Zionism

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ZIONISM

ZIONISM . The origin of the word Zion is unclear. It most likely derives from a word meaning "rock" or "stronghold" or perhaps "a dry place." The first occurrence of the name is in 2 Samuel 5:7, where David captures the Jebusite city of Jerusalem. The "fortress of Zion" appears to have been the Jebusite name for the place that was henceforth to be called "the citadel of David." But although Jebusite in origin, the name Zion (Hebrew, Tsiyyon ) was assimilated into the Israelite vocabulary and became associated with the Davidic monarchy and its capital in Jerusalem. In writings of such prophets as "First Isaiah" and Jeremiah and in Psalms, the name Zion is used as a synonym first for the Temple in Jerusalem, then for the kingdom of Judah, and finally, in postexilic literature, for the Land of Israel. In the Babylonian exile the psalmist wrote: "By the waters of Babylon / There we sat down, yea, we wept / When we remembered Zion" (Ps. 137:1). Thus what was first a specific place-name came to represent symbolically the whole Land of Israel, whose people had been exiled. The particular associations between Zion and the Davidic monarchy gave the word a special resonance in later messianic literature that expressed longing not only for the return of the people to their land but also for the reestablishment of the kingdom of David.

A particular tension has informed the Jewish relationship to Zion since biblical times. On the one hand, the Land of Israel is regarded as a land specially promised to the ancient Israelites and their descendants (the term Holy Land, however, only appears once in the Hebrew Bible). According to this position, the Israelite God can be worshiped only on this sanctified territory. Thus when David flees from Saul to the land of the Philistines, he laments that "[men] have driven me out this day that I should have no share in the heritage of the Lord, saying 'Go and serve other gods'" (1 Sm. 26:19). In Psalm 137, verse 4 the writer wonders, "How shall we sing the song of YHVH in a foreign land?" In both biblical and rabbinic law, much of the agricultural, ritual, and even civil law applied only to the Land of Israel.

On the other hand, a strong universalist tendency already developed in biblical times held that God rules over all the world and can be worshipped anywhere. This tendency became particularly prominent as a result of the Babylonian exile and found expression in such exilic writers as "Second Isaiah" (Is. 40ff.). In some of this literature there is even a hint of criticism against those who wished to limit worship of God to Zion: "Thus says YHVH: with heaven my throne and earth my footstool, what house could you build me, what place could you make for my rest?" (Is. 66:1).

The realities of Jewish life during and after the Second Temple period (538 bce–70 ce) made a combination of these positions necessary. From the time of the Babylonian exile, a large Jewish community developed outside the Land of Israel and became particularly prominent during the Hellenistic and Roman Empires. Even before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 ce and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 ce), the Jews of the Diaspora probably constituted a majority of the Jewish people. Nevertheless these Jews maintained a strong connection with the Land of Israel and its religious institutions. They made regular pilgrimages to the Temple and contributed money to it for sacrifices. After the Temple was destroyed, the Palestinian community remained important until the late third century, when it began to decline, and following the Muslim conquest in the seventh century, it ceased to play a significant role in Jewish life. Even after the Temple was destroyed, the Land of Israel continued to function as a religious center for Diaspora communities, owing in part to the continuing authority of the Palestinian rabbis. But at the same time the emerging rabbinic center in Babylonia challenged its Palestinian counterparts and insisted on the equal—or sometimes even the greater—importance of its own community. From a legal point of view, these rabbis did not legislate that one must live in the land in order to fulfill all those commandments that could only be realized there. But they did make the decision of a man to "go up" to the land binding on his wife.

The rabbis developed rituals that could be practiced anywhere and yet were designed to preserve the memory of the Temple (zekher le-hurban). Such ceremonies included leaving a small area of wall unfinished in one's house. It was during this period that prayers were added to the daily service that pleaded with God:

Sound the great shofar for our freedom; raise the standard for the gathering of our exiles, and assemble us from the four corners of the earth.… Restore our judges as of old.… And to Jersualem thy city return in mercy and dwell therein as thou has spoken, rebuild it soon in our days as an everlasting building, and speedily set up therein the throne of David. (The Daily Prayer Book)

Medieval Period

The spiritual connection to Zion was kept alive during the Middle Ages primarily through literature. To be sure through the centuries there were individual Jews who made pilgrimages or actually settled in the Land of Israel, but no theology of pilgrimage developed, nor was it seen as religious obligation. The theme of Zion played an important role in the medieval liturgical poems (piyyutim) and especially in the lamentation poem (qinot) recited on the Ninth of Av (the day, according to tradition, on which the First and Second Temples were destroyed).

