Israeli, worldwide leaders mourn Queen
Queen Elizabeth II has been hailed as a "symbol of stable and responsible leadership" in a world that changed dramatically during her rule.
Queen Elizabeth II “leaves behind an unparalleled legacy of leadership and service”, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said.
Elizabeth took the throne following the death of her father King George VI in 1952, just four years after a then-nascent Israel was founded.
“On behalf of the Government and people of Israel, I send my condolences to the Royal Family and the people of the United Kingdom on the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” Lapid said.
“May her memory be for a blessing.”
President Isaac Herzog said the Queen’s death was “the end of an era”.
“Queen Elizabeth was a historical figure – she lived history, created history and left behind her a magnificent and inspiring legacy,” he said.
Herzog expressed condolences to King Charles, the former Prince of Wales who became monarch upon his mother’s death, the rest of the royal family and the British people, while hailing Elizabeth as a “symbol of stable and responsible leadership” in a world that changed dramatically during her rule.
“The Queen served the international community over 70 years, and under her reign, UK-Israel relations flourished. My thoughts are with the UK today,” Defence Minister Benny Gantz tweeted.
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the late monarch as “a beacon of integrity and a steward of a second Elizabethan age which will be remembered down the centuries”.
Israel’s ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely said the Queen “was admired around the world as an inspirational and beloved stateswoman”.
“Israel stands with the royal family and the British people in mourning the loss of the Queen,” Hotovely wrote on Twitter.
The Tel Aviv Municipality lit up the city hall building in the colours of the UK flag to commemorate the Queen.
Jewish groups in the UK and elsewhere also mourned her death.
British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis eulogised the queen as the embodiment of Britain’s “most noble values”.
“Every week we have prayed for her welfare, wellbeing and wisdom, and she has never let us down,” he said, remembering “the warm relationship” she had with British Jews.
“Her affection for the Jewish people ran deep and her respect for our values was palpable.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews umbrella group said, “No words can fully describe the extent of our nation’s loss; Her Majesty’s wisdom, benevolence and dedication to duty served as an inspiration to generations. May her memory be for blessing.”
The World Jewish Congress said Jewish communities in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth “have flourished and grown in peace and security” while Elizabeth was monarch.
“She and her family were beloved symbols of resistance to Nazi tyranny,” the group’s president Ronald Lauder said in a statement. “Queen Elizabeth’s refusal to flinch in the face of evil, but instead to fight it with every formidable fibre of her character, will be an inspiration for generations to come.”
Meanwhile, Conservative Friends of Israel honorary president Baron Stuart Polak delivered a heartfelt tribute to the Queen during a speech in the House of Lords in London last Friday, in which he expressed regret that she was never able to visit Israel.
The Tory peer recited parts of both the Prayer for the Royal Family, and Psalm 116 in Hebrew as he spoke on Friday as tributes were made to Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in both houses.
Polak revealed he had once discussed with Princess Anne how the royal family were “prohibited from visiting Israel by the Foreign Office”.
He recalled that on June 26, 2016 he was at a fundraising event at the Princess Royal’s home.
During a conversation with the royal host, Polak said: “We agreed that as someone who was deeply religious and God-fearing it was sad, it is sad, that she never walked down the Via Dolorosa into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
“She never visited the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem or the tranquil peace of the Sea of Galilee.”
In his tribute to the late monarch in the House of Lords, Baron David Wolfson walked his peers through several aspects of Jewish tradition – including gematria, the Jewish practice of finding meaning through the numerical value of words.
First he discussed the term “mitzvah”, or good deed, explaining that it is not simply a good deed one does at will – it is a duty whose roots are the Hebrew letters tzaddi and vav, or “tzav”.
“Her late Majesty spent her whole life doing the right thing, and not just because she felt like it, or because the mood took her,” he said. “She spent her 96 years doing the right thing day in and day out, out of a sense of duty.”
Wolfson then slid into the realm of gematria, which was developed by Kabbalah practitioners, noting that the sum of the Hebrew letters that make up the word mitzvah add up to 96.
“In one of those coincidences, which perhaps are not, the value, the numerical value of the Hebrew word tzav, the root of the word mitzvah is 96 – 96 years of tzav, of duty, and also of mitzvah of doing the right thing, because that is your duty,” Wolfson said.
Wolfson also noted that in synagogues throughout the world, the reading of the Torah will soon be complete, and that tradition dictates that it start again right away. That offers a parallel to the British tradition of mourning the passing of one monarch and joyously welcoming another, in this case, King Charles III.
“We’ve closed one book, a long and good book which we’ve had with us for so many years, and we are about to open another,” said Wolfson, a lawyer who studied in his youth at a yeshivah in Jerusalem. “And as we all pray that God save our King, I will also pray that he too may enjoy a reign of mitzvah, of doing the right thing, for that now is his duty.”
TIMES OF ISRAEL, JEWISH NEWS UK, JTA
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