Rabbi Avraham Weinfeld (1930-1987): The innocent bystander approach

Shailos Utshuvos Lev Avraham, Siman 129:

It is now more than eight years since the Zionist leaders declared a Jewish state in a part of Eretz Yisroel. Since that time, opinions in the Jewish world have been divided. Some say it was good; they see it as the beginning of redemption, that Hashem has visited His people after two thousand years of exile, and this is the beginning of the sprouting of the awaited redemption, may it be revealed soon, in our days amein. And some say it was bad, that the entire existence of the State is against the Torah, it is the work of the Sitra Achra, the work of Satan was successful, and it is the last trial before the coming of the righteous redeemer, so that the Jews should be selected and cleansed and merit redemption, and fortunate is he who withstands this trial, and does not recognize the state; he will be among “those who are left in Zion and Jerusalem, holy is he called,” may it come soon in our days amein.

But I with my poor mind do not understand why there is any question here at all. The question would have applied if we had merited that the Jewish people was on its proper level, faithful to its G-d, and the true gedolei yisroel were the leaders, and the people presented them with this question: Is it permitted to establish a Jewish state before the coming of moshiach, or not? Then certainly we would have had to consider whether this was a violation of the Three Oaths with which the Holy One, blessed is He, adjured Israel (Kesubos 111a), and also whether it is permitted to throw away Jewish lives by sending them to war for the sake of the existence of the State, if without the establishment of the State there is no danger to the Jews and thus it does not fall under the category of killing in self-defense. Then the gedolei yisroel would issue their ruling according to Daas Torah.

But now that, unfortunately, we were not privileged to this level, and the leaders of the State are non-religious, and they did and do everything according to their own wishes, and we are not consulted by them as to what the Torah view is, and we have no power to change the course of events and their free will. We stand before a fact, that they have established a state on a portion of our holy Land – we have no question before us if it is permitted or forbidden, for this question has already been answered by those who do not ask questions. It remains for us only to determine our position and our relationship to this fact which they have placed before us. This question is already out of the realm of halacha that can be determined from the sources of Torah. In this matter we grope like a blind man in the dark, without clear knowledge if this is a punishment or a kindness. Therefore we must admit without embarrassment that we do not know the meaning of this fact, and we cannot know it without prophecy or divine inspiration.

When this essay was originally published in 1957 in Hamaor, it was printed that Rabbi Reuven Grozovsky and Rabbi Yisroel Weltz praised it, saying Rabbi Weinfeld had hit the nail on the head.

This explains why many rabbis in the post-1948 years did not speak out against the existence of a Jewish state. They didn’t see it as relevant. They saw their role as working to limit the Zionist government’s incursions against Torah.

However, Rabbi Weinfeld’s answer is unsatisfactory for today. It was written in the 1950s, when the state was relatively new. The Zionist movement and the state were then synonymous. Torah Jewry, a tiny minority at that time, did not consider the state its own. It was founded by and for secular Zionists. Those who favored participation in the government saw it only as a tool to temper the anti-religious nature of the Zionists.

Today, the Zionist leaders who founded the state are no longer alive. Zionism, as a movement, is fading away, is almost gone. Instead we have a State of Israel containing religious and non-religious Jews. There are still struggles over what kind of state it should be, but as far as the state itself, almost no one sees that as the pet project of a secular movement. The state is merely the democratic system under which all the Jews who have settled in Eretz Yisroel live. So the question of whether a Jewish state is permitted is just as much our question as it is the secular Jews’ question.

In fact, it is really only our question, for in the long run, only what Torah Jews do is seen as a lasting act of Jewry. If a group of secular Jews found a communist government in Russia, or run a financial fraud scheme in America, it is not looked at as a Jewish project. The Zionists are somewhat different, since they at least claim to be acting in the name of the Jewish people, but the world is not fooled. If no religious Jew participates in it, then it is seen as a breakaway sect or an offshoot of the Jewish people, not the Jewish people proper. That is how the world sees it, and that is certainly how Hashem sees it – Hashem holds knowledgable religious Jews much more responsible for their actions than ignorant Jews who were brought up without Judaism.

Moreover, the demographic makeup of the State of Israel is gradually changing. Religious Jews have a much higher birthrate than the non-religious. There is a movement of baalei teshuva. More and more children from non-religious homes are going to religious schools. The non-religious are leaving the country, or even if they stay, losing their Jewish identity and often intermarrying. Thus, the future of the State of Israel as a Jewish state is in religious hands. It is time for us to ask ourselves what we will do when the state becomes dominated by observant Jews. We cannot shirk our responsibility by saying it is someone else’s problem and we were never asked.