Noam: Hey everyone, welcome to Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam.
Mijal: I’m Mijal.
Noam: And I’m Noam and this podcast is our way of trying to unpack those big questions being asked by Jewish people, by non-Jewish people, about the Jewish people, about the Jewish story. We absolutely don’t have it all figured out, but we’re going to try and figure out some very big items together, whether we make it there or not. It’s really about the process of wondering together and leaving every episode feeling like we’ve all learned something new.
Mijal: As we say every week, and we really mean it every week, our favorite part of the show is hearing from you. So please continue to share your questions, suggestions, feedbacks, whatever’s on your mind, by emailing us. And we have a new and improved email address, wanderingjews@unpacked.media. That’s wonderingjuice@unpackeded.media. And again, like we really, really appreciate hearing from you. It does mean a lot.
I want to just to offer a special shout out this week to Charlie. who shared with us that he and many fellow Christian Zionists are big fans of the show and that last week’s episode about moving to Israel or not, in particular, I him thinking about the value of Israel and also just thinking, is this only a value to Jews or is this a value for maybe also like Christian Zionists who might want to consider it? So that’s really fascinating and it definitely expands the way that we think about these questions.
Noam: I was gonna throw a wrench in and say also Muslim Zionists, right? Also Muslim Zionists. It’s a thing, it’s a thing. So Christian Zionists, Jewish Zionists, Muslim Zionists. That’s so cool to hear. Thank you, Charlie. If you’re confused about what we’re talking about, you gotta check out last week’s episode and you’ll see what all of this fuss is about.
Okay, okay. Let’s get stuck into the topic of conversation, which I really wanna wonder about today, about the topic of religious Zionism or the relationship between religious Zionists and religious Zionism to both peace and conflict.
It felt not only appropriate, but critical that we bring in heavyweight champion one of the leading journalists and experts on religion and society in Israel whose work has helped to shed light on the complex and ever evolving landscape of religious Zionism. None other than Yair Ettinger. Welcome, Yair.
Yair: Hi, Noam. Hi, Mijal. Thanks for having me. Thank you.
Noam: We’re so grateful to have you. It’s so awesome to have you join us as an honorary wonderer today. And we’re going to include your very impressive bio in the show notes. But I want you to give us your top three career highlights to date. And I will accept your book, Frayed, which I have right here with me.
Yair: So, Frayed would be one of them, that’s one. I would also mention another book I wrote with Professor Nissim Leon. I think Mijal is very much aware of him. He’s a great professor, he’s an expert in Sephardi Judaism and Shas movement, which is also a religious movement and a social movement and a political movement so we wrote a book about this movement after Rav Ovadia Yosef which was the leader, the spiritual leader of this movement after he passed away so we wrote a book about this movement after his era.
What else? I think journalism this is something I do for 25 years or so, first in Haaretz newspaper and then now in at Kan’s broadcast service, the national TV radio digital in Israel.
Noam: Kan’s great.
Yair: So it’s not a one, it’s not a highlight. It’s just 25 years of trying to do journalism and to explore different sides of mainly the Israeli society which is so interesting.
Noam: Amazing.
Mijal: That’s awesome. Yair, I just want to say that I’m excited to have you here, not only because of your work, but also because you’re a friend. We got to intersect a little bit at the Shalom Hartman Institute. I just want to say because of the way we started this episode, I just want to make sure that we clarify we’re talking about Jewish religious Zionism today. That’s going to be like, we’re going to say religious Zionism, meaning Jews. Yes. In Israel.
Noam: Yes, yes, Jewish religious Zionism.
Okay, and the term is really confusing. there’s so much to talk about. Ya’ir, I’m giddy to have you here because I think that you could help articulate and express. Mijal and I know a bit about religious Zionism, but you are a scholar in the topic. And I’ll tell you why specifically religious Zionism is a topic that I am so excited to talk about. Okay, so I was giving a talk a couple of weeks ago and at this talk I was explaining the different philosophies of Zionism. And everyone here, everyone that was hearing the talk was nodding their head. They were like, okay, all of these things that you’re saying about Zionism, I could wrap my head around, they don’t sound actually as crazy as I thought previously, until one person raised their hand and they said, you didn’t mention one part of Zionism. I said, yes, which one? They said, religious Zionism. They said the reason that people are not connected and have discomfort, maybe disdain for what’s going on in Israel is religious Zionism. There is something in religious Zionism, which is fundamentalist, which is challenging, which is problematic. Noam, what about religious Zionism?
