FM: John Whitbeck
The article transmitted below shines a light on a
significant trend in Israeli society with
potential global consequences, since this
"messianic fervor" is likely to get even worse
over time and since Israel has nuclear weapons.
Similarly delusional and dangerous "thinking" is
found among the millions of American adherents to
dispensationalist "Christian Zionism", the bizarre
cult whose adherents worship the State of Israel
rather than the traditional Christian Trinity,
have contempt for the gentle moral message of
Jesus of Nazareth and hope to witness in their
lifetimes the apocalyptic Battle of Armageddon in
the "Holy Land", the end of life on Earth and
their personal "rapturing" up to heaven.
For me, the best moment in the controversial
opening ceremony of the current Paris Olympics was
the rendition of John Lennon's classic song Imagine:
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky ...
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too ...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
With irrationality on a rampage, one can, and
rationally must, dream of such a better world.
War Will Usher in Israel's
Redemption? Messianic Fervor Is
Gaining Popularity Beyond
Religious Fanatics
Disasters are a fertile ground for
purveyors of apocalyptic
prophecies
Israel's
national missions minister isn't
alone in thinking that we are
living in a miraculous time.
Increasing numbers in right-wing
circles have lately joined Orit
Strock in identifying the war in
the Gaza Strip with the War of Gog
and Magog and the ongoing disaster
of October 7 with the birth pangs
of the Messiah and the advent of
redemption. Some, like Rabbi
Eliezer Kashtiel, from the Bnei
David yeshiva in the Eli
settlement in the West Bank, draw
on the words of the founder of
religious Zionism, Rabbi Abraham
Isaac Kook (1865-1935), who said,
"When there is a great war in the
world, the power of the Messiah
awakens." War has a purifying
power, Rabbi Kook maintains,
because it arouses the divine in
humanity and helps overcome the
selfish instinct. "The greater the
destruction and the more systems
that have fallen part… the greater
the anticipation of the Messiah's
footsteps."
Social
media is flooded with clips of
rabbis calculating the end times
and intoxicated with salvation as
they declare that we are poised at
the onset of the flowering of our
redemption. Rabbi Naftali Nissim,
a YouTube star in-the-making,
waxed poetic: "There has never
been a beautiful period like this…
What happened on Simhat Torah [October 7]
is a prelude to redemption." Rabbi
Yaakov Maor explained that "Rafah
[in Gaza] refers to '288 sparks'
[the numerological value of the
word 'RFH," and a concept in
kabbalistic literature]. The
redemption is near!" And Rabbi
Eliezer Berland, head of the Shuvu
Banim group in the Breslav Hasidic
sect, promised: "This is the last
war before the Messiah. After this
war, Messiah Son of David will
come."
But such
talk is not confined to the
yeshivas and the kollels (yeshivas
for married men), it's even voiced
on commercial television. Dana
Varon, a presenter and commentator
on the right-wing Channel 14,
stated, "It's written in the
Mishna: The Galilee will be
destroyed and the Golan shall be
emptied, and the people of the
border wander from city to city,
that's the Mishna coming to
realization within us literally,
I'm happy about this."
Her
colleague Yinon Magal went even
farther in a radio broadcast. "The
feeling is that we are approaching
great days. We are in a redemptive
process, and prophecies are
happening." And on another
occasion: "Only the Messiah [can]
supplant Bibi." Magal is a
demagogue and the embodiment of
narcissism, but his remarks
reflect a prevailing sentiment
among broad circles of the settler and Hardali (nationalist
ultra-Orthodox) right, and one
that has also been adopted by
broad segments of the ruling
party.
The
sentiment itself is not new. Since
the advent of religious Zionism,
it has greased the movement's
ideological wheels and been the
driving force of the settlement
project and the vision of Greater
Israel. What is new is the
popularity these ideas enjoy in
the present-day political and
public discourse, and how they
have traveled from the margins of
right-wing politics into the Likud
center. Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, who is captive by
choice of power-hungry Kahanists
and other extremists, is dragging
Israel into the grip of an
apocalyptic ecstasy that is
deepening the existing crisis and
creating new conditions for
realizing the messianic fantasy of
conquering all the territories of
the Land of Israel, replacing
Israeli democracy with the kingdom
of the House of David and building
the Third Temple.
