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Rav Lichtenstein's Political Views

In a long piece in the May issue of First Things, a monthly Catholic journal, entitled For Torah and Culture, David Singer of the American Jewish Committee focuses on Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein.

The piece is not yet online, but it appears that First Things tends to place material from past issues on its website once a new issue is published, so it is likely that the article will be online next month.

I may have more to say about the piece once it is posted online. In the meantime, I will quibble with one statement submitted by Singer, that:

Lichtenstein identifies with the religious Zionist camp in Israel... In terms of practical politics, however, Lichtenstein's pronounced dovishness makes him a dissenter within the ranks of religious Zionism.

To be sure, Rav Lichtenstein has long supported territorial compromise. Within the ranks of religious Zionist rabbis, his political views on ceding land are indeed on the left.

But while at one time Rav Lichtenstein's views could be considered dovish, that is no longer the case, not in this post-Oslo world in which a Likud government has accepted the road map, accepts the formation of a Palestinian state, and even initiated a process of unilateral withdrawal.

Furthermore, in a piece directed at readers who are unlikely to have ever heard of Rav Lichtenstein, it is disingenuous to refer to his "dovishness" while omitting the fact that he founded Yeshivat Har Etzion, a flourishing yeshiva in Alon Shvut. While Alon Shvut is located within Gush Etzion, which Israel is expected to annex as part of any agreement, it is outside Israel's pre-June 1967 borders, and in the meantime, most of the world considers it a "settlement" and Rabbi Lichtenstein a "settler."

Rav Lichtenstein may be well to the left of most of his rabbinical peers, but he rejected - in strong terms - the concessions egregiously agreed to at Camp David by Ehud Barak. Indeed, Rabbi Lichtenstein was among the rabbis who sent a letter to Barak during the Camp David negotiations. The letter stated, in part:

In light of the government's plans to transfer large portions of Eretz Yisrael, including dozens of Jewish towns, to the control of the Palestinian Authority, we wish to express our concern and dread over the dangers and the severe consequences that are liable to result.

A policy that forces the residents of Yesha to choose between either the destruction of their life's work - dozens of flowering towns that were established with blood, sweat, tears, and the approval of Israeli governments - or living in constant danger to their lives and their families and being at the mercy of terrorist enemies of Israel, is seen by many as an impossible choice, in that it stands in contrast to human morals in general and the Jewish conscience in particular...

The abandonment of Yesha settlers stands in opposition to the principle of mutual responsibility in Israel, and is liable to undercut one of the pillars upon which the State of Israel stands. A desecration of this sublime value is liable to traumatize the entire Israeli society, which is already splintered and torn, and cause a great rift.

We call upon you, as Prime Minister of all of us, to stand firmly for the elementary fundamental ethic of mutual responsibility in the nation, and ensure that it is not shaken, Heaven forbid, by the destruction or abandonment of Jewish towns.

"Be strong and let us be strengthened on behalf of our nation and on behalf of the cities of our G-d."

Rav Lichtenstein recognized that one can support territorial compromise but reject the wholesale abandonment of Israel's right to Judea and Samaria. If he is a dove, then so am I, and so is Ariel Sharon and most of Likud.
posted on 5/02/2005