Zalman Baruch Melamed

Rabbi Zalman Baruch Melamed, born in Tel Aviv on July 20, 1937, is one of the prominent leaders of Israel’s Religious Zionist community. For decades he has led the Beit El yeshiva and its institutions, trained rabbis and educators, encouraged the creation of religious communities, and helped build an independent religious-national media network. His work brought together Torah study, community building, settlement, education, and public communication.

His influence is visible not only in the positions he held, but in the institutions and people shaped by his leadership. Around the Beit El yeshiva grew a broad educational system that included a higher yeshiva, a secondary yeshiva, a girls’ seminary, a pre-military academy, and additional study frameworks. His students went on to establish Torah institutions, serve as rabbis and educators, and lead communities throughout Israel and, in some cases, abroad.

From Religious Youth Education to Mercaz Harav

Melamed grew up in a family with both Torah and national roots. His father, David Melamed, was born in Kharkiv and had studied at the Novardok yeshiva; his mother, Ra’aya, was the daughter of Rabbi Eliyahu Epstein, rabbi of the moshav of Balfouria. As a young man he belonged to the Eitanim group of Bnei Akiva, a cohort that helped shape Religious Zionist education and its combination of Torah commitment, national responsibility, and community life.

He studied at the Bnei Akiva yeshiva high school in Kfar Haroeh, spent a short period at Yeshivat Knesset Hizkiyahu, and was among the founders of Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh in 1953. In 1954 he transferred to Mercaz Harav in Jerusalem, where he found the synthesis of Torah and national revival that he had been seeking. His relationship with the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, became decisive in his life. He was also a distinguished student of Rabbi Avraham Shapira and studied at Mercaz Harav for approximately a decade.

In 1965, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook appointed him as a ram, or instructor, for the first-year class. Melamed was the first instructor in that role to have been educated within the Religious Zionist school system and yeshiva world. The appointment symbolized the emergence of a new generation from within Religious Zionism to train its future leadership.

Founding Beit El Yeshiva and Its Educational Network

In 1978, his teacher asked him to establish a new yeshiva. After an initial plan to locate it in Ofra did not materialize, Melamed founded the yeshiva at a military base near Beit El. Beit El Bet developed around it as a community with a distinctly Torah-oriented character. Beit El Bet later joined Beit El Alef, where academics and professionals had built a more open religious community, under one local council.

Under Melamed’s leadership, Beit El became more than a study hall. It developed into an educational and communal center that included the higher yeshiva, the Bnei Tzvi secondary yeshiva, the Ra’aya girls’ seminary, the Magen David pre-military academy, and other programs. He also initiated the establishment of Machon Tal, a technological institute for women intended to provide professional training within a Torah framework.

Among his students are rabbis, heads of yeshivas, judges, educators, and community leaders. They include his son Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, rabbi of Har Bracha, head of Yeshivat Har Bracha, and author of the Peninei Halakha series; Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Weitzen; Rabbi Shlomo Shushan; Rabbi Shimon Cohen; Rabbi Moshe Habib; Rabbi Eyal Yakovovitz; Rabbi Shmuel Holstein; and many others. Beit El thus became a major center for training religious leadership with an impact far beyond the yeshiva itself.

Disseminating Torah and Building Communities

Melamed regards bringing Torah to the wider Jewish public in Israel as a central educational responsibility. He encouraged his students to establish Torah-oriented community nuclei in cities including Dimona, Ramla, Tel Aviv, and Hod Hasharon. These groups sought to combine Torah study, education, community service, and Jewish identity within the broader Israeli public.

At the same time, he sent students to strengthen communities in Judea and Samaria. In 1994, six of his students helped sustain the community of Rehelim and organized seminars on Jewish subjects there. A group of avrekhim helped reinforce the settlement of Ateret. Other students became rabbis and educators in Israel and in Jewish communities abroad. In this model, Beit El was both a house of study and a base for public and communal service.

In the field of youth movements, Melamed encouraged the creation of Ariel in the early 1980s, a movement designed to provide separate frameworks for boys and girls. He was also among the leading figures involved in establishing the Tehiya political party and the Komemiyut movement, seeking to create public institutions that reflected the worldview of the conservative wing of Religious Zionism.

Religious Media: From Radio to the Internet

One of Melamed’s most consequential public initiatives was the founding of Arutz Sheva in 1988. He viewed radio as a way to bring Torah lessons, religious discussion, and Religious Zionist perspectives to an audience far larger than any yeshiva or lecture hall could accommodate. He served as the station’s spiritual authority and driving force, while his wife, Shulamit, managed its day-to-day operations.

