What Is a "Messianic Movement"? An Application to the Case of Zionism

With God's help

A paper by Bruria Abraham, with the assistance of Rabbi Michael Abraham

Orot Israel College

Seminar Paper

What Is a 'Messianic Movement'? An Application to the Case of Zionism

Submitted by: Bruria Abraham

ID No.: 203231931

Course title: Seminar in Judaism, Year 2

Year: 5773

Instructor: Rabbi Ari Shvat

Table of Contents

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Chapter One: Basic Concepts and Presentation of the Problem………………………………………………………….

Chapter Two: Messianic Movements – A Historical Perspective………………………………………………………….

Chapter Three: 'Messianism' and 'Apparent Messianism'………………………………………………………….

Chapter Four: Is Zionism a 'Messianic Movement'?………………………………………………………

Summary and Conclusions………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Introduction

Initial Motivation

In this paper I would like to examine the question of what a 'messianic movement' is (especially in the negative connotations of that concept), and then apply this to the characterization of Zionism. This question is, on the face of it, a natural one, and we would expect the discussion of it to be broad and comprehensive. Yet, to my great surprise, I found very little reference to it, none of it sufficiently complete, and most of it appears within the framework of Haredi criticism of the Zionist movement and of Religious Zionism.

Addressing these questions requires great caution. On the one hand, it is easy to fall into generalizations and superficial comparisons, as has often happened in Haredi polemical literature. On the other hand, affection biases judgment. Identification with the Zionist idea and with the Zionist movement may distort one's judgment and make it very difficult to formulate a cautious and profound position. As we shall see below, the concept of messianism itself is vague and difficult to diagnose and define, and the use made of it is often rash and imprecise. At first glance, the question addressed in this paper may appear captious, but it seems to me that a second look reveals that this is an important and interesting question, and by no means a trivial one. Because of this obligation to proceed cautiously, and because of the difficulty of defining the concepts, most of the paper is devoted to a principled conceptual clarification of the notion of messianism in general, and only at the end will I turn to the discussion of Religious Zionism, which by nature will be brief and not exhaustive.

Methodological Considerations

There are two methodological problems from which I would like to beware in this paper. A. I do not intend here to engage in futurology, that is, in trying to predict the future of the Zionist movement. Such an attempt involves speculation that is neither within my ability nor my intention. For that reason, I must beware lest my own Zionist outlook tempt me to expect a rosy future for Zionism and to present it in a positive light by distinguishing it from other messianic movements. B. There is a difficulty in someone like me treating Zionism and Religious Zionism from a historical perspective. This requires a reflective gaze at myself and at the society in which I live, together with a willingness to examine seriously claims directed against us and to adopt as objective and critical a perspective as possible. Here one must try not to adopt automatically a sympathetic and optimistic, rather than critical, point of view.

A systematic examination of the questions posed above requires attention to two levels of discussion, which are not independent of one another: A. First, one must survey what the sources say regarding redemption and our relation to it, and on that basis, and against that background, try to examine the ideas and ideals of Zionism and Religious Zionism. B. No less important is the comparison to other messianic movements throughout history.

Structure of the Paper

The first chapter will describe, in general terms, the concepts of messianism and will present and sharpen the research question. The second chapter deals with the history of several messianic movements and with the results of their activity. The third chapter touches on phenomena adjacent to, but distinct from, messianism. The fourth chapter focuses on the Zionist movement, and also on Religious Zionism and its conceptions, and discusses the question whether Zionism is indeed a 'messianic movement,' especially in the negative and problematic senses of that term. The paper concludes with a summary chapter, in which several of my main conclusions are presented.

Chapter One: Basic Concepts and Presentation of the Problem

Introduction

This chapter is devoted to basic concepts and clarification of the research question. By its nature, I will deal with these foundational concepts briefly, since each of them requires clarification and analysis from a range of sources, and this is not the place for that. I will use representative sources only in order to illustrate the basic principles and meanings, to the degree necessary for clarifying the research question. The principles proposed here as a framework for discussion will recur and be discussed in greater detail in the following chapters.

Redemption and the Messiah as Principles of Faith

In Maimonides' commentary to the first mishnah of the chapter Helek (tractate Sanhedrin), the thirteen principles (or foundations) of faith are presented. The twelfth principle is:

The twelfth foundation is the messianic era: to believe and affirm that it will come, and not to say that it is delayed. If it tarries, wait for it. One must not set a time for it, nor interpret the verses so as to derive the time of its coming, for the Sages said: May the spirit of those who calculate the end expire. One must believe in it, esteem it and love it, and pray for its coming in accordance with what every prophet said about it, from Moses to Malachi. Whoever doubts it or belittles its significance denies the Torah, which explicitly promised it in the Balaam passage and in the section "You Are Standing Today." Included in this principle is that Israel will have no king except from David and specifically from the seed of Solomon. Whoever disputes this family denies God and the words of His prophets.[1]

Maimonides rules here that belief in the coming of the Messiah is an absolute obligation, one of our principles of faith. It follows that one who denies it is a heretic and a denier who has no share in the World to Come (as with all the other principles). Maimonides even proposes sources in the Torah for this belief, in the Balaam passage and in the section of Nitzavim, as well as in the words of all the prophets (from Moses to Malachi). Maimonides repeats these points in greater detail in his legal work, the Laws of Kings, throughout chapter 11.

However, in the Babylonian Talmud we find a very problematic statement of Rabbi Hillel:

Rabbi Hillel says: Israel has no Messiah, for they already enjoyed him in the days of Hezekiah. Rav Yosef said: May his Master forgive Rabbi Hillel! When was Hezekiah? In the First Temple era. Yet Zechariah was prophesying in the Second Temple era and said, "Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; shout, daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a she-donkey."[2]

Rabbi Hillel seemingly denies the coming of the Messiah. And indeed, on the spot Rabbi Yosef rejects his words as unacceptable: Hezekiah reigned in the First Temple period, and if after him no Messiah will come, how could we explain Zechariah's prophecy (Zechariah prophesied at the beginning of the Second Temple period) about the coming of the Messiah?!

Belief in the coming of the Messiah and in redemption has become widespread, and today it is regarded as a cornerstone of Jewish thought and Jewish legal-religious identity. It does not seem that today there is any sage or halakhic decisor who disputes this. Admittedly, Sefer Ha-Ikkarim cites Rabbi Hillel's opinion, but only as an attack on Maimonides' position, which sees belief in the coming of the Messiah as a basic criterion (a principle) of faith. The author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim writes there:

Rabbi Hillel too was in error, because he did not believe in the coming of the redeemer, but he was not a denier of a principle. That is also the view of the later authorities, who did not count the coming of the Messiah or belief in creation among the principles.[3]

That is, in his view this cannot be a foundation or principle of faith if there is an Amora who disagrees. But he too agrees with Maimonides that this is indeed a binding and correct belief.

Awaiting Salvation

Beyond the fact that the coming of the Messiah is a binding principle, the Sages command us to engage in awaiting salvation. This belief does not exist only on the purely intellectual plane (knowing that the Messiah is supposed to come); it obligates us to a particular inner disposition: expectation. A sharp expression of this appears in a statement in tractate Shabbat:

Rava said: At the time a person is brought to judgment, they say to him: Did you conduct business faithfully? Did you set aside times for Torah? Did you engage in procreation? Did you look forward to salvation? Did you reason wisely? Did you understand one thing from another?[4]

That is, there is a demand made of every person to await salvation, as Rabbenu Nissim explains there in his commentary:

Did you look forward to salvation? Rashi explained: to the words of the prophets. But it must further be explained: did you look forward to salvation in your own days? It does not say, "Did you expect that salvation would come to Israel," because one who does not believe this is a heretic, for heretics do not believe that salvation will ever come to Israel. So it is explained in Tosafot.[5]

If so, the expectation must be concrete, not merely a general belief.

Signs of Redemption

In the Hebrew Bible and in the literature of the Sages we are given many signs and descriptions of redemption. Several characteristics of the generation of redemption are described there,[6] as well as changes in the world's mode of conduct (not unequivocally, apart from subjugation to foreign kingdoms, which is clearly supposed to cease),[7] the blossoming of the land, the return of the Jews to it,[8] and the like.

These signs invite engagement with redemption and with identifying the period in which it will come. Not only do they make such engagement possible (for one can compare the signs of the age with those given by the prophets and the Sages), it seems that the signs also provide legitimacy for the very act of engaging in the matter. Ostensibly, the signs were given to us so that we would do this—that is, so that we would know how to identify the period in which the Messiah arrives and redemption unfolds.[9] Sometimes this engagement is only theoretical (perhaps as part of awaiting redemption), but usually the motivation to engage in the signs of redemption and the identification of the period is awakened in difficult times, or in periods when these signs seemingly begin to be fulfilled (as indeed is implied by the expression 'a revealed end' in Sanhedrin 98a). There is no need to say that this phenomenon is certainly widespread in our time, and it is one of the foundational elements of the outlook of Religious Zionism.

The Problematic Nature of Engaging with Redemption and Bringing It About

In that same sugya in tractate Sanhedrin, calculations of the end are discussed. At the beginning of the sugya there we find several Sages who indeed calculated the end:

A baraita teaches: Rabbi Nathan says: This verse pierces and descends to the depths: "For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and it hastens toward the end and will not lie; though it tarry, wait for it, for it will surely come and not delay."[10] Not like our rabbis who expounded "for a time, times, and half a time,"[11] nor like Rabbi Simlai who expounded "You fed them bread of tears and gave them tears to drink in triple measure,"[12] nor like Rabbi Akiva who expounded "Yet once more, in a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth."[13] Rather: the first kingdom lasted seventy years, the second kingdom fifty-two, and the kingdom of Ben Koziva two and a half years.[14]

Yet although all of these did so, in the end the verse in Habakkuk is expounded as a rebuke of those who calculate the end:

What does "it hastens toward the end and will not lie" mean? Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani said in the name of Rabbi Yonatan: May the spirit of those who calculate the end expire, for they would say: since the end has arrived and he has not come, he will never come. Rather, wait for him, as it says: "Though it tarry, wait for it."

From the Gemara here one might have learned that one should not make one's anticipation of the Messiah dependent on any calculation. However, there is no clear statement here that it is altogether forbidden to engage in calculating the end and expounding the verses. At the end of the sugya it indeed seems that the main point is not to make one's anticipation dependent on the calculation, but we do not find there a prohibition on calculation itself. This also clearly emerges from Rashi's comments on the sugya.

But in Maimonides' words, cited above, one can see that in his view it is forbidden even to interpret the verses in a manner that calculates the end. One senses in his words anxiety about the very engagement in this subject, as if it were dangerous explosive material. In his legal work too he returns to this, and after concluding his description of the signs of redemption and the characteristics of the King Messiah, he warns (Laws of Kings 11:4): "But human beings have no power to grasp the thoughts of the Creator of the world, for His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts." He further writes:

All these things and matters like them no person can know how they will be until they happen, for they are obscure matters in the prophets. The Sages too have no received tradition regarding these matters, only what may be inferred from the verses; therefore there is dispute about them. In any case, the order in which these things will occur, and their details, are not fundamental to the religion. A person should never engage in aggadic passages, nor dwell at length on the midrashim stated about these matters and similar ones, nor make them primary, for they lead neither to fear nor to love. Likewise, one should not calculate the end. The Sages said: May the spirit of those who calculate the end expire. Rather, one should wait and believe in the matter in general, as we have explained.[15]

Indeed, even in our own time, engagement with messianism and messianic movements arouses serious concern. Messianism is often portrayed as delusional and detached, and perhaps even dangerous.

How can it be that attempts to realize such a fundamental and important belief for us are perceived as problematic acts? In what way is bringing the Messiah different from keeping the Sabbath? The issue becomes even sharper in light of the fact noted above, that awaiting redemption is a clear demand placed on the believing Jew.[16] It seems that the root of the matter lies in the phenomenon of false messianism, and in the fears aroused by the history of messianic movements, as will be detailed below.

Must We Bring Redemption with Our Own Hands?

We find another statement in tractate Sanhedrin:

And so Rabbi Judah would say: Israel was commanded with three commandments upon entering the land: to appoint a king for themselves, to destroy the seed of Amalek, and to build for themselves the Chosen House.[17]

One might have understood this as a commandment stated only for its original historical moment (upon entering the land). But other sources teach that this commandment was stated for all generations. And indeed, one of the commandments listed in Maimonides' Sefer HaMitzvot is the building of the Temple:

The twentieth commandment is that we were commanded to build a house of worship, in which sacrifice will be offered and the fire will burn continually, and to which there will be pilgrimage and ascent, and annual gathering, as will be explained. This is what He, exalted be He, said: "And let them make Me a sanctuary."[18]

This commandment is agreed upon by virtually all the enumerators of the commandments, and it is settled Jewish law.

And yet we find in Rashi on the Talmud:

[…] But the future Temple for which we hope is already built and perfected; it will be revealed and come from heaven, as it says, "The sanctuary, O Lord, that Your hands established."[19]

He determines that the future Temple will descend built from heaven; that is, we will not build it. Well known are the words of Rabbi Yaakov Ettlinger, who addresses these comments of Rashi and writes that other medieval authorities also agreed with them,[20] but nevertheless is unwilling to accept them:

Therefore, it seems to me that certainly the Temple in the future will be an actual building made by human hands. What is said, "The sanctuary, O Lord, that Your hands established," and what is expounded in the Tanhuma, that it will descend below, refers to the spiritual Temple, which will enter the physically built Temple like a soul within a body—just as in the Tabernacle and in the Temple the heavenly fire descended into the ordinary fire kindled with wood. And so it appears from the Mekhilta[21] which expounds from the verse "The place for Your dwelling that You made, O Lord," that the heavenly Temple corresponds to the earthly Temple. Therefore it says "The sanctuary, O Lord, that Your hands established"—that in the future, when the Lord reigns forever before the eyes of all who come into the world, He will dwell below within the sanctuary that has already been built and aligned with the earthly Temple; that is what it means that it will descend below, into the sanctuary that will be built.[22]

His claim is that we are commanded to build it, and that what the medieval authorities wrote—that it will descend built from heaven—means that a spiritual Temple will enter the physical Temple that we build.[23]

It is possible that one of the roots of this dispute is ideological, not only exegetical. If the future Temple descends from heaven, then there is no room for a messianism that strives to build it. On the other hand, the fact that there is a commandment to do so teaches that the matter is indeed entrusted to us. This is the same messianic-redemptive tension that we have presented until now. Similar disputes arise in later generations regarding bringing redemption, and one can see additional sources in Em HaBanim Semehah, which is devoted entirely to this issue.

Is False Messianism a Violation of Jewish Law?

It is important to understand that despite everything said up to this point, we have not found a legal prohibition against engaging in salvation, acting to bring it, or calculating the end. Even Maimonides' forceful language cited above[24] indicates that we are dealing with guidance for conduct, not with formal law.[25] It seems that the concept of 'false messianism' is, in its essence, more sociological-historical than religious-legal.

For comparison, let us briefly note a parallel but different concept: a false prophet (in the next chapter we will see references that nevertheless connect the two concepts). The Torah itself, and afterward also the Talmud and the halakhic decisors, forbid being a false prophet, and also listening to one.[26] Is there a parallel prohibition against being a false messiah? We have found no such prohibition anywhere. A person who declares of himself that he is the Messiah may be foolish, mentally unstable, and usually harmful—and perhaps all of these together. But he does not seem to be an offender, at least not in the legal sense.[27]

The conclusion is that false messianism is a concept whose basis is historical-sociological, in light of phenomena that occurred in history and the damage caused by them. Therefore, my treatment of this phenomenon and its contemporary applications will rest not only on examination of Torah and legal sources, but also on historical analysis.

A Look at History: The Phenomenon of False Messianism

In Jewish history there arose quite a few figures and movements that proclaimed themselves messiahs, or as those meant to bring redemption. We will describe this phenomenon and discuss it in greater detail in the next chapter, but already here it can be said that almost all of them were eventually disproved. Some acted mistakenly and innocently, and there are even those who explain the non-realization of redemption in their time by saying that the generation was not worthy; that is, they are not prepared to acknowledge that the messianism turned out to be false messianism. Others are remembered with everlasting disgrace as wicked deceivers. Concerning some of them bitter disputes were conducted, and concerning others the disputes continue until this very day. It should be noted that Maimonides himself also presents Christianity and Islam as kinds of false messianism.

It is therefore no wonder that the connotation that now accompanies terms such as 'messianism' or 'messianic movement' is plainly negative. In light of the findings of history, it truly appears as a bizarre idea, detached from reality, often extreme, and therefore fearsome and disturbing. This seems also to be the basis of the concern expressed by Maimonides, following the Sages, about excessive engagement in this subject.

An extreme expression of this concern is found in the thought of Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who said: 'I believe in the Messiah who will come. Forever he will come. A Messiah who has come is a false messiah.'[28] According to another version he says: a messiah who has arrived is not the Messiah, or is not a Jewish messiah (this is of course a crude allusion to Christianity's view of Jesus as the messiah who has already come). His intention is to say that the Messiah is an idea whose purpose is to move us to action, improvement, and hope, but not a historical prediction. In his view, the coming of the Messiah is not supposed to be a historical event, but a utopian vision that is not meant to be realized. What matters is striving toward it, not its actual realization. David Ben-Gurion too once said: 'The Messiah has not yet come, and I do not wish for him to come. The moment the Messiah comes, he ceases to be the Messiah. When you find the Messiah's address in the telephone book—he is no longer the Messiah.'[29]

Why this sweeping negation of the historical realization of the messianic idea? Why is the Messiah's mere potentiality such an essential foundation for them? Tomer Persico, in the remarks cited there, attributes this to the weakening of the protest and aspiration to act that has driven Judaism from time immemorial. But it seems impossible to ignore here also the fear of the influences and consequences of messianism should it be disproved—despair and loss of faith. As we shall see below, this is exactly what happened more than once in history.

The central Jewish conception, of course, does not accept this interpretation. Belief in the coming of the Messiah is perceived by the Sages of Israel, as well as by the believing public in general, as an unequivocally historical belief. Prayer for the coming of the Messiah is not a metaphorical movement of the lips but a request grounded in concrete historical belief. The aspiration to bring the Messiah does indeed express a desire to act and improve oneself, but it draws nourishment from the belief that in the end it will also be realized. It is difficult to understand how one can build cultural, religious, or national aspirations on an illusion or myth alone. However, the dangers that move Leibowitz and Ben-Gurion to develop such conceptions certainly exist, and it is important to understand how they are dealt with. These claims cast no small shadow over the very possibility of a messianic movement, since the danger and apprehension always accompany it.

Two Types of Messianism

It is important in this context to distinguish between two different uses of the term 'messianism.' There are movements such as communism, or movements of liberation and equality (for women, for Blacks, and the like), whose goal is to bring an axiological redemption to the world, or to improve the moral condition of some society. There is no messiah here in the religious-eschatological sense. Messianism here is a metaphor whose meaning is arrival at a more complete and correct moral state (= redemption). There, the question of potentiality and realization is not especially important. The main thing is the aspiration to repair the world, and by all views that is a positive aspiration even if it is not actually realized. By contrast, we are speaking of concrete messianism, that is, a movement whose goal is to bring the religious Messiah and the promised redemption. Here the question of the concrete realization of the promises of the Torah and the prophets is critical. The complete moral condition to which ideological movements aspire does not exhaust the aspiration of redemption and religious messianism. There is here a distinctly religious dimension that constitutes a goal of the messianic movement. In the Jewish context this refers to the return of the Divine Presence, prophecy, the Sanhedrin, the building of the Temple, the ingathering of exiles, and the like.

An important expression of this, though not a necessary one, is the persona—that is, a concrete person who will bring all this about. This is the Messiah in his original, not metaphorical, sense. But even messianism without a messiah, if it aspires to the state of the end of days in its religious sense, may be considered a messianic movement, and such things have indeed happened in history. It is important to note that in the context of Zionism it is difficult to speak of a person who claims of himself that he is the Messiah, and therefore here, if at all, we are speaking of a messianic movement and not of a person (= messiah).[30]

The concern of this paper is only with messianism of the concrete type (whether with a persona or without one). Metaphorical messianism can serve only as background for the discussion. One may of course learn from it about the problems inherent in realizing the utopian and messianic idea, and about the dangers involved in the aspirations and extreme modes of action that characterize many revolutionary movements. It is important to understand that it is not always clear whether statements such as those of Leibowitz and Ben-Gurion cited above refer to metaphorical messianism or to concrete messianism, or perhaps to both. At least in the postmodern age (an age in which it is customary to think that the great ideologies have 'died'), it seems that usually the intention is indeed both.

