Chief Rabbi David Lau puts his career on the line to stand up for halachah
The portrait of his grandfather, Rav Yitzchak Yedidiah Frenkel — a former chief rabbi of Tel Aviv and major influence on the boy then known as Dudi — hangs over the desk, both in reality and in spirit.
And in the velvet lapels of his rabbinic frock coat, and the way that the current chief rabbi mixes substance and anecdote, it’s not hard to detect the trademark style of his father and predecessor-but-one, the venerated Rav Yisrael Meir Lau.
But even if the long-gone generations don’t get a seat around the table, the full weight of all those rabbinic ages reveals itself in a few sentences that frame the painful situation that he’s now in — one that few of Rav David Lau’s ancestors could have contemplated.
“If the Knesset would enact a law forcing a doctor to sign that a person who has high fever is totally healthy, do you know a doctor who would obey?” he asks rhetorically. “If the Knesset enacts a law that it is not necessary to build a building with cement, would an engineer agree because it’s the law?
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