Religious Zionism Research Articles

BACK TO ZECHARIAH FRANKEL AND LOUIS JACOBS? ON INTEGRATING ACADEMIC TALMUDIC SCHOLARSHIP INTO ISRAELI RELIGIOUS ZIONIST YESHIVAS AND THE SPECTRE OF THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE HALAKHAH

This paper will discuss three new methods of teaching Talmud that Israeli Religious Zionist Yeshivas have adopted over the past two decades against the backdrop of the hitherto and perhaps still dominant approach to teaching Talmud in these Yeshivas, namely, the classical conceptual, ahistorical, highly abstract “Brisker” approach: (1) a modified Brisker approach; (2) the “Torat Eretz Yisrael,” “the Torah of the Land of Israel” approach; and (3) what I would call the “shiluv” approach, a term that implies forming a new and harmonious whole. What these three approaches have in common is the desire to retain the conceptual analysis of the Brisker approach, but to abandon its strict formalism and combine it with the search for religious meaning and significance. However, while the first two approaches in their search for the religious significance of the text generally eschew the use of the critical methodologies employed by academic Talmudic scholarship, the third approach embraces the use of those methodologies and seeks to integrate them into the world of traditional Talmud study. I will focus on the theological challenges raised by this attempted integration and on how the exponents of the “shiluv” approach have sought to deal with them.

Reading The Time of Trimming under the Desk of Religious Zionism: Haim Beʾer and National-Religious Identity

This article addresses Israeli novelist Haim Beʾer’s relation to national-religious identity and the rifts and the pain it causes him, as can be discerned from his fiction and journalism, and certainly from interviews with him. His relation to national-religious identity also reflects a sort of mirror image, at times inverted, of the relationship between religious and national identities. Beʾer’s movement between religious community and nation criticizes on the one hand prevalent conceptions of secularization and national identity in Zionist discourse, and, on the other hand, conceptions of redemption in religious discourse.

From “Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires” through “Return to Zion” to “Conquest of the Land”: Paradigm shifts and sanctified reenactments in building the Jewish state

Critical historical junctures sometimes cause religious or national groups to shift from one ontological and behavioral paradigm to qualitatively different ones. This paper describes a persuasive tool used to justify these shifts: The new policy is portrayed as a reenactment of an event from the group's sanctified past. Three such reenactments advocating three very different types of relations between Halachic Jews and the Land of Israel/Palestine, the nations of the world and the non-Jewish groups residing in the land are examined: The Diaspora “Do not arouse or awaken love” which warns Jews against antagonistic en-masse Jewish immigration to the land; “Shivat Zion,” the classical Zionistic approach, which is inspired by the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon under Emperor Cyrus (6th century BCE); and the Conquest of the Land reenactment, the post-1967 religious Zionism approach which is inspired by Joshua's mythical campaign against the idolatrous Canaanite nations and which advocates exclusive Jewish rights to the land and intolerance of non-Jews. The symbologies, group identities and policies deriving from these reenactment metaphors in the process of Israeli state building are described.

Eliezer Goldman and the Origins of Meta-Halacha

Eliezer Goldman (1918–2002) had a significant, though seldom recognized, impact on the way that contemporary religious Jews deal with the implications of modernity. Perhaps his most far-reaching contribution was his philosophy of halacha. Goldman was hardly alone among religious thinkers in proposing halachic responses to the constitutional, technological, and ethical dilemmas posed by the establishment of the State of Israel. He was, however, distinctive in two respects. First, he was one of the few Jewish thinkers in the mid-twentieth century who mapped out the basics of a halachic jurisprudence in a Western idiom. To be sure, others had described certain aspects of Jewish law in Western terms.1 However, Goldman was rare in that he articulated a broad philosophy of halacha in an attempt to explain the mechanisms of halachic change. To do so, he showed that halacha is made up not only of concrete rules but of abstract principles that guide its development. To describe these principles, he invented the term “meta-halacha,” that continues to enjoy great currency among contemporary Jewish thinkers.2 Second, Goldman was unusual among religious Zionists in that his thought was deeply influenced by streams in twentieth-century American thought. In particular, his theology and his halachic jurisprudence drew heavily on American philosophical pragmatism and legal realism. This gave Goldman’s writing an idiosyncratic twist and contributes to its ongoing resonance with the contemporary reader.

