The View From Jerusalem: The Formative Years - Colossal Failure Of Religious Zionism

In my previous opening salvo, The Colossal Failure Of Religious Zionism - Part One, I concentrated on an introduction to the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, vis-a-vis the religious Zionist perspective. I should make a few things clear though.

Religious Zionism certainly did not begin with the Six Day War. Modern religious Zionism began with the Zionist movement or 20-30 years before. I do not mean to imply that the Six Day War, or even the 1948 War of Independence gave birth to religious Zionism nor to Zionism itself. To be sure the establishment of the State of Israel on the world arena did give validity and impetus to the Zionist dream. And to be sure, the Six Day War and its achievements did give "legitimacy" to those who viewed themselves as religious Zionists.
More importantly, I do not think it is fair to judge any movement, be it successful or a total dismal failure - by only judging it through the outcome of war. However, our society, Israeli society, sad to say, is greatly formed and formulated through and by the wars we have had to fight and even more so by those wars which we did not have to fight and worse by those wars which we had no business fighting or getting involved in.

Be that all as it may, it remains true, that religious Zionism did see the events that led up to, included and followed upon the heels of the Six Day War as a stamp of approval. It gave legitimacy to the struggle and the dream.

I received a few emails actually asking what possessed me to take on this volatile subject. A friend told me I had lost my mind. Well, it is simple actually and I will explain before going on.

The Internet allows us all to express our views. And I peek at other very popular blogs on this subject. And sometimes I read statements made by armchair Zionists, who happen to be religious, telling us all how we need to kill and fight and by golly gee go to war again. Shoot those bullets. Fire the missiles. Send in the tanks. Fly those war planes. March to the drummer.

I am far from a peace-nik. I am far from the world of "Peace Now and at any cost". But what truly makes my blood boil, when some nice fool, who has never spent a day of his or her life in the army; has never watched friends cower in fear from almost certain death; has never had to tend to a wounded soldier; has never had to choose between killing and being killed - when such people tell me I should go to war and my children should go to war - so they can live out their dream of what they think religion and Zionism is. And the heart of the matter is - my sons and my son-in-laws will go to war. And those wonderful God-fearing "religious Zionists" along with their sons and family will watch it all on TV and eat pretzels and potato chips and don't forget to pass the Coke. They will cheer for the gipper, and we will bleed and die so they can fulfill their dreams.

And when I read of a mother describing her soon to be born child as the next "soldier-fighter" to be born into the ranks of religious Zionists I cringe with fear. I quote below from one such diatribe which is much longer and much more dangerous when taken in its whole context.

....We aren’t ready to boast, or cheer, or go into the streets—yet. We are still waiting for the inevitable last throws of secularism to try to push its weight around and eliminate our advantage, importing large numbers of non-Jews, attempting to give away strategic lands—doing anything to maintain their illusion of power.

We look with sadness upon the last throws of their backward rein where they kowtow to terrorists and sacrifice our land and our people to the great idol of “peace.” We have seen how “peace” has stood, like a graven image, unable to move or speak, while our living G-d still gives us hope and promise of returning to our Holy places and reclaiming our Holy land. We know there is a lot of pain to come, but we also know the slow unrelenting mass of religious children are headed their way, and there isn’t a whole lot they can do about it.

(The above can be read: The War Has Already Been Won)

I seriously cry for a mother who thinks along such lines. I feel sorry for her. And I know that something has gone deadly, drastically and fatally wrong with religious Zionism if someone can think like this. When we view our enemies as our own people, something is truly rotten deep inside of religious Zionism. Who are we fighting? Who is our enemy? Suddenly today, religious Zionism has declared that anyone else who does not think along certain specific lines is an enemy? Excuse me for the crass statement, but this is some real scary shit.

Up until the Six Day War, the goals of religious Zionism were fairly clear. To live as Jews, seeking guidance from the Mitzvot and Torah in the Land of Israel. To be sure, religious Zionists also had a political agenda. And to be sure some of that political agenda was achieved. Public transportation was closed (except in Haifa); Yom Kippur until this very day maintains its own rules of conduct in the public sector; Kashrut was implemented; Chief Rabbis were appointed and maintained by the State - and on and on we can go.

Yet, the Six Day War forced the religious Zionist movement to suddenly leap forward. Up until that point we were content with hoping and praying for the Redemption. We believed that the State of Israel, founded in 1948, was a great watershed in human history, and specifically and certainly in Jewish History. But we were simply not prepared for the fact that our dreams would come true. How is that for irony? For 2000 years we wait and pray and cry and beseech- and suddenly when we are hit with our dreams turning into reality - we screw it all up.

Rav Kook, was the embodiment of religious Zionism. After the Six Day War, his words rang true. Indeed, almost akin to a prophet. Indeed, truth be told he was our prophet. But something happened then. Something critical to our way, as religious Zionists, of looking out upon the world.

Remember, religious Zionism, has at its very heart three critical things. Torat Yisrael (Torah); Am Yisrael (the Jewish People); and Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel). And somewhere in that euphoria - that political euphoria and religious ecstasy that came upon the heels of the Six Day War we began to get it all mixed up. We got all mishkabobbled in priorities and requirements and needs.

