What Actually is Religious Zionism?

0:00Is the West Bank reality apartheid? Are Palestinians defined only by their opposition to Israel? What is the future of Judaism? What's Israel's relationship with its Arab neighbors? Amir Miyau, host of the new podcast from Unpacked, Borderlines with That Semied. These are the kinds of questions that end friendships and dinner parties, the ones most people won't touch. On Borderlines with That Semied, I walk straight through the minefield. Every episode, I start on the street, asking regular people what they really think about the question everyone's arguing over. And then I sit down with an expert or insider who lives it, often someone who sees it completely differently than I do. And instead of scoring points, we actually talk, a Palestinian political leader, and Ethiopian Israeli scholar, a rabbi rethinking what Judaism is becoming. I bring strong convictions. So today, we leave behind the talking points and have real conversations that most people are afraid to have. Come for the questions you've been scared to ask. Stay for the honest answers. Search Borderlines with That Semied on YouTube or wherever you're listening right now. New episodes, weekly.

1:00Hey, I'm Norm Weissman, and this is unpacking Israeli history, the podcast that takes a deep dive in some of the most intense, historically fascinating, and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history. This episode is sponsored in memory of Leo M. Bernstein. Leo M. Bernstein was a Washington, DC real estate developer, investor, banker, and philanthropist. A man with a deep love of the United States of America, a devotion to democracy and democratic institutions that mattered a lot to him. And he also had a lifelong pride in his Jewish identity. So honored, so honored to carry his memory forward through this work. And I really want to thank the Bernstein Foundation for their generous support and partnership. If you want to sponsor an episode of unpacking Israeli history, shoot me a message at noamadunpacked.media. And as always, be sure to check out all our content, all of unpacking Israeli history on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and all the places. And by the way, Instagram, noamadunpacked.media.media.media. Check it out. OK, yalla, let's do this.

2:01A nomadrzim badok. Allah akhamat, Yudinah, Yudinah, Yudinah, Yudinah, Yudinah, Yudinah, Yudinah. We, the people of Israel, are prepared and anxious to meet the representatives of our neighbors without any precondition. Hello, my name is Erbil. Our people in Israel and elsewhere say it's impossible to make this museum that upset Israel or the Jewish people. I think that's all. Two years ago, I gave a talk in Philadelphia about everyone's favorite word, Zionism. Yeah, that word. It was a Jewish federation-type crowd full of, you know, smart, thoughtful people who care deeply about Israel, have some questions. And I like the rest of us live in a world where the word Zionism has become radioactive. Now, I see the basic definition of a Zionist as someone who simply believes in the Jewish people's right to govern themselves in their ancestral homeland.

3:02It's all about making sure that Jewish people have dignity, have autonomy, have the ability to govern themselves. That's the idea. It doesn't say anything about borders or governments or policies or a relationship to the other people who live in the land. Those are open questions with infinitely adaptable answers. But somehow, somewhere along the way, the word Zionism came to mean everything, settlements, Netanyahu, Jewish supremacy, white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism. The word itself has become a Rorschach test and infinitely malleable shorthand for every conceivable grievance, which is exactly why I went to give this talk in Philadelphia. It's kind of my job to strip all that away, to remind people of the original Zionism before it was co-opted and redefined for us by outsiders. The talk was going pretty well. People were nodding and asking smart questions to energy in the room was good. So of course, it was the perfect moment for a major curveball

4:06followed by an existential crisis. As the evening wound down, a man in the audience raised his hand to ask me a question, I had somehow never been asked before. I'm going to call him Bill. He looked like a building. I don't know. Listen, Bill started. Everything you're saying about Zionism, makes sense and I think that we should help redirect the world to all about that. And I think that despite all the challenges that Jewish people returned to their homeland was a good thing. But you know him, you haven't acknowledged the dangers of nationalism, especially he said when it's mixed with religion. So can you talk more about religious Zionism? That's what Bill wanted to know because people who say they hate Zionism, they're not just responding to this idea that Jews should have self-determination. Okay, broadly speaking, that sounds fine. They're responding to the whole religious element, the messianism, the controversial figures in the Israeli government like Itamar Ben-Govir or Bitsala Smotrich. By this point, I was starting to sweat a little.

5:07But Bill was still going. The attacks on Palestinian villages, the potential annexation of the West Bank, the politicians who talk about banishing Palestinians from their homes, the people talking about resettling Gaza. That's the problem, Noam. It's not Zionism. Some Jews are doing terrible things in the name of Zionism or to be more accurate religious Zionism. And you, Noam Liore Weissman, have failed to address that at all. Okay, Bill did not use my full name, but it felt like he did. And as the question hung in the air, waiting, I was wrestling with two competing thoughts. My mind was shouting, okay, Bill, relax, you're totally exaggerating. But my mind was also shouting, Bill, I get exactly why you think that. Part of me wished that Bill had thrown me a softball rather than a difficult question worth truly grappling with. But wasn't that why I had shlept to Philly in the first place? To seriously address complicated issues? Still, I didn't expect this question to make me feel so activated,

