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We need a Zionist halakha
The non-Jewish wave of immigration has brought the issue of relations between religion and state - chiefly regarding marriage and conversion - to a moment of truth. Even those who favor continued Orthodox monopoly on marriage will not be able to accept a situation in which hundreds of thousands of immigrants are unable to marry in Israel. This is what led former chief rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron to propose a sweeping annulment of the monopoly.
Bakshi-Doron's proposal, seemingly coming from liberal provinces, actually stems from the isolationist Haredi answer to the challenge set by the immigrants. This says let them and the rest of the secular Israelis marry any way they please, and leave the Haredim alone to safeguard the halakhic (religious) laws of marriage and keep them pure and pristine. Of course what is caught in the divide between the challenge of the immigrants and distaste for the isolationist view is religious Zionism and its spiritual leaders.
Religious Zionism would not have found itself in this state of tension had not its rabbis failed the paramount challenge they faced - translating into practical form the fundamental ideological decision they took on themselves when they identified with and integrated into the Zionist movement. In the halakhic realm, the reference group on which the spiritual leaders of religious Zionism base their decisions is not the public to which they belong, but the Torah-based establishment of halakha authorities - mainly Haredi.
This generates absurd situations in which even a superb Zionist rabbi such as Yaakov Arieli from Ramat Gan refers to the Israeli judicial system as a legal tribunal of the non-Jews.
This is in blatant contrast to the instinctive way his own public relates to the Israeli judiciary, seeing it as one of the quintessential expressions of Jewish sovereignty and national interests, even if the courts don't issue rulings based on Torah laws. But one must admit that the High Court of Justice ruling on the sale of pork is liable to dull this sense of solidarity.
Ever since the Enlightenment period, even before Zionism, Jews have not belonged to a mitzvah-observant people. Halakhic rulings, including those of the Haredim, recognized this fact, and did not strip the secular public of its Jewish belonging, unlike the halakhic views that prevailed in the pre-secular era.
Zionism added another stratum by creating a national renewal enterprise shared by religious and secular and whose basic essence requires mutual responsibility and assurance. Therefore, the definition of Jewish identity adopted by the state cannot be conditioned on mitzvah observance, but is a national definition.
In any case conversion, unlike halakha, must be accepted by the state and cannot be conditioned on observance of the 613 Torah mitzvahs. Anyone who has accepted Zionism should be able to accept this conclusion, too.
The moment of truth faced by the rabbis of religious Zionism in the wake of the non-Jewish immigration compels them to implement that which deterred them from the outset - adoption of a "Zionist halakhic code" that would inevitably differ from the Haredi halakhic perspective.
To tell the truth, the isolationist-Haredi option does not really exist for them. Even if they tried to choose it, they would find that the overwhelming majority of their public would not follow them. For this public the notion of integration in the Israeli corpus is an indivisible part of their identity and existence, and not just as "ideology."
Just as the mass of Israelis who subscribe to the tenets of religious Zionism did not accept the halakhic rulings that called for refusing orders to evacuate settlement outposts, it is reasonable to assume that they will not readily obey halakhic rulings that do not affirm the Jewishness of people who are not prepared to commit to all 613 mitzvahs. And just as they do not need rabbis to decide which cultural interests they will pursue, it is reasonable to assume that most would prefer to define for themselves whom they would "kosher" as a spouse.
The combination of evacuating settlements, the majority of which are religious, and the eradication of symbols that strongly express the Jewish character of the state - bustling commerce on the Sabbath, or permission to sell pork - could push many upstanding religious Zionists toward the isolationist view.
The political and judicial establishments should be aware of this danger. One may assume, however, that adopting this approach will not come from any rulings by the religious establishment, which is not revered by religious Zionists, either.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/440001.html
Religious Zionism would not have found itself in this state of tension had not its rabbis failed the paramount challenge they faced - translating into practical form the fundamental ideological decision they took on themselves when they identified with and integrated into the Zionist movement. In the halakhic realm, the reference group on which the spiritual leaders of religious Zionism base their decisions is not the public to which they belong, but the Torah-based establishment of halakha authorities - mainly Haredi.
This generates absurd situations in which even a superb Zionist rabbi such as Yaakov Arieli from Ramat Gan refers to the Israeli judicial system as a legal tribunal of the non-Jews.
