Roman Gofman’s appointment as Mossad director highlights a deep change in Israel’s power structure and the religious ideas guiding it all
Jpost
Roman Gofman’s name was first floated as the next Mossad director in the usual way, via anonymous security sources and cautious headlines. The debate that followed also sounded familiar: Is he experienced enough inside the building? Did he climb the right internal ladders? Will the rank and file accept him?
But that narrow argument misses the point. Gofman’s appointment is not just about who will sit in the director’s office of Israel’s most secretive institution. It is part of a quiet story about who now sits at the top of Israel’s entire power pyramid, and what kind of Torah, nationalism, and identity they bring with them.
On paper, Gofman looks like a classic product of the security establishment. A decorated officer, a long record, someone who knows the map of threats from Tehran to Beirut. The criticism that he did not ‘grow up’ in the Mossad is easy to understand, but historically shaky.
Gofman stands apart in his studies
Many of the agency’s most powerful leaders arrived as outsiders who had to learn its internal culture: Meir Amit, Zvi Zamir, and Yitzhak Hofi came as major-generals from the IDF, Danny Yatom from the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, and Meir Dagan from the operations world.
The idea that only someone socialized from day one inside the Mossad can lead it is more myth than rule.
What sets Gofman apart is not where he did not serve, but rather, where he studied.
Like Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency) Director David Zini, he comes from a certain spiritual universe. Both men are, in different ways, products of the beit midrash (study hall) shaped by the national-religious teachings of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook and his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the founding thinkers of modern religious Zionism.
Gofman does not define himself as religious. He is not seen putting on tefillin for the cameras or quoted by rabbis as ‘one of us.’
Yet when he was juggling university studies and military service, he chose to spend two years in the Bnei David academy in Eli, in its beit midrash for army veterans.
Bnei David is not just another yeshiva (religious seminary). It is the flagship national-religious premilitary academy, which has quietly filled entire IDF brigades with officers who wear knitted kippot and speak about sovereignty with the language of prophecy.
A senior figure at Eli describes Gofman in terms that sound almost like a character reference in a rabbinic court.
‘He was like a student here while he was at the university,’ the source said. ‘He is not observant, but he is very close. Everywhere he goes, he says he is a graduate of Bnei David. He loves the place, knows it well, is in touch with some of the rabbis, and feels connected to Rabbi Kook’s Torah. He speaks about the academy in Eli wherever he goes. He is very serious and a great blessing for the people of Israel.’
For decades, the Israeli security elite looked different. The classic Mossad director or IDF general was a secular Ashkenazi man, often with roots in the Labor movement or the kibbutz.
And while religious Zionists existed on the margins – the polite cousins who served loyally, built settlements, and were sometimes invited into the room, they rarely were put at the head of the table.
Bnei David helped produce a new type of graduate. Not the old National Religious Party model that saw itself as a bridge between secular Israel and the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) world, but something more ambitious.
These were young men who believed that they, and not the old socialist elite, were the rightful heirs to the leadership of the Jewish state. Not a neutral ‘state of all its citizens,’ and not a formal halachic state, but a Jewish state whose deepest code should be drawn from Torah.
Unlike the haredi position, which often keeps a careful distance from the organs of the state, the Eli model wants to be inside the cockpit. Its alumni seek battalion commands, senior prosecutor roles, slots in the civil service, seats in the Knesset, and now, apparently, the director’s chair in the Mossad.
The goal is not to stand outside and protest, but to reshape the ethos of the state from within.
To understand what that might look like at the level of a Mossad chief, it helps to listen to the ideological language that has grown around this camp. Over the years, supporters and critics have described a set of principles that guide at least part of the religious-Zionist project in the state.
The first is the idea that ‘the Torah is the DNA.’ Torah here is not a private spiritual resource but rather the operating code of the Jewish state. Legislation and state policy are expected to ‘fit’ Jewish religious values, and the Knesset’s sovereignty is implicitly limited by a higher, unwritten religious constitution.
The phrase ‘state of all its citizens’ is treated with suspicion, as something that blurs the state’s Jewish essence. Liberal Israelis see this as a direct threat to substantive democracy, because it weakens the promise of equal citizenship for those who live outside that religious framework.
A second principle is often called the ‘responsibility of monarchy.’ In this picture, the Chief Rabbinate and religious institutions are not just service providers. They are a parallel sovereignty, a kind of spiritual General Staff.
They keep a monopoly over personal status and kashrut (dietary supervision), and they see public space as a place where religious norms should be actively enforced. Critics warn that this slowly pushes Israel toward a de facto theocracy.
The third pillar is ‘intentional integration.’ Premilitary academies, yeshivot, and community networks work to channel talented and committed young people into centers of influence: the IDF, the legal system, the media, and public administration. Once there, they maintain tight, values-based circles that reinforce a shared worldview.
Admirers see this as a long-overdue correction of historic exclusion.
Detractors however talk about a ‘hostile takeover,’ a shift from professional independence toward sectoral loyalty.
The final principle is sometimes described as ‘identifying spirits.’ Change, in this view, must be paced. It should be introduced gradually at a level the wider public can absorb, what critics call the ‘salami method.’
Crises, such as wars or waves of terrorism, are read as openings to speak more openly about faith and destiny, and to secure changes that would be difficult in quieter times. Liberals compare this to ‘boiling the frog,’ arguing that many secular Israelis do not understand the cumulative effect until it is too late.
Roman Gofman is not a rosh yeshiva. He will be judged, like every Mossad chief before him, by the quality of operations, the intelligence his agency brings to the cabinet table, the quiet successes nobody can write about, and the failures that sometimes explode into the headlines.
Yet it would be naïve to pretend that the beit midrash where he once sat, or the Torah he says he feels connected to, will have no influence on how he reads the role of the Mossad in a Jewish state. Those formative years in Eli are part of the story, just as the kibbutz dining halls were part of his predecessors’ story.
For Israelis who still imagine the country as being run by the old secular aristocracy, this is an unsettling moment. For those religious Zionists who spent decades feeling locked out of the real levers of power, it looks like vindication.
For everyone else, it is an invitation to take a clear-eyed look at who is running Israel’s most sensitive institutions and what type of inner map they carry with them.