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RELIGIOUS ZIONISM AFTER DISENGAGEMENT; WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
By Shlomo Riskin, Chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone and Chief Rabbi of Efrat
Friday, 2 September, 2005
The Disengagement or Expulsion has ended - but what remains are the
pictures etched in the souls of a nation: the cries of grown men at the loss
of their life’s work and life’s ideal which often drowned out the more
silent sobs of the women and children. The joint prayers of soldiers and
settlers which gave eternal voice to the silent embraces between them,
clasps of leaving which offered glorious testimony to the oneness of our
people despite the apparent chasm which generally divides the evictors from
the evictees. Who can ever forget - the father, a major Commander-General
who insisted that he be the one to remove his son, daughter-in-law and
grandchildren from their home in Gush Katif, met with them privately as a
father first and as an agent of the IDF only secondly and they emerged
together weeping and embracing as a family. Ironically and strangely enough
we all emerged from a horrific experience as members of the family of
Israel.
It was no secret that I vigorously opposed the disengagement - not
because I believe it is forbidden to give up parts of the land of Israel,
because I do believe that the sovereign State of Israel has the right to
determine whichever borders it deems defensible and feasible for the good of
the majority of its populace; it was rather because I believed that the
timing was wrong, that it was unconscionable to give a prey to terrorism
when the entire free world is threatened by terror, and it was because the
Prime Minister failed to offer a vision, a comprehensive program for a
better future which might have given time justification for the suffering
which was inflicted upon the heroic settlers of Gush Katif.
But is this also the end of Religious Zionism? Are there lessons we can
and must learn which may enable us to emerge from this most difficult period
not only having survived but perhaps even having been strengthened?
The first lesson we learned is that we are indeed one nation, neither
segment of which desires to sever itself from the other. Hence only a very
small number of soldiers refused to carry out military evacuation orders
despite the charge to do so from some major Rabbinic voices, there was no
real violence and there was even majestic fortitude and an exaltation of
spirit displayed by many of the Gush Katif settlers and leaders; the
soldiers and police behaved with incredible sensitivity and restraint
throughout their very difficult task. It was a heart-wrenching period, it
was an uplifting period, it was a period in which I was both tear-filled and
pride-filled to be an Israeli Jew.
Is this the end of Religious Zionism? Only if the definition of Religious
Zionism is Greater Israel, and only if “we want the Messiah now” has
become not merely a future wish but the description of our present
historical reality. Let us remember that Maimonides developed a position of
“normative Messianism,” teaching that “no one ought imagine that the
normal course of events will be transformed during the Messianic era or that
there will be a change in the order of creation; the world will continue in
its normal course…. “(Laws of Kings 12,1,, B.T. Avodah Zarah 54b).
From this perspective, no one had the right to declare for example that
G-d will never allow Gush Katif to be dismantled, as some very important
religious leaders did, or that if we all pray together at the Western Wall,
our prayers must be answered. The only guarantees the Torah gives is that
the Jewish people will never be completely destroyed, and that there will
eventually be world peace emanating from Jerusalem (Leviticus 26:44,45;
Isaiah 2). As far as everything else is concerned, pray and work to achieve
the best, but prepare for and be ready to accept the worst; at the same time
that the Talmud teaches that “even when a sword dangles at your throat you
must not despair of Divine Mercy, nevertheless our Sages also declare, “it
is forbidden to rely on miracles.”
And a major part of working to achieve the best is by living a life of
dialogue and engagement with our “secular” brothers and sisters.
