Shmuel Rabinowitz
Encyclopedia
Shmuel Rabinovitch, also spelled Rabinowitz (born 4 April 1970, Jerusalem) is an Orthodox
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...

 rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

 and Rabbi of the Western Wall
Western Wall
The Western Wall, Wailing Wall or Kotel is located in the Old City of Jerusalem at the foot of the western side of the Temple Mount...

 and the Holy Sites of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. Among his duties at the Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, he is responsible for ensuring that notes placed in the Wall
Placing notes in the Western Wall
Placing notes in the Western Wall refers to the practice of placing slips of paper containing written prayers to God into the cracks and crevices of the Western Wall, a Jewish holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem....

 are removed and treated consistent with tradition and halakhah, as well as enforcing guidelines around the Wall about modesty and not taking photographs on Jewish holidays. He often escorts visiting heads of state and foreign dignitaries during their visit to the Wall, and has been an outspoken defender of Torah values at the Jewish people's holiest site.

Biography

Rabinovitch is the son of Rabbi Chaim Yehuda Rabinovitch, av beis din of the Jerusalem Rabbinical Courts, and grandson of Rabbi Shmuel Benzion Rabinovitch (d. 1950), a Lubavitcher
Chabad
Chabad or Chabad-Lubavitch is a major branch of Hasidic Judaism.Chabad may also refer to:*Chabad-Strashelye, a defunct branch of the Chabad school of Hasidic Judaism*Chabad-Kapust or Kapust, a defunct branch of the Chabad school of Hasidic Judaism...

 Hasid
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew —Ḥasidut in Sephardi, Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith...

 born in Russia who brought up six children in the Old Yishuv
Old Yishuv
The Old Yishuv refers to the Jewish community that lived in the Land of Israel from the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE to the First Aliyah in 1881-82, prior to the onset of Zionist immigration....

 but died at a young age. Shmuel Rabinovitch was named after his grandfather. He grew up in the Kiryat Mattersdorf
Kiryat Mattersdorf
Kiryat Mattersdorf is a Haredi neighborbood in Jerusalem, Israel. It is located on the northern edge of the mountain plateau on which central Jerusalem lies. It is named after Mattersburg , a town in Austria with a long Jewish history. It borders Unsdorf and Romema...

 neighborhood of Jerusalem and studied at Yeshivat Kol Torah in Bayit Vegan
Bayit Vegan
Bayit VeGan is a neighborhood in southwest Jerusalem, Israel, with a mostly charedi religious population. Bayit VeGan is located to the east of Mount Herzl and borders the neighborhoods of Kiryat Hayovel and Givat Mordechai. The Shaare Zedek Medical Center is located near Bayit VeGan...

.

During his army service, he served in the Rabbinical Corps of the Israel Defence Forces. Following that, he was appointed as an area rabbi in southwest Jerusalem.

Rabinovitch was appointed to the position of Rabbi of the Western Wall by former Israeli Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Israel
The Prime Minister of Israel is the head of the Israeli government and the most powerful political figure in Israel . The prime minister is the country's chief executive. The official residence of the prime minister, Beit Rosh Hamemshala is in Jerusalem...

 Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....

 and former chief rabbis of Israel
Chief Rabbinate of Israel
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel is recognized by law as the supreme halakhic and spiritual authority for the Jewish people in Israel. The Chief Rabbinate Council assists the two chief rabbis, who alternate in its presidency. It has legal and administrative authority to organize religious...

 following the death of the Rabbi of the Western Wall, Rabbi Meir Yehuda Getz, in 1995.

Rabbi of the Western Wall

The Western Wall is a frequent source of political and religious controversy, and Rabinovitch has been involved in and commented on many such controversies.

In May 2008, Rabinovitch prevented a delegation of Roman Catholic clergy from visiting the Wall while they wore visible crosses. Rabinovitch stated that anyone was welcome to pray at the Wall as long as he or she did not offend Jewish sensibility by wearing symbols of other religions. In a similar incident in 2007 with a group of Austrian clergy, Rabinovitch claimed that when Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...

 visited the Wall he had not had a visible cross but pictures of the Pope's visit contradicted this claim. In 2009, Rabinovitch refused to honor the request of Pope Benedict XVI to clear the area of Jewish worshippers upon his visit to the Western Wall, and also asked the pope to cover the gold cross he wears around his neck. Israeli diplomatic sources overruled the latter request.

Rabinovitch has maintained rigid gender separations at the Wall, siding with the Haredi
Haredi Judaism
Haredi or Charedi/Chareidi Judaism is the most conservative form of Orthodox Judaism, often referred to as ultra-Orthodox. A follower of Haredi Judaism is called a Haredi ....

 Jewish minority against the more numerous non-Orthodox Jews. He was also involved in an incident in 2009 when an Orthodox member of Women of the Wall
Women Of The Wall
Women of the Wall is an organization based in Israel, whose goal is to secure women's right to hold and read the Torah and to wear religious garments at the Western Wall. They have organized a series of Women's prayer groups at the Kotel each month on Rosh Hodesh...

 was praying in the women's section while wearing a tallit
Tallit
A tallit pl. tallitot is a Jewish prayer shawl. The tallit is worn over the outer clothes during the morning prayers on weekdays, Shabbat and holidays...

