The Hyphen Cannot Hold

This article presents an innovative sociological framework to discuss recent social, ideological, and religious trends within the Religious-Zionist sector in Israel. The article challenges the prevalent conceptualization of Religious-Zionism as a sui generis ideology. Contrary to researchers who emphasize the synthesis of religion and Zionism in the Religious-Zionist ideology, the author argues that the Religious-Zionist identity is based primarily on social connections (kinship, geographical, institutional) between the members of the group. The author uses this approach to make sense of recent Religious-Zionist trends: post-Zionism, the ‘religious-lite’, Orthodox feminism, and neo-liberalism.

Finally, Militarism Is a Legitimate Term

David Greenblum, From the Heroism of the Spirit to the Sanctification of Power: Power and Heroism in Religious Zionism between 1948 and 1968 (Tel Aviv: Open University, 2016). Uri S. Cohen, The Security Style and the Hebrew Culture of War (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2017). Dan Arev, Dying to Watch: War, Memory, and Television in Israel 1967–1991 (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2017). Dalia Gavriely-Nuri, Tel Aviv Was Also Once an Arab Village: The Normalization of the Territories in Israeli Discourse, 1967 (Cambridge, MA: Israel Academic Press, 2017). Nitza Ben-Dov, The Life of War: On the Military, Revenge, Loss, and War Consciousness in Israeli Prose (Jerusalem: Schocken Books, 2016). Haya Milo, Songs Through the Barrel of the Gun: Israeli Soldiers’ Folk Songs (Tel Aviv: Open University, 2017).

Ontological Theology in Religious Zionism—Rabbi Y.M. Harlap as a Case Study

The present study sets out to shed light on R. Yaakov Moshe Harlap (1882–1951), Kabbalist, head of the Merkaz Ha-Rav yeshivah, in his understanding of ontological theology—material labor, meaning the basic life pattern, in which one gets up daily in the morning and goes to “work.” Did R. Harlap see labor as no more than a need and an obligation incumbent upon man to provide for his family? Or did he, perhaps, see labor as a religious value, an outgrowth of the theology he upheld? The conclusion is that work in the teaching of R. Harlap is not only needed to earn a living, but part of the multidimensional theology of Torah, textual–spiritual study and practical work effort. All this is part of the perfecting of the Land of Israel, which became central in the messianic age. Labor is a precondition and an indication of redemption—national, human and Divine.

Abraham Isaac Kook

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Ha-Cohen Kook (b. 1865–d. 1935) is considered one of the most important modern Jewish thinkers and shaper of some of the most significant trends in Religious Zionism. He was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine and the founder of the institutional state rabbinate, as well as an influential yeshiva known as Mercaz Ha-Rav. Rabbi Kook was known for the breadth and depth of his scholarship across all the branches of traditional Jewish scholarship, including law, philosophy, and Kabbalah as well as his appreciation for contemporary science and non-Jewish philosophy. Witnessing the disaffection or rebellion of Jewish youth from tradition, particularly among the Zionist pioneers in the Land of Israel, he devoted himself with special fervor to the attempted reconciliation of modernity with Orthodox Judaism. To this end, he developed a series of dialectical responses that often seemed to accord spiritual dignity to the characteristic features of modern consciousness—such as burgeoning nationalism and evolutionary historicism—while simultaneously subordinating them to his understanding of Jewish theological imperatives. Though he aroused suspicion and controversy among both secularists and traditionalists, Rabbi Kook was often able to gain their respect and serve as a rare bridge between their communities. Ultimately, his thought contributed to the rise of a distinctively Zionist Religious community dedicated to traditional learning and observance as well as commitment to the Zionist state building project. Though Rabbi Kook himself died in 1935, before either the Holocaust or the establishment of the State of Israel, his thinking remains a vibrant source of inspiration and controversy to this day, and is the subject of voluminous secondary literature. Rabbi Kook’s primary writings included many letters and essays published during his lifetime, but some of his most famous and influential works are the result of significant editing by various disciples, some of which took place posthumously. For a variety of reasons, R. Kook’s original notebooks were not available to scholars until the last few decades, and are now gradually leading to revisions in our understanding of his creative legacy. Despite the intellectual and political vicissitudes of classical “religious Zionism” associated with his name, popular and scholarly interest in R. Kook has only burgeoned in recent years through a spate of academic research, publication of new, more accessible Hebrew versions, and translations primarily into English. His views on prophecy, Jewish law, state building, ethics, and metaphysics remain both provocative and generative today.

The Pluralistic Roots of Religious Zionism

This chapter shows that before 1948, religious Zionists were legal pluralists: that is, that they imagined the state being run by several parallel legal regimes, of which only one would be halakha, traditional Jewish law as interpreted by the rabbis. They were willing to accept a democratic legislature and did not call for halakha to rule Israel. This legal pluralism drew on a very long history of Jewish law and was congruent with the way that Jews had organized their legal institutions for centuries. Thinkers who adopted this position included Reuven Margulies, Shlomo Gorontchik (Goren), Shimon Federbusch, and Haim Ozer Grodzinski.

A Constitution for Israel According to the Torah

This chapter describes the new legal centralism that Herzog brought to religious Zionism in Palestine and Israel. He composed the draft of a constitution for Israel that was based on traditional Jewish law (halakha). To allow halakha to be more suited to the needs of a modern democracy, he used inventive interpretations of precedent to make halakha more egalitarian and more acceptable to people who were not Orthodox Jews. He also created a vision of halakha that conformed to the theoretical framework of modern European legal centralism. These changes are understood against the backdrop of European colonialism. Herzog’s adoption of European jurisprudence was similar to the intellectual strategies of many nationalist leaders, who resorted to European modes of thought in their struggle against European colonial rule.