Different Issues with different responses. A) Ownership of Land of Israel B) Return & Settling C) Creating an Independent State D) The religious dimension of the State E) The Messianic Dimension of the State. F) Protecting the State and inhabitants G) Developing the State and benefiting the inhabitants H) Citizenship in the State and the obligations I)Authority of State Vs. Torah Obligations J) State of Jews or Jewish State. K)Democratic and/or Jewish State. etc:)
The Jewish People are defined by the Torah and Mitzvot
Saadia Gaon 882-942 CE (Emunos VeDayos 7:3)
Our nation is only a nation by virtue of its Torah
Birth of a nation Passover Haggada
We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the L‑rd, our G‑d, took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm.
In the beginning our fathers served idols; but now the Omnipresent One has brought us close to His service...
Blessings on Mitzvot
Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to...
Blessings on Torah
Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the universe, who has chosen us from among all the nations and given us His Torah. Blessed are You, L-rd who gives the Torah.
Holiday Prayers
You have chosen us from all the nations; You loved us and found favor with us.
You have raised us above all tongues and made us holy through Your commandments
You, our King, have drawn us near to Your service, and proclaimed Your great and holy name upon us.
Pastoral Letter from the Lubavitcher Rebbe
In the Days of Selichoth, 5717 [September, 1957]
...What is the specific function of our people, and of the Jew as an individual?
It is, of course, easier to ascertain the individual function of any particular organ in the body than the function of a people in the community of nations. However, in the case of the Jewish people, which is unique in its extremely varied experiences and long history, the answer is not difficult to find. By a process of simple elimination, we can easily ascertain what factors have been essential to its existence and survival, and thus determine the essential character and function of our people.
An objective, unprejudiced survey of the long history of our people will at once bring to light the fact that it was not material wealth, nor physical strength, which helped us to survive. Even during the most prosperous times under the united monarchy of King Solomon, the Jewish people and state were materially insignificant by comparison with such contemporary world empires as Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia.
That it -was not statehood or homeland — is clear from the fact that most of the time, by far, our people possessed no independent state and has lived in the diaspora.
That it was not the language, is likewise clear from the fact that even in Biblical times Aramaic began to supplant the Holy Tongue as the spoken language; parts of the Scripture and almost all of our Babylonian Talmud, the Zohar, etc., are written in that language. In the days of Saadia and Maimonides Arabic was the spoken language of most Jews, while, later, Yiddish and other languages.
Nor was it any common secular culture that preserved our people, since that changed radically from one era to another.
The one and only common factor which has been present with Jews throughout the ages, in all lands, and under all circumstances, is the Torah Mitzvoth, which Jews have observed tenaciously in their daily life.
To be sure, there arose occasionally dissident groups that attempted to break away from true Judaism, such as the idolatry movements during the first Beth Hamikdosh, the Hellenists during the second, Alexandrian assimilationists, Karaites, etc., but they have disappeared. Considered without prejudice, the Torah and Mitzvoth must be recognized as the essential thing and essential function of our people, whether for the individual Jew, or in relation of the Jewish people to humanity as a whole...
The secret of our existence is in our being "a people that dwell alone" (Num. 23:9), every one of us, man or woman, believing in the One G‑d, leading a life according to the one Torah, which is eternal and unchangeable. Our 'otherness' and independence of thought and conduct are not our weakness but our strength. Only in this way can we fulfill our function imposed on us by the Creator, to be unto G‑d a "kingdom of priests and a holy nation", thereby being also a "segulah" for all humanity...
The Age of Enlightenment AKA the Age of Reason
17th and 18th centuries
Emancipation, integration, and assimilation of the Jews
"Admission of Jews to Rights of Citizenship," Decree of the National Assembly, 27 September 1791
The National Assembly, considering that the conditions necessary to be a French citizen and to become an active citizen are fixed by the Constitution, and that every man meeting the said conditions, who swears the civic oath, and engages himself to fulfill all the duties that the Constitution imposes, has the right to all of the advantages that the Constitution assures;
Revokes all adjournments, reservations, and exceptions inserted into the preceding decrees relative to Jewish individuals who will swear the civic oath which will be regarded as a renunciation of all the privileges and exceptions introduced previously in their favor.*
*The right to an autonomous community ruled by its own members according to its own customs. The law required Jews to be individuals just like everyone else in France.
Rabbi Jonathon Sacks, Persistence of Faith: Religion, Morality & Society in a Secular Age pp. 3-4
“Modernity struck European Jewry with shattering force in the form of civil emancipation. Hitherto Jews had been excluded from the mainstream of European society. That fact had at least served to reinforce Jewish identity. Jews were, and were conscious of being, a people apart. External circumstance matched internal self-definition. Jews, scattered and dispersed, saw themselves as a nation in exile. Their persecutions and expulsion, their strange isolation, all served to confirm their religious self understanding. Emancipation changed that fundamentally.
