holy war in modern judaism? 'mitzvah war' and the problem of...

Holy War in Modern Judaism? "Mitzvah War" and the Problem of the "Three Vows"Author(s): Reuven FirestoneSource: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 954-982Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4139958Accessed: 18-08-2018 15:51 UTC

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Holy War in Modern Judaism? "Mitzvah War" and the Problem of the "Three Vows" Reuven Firestone

"Holy war," sanctioned or even commanded by God, is a common and recurring theme in the Hebrew Bible. Rabbinic Judaism largely avoided discussion of holy war for the simple reason that it became dangerous and self-destructive. The failed "holy wars" of the Great Revolt and the Bar Kokhba Rebellion eliminated enthusiasm for it among the survivors engaged in reconstructing Judaism from ancient biblical religion. The rabbis therefore built a fence around the notion through two basic strategies: to define and categorize biblical wars so that they became virtually unthinkable in their contemporary world and to construct a divine con- tract between God, the Jews, and the world of the Gentiles that would establish an equilibrium preserving the Jews from overwhelming Gentile wrath by preventing Jewish actions that could result in war. The notion of divinely commanded war, however, was never expunged from the repertoire of Jewish ideas. Remaining latent, it was able to be revived when the historical context seemed to require it. Such a revival occurred with the rise of Zionism and particularly after the 1967 and 1973 wars.

THE VIOLENT CONFLICT BETWEEN JEWS AND ARABS over the Land of Israel/Palestine' originated in the late nineteenth and early

Reuven Firestone is a professor at the Hebrew Union College, 3077 University Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90007.

1 Terminology is sensitive on this issue because no term, either for the protagonists (i.e., Israelis/ Zionists/Jews and Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims) or the land (i.e., Land of Israel, State of Israel, Palestine, Holy Land), is free from particular religiopolitical perspectives. Because this study treats a particular Jewish perspective regarding land that is defined, according to those holding that perspective, as the "Land of Israel," we freely use that term.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion December 2006, Vol. 74, No. 4, pp. 954-982 doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfl027 ? The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Advance Access publication November 3, 2006


Firestone: Holy War in Modern Judaism? 955

twentieth centuries as a conflict between competing national movements. It was a secular conflict and recognized as such. But in the last third of the twentieth century, it has been described increasingly by both sides as a conflict between religions. We are used to processes of secular- ization, but here we have movement in the opposite direction. How did something that both sides saw as secular become something both sides see as religious?

Much thought and analysis has been applied in recent years to understanding religious justification for warring in Islamic tradition (Cook 2005, Johnson and Kelsay 1990, Kelsay 1993). But surprisingly, little attention has been given to the fact that religious justification for warring has become an increasingly important motivation among certain sectors of the Jewish population as well. What follows is a study of one aspect of the problematic of divine authority for engaging in war over the biblically defined Land of Israel among a small but influential population of religiously orthodox Jewish Israeli thinkers. The issue is complex and cannot be given its full due in a single article, but certain aspects are of particular interest to those engaged in the study of biblical interpretation and in the study of religion.2

This article will primarily analyze two movements in Jewish thought about war. First, it details how rabbinic sages constructed a mechanism designed to prevent a political situation that might trigger war for Jewish political sovereignty over the Land of Israel. Second, it details how one community of modern Jewish religious activists and thinkers has dis- mantled that mechanism. Not only is the topic timely and of some importance for a better understanding of the current situation in the Middle East, it also provides a window onto the complex and often subtle processes of interpretation and change within religious systems.

DIVINELY SANCTIONED WAR IN THE HEBREW BIBLE

War as depicted in the Bible has been a popular topic of study ever since Julius Wellhausen pointed out its overwhelming significance in his Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel in 1885 (Niditch 1993, von Rad 1991, Wellhausen 1957). Various approaches and conclusions have been suggested, from Friedrich Schwally's coining of the term "holy war" (heilige Krieg) in his monograph of that name in 1901 (Schwally 1901) to Fritz Stolz's concept of "Yahweh war" seventy years later (Stolz 1972).

2 A book-length study of the revival of "holy war" in modern Judaism by this author is currently under review for publication.


956 ournal of the Ameican Academy of ReligionC al~ra vj thc-A e icatricdeffy o

Publication continues apace on the subject of war in the Bible to this day, and as one can imagine, interest in the topic is motivated by religious and political inclination as well as scholarly goals (Armstrong 1988, Barrett 1987, Craigie 1978). This article treats not the biblical ideas themselves, but how postbiblical Judaism has struggled and continues to struggle with the meaning of divinely sanctioned or even commanded war. The exegetical process and its results have continued to evolve to this day, all strongly influenced by historical context.

The Hebrew Bible contains many images of peace and longings for the cessation of war, to be sure (Isaiah 2:24M//icah 4:1-5, Isaiah 11:1-9, Psalm 34:12-1), but it is also packed with stories, references, and commands through which God sanctions mass violence against the enemies of Israel.3 Heroes such as Joshua, Gideon, Saul, David, and even Moses lead Israel into wars that devastate Israel's enemies. In some, God commands genocide against Israel's adversaries (Deut. 3:6, 7:2, 20:17; Josh. 6:17, 10:28-40). In others, God even engages in the fray himself (Exodus 15:3, Josh. 28:41, Ezek. 38-9). This is classical "holy war"; that is, war that is holy because it is authorized or even commanded directly by God (Firestone 1999: 14-6).

Some of Israel's wars, such as David's wars against the Arameans of Aram Tzuba (2 Kings 10), are successfully initiated with no reference to God. In light of these cases, it is clear that not all wars depicted in the Bible are explicitly commanded or forbidden by God. Some simply "hap- pen" (under a broad understanding of divine providence), initiated without direct reference to the divine command. According to biblical historiography, however, Israel's wars were successful, whether divinely commanded or not, only when the people obeyed their God. We thus observe how Israel failed in its first collective attempt to fight its enemies because it did not listen to God (Num. 14:44-45//Deut. 1:42-44). All subsequent failures and defeats, as well as victories, were understood in biblical depictions as divinely determined, including even the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 586 BCE and the associated massacres and population transfers by the Babylonian armies (2 Kings 24:1-4; Jeremiah 37:27-31, 38:2-3, 39:15-17; 2 Chron. 36:11-21).