The best examples of secular poetry devoted to longing for Zion are found during the "classical age" of the Spanish Jews (900–1200 ce). Two themes intermingle in this poetry: descriptions of the beauty of Zion and lamentations for its ruin. Some of the Spanish Jewish writers achieved high positions in Spanish society, but their work reflects persistent attachment to the land of their forefathers. Shemuʾel ha-Nagid (933–1055/6 ce) was the vizier of Granada and the commander of its army. One of his poems, "My Heart Waxes Hot within Me," celebrates victory over his enemies, but the first part is a lament over the destruction of Zion. Thus Shemuʾel's pride over his military accomplishments was tempered by the feeling that they were incomplete as long as the Jews lived in exile.

Perhaps the most outstanding representative of this school of poets was Yehudah ha-Levi (c. 1075–1141), whose Shirei Tsiyyon (Songs of Zion) inspired many imitations later in the Middle Ages. One of his poems, ("Zion, Will You Not Seek the Welfare of Your Prisoners?") was included in the liturgy of the Ninth of Av. In another, titled, "My Heart is in the East," he wrote:

My heart is in the East and I am at the edge of the West How then can I taste what I eat, how can I enjoy it? How can I fulfill my vows and pledges, while Zion is in the domain of Edom [i.e., the Christian Crusaders] and I am in the bonds of Arabia [i.e., Muslim Spain]? It would be easy for me to leave behind the good things of Spain, just as It would be glorious to see the dust of the ruined Shrine. (The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse)

Ha-Levi emigrated to the Land of Israel toward the end of his life, although whether he moved out of ideological or pragmatic reasons remains disputed.

Moses Nahmanides (1194–1270), the twelfth-century Spanish commentator, philosopher, and mystic, who died in the land in 1270, advanced the most radical position on settlement in the land. Not only did he view it as a religious obligation, but he held that it was perhaps the cardinal obligation. Where other thinkers had noted the fact that perhaps a third of the laws of biblical and rabbinic Judaism pertained to the land—and especially to its agriculture—Nahmanides suggested that all of the commandments required performance in the land if they were to achieve their full mystical effect on the divine.

This proto-Zionist sentiment cannot be dissociated from medieval Jewish messianism. All messianic thinkers in the Middle Ages considered the return to Zion to be among the primary tasks of the Messiah. Even as messianic expectations were embroidered with supernatural fantasies, such as the belief in the resurrection of the dead, the core of Jewish messianism remained political and nationalistic: the Messiah would return the Jews to Zion, reestablish the kingdom of David, and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The movements mentioned here were all attempts to spark the messianic process by encouraging human beings to take the first steps of resettling the Land of Israel. In the seventeenth century the Shabbatean movement caused Jews throughout the world to prepare themselves for the imminent return to Zion, a hope largely dashed when the putative Messiah, Shabbetai Tsevi (1626–1676), converted to Islam in 1667.

On the other hand, another group of medieval thinkers deemphasized the importance of immigration to Zion. Some, such as Ḥayyim Kohen (twelfth century), saw no obligation to live in the Land of Israel since the commandments pertaining to the land could not be observed until the coming of the Messiah. Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg (c. 1220–1293) argued that it is permissible to leave the Land of Israel to study the Torah. Similarly Moses Maimonides (Mosheh ben Maimon, 1135/8–1204), the most renowned of medieval Jewish philosophers and legal scholars, gave greater emphasis to the study of the Torah than to awaiting or hastening the coming of the Messiah. In his code of Jewish law (Mishneh Torah, c. 1180), Maimonides did not include settling in the land as one of the 613 commandments. For Maimonides the central event in Jewish history was at Mount Sinai, and the return to Zion in messianic times would be a means toward uninterrupted study of the law revealed at Sinai. Although Maimonides clearly believed in the coming of the Messiah (which he understood as a realistic and not solely supernatural process), he subordinated Zion to Sinai.

This trend of thought became even more pronounced in eighteenth-century Hasidism, which, as Gershom Scholem (1897–1981) has argued, frequently played down expectations of the imminent coming of the Messiah. Dov Ber, the maggid of Mezhirich (1704–1772), believed that the qabbalistic task of "raising the sparks" might be more effectively accomplished in the lands of the exile. Naḥman of Bratslav (1772–1810), who was perhaps the most messianic of the Hasidic masters, stretched the holiness of the Land of Israel to encompass all the lands in which the Jews lived, thus spiritualizing what had hitherto been a concrete concept.