The cost of emancipation was that Jews would have to undergo that most characteristic change of modernity: the privatization of faith. Jews would speak, dress and act like Frenchmen, and would be Jews primarily in the synagogue and home. Jewishness was no longer a taken-for-granted reality, and environment. Instead it was to be a highly circumscribed religious confession, confining Judaism into a more restricted space than it had ever previously occupied in the life of the Jews.
The Haskala "Jewish Enlightenment" 1770-1880
sought to replace the framework of values held by the Ashkenazim of Central and Eastern Europe with their own philosophy, which embraced the liberal, rationalistic notions of the 18th and 19th centuries and cast them in their own particular mold. This intellectual upheaval was accompanied by the desire to practically change Jewish society.
Reform Judaism and Zionism were different responses to challenges of the Age of Enlightenment
Reform Movement's Pittsburgh Platform 1885
3.We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject al such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.
4. We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.
5.We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.
Herzl: The creation of a Jewish commonwealth, a progressive society based on the European model, would bring the end of anti-Semitism.
We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of our fathers. It is not permitted us. In vain we are loyal patriots, sometimes superloyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in vain do we strive to enhance the fame of our native lands in the arts and sciences or their wealth by trade and commerce. In our native lands where we have lived for centuries we are still decried as aliens, often by men whose ancestors had not yet come at a time when Jewish sighs had long been heard in the country. The majority decide who the "alien" is; this, and all else in the relations between peoples, is a matter of power.
David Ben-Gurion
Since our last national tragedy—the suppression of the Bar Kochba rebellion by the Romans—we have had "histories" of persecution, of legal discrimination, of the Inquisition and the pogroms, of dedication and martyrdom, but we did not have Jewish history anymore, because a history of a people is only what the people create as a whole, as a national unit, and not the sum total of what happens to individuals and to groups within the people. For the last fifteen hundred years, we have been excluded from world history, which is made up of the histories of nations.
Ze’ev Jabotinsky
"Only after removing the dust accumulated through two thousand years of exile, of galut, will the true, authentic Hebrew character reveal its glorious head. Only then shall we be able to say: This is a typical Hebrew, in every sense of the word."
In his Eulogy for Herzl that
our starting point is to take the typical Yid of today and to imagine his diametrical opposite ... because the Yid is ugly, sickly, and lacks decorum, we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty. The Yid is trodden upon and easily frightened and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to be proud and independent…..The Yid wants to conceal his identity from strangers and, therefore, the Hebrew should look the world straight in the eye and declare: ‘I am a Hebrew!’.”
From Herzl to Rabin, The Changing Image of Zionism By AMNON RUBINSTEIN
Normality means the redemption of the individual as well as the normalization of the people. The Return to Zion is coupled with a metamorphosis of the Jew into a new man. The Jew would become a "goy" in the double meaning that this word has in Hebrew, signifying both "Gentile" and "nation." Once this rebirth takes place, the traumas of the past will be forgotten. To be a goy means to be healthy; healthy nations, healthy people are not obsessed with issues of existence and survival.
Ahad Ha'am
Anyone examining this book (Herzl's Altneuland) will find that in their state the Jews have neither renewed nor added anything of their own. Only what they saw fragmented among the enlightened nations of Europe and America, they imitated and put together in their new land.
Max Nordau, who combined ardent Zionism with fiery atheism, brought this nationalist attitude to its extreme conclusion. Asked about the future of the Sabbath in the Jewish state, he did not exclude its optional replacement by the more universal Sunday, as is the custom of the Gentiles. Ahad Ha'am, who regarded the Jewish Sabbath as the incarnation of the Jewish spirit, was flabbergasted and infuriated by such ideas, and from his Odessa home he directed at Nordau words of fury and scorn:
Not one word escaped the mouth of this Zionist sage which would testify that his heart rebels against the cancellation of the Sabbath, because of its historical and national value. The whole question, in his eyes, is purely religious, and therefore he excludes himself from any direct commitment. He, the freethinker, will have his own appropriate day of rest, bereft of any religious, intent, and he does not care whether the Sabbath, the Queen of Judaism, exists or not.
Jacob Klatzkin, born within the Russian Pale of Settlement and later editor of Die Welt, the official organ of the Zionist organization, railed against the eastern European need for "Jewish content." For Klatzkin, Zionists like Ahad Ha'am represented a galut mentality and would be responsible, if successful, for frustrating the very idea of national renaissance:
"It is no accident that Zionism arose in the West and not in the East. Herzl appeared among us not from the national consciousness of a Jew but from a universal human consciousness. Not the Jew but the man in him brought him back to his people."
Klatzkin claimed that the basic intention of Zionism was "to deny any conception of Jewish identity based on spiritual criteria."
Nahman Syrkin
Only in the new age was Judaism revived. But this Judaism stands in full contrast to the Judaism of the Middle Ages, religious Judaism, and the Judaism of the Diaspora. Zionism truly does uproot religious Judaism from its roots in a more powerful and profound manner than Reform Judaism and assimilation […]. In creating new characteristics of Judaism […], it uproots [the traditional form], so that it cannot rise again (Syrkin 1939:169–170).