The Zionist Movement and Religious Zionism as Two Types of Messianism

It is important here to return to the distinction I made in the previous section. General Zionism is a messianic movement only in a borrowed sense. Its goal was (and still is) to bring national and cultural redemption to the Jewish people by their own hands, and thereby to put an end to passivity and stagnation (and, of course, to free itself from antisemitism as well). Part of this involved liberation from the 'chains' of religion and from expectation of the religious-eschatological Messiah. This is messianism in a national sense, and it resembles communism and various movements of national and social liberation such as those mentioned above. It contains dimensions opposite to concrete messianism (such as the importance of activity, as against the passivity that usually characterizes awaiting the Messiah), and also similar dimensions.

By contrast, Religious Zionism advocates religious-eschatological messianism. It is a movement that joined the Zionist movement in order to realize a national redemption that cannot be separated from religious redemption and from the Davidic Messiah promised to us in the Torah and the prophets. It has something in common with metaphorical messianism, since it too arose against Haredi and anti-Zionist passivity, advocating the bringing of the (concrete) Messiah by our own hands. On the other hand, it differs from general Zionism, because its aspirations are no less religious than national (many within Religious Zionism do not distinguish between the two at all).

In fact, this is a prominent characteristic of almost all messianic movements. Messianic movements, even those whose goal is the concrete Messiah, differ from the passive aspiration for the Messiah that prevails throughout the religious world precisely at this point: activity. A messianic movement is a movement whose goal is to act actively to bring the concrete Messiah. This is distinct from belief in the coming of the Messiah, and even from anticipating him, both of which are essentially passive modes of conduct, and whose legitimacy is not disputed.

It is precisely in this that the advantage of these movements lies, but also the danger involved in them. The activity, devotion, and self-sacrifice that characterize the messianic movement may lead to problematic deeds. They may also crash upon the rocks of reality in the event of failure, something that may lead to loss of faith in the Messiah and to general despair.

This is the background that sharpens the importance of the question addressed in this paper. On the face of it, Religious Zionism is a messianic movement. The question therefore arises whether it suffers from the same defects and is subject to the same dangers as almost all the messianic movements in our history.

Maimonides' Note: Why the Holy One Raises Up False Messiahs

Maimonides writes in the Laws of Kings:

If there arises a king from the house of David, immersed in Torah and occupied with commandments like David his father, according to the Written and Oral Torah, and he compels all Israel to walk in it and strengthen its observance, and he fights the wars of the Lord, he is presumed to be the Messiah. If he succeeds, defeats all the surrounding nations, builds the Temple in its place, and gathers the dispersed of Israel, then he is certainly the Messiah. But if he does not succeed up to that point, or is killed, then it is known that he is not the one the Torah promised; rather, he is like all the worthy and upright kings of the house of David who died. The Holy One, blessed be He, raised him up only to test the many, as it is said: "And some of the wise shall stumble, to refine, purify, and whiten them, until the time of the end, for it is yet for the appointed time."[31]

Maimonides gives here a criterion for how and when we can know that a king who arises for us is indeed the true Messiah. After that he explains the general phenomenon of false messiahs, whose purpose is to test us.

This explanation is highly innovative, since Maimonides presents it as if the Holy One, blessed be He, is the one who raises up false messiahs in order to test us. It seems that in his eyes this is not like every other sin or transgression, which is our own deed and our responsibility; rather, this is an act of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose purpose is to test us.

Later in that same law, Maimonides gives an additional purpose for some of the false messiahs (he is referring to Christianity and Islam):

But human beings have no power to grasp the thoughts of the Creator of the world, for His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. All these matters concerning Jesus the Nazarene and that Ishmaelite who arose after him were only to clear the way for the King Messiah and to prepare the whole world to worship God together, as it is said: "For then I will turn to the peoples a pure language, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve Him with one accord." How so? The whole world has already been filled with talk of the Messiah, the Torah, and the commandments, and these matters have spread to distant islands and among many uncircumcised peoples. They discuss these matters and the commandments of the Torah: some say these commandments were true but have now been annulled and were not meant for future generations; others say there are hidden meanings in them and they are not to be taken literally, and that the Messiah has already come and revealed their secrets. But when the true King Messiah arises and succeeds and is exalted and lifted up, all of them will at once return and know that their fathers inherited falsehood, and that their prophets and ancestors led them astray.[32]

If so, these messiahs too are the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He, except that they were not meant only to test Israel, but also to repair the world and prepare the way for the true Messiah.

The Research Question: Is Religious Zionism a 'Messianic Movement'?

The question I wish to examine in this paper is the status of Religious Zionism within this historical picture. There is no doubt that there are here dimensions of a messianic movement, even if there is no specific person who has been declared the Messiah. Even so, the fear that this movement too may be disproved, and that the process in which we find ourselves will join all its predecessors, gnaws at many hearts. Is there room for this fear? Is Religious Zionism nothing more than yet another messianic movement, and will its end be like that of its predecessors? The quotation marks around 'messianic movement' are intended to express that I am dealing specifically with the negative and problematic meaning of this term (as distinct from its merely descriptive meaning). The subject of this paper is not the factual question whether Zionism is a messianic movement, but the evaluative question: is it a 'messianic movement'?

We, as those who live the Zionist age and are partners in the Zionist movement, and especially as those who belong to Religious Zionism, are accustomed to seeing all this as self-evident. Usually we do not require the historical-Torah perspective needed in order to examine this question, which concerns ourselves. Naturally, the movement to which we belong is not perceived by us as bizarre, dangerous, or as deviating from the Torah perspective in its various sources. On the contrary, it seems to us that we are their authentic continuation. But is this really the case? It is proper that we examine whether we are not part of a Shabbetai Zvi-style messianic movement.

A few years ago Binyamin Shlomo Hamburger's book, Meshichei HaSheker UMitnagdeihem (hereafter: Hamburger), appeared,[33] and it attempts to place Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl as part of the chain of false messiahs throughout the generations. The book was written from a Haredi perspective and is highly tendentious (as I will show below), and in this it joins earlier Haredi polemical literature that sharply criticizes Zionist messianism. It is difficult to avoid the feeling that some of this Haredi criticism is based on those same fears of messianism in general, and not necessarily on the specific content of Zionist messianism. Sometimes this is not even conscious, but it is certainly present in the background.

Despite all this, it seems to me that we are not entitled to ignore the claims raised in the book. The placing of Herzl in the line of false messiahs arouses discomfort (to say the least) and a feeling of tendentiousness, and yet, in my best judgment, we owe it at least to ourselves to give an account of the relation between our way of life and messianism in its negative and problematic senses. Such an accounting, despite the sense of alienation it may generate, will help us clarify for ourselves where we stand.

A Further Clarification of the Research Question

One more important clarification must be made with respect to the research question. Even if we survey the sources of the prophets and the Sages and find that the assessment of Religious Zionist figures regarding our own period indeed reflects them correctly—that is, that the signs of redemption are truly being fulfilled in our time—this still does not necessarily answer the research question. The research does not ask whether Religious Zionism is correct (that is, whether it accords with the sources that describe redemption), nor what the end of the process will be (whether we will reach redemption or not). The question with which we are concerned is whether Religious Zionism is a 'messianic movement.' Even if there is complete correspondence between our era and the descriptions in the books of the prophets and in the words of the Sages, there is still room to argue that we are forbidden to draw practical conclusions from this. False messianism can also be a mode of conduct and a form of action, and not only a lack of fit to the sources or a historical-factual failure.

Earlier 'messianic movements' also made use of signs of redemption. Every messiah brought supports and proofs, better or worse, for his claim to the messianic crown.[34] Therefore the mere fact that there are supports does not by itself mean that we are dealing with messianism without quotation marks. Moreover, the problem with false messianism is not only that the supports it brought were incorrect, that is, that the correspondence to the signs of redemption is forced or mistaken. It is not reasonable to identify false messianism with an error in interpreting verses or reality. Error as such is not a disgraceful thing. It is quite clear that part of the problem of false messianism lies in the mode of action adopted by the movement or those individuals in light of those supports.

The same is true in the opposite direction. Just as a correct calculation does not necessarily mean that we are not dealing with false messianism, so a mistaken calculation does not necessarily mean that we are. Several of our earlier authorities engaged in calculations of the end, and some of them even gave signs. In the end they were all disproved. Would it be reasonable to classify those medieval authorities as engaged in false messianism? Once again we arrive at the conclusion that the question whether something is a 'messianic movement,' or false messianism, is a question different in its essence from the exegetical question: whether the signs given for redemption are indeed faithful to the signs transmitted in our tradition.

If historical disappointment is not necessarily a criterion for a 'messianic movement,' how can it be defined? I will suggest here several possibilities for defining it, on several ascending levels, and over the course of the paper we will examine which of them best represents this concept:

• The most extreme approaches will say that belief in a concrete and realistic messiah, even without acting on his behalf, is already false messianism. As we saw, Ben-Gurion and Leibowitz thought that a messiah who has arrived is a false messiah. As noted, I assume that this approach does not fit the Jewish tradition.
• A somewhat less extreme approach will say that the very fact that you act in practice to bring the Messiah turns you into a participant in a 'messianic movement' in the negative sense. The Messiah is an idea, a person, or an age, toward which one should look, and which is also supposed to be realized (not as Leibowitz thought), but still one may not act practically to bring it. It is supposed to come from heaven (as in Rashi's words cited above in tractate Sukkah).
• An even less extreme approach will say that it is indeed possible to act to bring redemption, but the question is how. According to this approach, what defines a 'messianic movement,' or false messianism, is performing problematic acts for that purpose. Here too one can point to several kinds of problematic actions:
  1. Actions that involve a legal prohibition.[35] For example, the Zionist movement established a court system that does not operate according to Jewish law, and ostensibly this actually involves the prohibition of going to secular courts.
  2. Actions carried out in a way not accepted in our tradition, even if not a transgression in the formal legal sense. For example, cooperation with secular Jews and deniers, including the establishment of a governing system that does not operate according to the Torah. Another example is rebellion against the nations and forcing the end (against the Three Oaths cited in tractate Ketubbot 111a). All these are actions that ostensibly stand against our tradition (even if not against formal law), and there are those who see in them marks of false messianism, or of a 'messianic movement.'
  3. Actions that have no justification in realistic thinking, or that exaggerate our power. For example, selling all our property and immigrating to a desolate land where we have no realistic chance of succeeding in settling. All the more so when this also involves a security risk vis-à-vis the Arab states (and the world). Provocation and declaration of war against great powers. There are those who tie false messianism to actions of this sort.

As stated, over the course of our discussion we will try to examine all these proposals historically.

The Methodological Meaning of This Distinction

In the Jewish literature of the past two hundred years one can find quite a few references to the question whether our period is indeed the age of the Messiah.[36] These sources deal mainly with the question whether the signs of redemption are being fulfilled and indicating to us that redemption is indeed near, or not. But one hardly finds there discussion of the question whether Religious Zionism is a 'messianic movement' in the sense I have proposed here (with the exception of Hamburger and Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum's VaYoel Moshe, which address it, albeit in a tendentious and biased way). As I have shown here, these are two different questions, and my paper deals with the second.

The meaning of this is that it is not enough to examine this question in light of ordinary legal sources. The reason is that, as we saw above, there is no legal definition of false messianism. This is a sociological-historical phenomenon in its essence, and it must be treated with historical tools. On the other hand, since our concern here is with an evaluative determination and not only with facts, we will focus on the way the sages of Israel related to the various movements, even if this is not necessarily historically grounded. It is more important how those sages saw the 'messianic movement' with which they were dealing than whether their view accords with the historical facts.

In the next chapter I will present a historical survey of the phenomena now known as false messianism, in order to try to learn from them about the characteristics of such messianism, and to examine the proposals for defining characteristics that were presented above. Only afterward will we be able to return and ask whether these characteristics also exist in Religious Zionism or not.

Chapter Two: Messianic Movements – A Historical Perspective

Introduction

The number of messianic movements is very large,[37] and therefore I have chosen to focus on several prominent examples of different types in order to try to learn from them about the concept of a 'messianic movement' in general. At least some of them (such as Christianity, Sabbateanism, and the Bar Kokhba revolt) deserve long and detailed discussion, and I cannot do that here. I will try to focus briefly only on the aspects relevant to their definition as 'messianic movements.' As I said in the previous chapter, what matters for our purposes is how these movements were perceived in the eyes of the sages, and not necessarily the historical truth. Therefore I will try to be brief, and I have hardly entered into critical historical sources; my discussion assumes the description of the events as it appears in the literature of our sages throughout the generations.

I have divided the historical discussion into four categories, which in my view reflect four kinds of 'messianic movements': A. Christianity as a movement that in the end completely separated itself from the Jewish people. B. Bar Koziva as a national-forceful movement. C. Alroy, Reuveni, and the like, who were false messiahs that did not deviate from Jewish law but undertook various practical actions in order to bring the Messiah. D. Shabbetai Zvi and the Sabbateans, who deviated entirely from Jewish law and traditional belief (and in the end some of them also abandoned Jewish religion and society).

A. Jesus and the Beginnings of Christianity[38]

Christianity began in the Land of Israel as part of the phenomenon of the Gnostic sects in the first century of the Common Era, through Jesus of Nazareth, later called Yeshu. Its main diffusion came through his disciples (the apostles, and especially Paul, that is, Saul of Tarsus). Christianity took shape as an independent religion only over the course of several centuries thereafter, and today it is widespread throughout the world, with dozens and hundreds of different branches and sub-branches. Research data show that it is the religion with the largest number of adherents in the world.[39] Christianity is a complex, broad, and long-lasting phenomenon, and it is the primary influence on contemporary Western culture. In Jewish law and thought there are many discussions and disputes about the status of Christianity as idolatry and about the proper attitude toward its beliefs and rituals, but that does not directly concern us. For us, what matters is the messianic dimension in Christian faith, whose centrality is evident from Jesus' title (Christos, meaning Messiah in their language).

According to Christian belief, Jesus is the son of God who descended into the world to redeem humanity through his death. One of the principles of Christian belief is that at the end of days he will return to redeem humanity (what they call the Apocalypse). At the beginning of its path, Christianity appealed mainly to Jews in the Land of Israel, and in the third century, when it reached Rome, its believers were persecuted by the Roman Empire. But at the beginning of the fourth century the emperor Constantine decided to stop the persecution, and even converted to Christianity himself. In the year 325 the Council of Nicaea was convened, where the principles of Christianity were established. After that, freedom of religion was granted to Christians in Rome, and finally Theodosius I turned it into the only permitted religion in the empire.

In that same century the Roman Catholic Church came into being, governed and directed by a hierarchy of priests of various ranks, headed by the pope, who since then and until today (with minor interruptions) has sat in Rome. In order to deepen its diffusion and control, the Church established the missionary enterprise, which spread the Christian religion throughout the world and brought it to its present status. From its establishment and for more than a thousand years thereafter, the Christian religious establishment ruled most of the Western world. At that stage Christianity certainly can no longer be regarded as a Jewish sect.

Christianity adopted the Hebrew Bible and early Jewish tradition as part of its canon ('the Old Testament'). It added to this the Gospels and called them 'the New Testament,' symbolizing God's transition from the Jewish people in the classical sense to the Jewish people in the new sense they tried to give that term (they call themselves Israelites or Jews). Christian conceptions, rituals, and articles of faith underwent changes, and Christianity experienced many schisms. These schisms and the Reformation created many Christian sects that differ in many ways from Catholicism, both in their religious establishment and in their faith and rituals.

Throughout history, Christianity, in its various branches, persecuted the Jews and Judaism. The root of this persecution is twofold: 1. the accusation that the Jews crucified Jesus, or caused him to be crucified; 2. according to Christian theology, God abandoned the Jews, and the Christians are the true continuators of Judaism (He made a 'new covenant' with them). Part of that theology obligates them to wipe out classical Judaism and to bring the Jews into the bosom of Christianity, or alternatively to leave Judaism in a state of humiliation, as part of the obligation to eliminate the force that opposes Christian messianism (the anti-Christ, in their language). I should note that the rebirth of the State of Israel was (and still is) a severe blow to Christian theology, since it proves that the Jews have continued existence and redemption, as written in the sacred scriptures of the Hebrew Bible. Therefore it was very difficult for the Church to recognize the State of Israel and establish normal relations with it.

Maimonides, in the Laws of Kings, defines what a true messiah is (see his words cited above). Later in that law appears a section that was censored in ordinary editions:

Jesus the Nazarene, who imagined that he was the Messiah and was executed by the court—Daniel already prophesied about him, as it is said: "And the lawless among your people shall exalt themselves to establish the vision, but they shall stumble." Is there a greater stumbling block than this? For all the prophets spoke of the Messiah as the redeemer of Israel, their savior, the gatherer of their dispersed, and the one who strengthens their observance of the commandments. But this one caused Israel to perish by the sword, scattered their remnant, humiliated them, altered the Torah, and misled most of the world to worship a god other than the Lord.[40]

We see that, in Maimonides' opinion, the main problem was that he declared himself the Messiah without justification. The proof is that he failed, that is, that it became clear that it was not true. The problematic dimension Maimonides saw in the phenomenon of Christianity is the result: it caused Israel to perish by the sword, scattered its remnant, humiliated them, altered the Torah, and misled the world into worship of another god (for Maimonides, Christianity is idolatry). But in light of what we said in the previous chapter, we must ask here: is there also a problem in the very conduct of early Christianity, beyond the results?

Rabbi Judah Aryeh of Modena,[41] in his book Magen VaHerev, analyzes Christianity historically and conceptually at length. Among other things he writes that there were several different sects in the Land of Israel in that period, and regarding Jesus he writes:

It follows that he acknowledged not only the Written Torah but also the Oral Torah, insofar as it had been transmitted according to his understanding… and that sustained him for a time. For had he preached even a slight change in the Torah, no one would have listened to him, and everyone would have pursued and opposed him. Therefore he always spoke of maintaining it: "I have not come to change the Torah but to fulfill it." And he further said: "Heaven and earth may pass away, but not a single word of the Torah will pass away."[42]

That is, Rabbi Judah Aryeh thinks that Jesus was close to the Pharisees (there is disagreement about this among scholars), and this was the reason people accepted him and did not dismiss him out of hand. Afterward he writes that Jesus began to cast doubt on several laws and components of the tradition and said that they were not from Sinai (with regard to ritual hand-washing, this appears in the Gospel itself, where the Pharisees rebuke him for it). Therefore they began to suspect him as one of the sectarians who arose in that period. He adds that Jesus himself did not at all think of himself, or imagine himself, as the son of God (after all, he ate, drank, and slept like any ordinary person); it was his disciples who did so.

There is here an important characteristic. False messianism begins within the tradition and out of recognition of, and full commitment to, it. The 'messiah' claims that he is the one who upholds the tradition, and that his path is the one that will bring us the hoped-for redemption. The challenge to the details of Jewish law and the deviation from tradition usually come later, gradually and cautiously, and that makes it difficult for sages to diagnose the phenomenon at its beginning. Another characteristic is charisma, the performance of wonders, and presentation of oneself as a powerful, wealthy, wise man, and perhaps even as a prophet endowed with powers. The title 'son of God,' which was born only in later generations, is a result of these spurious characteristics of his conduct and character.

The Tashbetz too (one of the great sages of Algeria in the fifteenth century) wrote a treatise called 'Refutation of Christian Belief,'[43] in which he describes the matter in a similar way. In his opinion, Jesus certainly did not think of himself as the son of God. He saw himself as a prophet and a great man, and as a messiah sent to Israel to redeem them. He saw himself as the one about whom the prophets had prophesied. The Tashbetz argues that his execution by the Jews was part of their attempt to test whether his wonders were from divine power or from sorcery.

There are here two additional characteristics of the false messiah: 1. he has messianic pretensions; 2. he performs wonders by another power, and not by divine power. I note here that this description may depend on disputes among the medieval authorities.[44] Some thought that there is indeed another power (the 'other side'), which is forbidden by the Torah prohibition of simple wholeheartedness with God and by the prohibitions of sorcery, divination, and the like. Maimonides and his school, by contrast, held that there is no such other power and that all of it is sleight of hand. And indeed we have already seen above that Maimonides is consistent here with his own view, seeing Christianity as an act of the Holy One, blessed be He (in order to test us and to pave the way for the world's true redemption), and not as something born of a foreign power.

