Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective (43 page)

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Authors: Lawrence Kaplan

Tags: #Religion, #General, #Fundamentalism, #Comparative Religion, #Philosophy, #test

BOOK: Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective
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Page 168
whose violence is confined mostly to verbal or written harassment and the destruction of property. Although people have been hurt by stones thrown at cars traveling on the Sabbath, this has not resulted in any fatal injury. Moreover, the zealots have never taken up weapons or used any other means deliberately aimed at killing people.
The reasons for this restraint are critical to our understanding of the distinction between conservative and innovative fundamentalism, for one of the factors that leads
haredi
zealots to exhibit restraint is their awareness of mutual Jewish responsibility, which is strengthened by their very affinity to Jewish tradition. However, they express this in a very curious manner: even when they are explicitly stating their hope that the mutinous and atheistic State of Israel will vanish, they add:
This Lord of the Universe . . . knows how to lead His world in mercy and benevolence and to remove the obstacles and delays of the coming of the Messiah [an allusion to the State of Israel] without, Heaven Forbid, hurting anyone in Israel. . . . He who passed over the houses of Israel in Egypt and saved those who waited for redemption shall also show us wondrous things at the time of future redemption.
10
This quote, by one of the main supporters of the zealots in Jerusalem, is evidence that, despite all their differences with other Jews, there is a clear sense of a common Jewish fate in a hostile world.
The affinity of extremist zealots for the complex social structure that constitutes Orthodox society in its entirety, and their dependence on it as well as on recognized religious authorities, inevitably keeps their activities within tolerable confines. And, because they do not serve in the army, extremist
haredi
zealots usually are not familiar with the use of firearms. In fact, as a very small and visible minority, they can easily be harmed themselves.
Finally, the extremists have no political ambitions in terms of reaching positions of power within Israeli society. On the contrary, they want to continue to live in exile as a minority protected by the powers that be. The central religious import of the concept of exile in traditional Jewish society is not merely a political-geographical one delineating relations between Jews and the society and sovereign political framework that surround them. It is essentially religious in
 
Page 169
that it determines the historical framework of Jewish existence as the basis of the unique relationship between the Jewish people and God. According to kabbalistic tradition, notably that of the Lurianic Kabbalah, the reality of exile encompasses the divine system itself, which has been "damaged," as it were, and requires "restoration."
To define the historical reality as one of exile is to evoke much of halakhic significance that does not admit of elaboration within the present framework. Fundamentally, however, defining the political reality as one of exile serves as a mechanism of adaptation to the unique conditions of Jewish existence on both the political and religious-halakhic planes. Therefore, not only are Torah laws relating to or bound up with Temple rites sequestered from day-to-day Jewish life in exile, but the entire network of precepts dealing with relations between Jews and gentiles is perceived as not binding in accordance with the Jew's political experience as a persecuted minority.
11
Two levels of simultaneously existing religious rulings are discernible within this framework. One bears an affinity to the political reality of exile, and the second relates to a utopian "reality" that either existed in the past or is destined to emerge in the future, when "Israel's hand shall be high." The reality of exile enables political-social ideas from the non-Jewish world to be absorbed and adopted while preserving a binding and fundamental affinity to religious-political precepts that are completely opposed to such ideas. Indeed, ever since the emergence of the modern era, Jewish society has been characterized by the existence of two different worlds, which demand contradictory systems of social-cultural norms.
Without going too deeply into the different interpretations given to exile by various groups of
Halakhah
-bound Orthodox Jewry, some remarks are called for on the Jewish society in
Eretz Israel
as it evolved through the agency of the Zionist movement. Secular in nature, the Zionist movement sought to establish a sovereign Jewish society that would be "modern" not only on the technological plane but also, and perhaps chiefly, on the culture-value plane. In such a democratic society, it was envisioned, non-Jews would enjoy full personal and religious equality, in contrast to the discrimination and persecution that Jews and Jewish culture had suffered in non-Jewish societies. These basic concepts were first put to the test in
Eretz
 
