Dov Lior

Dov Lior (Hebrew: דב ליאור‎‎, born 1933) is an Israeli rabbi, who serves as the Chief Rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank. He is also the rosh yeshiva Kiryat Arba Hesder Yeshiva, and also heads the "Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria".

He was born to a Belz Hasidic family, son to Moshe Leinwand in Jarosław, Galizia. After failing to board the Exodus, he eventually managed to arrive in Palestine, and reach the kibbutz 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 married Bitya in 1960. She died of cancer in 1988. He later married 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 HaMa'apil.

Lior is a Religious Zionist leader and student of Zvi Yehuda Kook, son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. He served as Rabbi of Moshav Kfar Haroeh for 10 years. He subsequently became Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Arba. He serves along with Rav Eliezer Waldman as Head of the Hesder Yeshiva Nir Kiryat Arba. In 1978, he ran for the post of Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, but was defeated 37-25 by Rav B. Zolti. He served as Av Beit Din of the Beersheva Rabbinical Court. One of his rulings, that Jews should be prepared to sacrifice their lives to defend the settlement of Hebron, has been interpreted as support for acts of suicide if the government tries to force evacuation. In the late 1980s, Israel's Attorney General barred Lior’s almost certain election to the Supreme Rabbinical Council of Israel following a public outcry over his remark that captured Arab terrorists could be used as guinea pigs in medical experiments. After the Mercaz HaRav massacre, he said it was forbidden by Jewish law to employ or rent homes to Arabs.

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