I then said to the person, I actually identify as a religious Zionist. They were so thrown off by that. They said, there’s no way you’re a religious Zionist, Noam. I said, well, actually, I really do view myself that way. I then told this story to a colleague and a friend of mine, and she said to me, Noam, that’s crazy. You’re not a religious Zionist. You can’t be a religious Zionist.
And I was thinking nonstop, oh my Lord. I don’t think people understand what religious Zionism is and what it is all about. And specifically now, there’s even more of a challenge. And the challenge is around, there are influencers talking about, I don’t know if you’ve seen this yet here, but influencers talking about Meir Kahane a lot right now. It’s coming up a lot on people’s screens on TikTok and Instagram. People are saying Kahane tzadak, that Kahane was right.
And we’ll talk a little bit more about who Meir Kahane was. But I want you to, alk to us about religious Zionism. What is it? How did it go from a movement that in the early 20th century, in 1903, the leader of religious Zionism, a man by the name of Rabbi Reines, argued or defended Theodor Herzl’s desire to settle in Uganda as a temporary measure. How did we go from that, a religious Zionist, Rabbi Reines saying, the land, it’s okay to be in Uganda, to a world in which the people who seem to represent religious Zionism sometimes are people like the Hilltop youth, people who are in the Judea and Samaria, the West Bank or whatever. How did it go from Reines-ists, not only not land for peace, but not even the land of Israel being okay with it and leading religious Zionism to not only not land for peace, but Judea, Samaria, the West Bank. What’s the story of religious Zionism? How did that happen?
Yair: Okay, so I’m so happy you mentioned Reines, because Reines is, for many people, is anonymous. Many people do not know about Reines, not only in the general society in Israel, but even in the religious Zionist community. The person who is considered to be the father of religious Zionism is Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hakohen Kook, that he was also he was active before the before the state of Israel but what I’m saying is that Rav Kook is very much identified with Tzionut Datit but Rav Reines–
Noam: Which is religious Zionism. Which is religious Zionism. Yeah.
Yair: Yeah, religious Zionism, thank you. But Rav Reines is also very much the designer of part of Tzionut datit not he did not disappear until today. There are what I would like to to claim here is that there are for 120 years over 100 years there are two streams in Tzionut datit, two streams in religious Zionism. One of them is saying, you know, we can coexist with the secular state, we can still be orthodox Jews, keeping the Jewish laws, but the state is secular. We are the religious part of the secular state and we are very much pragmatic. It’s not only about nationalism, it’s also about being modern, modern person in the modern world. Our Jewishness and our Zionism could be coexist together.
Rav Kook, which came, he was active in Jerusalem and he was much more romantic and much more, I would say–
Noam: He’s mystical.
Yair: Mystical. Thank you. That’s the word. He was mystical about the state. He said that the history, the voice of history calls us to be part of the revolution of Zionism. We can join it and we can shape it in a more redemption vision of being something more divine. That the state would have this significance or this meaning of redemption.
These are two attitudes towards the state of Israel. One of them is much more active. One of them is a little bit more laid back and modest about the causes.
The Haredim are the ultra-Orthodox of Europe. Ultra-Orthodox who were very much isolated or they said we have no part with these Zionists.
Either you’re Orthodox or Zionist and Reines said we could be both.
Noam: So far, what I’m hearing you say is there’s the mystical Zionism of Rav Kook and there’s the pragmatic Zionism of Rabbi Reines, and they’re both streams within religious Zionism and there are different aspects of it.
And you wrote in your book, I’m gonna quote from you if you don’t mind. You wrote, here I’m reading your book, starting in 1967 and with mounting force after the earthquake of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and ever since, religious Zionism increasingly took hold of its sense of self as the true inheritor of the Zionist revolution. That something took place in 67 and 73 that religious Zionism started to have a much more active impact on the state of Israel. And I’m using where the state in two different ways.
