The government voted to appoint Israel's former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau as Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council. The post was formerly filled by the late Yosef "Tommy" Lapid, journalist and head of the anti-religious Shinui party.
Rabbi Lau currently serves as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, and served as Israel's Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi from 1993 to 2003.
Accepting the appointment, Rabbi Lau thanked Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "as well as the Cabinet ministers, for approving my appointment. I received the news with holy awe. The timing is particularly special, as it occurs the same week in which we mark 70 years since Kristallnacht, the outbreak of Holocaust violence."
Avner Shalev, Director of Yad Vashem, said, "I am very happy at the appointment of Rabbi Lau, who is one of the highest-caliber people I have merited to know over the course of many years. The Holocaust is very close to his heart, and he sees the preservation of its memory as a Jewish and universal value."
Rabbi Lau was freed from the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 at the age of 8. Nearly all of his family was murdered by the Nazis, including his father, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, who was the last Chief Rabbi of his Polish hometown Piotrokow. Only his older brother and a half-brother were saved; an uncle had immigrated to Mandatory Palestine before the Holocaust.
He came to Palestine in the summer of 1945, studied Torah in hareidi-religious yeshivot, and was ordained a rabbi in 1971. His wife is the daughter of Rabbi Yitzchak Yedidya Frankel, the late Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, and his son, Rabbi David Lau, is the Chief Rabbi of the city of Modi'in.
In 2005, Rabbi Lau was awarded the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and was described by the award committee as "a central and admired figure in Israeli society and in the world. His personality serves as a model for bringing religious and secular closer together, and for bridging Israeli and Diaspora Jewry, and between various religions."
He is the author of several works on Judaism, as well as a memoir about his Holocaust experiences, entitled "Do Not Raise Your Hand Against the Boy."