Jewish fundamentalism in Israel
Three main trends in Israeli Judaism have been characterized as fundamentalist: militant religious Zionism, the ultra-Orthodoxy of the Ashkenazim (Jews of eastern European origin), and the ultra-Orthodoxy of the Sephardim (Jews of Middle Eastern origin) as represented by the Shas political party. All three groups stress the need for strict conformity to the religious laws and moral precepts contained in the sacred Jewish texts, the Torah and the Talmud.
The fundamentalist impulse in Israel is rooted in events that took place well before the country’s founding in 1948. Since the destruction of Jerusalem’s Second Temple by the Romans in 70 ce (see Jerusalem, Temple of), most Jews had lived in the Diaspora—that is, dispersed far from the land of Israel promised by God to the Jewish people according to the Hebrew Bible. During their prolonged “exile” (Hebrew: galut), Jews all over the world prayed daily for the coming of the messiah, who would lead them back to Israel and deliver them from their Gentile oppressors. In the late 19th century, some Jews, primarily secular intellectuals such as Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), a Viennese journalist and playwright, concluded that the ancient problem of anti-Semitism could be solved only by the creation of a Jewish state. Zionism, the movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, thus represented a secularization of the traditional messianic theme. Instead of waiting for God and the messiah to lead the Jews back to the land of Israel, Zionists argued, Jews should take it upon themselves to return there. For Herzl and his closest associates, the messianic aspect of this “ingathering of the exiles” was irrelevant: the crucial point was to create a state where Jews would no longer be at the mercy of non-Jews.
Most Orthodox Jews—and Orthodox rabbis in particular—were opposed to Zionism, primarily because, in their view, it called upon humans to do what only God and the messiah could do. In traditional Judaism, the return to the land of Israel was inseparable from the messianic redemption of the people of Israel. Thus, returning to the land and creating a state would amount to defying God’s will and would only postpone the real redemption and the real ingathering of exiles. Orthodox Jews also objected to the fact that Herzl and most other early Zionist leaders did not advocate a state based on strict conformity to Jewish religious law. Hostility toward Zionism prevailed among Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox rabbis through the early 20th century. However, it virtually disappeared among the former with the coming of the Holocaust, which appeared to confirm the Zionist argument that Jews could be safe only in their own state.
Modern Orthodox Jews strictly observe Jewish religious law but have nevertheless devised ways to participate in modern society, both in the Diaspora and in Israel. The ultra-Orthodox, in contrast, insist on separating themselves from Gentile society, as well as from Jews who do not follow the religious law as strictly as they do.
Religious Zionism
Despite the hostility of most Orthodox rabbis, Zionism aroused considerable enthusiasm among many Orthodox Jews who saw in it the promise of the long-awaited messianic redemption. Some Orthodox rabbis, therefore, sought to legitimate Orthodox participation in the Zionist movement. Rabbi Yitzḥaq Yaʿaqov Reines (1839–1915), founder of the Mizraḥi religious Zionist movement in 1902, argued that the Zionist settlement of the land of Israel had nothing to do with the future messianic redemption of the Jews and thus did not constitute a heretical defiance of God’s will. Zionism’s manifestly messianic implications, however, limited the appeal of this idea, which was soon displaced by a radically different view: that Zionism itself was part of the gradual messianic redemption of the Jewish people. The secular Zionists, though they did not know it, were doing the work of God and the messiah. This argument was made by Rabbi Abraham Kook (1865–1935), and it has remained a basic theme of religious Zionism.
Religious Zionists are usually referred to as the datim leʿumim (Hebrew: “national religious”). This term captures the fusion of Orthodoxy and nationalism that has always characterized the movement. Unlike the ultra-Orthodox, the religious Zionists have always been willing to cooperate with the far more numerous secular Zionists who were primarily responsible for creating the State of Israel in 1948. Indeed, from 1948 to 1992, religious-Zionist parties participated in every Israeli government. Until 1977 there was a close relationship between these parties and the Israel Labour Party, which dominated Israeli politics during this period. In 1956 Mizraḥi and ha-Poʿel ha-Mizraḥi (the Mizraḥi Worker Party) joined to form the National Religious Party (NRP), or Mafdal. Traditionally, the NRP and its predecessors concerned themselves with domestic religious issues, such as observance of Shabbat (the Sabbath) and the question of who is a Jew, and left foreign affairs to the Labour Party.
The Six-Day War of 1967 (see Arab-Israeli wars) awakened the dormant messianic dimension of religious Zionism. East Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and Judaea—the very heart of ancient Israel—were once again in Jewish hands. To return any of this land to the Arabs would be to defy God’s plan for the redemption of the Jewish people. The religious Zionists who felt this way (not all did) began to settle in the territories occupied—or, as they saw it, liberated—in the Six-Day War.
The militant religious Zionists in the vanguard of the settlement effort formed a movement called Gush Emunim (Hebrew: “Bloc of the Faithful”), which clashed with the more traditional religious Zionists who still led the NRP in the 1960s and ’70s. The latter continued to believe that God had given the land of Israel to the Jews, but they felt that making peace—and thus saving Jewish lives—was more important than retaining territory. For the militants, settling the land and preventing the government from withdrawing from it took precedence over anything else. In 2005 settlers staged widespread protests in a vain attempt to halt Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Their prediction that such a withdrawal would provoke civil war was wrong. Some Israelis hope that the experience in Gaza will facilitate future Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank (Judaea and Samaria).
Militant religious Zionism thus illustrates the diverse character of fundamentalism. Its practitioners conform strictly in their daily lives to what they believe are the laws of God, and they advocate the creation of a society based on those laws, but their political activities have been directed toward settling and retaining the land won in 1967. Militant religious Zionists share with other religious and secular Zionists a nationalist sentiment and the conviction that anti-Semitism can be effectively opposed only with force. Indeed, religious Zionism draws upon some basic themes of mainstream Zionism, notably the idea that the goal of Zionism is to create a “new Jew” who will never submit to oppression.