlement movement. His positions circulated through synagogue pamphlets, including Giluy Da’at, which was distributed in thousands of synagogues and gave his views an audience beyond Kiryat Arba.[15][6]

His public standing also generated organized opposition. In 2012, Lior was invited to address reserve infantry soldiers stationed near Gaza, but several soldiers objected because of his endorsement of Torat Hamelech and read passages from the book. He left after several minutes without delivering the planned address; his household disputed the implication that the incident had substantially affected him.[20]

Lior’s written approval of Torat Hamelech, a book by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira of Yitzhar, led to a police investigation and his questioning in 2011. The book was reported to argue that Jewish law permits killing non-Jews during wartime in some circumstances and that children of Israel’s enemies could be killed under certain conditions.[6][7] The World Jewish Congress reported that the book said of those children that “it is clear that they will grow to harm us”; this was presented as a claim in the book, not as Lior’s own words.[7]

After declining police summonses, Lior was arrested near Jerusalem on June 27, 2011, questioned, and released.[6] He said rabbis had a right and duty to express views on Jewish matters and that authorities should not interfere in Torah discourse; at a support rally, he criticized officials for directing that copies of the book be removed from shelves.[6] President Shimon Peres called on rabbis to avoid statements he said could damage Israeli society, the state, and the Torah. Political leaders also criticized the rabbis’ stance toward the authority of Israeli law.[7] The cited reporting documents suspicion, questioning, and release, but does not establish a conviction or other final finding of guilt concerning Lior.[6][7]

An earlier campaign against Lior’s election to the Supreme Rabbinical Court reportedly relied on a ruling attributed to him that experiments on Arab detainees were permissible. The account presents that claim as the campaign’s rationale, not as an independently resolved characterization of the ruling, and notes that Lior was not formally connected to Meir Kahane or the Kach Party.[21]

A further dispute arose in October 2026, when Lior issued a halakhic ruling permitting Jews to harvest olives from Palestinian-owned groves in Judea and Samaria, including trees whose owners could not reach them because of security restrictions. He argued that the Jewish people had not relinquished property in the Land of Israel and that harvesting could demonstrate Jewish ownership and fulfill the commandment of conquering the land. Other rabbis and the Tzohar organization argued that the olives remained their owners’ property and that taking them constituted theft.[8]

Rabbis for Human Rights filed a complaint alleging incitement to racism and soliciting theft of property; police said it had been passed on for examination. The cited reporting does not establish a finding of wrongdoing.[9]