We must remember that performing wonders indicates prophecy, but not messianism,[45] as Maimonides writes:

Do not suppose that the King Messiah must perform signs and wonders, create new things in the world, revive the dead, or the like. It is not so. Rabbi Akiva, one of the great sages of the Mishnah, was the armor-bearer of King Ben Koziva, and he said of him that he was the King Messiah. He and all the sages of his generation thought that he was the King Messiah until he was killed because of sins. Once he was killed, they knew that he was not. The sages did not ask him for any sign or wonder. The essential principle is this: this Torah, its statutes and laws, are forever and ever; nothing may be added to them or subtracted from them. Anyone who adds or subtracts, or interprets the Torah in a way that uproots the commandments from their plain meaning, is certainly wicked and a heretic.[46]

Maimonides gives here two criteria for diagnosing false messianism: A. reliance on wonders; B. deviation from Jewish law and from the principles of the Torah. So too we saw above[47] in Maimonides' words that in the days of the Messiah there will be no departure from the natural order of the world ('there is no difference between this world and the days of the Messiah except subjugation to foreign rule'). If so, the very use of wonders as the basis of messianism contains a deviation from our tradition concerning the Messiah.[48]

In his novellae, the Ritva[49] attributes Jesus' power to his rhetorical ability and charisma ("that he would preach in the marketplaces before the multitudes tales of slander in order to lead them astray"). Rabbi Joseph Duran, in his book Kelimat HaGoyim, adds that he appealed mainly to the simple masses with Torah discourses that he delivered in their ears on Sabbaths, and explains this by a charlatan-like use of Kabbalah before those ignorant of it. He explains in that way the distorted citations from sacred scripture that appear in Christian literature. It should be noted that the Church itself celebrates Jesus' drawing close to the common people, and in that sense there is a certain resemblance here to early Hasidism and the struggle against it, mutatis mutandis.

Christians bring many proofs for his messianism from sacred scripture and from historical events, and they attribute various events in history to the refusal to accept his messianism. Rabbi Hayyim Vital cites descriptions by Jewish sages who displayed Jesus' corpse and the means of his execution as proof that he died. He attributes a considerable part of the legends about Jesus' death and return to the crisis his disciples underwent when they saw that he died like an ordinary human being.[50] Because of this they began to disseminate various legends that would resolve that difficulty.[51]

Maimonides too, in his Iggeret Teiman, relates that the Jews rejected these tales with mockery, as though this were mere buffoonery: "The matter became a joke and a mockery, like the amusement people take in the antics of a monkey when its deeds resemble those of human beings."[52] Therefore the Christians turned to spreading their faith specifically among the gentiles throughout the world, and then it shed most of what at first had seemed to be Jewish clothing. Rabbi Judah Halevi places in the mouth of the Christian sage a description of that process, whereby the practical commandments were abolished, a corporeal conception of divinity was created, proofs were brought from sacred scripture that Jesus was the true Messiah promised by the prophets, and therefore the traditional belief in the coming of the Messiah was annulled, and so forth.

A central part of the Jewish sages' view of Christianity as false messianism is the persecutions it carried out against the Jews throughout the generations. The fact that this 'messianic' process brought such grave results—persecution, humiliation, murder, blood libels, coercion, and expulsions—bears overwhelming witness to the falsehood of this messianism from its very beginning.[53]

B. Shimon Bar Koziva

This is an interesting and unusual case of a messianic movement, mainly in two respects: A. the characteristics: there does not seem to have been an element there of violating the commandments or deviating from tradition. By contrast, there is here an element of the use of force to fight the enemies of Israel, and some have likened this to contemporary Zionism. B. the dispute concerning him: there was a disagreement among the greatest tannaim (which continues until today) about the nature of Ben Koziva, and as is well known Rabbi Akiva, the greatest of the sages of the Oral Torah, supported him. Maimonides writes that he even carried his weapons.

About fifty years after the destruction of the Second Temple, the Romans imposed harsh decrees upon Israel, whose purpose was to uproot the Torah and suppress Jewish nationhood. They erected statues of Jupiter everywhere, including in Jerusalem. The Jews began a revolt, led by Ben Koziva, whose epithet was Bar Kokhba.[54] The Sages describe him in several places as a wondrous hero of enormous strength. They tell that he would catch ballista stones hurled at him and kill his enemies with them.[55] He selected for himself only men of exceptional strength and courage, and did so by means of tests that required his soldiers to sever one of their fingers with their teeth or place it in fire.[56] The Sages criticize him for thereby turning the young men of Israel into men with blemishes, and as a result he moderated the test and required his soldiers to uproot cedar trees while riding horses.[57] In the end he raised an army of four hundred thousand such men (!). His confidence was so excessive when he went out to battle that the Gemara describes him as saying: "Master of the Universe, neither help nor hinder."[58] Intoxication with power is the most salient characteristic of this description.

He won victories against the Romans, and his name became a myth even outside the Land of Israel. I did not find a source that Ben Koziva himself saw himself as the Messiah, but the Jerusalem Talmud there describes Rabbi Akiva's excited response: "This is the King Messiah!" Maimonides writes that following this Rabbi Akiva became Ben Koziva's armor-bearer. Rabbi Yohanan ben Torta there in the Jerusalem Talmud sharply disagrees and says to him: "Akiva, grass will grow from your cheeks and the son of David still will not have come!" In fact the dispute concerning Bar Kokhba continued in later generations as well. Maimonides writes, 'all Israel and the great sages thought that he was the King Messiah,'[59] and similarly the Abudraham,[60] and Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano.[61] The Radbaz on Maimonides there, however, is careful to note that already at the beginning of Ben Koziva's path, the sages of Israel were divided concerning the proper relation to him.[62]

The Gemara in Sanhedrin[63] presents the characteristics of the Messiah, and one of them is that he judges by the sense of smell and does not need sight. The Gemara recounts that Ben Koziva declared himself the Messiah, and then the sages tested him according to that criterion, and when he failed to meet it, they killed him. Why did the sages of Israel sentence him to death? As we saw in the first chapter, false messianism is not a legal transgression. Moreover, by that period capital cases were no longer tried by the Sanhedrin. The Yad Ramah explains here: "In a case like this he was a false prophet, for the Messiah judges by the holy spirit of smell. Since he said, 'I am the Messiah, and I judge by smell,' he is therefore a false prophet and liable to death."[64] First, he determines that Ben Koziva was a false messiah. Second, he understands that the Gemara here innovates that false messianism is really false prophecy, that is, a transgression liable to death (see our discussion of this in the first chapter). It is possible, however, that Ben Koziva's execution was not carried out according to the formal law of capital punishment.

In Eikhah Rabbati (2:4) it is described that two of Bar Koziva's soldiers wanted to kill the emperor Hadrian and crown him in his place. They too expressed the view that they did not need God's help for this ('do not help and do not hinder,' as above), and immediately died. During his victories he was crowned king of Israel in Betar, his royal city. He minted coins as though he were king.[65] During the two and a half years that he ruled the Jews, they resumed keeping the commandments without fear.[66]

In the end, Bar Koziva retreated before the Romans and entrenched himself in Betar. After a siege lasting three and a half years, Betar was captured. Thousands of Jews were killed there, and there are horrifying descriptions of rivers of blood flowing from there outward until the Great Sea.[67]

In the Jerusalem Talmud, Ta'anit there, it is told that Bar Koziva's uncle, Elazar of Modi'in, used to pray in Betar and thus protected the city from the Romans. The only counsel that helped the Romans was to sow discord between Bar Koziva and his uncle so that he would kill him and the prayer would cease. Thus the Gemara says after describing Bar Koziva killing his uncle:

Immediately a heavenly voice went forth and said, "Woe to the worthless shepherd who abandons the flock! A sword upon his arm and upon his right eye; his arm shall wither, and his right eye shall grow dim."[68] You killed Rabbi Elazar of Modi'in, the arm of all Israel and their right eye; therefore the arm of that man shall surely wither and his right eye shall surely grow dim. Immediately Betar was captured and Ben Koziva was killed.[69]

It clearly emerges here that there was an ideological confrontation between Bar Koziva and his uncle over a basic question: what is the proper way to bring redemption to Israel—through prayer or through war? In the end, forceful redemption wanted to defeat spiritual redemption and failed. The sages inferred from this that part of the problem was the excess of forcefulness. The Gemara there relates that Hadrian himself said: "If not for the God who killed them, who could have killed them?" and applied to him the verse "Were it not that their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had delivered them up." Without the Holy One, blessed be He, delivering us into his hand, he could not have overcome us. The message of this Gemara seems to be that prayer is the more important means, not force.[70]

Maimonides, in the Laws of Kings, writes:

Rabbi Akiva was a great sage among the sages of the Mishnah, and he was the armor-bearer of King Ben Koziva. He said of him that he was the King Messiah, and he and all the sages of his generation thought that he was the King Messiah until he was killed because of sins. Once he was killed, they knew that he was not, and the sages had not asked him for any sign or wonder.[71]

Maimonides interprets the very death of Bar Koziva as the final proof that he was a false messiah. Indeed, the Raavad there objects to him on the basis of the Gemara we saw above. It seems he understood that the sages themselves killed him, that is, that they understood he was a false messiah even before he died. From Maimonides' words it appears that there really was room to regard Bar Koziva as the Messiah, and that there was nothing in his conduct itself that contradicted this. Only his death proved retroactively that it was an error. It should nevertheless be remembered that other sages disagreed with Rabbi Akiva, and from the beginning argued that this was false messianism.[72]

Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel, in his book Yeshu'ot Meshiho,[73] compares the false messianism of Bar Kokhba to Christianity and Islam. He does so, however, only in the sense that the phenomenon of messianism is meant to pave the way for the King Messiah, as Maimonides wrote in the passage we saw above. He does not specify exactly what the falsehood in Ben Koziva's messianism was.

To what can it be attributed? There was no performance of wonders here. There was no deviation from Jewish law. There certainly was charisma and heroism, and there was provocation—probably unrealistic—against a very strong empire. There was also pride and excessive self-confidence to the point of removing God from the stage. There was self-coronation as king (there are sources saying that he was from the tribe of Judah and from the line of David; therefore there is not necessarily a prohibition here).[74] There was forcefulness and forcing the end. And there were the catastrophic results of the revolt.

The results are a retrospective indication that this messianism failed. But what are the indications that there was here a 'messianic movement' in the sense we defined in the previous chapter? What in the conduct itself testified that there was something problematic here? In what did Rabbi Akiva err, if at all? From what we have said above, it seems that this can be attributed either to self-confidence and the removal of providence ('my power and the might of my hand'), or to forcefulness and unrealistic rebellion against the Roman Empire. In the previous chapter we suggested several characteristics of a 'messianic movement.' Here it can be attributed either to a mistaken spiritual approach (rebellion against the Holy One, blessed be He), or to adopting actions that stand in opposition to realist political considerations.

In summary, there are several approaches to understanding the falsehood in the messianism of Bar Koziva.

• Maimonides did not see a problem in Bar Koziva's conduct at all, at least until his death. The two criteria that can be brought here are: 1. his death itself; 2. the destructive results of his actions, which of course became clear only after his death.
• There are also approaches that speak of the spiritual problem. The first authorities in this direction are the Sages themselves, who put in Bar Koziva's mouth a rejection of God's help, that is, removing the Holy One, blessed be He, from the arena. Thus too Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch writes:

This was in the period of Emperor Hadrian, at the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt; that revolt proved to be an error of great calamity, and Israel needed to be warned for all generations not to repeat that attempt. For it is not by their own strength and power that they will restore Israel's crown to its former glory; rather, they must entrust their national future to the guidance of God alone… Thus a lesson was learned for all generations: that we should turn our minds away from the help of flesh and blood and cast our burden on God alone: "He has done us good… He will do us good… He will bestow goodness upon us… He will reign… He will break…"[75]

He attributes Bar Kokhba's punishment to the fact that he did not place his trust in the Holy One, blessed be He (as we saw above: 'do not help and do not hinder').

• In Rabbi Yaakov Emden's book Birat Migdal Oz, one can perhaps find a source for the third approach, namely the negation of forcefulness itself and of forcing the end. He discusses there the different attitudes of human beings toward nature, and classifies them into several types. The seventh type is:

Deceptive fools like Ben Koziva, David Almoser, Rabbi Solomon Molkho, Rabbi Asher Lammlein, and the like, who made use of adjurations and practical Kabbalah, and suddenly passed away and were punished. Although their intentions were for the good, and they did not transgress teachings or cast off restraints, nevertheless they violated the oath with which the Holy One, blessed be He, adjured Israel not to force the end. They became a stumbling rock and offense for Israel, arousing the jealousy and hatred of the nations against them and distancing from them the wondrous providence of God, which never ceased to show its power in this bitter exile, to keep our feet upon the rock against all who rise up against us in every generation to destroy us, while the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us. How then can a prisoner free himself to seize kingship through the hasty counsel of rash and foolish advisers.

Of these sects and the like it is said: "And some of the wise shall stumble, to refine them, and to purge and whiten them, until the time of the end, for it is yet for the appointed time." Happy are the faithful, children of the faithful, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who do not hasten, do not break through to go up as a wall, but seek the peace of the city to which they were exiled, and entreat the Lord to restore their captivity. They give Him no rest; they plead and beseech, and He answers them and heals them, gathering their dispersed ones, one by one bringing them to the land He swore to them. Happy is the one who waits and reaches that day.[76]

He explains explicitly that in all those movements[77] there was no deviation from tradition and Jewish law, and their intention was good, and nevertheless this is false messianism because it contains forcing the end, 'ascending as a wall,' and seizing political rule. The problem is forcefulness and active rebellion, instead of passively waiting for redemption, as well as the destructive consequences that came in their wake. It is interesting to note in this context that there is a surprising partner to this diagnosis, namely the Israeli secular-Zionist scholar Yehoshafat Harkabi, who devoted an entire book to this argument, and even more to the analogy with the Zionist movement (an analogy that Haredi literature is also so fond of making).[78] It should be noted that Maimonides, by contrast, does not mention that Bar Kokhba's actions involved forcing the end.

Needless to say, Hamburger places forcefulness and rebellion against the nations at the center of his diagnosis. Already in the chapter dealing with Bar Kokhba, long before he comes to discuss Herzl, he presents the athletic association 'Bar Kokhba' as the continuation of Bar Kokhba's false messianism, leaving us to draw the obvious conclusions for our own time. This is one indication among many of his tendentiousness. One can even see this as misleading: first, there is no source he cites that expresses a negative attitude to physical culture and sports. The problem in forcefulness is that the force is directed to improper, and perhaps unrealistic, goals—not physicality as such. On the contrary, we saw that the sages rebuked Ben Koziva for maiming the young men of Israel, and such rebukes actually indicate concern for the body rather than negation of involvement with the body. Moreover, the sages themselves recommended to him a different form of training, namely uprooting cedars while riding a horse. Incidentally, the very fact that they recommend different training methods perhaps indicates that they even agreed with the war he was waging. Second, as we have seen here, there are indeed approaches that see the problem in forcefulness, but there are certainly also approaches that argue that the basis of the attitude to Ben Koziva is rebellion and the removal of the Holy One, blessed be He, that is, a spiritual basis. To be sure, much of this is found in the Zionist movement, but not in Religious Zionism.

This is the place to note that the Zionist attitude toward Bar Kokhba was sympathetic, even to the point of mythical admiration. In the early years of Zionism songs were sung in his honor, and his myth was actually one of the founding myths of Zionism. Only in the post-Zionist age did this attitude begin to change, and here there is a joining of Hamburger's narrative, which disqualifies Bar Kokhba's forceful approach.[79] The same is true, as noted, with respect to Religious Zionist thinkers. Rav Kook, in his work Migdal Yerachim,[80] on the month of Iyyar, explains the phenomenon of Bar Kokhba in a positive way. His son, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, in a booklet on Lag Ba'Omer, explains that the rejection of God's help was meant to educate the public not to rely on miracles—a positive goal in itself. This is an alternative narrative to the one I have described until now, and in my judgment, it too, no less than its opposite, is meant to advance an agenda (for or against forceful Zionism).[81] Therefore in this paper I prefer to focus on earlier sources.

C1. Alroy and Lammlein

We saw in the previous section that Rabbi Yaakov Emden mentions Alroy together with Ben Koziva, Solomon Molkho, and Lammlein, all of whom 'did not throw off the yoke' (= traditions), did not deviate from Jewish law, and had good intentions, and yet are classified in our people's history as false prophets. We explained that false messianism in these cases may arise from the use of forcefulness and unrealistic action, or from removing the Holy One, blessed be He, from the sphere of action in the world. We also added the destructive results of these movements as a retrospective criterion. This is also the case in later 'messianic movements.'

Alroy[82] was a disciple of Rabbi Ali, head of the Gaon Yaakov academy in Babylonia, almost a thousand years ago (in the twelfth century C.E.). He was brilliantly gifted, and at some point he declared himself the Messiah. He began his activity among the Khazars in the Caucasus, and his words fell on receptive ears because of the many sufferings they had undergone during the Kipchak invasion (nomads who invaded Khazaria). The Crusades and other great events of that period also served for them as signs that the messianic age was arriving and that one must undertake practical actions to bring and realize redemption. His original name was Menachem, and he changed his name to David in order to strengthen his status as King Messiah. Together with his father and with a propagandist named Ephraim ben Azariah of Jerusalem, he sent letters to all the Jews that the time had come to gather and go up to Jerusalem. He became famous as a miracle-worker, and his disciples engaged in prayers and ascetic practices. When they saw that this did not help, their hearts were broken, and they were shamed by the gentiles, who mocked them and argued that this proved that all Jewish belief was false.

Alroy left Khazaria and established a new center in Kurdistan. There he befriended the Muslim leader in a fortress set against the Christian Crusaders, in order to familiarize himself with the place and conquer it. When the Jews came, the commander of the fortress discovered the plot, and Alroy was sent to the king of Persia for investigation. Alroy appeared before him proudly as king of the Jews and as the Messiah, and the king sentenced him to imprisonment. There he performed various wonders, by means of which he also escaped from prison. Letters reached Baghdad telling the Jews to prepare for the date of redemption, on which all of them would fly with the wind to Jerusalem. Masses of Jews waited on the appointed date for the promised angels, and some even tried to fly by their own powers, but in vain. They entrusted Alroy with much money, and came to realize that he had deceived them. Here too the gentiles mocked the Jews because their beliefs had failed them.

The Persian king sent the Jews a demand to capture Alroy, or else he would issue a death sentence against them all. The sages of the generation sent word to him to refrain from actions designed to hasten redemption, and threatened him with excommunication. He mocked them and saw them as delaying redemption. The governor of Mosul persuaded his father-in-law to kill him and bring his head, so that he could send it to the Seljuk sultan in order to stop his persecution of the Jews. This was done, but the persecutions did not stop until they paid him yet more money.

Here too we are dealing with a man of good intentions (and apparently also somewhat unstable), whose conduct itself involved no deviation from tradition and Jewish law. Here there is not even a documented turn against the Holy One, blessed be He, and His providence (as we saw with Ben Koziva), but rather a good intention to accelerate and bring redemption. The results were severe, and the disappointment led to a deep crisis of faith and to gentile mockery and desecration of God's name. Alroy did not even undertake clearly forceful actions, but mainly unrealistic actions that led to severe results.

The story of Rabbi Asher Lammlein, in Italy at the beginning of the sixteenth century, is similar but somewhat different from Alroy's. He was in fact less gifted, and what led him to his messianism was probably the frustration accompanying that. That is likely the reason he wrote derisive and mocking remarks about Torah scholars and Talmudic and legal casuistry. He lived in Italy in a period when members of various communities had gathered there. Lammlein attacked the prayer rite and the Sephardic mode of expression. He attributed this to revelations he had experienced, and around him a stir began to form in anticipation of the redemption and Messiah who were about to arrive. In some sources it appears that he did not at all regard himself as the Messiah, but rather as the herald of redemption. The author of Shalshelet HaKabbalah writes of him that he made himself into a prophet. Others write that Lammlein saw himself as the Messiah. This was a result of his withdrawal and his cultivation of ambiguity, which led many to believe in him and his powers.

It is interesting to note that many among the people repented following his exhortations. The author of Sefer Haredim, who lived about a hundred years after Lammlein, relates[83] that his actions were linked to the saying of the Sages, 'Israel will not be redeemed except when they repent.'[84] Various sources describe rather extreme acts undertaken as part of the preparations for redemption. The author of Tzemach David describes how his grandfather smashed his matzah oven, claiming that the next Passover would be celebrated in Jerusalem.