The Nineteenth Century

In the nineteenth century the forces of modern nationalism, released by the French Revolution, awakened nationalist hopes among the Jews throughout Europe. Although emancipation and assimilation caused many Jews, particularly in western and central Europe, to identify with the national aspirations of the countries in which they lived, increases in anti-Semitism and the failure of emancipation to fulfill its promises refocused attention on Zion. The nineteenth century thus witnessed a fusing of traditional messianism with modern nationalism that culminated in the emergence of modern Zionism at the end of the century.

Two important intellectual developments in the nineteenth century, among both modernizing and traditional Jews, prepared the ground for Zionism. The first was the movement of Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), which began in Germany in the late eighteenth century and spread to eastern Europe in the nineteenth. The Haskalah developed in two directions with respect to Zion. On the one hand, there was a general tendency to promote the emancipation of the Jews in Europe by glorifying the European nations. The Reform movement in Germany, which was one product of enlightenment, deleted references to Zion in the prayer book and emphasized the patriotic attachment of Jews to their native countries. Some Haskalah writers used messianic language to describe European rulers, such as Joseph II of Austria (1741–1790) and Alexander II of Russia (1818–1881), who were perceived as particularly sympathetic to the Jews.

On the other hand, much of the new Hebrew literature written by Haskalah authors, especially in eastern Europe, harkened back to the land of the Bible. Avraham Mapu (1808–1867), the first Hebrew novelist, placed the plots of two of his novels, Ahavat Tsiyyon (Love of Zion, 1853) and Ashmat Shomron (Guilt of Shomron, 1865–1866), in romantic biblical settings. Hebrew newspapers such as Ha-shahar and Ha-maggid, published in Russia, also fostered interest in the Land of Israel and countered assimilationist tendencies by arguing for a Jewish national consciousness. In addition the activities of western European Jewish philanthropists, such as Edmund de Rothschild (1845–1934), Adolphe Crémieux (1796–1880), and Moses Montefiore (1784–1885), in settling Jews in Palestine fostered the beginnings of the modern settlement in the country. Thus both in literature and philanthropy modern "enlightened" Jews created the basis for a Zionist movement.

One secular Jewish thinker of particular importance was Moses Hess (1812–1875). Hess was one of the early leaders of European socialism. Following the 1848 revolutions, he withdrew from political activity and became interested in the history of national groups. He rediscovered his Jewish origins and became a fervent advocate of Jewish nationalism. In his Rome and Jerusalem (1862), he advanced a proposal for the renewal of the Jewish state, arguing that the continuation of the Jewish people could be justified only on national, rather than religious, grounds.

The second important nineteenth-century development was among traditional Jews. Tsevi Hirsch Kalischer (1795–1874) appealed to the Rothschild family to buy the Land of Israel from Muḥammad ʿAlī (1769–1849), the ruler of Egypt. Kalischer developed a plan to reinstitute the ancient sacrifices on the Temple mount as a way of hastening the coming of the Messiah. He based his messianic doctrine, which called for human initiative, on Moses Maimonides, who had argued that certain human actions might precede the actual coming of the Messiah. Later, following the Damascus blood libel affair of 1840 and the attempt by Western philanthropists to rescue the Damascus Jews, Kalischer advocated agricultural settlement in the Land of Israel. However, even in his later writings, which put forward this kind of practical suggestion, Kalischer never abandoned his messianic expectations, nor did he give up his hope that the sacrifices might be reinstituted by the new settlers.

A similar kind of religious "Zionism" can be found in the writings of Yehudah ben Shelomoh Alkalai (1798–1878), who until the Damascus Affair was an obscure preacher in the Balkans. Like Kalischer, Alkalai argued in numerous pamphlets for Jewish settlement in the Holy Land as a means toward bringing the Messiah.

The writings of Kalischer and Alkalai had little immediate effect, although there was an increase in immigration to Palestine by Orthodox Jews throughout the nineteenth century. New communities of religious Jews were established outside the walls of Jerusalem, in some cases with the help of philanthropists like Montefiore. In 1878 a group of Orthodox Jews established the first agricultural colony, Petach Tikva. Despite their traditionalist orientation, these religious Jews made important contributions in laying the groundwork for the later Zionist settlement.

Modern Secular Zionism

The rise of anti-Semitism in France, Germany, and Russia in the last quarter of the nineteenth century raised serious questions about the prospects of Jewish integration into European society. Under the influence of modern nationalist ideas, a number of secular or partially secular Jews in several countries began to conceive of a Jewish homeland as the only answer to the Jewish situation. In addition to the political problem of anti-Semitism, many of these thinkers felt that the growing problem of Jewish assimilation could be addressed only by the creation of a Jewish society with its own national culture.

