OPINION: Why are Orthodox Zionist leaders silent on Israel’s political direction?

Like most in galut (exile), I am reluctant to criticise Israel. I don’t live there, braving the risks, so I don’t want to ‘judge my fellow without standing in his place (Avot 2.4)” or give succour to Israel’s enemies.  

But a recent Jewish News poll shows this protective shield has broken down, as the new national-religious coalition government implements its programme. A majority now feel free to criticise Israel and support the unprecedented numbers of Israeli protesters.

The Jewish Leadership Council’s ex-chair has urged us to do so. So has as a new group, Choose Democracy, comprising largely non-Orthodox or pluralistic organisations. Although I have joined it, and attended last Sunday’s rally, these are not the voices I primarily want to hear.

As a kippa-wearing, tzitzit-out, shul-twice-a-day, learn-a-little, Tottenham-Hotspur-supporting kind-of-guy, l want to hear our Orthodox leaders, and religious Zionist organisations, absent from Sunday’s rally, speaking from an explicitly religious Zionist perspective.  If there are good religious grounds for protesting the new coalition’s programme, one can engage with Israeli Religious Zionists supporting the coalition, to challenge  the religious foundations of their support, and thus generate effective change.

Indeed there is Talmudic license to protest against a government which seems to forgive, even normalise, corruption, poor governance, incitement, discrimination, intolerance, hatred and  division and plans to reform the rules of engagement, the law of return and the democratic norm of an independent judiciary restricting executive power.

Smotrich’s call to wipe out Huwara is about as Orthodox as eating pork, and very much worse.

The Gemara (Shabbat 54b) in the names of Rav, Rav Chanina, Rabbi Yochanan and Rav Chaviva says:  ‘Anyone who can possibly protest (the incorrect conduct) of the people of his household, his town or even the whole world and does not– is punished for (the conduct) of his household, his town or even the whole world.’

Although Israelis are famous for not listening to what others think, with the minister for diaspora affairs telling the US ambassador to ‘mind his own business’, the Gemara concludes (Shabbat 55a) that, as no one knows for sure if they will be ignored, they should still protest!

And we have a wealth of biblical prohibitions, Talmudic teachings and halachic rulings calling into question much of the coalition’s programme.

Coalition supporters may advance their own halachic  justifications for their actions. The chair of the Knesset Committee driving the judicial reforms is  quoted  saying he is essentially “’doing what the Holy-One, Blessed-be-He, wants.’

So for religious Zionists, this is a “Machloket LeShem HaShamayim‘ (argument for heaven’s sake) between hashkafot (world views), between an eschatological ‘end of days’ event-driven one and one where “personal, natural, moral sensibility” transcends other religious behaviors (Rav Abraham Kook, Orot HaKodesh 4e), ameliorating the excesses to which religion and nationalism are prone.

Make no mistake, Israeli religious Zionists are also protesting, founding a new organisation, Smol Emuni (the Faithful Left).

As a kippa-wearing, tzitzit-out, shul-twice-a-day, learn-a-little, Tottenham-Hotspur-supporting kind-of-guy, l want to hear our Orthodox leaders, and religious Zionist organisations, absent from Sunday’s rally, speaking from an explicitly religious Zionist perspective.

Last week, a Religious Zionist ex-minister, ‘devastated’ by the  settlers’ pogrom in the Arab village of Huwara, where two Israelis were murdered, and by Finance Minister Smotrich’s call to “wipe out” Huwara, announced a demonstration in Givat Shmuel, the heartland of Religious Zionism.

That is the kind of Orthodox leadership I am looking for. As I see it, there’s a Jewish religious case for protesting almost every part of the coalition’s programme.

Smotrich’s call to wipe out Huwara is about as Orthodox as eating pork, and very much worse.

Our own Chief Rabbi, citing the overarching concept that everyone’s created in God’s image, criticised coalition members’ homophobic abuse of the Knesset speaker by coalition members.

Two Shabbatot ago, I hear, an Orthodox  London rabbi  criticised the judicial reforms, citing the traditional triple separation of powers into ‘Priesthood’, ‘Kingship’ and ‘Torah’ (Avot 4.13).

The late Lord Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote that “God is (also) to be found in the public square, the structures of society: the market place, the corridors of power and the courts of law,” and that there should be ‘no dissociation of sensibilities’ between man meeting God and man meeting man (Covenant and Conversation, Mishpatim).

This seems remarkably close to the Hashkafah of Rav Kook. And in this choice between the two hashkafot on offer, I don’t see a fence to sit on. However, what do I know?

Rabbis and religious Zionist organisations, over to you…

Sheldon is a London-born, Orthodox retired Teaching Hospital Consultant Physician. This column is based on his BLOG