Shalom Arush

Shalom Arush was born in 1952 in Beni Mellal

Shalom Arush was born in 1952 in Beni Mellal, Morocco, one of nine children. He studied at the local Jewish Alliance school and learned Hebrew in the evenings. At 13 he moved to Israel with his family, which settled in Petah Tikva.

In Israel he attended a state-religious school and later a secular high school. In 1970 he joined the IDF as an airborne combat medic and served during the Yom Kippur War. After several friends from his unit were killed in an aircraft crash, he turned to religion.

He studied at Tel Aviv University and then at several yeshivas. He became a close student and assistant of Rabbi Eliezer Berland and also studied with Levi Yitzchok Bender and Shmuel Shapira.

In 1985 he founded the Chut Shel Chessed yeshiva, which later moved to the Musrara neighborhood of Jerusalem. The institutions grew to include schools, a yeshiva and a kollel, and actor Shuli Rand studied there. His lessons stress faith and joy, and he hosts weekly radio programs with his wife.

In 2014 he published a book on faith for non-Jews that was translated into many languages. He wrote the words of the song Tamid Ohev Oti, released by Yair Elitzur in 2024. He has supported Berland through his convictions, and Rabbi Yaakov Ariel told people not to learn from Arush.