The new Zionist thinkers attempted to combine the ideas of secular nationalism with the messianic aspirations still cultivated by the large population of traditional Jews. Indeed it might be argued that Zionism emerged when it did as a result of the influence of modern nationalism, but that it emerged at all was a result of the persistence of the age-old religious longing for Zion. Yet the tensions between these seemingly similar national ideals were evident from the inception of modern Zionism, and they continue to characterize the conflict between the secular and the religious in modern Israel.

Following the pogroms in Russia in 1881, a group of eastern European intellectuals formed the Ḥibbat Tsiyyon (Love of Zion). The members of this movement came from both of the groups previously mentioned: followers of the Haskalah and religious figures. Ḥibbat Tsiyyon was primarily a practical movement that sought to foster settlement and agricultural development in Palestine. It borrowed its ideology of "productivization" of the Jews from the earlier Haskalah. The Ḥibbat Tsiyyon was a response to the mass emigration of Jews from Russia that began in the wake of the pogroms, and it tried to direct the immigration to Palestine instead of to western Europe and America. Although the Ḥibbat Tsiyyon sponsored a number of colonies in Palestine, it never became a mass movement, and its impact was largely on Russian Jewish intellectuals.

Modern Zionism really began with Theodor Herzl (1860–1904). The term Zionism was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum (1864–1937) in his journal Selbstemanzipation and was adopted by Herzl and his followers at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. Although some rabbis supported Herzl, most members of the movement, including Herzl himself, were secular and Westernized. Nevertheless Herzl was greeted by many eastern European Jews as a messianic figure. The first substantial Zionist emigration from eastern Europe to Palestine started after the pogroms of 1903 and 1905 to 1906 and was largely made up of young secular Russian Jews, many of whom were influenced by the Russian radicalism of the period.

The attitude toward religion among the early secular Zionist thinkers was frequently quite hostile. Traditional Judaism was viewed as the religion of the exile, and the Zionists saw themselves as a movement to "negate the exile" (shelilat ha-golah). This position received its sharpest expression in the writings of M. Y. Berdichevsky (1865–1921), J. H. Brenner (1881–1921), and Jacob Klatzkin (1882–1948). Berdichevsky, for example, saw the whole religious Jewish tradition, going back to Mount Sinai, as being opposed to a proud national life, and he wished to create a "new Hebrew man" based on a "Nietzschean" countertradition of strength and naturalism. Berdichevsky traced this countertradition back to the biblical period, when, he believed, the ancient Hebrews followed a revelation from Mount Gerizim, mentioned in Deuteronomy 27:11–26, that was opposed to the "ethical" Torah of Mount Sinai. The prophets, and later the rabbis, suppressed this Torah of nature, but it persisted in heretical movements and splinter sects, such as the first-century Zealots and the eighteenth-century Ḥasidim. This idea, that the Jews had been misled by the rabbis and had followed a tradition alien to their roots, had an important influence on the more radical secular Zionist attitudes toward the Jewish religion.

Nevertheless there were other secular Zionists who tried to base the new Zionist culture on elements from the religious tradition. Aḥad ha-ʿAm (the pen name of Asher Ginsberg, 1856–1927) tried to develop a secular Judaism based on certain principles from the Jewish heritage. He believed that the Jewish religion was one expression of a wider Jewish national culture. The elements that a secular Judaism might borrow from the tradition varied in Aḥad ha-ʿAm's writings (sometimes "absolute monotheism" was stressed, other times "liberal ethics"), but he held that the development of this culture was possible only in a Jewish national home. This national cultural center would in turn revitalize the Jewish Diaspora, which had been spiritually weakened by assimilation and the decline of the Jewish religion.

A number of the leaders of the secular Zionist labor movement also tried, with varying degrees of success, to incorporate a more positive attitude toward the Jewish religion into their secular ideologies. Aharon David Gordon (1856–1922), who was one of the pioneers of the early agricultural settlements, developed a religion of labor based on a mystical bond between the Jew and the Land of Israel. Physical labor on the national soil is a way of renewing the self and bringing it into harmony with the cosmos. Although Gordon was not a practicing Orthodox Jew, his philosophy relied heavily on Jewish mysticism and Hasidism as well as on Tolstoyan ideals.