6:10emotional. Because when I hear the words religious Zionism, I personally don't think about messianism or e-tomar-bengueer or pizzalo-smotritch. I don't. And I definitely don't think about driving Palestinians from their homes. In fact, the words religious Zionism conjure the absolute opposite of all of that for me. Religious Zionism makes me think of my parents and my grandparents. My parents, Pam and Neil Weissman, they're quite kind, gentle, really thoughtful people. But like I said, it makes me think of my grandparents moved to Israel and lived the last 40 years of their lives in Israel. Raised one of their children in Israel, then their grandchildren in Israel. And they were inspired by the euphoria after 1967. Really just a deep Jewish yearning to come back home. It makes me think of my teachers in Yashiva, you know, the seminary where you study Torah. In Israel, deeply empathic people

7:10profoundly connected to the land. It makes me think of all the proud Jews who believe deeply in studying Torah in serving their country and taking responsibility for the Jewish people. That's why I think of people who work every day to create a society animated by and anchored in Jewish values. And it makes me think of myself too. Because as much as I want to resist a label, a breezy shorthand, I have to admit, this one more or less fits. I was raised in a religious Zionist home and I'm raising my own children the same way. I was the principal of a religious Zionist high school. By all metrics, I'm a religious Zionist. Yeah, I know, I don't live in Israel, so come at me for that, fair. But that's the problem with labels, isn't it? Depending on your vantage point, the same words can conjure vastly different meanings. When an Israeli political party literally brands itself as, quote, religious Zionism aka Hatsionotatatit, well, that complicates things.

8:11Because without going into details, the head of that party, Bitsalus Motors has said and done a lot of things that are simply not my version of religious Zionism, but let's be clear, it is other people's version of religious Zionism. So Bill was right to press me. He was right to want to understand the relationship between Zionism and religion. He was right to question whether religious Zionism is a different animal than just Zionism. To ask, what makes a person a religious Zionist, not just a Zionist who identifies as religious? And is this identity as dangerous as Bill claimed? Are people both Jewish and otherwise reacting to the excesses of people who claim to be religious Zionists? For that matter, have we established consensus on what religious Zionism actually is? And what does the answer mean for Israeli citizens or for Jews in the diaspora? See what I mean? Total existential crisis. Thanks a lot, Bill. Thanks, Bill. So Bill, if you're listening, consider this series on religious Zionism, my belated response to your phenomenal thought-provoking question.

9:14This week, we are going to delve into the history of religious Zionism. Where did it come from? What were its aims? How did it differ from plain old secular Zionism? Next week, we'll get a little more contemporary. We'll talk about the evolution of the movement from the 1970s through today. We'll talk about settlements and messianism and land for peace, about peace activists and political agitators each inspired by their own vision and version of religious Zionism, and we'll unpack the most significant question of all. What visions of the future can religious Zionism offer Israelis and Jews around the world? And in a bonus third episode, you will hear something incredibly special, a sit-down conversation with Professor Yuhud Murzky, one of the foremost experts. In the person many would call the father of religious Zionism, even if maybe he didn't call himself that. It's a big mandate for a short podcast series, one honest caveat before we begin. This is a series about 150-year movement with an enormous cast of characters,

10:17and as much as I tried, there's simply no way I can give everyone their due. I can't. I can't. For every rabbi or thinker I mentioned, there are a dozen more who shaped the story and didn't make the cut, not because they don't matter. But because I had to make brutal choices in this episode, take rabbi Shlomogorin, for example. He shows up later blowing the shofar at the western wall in 1967, and again, for his writings on the Temple Mount, but he was also the IDF's first chief rabbi, and one of the great halachic, meaning Jewish legal, minds of the movement. He and the rest of the people I'm about to name deserve their own episodes, not a cameo, like Rabbi Chaim Jirukman, who built much of the Bnekiva in the Zrachi world that raised generations of religious Zionists, including me, I guess, or Zavulun Hammer, or Nakhamalibovits, or Rabbi Cha'ul Yusra Ali, or Rabbi Ali Ezermalamid. These are all important figures in the history and present of religious Zionists thinking, and they sadly don't get airtime here. So if someone you love isn't in the series, or only gets 30 seconds when they deserve 30 minutes,

11:19it's not a judgement call about their importance, it's just math. It's just math. So with that, ready? Let's freaking go! Okay, let's do this. Chapter 1, Love Sick for Jerusalem. I don't generally think of rabbis as love poets. Maybe you do. There's not a ton of romance in parsing the finer points of Jewish law. But there's a surprising amount of poetry in the Jewish tradition, from the deeply erotic Shira Shireem aka Song of Songs, to the passionate religious Piotim, or the turgical poems of the medieval mystics. Rabbi Huida Halaviiz, Li Bbumizrah, where my heart is in the east, falls somewhere on the tamer end of the spectrum. It's a poem of passionate longing for Zion, not composed in the 20th century, but composed in Muslim Spain, sometime in the 12th century. During the 88 year period of crusader control over Jerusalem, when Jews were barred from the city. The original is in Hebrew,

12:20yep, contrary to popular opinion, the Hebrew language never died, but that's the story for another time. Here is the English translation. My heart is in the east, and the rest of me at the edge of the west. How can I taste the food I eat? How can it give me pleasure? How can I keep my promise now, or fulfill the vows I've made, while Zion remains in the cross's reign, and I in Arab chains? With pleasure I would leave behind all the good things of Spain. If only I could gaze on the dust of our ruined holy place. My heart is in the east, is probably the most famous expression of the Jewish people's love of Zion, outside of the Hebrew Bible itself. Yes, this goes back a few thousand years. So I promise I'm not poo-pooing, you're just missing it when I say, that the poem slots neatly into millennia of Jewish longing for the Promised Land. It's the heart cry of a people who pray facing east toward Jerusalem. It's a longing embedded in the liturgy

