Part VII: Sacrilege of Religious Zionism
As explained in Part II, Zionism is statism with a pseudo-Jewish veneer. The nationalist movement to return to Zion en masse was a pretext through which statism was imposed on Jews. What made it so insidious is how it sought to appeal to not only non-religious but religious Jews as well. For the latter, Zionist statism was painted as Judaic creed with astonishing efficacy. By winning over so many in the observant Jewish population, Zionism succeeded where other statist movements, such as Jewish Communists, failed.
Religious Jews were lured into joining the Zionist movement by means of a tempting doctrine called "religious Zionism."
Religious Zionism preaches that the state is nothing less than the first phase of the long-awaited Redemption promised in scripture, or ithchalta d'geulah in rabbinic parlance [1]. In religious Zionist liturgy, the state is referred to as ראשית צמיחת גאולתנו, the "beginning of the sprouting forth of our redemption" [2].
This audacious claim is based on a midrashic teaching in the Jerusalemite Talmud that describes the process of redemption as a gradual one [3].
The existence of a supposedly-Jewish state that instigates a mass Jewish return to the Land is regarded by religious Zionism as the "ingathering of the exiles of Israel" described in scripture [4]: "And the Lord your God will return your captives and... will gather you from amongst all the nations to where He had dispersed you."
The obvious problem is how to deal with the previous verse, "you will return to God with all your heart...?"
Furthermore, how can a political state claim to be the harbinger of redemption? Did poverty, greed, illness, crime, cruelty, etc. [5], miraculously disappear with the glorious advent of the supposedly-long-awaited Jewish State? No, it didn't.
Moreover, how can a Divinely-inspired redemption be achieved at the hand of a secular state run by atheists?
Religious Zionist apologetics has an answer: at least the redemption process has begun, albeit gradually. Supposedly, if all Jews would return to the Land and pledge allegiance to the "redemptive" State, then the rest of the Redemption would follow.
Early Christian theologians had a similar problem when claiming authentic messianic status for their messiah. How could they explain J…’s’ failure to deliver the actual redemption, a time when the "wolf will lie with the lamb"[6], an end to evil and bloodshed, etc.? Consequently, they contrived the novel idea of a "first" and "second" coming. The redeemer was no longer required to actually redeem anyone, at least not in a practical and physical sense. Supposedly, he just needed to die for their sins and achieve their "forgiveness," while the actual redemption could occur millennia later. Or so goes the apologist Christian rationale.
Of course, this was a significant departure from authentic Torah faith, so it was roundly rejected by Jews throughout all of history.
All false messianic movements dealt with this same conundrum: how to explain your messianic candidate's failure to achieve actual redemption?
Religious Zionism attempted to address this problem by reducing the redemption to a geographic and political reality. It was claimed that a mass return to the Land, and a revival of supposedly Jewish sovereignty therein, by definition constitute redemption, or at least the "first stage" thereof, i.e. the "physical redemption." All other aspects of redemption would invariably follow, religious Zionism promises, including repentance and "spiritual redemption."
Similar to Christianity's dogma of first and second comings, religious Zionism dissected and dichotomized the messianic advent into two, a physical redemption and a spiritual redemption.
According to religious Zionism, these two stages were predicted in the above-mentioned midrashic teaching that describes the redemption as a gradual process.
However, in authentic Jewish faith, midrash aggada carries little weight with regards to actual practice. While these insightful homilies are studied for their moral/ethical/spiritual value, this sort of midrash is not law and often has no practical application, especially not when it's contradicted by explicit halachic rulings.
In this case, the redemptive process is clearly delineated in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah [7]. There is indeed a process but the sequence is reversed:
"If a king will arise from the House of David who is diligent in Torah and observes its commandments as prescribed by the Written Law and the Oral Law like David, his ancestor, will compel all of Israel to walk in (the way of the Torah) and rectify the breaches in its observance, and fight the wars of God, we may, with assurance, consider him the moshiach (i.e. messiah, iterally the ‘anointed’).
"If he succeeds in the above, builds the Temple in its place, and gathers the dispersed of Israel, he is definitely the moshiach.
"He will then improve the entire world, motivating all the nations to serve God together, as it is stated [8]: 'I will transform the peoples to a purer language that they all will call upon the name of God and serve Him with one purpose.'"
Halacha clearly rules that national repentance led by a human messiah precedes the construction of the third Holy Temple on Mount Zion, and only later does the ingathering of the exiles occur.
Authentic halachic eschatology doesn't recognize a "physical redemption" devoid and independent of a spiritual one.
The correct sequence is clearly described in the same scripture cited above [9]:
"And you will return to the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and you will listen to His voice according to all that I am commanding you this day you and your children."
"Then, the Lord, your God, will bring back your exiles and... once again gather you from all the nations, where the Lord, your God, had dispersed you."
Our people's teshuva (return to God) precedes our geographic return to Zion, or at least the national return to Zion that scripture identifies as messianic.