This is in blatant contrast to the instinctive way his own public relates to the Israeli judiciary, seeing it as one of the quintessential expressions of Jewish sovereignty and national interests, even if the courts don't issue rulings based on Torah laws. But one must admit that the High Court of Justice ruling on the sale of pork is liable to dull this sense of solidarity.
Ever since the Enlightenment period, even before Zionism, Jews have not belonged to a mitzvah-observant people. Halakhic rulings, including those of the Haredim, recognized this fact, and did not strip the secular public of its Jewish belonging, unlike the halakhic views that prevailed in the pre-secular era.
Zionism added another stratum by creating a national renewal enterprise shared by religious and secular and whose basic essence requires mutual responsibility and assurance. Therefore, the definition of Jewish identity adopted by the state cannot be conditioned on mitzvah observance, but is a national definition.
In any case conversion, unlike halakha, must be accepted by the state and cannot be conditioned on observance of the 613 Torah mitzvahs. Anyone who has accepted Zionism should be able to accept this conclusion, too.
The moment of truth faced by the rabbis of religious Zionism in the wake of the non-Jewish immigration compels them to implement that which deterred them from the outset - adoption of a "Zionist halakhic code" that would inevitably differ from the Haredi halakhic perspective.
To tell the truth, the isolationist-Haredi option does not really exist for them. Even if they tried to choose it, they would find that the overwhelming majority of their public would not follow them. For this public the notion of integration in the Israeli corpus is an indivisible part of their identity and existence, and not just as "ideology."
Just as the mass of Israelis who subscribe to the tenets of religious Zionism did not accept the halakhic rulings that called for refusing orders to evacuate settlement outposts, it is reasonable to assume that they will not readily obey halakhic rulings that do not affirm the Jewishness of people who are not prepared to commit to all 613 mitzvahs. And just as they do not need rabbis to decide which cultural interests they will pursue, it is reasonable to assume that most would prefer to define for themselves whom they would "kosher" as a spouse.
The combination of evacuating settlements, the majority of which are religious, and the eradication of symbols that strongly express the Jewish character of the state - bustling commerce on the Sabbath, or permission to sell pork - could push many upstanding religious Zionists toward the isolationist view.
The political and judicial establishments should be aware of this danger. One may assume, however, that adopting this approach will not come from any rulings by the religious establishment, which is not revered by religious Zionists, either.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/440001.html
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For those who claim Israel isnt racist towards minority groups, can you explain this article?
Religious Zionism
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Religious Zionism can be traced to the "augurers of Zion" (Mevasrei Zion, precursors of Hibbat Zion), including Rabbis Yehudah Alkalai, Zvi Kalischer, Shmuel Mohilever, and Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin. Based on a fusion of Jewish religion and nationhood, it aims to restore not only Jewish political freedom but also Jewish religion in the light of the Torah and its commandments. For Religious Zionism, Judaism based on the commandments is a sine qua non for Jewish national life in the homeland.
In 1902, in response to the decision of the Fifth Zionist Congress to consider cultural activity as part of the Zionist program, Rabbis Reines and Ze'ev Yavetz established the Mizrachi organization (mizrachi being the Hebrew abbreviation of merkaz ruhani-"spiritual center"). Mizrachi held its first world convention in 1904 and composed the movement's platform, which concerned itself principally with observance of the commandments and return to Zion. In Palestine, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook gave Religious Zionism his personal and spiritual endorsement, regarding settlement in the Land of Israel as the beginning of Redemption.
Religious Zionism has pledged much of its efforts and resources to constructing a nationalreligious education system. Hapoel Hamizrahi branched away from the main movement (1922) to focus on Orthodox rural settlement in Palestine under the slogan "Torah va'Avodah" (Torah and Labor). In 1956, the two movements, Mizrachi and Hapoel Hamizrahi, united under the umbrella of the National Religious Party, active in Israeli politics today.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Zionism/Religious_Zionism.html
National Religious Party
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Established in 1956 through the merging of Mizrachi, Ha-poel Mizrachi and other religious Zionist supporters, the National Religious Party’s (NRP - Mafdal) emphasis is on making Israeli law consistent with halacha (Jewish law). The NRP is largely responsible for the fact that parents can choose to send their children to state-funded religious schools, the establishment of religious courts endowed with legal authority over all issues of personal jurisdiction in the Jewish community and the exclusive use of kosher food in the Army and government functions. The NRP consistently polled roughly 10 percent of the popular vote until 1981, when new religious parties vied for the same constituency.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Politics/NRP.html
Israel: A Sharply Divided Society on the Brink of a Cultural Civil War
...