In the end everyone understood that this process was not the hoped-for redemption, and this led to a very deep crisis. Quite a few converted their religion. Yet there were still those who clung to him and his deeds, and even sages such as the author of Haredim did not condemn him. The latter relates that Lammlein eventually came to Meron and it was revealed to him that he had interpreted the saying of the Sages incorrectly. When he died, another crisis arose, with yet another wave of conversion.[85]

Here too it seems that we are dealing with a good and pious man of good intentions (though perhaps somewhat frustrated by his scholarly limitations), who adopted positive steps (repentance). And yet the results of his deeds were destructive. Here too, unlike Bar Kokhba, we are not dealing with forcefulness but with fasting, prayer, and mortification. And yet there is false messianism here. The characteristics of his false messianism are the undertaking of baseless and unrealistic acts, and the severe consequences of his deeds, which included conversion.

C2. David Reuveni and Solomon Molkho[86]

The story of these two is even more unusual than the two preceding ones. Reuveni appeared at the beginning of the sixteenth century and presented himself as a traveler from the land of the Ten Tribes. He testified of himself that he did not know the Mishnah and the Talmud (because the exile of the Ten Tribes preceded the redaction of those works). He presented himself as David, son of King Solomon. His brother Joseph, according to him, ruled over tens of thousands of people from two and a half tribes—Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh—in the desert of Habor. He called himself 'the Reuveni' because, in his own telling, he was prince of the tribe of Reuben.

Reuveni traveled around the world—Italy, Germany, Egypt, and the Land of Israel—and everywhere stirred up a movement of repentance. He told people that the Ten Tribes were about to return (according to him they had already seen eight out of the ten signs transmitted to them as a sign of redemption). Reuveni mortified himself and fasted a great deal; on the other hand, there is testimony in his own writings of revelry and immodesty. In Italy he was received by Pope Clement VII and by the leadership of the Vatican (it should be remembered that this was the Renaissance period, and some of them were sympathetic to Judaism and even studied it), riding on a white horse. He told them of plans to conquer the Arab lands, including Mecca, the capital of Islam, with the help of his heroic warriors from the desert of Habor. He asked the pope to work to ease the tensions between Germany and France, and to influence the two rulers to assist him (Reuveni) in his war against Islam. It should be remembered that at that time the Church was conducting a war of forced conversion against the conversos, and this caused the Jews to see Reuveni as an important leader and to place great hopes in him. At some point he fell ill, and members of the Jewish community in Italy cared for him. He promised them that he would not die before gathering them all to Jerusalem and offering sacrifices there. Although he refused requests to perform miracles, he surrounded himself with symbols of Jewish royalty (flags and the like).

I should note that it seems that the sages of Israel did not formulate a clear position toward him. The leadership of the community in Italy, including Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, came to visit him, and he suspected them of coming to spy on him and caused them to be imprisoned. Afterward he insisted on freeing them (apparently in order to display his power and leadership).

After considerable international intrigue involving many European states, the Portuguese government became concerned that Reuveni would return the conversos to Judaism. When he was permitted to visit Portugal on the pope's recommendation, the conversos and Christians received him with great honor, and the conversos became highly enthusiastic and saw in him a savior. In order to avoid hostility from the Christian side, Reuveni was careful to present himself as king of the Jews and their savior, but not as messiah, prophet, or wonder-worker. He traveled with a large entourage and horses, and met King John while immersed the whole time in fasts and mortifications. The king promised him broad military assistance, and messianic expectation soared to the heavens.

Even the king's secretary, Diego, who came from a family of conversos, returned to Judaism and called himself Solomon Molkho. He begged Reuveni to circumcise him, but in the end was compelled to circumcise himself. Because of this, the king began to monitor Reuveni and ultimately expelled him from Portugal, to the deep disappointment of the conversos. Following his departure, their situation worsened greatly, and the Inquisition intensified its activities.

Molkho, who never stopped believing in Reuveni, thought after his circumcision that Reuveni would accept him. He fled Portugal and came to study under Rabbi Yosef Taitatzak in Salonika. He studied with him both revealed and esoteric Torah, and because of his talents acquired extraordinary learning. In his sermons he told many people that the Messiah was soon to arrive, and that one must prepare for his coming through repentance and good deeds. Molkho also engaged in acts of practical Kabbalah to bring the Messiah. This was in contrast to Reuveni, who sought to bring redemption through political and military means.

Molkho arrived in the Land of Israel via Egypt and Turkey, and everywhere stirred the public to repent in preparation for redemption. Maharalbah, the leading sage of Jerusalem at that time, opposed this movement with great vehemence. He called them "fools, speakers of lies—may their spirit expire."[87] He told everyone that the end must not be forced, and warned against rebellion against the Turks.

After that Molkho passed to Italy, and there preached everywhere about redemption. He had enthusiastic admirers and bitter opponents, both Jews and Christians. There he met Reuveni again, and was once more captivated by his charm and by his path for bringing redemption. He was interrogated by bishops as a converso who had returned to Judaism, and answered them proudly that his studies had shown him that Judaism is the true religion. In order to hide from them he settled at the gates of Rome and lived on meager food with the poor, as the Sages say regarding the King Messiah.[88] Some wrote that at this stage he had already declared himself the Messiah, with Reuveni as his prophet.

He warned of disasters (floods and earthquakes) that eventually came to pass. This raised his standing in the eyes of Jews and Christians alike. Messianic hope again surged, and people related to him as a prophet. A Jewish physician and scholar, Rabbi Jacob Mantino, was his bitter rival, and in the end brought about his death sentence in the papal court. Even the pope tried unsuccessfully to save him. The sentence was carried out, but it turned out that another man had been burned and Molkho remained alive (some say with the pope's help). He fled the city for fear of persecution. Together with Reuveni they set out for Germany to try to persuade the emperor to assist their plans of redemption. Rabbi Yoselman, the important Jewish communal activist, tried to persuade them not to appear before the emperor, but in vain. Some versions say that they even tried to persuade the emperor himself to convert to Judaism.

The emperor cast them both into prison, and the Inquisition burned Solomon Molkho at the stake. He sanctified God's name in his death; even though they tried to persuade him to return to Christianity, he refused and preferred to die. This is the reason that after his death Molkho's figure was admired by many of the sages of Israel until our own day (including Rabbi Yosef Karo, who speaks of him in exuberant praise in Maggid Meisharim, as well as the author of Tosafot Yom Tov, and others).

Such words of praise indicate that we are dealing with a man who acted innocently, and despite the many troubles he brought upon the Jews, he was ultimately judged according to his relation to Jewish law, faith, and tradition, and according to his motives. It is interesting to note that Reuveni did not receive a similar attitude. Historically his end was different, for he had been born a Jew and there was therefore no legal basis to burn him, and he was imprisoned until the end of his days. It is not clear where or how he died, but he remained in Jewish consciousness as a false messiah.[89] One can only wonder what would have happened had he too been burned at the stake and endured the trial as his companion-disciple Molkho did. Would the judgment of history concerning him have resembled the judgment Molkho received?…

Both of these 'messiahs' acted, as they understood it, in order to bring redemption. They wanted to strengthen faith and observance of the commandments, and certainly did not deviate from them. Their deeds admittedly led to difficult results, but in their actual conduct it seems that all their fault lay in the bizarre actions they undertook. In such a case, it seems that the end is what determines the attitude of our tradition toward them. One can see from this that the mere fact that someone turns out to be a false messiah—even if there are severe consequences to his deeds, and even if his conduct is impractical and bizarre—does not itself disqualify him. Everything depends on his deeds and motives, and on what finally emerged.

D. Shabbetai Zvi[90]

Rabbi Yaakov Emden, in his work Brit Migdal Oz (cited above at the end of the section on Bar Kokhba), discusses different attitudes toward nature. In section 7 he speaks of the forceful messiahs, as we already mentioned, whom he calls 'deceptive fools.' In section 6 there he speaks of Shabbetai Zvi and Hayon, whom he calls 'mad apostate villains.' In the previous sections we saw that the deceptive messiahs did not deviate from Jewish law and tradition, but Shabbetai Zvi and his continuators are given these epithets because they certainly did deviate from them. In his words there:

The vile madmen, such as the apostates Shabbetai Zvi, Berahia, Cardozo, Hayon, and their company—may their names be blotted out—craftsmen of destruction, companions of Jeroboam, who led Israel astray with their many sorceries and ruined their stew in public… They sinned and caused others to sin, stumbled and made others stumble… Because they wished to force the hour, in the end they went out to evil ways. Gehenna is finished and they are not finished… Even though they have already been uprooted from the world and became a horror to all flesh, a desolation, evil roots still remained, as in our own time…

The last category that I will survey in this section is therefore the group of false messiahs around Shabbetai Zvi, and the movement that followed him ('the evil roots' that remained, in Rabbi Yaakov Emden's words), which came to be called Sabbateanism. As we shall now see, these are messiahs for whom, beyond the results of their deeds, the very conduct itself was highly problematic in terms of fidelity to faith and to the tradition of Jewish law, and this influence continued for many generations after the deaths of the figures involved in the original controversy. Therefore here there is no dispute at all about their classification as false messiahs. Until today, Sabbateanism is a synonym for false messianism and for the opprobrium attached to it.

Shabbetai Zvi was born on the Ninth of Av in 1626 in the community of Spanish exiles in Izmir. He was considered handsome, with a pleasant voice, prodigious talent, and a fiery soul. He practiced solitude all his life from childhood onward. In his youth he studied under Rabbi Yosef Eskapa, author of Rosh Yosef, one of the leading sages of Izmir in those years, from whom he also received ordination as a hakham already in adolescence. From some point onward his engagement with the revealed Torah slackened and he turned to the study of Kabbalah, while training himself in ascetic practices. He acquired a reputation as a man possessed of spirit, and young disciples joined him. All of them would go about wrapped in tallit and tefillin all day, immerse, fast, and occupy themselves with the secrets of the Torah far from people's eyes. At the age of twenty-two he married, but because of his abstinent behavior he distanced himself from his wife, and the religious court therefore compelled him to divorce her. The same thing happened with his second wife, and this created controversy around him. Some saw him as a fool and an idiot, while others saw him as an ascetic and a righteous man.

His youth took place during a very turbulent historical period. The Thirty Years' War and the 1648–49 massacres, which caused much suffering to the Jews, left a deep mark on him. The revered kabbalist Rabbi Shimshon of Ostropoli was killed in sanctification of God's name, and terrible slaughters and exiles brought many sword-refugees to Izmir. Many awaited the coming of the Messiah, as part of the conception that before his coming great disasters were to occur, in the spirit of 'let him come, but may I not see him.'[91] Shabbetai Zvi suffered greatly from mood swings (from deep depression to elation). In times of uplifted spirit he would do his strange deeds, and his low periods were explained by Nathan of Gaza as the strengthening of the husks. The Sabbatean calendar includes commemorative dates for his rescue from various troubles, and songs were composed for those festivals.

One day he related that he had heard a vision in which the holy Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob informed him that he was the savior of Israel. He went to the synagogue and pronounced the Divine Name as it is written.[92] He told his circle that he was able to stop the sun and the moon like Joshua. When these deeds became known to his teacher Rabbi Yosef Eskapa and to the other sages of the city, they summoned him to come and explain himself before them. He refused and they excommunicated him. But he returned the writ of excommunication to them, saying that he was the one who excommunicated them, since he was greater than they. Some proposed killing him secretly, but in the end it was decided to expel him from the city.

From that point a chain of wanderings begins throughout the Jewish world. At first he arrived in Salonika, where they had not heard about what had happened in Izmir, and they honored him greatly. Because of his charisma, local students joined him. In time he returned to his strange deeds (among other things, he performed a wedding between himself and a Torah scroll, signed letters as the bridegroom of the Torah, and more). As a result, the rabbis of Salonika too expelled him from the city, and he came to Constantinople. There he decorated a fish and placed it in an infant's cradle, celebrated the three pilgrimage festivals on one day, held the Passover seder on Shavuot, and committed quite a number of violations of Jewish law. He would make blessings over each such violation. Here too opinions about his actions were divided between seeing him as holy and seeing him as deranged. The sages of Constantinople also had him flogged and excommunicated, and in the end expelled him from the city.

He returned to Izmir, and when he sank into depression, his companions were ashamed of him and outfitted him for a journey to the Land of Israel. He passed through Rhodes and Egypt, and in Egypt the head of the community and the state treasurer took him under their patronage. There he heard about a strange woman from Italy who, in her imagination, had foreseen that she would marry the Messiah. He summoned her and married her. Rumors spread of her promiscuity, and these were explained by his followers through the verse in Hosea commanding him to take a wife of harlotry.

From Egypt he moved on to Jerusalem, where he achieved high standing, and then went out once again as an emissary to Egypt. There he met his prophet, Nathan of Gaza, who was seventeen years younger than he was. Nathan was a great Torah scholar born in Jerusalem and a student of Mahar"i Hagiz, and it is said that he knew three orders of the Talmud by heart. He moved his residence to Gaza, and there began to engage in Kabbalah and to experience various visions. He became famous as a prophet and conducted journeys of repentance. In his visions he saw Shabbetai Zvi and informed him that he was the Messiah. Nathan saw it as his duty to be the prophet who announces his coming, and he sent letters and delivered sermons to all Israel about his being the Messiah. One of the letters appears in Rabbi Yaakov Emden's Torat HaKena'ot:

Our brothers, the house of Israel: let it be known to you that our Messiah has been born in the holy community of Smyrna, and his name is Shabbetai Zvi. Soon his kingdom will be revealed; he will take the royal crown from the head of the Ishmaelite king and place it on his own head, and the king will go after him like a Canaanite servant, for the kingship belongs to him. After this our Messiah will disappear from the eyes of all Israel, and they will not know where he has gone, whether he is alive or dead. Our Messiah will go beyond the Sambatyon River, and Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, has had a daughter born to him named Rebecca, whom our Messiah will take as a wife. Moses our teacher is awaiting the coming of our Messiah, and when our Messiah comes to him, they will cross, along with the children of Rechab or the children of Moses and the Ten Tribes, the Sambatyon River—which, as is known, no human being has ever crossed, for all six weekdays it rushes and hurls great stones, and only on the Sabbath does it rest. But when a person wishes to cross on the Sabbath, the Jews of the Ten Tribes stone him because he has desecrated the Sabbath, in accordance with our holy Torah. But when our Messiah crosses with Moses our teacher and the Ten Tribes, it will rest and cease throwing until all the Jews have crossed, after which it will resume its former manner. Then a heavenly lion will descend, and in the lion's mouth there will be a giant serpent with seven heads, and fire will come from the lion's mouth. Our Messiah will ride upon it and lead Moses our teacher and all the Jews to Jerusalem. On the way Gog and Magog will meet them, with a people as numerous as the sand on the seashore, coming to wage war against him. But our Messiah Shabbetai Zvi will not fight with spear or sword; rather, with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked and cast them down by the words of the living God. And when our Messiah and Moses our teacher come with all the Jews to Jerusalem, then the Lord our God will raise the Temple from heaven, built of gold and precious stones that illuminate the whole city of Jerusalem. Immediately our Messiah will offer sacrifices to the Lord, and afterward the resurrection of the dead will take place throughout the world. Who can elaborate on these matters, for they are secrets and were not given to be revealed to every person; but they shall see eye to eye when the Lord returns to Zion. I have written to you at once so that you may know that soon you will merit redemption. Thus speaks Nathan Benjamin Ashkenazi.[93]

The entire Jewish world was stirred, and following these messianic expectations a tremendous messianic movement arose in Persia, the Middle East, North Africa, and all Europe. It included important Torah scholars (including the rabbis of Izmir who had previously excommunicated and expelled him). Rumors spread of his victories and conquests, the return of the Ten Tribes, and the conquest of Jerusalem. The feeling was that the Messiah had arrived and the vision of the prophets was being fulfilled at that very moment. Huge numbers of prophets arose (in Izmir alone the number spoken of was more than 150 prophets), prophesying about redemption, the Messiah, and Shabbetai Zvi. Various numerological hints and allusions in the Hebrew Bible were found for his messiahship and for the age of redemption. People throughout the world sold their property and prepared to go up to Jerusalem. Shabbetai Zvi arrived in Izmir, and there preached in the synagogue, pronounced the Divine Name, called women up to the Torah, reviled and cursed the rabbis of the city (among them Rabbi Hayyim Benveniste, author of Kenesset HaGedolah), crowned kings around the world (some of them his brothers), and danced with the Torah and sang it a love song in Spanish in which he attached various kabbalistic secrets. Immediately after that stormy Sabbath, most of the people and sages of the city joined his side (including Rabbi Hayyim Benveniste), and the controversy raged intensely. He permitted various prohibitions, canceled the Tenth of Tevet, and declared himself and his brothers to be reincarnations of the house of David.

He set out toward Constantinople, and his believers explained that his purpose was to remove the crown from the sultan who sat there and reign in his place. He was arrested in Gallipoli, where he was treated with incomprehensible tolerance. He slaughtered a lamb and ate its forbidden fat (a transgression punishable by excision) while reciting the blessing "Who releases the bound." He appointed kings around the world and conducted himself with royal customs and ceremonies. On the fast of the Seventeenth of Tammuz he canceled all fasts, and he ate on the Ninth of Av. This act is remembered in our national consciousness as the sin of the public in that generation.

Quite a few sages came to examine his messianism in prison, and left without a clear result. Most accepted it. His standing throughout the Jewish world was greatly strengthened, and only a few of the Torah sages dared to oppose him. One of the few who dared do so was Rabbi Yaakov Sasportas, who wrote Tzitzat Novel Tzvi, in which he describes the events and explains the falsehood of his messianism. It was almost a voice crying in the wilderness. It seems that there were others who opposed him, but did not dare to do so openly, whether out of fear or because they desired the positive effect he had in bringing people to repentance, which he preached publicly. Hamburger, in his tendentious way, tends to say that most of the leading sages rejected Shabbetai Zvi already before his true nature was known, but in truth that does not seem to have been the case.

The breaking point in the Sabbatean process was the visit of the famous Polish kabbalist Rabbi Nehemiah Cohen to Shabbetai Zvi in Gallipoli. Cohen argued with him bitterly, and in the end declared him a fraud whose sentence was death as an enticer and inciter (compare the Yad Ramah's words cited above in the section on Bar Kokhba). Fearing the followers of Shabbetai Zvi, Cohen fled to the sultan's court in Adrianople and lodged a complaint against him. The sultan tried Shabbetai Zvi, who denied the entire matter of messianism, and then placed him before the choice of converting to Islam or death. Shabbetai Zvi chose conversion to Islam, and from then on was called Aziz Muhammad, living on a handsome stipend from the state treasury.

The conversion struck the entire Jewish world with shock. Almost the entire public and the sages understood that a colossal mistake had been made here (including by the greatest sages of Israel!). They began destroying his writings and declared a ban on mentioning his name. Various restrictions were also imposed on the study of Kabbalah (especially by the Council of the Four Lands). On the other hand, not a few followed him and converted to Islam or Christianity (each in his own environment). Others continued to believe in him as the Messiah and to offer various interpretations of those events. Thus Sabbateanism began to take shape, as a movement that continued to live on in various forms in many places.

Nathan of Gaza continued to travel around the world and strengthen the believers of Shabbetai Zvi until his death. He explained the conversion to Islam as a descent into the husk of Islam in order to raise sparks. Shabbetai Zvi himself too continued to live as a doubtful Muslim and doubtful Jew, with various bizarre acts. He sent letters of encouragement to his followers (many of whom converted to Islam with him). He married a woman who bore a son to her husband after her marriage to Shabbetai Zvi. He died during the Ne'ilah prayer of Yom Kippur, and Nathan of Gaza spread the rumor that he had not died but had ascended into the upper lights (that is, become part of divinity) and would soon return to save Israel. This resembles elements in Christian belief.

Sabbatean kernels survived in Europe until the eighteenth century, the best known being the Frankists, who in the end all converted to Christianity. There was also the messiah Hayon and many others, all possessing Sabbatean characteristics (charisma and use of divine names and mysticism, declaration of themselves as messiahs, conversion of religion, deviation from Jewish law, strange acts, and so forth).

It is interesting to note that from that period onward many good and worthy people were suspected of Sabbateanism, even when the basis for this was very slight (sometimes it was enough to use amulets or to engage in Kabbalah in order to be suspected). It seems that the most famous of them all is Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz, author of Ya'arot Devash and Urim VeTummim, one of the greatest sages and legal decisors of his generation, whom his colleague Rabbi Yaakov Emden, also an outstanding Torah scholar, accused of Sabbatean activity through amulets. Until the end of his days, Rabbi Yaakov fought Rabbi Jonathan and those who followed his way in an extremely harsh and even violent manner. That dispute tore the Jewish world apart, including several leading decisors, long after the death of the two protagonists. Everyone remembered that Shabbetai Zvi too had been recognized as a great Torah scholar, and therefore testimony of sages, and Rabbi Jonathan's own status as a major Torah scholar and legal giant, did not always help him. In the matter of Sabbateanism it is very difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood.