Arutz Sheva broadcast for approximately fifteen years and became a major communications platform for the Religious Zionist public, at a time when that community had relatively few independent media outlets. Following its closure after a High Court ruling and legal proceedings concerning the regulation of its broadcasts, the Arutz Sheva website and the newspaper Besheva were established. The project therefore continued through digital and print media.

Melamed also encouraged the creation of Yeshiva.org.il, an online platform offering lessons, articles, and answers on Torah and faith. The idea that technology could broaden access to Torah study became an important part of the educational and communications infrastructure of Religious Zionism in Israel.

Writing, Teaching, and Preserving the Thought of Rabbi Kook

Melamed’s teaching has also been preserved in books and collections edited from his lectures and talks. His publications include For Our Time, on the return to Zion, the State of Israel, and national revival; For the Time and the Hour, essays on current affairs; Rulings and Responsa, on halakhic questions connected with settling the Land of Israel and the disengagement plan; Lessons for Shabbat Shuvah; In the Paths of Our Teacher, on Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook; And You Shall Tell Your Son; and With a Good Eye on the Torah, lessons on the weekly Torah portion.

He also selected and edited Eretz HaTzvi, a collection of talks and proclamations by Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook on the integrity of the Land of Israel. In more recent years, the With a Good Eye pamphlets have addressed faith and Jewish thought, and Paths of Faith has presented the foundations of belief and divine service in the tradition of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and his son. By 2024, seventeen pamphlets in the With a Good Eye series had been published.

In his educational approach, Melamed emphasizes a form of religious service that leaves room for human individuality, judgment, and stability. He opposes forms of extremism and mysticism that may unsettle a person. His outlook is optimistic, grounded in the belief that life can move toward good and in a deep commitment to Torah, the Jewish people, and the Land of Israel.

Public Leadership, Unity, and the Land of Israel

Melamed helped found the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria, established in 2000, and is associated with the Union of Rabbis for the Land of Israel. Since the Oslo period he has worked with other rabbis to defend the settlement enterprise and his understanding of the unity of the Land of Israel. He also helped organize gatherings of Religious Zionist rabbis and sought to advance a unified body capable of dialogue and agreement among rabbinic leaders. Hundreds of rabbis signed a census supporting that effort.

His relationship to the State of Israel is principled but not uncritical. He regards the state as a gift to the Jewish people and the beginning of redemption, while also holding that government is an instrument intended to serve the people. This position led him to criticize government policy and oppose it when he believed it contradicted Torah values or harmed Jewish settlement.

During the debates over the Oslo Accords and the Gaza disengagement, he expressed strong opposition and, during the disengagement, called for refusal of military orders in accordance with the position of Rabbi Avraham Shapira. He took part in the public campaign against the plan and was present with other rabbis in Kfar Darom during the evacuation. These positions formed part of his public worldview, which, alongside opposition to specific policies, continued to regard the state as a central framework of Jewish national life.

Prayer was also, in his view, a means of shaping public consciousness. During periods of political conflict, he altered passages in the prayers for the welfare of the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces to express his views concerning national responsibility, security, the Land of Israel, and worthy leadership.

Family and Continuity

Rabbi Melamed is married to Shulamit, an educator and manager of Arutz Sheva. They have seven children, many of whom are involved in Torah education. His family reflects the institutional network that developed around Beit El: his son Rabbi Eliezer Melamed leads Yeshivat Har Bracha; Rabbi Yisrael Melamed taught at the Otzem high school yeshiva in Otniel; and Rabbi Yehuda Melamed teaches at Yeshivat Ramat Gan and delivers lessons in faith at his father’s yeshiva.

Why Zalman Baruch Melamed Belongs in Moreshet

Zalman Baruch Melamed merits inclusion in the archive because he has acted simultaneously as an educator, institution builder, community leader, and creator of a communications infrastructure. He did not limit his work to the study hall. He established a yeshiva that trained generations of rabbis and educators, helped build communities and Torah-oriented nuclei, and promoted educational frameworks for boys and girls.

The founding of Arutz Sheva, followed by the development of the Arutz Sheva website, the newspaper Besheva, and Yeshiva.org.il, demonstrated how radio, print, and the internet could expand the reach of Jewish learning and religious public conversation. His books and lectures continue to document and interpret Religious Zionist Torah, the thought of Rabbi Kook, and the relationship among faith, people, land, and state.

For Moreshet, his life illustrates how a religious idea becomes a living network of institutions, communities, students, and media. Moreshet.com preserves Melamed’s place in the broader story of Jewish and Israeli life: a story in which education, spiritual leadership, community building, and the dissemination of knowledge shape people and society across generations.