In many places throughout the country one day last week,
explosions were heard during the night, and when people
rushed to their windows or went out to their terraces, they
saw fireworks, and knew what it was all about. They could not
help watching the multicolored display of red and yellow,
blue and purple, green and violet. They saw rockets climbing
up into the sky and painting it with a splash of strange
shapes, only to vanish as quickly as they had appeared.
This spectacle repeats itself annually. There is something
symbolic about it: the yearly exercise serves to divert the
attention of the public, if only for a day, from the pressing
problems of the day-to-day, problems which are only becoming
more acute and insoluble as time passes. Whereas the media is
obsessed with them all year round, comes this day of
Independence, and all is silenced. The public is fed a
measure of illusion, with the fireworks serving as the symbol
of the fantasy and ephemery of the deception that all is not
only rosy, but beautiful. The flares are spectacular,
impressive, entertaining, esthetically pleasing and exciting.
But only for a passing moment, if not less. The lights
quickly fade, leaving the dark night once again, covering and
conquering.
The fifty-first, like the fiftieth year of Israeli statehood,
leaves us with a big question mark, with great perplexity and
confusion. They wrought much in founding the state, there is
no denying it. But it seems that they did not even reach the
starting point. Arab inflexibility and obstinacy and
hostility, which has only increased in latter years, has made
people ask the crucial question: Is a Jewish state truly the
solution?
Why have they reached this point? Has not the rosiest of
Zionist dreams been fulfilled? Don't `we' now have a
sovereign state? Are `we' not an "am chofshi
be'artzeinu -- a `free' people in our land"? What is it
about our situation that seems to confound the Zionist vision
and aspiration? Is today's state of affairs not exactly what
the State was created for? Was this not the goal and
direction for which they strove -- to establish a state
regardless of Arab opposition? Why, then, are they surprised
and frustrated if this selfsame problem remains the identical
obstacle it always was?
Several years ago, a newspaperman said that all this stems
from a switch in roles. If, in the past, we suffered from a
persecution complex that the entire world was against us,
today it is we who are against the entire world. And for
this, he blamed the Right. Very true that accompanying the
Jewish people throughout the ages is the fact that "they're
all against us," as the Rambam noted, "It is an established
rule that Eisov despises Yaakov" and that now it is us
pitched against the world. But is the Right, alone, the
address to blame? Does not historic justice behoove us to
admit that this situation is, in fact, the most central
`accomplishment' of all Zionism, in all of its streams and
camps?
*
It all began with the fact that Zionism started out declaring
war -- against the Jewish people. In the Second Zionist
Congress, ninety-six years ago, this fact was established
"constitutionally," through a central resolution stating that
"religion is the private matter of the individual." It has,
according to that, nothing to do with the Jewish public body.
This declaration came to establish and strengthen the Zionist
ideal of the Jew being like any other human being, "kechol
hagoyim beis Yisroel." Just as one can be an American
Catholic, Moslem or -- lehavdil -- a American Jew, so
should the Israeli be nondenominational, and non-
religious.
The goal was to assimilate to the rest of the world, but in
reality, it was a declaration of war upon the soul of the
Jewish people and its very essence. The Jewish people is,
after all, the people of Hashem, the people of the Torah.
Only because of its faith, by which it survived throughout
history, did it succeed in outlasting mighty empires of yore.
And when the Zionist Congress declared that the goal of
Zionism was to establish a different essence and character to
the Jewish people, one of conforming with other nations, this
was, in effect, a cry to arms against the soul of the Jewish
people proper.
This is no play of words or philosophizing. It is a real war,
a challenge of Zionism against the very kernel and core of
Jewishness, and to this, so many spiritual victims have
succumbed. It is this very issue that widens the split within
the nation to this day.
Our sages with their far-reaching vision foresaw the danger,
even before, when the ideology was couched in less stark
terms and was passed as an official decisive resolution of
the Congress. But the Jewish masses, who could not intuit the
danger of the direction, rallied towards Zionism and slowly
veered away from their faith and their Jewish way of life,
exchanging it for so-called "Jewish culture" and the
imaginary "national identity." This has wrought a devastating
spiritual destruction in the life of the Jew.
It is true that Zionism is not the only movement that caused
the masses of Jewry to deviate from their traditional faith
and lifestyle of Torah and mitzvos. There were many
ideologies that attracted Jews. But these never pretended nor
presumed to be a Jewish substitute, besides which they
quickly evaporated into nothingness and were exposed as
futile. Zionism had a longer life, and continued to deceive
the people with its national illusion as a substitute for
belief in the Creator and observance of His will through His
commandments.
