At the National Religious Party Convention in 1986, Yosef Burg, Minister of Religious Affairs in the National Unity Government, spoke out forcibly against the Ultra-Orthodox Jews.
He accused them of deepening hatred and responsible for extremism in the non-religious camp.
Burg was one of the founders of the National Religious Party, viewing the party as a bridge between the ultra-Orthodox and the secular, also between the left and right wings in Israeli politics.
Yosef Burg was born in Dresden, Germany and was studying in Berlin when the Nazis came to power in 1933.
He had already completed his doctorate in mathematics and logic, in addition to becoming an ordained rabbi, but later, while attending the University of Leipzig, he risked arrest by becoming active in the Young Mizrahi religious Zionist movement.
The mission was dangerous, arranging religious services in private homes after the synagogues were burned, and working underground to help German Jews escape to England and the Netherlands.
In 1939, just prior to the outbreak of WW2, Yosef Burg arrived in British Mandate Palestine after being smuggled out of Europe with a false passport.
After settling in, he worked as a high school teacher in Tel Aviv, prior to becoming a Research Fellow at the University of Jerusalem.
The Rise in Politics
Shortly after, Yosef Burg was elected to the executive committee of the Jewish Agency, the pre-state shadow government for the Jews in Palestine.
In 1949 he was elected to the first Knesset and served in the government for the next 40 years.
Yosef Burg was a man of conviction, but also of moderation and reconciliation.
During his long tenure in government as a Cabinet Minister for more than three decades, he earned the reputation for being a political survivor having served governments headed by both the Labour Party and the Likud coalition and under eight different Prime Ministers.
His most important legacy is that he tried to build a bridge over the biggest gulf in Israeli society, the gulf between religious and secular Jews.
As former Prime Minister Shimon Pres said:
“He was a religious man but he believed in compromise.”
And former Prime Minister Ehud Barak remarked that Burg took the path of moderation and tolerance and showed a love for Jewish traditions.
For 19 years the National Religious party played a centrist role in Israeli politics, but when Israel liberated Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 War, the younger generation in the party moved rapidly to the right.
This move was enhanced with the leadership change in the party at the 1986 Convention.
Zevulun Hammer was elected new leader succeeding Yosef Burg in an attempt to regain momentum after electoral losses.
This result represented a shift towards the younger generation, focusing on strengthening Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel and the affirmation of religious-nationalist principles.
Yosef Burg’s longevity was attributed to his cautious style, a factor in his selection in 1977 to head peace negotiations with Egypt.
At the time he quipped:
“Historical developments are not to be measured with a stopwatch, but with a calendar.”
A dedicated statesman who gave his life to the development and well-being of Israel.
A noted scholar, fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, French, Spanish, Latin and Greek.
