Messianism, Lesson 7

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that was always part of the issue, because the moment something like this is proposed, obviously everyone understands that at first it has no chance whatsoever. It sounds insane. After two thousand years in this situation, suddenly some assimilated journalist like Herzl shows up and starts some kind of movement. What, with all his fantasies? No chance. But I don’t know if that’s the whole story. I mean, it goes beyond that. The very fact that they did something—that’s why I said, that’s why I sorted all the levels of false messianism and suggested a few possibilities. In my view, already the second suggestion was on the table there. In other words, the very fact that they did something immediately aroused opposition, even before the question of who was doing it and how. After that, of course, you can strengthen the opposition much more if you point out: look who’s doing it too—these secular people who are leading Israel away from religion, and heretics who are leading this whole thing, and look what’s happening in the colonies, and all sorts of things of that kind—which was all true. But in my opinion that wasn’t the root of the matter. As far as I can tell—and again, I’m not a historian, but I’ve read quite a bit about those periods—I get the impression that the root of the opposition was really theological, not practical; not that they simply didn’t want secularism. That came afterward. When you’re looking for someone, obviously you look for every point you can attack. And then the secularism and the conduct and everything else come in too.

[Speaker B] There’s the question of the secularism, and there’s the question of the chances of this thing actually happening.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said, that too—even that, in my opinion, belongs more under section B. The secularism is already section C. But I’m saying even that, in my opinion, wasn’t the root. Even though, again, it’s always mixed together; I don’t know, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how it worked.

[Speaker B] Like the model where someone is supposed to come and redeem us.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, Messiah son of David will come riding a white donkey, gather everyone, calm down the nations, take us to Jerusalem, the Temple, and everything will be fine. That was the ethos people were raised on. Absolutely. Look at the immigration of the students of the Vilna Gaon and of the Hasidim and so on. That was an exceptional act. Nobody imagined that this was something that was going to bring the Messiah, of course. They made calculations—sure, in books we know how to do everything—but the actions were not messianic actions. They simply immigrated and settled in the Land of Israel. By the way, the sixteenth century was the same. Breuer writes about this in his books, if I mentioned it—when they came to Safed and Tiberias in the sixteenth century after the expulsion, the expulsion from Spain, end of the fifteenth and into the sixteenth century, this came with a very clear and very strong messianic background. Meaning, people had midrashim saying that the Messiah would first come from the north, and they latched onto exactly those midrashim and talked about them a lot, I think. And that’s why many kabbalists came specifically to the north and not to Jerusalem in that wave of immigration. They wanted to meet the Messiah there first and then go with him to Jerusalem. But I’m saying that in the end these processes were not political processes. In other words, even if in the background there was some calculation about redemption and maybe the Messiah would come and so on, the only actions you did for the redemption were numerology, books, and nonsense. But in the end, you came up to the Land of Israel. Yes, that you did—but there was no political activity, no call to the public: come, let’s establish a state here, no lobbying of gentile rulers, and all kinds of things like that. I’m not even talking about defense forces, of course, and establishing an army and all those things—there’s no comparison; it’s as far as east is from west. So that wasn’t there. There were messianic backgrounds, but you can’t say they took action to bring the Messiah. They came to the Land of Israel, but immigrating to the Land of Israel is not bringing the Messiah. Immigrating to the Land of Israel is the commandment of settling the Land of Israel; it’s part of Jewish law. It has nothing to do with the Messiah. You’re commanded in that regardless of the Messiah. On the contrary, the fact that they didn’t do it until then is a great wonder. The Kuzari already talks about this. Yes—the king of the Kuzari asks the Haver there: what is this, you keep asking the Holy One, blessed be He, all the time to bring you to the Land of Israel, and you don’t do anything. And he says, “Our shame”—if I remember correctly, I think the Kuzari says it there twice—he says that, “a shameful empty phrase.”

[Speaker B] You both know the debate about Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, who wanted the offering of sacrifices.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, it starts with Rabbi Akiva Eiger and Rabbi Gutmacher and his student, Eliyahu Gutmacher, and Kalischer. These are the forerunners of Zionism. It’s not yet really a Zionist movement; these are more like thinkers. But the political movement began a bit later. They also weren’t all religious, at least some of them weren’t. But the ones who started the political movement were secular Zionism. So I’m saying that the opposition to this movement was that it was false messianism. And it began almost from the deepest root—maybe not Leibowitz and Ben-Gurion, for whom anyone waiting for the Messiah is a messianic movement—but yes, anyone who does something to bring the Messiah. And before asking what exactly you do, the very fact that you take real, practical action to bring the Messiah makes you immediately suspect. That’s clear. That was there in a very obvious way. Not only that, but even those who were partners in this movement felt a need to apologize. Meaning, it was clear that there was this sort of ethos that wasn’t trivial, and they had to explain that maybe this is permissible, and maybe this is only settling the Land of Israel and not bringing the Messiah. There were all kinds of apologies and explanations like that. This isn’t something you can dismiss. So I think the Zionist movement—even though maybe one could conclude that it wasn’t a messianic movement at all, perhaps, I’m not one hundred percent sure, we’ll talk about that later—it still reflects how people understand what a messianic movement is. In other words, the criticism of the Zionist movement reflected the criteria by which people classify a movement as messianic. And here you see that the criteria go almost all the way: the very fact that you do something already means you’re in the dangerous zone, you’re already suspect. Why is the very fact that something is messianic a problem?