13:20in our calendar, in our weddings and our funerals. Do not forget Jerusalem. The longing goes deeper than prayer and poetry. Over the centuries, many Jews did return to Zion, or try to anyway. One hundred years after Rabbi Huda Halavi wrote this poem, Rabbi Moses Ben Nachman, aka Ramban aka Nakhmanides, arrived in Jerusalem. The crusaders had been vanquished, but the holy city was in ruins. In a corner of the old city close to the temple mount, Nachmanides established a synagogue that stands to this day. Later, after the expulsion of all Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, thousands of Sephardic Jews moved to the Ottoman-controlled land of Israel, settling mostly in the Holy Mystical City of Tsphat, Safed. And soon this city was a global center for the study of Jewish law and Kabbalah. There were more organized attempts too. In 1558, Don Joseph Nassia, Portuguese Jewish diplomat and advisor to the Ottoman Sultan,

14:20leased the ruined city of Tiberius and surrounding villages, hoping to build an autonomous, self-sustaining sanctuary for Sephardic Jews fleeing the Inquisition. Then there were the scholars of the 18th century who encouraged their students to make the trick to the Holy Land, believing that redemption would arrive only when the Jews returned home. The Vilna Gaon, an English Elijah Kramer, Eliahu Benchlomo Zalman never got there, but hundreds of his students did. From Ethiopia, the Ascetic and Scholar, Abba Mahari, led his community towards the Promised Land in 1862, a failed journey that few survived. I could go on and on and on, but you get the point. In Jewish practice, the land of Israel is inextricable from Judaism itself, period and of like honestly, and it's it. But it wasn't until the mid-19th century that this ancient longing collided with modernity, with politics, with a movement. 700 years after Abba Yuhdha Halevi lamented

15:21his distance from the Holy Land. Another rabbi named Yuhdha, rabba Yuhdha Al-Khalai, channeled his longing into action. A young rabbi Al-Khalai was leading the Sephardic Jewish congregation of Semen in what is today Serbia. He was inspired by the nationalism in the air, but it was the 1840 Damascus affair that turned him into a full, blown political Zionist, though that term didn't exist yet. The term Zionist didn't exist. In February of 1840, a Catholic friar named Father Thomas went missing into Damascus, along with his Muslim servant, Ibrahim Amara. Now, Father Thomas was known to have been involved in some shady business dealings, and most historians assume that he and Amara were killed by business rivals or unhappy customers. We don't know for sure because the bodies have never been found, but Father Thomas' order, the Kapuchin Franciscans, I think that's how you pronounce it, they were not historians. They were 19th century Catholics still 125 years away from the Vatican II declaration that formally absolves all Jews of their collective culpability

16:22for the death of Jesus. In other words, their religious tradition automatically painted all Jews as God-killers. From there, it was a hop-skip and a jump to the Jews killed them to use their blood to make Mata. And when bones were found and the sewers under the Jewish quarter, well, it was game over. Even though experts couldn't verify whether the bones were even human, you can guess what happened next. Roundups, detentions, torture, forced confessions, the deaths by torture of Jewish community leaders, the kidnapping of 60 Jewish children by local authorities in an effort to make their parents confess. But it was the willingness of the European press to repeat and even endorse the blood libel that shocked so many Jews. Maybe Jews should stop being shocked. There was, however, a glimmer of hope, and that was Jewish solidarity. European and American Jews lobbied local leaders hard to intervene and the British queen and the US Secretary of State spoke out against the arrests.

17:23But it was only after a delegation of prominent Jews lobbied the Sultan in Constantinople that their remaining prisoners were released. By the way, the charges were never officially dropped in Father Thomas' grave, so still says he was killed by Jews. Nice, lovely. Back in Semlin, Rabbi Al-Khalai was struck by an all-too-familiar epiphany. Anti-Semitism is never going to end. Not in the Arab world, not among Catholics, not among the so-called Enlightened Western Europeans, which meant that the only answer to the so-called Jewish question was, not a word called Zionism, but Tishuvah. Usually we translate Tishuvah as repentance, bad translation. The Hebrew ruch Shu, literally means return. And this was exactly what Rabbi Al-Khalai proposed in his 1843 treatise, Minchat Yudah, dedicated to our brothers, the children of Israel, who dwell in the city of Damascus. The Jewish people's physical return to a Jewish land, a Jewish language, and a shared national life, exactly as the ancient prophets had predicted prophesied.

18:23Anyway, this mass returned to the ancient Jewish land sounded like a pipe dream. But Al-Khalai had thought it through a lot, inspired by an earlier thinker named Rabbi Bebus. As well as very concrete directions in the Hebrew Bible. Just check out Duteronomy 30, 1 to 3 if you want to fact-check this. The idea is once Jews physically arrive in the land, God will follow. Rabbi Al-Khalai proposed building a great assembly of Jewish leaders, raising funds for buying land, and reviving Hebrew as a spoken language. Of course, all of this required money and influence so the Rabbi appealed to wealthy and powerful Jews for help. Prominent Jews had stepped into save the surviving Jewish prisoners of Damascus. What if they used their influence to ensure that vulnerable Jews would never need saving again? Now you might have noticed that I've been talking about 19th century Zionism for a while without even mentioning the father of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl. That's because Herzl wasn't even born yet.

