Yehudah Alkalai (Eretz Yisrael, Serbia , 1798–1878): a Sephardic rabbi and an early advocate for the Jewish colonization of Palestine. He was deeply influenced by Kabbalah and believed in the necessity of a physical return to the Land of Israel as a precondition for redemption
Excerpt from: The Third Redemption (1843)
There are two kinds of return: individual and collective. Individual return means that each of us should turn away from our evil personal ways and repent; the way of such repentance has been prescribed in the devotional books of our religious tradition. This kind of repentance is called individual, because it is relative to the particular needs of each one. Collective return means that all Israel should return to the land which is the inheritance of our fathers, to receive the Divine command and to accept the yoke of Heaven. This collective return was foretold by all the prophets; even though we are unworthy, Heaven will help us, for the sake of our holy ancestors...
I wish to attest to the pain I have always felt at the error of our ancestors, that they allowed our Holy Tongue to be so forgotten. Because of this our people was divided into seventy peoples; our one language was replaced by the seventy languages of the lands of exile...We must redouble our efforts to maintain Hebrew and to strengthen its position.
It must be the basis of our educational work.
Abraham Isaac Kook (Latvia, Lithuania & Palestine, 1865–1935): a foundational religious Zionist whose teachings emphasized the spiritual significance of the Land of Israel and the redemptive role of the Jewish people. He was the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine.
Excerpt from: The Land of Israel (1910-1930)
Eretz Yisrael is not something apart from the soul of the Jewish people; it is no mere national possession serving as a means of unifying our people
and buttressing its material, or even its spiritual, survival. Eretz Yisra'd is part of the very essence of our nationhood; it is bound organically to its very life and inner being. Human reason, even at its most sublime, cannot begin to understand the unique holiness of Eretz Yisrael; it cannot stir the depths of love for the land that are dormant within our people What Eretz Yisrael means to the Jew can be felt only through the Spirit of the Lord which is in our people as a whole, through the spiritual cast of the Jewish soul, which radiates its characteristic influence to every healthy emotion. This higher light shines forth to the degree that the spirit of divine holiness fills the hearts of the saints and scholars of Israel with heavenly life and bliss.
To regard Eretz Yisrael as merely a tool for establishing our national unity-or even for sustaining our religion in the Diaspora by preserving its proper character and its faith, piety, and observances- is a sterile notion; it is unworthy of the holiness of Eretz Yisrael. A valid strengthening of Judaism in the Diaspora can come only from a deepened attachment to Eretz Yisrael. The hope for the return to the Holy Land is the continuing source of the distinctive nature of Judaism. The hope for the Redemption is the force that sustains Judaism in the Diaspora; the Judaism of Eretz Visrael is the very Redemption.
Abraham Joshua Heschel (Poland & America, 1907–1972): a rabbi, theologian, and civil rights activist known for his profound influence on Jewish philosophy.
Excerpt from: Israel: An Echo of Eternity (1969)
However, it was not justice as an abstract principle which stirred us so deeply [in 1967]. Auschwitz is in our veins. It abides in the throbbing of our hearts. It burns in our imagination. It trembles in our conscience. We, the generation that witnessed the Holocaust, should stand by calmly while rulers proclaim their intention to bring about a new Holocaust?
A new life in Israel has bestowed a sense of joy upon Jews everywhere, by creating a society based on liberty, equality and justice, by the great moral accomplishments, by their scientific, technical and economic contributions. In the Land of Israel those rescued from the Holocaust of Europe and the refugees from persecution in Arab lands have found a home and are able to renew their lives. A well which had been blocked and sealed in some deep corner of the soul was suddenly opened. What sprang forth was the realization that while we may be extending our lives in so many different directions, our secret roots are near the well, in the covenants, with the community of Israel. This is not an ideology, a matter of choice, it is an existential engagement, a matter of destiny. We may not all understand the meaning of the divine but to us our relationship to the community of Israel can never be detached from our gropings for the divine....
One of the insights learned from the great crisis in May 1967, is the deep personal involvement of every Jew in the existence of Israel. It is not a matter of philanthropy or general charity but of spiritual identification. It is such personal relationship to Israel upon which one's dignity as a Jew is articulated... The Lord's compassion is over all that He has made (see Psalm 145:9). We mourn the loss of lives, the devastation, the fruits of violence. We mourn the deaths of Jews, Christians, Moslems. The screams of anguish are not to be lost to our conscience...
The six days of war must receive their ultimate meaning from the seventh day, which is peace and celebration...
The ultimate meaning of the State of Israel must be seen in terms of the vision of the prophets: the redemption of humanity. The religious duty of the Jew is to participate in the process of continuous redemption, in seeing that justice prevails over power, that awareness of God penetrates human understanding.