[Speaker B] Why is the very fact that it’s messianic a problem?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, by “messianic movement” in quotation marks I meant a problematic movement, not messianic in the sense of “I believe in the coming of”

[Speaker B] the Messiah—meaning false messianism.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that’s what has accompanied us through this whole discussion. I’m just saying: there is such a thing as false messianism—now how do you define it? So I presented several definitions, from one end to the other. I said there are those who define it, like Ben-Gurion and Leibowitz, that anyone waiting for the Messiah is messianic. Fine, that’s not a reasonable interpretation within the religious context. But the next interpretation—which even today many people already wouldn’t agree with, but you have to remember that the ethos really was like this—is that anyone who does something is already a messianic movement. In principle, this is supposed to come from Heaven. “Messianic movement” in the negative connotation, when I say “messianic movement.” I mean “messianic movement” in the negative connotation. Okay? Now I’m saying that today many people don’t think that way; I don’t think that way either, by the way. But you can’t ignore the fact that this was the basis of the original criticism of the Zionist movement. In other words, you really do see that in the ethos that developed—and again, not to accept it just because it developed; I’m not claiming that means it was right—but clearly it was there. The very fact that they did something, the very fact that they took initiative—in Zionism they always accused the traditional Jewish world of a certain kind of passivity, and not for nothing. That passivity was part of the ideology. We are supposed to perform commandments and study and be righteous, and the Holy One, blessed be He, will help us. In other words, in principle we are supposed to be on the passive side. That was the basic ethos. And therefore there’s something very deep here. It’s not just some kind of helplessness or lack of familiarity with the world, not knowing how to do things. The fact that they didn’t know how to do things in Eastern Europe wasn’t just because they were passive, but because there was an ideology of passivity. We aren’t supposed to do anything. Initiatives are simply not part of the ethos. The Holy One, blessed be He, is supposed to run the initiatives. “What have you to do with the hidden matters of the Merciful One?” You study Torah, observe commandments, do what you need to do, that’s all. What are you doing running the world here? Some kind of megalomania. There’s a very strong ethos like that. Now in recent times we’ve loosened up from it a bit, because if you’re inside the Zionist process, you can’t really remain inside it and still cling to that ethos—almost can’t continue to cling to it. But that’s a birth process, meaning it wasn’t always so. Something somewhat new was born here. And again, that doesn’t mean the previous ethos was grounded in the sources and now this is a departure from the sources. I didn’t say that. In the sources it’s hard to find clear criteria here. But it definitely was a prevalent approach, definitely the simpler, more natural outlook. By contrast, over time a view developed—and it started as: we’re returning to the Land of Israel and we have an opportunity to settle the Land of Israel, and until now we were passive and didn’t fulfill the commandment of settling the Land of Israel, and this has nothing to do with the Messiah—what’s called Reines-style Zionism, the Religious Zionism of Rabbi Reines, who is regarded as the representative of secular Zionism—not secular Zionism, but Religious Zionism without a hyphen, as opposed to what they later told me Professor Leibowitz said. Meaning, a Zionism that is not religious in tone, but rather national in tone. And generally the one who represents that in the world of ideas was Reines. I don’t know his writings well enough; I haven’t read enough in them, but that’s how the views are usually classified. At first Religious Zionism was more Reines-style. And little by little it developed—Rabbi Kook, of course, introduced this very strongly much later—he introduced very strongly the messianic dimension, the dimension of redemption, of joining the Zionist movement as part of bringing redemption and as a religious value. Which, by the way, are not exactly the same thing. As a religious value and bringing redemption are not identical things. Because Rabbi Reines—I don’t know, I’m not one hundred percent sure—but it could be that he didn’t even see it as a religious value. Not only not bringing redemption; living in the Land of Israel and fulfilling the commandment of settling the Land of Israel, obviously yes. But mobilizing people to create some sort of national liberation movement—that is not necessarily something of religious value, and certainly not specifically about redemption. So I think that even in the Religious Zionist world this whole thing took time to ripen, for the same reason: because taking action to bring the Messiah, at first, was something not so legitimate. And that included those who were drawn into this process. And slowly some kind of conception developed, or this ideology crystallized, saying: basically, why not? There’s Rashi versus the Or HaChaim that I brought there in Sukkah—will the Temple descend from Heaven, or will they build it? And somehow suddenly people began to say: wait, who said? Why can’t I do something, as long as it’s done within the framework of Jewish law and doesn’t go beyond it? Here we return to section C. Right? The form of conduct—whether it’s forceful, whether it’s unrealistic, whether it goes beyond Jewish law, certainly. But as long as I’m not in section C but only in section B, then slowly this crystallized. And that’s why you see that the criteria I listed as messianic movement A, B, C—where in C there are one, two, and three—basically, it crystallizes along those criteria. In other words, at first section B was a messianic movement, that’s clear. Later, suddenly, there was a debate about it. In Satmar, for example, they think section B is a messianic movement—anyone who does something. In Satmar they fight against the wicked Zionists, and it’s not because they’re secular. They use the fact that they’re secular because it strengthens the criticism, but that’s not the reason. The reason is that they do anything at all. That’s the ideology of the avant-garde ideological Haredi wing. But I think that even in the Haredi world—those who are not at the Satmar or Neturei Karta pole—if you ask them on the ideological level, though they don’t engage all that much in ideology there, as I said, the non-Satmar Haredi public is a very non-ideological public—but if you ask them, they might tell you this is false messianism. Practically, not anymore, and the religious public is already not there. Which probably means that this movement—and in Satmar, that the Messiah won’t come, and that’s perfectly fine—I don’t think they’re really there anymore either, at least de facto. Section B has already dropped off the agenda for most of the religious public, I think. Section C is what is now at the center of the debate. So notice that in this picture there is somehow a process of crystallization, of conquest—sorry, conquest of one more plot and another plot out of the criteria of false messianism—until we basically reach a point where joining a movement that desecrates the Sabbath and causes people to leave Torah, which is already really bordering on C-3, meaning deviating from religion—in fact not merely bordering but actually there—even that today is already not perceived as a messianic movement. So what remains of the concept “messianic movement”? I mean within the Religious Zionist world. So what remains of the concept “messianic movement” if even that isn’t one? If even that isn’t a messianic movement? Almost nothing remains. So you have to understand that it’s not trivial to say, no, no, this is not a messianic movement, everything is fine, because if we are not a messianic movement within this framework, I don’t know what a messianic movement is.

