While the land of Israel is central to the Jewish people, the idea of placing the acquisition of specific tracts of land over other key Torah values is inconsistent with traditional Jewish texts and Jewish history and, in our day, immoral. Although we may sometimes be pushed to take up the sword, this is a distasteful last resort and never a source for glory. It is a religious Zionists' obligation to protest against violent stances and to teach the meaning of human dignity.

This speech was delivered at the founding conference of Netivot Shalom (Paths of Peace) in Jerusalem, December 29, 1982. Since the Six-Day War, Orthodox Judaism is Israel has largely been associated with an uncompromising commitment to retaining the entire territory of the biblical Kingdom of Israel and with an uncompromising refusal to negotiate with the Palestinians. These stands have been integral to the National Religious party and the Gush Emunim. Netivot Shalom was founded in the wake of the Lebanon War in an attempt to promote an alternative religious message.

There are many Jews among us for whom today is a soul-stirring day, a day for which they waited and longed during the course of many years, years in which they stood against the stream, years in which they withstood criticism, censure, and attack. It is for these individuals, these religious Zionists, some of whom are present here in this hall, that I would be a spokesman. For a long time, these people sensed that the public, official, religious Zionism was becoming alien to them and thereby alienated from itself; that it was drifting in the direction of one concept, steadily contracting itself and becoming ever more one-sided; that it was diminishing its own image and stature, distorting its time-honored scale of values. These individuals who dared to brave the current and saw children distancing themselves from them now see children returning to them, slowly, cautiously, but decisively.

In the past few years, many of us looked about and grew faint and depressed. They saw how the struggle for human dignity, for the sanctity of life, for the peace of Israel, for the peace of mankind, all these were suddenly viewed as a struggle on behalf of “foreign” slogans and ideals, of alien offspring who have no portion or inheritance in Jewish sources; they saw how all these values were shunted aside into some obscure, neglected corner and were considered to be the private concern of a few yefei nefesh – “beautiful and sensitive souls,” “do-gooders”; they saw how every moral and ethical restraint against harming one's fellow was presented as weakness; how every hesitation, every qualm against endangering our soldiers was perceived as faintheartedness. Can there be a greater hillul HaShem, a greater profanation of the divine name, than that in all questions and issues connected with human life and dignity, with ethics, with peace, it was precisely the voices of those who do not observe the Torah that were heard, that were raised up and heard yet again, while in our camp there was silence, disregard, and even, at times, beligerent and war-like calls? What has happened to the scale of values of religious Zionism? Are our entire lives and existence henceforth to be based on one principle alone – that of shelemut ha'aretz, the completeness of the land – which will override any and all other principles? Is this how the paths of Torah are portrayed in our classical sources? Is this to be the exclusive focus of the battle of Torah?

They tell us: there is a scale of values for the exile, and a scale of values for the redemption, for the return to Zion. There is a Torah of the diaspora, and a Torah of the land of Israel. These two scales, these two Torot, are not the same, but differ from each other; and today all must be set aside in favor of the reckoning of the redemption of the land.

And we can only reply in amazement: Did not prophets, sages, and kings rise up and lead the people of Israel while still in its own land? And both prophet and sage knew how to stand up to king and society and fight the battle of Torah. What was the scale of values they set forth; what was their Torah of the land of Israel? What stood at the head of the list of their concerns? Didn't they also live during a period of Jewish sovereignty; didn't the love of the land beat in their hearts too; didn't they also stand up against kings and at the same time serve kings? And these kings, as is the way of the world, conquered and withdrew, advanced and retreated, in ever-continuing ebb and flow. There were those who rose up to deliver Israel from the hand of the foe. There were those who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo-Hamath to the Wadi of Egypt, while there were many more who were constrained, given the political and military circumstances, to be satisfied with less. Now under these circumstances, when prophets arose and rebuked, chastised and protested, what did they demand of king and country; what were the issues with which they were concerned as they confronted the Israelite community? How concerned were they over the question of the borders of the land, and to what extent did they call for hesed, loving kindness, mishpat, justice, and tzedakah, righteousness, for “restraining your feet for the sake of the Sabbath” (Isiah 58:13) in the land? And later, when sages arose and taught and judged the Jewish community in the land of Israel, and they didn't even hesitate to prosecute a king before the Sandhedrin – “Stand on your feet, O King of Israel”2 – what stood at the center of their teachings and judgments, what demands did they set forth before the community? Was Alexander Yannai, the King of Israel, the renowned military commander, judged by his conquests or his retreats? Or was he brought to court on account of the blood shed by his officer?3 How did the sages view the way of Torah? How concerned were they with the ever fluctuating boundaries of the land, and how concerned were they with Torat hayyim, with the Torah of life, with shaping the people in its land? It was these very sages whose teaching and rulings define for us the very concept of the land of Israel and the nature of its sanctity.