Finally, it should be noted that following Shabbetai Zvi, awareness of the problem of false messianism increased greatly (until then there had not been much attention to these phenomena). As part of this, Haredi thinkers made frequent use of Shabbetai Zvi and Sabbateanism in order to attack Zionist messianism (Hamburger's book is the most prominent and extreme example of this in our time), and even Herzl in his book Altneuland refers to these claims. The same is true of the messianism of the last generation in Chabad.[94]

Summary: The Four Types of Messianic Movements

We have seen four types of messianic movements (two of them already classified by Rabbi Yaakov Emden):

• Bar Kokhba was characterized by the use of force that was militarily and politically irrational, by defiance toward Heaven ('my power and the might of my hand'), yet he does not appear to have deviated from Jewish law. There is also no evidence regarding him of the use of mysticism or Kabbalah. Important sages supported him, but in the end the results of his actions were catastrophic for our people.
• Christianity departed entirely from Jewish law and certainly from the traditional principles of faith. It apparently made use of mysticism, and attributed divine qualities to its prophet or messiah. It went outside the bounds of Judaism, and the disastrous results throughout history are well known.
• Alroy, Lammlein, Molkho (and perhaps Reuveni) were messiahs whose main problem was the use of power and a policy that was irrational and bizarre. They did not depart from Jewish law or principles of faith. Yet with them too the results and implications of their deeds were highly problematic. We saw that at least regarding Molkho, according to some sages history accepted and fixed him as an exemplary figure. From this we concluded that in this type of messianism (which does not involve deviation from Jewish law), it is mainly the result that determines the attitude toward them.
• Shabbetai Zvi and the Sabbateans certainly departed from Jewish law and faith, and ended in conversion of religion. They used mysticism and Kabbalah and gave them new and deviant interpretations. In addition, they too undertook irrational and forceful actions, and brought spiritual troubles and disasters upon the people.

From this perspective it can already be seen that the second and fourth types are simpler. There one can determine already in real time that one is dealing with a 'messianic movement' and with false messianism, since all the criteria are present there. The other two types are not unequivocal, and it seems that the implications and results of their deeds largely determined the attitude toward them. The implicit assumption here is that the true Messiah may perhaps use force that is not rational, be characterized by extraordinary qualities, and have legends attached to his name. If he succeeds, it will then become clear retroactively that he really was the Messiah.

Chapter Three: 'Messianism' and 'Apparent Messianism'

Introduction

In this chapter my aim is to summarize what we saw in the previous chapter and to create an overall picture of messianism as it emerges there. After that I will discuss several phenomena that might perhaps have been viewed as lying on the border of messianism, but which, at least in light of the judgment of history, do not really belong there. These phenomena may shed additional light on the phenomenon of messianism, at least by way of negation (that is, what is not called a 'messianic movement').

The Characteristics of a 'Messianic Movement'

If we summarize what was described in the previous chapter, one can point to several characteristics that appear in 'messianic movements' and among false messiahs (not all of them in every movement): usually this awakens in a difficult period for the Jews. A man arises with charisma who performs wonders, or who possesses extraordinary power and wealth. Personal adulation is created around him (songs in his honor, and festivals commemorating events in his life). He brings proofs from the sources for his words and gives signs of redemption and of the coming of the Messiah. He engages in mysticism and Kabbalah, and sometimes gives them his own interpretation. He acts actively to bring redemption, whether by mystical means or by political and military-forceful means. At some stage he begins to commit transgressions and to deviate from the tradition of Jewish law and faith. He fasts and practices asceticism and appears as an exalted person. He returns the people to repentance as part of preparation for the coming of the Messiah. He performs rash and irrational acts from the standpoint of ordinary considerations, and he employs force without proper judgment. His deeds have disastrous consequences (disappointment and disintegration of faith and Jewish law, despair and suicides, conversion of religion, intensified persecution from the gentiles, desecration of God's name as reflected in gentile mockery of our faith).

In many cases there are those who insist on continuing to see him as the Messiah even after the failure, and then retroactive explanations arrive: he is the true Messiah but the generation was not worthy. The Messiah united with God and will return to us. He did not really die; it only appears that way. He was misunderstood. And so forth.

The Reasons for the Difficulty of Diagnosis

There are several problems that make it difficult for Torah sages to diagnose in real time whether one is dealing with false messianism, that is, a 'messianic movement,' or with a true messiah who is generating a messianic movement. First, we saw that there is built-in ambiguity in the definitions of the Messiah and redemption. Second, it is very difficult to identify historically the appearance of their signs. History is a very complex process, and things do not appear in it in a simple way. For that reason, several phenomena described explicitly in the Torah gave rise to disputes among interpreters concerning their historical appearance. For example, the description of the exiles in the admonitions and curses is not precise. This led different medieval authorities (Nachmanides, Abarbanel, and others) to dispute which historical period, if any, they describe. If so, the period of redemption and the Messiah, which do not appear explicitly in the Torah at all, naturally give rise to obvious ambiguity. Third, Kabbalah and mysticism are characterized by varying interpretations, since they do not rest on a firm tradition. Reliance on Kabbalah makes diagnosis of the phenomenon very difficult. Fourth, the sufferings and hopes aroused when a 'messiah' appears may lead to an unbalanced and biased view of the phenomenon. Fifth, the 'messiah' himself may act out of good intentions and innocence, and in the end may even die as a saint in sanctification of God's name. In addition, there are always retroactive explanations for failure. And above all, the results of that messianism come only after it has occurred, and therefore in real time it is very difficult to assess and judge it.

In light of all this, it is difficult to avoid asking what will happen when the true Messiah appears. Will we then have clear certainty about him? Below we will see several phenomena that may be suspected of false messianism, and they will further sharpen the problem I have presented here.

The Chabad Messianism of the Last Generation

I already mentioned that in contemporary Lithuanian polemical literature, Chabad messianism in the period of the last Rebbe and after his death was also described as a kind of Sabbateanism. Indeed, it is difficult to deny that there are quite a few points of similarity between these phenomena. Just to sharpen the point, I will note several of the characteristics.[95]

There is no dispute that the Rebbe was a very charismatic and very wise man, and that he did much to bring people to repentance as part of the redemptive process that he preached. He created a worldwide movement numbering many thousands of people, led by a hierarchy and a well-oiled establishment. He merited, and still merits, blind admiration almost to the point of actual worship. Many think to this day that the Rebbe did not die. Many also in various ways blur the line between him and divinity, both in his lifetime and after his death. Likewise, there are those who use mystical interpretations for every act he performed, including legal deviations[96] (such as not sleeping in the sukkah, prayer times, and the like). He conducted himself with various royal customs, and because of his spiritual-political-economic standing, leaders from all over the world made pilgrimage to him. Stories of wonders surround him by the hundreds and thousands. The declaration of his messiahship is recited in many places within synagogue prayer (even after his death). After his death, faxes are sent to his grave with questions, and lots are cast in his writings to direct people what they should do in various situations (matches, business affairs, and the like). Such acts come close to severe Torah prohibitions ("You shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God," inquiring of the dead, sorcery, divination, and the like). During his life, festivals were established in honor of events in his life. Beyond all this, there are also deviations here from the boundaries of Jewish law (see examples above), and certainly rulings that differ greatly from the tradition (Chabad has a distinctive method in many legal matters, from the ritual bath to sleeping in the sukkah, kashrut, and the prayer rite. Admittedly, some of these are not specifically related to the last Rebbe and his messianism).

After his death, as expected, retroactive explanations arose that justified the attitude toward him: he is the true Messiah but the generation was not worthy. The Messiah united with God and will return to us. He did not really die; it only appears so. Contrary to what is accepted in other Hasidic dynasties, Chabad is careful not to appoint a new Rebbe as successor. For this purpose they also created a mystical theory according to which the seventh Rebbe is the last one.[97] The admiration and near-worship directed toward him continue even after his death. Faxes are sent to his grave, inquiries are made by mystical lots in his books (especially in the Iggerot Kodesh), and so forth.

It should be noted that one of the indications that a phenomenon is a 'messianic movement' is the consequences of the disappointment following the death and failure of the 'messiah.' These consequences did not in fact appear in a significant way in the Chabad context. Faith in the Rebbe continues, and I am not aware of phenomena of conversion of religion, despair of redemption, or abandonment of tradition. The explanations, which are designed precisely to prevent those things, apparently 'deliver the goods' in this case.

I already noted in the first chapter that false messianism is not a formal legal offense, so long as it does not go beyond the bounds of Jewish law. The references to it as incitement (Nehemiah Cohen) or as false prophecy (the Yad Ramah) are exceptional and perhaps metaphorical. But in the case of Chabad there are deviations from Jewish law, and even apart from them the bitter aftertaste of Sabbateanism does not allow us to treat such a phenomenon lightly. The question whether this is a phenomenon of false messianism is disputed among contemporary sages. It is said that Rabbi Shach called Chabad 'the sect closest to Judaism.' In recent years works have appeared claiming that there is idolatry and false messianism here.[98] Other Torah scholars do condemn some of the phenomena and even ridicule them, but refrain from issuing a clear judgment. One may assume that this stems mainly from their great respect for the Rebbe and his remarkable deeds, and for the important Chabad enterprises throughout the world to this day. Another possible reason is that his death did not have severe consequences like those that followed the other 'messianic movements.'

Kabbalists Who Tried to Bring the Messiah

There is an entire set of phenomena in which people try to bring the Messiah by means of mystical acts. These are not messianic movements in the full sense, since there is no practical action there of any kind (except perhaps immigration to the Land of Israel, which is itself a commandment apart from redemption), and certainly no transgressions or deviations from faith. Kabbalists and rebbes throughout the generations tried to carry out acts of practical Kabbalah in order to bring redemption, usually in secret. Some saw Hasidism in general as a messianic movement (this is the well-known dispute between Gershom Scholem and Ben-Zion Dinur).[99] Professor Aryeh Morgenstern, a historian who studies Jewish messianism, argues that the beginning of Jewish settlement in the north of the Land of Israel (Tiberias and Safed) had its basis in attempts by kabbalists to bring redemption. The same, according to him, is true of the beginning of Jewish settlement in Jerusalem in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.[100]

This is a broad subject and I will not enter into its details. In these modes of conduct it is difficult to see a 'messianic movement,' but there were nevertheless cases in which there were harsh results (the disappointment when the attempt failed). In the final analysis, however, it seems that in the judgment of history almost no one relates to these events as a 'messianic movement,' and I am also unaware of harsh criticism directed against the messianism of those who engaged in them.

What is the reason for this? First, the actions were carried out in secret. Second, the motives were pure. Third, there were no acts of unjustified and unfounded forcefulness here, nor any implications involving unreasonable steps on the part of others. There were no transgressions and no deviation from tradition. There was no person here crowned as messiah or prophet. Usually no deviant interpretations of kabbalistic sources were involved. The results were generally minor. The phenomenon did not take place by way of a public movement; these were the acts of private individuals. The conclusion is that the mere fact that one acts to bring the Messiah—at least so long as the actions remain within one's own immediate sphere—is not enough for them to be judged as 'messianic' activity in the negative sense.

Sages Who Swear That the Messiah Will Not Come

As a complement to the previous section, I will bring here several testimonies concerning difficult periods in which a messianic movement arose that led people to take rash and dangerous steps (such as selling their property) without basis. In several of these cases a great Torah scholar in Israel arose and swore that the Messiah would not arrive.

In the second half of the nineteenth century in Jerusalem, a very strong messianic movement arose,[101] though not a personal one, that is, without a charismatic messiah standing at its head. Its results were disappointment and mass conversion to Christianity. Following this, it is told that Rabbi Shmuel Salant, the rabbi of Jerusalem in that period, rose and swore publicly that the Messiah would not arrive that year. He did so in order to prevent the anticipated disappointment. This is a very extraordinary and far-reaching step for a man entrusted with the tradition that one must await the Messiah every day. It seems that in his conception there was here a decree of the earthly court that the Holy One, blessed be He, would not bring the Messiah, in order to prevent the severe consequences of that 'messianic movement.'[102]

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, in a short responsum, relates a similar story about Rabbi Yaakov Gesundheit, rabbi of Warsaw:

As the year 5600 approached, when terrible and horrifying troubles came upon the Jews of Russia at the hands of the wicked Tsar Nicholas I, rumors spread in Russia and Poland that this would be a year of redemption and salvation. They even found supports for this in the Zohar… The sages of Israel saw that this belief—that in the year 5600 the earth would be filled with knowledge and the Messiah would come—was steadily growing, and they feared disappointment and despair. They therefore decided to calm the public mood. One of the greatest geonim of the generation, Rabbi Yaakov Gesundheit, the chief rabbi of Warsaw, ascended the pulpit of his study hall on Rosh Hashanah of the year 5600, took hold of a Torah scroll, and swore before the entire congregation that in the year 5600 the Messiah would not come![103]

The importance of these examples is that we are dealing with a non-personal movement. True, there is no individual to blame here, since this is a collective phenomenon without a leader, but it is quite plain that we are dealing with a 'messianic movement,' if only because of fear of its consequences. Beyond that, there are also irrational acts here (rash behavior), and the anticipated results of disappointment and despair, even to the point of conversion of religion.

A Note on the Immigration of the Hasidim and the Disciples of the Vilna Gaon[104]

In the last third of the eighteenth century there was a major immigration of Hasidim to the Land of Israel, led by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk, two of the greatest disciples of the Maggid of Mezeritch. Thirty years later, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the disciples of the Vilna Gaon also came up to the land, led by two of his greatest disciples, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Shklov and Rabbi Saadya ben Rabbi Natan Neta of Vilna.

These two immigrations could also be considered a messianic movement, but I am not familiar with references to them as a 'messianic movement.' The reason is that, although they did indeed involve a desire to advance redemption by practical means, these means did not include unreasonable actions, provocation against the nations, forcing the end, or deviation from traditional faith and Jewish law. The practical side of these movements was observance of the commandment of settling the Land of Israel. This, of course, is unrelated to the question of redemption. According to almost all decisors, there is a legal obligation to go up and dwell in the Land of Israel, and therefore the deeds of these two movements are not considered 'messianic' actions. There is no pretension here to concrete redemption that can fail, and therefore no disappointment and severe consequences were to be expected.

Summary

At the beginning of the chapter I summarized the characteristics of 'messianic movements' as they emerge from the previous chapter. Afterward I examined several adjacent phenomena, most of which are not classified that way, and I pointed out the reasons why it is indeed inappropriate to view each of them as a 'messianic movement.' The exception is the Chabad movement, which some do see as a 'messianic movement,' and as we saw, almost all the characteristics of such movements do in fact appear there, apart from the severe consequences that usually follow failure.

We are now ready to move on to discussion of the principal research question addressed in this paper: the question of the 'messianism' of Religious Zionism. That will be the subject of the next chapter.

Chapter Four: Is Zionism a 'Messianic Movement'?

Introduction

After presenting in the previous chapters the principal characteristics of the various types of 'messianic movements,' we can now discuss Zionism: is it indeed a messianic movement? Because of the short scope available here, I cannot properly enter into the history and ideology of Zionism in general, or even of Religious Zionism in particular, and therefore after a brief survey I will proceed directly to a short analysis of the characteristics of Zionism and of Religious-Zionist thought in light of the issue of messianism. Naturally, such a discussion must take place both on the plane of thought and ideology and on the plane of practical-historical conduct. These two are not necessarily identical. There may be 'messianic' ideology with conduct in practice that is not such, or the reverse. I will make use of the history and ideology of Zionism only insofar as this contributes to the topic of the paper. The focus will be on actual conduct and the thought that accompanies it. Nor will it be possible here to enter into all the nuances and sub-nuances within Zionist and Religious-Zionist thought. I will try to address the central and most prominent strands within it.

Zionism: A General Survey[105]

In the modern era several movements began to arise among the Jewish people, setting themselves the goal of returning to the Land of Israel, and in the background stood various tendencies, some of which may be described as messianic in certain senses. Scholars such as Aryeh Morgenstern and his associates see the first stirrings of the process in the immigration of kabbalists to northern Eretz Israel (Tiberias and Safed) and to Jerusalem in the sixteenth century, and afterward in the immigrations of the disciples of the Vilna Gaon and the Baal Shem Tov during the nineteenth century.[106] At the end of the nineteenth century the new Jewish national movement, which called itself Zionism, began to crystallize institutionally. The principal visionary and creator of the organized movement was an Austrian journalist from an assimilated home, Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl (1860–1904), who observed and covered the Dreyfus trial in France and was thereby moved to think about a solution to the Jewish problem. Herzl consolidated the Zionist movement into an organized practical political movement, which gained bases of support throughout the Jewish diaspora.

The consolidation of the Zionist movement did not take place without controversy. Some opposed it from the left, out of universalistic worldviews (such as the Bund, the Reform movement, parts of the Haskalah movement, and of course assimilationists), and some opposed it from the right (the Judaism that later came to be called 'Haredi')[107] because of its lack of commitment to Torah and commandments. In between, as part of the Zionist movement, stood strata within the religious world that supported joining and cooperating, to varying degrees, with the Zionist movement. In time this religious current came to be called 'Religious Zionism' (hereafter: RZ). Haredi Judaism advocated passive waiting for the coming of the Messiah, aside from prayer and longing. Some among them relied on the Three Oaths with which the Holy One, blessed be He, adjured Israel not to go up as a wall, not to rebel against the nations, and not to force the end (see Bavli, Ketubbot 111a), and tended to see the Zionist movement as a kind of false messianism. Some of them even argued that the very undertaking of practical actions to bring redemption is itself a kind of 'messianic movement' (they are assuming the most radical conception among those described in the first chapter, although as we saw it lacks any substantial basis).

By contrast, Religious Zionism sees Zionism as a value that arises from the Torah of Israel. In the words of Rabbi Maimon: 'Our Torah does not separate between these two outlooks, both of which draw from one domain, the domain of the nation's existence. The Torah of the living God, which is also a Torah of life, speaks of material and political destinies just as it speaks of spiritual and religious destinies.'[108] Religious Zionism sees the state as 'the beginning of redemption,' and even argues that redemption will come only through active action on the part of the Jewish people. It inscribed upon its banner the slogan: 'The Land of Israel for the People of Israel according to the Torah of Israel.' Religious Zionism advocates cooperation with secular Zionist forces, despite the problematic nature of doing so.

The controversy between Zionism and Religious Zionism, on the one hand, and Haredism, on the other, which continues until our own day, is the background to the discussion conducted in this paper. We have seen that Haredism tends to refer to Zionism (and with it also to Religious Zionism) as a 'messianic movement.' A blunt and severe expression of the Haredi attitude appears in Hamburger's book, which devotes its final chapter to Herzl's figure and to the attitudes toward him and toward the Zionist movement, while trying to present all this as a continuation of the false messiahs of previous generations. It is difficult to shake the feeling that this was the purpose for which the whole book was written.

Of course within Zionism, and no less importantly for our purposes within Religious Zionism, there are many shades that disagree with one another on various questions, some ideological and Torah-based, some practical. Rabbi Reines (Lithuania, 1839–1915), for example, saw Zionism mainly as a practical infrastructure for solving the material sides of the Jewish problem.[109] This conception represents the pole farthest from messianic conceptions. By contrast, Rabbis Alkalai (a Sephardic rabbi in Serbia, 1798–1878), Gutmacher (Poland, 1796–1874), and Kalischer (Poland, 1795–1874), who preceded him and influenced him, maintained that what later came to be called 'Zionism' is the realization of the Jewish people's obligation to act practically to bring redemption, and is in fact the first stage on the road to it. This conception reached its peak in the thought of Rav Kook (Latvia – Land of Israel, 1865–1935), later the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of the Land of Israel, who grounded the standing and validity of Zionism and cooperation with it as one of the principles of the Jewish outlook, and even saw it as a basic obligation in the service of God. Rav Kook saw in Zionism a manifestation of the Holy One, blessed be He, and of the Divine Presence in the real world (in later terminology: 'God's throne in the world,' and 'the beginning of redemption').

If Haredi opposition to Zionism has gradually become more moderate, and its extreme faction is perceived as bizarre and esoteric (Neturei Karta, Satmar Hasidim, and other small extreme groups, mainly in Jerusalem, New York, and London), then the disputes within the Religious Zionist camp have become sharper in our own time. Some of the streams within contemporary Religious Zionism are mixtures, in varying proportions, of the conceptions presented above, but at times these approaches have actually become sharper today than they were at the time of their formation.

