To Be a Jew Today, by Noah Feldman

I was pleased to see I Will Await Him cited by Harvard professor Noah Feldman in his recent book To Be a Jew Today (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2024). In the chapter entitled “Israel Without Zionism”, Feldman discusses how it came to be that so many Traditionalist Jews, who opposed or at least did not identify with Zionism, now “hold views about Israeli politics –and domestic American politics with respect to Israel – that reflect their identification with the state.” (p. 216)

“Where prior generations of American Jewish Traditionalists might have thought of secular Israeli politicians as irrelevant or orthogonal to their concerns, today’s American Jewish Traditionalists are knowledgeable about Israeli politics and feel solidarity with right-wing Israeli secular politicians. American Jewish traditionalists have, in short, taken on some of the aspects of right-wing American Jewish Zionist support for Israel, all without committing themselves to Zionist ideology… How did this transformation happen?” (p. 217)

He goes on to explain that “from the dawn of classical Zionism, Traditionalists recognized the anti-religious, atheistic, radically secular aspects of the movement and were horrified by its whole enterprise… One strand of traditionalist anti-Zionism went further, condemning Zionism as a violation of a teaching known as the ‘three oaths.’”  (p. 217)

Feldman quotes and explains the Talmudic passage of the Three Oaths,  making clear that this does not contradict the mitzvah of settlement in the land of Israel. “That command could be interpreted as an individual duty, whereas the oath was a ban on collective action,” he writes. “The theology of the three oaths translated into a definitive rejection of the Zionist project, not a mere objection to its secularism. If authoritative rabbinic teaching prohibited the Jews as a people from attempting to settle the land of Israel, then (in theory) nothing, not even the desecularization of Zionism, could cure the Zionist project of its heretical qualities…  the three oaths loomed large in traditionalist writing about Zionism until some fifty years ago.” (p. 218) At this point Feldman inserts a footnote referencing my book, as well as the Lehrhaus review.

He then makes the point that even early religious Zionist leaders held that the oaths had the force of Talmudic law: “The small number of traditionalist leaders who were open to Zionism had to address the oaths to explain their apparent deviation from them.” (p. 218) This is evidently based on pages 242-250 of my book in which I quote several early Zionist leaders who upheld the validity of the oaths, but argued that peaceful immigration and land purchase did not violate them.

Feldman continues to address the question of why we rarely find the three oaths mentioned today. “The main reason is surely that the state of Israel is now an accomplished fact. Any prohibition that might have existed on settling the land en masse and trying to create a state there has now been violated. The practical question facing Traditionalists is therefore not whether to move to Israel or support Zionism but rather how to interact with the existing state.” (p. 219) This seems to be based directly on pages 320-322 of my book.

The remainder of the chapter is an analysis of how many of those who were once anti-Zionist progressed to a point where they identify with the state and its army, and hope for the day when they can control the state and run it according to religious law, all the while failing to address the concept of the state itself and how it fits into Jewish theology. 

Feldman attributes an attitude of compromise with the state to no less a gadol than the Chazon Ish. In his meeting with Ben-Gurion, the Chazon Ish famously compared the religious Jews to a loaded camel and the Zionists to a camel without a load. When these two meet on a narrow path, the camel without a load must step aside and let the loaded camel pass first.

Feldman comments: “It has sometimes been thought that the Hazon Ish was advancing a theological view of the superiority of Traditionalism to secularism. Ben-Gurion may have believed something of the sort, given his testy response.  A better interpretation of the Hazon Ish’s  invocation of the Talmudic passage about the two camels is that he was suggesting the value of compromise between the state of Israel and its Traditionalist population, which was then extremely small. Compromise was the point of the Talmudic passage about the two camels. The Hazon Ish was proposing compromise as a mode of coexistence.” (p. 221)

But the background for Ben-Gurion’s visit was the struggle over the drafting of girls, an issue on which the Chazon Ish was famous for being unwilling to compromise in the slightest. He declared publicly that a girl must give up her life rather than be drafted. Furthermore, the Chazon Ish was not one of those gedolim who encouraged compromise with the Zionists even in politics. He did not sign proclamations encouraging his followers to vote, and he himself did not even possess a state identity card. On at least one occasion, he said that the state violated the three oaths and was punished for it. The Chazon Ish was definitely not the mastermind of Haredim’s increasing participation in and identification with the state, as Feldman argues.

Surprisingly, Feldman neglects to mention one of the main influences on Haredi opinion of the state: the modern Haredi newspapers. In reporting on the state and its conflicts, a new generation of Haredi journalists, combined with non-religious and religious Zionists whose work they reprinted, portrayed the state as fighting to protect Jews, and all who oppose it as anti-Jewish. Building on a post-Holocaust mentality still strong among Haredim, they added the state’s enemies to the long list of the Jewish people’s historical persecutors, implying that the state was indeed Jewish and that its conflicts were nothing new.

Eventually, the fallacy that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” took hold and many traditional Jews began to align themselves with the Israeli right wing, as well as whatever American politicians were the most pro-Israel. (See page 223 of the Hebrew edition of my book.)

Whether his explanations of the change are satisfactory or not, Feldman correctly concludes, “Seen against the backdrop of the old Traditionalist anti-Zionism or non-Zionist quietism, this development marks a victory achieved by Zionism in relation to Traditionalism. Traditionalists who once rejected the state are now aiming to insert their values into it and govern under it.”

To Be a Jew Today is an eye-opener for those espousing what is essentially an inconsistent position, and one at variance with that of the gedolim of the past.