Today is the 59th anniversary (plus one day) of the founding of the state of Israel. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel proclaimed the state of Israel as "reishit tzmihat geulateinu", the beginning of the sprouting of our redemption. The Rambam in the end of Hilchot Melachim declares that Christianity and Islam are ultimately vehicles for spreading knowledge of G-d and His plan for redemption in the world. But of course we do not declare them kosher and celebrate them. Rav Kook zt"l appeared at the founding of the Hebrew University (I believe it was in 1908) but later disassociated himself from that institution when he discovered that they were going to teach Biblical criticism. In the same vein many of us Tzalash Mamlash Jews (Tzioni Lesheavar = ex-Zionist, Mamlachti Lesheavar = ex-Statist) have second thoughts about the national framework in which we live. I feel that I can no longer be a Religious Zionist because the state as a framework has crossed the red line of operating against the Torah and against the rights of the Jewish citizens for whom it was founded. The State of Israel and its representatives have given away parts of the holy Land of Israel to our enemies. The government and the Jewish Agency have purposefully instigated the mass aliya of non-Jews from the Former Soviet Union in order to maintain the secular character of the state. The government has at the same time let itself be the doormat of the secret anti-Jewish and anti-Israel policy of the United States. The state of Israel accepts foreign aid from the United States which prevents us from developing and marketing optimally our own armaments to defend ourselves. As the population of Israel increases the state decreases the capability of the nation to feed itself by acts such as the destruction of the agricultural capacity of Gush Katif. At the same time I can not consider myself hareidi because the hareidi position passively accepts this affront to the Torah and justice to the Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael. The hareidi establishment failed the test when Jews were thrown out of their homes.
I am proposing an alternative. As a Torah-observant, patriotic Jew in Eretz Yisrael I long for the day on which I will be able to live in a Jewish polity which operates according to halacha, Jewish law. I sorrowfully see a secular state which is in a desperate race against time to commit suicide before there is a Torah-observant majority ruling it. We must get off the wagon called Medinat Yisrael because it is on the way to self-destruction.
What must we propose? What are the minimum requirements for a self-sustaining Jewish polity which we can live with?
We must found a Jewish state for all those Jews in Erest Yisrael who wish to live as a free people according to the Torah. We do not wish to coerce other Jews and non-Jews into observing bits and pieces of the Torah at the cost of earning their enmity. The basis should not be the grandiose vision of reishit tzmichat geulateinu because we are not there yet. A more modest basis is takanot kahal, the democratic organization of a community. The community of those Torah-observant Jews who choose to join will take upon themselves set up a state in part of Eretz Yisrael. The laws will be according to halacha. The security and police will operate according to halachic Jewish values: respect for kashrut, Shabbat, modesty, property, prayer. Marriage and divorce and conversion to Judaism will be based on examination of the ancestry of the people involved because the government-appointed Israeli Chief Rabbinate is not sufficiently independent to avoid registering non-Jews as Jews or making less than serious conversions. The economy will be run on the basis of modest consumption and the encouragement of agriculture and the fulfilling of the Torah's agricultural commandments. Such a state will underbid secular Israel and other countries for outsourcing jobs because of the ability to live on lower salaries. The Torah state will develop an arms industry free to deal with any friendly country without foreign aid.
The state of Israel will not give in so fast. But if they fight it, they will have more and more teshuva activists in the streets of Tel Aviv. Let the idea be heard.
4 comments:
"I am proposing an alternative."
It already exists . . . it's called Chabad. :-)
This post goes right to the heart of the issue . . . if only it could be true. Yet I feel that save Moshiach, it won't be too easy.
Let him come and end the issue already.
Isn't this like the closed communities that already exist? Or are you saying they need to be in one place?
it's a reasonable position
I've always felt RTG was overblown and presumptuous, it's better to construct a working jewish state and worry about the implications later and that means mobilizing political efforts to maintain the jewish character of the state at a political level, a true jewish party
I'm not talking about sectarian or closed communities. I'm talking about political autonomy or sovereignty. The fact is that the instruments of Torah law had more clout in the pre-emancipation ghettos than they have now. My fear is that our internal enemies, the self-hating Jews, may succeed in destroying Israel before birthrate + kiruv succeeds in passing the tipping point and we have a change of regime. Even when we reach a majority, we will be gentlemanly about it and it will take longer. This is a proposed solution which would allow Torah Jews (and whoever supports them) to take destiny into their hands without imposing our values on those who have not yet accepted them. A Torah state, say, like Beitar writ large, could give the non-religious Jew the vision to see that it works.
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