According to both biblical and postbiblical traditional Jewish historiography, history moves exclusively by way of God's will, even if not

3 The traditional Jewish term, "Israel," is a shortened form of "the People of Israel" ('am yisra'el), not a reference to a modern nation-state. The actual name of the modern Jewish State is Medinat Yisrael, "the State of [the People of] Israel." In this article, I use the traditional vocabulary of "Israel" to refer to the Jewish people from the biblical to the modern periods.



always immediately apparent to mortals. The Persian King Cyrus is inspired, if not commanded directly, by the God of Israel to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple and bring the Judeans back from Babylonian captivity (Isaiah 24:26-25:5, Ezra 1:1-8, 2 Chron. 36:22-23). The postbiblical Maccabean successes against the powerful Hellenist Syrians (Seleucids) were also understood by the Jews as successful holy wars, sanctioned by God, if not directly commanded by him. Mattathius' clan that led the Maccabean revolt is depicted in 1 Maccabees as regularly entreating God for help before going into battle and equating their battles with those of the biblical heroes (I Macc. 3:46-53, 4:8-11, 30-34, 7:40-42). The great- est Maccabean warrior, Judah, is represented as relying entirely on God's deliverance in his battles against overwhelming odds, exclaiming, for example, "It is easy for many to be delivered into the hands of few. Heaven sees no difference in gaining victory through many or through a few, because victory in war does not lie in the weight of numbers, but rather strength comes from Heaven" (I Macc. 3:18-19). And as traditional Jewish liturgies proclaim to this day in reference to the Maccabean wars, "[God] delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few."4

After the successful Maccabean Revolt, however, the association of obedience with reward, and disobedience with failure, seemed to break down. The failed Great Rebellion against Rome (66-70 CE), which resulted in the second and final destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, could again be explained for a time through recourse to the trope of success and failure intimately associated with obedience to God. Josephus and rabbinic literature blamed the destruction on the sins of certain Jews.

Jewish bandits and terrorists (Gr. LesteslHeb. listim, Gr. Sicarii/Heb. biryonim) were roaming the countryside of Roman Judea at the time, and the activists at the core of the rebellion were a group that Josephus called (terrorist) dagger-men (sicarii). Rabbinic Jews called them thugs or biryonim (1970: 144-49, 393-5, 461-2). These were outlaws who not only killed foreign members of an oppressive and illegal occupation but also their own innocent coreligionists.

There was one critical difference, however, between the destruction of the First Temple and that of the second. Unlike the first destruction, ostensibly justified by Jewish sin but forgiven seventy years later with the destruction of the Babylonian Empire and subsequent return of Jews from Babylonia, the destruction of the Second Temple was not followed by a return. No one succeeded in destroying the Romans. Even the most

4 Addition to the thrice daily and Sabbath amidah during the eight days of Chanukah.


958 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

righteous and pious rabbi of his generation, Akiba ben Joseph, failed to do so. A story is related in the Talmud about how some disciples of Rabbi Akiba were once overtaken by Jewish robbers (listim). When they were asked whose disciples they were, they replied "'Rabbi Akiba's,' where- upon the robbers exclaimed, 'Happy are Rabbi Akiba and his disciples, for no evil person has ever done them harm' " (Avodah Zarah 25b).

That observation did not prove accurate indefinitely, for one of Rabbi Akiba's disciples was Bar Kokhba. Akiba considered him to be the messianic war-hero who would deliver Israel from the evil empire of Rome, as Judah the Maccabee delivered Israel from the evil Hellenist Seleucids. But it turned out that this disciple of Akiba was not safe from harm, nor were most of his warrior followers. The Bar Kokhba Rebellion, under the spiritual leadership of Akiba and the military leadership of a man whose name was not Bar Kokhba ("star-man") but actually Bar Kosiba whom later rabbis called "Bar Koziba" ("the liar"),5 ultimately failed. The results were devastating. Both leaders were killed (Jerusalem Talmud Ta'anit 4:8, Lamentations Rabba 2:2), and the massacres and human dislocation that followed were devastating. It was in the wake of these disasters of biblical proportion that the mechanisms emerged that would put the holy war on hold. The surviving rabbis, it appears, felt the need to find a way to overturn, abrogate, or cancel the paradigm that expected militant, activist piety to lead to military success.

THE ABOLITION OF A BIBLICAL INSTITUTION

The rabbinic sages responded to the crises in a variety of ways, among which were to develop two symbolic paradigms to counter the expecta- tion that divinely authorized military success would establish Jewish independence. One paradigm defined holy war in a way that made it virtually impossible to apply. The other detailed a delicate relationship between exile and redemption whereby Jews had virtually no option other than to accept their divinely ordained fate to live under the political hegemony of strangers.

5 The real name of Bar Kokhba was Shim'on Bar Kosva or Bar Kosiva (RDo t 12 pmnt, spelled alternatively 301D or inlO), probably pronounced "Kosiba" or "Kosiva." The two puns seem to have evolved in relation to the name depending on how he was viewed: Bar Kokhba ("son of the star" or "star man"-KoD I1:0 ) among those who attributed messianic status to him (in relation to Num. 24:17), and Bar Koziba (Wan' 13) among those who opposed him and later, those who suffered from the failure of the revolt ("son" or "man of lies," meaning "liar.").



Commanded and Discretionary Wars

In the first paradigm, found at the end of the eighth chapter of Mishnah Sotah, the rabbis condense the dense, complex, and varied expressions of holy war in the Bible into two sentences. Chapter eight provides significant detail in its discussion of the deferments to war mentioned briefly in Deut. 20:5-8. The last section of the chapter then contextualizes the discussion simply: "To what (types of wars) do these instructions apply? To a discretionary war (milchemet reshut), but in a commanded war (milchemet mitzvah) everyone must go forth, even a bridegroom from his chamber and a bride from her bridal pavilion (Mishnah, Sotah 8:7 [Cf. Joel 2:16])."6 Israel's wars are thus divided into two types. Discretionary war allows for deferments from warring. Commanded or "mitzvah" war does not. The latter requires the participation of all Israel with no exceptions. But the mishnah never describes what kinds of wars were intended

by the terms "discretionary" or "commanded." This problem is addressed in the Gemaras of both the Jerusalem and the

Babylonian Talmuds-the two separate but related compendia containing records of some of the continuing discussion of the rabbis after the assembly and canonization of the Mishnah in circa 200 CE. According to Rabbi Hisda's understanding of the Mishnah as expressed in the Palestinian Talmud (Sota 8:10), discretionary war refers either to the specific wars initiated independently by King David or to wars in general that were initiated by Israel against an enemy. Commanded war refers to the wars initiated by Joshua specifically in response to God's command or a war in which the enemy initiates against Israel. In the Babylonian Talmud (Sota 44b), Rava is cited to report that Joshua's wars of conquest were considered by everyone to be required (or commanded), whereas the wars of the House of David for (territorial) expansion were considered by everyone to be discretionary.

This is virtually the end of the Talmudic discussion.7 However one reads the two Talmuds' expanded discussion of the Mishnah, holy war- meaning war commanded by God ("war of mitzvah")-could no longer be initiated by Israel because initiated holy war became, by definition, limited to the wars or conquests of Joshua in response to the divine

6 The section continues with a slight variant of the same statement ("Rabbi Yehudah said: To what do these instructions apply? To a commanded war, but in a required war everyone must go forth, even a bridegroom from his chamber and a bride from her bridal pavilion"), but the variation in terminology and the possible reasons for its inclusion need not occupy us here. For more discussion on this, see Firestone (forthcoming).