This
accounts for the enthusiastic
spirit that has gripped the
messianic camp since October 7, as
well as the repeated provocations
on the part of individuals and
groups in an attempt to ignite a
conflagration in the West Bank and
pull the Arabs in Israel into the
blaze.
War of
Gog and Magog
The
origins of this craving for
destruction and strife reside in
the belief that the coming of the
Messiah will be preceded by a
period of "pangs of the Messiah,"
characterized by suffering and
ordeals; in short, there is no
redemption that is not acquired
without torments. This is a basic
element of political messianism,
which interprets historical events
in a mythic light, as the
embodiment of sanctity in concrete
reality. According to this
approach, the birth of Israel and
the Zionist enterprise,
particularly since the victory in
the 1967 Six-Day War, are
manifestations of emerging
redemptive reality. This reading
of events is based in part on
tractate Berakhot in the Talmud,
according to which between this
world and the time of the Messiah
there is only "servitude to the
[foreign] kingdoms."
Indeed,
the power of this redemptive
mysticism derives from the fact
that it does not talk about
far-reaching cosmic
transformations in the order of
creation, as predicted by the
Prophets. It refers, rather, to
messianic fulfillment within the
realm of historical, concrete
time, and as such it is tightly
linked to human deeds. Rabbi
Shlomo Aviner, the dean of Ateret
Yerushalayim Yeshiva and the
former rabbi of the settlement of
Beit El, put it succinctly: "We
assert the absolute certainty of
the appearance of our redemption
now. There is no barrier here of
secret and hidden."
The same
applies to the present war; it
needs to be seen in its biblical
dimension and perceived through a
messianic prism. In this sense,
the history of our generation is
not much different from the
chronicles of the Exodus from
Egypt and the conquests of Joshua.
At that time, too, the events
occurred by natural means and the
military victories opened the age
of redemption.
National
Missions Minister Orit
Strock speaking last month
in the Knesset. Views the
war as the birth pangs of
redemption.Credit:
Oren Ben Hakoon
The Gaza
war, from this perspective, is
bringing closer the Jewish
people's collective redemption.
Light and dark are intertwined
here, destruction and revival are
interlocked like revealed and
concealed, and as material and
spiritual reality. Accordingly,
the greater the dimensions of the
destruction and the devastation,
so too will the spiritual
transformation brought by the
campaign in its wake be augmented.
The war is the purgatory that will
steel the spirit of the Jewish
people, which is already at the
stage of incipient redemption.
Anyone seeking a foundation for
this idea will find it in the
thought of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook
(the son of Abraham Isaac Kook):
"What is the reason for the War of
Gog and Magog? Following the
establishment of Israel's
sovereignty, war can possess only
one purpose: the purification,
refining and galvanizing of
Knesset Israel [the Jewish
people]."
What is
the conclusion? The more that
suffering increases, the more good
there will be; and "the more they
were oppressed, the more they
increased and spread out" (Exodus
2:12). They will multiply and
burst forth, for like the measure
of justice, so too is the measure
of mercy. And as Dana Varon noted
in replying to her critics, "It's
a good sign. Because if all the
bad and the wicked materialize,
that is a sign that the good is
also guaranteed and is arriving."
Sanctified
victims
The
designation of catastrophe as a
condition for salvation is not new
in human history. History
demonstrates how apocalyptic
interpretations can be created
from the experience of an
existential crisis, which brings
to a head the everlasting tension
between deficiency and the
striving for fulfillment – a
tension that characterizes the
human condition in general. Since
the start of recorded history,
periods that were marked by
political crises, plagues, social
anxieties and collective despair
have been accompanied by the rise
of apocalyptic interpretations
that have vested history with a
new and sanctified significance
and have charged the events of the
hour with redemptive meaning.
As the
British historian Norman Cohn
showed, marking a low point as a
formative moment of spiritual
renascence that leads to
redemption is part of a recurring
pattern that appears in all
apocalyptic interpretations of
events throughout Western history.
Cosmic disorder is a precursory
and necessary stage for the coming
of the Messiah and the
establishment of the Kingdom of
God.