Yair: So yes, so no doubt religious Zionism took many different turns during the years and I think one of the most significant was between 67 and 73. Rabbi Kook the father, Rabbi Abraham Yitzhakah Kohen Kook, he was very much admired those secular Zionists who built the country.
His son, Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, took it to the next level or to a different level, to a level which had many times it’s confronted and had conflict with the secular state because of the settlements. He put the settlements or building settlements in Judea and Samaria and Gaza as one of the top priorities of Tzionut datit. It wasn’t that way before. For many young people, this revolutionary vision and spirit, let’s go to the hills of Judea and Samaria and build a settlement, it was a young people movement that said, okay. Yeah, let’s change the world. It was very much the ethos of those young people, even though it has some conflicts with the state of Israel. Okay, so the secular state, we are going to be the revolutionaries. People will follow us at the end of the road. It didn’t happen so much, or partly it happened. But for many people it was, you know enthusiastic, it was very much rock and roll. People are going to the hills, to the hilltop and building a new settlement, building the revolution.
Mijal: So right now you’ve teased out almost like two key ideological streams within religious Zionists in Israel. In terms of demographics, like zooming out for a second, how big is the population of Jews in Israel who would identify as religious Zionists?
And within this population, I don’t know if we have data, but if you had to give an estimate of how many of those kind of like fit with what we might call the Reines, religious Zionism, right? Yeah, a little bit more pragmatic, a little bit, okay, you’re religious and you’re a Zionist. And what percentage or what part would identify with the Kookian, let’s say, religious Zionism, which I would say it’s a bit more messianic, a little bit more like we are going to intervene in the state to bring something on.
Yair: Yeah, there was a really interesting research. It’s 10 years old. It’s really old. the reason I’m quoting it is that there is a need for a new research, wide research. So in Israel, we have about 10 million people, 8 million Jews, So. This research from 10 years ago from Israel Democracy Institute found that 22% of the Jewish population in Israel identify themselves. They are not religious Zionists, but they identify themselves or you would say appreciate, admire. They would like to be part of the religious Zionist movement community. This is amazing. This is amazing. 22%.
Out of those 22%, half of them do live their lives as religious Zionists, which means they keep the mitzvah, they keep Shabbat, they are Orthodox Jews, but at the same time, they see the value, the religious, maybe even religious value of the state of Israel. They are national.
They have national values and they are modern. So maybe 11% are really hardcore religious Zionists, but there are another 11% which are identified with this very successful minority. Successful minority.
Now we live today, we’re talking in the middle of the war. Let’s hope it’s the end of the war maybe, but we are in the war. This war is very significant in the history of the religious Zionist community. Why? Because people are witness right now that how much the new elite of Israel is, know, members of these religious Zionist community are taking a really important role in the army, in the government, and in the, I don’t know, Supreme Court, just name it. Business, academia, everywhere.
It’s really hard to answer, Mijal, your question, how much are Reines or Kook? I would say that most of people do not identify themselves as Reines or Kook. The two powers are affecting everyone, I would say, the pragmatic and the more messianic force. Some people could be today messianic and tomorrow indifferent, if you ask a different question, they would be more pragmatic. But at the same research that I’m talking about, asked these questions. What kind of Zionist are you? I think most people just say themselves, they are religious Zionists. Most of the people.But part of them would, a small part, think it was 13% or 12% would identify themselves as liberal, liberal religious Zionists. the other, it was back then, think it was 6%, today it’s bigger, I think, were Hardalim. Hardalim means much more conservatives, much more messianic in some issues. It was six and twelve. I think today it would be twelve and twelve or it would be much more. The more conservative and messianic part of Tzionut datit. But still, the majority of Tzionut datit, the vast majority of religious Zionism are just religious ironists. So they could be more fluid, I would say, between those two trends or two vectors of rightness and cool.
Noam: Okay, in I was saying at the beginning of this in the United States There are some influencers that for whatever reason, there’s tribalism after that everyone saw what happened to the Bibas family and there’s just like this visceral just anger and so people are starting to hear old things that Meir Kahane said and these influencers are posting these ideas that Meir Kahane was right about this, and then they try to nuance it, provide caveats, whatever. To what extent? I started doing some research into Meir Kahane. Meir Kahane created two movements. One is called Kach, the other is called JDL, Jewish Defense League.
