Why Make it Easier for the Mullahs?

 

My witty childhood friend Aaron Kopolowitz of blessed memory once commented that if you've got nothing nice to say about somebody, you must be thinking of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

I thought of Aaron and what he said about the gepaygerter Ayatollah when I spotted a photo in The New York Post of former president Jimmy Carter looking hospice frail at 99. Carter and Khomeini go together in my mind.

Ruhollah Khomeini, from exile, led the Islamist opposition to the Shah of Iran during the revolution that culminated on February 11, 1979.

The overthrow of the Shah’s Pahlavi dynasty allowed for the emergence of what is indisputably the most wicked regime in the Middle East.

Shah made the mistake of crushing secular opponents of his rule, which left the Islamists poised to lead the resistance. When anti-government demonstrations began in October 1977 against the Shah, Jimmy Carter's administration had no good options to save this vital American ally. US intelligence had been blindsided by the revolution. The ailing monarch fled Iran on January 16, 1979, leaving behind the reasonable Shapour Bakhtiar as interim leader. Bakhtiar was assassinated by the Islamist regime while in French exile on August 6, 1991.

In the event, on February 1, 1979, Khomeini returned from exile in France to a tumultuous welcome. And by February 11, he was ensconced as leader until he died on June 3, 1989, at age 86. Not only did the people of Iran welcome Khomeini, but in March 1979, they also overwhelmingly backed the referendum declaring the country an Islamic Republic.

While the embers of the revolution still smoldered, PLO leader Yasser Arafat arrived in Tehran on February 17, 1979, to celebrate the Shah's overthrow with Khomeini. Iran and Israel had close, if unofficial, ties. Most of Israel's oil came from Iran. Meantime, Arafat had connected with all the contending anti-Shah groups based in Lebanon (the south of which was then his Fatahland). Eventually, he put most of his cards on anti-Shah factions loyal to Khomeini. The PLO would later take credit for suggesting that Iran form the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

Not unappreciative, Khomeini turned the Israeli diplomatic mission (one of our largest anywhere) in Teheran over to the PLO.

The regime began a series of executions of Jewish community leaders on accusations of Zionist sympathies, starting with Habib Elghanian.

Khomeini agreed with Arafat that Israel had to be wiped off the face of the earth. Iran has never deviated from this position. That is why Teheran opposed the March 1979 Egyptian-Israel peace treaty and worked to isolate Egypt from the Muslim world.

When, in October 1979, the Shah was admitted into the US for medical treatment, the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line took over the American Embassy on November 9, 1979. Khomeini promptly blessed the capture. Fifty-three Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979, until January 20, 1981, and freed just as Ronald Reagan was about to be inaugurated.

When in 1993, Arafat himself disingenuously professed to accept the existence of Israel in the Oslo Accords, Persian Iran's three proxy groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad (both Sunni Palestinian Arab), and Hezbollah (Shi'ite Lebanese Arab) intensified their jihadist resistance. Alawite-led Syria, another Iranian satellite, also joined the rejectionist camp.

***

Fast forward to June 2024. Israel, isolated and condemned in the international arena, prepares for all-out war with Hezbollah. The possibility that Iran will not stand on the sidelines is real. Iran is a formidable enemy – a massive country with a population of 88 million. Its major export trading partners are China and Turkey. Iran's other key allies are Russia and North Korea. Ordinary Iranians may regret the embrace their elders gave to the Islamists, but there is no freedom of expression in Iran, and all broadcast media is state-run.

Now, Israel finds itself fighting a multiple-front war – funded, instigated, and enabled by Iran:

-       Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon

-       Syria

-       Iraq (where pro-Iranian militias have a free hand)

-       West Bank (Iran funds various terror groups besides Hamas)

-       Yemen (Shi'ite Houties control large parts of the country)

-       Gaza (Hamas and Islamic Jihad remain dominant)

-       Iran itself

***

On the threshold of nuclear weapons, Holocaust-denying, genocide-instigating Iran and its so-called Axis of Resistance is responsible for untold death and suffering across the Middle East (and beyond, including fatal attacks against Jewish targets around the globe).

Iran sees itself in a zero-sum conflict with the West and Zionism. It is Israel's mortal enemy. However, Europe does not see itself as being at war with Iran. Iran Air flies to Paris and London. In February 2024 alone, Europe's trade with Iran was estimated at €847 million. The US seeks any opportunity to engage with Iran, most recently holding secret talks last month in Oman. Both the UN General Assembly and Security Council paid tribute to the memory of Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian president who, together with his foreign minister, was killed in a helicopter accident on May 19, 2024. Alas, no one held a moment of silence for the thousands of Iranians Raisi ordered hanged when he sat on the regime's Death Commission.

