Yisrael Rosen

Yisrael Rosen was born in Tel Aviv in 1941.[1] He received his secondary education at the religious school Hayishuv Hehadash in Tel Aviv before advancing to Kerem B'Yavneh Yeshiva for Torah studies.[1] At Kerem B'Yavneh he helped establish the institution's kollel — described as the first advanced study program within the hesder framework, which combines yeshiva study with military service.[1]

Rosen went on to study electrical engineering at Machon Lev while serving in the military, and later studied at Bar-Ilan University.[2][1] He served in the Israel Defense Forces as a Nahal combat soldier, participating in the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.[1] After receiving rabbinic ordination, he transitioned to the role of military rabbi and eventually served as a division rabbi.[1] He lived in Alon Shvut in Gush Etzion.[2]

In 1976, Rosen founded the Zomet Institute in Alon Shvut, Gush Etzion, and led it for approximately forty years.[1] The institute's name is an acronym for Teams of Science and Torah, and its mission centered on integrating Jewish law with modern life — particularly addressing how a modern Jewish state and its institutions, including the military and hospitals, could operate in accordance with halakhah.[1]

As an engineer, Rosen developed technological products enabling observant Jews to maintain Sabbath observance while working in settings that operate seven days a week.[1] Among Zomet's notable developments were a Sabbath elevator, a mobility scooter for disabled people, and the Chagaz device, all built around the halakhic principle of grama — indirect action — which can render otherwise prohibited Sabbath activities permissible.[1] The Zomet Institute credited Rosen's close relationships with leading rabbinic authorities as producing dozens of solutions that helped elderly and disabled people observe Shabbat according to Jewish law.[1] Gush Etzion Regional Council head Shlomo Ne'eman eulogized Rosen as one of the pillars of Gush Etzion who dedicated his life to connecting Torah and the state.[2]

His approach was not simply to permit every new technology. In 2017, Rosen said an autonomous car for ordinary Sabbath travel remained technically and halakhically impractical because a driver or control center would still have to supervise it. He nevertheless suggested that autonomous vehicles might reduce Sabbath violations during essential military or medical travel.[3]

Rosen also served as editor-in-chief of Techumin, Zomet's annual halakhic journal in which senior rabbis and decisors addressed the relationship between Jewish law and modern life.[4][1] By the time of his death, 37 volumes had been published.[1] He was additionally identified as co-editor of Kumu V'Naaleh, a collection of essays on the contemporary status of the Temple Mount.[4] In 1996, the Zomet Institute collaborated with Bar-Ilan University's School of Education to produce a 25-page research report on pre-military academies, with Rosen listed as one of its associated creators.[5]

Rosen founded and directed the Conversion Administration within Israel's Chief Rabbinate.[1] The administration was established in 1995 to facilitate conversion among immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and Rosen oversaw the creation of rabbinic conversion courts around the country.[6][1] He later established Jewish-studies institutes for prospective converts in advance of the decisive stages of the conversion process.[1]

In 2004, the administration was transferred to the Prime Minister's Office, and Rabbi Haim Druckman became its director, serving until 2012.[6] Rosen also served as a dayan — a rabbinic judge — in one of Israel's special conversion courts.[7]

Beyond his institutional roles, Rosen was an active public writer and commentator. He wrote a weekly column in the religious newspaper supplement Shabbat B'Shabato for more than thirty years and contributed columns to ynet, among other outlets.[1] He published dozens of Torah works over the course of his career.[1]

In his later years, Rosen served as chairman of the presidium of the Religious Zionist Jewish Home party.[1] He was identified throughout his career with the Religious Zionist movement.[1]

Rosen died in November 2017 following a serious illness, at the age of 76.[1] Hundreds of mourners attended his funeral at the Kfar Etzion cemetery.[1] He was remembered as a pioneering figure who bridged the worlds of Torah scholarship, engineering, and Israeli public life over four decades.[1]

His founding of the Zomet Institute created an institutional framework for addressing the halakhic challenges posed by modern technology, while Techumin provided an annual forum for rabbis and scholars examining Jewish law and contemporary society.[4][1] His establishment of what ynet described as Israel's first state conversion system was another significant institutional contribution to Israeli religious life.[1]

Several of Rosen's positions generated public debate. His halakhic rulings permitting the use of grama-based technology on the Sabbath — including Zomet's Sabbath elevator — were not accepted by the Haredi public, and senior Haredi rabbis engaged in serious disputes with him over these rulings.[1] In one publicized exchange, Rosen argued that a passenger's effect on a Sabbath elevator was imperceptible and halakhically negligible, and that Zomet's permission rested on a substantive ruling associated with Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and his students rather than on technical workarounds alone.[8]

Rosen's work as a dayan in a special conversion court attracted scrutiny after reports that he had prepared a list of 167 converts he considered insufficiently observant and therefore ineligible to marry through Israel's rabbinic court system.[7] In a separate controversy in 2015, a Jerusalem Rabbinical Court retroactively annulled a conversion performed in 1983 under the auspices of Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren. Rosen strongly opposed the ruling, calling it "halachically absurd" and arguing that Jewish law contains no concept of conversion annulment, that a convert remains Jewish even after returning to prior practices, and that later religious behavior could not justify canceling a decades-old conversion without dramatic undisclosed information.[9] He invoked the biblical episode of the Golden Calf, noting that the Jewish people's own "conversion" was not canceled after that event.[9]

In 2011, Rosen called for boycotting the public activities of Knesset member Einat Wilf, objecting to her marriage to a non-Jewish German and stating he could not accept a Knesset member in a mixed marriage seeking leadership of the Education or Immigration committees.[10] The call drew a public response from Wilf.[10]

Rosen's 2007 views on Reform Judaism also sparked debate. He called on Orthodox Judaism to reconsider its attitude toward the Reform movement, welcomed what he described as Reform's rapprochement with Zionism, and said he did not oppose Reform religious ceremonies such as britot, bar mitzvahs, weddings, and funerals.[11] He nevertheless opposed recognition of Reform conversions for purposes such as eligibility for rabbinic office, accused Reform Judaism of betraying the Torah, the Jewish people, and the Land of Israel, and criticized the Diaspora movement for legitimizing intermarriage.[11]