During the past decade the division over which system of law—religious or civil—should prevail has grown, with the religious right demanding that democratic values be subordinated to Jewish law and the secular left demanding that a bill of rights be legislated. On the political right, there are calls for an end to equal political rights for nonJews. Since the signing of the Oslo agreement, some have demanded that any government decision fateful to the country’s future should require a “Jewish majority” to be ratified by the Knesset. The implication is that votes cast in the Knesset by parties representing Israel’s Arab citizens should simply be disqualified.
The rhetoric of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox groups in the days preceding the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin made it clear that Rabin’s death was a legitimate, even a religious goal.
Elyakim Ha’etzni, a 67-year-old lawyer, founder of the Yesha Council, the voice of the West Bank settler movement, a former Knesset member from the defunct radical right Tehiya Party, was one of three former Knesset members who signed an open letter in November 1993 calling upon soldiers and police to defy orders to evacuate settlements and warning that relinquishing any territory to the Palestinians would spark a civil war. In March 1995 he again tried to spur the army to revolt by telling the head of the Israel Defense Force’s General Command, during a heated meeting with settlers in Hebron: “In Hitler’s Germany there were officers who understood that their government was leading the German people to oblivion, and they stood up and threw down their insignia and paid for it with their lives. Here the government is leading the people to oblivion.”
Ha’etzni also harped on the alleged parallel between Rabin’s government and the collaborationist Vichy regime in France during World War II: “Those loyal to the Greater Land of Israel have the right to declare a government that gives up territory as an illegal one, just as De Gaulle declared the Vichy government illegal.” He even drew a direct parallel between Rabin and Vichy leader Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain, saying: “We will treat [the signing of the Oslo agreement] as collaboration with the Nazis was treated in occupied France...This is an act of treason, and it’s unavoidable that the day will come when Rabin is tried for this as Pétain was.”
The ultra-Orthodox weekly Hashavna (“The Week”) was used by its publisher, Asher Zuckerman, to wage a vicious crusade against Rabin. The magazine regularly called the prime minister “a Kapo,” “an anti-Semite,” “ruthless” and “a pathological liar.” This weekly, which is read by close to 20 percent of the ultra-Orthodox community, published a symposium on the question of whether Rabin deserved to die and the appropriate means of executing him.
Members of the Likud establishment expressed similar views. Hashavna published an interview with Ariel Sharon, who spoke of the Oslo peace policy as “graver than what Pétain did,” adding, “It’s hard to use the word ‘treason’ when speaking of Jews, but there’s no substantive difference.” In March 1995, Zuckerman wrote of a talk he had with Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu. He quotes Netanyahu as saying: “Rabin charges that he’s called a terrible word, ‘murderer.’ But with all the unpleasantness [implied by that term], he has no reason to complain. Whoever is aware [that] the fetters he places on soldiers’ hands have led directly to the murder of a large number of Jews has difficulty refraining from use of the terrible word ‘murder.’”
By the critical summer of 1995, Hashavna went so far as to charge that Rabin and Peres “are leading the state and its citizens to annihilation and must be placed before a firing squad,” In the issue published on Friday, Nov. 3, 1995, the day before the assassination, Zuckerman (under the pen name A. Barak) offered his readers the forecast that, “The day will come when the Israeli public will bring Rabin and Peres into court with the alternative being the gallows or the insane asylum. This nefarious duo has either lost its mind or is flagrantly treasonous.”
Beyond all of this, a group of Orthodox rabbis gave religious sanction to the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. These rabbis, both in Israel and abroad, revived two obsolete precepts—din rodef (the duty to kill a Jew who imperils the life or property of another Jew) and din moser (the duty to eliminate a Jew who intends to turn another Jew in to nonJewish authorities).
By relinquishing rule over parts of the Land of Israel to the Palestinian Authority, these rabbis argued, the head of the Israeli government had become a moser. And by branding Rabin they effectively declared open season on his life. Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, himself an Orthodox rabbi and West Bank settler, declared that, “Hundreds of people heard the word rodef in connection with the late prime minister months before and around the time of the murder. The fact that these discussions leaked out and inspired a heated public debate in the religious community turned the obsolete notions of rodef and moser into household words.”