How far will Iran push its hatred of Israel? Will its Twelvers' eschatological Shi'ism lead it to disregard rationality by attempting a surprise knockout blow against the Jewish state? Such a decision may await the demise of the current Supreme Leader, 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He is the final decision-maker on issues of war and peace. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its hyper-terrorist Quds Force branch are loyal to him.

Iran is the most significant external strategic threat to Israel, no doubt.

None of its proxies are mindless puppets, but the mullahs in Teheran provide the essential military, diplomatic, and logistical wherewithal.

***

Now, let’s cut to the chase. Iran has somehow been able to bridge the usual divide separating Turks, Persians, and Arabs, not to mention Shi'ites and Sunnis. We need to ask ourselves whether any of Israel's policies have contributed to Iran's extraordinary achievement. What might we be doing to infuriate Muslims in a way that makes them willing to overlook their historic ethnic and theological differences?

Here's something to ponder. Israel has ostentatiously changed the status quo on the Temple Mount. Mohammed Deif cited this in the Hamas declaration of war of October 7, 2023. You can say that the enemy does not need an excuse to strike out. But the unity among Muslims is unprecedented. What do you think explains it? Or, maybe you think that on principle that praying, prostrating, and prancing on and around the Temple Mount – may be schecting a lamb – is a price worth paying. And the Iran-led united front against Israel will crumble because our God is bigger than theirs. In other words, our apocalyptic vision will prevail over theirs.

On the other hand, if you don’t see the world through this sort of messianic prism, you, like me, are left to wonder if we are imprudently uniting our enemies even as we fragment ourselves.

Jerusalem Day, 2024. Prostrating near Temple Mount

Congratulations Yair Golan - new head of Israel Labor Party I would like to vote for you

 

Congratulations.

I would like to vote for you.

Because I am sick and tired of Netanyahu, his La Familia-dominated Likud, the Haredi parties, and the messianic apocalyptic religious Zionist hardali parties.

I am tired of Benny Ganz playing Hamlet and intensely irritated with Yair Lapid (see below).

So, I mean it when I say I would like to vote for you.

However, you have been advocating emptying our prisons of Palestinian terrorists – not just the very monsters who executed October 7 but thousands of veteran “Yihya Sinwars” – in return for our hostages or their remains.

That would be a Schalit Deal on steroids.

And this will make us …safer?

This will discourage the Islamists from coming back for more.

Today, we paid yet another installment on the Schalit deal.

Now, you say we should have pulled out of Gaza 4 ½ months ago. So, we should leave the Philadelphi Corridor to the Egyptians and Hamas. How well did that serve us until now?

I would like to give you a chance to develop a grand strategy for Israel. I would like to take you seriously and pray you are not another "too-brilliant" Ehud Barak.

Take your time. Think out what you are offering. I am open.

Oh, about Yair Lapid. He also supports a Schalit II deal.

There is always Armageddon

Let me take your mind off our war of survival against Hamas, off the hostages held in Gaza, and off the sociopathic killers we would need to release in return for our captives – not that we know how many are still alive. Let me show you how to mentally brush off those ignoramuses of Jewish ancestry who have made a common cause with wokes, socialists, and Islamists in an orgy of intersectionality. How to ignore the tidal waves of anti-Israelism and antisemitism sweeping university campuses around the world. How to put aside the hypocrisy of world leaders and the international community and – even disregard the stupidities, hubris, and miscalculations of our own government. I can help you momentarily forget all those maddening posts on social media that suck up your time. And even how to figuratively mute the red alerts that are set off on your phone when Hezbollah attacks from the north or Hamas gets off rockets and mortars from the parts of Gaza it holds or has retaken.

For I have just finished a book that is so mind-shattering, so attention-grabbing, that it can temporarily numb us from our present travails.

The book is Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, in which the author sets out cinematically what might happen in the first 72 minutes of a nuclear war that begins one mid-afternoon when North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un launches two or three nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles at the US.

Time is of the essence. Begin with the fact that the president has just six minutes to evaluate what he has been told about incoming ballistic missiles before he must give the launch order.

