Re: The Christianization of Zionism

On Jun 6, 2015 9:49 PM, "Paul Eidelberg" <foundation612.12@gmail.com> wrote:

The Christianization of Zionism

 

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

 

 

In Theodor Herzl's path-setting Zionist book The Jewish State, the Torah is reduced to a "religion," relegated to the home and the synagogue. Severed from Public Law, Zionism was rendered comparable to antinomian Christianity: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."

 

This dualism is foreign to the Torah. It splits the mind, placing secular values, such as security, on the level of the spiritual values, such as morality. PM Benjamin Netanyahu recently said he wants to be remembered as having brought security to Israel.  That very much sums up the modus operandi of secular Zionism.

 

Therefore, it needs to be stressed that Zionism can't be secular without violating the original meaning of the term "Zion," which involves three interrelated ideas:  (1) the People of Israel, (2) the Land of Israel, and, above all (3) the Torah.

 

Hence, we should admit that if Jews, 2,000 years ago had "Zionist" leaders like Binyamin Netanyahu, the Jewish people would have become as extinct as the Phoenicians.  No serious person will dispute the fact that it was only the Torah that preserved the Jewish people during these past two millennia. 

 

Zionism suffered a crippling stroke when the Yitzhak Rabin signed the Israel-PLO Agreement of 1993. The coup de grace came when Netanyahu, on June 1, 2009, endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. That marked the official death of Zionism.

 

The death of Zionism means that politics in Israel has no distinctively Jewish national goal. The "politics of peace" embraced by Israeli prime ministers has not only disemboweled the Jewish state. Notice that Netanyahu's insistence that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people has been met with contempt. It's as if the PA, the leaders of an "invented people," discerned that Netanyahu without the Torah lacked authenticity!  

 

Nevertheless, the Jewish people should not be disheartened by Israel's political decay. Never have so many Jews returned to the Torah. A veritable renascence is taking place in the study of Jewish law, the Halakha, revealing its great rationality and relevance. Moreover, scientists and mathematicians are engaged in fundamental Torah research, showing that the Torah is not only the paradigm of how man should live, but the paradigm of knowledge. The convergence of Torah and science is enfolding at a quickening pace, as is documented in my latest book Rescuing America from Nihilism: A Judeo-Scientific Approach. 

 

Meanwhile, more and more people in Israel realize that politics is incapable of solving any of the nation's basic problems. They are becoming increasingly aware of Israel's dysfunctional government, whose average tenure is only two years, a government, moreover, whose cabinet consists of 5 or 6 rival parties competing for a larger slice of the public treasury. Who does not see the absurdity of a political system where 30 and more parties vie for seats in the menagerie called Israel's "Knesset?

  

It should also be noted that more and more people are fed up with the aggrandizement of Israel's Supreme Court, which often trashes the abiding beliefs of the Jewish people. This "courtocracy" has made a mockery not only of democracy, but also of the rule of law, given its imperialistic and despotic dictum "everything is justiciable"! And this is not all. 

 

Who does not know that the Oslovian peace process is a fraud, a deadly fraud, for which no Israeli Government has been held accountable?

  

It matters not who is Israel's prime minister, whether he's a sharp-witted secularist like Binyamin Netanyahu, or a dull-witted secularist like Ehud Barak. Both have ignored the Torah's vital imperative, "Justice, justice shall you pursue, so that you will live and possess the Land that Hashem your God gives you (Deuteronomy 16:20). 

  

Absent the Torah, absent Jewish national identity and purpose, Israeli Prime Ministers will stagger like drunkards. The Government will genuflect to "the nations."  Jews will be despised, and the Jewish state will be deemed a pariah. 

 

We may therefore conclude that Israel's salvation requires a Torah-oriented statesman on the one hand, and a Judaic form of democracy on the other. Only when the two are conjoined will Israel transcend the Christianization of Zionism.☼