7 But not discussion on the Talmudic discussion, which continues to this day. For only a casual sample of contemporary articles in English (very many more exist in Hebrew), see Newman (1968), Bleich (1979, 1983), Inbar (1987) and Schachter (1988).



command. The terminology in the two Talmuds is quite specific: milcha- mot yehoshua likhbosh (the wars of Joshua to conquer) in the Babylonian Talmud and milchemet yehoshua (Joshua's war) in the Palestinian Tal- mud. Henceforth, the only conceivable kind of Jewish holy war could be defensive, but even that rendering is found only in the Jerusalem Talmud and absent from the Babylonian Talmud, the latter being the authoritative work upon which most Jewish law is constructed.8 Discretionary war could still be sanctioned if the proper procedures for initiation were followed. These included the requirement that the Jewish king obtain approval from the Great Sanhedrin and a positive response after consult- ing the oracle of the priestly urim vetumim (BT Berakhot 3b, Sanhedrin 16b), but this kind of warring was highly limited. The dangerous wild card of holy war, a full mustering of fighters in total war for which no deferments were allowed, was thus removed, for all intents and purposes, from the real-time repertoire of rabbinic Judaism.'

The Three Vows

The second rabbinic paradigm is the story of the "Three Vows" (Ketubot 110b-11 la, paralleled in the Song of Songs Rabbah 2:7; Ravitzky 1997: 211-34). Through this construct, the rabbis discouraged mass movements that might instigate a backlash by the various Gentile hege- monies under which the Jews lived after the destruction of the second Jerusalem Temple. The Three Vows refer to a phrase occurring three times in the Song of Songs, I make you swear, o daughters of erusalem, by the gazelles and by the hinds of the field, do not wake or rouse love until it is wished (Song of Songs 2:7, 3:5, 8:4).

The general rabbinic understanding of the repeated phrase is that God is making the daughters of Jerusalem, a metaphor for Israel, swear not to wake or rouse love-understood as attempting to bring the messiah-until it is wished, meaning until God decides the time is right. Attempting to bring messiah through human initiation rather than wait- ing patiently for God to do so is sometimes called "forcing God's hand," which would only bring God's wrath and further disasters for the Jewish people. The discussion articulated in this Talmudic pericope became symbolic for Jews for well over a millennium.

8 Maimonides (d. 1204), however, formalizes the notion of defensive war as a category of mitzvah war in his Mishneh Torah, melakhim 5:1.

9 Holy war remained alive and well in the fantasy world of rabbinic Judaism but hardly a possibility in real time. There were, nevertheless, a few historical exceptions to the Jewish rejection of organized military adventures, such as the militant Khazar kingdom and the messianic warrior Abu Isa al-Isfahani, but neither seem to have been part of the world of rabbinic Judaism.



Rabbi Yose in the name of Rabbi Hanina said: Why are there these three vows [in the Song of Songs]? One [teaches] that Israel should not go up [to the Land of Israel] in a wall (bechomah), in one the Holy One made Israel swear that they would not rebel against the nations of the world, and in one the Holy One made the nations of the world swear that they would not subjugate Israel too harshly.

The repeated phrase of the three vows in the Song of Songs thus articu- lates three requirements. Two relate to Israel and one to the rest of the world. The second and third requirements are quite clear, but "ascension in a wall" is not immediately comprehensible.

Rashi (d. 1104), the great medieval Talmud commentator, explains the phrase simply as meaning ascension by force (beyad chazaqah). Rashi's definition can refer to the use of force in a variety of ways. One is in the sense of Israel ascending to the Land of Israel through its own force of numbers, ascending virtually as a wall of humanity (bechomah). Another way to understand both Rashi's comment and the Talmudic text itself is that Israel

is forbidden to go out "against the wall" (bachomah) established by God to prevent mass immigration to the Land of Israel, and it is not always clear which of these understandings is intended by later commentators. The different meanings would be clarified through vocalization (bechomah referring to the first interpretation and bachomah to the second), but the unpointed texts of both the Talmud and Rashi do not provide a hint for us.'1

A second interpretation of the pericope, which is often combined with the view of R. Yose in the name of R. Hanina cited in the paragraph above, multiplies the three vows by two, based on the two commands in the Song of Songs verses: do not wake and do not rouse love. The result is the following exegesis:

Rabbi Zeira: This must be explained according to Rabbi Levi who said: Why are there these six vows? Three we just mentioned, and [three] others: That they shall not reveal the End, that they not postpone the End, and that they not reveal the secret to the Gentiles. [It is written] by the gazelles or by hinds of the field. Rabbi Elazar said [with regard to this phrase, that God intended the following]: If you carry out the vow, good. But if not, I will permit your flesh [to be consumed] like [that of] gazelles or hinds of the field.

Both interpretations came to be understood in classical rabbinic thought as expressing the divine will that Israel not ascend to the Land of Israel en masse ("ascension" or "going up" refers to moving from outside the Land

0 I am grateful to the anonymous JAAR reviewer for calling this to my attention.



of Israel to within the biblical borders, from whence the modem Hebrew term for emigration to the State of Israel, 'aliyah). Neither may they rebel against their inferior position under the rule of Gentiles. In response, God will not allow the Gentiles to persecute the Jews "overly much" (yoter midday). But if the Jews would not agree to these terms, then they would be subject to divinely authorized violence by the hands of the Gentiles, permitting

their "flesh [to be consumed] like [that of] gazelles or hinds of the field." These words should not be read out of context, for the Three Vows

construct occurs within a Talmudic pericope that also conveys many statements strongly supporting living in the Land of Israel. These include such famous words as "anyone who lives in the Land of Israel is like one for whom there is a God, while anyone who lives outside the Land is like one who has no God..." or the statement that one should prefer living in the Land of Israel even among idolaters to living outside the Land of Israel, even among Jews (Ketubot 110b). But after these pro-Land of Israel statements are well articulated, the Three Vows contextualize them by suggesting that living within the Land of Israel is good, but rebelling against the exilic condition by moving to the Land of Israel en masse is so dangerous that it must be forbidden."

MEDIEVAL AND MODERN DEVELOPMENTS

These two symbolic paradigms-the division of Israel's wars into "commanded" and "discretionary" and the Three Vows-remained deeply interrelated in rabbinic discourse throughout the medieval and modern periods. The prohibitions against "going up in a wall" and "rebelling against the Gentiles" were not considered by the sages as having been articulated as direct divine commandments per se, though they were often considered as authoritative (Breuer 1979: 49-57). Neverthe- less, when Maimonides assembled his Book of Commandments in which he accounts for the 613 commandments assumed by rabbinic tradition to have been given by God in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 87a), he did not include the Three Vows,12

" I feel compelled to clarify here that the discussions in traditional Jewish sources today cite a much broader range of opinions and issues that treat the issue of living within or outside the borders of the Land of Israel, such as the relative merit or even possibility of engaging in certain commandments. The discussions are wide ranging and valuable, but they extend beyond the scope of this particular investigation.