[Speaker B] You could say that

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] doing bizarre and forceful things—but what? Violating Torah is permitted, but doing forceful things is forbidden? The hierarchy seems to be C-2 first and then C-3, meaning first doing bizarre or unrealistic things, and only afterward doing things that deviate from Jewish law, like Shabbetai Tzvi and all that. Reversing that order doesn’t sound trivial; it’s not so simple. So I’m saying there’s some ideological challenge here. I wouldn’t call it a religious challenge exactly—I didn’t say that; it doesn’t really belong so much to halakhic and religious thought—but maybe a religious challenge, though not a halakhic one. There is a non-trivial ideological challenge here: to define the concept of a messianic movement when the Zionist movement is not there. And in that sense, Haredim, Haredi thought, have an advantage, because whatever characteristics you want in a messianic movement, you’ll find some of them in the Zionist movement. In one dosage or another, but you’ll find some of them. If you want to portray it as something completely clean of the concept “messianic movement,” you almost leave no possibility of defining a messianic movement at all. If you think none of the characteristics are there, then what is left? The point, of course, is dosage. So I say: fine, there are messianic elements—but this is the sorites paradox, the heap paradox. Because the question is: how much messianism must there be in a movement before I declare it a messianic movement? The fact that there are characteristics, and that some think this and others think that—in every group there are characteristics in different degrees. Still, in the final analysis you can say: this is not a messianic movement. That’s a statement one can perhaps live with more easily. But if you want to cleanse it entirely, to say that everything here is non-messianic, I don’t know what that leaves of the concept of a messianic movement.

