RELIGIOUS ANTI ZIONISIM

 (Posted by Frenchie)

Prior to Christmas, both Tim Rohr and myself wrote several articles regarding a Catholic approach to the conflict in Palestine, explaining the origins of Zionism, and the strange phenomenon of Christian Zionism, both of which are widely viewed as the origin, or at least as the major contributing factor to the quasi eradication of Christians in the land of our Lord Jesus Christ. A situation unseen prior to 2023, even during the darkest times of the Muslim expansion, the Crusades and/or the so called Western colonization of the Levant.

One issue that is largely occulted by the majority of the western media is the fact that the most anti Zionist movements have historically been found within the ranks of the Jewish faith practitioners who view Zionism as a dangerous heresy, which threatens Jews around the world. Hence, I felt it was necessary to equip the lectors and supporters of this blog with a concise analysis of that religious opposition to Zionism, in order for well meaning Catholics to approach this extremely divisive issue, with a good understanding of its background and a new wealth of knowledge, in order not to be manipulated by ill will groups, using this problem as an opportunity to weaken our faith, our beliefs and simply the truth.

One of the important thing I noticed since the rekindling of the Conflict in Palestine, is that most of the original demonstrators in western countries were actually different Jewish groups, both religious and atheist who supported Palestine or were against Israel. These groups were often labeled in our medias as pro Hamas, or pro Terrorist, a mantra regurgitated ad nauseum by an Army of well meaning useful idiots who use the tired old "ad hitlerum" arguments we have been bombarded with for the last 75 years.

In his excellent book: "Messianic origins and genesis of Zionism" Historian Y. Hindi contradicts the accepted Historiography that wants us to believe that Zionism's origin goes back to the end of the 19th century, in its laic version. Most historians who attempted to research an earlier source of this movement have all stopped at the British Calvinists of the XVII century . According to them, these British millenium advocates would be at the source of the original project of return of the Jews to the Holy Land, in order to hasten the return of Christ. In his book published in 2015, Y. Hindi traces back the genealogy of Zionism all the way back to the Medieval Period, throughout the Rabbinistic, Messianic, and Kabbalistic movences, and underlines how this active messianism had profoundly influenced the new millenium Protestant subgroups. The major factor that has rendered most Historians blind to the Jewish origins of Zionism (specially Jewish and Israeli, like Yakov Rabkin and Shlomo Sand) is in fact quite simple to understand: The Talmud forbids Jews to return to the Holy Land in order to found a Nation.

Rabbi Elbo (3rd century) master of the Talmud commenting on the Cantic of Cantics: 2,7 " I implore you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and the does in the field, do not provoke, do not awaken love before they wish it" Declares: "Four vows are mentioned here: The Israelites are adjured not to revolt against the kingdoms of this world (the secular powers) not to "hasten the end", not to reveal her mysteries to Nations, not to rise from exile like a wall (understand in great number) " Why then the Messiah-King should return? To assemble the exiles from Israel." (Babylonian Talmud, Shir-ha Shirim rabba II, Ketubot 111a)

To resume simply, Jews MUST wait for their Messiah who shall bring them back to the Holy Land. They must NOT in any way hurry his arrival, or the messianic times.

Zionism a laicized Messianism

I shall not come back on this long History, simply I shall remind the reader that Zionism is the unleashing (in the meaning of letting loose, or freeing) of the interdictions, and the victory against the forces inside judaism, who held back the apocalyptic messianic tendencies, which implied the use of the Hebraic Bible, with its supremacist and genocidal books and passages (book of Joshua, the end of Deuteronomy), as a political manual, even by atheist jews, like Vladimir Jabotinsky ( the founder of the revisionist zionists, the far right wing of the movement), or like David Ben Gurion (socialist), and their heirs.

Zionism like other modern ideologies, is a laicization of Judaism and its Messianism.

Despite his own Atheism, the first leader of the State of Israel, David Ben Gurion was organizing bible Studies at his own home in the 1950s.

As head of State, he understood clearly the power of using the Biblical texts as political and strategic tools, and he did so intelligently.  He used them as a background for the collective past, and in shaping  the narrative of homeland for hundred of thousands of different new immigrants to tie them to the land, and unify them, as one people. Biblical stories were used to structure his daily political rhetoric, and his personal identification to Moises or Joshua were heartfelt, and appear to have been honest. In a similar way to the original French Revolutionary leaders who were certain to incarnate the roles of Senators of the Antique Roman Republic, Ben Gurion and many of the other leaders of the Zionist Revolution, Military leaders and State thinkers also believed firmly that they were replaying the conquest of the Biblical State, and rebuilding the kingdom of David. The events of contemporary History could only explain their justification on a set paradigme scenery of the past.

At the occasion of the conquest of the Sinai desert during the war of 1956, and after Tsahal reached Sharm el Sheik, Ben Gurion made a speech for the victorious soldiers, by using Biblical references in a stunning Messianic declaration: "...and we shall once more sing the Chants of Moses and of the sons of Israel....in a shared commun elan with the ancient armies of Israel. You have rekindled our links with King Solomon who made Eilat the first port of Israel, 3000 years ago...with Yotvata (known as Tiran) which constituted 1400 years ago an independent Hebrew State, which allowed it to become a part of the third Kingdom of Israel."