Rabbenu R' Elchonon Wassermann Hy'd wrote his famous
treatise, Ikveso deMeshicho shortly before the
outbreak of World War II. Already then, he enumerated a long
list of "isms," of false ideologies to which Jews had latched
on to the point of idolatry, as it were. These include:
Berlin-type Haskalah, Liberalism, Socialism,
Communism, "but all of these `isms' died a quick death and
passed suddenly away."
He dwells on two which were still extant in his time: "They
still cling to the hems of the dying democracy," and
"nationalism which presumes to bequeath to the Jewish people
a material deliverance as well as a spiritual one. Its goal
is to establish a Hebrew nation anew which will succeed in
shaking off the dust of previous generations and will make
anathema the very mention of Hashem's Name. Their plan of
action is very simple: to oust and eject the Master of the
World from the House of Israel and the hearts of the Jewish
people" (pp. 13-14).
That gaon vetzaddik predicted -- and knew what he was
prophesying. "Democracy is dying . . . It, too, is of no
avail, for it has no real substance." Over the period of many
years, while the Left was in a government coalition with the
Right, and during the four years following, when the Left had
sole power, there was an intensive campaign of "injecting
democracy" into all the strata of society, something that has
carried on to this day [even though, as it has been noted,
there is no mention of democracy in the State's charter of
independence], especially by the court system. They hoped,
and still hope, to find some resolution to the existing
problem. If we appear to be devout democrats in the eyes of
the world, it will accept us, but in reality, everyone sees
that none of this helps.
The One on High mocks them all. "For if your estranged ones
will be at the end of heaven, from there shall He gather you
and from there shall He take you" (Devorim 30:4). No
matter how far a Jew distances himself from his Creator, from
his faith and Torah, from the remotest place will he be
dragged, by the fringe of his hair, to be brought back to the
cognizance of his Jewish origin."
Hagaon R' Wassermann writes in a realistic manner, as if it
were relevant in his days. " . . . imagine that nothing will
stand in their way of ejecting Hashem from our midst, as if
it were not difficult. But Hashem's power is mightier than
theirs and we are like fools who were beaten up. Not simple
fools, but outright idiots who were taught a lesson, who were
chastised, but whose ears persist in being plugged up" (p.
14).
There is no difference between religious Zionism and the
various other streams within it, with regard to the pitched
battle against the Jewish people. War has been declared
against Heaven, and it matters not if you call it socialism
or revisionism, Left or Right or "religious," for all are
partners in that movement which signed the resolution at the
Second Zionist Congress declaring that "religion is a private
matter." Any "religious" person who is a member/collaborator
of this Zionism, may be religious in private, on an
individual basis, but by subscribing to the movement that
ejected the Torah from the general sphere of the Jewish
people he is, consequently, a member of that, "We versus the
Jewish nation."
This concern which is part of the phenomenon of "We against
the world," is especially compromising with regard to our
relationship to the U.S., which has remained Israel's last
friend. This is especially exploited by the leftist camp,
mainly for political, self-serving interests. But we must not
ignore it. It raises the real threat that perhaps the entire
world will truly be against us and press us against the wall,
and this is not only a danger for the Jewish state and its
residents, but one for the entire Jewish nation, a threat of
antisemitism erupting in countries which had previously not
known of this curse, or, at least, not in an overt manner.
*
Zionism purported to find the solution to the scourge of
antisemitism, both by establishing a state-like-all-states
and by transforming the image and essence of the Jewish
people. Anyone studying that phenomenon of "the entire world
against us" will find that not only has the State become a
country like all the goyim, but it has developed into
the central focus par excellence of world antisemitism, and
even raises these dark sentiments against Jews living
throughout the world. And this can be readily
demonstrated.
If we study this reality, we must conclude that "us against
the world" is a long story. Zionism began by antagonizing the
Arab world and bequeathed this feud to the Jewish State, and
with this background it has been in constant, if covert,
confrontation with almost every single country in the
world.
The writer of these lines cannot forget to this day the sight
of the gloomy, anxious expression of the Agudath Israel
leader, R' Yitzchok Meir Levine z'l, when the Knesset
was on the verge of imposing Israeli rule over East
Jerusalem, right after the Six Day War. "What do they think,
the leaders of the country -- that they will be able to defy
the entire world?"