Kach was banned by the Israeli Knesset. And he has some followers. People like Baruch Goldstein who murdered 29 Palestinians, Itamar Ben-Gvir who’s actually in the Israeli government. People like Baruch Marzel who I’ve met in person actually in his house in Hebron at one point. Meir Ettinger, Meir Ettinger maybe is how you pronounce it, who was actually his grandson who was arrested. Not you, not related to you, exactly.
Yair: It’s not me by the way, I know what you’re thinking.
Mijal: Ha ha ha. But Noam, you should give like a one sentence bio or two sentence bio of Meir Kahane.
Noam: Well, I want Yair to give us a little bit of a description of Meir Kahane and is it the case that Meir Kahane is making a big influence in Israel right now or not?
Yair: Okay, so, Meir Kahane is like a really interesting topic. Meir Kahane, we’re talking about Reines and Kook. Meir Kahane was never in the realm of religious Zionism. I think he did not identify himself back in the day when he was active in the 80s as religious Zionist, and he was not impressed at all by Rav Kook, nor by Rav Reines. He brought something new to Israel. He was first of all, he was an American phenomenon. I mean, JDL is something that people are not even aware of it in Israel. And he came to Israel,. He was an outsider for sure when he was elected to the Knesset for one term, but when he was stepping up for a speech, people from the right wing of Israel, Likud party, they ran away, they went out, not mention the religious Zionist representatives in the parliament, in the Knesset. So, he was an outsider and his support, his base, his political base was not at all religious Zionist.
His supporters, they wanted something more nationalist, more hawk, more to, I don’t know, talking about transfer of Arabs from Israel. So his base was not religious Zionist at all.
But what happened was, and this is a good chance to talk about it, that Reines and Kook, I mean, they are 120 years old, their legacy, their ideology, but you know, as things are happening, there is privatization, there are many other trends and many other mix of…
Noam: What is privatization?
Yair: Sorry, privatization is that ideology turns to many different directions without guidance from above. It’s a market of ideas. As I mentioned before, the 11% which are identifying themselves as religious Zionism, but they’re not really religious Zionists. the Israeli society is a mix. People are mixing religiousness and secular values, East and West, also, and also it happened also in religious Zionism, many new ideas.
Some of them, by the way, are liberal. Some of them are much more nationalist, got what was observed inside. And the Kahane phenomenon is a new thing. It’s something that makes the ideology of with Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Kahane, and today it’s becoming more common, more normal.
There are many, many reasons for that, many trends. What happens in our political landscape in Israel? What happened with Netanyahu in the last decade? Netanyahu, our prime minister, brought Itamar Ben-Gvir which is the, how do say, the–Mijal: Disciple, disciple.
Yair: Yeah. And Itamar Ben-Gvir was really an outsider. He was very, very radical, and he became more, you know, normalized by Netanyahu, by other things that happened in our political arena.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, represents partly Kahane and partly Rav Kook and also partly this Mizrahi base, because I think that much of his support is not coming from religious Zionist communities. He’s getting votes from, you know, from far little towns in Israel, which are not necessarily religious. He became the party of the periphery in Israel, of many people in the periphery. So it’s a mix of things. And also, I agree that he was normalized also at the end in some parts of Tzionut Datit, some part of religious Zionism. That’s what happened.
Mijal: I think he also represents like almost like the party of like anger, people who are disaffected. And I know like the disengagement from Gaza, that’s 2006, 2005, yeah. That was for many, like I had cousins who were protesting who were there. And for many of them that summer was feeling like the state betrayed them and the state betrayed its own mission and vision. Like raging against the establishment and you vote for them as a way of saying like, you know, it’s a vote in protest.
Yair: It’s a protest party. Yeah. It’s a protest party in many ways.
Mijal: Right. Part of the challenge right now, which goes back to Noam’s introduction, is that from America, what we are seeing is almost like the most prominent and loudest voices of religious Zionism, which very often are more extreme, and present a whole host of issues, especially when thinking about the relationship between American Jews who are way more liberal to Israeli Jews who are less liberal. And a lot of the nuance gets lost when we only see the Ben-Gvir and Smotrich as like the exemplars of religious Zionism.