From the beginning of 1995 onward, the popularization of the words rodef and moser nourished the belief in Orthodox circles that a consideration of whether or not they should be applied to Rabin was legitimate. Orthodox rabbis were consulting one another about whether Rabin fell into the category of a rodef or a moser. In the U.S., hundreds of Orthodox rabbis signed a statement declaring that he did.
Two students of Rabbi Shmuel Dvir, a teacher in the Har Etzion Yeshiva in Gush Erzion, subsequently reported that he told them it was definitely permissible to kill Rabin under the provision of din rodef. A third described Dvir’s desire to execute the act personally. “If Rabin comes to visit Gush Etzion, I myself will climb on a roof and shoot him with a rifle,” he boasted.
After Yigal Amir acted upon the ultra-Orthodox agitation to remove Yitzhak Rabin from the scene and thereby bring the peace process to an end, he was hailed as a hero in many quarters. A resident of the ultra-Orthodox stronghold of Bnei Brak stood before TV cameras and declared: “There is no mourning here. Yitzhak Rabin was not one of us.” In the West Bank settlements of Tapuach and Yizhar, pictures of Amir were hung on the walls at parties celebrating the “miracle.” When word of the assassination reached the large West Bank settlement of Ariel, participants at a political assembly stood up and applauded. In the Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea in Jerusalem, young men embraced one another on hearing the news. In the Orthodox study group at Bar-Ilan University—of which Amir had been a participant—students called him “a saint.”
A question on the 1996 high school matriculation examination in citizenship prompted many essays indicating support for Yigal Amir and his motives. Two of the teachers grading these exams spoke out about the answers of students from religious high schools and sought to publish them. But the Ministry of Education and Culture, then headed by Minister Zevulun Hammer of the National Religious Party, forbade them from doing so. Bar-Ilan University sociologist Nissan Rubin, himself of moderate political views, declared that, “There’s a feeling among the religious public that Rabin’s death was a miracle.” Citing ancient Jewish myths of miraculous rescue, Rubin wrote in Ha’aretz: “Just as the Jews were always saved from destruction at the last minute—an allusion to the parting of the Red Sea during the Exodus and the 11th hour rescue of the Jews in Persia from the wicked Haman, so now people are saying a miracle has occurred.”
The depth of Israel’s cultural divide may be seen in the fact that Yigal Amir and those who embraced his act of murder are not a small, isolated fringe, but a large segment of Israeli society. Hebrew University sociologist Moshe Lisak states: “Yigal Amir grew out of the mainstream, not the margins. What is referred to as the ‘ideological fringe’ is actually very broad. We’re speaking of a variety of groups—social networks—some of which speak and write on a high level. They share a good degree of common ground, and they live and act in continuous circles. These are not isolated or reclusive elements, and there is a big difference between them and the Kahanist thugs.”
Rabbi Yehudah Amital, the founder of Meimad, a small movement of politically moderate religious nationalists, said that, “The murderer came from among us, out of religious Zionism and Judaism and we cannot say that ‘our hands have not shed this blood.’ Rather than be a tempering influence, many of our rabbis have been a radicalizing one, creating a political dogma and a public mood that made the murder possible. Political extremism has been dressed up as religion. Not only did the prime minister’s murderer come from among us, but Baruch Goldstein, the murderer in the Cave of the Patriarchs, did too. That the religious community brushed off that slaughter...shows that its moral sensibility is flawed...The decline began when the rabbis chose to turn a blind eye to the attacks on Arabs that eventually led to acts of murder…”
Authors Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman report that, “Historians are likely to characterize the post-Rabin period as a time of deep anxiety. There are many indications that racist and separatist philosophies are gaining ground, especially among...the national religious population. One particularly troubling development is the recent wave of verbal assaults on the High Court of Justice by religious circles…Knesset Member Aharon Cohen of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, which in the past decade has grown from a marginal political force to a major power, characterized the court’s justices as ‘foreign priests of modern primitive idolatry.’ Shas’s spiritual mentor, former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, went a step further in urging all Israelis to boycott secular courts ‘which are not for Jews,’ and agree to be judged only before rabbinical tribunals.”
In the same election which unseated Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Shas Party grew, while both Likud and Labor shrank. Shas captured 17 out of 120 seats, up from 10 and only 2 less than Likud. “Thank God for He is good!” proclaimed the Shas Party newspaper, Day By Day. The subheadline read: “The dream has come true: The Second Israel is not second anymore: Sephardim have captured the state of Israel.”