All the complexity and ambiguity of zionism reside in this contradiction between Atheism and Religiosity, between materialism and messianism. It is an ideology which takes root in the Jewish tradition, while violating Jewish Law; it uses the Hebraic Bible as its model, while breaking its own tenets.

 The political zionism of the end of the XIX century is a form of messianism, without a messiah and without a God. In this contradiction it is a laicized version of the Lurianic Kabbalah, (16th century) according to which the Jewish people is an actor of its own redemption and of the reparation of the world (tikkun olam), by excluding God and his Messiah from this Historical Religious process.

After this brief introduction to the laicized Messianic Zionism, lets delve into the core of the subject.

As we said earlier, both a religious and an atheist Zionism exist. Yet, facing these two heretical zionism, exist both a religious and a secular anti zionist movement. To clearly understand anything further, the arguments of the religious anti zionist movement must be known and understood by all; first of all because they are directly linked to the Jewish Orthodoxy, but also because they can be useful and utilized on the field of religious arguments which we have been brought to by the Israeli leaders. Here we are specifically facing Netanyahu who is publicly declaring that he is fulfilling the prophesies of Isaiah, that Israel is the people of the light, while the Palestinians, they are massacring by the bushels are the people of darkness, and human animals.

It is also an answer to the atheist jews who do not believe in God, but believe that this same God promised them the Holy Land, without conditions. To both the religious Jewish Zionists and the Atheists who use the Hebraic Bible as a road map, it is important to answer  them precisely with the arguments of Orthodox Judaism.

Promised Land, with or without condition?

When the Hebrews were ready to enter the promised land, after their escape from Egypt, God put conditions on their stay in what is now Palestine; so Moses warned the Hebrews:

"When you have children, and children's children, and have grown old in the land ; should you then act corruptly by fashioning an idol in the form of anything, and by this evil done in his sight provoke the Lord, your God, I call heaven and earth this day to witness against you, that you shall all quickly perish from the land which you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You shall not live in it for any length of time but shall be utterly wiped out. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples and there shall remain but a handful of you among the nations to which the Lord will drive you. There you shall serve gods that are works of human hands, of wood or stones, gods that can never see or hear, neither eat nor smell." Deuteronomy 4, 25-28

In another book of the Torah, leviticus, you can read this ominous warning:

"Otherwise the land will vomit you out also for having defiled it, just as it vomited out the nations before you." Leveticus 18,28

The Grand Rabbi, and famous Exegete, Rachi (1040-1105) commented on this passage that way: " otherwise the land will vomit you. This resembles a Prince who was fed a disgusting dish: he cannot keep it in his system, and has to vomit it". It is the same with Erets Ysrael (the land of Israel) it cannot keep the sinners. The Targum Angelos use the word to empty.  "The land is emptying itself of them".

Still further in Leveticus, we can read this other warning: " Be careful to observe all my statutes, and all my decrees; otherwise the Land where I am bringing you to dwell will vomit you out." Leviticus 20.22

According to Or ha-Haim, Classical commentary written by the Morrocan Great Rabbi Haim ben Atar (1696-1743) the first warning is addressed to the sinners that the Land will vomit, while the second warning is addressed to the practicing and pious Jews who will also be vomited, because they did not opposed the sinners.

Expulsion, destruction and Divine retribution.

If the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians (- 722), if the Kingdom of Judah and the first temple were destroyed by the Babylonians (-586) and the 2nd temple was destroyed by the Romans AD70, it was due to Divine Retribution.

The Talmud is non equivocal on the subject, the cause of the destruction of the temple by the Romans is the sins of the Jews, in particular the "unchecked hatred" among the jews (Babylonian Talmud, treatise "Yoma" p.9b) According to the jewish tradition, the sons of Israel have soiled the Holy Land, therefore they have been punished and expulsed from it.

Redemption cannot be obtained by the establishment through physical force of a Jewish State. On the contrary, it is a violation of the Law, that can only lead to another punishment, because it amounts to usurp the place of God himself, as Columbia University professor Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi reminds us.

Redemption and Zionism cannot be put together, they are like water and oil. Redemption happens suddenly, and ends the exile; the creation of the State of Israel is not an act of redemption, in fact it hinders Redemption. 

From there on, one can understand the reason of the opposition of the majority of the World Rabbis to the creation of Israel until after the conclusion of the six days war (1967). Three years before the first Zionist congress of 1897 in Basel (Switzerland) Rabbi Alexander Moshe Lapidos (1819-1906) the pre-eminent Russian Rabbinic authority, had expressed his deep sorrow while faced by the first attempts of establishment of Jewish colonies in Palestine, by the Russian movement Ovevei Zion (also known as Hibbat Zion, loosely translated as the lovers of Zion) starting in 1881.