NATIONAL MOVEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW: RABBI SHLOMO GOREN'S UNDERSTANDING OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

AbstractRabbi Shlomo Goren was one of the leading rabbinic figures in religious Zionist circles. As the first chief Rabbi of the Israeli military, he had a unique opportunity to influence the development of the Israeli army and its policies. He needed to deal with questions that had no precedents in Jewish law. One of his challenges was the part international law played in the formation of a modern army. Rabbi Goren wished to give a halachic perspective to questions of international law, and to do that, he had to translate the language of international law, a field developed in the modern period, to halachic language. This process led him to evaluate moral positions that are part of international law and the ability of halacha to be part of the modern world.

Bifurcated loyalty and religious actors’ behaviour in democratic politics: the case of post-1967 religious Zionism in Israel

This paper deals with the political behaviour of religious groups in a democratic setting. In particular, it suggests an explanation as to why the same religious group might adopt very different modes of engagement with the state, over the same issues, at different times. The proposed framework combines two components: (1) a communitarian understanding of civil society; and (2) the concept of bifurcated loyalty which grasps the unique tension experienced by religious groups in democratic regimes, and its effect on their political behaviour. I go on to apply this framework in the case of religious Zionism in Israel. This case, which explores important events and trends in the history of the religious Zionist group in Israel, with special emphasis on the post-1967 era, nicely demonstrates the shifting strategies of engagement of this group with the state. The behaviour of this group ranged from constructive collaboration through participation in government to outright violent clashes with the state. Such dramatic changes expose the link between changing levels of bifurcated loyalty and political behaviour in response to changes in state policies towards religious actors and contents. The paper concludes with a brief discussion about the general applicability of such an approach to the study of religious groups in democratic politics and civil society.

Messianism and Politics: The Ideological Transformation of Religious Zionism

Religious Zionism has undergone a political transformation, but it is not to be understood as a linear development from moderation to extremism, neither is it the product of partisan considerations nor of a single dramatic event. Admittedly, the Six-Day War played a significant role in the political radicalization of religious Zionism, but it mainly precipitated a process of change that had begun before the War and went on after it. It was influenced by various factors, some of which paved the way to the rise of messianic ideology of a radical political kind. Rabbi Zvi Yehuda was preaching this ideology long before 1967, but only after the War did his disciples manage to propagate his ideas among the wider circles of religious Zionism. In this they were helped by the establishment and expansion of a new system of “nationalist Yeshivot”, in which many of them served as educators. The developments in religious Zionism have also been greatly influenced by the factor of leadership. The moderate policies pursued by the NRP before the Six-Day War reflected the political stance of its senior leadership, headed by Chaim Moshe Shapira, rather than the views of the wider ranks of the party. Even after the War, as long as Shapira continued to lead the NRP he managed to restrain the radicalized attitudes of its members and to prevent their implementation in the operative policies of the party.

Guiding Settler Jerusalem: Voice and the Transpositions of History in Religious Zionist Pilgrimage

This article examines how Elad, a religious Zionist settler group, attempts to reanimate biblical tales by transposing biblical text as part of tours for Jewish visitors to the City of David archaeological site in East Jerusalem. Since the early 1990s, Elad has created controversy by settling in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, provoking criticism from Israeli archaeologists and peace activists. In an effort to avoid 'politics' during tours, the group emphasizes a now globalized historicist reading of the Bible, an interpretation popularized by archaeology over the last century and a half. The article considers how transposition from this historicist reading into the here and now is a rhetorical device used to create a biblical realism that does not yet exist in the contested landscape. However, rather than producing an erasure of the Palestinian presence, and in contradiction to the professed desire to refrain from politics, I show that the very communicative situation and multiple framings for producing this biblical realism inevitably remind visitors of the contemporary context.

Democratic Themes in Religious Zionism

Religious Zionists who wanted to preserve their commitments to tradition and the Jewish state had to address the difficulties of applying tradition to new realities. The main challenge for them arose from the democratic nature of the new State of Israel. Between 1948 and the mid-1950s, Zionist leaders and thinkers contributed to the evolving dialectical relationship between a secular, modern democracy and traditional Jewish culture based on halakah. Religious Zionists were very much aware of the challenge that democratic principles posed to the Jewish tradition and were often reluctant to compromise their halakic commitments for the sake of the demands of a democratic state. Thus, scholarship has focused on the confrontation, compatibility, or compromise between religion and modernity in the Zionist context as if they are two distinct and opposing spheres. In these sketches of halakic argumentation among religious Zionists in the early years of Israel, I try to complicate this picture.