Page 170
Israel
in the formative stage of Zionism, when the religious-political question of women's right to vote for institutions of self-government arose after Britain took over Palestine.
12
The two positions of principle adduced on this issue were the modern-secular view, which could not accept discrimination against women as it conflicted with the political-social values of modern society, and the religious outlook, grounded in Halakhah and in the values of the traditional religious society. This question was not resolved in the religious community as a whole, as it split along the lines of Zionist and anti-Zionist identification. The anti-Zionists, who rejected Zionism as an attempt to annul the state of exile by secular-political-material means, viewed the enfranchisement of women as a substantive expression of secular Zionism. As such, they refused to take part in the Jewish institutions established at the outset of British mandatory rule in Palestine.
Notwithstanding halakhic pronouncements by rabbinical authorities whom it also accepted, the religious Zionism that found expression in the stand of the Mizrachi movement
13
relied upon halakhic rulings of other authorities, who acquiesced in the secular Zionists' stand on this question. Although the Mizrachi movement's "decision" on the issue of women's enfranchisement did not follow from its obligation to
Halakhah,
it viewed itself as true to its commitment to both the Jewish people, the Torah, and God, on the one hand, and to the national goals of the Zionist movement, on the other. This is what led to their imbuing the Zionist enterprise in
Eretz Israel
with a "positive" religious definition in terms of the traditional concepts of Exile and Redemption, and of what underlies the fundamentalist religious innovation of religious Zionism. This principle of religious Zionism vis-à-vis exile and redemption, which was concealed and downplayed in the past, is highly visible in the radical religiosity of Gush Emunim's Zionism.
Paradoxically enough, within the framework of the dialectic between exile and redemption, the ability of religious Zionism to cope with the secularization process undergone by Jewish Palestine was almost inevitably grounded in the religious conception of the uniqueness of Jewish history, of being "not like all the other nations." In other words, it was based on a principled religious outlook hold-
 
Page 171
ing that the historical process, as it evolved in Palestine, implied a change in the state of exile or the transition to the state of redemption. Hence, the "secularization" of the Jewish community in Palestine, as part of a reconstructed sovereign Jewish society, could be perceived and explicated both in terms of the sanctification of the entire historical process and as an essential part of a divine plan for the redemption of Jewish people by extricating them from the state of exile.
These concepts were given their full expression in the writings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-Cohen Kook.
14
Though religious Zionists did not necessarily accept all or even part of Rabbi Kook's religious philosophy, such realities of Jewish existence as World War II and the establishment of the State of Israel as a sovereign political entity were perceived as an inherent part of the process of redemption. In other words, the fact that the State of Israel offered Jews a place for in-gathering from exile was enough to accord religious legitimization to it and even to the secular Jewish society existing there. These same basic principles, however, also became the rationale for another kind of political radicalism and fundamentalist religious positions derived from Jewish "writings" relating to Redemption.
The Six-Day War was a turning point in the political expression of religious radicalism. If Israel's 1948 War of Independence is viewed as a Zionist war for the establishment of an emergent secular Jewish state, the Six-Day War can be defined as a Jewish war that reflected a substantive historical change in dialectic between exile and redemption. For, whereas the Six-Day War did not necessarily constitute total and absolute transition from exile to redemption, it marked the point at which a substantially different religious reality came into existence.
The background to this development stems from social changes in the Israeli polity, as well as from such historical circumstances as Israel's rapid and astonishing victory over Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, which brought all of
Eretz Israel
under Jewish rule. Now that places denoting the Jewish people's essential affinity to
Eretz Israel
such as Jerusalem with the Temple Mount at its center and Hebron with its Tomb of the Patriarchshad come under Jewish rule, a new geopolitical reality was created. And the young religious-Zionist elite
 
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that encountered this new reality was ready to accord the war and the situation it generated an existential-religious meaning through which the State of Israel became the Land of Israel and the Zionist state the Jewish state. This concatenation of events led to the emergence of Gush Emunim, a movement that regards itself as religious-Zionist in its fulfillment and within whose framework expression has been given to fundamentalist concepts that represent what I term
innovative fundamentalism
.
Religious Zionism represents an attempt to combine a modern way of life with observance of
Halakhah
as it traditionally has been interpreted. The consolidation of modern religiosity inevitably entailed selecting the traditions and practices that conformed to this new way of life. Thus, some traditional elements were excluded and observance of such central Jewish commandments as prayer, Torah study, and premarital chastity became less stringent. The pattern of life that emerged from this basically spontaneous and socially activated process might be termed one of diminished religiosity.
15
Although this religiosity allowed religious Zionist Jews to play a role in the developing society and its economy without affecting their self-identification as Orthodox Jews, there was no ideological development in this atmosphere. Once the intensive pioneering activity of prestate
Eretz Israel
leveled off, and the rise in living standards facilitated the establishment of high-school
yeshivot,
religious Zionist youth became aware of the painful contradiction between their parents' way of life and what they felt was prescribed in the halakhic literature they studied. The helplessness of parents in the face of this direct and indirect criticism from their children began a delegitimation of parents that has had social and political repercussions. Whereas some of the national religious youngsters who graduated from high-school
yeshivot
were absorbed by ultra-Orthodox "great"
yeshivot,
others went on to those that were more in line with the principles of religious Zionism. The oldest and most important of these latter
yeshivot
was the Mercaz ha-Rav Yeshivah of Rabbi A. I. Kook. Under the direction of his son Zvi Yehudah Kook, Mercaz ha-Rav presented young people with a world view that offered a meaningful religious existence in the State of Israel in accordance with Zvi Yehudah's interpretation of his father's teachings.

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