Yehuda Amital

Yehuda Amital was born in 1924 in Oradea

Yehuda Klein, later Amital, was born in 1924 in Oradea, Romania, to Yekutiel Ze'ev and Devora. As a youth he studied at a yeshiva founded in his town by Rabbi Chaim Yehuda Levi. In 1944 his family was sent to Auschwitz and killed, while he was held in a labor camp until the Soviet Army freed him.

He reached Mandatory Palestine in 1944 and, after a stay at the Atlit camp, studied at Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He later studied at Kletzk Yeshiva and married Miriam, daughter of its head, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Meltzer. He received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer.

He served in the Haganah and was mobilized in 1948, fighting at Latrun and in the western Galilee. After the war he worked at the rabbinical court of Rehovot and then taught at Yeshivat HaDarom, where he developed the Hesder Yeshiva idea.

After the Six-Day War he became head of Yeshivat Har Etzion, which opened in Kfar Etzion in 1968 and later moved to Alon Shvut. In 1988 he cofounded the Meimad movement, and in 1995 he joined the government of Shimon Peres as a minister without portfolio.

He retired from heading the yeshiva in 2008. He died in 2010 and was buried at Har HaMenuchot in Jerusalem.