Equality, orthodoxy and politics: the conflict over national service in Israel

National service was a controversial issue in Israel in the early years of the state. A law requiring religious girls exempted from the military to do two years of mandatory civic service was passed in August 1953 and never implemented. This article examines the political controversy surrounding the adoption of the national service law and concludes that David Ben-Gurion advanced the law mainly for political reasons in order to counterbalance concessions made to the orthodox. Moreover, consistent with his mamlachtiyut (statist) philosophy, he was unwilling to consider any compromise proposals other than a mandatory government-run programme. Pressure from the religious parties caused his successor, Moshe Sharett, to concede on the implementation details, voiding the law of content. Subsequent governments acceded to orthodox demands to freeze the law. In 1971, a more pragmatic Labour government headed by Golda Meir instituted a programme of voluntary national service which provided needed manpower to the development towns and fulfilled the wish of girls from the religious Zionist sector to give service to the nation.

What Did the Teacher Say Today? State Religious Kindergarten Teachers Deal With Complex Torah Stories

This study deals with the way in which kindergarten teachers in state religious kindergartens in Israel tell the Torah stories to children. It examines the influence of the teachers’ identity, being part of the religious Zionist society, on the way in which she tells the stories. These kindergarten teachers function at a crossroads of identities. It is to be expected that their identity will be complex, reflecting the built-in dissonance of their lives. The Torah stories include an additional complexity based on the characters. The present study deals with the teachers’ manner of dealing with the above-mentioned complexities.

RABBI YITZCHAK GINSBURGH AND HIS FEMININE VISION OF THE MESSIANIC AGE

Since ancient times, the collective “People of Israel” has been depicted as God's female consort. This mystical, female image of the People of Israel has been challenged by the masculine discourse of religious Zionism. Spurred by post-modern tendencies and ideological disillusionment, the redemptive theology of religious Zionism has suffered a process of de-legitimization accompanied by the reactivation of the “feminine” messianic narrative. This paper focuses on an example of such redemptive feminine theology, one whose creator explicitly promotes it as an alternative to the male narrative of religious Zionism. The theology in question belongs to Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, one of the most controversial figures on the Israeli religious scene. Ginsburgh's messianic narrative is overwhelmingly feminine and is sceptical about rationalism. It offers an unusual synthesis of New Age spirituality, nationalistic rhetoric, and extreme political nihilism.

Between national ideology and Western therapy: On the emergence of a new “culture of trauma” following the 2005 forced evacuation of Jewish Israeli settlers

The Israeli government's decision to evacuate Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank introduced a new category of at-risk individuals to Israeli mental health discourse, namely victims of what has come to be termed the "trauma of the Disengagement." This category refers to Jewish settlers who are motivated by a religious-Zionist ideology and who define their role as fulfilling the divine command of "redeeming the Land of Israel." Based on an analysis of the professional activities of the Mahout Center, a mental health service that aimed to mitigate the "trauma of the Disengagement," this article examines how the Disengagement experience was constructed in the rhetoric and practices of mental health practitioners identified with the religious-Zionist enterprise. It explores the specific notion of trauma and the characteristics of the resilient self, as fashioned according to the distinctive "culture of trauma" that has been developed in the Mahout Center in the context of the Disengagement. This "culture of trauma" is based on a unique alliance between the Western therapeutic model of trauma and the ideological and theological imperatives of religious Zionism.

Religious Zionist Singles and Late-Modern Youth Culture

In Israeli-Jewish society, specific life-cycle scripts bolster boundaries between religious groups. The Religious Zionist (RZ) script calls for marriage in the late teens or early twenties. RZs who remain unmarried after this age often rent apartments in downtown locations where they form social networks. Sociologists who have studied this phenomenon among Western youth associate it with the tendency of individuals in late modernity to carry on certain aspects of adolescence into later years, thus creating a new life stage—'young adulthood'. Although RZ rabbis prefer that singles marry early and avoid this life stage, the singles interviewed in this study do not accept this rabbinical stand. They value various aspects of late-modern youth culture but, nevertheless, continue to believe in RZ family values as well. Their social networks help maintain religious boundaries even while allowing them to inch closer to a Western youth culture lifestyle.

Crises in Orthodox Israeli Family Life Onstage

This article demonstrates that theatrical representations of crises in family life, which have been produced in the Religious Zionist (RZ) community in the past few years, reflect a complicated, crisis-rid - den reality that many of its members wish to address publicly. The image of Orthodox family life as sacred and harmonious has been carefully cultivated by rabbis and educators, yet the upsurge of plays portraying crises in Orthodox families proves otherwise. Theater, as a space where social dramas are presented, has become one of the facilitating tools of Western, secular society adopted by members of this community to allow for open discourse on previously silenced social problems. A recurring theme in the article is how Orthodox individuals seeking autonomy within the framework of family life engage in acts of individualized religious practices, often with only partial success.