19:25You know who was though? His grandpa, Simon Loeb Herzl, who just happened, this is so fascinating, to be one of Rabbi Al-Khalai's few disciples. Ali Michelle, editor of the Hamizraqi magazine, puts it plainly, scholars have traced the line from there. Bebos, to Al-Khalai, Al-Khalai to the Herzl family, and from that home to the man who convened the first Zionist Congress in 1897. In other words, there was no political Zionism without religious Zionism. The entire movement was based on centuries of religious longing, expressed in the new language of nationalism. Herzl just stripped out the religious angle. Rabbi Al-Khalai did eventually make it to the land of Israel, but he didn't live to see many of his ideas find widespread acceptance among the world's Jews. Neither did his contemporary, Rabbi Tsfiher Shkalleshir, who was making a similar argument in Prussia, a country that doesn't exist anymore. But another Rabbi, Samuel Moelever, did, or Shmuel Moelever, depending on how you want to pronounce it. Today, Rabbi Moelever is credited with co-founding

20:27the Khobovate Zion movement, literally the lovers of Zion. Like Al-Khalai, he was galvanized by horror. In his case, the brutal pogroms of 1881. And like Rabbi Al-Khalai, he understood that the best way forward was to appeal to wealthy donors. So in 1882, he traveled to Paris to convince Baron Edmund, to Rothschild, to bankroll the small, struggling Jewish farming settlements in Palestine. That's what the region was known as at the time. It worked, and the Baron soon earned the nickname Hanadeev Hayidua, the known philanthropist, and sometimes even the father of the Yeshua for financing the purchase and development of more than 125,000 acres of land across Ottoman Palestine. Rabbi Moelever and his ideological successors didn't care that the Baron was not religiously observant. The rabbis theology held that simply buying the land was a religious act. So was planting a vineyard, draining a swamp, and establishing the first Jewish-owned factory in the area. As he put it in a letter read at the first Zionist Congress in 1897, the resettlement of our country

21:28is one of the fundamental commandments of our Torah. As Rabbi Moelever and his predecessor saw it, God wasn't going to hand over national redemption on a silver platter. God wanted human action right here on earth, and it did not matter if the work was done by deeply traditional Jews who kept their heads covered and maybe had sidewalks as well, or by atheists who ate sandwiches and plowed fields on Yom Kippur. It was the work itself that would bring redemption, not merely the piety of the worker. By the time the first Zionist Congress rolled around in 1897, this idea had caught on among some to vow Jews. Not all, not by Longshan, which brings us to our next chapter. The religious case against Zionism, chapter 2, the Three Othes. The Babylonian Talmud is full of all sorts of unexpected stuff. What to do if your ox gores your neighbor? Whether you can send a proxy to get married and your stead, how to spot the demons lurking around us at all times? That's a wild ride. So you'd expect its most controversial passage,

22:30at least controversial among Jews to be pretty, pretty, pretty spicy. You'd be wrong. Here it is. Traptych Tupot, page 111A. Outlines 3-0s. One, the Jews must not return to Israel as a wall, meaning in a mass organized movement. Two, the Jews must not rebel against the nations of the world. Three, the nations of the world must not subjugate the Jews excessively. Now, we could sit here and argue about exactly what all this means until the cows come home. The rabbis of the Talmud certainly did. So have Jewish scholars across the generations, but it wasn't until the 19th century that the Three Othes became a lightning rod. For many devout, Ashkenazi Jews, the Talmud was crystal clear that the Jewish people would remain in exile until God shows to redeem them, which meant that anyone who tried to end the exile prematurely was violating God's will. Again, most early Zionists didn't particularly care about God's will. Most of the movements early leaders were proudly secular. Even rebelling against Judaism, many called for the creation of a new Jew

23:31who would work the land instead of studying Torah, who would profane Hebrew the Holy Tung, the language of the Torah with ordinary secular conversation. Some early Zionists thinkers went even further, insisting on throwing aside Judaism for some new non-religious Hebrew identity, whatever that meant. So I don't blame the devout Ashkenazi Jews of the period for very recently, asking, yo, what are you even trying to redeem us from anti-Semitism or Judaism itself? Not to mention, who are you to preempt God's plans? Honestly, the rabbis didn't even need to point to the Three Oathes to ground their objections. All it took was a look at the movement trying to lure their children away from Torah to decide, nope, design is themself and ain't for us, not for me! All of which made Ashkenazi religious Zionists like rabbis, Calusher and Moelever, the minority among traditional Ashkenazi Jews, aka Jews who spent the long years of exile in Christian Europe. But Sephardic Jews like Rabbi Bebas and Rabbi Al-Khalai

24:31took a completely different approach to modern Zionism and in fact Judaism itself. For the record, when I talk about Sephardic Jews, I am referring both to Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, as well as Jews who settled in the Muslim world. These differences are super complicated, but I'll do my best to explain them as simply as I can. In Europe, the Enlightenment and modernity produced a dramatic split. Some Jews, including many early Zionists, rebelled completely against religious tradition, others responded by becoming stricter, more conservative, more insular, and more exacting in their approach to observance. You were either religious or you were secular. No shades of gray. It was Ashkenazi Jews who adopted denominations, orthodox conservative reform, each with their own sets of rules, norms, and cultures. But among Sephardic Jews, such divisions were less. Far less pronounced. Of course, many Sephardic Jews were and are strictly observant, but many saw themselves as traditional, neither entirely secular nor entirely observant.

