So we see the flexibility of interpretation has led to the centrists being the most irredentist, a position one expects to find religious extremists occupying.
This is actually more or less how I imagined it (though of course I’m nowhere as familiar with all the details). Thanks for the very informative comments.
A certain historical factor is important here, I will try to expand on it.
World religions are similar in that many have more liberal branches, more mystical branches, more conservative branches, more textualist branches, etc. For example, Sufiism and modern Breslov (Breslev/Bratslov) Chassidism or original Chassidism are similar mystical responses to institutional monotheism (however, the similarity here might be partially caused by direct Sufi influence on Judaism rather than convergent development). Similarly, different religions have produced people believing variously that: modern dating methods are fatally flawed, the Earth was created as if billions of years old, scripture was meant allegorically, scripture was not divinely given, or that the whole tradition is invalid. It is a matter of playing whack-a-mole in which one must admit to some unpleasant conclusions, but not all, and interpretation determines which.
Religious Zionism was the centrist movement in religious Judaism around the founding of the state, the median and mode Orthodoxy, and probably the mean as well, to the extent that means anything. It was the result of biased interpretation of tradition and text to be in accord with the majority of Jews. This happened due to historical exigency and under circumstances that may well have been extreme enough to invoke such a reading under the tradition’s own principles. What’s important is that a secular twentieth-century movement was justified in a religious community.
For a while Religious Zionists were heroes of the state and people, the secular majority’s link to traditional Judaism, traditional justifications for Israel, and its evidence its conflict with the Chareidim wasn’t simply the result of secular anti-Orthodox prejudice. This is what one would expect, considering that creating this unity was the justification for non-traditionalism. Yet, like all religions, Religious Zionism got stuck. Once the social milieu changed, it could not alter its ideology to match, at least not at great speed. In any case, it did not want to and would never have wanted to—secular Zionism was perhaps worth religious flexibility to meet half way, secular post-Zionism and anti-Zionism less obviously so. Nonetheless, the value of empathizing with the mainstream has never been abandoned, indeed it is difficult to see how it could be, and it is still cited as a justification.
That is where we are today. At something less than a million of Israel’s something less than six million Jews, Religious Zionists constitute most new combat officers and only a bit less than half of all new army officers. Their organizing principle of establishing holds on strategically important locations is now theirs alone now, but was once a universal Zionist ideal.
However, Religious Zionism is not merely the continuation of Zionist ideology under religious aegis. Orphaned by time, it faces a shocking hostility from a public that increasingly blames them for conflict with the Arabs rather than lauds them for bearing the brunt of it, and as always the secular state disregards their religious desires. As an established religion, it faces its own splintering into factions emphasizing aspects of its creed differently, exacerbated by the fact that a reason for its existence was pegged to an unstable variable—the secular public.
Though it was born from centrism, I expect Religious Zionism to become more diverse over time regarding how extreme its components are.
Likewise, if I give you a grocery list with both categories of things and specific things, the more specific things I put under a category, the less likely it is I want something not listed that is in that category. If I wrote on the list “Many kinds of bread, white bread, hot dog buns, hamburger buns, bagels, whole wheat bread, and pumpernickel,” it sounds more plausible that I want a bialy than if I only wrote “Many kinds of bread,” which only has four bread related words. Someone with the latter list will have to take some initiative, while with the former it is possible to simply buy the breads on the list and pretend inaction is not a type of action, and that one has not made an independent decision.
It is at least true that given the first list it’s highly unlikely the bread product I want most is a bialy. We might still expect that someone who wrote the first list might like bialys more than someone who wrote the second list, simply because the author of the first list has indicated enthusiasm for bread products by writing so much about them. This is because we are used to normal human authors who emphasize by repetition, but if we know the author to be strictly logical, we will understand that the request on the second list is broader and more open-ended than that on the first.
The barbarity and tedium of the Old Testament are both partially caused by enumerations of who to kill, and how, and when, in great detail (doubly so for bringing sacrifices and matters of purity [which includes lineages]). A normal human author, like those who actually wrote the texts, expressed their shortcomings thereby.
Pretending the texts were written by a logical, autistic, single person turns this on its head. The more detail appended to when to kill, the less its a reinforcing admonishment against our innate humanity and the more it is restrictive detail circumscribing the conditions where violence is permitted.
What’s that, God? Kill the Amalekites, you say? Every man woman and child? Um...and ox sheep, camel and donkey? Reminds me of the Order of the Stick from the exact day in the future when lessdazed will write about this online, but OK. And the Midianites? Kill the males, but keep the female virgins for ourselves? Got it! Who else do we kill? The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites? OK. A man gathering wood on the Sabbath day? Kill. And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore? Why, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire. And if a man take a wife and her mother? It is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire! Tax evasion regarding rebuilding the temple? A beam is to be pulled from his house and he is to be lifted up and impaled on it. And for this crime his house is to be made a pile of rubble. The Philistines and Kerethites? “I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I take vengeance on them.” Glad you got that one covered, LORD. (It goes on like this.)