12 Maimonides did invoke the Three Vows in his letter to the Yemen, however. He was trying to dissuade the agitated Jewish community of Yemen from following a messianic pretender (Halkin and Hartman 1985: 130-1).



nor did he list conquest of the Land of Israel as a commanded war despite the numerous divine messages in the Torah (uttered in the imperative voice) to capture and settle the Land. Neither did Nahmanides (d. 1270) include a refutation of the vows when, in his critique of Maimonides, he demilitarized conquest by claiming that the simple act of moving to the Land of Israel and settling there was a form of commanded war;'3 to Nahmanides it is an eternal commandment incumbent upon every Jew in every generation.'4 Maimonides did not include conquest of the Land of Israel, "commanded war," or even settlement of the Land of Israel in his Book of Commandments. Nahmanides considered even the simple act of establishing a household in the Land of Israel to be a form of commanded war.

The contrary positions of Maimonides and Nahmanides became classic arguments that have been studied in yeshivas for generations. Students of Maimonides have puzzled over his omission of the command to conquer the Land of Israel in his authoritative list of commandments. Nah-

manides's argument for the eternal requirement to settle the Land of Israel as a form of commanded war has emerged as the standard-bearer for those who would settle all of the biblical lands many generations later. The themes raised by their disagreement (Hebrew, machaloqet) have become classic symbols around which discussion continues to take place today.

Aviezer Ravitzky has shown how medieval Jews were divided over moving to the Land of Israel and settling it. Those who opposed it made the Land of Israel a symbolic, messianic category that remained off limits to Jews in "real time." One must wait patiently until God decides the time is right. The repeated phrase was understood by this group to mean that God made Israel swear not to rebel against the Gentile nations or move en masse to the Land of Israel until the unknown and unknowable time when God

would bring the messiah: I make you swear, o daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and by the hinds of the field, do not wake or rouse love until it is wished.

On the contrary, medieval proponents of relocation to the Land of Israel attempted to dissociate the Land of Israel from any sense of messianism and constructed barriers between their immigration and any expecta- tions of redemption. Their move was not "in order to conquer" nor was it a mass immigration or forceful ascension "in a wall" (Ravitzky 1997: 221).

Leaders of premodern Jewish communities observed occasional catastrophes that resulted from Jewish messianic mass movements, such

13 Nahmanides did refer to The Vows when he explained that many Israelite tribes did not wish to return to the Land of Israel under Ezra from Babylonian exile because "they did not wish to force the End" (Chavel 1962: 1:274).

14 Nahmanides, Hasagot, or "Comments" on Maimonides' Book of Commandments, positive #4 (found in the traditional Hebrew folio editions).



as the devastating Sabbatean movement (1665-66). These often included an element that could be considered rebellion against Gentile "nations of the world," and they also included collective immigration to the traditional Land of Israel ("ascending in a wall"). When the early Zionists proposed mass emigrations to Palestine under Turkish and then British Mandate rule, therefore, many in the Orthodox Jewish community condemned the movement as dangerous and threatening to the well-being of the Jewish community using traditional arguments to support their case (Light for the Righteous 1900, Position of the Rabbis 1902). Anti-Zionism included Reform and secular Jewish seekers of emancipation as well as Orthodox Jews, but their positions of course did not rely on such traditional arguments.

THE PROBLEM OF THE VOWS FOR RELIGIOUS ZIONISM

Although most of the earliest Zionists were traditional, observant Jews, within a short period the leadership and then the rank-and-file of the Zionist movement were avowedly secular (Luz 1988: 66-7, 1998: 48). The Three Vows were meaningless to secular Zionists, but they remained of great importance, even if considered a hindrance, to the religiously Orthodox Zionist minority. The burden of proof was upon them to demonstrate to their non- or anti-Zionist Orthodox compatriots that Zionism would not threaten the Jewish people with the wrath of God for disobey- ing a divine injunction against rebellion and mass immigration. They claimed that their intention was not to hasten the coming of the messiah but, rather, merely to rescue the miserable Jews of Eastern Europe who were experiencing the violence of overt anti-Semitism.

But the powerful redemptive symbols of Zionism, such as "ascension" to the Land of Israel, the blooming of the deserts and so forth, were deeply imbedded in religious literary topoi associated with messianism and the End of Days. Arthur Hertzberg made clear in his path-breaking book, The Zionist Idea (1959), that classical secular Zionism was actually a kind of secular messianism-so much the more so among Zionists who were living traditional religious Judaism.

Nevertheless, the truly messianic nature of what has come to be known as "Religious Zionism"'5 only became publicly acknowledged by

15 One can argue that even secular Zionism, as a neomessianic movement, is in some way "religious." Other expressions of Zionism outside the religiously Orthodox camp are admittedly religious, such as those that are articulated by the "Masorti" Movement (Conservative) or the "Movement for Progressive Judaism in Israel" (Reform). And traditional secular Zionism of the socialist variety might fairly be called politically Orthodox. But conventional ascription applies the term "Religious Zionism" to the religious Orthodox Zionist camp.



Religious Zionists (or perhaps only became recognized by most) after what was considered the divine miracle of victory in the June war of 1967. Until 1967, the intellectual organs of Religious Zionism rarely suggested that the establishment of the State of Israel was part of the divine plan that would culminate in the messianic coming. Immediately after the victory, it seemed as if a dam had burst and everyone in the Religious Zionist camp was writing about the beginning of messianic redemption. Some of the many issues that the 1967 war raised included questions about the nature of the Zionist enterprise as articulated by the role of the State, the significance of the newly acquired territories and their settlement by Jews, and the meaning of the Israeli army.

THLE THREE VOWS'` AND MIVODERU N iVilESSiANISMNV

The neomessianic nature of Zionism, whether of the socialist, revisionist, religious, or most other expressions, has been recognized for decades. Although the immediate impetus for the emergence of the Jew- ish nationalist movement was indeed modernity and the attractiveness of secular nationalism for solving the "Jewish Problem" (Hertzberg), the religious (or at least transsecular) core of Jewish nationalism has come to the fore through the writings and actions of Religious Zionists, "migrat- ing" the ideology of the movement from a largely secular consciousness to an increasingly religious one.

The problematic for the purpose of this article is the modern national messianism articulated by religiously Orthodox Zionists and its association with the revitalization of holy war paradigms. The issues of national messianism and war are not infrequently articulated in the written discourse of Religious Zionism, especially after the 1967 war, in terms of the Three Vows. For this discourse, one recurring question is whether what became clearly recognized as breaking the two vows made incumbent upon Israel, that is, the prohibition against mass immigration of Jews to Israel through the Zionist Movement ("ascension in a wall"), and the State of Israel setting its own independent political course often directly against the will of the United Nations ("rebellion against the nations"), is justified in a cosmic sense by the Gentiles' breaking of their vow not to subjugate (or persecute-yishta'abdu) the Jews too much in the modern period, and particularly during the Holocaust.