[Speaker B] Until today a messianic movement meant the Messiah, a person, like Shabbetai Tzvi.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was a persona. So I’m saying, even at the level of persona—and now I’ll bring a few sources on this point. For example, Herzl. Let’s take Herzl. If you look at the descriptions of Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan—I brought here a passage from the book From Volozhin to Jerusalem, the memoirs of Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan, the son of the Netziv. And he writes like this: “There are figures who in their lifetime are like legend; while they walk among people, and those who see their virtues and traits see them as with all human beings, nevertheless they relate to them as something not ordinary.” Even when you see the flaw, you can’t believe there is a flaw in him. Even though he is with you, you see him up close—not as a man, but as a chapter of history. “And Herzl attained this.” Legends enveloped him while he was still young and fresh, healthy and strong. The man died at age forty-four, so he wasn’t exactly very old. At least everyone thought he was healthy and strong, even if he wasn’t. “When it was heard that Herzl was ill, nobody believed it.” You can’t believe Herzl was sick. He’s not a human being, he can’t be sick. “It was hard to believe that the man who breathed not only life but revival into the nation was himself sick.” “They already saw and heard that Herzl had passed through, in flight”—this is before the age of airplanes—“several Jewish cities and Petersburg, in a chest and tower.” Literally legends in the style of Shabbetai Tzvi spread around him. Okay? Everything Herzl did, every place he traveled—to Constantinople, to Jerusalem, to Rome, to London—they interpreted all of it through Pardes. Everything was according to verses and allusions and Kabbalah, and every step he took spawned all kinds of legends. By the way, it’s not all that far from what people do today in certain circles—not about Bibi specifically, but about the state or what the state does. So I’m saying there are things here that completely recall what happened around the false messiahs I described in previous sessions. And again, I’m saying: that doesn’t mean Herzl orchestrated it. I don’t think so. I don’t know, I haven’t examined it enough. But it doesn’t seem to me that this is what he intended to happen. But as crowds tend to behave, that’s what happens. So it’s no wonder that when you look at this movement from the outside you say: wow, there are elements of a messianic movement here. Rabbi David Friedman of Karlin, one of the great halakhic decisors, Rabbi David Friedman—he says: “My view on this matter is known, namely that I regard this approach as the approach of Shabbetai Tzvi, may the name of the wicked rot.” He’s speaking about Zionism. “Just as the false prophet, the trumpets of acclamation in favor of Herzl, prophesy in the false spirit of Shabbetai Tzvi.” In other words, he sees Herzl as some kind of Shabbetai Tzvi—a man with grand rhetoric, going to speak with emperors and counts and kings, doing political lobbying. This man, first of all, is going to bring disaster upon us. But that, I’m saying, is stage B: first of all he is doing something, and that itself is the initial problem. Then afterward, when someone is doing something, you look and say: he’ll bring disaster on us. Who knows what His Imperial Majesty may eventually decide to do, or whether he won’t chop all our heads off because of this insolent fellow. Wow, he’s crazy—let him sit quietly until the Messiah comes. That’s basically the point. And then of course you move on to his secularism and so on. I’m saying the whole structure builds up, in the end it goes all the way, but it doesn’t start there. It starts from the subtler points. Similarly Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman writes, yes, in his Kovetz Ma’amarim, in Ikveta de-Meshicha of course, that famous pamphlet. “The Jewish people always suffer from two things: from outside, blood libels; and from inside, through false messiahs, who from the beginning entice and promise to bring people up to the Land of Israel, and the end of all false messiahs is apostasy for thousands and tens of thousands of Jews.” “If you look with penetrating eyes,” he writes, with some omissions, “you will see that even in our time there is such a false messiah, who has clothed himself in that well-known sect which says with its mouth that it is leading to the Land of Israel, but in truth it leads to complete and essential heresy.” And all in all, you can’t ignore the fact that within the Zionist movement many, many people left commandment observance. And you can discuss what was cause and what was effect; I’m not at all sure in which direction it ran. Of course there were all kinds of people, but in general I’m not at all sure that because of Zionism they left the commandments; rather Zionism gave them the opportunity to do so. But it’s known—Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan in that same book describes how he traveled from Odessa; he boarded a ship to the United States. And he says that when the people boarded the ship—Odessa was a city of maskilim anyway, but never mind, it was the port from which people departed from all over—everyone boarded wearing traditional dress, Haredi families boarded the ship. The moment their foot stepped onto the ship, you no longer saw any Haredi clothing. Everyone took off the clothes, took off the head coverings, took off everything. On the ship, he says, on that very day—

[Speaker B] They threw it into the sea.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes. Nothing remained. Nothing remained.

[Speaker B] Is that the deviation from Jewish law on the ship? What? Is that the deviation from Jewish law of the ship?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. You can’t ignore the whole issue of… That’s why I say: in practice, first of all ideologically too, this was present for some of the people. What—the very cooperation? Certainly. Not cooperation, regular Zionism, secular Zionism. In its ideology, among other things, there was also a goal of secularizing. Certainly. The “culture controversy” in all its versions, yes, in the early congresses—the sixth, I think, I’m not sure exactly where. The culture controversy. Herzl was sober enough not to get into it, and to separate the Zionist movement from culture, but Ben-Gurion and Leo Motzkin, and I think Weizmann too, wanted to bring culture into the Zionist movement. And what is “culture”? That the Zionist movement should also have a minister of education and culture, not just a minister of defense and politics or transportation. In other words, that the Zionist movement should also manage education and values and everything else—and you understand where that was heading if Ben-Gurion and Weizmann are running the culture.

[Speaker B] Yes, but in order to characterize Zionism, I’m asking about characterizing Religious Zionism as a messianic movement.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, this wasn’t said about Religious Zionism specifically, but about Zionism in general. Religious Zionism certainly did not want to secularize people. But I’m saying: when you look at the Zionist movement, you say—so you Religious Zionists are joining this movement? This movement is Shabbetai Tzvi. They’re taking everyone to the Land of Israel in a messianic narrative, in messianic language, when really they are… all out of proportion—and of course they did this to, I assume, a few dozen or maybe even a few hundred children, the Tehran children and things like that, but it turned into some sort of ethos, a Haredi ethos, as though the whole Zionist movement was only engaged in cutting children’s sidelocks. This came against that background, meaning it began already in the 1950s after the state was established—that’s what I’m talking about now—but it began from the criticism that basically what you want is to cut off our sidelocks. So then all of a sudden—there, now we see that’s what they’re doing, you see? Our rabbis already foresaw this fifty years earlier, or seventy years earlier. Together with all those who foresaw the Holocaust, of course—everyone foresaw the Holocaust after it happened, and everyone foresaw it afterward. They find their writings from before the Holocaust after the Holocaust, and there they discover that they foresaw the Holocaust, because if you predict enough things, eventually you’ll predict the Holocaust too. You can predict everything if you bombard enough predictions. What’s his name, Doctor de Nostradamus, Nostradamus, yes, Nostradamus. If you predict enough things, some of them will come true too. It’s just simple statistics.