Shabar Ilan, a religion expert for Ha’aretz, said of Shas: “It’s the closest thing we have to the Islamic movement.” A party that received nearly 430,000 out of 3.7 million votes can hardly be ignored.
Can a society in which a large bloc of voters seek to replace the civil law mandated by a political democracy with religious law, and are willing to use violence when its desires are thwarted, maintain its identity as a state which is both Jewish and democratic? Can such a divided society avoid a cultural civil war? Can it move forward toward a genuine peace with its neighbors? These are the questions which Israelis, Israel’s friends throughout the world, and its Arab neighbors are asking.
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0799/9907086.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Religious Zionism can be traced to the "augurers of Zion" (Mevasrei Zion, precursors of Hibbat Zion), including Rabbis Yehudah Alkalai, Zvi Kalischer, Shmuel Mohilever, and Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin. Based on a fusion of Jewish religion and nationhood, it aims to restore not only Jewish political freedom but also Jewish religion in the light of the Torah and its commandments. For Religious Zionism, Judaism based on the commandments is a sine qua non for Jewish national life in the homeland.
In 1902, in response to the decision of the Fifth Zionist Congress to consider cultural activity as part of the Zionist program, Rabbis Reines and Ze'ev Yavetz established the Mizrachi organization (mizrachi being the Hebrew abbreviation of merkaz ruhani-"spiritual center"). Mizrachi held its first world convention in 1904 and composed the movement's platform, which concerned itself principally with observance of the commandments and return to Zion. In Palestine, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook gave Religious Zionism his personal and spiritual endorsement, regarding settlement in the Land of Israel as the beginning of Redemption.
Religious Zionism has pledged much of its efforts and resources to constructing a nationalreligious education system. Hapoel Hamizrahi branched away from the main movement (1922) to focus on Orthodox rural settlement in Palestine under the slogan "Torah va'Avodah" (Torah and Labor). In 1956, the two movements, Mizrachi and Hapoel Hamizrahi, united under the umbrella of the National Religious Party, active in Israeli politics today.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Zionism/Religious_Zionism.html
National Religious Party
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Established in 1956 through the merging of Mizrachi, Ha-poel Mizrachi and other religious Zionist supporters, the National Religious Party’s (NRP - Mafdal) emphasis is on making Israeli law consistent with halacha (Jewish law). The NRP is largely responsible for the fact that parents can choose to send their children to state-funded religious schools, the establishment of religious courts endowed with legal authority over all issues of personal jurisdiction in the Jewish community and the exclusive use of kosher food in the Army and government functions. The NRP consistently polled roughly 10 percent of the popular vote until 1981, when new religious parties vied for the same constituency.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Politics/NRP.html
Israel: A Sharply Divided Society on the Brink of a Cultural Civil War
...
During the past decade the division over which system of law—religious or civil—should prevail has grown, with the religious right demanding that democratic values be subordinated to Jewish law and the secular left demanding that a bill of rights be legislated. On the political right, there are calls for an end to equal political rights for nonJews. Since the signing of the Oslo agreement, some have demanded that any government decision fateful to the country’s future should require a “Jewish majority” to be ratified by the Knesset. The implication is that votes cast in the Knesset by parties representing Israel’s Arab citizens should simply be disqualified.
The rhetoric of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox groups in the days preceding the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin made it clear that Rabin’s death was a legitimate, even a religious goal.
Elyakim Ha’etzni, a 67-year-old lawyer, founder of the Yesha Council, the voice of the West Bank settler movement, a former Knesset member from the defunct radical right Tehiya Party, was one of three former Knesset members who signed an open letter in November 1993 calling upon soldiers and police to defy orders to evacuate settlements and warning that relinquishing any territory to the Palestinians would spark a civil war. In March 1995 he again tried to spur the army to revolt by telling the head of the Israel Defense Force’s General Command, during a heated meeting with settlers in Hebron: “In Hitler’s Germany there were officers who understood that their government was leading the German people to oblivion, and they stood up and threw down their insignia and paid for it with their lives. Here the government is leading the people to oblivion.”
Ha’etzni also harped on the alleged parallel between Rabin’s government and the collaborationist Vichy regime in France during World War II: “Those loyal to the Greater Land of Israel have the right to declare a government that gives up territory as an illegal one, just as De Gaulle declared the Vichy government illegal.” He even drew a direct parallel between Rabin and Vichy leader Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain, saying: “We will treat [the signing of the Oslo agreement] as collaboration with the Nazis was treated in occupied France...This is an act of treason, and it’s unavoidable that the day will come when Rabin is tried for this as Pétain was.”