 (a traditional Jewish prayer shawl worn by men) and holding a Sefer Torah
Sefer Torah
A Sefer Torah of Torah” or “Torah scroll”) is a handwritten copy of the Torah or Pentateuch, the holiest book within Judaism. It must meet extremely strict standards of production. The Torah scroll is mainly used in the ritual of Torah reading during Jewish services...

. Haredi men who were praying in the men's section violently objected. With the authority of Rabbi Rabinovitch, the police arrested the praying woman. Rabinovitch explained, "It is an act of provocation that seeks to turn the Western Wall into disputed territory...A prayer that causes contention and desecration of the sanctity of the Western Wall has no value. It is an act of protest". The woman was not charged, though she was banned from visiting the Western Wall for two weeks.

Escorting dignitaries

Rabinovitch accompanies many heads of state, religious figures, foreign dignitaries, and media on tours of the Wall and the Western Wall Tunnel
Western Wall Tunnel
The Western Wall Tunnel is an underground tunnel exposing the full length of the Western Wall. The tunnel is adjacent to the Western Wall and is located under buildings of the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel. While the open-air portion of the Western Wall is approximately long, the majority of its...

. He escorted US First Lady
First Lady of the United States
First Lady of the United States is the title of the hostess of the White House. Because this position is traditionally filled by the wife of the president of the United States, the title is most often applied to the wife of a sitting president. The current first lady is Michelle Obama.-Current:The...

 Laura Bush
Laura Bush
Laura Lane Welch Bush is the wife of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. She was the First Lady of the United States from January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009. She has held a love of books and reading since childhood and her life and education have reflected that interest...

 together with Gila Katsav
Gila Katsav
Gila Katsav was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1948. In 1969 she married Moshe Katsav, the former President of the State of Israel. The couple has five children, four sons and a daughter, and two grandchildren.Mrs...

, wife of then-President of Israel
President of Israel
The President of the State of Israel is the head of state of Israel. The position is largely an apolitical ceremonial figurehead role, with the real executive power lying in the hands of the Prime Minister. The current president is Shimon Peres who took office on 15 July 2007...

 Moshe Katsav
Moshe Katsav
Moshe Katsav is an Israeli politician. He served as the eighth President of Israel, a leading Likud member of the Israeli Knesset, and a Cabinet Minister in its government....

, on a visit in 2005, and Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...

, former Governor of Alaska, in 2011.

In July 2008, Rabinovitch accompanied U.S. presidential candidate
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...

 Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

 on a pre-dawn visit to the Wall. During this visit, Obama placed a prayer note
Kvitel
Kvitel refers to a practice developed by Hasidic Judaism in which a Hasid writes a note with a petitionary prayer and gives it to a Rebbe in order to receive the latter's blessing...

 in the Wall. After Obama and his entourage departed, his note—written on hotel stationery—was removed from the Wall by a seminary student who sold it to the Maariv
Maariv
Maariv is a Hebrew language daily newspaper published in Israel. It is second in sales after Yedioth Ahronoth and third in readership after Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel HaYom. In a TGI survey comparing the last half of 2009 with the same period in 2008, Maariv saw its market share fall slightly...

newspaper. The newspaper published the note, prompting criticism from other news sources and from Rabinovitch for violating the privacy that is inherent in notes placed in the Wall.

Rabinovitch wrote a sefer
Sefer (Hebrew)
Sefer in simple Hebrew is a word that means any kind of "book" It is derived from the same Hebrew root-word as sofer , sifriyah and safrut ....

entitled Sheilos u'Teshuvos Shaarei Tzion containing the many halakhic
Halakha
Halakha — also transliterated Halocho , or Halacha — is the collective body of Jewish law, including biblical law and later talmudic and rabbinic law, as well as customs and traditions.Judaism classically draws no distinction in its laws between religious and ostensibly non-religious life; Jewish...

 questions which have arisen at the Western Wall and other holy sites. One chapter deals exclusively with the question of disposing the prayer notes commonly inserted between the stones of the Wall. Rabinovitch rules that burning is a "pure" way to deal with the notes, but burying them is more honorable. Twice a year, Rabinovitch and his assistants collect the hundreds of thousands of prayer notes left in the Wall and bury them in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives
Mount of Olives
The Mount of Olives is a mountain ridge in East Jerusalem with three peaks running from north to south. The highest, at-Tur, rises to 818 meters . It is named for the olive groves that once covered its slopes...

.

He is also the author of Minhagei HaKotel, a book on the history and customs of the Western Wall.

Other activities

Rabinovitch is the chairman of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, a government-mandated organization which preserves and develops the Western Wall site and Western Wall Tunnel, as well as promotes the value of the site through education.. Rabinovitch has also headed a public commission for environmental quality
Environmental quality
Environmental quality is a set of properties and characteristics of the environment, either generalized or local, as they impinge on human beings and other organisms...

, and supervision and licensing of burials in Israel. He is a former vice president of the Aleh Children's Home in Jerusalem.

Sources

This article incorporates material from the Hebrew Wikipedia article, שמואל רבינוביץ.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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