[Speaker B] That’s how all those horoscope people work, that’s how they work—one out of a hundred hits.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So now I also brought here—yes, Rabbi Shach, for example, writes in a later period: “We need to believe that the coming of the Messiah, and even the beginning of redemption, cannot come through such channels that have no relation and no connection to the Torah of Israel. We need to believe that redemption is not connected to Sabbath desecration and uprooting commandments.” This is false messianism. If you tell me that this will bring redemption, that is false messianism. And notice: this is false messianism not in terms of outcome but in terms of the conduct at the time. I don’t know what will happen in the end, whether the Messiah will come or not, and that doesn’t even interest me. I see how you are conducting yourselves now: this is a messianic movement and this is false messianism. Of course, he says that if it is false messianism then it also won’t be realized, meaning in the end redemption will not come. But he doesn’t wait to see it disproved and only then determine that this is false messianism. Rather, in light of their mode of conduct in real time, he determines: this is false messianism. Now Rabbi Kalischer, for example, already among the early supporters of this process, deals with this claim because it is a serious claim. So Rabbi Kalischer writes: “Do not think that suddenly God will descend from Heaven to earth, for little by little the redemption of Israel will come. The beginning of redemption is through the awakening of benefactors and through the desire of kingdoms to gather the dispersed of Israel to the holy land.” There too he speaks about the possibility that this can come through people who do not observe commandments. Rabbi Waldenberg, much later, in Tzitz Eliezer—his classification as Zionist or Haredi is very unclear, and that itself is a controversy; his children try to portray him as completely Haredi, but I don’t know if that classification is correct, it’s always part of rewriting history—says: “There is no room whatsoever for the claim that it is impossible for the heavenly salvation to sprout through people who are not God-fearing in their hearts. There is no place for it, no basis for it. For besides the fact that it is false in itself, it is clear that the more immigration there is of Torah observant Jews, the stronger the influence of faithful Judaism in the institutions of the state will become, until in time the efforts to change matters for the better, with God’s help, will be crowned with success. And besides this, who can enter into the secret of divine providence and fathom its depth? We have already had such things in the past, when with no help from anyone God sent His aid from holiness by means of a wicked king of Israel to widen the borders of the land and settle multitudes of the house of Israel there.” In other words, he says, fine—where is your source? We’ve already seen things like this. He says more than that, and this is a claim that I always made later in my debates in Bnei Brak, and now I see he writes it here too: it’s not only that secularism doesn’t—you say secularism cannot bring redemption; you are the ones causing this movement to be secular, and therefore unable to bring redemption. If you, the religious public, had joined this movement, then it would not have been a secular movement. The movement is secular because the religious stayed outside; that’s why it is secular. If you had been there, you could have influenced it from within, and maybe it would not have been a secular movement. So even according to your view, that a secular movement cannot bring redemption, the one who caused the movement to become secular is you. And that is the approach—yes, the secularization of people who enlist. In Bnei Brak, in my arguments about these matters, I used to tell them that the ones causing them to become secular are you, not the army, because once you educate someone in such a way that whoever goes to the army becomes secular, then when will he go to the army? Only after he has decided to become secular. Otherwise he won’t go there. Right? So that’s obvious. Go out and see that in a place where they don’t educate like that, people who go to the army do not necessarily become secular. And the stronger the religious indoctrination is… then there is less secularization. There is some secularization in the army from every public, but in Mercaz HaRav, for example, where they see it as an ideal, and “the garments of the High Priest,” and all kinds of things like that—people who enlist from Mercaz HaRav, I think the secularization rate there is basically zero. I don’t know, surely there’s one or two, but it’s completely negligible, absolutely zero.

