Tension between Zionism and Religion

Observers unfamiliar with Zionism’s inner history are sometimes astonished to learn that the movement was not an expression of religious impulses and that it actually developed in an atmosphere of mutual hostility between Zionists and religious authorities.

This antagonism was part of the larger struggle between those seeking to make Jewish communities part of modern secular European society and those clinging tenaciously to Jewish separatism and particularity. As noted in chapters 2 and 3, the Enlightenment and its Jewish echo (the Haskala) had seriously undermined the autonomy of the traditional Jewish community and the role of religious law in Jewish life. In reaction, much of the rabbinical establishment in Eastern Europe turned inward, rejecting the lures of the outside world and focusing religious law (halacha) increasingly and inflexibly on matters of ritual observance.^[15]

In this context, Zionism was simply another threat to Jewish integrity from an alien and menacing universe. Religious leaders regarded it, with considerable justice, as a continuation of the secularizing Haskala movement; it was no accident that most early Zionist leaders were maskilim by background. Zionism was part and parcel of the Western secular nationalist tradition. It was a movement for Jewish national self-determination in the same mode as other nationalist movements of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, like other nationalist movements of the period, Zionism was anticlerical, opposed to basing public life on religious principle. Just as the nationalists of Europe sought to liberate themselves from all traditionalism, including clerical control of politics, Zionism sought new political paths free of religious restraints.

Consequently, the established religious leadership opposed Zionism with near unanimity, in defense of both their prerogatives and their principles. Naturally they saw it as a threat to their own position within the Jewish community, where their authority had long been accepted on matters both sacred and mundane. They also opposed it on theological grounds because Zionism aspired to create a Jewish state outside the religious framework, as a result of the endeavors of humankind rather than the intervention of God. They opposed such undertakings as the rebirth of Hebrew as a spoken language, preferring that it remain a sacred liturgical tongue. Traditional religious authorities were the most vocal opponents of Zionism within the Jewish community. While a religious version of Zionism did develop in the early twentieth century, it remained a minority both among Zionists and—until much later in the century—among Orthodox Jews as well.

Secularization of public life, it should be recalled, is a Western invention that does not appear even in Western history before the last few centuries, and it has probably been totally achieved only in a handful of avowedly “materialist” regimes (most of which no longer exist). Historically Judaism viewed itself as a way of life and not simply as a religion (originally there was no word for “religion” in Hebrew). Like Islam, it centered on a code of law that encompassed what we would now consider civil or political matters (consider the Ten Commandments). The traditions of Judaism provide little basis for the modern idea of separating religion and politics.

The same can be said about Middle East custom and practice, embodied particularly in Islam. Islam affirms religion (or what the West calls “religion”) as the organizing principle of state and society. In the Ottoman Empire this link between religion and politics was expressed in the millet system, under which each religious community governed itself in certain respects. Even before the British Mandate in Palestine, the rabbinical establishment in the area exercised certain governing powers within the Jewish community (the so-called “old yishuv ”), particularly in matters of personal status such as marriage and divorce.

The old yishuv was divided between a Sephardi community, led by a chief rabbi, and an Ashkenazi community, with its own rabbinical courts, that was supported by outside contributions (haluka) and led a largely isolated existence centered around acts of piety. Though both groups opposed Zionism, the Ashkenazim in the old yishuv were particularly antagonistic to this latest and most insidious challenge to their besieged way of life. It was this group that set the basic patterns for the non-Zionist and anti-Zionist haredi communities in Palestine and Israel.^[16]

In some respects, the division between non- or anti-Zionist haredim and Zionist Jews, religious or nonreligious, was more fundamental than the more common distinction between religious Jews (whether haredi or Zionist) and nonreligious Jews. Apart from a much smaller number on the far left, the haredim were the only Jewish group in Israel outside the “Zionist consensus”; religious Zionists often had more in common with nonreligious Zionists than they did with religious Jews outside the Zionist fold. Despite their shared religiosity, the worldview of those who work fervently for the Jewish state—even one with secular leaders—differs in essence from the worldview of those who view that same state as an alien and illegitimate entity. In contrast to the haredim, religious Zionists stress the national as well as the religious aspect of Judaism, reject separatism as a way of life, and seek in many ways to become part of modern society.

Had members of the old yishuv been the leading element in the expansion of the Jewish settlement in late nineteenth-century Palestine, the governing principles of the new settlement would have been quite different. In fact, the settlers of Petah Tikva, the first settlement outside the old yishuv (1880), drew up regulations making their rabbi sole judicial authority within the settlement, with powers to enforce all religious laws (many of the settlers were from the old yishuv).^[17] But the Zionist settlers of the “new yishuv ” did not adopt this model (nor, eventually, did Petah Tikva itself); they made use of experience with self-government in Eastern Europe and elsewhere to create autonomous, but basically secularized, villages and communes. When the new settlers finally convened a body to represent Palestinian Jewry—the Knesiya of 1903—they excluded from the electorate all those who subsisted on haluka, meaning most of those in the old yishuv, though they still constituted the bulk of the Jewish population.^[18] Jews in the homeland were now sharply divided into two communities, neither of which respected the values or way of life of the other.

The division between old yishuv and new yishuv corresponds roughly to the division between haredi and Zionist, which has reemerged in recent years as a source of increasing trouble for Israeli politics. It is important to understand the depth of this divide. The leading analyst of haredi society, Menachem Friedman, describes its worldview as “a comprehensive historiographic conception which perceived of the central historical processes of the modern era—from the inception of modernization and secularization (i.e., the Haskala or Enlightenment), through the development of the Zionist Movement up to the establishment of the State of Israel—as a totality of a cause and effect expressing the great ‘rebellion’ against the unique essence of religious Judaism. . . .” ^[19]

Haredim are “fundamentalist” according to the definition developed by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby: “a tendency…which manifests itself as a strategy, or set of strategies, by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve their distinctive identity as a people or group.” This involves the selective retrieval of “fundamentals” from a sacred past and their use as a bulwark against the dislocations of modernization. It is not a simple return to the past, but an innovative recreation of a political and social order characterized by authoritarian leadership, strong discipline, a rigorous moral code, clear boundaries, and an identified enemy.^[20] All of these elements appear in haredi society, whose roots go back over two centuries to Jewish resistance to the Enlightenment and the prospect of integration into European culture.

As noted, most Jewish religious authorities initially saw Zionism as part and parcel of this threat. While religious Zionists came to terms with a largely secular process by ascribing messianic significance to the Jewish state as “the Beginning of Redemption,” anti-Zionists turned this on its head by labeling Zionism a “false Redemption” and promoting a messianism based on its rejection. The return of Jews to the Land of Israel may be a part of the process, but genuine redemption cannot take place in a secular framework. Some even believed that “the great sin which has prevented the coming of the Messiah is none other than Zionism!” ^[21] Cooperation and accommodation with the Zionist state was regarded by many anti-Zionists as a practical or tactical necessity but did not necessarily indicate recognition of its legitimacy.