Religious Zionism:
Rabbi Kook
”Secular Zionists may think they do it for political, national, or socialist reasons, but in fact – the actual reason for them coming to resettle in Israel is a religious Jewish spark ("Nitzotz") in their soul, planted by God. Without their knowledge, they are contributing to the divine scheme and actually committing a great Mitzvah.“
”The role of religious Zionists is to help them to establish a Jewish state and turn the religious spark in them into a great light. They should show them that the real source of Zionism and the longed-for Zion is Judaism and teach them Torah with love and kindness. In the end, they will understand that the laws of Torah are the key to true harmony and a socialist state (not in the Marxist meaning) that will be a light for the nations and bring salvation to the world.”
Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook
We must realize that our restoration in Israel is not happenstance. This is not a coincidental shaping of history. Rather, we must see G-d's guiding hand, and His divine ordering of events, for what they are -the fulfillment of, "When the Lord brings back the captivity of Zion". How fortunate we are to be a part of this national rebirth, to be a part of the restoration of our life to its original essence.... The more we are conscious of the divine in the events of our time, the more we will merit to meet the Almighty, who returns his Divine presence to Zion.
All of the wars we have experienced have been a part of the process of redemption, whether they occurred before or after the establishment the State; whether they were before or after the conquest of Jerusalem. . . . We are in the middle of the journey. . . . God causes salvation to appear, and brings redemption to completion, step by step. We must accustom ourselves to gaze on these matters with perfect faith, and to trust in the redemption of Israel, and in its inexorable unfolding."
Critiques of the Messianic nature of the religious Zionist movement.
Song of Songs
2:7 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the hinds of the field, that you neither awaken nor arouse the love while it is desirous.
3:5 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the hinds of the field, that you neither awaken nor arouse the love while it is desirous.
8:4 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem; why should you awaken, and why should you arouse the love until it is desirous?"
Rabbi Yosei, son of Rabbi Ḥanina, who said: Why these three oaths (Song of Songs 2:7, 3:5, 8:4)? One, so that the Jews should not ascend to Eretz Yisrael as a wall, And another one, that the Holy One, Blessed be He, adjured the Jews that they should not rebel against the rule of the nations of the world. And the last one is that the Holy One, Blessed be He, adjured the nations of the world that they should not subjugate the Jews excessively...
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Devarim (Deuteronomy) - Chapter 30 |
| 2and you will return to the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and you will listen to His voice according to all that I am commanding you this day you and your children, |
| 3then, the Lord, your God, will bring back your exiles, and He will have mercy upon you. He will once again gather you from all the nations, where the Lord, your God, had dispersed you. |
| 4Even if your exiles are at the end of the heavens, the Lord, your God, will gather you from there, and He will take you from there. |
| 5And the Lord, your God, will bring you to the land which your forefathers possessed, and you [too] will take possession of it, and He will do good to you, and He will make you more numerous than your forefathers. |
| 6And the Lord, your God, will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, [so that you may] love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, for the sake of your life. |
Yad Hachazaka: By Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon ("Maimonides")
Laws of Repentance
7:5 All the prophets commanded [the people] to repent. Israel will only be redeemed through Teshuvah.
The Torah has already promised that, ultimately, Israel will repent towards the end of her exile and, immediately, she will be redeemed as [Deuteronomy 30:1-3] states: ”There shall come a time when [you will experience] all these things... and you will return to God, your Lord.... God, your Lord, will bring back your [captivity].”
Laws of Kings - Chapter 12
1. In the future, the Messianic king will arise and renew the Davidic dynasty, restoring it to its initial sovereignty. He will build the Temple and gather the dispersed of Israel.
Then, in his days, the observance of all the statutes will return to their previous state. We will offer sacrifices, observe the Sabbatical and Jubilee years according to all their particulars as described by the Torah.
Anyone who does not believe in him or does not await his coming, denies not only the statements of the other prophets, but those of the Torah and Moses, our teacher. The Torah testified to his coming, as Deuteronomy 30:3-5 states:
God will bring back your captivity and have mercy upon you. He will again gather you from among the nations... Even if your Diaspora is at the ends of the heavens, God will gather you up from there... and bring you to the land....
4 If a king will arise from the House of David who diligently contemplates the Torah and observes its mitzvot as prescribed by the Written Law and the Oral Law as David, his ancestor, will compel all of Israel to walk in (the way of the Torah) and rectify the breaches in its observance, and fight the wars of God, we may, with assurance, consider him Mashiach.
If he succeeds in the above, builds the Temple in its place, and gathers the dispersed of Israel, he is definitely the Mashiach.
He will then improve the entire world, motivating all the nations to serve God together, as Tzephaniah 3:9 states: "I will transform the peoples to a purer language that they all will call upon the name of God and serve Him with one purpose."
If he did not succeed to this degree or was killed, he surely is not the redeemer promised by the Torah. Rather, he should be considered as all the other proper and complete kings of the Davidic dynasty who died. God caused him to arise only to test the many, as Daniel 11:35 states: "And some of the wise men will stumble, to try them, to refine, and to clarify until the appointed time, because the set time is in the future."