Another labor leader, Berl Katzenelson (1887–1944), argued for the adaptation of traditional Jewish holidays and rituals to the new national home. Katzenelson, who was enormously influential as a cultural and ideological writer, laid the groundwork for a secular national culture that had its roots in Jewish tradition. Similarly the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion (1886–1973), sought to base the new national culture on a return to the Bible, a theme that had precedent among the Haskalah writers of the nineteenth century.

The ambivalence toward the Jewish tradition that one finds in many of these early secular Zionists had much to do with their biographies. In most cases they came from traditional homes and were educated in the yeshivot (rabbinic academies) of eastern Europe. Zionism was a radical revolution for them against the world of their childhood, but they never fully broke with their memories of this religious culture. Even if their way of life was secular, they wished to recreate an authentic Jewish culture on a new, national basis.

If the labor Zionists were ambivalent at best toward the Jewish religion, their counterparts in the Revisionist Zionist Party (organized in 1925) were militant. The Revisionists were led by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), the Russian-Jewish journalist and poet, and they acquired the reputation of a right-wing, nationalist movement. Although Jabotinsky had a few religious followers, his movement was generally adamantly secular and opposed to religion. In the 1940s a splinter group under the poet Yonatan Ratosh (1908–1981) broke off from the Revisionists and formed the Young Hebrew, or "Canaanite," movement (the latter term was originally used by their opponents). The Canaanites saw the Jews as a religious group whose history was in the exile, whereas the new Hebrew community in Palestine was to break from the religious past and develop its own indigenous culture. The Canaanites were inspired by the myths of the ancient Canaanites that were uncovered in the Ras Shamra excavations of the 1930s. Although the Canaanites were an extreme nativist movement, their thought points to an important trend in Israeli culture away from traditional Jewish religion and toward a new national culture that might incorporate ancient Near Eastern myths.

Religious Zionism

Although the majority of the Orthodox Jewish world was either indifferent or opposed to Herzl's Zionist movement, there was a significant group that responded favorably to the idea of a Jewish state. Among the first rabbis to join Herzl were Yitsḥaq Yaʿaqov Reines (1839–1915) and Shemuʾel Mohilever (1824–1898), who was perhaps the most prominent rabbi in the Ḥibbat Tsiyyon movement. In 1902 Reines formed Mizraḥi, a religious faction within the World Zionist Organization (the name is a composite of some of the Hebrew letters from the words merkaz ruhani, "spiritual center"). Mizraḥi consisted of two groups, one that opposed the introduction of any "cultural" issues into the Zionist movement, for fear that the secularists would set the tone in such endeavors, and another that saw that Zionism could not avoid confronting cultural questions and demanded that Mizraḥi try to influence the Zionist movement in a religious direction. Although the "political" faction was initially predominant, the Mizraḥi movement ultimately saw as its raison d'être the fostering of religious education and public religious practice in the Zionist settlement in Palestine and later the state of Israel.

Mizraḥi played a major role in mustering support for Zionism among Orthodox Jews in Europe and the United States. It created a network of schools in which Zionism was taught together with traditional religious subjects. At the same time Mizraḥi established schools in Palestine that formed the backbone of the religious educational system that is an important part of the general educational system in the contemporary state of Israel. The Mizraḥi youth movements, Young Mizraḥi and Benei Akiva, began establishing agricultural settlements in Palestine in the 1920s.

The Mizraḥi joined three other religious parties to create a religious faction in the first Israeli governing coalition. In 1956 they formed the National Religious Party (NRP) and Poʿel Mizraḥi (Mizraḥi workers). The NRP has sat in every Israeli government (with the exception of one year) to date and regularly receives approximately 10 percent of the vote. However, this percentage began to drop in the 1980s with the defection of more nationalist elements to other, nonreligious parties and the emergence of the ultraorthodox Shas Party, which appealed to Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin. Despite its relatively small share of the national vote, the NRP has constituted an important "swing" element in Israeli governments since neither the Labor Alignment nor the Likud Party has been able to win a clear majority. Thus the NRP has exerted disproportionate influence on Israeli politics and on the role of religion in Israeli society.

Since its inception the Mizraḥi sought to avoid the problem of the relationship of Zionism to Jewish messianism. Much opposition to Zionism in the religious world stemmed from the belief that human beings should not "force the end" (i.e., initiate messianic times by secular means). Instead of answering this position with a new messianic theory, the adherents of Mizraḥi took a cautious stance, claiming that the Zionist movement constituted a "beginning of redemption." They saw their role as guaranteeing that the future redemption would not be ruined by the heretical actions of the secular Zionists.

