Shimon Gershon Rosenberg

He was born and raised in Jerusalem, to Shalom Zelig and his wife, who were both Transylvanian Holocaust survivors. He learned in the grade school Neve Etzion, in the neighborhood of Bayit Vegan, and continued his studies in the high school, Netiv Meir, and in the Hesder yeshiva Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh. In 1973 he began to learn in Mercaz HaRav Kook, as well as with Rabbi Shlomo Fisher and Kabbalists. In the same year he married Miriam Ziv. After his wedding he began to learn in the Kollel of Yeshivat HaKotel. He received his nickname Shagar in high school when one of his rabbis saw the initials of his name on his Tallit bag, and began to refer to him humorously as "Shagar."

Harav Shagar was badly injured during the Yom Kippur War in the tank battles in the Golan Heights. His tank took a direct hit and two of his comrades who were also with him in yeshiva were killed instantly. He himself was badly burnt and with great difficulty was saved.[1] After recovering from his injuries he returned to his studies. He received rabbinical ordination in the beginning of 1976.

In the 1980s he was a dominant figure and teacher in Yeshivat HaKotel and even filled in for the head of the yeshiva, HaRav Yeshayahu Hadari, for a year (when HaRav Yeshayahu Hadari took a sabbatical). The uniting of a group of students around him led to internal politics and he left his position as a lecturer at the yeshiva. In 1984 he established the higher yeshiva "Shefa." Heading the yeshiva together with him were Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz and Rabbi Menachem Froman. A group of his students from Yeshivat HaKotel came with him to the new yeshiva. In a later stage the yeshiva helped establish the high school Makor Haim. Yeshivat Shefa closed with his leaving in 1988. In 1989 he was for one year the head of the Beth midrash Ma'ale - the Center for Religious Zionism, together with Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun and Professor Shalom Rosenberg. In 1990 Professor Benjamin Ish-Shalom established the Beit Midrash of Beit Morasha and appointed HaRav Shagar to lead it together with Rabbi Eliyahu Blomenzweig. At the end of 1996 he established Yeshivat Siach Yitzchak together with Rabbi Yair Dreyfus. He was the head of this yeshiva until his death. During this time he also functioned as the head of the Beit Midrash "Uri" for women and taught women at the Midrasha at Bar-Ilan University, Nishmat and at Midreshet Lindenbaum. He lived in Kiryat Moshe in Jerusalem. He was married and had six children. In February 2007 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This caused him to have to leave the yeshiva in order to undergo treatments. He and his wife moved to the moshav Givat Yeshayahu, actualizing a dream of many years. He gave his writings to his friend and fellow head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yair Dreyfus, in order to prepare them for publication. On the 21st of May 2007, an institution was established in order to bring his writings to light. HaRav Shagar died a month later on the 25th of Sivan 2007, and was buried in the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery. In 2012 a movie was produced by Rabbi Mordechai Verdi entitled "To Chase After the Shadow" that dealt with the figure of Harav Shagar.

HaRav Shagar was a spiritual figure with his origins in the thought of Religious Zionism, particularly that of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. His book Broken Vessels: Torah and Religious Zionism in Postmodernity was an attempt to give a religious response to postmodern trends in today's world, claiming that they can be included within a Torah worldview. HaRav Shagar accepted parts of the postmodern claims and identified in them ideas and contents that appear in the Kabbalah and in Hasidism. He claimed that specifically the Deconstruction, that he identified as the "breaking of the vessels" as found in Kabbalah, opens up for people a religious option, for it gives man the ability to freely create his religious world. This stance brought much criticism from those who saw postmodernism as alien to Judaism and therefore opposed allowing postmodern philosophy into the Beit Midrash.

According to him, optimism is a giving up and escape from accepting life as it is.[2] He doesn't hide that his own faith is that which leaves room for spiritual questioning and in light of this he sometimes reformulates main traditional beliefs.[3] He sees this as part of the progress and improvement of religious devices seeing their flexibility (breaking the vessels), as he portrays in his book Broken Vessels".

HaRav Shagar's understanding emphasizes the individual-spiritual aspect of life in Israel. and not just the national aspect that was oftern stressed in the Religious Zionist movement. In his view yeshiva students must learn to integrate every aspects of their lives into their religious worldview and practice, and not only the army or their professional lives. HaRav Shagar encouraged his students to engage in the arts and he himself wrote and published poetry. In his teachings and writing, HaRav Shagar drew heavily upon Hasidic teachings, as do most of his close students.

In 2005, against the background of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan, he signed together with many rabbis from the Religious Zionist denomination a letter which expressed opposition to the plan. He did, however express clear opposition to the disobeying of orders by soldiers. He actively participated in the organization B'Magale Tzedek. In the political spectrum HaRav Shagar opposed withdrawing from the Samaria and Judea. At the same time he recognized the "Messianic Occupation" and the firm need to make peace. He said of himself, "I don't define myself as a rightist or leftist, rather as a pragmatist".[4] As a continuation of historiosophy from the school of HaRav Kook, in his sermons for Independence Day, "On this Day" HaRav Shagar identified the development Israeli democracy to be a multiculturalism and multi-national democracy as the next stage in the redemptive process. The multiculturalism and multi-nationalism are for him an entry for a mystic consciousness of containing plurality and divisions.[5] Because of this he wished for the breaking of the binary thinking between the left and right in Israeli discourse.[6]

His books and his ideas are mostly in the area of new Hasidism developing in the Religious Zionist community. His books are learnt mostly in the yeshivas that are thought to be more progressive, and his thought has not extensively broken into the nucleus of the Religious Zionist yeshivas. His language and areas he dealt with have gained appreciation from academic and artistic institutions, and many of his students engage in these areas.

The publication in 2017 of a collection of his essays in English, "Faith Shattered and Restored: Judaism in the Postmodern Age" (Jerusalem, Maggid Books), translated by Elie Leshem, led to much online debate and controversy. Nonetheless it helped to widen his influence in the Modern Orthodox community in North America.

His Students:

• Rabbi Benni Kalmanzon, and Rabbi Amiram Olami - founder and heads of Yeshivat Otniel
• Rabbi Dov Zinger head of Yeshivat Makor Haim
• Rabbi Dr. Yehuda Brandeis head of Beit Morasha
• Rabbi Yehoshua Engelman - Rabbi of Congregation "Yakar" in Tel Aviv
• Rabbi Benny Perl, Principal of the Bar-Ilan Yeshiva High School for Arts and Sciences in Tel Aviv.
• Rabbi Ohad Teharlev - Head of the Israeli program at Midreshet Lindenbaum
• Ohed Ezrachi - Teacher and spiritual guide
• Rabbi Dr. Naftali Moses - Translator of Two of Rav Shagar's Books into English
• Rabbi Dr. Zvi Leshem - Director of the Scholem Collection at the National Library of Israel
• Dr. Zohar Maor - Lecturer in History at Bar-Ilan University and Editor-in-Chief of Rav Shagar's Books
• Professor Zvi Mark - Hasidic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
• Dr. Ze'ev Kitzes- Zusah Hasidic Stories Research Project
• Rabbi Mordechai Vardi, Rabbi of Kibbutz Rosh Tzurim and head of the Screenwriting Department at the Maale Film School in Jerusalem.

• http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/kitveyet/shana/siach-4.htm

Additional readings

• Ephraim Chamiel, Between Religion and Reason - The Dialectical Position in Contemporary Jewish Thought, Academic Studies Press, Boston 2020, part I, pp.168-176.