By organizing her deeply researched book into minutes, Jacobsen is able to play out a situation in which there is no time for decision-making, as in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Instead, decision-makers must abide by a playbook.

Pyongyang has attacked – why, we never find out. With absolute plausibility, Jacobsen shows how the foretold US retaliation is misread by not-ready-for-prime-time sensors in Russia. Its generals think Washington is exploiting the North Korean aggression to launch a First Strike against Russia.

She takes us from the moment when US eyes in the skies pick up the North Korean launch to a series of ill-fated – but emphatically credible – actions that inexorably ensue, which the reader can’t help but intuit will lead to the unraveling of human civilization.

The book brought to mind the 1983 made-for-ABC-TV film The Day After. President Ronald Reagan found the film depressing and compelling; it encouraged him to urge Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to agree to the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Unfortunately, while there has been a reduction in the number of nukes around the globe since the USSR collapsed in 1991, there are still too many – on the order of 12,000.

This book is non-fiction not a post-apocalyptic novel like The Road, Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 magnum opus. Annie Jacobsen has produced a corrective for all those books and journal articles that students of politics and wargaming read in graduate school and military academies. Its starting premise is that, for some unknowable reason, deterrence fails.

At the end of the book, in a sort of epilogue, we get to find out how humanity fared when the last of the detonations are over —spoiler alert. Those not incinerated immediately in the US, North Korea, Russia, and Europe will likely face extinction because of nuclear winter and the depletion of the earth's ozone layer.

Would things really turn out that bad? I am thinking about how well Israel did – with the invaluable assistance of the US and other allies – in shooting down the blitz of 120 ballistic missiles, 170 drones, and about 30 cruise missiles, all conventionally armed, that Iran fired at us in the early morning hours of Sunday, April 14.

Why couldn’t the US take down a few North Korean missiles? And why did it choose to retaliate instantly? Thus giving the inept Russians the opportunity to miscalculate. I am thinking about how Washington dissuaded Israel from immediately reacting against Teheran’s attack.

We don’t have a complete picture of how Iran’s missiles were intercepted, but we do know it was not a bolt-out-of-the-blue attack. We had hours to ponder the appearance of the drones. And there was no immediate retaliation that might have been misinterpreted as a First Strike by some non-involved nuclear power.

Furthermore, while Iran has 3,000 conventional ballistic missiles, its leaders made an apparent decision not to try to overwhelm Israel’s defenses. Certainly, had Iran acted differently and had Lebanon and Yemen simultaneously unleashed all their Houthi and Hezbollah-controlled missiles, rockets, and drones, that night would have ended catastrophically. Perhaps the Shi’ite Islamists decided they would bide their time until they had a nuclear deterrent to inhibit any devastating Israeli retaliation.

In Jacobsen’s telling, there are very few interceptors (maybe 44) based in the continental US, making the chances of shooting down a state-of-the-art North Korean ballistic missile low. As part of the scenario, besides devastating strikes on California and Washington, North Korea also detonates a satellite bomb already in orbit above the US that unleashes an electromagnetic pulse or EMP that takes down America’s power grid and everything that works on electrical components – meaning the whole shebang of US society.

Deterrence has worked so far. It is supposed to operate so long as an irrational leader or fanatical terror group does not get hold of a nuclear bomb. Or until there is a glitch in some country’s early warning system. Or until there is some human error. Except that if deterrence fails – Jacobsen’s point is that there is no such thing as a limited nuclear war. In a nuclear war, there are no rules about “proportionality” or anything else.

Plainly, the best course for humanity to follow is one of universal nuclear weapons disarmament.

So, while the useful idiots on America’s campuses have been protesting a “genocide” that is not happening in Gaza and shilling for a genuinely colonial and imperialist worldview, attention has undeniably shifted away from the nuclear threat posed particularly by North Korea, Iran, and Putin’s Russia.

Tilting at windmills in kaffiyehs and face masks even as the fate of all mankind hangs in the balance strikes me as unforgivably criminal.

-------------

Here is a C-SPAN interview with the author, which may encourage you to read/listen to this important book.

ASK THE (REFORM) RABBI - A Review of 'Reading Reform Responsa'

Reading Reform Responsa: Jewish Tradition, Reform Rabbis, and Today's Issues by Rabbi Mark Washofsky (CCAR Press, 2024)

This book could open your eyes to a Reform Judaism you may not have realized existed – faithful to tradition, Jewishly learned, and in its own way connected to Halacha. For there is an inclination – at least in my neck of the woods – to denigrate the Reform as the stream that makes it up as they go along.