The land of Israel is the source of our life. We shall not allow any group, any bloc (gush), to claim a monopoly on its love or its acquisition. The land of Israel in its entirely stood and continues to stand at the very center of the consciousness and hope of the Jewish people. This consciousness is indivisible. Even when concrete historical reality does not allow for its complete implementation, its total realization, consciousness is neither divided nor sundered. Even if the process of realization does not correspond to the full dimensions of our dreams and imposes compromises, the wholeness of our relationship still remains in force and does not cease.

“Many cities were conquered by those who came up from Egypt which were not settled by those who came up from Babylon... for they left them in order that the poor be maintained upon them during the sabbatical year.”4 The Babylonian Jews who returned to Zion and built the second commonwealth – and according to the halakhah it is only their possession of the land of Israel that sanctified it with an eternal sanctity – took into account many considerations in addition to that of the sanctity and conquest of the land. Therefore, they did not take possession of cities in the land of Israel, but left them alone so that the poor would benefit in as much as the fruits of these cities would be permitted on the sabbatical year, that is, they took into account economic considerations! Are their deeds, their mode of rebuilding the land, cited in the annals of Jewish history for blame or for praise?

This was the path taken by those who built the Second Temple. But he who built the First Temple acted in an even more radical fashion. “Then King Solomon gave him [Hiram] twenty cities in the land of Galil” (1 Kings 9:11). Indeed, we may wonder at this action, for these cities were delivered to Hiram, King of Tyre, not in order to attain peace, nor even to benefit the poor, but as payment for cedar trees (or perhaps in exchange for other cities as well as cedar trees – according to some commentators in light of the version of this story in 2 Chronicles 8:2). In any event, was this act viewed as critical for evaluating Solomon's image in Jewish history? Has that image somehow been tarnished or discredited in our sources: “King Solomon, the King of Peace”?

Thus acted the builders of both the First and the Second Temple. And we, too, like them, are building, if not our Third Temple, then our third commonwealth in the midst of historical reality, not beyond it; not in a post-historical eschaton.5 Indeed, we are not just called upon to weigh economic considerations today vis-a-vis the completeness of the land; it is not a matter of fruits of the sabbatical year or cedar tress, but questions of peace and war, life and death, the human reality and political circumstances. But we, like them, are all facing in the same direction; our faces, like theirs, are turned to the Torah and the land of Israel.

For many years we have been told that the struggle is for the land of Israel, that it is all part of the drive toward redemption. Indeed, there were serious differences of opinion, both from a political standpoint and from the standpoint of values, as to whether this was the proper struggle, whether this campaign was creating the proper context for building the Jewish people. Yet we recognized it as a serious ideological and principled campaign. Recently, however, we see where this struggle has ended up. What is the connection between the struggle for the land of Israel, and even the greater land of Israel, and stubborn opposition to setting up a commission of inquiry to look into the massacre in Sabra and Shatila? How did we reach the point when, after an entire section of the Knesset sharply condemned the massacre in the media, the statement of another Member of the Knesset, an observant Jew and a rabbi, is cited as condemning the yefei nefesh, the “beautiful and sensitive soul”? May I be counted among them! What connection can there be between love of the land of Israel and moral and emotional callousness regarding the bombing of Beirut? In the last stages of the Lebanon War, when the leaders of Herut6 were already vacillating and were concerned (along with rabbis and religious ministers) about the lives of hundreds of our soldiers, the spokesman of the Gush Emunim was demanding that the army press ahead, strike, and conquer, aware of the price to be paid in the lives of our soldiers, aware of the dangers posed to thousands of innocent civilians. Had the question of conquering Tripoli been placed on the agenda, who would have dared to guess what his position would have been? Can such a stance be seen anymore as a matter of ideology? Are we not confronted here with a certain mentality, the mentality typical of the extreme, instinctive nationalist, all of whose positions are readily predictable? Such stance does not recognize, refuses to recognize, both the practical and ethical limitations on the use of force. Are we not constrained to agree in sorrow with the biting words of Rav Yehuda Amital (delivered in a public address at his yeshiva) regarding the most recent developments in our camp: “Strident voices are emerging within the camp; hawkish, militaristic voices; voices that align themselves with every militaristic tendency in our people.” Aware of the pain and the shame, we can only confess to the truth of these words, hoping that they hold true for only a minority.