Among the spiritual leaders of Religious Zionism, from its beginning until today, a large majority have favored the second conception. Naturally, rabbis tend to look at historical processes and to address practical obligations from the standpoint of Torah, not from that of secular culture. It is difficult for a rabbi who is a man of Torah and Jewish law to relate to processes as central as these as no more than a secular political solution, as we described Rabbi Reines' doctrine. Even those who do so are motivated, at least in part, by Haredi criticism, which sees these processes as false messianism. The self-defense against such claims consists in proposing to see the Zionist movement as a realistic response to the Jewish problem, and not necessarily as part of the process of redemption (and we will return to this below).

To complete this very general description, we should add that Rav Kook's conception finds very sharp expression among some of those who regard themselves as his disciples and continuators. Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook compared army uniforms to the garments in which the High Priest served.[110] This is a far-reaching comparison, for in legal terminology the garments of the High Priest are not only ritual objects but sacred objects (see Bavli, Megillah 26b).[111] Similar attitudes can be found in him and in his disciples with respect to the flag and the anthem of the State of Israel. Another contemporary example can be seen in Rabbi Tau, a disciple of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, who referred to the disgraced president of the State of Israel, Moshe Katsav, as a national symbol that should not have been harmed despite his deeds.[112] Rabbi Tau also viewed the attack on him as anti-redemptive and anti-Jewish subversion, as part of a conception according to which all the bodies involved in this matter (the press, the judicial system, academia, the Ministry of Education, and more) are forces essentially opposed to the Jewish process of redemption. These matters gain even greater significance against the background of a completely different attitude among holders of this view toward pioneers and members of the Zionist left who opposed and still oppose Judaism in its religious sense. In their view, these are exemplary figures, bearers of the process of redemption, even if not consciously.

My father illustrated this point to me through a response by the editor of the journal Tzohar to one of his articles.[113] In the article (see footnote 9 there) a citation from Professor Leibowitz appeared, and the editor insisted that it be written as 'Prof. L.' rather than by his full name. By contrast, in that same article Ben-Gurion also appeared, and there was no objection to writing his full name. In response to my father's question, the editor replied that this was the custom received from Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, that one does not refer to a wicked person by his full name. That is, a commandment-observant Jew (and a Zionist) who does not identify with Zionism and redemption as the disciples of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda understand them is a wicked person whose full name should not be mentioned. Whereas a man who fought against religion and its representatives, and of course was entirely non-observant, is a positive figure worthy of respect and citation. This is another expression of the attitude toward Zionism as a category of holiness, whose force surpasses that of the category of commandment.

By contrast with these approaches stands the conception of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and his disciples/continuators, which contains stronger 'Reines-like' elements, again in varying shades.[114] Some of them see the state as the beginning of redemption, but do not attribute holiness to it and certainly do not refrain from criticizing its institutions and conduct. Another group is willing to forgo the messianic-redemptive dimension entirely, and to suffice with the state as a platform for the existence of the Jewish people as a normal nation in its own land, preventing assimilation and physical threats to Jewish life and to the observance of commandments.[115]

The Haredi Critique

After briefly describing the Zionist movement and Religious Zionism, we can approach the question whether Zionism and Religious Zionism can be treated as a messianic movement. It is difficult to separate the two questions, since Religious Zionism is part of the Zionist movement. But it is clear that the religious dimension of this process was shaped by Religious Zionism, whereas general Zionism, certainly in our own time, focuses on redemption in its earthly-practical sense. Admittedly, Zionism at its beginning, even though led by people not committed to Torah and commandments, certainly spoke in the language of redemption, and it appealed to the Jewish public in the diaspora as a whole, a significant portion of which was entirely committed to Torah and its commandments. Above, in the first chapter, I stated that in this paper I wish to deal with messianism in its religious sense, and therefore the question with which I am concerned touches some combination of Zionism in general and Religious Zionism.

As for the personal question, the only candidate for messianism in our context is Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl, the creator of modern political Zionism. It is indeed true that legends were woven around him, as simple people so often do around leaders. Even Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan writes of him as follows:

There are people who in their lifetime are like legend. While they walk among others, who see both their virtues and their shortcomings as with any human being, they are nevertheless regarded as something out of the ordinary—not as a mere man, but as a chapter of history. Herzl merited this. Legends enveloped him even while he was still young and fresh, healthy and strong—or at least everyone thought him healthy and strong. When it was heard that Herzl was ill, no one believed it. It was hard to believe that the man who embodied within himself not only life but revival was ill… Only recently people had seen and heard that he, Herzl, had passed in flight – before the age of airplanes – through several Jewish cities and reached Petersburg… Everything Herzl did and every place to which he traveled, whether Constantinople or Jerusalem, Rome or London, people interpreted according to all the levels of interpretation…[116]

Herzl also came into contact with the great men of the earth and the leaders of the world, moving among them as the representative of the Jewish people. This too somewhat resembles the false messiahs described above. In journalism, publicistic writing, and even in some essays of thought, many comparisons were made between him and leaders of the people in the past (Moses, King David, and others). For example, in the newspaper Hashkafah,[117] there appears an announcement saying that if prophets existed today, they would establish a fast day on the day of Herzl's death. Moreover, Rabbi Zvi Peretz Hayot, rabbi of Vienna, compares him to Moses, who grew up in Pharaoh's house and was the son-in-law of the foreigner Jethro in Midian, and afterward came to save Israel.[118] It is therefore difficult to ignore several lines of similarity between Herzl's figure and conduct and those of the false messiahs of history.

And indeed, Haredi publicists and rabbis seized on these lines of similarity and advanced the claim that this is yet another false messiah. For example, Rabbi David Friedman of Karlin, one of the leading authorities and decisors of that period, wrote: "My opinion on this matter is known: I consider this approach akin to that of Shabbetai Zvi—may the name of the wicked rot."[119] And he further wrote: "When the false prophets, the trumpets of acclamation for Herzl, prophesy in the false spirit of Shabbetai Zvi."[120] Another of the most prominent and blunt Haredi critics of Herzl and Zionism was Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, who wrote:

The Jewish people always suffer from two things: from outside, blood libels… from inside, through false messiahs, who at first entice and promise to bring us up to the Land of Israel, but the end of all false messiahs is apostasy for thousands and tens of thousands of Jews… Anyone who looks with penetrating eyes will see that in our own time too there is such a false messiah, clothed in the well-known faction, which with its mouth says that it leads to the Land of Israel, while in truth it leads to complete heresy regarding the very foundations…[121]

Here another claim appears, hinting that the Zionist movement set itself the goal of leading the Jewish people into heresy and deviation from Torah. This is an additional, more severe characteristic of false messianism. Indeed, it is hard to deny that the Zionist movement led not a few Jews away from their religion and Torah. In the previous chapter we saw that this characteristic of false messianism is decisive, that is, a movement whose essence is of this sort should be judged as false messianism already in real time, independently of the results of its activity. Moreover, here we are already dealing with criticism of the movement itself, its path, and its goals—not only of the individual who defines himself as the messiah.

Rabbi Meir Simhah of Dvinsk, one of the greatest commentators on Torah and Talmud of that generation, also expresses concern that this movement may turn into false messianism, but unlike Hamburger's tendentious interpretation of his words (p. 627), in Rabbi Meir Simhah's view that concern was not actualized, thanks to the great sages of the generation who stopped the drift. Many have already pointed out that it is difficult to extract from Rabbi Meir Simhah's words a clear attitude to the Zionist movement as such.[122]

Rabbi Elazar Menachem Man Shach, the leader of Haredi Judaism at the end of the twentieth century, adds another layer to this Haredi criticism when he points out that the Zionist movement is led by forces that are not observant of Torah and commandments:

We must believe that the coming of the Messiah—and even the beginning of redemption—cannot come through such channels, channels that have no relation at all and no approach to the Torah of Israel. We must believe that redemption is not bound up with Sabbath desecration and uprooting of the commandments. The Torah says: 'lest the land vomit you out,' and through deeds for which the land vomits out its inhabitants there can be no redemption, and not even the beginning of redemption.[123]

Here another argument arises, one based on verses, according to which redemption cannot come through people who do not keep the commandments, and cannot occur side by side with deeds that cause the land to vomit us out.

The Nature of the Haredi Critique

It is difficult to escape the feeling that these critiques are not well grounded in the sources. Despite the efforts of Rabbi Wasserman, Rabbi Shach, and their colleagues, the sources they adduce do not really yield the conclusions to which they point.[124] Their reliance on Scripture, on midrashic passages of the Sages, and on other sources is highly speculative and tendentious. It seems to me that the speculative character of the critique stems mainly from the desire to oppose and condemn the deviation of most members of the Zionist movement from observance of the commandments, and for that purpose they enlist the concept of false messianism as well, without being overly precise about its components and characteristics. To do so, they categorically determine that redemption cannot come through Jews who do not observe Torah and commandments, despite the fact that there is no solid source for this. They also determine that redemption must come from heaven and not through our efforts from below. As we saw in the first chapter, that determination too is merely the choice of one approach among several possible ones (see there the discussion of the Arukh LaNer).

Regarding the second point, Rabbi Kalischer already wrote:

Let not the thinker imagine that God will suddenly descend from heaven to earth… Rather, the redemption of Israel will come little by little… The first stage of redemption will be through the awakening of benefactors and through the willingness of the kingdoms to gather the dispersed of Israel to the Holy Land.

And so did many others like him.[125]

Regarding the question whether redemption can come through those who do not observe Torah and commandments, Rabbi Waldenberg already addressed it in his responsa Tzitz Eliezer, where he rules:

There is absolutely no basis for the claim that it is impossible for heavenly salvation to sprout through people who do not have fear of God in their hearts. Aside from the fact that the claim is internally false, for it is clear that the more the immigration of Torah-observant Jews increases, the greater the influence of faithful Judaism in the institutions of the state will become, until in time the efforts to improve matters will, with God's help, be crowned with success. Aside from that, who can probe the end of providence on high and search out the Almighty? Has it not happened before that when there was none to help, the Lord sent His holy aid through a wicked king of Israel to enlarge the borders of the land and settle great numbers of the house of Israel in it.[126]

It is important to note that he not only rejects this claim, but also points out that it is baseless speculation.

Moreover, one of the signs of redemption is that the kingdom will turn to heresy, and thus Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel writes:

…for when a person is not inclined to any particular beliefs and is stripped of them all, he will accept the true faith more readily than if he were already habituated to a contradictory belief. Therefore it was part of God's wisdom that before the coming of the Messiah and the revelation of faith in God, the kingdom would turn to heresy and would not accept rebuke from its sages regarding it, so that when the Messiah comes he will then turn the peoples to a pure language to call upon the name of the Lord and serve Him with one accord…[127]

The claim that sees Zionism as an assimilatory movement is also problematic. Herzl himself grew up in an assimilated home, and it was his Zionism that strengthened and preserved his Jewish identity. The preservation of Jewish identity among Jews around the world is a product that has accompanied the Zionist movement until our own day, and more than a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union can testify to this (see more on this below).

Because of limitations of space, I cannot elaborate further here on the tendentiousness of the Haredi critique and on the response to it. In what follows I will try to address mainly the points raised in the previous chapters, since these seem to me to be better-founded characteristics of false messianism. Therefore, in order to determine a position regarding the status of Zionism as a 'messianic movement,' one must examine them.

Is Zionism a 'Messianic Movement'?

The first point we saw above is the question of the persona. It is not reasonable that it should be enough for legends to circulate about some person among the simple masses, and for him to meet with leaders and the great of the earth, in order to define him as a false messiah. Even the comparisons made between him and Moses and Jewish leaders of the past, which so outrage the Haredi critics (see Hamburger, pp. 616–617), are nothing more than historically natural comparisons, and there is certainly substance to them. Herzl really does resemble Moses in terms of his foreign upbringing and origins, and then in his dedication to the redemption of the people. Moreover, examination of Rabbi Zvi Peretz Hayot's words cited above shows that his purpose in that comparison is only to say that Herzl, as one who grew up among gentiles, was raised as a free man without the sense of Jewish humiliation, and this is what enabled him to act so significantly for redemption. This is a wholly innocent historical-psychological claim, and it is difficult to see in it a messianic agenda. The decisive question with respect to false messianism in a person such as Herzl is what purpose these comparisons serve, how true and balanced they are, and especially to what extent these legends influence the actual conduct of the movement he leads. Therefore, from the personal aspect it is difficult to define the Zionist movement as false messianism.

As for the conduct of the Zionist movement, several of the heads and thinkers of Religious Zionism addressed these Haredi criticisms, and even partly agreed with them. Yet this did not prevent them from supporting the Zionist movement. For example, Rabbi Shmuel Yaakov Rabinowitz of Aleksot, one of the earliest rabbis to join Herzl's Zionist movement, wrote:

It [the Zionist movement] has no connection and no resemblance to the movement of false messiahs, who deceived many of our people in various times and periods. It will not err in fantasies and delusions, it will not force the end, and it will not propose to do things that are beyond our capacity. Nor does it touch at all the true faith in the Messiah awaited at the end of days.[128]

Here we can see several of the characteristics of false messianism that we discussed in the previous chapters, such as deception, fantasies and delusions, doing things beyond our capacity, and harming the traditional belief in the Messiah at the end of days. We do not see here any reference to harm to Jewish law, apparently because it was clear to him that Zionism is not a movement that harms Jewish law. But the price paid by Rabbi Rabinowitz's thought is that his relation to Zionism was disconnected from his belief in redemption and in the coming of the Messiah. He saw the Zionist movement as a movement of political-state repair, and not as activity for redemption in its religious sense.

It seems to me that these words were said under pressure from the Haredi critique. As a matter of substance, it would certainly have been possible to suffice with less minimal and more far-reaching statements without falling into false messianism. In fact, one could omit his final sentence, which refers to the coming of the Messiah. Even an approach that sees Zionism as a movement that brings the Messiah nearer and acts to bring redemption is not necessarily false messianism. It is enough that there be no deviation from Jewish law, and no activity beyond what is rationally possible, without fantasies and delusions. This is apparently how all those Religious-Zionist rabbis and thinkers understood matters—those who joined and supported the Zionist movement, without reservation and without claiming that it was not a movement with messianic goals, down to our own day.

Many years later, Rabbi Avraham Korman, a Religious-Zionist thinker,[129] wrote in response to the first edition of Hamburger's book:

A person who claims or hints that he is the Messiah in the sense of being God's chosen one to bring redemption to the Jewish people, despite the fact that Providence did not choose him for that and did not inform him by prophecy that he is the redeemer—that person is a false messiah. A person who appears holding a plan for how to help or save Jews in a practical and natural way is not included in the concept of a 'false messiah,' because he did not claim to be such at all.[130]

Here he does not deny that Zionism is part of the process of redemption, but he points out that this is done by sensible means for improving the condition of the people, and that there is no declaration here that a given person is the Messiah without his actually having been chosen for that by the Holy One, blessed be He. Additional sources, mainly from Rav Kook, are brought by Pilber in section 14.

I mentioned that the Zionist movement was not perceived by its own members as a movement whose goal was to lead Jews away from religion and into heresy. On the other hand, it is difficult to deny that many of those who joined it did in fact abandon observance of Torah and commandments (in my view, part of the reason lies in the very negative Haredi attitude toward this movement, which built itself in reaction to it). In my understanding, that is not enough to define Zionism as a 'messianic movement,' because it was part of the phenomenon of the Haskalah and modernity, which preceded Zionism. To the best of my judgment, the Zionist movement's contribution to this process was not unequivocal. There is also basis for the claim that Zionism actually saved many from assimilation, because it posed a national Jewish challenge even to those not committed to tradition and Jewish law. Moreover, it brought millions of Jews to the land, thereby physically preventing, and to this day continuing to prevent, their assimilation.

We are thus left with the question whether one can accept that a movement acting to bring redemption may be led by Jews who do not observe Torah and commandments. This question receives much attention in the writings of Religious-Zionist thinkers. Rav Kook already addresses this question when he determines that settlement in the land is the beginning of redemption. More than that, he argues that what drives the pioneers is indeed commitment to the Torah, except that they themselves are not conscious of it:

What they want they themselves do not know. So deeply is the spirit of Israel joined to the spirit of God that even one who says he has no need at all of the spirit of God—once he says that he desires the spirit of Israel, the divine spirit dwells within the innermost point of his aspiration, even against his will.[131]

See more on this at length in Rabbi Pilber, sections 2 and 7, where he discusses the question of the relation between redemption and repentance.

We can now briefly review the other characteristics presented in the previous chapter. Reliance on human power in bringing redemption and removing the Holy One, blessed be He, from the stage (as we saw with Bar Kokhba), indeed characterize broad parts of general Zionism. The song 'We Carry Torches,'[132] is part of the central Zionist ethos, it is still sung in state ceremonies, and it constitutes an excellent example of this. A line such as 'No miracle happened to us; we found no cruse of oil…' which repeats several times in the song, expresses this very forcefully. But it should be remembered that this characteristic stems mainly from the fact that this is a movement secular in character. The Holy One, blessed be He, was removed by them not only from history but from the world. His removal from the arena was not part of the Zionist ethos but preceded it. It is a result of the secularization undergone by parts of the Jewish people in the period that preceded Zionism and during it. Moreover, these characteristics certainly do not exist in Religious Zionism, except perhaps as part of a conception according to which we must make efforts so that the Holy One, blessed be He, may assist.

Now to the matter of realistic conduct. Although people like to quote in Ben-Gurion's name that in the State of Israel whoever does not believe in miracles is not realistic, it is not reasonable to accuse the Zionist leadership of bizarre and unrealistic political activity. Zionist activity is characterized by far-reaching vision, but it does not seem to me delusional. Zionism did not rebel against the nations but made use of them and acted with their permission. There are no mystical methods here, and also no reliance on far-reaching kabbalistic interpretations. Admittedly, Rav Kook certainly does rely on kabbalistic ideas in order to ground his attitude toward the Zionist movement, and in that sense there is a certain mystical dimension here. Below we will see additional dimensions of this kind.

As stated, deviation from tradition and from observance of the commandments is not unique to the Zionist movement, but is part of the Jewish response to the modern period. Therefore it is difficult here to speak of deviation from Jewish law or from our tradition. Even so, there are certain dimensions in Religious-Zionist conduct that are not so simple, such as cooperation with secular Jews, establishing a secular judicial system that does not operate according to the Torah (this is the serious prohibition of secular courts; see Gittin 88b and parallels). For example, the Haredi parties were always careful not to serve in the government as ministers, so that they would not bear collective responsibility for governmental actions carried out against Jewish law. Religious parties and religious members of Knesset are not careful about this. On the contrary, they are careful to be part of the process and even see great value in that. The Haredi critique argues that even here there is a dimension of deviation from Jewish law.[133]

To summarize up to this point: in the previous two chapters we distinguished between two types of messianic movements: 1. Messianism in the strong sense involves deviation from Jewish law and bizarre acts. It is defined as a messianic movement irrespective of the final outcome of the process. 2. Messianism in the weak sense is characterized by unrealistic activity, but without deviation from Jewish law. We saw that this type of messianism is judged mainly by its results. From the description thus far it emerges that it is difficult, though not impossible, to see deviation from Jewish law in Zionist conduct. It is more reasonable to examine whether Zionism is a 'messianic movement' in the weak sense. Even in that sense, that conclusion does not seem reasonable. Therefore, at least at the present time, there does not seem to be room to classify the Zionist movement as a 'messianic movement.' If the future reveals that this movement brought severe consequences and a deviation from our tradition, it is possible that the evaluation will change. As noted, I do not see room or need here to engage in futurology, and therefore such judgment must be left to future generations.

On the face of it, this is the conclusion called for by the entire discussion we have conducted until now. Even so, there is here one additional important aspect, and I cannot avoid mentioning it, though it would require a separate and broad discussion in its own right. I am referring to several additional characteristics that appear only in Religious Zionism, or at least in parts of it, and that can arouse the feeling of a 'messianic movement.'

'Messianism' of a New Type: A Look at Parts of Religious Zionism

There are characteristics that arouse a sense of 'messianism' in the way certain currents within Religious Zionism relate to what takes place in the State of Israel and in Zionism. It is difficult to map these neatly onto the characteristics we found in the 'messianic' movements of history, and yet it is difficult to ignore that connotation. It is important to note that these characteristics do not exist in all Religious-Zionist circles; each of them appears only in certain sectors. Here I will note only a few of the principal ones briefly, merely in order to complete the picture.

