Wednesday, May 29, 2019

What should be our attitude toward Zionism?


What should be our attitude toward Zionism? Answer, by this time, I think that our people know the answer, but to repeat. Zionism is a substitute for Judaism. It would be as saying, if someone began a movement Sulanism or Sukiism. Everybody who emphases one thing is already under suspicion that he does not belong to the Torah Jews. Because the Torah is composed of taryag mitzvos and when one chooses a single mitzvah and makes a big fuss about it then we suspect him of intending to do away with the rest. And that’s exactly what Zionism is. It’s an attempt to substitute nationalism for everything else, for mitzvos, for Torah, and even for God Himself. (Rav Avigdor Miller “Pictures in the Mind, 040, 1:30:39)


Israel should be one nation, an entire nation that should have no other foundation for its existence, survival, activity and significance other than this Torah. It is to see the realization and devoted observance of this God-given "fiery Law" as its one contribution in world history for the edifice of human salvation. What the Phoenicians sought to bring about with the keels of their ships, what the ancient Greeks sought to achieve with their chisels and what the ancient Romans sought to attain with their swords, Israel is to accomplish with its Torah. Nay more, Israel is a nation that became a nation only through and for the Torah, a nation that once owned a land and existed as a state only through and for the Torah, and which possessed that land and that statehood only as instruments for translating the Torah into living reality. This is why Israel was a people even before it possessed land and statehood; this, too, is why Israel survived as a people even after its land was destroyed and its statehood lost, and this is why it will survive as a nation as long as it does not lose this only מורשה, this sole foundation for its survival and significance. That is the kind of nation that Israel, that all of us, should be. 

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch "The Character of the Jewish Community," Collected Writings, Vol. VI, p. 35

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