This is not an idle question from the perspective of traditional Jews. For many, the stakes are extremely high. What is in the balance is the possible redemption of the Jewish people or possibly another catastrophe along the lines of the destructions of the two Jerusalem Temples and disaster of the Bar Kokhba Rebellion. Perhaps the best way to imagine the



possible negative outcome of the wrong interpretation is another Holo- caust, however one might imagine such a forbidden thought.

In other words, does Gentile persecution of Jews in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries represent an annulment of the Jewish promise to God for self-restraint symbolized by the Three Vows? Might such an end to Jewish self-restraint even represent the beginning of the messianic process leading to a final redemption? Or, does the meaning of modern European persecution of Jews lie elsewhere? Could the persecution of Jews in the modern period represent, say, a divine warning to the Jewish people to refrain from forming liberal religious or secular movements or, simply, to refrain from modernizing in any manner? If so, then perhaps early Zionism was only another forbidden attempt to "force God's hand," which provoked the horror of the Holocaust. And perhaps the establishment of the State and post-1967 conquest, territorial expansion, and settlement represent yet more human attempts to rebel against God and will bring yet another and perhaps final disaster to the Jewish people.

Alternatively, would the failure of the Jewish people to be obedient to God's national messianic design manifest by the 1967 war in itself bring destruction? In other words, the miracle of the "6-Days War" is considered by some to be a sign that God designed for Israel to conquer and settle all of the Bible Land of Israel, including those lands extending far beyond the borders established by the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 or armistice agreements following the 1948 war. Failure to carry out the divine will could provoke God's wrath.

The intensity that we witness in the current climate, particularly among the ultranationalist Orthodox who are engaged personally in the "conquest" of settling all of the Land of Israel, cannot be found in writings on the topic before the paradigm shift of the 1967 war. Such religious militancy was simply inconceivable before that watershed event.

Rabbi Yisachar Shlomo Teichtel referred to the Three Vows in his

book, Em HaBanim Semeychah, written in 1943 during the Holocaust, which he witnessed from Budapest. Two years after writing his book, he died in a boxcar on his way to a death camp.16 Teichtel is notable because he changed course radically from anti-Zionism as a result of his horren- dous experience. He called for a concerted effort to settle the Land of Israel and for Jews to relearn the ways of war and defense. According to Teichtel, the calamities brought upon the Jews were God's admonition

16 Jerusalem, Israel: Kol Mevaser, 1998. Translated by Pesach Schindler as Restoration of Zion as a Response During the Holocaust. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1999. Citations are from the Hebrew edition.



not to become accustomed to exile. But Israel had become so accustomed

to exile that it could not even understand that it was being punished for rejecting the Land and having no faith in God's promise. "[W]e do not feel that sin is causing our suffering for so long, but it is because we do not push ourselves to return to the Land of our ancestors" (Teichtel 1999: 8). He considered the prohibition against "ascending in a wall" to mean that ". . .we are to use the natural means available to us, such as requesting that the rulers have mercy on us to end our exile and to conquer the Land through [legal] monetary acquisition.. .but not to rely on miracles" (Teichtel 1999: 194-5). This is a surprising reversal of the traditional position that the Three Vows were understood as a requirement not to engage in natural means to ascend to the Land but rather to wait for the miracle of God's messianic redemption. Teichtel, in contrast, restated the famous position of Nahmanides that a divine commandment obligated every individual to ascend and settle the Land of Israel (1999: 307-8).

Four years later, in 1947, when war between Jews and Arabs seemed inevitable, Rabbi Isaac HaLevi Herzog (d. 1959), the chief rabbi of Pales- tine under the British Mandate and the first chief Ashkenazic rabbi of the

State of Israel, took a similar position. In a responsum to the question as to whether the Three Vows remain in force, he responded:

There is no ruling (halakhah) that forbids us from establishing a Jewish State with the permission of the nations (bireshut ha'umot) before the coming of the Redeemer.. .The Three Vows have validity, in my opin- ion, only in relation to the nations that rule over the Land of Israel. This is quite clear, that [the prohibition] not to rebel against the nations of the world has no validity in relation to the nations that do not rule,17 for this is not their business. (Herzog n.d.: 1:121).18

He added that Jews who fought for the British mandatory authorities in Palestine against the enemies of Britain (and the Jews) in World War II did not transgress the Torah command against rebelling against the Gentiles. On the contrary, joining in the war on the side of the nations in power over the Land of Israel against ". . .the nations that do not have power over Israel...is not rebellion but rather, war, and it is not said that God made Israel swear not to war against the nations of the world."

17 This is a reference to the local Palestinian Arabs and neighboring Arab states. 18 This responsum appears in slightly different version in Herzog 1983:13 and Refael and Shragai

1988: 1:60f.



Herzog opens the way here for Orthodox Jews to volunteer to train and fight with the British army. Later, he authorized a military draft including the Orthodox on Jewish legal grounds, based on Maimonides' argument that war of defense lies within the category of commanded war (n.d.: 128). The wars for Israel's national independence were conceived purely as wars of defense. Induction into a Jewish army is therefore per- mitted for the modern State of Israel, for as we noted above from the Mishnah, "In a commanded war (milchemet mitzvah) everyone must go forth, even a bridegroom from his chamber and a bride from her bridal pavilion" (Sotah 8:7). In a discussion over Maimonides' decision to exclude the Three Vows from his compendium of official commandments, Herzog concluded that Israel had been released from its vows because the nations of the world had long before transgressed their vow not to oppress Israel too much (Refael and Shragai 1977: 1:62-3).

One of most venerable early thinkers in the postindependence activist religious Zionist camp was Rabbi Sha'ul Yisraeli (d. 1995), who in the 1950s was one of the first to write seriously and openly about both the halakhic and transcendent meaning of the Jewish State. Like most religious Zionists, he considered the international political process to be a series of divinely established stepping stones along the path to redemption. Decisions of the League of Nations, the United Nations, and even individual governments were read as divine signs of impending salvation.

In a complex examination of the positions of earlier authorities, Yisraeli sought to demonstrate how the Nahmanidean position equating the commandment of conquest of the land with settlement remained in force and would eventuate in this epoch with the final divine redemption of Israel [the people]. Mass ascension to Palestine and, later, the State of Israel was part of the divine plan. As noted previously, the prohibition against ascending in a wall was defined by the authoritative medieval Ashkenazi commentator, Rashi, as "going up together by force" (yachad beyad chazaqah), which, according to Yisraeli, was neither the intent nor the modus operandi of the Zionist Movement. But in any case, when the United Nations authorized the Jews to establish a Jewish State and declare national independence that would open the gates of the State to mass emigration, the authority of the vow not "to ascend in a wall" had expired. Upon this expiration, all of Israel is required to engage in "conquest of the Land." The warning not to rebel against the nations of the world thus obtained only in the lands of the exile, but because of the United Nations declaration, fighting for a Jewish State in the Land of Israel was not rebellion (Axelrad 1993: 21, Yisraeli 1999: 31). The United Nations expressed God's will:



The establishment of the State in our days, which occurred according to the declaration of the nations to give the right to Israel, is the stage of which it is stated, 'until [God] pleases,' and it is the first stage in the way of [divine] redemption, through which a strong public and independent rule in the Land of Israel is the establishment of the kingdom of the King Messiah. (Israeli 35)

THE 1967 WAR

After the messianic suggestion associated with the conquest of most of the biblical Land of Israel in the 1967 war, Orthodox religious scholars, and particularly religious Zionist activists and thinkers, became deeply invested in legitimating the right for Israel to control those territories and in the legit- imacy of Jewish militancy in general. The causes of this are complex, but it is clear that many Orthodox thinkers began, only after 1967, to discover and cite a range of premodern thinkers and arguments that would support the messianic nature of the State of Israel. These include the view that not all

Jews are required to return to traditional Jewish religious practice in order for the messianic redemption to occur and that the great agricultural successes of the modern Jewish State are signs of the immanent salvation (Aviner 1983: 2:114-5, 119-20; Blumenfeld 1974: 151-5, Kasher 1977: 213- 28, Neria 1974: 149-80). Abraham Isaac Kook, who wrote about the messianic implications of the new Jewish settlements' agricultural attainments even before the Balfour Declaration, was an exception (Yaron 1991: 234-5).

Shortly after the 1967 war, Rabbi Shelomo Zalman Shragai, a stalwart activist in the religious Zionist Mizrachi organization from the 1920s through his brief stint as mayor of Jerusalem in the early 1950s, gave a speech before the World Congress of (Orthodox) Synagogue Representatives at the head- quarters of the Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel in Jerusalem, Heichal Shelomo. In that speech he said, "At this time when we have seen such miracles and wonders, the vow or what is called the 'Three Vows' has fallen and is

annulled." He exclaimed that the strength of Israel in the 1967 war

[S]hows that the Three Vows no longer exist.... We were witnesses in the Six Days War that God heard our prayers on Hoshana Rabba: 'Hos- hana of Three Hours,' for in the first three hours of the war we merited to get the better of our enemies, who said (Ps. 83:5) Come let us wipe them out as a nation, but after the war the people were awakened and said (Ps. 118:23) This was from God'9. . . . We must know that the

19 This Psalm is recited in the special thanksgiving service in the synagogue (Hallel) in great joy and song, and his use of the phrase recalls the full recitation of thanksgiving.


970 journal of the American Academy of Religion

continuation of the full redemption and the establishment of the shekhinah in the State of Israel is dependent on us, to the extent that we emigrate to the Land and fill it with Torah and commandments and add to its holiness the holiness of our lives in Torah and commandments. ... The

second thing we need to remember is that we must know that the divine presence (shekhinah) will return to its place only with the ascension of Jews as a wall (kachomah). (Shragai 1969: 276-7)

This reference to ascending "as a wall" needs closer examination. Recall that the Talmud section treating the Three Vows had the Hebrew rendering "in a wall" (bachomah). Shragai's rendering is "as a wall" (kachomah). The different prepositions might appear to have little significance, but each rendering actually references a different Talmudic subtext. The subtext to "in a wall" has been examined above. The subtext to "as a wall" is

a different pericope but one that treats the same subject of ascension to the Land of Israel.

Resh Lakish was swimming in the Jordan. Rabbah Bar Bar-Hana gave him a hand. He [Resh Lakish] said to him. God! I hate you! It is written (Song of Songs 8:9): If she be a wall, we will build upon her a turret of silver; if she be a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar. If you had made yourselves as a wall and had gone up altogether in the days of Ezra, you would be like silver that does not rot. But since you went up like doors, you are like a cedar that rots! (Yoma 9b).

Rabba bar Bar Hana was a Babylonian sage who went to the Land of Israel to study but then returned to Mesopotamia, where he reportedly suffered personally from persecutions by the ruling Sassanian Empire. Resh Lakish was a Palestinian contemporary of bar Bar Hana who had been a gladiator prior to having returned to his religious roots and become a religious sage. He was known to have harshly criticized his Babylonian colleagues for not returning to the Land of Israel when allowed by the Persian emperor in the fifth century, BCE. According to his Resh Lakish's thinking, had enough Jews remained in or returned to Judea before the coming of the Romans, they would have succeeded in their rebellion and remained an independent polity in their land. (BT Kiddushin 39b, JT Berachot 2:5(3))

"In a wall" thus refers to the prohibition against ascending to the Land of Israel en masse. "As a wall" as referenced in Yoma 9b refers to a missed

opportunity. If Shragai was referencing Resh Lakish's statement with this in mind, then his use of the latter suggests that he considered the missed opportunity of previous eras to be correctable in his own time by a mass movement of Jews to the Jewish State. "As a wall" in the context of Yoma 9b,



and thus through exegetical extension in other contexts as well, evokes a sense of Jewish power.20

Despite the increased messianic feeling associated with the conquest and successes of the Jewish armies of the modern State of Israel, establishment rabbis remained careful with their interpretation of the Three Vows. The chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces and later chief Ash-

kenazi rabbi of Israel, Shelomo Goren (d. 1995), provides three reasons for the cancellation of the force of the Three Vows, two of which rely on earlier authorities (1996: 36-42).

For the first, Rabbi Goren cites Rabbi Chayim Vital (d. 1620), the stu- dent of Rabbi Moses Alshekh and the chief disciple and amanuensis of the great mystic, Rabbi Isaac Luria, who placed a time limit of one thou- sand years on the vow, after which it was no longer operational. Goren cites Rabbi Meir Simchah HaCohen of Dvinsk (d. 1926) for the second reason that the Three Vows are no longer in force: the Allied Powers' 1920 confirmation in San Remo of the Balfour Declaration concerning the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine was a public affirmation that henceforth, mass immigration to Palestine could no longer be considered rebellion against the nations. The third reason is based on the requirement for the Jewish people to defend themselves from attack, ". . .for the vow was only against a war of conquest [initiated] by us from outside, and not a defensive war, which is considered a commanded war to which all [must] go out to fight, even a bridegroom from his chamber and a bride from her wedding canopy. The vow does not apply in any way to a war of survival such as this" (Goren 1996, 42).

Rabbi Goren cites Chayim Vital further to provide support for the Zionist project as a whole. Vital suggested that God will be willing to bring redemption only after the Jewish people communicate their intense desire for it: "do not wake or rouse love until it is wished, for the sparks of the (divine) redemption need to be awakened by the spiritual will of the people, as it is written there, it is for this reason that I make you swear o daughters of Jerusalem." As Goren understood Vital, therefore, when Israel is truly ready and its desire is great enough, then Israel itself will awaken the desire of God to bring the divine redemption (1999: 23). What does not need to be said by Rabbi Goren is that the Zionist project and the very existence of a vibrant Jewish State are demonstrations of

20 It is not absolutely clear that this subtlety would have been noted by Rabbi Shragai's audience, but there is no doubt that Shragai was familiar with the contextual subtleties. There are other attempts to understand the difference between the two renderings of "in a wall" and "as a wall" as well. Rabbi Ya'qov Ariel, for example, understands "in a wall" to mean "forcibly" and "as a wall" to mean en masse (Ariel 2003: 17, n. 1).