Yair: Right, the loudest voice is the voice you hear. It’s easier to talk loud because you are getting more attraction, more likes and shares in Twitter and that’s also things that happened here. You know, we can’t go over all the reasons for Itamar Ben-Gvir’s success right now. And he is a success. But let’s not forget his coalition. He has a coalition party with a party that named itself Tzionut datit. Tzionut datit means religious Zionism.
And this is Smotrich, which you just mentioned, Mijal. And Smotrich did something really controversial. He took the name, the brand name of Tzionut datit, religious Zionism, and named his party in this name, even though he represents just one part, the more conservative nationalist part of Tzionut datit.
And the question, it’s a great question. What happened to the majority? What happened to the nuance? What happened to the old, rightness or pragmatic people of this community? Why are they so silent?
So I think, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think the war could be a shifting point. I think that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich coalition together is partly, partly a change of values and ideology from the community and partly also political circumstances, the push by Netanyahu, the anger, I think this is maybe a changing point which religious Zionism as a whole has a lot of power in Israel and I think that many people from this community today they are distanced themselves from Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. You could hear that in many talks and many people are writing about it.
The question is, will there be a political power, a movement that says, okay, we are different, we are taking back, reclaiming the name Tzionut datit, we are reclaiming the name religious Zionism and building something new with more of our secular partners, secular Israel? And that’s a question.
Noam: I have so many more questions for you, Yair. I have to ask two more questions very quickly, very quickly. But the two questions I have for you is if you could list the two biggest debates within religious Zionism right now, what are they? What are the two biggest debates within the religious Zionism camp?
And my second question to you is, do you think that religious Zionism is the reason there is no peace between Israelis and Palestinians? Or do you view religious Zionism as something that’s providing the soul to the Jewish character of the state of Israel right now and pushing it to its next stage?
Yair: Okay, two issues. I would say one of them would be during the war the question of hostage deal. Because the representatives who call themselves religious Zionism, Zionist, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, they oppose any deal with Hamas, whereas their voters, or many of their voters, they are for the deal. They do not accept Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s stance. But other people do accept. So I think this is really splitting the community. it’s a really… And if we’re talking about Tzionut datit, I mean, one party is getting more radical or more with conflict with mainstream Israelis. And the other one is getting closer to the mainstream. This is something really interesting. This is a major major conflict right now.
I would say another conflict which is the majority of Tzionut datit, the question of recruiting the Haredim, the ultra-orthodox of Israel. There is a really really big issue regarding the military service of people from the ultra-orthodox community. This is also a very big issue. I don’t know if we can go into details right now, but this is the second thing that I would say really happening right, divisions, right.
The question of peace, I would not say so. I would not say so, even though Itamar Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and their parties are the, I don’t know, the poster models of radical, not, know, of more hardline and nationalist.
Noam: It’s a division. It’s a division. Okay. Okay.
Yair: I think what happened in Israel regarding the peace, the question of peace is a big, big book that we have to write about what happened in other parts, other sectors of the Israeli society. know, the Israeli left wing, are for a deal with the Palestinians is really tiny right now and it has nothing to do with Tzionut datit, I think. It’s a process that was forming for, I don’t know, for a generation right now. And Tzionut datit is just a part of it. I think Tzionut datit has a part in, it’s a cultural thing and it’s a national thing. It’s really complex. I wouldn’t put everything on Tzionut datit.
Mijal: Yeah, I want to I do want to just add one thing. I do think some of our conversation has been teasing out, also saying where we have criticism or differences. I’ll also say as someone who lives in America right now, I know that a very significant percentage of the soldiers who have been killed in battle and those who have volunteered for combat role are from the community.
Yair: That’s right.
Mijal: And I want to just acknowledge, at least for me, that I have so much gratitude and admiration for a community that is raising children who are willing to stand up and to defend other Jews at the risk of their own life. So I just, that’s another conversation that we could have a different time, important for me to like, to name that as we’re concluding this conversation, the gratitude towards Tareefus.