25:33In the Sephardic world, faith doesn't necessarily translate to meticulous observance. So when political Zionism began making waves, Sephardic Jews were all in, even deeply observant Jews didn't worry too much about the dangers of modernity or the threat of secular Zionism. And when Israel was established in 1948 and the Arab world violently discouraged nearly one million Jews, these new immigrants came to view the state of Israel as a lifeline. Nearly 80 years later, you're far far less likely to find a Sephardic anti-Zionist than an Ashkenazi one. Again, these are generalizations. They are. But the takeaway here is that Zionism, both religious and secular, fit very comfortably into the Sephardic view of the world. For devout Ashkenazi Jews, particularly in the early years of the movement, it was a lot more complicated. That's what makes the early Ashkenazi religious Zionists so compelling. Today, they're commonplace in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the religious Zionist

26:35rabbis of Europe were in the minority. The secularism of the overall movement didn't scare them off. In fact, the philosopher, Michael Goodman, points out that it was exactly this secularism that allowed observant Jews to become political Zionists in the first place. Sounds counterintuitive at first, but think about it. Political Zionism had never claimed to be a religious movement. It wasn't interested in redeeming Judaism or rewriting Jewish observance. If it had been traditional rabbis, whatever resisted it as a rival theology, but hurtful Zionism didn't make claims about Judaism, per se, but about Jews, specifically about Jewish safety and Jewish survival. And when the 6th Zionist Congress rolled around in 1903, safety and survival were the only items on the agenda. The world had changed. Would the movement change with it? Chapter 3, Uganda Today, Kishenev is the capital of Moldova, home to a few thousand Jews. But in 1903, it was 40% Jewish, a relatively prosperous corner of the pale settlement,

27:35at least until the program that changed everything. We talked about Kishenev in an earlier episode, which was linked in the show notes. So I'm not going to rehash why this program changed the course of Jewish history in a way that others didn't. All you need to know was that the world was horrified by the carnage. Meanwhile, Theodore Hurtzel was frantic. He'd been saying it for years, now maybe someone powerful would listen. The Jews needed safety, and they needed it now, now. Turns out someone was listening, someone with a lot of power and influence, someone who controlled a ridiculous amount of the world's territory and had the authority to just hand it over. British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain needed someone to watch out for England's East Africa. The Jews needed a safe haven. It was a win-win, or it would have been if the Jewish people had any historical or spiritual connection at all to East Africa, which they didn't, they don't, and they never will. And if the British settlers had actually wanted the Jews there

28:38to say nothing of the native East Africans, who were of course not consulted. But Kishenev had changed the calculus. Jews needed safety, and they needed it fast. So Hurtzel brought the Uganda to the sixth Zionist Congress of 1903, making sure to emphasize that this would be temporary, just to stop over on the way to the Promised Land. Moses wandered 40 years he argued, and we can take a detour. When he finished his speech, the hall exploded. The socialist torrented him. The Russian delegation stormed out, wailing and rending their shirts as though they were mourners sitting Shiva. Yes, the Russians, the very same people who were living through the pogrom screamed and accused Hurtzel of betrayal. Meanwhile, a 23-year-old Russian journalist who was covering the Congress for an underground socialist newspaper declared that the Zionist movement was finished. Nerd-corner alert, that journalist was Leon Trotsky. History is completely insane.

29:38But not everyone was rending their garments in English. Once the delegates collected themselves, the Congress proposed sending a commission to Uganda, and the motion passed. Among the delegates who voted yes, for the Uganda plan, was Rabbi Yitzhak Yako Rhinus, student and disciple of Rabbi Samuel Moelever. If Rabbi Moelever had opened the door to a religious secular partnership, Rabbi Rhinus walked right through it. He had founded the Mizrahi movement. Remember, I just quoted Ellie Michelle from the magazine, Hamizrachi? Well, that movement, the Mizrahi movement, was the organized religious wing of political Zionism that Rhinus started in 1902, throwing his full support behind Hurtzel's secular and political Zionism. And yet, here he was, voting in favor of sending an exploratory expedition to East Africa, a region of the world with absolutely no historical or religious significance to the Jewish people. Why? Why would a religious Zionist, a man who believed that settling the land of Israel was a divine imperative suddenly supporting this crazy plan?

