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Authors: Lawrence Kaplan

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revolutionary who believed that the time of redemption had already begun. The First World War, so he wrote in the very midst of it, was proof of the suicidal bankruptcy of the Christian West. The time was at hand when the Jews would resume their ordained function of leading the world to live in the sight of God. The Zionist return to the land of Israel was the first act of the redemptive drama which would soon, in our day, climax with all the glories that had been foretold about the coming of the Messiah.
Abraham Isaac Kook was a gentle man. He sounded no call to arms, because that was against his temperament, and against the prevailing atmosphere in the Zionist movement as a whole. The dominant ideology among secular Zionists was humanistic socialism, which believed that the dream of national rebirth in the land would be achieved by building the new Jewish society. Jews thought of themselves, then, as defending their settlements in Palestine against Arab attack and not as conquerors of the land by force. But Kook was not merely reflecting the dominant mood of the moment. He was famous for his warm feelings toward even antireligious Zionists, the rebels against God who were creating the Kibbutzim and helping to revive the Hebrew language as a modern, secular tongue. But Kook was so accepting because he saw these "heretics" as unwitting instruments in the hand of God. He knew, as they did not, that they were really acting out some of the preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Reclaiming the land and reviving the language were sacred acts, the very sacredness of which would ultimately bend those who perform them to the will of God. As the Catholic writer Graham Greene once said, "God was writing straight through crooked lines." Kook knew what God was writing, and what time it was on His clock.
Kook's revolutionary idea, that he had perceived the divine intention in contemporary political acts, was a genie being let out of the bottle. Like all genies, it would be uncontrollable. If some political acts, such as building secular kibbutzim in the midst of hostile Arabs, were part of God's plan, it is at least conceivable that other acts, such as failing to defend an exposed kibbutz and abandoning it to Arabs, were against God's will. A secular authoritya Zionist central body or a Jewish state, not to speak of some Gentile power
 
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which might ordain such action could be defined as illegitimate. To oppose such decisions is not unlawful or even treasonable. On the contrary, it is the truest obedience to which man can be called. The gentle mystic can thus be transformed, at least by some of his followers, into a defiant armed prophet, which is exactly what happened to Abraham Isaac Kook. His son, Zvi Yehudah, eventually succeeded him as head of the
yeshivah
which the father had founded. The young men trained in this school affirmed their Zionism by serving in Israel's army, as the older, passivist fundamentalists would not. More and more the disciples of Zvi Yehudah Kook moved from training priests for future service in the Holy Temple to longing for, and being eager to fight for, the restoration of all of the Land of Israel to Jewish hands. Even before the Six-Day War in June 1967, Zvi Yehudah Kook exhorted his followers toward action in regaining Judea and Samaria. The very earth of these regions was longing, he asserted, to reencounter the Jews, the rightful inhabitants to whom God had promised all of the Holy Land. The victory in the Six-Day War was immediately understood by Kook, the younger, and by his followers as proof that the age of redemption had indeed arrived. All of the land was now in Jewish hands, and it was now necessary only to ensure that all of it was made inalienable. The "armed prophets" split into factions, but the movements to settle Judea and Samaria, the radicals who wanted to expel the Arabs, and those who plotted to dynamite the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount were all nourished from the same source: the teaching that the days of the Messiah were at hand, and that those who stood in the way of his coming should be removed or pushed aside.
In recent years, detailed accounts of the actions of the various factions among "armed prophets" have appeared with increasing frequency in a number of languages, especially in Hebrew and English. This essay is not an attempt at such a history but rather at an analysis of the underlying theological structure of the two major varieties of Jewish fundamentalism. From the perspective of the older, anti-Zionist fundamentalists, the new "armed prophets" are heretics. They are regularly denounced in the publications of the older group as reevoking the most dangerous of all the false messiahs, Shabtai Zvi, who appeared in the Eastern Mediterranean region in the middle
 
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of the seventeenth century. Zvi had announced that he knew the year of the redemption, 1666, and that, amidst divine miracles, he would lead the scattered Jewish people back to the land. Today's "armed prophets" are often called contemporary Shabtai Zvis by their religious critics.
For theoretical purposes, one question remains: Whom do the "armed prophets" represent? Do they come of a different socioeconomic class than the passivist fundamentalists, or than the rest of Jewish society in Israel or the Diaspora? Many analysts have maintained that revived Islamic fundamentalism represents the
suk,
the petty bourgeois who feel dispossessed in modern, technological society. Such class analysis simply does not work when applied to Jewish fundamentalism. In all its varieties, the camp of the "armed prophets" is no different in social composition than the rest of Israel. Indeed, the members of Gush Emunim and the "faithful" of the Temple Mount are as well educated, and as middle class as most Ashkenazi Israelis. The difference is ideological; it is a matter of belief and not an expression of class anger.
One must beware of equating the "armed prophets" with a much larger constituency in Israel that advocates toughness toward the Arabs. It is true that the majority of those who adhere to the hard line are poor Sephardim. It is they who hail General Sharon as "Arik, King of the Jews." Here class anger at the Ashkenazim, who long dominated the Israeli establishment, is indeed being expressed, along with many centuries of remembered hurt at the hands of the Arab majority in the North African lands from which most Sephardim emigrated. This political constituency, which is now the core of the Likud vote, is not to be equated with fundamentalists, old or new. Some of their religious leaders do belong to the "armed prophets," but their greatest spiritual authorities definitely do not. The most authoritative of all voices is that of Rabbi Ovadaih Yosef, who was once the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel. He continues to insist, and to instruct his political followers, that the time of the redemption is God's own secret, and that, in the here and now, it would be permissible for an Israeli government to return land in Judea and Samaria to Arab rule, if that would save lives. In Israel, the
shuq
does harbor class anger, and it votes for Ashkenazi leaders who are populists, but
 
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Shamir and even Sharon are secular nationalists and not religious fundamentalists. A populist leadership that was dovish could conceivably lead these elements in a different direction.
The "armed prophets" of Israel, and their supporters throughout the Jewish world, are a very nearly pure example of ideology in politics.
 
