Reclaiming Zionism

Judaism, Wntr, 1999 by Amnon Hadary

Where were you when I laid the foundations of this land? Declare if you have understanding...who laid its cornerstone?--Job 38:4-5

MY ELDEST SON, OREN, AND MY FATHER, GERSHON, DIED a mere six years apart and are buried not far from one another on a pastoral knoll overlooking the Mediterranean in the cemetery of Kibbutz Gesher Haziv. Oren fell in the Yom Kippur War, his first war in defense of Israel's sovereignty. He had just turned 21, four years younger than the state itself. Gershon died a 79-year-old inveterate, peaceful advocate of Zionist sovereignty, a half year before the Six-Day War, never having shot a gun in anger. Standing midway between them in a three generational line of contemporary Jewish independence, I have gone out to all my wars to safeguard Jewish sovereignty.

We thought we had it made. Up to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Zionist revolution we all subscribed to had weathered seven decades and four wars since Theodor Herzl's call to the scattered nation at the founding Zionist Congress in Basel. After the astonishing victory in the Six-Day War, most Israelis believed that peace would now crown all our other successes: the incredible realization of an independent state governed by a Jewish parliamentary democracy with a burgeoning authentic culture and astonishing accomplishments in agriculture and medicine. The rude awakening of the 1990s was unmerciful.

Today, pessimists see a kulturkampf in store for Israel over the question of secularism vs. orthodoxy; the gloom-and-doomers predict a civil war; the apocalyptically inclined prepare themselves for Armageddon. In each camp, the majority now believe that in the 21st century an escalating Jewish/Jewish enmity will be unleashed which will rival the Arab/Jewish conflict that distinguished the last century. For all of that, it is not a new conflict. How did it transpire that a state established 50 years ago on secular, humanist, liberal, and radical foundations takes on an increasingly clerical hue?

The issue is disagreement about the source of authority in Israel. All secular and many modern Orthodox Israelis believe that the core of our democracy and the source of its authority is the basic principle which stipulates the consent of the governed, legislation by representatives elected to the Knesset, and interpretive rulings by an independent judiciary. The ultra-Orthodox, and with them many who are not so ultra, claim that the ultimate source of all laws resides in God's Law as it was revealed to Moses at Mt. Sinai. In turn, interpretation of the Law is claimed as the sole prerogative of the rabbinic authorities. Over the centuries, this authority has evolved a corpus of legal decisions, the halakhah. Halakhah has often been fundamentalist and immutable, committed to the notion that hadash asur min HaTorah--meaning that innovation is essentially invalid. The irony here is that the Hebrew word derives from the verb "to go," and yet halakhah all too often marches stubbornly in place. It has come to embr ace core concepts and the minutiae of personal, societal, national, and international relations, along with each and every other observance within Judaism. Thus, questions of withdrawal from territories conquered in the 1967 Six-Day War, or decisions regarding a recalcitrant husband who refuses to grant his wife a divorce, or wearing a garment that blends a mixture of linen and cotton, all come under the rubric of halakhah, and each issue appears to be regarded with the same obsessive gravity.

Who determines sovereign power in Israel? Does God bestow it? Or, since it originates in the consent of the governed, do the people delegate it? Ultimately, there can be only one law in the land. Who will legislate, elected members of Knesset or a halakkic oligarchy? And who will enforce it?

The Law of Return is a case in point. It was passed by the Israel parliament, the Knesset, on July 5, 1950, the anniversary of Theodor Herzl's death. One of the earliest and most significant of Israel's Basic Laws, the Law of Return declares that every Jew has the right to settle in Israel and automatically acquire citizenship. The Law gives confirmation to the age-old Jewish yearning for return to Zion. In presenting the bill to the Knesset for its first reading, David Ben-Gurion said: "This law lays down not that the State accords the right of settlement to Jews abroad but that this right is inherent in every Jew by virtue of his being a Jew if it but be his will to take part in settling the land. This right preceded the State of Israel, it is that which built the State." There were no stipulations in the Prime Minister's mind nor were there any in the minds of the other Knesset members to the phrase "every Jew by virtue of his being a Jew." Exclusions, exemptions, restrictions came later.

Due to their small number in those early days, the Orthodox were unable to over-run the positions of the "Zionist enemy" on this Basic Law, so they began their shtik. Resorting to talmudic disputation, "Ah, but who is a Jew?" they asked, insisting adamantly that only a person born of a Jewish mother qualified. Growing numbers and the exigencies of coalition horse-trading were such that by 1970, the Orthodox were able to impose changes in the Law of Return. Today, they would exclude non-Jewish spouses or conversions not approved by Orthodox rabbinical courts.