30:43Today, when so many of us think of religious Zionists, our minds go to the extremes, to the so-called hilltop youth setting up shop on every hill in Judea, to people who are described as settlers, to people who swear that the West Bank is wholly ground and refuse to see an inch. But as the story of Rhinus demonstrates, that is not how the movement started. Back in 1903, the religious wing of the Zionist movement was ready to give up any part of the land of Israel, at least temporarily, in exchange for safety. Why? To words, Piqua, nefesh. If that sounded like Jibershti, well, it was Hebrew, an English saving a life. This is the trump card that beats almost every other commitment. There is very, very little that is as important to Jews as staying alive, and you are permitted to do almost anything to save a life. Either your own or someone else's, so if a detour in East Africa would save Jewish lives, Rabbi Rhinus was all in. In 1904,

31:43the movement did send a delegation to East Africa, but they came back with a pretty dismal report claiming that the land was uninhabitable. The Seventh Zionist Congress officially rejected the proposal in 1905, at which point the Brits were sent to the offer. Very, you can't find me, I quit energy there, Brin. The Ugandan plan was dead in the water, but the Zionist movement was stronger than ever, and it was about to get an unexpected boost from an unlikely source, a mystic whose writings would echo well into the future, changing religious Zionism in unexpected ways. The Mystic. From the outside, the Valyche Nishiva didn't look like much. I've actually been there, but looks can be deceiving. From 1803 to 1939, this was the school where the most brilliant Jewish boys went to argue and debate and soak up thousands of years of scholarship. It was a deeply traditional place. Its tomat classes packed full each day with a few state mandated secular classes sat more or less empty, not exactly the kind of school that you'd expect to churn out

32:47diehard Zionists. I'm going to tell you more about Valyche Nishiva in two weeks, in the conversation that I had with you in a mercy, which was so awesome. But for our purposes, I need to tell you about an incredible Valyche Nishiva along, one who had brilliant and innovative ideas, but who sadly did not live to see his ideas take hold. The far-ranging influence would come many years after his death. But the ideas of Abraham Isaacuk, aka, Rev. Avrami Psychoan Cook, are the hinge upon which this entire story turns. Rabbi Cook, or Rev. Cook, was a brilliant scholar, but he was also a Mystic, certain that underneath the surface of ordinary life lay complex and invisible spiritual machinery. And whether they knew it or not, all human beings even diehard atheists helped keep this machinery going. So when Rabbi Cook, or Rev. Cook, took a position as the chief Rabbi of Jaffa in 1904, he was certain that this machinery was at work. Just not how anyone could have expected or predicted. On the one hand, the Jews were returning to the land of Israel, just as the prophets had

33:52prophesied. On the other, these early Zionists were not only secular, but they were anti-religious, who viewed Judaism as old-fashioned religious superstition. So how could he Arabi a man who loved God and observed Jewish law stringently possibly viewed this return to the land by these particular people as not just a good thing, but a slice of a divine redemption? After observing the secular pioneers work from sun up till sundown, and then dance under the stars, he found his answer in Kabbalah. Now, Rev. Cook was a Kabbalistic genius, and I am well not. So bear with me as I try to unpack exactly what that means. The Kabbalah states that the Jewish people have a collective soul, known as Knessa Israel. Yes, we all have our own individual souls, but we also have a stake in the collective spiritual essence of the Jewish people. If your Jewish that is, which is bigger than anyone person and greater than some of its parts, and no matter what's happening with us on an

34:53individual level, the collective soul of the Jewish people is always yearning for God. But how does it express that yearning through the individual? And each individual has their own way of drawing closer to God, whether they know it or not. Their own way of serving and nourishing the collective, which meant that these pioneers craved God too. They just didn't know it. They rebelled not because they hated God, but because they secretly longed for him. And though they might not have thought of themselves as part of a spiritual collective, Ravkuk saw their work as an expression of the collective soul's devotion to God. Even the most secular and tight religious pioneer came to the Holy Land to build a Jewish home and ensure the safety of future generations of Jews. What was that devotion to other Jews if not an expression of the collective soul? This concept was revolutionary. It was revolutionary. It was a rebel in this way. Where other rabbis of his background looked at the secular Zionists and saw an abomination horrible. Ravkuk saw a divine spark, an indispensable

35:59ingredient for the coming of the Messiah, and in response, most secular Zionists treated this eccentric mystical scholar with the same deep respect he showed them. In 1913, Ravkuk, along with other rabbis, embarked on a month-long journey to visit the tiny farming settlements along the Galilee. Ravkuk and his colleagues hoped to encourage these completely secular farmers to maintain Jewish traditions, particularly those related to agriculture. Side note, the Torah is very particular about the agriculture of the Holy Land. But he had no interest in coercion or guilt that's just not a style. Instead, as he told the farmers of Porya, quote, we have to bind together all Jews. From the oldest rabbi in Jerusalem to the youngest laborer in Porya. And then he showed them exactly what that looked like. Later that evening, he took off his own coat and offered it to a watchman on duty who was wearing a beddewin cloak. As the two swapped

37:01out their outerwear, Ravkuk said, I wore your clothes and you wore mine. We've exchanged on the outside. Let us exchange on the inside too. Let us join together in our hearts. And then he danced with the farmers of Porya deep into the night. The chief rabbi in the farm hands, linking hands under the stars. Because ultimately, Ravkuk believed the Jewish return would renew the religion itself, that the old forms of Judaism shaped by centuries of exile would soon meet the energy of national revival. You can call this a kind of spiritual nationalism. But Ravkuk did not like that term. As Ihu Demersky writes, quote, cook categorically denies that Jewish nationalism is akin to non-Jewish nationalism. Because the former is guided not by passion but the mind, and thus knows that its true vocation is an ethical mission for the benefit of all humanity. End quote. Back to the story, Ravkuk believed that nationalism unmoored from Jewish moral tradition

