page_title: Dov Lior
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Dov Lior / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Rabbi Dov Lior, chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and Hebron, Israel, during a meeting with yeshiva students from Machon Meir. Español: El Rabino Dov Lior, rabino jefe de Kiryat Arba y Hebron, Israel, durante una reunion con estudiantes de la yeshiva Machon Meir. Ladino: El Sinyor Rav Dov Lior, rabino shefe de Kiryat Arba i Hevron, en un enkontro i shiur con elevos de la yeshiva Machon Meir
context_page_description: Rabbi Dov Lior is an Israeli Orthodox rabbi, who served as the Chief Rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank until late 2014. He is also the rosh yeshiva of the Kiryat Arba Hesder Yeshiva, and also heads the "Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria".
context_section_description: He was born to a Belz Hasidic family, son to Moshe Leinwand, in Jarosław, Galizia. During World War II, he fled the Nazis with his family to the Soviet Union. They went deep into Soviet territory, including Siberia and Kazakhstan, and suffered from hunger and disease. Both of his parents died. In 1944, he was placed in an orphanage for Polish citizens. In 1945, he arrived in Poland. Using a false identity, he managed to pass into the American occupation zone in Germany, where Jewish institutions operated. There, he reunited with an older brother who had served in the Red Army during the war, while another brother who was with him during the war joined the Hashomer Hatzair movement. Lior was placed in a Jewish children's home, where he began to study Hebrew.
  In 1947, Lior was one of the passengers on the SS Exodus, which was intercepted by the Royal Navy after defying the British blockade of Palestine. He and the other refugees were deported by the British back to Germany. He eventually managed to reach Mandatory Palestine aboard the ship Negba, which arrived a few weeks before the establishment of the State of Israel. Once there, 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. He served in the Israel Defense Forces for one month in 1964.
  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. His two brothers arrived in Israel after him, and joined the Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz HaMa'apil.
caption: Rabbi Dov Lior (center) in a meeting with students of Machon Meir at his house in Kiryat Arba in June 2008
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