But it
would be a mistake to assume that
the pattern of apocalyptic thought
exists only within the framework
of religious belief. Its
fingerprint can also be found in
secular revolutionary movements
and in modern ideological
worldviews. Marxism, for example,
is based on the assumption that
history is progressing toward a
final end, after which there will
be no more oppression, injustice
or wars. The realization of the
Marxist utopia sees extreme
aggravation in the living
conditions of the working class as
a necessary condition for world
revolution, and for the formation
of a classless society that will
bring about the end of history.
Fascism,
and German fascism in particular,
preserves a central place for
apocalyptic patterns of thought.
In Hitler's Third Reich, whose
followers adopted the Christian
eschatological concept of the
"Thousand Year Reich," extensive
use was made of the narrative of
fall and redemption as a means to
consolidate the Nazi movement's
ideological hold on the German
public. The Nazi ideologues and
propagandists were successful in
evoking the deepest fears of their
contemporaries, and in depicting
Germany's military defeat in World
War I and the national nadir as a
formative moment of illumination,
resurrection and renewal.
It's
natural that in periods of
distress people should wish
to console themselves and
imbue their sacrifice and
loss with cosmic meaning.
There is nothing
intrinsically wrong with the
longing for redemption. The
danger lies in the attempt
to transform redemption into
a political program.
As the
Nazis conceived it, the
catastrophe of the war marked the
watershed – it was a rupture that
exposed the subversive activity of
the Jews, awakened the German
people to recognize its inner
strength and accelerated a process
of national renewal. It was
precisely the destruction and the
mass killing of the Great War that
made it possible to formulate a
new worldview and philosophy of
life that was based on recognition
of the vital powers of the race
and the organic essence of the
people (the Volk). As such, the
sacrifice of the war's fallen was
vested with sanctified validity.
The
totalitarian movements thus
secularized the apocalyptic
pattern of thought and implanted
it in their worldview. They
offered their believers a utopian
vision that was based not on
divine redemption but on
scientific progress, naturalism
and the sovereignty of humanity.
Their followers were driven by a
sense of moral eclipse and
existential dread, accompanied by
a call to eradicate the old world
and to build on its ruins a new,
orderly world. The total war, in
the Nazi case, or the total
revolution, in the communist case,
were perceived as a necessary
stage to realize the secular
utopia, and made it possible to
normalize the most horrific crimes
and sanctify every form of
violence. The historical lesson is
thus clear: Every attempt to
establish the Kingdom of God on
earth is destined to ignite the
abode of man.
Here
lies the danger in striving for a
politics of "total solutions,"
whether on the right or on the
left. That form of politics
entrenches a false picture of
reality and paves the way for
demagogues and populist false
messiahs who are adept at
exploiting social distress and
anxiety by appealing to the urge
for redemption and the human need
for absoluteness.
Not only
does political messianism cast on
its leaders a sanctity of
religious mission that is
insusceptible to doubt; it also
requires the marking of enemies
(or political rivals) as foes that
are delaying redemption, in the
spirit of the Latin phrase,
"Nullus diabolus, nullus
redemptor" (No devil, no
redeemer). In this sense, the more
powerful the messianic idea is,
the greater the violence and the
destruction it sows when the
demand for absoluteness shatters
on the rocks of reality; the
height of the sublimity toward
which it thrusts is matched only
by the depth of the abyss into
which it is liable to slide. For
the more that reality declines to
acquiesce to the absolutist
demands of the advocates of
political messianism, the greater
the strength they wield to shape
it in the image of their utopian
visions; and the more untenable
this becomes, the more they
attribute their failure to an
internal enemy and to the power of
abstract conspiracies.
David
Ben Gurion. "The Messiah has
not yet come, and I do not
long for the Messiah to
come. The moment the Messiah
will come, he will cease to
be the Messiah. "Credit:
Fritz Cohen / GPO
Between
the absurd and the meaningful
It's
only natural for people to seek to
inform their lives with meaning
that transcends their temporary,
ephemeral existence. It's also
natural that in periods of
mourning and distress they should
wish to console themselves and
imbue their sacrifice and loss
with cosmic meaning. Crisis and
catastrophe can indeed serve as an
opportunity for renewal, and there
is also nothing intrinsically
wrong with the longing for
redemption or for the absolute
that is innate in the human
psyche. The danger lies in the
attempt to transform redemption
into a political program, and the
ambition to bring the heavenly
kingdom into being in this world.