"We first believed that this sacred mace would stay true to the Lord and his people, that it would restore our souls....but since its inception it has propagated bad seeds and a putrid odor which reaches far. We are pulling back our support, we shall remain on the outside, and resist to the best of our abilities, we must assembled all our forces under the banner of God."

When Theodore Herzl attempted to organize the fist Zionist Congress in Munich, he was opposed by the General Assembly of German Rabbis. This was the main reason he finally had to settle in Basel, in order to do so.

This opposition to Zionism by the religious jewish world is not limited. The attacks by Rabbis against the project of installation of a Jewish State in the Holy land are too numerous to count.

Moritz Gudemman (1835-1918) an Historian and influent Rabbi from Vienna rejects as soon as the Zionist Congress of 1897, any attempt to separate the Jewish Nation from its Monotheist faith, as he justly perceive Zionism as a project that is essentially Atheist. He analyzed that many Zionist members were free masons, socialists or bolsheviks. Furthermore, he concluded that ever since the Babylonian exile, the Jewish Nation is a "community of believers" and that the Jewish nationalism is always a step behind, in view of the waiting for a Messianic event of a Sublime Kingdom, rather than a man made one. A few years later the Russian Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan (1838-1933) raise a similar contradiction. Rabbi Joseph Bloch (1850-1923) hailing from Galicia (formerly Austro-Hungaria, then attached to Poland) shows his opposition to Zionism, during lively debates in the Parliament of Vienna. He compares Zionism to the false Messiah and antinomist Sabbatai Tsevi (1626-1676) . Rabbi Bloch further explain to Herzl the Talmudic interdiction of the return en masse to the Holy Land, before the arrival of the Messiah.

For the anti Zionist Orthodox Jews, the creation of a secular State of Israel, is nothing but a Satanical Act; an event that can only lead to further Divine Retribution, a catastrophe for all Jews. Famous Historian Yakov Rabkin, himself a devout religious Jew, explains : " the jewish tradition tends to interpret any calamity, even minor accidents, as a consequence of the failing of the Jewish behavior." This explain the meaning of this verse from the book of the prophet Jeremiah.

" your crimes have prevented these things, your sins have turned these blessings away from you"  Jeremiah 5,25

This verse according to Yakov Rabkin "is the key concept of the Jewish Tradition. The consequences become worse, when the transgressions occur on the Land of Israel. This normative, contracted  relationship with the Land of Israel, would affect the behavior of almost all Jewish religious groups, may they be partisans or adversaries of Zionism."

What could be called catastrophology at the center of the Jewish tradition, leads us to the interpretation of the Shoah by religious jews. As we highlighted earlier that the destructions of the Kingdom of Israel, Judah, and the Temple of Jerusalem, are explained by Jewish tradition as a punishment, a retribution from God. In the same way, Orthodox Jews saw the Shoah in religious terms. Rabbi Wasserman, a contemporary of Adolf Hitler, who will be killed by the Nazis, explained the persecutions against Jews as a direct consequence of Zionism.

"Today the Jews have chosen two idols to offer sacrifices to: socialism and nationalism.... These two forms of idolatry have poisoned the souls and the hearts of Jewish Youth. Each one has his own tribe of false prophets, under the shape of writers and orators who accomplish their work with perfection. A miracle has happened in the heavens with the fusion of these two idolatries into a single one: the national socialism.  This is how in all corners of the world this frightful mace is hitting every jew with a vengeance. The abominations in front of which we prosterned ourselves are also hitting us in turn.

The judaic literature which embraces this vision of the Shoah is numerous , "it takes its sources in Jewish classics, and starts well before Auschwitz". Tells us Yakov F Rabkin. " the betrayal of the exile by the Zionists has led to the catastrophe, as the Zionist transgression is collective, so will the retribution be."

On the road to Auschwitz a Jew asked Rabbi Shelomo Zalman Ehrenreich, aka the Shimlauer Rov (1864-1944) why the Blessed Saint had unleashed this catastrophe on the Jews of Europe? He answered him: "because we have not fought the Zionists hard enough". Because any sin, even individual ones against the Torah falls back on the whole community.

The religious tradition which orders Jews to display Modesty and submit to the Nations they live in, find its source in the memories and the fears of the punishments of God, who used powerful empires to punish the Jews. These retributions shall continue to be the Archetype of the Jewish Religious History, and shall continue to lead the Rabbis to further explain the pogroms and the expulsions as retributions from God.

There has always been rebel elements, proud, arrogant, full of hubris, among the Jewish people: from Kore (who revolted against Moses) to Netanyahu, and many in between, like Bar Kokhba, Solomon Molcho, Sabbatai Tsevi, the Rothchilds, or closer to us the conservative guru Ben Shapiro and countless others who have brought Catastrophe to the Jewish people.

Today, we observe than secular Jews like Rony Brauman arrive to the same conclusions than religious jews like Yakov Rabkin, and the anti zionist religious jews of Neturi Karta. Rony Brauman declares:" for me as a Jew, I consider that Israel is threatening Israel and puts it in danger, just as they put in danger the whole Jewish population around the world."