And so, slowly, but not too slowly, religious Zionists adopted the "Eretz Yisrael Ha'Shelemah" banner. The Six Day War allowed us to do this. Now it was all or nothing. It was enough to inculcate our friends and children with this dream. It was based on the prophecies of old. We looked to the Bible and the Halacha; to the mystics and pragmatics; to history and to the millions who were recently gassed - and we decided this was to be our goal. All or nothing.

Religious Zionists made two critical mistakes then. We did not take the time to educate, explain and deal with the rest of our people. We did not take into account the overwhelming odds against such a belief.

The second mistake we made, and this the most critical - is that we always assumed that the connection we had with the Land of Israel would somehow magically jump from generation to generation. Hardships, struggle, war, fighting - were so part of our lives, so part of the recent past, that we could not envision a world where the next generation would want to live it in luxury and peace - no matter what the price.

Somewhere along the line we got it all mixed up. The need to hold on to every inch of Israel, became tantamount. If you were a religious Zionist - by definition you had to believe that was the case. Period. It was heresy to suggest anything different at the time. God had given us Jerusalem, the Golan and even Sinai - it was now up to us to rush in and take over.

Thus we found all the reasons within the religious context to do so. We took care of two things. We made sure our collective butts were covered when it came to the Land of Israel, and somewhat less so when it came to Torah. What we truly forgot - and what we, who once called ourselves religious Zionists are never allowed to forget - is that Am Yisrael - the people of Israel does not only include those same faces who we met at every new rally or settlement.

Those were the days when the great Yishuvim went up. Alon Shvut, Ophra, Beit El just to name a few. We poured our hearts and souls into them. We moved there. Lived without phones, baths and transportation. Woke up in the middle of the night to patrol.

And lest it be said that I do not as an individual - not as a religious Zionist - that I do not personally believe in these settlements - lest it be said that I am just a boiled over peace-nik who is a serious left leaning liberal - I was in Alon Shvut during those early days. I have a daughter today with my grandson and her husband living in Ophra. And I am damn proud of them. BUT that is not and should never have been the goal of "religious Zionism". What happened to the "religion" part of religious Zionism? Did it only consist of settlements and rally's and demanding that we keep every inch of the acclaimed "biblical" land of Israel? How did we ignore and forget the vast majority of our people, who had no idea - no inkling - no vestige of understanding - of the Jewish religion? How did we get so caught up in one point of a star, which held so many other shining pinnacles? How did we forget - that our dream is not necessarily the dream of 80% of the rest of the Jewish people? What were we thinking when we made every single aspect of our lives subservient to that one goal?

And we pushed. Oh boy did we push. We pushed our own community in the need to "conform". If you were a religious Zionist after the Six Day War - you had virtually no choice. You had to believe in settlement. You had to conform to the rules. You had to march and help set up the first caravans. We listened to visionaries, and I say this without any rancor or cynicism, who stood on the top of barren hilltops, and spoke of settlements being built with thousands of people. We felt their dream. We took part in it. We committed to it. We flourished in it.

The aura of the Six Day War allowed this. It allowed us to finally look to the heavens and feel that our prayers were being answered. Nothing could stop us now. Nothing. It was a race to all or nothing. Our long exile, our suffering, our dreams had all been vindicated.

Politics was now played on a global arena. As religious Zionists we now showed our strength and our ability to make those dreams, so long held in abeyance during our torrid and dark exile, come true. We were so concentrated on ourselves on what we were convinced was right, we forgot the rest of our people. And we forgot that we had to pass on this ideology to the next generation. We took it for granted that our children would see the world as we do. For a people so subject to the flux of change; the raging of time; the one law in the universe that nothing remains stable; - we stumbled blindly assuming it would all remain just as it is. We would conquer those hilltops. We would subdue our enemies. We would move forward with the words of the prophets. We would rebuild the Temple. Nothing could stop us.

We looked to the Diaspora. Our friends and our families. We could not understand nor would we accept that they would choose to live there and not here in Israel. How could one choose the luxury of the Diaspora over the wind whistling through a caravan on a barren hilltop, when the road to the Wailing Wall was open to all Jews? It was beyond our understanding. And because we did not truly take the time to understand this - religious Zionism was doomed to failure.

We wore our knitted kippot with pride. And audacity. And smugness. And full of our own righteousness.

That is right. Nothing could stop us then. It was All or Nothing. Period.

And in 1972, just to prove nothing could stop us, as Israeli's, as Zionists, as religious Zionists - we allowed the streets of Jerusalem to be torn up under the treads of tanks as we put on a display of our power in a military parade.

"My own power and my own might have brought this great army to me" - the curse was upon us and we did not even see it. We were blind. Because nothing could stop us then. Not the terrorism of Arafat, not the corrupt UN, not the voices of peace, not even those who among the religious Zionists had the audacity and courage to beg us to first take care of the People of Israel and then worry about the settlements.

Nothing could stop us then. That is until, on a Friday night, in the year of 1973, on the Day of Atonement, on Yom Kippur itself, we were stopped dead in our tracks. By the only power that could stop us. The only power we would answer to. And even then it took some doing.

(To be continued....)

Posted On: The View From Jerusalem