38:04could easily become shulvanistic, xenophobic, and violent. If it didn't further a larger religious and ethical mission, he wasn't interested. As he saw it, the Jews returned to the land of Israel should be a blessing to all of humanity. Keep that in the back of your mind. We're going to return to this later. As is so often the case with the visionaries, Ravkuk's ideas never quite took off in his lifetime, or guided exactly by him. To the sectorists, he was still a strictly observant rabbi with rigid religious demands. Some even found his theology insulting, turns out some people didn't appreciate being told that they don't know their own minds. Meanwhile, to many in the religious establishment, Ravkuk was rubber stamping heresy. Turns out, some deeply religious people didn't appreciate lines like the souls of this generation sinners come from a higher place than the souls of the pious. Yep, he said that. And both sides had good reason to ask, hey rabbi, who made you the interpreter of everyone's soul? But most

39:06ordinary people who fell somewhere in between fanatical atheists and religious fanatic, by the way, insulting to both of those people, they loved Ravkuk, no matter their religious affiliation. So when the rabbi passed away in 1935, more than 80,000 people lined the streets of Jerusalem for his funeral, shops and cinemas closed. Everyone showed up to honor him, religious Jews, secular Zionists, political leaders, and ordinary folks. But they had turned out to honor the man, not necessarily his ideas, because Ravkuk's ideas were nowhere close to mainstream. The official religious Zionist movement, Misrachiy, shied away from his mysticism. There is was a practical Zionism. Work with the secular Zionists, build institutions, participate in public life, and leave the messianic stuff and the messianic questions alone. They could not have predicted the seismic change that would soon be upon them. Chapter 5, politeness. On May 14, 1948, a modern movement

40:0650 years in the making finally achieved its aims. An ancient aspiration had been miraculously fulfilled, and suddenly the theoretical became real, and I know in a history podcast, I should not say words like miraculous. But it felt that way. The state of Israel was reborn, and after 1900 years, Jews were a sovereign people once more. Last time around, they had been ruled by King. This time they established a parliamentary republic with various political parties, fighting over the parliaments 120 seats. They were a diverse and often fractious bunch. The first connesset of 1949 boasted a communist party, an Arab party, a party concert almost entirely with a role of women, as well as the United religious front, a union of four religious parties, two Zionists, two not. There are very few constants in Israel's crowded political landscape. Parties shift and morph and cannibalize each other, or else they split into even smaller and more specific entities. That's exactly what happened with the National Religious Party, aka

41:08Miflagad, Tatyit Leumit, aka Mafdal. By 1959, the smaller religious Zionist parties had merged, and they remained a coalition partner in almost every connesset, the parliament until 2003, working with both the labor leftists and later the liquid firebrands. For the first few decades of Israel's existence, they were respectable, modern, polite. They handled religious affairs, and made sure the army provided kosher food, and that buses did not run on Shabbat. As the historian, yet your attendger put it, the religious Zionists were basically the casher at the kosher supervisors on the train of Zionism. If labor was at the wheel, in charge of the root and the destination, Mifdal's job was to walk through the cars and make sure nothing trade happened on the way. Their ambitions were modest, they reached limited. They didn't believe they were destined to take over the whole national project, and they certainly did not make grand messianic claims. Until they did. Chapter 6, the Shofar

42:09Israel's 19th Independence Day, May 1967. The war that would change everything was still three weeks away hadn't happened yet. No one could escape the tension in the air, the sense of impending doom. But for one day only, the students at Merkazirav, Ravkuk's ishiva, said all that aside. This was a day for celebration. But when their rabbi got up to speak, he veered wildly off script. Rabbi Tsvi Huda Cook, son of the Ojirof Cook, was now in his 70s, but his rhetorical prowess remained as sharp as ever. His speech began with the happiest moments in modern Jewish history when almost 20 years earlier, David Bengurian, had stood up and declared, he, Medinat Israel, was his Hebrew, which meant we announce at this moment the establishment of the Jewish state, which is going to be called the state of Israel, or something like that. But instead of rejoicing, he reminded his students that their country was not complete. Whereas our Hebron,

43:12whereas our Hebron he asked rhetorically, have we forgotten her, whereas our Shechem, our Yeriko, Jericho, where they divided the land of God, I could not go outside to dance and rejoice. An old rabbi at a party weeping about a map. I want you to picture the room, because I guarantee you that some of the young men sitting there thought we love him, and he is living in the past. The borders are the borders. I know there might not be official or whatever, but like these are the borders, we're lucky to have a state at all. Three weeks later, the tension that had simmered all summer finally broke. Israel had spent weeks listening to threats from radio Cairo and radio Damascus, digging 10,000 graves in debating whether to send the children away so that someone would survive their coming slaughter. Instead, I'm going to use this word again. A miracle. Within six days, the Israeli army captured the Sinai, Gaza, the Golan, and the entire West Bank, the cradle of ancient Jewish civilization. Hebron, Jarricho, Yeriko, Shchem, Nablus, the old city of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount,