There were, however, certain elements among the religious Zionists who took a bolder approach to the question of messianism. Primary among these was Avraham Yitsḥaq Kook (1865–1935), who became chief rabbi of Jaffa in 1904 and then chief Ashkenazic rabbi of Palestine from 1921 until his death in 1935. Kook held that redemption had begun with the Zionist movement, and in anticipation of imminent messianic times, he fostered study of the sacrificial laws in his yeshivah. Unlike other religious Zionists and religious anti-Zionists, Kook believed the secular pioneers were a necessary force to prepare the material foundation for messianic times. He argued dialectically that the profane was necessary for subsequent emergence of the sacred. Kook met frequently with leaders of the labor Zionist movement and developed close ties with them. As chief rabbi of Jaffa he played a central role in 1909 in the attempt to solve the problem of the shemittah, the agricultural sabbatical during which land owned by Jews in the Land of Israel is supposed to lie fallow. Kook arranged for sale of such land to a non-Jew, which allowed it to be worked by Jews and permitted the continuation of the agricultural settlements. Kook's unusually positive attitude toward the secular Zionist movement was based on his belief that, when Zionism succeeded, messianic times would come and the Zionist movement would itself return to its unconscious religious roots.

Kook's messianic philosophy had little direct impact on the religious Zionist parties, but it did influence a new generation of religious Israelis, particularly through the Merkaz ha-Rav Yeshivah in Jerusalem, established by Kook and headed by his son Tsevi Yehudah Kook (1891–1982) until the latter's death. This new generation did not accept the compromise position of the older leaders of Mizraḥi, who believed that the religious parties should primarily guard the religious status quo in the state of Israel. The young religious Zionists, who grew up after the creation of the state in 1948, believed strongly in Zionism as the fulfillment of traditional Jewish messianism. This belief took political expression after the Six-Day War of 1967. Young religious Israelis reestablished the settlements in the Etsion bloc south of Jerusalem and created a Jewish outpost in Hebron in 1968. (This illegal settlement was later recognized by the government and developed into the town of Qiryat Arba outside of Hebron.) In 1974, following the Yom Kippur War, these religious activists founded the Gush Emunim (bloc of the faithful) movement, which advocated the incorporation of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank of the Jordan River) into Israel. The Gush Emunim led a settlement drive in these areas, sometimes with the support of the Israeli government and sometimes illegally. They constituted a significant messianic force in Israeli politics and formed alliances with secular nationalist forces.

Religious Institutions in the State of Israel

Under both the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, Jewish religious courts enjoyed official jurisdiction over matrimonial and inheritance law. The office of the hakham basi in the Ottoman Empire was succeeded by the Ashkenazic and Sefardic chief rabbis under the British Mandate. These functions were carried over to the rabbinic courts and the chief rabbinate of the state of Israel, which were given jurisdiction over matters of personal law by a Knesset enactment of 1953. Rabbinical judges were given the same status as district court judges, and their decisions were enforced by the civil authorities. Thus in matters of marriage, divorce, and child custody, rabbinic courts—ruling according to Jewish law (halak-hah) —have state sanction. Civil marriage and divorce do not exist, although civil marriages are recognized if contracted abroad. The Ministry of Religious Affairs deals with the needs of the various religious communities in Israel and funds the construction and maintenance of synagogues, yeshivot, and other religious facilities.

Although both the Conservative and Reform movements have small followings in Israel, their rabbis are not authorized by the rabbinate to perform marriages, and they do not benefit from the budgets available through the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Conversion to Judaism is supervised by the rabbinate, and thus Conservative and Reform conversions are not recognized as valid unless contracted abroad.

Although the majority of the Jewish citizens of Israel are secular or quasi-traditional, a religious status quo is maintained. The Sabbath is the national day of rest, and Jewish holidays are national holidays. Sabbath rules apply in public places at the discretion of local municipalities, but the various political parties have undertaken to maintain the practices that have existed since the creation of the state. In the 1977 and 1982 coalition agreements, the Agudat Yisraʾel Party, which represents some of the most orthodox elements, demanded certain changes in the status quo, such as cancellation of Sabbath flights by the national airline, El Al.

