The Chief Sephardic Rabbi, Rav Shlomo Amar, said Wednesday that in its idealistic rush to settle Judea and Samaria, the religious population had not "settled' Israel’s cities until the Torah Nucleus Groups were created and began to fill the gap.
Rav Amar spoke at the Convention of Torah Nucleus Groups sponsored by the Kehilot Fund, Lev Yehudi and Hineni. Rav Amar expressed his appreciation for the nucleus groups. These are young couples who move to development towns and cities together and work within the exisiting systems to improve education, create after school activiites for youngsters, spread religious knowledge and rejuvenate religious experiences for residents, explaining:
“It seems to me that the national religious sector, as well as the hareidi-religious one, had neglected the Land’s cities for a long time. Following the Six Day War, the national religious public went to settle Judea and Samaria out of enthusiasm and devotion, but in the peak of enthusiasm it neglected all of Israel’s cities for dozens of years.”
As for the hareidi public – the Rabbi contended that most of it has settled in several major hareidi cities, but keeps to its own neighborhoods and has no real influencing presence in the rest of Israel’s cities.
If the hareidis enter cities and create involved communities in the way that the Torah nucleus groups do, “there would be great salvation in this and their children would not suffer spiritually either,” he said.
Rav Amar mentioned the Chabad emissaries who are sent to every country in the world, and despite the problematic environments, succeed in seeing their children remain true to Judaism.
He told the religious nucleus group representatives: “You are doing one of the greatest things that are being done in this period… Without taking away from the importance of settlement in Judea and Samaria, the Torah nucleus groups are even more important in my eyes because it saves so many souls in all of Israel’s cities. There is nothing greater than this in my view.”