What we have today is an Orthodoxy that sees killing and genocide as things God is more than happy to command for circumstances in which he wants them done. Atheists often view the bible as reflecting upon the character of a fictional god, and worry believers will do the same (minus the recognition that it is fiction) and ask themselves what it seems plausible that god would want them to do. People are fundamentalist to the extent that they instead ask what they are ordered to do, under the belief that everything worthwhile is commanded. Not only the Chareidim, but also the Religious Zionists, are fundamentalist enough that there is no danger of a mainstream religious perspective conflating Arabs with Canaanites. Even for Religious Zionists, the conflict with Arabs is secular.
Belief in a less interactive god, even an omniscient omnipotent omnipresent one, is logically possible and what many imagine to be the case. Under such a theology, the gap in biblical instruction regarding what to do about Arabs would be filled in with the most plausible analogous case, and killing Arabs would have them same ersatz biblical sanction that settling and possessing the land actually does for the Religious Zionists. Instead, it is pretended that there is no instructional gap, so resorting to analogy has nothing like the force of divine command at all.
I’m having a bit of trouble with my point here, which may indicate a flaw in my thinking rather than articulation. But the tl;dr is that the Religious Zionists see themselves as commanded to reoccupy the land and kill the Canaanites again, under such circumstances that the presence of Arabs in the stead of Canaanites is perplexing rather than soluble, as it is also unsolvable for a dumb enough AI, (which includes otherwise smart ones). The “obvious” solution is correctly seen as not obvious at all, and only seems obvious because of human intelligence. In this sense there is not a religious war.
In general, taking seriously a text that reinforces evil by repetitious emphasis and instead reading it as if its writer were logical and had realized that “detail is burdensome” emasculates the evil. Non-fundamentalists who correctly find the original meaning of the text as author intended, namely that which seems plausible upon reading it, are directly dangerous.
Even Religious Zionists are sufficiently fundamentalist Orthodox Jews that such a reading is not at all common. (Chareidim are solidly so, which doesn’t matter much as they don’t see the state as legally a continuation of ancient Israel anyway.)
This is actually more or less how I imagined it (though of course I’m nowhere as familiar with all the details). Thanks for the very informative comments.
A certain historical factor is important here, I will try to expand on it.
World religions are similar in that many have more liberal branches, more mystical branches, more conservative branches, more textualist branches, etc. For example, Sufiism and modern Breslov (Breslev/Bratslov) Chassidism or original Chassidism are similar mystical responses to institutional monotheism (however, the similarity here might be partially caused by direct Sufi influence on Judaism rather than convergent development). Similarly, different religions have produced people believing variously that: modern dating methods are fatally flawed, the Earth was created as if billions of years old, scripture was meant allegorically, scripture was not divinely given, or that the whole tradition is invalid. It is a matter of playing whack-a-mole in which one must admit to some unpleasant conclusions, but not all, and interpretation determines which.
Religious Zionism was the centrist movement in religious Judaism around the founding of the state, the median and mode Orthodoxy, and probably the mean as well, to the extent that means anything. It was the result of biased interpretation of tradition and text to be in accord with the majority of Jews. This happened due to historical exigency and under circumstances that may well have been extreme enough to invoke such a reading under the tradition’s own principles. What’s important is that a secular twentieth-century movement was justified in a religious community.
For a while Religious Zionists were heroes of the state and people, the secular majority’s link to traditional Judaism, traditional justifications for Israel, and its evidence its conflict with the Chareidim wasn’t simply the result of secular anti-Orthodox prejudice. This is what one would expect, considering that creating this unity was the justification for non-traditionalism. Yet, like all religions, Religious Zionism got stuck. Once the social milieu changed, it could not alter its ideology to match, at least not at great speed. In any case, it did not want to and would never have wanted to—secular Zionism was perhaps worth religious flexibility to meet half way, secular post-Zionism and anti-Zionism less obviously so. Nonetheless, the value of empathizing with the mainstream has never been abandoned, indeed it is difficult to see how it could be, and it is still cited as a justification.
That is where we are today. At something less than a million of Israel’s something less than six million Jews, Religious Zionists constitute most new combat officers and only a bit less than half of all new army officers. Their organizing principle of establishing holds on strategically important locations is now theirs alone now, but was once a universal Zionist ideal.
