Most of all, Rabbi Haim Druckman was a normal rabbi - influential, but normal.
Such a statement may of course immediately target those who do not fall within this fence.
Except that in Rabbi Druckman's case it came to emphasize a positive, not a negative;
They are, and neither are they.
Druckmann was normal in that he embraced and accommodated almost everyone.
He was normal in that he spoke without arguing, in a settled mind and his words were heard and therefore also heard with ease.
He was the sanctifier in the group of religious Zionist rabbis.
He is free of personal considerations and interests, who devoted his time to the affairs of the general and the public and the hardships of the individual.
Everyone was equal in his eyes: the ministers and the politicians, the military men, the undecided youth and the families in need - and they all found ways to his heart and his open house.
Druckman taught a right to almost every person, a sort of modern version of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, who in the 18th century was known as "the defender of Israel".
Rabbi Chaim was Israel's advocate two hundred years later.
Rabbi Druckman.
Free from considerations and personal interests, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
Uri Orbach once wrote about the "normal religious", that their Judaism is as natural to them as air to breathe.
"About our air," Auerbach testified about himself and his ilk, "we don't ask too many questions and don't philosophize too much. As long as we can breathe comfortably, we consume it in the required amount. Without air from peaks and without moss from basements. Only with the knowledge that without air - there is no life.
Rabbi Druckman was also in many respects one of the "normal religious", and therefore for many of them he was the "normal rabbi".
A rabbi for everything, from the classic and unpretentious religious Zionism, but also a rabbi who does not close himself off and strives for his students to have an impact in every field in "the State of Israel - the beginning of the growth of our salvation.
A rabbi of routine, not of sparks.
A rabbi of love for Israel in the simplest, most beautiful and truest sense of the word.
who served as godfather in thousands of alliances, who celebrated thousands of couples, who delivered thousands of sermons, who spoke at hundreds of memorials, who eulogized the masses of the deceased, who visited thousands of funeral homes.
and which is present in the routine of many of us.
Rabbi Lau in his last meeting with Rabbi Druckman, photo: no credit
Not taken to extremes
Rabbi Haim was mainly a teacher and educator, titles in which he was sometimes more proud than his rabbinate.
He was also the commoner of many of us.
For 70 years he served as a member of the national board of Bnei Akiva, guiding and guiding, accurate and perfecting, as if not many decades had passed since he guided the mythical Eitan tribe in the movement.
He fished and balanced between extremes, and was not taken to extremes, but at the same time he also stood by his opinion and always remained stately.
He made sure not to go against the state, even when its captains let him down.
Once he even scolded the boys who called the Oslo government "the government of malice".
In the last decade of his life, he also became the rebbe of religious Zionism, or as Rabbi Chaim Navon defined him yesterday, "the guiding rebbe", the one who does not shut himself up in Migdal Shen and until his last years wanders among his thousands of apprentices and students, their sons and grandsons.
Rabbi Chaim Druckman with members of Bnei Akiva, photo: BNA spokesmen
They and we loved its simplicity.
the normality in it.
The fact that he spoke to them at eye level, without condescending, without growing crazy.
He was a bridge, as a true scholar, between the grammars of Halacha and life, with the understanding that the Torah is the Torah of Life.
So in conversion, so in politics, so in the many settlements and yeshiva of the hit in the establishment and existence of which he was involved.
Rabbi Benny Lau, who saw Druckman in his mind's eye in the form of the "middle bolt", who erected and strengthened the planks of the tabernacle, wrote yesterday: "The days of Hanukkah are over. The sun of the eight canes has finished its work and returned its soul to its creator."
At the end of his days, Rabbi Druckman was asked who would continue his leadership?
To this he replied: "Not a widower of Israel" - one should hope that this is indeed the case.
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