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9
Jewish Zealots: Conservative versus Innovative
Menachem Friedman
When zealot groups in Israel are discussed, two diametrically opposed religious-political viewpointsNeturei Karta (NK) and Gush Emunim (GE)are considered the two poles on Israel's religious map. In this chapter, these groups are shown to be manifestations of two types of fundamentalism: "conservative" in the case of NK, and "innovative" (or revolutionary) in the case of GE.
Because the concept of fundamentalism originally evolved within the framework of the history of Christianity,
1
the term cannot always be used in the same way with reference to non-Christian religions, such as Judaism or Islam. We use the term to define a religious outlook shared by a group of believers who base their belief on an ideal religious-political reality that has existed in the past or is expected to emerge in the future. Such realities are described in great detail in the religious literature. And the fundamentalist believer is obliged to use whatever religious and political means are necessary to actualize these realities in the here and now.
Both conservative and innovative fundamentalism refer to the traditional Jewish religious conception of Jewish history, which is said to be in a state of dialectical tension between "Exile" and "Redemption." However, although redemption signifies an ideal religious-political reality, paradoxically, within contemporary Orthodox Jewish society,
 
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the exilic pastparticularly that which evolved in Eastern Europeis viewed nostalgically as the very model of Jewish life. Thus, conservative fundamentalism looks to the past; any deviation from the idealized Jewish society, whether on the religious-social or religious-political plane, must be fought. From this perspective conservative fundamentalists condemn as "deviant" the Jewish reality in the State of Israel today.
Radical or innovative fundamentalism, on the other hand, sees a diametrically opposite "reality," one in which the State of Israel today exists in a condition that is categorically different from the exilic state. Although radical fundamentalists do not view the reality of the State of Israel today as a sign of complete redemption, they do perceive it as a signal that the period of the "footsteps of the Messiah" is beginning. Thus, images and precepts that are part of the traditional messianic literature sometimes assume radical "new" significance for innovative fundamentalists.
Although Neturei Karta ("Guardians of the City") cannot really be regarded as a formally organized movement,
2
more attempts than ever before are currently being made to organize in an institutionalized framework those who identify with its religious-ideological views. These attempts have been increased since the deaths of two NK founders and leaders, Amram Blau and Aharon Katzenelbogen.
3
By virtue of their personalities and work, they succeeded in spontaneously rallying many of those who had identified with the entire NK ideology and practices or had joined the group because they agreed with one or more of the issues it was fighting for. The deaths of Blau and Katzenelbogen created a vacuum that exacerbated existing differences and tensions between NKwhich represents the extreme isolationist view that rejects every form of contact with the political-economic Zionist establishmentand the Edah Haredit,
4
another ultra-Orthodox group that rejects the aspirations of Zionism in Palestine by adhering to the principle of "isolationism."
The increased tensions arose because, as an organized community, the Edah has been forced to compromise with the political-economic reality of the State of Israel in order to ensure that its members receive the full complex of communal services. This is in contrast with NK which, despite attempts to become more structured, re-
 
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mains a fairly loose, mostly spontaneous association of people who define themselves as "zealots" in the terminology of traditional Judaism. Whereas the NK to a certain degree is a protest group, its zealotry goes much further than mere protest. Deeply rooted in the Jewish religion, zealotry expresses the tension between a religion based on ancient sacred writings and the reality that characterizes the Jewish religion in today's world.
Neturei Karta first appeared in the wake of the political developments of the 1930s, when the conflict between the Jewish
yishuv
and militant Arab nationalism was becoming increasingly violent and the Nazis were rising to power in Germany. These developments impelled Agudat Israel,
5
the extreme anti-Zionist Jewish religious-political movement that until then had included NK leaders, to reconcile itself to some forms of political cooperation with the Zionist leadership in Palestine. This signified a major turning point for Agudat Israel, which had opposed Zionist
yishuv
institutions from the beginning of the British mandate, when the Agudah and the Edah were identical in Palestine. Agudah-Edah activities aimed at delegitimizing Zionist efforts to establish a new secular Jewish society in
Eretz Israel
found their most stringent expression in the "exodus" of both from the organized Zionist communities (
knesset Israel
) and in the establishment of the Edah as an anti-Zionist group on its own. But, after the riots of 1929 in Palestine and the worsening economic and political position of Jews in Poland and Germany, Agudat Israel saw no choice but to identify with the minimum demands of the Zionist
yishuv,
in order to ensure Jewish immigration, especially for its own members.
The problems of European Jewry notwithstanding, Amram Blau and Aharon Katzenelbogen, who were then the leaders of Tzeirei ("The Young Guard") Agudat Israel, remonstrated against the Agudah for having betrayed its fundamental principles in abandoning isolation by cooperating with secular Zionist organizations and institutions. Originally calling themselves Ha-Chaim ("Life"), they adopted the Aramaic name Neturei Karta ("Guardians of the City") in 1939, when Blau and his circle published a proclamation against a fundraising campaignin actuality a taxfor defending Jews against the Arab revolt of 193639. The name derives from a passage

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