To deal with this obvious conflict, religious Zionism fabricated a new idea, a bold subversion of teshuva, that "returning to God" is a code word for returning to God's land. In religious Zionist dogma, Jews' return to the Land en masse constitutes a "national teshuva" of sorts. Okay, but what about the continuation of the verse: "and you will listen to His voice according to all that I am commanding you this day..."? In a bizarre eisegetic attempt, "all that I am commanding you this day" was interpreted to mean the all-embracing commandment of returning to, and taking "national possession" of, the Land. Funny how "all" that God had commanded us in the plains of Moab -- the entire Book of Deuteronomy and part of Numbers -- is somehow reduced to one single value, the one dictated by religious Zionist theologians.
Religious Zionism mirrors Christianity in this regard as well. Both have reduced our covenant with God comprising six-hundred thirteen eternal Commandments to one single value that eclipses all else [10]. For the latter, it was belief in a savior. For the former, it's belief in a state. In fact, for Religious Zionists, the state is their savior.
[Parenthetically, there’s a debate among Jewish scholars as to whether the virtue of residing in the Land or "taking possession" thereof, is even considered a Biblical Commandment at all. It's not listed among the six-hundred and thirteen Divine commandments in the authoritative Maimonidean code nor is it cited as a rabbinical commandment. Some have suggested that living in the Land is indeed not a particular commandment but rather an all-embracing value that makes observance of many other commandments possible (i.e. those dependent on the holy soil and non-applicable abroad, such as many agricultural commandments). However, this argument itself proves the fallacy of religious Zionism. If residing in the Land is important only because of the commandments one can now fulfill, certainly "all that I am commanding you this day" means quite literally all the Torah's Commandments. "National teshuva," then, cannot be achieved by a national return to the Land's mere geographic borders, but rather by a return to observing all of God's commandments. (emphasis blog) Now, if the national return to Zion had achieved this result, there might have been some grounds for this debate. The reality, however, is sadly the reverse. Hundreds of thousands of formerly-Torah-observant Jews immigrated to the fledgling "Jewish State" and abandoned their observance. This was not by happenstance.The Zionist state had an obvious agenda to dispossess and disenfranchise sephardic and mizrahi Jewish immigrants of their faith-based communities. Just visit the slums and prisons in Israel today and you will discover thousands of men of Moroccan and Yemenite descent, drug dealers, deadbeats, and criminals whose grandparents had been pious and steadfastly Torah-observant Jews in Morocco and Yemen respectively, prior to their communities' alleged "national teshuva." Many of these men had been cruelly separated from their families as young children and forced to grow up in secular kibbutzim by the Zionist regime. I learned of this tragic phenomenon when I conducted passover seders in Israel's highest-security civilian prison in the late 1980s.]
The question about whether a large-scale return to Zion before the actual redemption was halachically permissible is a different question, not germane to this discussion, and quite frankly, a distraction to the real dangers of Zionism given what we now know [11].
Rather, what we're discussing is the odious deception of religious Zionism by endorsing a false messianic movement, one that requires its adherents to subjugate themselves to a modern state as a cardinal religious tenet.
Herein lies the danger of religious Zionism. It objectifies the state by according it messianic status. In religious Zionist dogma, Ben Gurion, Golda, Sharon, Bibi, et al, rule by divine right in the so-called Third Commonwealth. The Zionist oligarchy is on par with the Davidic Kingdom. Total subservience to the state is now a religious duty of supreme priority, or so goes the religious Zionist rationale.
Even without playing the Messiah card, religious Zionism attempts to accord religious authenticity to the lie of statism, that the state's authority constitutes the rule of the people.
Religious Zionism deceptively claims that the state's administration of the Land is equivalent to Jewish national possession of the Land.
By returning to the Land and subjugating yourselves to the state that wields control over its borders, religious Zionism preaches, you are supposedly fulfilling the Torah's commandment: "And you shall possess the Land" [12].
According to religious Zionism, "possessing the Land" means establishing national control over the land by means of a modern state controlled by a nominally-Jewish regime.
Religious Zionism views the regime as "Jewish national leadership," albeit not observant of Torah law. Supposedly atheists like Rabin and Peres are no less sovereign than the wicked King Ahab to whom Prophet Elijah accorded respect due to this royal status [13], or so it is claimed.
The Torah states: "Set over yourself a king whom the Lord your God will choose, from amongst your brethren shall you set a king over yourself..." [14]. This commandment was only incumbent upon Israel once they entered the Land [15].
Religious Zionism claims that this is a commandment to accept the authority of the allegedly sovereign "Jewish State." It declares that Jews are obligated to impose a "national Jewish administration" over the Land by agency of the Zionist regime.
The reality, however, is that the Zionist regime is neither Jewish nor sovereign, nor does it constitute "rule by the people" in any way.