[Speaker B] The hesder at Mercaz is pretty comfortable.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, fine, but still, you’re there nine months, something like that, okay, so where is the secularization, where is this? Why not just give them another three years and that’s it? The secularizing army, after all, leads Israel away from its religion, as we know—that’s why it was founded. Abarbanel writes that kingship will turn into heresy; after all, the Sages already say this in Ikveta de-Meshicha. So who said this process can’t be brought by people who aren’t religiously committed? That really is an unfounded invention. And therefore I think it really doesn’t start there. It starts from two points. It starts from one point of false messianism in the sense that you’re doing something, and afterward, to strengthen the argument, then we say—they must be secular, and things like that. And from another point, which is later: I want to oppose the secularism in this matter. Maybe they’ll bring the Messiah, I don’t know what, but I don’t want my people joining this movement, because otherwise I’ll lose them. So then I say: the Messiah too cannot come in such a way, and I harness that argument too in the direction of false messianism. But originally, I don’t think it really started there. There is this theological idea that it cannot be that someone who doesn’t observe commandments will bring redemption. It didn’t start there—you harness that argument to one of those two roots. Why, for example, the religious apologies? Look here, for example Rabbi Shmuel Yaakov Rabinowitz of Aleksot, one of the founders of Religious Zionism, writes a composition called Religion and Nationalism, and there he writes that “the Zionist movement has no connection or resemblance whatsoever to the movement of the false messiahs,” “who misled many of our people in different times and periods.” Why? Several explanations. “It does not err in delusions and fantasies.” Unrealistic things, right? You see the criterion here. “It does not force the end,” it does not do unrealistic things, okay? “And it does not propose doing things beyond our capabilities.” Fine. Up to this point that fits what I said. But the concluding sentence: “Nor does it touch in any way the true faith in the Messiah who is hoped for at the true end.” They are not doing this in order to bring the Messiah at all. The Messiah has nothing to do with it; the Messiah is a religious matter. I join them because I have a national vision. I too am Jewish in the national sense, not only in the religious sense. And I join them—this is like Reines, this is basically Reines-style Religious Zionism—and therefore they are not bringing the Messiah, and therefore it is not a messianic movement by definition, despite all the characteristics, because they are not here for the Messiah. Now again, the very fact that even someone from Religious Zionism who joins this movement finds it necessary to apologize in this way means that even those who belong to the Zionist movement see doing acts to bring the Messiah as a messianic movement. Because he says that beyond the fact that they are not erring in fantasies and all the substantive criteria, they don’t even want to bring the Messiah at all—what do you want from them? In other words, he goes all the way to B. He says they have none of the characteristics—not B, not C-1, not C-2, and not C-3. Okay? They have none of that. Meaning, later on, yes, Rabbi Kook and the more messianic Religious Zionist movement say: not true, B is not a messianic movement. But the first ones who join the Zionist movement, Religious Zionism, say: B is a messianic movement, but we are not B. We are not doing this in order to bring the Messiah. We are not doing acts to bring the Messiah. We simply want to return to the Land of Israel, to reestablish the life of our people. We too want to have the life of a people like every other people, of course with the commandment of settling the Land of Israel, the specific rational religious matter, not the eschatological one. The historical movements, yes—but they do not want to bring the Messiah. Heaven forbid; this movement does not want to bring the Messiah. So that’s a very interesting apology, because it’s an apology that says: they attack us and we defend ourselves. And you see how deeply embedded this ethos was—that anyone who does something is a messianic movement. You have to explain that you’re doing nothing to bring the Messiah in order to escape the criticism, even if you are already inside the movement, not only if you’re arguing from the outside—and that’s interesting. Korman, for example, writes—Nissan Korman, I think the older people here know him, the younger ones less so. Korman wrote books on Jewish thought, disputes of Judaism and religion and science and things like that; he was ahead of his time. He was an autodidact, a Tel Aviv Jew, I’m not exactly sure what he did—

[Speaker B] But for years, what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A social worker. And he wrote all kinds of books on Jewish thought, which in our time was what there was. For the Zionist—people older than me certainly—there really wasn’t much else. That was the whole story in Jewish thought, in dealing with other ideas. There was Brett, Aharon Brett, and The Five Eternal Books, yes, there was almost nothing. So Korman was the one who really dealt with these things. So he says here: “A person who claims or hints that he is the Messiah”—he’s writing this as a response to the first edition of Hamburger’s book, this is what I told you before. Korman apparently lived in that time. So he says: “A person who claims or hints that he is the Messiah, in the sense that he is God’s chosen one to bring redemption to the Jewish people, although Providence did not choose him for that and did not inform him by prophecy that he is the redeemer—he is a false messiah. A person who appears with a plan in hand as to how to help and save Jews in a practical and natural way does not fall under the concept of a false messiah, because he does not claim at all to be such.” Now here there’s a bit of room to hesitate. Because if he had said this to me—if he had put it this way—it’s a little odd to parse his language so carefully, but there is something to parse here; listen to what he writes. He says: if someone says he is the Messiah even though he was not informed by prophecy that he is the Messiah, and he says he is God’s redeemer, that is clearly a false messiah. The antithesis I would expect would be: but if a person truly brings redemption and doesn’t claim that prophecy told him he is the Messiah, but he does claim to bring redemption, that is not a false messiah. But he doesn’t write that. He says that someone who wants a plan to save the Jews—again in the national dimension, exactly like the previous source—that is not redemption. Redemption belongs to the Messiah; you are not bringing the Messiah. But if we’re speaking deep within the period of the state—the first edition of Hamburger, if I’m not mistaken, came out in the 1980s, I think, the 1980s—so when he writes this as a response to Hamburger’s first thing, thirty years ago, forty years ago, something like that, up until then the defensive discourse of Religious Zionism was still that we are not bringing the Messiah at all. That’s not the point. Of course this is after Rabbi Kook—thirty years after Rabbi Kook died, no, fifty years after Rabbi Kook died, thirty years after the Chazon Ish. So again you see here that in his time, of course, this was no longer unanimously accepted; there were already the… but still Mercaz HaRav in that period, the early 1980s, was some kind of Haredi yeshiva with a few little trimmings, a little… the Zionist period of Mercaz HaRav had only just more or less begun, not much before that. Meaning, there still wasn’t yet a really strong stream in the wake of Rabbi Kook. Rabbi Kook still didn’t have the status he has today. So this was still the Religious Zionist mainstream, speaking in that language, thirty-five years ago. When you say they spoke in that language—are you being judgmental?