However, Religious Zionism is not merely the continuation of Zionist ideology under religious aegis. Orphaned by time, it faces a shocking hostility from a public that increasingly blames them for conflict with the Arabs rather than lauds them for bearing the brunt of it, and as always the secular state disregards their religious desires. As an established religion, it faces its own splintering into factions emphasizing aspects of its creed differently, exacerbated by the fact that a reason for its existence was pegged to an unstable variable—the secular public.
Though it was born from centrism, I expect Religious Zionism to become more diverse over time regarding how extreme its components are.
Fundamentalism is less prone to certain pitfalls than centrism.
The more details one adds to an account, the more plausible it sounds but the less probable it is.
Likewise, if I give you a grocery list with both categories of things and specific things, the more specific things I put under a category, the less likely it is I want something not listed that is in that category. If I wrote on the list “Many kinds of bread, white bread, hot dog buns, hamburger buns, bagels, whole wheat bread, and pumpernickel,” it sounds more plausible that I want a bialy than if I only wrote “Many kinds of bread,” which only has four bread related words. Someone with the latter list will have to take some initiative, while with the former it is possible to simply buy the breads on the list and pretend inaction is not a type of action, and that one has not made an independent decision.
It is at least true that given the first list it’s highly unlikely the bread product I want most is a bialy. We might still expect that someone who wrote the first list might like bialys more than someone who wrote the second list, simply because the author of the first list has indicated enthusiasm for bread products by writing so much about them. This is because we are used to normal human authors who emphasize by repetition, but if we know the author to be strictly logical, we will understand that the request on the second list is broader and more open-ended than that on the first.
The barbarity and tedium of the Old Testament are both partially caused by enumerations of who to kill, and how, and when, in great detail (doubly so for bringing sacrifices and matters of purity [which includes lineages]). A normal human author, like those who actually wrote the texts, expressed their shortcomings thereby.
Pretending the texts were written by a logical, autistic, single person turns this on its head. The more detail appended to when to kill, the less its a reinforcing admonishment against our innate humanity and the more it is restrictive detail circumscribing the conditions where violence is permitted.
What’s that, God? Kill the Amalekites, you say? Every man woman and child? Um...and ox sheep, camel and donkey? Reminds me of the Order of the Stick from the exact day in the future when lessdazed will write about this online, but OK. And the Midianites? Kill the males, but keep the female virgins for ourselves? Got it! Who else do we kill? The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites? OK. A man gathering wood on the Sabbath day? Kill. And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore? Why, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire. And if a man take a wife and her mother? It is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire! Tax evasion regarding rebuilding the temple? A beam is to be pulled from his house and he is to be lifted up and impaled on it. And for this crime his house is to be made a pile of rubble. The Philistines and Kerethites? “I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I take vengeance on them.” Glad you got that one covered, LORD. (It goes on like this.)
What we have today is an Orthodoxy that sees killing and genocide as things God is more than happy to command for circumstances in which he wants them done. Atheists often view the bible as reflecting upon the character of a fictional god, and worry believers will do the same (minus the recognition that it is fiction) and ask themselves what it seems plausible that god would want them to do. People are fundamentalist to the extent that they instead ask what they are ordered to do, under the belief that everything worthwhile is commanded. Not only the Chareidim, but also the Religious Zionists, are fundamentalist enough that there is no danger of a mainstream religious perspective conflating Arabs with Canaanites. Even for Religious Zionists, the conflict with Arabs is secular.
Belief in a less interactive god, even an omniscient omnipotent omnipresent one, is logically possible and what many imagine to be the case. Under such a theology, the gap in biblical instruction regarding what to do about Arabs would be filled in with the most plausible analogous case, and killing Arabs would have them same ersatz biblical sanction that settling and possessing the land actually does for the Religious Zionists. Instead, it is pretended that there is no instructional gap, so resorting to analogy has nothing like the force of divine command at all.
I’m having a bit of trouble with my point here, which may indicate a flaw in my thinking rather than articulation. But the tl;dr is that the Religious Zionists see themselves as commanded to reoccupy the land and kill the Canaanites again, under such circumstances that the presence of Arabs in the stead of Canaanites is perplexing rather than soluble, as it is also unsolvable for a dumb enough AI, (which includes otherwise smart ones). The “obvious” solution is correctly seen as not obvious at all, and only seems obvious because of human intelligence. In this sense there is not a religious war.
In general, taking seriously a text that reinforces evil by repetitious emphasis and instead reading it as if its writer were logical and had realized that “detail is burdensome” emasculates the evil. Non-fundamentalists who correctly find the original meaning of the text as author intended, namely that which seems plausible upon reading it, are directly dangerous.
Even Religious Zionists are sufficiently fundamentalist Orthodox Jews that such a reading is not at all common. (Chareidim are solidly so, which doesn’t matter much as they don’t see the state as legally a continuation of ancient Israel anyway.)