Since its inception in 1873 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise in Cincinnati, American Reform has gone through massive changes, for instance, from anti-Zionist to non-Zionist to staunchly pro-Zionist. Likewise, in matters of ritual and observance. Reform has proceeded from willfully anti-Orthodox – from davka not kosher, davka not Shabbat observant, and davka universalism over Yiddishkeit to something else entirely.

Today's Reform takes a measured approach to kashrut. Many Reform Jews avoid overtly treif food; the movement strongly encourages observing Shabbat, including candle lighting, and it is explicitly committed to Jewish peoplehood, Israel, and Zionism.

Politically, as the most assimilated of the three remaining branches of organized US Judaism, Reform has been buffeted by the winds of woke, and its idea of pro-Israelism is stretchy. But my impression is that post-October 7th – and in the wake of the tsunami of anti-Israelism and antisemitism that has swept America – Reform Jews, though still progressive at the DNA level, may be rethinking some of their woke conceits.

I don't think anyone knows how many Reform pulpit rabbis are pro-Zionists (probably most) and how many recently ordained are unabashedly in the Palestinian Arab camp. Lately, there were headlines connecting Rabbis for a Ceasefire to the Reform movement.  Yes, these business-class clerical activists include Reform rabbis, but the driving force behind what is a Jewish Voice for Peace front group are holy women associated with the Reconstructionists. 

It is undeniable that Reform and Conservative rabbis are active with J Street, whose raison d'etre is an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines. This group brands itself as pro-Israel but has been working to limit military aid to Israel and endorses House Members who oppose funding the Iron Dome. Not long ago, J Street was shamed into pulling its endorsement of Jamaal Bowman. But it continues to collaborate with a cadre of other House members even as they work to undercut support for Israel in Congress.

In fairness, Orthodoxy, too, began in opposition to Zionism. Nowadays, the mainstream ultra-Orthodox in America are mostly non-Zionist, not anti-Zionist. The responsa of the Orthodox sage Rabbi Moshe Feinstein showed him to be less than keen on Zionism. For instance, he opposed displaying an Israeli flag in synagogues. That said, today's Agudah Israel of America (with which Feinstein was associated) is staunchly pro-Israel even as it remains ideologically non-Zionist. Reb Moshe died in 1986, and as far as I know, he never visited Israel. It is hard to predict how his thinking might have evolved.

In Reading Reform Responsa, Rabbi Mark Washofsky, the Solomon B. Freehof Professor of Jewish Law and Practice at Hebrew Union College, makes the case that Reform is engaged with Halacha – to be understood as the laws and guidelines for Jewish living – and that it is futile to debate whether Reform is a "halachic" movement. For in the process of developing their decisions, Washofsky and other Reform rabbis engage with Halacha. And they have been doing so since the earliest days of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the movement's rabbinical body. Washofsky explains that the "word [Halacha] is likely derived from the Hebrew root ה-ל-ך, hei-lamed-chaf, 'to walk,' as in 'the way that one should walk, the path that one should follow.'"

Washofsky is plainly on to something when he explains that "responsa, like all texts, are products of a particular time and place, displaying the influence of the social, political, and cultural environment in which they are written."

For this book, he has selected a dozen or so responsa, "a representative sample," which he uses to explain what responsa is and how Reform and Orthodox responsa differ. He does not have much to say about Conservative responsa. Parenthetically, the US Conservative Rabbinical Assembly ruled in 2023 that "Use of an electric car per se is not a violation of Shabbat as long as the driving is not for non-Shabbat purposes."

All responsa are "questions about Jewish religious practice" that individuals and communities submit as inquiries to a rabbi or, in this instance, to the Central Conference of American Rabbis. These tend not to be easy problems, for if they had an obviously correct halachic answer, they would have been resolved at the pulpit level. What makes the responsa Reform in particular is that the replies are "composed by Reform rabbis for an audience of progressive Jewish readers" who share the same religious, social, and aesthetic sensibilities.

The responsa Washofsky selected reads like a cross between tightly argued legal briefs and literary essays. The authors' goal – and I think this is true across denominations – is to persuade, not dictate. We may think of Reform as institutionally hierarchical, but it is theologically decentralized. "The responsum is an 'opinion,' but it is almost always an advisory opinion," Washofsky writes.