Israel's readiness and desire and that it has reached a point where it is indeed bringing on the final process of redemption.

THE REMILITARIZATION OF CONQUEST

Even after 1967, however, the Three Vows continued to have some force, and yeshivah students raised the question of whether they applied to the contemporary situation. Non- or anti-Zionist Orthodox rabbis continued to write and republish pamphlets and tracts condemning Zionism, and the ammunition of the Three Vows remained a powerful part of the anti-Zionist arsenal (Teitelbaum 1982). Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook (d. 1982), the only child of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (the first chief rabbi of Palestine under the British Mandate Authority), became the most symbolic leader of the activist camp of religious Zionists. Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah, as he is often called, was the head of Mosad HaRav, which became the intellectual center of activist Religious Zionism not long before the 1967 war (Aaronoff 1985, Aran 1990, Friedman 1983).

Tzvi Yehudah Kook was not an original thinker, but through a certain charisma and especially his reputation as the person most intimately familiar with the words and writings of his famous and extremely influential father, he became influential himself and came to symbolize a messianic activist approach to Religious Zionism. His yeshiva students strove to live deeply religious lives through carrying out the activist "settlement = conquest" program of Nahmanides. They were also powerfully influenced by the earlier generations of secular-messianist Zionist pioneers who settled the land by building villages and kibbutzim even in the face of Arab and British Mandate Authority opposition. Here was conquest revisited-conquest in a new garb. It combined the spirituality and religiosity of religious orthodoxy with the militant activism and land centeredness of socialist Zionism. It was a return to the Land in both a

Nahmanidean and Gordonean sense (Hertzberg: 368-86). In the early period of the vitalization of Religious Zionism in Kook's

yeshiva and its offspring before the 1967 war, this invigorated sense of Nahmanidian-Gordonean conquest was activist but nonviolent. It was associated with the agricultural settlements of the religious kibbutz and moshav movements and with a revitalization of Jewish learning. After the 1967 war it became increasingly energized and aggressive. An organized political-religious movement emerged from the ideological mixture of religious orthodoxy and secular militant activism, and it took off especially in the aftermath of the October war of 1973, after which there was increased discussion in Israel about returning the territories conquered in the 1967 war. This threat of returning territories, and particularly the



biblical patrimony of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), caused tre- mendous consternation within this community.

When asked about the Three Vows shortly before the 1973 war, Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah gave the following answer (Kook 1989-1997: 3:217-8).21

With regard to the rebellion against the nations of the world, when we were forced to expel English rule from here it was not rebellion against them, for they were not the legal rulers over our land. Rather [they were] temporary mandatory authorities [who were here] in order to prepare the rule of the People of Israel in its land as per the decision of the League of Nations, according to the word of God in the Bible. So when they abused that role, their time had arrived to depart from here. Lastly, ascension in a wall,22 about which we have been warned: this wall is nothing but the rule of the nations over our land and the place of our Temple. As long as that wall stands, [it does so] through the divine decree of exile. But in the course of the results of the revealed End [of history (haqetz hameguleh)], it was annulled and this wall fell, for 'the mouth that forbids is the mouth that permits.'23 The Master of the Universe who set up this wall like 'an iron partition that divides Israel from its Father in Heaven,'24 is the one who annulled and took down that wall. And since there is no wall, there is no delay. The issue of ascension in a wall is like the one who vows not to enter a house. When the house

falls down, he does not need an [official] annulment of his vow.25

Kook equates the proverbial wall of the Three Vows with foreign rule over the Land of Israel. God ordained this foreign rule in the past, but following Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, Kook claims that God has since annulled the authority of foreign rule. This, according to both Yisraeli and Kook, can be proven from the very establishment of a Jewish polity in the State of Israel. His use of the term "iron partition" (mechitzah shel barzel) evokes the image referenced in the Talmud of a powerful barrier that nevertheless cannot obstruct the relationship between God and the Jews: "...even an iron partition cannot divide between Israel and its Father in Heaven." Thus, the iron partition of foreign rule or even contemporary foreign interference cannot keep the Jews back from their divinely ordained birthright, the Land of Israel.

21 Originally published in HaTzofeh, the daily Hebrew newspaper of the Israeli National Religious Party, September 15, 1973, one month before the 1973 War.

22 Or perhaps more likely here, "against the wall." 23 A reference to God (this is a citation from the Jerusalem Talmud, Terumot, chapter 9). 24 A slight variation from the Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 85b and Sota 38a. 25 Cf. Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah, 216:6.



Immediately after the 1973 war, activists accelerated the pace of settlement activity under the mixed messages given by the government regarding their endorsement and the legality of these actions. The settlement movement became known as Gush Emunim, the "Faithful Block." That name has been discarded, but it still typifies what is called today the Settler Movement (Aran 1990). The ideological mixture of religious orthodoxy and secular militant activism created an energetic and effec- tive movement. Both components were neomessianic. Combined, traditional religion and modern utopian nationalism created a powerful, activist and thoroughly postmodern messianism.

One result of the emergence of Gush Emunim after 1973 and the Set- tler Movement that perpetuated the Gush's ideals was that the Three Vows have been annulled for all intents and purposes. Those few in the Orthodox Jewish world who would disagree have long been over- whelmed by the fervor that grew out of the 1967 war and especially the feverish activism that emerged after the 1973 war.

"JEWISH" ZIONISM

Even the failure of the 1973 war was not a major setback to the tre- mendous growth of messianism that blossomed in the wake of the 1967 war. Ironically, the 1973 war energized the movement. It marked a watershed in the fall of socialist Zionism from ideological dominance in the Jewish State and the rise of "Jewish" Zionism. Of course all expressions of Zionism are Jewish. Zionism is, by definition, a Jewish nationalist movement. But the ideological force of the dominant socialist expressions of Zionism was, theoretically, economic and social in nature, while the coa- lition of ideological forces driving the "Jewish Zionisms" of the Settler Movement emerged out of a Jewish religious or neoreligious base, even among many Jews who would not define themselves as religiously observant.

As the universal secular humanistic ideologies emerging out of a socialist vision declined, the inward-looking beliefs of a religious vision became increasingly instrumental in forming a new range of Israeli nationalist ideologies. Zionism, always a movement of Jewish nationalism, thus adjusted and evolved from an avowedly secular movement in the beginning of the twentieth century to an increasing religious one by its end. This meant, among other things, an increase in religious terminology related to the Zionist project. In some cases, the earlier secularizing of religious terminology that was so much a part of the secular Zionist program was reversed. The concept of "conquest of the land" (kibbush ha'aretz), for example, had earlier been applied by secular



revisionist and socialist Zionists to their own political ideologies, such as a return to agriculture (Shapira 1992). In the discourse of the new "Jew- ish" Zionisms, conquest hearkens back to the Talmudic rendering of Joshua's conquest of the Land of Canaan. But unlike the Talmudic references to Joshua's conquest that were intended to limit the application of divinely authorized war and thereby prevent dangerous attempts to apply holy war in contemporary times, those same references came to be read as merely one example, and not a limitation, of divinely sanctioned conquest. In the new Jewish Zionisms, the advances marked by the establishment of the State, the success in conquering the biblical lands in the 1967 war, and the establishment of Jewish settlements in these areas are all expressions of divinely ordained victory.

