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More On Religious Zionism, Greater Israel and Gush Etzion

Further to yesterday's post about Rav Amital and religious Zionism, I have two additional thoughts:

1. Rabbi Amital's response to those undergoing an ideological crisis due to the impending unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria is that "the State was declared without Gush Katif, without Jaffa, without Nahariya, and without the Old City of Jerusalem ... when we heard about the fall of Gush Etzion, it was bitter, and nevertheless we rejoiced" over the establishment of the State.

While I agree with R. Amital's approach to religion and Zionism, his response fails to take into account that the fall, during war in 1948, of Gush Etzion and the Old City of Jerusalem, while indeed very tragic, is very different from a decision to unilaterally withdraw from territory. This is especially the case since the battles for the Old City and Gush Etzion continued even when the Jewish forces were nearly decimated, and the defenders held the Jordanian army from conquering western Jerusalem. As Prime Minister David Ben Gurion said: "I can think of no battle in the annals of the Israel Defense Forces which was more magnificent, more tragic or more heroic than the struggle for Gush Etzion … If there exists a Jewish Jerusalem, our foremost thanks go to the defenders of Gush Etzion."

The Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza were told for decades that their presence was heroic and protected Israel's major population centers from attack. For some of these communities to now be unilaterally destroyed, without any reciprocal concession by the Palestinians, is akin to suddenly declaring, in a form of revisionist history, that the Gush Etzion communities actually impeded Israel in the 1948 War.

2. On Shavuos at Manhattan's Lincoln Square Synagogue, Rabbi Moshe Taragin, also of Yeshivat Har Etzion, and a disciple of Rav Amital, gave a lecture in which he offered many sources showing that Jewish sovereignty in Israel, even if led by a non-religious government, has deep religious significance.

Discussing the unilateral withdrawal plan, R. Taragin stated that "these are places that G-d clearly wants us to settle." Of course, R. Taragin's mentor, R. Amital, rejects that approach. As Haaretz described him in its feature last week, R. Amital "is a sharp opponent of the Greater Israel approach. In a sermon he delivered in the yeshiva just a month ago, he said: 'A Palestinian state is the light at the end of the tunnel of what we have undergone in the past few years, because only a Palestinian state will save us from losing the Jewish state.'" The Haaretz piece then notes: "That sentence, [Rabbi Amital] relates with a twinkle of pleasure in his eyes, was apparently considered so radical by his students that they decided on their own to censor it in the printed version of the sermon."

I didn't attend Gush, but have long found it interesting how so many students of Rav Amital and Rav Aharon Lichtenstein (many of these "students" now themselves rabbis) espouse the philosophy of R. Amital and R. Lichtenstein in every area except the political question of the future of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. And, I suppose, it is equally interesting that R. Amital and R. Lichtenstein have taken a relatively dovish political position despite their yeshiva being in the "West Bank." (As silly as it may seem to most observant Jews, to almost the entire world, and to a disturbingly increasing number of Israelis, Alon Shvut is just another "settlement" located in "occupied territory." Even many religious Jews are unaware of Gush Etzion's history.)
posted on 6/17/2005