These disturbing phenomena began on the edge of the camp, on the periphery of society, but they are threatening to gradually penetrate inward. I recall how shaken and upset we were a number of years ago when large announcements, in bold type, appeared in the Israeli newspapers calling upon us to establish in Shekhem a settlement of “not one step back,” “Af SAL,” spelling out the initials of “Shimon and Levi,” who “came upon the city of [Shekhem] boldly and slew all the males” (Genesis 34:25). How shall we term such yearning for the deeds of Shimon and Levi in Shekhem as expressed by Meir Kahane and his cohorts? Who ought to protest, if not us? Whose obligation is it to condemn such phenomena, if not ours? For we and they shared the same Sabbath; and one Torah, one law was intended to guide both them and us. We want a religious Zionism that will stand in the breach, that will be the first to cry out, so that we may not be subject to our father Jacob's curse: “Their weapons are weapons of violence / O, my soul, come not into their Council / O, my spirit, be not joined to their company.... Cursed by their anger for it is fierce / and their wrath for it is cruel” (Genesis 49:5-7). Only a religious Zionism that protests against weapons of violence will bring blessing upon us and wipe out any trace of curse.

We want a religious Zionism that will be the first to denounce “aberrations” and “deviations,” that will teach the people the meaning of human dignity, the sanctity of life, and “Beloved is man, for he was created in the [divine] image.”7 We no longer want to find our children in the vanguard of every conflict, every confrontation, and even, at times, leading the way in personal callousness.

We want a religious Zionism that will sound the voice of Torah which teaches that even the enemy, even the most wicked enemy, is not some “two-legged beast,”8 a religious Zionism that will have the strength to stand up to officials and rulers, and even to the Prime Minister himself, and protest against demonizing the enemy; that will teach that the Torah considered even an enemy pursuing Israel, such as Pharaoh and his army, to be the work of God's hands, and that, therefore, though it may be necessary to fight against the enemy to the end, we cannot proclaim “for He is good.” The Talmud states that the ministering angels cannot sing songs of praise to God when confronted with the downfall of the wicked. Regarding the battle between King Yehoshaphat and the Ammonites, however, it is the Jewish people themselves who are called upon to moderate their songs. “Why was the phrase 'for He is good' omitted from this song of thanksgiving? Because God does not rejoice in the downfall of the wicked.”9

We want a religious Zionism that will teach, again and yet again, that though, at times, it may be necessary and obligatory to use the sword – the sword can never be a source of sanctification, but only of profanation; that though it is necessary to establish a defense force and to build up tank units, it is not true, it will never be true, that “every tank is holy,” heaven forbid. Rather, “for you have wielded your sword over it and profaned it” (Exodus 20:22). According to the Torah, the sword that brings about profanation is not only that of the enemy but our own too, our sword of defense, which at times we are commanded to wield. “For iron was created to shorten man's life, while the altar was created to lengthen man's life. Therefore, it is not fitting that that which shortens man's life be wielded over that which lengthens his life. Moreover, the altar establishes peace between Israel and their Father in heaven, while the sword cuts off and destroys.”10.

Who will proclaim this fundamental Torah, this fundamental teaching, if not those who observe the Torah? We know full well that there are other emphases as well in our sources, that there are also other perspectives to be found in our Torah, but those other perspectives today have many, too many, spokesmen, while the paths of peace of our Torah are shunted aside into some obscure, neglected corner.