Religious Zionism from the time of the early years of the State until the
immediate aftermath of the Yom Kippur War was based on compromise regarding
land, on our acceptance of a Partition Plan and our withdrawal from Sinai in
’56, on our modest belief in our era as merely “the beginning of the
sprouting of our redemption,” as a lengthy process fraught with advances
and regressions, achievements and setbacks. It was this attitude of
compromise which prevented us from a no-exit collision course with
Palestinian fundamentalists screaming “not one grain of sand” and our
nationalists insisting, “not one inch.” And it is this spirit of
compromise which fostered our constant presence in the Government, even at
times in rabidly secular governments, as an expression of our willingness to
continue our dialogue with those with whom we may violently disagree about
many issues of the State, but we realize that the common Judaism and
Israelism which unites us is stronger than any ritual observances which may
divide us. And it is only such a spirit of compromise regarding the Religion
of the State which will enable us to live together in a democratic state
(even when a Prime Minister pushes democracy to its limits), and prevents
our self-destruction in a fire of internal enmity which destroyed the Second
Commonwealth even before the Romans touched the Holy Temple!
It was after the Yom Kippur War – a miraculous although agonizingly
belated victory after the IDF had been caught with its “pants down” –
that car-stickers began advertising “Israel has confidence in G-d” (in
contrast to the car stickers of “all glory to the IDF” after the Six Day
War). At that point a significant portion of National-Religious Israel began
to feel that the Messianic Age had already arrived, that Greater Israel was
an unstoppable phenomenon and that we must place on the top of our agendas
settlement-building throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It was as though the
Almighty entered into a covenant with our generation: we were to build the
settlements and G-d would guarantee their permanence.
And we built glorious settlements, model communities based on idealistic
love of land, and spiritual – intellectual love of Torah. But in the
process, we left the rest of the nation behind. Most of our settlements had
screening committees which set up conditions for acceptance – mainly
religious conditions – and during the last three decades more and more
national religionists have chosen to live in separatest communities apart
from their secular siblings. Two nations are beginning to emerge… two
nations which rarely interface.
We also created magnificent schools, from day care centers for six-month
olds to “different strokes for different folks” type Yeshiva High
Schools – running the gamut from Talmud intensive to Music and Art
intensive, from Yeshivot Hesder of varying philosophies to Mechina, one-year
preparations for the Army and for life.
But these schools were all religious! We did not take seriously many of
the social problems plaguing our Israeli society – from forced
prostitution, to exorbitant bank interest rates, to corruption in the
highest places, to the ever-climbing poverty graph – and although we were
deeply involved in our own education, we seemed to be totally disinterested
in the secular educational institutions. While our founding fathers –
although in certain cases addicted to bacon and eggs for breakfast and
hardly scrupulous about observing the Sabbath – were deeply committed to
the Bible, and were even romantically in love with the land to which they
returned, livnot ul’hibanot -- in order to build and by which they hoped
to be built. A.D. Gordon, Ahad HaAm, H.N. Bialik, David ben Gurion, Levi
Eshkol, Yehoshua Cohen were all a far cry from Yossi Beilin, who wrote that
his grandfather made a mistake for not voting for Uganda in the Zionist
Congress, and Shimon Peres, who claimed that the New Middle East requires us
to aspire to join the Arab League and that Rachel’s Tomb and the Machpela
Cave are merely unimportant pieces of real estate in a world in which Tel
Aviv alone can become a Hong Kong of the Middle East. No wonder this
every-growing ideological chasm between us has caused us to drift so far
apart.
So what must be some of the guidelines emanating from our soul-searching?
The main lessons of this Disengagement must be our return to normative
Messianism, and the critical necessity of establishing a common language
between the religious and secular based on Jewish culture – a Jewish
culture for the entire populace of Israel, a Jewish culture which must
permeate our music, art and theatre, our Matnasim and our Schools, our TV
and our radio – and the counter-establishment of more and more “mixed
neighborhoods” and opportunities for interpersonal dialogue. We must
resurrect the initial flag of Religious Zionism, our tripod ideals – of
the land, the Torah-culture and the people – and we must never again allow
ourselves to forget the majority of our people in our enthusiasm for land
and Torah.
I am convinced that by so doing at the very least we will learn to
respect each other – and we may even create the kind of shared culture and
values which will transform our State from a mini-New York to a light unto
the nations; from a mirror of a decadent Western society to a model for a
world of peace and mutual respect.
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