Rabbi Avraham Ravitz passed away early Monday, January 26 in Jerusalem’s Hadassah-Ein Kerem University Hospital at the age of seventy five. A fine rabbinic scholar, brilliant orator and long-time Torah activist, he served for more than twenty years as a member of the Knesset representing the Degel HaTorah party (now united with Agudath Israel). The funeral took place Monday afternoon. Thousands, family, friends and followers, rabbis and Rashei Yeshiva as wells as leaders of other political parties such as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Bibi Netanyahu of Likud followed the coffin from Bayit Vegan where Rabbi Ravitz lived to Har Hamenuhot where he was buried.
Rabbi Ravitz’ father, Rabbi Aryeh Leib Ravitz, studied at the Yeshiva of Slobodka. In the 1920s he came to the Land of Israel with a select group of fellow students to continue his studies in the Yeshiva in Hebron. He was in Hebron during the 1929 Arab massacre. After his marriage, Rabbi Aryeh Leib Ravitz settled in Tel Aviv, where he served as the rabbi of the Montefiore neighborhood and Av Beth Din of the city.
Rabbi Avraham Ravitz was born in Tel Aviv in 1934. Avraham studied in Tel Aviv’s Sinai Talmud Torah and in Yeshivot Ketanoth. After his Bar Mitzvah, he joined the Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem.
During the last year of the British mandatory rule in Palestine, young Avraham Ravitz was a member of the anti-British Lehi underground (Lohamei Herut Yisrael — Fighters for Israel’s Freedom) also known as the “Stern Group.” At first, the thirteen year old put up posters and distributed leaflets. Later he was appointed a member of the committee which sought to recruit members for the organization.
The Stern Group was dissolved some time after the establishment of Israel. Rabbi Ravitz then found himself in another activist group. Rabbi Ravitz and religious friends who were with him in Lehi, wondered: We have a Jewish State! But is it really Jewish? Why are there public desecrations of the Shabbat all over the country? The group he was with called itself Brith HaKanaim and protested and campaigned against Hillul Shabbath. Some of its members went even further. They burned cars which were driven by their owners on Shabbath and cinemas which were open on the holy day.
Later, Rabbi Ravitz became activive in another group. In the first years of the State many Jewish children from the lands of the Diaspora came to Israel with their parents or were brought to the county by Youth Aliyah. Many of these children were pressured by certain organizations and youth leaders to abandon religious observance. An organization came into being which set itself the task to protest against the attempts to rob these children of their religious observance and to take any action possible to save them and restore them to our faith. The organization which is still active was initially called Hever HaPe’ilim (activists) and later renamed Yad L’Ahim. One of its pillars is Rabbi Sholem Dov Lifshitz, a man who did very much to return to our religion new immigrants who had been led astray.
Rabbi Ravitz was a leading figure in this organization. He himself has described one of its great operations.
In Ein Shemer, near Pardes Hannah was a camp in which hundreds of Yemenite children were concentrated. Rabbi Ravitz and members of Pe’ilim infiltrated into the camp several times and befriended the children. The children did not wear any Kippot nor Tzizit. Many of them still had sidelocks (Pe’ot). The sidelocks of others had been cut off.
Rabbi Ravitz and his friends decided to take action to strengthen the religious feelings of the children and to show their unobservant instructors that they would not succeed in their endeavors to estrange them from our faith. They decided to buy Kippot and Tzizit and put them on the children.
Rabbi Ravitz left immediately to Bnei Brak to talk to the Hazon Ish. The Hazon Ish gave him 5 Lirot and said : “Buy Kippot and Tzizit for the Yemenite children.”
Rabbi Ravitz continued on to Tel Aviv. He wasn’t sure what to do. Five Lirot were not enough to buy the many Tzizit and Kippot he needed. Should he buy only Kippot. He told his dilemma to a friend he met in the street. When the friend heard that Ravitz was in the possession of money he had received from the Hazon Ish, he said to him: “I will help you buy what you want on condition that you give me the money you received from the Hazon Ish.”
They bought a very large number of Kippot and Tzitzit. Rabbi Ravitz returned immediately to Pardes Hannah. At night, he and his friends crawled with the Kippot and Tzizit under the fence into the camp. Going from tent to tent they put the Kippot and the Tzizit on the children, who were full of joy and gratitude to Rabbi Ravitz and his comrades.
One can imagine the shame felt by their irreligious instructors when the following day they saw the children wearing with pride the Kippot and the Tzizit.
(To be continued)