Rabbi Solomon Freehof (1892-1990) anchored modern Reform in the responsa tradition. He chaired the movement's responsa committee (in effect serving as Reform's posek) and collated its work. Washofsky lauds him as a pathbreaker, even if he doesn't always agree with Freehof's conclusions.

For the Orthodox, Washofsky explains, "the meaning of the Torah does not evolve but is eternal and unchanging: the meaning of the text lies objectively (if implicitly) there, between its lines, and our task as students of Torah is to 'turn the Torah over and over again' (Mishnah Avot 5:22) until we discover it.'" 

Take, for instance, whether it is permissible to ride an elevator on Shabbat and under what circumstances. For the Orthodox, the answer would have been hovering about in the holy texts even before electricity had been harnessed. The Halacha turns out to be…less than clear-cut. Some Shabbat lifts meet the guidelines set by some Orthodox decisors. Others do not. 

In contradistinction, Washofsky writes: "We Reform Jews do not consider ourselves bound to the authority of Jewish law, a corpus of writings mostly composed by an all-male ancient and medieval scholarly elite who did not share the modern and progressive commitments that define our religious outlook." That said, "the practice of Reform, the way we have lived out Judaism on a daily, weekly, and seasonal basis, remains firmly rooted in the Rabbinic (that is to say the halachic) tradition." Washofsky allows that "This sweeping insight may be surprising to many readers."

I came away from reading this book with the sense that Reform rabbis in the Washofsky mold care very much that their Judaism rings authentic. They have moved light years from the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, which staked out a combatively anti-Orthodox stance. That may have catalyzed Orthodoxy in a more reactionary direction. It stirred the Chatam Sofer (Rabbi Moshe Sofer) to declare, "Everything new is forbidden by the Torah." I attended an elementary school on the Lower East Side jointly named after him and Rabbi Shlomo Kluger, who was a proponent of insularity in the face of modernity. And here I am blogging about Reform responsa!

In any case, successive Reform platforms Columbus (1937), San Francisco (1976), and Pittsburgh II (1999) have made Reform more traditional and conventionally observant while American Orthodoxy has arguably, though not uniformly, moved in a more inward-looking and ultra-Orthodox direction.

In October 1983, CCAR made an irreparable break with convention by embracing patrilineal descent. I get why they did it – rampant out-marriage and a new generation that understood its Jewish identity as a matter of choice and lifestyle. Yet the consequences have been as shattering as when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. Whatever the technical, historical, or sociological justifications of the patrilineal descent determination, it undermined the peoplehood that Jewish civilization needs to embrace. Washofsky doesn't address this controversial and uncomfortable decision in Reading Reform Responsa.

Instead, the book synthesizes more recent responsa. The appendix contains the full text of all the responsa and a helpful glossary. The issues here include: May the Torah portion be read on a Friday night if there is no minyan on Shabbat? May an Orthodox minyan be granted space in a Reform synagogue? Does one honor a parent's request for cremation? Is it permissible for a bar or bat mitzvah to read from a defective and irreparable Holocaust-era Torah Scroll for its important symbolism? How should we understand what constitutes Sabbath observance and Sabbath desecration? Should congregations display Israeli and or American flags on the Bimah? May they sing Hatikvah? Can a Reform Jew mark Valentine's Day and other secular holidays? Has Christmas become an essentially secular holiday? May one withhold medical information in a job interview? Is it permissible to employ non-union labor in renovating a Reform Temple? May hunger-striking Islamist prisoners in Guantanamo Bay be force-fed?

More than the answers, Washofsky is interested in showing us the process of Reform responsa. Bear in mind that while Reform Judaism is not bound by Jewish law, it does not willy-nilly disregard it. Take the question of honoring a parent's request for cremation. "Reform Judaism does not regard cremation as a violation of Jewish law," writes Washofsky. Classical rabbinic sources were not explicit on the issue, perhaps because cremation wasn't an issue. After the Shoah, cremation became associated with the Nazis. Reform theologians have historically come down on both sides of the issue. The responsa here decides that children are "entitled to uphold their own religious standards against their father's request" to be cremated.

Reform responsa often cites the kind of sources you'd find in Orthodox responsa – Torah, Talmud, Rambam's Mishneh Torah, Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh Dei-ah), and 20^th-century decisors like Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (for example on displaying the Israeli flag). Citing is not following, but it is contextualizing and acknowledging.

