There's No Place Like Home: Religious Zionism in a Post-Disengagement World
The disengagement from Gaza and other policies of the current government are fostering a full-fledged crisis in the Religious Zionist camp. Some think the government’s actions disqualify them, and even the whole State, from their pull on our financial interest and emotional concern.
This is not, I suggest, the only plausible response a Religious Zionist can and ought to have. The evidence of our tradition suggests that the road to success and redemption takes turns we could not predict and would a priori assume to be wrong.
For one example, the Navi tells of the city of Shomron, capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel., struggling with a siege that sparked a famine so severe that some people turned to cannibalism, that others were willing to pay 80 silver pieces for the head of a donkey. Aram, the enemy, had the tactical advantage and far outnumbered the Israelites.
Into this bleak situation, luckily for us, G-d brought salvation, a frightful sound that scared away all the enemy troops, who fled with only the clothes on their backs, leaving behind enormous wealth. The uninformed Jews of Shomron, however, did not know the siege had ended; God needed a messenger to reveal the miracle that had been peformed for them.
The chosen messenger? Four lepers, metzoraim, expelled from the city because of their condition, desperate for food, decided surrender was the only was to live. Arriving at the enemy camp, they found that they had fled. When they brought the glad tidings to the king—after having appropriated some of the abandoned booty for themselves—he refused to believe them, worrying that the enemy was playing a trick, laying an ambush.
I wonder whether the king’s suspicions were not stoked by the messengers who brought him news of his salvation. God’s miracles are announced by prophets, priests, kings, the highest strata of Jewish society. Lepers are the opposite, literally outcasts. Leprosy, tsara’at, is also putative evidence of sin, slander, arrogance, and even idolatry or immorality. The midrash makes the case clearer, identifying these lepers as Gehazi, Elisha’s sinful and banished student, and his three sons.
The king would be sure that God would never allow such people to bring such important news. But his premise was wrong; news of the redemption came precisely by word of sinners.
For Religious Zionists, the same question arises. We have managed to accustom ourselves to the reality that the State, we hope the first flowerings of the ultimate redemption, came about through secular Zionists, socialists, some of whom were actually anti religious. That this salvation included a painful retreat and abandonment of parts of Israel, that the threat of more such abandonments looms over us, presents a new challenge.
This is, I maintain, another example of the answer we Religious Zionists have always given, that redemption comes in ways we cannot predict or always control. Similarly, when (in Sanhedrin 98) R. Yehoshua b. Levi asks Elijah about Mashiach, Elijah says that he is sitting at the gates of Rome, not the place we would have expected him to be.
Mashiah wasn’t in Jerusalem where you would expect him. Redemption can come from afar, we are being told, indeed as Yirmiyahu said, Merachok nirah li hashem, from far or, perhaps, from unexpected places, and in the gemara, Mashiah is sitting among those who had skin diseases, maybe yes, leprosy. Redemption can come from within an unhealthy situation, through the agency of sinners and those who have gone astray.
The actions of metsora’im, lepers, can guide us in how to act when redemption takes a course we would not have predicted and see as odd. When a man thinks he has tsaraat habayit, leprosy in his home, he turns to the Kohen and says “k’nega,” it seems like a plague, in my house. Note that he does not identify it as actually tsara’at, even if he is a great sage. When it is your home, I suggest, you don’t want to see leprosy, you don’t want to see plagues, you look for the best interpretation, you look for a silver lining.
Keeping that attitude towards the State will help us maintain perspective as well. Israel is our ultimate homeland and birthright. We can never say we see a plague in our home, we can never be disengaged from our homeland and our birthright. It only appears to be a nega, a blemish. Why am I so cautious? Because it is my home. I’m not so anxious to say I see a blemish in my own home.
Which doesn’t mean we have to be happy with all that happens in Israel. The withdrawals we are witnessing are at best unfortunate, at worst a folly we will pay for dearly, a sign of retreat, even defeatism. Can redemption come from this? As Religious Zionists we always say, yes, redemption is on the way, even in the worst of times. Even when the borders didn’t include Jerusalem; even when Israel was a small, war- torn country with a weak economy and international isolation; even when the religious were a tiny minority in a sea of secularism. (My father was in Israel in 1950, and said he felt uncomfortable wearing his kippah in such a secular environment.) We can certainly say yes to to redemption today, when Torah flourishes, when in many ways the economy flourishes, when millions of Jews have made Israel their home.
Israel is our bayit, it is our home, and the Torah teaches us not to see the blemishes in our home, to focus on the smiling faces of her children, the blossoming of the land, the flowering of yeshivot. Our home is great. Our home is alive and well. Our home is strong. Our home is beautiful. Our home is growing in torah and in power and wealth.
Obviously, that is only one half of the story. We would not want to be Pollyanna-ish about this, to see only the good and ignore the challenges or problems. But spending some time remembering those positives will perhaps also give us the fortitude to ride through the difficult times, when we cannot believe that this is the messenger or the redemption that God is providing, to continue striving to understand God’s Plan and even to sway it towards a better future than the one we see developing.