We want a religious Zionism that will teach, and recite, and reiterate the verse: “And Jacob was afraid and he was distressed” (Genesis 32:8). “ 'And he was afraid' – lest he be killed; ' and he was distressed' – lest he kill others.” And this comment, as the verse itself indicates, applies even to one “who acts toward you like the wicked Esau who still maintains his hatred.”11 We are Zionists, and therefore, we are well aware of the critical importance of establishing a defense force so that we should no longer be plundered and despoiled, so that we should not longer be pursued. We are Jews, and, therefore, we are also aware of the need to set limits, of the importance of restraint, of the divine command “and you know the soul of the stranger” (Exodus 23:9), so that we should never become pursuers. We are Zionists and, therefore, we are well aware of the strength we derive from independence and sovereignty. We are Jews and, therefore, we are also aware of the limits of physical strength, the indomitable ability of “the remnants of Israel” to endure for 1900 years and outlive great military empires – “[until] God caused Israel to find rest” (Jeremiah 31:1).

This gathering was organized by different groups: graduates of yeshivot hesder12 and students, rabbis and university faculty, members of the religious kibbutz movement, members of Oz veShalom,13 and others. An entire spectrum of political opinions has joined together here, centered about a number of fundamental principles that have been set forth today for further discussion and clarification. We are all united by the desire to reinstate the Torah-of-life and the peace-of-Israel at the head of the scale of priorities; we are troubled and disturbed by the growing identification between extreme nationalism and Torah and mitzvot. We all sense the hillul HaShem, the profanation of the divine name, which is reflected in abandoning the struggle for human life and dignity to the secular community alone. We recognize that the word “compromise” is not unclean, that “Peace” is one of God's names. We all adopt the words of Rav Abraham Isaac Kook: “Jacob should not engage in government when it would require murder and bloodshed, when it would demand the talents of the wicked.... It will be possible for us to conduct our State according to the principles of goodness, wisdom, equity, and the blessed divine illumination.”14

1 Kings 8:65: “So Solomon and all Israel with him – a great assemblage, [coming] from Lebo-Hamath to the Wadi of Egypt – observed the feast at that time.” These locations, referring to the entire expanse of the country, are also mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.

2 Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 19a.

3 Alexander Yannai was a Hasmonean king of Judea and High Priest from 103-76 BCE. He greatly expanded Hasmonean territory, gaining control of the entire coastal region of Palestine, but he also provoked bitter internal turmoil which culminated in a civil war.

4 Babylonian Talmud, Hullin 7a and Hagigah 3b. The law of the sabbatical year, commanding that the land lie fallow every seventh year, did not apply to land outside of Israel. Therefore, certain towns near the border were purposely not included in the re-consecration of the land, so that the fields in these town might be cultivated even in the seventh year.

5 Eschaton is an ear of messianic fulfillment or end of days.

6 The Herut party is a secular and Right- of-Center party that has combined with another Right-of-Center party to form the Likud.

7 Mishnah, Pirkei Avot 4,18.

8 An expression used by Menachem Begin in reference to Yasir Arafat.

9 Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 39b and Megillah 10b. Following the battle with the Ammonites, the men of Judah and Jerusalem sang, “Praise the Lord, for His steadfast love is eternal” (2 Chronicles 20:21). However, the singers left out the phrase “ki tov” (which means both “He is good” and “it is good”), even though the phrase is found in this same song in Psalm 107:1. The Talmud questions why “ki tov” was omitted.

10 Mishnah Middot 3,4; Rashi on Exodus 20:22.

11 Rashi on Genesis 32:8 and 32:7.

12 Yeshivot hesder are religious academies that combine yeshivah studies with army service. The head of the yeshivot hesder (religious academy) at Har Etzion is Rabbi Yehuda Amital, a founder of Netivot Shalom.

13 Oz veShalom (“Strength and Peace”), an Israeli religious peace movement, was founded in the seventies as a response to Gush Emunim. It has remained a small movement.

14 Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Orot, page 14.

Questions for Discussion:

1. Ravitzky posits that there is greater emphasis in the tanach on values such as human dignity, peace, and justice than there is on conquering and settling the Land of Israel. What are the implications of this position in formulating a contemporary Zionist agenda? Is the statement even relevant regardless of whether or not it is accurate?

2. Is there or should there be a different “Torah” or “scale of values” for the “exile” and for the “redemption?” If so, how should/do they differ?

3. Contrast the realities and the setting of the American peace movement of the 1960's (protesting the war in Vietnam) with that of the “peace camp” in Israel today.

This article also belongs to the following subjects:
Zionism > Zionism Revisited

Have your say! Post your comments on this article.

Only registered users can post their opinions. If you are a registered user please login. Otherwise, you can register.