David Hartman (America & Israel, 1931-2013): an influential American-Israeli rabbi, philosopher, and founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He was known for his thoughtful contributions to contemporary Judaism and advocacy for religious pluralism.
Excerpt from: Auschwitz or Sinai (1982)
One of the fundamental issues facing the new spirit of maturity in Israel is: Should Auschwitz or Sinai be the orienting category shaping our understanding of the rebirth of the State of Israel?...
Israel is not only a response to modern antisemitism, but is above all a modern expression of the eternal Sinai covenant that has shaped Jewish consciousness throughout the millennia. It was not Hitler who brought us back to Zion, but rather belief in the eternal validity of the Sinai covenant.... It is dangerous to our growth as a healthy people if the memory of Auschwitz becomes a substitute for Sinai.
The model of Sinai awakens the Jewish people to the awesome responsibility of becoming a holy people. At Sinai, we discover the absolute demand of God; we discover who we are by what we do. Sinai calls us to action, to moral awakening, to living constantly with challenges of building a moral and just society which mirrors the kingdom of God in history.
Sinai creates humility and openness to the demands of self-transcendence.
In this respect, it is the antithesis of the moral narcissism that can result from suffering and from viewing oneself as a victim...
Sinai requires that the Jew believe in the possibility of integrating the moral seriousness of the prophet with the realism and political judgment of the statesman. Politics and morality were united when Israel was born as a nation at Sinai. Sinai prohibits the Jewish people from ever abandoning the effort of creating a shared moral language with the nations of the world.
The rebirth of Israel can be viewed as a return to the fullness of the Sinai covenant—to Judaism as a way of life. The moral and spiritual aspirations of the Jewish tradition were not meant to be realized in Sabbath sermons or by messianic dreamers who wait passively on the margins of society for redemption to break miraculously into history. Torah study is not a substitute for actual life, nor are prayer and the synagogue escapes from the ambiguities and complexities of political life.
The Jewish world will have to learn that the synagogue is no longer the exclusive defining framework for Jewish communal life. Moral seriousness and political maturity and wisdom must come to our nation if we are to be judged by the way we struggle to integrate the Sinai covenant with the complexities of political realities...
Rav Shagar (Israel, 1949-2007): an important rabbi in traditional circles of Jerusalem, Rav Shagar ultimately synthesized Religious Zionism and Jewish Thought with postmodernism.
Excerpt from: Religious Post Zionism (Published Posthumously 2014)
The fact is that the Arab, the Palestinian, lives here and views the land as his beloved homeland. It is, in fact, his beloved homeland and this does not need to blemish my relation to this land. This realization does not at all damage my connection to this land as my homeland-this is the land of miracle, and in it "all speech is received from heaven." From this perspective, we can reach a state of friendship: a friendship that is not the result of a stripping away, or of turning individuals, their culture and beliefs, into something one-dimensional. Rather, a friendship founded on difference, and even opposition.
To enter the land of miracle and wonder and to manage it, and also to bless it with vessels that hold blessing "God did not find a vessel that holds blessing except peace" (Mishnah Ukzkin 3:12) - one can speak various languages: peace is the deep comprehension that the highest place contains all opposites. Therefore, there is no doubt that religious Zionism today cannot bring peace, as such peace [on its terms] will bring pain to large portions of those who reside in Zion. Therefore, it is necessary for it to reconstitute itself in a radical way that is open to the spirit of postmodernism. As a result of this shift, it will discover that which is concealed in (and from the religious world): the mystical for, today, it is impossible for one to embrace religion without its mystical core. For religious Zionism to exist at all, in these times, it must become "religious post-Zionism."
In reality, the response of religious Zionism toward the cultural expressions in the country [of Israel] in our time is similar to the response of the Haredim to Zionism in general: complete and utter negation. Religious Zionism, as it were, recognizes the untenable contradiction it faces in reconciling itself with the prevailing reality that exists for large portions of Israeli society. In truth, this is the proof of its programmatic failure, as it was built on [a belief in] the very possibility of building a state that combined all the existing elements [of society]. It is worth pointing out: I am speaking of a religious Zionism that believes in its program and sees in it the true inauguration of redemption.
This potential is concealed because, in my opinion, at the base of the religious awareness of religious Zionist thinkers Rav Kook first and foremost is the staunch will to generate a new religious mentality, a different religious understand-ing, one that knows how to assimilate within itself values that it did not traditionally include. And now, this renewal is possible. And it stands at the very threshold of religious Zionism. If we embrace it, religious Zionism can help achieve the long-awaited peace; a paradoxical peace that can see the other, the Arab, as belonging to the homeland, without negating his own sense of at-home-ness in the homeland. In this way, it will be possible to find the intimacy of one stranger with another. This will yield a categorically different harmony, the song of the future.