Take Shabbat. Unlike the Orthodox, Reform Jews are not constrained on Shabbat from carrying an umbrella on a rainy morning, ripping toilet tissue, or taking a shower. Washofsky reminds us, "We [Reform] have found it more useful to concentrate upon the positive, ritual elements of Shabbat that do strike us as meaningful rather than upon the negative ones that are devoid of significance to us."

What does that mean in practice? For one, the synagogue gift shop should be closed on Shabbat. An already delayed Brit milah should not be held on Shabbat. One responsum found: "The fact that Shabbat' conflicts' with another mitzvah or worthy cause does not mean that it is Shabbat that must give way. Indeed, the reverse is often the case." The Reform rabbis recognize that beyond abstaining from work on Shabbat, there is also a positive obligation to rest. In the final analysis, Reform rabbis like Washofsky want their Shabbat to share commonalities with the Shabbes of other observant Jews. "What does sh'mirat Shabbat even mean in our Reform context?" The answer begins with creating a "Sabbath mood."

This accessible book's principle idea is that Reform responsa are halachic texts. They strive with precedents even if they do not hesitate to overturn them (in how to define "work" on Shabbat, for instance). Their starting premise and aesthetic are non-Orthodox. And they are "Reform" because they are drafted by Reform clergy and aimed at a Reform audience.

If, like me, you are interested in what still binds our tribal people together, you will enjoy - as much as I did - reading this erudite introduction to the place of Halacha in Reform Judaism.

 

BOOK BLOG: Yair Ettinger's Frayed: The Disputes Unraveling Religious Zionists

 

It is all connected. Mizrachi (merkaz rehani) was founded in 1902 in Vilnius, Lithuania, as a religious faction in the World Zionist Organization. In Palestine, the movement spearheaded the establishment of a Rabbinate under Rabbi Abraham Issac Kook. In 1952, after dissolving its relationship with the non-Zionist Orthodox parties, Mizrachi and Ha-Po'el ha-Mizrachi created the National Religious Party and a daily newspaper, Hazofeh. Ha-Kibbutz ha-Dati is Mizrachi's kibbutz movement. Mekor Rishon subsumed the newspaper, and the NRP went defunct in 2003. Followers of Religious Zionism are known as Dati Leumi, though many have turned haredi-leumi or Hardal.

Religious Zionism is a stream of Orthodoxy with a pronounced political ideology. How is it connected to Modern Orthodoxy in the Diaspora? That is one of the questions I was thinking about as I read journalist Yair Ettinger's Frayed: The Disputes Unraveling Religious Zionists (278 pages, Toby Press, $29.95). Ettinger, a kipa-sruga wearer, has perceptively covered the religion beat in Israel for Haaretz and Kan (Israel Broadcasting Authority), so he is well-positioned to launch readers into exploring the various shades of Religious Zionism.

Religious Zionism is rooted in a triad: the Land of Israel, the People of Israel, and the Torah of Israel, as Ettinger explains. For literate Jews, regardless of religiosity and ideology, the Covenant that anchors Jewish civilization is the connection between the land and the people as described in the Torah – Ettinger's triad. Whether you take this literally as Religious Zionists do or as a sacred foundational myth, Jewish civilization is rooted in the land. The attachment to the land manifested by other ancient civilizations, such as the American Indian tribes, the Aboriginals of Australia, Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and the South American Incas, is also an attribute of our civilization.

All that Theodor Herzl and his modern political Zionism did was revive this element of our civilization. A short while later, the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook gave Orthodox Judaism its roadmap into political Zionism. After 1967, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook provided Gush Emunim's settlement movement with its messianic marching orders, and its energy consumed religious Zionism.

Ettinger's book identifies disputes that divide Israel's Dati Leumi world. These no longer involve settlements over the Green Line. Gush Emunim's triumph resolved the issue, making settling Judea, Samaria, and Gaza the First Imperative. Nowadays, to my knowledge, no national religious figure who can draw a crowd opposes the primacy of the settlement enterprise.

What's left to unravel? Plenty. For instance, the role of women in the synagogue and the IDF, the reception of male homosexuals in the synagogue, and whether to shake off the influence of the patronage-laden state-funded Rabbinate (which today has only a thin Zionist veneer), including over marriage and kashrut. Should Religious Zionists commit to building the Third Temple? 75% of them support Temple Mount pilgrimages, though the Kooks (father and son) were opposed. And how should Religious Zionists relate to the non-Jewish world?