And when I expressed surprise at his fears, precisely after
the blazing Israeli victory and the crushing defeat of the
Arabs, he replied, "You are still young and don't understand.
This is a world of enemies, of those who despise us,
especially against an outspoken religious background; it is
the Moslem and Christian worlds of billions of people against
us."
The cheshbon and the nefesh is the
clarification we must make in these days of post-jubilee
Independence celebrations and politicians' attempts to divert
attention from the main issues, beginning with the ceremonies
of the Day of Remembrance and concluding with the Day of
Independence. The atmosphere is laden with empty boasting,
with vapid phrases like "the existence of the State is our
guarantee that Jews will no longer be helpless victims"
reverberating in the air, with everyone capable of
enumerating more than one incident of Jewish murder, in
places not as remote as Kazakhistan or the African plains,
but here in Israel, itself, with the "state- guarantee"
helpless to do anything.
In its two millennia of exile, the Jewish nation has
experienced much persecution and many pogroms and bloodbaths,
with not even a day of respite. The biggest tragedy of all
took place in the Second World War, when six million of our
people were exterminated in the demonic genocide campaign of
the Nazi fiend. He was determined to destroy, wipe out,
annihilate every last Jew in the world, total destruction of
a scope never dreamed of before. This occurred fifty years
after the Zionist movement pretentiously presumed to solve
the Jewish problem and bring redemption to the people.
R' Moshe Sheinfeld z'l wrote what the Klausenberger
Rebbe zt'l had once said to Levi Eshkol, a former
prime minister: "For two thousand years, the leadership of
the Jewish people was deposited in the hands of gedolei
Yisroel, and as trusty captains, they steered the nation
through stormy seas and treacherous waters. Danger hacked
away from our numbers, evil forces gnawed away and devoured
us, but the core always remained intact and the body of the
nation was able to recoup. In this past century, the
secularists have usurped the power, and what has happened to
the people? East European Jewry is lost and gone. Western
European Jewry along with Jews in North and South America are
doomed to a spiritual holocaust. Russian Jewry is still
within the crushing embrace of the Red Bear, while the Yishuv
in Eretz Yisroel is besieged by eighty million hostile
enemies out for their blood. Were it not for heavenly mercy,
we would all be doomed" (Digleinu Av, 5334).
*
How true is this terror balance sheet and how it shatters the
arrogant boasting of the State as a "safe haven." And when we
hear the echoes of doubt within the Zionist camp itself, now,
fifty years later, as they ask themselves how even after
fifty years of statehood, we still find ourselves back at the
original starting point, at the threat of our very existence,
we can verily hear the verse in the Torah, "And he shall say,
where are their gods? The rock in whom they trusted?" Or, as
Hagaon R' Wassermann wrote, "Hashem shall ask: where are
their idols to whom they sacrificed their choice offerings?
Let them rise up and help you." And he quotes the verse in
Yeshaya, "And he saw that there was no man . . . " There was
not even someone who could pray for them.
Rosh Yeshivas Ruzhin, Hagaon R' Yehoshua Brim zt'l,
once directed this columnist to the words in Maseches
Sotah: "And there is no one to inquire, to seek, to ask.
Upon whom can we rely? [Only] upon our Father in Heaven."
There, the Maharsha writes: "Three terms are enumerated,
corresponding to three worlds. Of all the nations upon this
nether world, no one inquires after their welfare. No one
seeks their interests in the middle world, for all of the
constellations are opposed to them, as it is written, `Israel
does not fall under any mazel' [it is not governed by
any natural heavenly law]. And no one asks after them, not
even the defenders of the heavenly hosts, for the angels have
turned prosecutors. All they have left to rely upon is their
Heavenly Father, Who is the Master of them all and Whose
mercies are plentiful. He was precise in stating `our Father'
because our ancestral merit of the three Ovos has
already been used up and we have nothing else to fall back
upon, except for Hashem."
This is how Hagaon R' Wassermann interprets the verse, "For
Hashem shall judge His people and repent Himself for His
servants": After Hashem judges [and punishes] Israel with
deserved suffering, He will fulfill the second half, and show
remorse towards His servants. Then will come the ultimate
Redemption. When? "When He sees that we are helpless . . . "
When He sees our strength dissipating, with no one to come to
our aid, then will He send Moshiach."