The ultra-Orthodox weekly Hashavna (“The Week”) was used by its publisher, Asher Zuckerman, to wage a vicious crusade against Rabin. The magazine regularly called the prime minister “a Kapo,” “an anti-Semite,” “ruthless” and “a pathological liar.” This weekly, which is read by close to 20 percent of the ultra-Orthodox community, published a symposium on the question of whether Rabin deserved to die and the appropriate means of executing him.
Members of the Likud establishment expressed similar views. Hashavna published an interview with Ariel Sharon, who spoke of the Oslo peace policy as “graver than what Pétain did,” adding, “It’s hard to use the word ‘treason’ when speaking of Jews, but there’s no substantive difference.” In March 1995, Zuckerman wrote of a talk he had with Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu. He quotes Netanyahu as saying: “Rabin charges that he’s called a terrible word, ‘murderer.’ But with all the unpleasantness [implied by that term], he has no reason to complain. Whoever is aware [that] the fetters he places on soldiers’ hands have led directly to the murder of a large number of Jews has difficulty refraining from use of the terrible word ‘murder.’”
By the critical summer of 1995, Hashavna went so far as to charge that Rabin and Peres “are leading the state and its citizens to annihilation and must be placed before a firing squad,” In the issue published on Friday, Nov. 3, 1995, the day before the assassination, Zuckerman (under the pen name A. Barak) offered his readers the forecast that, “The day will come when the Israeli public will bring Rabin and Peres into court with the alternative being the gallows or the insane asylum. This nefarious duo has either lost its mind or is flagrantly treasonous.”
Beyond all of this, a group of Orthodox rabbis gave religious sanction to the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. These rabbis, both in Israel and abroad, revived two obsolete precepts—din rodef (the duty to kill a Jew who imperils the life or property of another Jew) and din moser (the duty to eliminate a Jew who intends to turn another Jew in to nonJewish authorities).
By relinquishing rule over parts of the Land of Israel to the Palestinian Authority, these rabbis argued, the head of the Israeli government had become a moser. And by branding Rabin they effectively declared open season on his life. Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, himself an Orthodox rabbi and West Bank settler, declared that, “Hundreds of people heard the word rodef in connection with the late prime minister months before and around the time of the murder. The fact that these discussions leaked out and inspired a heated public debate in the religious community turned the obsolete notions of rodef and moser into household words.”
From the beginning of 1995 onward, the popularization of the words rodef and moser nourished the belief in Orthodox circles that a consideration of whether or not they should be applied to Rabin was legitimate. Orthodox rabbis were consulting one another about whether Rabin fell into the category of a rodef or a moser. In the U.S., hundreds of Orthodox rabbis signed a statement declaring that he did.
Two students of Rabbi Shmuel Dvir, a teacher in the Har Etzion Yeshiva in Gush Erzion, subsequently reported that he told them it was definitely permissible to kill Rabin under the provision of din rodef. A third described Dvir’s desire to execute the act personally. “If Rabin comes to visit Gush Etzion, I myself will climb on a roof and shoot him with a rifle,” he boasted.
After Yigal Amir acted upon the ultra-Orthodox agitation to remove Yitzhak Rabin from the scene and thereby bring the peace process to an end, he was hailed as a hero in many quarters. A resident of the ultra-Orthodox stronghold of Bnei Brak stood before TV cameras and declared: “There is no mourning here. Yitzhak Rabin was not one of us.” In the West Bank settlements of Tapuach and Yizhar, pictures of Amir were hung on the walls at parties celebrating the “miracle.” When word of the assassination reached the large West Bank settlement of Ariel, participants at a political assembly stood up and applauded. In the Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea in Jerusalem, young men embraced one another on hearing the news. In the Orthodox study group at Bar-Ilan University—of which Amir had been a participant—students called him “a saint.”
A question on the 1996 high school matriculation examination in citizenship prompted many essays indicating support for Yigal Amir and his motives. Two of the teachers grading these exams spoke out about the answers of students from religious high schools and sought to publish them. But the Ministry of Education and Culture, then headed by Minister Zevulun Hammer of the National Religious Party, forbade them from doing so. Bar-Ilan University sociologist Nissan Rubin, himself of moderate political views, declared that, “There’s a feeling among the religious public that Rabin’s death was a miracle.” Citing ancient Jewish myths of miraculous rescue, Rubin wrote in Ha’aretz: “Just as the Jews were always saved from destruction at the last minute—an allusion to the parting of the Red Sea during the Exodus and the 11th hour rescue of the Jews in Persia from the wicked Haman, so now people are saying a miracle has occurred.”