Yair: Definitely and I will join you and thank you for saying that that’s what I meant before when I said that this war is Is a shift because I think many people from the other from the secular tribe of Israel are really really appreciate that and they are they are they’re Amazed or they want there is a very a sense of unity with Tzionut datit and this is not so much about messianic, it’s about partnership with the two major Zionist tribes of Israel, which is the secular and the majority of the religious Zionist community. This is the majority and they are acting right now the ethics of being Zionist, being patriot and being with solidarity with other people of Israel. This is very big.Noam: Okay, that was awesome, that was intense, that was fun, I’m a nerd, so I love this stuff. And Yair, really, really enjoyed wondering and learning with you today. Don’t be a stranger, you’re now officially a fellow wonderer, so feel free to pop in again. Thanks for your time.
Yair: Thank you very much. Take your namen, Mijal.
Mijal: Thank you.
—
Noam: Mijal, we just had Yair on the show and it was really, really, really interesting. It was so cool.
Mijal: I mean, what I like about Yair is like he’s a careful journalist. Like if somebody was his own values, but he doesn’t interpret the world based on his own values, he will distinguish between what he thinks and between the ways describing other people. And I love speaking to people who can do that.
Noam: Yeah, I find that incredibly impressive. I find that really, really interesting. I want to do what we always do now, which is some tangible takeaways from what we just heard. So hit me with some of your ideas. This is so nu, what now? What now?
Mijal: What now? No, what now? Well, one takeaway for me is how to always remember that even when social media and the news gives us like one view of a population, to remember that there is actually most often real diversity within it. So even here, like religious Zionism, you can think Ben-Gvir, or you can remember actually there’s a bunch of distinctions here. So that’s number one.
Second takeaway, though, is like, you know, just to understand that there is a rise in like what I would call like a more hardline messianic religious Zionist community in Israel. And I think that that is both an invitation to understand the better curiosity. And it’s also an invitation for involvement. If you if you have a different vision for the way the religion and Zionism should intersect in Judaism, this should actually be a challenge like, what are you doing? You know what I mean? Like get up and advocate for your views. So that to me is like an important takeaway.
Yeah, I don’t know, this whole conversation, it’s not a takeaway, but a lot of nostalgia for me. spent about eight summers with my cousins in Efrat in Judea Samaria, the West Bank, within religious Zionist communities. And I still feel very close to those communities. So it’s a lot of, I don’t know, I’m processing. What about you?
Noam: Yeah, so I like those three a lot. For me, it’s the world of social media. When he was talking about the loudest voice, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, basically. And it made me think about, with the story of Meir Kahane, right now, I’m a little bit frustrated with the influencers, some of whom I’m friends with and have relationships with, were sharing ideas from Meir Kahane without knowing the background of Meir Kahane. And one of the things I’m obsessed with talking about is it is dangerous, it is dangerous to shout from the rooftops about ideas that you know very little about. And if that sounds elitist of me, my apologies, but we can’t do that, folks, we cannot do that. And I learned…
Mijal: Don’t apologize, it.
Noam: just now from Yair, that Meir Kahane wasn’t really a major part of religious Zionism. I think that that is really, really interesting. So maybe it’s the case, this is number two, that when I tell people that I am a religious Zionist, maybe what’s in their head is Meir Kahane. What’s in their head is the Gush Emunim movement that emerged in the late 60s, early 70s after the Six Day War and the building of the Gush Etzion and other parts of the West Bank. Maybe that’s what’s in their head, as opposed to another stream of religious Zionism, which is called Memad, which is advocated at some point in time for land for peace, if there was actual peace. I don’t think it really exists right now in the same way as people like Meir Kahane, but they were all about the promotion of democratic values. And there was a great rabbi by the name of Yehuda Amital, and to an extent, Aaron Lichtenstein, who were big believers in, more Mmital, big believers in this idea of a more inclusive interpretation of religious Zionism. So I think that that is important to talk about also. And just a heads up, next week we’re closing out our Israel-themed episodes before we move on to topics of faith. That’s gonna be our next segment, it’s faith. And we’ve chosen to end with a real challenge. We’re wondering if Israel’s on the right or the wrong side of international law and everything that entails. So subscribe to the show if you haven’t already so you do not miss it. Natasha Hausdorff.
Mijal: And we have an awesome guest now. Natasha, she’s so good.
Noam: Okay, so I’m nervous and excited about it all at the same time. It’s going to be awesome. Thanks for tuning in everyone. We look forward to wondering with you again next week. Rock on.
Mijal: Thanks everyone.