Rabbi Zalman Baruch Melamed, a leading religious Zionist rabbi and the head of the Beit El Yeshiva, took part on Tuesday evening in a conference of rabbis in Jerusalem following the split in the Jewish Home.
"This is a very important conference of various important rabbis in religious Zionism, with the thought of how to consolidate all the rabbis and then the entire public into a big step of building a strong movement with a significant representation in the Knesset," Rabbi Melamed told Arutz Sheva.
"The rabbis here are fully confident that this can be achieved and now there are discussions about how to put things into practice," he added.
Rabbi Melamed stressed, "We are not going into details, the goal is to build a good representation that the public will follow and the rabbis will back up, and thus build a community of faith, to differentiate this movement from the ‘New Right’ which does not carry the banner of faith but rather the banner of the Land of Israel and the people of Israel without Torah.”
"The banner of religious Zionism is first and foremost the belief in the Almighty, and anyone who believes, even if he does not observe all the mitzvot, every person who believes in the Almighty and wants his children to be educated in religious education, belongs with us,” noted Rabbi Melamed.
In response to a question about anger among the public about the way in which Naftali Bennett left the Jewish Home party, Rabbi Melamed replied, "Among the rabbis I heard a great deal of anger at the way Bennett left, and they are right."