The problem of religion in the state of Israel is connected more generally to the question of a Jewish state. According to the Orthodox interpretation, a Jewish state would have to be a "theocratic" state governed by Jewish law (halakhah). At the opposite extreme, the secular nationalist argument holds that Israel should be a secular state in which synagogue and state are strictly separated and whose Jewish character is determined purely by the sociological makeup of its population. For the Orthodox the identity of the Jews can only be determined by the halakhah: one is a Jew only if born of a Jewish mother or converted by a halakhic procedure. For the secular Zionists anyone who declares himself or herself a Jew should be considered as such. Moreover some secular nationalists argue that a new Israeli identity should take the place of Jewish identity, which they regard as a religious relic of the years of exile. In a case in the 1960s the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Jewish identity is not determined by the halakhah. The case concerned a Carmelite monk, Brother Daniel, who was born a Jew and had fought against the Nazis as a partisan. He requested Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, arguing that, according to the halakhah, he remained a Jew even though he professed another religion. The court ruled against him with the argument that the conventional understanding of who is a Jew contradicted the halakhah in such a case and, since Israel is not a halakhic state, that the common definition should prevail. Similarly in 1970 the court ruled that a child born of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother might be registered as of "Israeli" rather than "Jewish" national identity. This decision would have set aside the concept of a corporate Jewish state in favor of a new secular Israeli identity. As a result of pressure from the religious Zionist parties and of discomfort on the part of many secular Zionists, the Knesset passed a law providing that only persons recognized as Jews by the halakhah might be registered as Jews by nationality. In 1980 the Knesset passed a law stipulating that, in matters in which there is no specific law or precedent, judges should be guided by "Hebrew jurisprudence" (mishpat ʿivri). Judges were directed to follow traditional Jewish law, but by avoiding the term halakhah, the Knesset was able to satisfy the secular refusal to accept a theocratic state. Thus the judicial system has generally attempted a secular definition of Jewish identity, whereas the legislative system, responding to religious sentiments, has avoided such a break with tradition.

The immigration of nearly a million Russian Jews following the breakup of the Soviet Union posed new challenges to Israel's identity. Many of these Russian Jews were of mixed parentage, and a large percentage (perhaps as many as a third) was not Jewish at all. The courts faced problems of whether fallen soldiers of Israel's army could be buried in Jewish cemeteries. The state faced another problem in 1994 with the immigration of Ethiopian Jews, whose religious traditions did not include rabbinic law. The rabbinate ruled that they were to be considered Jews, even though the weight of historical evidence seemed to preclude such ethnic descent on religious grounds.

Anti-Zionism

There are a number of expressions of anti-Zionism based on religious motivations. In both Europe and America nineteenth-century Reform Judaism was unalterably opposed to a national definition of Judaism. The Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 specifically rejected any expectation of a return of the Jews to Zion. By 1937, however, the Reform movement had moved to a more neutral position and adopted the Columbus Platform, in which the "group loyalty" of the Jews is recognized and the Jewish community of Palestine is supported "not only [as] a haven of refuge for the oppressed but also [as] a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life" (Plaut, 1963–1965). Nevertheless a wing of the Reform movement, which formed the American Council for Judaism, actively opposed the creation of Israel in the 1940s. Following the Six-Day War, the Reform movement became explicitly Zionist and joined the World Zionist Organization. Reform Jews established several kibbutsim and congregations in Israel.

Among the Orthodox, Zionism was initially greeted with skepticism or hostility. The initial plan to hold the First Zionist Congress in Munich was canceled as a result of opposition by the German rabbis. In 1912 Agudat Yisraʾel was formed by rabbis from Germany, Hungary, and Poland as an organization to advance orthodoxy in Jewish life. The Agudah opposed secular Zionism but maintained an ambivalent attitude toward settlement in the Land of Israel. Following the establishment of the state, the Agudah became a political party advocating a state based on the halakhah. The ideology of the movement opposes participation in Zionist governments, although its representatives have nevertheless from time to time held cabinet seats and although they provided coalition support for the government after 1977. The Agudah has used its political influence to strengthen its educational and religious institutions and has sought religious concessions from the Knesset, such as exemptions for religious girls from national service and stricter adherence to Sabbath rules. As opposed to the National Religious Party, the Agudah considers itself non-Zionist and does not identify with the national goals of the state.

In the 1980s the Shas Party was formed under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi ʿOvadyah Yosef (b. 1920), an Iraqiborn sage who served as chief Sefardic rabbi of Israel. The Shas Party appealed primarily to Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin and defined itself as non-Zionist, by which it meant that, like the Agudat Yisraʾel, it favored a theocratic state in place of the secular state of Israel. But Shas was characterized more by pragmatism, seeking state subsidies for its extensive network of schools and social services for its constituents.

