Who killed Religious Zionism? How did it happen that the moderate, centrist, responsible Mizrachi of the 1950s and 1960s, the Mizrachi of Zerach Warhaftig and Yosef Burg, was replaced by the Mafdal (National Religious Party—NRP) of Gush Emunim, the early radical precursor of today’s “settler movement”? How did Mizrachi permit itself to be hijacked by the radical “Kooki’im,” who misrepresented the teachings of Rav Kook and who generated Gush Emunim?
We need to take a step back and look at some history. Recall, first, that religious motifs inhered in Zionism from its beginnings. But the revolutionary moment in Religious Zionism came when Rav Yitzchak Yaakov Reines, an Eastern European rabbinic leader, established in 1902 a formal religious faction—Mizrachi—within the secular Zionist movement, and promoted traditional Torah study combined with labor on the Land. The model envisioned by Rabbi Reines was that of cooperation of traditional Jews with a non-religious—indeed anti-religious—Zionism that had rejected traditional Judaism in favor of “modern” secular values.
We can identify two typologies in Religious Zionism: Rabbi Reines and Rabbi Kook. According to Rav Reines, contemporary needs demand the religious and the secular working together in order to achieve a common Zionist goal. On the other hand, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook, Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Palestine from 1921-1935, whilst he acknowledged that secular activity was a vehicle for Zionism, was no Zionist, at least not in the conventional sense. He identified neither with then anti-Zionist Agudat Yisrael nor with Mizrachi. Further, he was a messianist. No Political Zionist he, Rav Kook was the Orthodox Ahad Ha`am—an Orthodox Cultural Zionist. His teachings were ultimately—and egregiously—misrepresented in the ideology of his son Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook and by Gush Emunim.
What about the present, in America? It’s counterintuitive, this question of Religious Zionism in America. After decades during which many predicted the demise of Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy in America over the past half century is vibrant, regnant—indeed triumphant. And the Zionist expression of Orthodoxy—Religious Zionism—looks like a success story. When Modern Orthodox Jews are polled, they report multiple visits to Israel and feeling “close” to Israel. As ties to Israel have cooled in the larger American Jewish population, especially among younger people, the Orthodox tie is strong.
And of course, there is the ultimate test: aliyah. It is no revelation that, at least since the late 1960s, aliyah from the USA has been disproportionately Orthodox, with the Orthodox percentage steadily rising. Current estimates of the Orthodox share of aliyah range as high as 80%.
The problem is that “Religious Zionist” has a different meaning today from 40 and 50 years ago, as does “Orthodox.” The fact that Orthodoxy in America is strong does not translate into the strength of classical Religious Zionism. Religious Zionism historically had wide-ranging political, religious, and cultural connotations. These have disappeared.
Historically, Religious Zionism was basic. Historian Lawrence Grossman has written about the two “pillars” of Religious Zionism. First, the “Torah VaAvodah” ideology sought to achieve the synthesis of Torah and modernity. Parallel to what we used to know as Modern Orthodoxy, modernity to Religious Zionists meant that secular activities—including secular studies plus Modern Hebrew language and literature—was not only part of the picture but was not incompatible with Torah study; each in fact enhanced the other. With the polarization of the Orthodox world and diminishing of the Orthodox “center” over the past 40 years there has been a diminishing of the ideals and impact of Religious Zionism as well.
The other pillar of Religious Zionism was that of Klal Yisrael—the unity of the Jewish people—in this case meaning collaboration and cooperation in the project of national renewal even with those who were not religiously observant—which were most of the Zionists.
The transformation took place after the Six-Day War—and was nailed down after the October War in 1973—in which the territories triggered a messianic upheaval in Religious Zionist circles. The messianic interpretation of Rav Kook of Zionism, reinterpreted (or misinterpreted?) by Kook’s son, became the basis of a militant Religious Zionism focused on retaining and settling Judea and Samaria, and Gaza.
A similar pattern existed in America. In American Orthodoxy, a movement in which by the late 1960s “modernity” was losing its luster, there was (a) a narrowing of intellectual horizons, and (b) an increased influence of Zionist Messianism imported from Israel. Historian Grossman notes that this approach was poles apart from the traditional stance of Mizrachi Religious Zionism, a non-messianic approach articulated by Orthodox leader Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and others. In the new vision, Israel was now halakhically mandated to control all captured territory. Period!
What happened is that Religious Zionism, looking over its right shoulder at an American Orthodoxy that was moving in a sectarian direction, subordinated its old values—Hebrew, a religious-secular culture, the unity of the Jewish people, a responsible and centrist approach to public affairs—to the territorial issue. The fight against ceding land became what the movement is in the United States. Zionism is now defined in territorial terms, informed by a particularistic messianism. So, today, Zionists may be “religious,” but they are not part of a Religious Zionist movement. In Religious Zionism the “Religious” got pinched by the Jewish religious right; the “Zionist” got pinched by the territorial right.
Thus the pattern: from a vulgarization of halakha to achieve ideological goals; through a reading of many of the Jewish people out of the Jewish community; even to a disengagement from the state itself, expressed by some religious extremists coming out of the Modern Orthodox world—this is where much of Religious Zionism is today. The Religious Zionists of America (RZA)—the merger of Mizrachi and Hapoel Hamizrachi—is finding, to the dismay of whatever moderate leadership that is left, that the center is not holding.
The ultimate irony is that, in an era in which all of American Zionism is weak, it is precisely Religious Zionism, with its faith-based commitment to Eretz Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael, which is the one movement that could revitalize Zionism. This will not happen unless there is the will to go back to its roots of Klal Yisrael and of cultural and intellectual openness in addressing the complexities of the modern world and of contemporary Jewry.
By Jerome A. Chanes