44:17every single place the rabbi had named the rabbi spoke about his lacrimos independence they speech now rebranded as prophecy. And suddenly, the entire country found itself in need of a new vocabulary. Every day, political language simply couldn't capture the wonder of this moment. Previously, secular Israelis reached for biblical stories. The ancient temple suddenly loomed large in the Israeli imagination. The quavering words of IDF Brigade Commander Mata Gore seared indelibly into every Jew's mind. Ha-ha-bayyid biyadeh new, the Temple Mount is in our hands. We've described this moment before in our series on the Sixth Day War. You gotta listen to it, but it bears repeating. Imagine a group of Israeli paratroopers bursting through the lion's gate into the old city of Jerusalem, fighting their way through the narrow alleys asking directions from nervous passerby, which way to the Western Wall? And then they arrived. For the first time, since Jordan captured the city in 1948, Jews stood before their ancient holy site,

45:22filthy and bloodstained and exhausted. Some wounded, some haunted by the faces of dead friends. Many were secular. Some probably would have said they didn't believe in God at all. And yet, with their hands pressed against the ancient stones, they wept. Hug the wall close and kiss its face as the army's chief rabbi, Schlommel Gaurin, blew the shofar, the ram's horn, the instrument you hear on Rojashana, that is said to open the gates of prayer. It's blessed, split the sky with the force of revelation of redemption, not a single Jewish person alive remained untouched by the miracle. IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, who was about as secular as a person could be, was given the honor of choosing a name for the war. He picked Mechemet Sheshet Hayamim, the Sixth Day War. Just as God had made the world in six days, Israel had remade its own reality in the same time frame. The victory was so unlikely it had to be divine.

46:23After the Sixth Day War, it felt like redemption was on the horizon, just as the Hebrew Bible prophesied. People who had never heard of Ruf Kuk before were suddenly sifting through the rabbis famously cryptic and mystical body of work, finding lines that read like truth, like prophecy. But the glorious victory of the Sixth Day War also carried a nagging question that we still have not answered. What was Israel going to do about the one million people already living in the territories that now controlled? The Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza had homes, communities, memories, fears, and national aspirations. The biblical sites that stirred Jewish longing had been their home for generations. Some religious scientists believed it was their duty to establish Jewish communities throughout these newly captured territories even as Palestinians continued to live there. These were the spiritual forefathers of today's territorial maximists, the religious Zionists who believe that if settling the West Bank, Judean Samaria,

47:23as a divine imperative, withdrawing from the sacred ground, is tantamount to sin. But other religious thinkers urged caution. Rabbi Joseph Barrasolvichik, one of the towering rabbinic leaders of the 20th century, and the dominant intellectual figure of modern orthodoxy, believed passionately in Israel and Jewish sovereignty. But he never claimed that this state had ushered in a messianic timeline. Meanwhile, the scholar Yishai Alebivitz, who is both meticulously orthodox and his own brand of Zionists, warned that this military victory had no automatic religious meaning. He feared that ruling over another people would corrupt Israel, turning Judaism into a costume for nationalism. At the end of the day, for many young religious Zionists, the war had confirmed all of Ravkuk's beliefs about Zionism as the precursor to redemption. But they did not yet believe they should lead the country. The old labor Zionists' heroes remained larger than life, Moshe Dayan, Golden Mayer, Yitzhak Rabin, they had built the state, they had won the wars,

48:26they were still the adults in the room. But on Yom Kippur of 1973, it became shatteringly. Akingly clear, that there were no adults in the room after all, Egypt and Syria had unleashed a devastating attack, catching the country's leaders unprepared with catastrophic results. It took six days to build an aura of Israeli invincibility. It took one minute and 10,000 Egyptian shells to destroy it. By the end of the war, more than 2,000 Israeli soldiers were killed. Dead, and so was Israel's confidence in its leaders. A generation of religious Zionists began to wonder if they had spent too long following instead of leading the country to where it needed to go. But where exactly did the country need to go? What vision would the movement lead it towards? That, my friends, is where we will pick up next week. Unpacking Israeli history is a production of unpacked and open-door media brands Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a rating on Apple

49:27or Spotify. It really helps other people find the show. So please do that. And one more time, I love hearing from you, so email me at noonadunpacked.media. This episode was produced by Riftge Stern. Our team for this episode includes Simon Apfel, Adele Bos, Jenny Falcon, Rob Perra, and Ari Schlacht. I'm your host, Noam Weisman. Thanks for being here. See you next week. Is the West Bank reality apartheid? Are Palestinians defined only by their opposition to Israel? What is the future of Judaism? What's Israel's relationship with its Arab neighbors? Amir Miyau, host of the new podcast from Unpacked, Borderlines with That Semied. These are the kinds of questions that end friendships and dinner parties. The ones most people won't touch. On Borderlines with That Semied, I walk straight through the minefield. Every episode I start on the street asking regular people what they really think about the question everyone's arguing over. And then I sit down with an expert or insider who lives it. Often someone who sees it completely differently than I do. And instead of scoring points, we actually talk. A Palestinian political leader,

50:29and Ethiopian Israeli scholar, Arabi rethinking what Judaism is becoming. I bring strong convictions. So today, we leave behind the talking points and have real conversations that most people are afraid to have. Come for the questions you've been scared to ask. Stay for the honest answers. Search Borderlines with That Semied on YouTube or wherever you're listening right now. New episodes weekly.