Alt+SHIFT: The Triple Thread of Religious Zionism

Alt+SHIFT is the keyboard shortcut allowing us quick transition between input languages on our keyboards—for many readers of TRADITION that’s the move from Hebrew to English (and back again). Yitzchak Blau offers this supplemental entry in this Tradition Online series offering his insider’s look into trends, ideas, and writings in the Israeli Religious Zionist world helping readers from the Anglo sphere to Alt+SHIFT and gain insight into worthwhile material available only in Hebrew. See the archive of all columns in this series.

Yair Sheleg, Ha-Hut ha-Meshulash: Kitzur Toldot ha-Tziyonut ha-Datit (Kinneret-Zmora, 2024), 224 pages

Yair Sheleg, a respected journalist and author, has penned an important Hebrew book, whose English title might be rendered as The Triple Thread: A Brief History of Religious Zionism. The slim volume opens with a citation from R. Kook calling for a combination of the three values of religion, nationalism, and humanism (called “liberalism” in R. Kook’s original Hebrew). Where the secular only adopt the latter two and the Haredim only the first value, Religious Zionists ideally embrace all three. Later parts of the book see how this triad plays out among Hardalim, religious liberals, and the silent mainstream.

I will begin with some points of general interest before returning to the central themes. Sheleg writes that the nineteenth-century proto-Zionist rabbis Kalischer and Alkalai were not very influential but they did open up the possibility of human political initiative playing a role in bringing about redemption. He reminds the reader that R. Kook’s robust Zionism only began after he arrived in Eretz Yisrael in 1905 and witnessed the dedication of the secular pioneers. As an interesting aside, he points out the irony that Jews under fascist regimes such as Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania, initially were safer in World War II than those living in democratic countries since the Germans did not need to invade them and these governments were not committed to annihilating world Jewry. Finally, Sheleg notes how different life was at the time of the State’s first election when all the religious parties ran together on one ticket (the partnership did not last as long as the first government).

The book traces historically important developments in the Religious Zionist world. Its Torah study was very weak in the first half of the twentieth century. R. Moshe Tzvi Neria opened the first yeshiva high school (initially with no secular studies) in Kefar ha-Roeh in 1954. When the original Yeshivat Hesder opened in Kerem be-Yavneh, the organizers could not find a worthy Religious Zionist rabbi to head it and turned to Haredi Rosh Yeshiva, R. Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht. For decades, Mercaz HaRav was a small yeshiva in danger of closing until it took off after the Six Day War. Seeing the impressive range of higher Torah learning institutions today helps us realize how far Religious Zionism has come.

[An earlier iteration of Sheleg’s thesis in “The Triple Thread” appeared at TraditionOnline | Yitzchak Blau previously reviewed Sheleg’s book HaHardalim]

Sheleg also traces the development of his three aforementioned groups. The Hardal phenomenon, combining Ultra-Orthodoxy with Zionist nationalism, arrived in the 1970s when graduates of Mercaz HaRav began to call for gender separation in elementary schools and youth groups. Liberal expressions flourished in the 1990s with calls to find expanded roles for women in the ritual sphere and with increased interest in producing religious film, poetry, and prose. Sheleg makes an interesting observation that in the early years, liberals felt a greater need to provide traditional sources in favor of their positions but then moved on to a more dynamic conception of Jewish law.

The Hardal world is divided between institutions associated with Mercaz HaRav and those affiliated with Har HaMor. The former try to influence the country with a positive message; the latter (about whom I have written here) engage in a fierce cultural war with leftist and liberal trends such as LGBTQ rights. On the other hand, the Har HaMor camp emphasizes mamlakhtiyut, loyalty to the state’s decisions even when one disagrees (such as with the disengagement from Gaza). However, the entire Religious Zionist world feels less strongly about the supremecy of mamlakhtiyut since leaving Gaza. To illustrate that idea, Sheleg points out how the dismantling of the Amona outpost and its 40 or so families in 2017 played out more violently than the removal of more than eight thousand Jews from Gaza twelve years earlier.

Despite the concise nature of Sheleg’s presentation, there are a number of good analytical passages. Why does the Religious Zionist community see many of its children drop religion but many fewer moving away from a right-wing political stance? When Dati Leumi youth toss off their kippot serugot they more often than not retain the political positions so commonly symbolized by that headgear. Among other suggestions, Sheleg claims that the religious and liberal elements clash with each other more obviously than the nationalistic aspect does with any other element. Why is the Hardali voice so resonant beyond its numbers in the population? A much higher percentage of the Hardal world goes into education and tend to vote for one political party whereas the silent majority and the liberals spread their votes among many parties. Why was R. Kook’s Zionist vision more influential than that of R. Yitzchak Yaakov Reines? Unlike R. Reines, R. Kook actually made it to Eretz Yisrael, established a yeshiva that lives on to this day, had loyal students (particularly R. Neria), teaching his Torah and establishing institutions to implement his worldview, and offered a more powerful and energizing vision than R, Reines’ pragmatic Zionism.

I believe the author intends this work to be read by the hiloni secular public as well; indeed, he sends a particular message to that audience. Secular criticism of the Religious Zionist world has often painted that community with one brush as if it was only represented by the likes of Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir. This in turn angers the Religious Zionist constituency who then moves rightward, generating a self-fulfilling prophecy. It would be better for each group to criticize the others in a more measured manner.

(The content editor did not have his best day at the office since there are three significant errors. R. Yohanan ben Zakkai snuck out to meet Vespasian, not Titus. A Jew does not become ritually impure because he is within two meters of a dead body. Finally, the reason women reading Megilla is halakhically simpler to permit than women reading the Torah is not because the Book of Esther is of a “less holy status.”)

Sheleg ends with two possible visions of the Religious Zionist dream: Either the right’s Betzalel Smotrich strives to maintain a vision of religious purity or the religious centrists Naftali Bennet and Matan Kahana work for Religious Zionism to serve as a bridge between different groups in the Jewish State. Like Sheleg, I hope very much that the latter vision wins the day.

Yitzchak Blau, Rosh Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem’s Old City, is an Associate Editor of TRADITION.