The depth of Israel’s cultural divide may be seen in the fact that Yigal Amir and those who embraced his act of murder are not a small, isolated fringe, but a large segment of Israeli society. Hebrew University sociologist Moshe Lisak states: “Yigal Amir grew out of the mainstream, not the margins. What is referred to as the ‘ideological fringe’ is actually very broad. We’re speaking of a variety of groups—social networks—some of which speak and write on a high level. They share a good degree of common ground, and they live and act in continuous circles. These are not isolated or reclusive elements, and there is a big difference between them and the Kahanist thugs.”
Rabbi Yehudah Amital, the founder of Meimad, a small movement of politically moderate religious nationalists, said that, “The murderer came from among us, out of religious Zionism and Judaism and we cannot say that ‘our hands have not shed this blood.’ Rather than be a tempering influence, many of our rabbis have been a radicalizing one, creating a political dogma and a public mood that made the murder possible. Political extremism has been dressed up as religion. Not only did the prime minister’s murderer come from among us, but Baruch Goldstein, the murderer in the Cave of the Patriarchs, did too. That the religious community brushed off that slaughter...shows that its moral sensibility is flawed...The decline began when the rabbis chose to turn a blind eye to the attacks on Arabs that eventually led to acts of murder…”
Authors Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman report that, “Historians are likely to characterize the post-Rabin period as a time of deep anxiety. There are many indications that racist and separatist philosophies are gaining ground, especially among...the national religious population. One particularly troubling development is the recent wave of verbal assaults on the High Court of Justice by religious circles…Knesset Member Aharon Cohen of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, which in the past decade has grown from a marginal political force to a major power, characterized the court’s justices as ‘foreign priests of modern primitive idolatry.’ Shas’s spiritual mentor, former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, went a step further in urging all Israelis to boycott secular courts ‘which are not for Jews,’ and agree to be judged only before rabbinical tribunals.”
In the same election which unseated Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Shas Party grew, while both Likud and Labor shrank. Shas captured 17 out of 120 seats, up from 10 and only 2 less than Likud. “Thank God for He is good!” proclaimed the Shas Party newspaper, Day By Day. The subheadline read: “The dream has come true: The Second Israel is not second anymore: Sephardim have captured the state of Israel.”
Shabar Ilan, a religion expert for Ha’aretz, said of Shas: “It’s the closest thing we have to the Islamic movement.” A party that received nearly 430,000 out of 3.7 million votes can hardly be ignored.
Can a society in which a large bloc of voters seek to replace the civil law mandated by a political democracy with religious law, and are willing to use violence when its desires are thwarted, maintain its identity as a state which is both Jewish and democratic? Can such a divided society avoid a cultural civil war? Can it move forward toward a genuine peace with its neighbors? These are the questions which Israelis, Israel’s friends throughout the world, and its Arab neighbors are asking.
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0799/9907086.html
Its interesting to note that "Israel: A Sharply Divided Society on the Brink of a Cultural Civil War" was written in 1999 and the main thing that has contained the tension between the majority in Israel that wants it to remain (and become more) secular and an extremist minority has been the second intifada which allowed the moderate-right to use secuirty fears to allow for a greater sense of unity and prevent the internal fighting Israel had been experiencing during the peace process.
http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&todayDate=06/17/2004
Interesting interview where Beilin makes a strong argument for Israel as a Jewish state (in a way that would probably make him call himself a Zionist) but also arguing against the wall since it steals Palestinian land. He also argues that those who claim Arafat isnt a "partner for peace" are getting in the way of a peaceful solution since it isn't for Israel to choose what Palestinian leader they negotiate with.
The show will be repeated tonight on KQED at 7PM
Interesting interview where Beilin makes a strong argument for Israel as a Jewish state (in a way that would probably make him call himself a Zionist) but also arguing against the wall since it steals Palestinian land. He also argues that those who claim Arafat isnt a "partner for peace" are getting in the way of a peaceful solution since it isn't for Israel to choose what Palestinian leader they negotiate with.
The show will be repeated tonight on KQED at 7PM
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