The religious educational legacy of Mordechai (Motti) Bar-Lev: scholar and visionary

The aim of this article is to analyse the educational and spiritual legacy of Mordechai (Motti) Bar-Lev, one of the pillars of religious education research in Israel. We first analyse the ideological–theoretical foundations that underlay his thought and provided inspiration for his scientific writing. Next, we analyse the principal dilemmas on which he focused in his research, and finally we attempt to consider the special nature of his work and its contribution to religious education research. Bar-Lev’s quantitative and qualitative research dealt with the elite of religious Zionism who grappled with traditionalism and modernity, and principally with its habitat – state religious education. Bar-Lev will be remembered not only as having informed the field of religious education in Israel, but, most of all, as the researcher who shaped its future.

The socio-economic ideology of religious Zionism in Israel: 1995–2007

During the past two decades religious Zionists have developed several different approaches regarding social justice. The middle class among them have tended to identify with neo-liberal policies. Many nationalist Zionists chose compartmentalization and adaptation, i.e. they accepted the prevalent capitalist outlook without a deep understanding of its religious implications. The ‘strong’ nationalists and strictly Orthodox have had little to say about socio-economic issues. This derives from their emphasis on the spiritual calling of the people of Israel and its general disregard for material life. There is also a connection between their messianic, rightist, religious and political orientation and a right-wing socio-economic outlook. The moderate nationalist, Torah-oriented (Torani) wing tends either towards a ‘third way’ or towards a more moderate leftist direction. The liberal religious sector has both liberal religious and liberal welfarist economic views.

Zionism's Conflicting Founding Designs and Their Ideological Impact

The article deals with two different approaches to the Zionist enterprise that clearly dominated nearly all of the stages of its development: viewing any envisioned return of the Jews to the Land of Israel through a traditional redemptionist prism and a novel perception seeking refuge for a persecuted people. Though the historical schism and the ideological gap between both perceptions are obvious, I try to demonstrate that in terms of real-life ideologies they at times worked hand in hand. The refuge position was neither the exclusive domain of secular Zionists, nor was its redemptionist counterpart limited to the proponents of religious Zionism. Sometimes both positions are echoed by one and the same person. Furthermore, an intermediate position is presented and the reasons for its meager success are scrutinized. The main protagonists here are Herzl, Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Reines, and Ahad Ha'am.

Religiosity, coping, and suicidality within the religious Zionist community of Israela thematic qualitative analysis

The relationship between religion and mental health has been the subject of extensive research, particularly in recent years. The issues of coping and suicidality have also been widely studied. Significantly, however, how religious people cope with harsh life situations is an area which has been overlooked. The present study based on 18 semi-structured interviews, analyses have members of the Religious Zionist community in Israel cope with harsh life situations. Although the study confirms the conclusions of previous research – in general religion creates a buffer to suicide – the results showed a relatively low impact of religiosity on coping: in general these religious interviewees found it difficult to access their religiosity during harsh life situations. The paper suggests a range of explanations, for example the complexity of personal and collective identities which characterise this group, or – more significantly – the possibilty that religious coping is not actually absent but is only available in a second, later stage of coping.

The crooked timber of identity: Integrating discursive, critical, and psychosocial analysis

This paper seeks to contribute to the growing band of constructionist approaches within the field of identity studies (Wetherell & Moharty, 2010). First, it will review the developments that have taken place since the emergence of these approaches in the 1980s, identifying a state of fragmentation into local discursive, political-moral, and psychosocial levels of analysis. Second, and in order to challenge this fragmentation, it will present a rhetorical psychological (Billig, 1987, 1999a) analysis of the classic exchange of public letters between Israeli historian of Judaism Gershom Scholem and American political theorist Hannah Arendt in the wake of the latter's book Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt, 1994a). The analysis will proceed from local discursive action, through political-moral frameworks, to the nature of the writers' investment in these constructions. It will show that while the participants' implicitly occasioning of extreme identity categories (such as the 'Jewish anti-Semite' and the totalitarian-style religious Zionist ideologue) is a function of apparently incommensurable political-moral discourses, the nature of investment into such constructions may be understood in a mutual commitment to the absolute inalienability of Jewishness. Third, therefore, the paper will conclude that, rather than constituting separate 'levels', local discursive action, political-moral intelligibilities, and psychosocial qualities are mutually constitutive of each other. It is only through recognizing their inter-dependent nature that the complexity of identity may properly be addressed.