Take the issue of women in the IDF. Rabbis Zvi Yehuda Kook and Shlomo Goren were not thrilled with the idea, Ettinger tells us. Yet Zionist Religious girls did go into the army in numbers. Today's Hardal position, as enunciated by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, is uncompromising. "A girl who enlists in the IDF claiming that she wants to contribute is indeed contributing – she is contributing to the destruction of the state." Other rabbis add that women who go into the army are potentially compromising their "modesty" and are likely to emerge "damaged." The rabbis also do not want their boys distracted and, therefore, oppose gender integration in combat units. Only the Religious Kibbutz movement representing the non-Hardal remains of the Mizrachi stream takes pride in sending its girls to the army, according to Ettinger. My impression is that only a minority of national religious women now do IDF service. Some girls do other forms of national service, but since the goal is to maintain "modesty," the alternatives can be pretty parve. 

In a parallel universe, a minority camp within Religious Zionism is pushing the envelope on egalitarianism for women. Some have pressed for partnership minyans, which give women a role in conducting the services. Should women give homilies during davening from the women's side of the partition dividing all Orthodox synagogues? Should they serve in top synagogical leadership roles? Since many women are Torah scholars, and some qualify as Yoetzet Halacha (essentially unordained rabbis), what weight should their legal rulings have?

Women can push the envelope only so far, partly for cultural and aesthetic reasons but primarily because of Halacha and the stare decisis approach male Orthodox rabbis take toward interpreting Jewish religious law.

Going back to politics. The ill-fated 1993 Oslo Accords with the PLO and Israel's 2005 unilateral disengagement from Gaza solidified the Hardal political ascendency within Religious Zionism. Hardal is ultra-Orthodox in religion and hyper-nationalist in politics. Under its influence, young men are sporting knee-length tzitzit, extra large skullcaps, and payot. Women are dressing more and more in the hyper-modest ultra-Orthodox fashion, albeit with color. Those who identify as Hardal would also lean conservative regarding women's participation in the synagogue. Further, Hardal folks desire to rebuild the Temple on Mount Moriah where the Dome of the Rock now stands, disregarding the prospect of an apocalyptic confrontation with the Muslim world, which also considers the site holy. Ettinger offers a rosier scenario in the "exceptionalism" of Yehuda Glick, who thinks rebuilding the Temple while leaving the present Al-Aksa Mosque in place would be possible and pave the way for a "religious utopia."

The role of the clergy is another point of contention within the Religious Zionist stream. In the non-Zionist Haredi world, which is ultra-Orthodox and insular from non-Jewish society, grand rabbis are held to be oracles, and their guidance is sought on matters ranging from medical procedures to voting in elections. Hardal Religious Zionists also relate to their clerics as sainted. When Naftali Bennett challenged this attitude, Ettinger writes, things did not end well for him.

Ettinger chooses not to use the term Hardal in his book. He does refer to today's leading Hardal politicians, Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the Kahane-lite Otzma Yehudit Party, and Bezalel Smotrich, the National Union/Tkuma Party leader. Before the most recent elections held in November 2022, Likud Party chief and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was adamant that Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and Avi Maoz of the Noam Party run under a single rubric to unite the entire Hardal and dati leumi camp. It worked. The bloc won 14 Knesset seats, briefly becoming the third-largest faction. Once sworn in, Ben-Gvir and Maoz broke away from Smotrich (though they have no fundamental differences) and returned to their respective parties. At the same time, Smotrich rebranded his as the National Religious Party.

About 22 percent of Israelis identify as Religious Zionists of all hues, according to  Ettinger. He says he can't predict whether a politically and theologically moderate NRP/Mafdal-like religious Zionist party will rise again. Its agenda was heavily weighed on education and social issues. As far as I know, today, national religious Israelis who are not Hardal must seek political expression through one of the non-parochial parties such as Benny Ganz's National Unity. There are not enough of them to form their own religious party. The last attempt was made in 1988 by rabbis Yehuda Amital and Michael Melchior.

Ettinger writes that the Mizrachi Party dominated dati leumi politics back in the day. The NRP was the dominant political institution alongside just a few religious-cultural gatekeepers, such as Mercaz Harav. His thesis is that today, there are no gatekeepers or controlling agenda-setters. Along with the ascendency of the settlement movement and political Hardalism, many contending yeshivot, rabbis, and powerbrokers have emerged. So, Religious Zionists can revel in not having a magisterium and in decentralized decision-making. Ettinger terms this state of play "privatization." Non-Hardal Religious Zionists mostly follow their consciences. Those in the Hardal camp are pressed to "listen to their rabbis." Lots of different rabbis.