The government includes Jew-hating Arabs and misanthropic atheists who are sworn enemies of the Jewish faith. The state serves not the population but its super-wealthy handlers. The Land is not in any "national Jewish possession." Instead, the Land is ruled by a puppet government that answers to Jew-hating sociopaths, the same predator class that holds the puppet strings to all other modern states.
"Backroom diplomacy" is business-as-usual for the JINO state, secret deals to which the public is oblivious and powerless to oppose. Elections are a sham, since the ruling class controls every major candidate and/or his party. There is no constitution, no rule of law, no recourse. In the name of "keeping you safe," citizens of the state are subject to extraordinary 24/7 surveillance, perhaps more so than in any other nation in earth. The Jews of our Holy Land are perpetual prisoners of the state, its propaganda media, its extreme-Leftist judges and their kangaroo courts, all of which are anything but Jewish.
Ariel Sharon was a non-Jew [16]. Of course, who else could preside over the forced expulsion of thousands of innocent Jews from Gush Qatif?
Bibi is a traitor who funded, enabled, and opened the border to jihadist butchers, allowing them to murder, torture, rape, and abduct defenseless Jews in the south for many hours.
All other prime sinisters likewise behaved not as Jews but as pagans. Any Jewishness they may have demonstrated was a mere token gesture. The Jewish-in-name-only establishment peddles non-Jewish and anti-Torah values. Secularist and LGBTQ wokeness is forced upon the population. The state routinely suppresses Jewish morals, Jewish pride, and Jewish identity.
However, the fact that the "Jewish State" is actually anti-Jewish is peripheral to the true evils of religious Zionism.
Alas, the “Jewish State” isn't controlled by Ahabs and Jezebels as Religious Zionists would have us believe, but by Amalek [17], Israel's nemesis. Whereas Jezebel sought to eliminate only the religious Jews and the Jewish religion [18], Amalek seeks to eliminate the Jewish people in its entirety, “להשמיד להרוג ולאבד” – to destroy, murder, and obliterate all the Jews, young and old, as Haman attempted in this time [18]. Today's Amakekites vie to destroy not just the Jews but the entire human race and subjugate the survivors to totalitarian digital enslavement.
In its endorsement of the statist Zionist objective, religious Zionism is complicit in crimes against humanity, and in particular, unspeakable crimes against the Jewish people.
Religious Zionism is a sacrilege of epic proportions, a cruel and cynical exploitation of religion and religious belief.
A Jew, yehudi, denotes one who rejects polytheism in all its iterations [19]. Zionism is an insidious form of idolatry that objectifies the state. By peddling an idolatrous and sociopathic false messianic movement, religious Zionism betrayed Jews in the darkest of ways. Nothing can be less Jewish.
Notes:
[1] Megila 17b.
[2] In Zionist prayer "Our Father in heaven" of unknown authorship.
[3] Talmud Yerushalmi, Berachoth 1a.
[4] Deuteronomy 30:4.
[5] Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings 12:5.
[6] Isaiah 11:6, Mishneh Torah ibid 12:1.
[7] Ibid 11:4.
[8] Zephaniah 3:9.
[9] Deut. 30:3-4.
[10] All false messianic movements demonstrated this sort of imbalanced extremity or exclusivity that minimizes or reduces all else. This phenomenon should not be confused with the Talmudic teaching "Habakuk came and set it up on one (principle), 'the righteous lives by his faith'" [Makkoth 24a, Habakuk 2:4]. This was a homiletic teaching underscoring the fundamental centrality of faith to Torah observance, but never negated or ignored the rest of the Torah.
[11] See Part VIII of this series.
[12] Numbers 33:53.
[13] Kings I 18:46; Zevachim 102a; Mechilta Yalkut Shimoni remez 207.
[14] Deut. 17:15.
[15] Ibid 17:14, Sanhedrin 20b, Mishneh Torah Laws of Kings 1:1.
[16] His mother was a subbotnik. Subbotniks were formerly Sabbatarian Russian peasants who embraced some Jewish practices. According to the rulings of Chief Rabbis Avraham Yitzchak Kook (in 1914, printed in Daath Cohen, siman 152) and Shlomo Amar (in 2004), a subbotnik is not to be regarded as Jewish without evidence that he or she had undergone a halachic conversion. There is no evidence that staunchly-secular Sharon or his secular socialist mother ever converted in accordance with halacha. Other prominent Israelis who descend from subbotniks include former IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Raful Eitan, former Israel Police District Commander Major-General Alec Ron, and Alexander Zaid, who established the Hashomer Jewish self-defense organization. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4497612,00.html
[17] Exodus 17:8, Numbers 24:20, Deuteronomy 25:17-19, Samuel I 15:3, Esther Rabba pesichta 7, Mishneh Torah Ibid 5:5.
[18] Kings I 18:4,13.
[19] Esther 3:13.
[20] Megila 13a, based on Daniel 3:12.
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