My father, in the article mentioned above, points out that the conception of major streams in Religious Zionism relies on mystical-kabbalistic explanations of historical processes,[134] and also makes decisions on the basis of those parameters. For example, opposition to agreements with our neighbors is not based only on considerations of security and policy, and not only on the commandment of settling the Land of Israel and the prohibition against handing territory to gentiles, but also on the claim that this may damage the process of redemption. Although the arguments are usually cast in legal terms (such as the prohibition of granting them a foothold, the commandment of conquering the land, and the like), it is clear that the dispute over territorial concessions corresponds rather neatly to the distinction between Religious-Zionist rabbis and Haredi rabbis.[135] The same is true of the sale permit for the Sabbatical year. Although this ostensibly is a purely legal question, it is clear to me that part of its grounding relates to the Religious-Zionist outlook (otherwise it would be hard to explain why this supposedly pure legal dispute aligns so exactly with the camps that support and oppose Zionism). Taking meta-historical and meta-legal considerations into account in making political and state decisions is a mode of thought that is certainly not accepted in the Torah tradition.

From another angle, one can see a lack of proportion between the attitude to Sabbath desecration, which is a 'religious' offense, and the return of parts of the homeland, which is a 'national' offense.[136] National offenses receive far more weight than their legal weight alone would warrant.

Another characteristic is the absolute belief that the end of the Zionist process will be the coming of the Messiah. Here too there is a distancing from realist political considerations, and reliance on metaphysical assessments (without entering into the question whether these assessments are correct).[137] These phenomena have dimensions of calculating the end, at least in a certain sense. When people determine what stage in redemption we are in (the beginning of redemption, and the like), there is here at least a pale reflection of calculating the end. To this one may add the radical opponents of Religious Zionism, who classify our period as 'the footsteps of the Messiah.' They too engage in identifying the period in terms of the process of redemption, and that is no less a calculation of the end than what is done on the other side of the ideological divide. Incidentally, they too make practical decisions in light of that calculation, and therefore there is 'messianism' in them as well in this sense.[138]

Rav Kook already writes:

Yes, the beginning of redemption is certainly appearing before our eyes. To be sure, this appearance did not begin today; it began from the moment the revealed end began to be revealed, from the time when the mountains of Israel began to put forth branches and bear fruit for the people of Israel who were about to come. From that time this beginning commenced.[139]

A blunt contemporary expression of this is what is reported about Rabbi Yosef Kalner, one of the leaders and thinkers of the 'messianic' circle within Religious Zionism (identified with the circles of Yeshivat Har Hamor), who stated that if the State of Israel were destroyed he would 'take off his kippah.' That sharpness stems from a certain interpretation of the words of the prophets and from his meta-historical outlook,[140] and it is difficult not to sense here a certain dimension of 'messianism.' As part of this process, one can also see arguments that find promises to the effect that a third commonwealth or third Temple will not be destroyed. These promises are based on sayings of sages throughout the generations and on midrashim,[141] and until our own day it was not customary to build such absolute confidence upon such foundations (why not reckon with the possibility that perhaps our interpretation is mistaken? After all, among the great Torah scholars of our own generation there are those who do not agree with that interpretation[142]), nor to make practical decisions on that basis.

A sharp illustration of these attitudes can be seen in the story about Rabbi Herzog, who heard that the Brisker Rav, one of the leaders of Haredi Judaism, was about to flee Jerusalem out of fear of the War of Independence. Rabbi Herzog raised the argument that 'we have a tradition that a third destruction will not take place,' and the Brisker Rav answered him that the tradition in his father's house (Rabbi Hayyim Soloveitchik of Brisk) is that 'when they shoot, one runs away.' This story sets against one another the meta-historical conception, which is prepared to make decisions on the basis of aggadic and metaphysical assurances of one sort or another, and the Haredi approach, which acts according to realistic and practical considerations (without entering the question whether those metaphysical assurances have substance, something the Brisker Rav does not address).[143]

When there are downturns in the process of redemption, such as the disengagement of 2005, which caused a deep and difficult ideological and moral crisis in Religious Zionism, retroactive explanations often arise within Religious-Zionist thought according to which everything nonetheless fits the process of redemption and the expectations (for these expectations are perceived as certain; the possibility of error is not an option).[144] Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu's forecasts before the disengagement ('It shall not be'),[145] whether he intended them as a factual determination or not, were understood by many in the Religious-Zionist public (and by some of its rabbis) as a promise, and some even made decisions on the basis of that assumption (donating money, refusing to cooperate with the disengagement administration, and so forth). I note that afterward, once they saw that this statement had been disproved, it too received an ideological purification and retroactive explanation, or else outright denial.

A third characteristic is the attitude toward state symbols as possessing immanent holiness. This characterizes broader sectors of Religious Zionism (and not only those who trace themselves to Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook). We have already mentioned the attitude toward state institutions, ministers and the president, the anthem, the flag, and army uniforms. One may add, as another example, the welcoming of the Chief of Staff at Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav every year on Jerusalem Day, which is accompanied by religious ecstasy.[146] It seems that he functions there as a religious symbol and not only as the holder of an important secular and state office. One of the indications of this conception is the fact that Religious Zionism is interested in the public character of the state far more than in the religious character of its citizens. It is more important to it that El Al not fly on the Sabbath, or that representatives of the state not desecrate the Sabbath and keep kosher, than that the Sabbath itself and the laws of Jewish law be kept by as many citizens as possible. Haredism, by contrast, generally focused more on trying to bring individuals to repentance, and less on the state's character.[147]

Events in the history of the state, such as the victory in the Six-Day War and the liberation of the Western Wall, and certainly the victory in the War of Independence, are interpreted as the hand of God and as signs of redemption. All of them are naturally given religious meaning, and Israel Independence Day and Jerusalem Day are established as festivals that are not merely days of thanksgiving (like Frankfurt Purim) but festivals of religious significance that mark increments on the ruler leading to redemption. Soldiers who fell in Israel's wars are perceived as sanctifiers of God's name, and as holy. Some of them did not believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, or in the Torah at all, and yet somehow they manage to 'sanctify God's name.' Such 'religious' martyrology also carries a messianic scent. Since they 'acted with God,' even if they did so without intention and without awareness, commitment to national values replaces religious commitment. Concepts of gratitude in the civic and moral sense are replaced by religious terms of holiness. All their sins are considered to have been atoned for in their deaths, at least in the public consciousness. Sometimes victims of terror, and even people simply killed by haters of Israel, also receive the halo of sanctifiers of God's name, again without any justification.[148]

I have brought only some of these characteristics, and there are several more. Some of them obviously depend on different outlooks and are not accepted by all circles of Religious Zionism, while others are formulated in ways that this is not the place to detail. In any case, most or all of them characterize broad and important circles within Religious Zionism. The question now arises whether this really is 'messianism' in the sense with which this paper is concerned.

If we try to map these characteristics onto the cluster of characteristics described in the previous chapter, the mapping is not trivial. There is here recourse to meta-history and meta-Jewish law, and in that sense a kind of appeal to mysticism and deviation from the realistic thinking accepted in the Torah tradition. There is here attribution of holy significance to symbols drawn not from the Torah and Jewish law, but from the national plane. There is here a dimension of non-rational conduct, not necessarily in the sense of going against sensible considerations, but in the sense of relying on additional or different considerations. There is here the certainty and absoluteness characteristic of messianic conduct that relies on signs in the literature of the Sages and in Scripture. It is true that it is difficult to establish complete identity between all these characteristics and what we raised in the previous two chapters, but still the impression that emerges is that there is here a certain 'messianic' dimension, even if it has new characteristics. In a certain sense one may say that the old characteristics have undergone a change of form and have been translated into our age, but the phenomena are similar.

It is true that at most this is 'messianism' in the weak sense (especially since there is no personal 'messiah' here), and therefore so long as we have not seen the results of this process it is difficult to determine categorically that this is a 'messianic movement.' On the other hand, there are certainly marks of 'messianism' here, at least in parts of the Religious-Zionist public, and therefore there is room for criticism, or at least for caution and reservation, with respect to them.

Summary and Conclusions

In this paper I tried to define and characterize the concept of a 'messianic movement.' I began in the first chapter by characterizing the messianic idea in general, in its legal and historical aspects, and I suggested four possibilities for defining it. After the historical survey in the second chapter and the summary and implications in the third, several characteristics emerged, and it seems possible to conclude that there are two types of messianism:

• Messianism in the strong sense. This is a messianic movement that deviates from Jewish law, revolves around a charismatic individual who presents himself as the Messiah, and carries after him a social movement whose aim is to bring redemption. Usually he undertakes actions with mystical dimensions, not subject to rational and real-political considerations, and these actions are based on mystical, meta-legal, and meta-historical considerations.
• Messianism in the weak sense. Here deviation from Jewish law is lacking. What distinguishes it is unrealistic conduct, decisiveness and absoluteness, a charismatic leader, the establishment of new symbols, the infusion of holiness into them, and the like.

The conclusion was that messianism in the strong sense can be clearly diagnosed already in real time, that is, even before the process reaches its end and its results can be seen. By contrast, messianism in the weak sense is judged mainly by its results. Clearly this is a generalization, and the more irrational the actions are and the more problematic the results they produce, the more the movement may be judged already in real time.

The application to Zionism is complex. On the one hand, we saw that it is difficult to characterize it as a 'messianic movement' in the strong sense. It does contain signs of deviation from Jewish law, but we explained them in ways that may rescue it from that classification. The deviation from observance of the commandments is not a result of Zionism but of the background of the Haskalah, Reform, and modernity within which it operates. Joining forces with those who have cast off the yoke is a necessary need and does not involve an actual prohibition. The establishment of judicial systems was done by them, and indeed most of the thinkers and spiritual leaders of Religious Zionism are not prepared to lend an active hand to this (except perhaps through silence). The question of the realism of the conduct is more complex. Secular Zionism conducts itself in fairly realistic ways. Moreover, it is secular Zionism that leads the Zionist movement, not Religious Zionism. But the interpretations that accompany this activity among the leaders and members of Religious Zionism give off the odor of 'messianism' in the weak sense. There is there decisiveness and absoluteness, recourse to considerations that do not belong to the world of real politics, and not even to the pure domain of Jewish law. There are there dimensions of calculating the end, of sacralizing national symbols, and of overvaluing nationality beyond religiosity. There is reliance on midrashim of the Sages and prophetic verses, and conclusions are drawn from them also regarding the real-historical plane. All these, and others, may be interpreted as contemporary translations of the classical signs of 'messianism.' It seems that the future will determine the proper judgment of this movement, but already now there is room for special caution and for reducing the degree of absoluteness and certainty.

It is important to note that here the distinction I made in the first chapter comes to expression: the distinction between judging a movement by its results and judging it in real time. I noted there that even if Zionism fails, that does not mean that it was a 'messianic movement,' and likewise vice versa. A large part of the polemical literature surrounding Zionism and messianism deals with assessing the future, both by realistic tools and by tools drawn from Torah sources. As I argued there, and reiterate here, that is not necessarily the most important criterion, especially in light of our inability already now to determine what the future will be, or even to infer clearly from our sources what it is supposed to be. Here I tried to examine and define, as far as possible with regard to so amorphous a phenomenon, criteria that concern the mode of conduct itself. The conclusion is not unequivocal, but it is certainly significant.

It is clear to me that the discussion conducted here is partial, mainly because of the brevity of the framework and the breadth of the topic. I could not enter into the sources within Zionist and Religious-Zionist thought and analyze the shades of these movements in great detail. My aim in the final chapter was to show an application to the Zionist movement of the historical and conceptual analysis conducted in the earlier chapters.

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Emden, Yaakov, Torat HaKena'ot, taken from the Otzar HaChokhma database (bibliographic details unclear).

Pilber, Yaakov, Eilat HaShachar, fourth expanded edition, the Institute for the Study of Rav Kook's Thought, Jerusalem, 5748.

Flusser, David, Christianity and the Hatred of Israel, Mahanayim 76, 5723.

Kook, Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen, Orot, Jerusalem, 5680, section 'Orot HaTehiyah.'

Kook, Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen, Iggerot HaRe'iyah, Mossad HaRav Kook, Jerusalem, 5706.

Kook, Tzvi Yehudah HaKohen, LiNetivot Yisrael, Jerusalem, 5739.

Korman, Avraham, Yehudi VeArtzo, Tel Aviv, 5752.

Kleinberg, Aviad, Christianity from Its Beginnings to the Reformation, The Open University, Ministry of Defense, 1995.

Kraus, Yitzhak, HaShevi'i – Messianism in Chabad's Seventh Generation, Yediot Sefarim, 2007.

Rabinowitz, Shmuel Yaakov, HaDat VeHaLe'umiyut, Warsaw, 5660.

Maimonides, Iggeret Teiman, Abraham Halevi ben Hasdai version, edited by Abraham Shlomo Halkin, American Academy for Jewish Research, vol. 3, New York, 5712.

Schwartz, Dov, Religious Zionism: History and Chapters of Ideology, The Open University, Ministry of Defense, 2003.

Scholem, Gershom, Shabbetai Zvi and the Messianic Movement in His Lifetime, Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 5717.

Articles

Aviner, Shlomo, 'Priestly Garments as IDF Uniforms,' on his articles website, dated 15.10.2012.

Aviner, Shlomo, 'The Dispute about Bar Kokhba': http://www.kimizion.org/maamar/.

Aviad, Yeshayahu, 'The Mission of Mizrachi,' in: Yosef Tirosh (ed.), Religious Zionism – A Collection of Essays, the World Zionist Organization, Department for Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora, Jerusalem, 5738, p. 92.

Abraham, Michael, 'The Third Way,' or: on 'Religious Zionism' without a hyphen, Tzohar 22, 5765, pp. 131-140.

Altshuler, Mor, 'Against All Odds,' online: www.jewish-studies.info/files/against-the-odd.doc‏

Efron, Yehoshua, The Bar Kokhba War in Light of the Palestinian Talmudic Tradition as against the Babylonian Tradition, in: The Bar Kokhba Revolt – New Studies, 5744.

Gurfinkel, Eli, 'A Third Redemption Has No Interruption' – In What Sense?, HaMa'ayan, Nisan 5771.

Yaari, Avraham, The Disciples of the Vilna Gaon and Their Rooting in the Land, Mahanayim 77, Tevet 5723.

Neubauer, A., 'Collections on Matters of the Ten Tribes and the Sons of Moses,' in: Kovetz Al Yad, year 4, Mekitze Nirdamim, Berlin, 5648-1888 (pp. 8-74).

Munitz, Avraham, Rabbi Soloveitchik's Attitudes toward Zionism, on the website of the Yeruham Hesder Yeshiva, especially the sources there in note 1.

Navon, Hayyim, Rabbi Soloveitchik's Religious-Zionist Conception, Tzohar 22, 5765.

Finkelstein, Ariel, 'There Will Be No Additional Exile' – A Reexamination, Tzohar 24 (5766), pp. 45-53.

Rabinowitz, Hayyim Reuven, The Gaon Rabbi Meir Simhah HaKohen of blessed memory, Shanah BeShanah, 5739 (cited on the Da'at website).

Shvat, Ari Yitzhak, 'It Is Worthwhile That We Stop Seeing Exile as an Alternative!', Tzohar 24 (5766), pp. 55-70.

Shvat, Ari Yitzhak, 'There Will Be No Additional Exile (On Rabbi Herzog's Saying),' Tzohar 21 (5765), pp. 111-120.

Shvat, Ari Yitzhak, A Defense and an Obligation in the Methods of Maimonides and Nachmanides Regarding the 'Kingship' of the Hasmoneans, HaMa'ayan 50:3, Nisan 5770, pp. 98-102.

Shvat, Ari Yitzhak, 'On the Tribe of Ephraim, the Ephrathites, and Messiah Son of Joseph,' www.tora.co.il/shiurim/shvat/efraim.doc‏.

Steiner, Hayyim, The Art of Explanation of Our Master Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, on the Yeshiva website, Iyyar 5766.

Shach, Elazar Menachem Man, Mikhtavim UMa'amarim, Bnei Brak, 5748, vol. 3, p. 143.

[1] Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah, Kapah edition, Mossad HaRav Kook, Jerusalem, 5723-5727.

[2] Bavli, Sanhedrin 99a, based on Zechariah 9:9.

[3] Rabbi Yosef Albo, Sefer HaIkkarim, edited by I. Husik, Philadelphia, 5690, article 1, chapter 1.

[4] Bavli, Shabbat 31a.

[5] Rabbenu Nissim ben Reuven, Hiddushei HaRan on Shabbat, 'Ran Frankel' edition, Jerusalem, 5755, 31a.

[6] See the Mishnah at the end of tractate Sotah.

[7] See Maimonides, Laws of Kings, chapter 11, law 3, and chapter 12 there; and Laws of Repentance, chapter 9.

[8] Ezekiel 36:8, and Bavli, Sanhedrin 98a, and elsewhere.

[9] See Rashi's words cited in the Ran in the previous section.

[10] Habakkuk 2:3.

[11] Daniel 7:25.

[12] Psalms 80:6.

[13] Haggai 2:6 (see also verse 21 there).

[14] Bavli, Sanhedrin 97b.

[15] Maimonides, Laws of Kings, chapter 12, law 2. The text of Maimonides throughout this paper is taken from the Responsa Project, based on the Jerusalem 5734 edition, reproduced from Warsaw 5641.

[16] Some have proposed technical distinctions, such as between calculating an exact date and trying to identify a general period, and so forth. But such distinctions cannot answer the basic difficulty presented here.

[17] Bavli, Sanhedrin 20b.

[18] Maimonides, Sefer HaMitzvot, positive commandment 20, based on Exodus 25:8.

[19] Rashi on Bavli, Sukkah 41b, Vilna edition, based on Exodus 15:17.

[20] See on this Rabbi Yissachar Teichtal, Em HaBanim Semehah, Budapest, 5703, especially in the second and third chapters.

[21] Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael, Beshallah, tractate Shirah, parashah 10.

[22] Rabbi Yaakov Ettlinger, Arukh LaNer, Or HaHayyim edition, Bnei Brak, 5764, on Sukkah there.

[23] It should be noted that this is impossible in Rashi's own words, for he is speaking there about the prohibition of building on a festival day. The interpretation is forced, but precisely that strained quality teaches how important it was to the author of Arukh LaNer to present an alternative view.

[24] Laws of Kings, chapter 12, law 2.

[25] Maimonides himself calculates the end in his Iggeret Teiman. It seems that he does so there in order to encourage the hearts of the Jews to whom the letter was sent. Had he regarded this as a legal prohibition, it is not likely that he would have done it.

[26] See, for example, Maimonides, Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, chapters 9-10, and more.

[27] Regarding kingship in general, according to some decisors there is a prohibition against appointing a king who is not from the house of David (see Maimonides, Sefer HaMitzvot, negative commandment 362, and Nachmanides' commentary on Genesis 49:10). But these sources concern appointing a king, not false messianism. To illustrate the difference: if a person who truly is a descendant of the house of David were to declare himself the Messiah despite not being so, this would involve no legal prohibition.

Another implication concerns cases in which the 'messiah' does not refer to himself as king, but calls himself prime minister, president, judge, and the like (as the Hasmoneans did). See Ari Shvat, A Defense and an Obligation in the Methods of Maimonides and Nachmanides Regarding the 'Kingship' of the Hasmoneans, HaMa'ayan 50:3, Nisan 5770, pp. 98-102.

[28] Oral statement; see on YouTube, 'Yeshayahu Leibowitz on the Coming of the Messiah':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz-QMDPW5RM&feature=player_embedded

[29] Cited in Tomer Persico's blog, Lula'at HaEl, in the article 'Judaism as a Protest Movement,' dated 2.5.2012.

[30] Rav Kook, followed by a good number of Religious-Zionist thinkers, raises the possibility that the messiah, at least Messiah son of Joseph, is not a person but a period, thereby emptying this distinction of its content. It is perhaps worth noting here that Rav Kook himself, in his eulogy for Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl (see Ma'amarei HaRe'iyah, Jerusalem, 5744, p. 94), identified him with a spark of Messiah son of Joseph, and in that way came somewhat close to personifying Zionist messianism. But for our purposes here this is not an essential point. See Rabbi Ari Shvat, 'On the Tribe of Ephraim, the Ephrathites, and Messiah Son of Joseph,' www.tora.co.il/shiurim/shvat/efraim.doc‏.

[31] Maimonides, Laws of Kings, chapter 11, law 4.

[32] This passage is censored in common editions, but was restored in the Frankel edition, Jerusalem-Bnei Brak, 5759, which I use in this paper.

[33] Second expanded edition, Machon Moreshet Ashkenaz, Bnei Brak, 5769.

[34] See on this in the next chapter.