Especially since October 7, 2023, the already complicated attitude of Religious Zionists toward non-Zionist Haredim who refuse to do any form of national service or send their sons to the army has only become more fraught. The two share an Orthodox theology; their prayer services are practically interchangeable. Yet, Religious Zionists have made disproportionate sacrifices for Israeli security. Meantime, haredi youth are now on their pre-Passover recess, fumfing around as if the country had not just buried over 600 soldiers. The Haredi alibi of insularity is wearing a wee thin.

Yet the dominant Hardal wing of Religious Zionism is well-disposed toward Haredi society. They share an aesthetic for close-mindedness. To the chagrin of haredi rabbis – twitchy haredi adolescents or shababnikim feel drawn to Ben-Gvir's religious chauvinism tinged with political extremism. If I am right that for some of their constituents, Haredi draft-dodging is becoming intolerable, Ben Gvir and Smotsrich will have to "do a Netanyahu" to maintain the alliance. They will need to obfuscate the haredi refusal to serve or, at the very least, kick the issue down the road. The best way to change the subject would be to channel the wrath of their electorate at the "leftists" who have, undeniably, been calling for ending the October 7 War at any price.

How does all this look from 6,000 miles away? A difference between Diaspora Modern Orthodoxy and Israeli Religious Zionism is the latter's ongoing commitment to the Land and IDF service (including nowadays relentless stints of reserve duty). At the same time, non-Hardal Religious Zionists and Modern Orthodox Diaspora Jews may be drawing inspiration from one another on the role of women and other social issues. Non-Hardal Religious Zionists are finding workarounds to the Haredi-dominated Rabbinate when they want to marry. Against the wishes of Hardal clerics like Dov Lior and Zvi Thau, they are turning to national religious Tzohar rabbis who are of a tolerant bent. They are also looking to bypass the Rabbinate on conversion and kashrut. America's Modern Orthodox manage to marry and eat kosher without a tax-payer-funded Rabbinate, so why shouldn't dati leumi Israelis enjoy the same privilege?

The two communities are not identical. A difference between the Diaspora and Israel is that Religious Zionists are more willing to think independently about the place of religion in society. They are keen to explore artistic, literary, and cultural expression and to stake out religious boundaries. Whereas in the Diaspora, centrist-leaning Modern Orthodox feel constrained to live within normative parameters, or so say academic observers such as sociologist Shlomo Fischer, who is cited in Yehuda Mirsky's introduction to the Ettinger book.

I confess to finding the nomenclature of Modern Orthodoxy misleading. The "modern" in Modern Orthodoxy should not connote leading anything less than a Halachic lifestyle. One of the characteristics of Orthodoxy is perforce insularity from the non-Jewish world – in terms of food, culture, friendships, and other non-utilitarian relations. Each sub-group within Orthodoxy finds its place along the insularity continuum from fully acculturated to completely inward-looking.

Whatever their intramural differences, Religious Zionists of all stripes and Modern Orthodox in the Diaspora appear united in opposing concessions to non-Orthodox streams of Judaism, including at the Western Wall Plaza, according to Ettinger.

I sense that Ettinger is not downhearted about any unraveling within religious Zionism, seeing the disputes as a sign of vibrancy. He assesses liberal Religious Zionism as alive and well, perhaps because he identifies with this more moderate wing. Maybe there is a dichotomy in Religious Zionism: politically monochromatic while synagogically kaleidoscopic.

Based on years of field reporting, Ettinger's strength in this book is his mastery of the subject. With Shmuel Rosner and, more lately, Yair Cherki, Ettinger helps render the multifaceted Orthodox world to Israel's non-Orthodox majority. Here, I feel he shies away from taking positions that could lead him into controversial territory, except when he blames Bennett for fragmenting Religious Zionism's Big Tent. Yet by the time Bennett reinvented himself to appeal beyond the Religious Zionist world and, in May 2021, as head of the Yamina Party, joined a unity government with Yair Lapid, the bulk of Religious Zionists were already in the Hardal Camp. Benett was simply giving the camp's non-Hardal remnant a soft landing.  

Frayed: The Disputes Unraveling Religious Zionists has been expertly translated by Eylon Levy and Mitch Ginsburg, making it a smooth and accessible read. There are not a lot of sparks here, and no new analytical ground is unearthed, but this is a solid primer on the struggles and place of Religious Zionism in Israel.

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