During the period from 1967 into the 1980s, the semantic significance of "conquest" changed even beyond that of the Talmudic texts. Conquest became more than agriculture, more than settlement and activism, and more than the conquest of the Land of Israel by Joshua. The causes of this change are manifold and include the decline of secular ideologies, the rise in yeshivah education among religious Zionists, the great personal investment of religiously observant Israelis in settling land and building communities in the territories conquered in 1967, the rise of violent resistance among Palestinians living in those territories and the parallel rise in deaths among Jewish settlers, and frustration at the lack of recognition both within the large secular and secularizing Israeli public and in the West in general (Karpel 2003). By the mid-1980s, particularly among the more activist groups within the Settler Movement, conquest had taken on a far more aggressive and militant tone, to such an extent that it had become transformed into an earlier, pre-Zionist and, indeed, prerabbinic biblical sense of divinely ordained, aggressive, unlimited military conquest of the Land of Israel. Indeed, and ironically, the very act of conquest itself had become one sign of the coming divine redemption.

This discourse of militant and military conquest is especially promi- nent in the more radical writings coming out of the movement. Many of these were collected into the short-lived motivational magazines, Artzi and Tzefiyah. But the language and the idea of military conquest in general have increasingly infiltrated the language of Zionist thinkers and teachers of the new pioneers that make up the Settler Movement and its supporters, and subsequently, increasingly in Zionist discourse in general.

CONQUEST AS "HOLY WAR"

This new discourse of conquest is a discourse of "holy war." Within a significant line of thinking among settler theorists is the view, simply,



that virtually any war engaged by Israel is sanctified. In reference to the 1973 war, the now more moderate activist Yehudah Amital argued:

[t]his war is a commanded war in two respects - from the standpoint of 'saving Israel from the hand of an [attacking] enemy (Maimonides). .. and war for the Land of Israel even without a danger of extermination is a commanded war .... Every war of Israel is a war for the unity of God. .. .26 Israel represents by its very existence the divine concept of the unity of God and the divine way of righteousness and justice. The meaning of the victory of Israel is the victory of the divine concept, and also, heaven forbid, the opposite. (18-9, 55-61)

The Talmud does indeed consider some properly initiated discretionary wars to be divinely sanctioned, but not any war in which Israel is engaged, and certainly any full mustering of combatants in total war is divinely authorized only in "commanded war" (war of mitzvah). This limits "holy war" in premodern traditional Judaism, and the Talmud divides such wars into only two types-wars of defense and the one war of conquest, namely, Joshua's conquest of the land of Israel.

In a different excursus on commanded wars, Yitzhaq Kaufman extends the category by listing nine different subcategories, based on the premise suggested in the Palestinian Talmud, that defensive war (war in which the enemy initiates against Israel) is commanded war for which there can be no deferments (1992: 5-6). These include, among others, preemptive attack against a threatening enemy who is liable to cause Israeli casualties. Kaufman defines any war over sections defined biblically as the Land of Israel to be commanded war, thus raising the bar far above the limitation suggested by both Talmuds. "According to the legal scholars (leda'at haposkim), any war to conquer sections of the Land of Israel for the purpose of keeping them in our hands (and certainly with the goal of keeping the sections of the Land in which we are already settled) is considered commanded war based on the commandment of settling the Land of Israel (1992: 7-10)."

Not all thinkers and teachers among the Settler Movement take a militant position on the concept of "conquest," but all relate their position to the classic statement in Nahmanides' commentary to Maimonides' Book of Commandments. Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitz, the head of the hes- der yeshivah "Birkat Moshe," does not read Nahmanides to mean that military conquest of the Land of Israel is commanded war (1994: 180-6, 1994: 3-19). Hearkening back to the view of the Talmud, he understands

26 This is based on Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Kings 7:15.



commanded war to have been limited to the military conquest of Joshua, by virtue of it being a command of the hour (hora'at sha'ah). Com- manded war as an initiated engagement (as opposed to defense against an attack), therefore, is limited by him to that occasion only and does not represent an eternal command. He must therefore redefine the term "conquest" not to mean war but rather acquisition. War in and of itself is forbidden. An exception was made for the Joshua's conquest, but only at that particular time. The eternal command, then, is settling the land with the purpose of gaining ownership and control over it. It is not a military conquest.

This position has stimulated a reaction among many thinkers in the activist camp. Rabbi Ya'qov Ariel, for example, repeatedly refutes Rabinovitz's understanding of Nahmanides, claiming that Rabinovitz's position is an innovation (chiddush) and that he does not read Nahmanides correctly or follow the tradition properly: "...anyone who takes the words of Nahmanides out of context is himself responsible for the idea" (Ariel 1984, 2003: 26-32).

These extensions of the category of commanded war, and the arguments that counter them, all make sense within particular social-historical contexts. It must be kept in mind that they represent only a part of one sector of modern Judaism. The traditional Jewish doctrine of war remains a work in process. It has not yet been rewritten but is rather being shaped in this generation because historical reality requires it. It must also be kept in mind that "tradition" itself is merely an honorific abstract that designates the collective work of a community of people. Tradition evolves and develops because the people living within the sys- tem that it symbolizes are constantly weighing in on the issues that they consider important. Only in some future generation will we know where the evolving doctrine of Jewish holy war has alighted, after which it will again inevitably take to the air and reconfigure itself when the need arises.

CONCLUSION

We have observed how historical necessity prompted the sages of rabbinic Judaism to remove an important but dangerous and ultimately self-destructive aspect of biblical religion from application in the "real time" of their own history. But their program was only possible in and for a particular historical context. That context came to an end when the history of Jewish existential and political exile ended with the rise of modernity in the West and the concomitant emergence of nationalisms. These historical changes enabled and, it may be argued, required the



traditional Jewish community to reexamine the notion of commanded war in the light of the needs of the times.

The safeguards established by the sages of late antiquity may have never been intended to be permanent. However they were intended, their limitations have been removed from the notion of Jewish "holy war" by a significant and influential orthodox Jewish community but not without some difficulty and not by everybody. What appears clear from this examination of the evolution of holy war ideas in Judaism is not simply the relative meaning of scripture but the flexibility of tradition and its astute sensitivity to historical context as it struggles to make sense of sacred categories and sacred text. Strategies of interpretation tend to allow current need to prevail. It is all about exegesis, and exegesis is all about contemporary context.

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