[35] In the sugya of Bavli, Eruvin 43a, it is explained that if the prohibition of Sabbath boundaries applies to descent from the sky below ten handbreadths, then the Messiah will not come on the Sabbath or a festival. The Brisker Rav proves from this that the Messiah will not come at the cost of violating even a rabbinic prohibition. For one source, see Rabbi Simhah Ullman's article, Yismehu, issue 18, parashat Beshallah, 14 Shevat 5770, p. 3.

[36] The first discussions already arose in the nineteenth century through the three rabbis regarded as the forerunners of Religious Zionism: Rabbis Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, Eliyahu Gutmacher, and Yehudah Alkalai. Two prominent twentieth-century examples are Rabbi Teichtal in his book Em HaBanim Semehah, and Rabbi Yoel Moshe Teitelbaum of Satmar in his book VaYoel Moshe, Brooklyn 5720 (and also in his book Al HaGeulah VeAl HaTemurah, Sender, Brooklyn, 5727). The subject will return in the final chapter.

[37] The phenomenon begins already in the Hasmonean period. Josephus already tells of messiahs who announced redemption from the Romans (Judah ben Hezekiah, Theudas, and others). After them came Jesus the Christian and his disciples, and some classify Bar Kokhba that way as well (after the destruction). The phenomenon continues and even expands later in history, and this is not the place to list them all. Some are discussed by Hamburger, and many more appear in Wikipedia under 'false messiah.' A few of them will be discussed below in greater detail.

[38] The beginnings of Christianity are very obscure, and its scholars are hardly agreed about anything in its history (see Aviad Kleinberg, Christianity from Its Beginnings to the Reformation, Open University). Similar obscurity exists among Jewish sages, and it is not even clear whether the historical Jesus really existed, or whether there were several such figures (see Hamburger, appendix 1, p. 645). As noted, what matters here is not the history, but what became fixed in the consciousness of Christians and of the sages of Israel regarding Christianity.

My remarks are based mainly on Kleinberg's book just mentioned. See also David Flusser, Christianity and Hatred of Israel, Mahanayim 76, 5723.

[39] See: http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

[40] Maimonides, Laws of Kings, chapter 11, law 4.

[41] One of the greatest sages of Italy, active in Venice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Below: Rabbi Judah Aryeh.

[42] Rabbi Judah Aryeh of Modena, Magen VaHerev, Jerusalem, 5720, pp. 43-46.

[43] Printed in Otzar Vikuhim, New York, 5688, p. 122.

[44] See sources and a very lengthy detailed discussion in Rabbi Yaakov Hillel, Responsa VaYashev HaYam, Ahavat Shalom, Jerusalem, 5754, no. 13.

[45] However, see below near note 64 the Yad Ramah's words on Bar Kokhba, and the Raavad's gloss on Maimonides, Laws of Kings, chapter 11, law 3.

[46] Maimonides, Laws of Kings, chapter 11, law 3.

[47] See note 7 above.

[48] See also Sefer HaIkkarim, article 1, chapter 18.

[49] On Berakhot 17b.

[50] See also below in the section on Bar Kokhba.

[51] This is a received tradition cited in a section of his Sha'ar HaGilgulim that was censored in the printed edition. See Mishpacha magazine, Nisan 5748, p. 32 (I did not find it elsewhere; the author's name does not appear there).

[52] Maimonides, Iggeret Teiman, Abraham Halevi ben Hasdai version, ed. Abraham Shlomo Halkin, American Academy for Jewish Research, vol. 3, New York, 5712, p. 19.

[53] See, for example, Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, Bein Sheshet LaAsor, Jerusalem, 5736, p. 177.

[54] See Hamburger, p. 138 note 2, who hesitates on this point. But in Jerusalem Talmud Ta'anit 4:5 it is stated explicitly that his name was Ben Koziva, and Bar Kokhba was his epithet.

[55] See Eikhah Rabbati 2:2; Otzar HaMidrashim (Eisenstein), p. 461, and elsewhere.

[56] See Otzar HaMidrashim there, and Jerusalem Talmud Ta'anit there.

[57] Jerusalem Talmud there.

[58] Jerusalem Talmud there.

[59] Maimonides, Laws of Fasts, chapter 5, law 3.

[60] Jerusalem, 5719, p. 253.

[61] Gilgulei Neshamot, Prague, 5448, letter ayin.

[62] And so too in Abarbanel, Yeshu'ot Meshiho, Koenigsberg, 5571, part 2, chapter 4.

[63] Sanhedrin 93b.

[64] Yad Ramah, Rabbi Meir Halevi Abulafia, on Sanhedrin there, Warsaw, 5755.

[65] See Bavli, Bava Kamma 97b.

[66] See Yevamot 72a and Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 19:2.

[67] See Bavli, Gittin 57a.

[68] Zechariah 11:17.

[69] Jerusalem Talmud Ta'anit, 'Me'orei Or' edition, Jerusalem, 5765, chapter 4, law 5.

[70] I note that from these descriptions it emerges that Bar Koziva was killed by the Romans. Other sources speak of his having been killed by a snakebite. By contrast, above we saw that the sages voted against him and killed him (see several resolutions in Hamburger, appendix 3).

[71] Maimonides, Laws of Sanhedrin, chapter 11, law 3.

[72] For an explanation of Rabbi Akiva's method and his relation to Ben Koziva, see Yehoshua Efron, The Bar Kokhba War in Light of the Palestinian Talmudic Tradition as against the Babylonian, in The Bar Kokhba Revolt – New Studies, 5744; also Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, 'The Dispute about Bar Kokhba': http://www.kimizion.org/maamar/, and Hamburger, appendix 4.

[73] Above, note 62, folio 20.

[74] See Hamburger, appendix 2.

[75] Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, commentary on the Torah, Breuer edition, Jerusalem, 5749, Deuteronomy 8:10 (the commandment of Grace after Meals).

[76] Rabbi Yaakov Emden, Birat Migdal Oz, Zhitomir, 5634, end of the section 'Aliyat HaTeva,' p. 4, letter 7.

[77] See on them below.

[78] Yehoshafat Harkabi, Vision, Not Fantasy – The Bar Kokhba Revolt, Domino, 1982.

[79] Harkabi's book just mentioned is part of that phenomenon.

[80] Rav Kook, Migdal Yerachim, first published as short aphorisms for the various months in the calendar 'Eretz HaTzvi' (in the years 5671-5674).

[81] Much research has been written on this. Here I refer to an article on the Open University website, Update 46: 'Bar Kokhba: How Did the Man of Disaster Become a Great Hero?', http://www.openu.ac.il/Adcan/adcan46/p22-26.pdf. The author is not indicated there.

[82] The details are based on the book of Benjamin of Tudela, Megillat Ovadiah HaGer, Shevet Yehudah by Rabbi Shmuel of Verga, and others.

[83] In his commentary on parashat Vayeshev, pp. 52-53.

[84] Bavli, Sanhedrin 97b.

[85] See Shalshelet HaKabbalah, p. 103.

[86] See A. Neubauer, 'Collections on Matters of the Ten Tribes and the Sons of Moses,' in Kovetz Al Yad, year 4, Mekitze Nirdamim, Berlin, 5648-1888 (pp. 8-74); and in the Encyclopaedia Hebraica, under their entries.

[87] See Responsa Maharalbah, Responsa Project, no. 147, s.v. 'od.'

[88] See Bavli, Sanhedrin 98a.

[89] See, for example, the letter of Rabbi Azriel of Dyene, cited by Hamburger on p. 279.

[90] The amount of material on Shabbetai Zvi is enormous. In order to summarize and reach the main point quickly, I used a little of Hamburger, as well as Gershom Scholem's book, Shabbetai Zvi and the Messianic Movement in His Lifetime, Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 5717, and the Encyclopaedia Hebraica under his entry.

[91] See Yalkut Shimoni, Jeremiah, remez 310.

[92] See Bavli, Pesahim 50a, where it is explained that when the Messiah comes, the Divine Name will be pronounced as it is written rather than as it is ordinarily read.

[93] Rabbi Yaakov Emden, Torat HaKena'ot, taken from the Otzar HaChokhma database (bibliographic details blurred).

[94] See on this in the next chapter.

[95] There is extensive literature on Chabad, both critical and hagiographic/apologetic. Here I refer only to two more objective works: Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman, The Lubavitcher Rebbe in His Life and in the Life After His Life, Dvir and the Shazar Center, 2011; and a more popular and more recent book: Yechiel Harari, Sodo shel HaRebbe, Yediot Sefarim, Tel Aviv, 2013. See additional sources in the following notes.

[96] Some of these are not unique to Chabad, but characterize other Hasidic dynasties as well.

[97] On this, and on Chabad in the period of the last Rebbe in general, see Rabbi Dr. Yitzhak Kraus, HaShevi'i – Messianism in Chabad's Seventh Generation, Yediot Sefarim, 2007.

[98] It seems to me that the most prominent among them is Rabbi Dr. David Berger's book, The Rebbe, the King Messiah, the Scandal of Indifference, and the Threat to Jewish Faith, Jerusalem, Urim, 2005.

[99] See Dr. Mor Altshuler's article, 'Against All Odds,' online: www.jewish-studies.info/files/against-the-odd.doc‏

[100] See especially his books: Mysticism and Messianism – From the Immigration of the Ramhal to the Gaon of Vilna, Jerusalem, 5759; The Return to Jerusalem: Renewal of the Jewish Settlement in the Land of Israel at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century, Jerusalem: Shalem, 5767.

[101] A literary description of this phenomenon can be found in Shulamit Lapid's novel Keheres HaNishbar, Keter, 1984.

[102] I heard from my father that similar stories are known about Rabbi Aharon Kotler in Lithuania, and about the Tzemah Tzedek in White Russia.

[103] See online:

http://www.google.co.il/url?q=http://www.kimizion.org/maamar/ktz60a.doc&sa=U&ei=C-4UUdLfI-GP0AW5noGAAw&ved=0CAwQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNHctvrakFBa8JYispLrhy2CtnTrQQ

[104] See Avraham Yaari, The Disciples of the Vilna Gaon and Their Rooting in the Land, Mahanayim 77, Tevet 5723.

[105] To my surprise I did not find a single source that adequately surveys the Religious-Zionist phenomenon in its various shades from both historical and ideological perspectives. I chose to use Dov Schwartz's book (see there, pp. 9-10 on the lack of systematic and comprehensive literature), Religious Zionism: History and Chapters of Ideology (hereafter: Schwartz), Open University, Ministry of Defense, 2003.

[106] See Morgenstern, Aryeh, Messianism and Settlement of the Land of Israel, Jerusalem, Yad Ben-Zvi, 5745; and Redemption by the Natural Path, Jerusalem, 5757.

[107] Until the early years of the state, the term 'Haredi' was synonymous with 'religious' (as opposed to Reform or 'Maskil'). Since the controversy over Zionism became sharper, the term has come to designate those who oppose Zionism and/or modernity.

[108] These words appear in Yeshayahu Aviad's article, 'The Mission of Mizrachi,' in: Yosef Tirosh (ed.), Religious Zionism – A Collection of Essays, the World Zionist Organization, Department for Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora, Jerusalem, 5738, p. 92.

[109] See Asher Cohen, HaTalit VeHaDegel, Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, 1988, p. 16. It should be noted that in Rabbi Reines' writings one can find more substantial references to the Zionist movement, and it seems that Cohen's analysis too suffers from tendentiousness (he belongs to the more pragmatic group within Religious Zionism and tries to find roots for it). But for the schematic map I am sketching here, this is sufficient.

[110] For many sources, see Shlomo Aviner, 'Priestly Garments as IDF Uniforms,' on his articles website, dated 15.10.2012.

[111] Though in Rabbi Aviner's article just mentioned (see previous note) he is careful to preserve this distinction.

[112] See on this Channel 2 News (Mako) online, dated 23.2.2011, and much more.

[113] 'The Third Way,' or: on 'Religious Zionism' without a hyphen, Tzohar 22, 5765, pp. 131-140.

[114] See Navon, Hayyim, Rabbi Soloveitchik's Religious-Zionist Conception, Tzohar 22, 5765; and Munitz, Avraham, Rabbi Soloveitchik's Attitudes toward Zionism, on the website of the Yeruham Hesder Yeshiva, especially the sources there in note 1.

[115] An example of this is found in my father's article just mentioned, which proposes omitting the hyphen in the phrase 'Religious-Zionist.' The meaning is that his Zionism is secular, though he himself is a religious person. By contrast, the common approach within Religious Zionism sees Zionism as part of religiosity. That is the meaning of the hyphen (see the responses to his article, in Tzohar and online).

[116] Bar-Ilan, Meir, MiVolozhin ad Yerushalayim – Zikhronot, vol. 1, Tel Aviv, 5699, pp. 306-307.

[117] Issue 42, Thursday, 24 Tammuz, the year 1000 after the destruction (as dated there).

[118] See Tadau, K., and Krayn, M., Adam BaOlam: Zvi Peretz Hayot, Tel Aviv, 5707, pp. 48-49.

[119] Letter dated 25 Av 5659, in: Or LaYesharim, Warsaw, 5660, p. 35.

[120] Letter dated Thursday, 13 Elul 5661, cited in Rabbi Eitam Henkin's article, 'The Ban against Rabbi Y. M. Pines in Jerusalem and His Ties with His Brother-in-Law Rabbi David Friedman,' HaMa'ayan, Tevet 5769, p. 15.

[121] Wasserman, Elchanan, Kovetz Ma'amarim, Jerusalem, 5723, p. 89.

[122] As noted, Rabbi Meir Simhah did not state himself explicitly regarding Zionism, but in his books a great love of the Land of Israel is evident. Moreover, in a letter he writes to members of Mizrachi in the Jewish National Fund, he says that in our time, through the kindness of the nations, the Three Oaths forbidding immigration have fallen away. See Hayyim Reuven Rabinowitz, The Gaon Rabbi Meir Simhah HaKohen of blessed memory, Shanah BeShanah, 5739 (cited on the Da'at website), chapter 5.

[123] Shach, Elazar Menachem Man, Mikhtavim UMa'amarim, Bnei Brak, 5748, vol. 3, p. 143.

[124] I heard the argument in this paragraph from my father. He made similar criticism of two additional sources dealing with the issue of Zionism as false messianism. Particularly prominent in this respect is the polemical book of the Satmar Rebbe, Yoel Teitelbaum, VaYoel Moshe, Brooklyn, 5720. Rabbi Teitelbaum gathers hundreds and thousands of sources in a highly tendentious and very unconvincing way in order to ground his claim that there is not a single point in Zionism's favor and that it is entirely impurity and prohibition. There too the reliance on the sources is highly speculative and homiletical. The modern parallel, Yoel Elhanan, in his book Dat HaTziyonut, Petah Tikva, 5763, likewise suffers from tendentious readings of legal and historical sources alike.

[125] For many additional sources see Pilber, Yaakov, Eilat HaShachar, fourth expanded edition, Jerusalem, 5748, in the chapter 'The Third Return to Zion' (hereafter: Pilber), section 9.

[126] Waldenberg, Eliezer, Responsa Tzitz Eliezer, vol. 7, no. 48, booklet Orhot HaMishpatim, chapter 12.

[127] Abarbanel, Isaac, Yeshu'ot Meshiho, p. 87. Even the Hafetz Hayyim, who was among the opponents of the Zionist movement, writes (from a source sheet; I did not locate the original source):

At the end of the time of redemption there will be found two types of people, and both will assist in bringing redemption near. There will be people who strengthen themselves to serve God with all their heart and all their soul, and there will arise a new generation, opposite to the former, who will stand on a low religious plane and each will act according to what is right in his own eyes; and even so, let not our heart fall because of this, for this too is one of the signs of redemption.

[128] Rabinowitz, Shmuel Yaakov, HaDat VeHaLe'umiyut, Warsaw, 5660, pp. 127-128. Similarly see Nissenbaum, Yitzhak, Alai Haldai, Warsaw, 5689, p. 147. Nissenbaum describes a meeting he had with the son of Rabbi Meisels of Lodz, who threw in his face the claim that Herzl was regarded among the Zionists as the Messiah, and he was shocked and disassociated himself from it.

[129] Avraham Korman (1917-2001) was among the first in Religious Zionism, and in Judaism more broadly, to grapple with modern and scientific ideas while defending the Jewish worldview. Although an autodidact, he wrote about twenty books in the fields of thought and philosophy, science, the Hebrew Bible, aggadic literature and the Oral Torah, and Jewish thought.

[130] Korman, Avraham, Yehudi VeArtzo, Tel Aviv, 5752, p. 155.

[131] Kook, Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen, Orot, Jerusalem, 5680, Orot HaTehiyah, chapter 9.

[132] A song from the 1930s, written by Aharon Ze'ev and composed by Mordechai Zeira.

[133] On this there exists an interesting legal discussion surrounding the separation of communities in Hungary and Germany in the nineteenth century. See Pilber there, section 1 (from p. 164 onward).

[134] The chapter just mentioned in Pilber is full of such discussions, beginning with the Holocaust, the War of Independence, the Six-Day War and the conquest of Jerusalem, the Yom Kippur War, the evacuation of Yamit, and by the end of the chapter even the Lebanon War.

[135] See, for example, Steiner, Hayyim, The Art of Explanation of Our Master Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, on the Yeshiva website, Iyyar 5766.

[136] Above I brought as one indication the example of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda's disciples' deep negative attitude toward Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who was perceived as anti-national (despite being a commandment-observant Jew), as against the attitude toward Ben-Gurion, who was perceived only as anti-religious (despite the fact that he was not observant and in many ways even persecuted the observant).

[137] See Rabbi Menachem Kasher, HaTekufah HaGedolah, Machon Tzofnat Pa'aneah, 5729 (who shows that these ideas already begin with the Vilna Gaon); also Rabbi Yitzhak Dadon, Atchalta Hi, Jerusalem, 5768 (who also shows these themes in rabbis of earlier periods); and Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Bergman, HaMedinah HaYehudit – Can the State of Israel Be the Beginning of Redemption?

[138] These matters appear sharply in Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman's booklet Ikveta DeMeshiha, Netzach, Bnei Brak, 5749. The Satmar Rebbe too used this expression frequently, including in his book VaYoel Moshe, already mentioned here.

[139] See Iggerot HaRe'iyah, Mossad HaRav Kook, Jerusalem, 5706, vol. 3, p. 155. See also his son Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, in LiNetivot Yisrael, Jerusalem, 5739, and much more.

[140] See Pilber there, sections 3 and 5.

[141] See Shvat, Ari Yitzhak, 'There Will Be No Additional Exile (On Rabbi Herzog's Saying),' Tzohar 21 (5765), pp. 111-120. Ariel Finkelstein published a response to this article: "There Will Be No Additional Exile' – A Reexamination,' Tzohar 24 (5766), pp. 45-53, and Rabbi Shvat replied in an article entitled 'It Is Worthwhile That We Stop Seeing Exile as an Alternative!' there, pp. 55-70. See also Eli Gurfinkel, 'A Third Redemption Has No Interruption' – In What Sense?, HaMa'ayan, Nisan 5771, and all the sources cited there.

[142] See explanations in Pilber there, section 6. He shows that the phenomenon of lack of identification had been anticipated in advance, and thereby explains the 'blindness' of some of the sages of the generation.

[143] This foundational story is mentioned in several articles that deal with our issue, and it arouses controversy. See Rabbi Shvat's article just cited, where he questions whether it happened at all; see also my father's article in Tzohar, and Eli Gurfinkel (see previous note). For me, the historical reliability of the story is not important. Like every good myth, it accurately reflects the differences in basic approaches, and for my purposes that is enough.

[144] See Pilber there, sections 8, 15, and more.

[145] See, for example, in Avishai Ben-Haim's article, 'It Was, and Very Much So,' on the NRG website, dated 9.9.2005, and much more.

[146] Here I relied on descriptions of people who were there, students and guests.

[147] Here too the subject requires a deeper discussion, since collective sins do indeed receive a stricter treatment in some sources of Jewish law, but this is not the place for it. The fact is that these attitudes divide quite neatly between Religious Zionism and Haredism, and for my purposes that is enough.

[148] My father argues that this approach is unfounded even in religious thought, and that its sources—even the few that really exist—are rather dubious. The principal source cited in this regard is the martyrs of Lod (see Bavli, Bava Batra 10b, and also Bavli, Pesahim 50a), who were two brothers, Pappos and Lulianus, who admitted to killing the king's daughter so that the Jews as a whole would not be blamed, and were therefore put to death in sanctification of God's name. But that source is irrelevant to our discussion here, because they were killed by their own choice in order to save their community, and not simply because they were Jews. That is certainly death in sanctification of God's name, and that is not what we are discussing here.

[149] The bibliography includes only books and articles that deal directly with the subject. Ordinary Torah sources are not included here, nor sources mentioned only incidentally in connection with a specific point.