Yuval Cherlow

Cherlow graduated from Yeshivat Har Etzion and served in the Israel Defense Forces, reaching the rank of major before retiring.[3] His religious education and military service preceded his later leadership of hesder yeshivot in Petah Tikva and Orot Shaul.[8][2]

Sources identify Cherlow as head of Yeshivat Hesder Petah Tikva in 2005 and as head of Orot Shaul in later profiles, including a 2024 Ynet interview.[8][2] A 2019 Bar-Ilan University conference program listed him as head of Yeshivat Amit "Orot Shaul" and the Machon Hagavoha Letorah. It also named him as a participant in a round-table discussion on Religious Zionism and the Holocaust.[9]

Beyond yeshiva leadership, Cherlow previously headed the Ethics and Religion Desk at the Jerusalem Center for Ethics and has worked for many years on Jewish and medical ethics.[2] He was among the founders of Tzohar, a Modern Orthodox organization dedicated to building bridges between religious and secular Israelis, and has served as director of its Center for Jewish Ethics.[3][1] He is also identified as one of the founders of Forum Takana.[2]

From early in his career, Cherlow embraced digital platforms as a vehicle for halakhic guidance. By 2004 he had answered roughly 13,000 questions on the religious Q&A site Moreshet, devoting several hours each day to the work at a time when the site held approximately 80,000 questions and answers in total.[10] He valued the anonymity of online access as enabling people to raise difficult or sensitive questions they might otherwise suppress, while warning that the medium's speed and availability could encourage excessive dependence on rabbinic authority.[10]

His reflections on this tension became sharper over time. He described his web-based system as "both a curse and a blessing," adding: "The curse is creating dependence, spiritual domination, manipulation, and loss of independence."[11] He encouraged rabbis to present answers as possibilities rather than final rulings and to foster independent thought among those who seek guidance.[11] During the coronavirus crisis, the volume of questions he received surged from roughly five per week to hundreds over two months, drawn from across Israeli society on questions ranging from doctors' professional obligations to school attendance and journalistic exemptions from phone tracking.[4]

Cherlow's approach to ethics combines fidelity to halakhic methodology with engagement in wider moral discourse. He has argued that moral principles should be applied consistently rather than used selectively for political or military purposes, and that Israel must follow the standards it expects of others.[2] In 2024 he published his fifteenth book, Ki Yesharim Darkhei Hashem — Jewish Ethics, through Yedioth Books. Its subjects include a moral reading of the Torah, ethical standards in religious rulings, the biblical law of the captive woman, and ethics in wartime; one chapter calls for cooperation with thinkers worldwide who promote moral life.[2]

On end-of-life questions, Cherlow challenged the assumption that Jewish law always requires extending life at any cost, arguing that Halacha can, in some circumstances, permit saying "enough is enough."[5] He directs Tzohar's Through One Hundred Twenty program, which connects families facing decisions about sick or dying relatives with teams of rabbis and social workers. The program does not dictate treatment choices but explains which options fall within Jewish law under particular circumstances. At the time of reporting, ten teams served families across Israel, with the program meeting roughly four families per week and having held online forums that attracted nearly 3,000 participants.[5]

On environmental ethics, Cherlow has argued that people are part of creation rather than separate from it, linking interpersonal wrongdoing — including harm to people or animals — with harm to the environment. Drawing on Ezekiel's account of Sodom's pride and failure to aid the poor, the Mishnaic principle "What's mine is mine and what's yours is yours," and the prohibition against wanton destruction, he contends that moral and environmental conduct belong together and that concern for nature cannot substitute for social responsibility.[12]

On arms exports, Cherlow argued that ethical scrutiny should extend beyond preventing technology leaks to assessing the morality of sales themselves. He cited the industry's financial scale as a corruption risk, called for greater transparency, and expressed concern that decisions were being made by too small a security group. He also called for scrutiny of former military officers who train objectionable actors abroad.[13]

In a 2024 discussion of hostage negotiations during the war with Hamas, Cherlow argued that Judaism has no single authority speaking for it and is characterized by continuing disagreement. He said that Jewish statecraft represents a new setting for religious law after more than 2,000 years without an independent Jewish state, and that returning hostages must be understood as a collective — not merely an individual — interest whose failure would represent a failure of the state itself.[1] In the same interview, he said that although he saw no moral obligation to treat a wounded enemy as such, Israel provides basic care because treatment is an international norm, reflects agreements Israel has signed, participates in worldwide moral progress, and reduces bloodshed.[1]

Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza placed Cherlow within an intense debate in religious Zionism about the community's future relationship to the state, the IDF, and secular Israeli society. He was among the prominent religious-Zionist rabbis who publicly rejected any break from the state or the army in the withdrawal's aftermath.[14] Arguing against those who advocated adopting an ultra-Orthodox model of communal separation, he warned that such a path would risk making religious Zionism "an isolationist cult."[14]

His position combined principled criticism of the disengagement with an insistence on continued civic responsibility. Cherlow urged religious Zionists to take responsibility for the state even when it is not governed according to Torah considerations, calling for self-examination and insisting, "There is no reality that cannot be influenced."[15] He published Shut Hitnatkut (Responsa on Disengagement) in summer 2010, a 296-page book compiling answers to thousands of questions he received during the disengagement period, including through his web-based Q&A system.[11]