[Speaker B] Are you saying that’s good or not good?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’m describing it. I’m describing it. Meaning, he speaks in a language that accepts B as a messianic movement. I don’t agree with that, but I’m not judging him; that’s what he thinks.

[Speaker B] And why indeed was there a need to take the rescue of the Jews, the establishment of the state, a little national liberation and so on—why must that necessarily be the beginning of redemption?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that doesn’t have to be the case. The question is whether it’s forbidden for it to be the case. I have no problem with that; “has to be” — I also think it doesn’t have to be, on the contrary. No, my Zionism really is not messianic. I’m only arguing that even someone whose Zionism is messianic is not engaged in false messianism. That’s my claim. In other words, he assumes that this accusation really places him under the category of false messianism. So he feels he has to say: I’m not going to bring the messiah. I argue: I’m a Zionist not in order to bring the messiah; I’m a Zionist for purely national reasons. I have no problem with that view. I’m only arguing that even someone who acts in order to bring the messiah is not engaged in false messianism. I don’t agree with his theology. Fine, so what? That’s a legitimate disagreement. But in their defensiveness they’re actually conceding part of the point. That is, they agree that doing things in order to bring the messiah involves a problem of false messianism, and therefore they try to cleanse Religious Zionism of that stain, as it were. Right? Today that’s no longer relevant discourse; on the contrary, today someone who says otherwise is considered very odd. I find myself in that slot, where I don’t say that — I only say that I’m not a Zionist in order to bring the messiah. I’m not claiming that someone who is a Zionist in order to bring the messiah is engaged in false messianism. I genuinely don’t agree with that. But I’m not a Zionist in order to bring the messiah, and that is already perceived as almost contradictory, especially within Religious Zionism. In other words, the discourse has undergone quite a major reversal in the past few decades. We should be aware of that. I’m talking about the years of my own life when I was already old enough to have my own views — meaning, I’m not all that old. Rabbi Kook, for example, says: “What they want — they themselves do not know.” He’s speaking about the pioneers. “They themselves do not know. So deeply is the spirit of Israel bound up with the spirit of God that even someone who says he has no need whatsoever for the spirit of God — once he says that he desires the spirit of Israel, the divine spirit dwells within the sanctified inwardness of his aspiration, even against his will.” In other words, he says they don’t think they are bringing the messiah, but they are bringing him — they just don’t know it. Not only do they not know that they are bringing him, they also don’t know that they want to bring him. They have some hidden desire, yes — false consciousness, in more modern terms. So the claim is that in fact they want to bring him; the inner Jewish point of the pioneers, even though they are disconnected from it, is really some kind of desire to bring the messiah — and they will also bring the messiah. In other words, that’s the claim. This is of course the exact opposite. That is, he says: this is a messianic movement openly on the table, just not in a negative sense. Certainly — we are doing things to bring the messiah, even with secular people, even with Sabbath desecrators, even with those who want to cause Israel to abandon their religion — yes, there were such people. There were some among them who wanted that, that’s clear. And Rabbi Kook says: certainly this is a messianic movement. And that is already the opposite pole. And again, in terms of chronology, Rabbi Kook was long before Kurtzman apparently; this was written fifty years earlier, or even more. But Rabbi Kook’s approach became current, or became rooted as something fundamental, as the Religious Zionist mainstream, very late. Very late. Okay, so now the Haredi criticism, when it attacks Zionism on the messianic issue, of course it talks about militarism, about the attitude toward the body. Yitzhak Sadeh, the Jewish people as a people of valor; he mentions Bar Kokhba, the attitude toward the body, the ideal type, the young men of Israel building muscles and all that, the Bar Kokhba movement of the Zionist movement — Zionist sports. Yes, he criticized that. He said: what is this? We don’t deal with the body. What’s wrong with dealing with the body? You want to feel like an army, you want to feel like a healthy farmer, you want a healthy soul in a healthy body — what’s wrong with that? Clearly they see here some kind of militarism as an expression of messianism, a messianic movement. That is, the moment you speak the language of force, that’s already Bar Kokhba: don’t help and don’t interfere, as if to say, with the Holy One, blessed be He; rather, “my power and the might of my hand.” We hear that all the time in this criticism — “my power and the might of my hand” — and behind all of it sits the critique of false messianism. “My power and the might of my hand” is an indicator of false messianism; it’s like Bar Kokhba. The same goes for rebellion against the nations, though that doesn’t really have a basis, since as it were everything here was decided by the nations, and they asked permission from all the nations before they entered: the Balfour Declaration. And really the whole thing is very hard to present — the Zionist movement — as some kind of activity that was delusional on the realpolitik level, meaning that it was not… True, they had a far-reaching vision. That far-reaching vision was so far-reaching mainly because the Haredi ethos was an ethos of passivity. Not Haredi, really Jewish in general — there was an ethos of passivity, of doing nothing. Passive, again, not in a judgmental sense, but in the sense that we are not supposed to do anything; rather, redemption is supposed to appear from above. So in that sense there really was some far-reaching vision here. But when you examine it on its own merits, overall it was a vision implemented through political means, like many peoples in the period of the Springtime of Nations. Of course the act was bolder, with smaller chances of success — after two thousand years in exile, gathering all sorts of people who had no connection with one another, different kinds of people from different communities. Of course that was more far-reaching than this or that European national movement — say, the Germans, when Bismarck united all the German principalities in the nineteenth century. Fine, but they were already there. It wasn’t about awakening the national spirit and creating a state out of it. So yes, it was part of that wave, and most of the Springtime of Nations wasn’t nearly as far-reaching as the Zionist movement. But overall they used the same tools; it’s just that its starting point was weaker: foreign residents, less national consciousness, more work had to be done. And overall they did it through political means, through practical effort, by coming here. There were threats, so you set up some kind of defensive force — but defense in the sense of defense. This was not a force that was intended, not designed, in order to conquer, as the finance minister and everything we described there…