A more extreme anti-Zionist group is the Neturei Karta (guardians of the city), which broke off from Agudat Yisraʾel in 1935. The Neturei Karta are largely followers of the Satmar Hasidic sect. Neturei Karta opposed the creation of the state of Israel and regarded Zionism as a heinous sin that prevents the coming of the Messiah. They believe the Nazi Holocaust was punishment for secular Zionism, and they declared their willingness to participate in an Arab government in Palestine. They clashed violently from time to time with the Israeli police in demonstrations against what they regard as violations of Jewish law in the state. The members of Neturei Karta live for the most part in Jerusalem, where they govern themselves, taking no services from the state and paying no taxes. They also have significant support from certain ultraorthodox Jews in the United States.

Conclusion

Modern Israel is the product of both secular and religious tendencies with origins in modern nationalism and in the traditional messianic connection to Zion. With the exception of the small anti-Zionist group, most Jews in the world, representing virtually the whole religious spectrum, support the basic aspirations of Zionism. Thus the character of the Jewish state—religious, secular, or some combination of both—remains an issue of political conflict among Zionists, but this conflict is also emblematic of the larger question of the relationship of religion to nationalism in the modern world.

Bibliography

Two books devoted to the subject of Zion throughout the history of Jewish thought are Abraham S. Halkin, ed., Zion in Jewish Literature (New York, 1961), which contains essays on the biblical and rabbinic periods, medieval secular and religious poetry, and nineteenth-century Hebrew poetry and prose; and the more synthetic Jean-Christophe Attias and Esther Benbassa, Israel, the Impossible Land (Stanford, Calif., 2003). An additional source of Zionist poetry is The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, edited by T. Carmi (New York, 1981), which includes poetry by Yehudah ha-Levi. For additional articles on the biblical period, see Shemaryahu Talmon's "The Biblical Concept of Jerusalem," Journal of Ecumenical Studies 8 (1971): 300–316; and Ben Zion Dinaburg's "Zion and Jerusalem: Their Role in the Historic Consciousness of Israel" (in Hebrew), Zion 16 (1951): 1–17. Other valuable discussions of medieval writings are Yitzhak F. Baer's "Erez Yisrael and the Diaspora in the View of the Middle Ages" (in Hebrew), Zion Yearbook 6 (1946): 149–171; and H. H. Ben-Sasson's "Exile and Redemption through the Eyes of the Spanish Exiles" (in Hebrew) in Yitzhak F. Baer Jubilee Volume, edited by S.W. Baron, B. Dinur, S. Ettinger, and I. Halperin (Jerusalem, 1960). A nationalist argument about the relationship between the Jews and Zion in Jewish history and especially the modern period is in Ben Zion Dinur's Israel and the Diaspora (Philadelphia, Pa., 1969). For the relationship of the Jewish Enlightenment to Zion, see Isaac F. Barzilay's "National and Anti-National Trends in the Berlin Haskalah," Jewish Social Studies 21 (1959): 165–192; and Jacob S. Raisin's The Haskalah Movement in Russia (Maple Shade, N.J., 2001), an old but still useful work. The attitude of nineteenth-century Reform is treated in W. Gunther Plaut's The Rise of Reform Judaism (New York, 1963–1965).

On the origins and history of the Zionist movement, see David Vital's The Origins of Zionism (Oxford, U.K., 1975) and Zionism: The Formative Years (Oxford, U.K., 1982). A good general history of Zionism is Walter Laqueur's A History of Zionism (New York, 1972). The history of Zionist thought has been treated by Shlomo Avineri in The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (New York, 1981) and by Ben Halpern in The Idea of the Jewish State (Cambridge, Mass., 1961). A good anthology of Zionist thought with a superb introductory essay is Arthur Hertzberg, ed., The Zionist Idea (Philadelphia, 1997). The specific issue of religion in the Zionist movement is treated by Ehud Luz, Parallels Meet: Religion and Nationalism in the Early Zionist Movement (1882–1904) (Philadelphia, 1988) and, in the state of Israel, by Ervin Birnbaum, The Politics of Compromise: State and Religion in Israel (Rutherford, N.J., 1970), Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Religion and Politics in Israel (Bloomington, Ind., 1984), and S. Zalmon Abramov, Perpetual Dilemma: Jewish Religion in the Jewish State (Rutherford, N.J., 1976). A good treatment of the relationship between Zionism and Jewish messianism is Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism (Chicago, 1996). An anthology of anti-Zionist thought is in Michael Selzer, ed., Zionism Reconsidered (New York, 1970). A semischolarly treatment of religion in Israel from the viewpoint of Neturei Karta is Emile Marmorstein's Heaven at Bay: The Jewish Kulturkampf in the Holy Land (London, 1969).