Menachem Froman

Rabbi Menachem Froman (also spelled Menahem and Fruman; ‎; 1 June 1945 – 4 March 2013) was an Israeli Orthodox rabbi, and a peacemaker and negotiator with close ties to Palestinian religious leaders. A founding member of Gush Emunim, he served as the chief rabbi of Tekoa in the West Bank. He was well known for promoting and leading interfaith dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims, focusing on using religion as a tool and source for recognizing the humanity and dignity of all people. Together with a Palestinian journalist close to Hamas, Rabbi Froman drafted a ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, known as the Froman-Amayreh Agreement. The agreement was endorsed by the Hamas government, but it did not receive any official response from the Israeli government.

Career Froman, a former Israeli paratrooper who took part in the 1967 capture of the Western Wall, was a student at the Mercaz haRav and Yeshivat HaKotel yeshivas. He was among the founders of the Gush Emunim settlement movement and supported the establishment of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He obtained rabbinical ordination from Rabbis Shlomo Goren and Avraham Shapira and then became the rabbi of Migdal Oz, a settlement in the Gush Etzion area. He was Chief Rabbi of the Knesset. He taught at several yeshivas, including Ateret Cohanim and Machon Meir, and was a lecturer at the Tekoa Yeshiva and Otniel hesder Yeshiva.

Views and ideologies

Interfaith meetings and dialogue Froman was involved in interfaith dialogue with Palestinians and Muslims and participated in informal negotiations with many Palestinian leaders as he argued that peacemaking efforts between Israelis and Palestinians must include the religious sectors of both societies. Froman conducted meetings with controversial Palestinian leaders, including with the late PLO Chairman and President of Palestinian National Authority Yasser Arafat, and the Hamas leaders Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Mahmoud Al-Zahar. Froman had close ties with Palestinian leaders, as evidenced by a letter he sent to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas about his last conversation with Yasser Arafat:

After the election of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, Froman stepped up his efforts to organize meetings between Israeli and Palestinian religious leaders. He met and conducted negotiations with current Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar and Hamas's Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, Sheikh Mahmoud Abu Tir, with the goal of drafting a ceasefire agreement that will end the killings in Gaza and the West Bank and lift the blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip.

Froman–Amayreh Agreement (2008) In February 2008, Froman reached a proposed agreement with Khaled Amayreh, a journalist close to Hamas, for an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that would put an immediate end to all Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians or soldiers, facilitate the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and end the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip. Senior Hamas officials have endorsed the agreement proposal. The Israeli government, however, did not respond to this initiative, effectively rejecting it.

Jerusalem – a shared capital Froman supported making Jerusalem (the capital of Israel, also claimed by the Palestinians as their capital) the religious capital of all three monotheistic faiths. In November 1999, he participated in a conference with dozens of international religious leaders, including the Dalai Lama. In his 2005 letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Froman cited examples from Jewish tradition of the importance of sharing Jerusalem between all 3 religions and turning it into a city of peace: From the difficult experience of the shared history of the two nations – the Israel nation and the Palestinian nation – we can learn one important thing – between two brothers – when one's fate is bad, the fate is also bad of the second. Only when it is good for one, it will be, with God's help, good for its double. Little Jewish children know the famous story (the hadith) of the man who came to the head of the Jewish Sages and asked him to teach him the principle of the Jewish religion while he was standing on one foot (in one sentence). The Sage taught him, "Love your neighbor exactly how you would love yourself...From this hadith, which summarized the main principle of our religion, it's possible to learn that just as Jews have obtained a free and thriving state from Allah the Exalted, respected in the world, and just as we obtained from Allah the Exalted a state with Jerusalem as its capital, our neighbor will also obtain a state with its capital as Jerusalem. If both nations will be fortunate to stone the Cursed Satan who stimulates war and hate, and establish Jerusalem as a capital of peace of Israel and Palestine, there will be, God willing, Jerusalem the Capital of Peace for the whole world! He claimed that, if Israel withdraws from Tekoa and most residents leave, he will nonetheless stay because of his love of the Land of Israel:

He was a strong opponent of Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza. In August 2005, prior to the implementation of the disengagement plan, he moved with his family to Ganei Tal in Gush Katif in order to show support for the residents being evicted.

Froman supported the Palestinian Authority's efforts to attain statehood recognition at the United Nations on 20 September 2011, and said that the establishment of the Palestinian state will benefit the peace process and Israel.

Personal life Froman was born in 1945 in Galilee, Mandate Palestine. and the couple had 10 children.

Upon being diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2010, Froman declared that he would add "Hai Shalom" (living peace) to his last name and re-dedicate his life to peace and coexistence between Jews and Palestinians. Despite treatment by both conventional and natural means, he died on the evening of 4 March 2013, at the age of 67. His funeral in Tekoa on 5 March 2013, lasting 4 hours, was filled with music and poetry, and was attended by thousands of people of all political and religious ideologies.

Legacy Froman was memorialized by Peace Now, a left-wing advocacy group, as well as by David Perl, council head of Gush Etzion. Rabbi Re'em Ha'Cohen, dean of the Otniel yeshiva, delivered a lengthy eulogy in his honor, entitled "a holy man was in our beth midrash."

Froman's activism, bringing religious settlers in the West Bank into contact with their Palestinian neighbors, has been continued in part by his student Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger and his organization Roots – Judur – Shorashim.

Works Froman did not publish any of his own books during his lifetime. Posthumously, his teachings have been collected in several volumes:

Soḥaki Aretz: Shalom, Am, Adama) [lit. "Playing of the Land: Peace, People, Earth"] (Yedioth, 2014) Ḥasidim Tzoḥakim Mi-Zeh [lit. "Hasidim (pious ones or adherents) laugh at this"] (Dabri Shir, 2015) Translated as: Chasidim Just Laugh (Deuteronomy Press, 2025) Tein Li Z'man [lit. "give me time"] (Koren, 2017) Ha-Adam Hu K'mo Ḥayat [lit. "Man is like a tailor"] (Dabri Shir, 2020)