[Speaker B] to announce

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that we are setting out on a campaign to conquer the world. They were always trying to compromise — let’s make peace, let’s divide the land, let’s compromise. And in every matter they bought; they didn’t take anything by force. The entire ethos was the opposite ethos. So in my opinion these accusations are completely baseless. And therefore it’s clear to me that they come from a different basis; they come from some other foundation: the very fact that one does something, and it really makes no difference what you do. Okay, so therefore, in practice, if we want to classify the Zionist movement on the basis of

[Speaker B] did midrashic Judaism merge into this whole celebration over those two hundred years?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know it well enough, but I can tell you my impression. I’ve read less, I know that wing less. There, Zionism is completely natural. It wasn’t ideological at all. It wasn’t… Obviously — the Land of Israel, what do you mean? We return to the Land of Israel, we want to be Jews. They didn’t make this distinction at all, between messianism and Zionism as nationalism; that distinction was completely foreign to them. We are part of the Jewish people, we want to return to the Land of Israel, we pray for this all the time, therefore we come. And that’s all. By the way, that is also the weakness of Eastern Zionism. Because Eastern Zionism did not initiate this move and did not really take an active part in it, except as foot soldiers but not in leadership — and that’s why. Because you need ideology in order to move things. There it wasn’t ideology. Once there is an opportunity — what, we won’t come to the Land of Israel? To live with the Jews? To dwell in the land of our ancestors? Of course we will. It’s the most natural thing in the world. But to initiate it? In order to initiate it you have to be Western. That is, you have to develop an ideology, write books that explain things to everyone, debates about political Zionism, cultural Zionism, Zionism… there are all sorts of labels for sub-streams within the movement. It’s a very ideological kind of conduct. In the East that didn’t exist. Not only among Jews, by the way. There are no ideological movements in the East at all. There are religious movements; there are no ideological movements in the East. By East I mean the Near East, not the Far East. Ideology is a European concept. That is, ideologies were born and died in Europe. Mizrahim can join, but they do not think in ideological terms. That just isn’t their mode of thought. And on the one hand they are not tormented by all the soul-searching of the Ashkenazim — are we really a messianic movement? What do you mean? Jews are coming to the Land of Israel, there is the commandment to settle the Land of Israel, the land of our ancestors — we’re here, that’s it. What’s the question? On the other hand, they can’t do it. To bring this about — that could not have come from there. It’s… and with all the Biton Committee and all… with all due respect, Zionism is an Ashkenazi movement, and rightly so. Ashkenazim invented it; nothing can help, and all the whitewashing won’t help here. Fine, they joined when they could, they wanted to, that’s fine, everything is wonderful, I’m very happy about it. But you can’t blur that difference.

[Speaker C] What about the fact that before the Holocaust, the Jews who are called Mizrahi were already part of it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] True, it doesn’t matter,

[Speaker C] also the majority was in Europe…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but even the part in Europe that initiated it was a small minority. If you count from within what group this initiative emerged, I don’t think it was larger than the total number of Jews in the East. Fine, but that small group was able to initiate it and attach to itself the Jews from the West. Fine, it doesn’t matter, maybe they’re completing it now.

[Speaker B] What? They’re completing it now.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I have no principled problem with that. I’m only saying: too bad — there is no point in changing the facts; one should recognize reality.

[Speaker B] What about Chabad? What is that? What do you mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About Chabad I spoke a bit last time. What is it? Yes, Chabad is a messianic movement even in an impersonal sense — meaning that all the legends, the legends are directed from above, not only generated from below as with Herzl, at least as he thinks regarding Herzl. There are characteristics there; I talked about it last time. Okay, we’ll stop here. I’ll complete this next time, and it’ll take us another time or two to explain it.