Dov Lior

Rabbi Dov Lior (born 1933) is the Chief Rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank. He is also the Head of a Yeshiva in Kiryat Arba,[1] and also heads the "Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria".

He was originally born to a Belz hasidic family, son to Moshe Leibland in Breslau, Galicia. He attempted to board the [[Exodus (ship)|], eventually arriving on the Negba a few weeks before the establishment of the State of Israel, where he changed his surname to the Hebrew Lior. In Israel he first studied at the Bnei Akiva Kfar HaRoeh high school yeshiva, and then at Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook's Mercaz haRav yeshiva, where owing to Lior's being an orphan, the Rabbi treated him like a son. Lior was married in 5720] to Bitya, but his wife died of cancer in 5748; he remarried in 5736 to Esther, widow of Rabbi Ephraim Shahor. Lior has 11 children, 55 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Two of his brothers arrived in Israel after him and joined the Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz HaMaf'il.

Rabbi Lior is considered by many to be a leading scholar of the Religious Zionist camp and the prime student of the late Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Rabbi Lior objects to withdrawal from any parts of biblical Israel, and claims that these withdrawals are in direct contradiction with Torah law.

Rabbi Lior has made many interesting and controversial Halakhic decisions and statements, including a declaration that Israel had no moral responsibility to aid refugees from the Darfur conflict, and that their plight must not be compared to Jewish victims of the Holocaust.[2]