On the specific question of military obedience, Cherlow opposed calls for religious-Zionist soldiers to disobey orders during the withdrawal, describing such calls as an "existential danger" to Israel.[11] He did not deny the state's authority to decide to withdraw from Gaza but argued that the decision could be assessed according to halakha and was, in his view, at least "borderline."[11] He further maintained that rabbis are qualified to evaluate policy and security questions because they "are experts on the premises of the larger debate."[11]

Cherlow has engaged with a wide range of novel halakhic questions. At a 2018 panel at Bar-Ilan University on kosher food and genetic modification, he argued that food grown from a pig cell could be kosher, reasoning that the cell loses its original identity in the process and the resulting product is neither forbidden food nor meat. On that basis, he concluded that there should be no restriction on eating lab-grown meat with dairy. He also described genetic food research as having religious and moral significance given its potential environmental benefits and ability to help feed a growing global population.[7]

On the use of autonomous vehicles on Shabbat, Cherlow raised questions about the effect of such cars on the character of public life and the boundary between ordinary electrical devices and a vehicle. He concluded that using a fully automated car on Shabbat would generally be forbidden, while acknowledging that decisors could make exceptions for people with disabilities and essential police activity.[6] He illustrated the ethical complexity with a runaway-car scenario — a vehicle heading toward five people could veer away and save them while injuring one bystander — and called for engaging such questions "with faithfulness to the Talmudic system which phrases those principals through analysis, reliance on precedents, and great creativity."[6]

On posthumous sperm use, Cherlow advised against using the frozen sperm of a deceased man for insemination, explaining that, in his view, medical technologies should address defects in nature rather than "invent new realities." He acknowledged that another view was possible and offered the questioner alternative ways to honor the deceased's memory, such as naming newborns after him or studying Torah in his merit.[16]

Regarding get refusal — the withholding of a Jewish religious divorce — Cherlow expressed caution about the use of public shaming as a sanction. He was unsure whether shaming properly applied the sanctions of Rabbeinu Tam and argued that it could be dangerous or unsuitable in contemporary circumstances. He compared its use to driving in reverse: necessary only when no forward route is available, limited to what is required, and undertaken cautiously so that it does not undermine the goal of obtaining the get itself.[17]

Cherlow has participated publicly in discussions concerning religious gay and lesbian people. He recalled that a decade before a 2011 interview, he would have dismissed Orthodox homosexuality as "two or four crazy people" assimilating into Western culture. After attending a gathering of more than 50 Orthodox homosexuals — nearly all graduates of Orthodox religious seminaries — he said he realized that the issue required serious attention.[18] He described members of the community as people "who are really in trouble" and said rabbis were searching for a meaningful response to a genuinely new question.[18]

At a 2008 meeting involving religious gay and lesbian people, parents, and educators, Cherlow stated that denying the existence of religious gay and lesbian people was mistaken. He said that, where a person felt able to come out, living openly might be better because it would allow that person to live truthfully. He declined to make a blanket recommendation, however, because he did not know the difficulties from personal experience.[19] He also opposed conversion treatments for adults, which he characterized as having no prospect of success and creating risk.[19]

Cherlow has published extensively on Jewish ethics, halakha, and religious thought. His works include the Reshut Hadibur series, published by Maggid, on Jewish ethics and speech. The series covers subjects such as slander, gossip, public shaming, exposure of abuse, and the tension between a person's reputation and the public's right to know.[20] His 2024 volume Ki Yesharim Darkhei Hashem — Jewish Ethics marked his fifteenth book.[2]

He has also written on the philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. A bibliography in Tradition records his book והיו לאחדים בידך, addressing dialectics and harmony in Soloveitchik's thought and published by Tevunot in 2000, and his essay "Redemption as Responsibility," which appeared in a Fall 2006 issue of Tradition devoted to Soloveitchik's Kol Dodi Dofek.[21] His speech-ethics work presents prohibitions against gossip, slander, humiliation, flattery, and falsehood as among the highest religious obligations, while examining circumstances in which silence can itself constitute a failure to protect another person from harm.[20]

Cherlow's documented influence includes bringing applied halakhic ethics into public, digital, and institutional settings. His online responsa made anonymous access to rabbinic guidance available on a large scale, while his warnings about dependence emphasized the importance of preserving a questioner's independence.[11][10] His work through Tzohar and his publications has carried this applied approach into debates over speech, medicine, wartime conduct, and emerging technologies.[1][2]

Several of Cherlow's public positions remain contested within Orthodox discourse and Israeli society. His ruling that lab-grown food derived from pig cells could be kosher and that lab-grown meat could be eaten with dairy is disputed; the source notes that stricter Jewish-law scholars continue to apply traditional meat restrictions to cultured products.[7] His caution about public shaming in get-refusal cases likewise places him within an ongoing halakhic and ethical debate rather than a settled consensus.[17]

His disengagement-era position was also contested. A Jewish Review of Books reviewer criticized the broader premise that rabbis are qualified to judge policy and security questions, even while noting Cherlow's opposition to military disobedience.[11] His engagement with religious gay and lesbian people entered another continuing Orthodox debate: in 2008 he rejected denial of their existence, favored openness where an individual felt able, and opposed conversion treatment for adults, while retaining qualifications and declining to issue a blanket recommendation on coming out.[19]