Your Face I Seek

This book contains sermons by Rabbi Shagar zt"l from 1981–82. That year Rabbi Shagar replaced Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Hadari shlit"a as head of Yeshivat HaKotel, and delivered the rosh yeshiva’s sermon every other week. These sermons combine homiletics on the weekly Torah portions and current events with shaping paths in the service of God.

Rabbi Shagar zt"l was one of the prominent figures in the Religious Zionist yeshiva world. A graduate of Yeshivat Netiv Meir and Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh, he studied and taught at Yeshivat HaKotel. In the Yom Kippur War he was severely wounded in the fighting on the Golan Heights. He taught Torah in several yeshivot and was a partner in founding various Torah institutions. At the end of 1996 he founded Yeshivat Siach Yitzchak together with his childhood friend, Rabbi Yair Dreyfus; the yeshiva is located today in Givat HaDagan in Efrat.

Rabbi Shagar’s teaching brought together different fields: Lithuanian-style yeshiva scholarship, Hasidut, Mussar, Kabbalah, Jewish and general philosophy, as well as the methods of academic research. His spiritual power, his search for truth, the richness of his teaching and the ability to listen and the sensitivity that characterized him bound his students to him with cords of love. Inspired by his teaching, these students have founded many educational institutions over the last twenty years.
Rabbi Shagar passed away on 25 Sivan 5767 (2007) after a severe illness. This book of sermons is published towards the anniversary of his passing.

The editors, Dr. Meir Vardiger, a physicist at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, and Dr. Uziel Fuchs, a lecturer in Talmud at Herzog College in Gush Etzion, Bar-Ilan University and Matan Jerusalem, have been students of Rabbi Shagar since 1980 at Yeshivat HaKotel.