The demand for absolute justice
always ends in injustice.
Moreover, a cause that relies on
unjust means can never be a just
cause.
In a
meeting with intellectuals and
writers in October 1949, David
Ben-Gurion said, "The Messiah has
not yet come, and I do not long
for the Messiah to come. The
moment the Messiah will come, he
will cease to be the Messiah. When
you find the Messiah's address in
the phone book, he is no longer
the Messiah. The greatness of the
Messiah is that his address is
unknown and it is impossible to
get to him and we don't know what
kind of car he drives and whether
he drives a car at all, or rides a
donkey or flies on eagles' wings.
But the Messiah is needed – so
that he will not come. Because the
days of the Messiah are more
important than the Messiah, and
the Jewish people is living in the
days of the Messiah, expects the
days of the Messiah, believes in
the days of the Messiah, and that
is one of the cardinal reasons for
the existence of the Jewish
people."
Those
remarks can be taken at face
value, but it's desirable to
understand them as a message that
encapsulates universal human
requirements: People need belief,
vision and a guiding ideal, but as
is the way with ideals, it's
certain that this too will never
materialize but will remain on the
utopian horizon toward which one
must strive but to which one will
never arrive. Humanity, thus, is
fated to exist in the constant
tension between want and fullness,
between the absurdity and futility
of life and our need for meaning,
purpose and significance. That
tension can be a millstone around
our necks and enhance the
attraction of political messianism
in its diverse forms.
Accordingly,
it's a mistake to assume that the
allure of messianism can be fought
only with rational tools. Myth
cannot be suppressed by reason,
and the yearning for the absolute
cannot be moderated by means of
learned, logical arguments. It was
Friedrich Nietzsche, of all
people, the philosopher who
perhaps more than any other is
associated with modern atheism and
the "death of God," who maintained
that the death of God does not
necessarily herald the death of
faith, and that the rejection of
religion and a consciousness of
God's absence do not mean that the
craving for the absolute has
ceased to exist.
On the
contrary, it is precisely the
death of God, precisely his
nonexistence, that keeps alive
more forcefully the longing for
him, and spurs man to find
substitutes. Hence Nietzsche's
famous cry: "Two thousand years
have come and gone – and not a
single new god!" The secular
individual who has been orphaned
of God is fated to give birth from
within to new gods that will
provide a response to one's
unfulfilled religious longing. God
is dead, but his shadow continues
to pursue humanity and to drive
people to act in numberless forms
and ways.
The
denial of God's shadow and of the
unrequited longing of the human
psyche for the absolute are the
root of the blindness of secular
culture in our time, and the
source of its weakness in the
light of the messianic sentiment.
Under the guise of
post-ideological pragmatism and
economical rationalism, secular
liberalism has completely forsaken
the psycho-religious needs of the
current generation in favor of
material utilitarianism,
narcissistic individualism and
consumerist escapism, and has
abandoned the possibility of
bringing into being a life of a
spiritual and cultural character
capable of providing a response to
the basic need for meaning and
self-transcendence. Secular
culture may perhaps allow freedom
of choice (and that's not a
little), but in itself it does not
offer another positive
meta-narrative, guiding idea or
existential meaning in an era of
consumer and technological
alienation. Into this vacuum
political messianism has
penetrated, as it offers an answer
for spiritual longings and
existential anxieties.
The
formulators of state-oriented
Zionism, head by Ben-Gurion,
understood this well. They sought
to harness the religious impulse
to nation building and to the
formation of a new Hebrew (Jewish)
identity that draws on the
messianic sources but does not
attach itself to their religious
content and instead secularizes
it. In this way the messianic
tension served Ben-Gurion to forge
an ideal vision of a Jewish state
that would be a moral paragon and
a light unto the nations.
Is a
return to the fold of
Ben-Gurion-style Zionism the
answer? Probably not. One thing,
however, is certain: besides the
urgent need to separate religion
and state, and to anchor Israel's
secular-liberal character in a
constitution, a deep
transformation is also necessary
in secular culture, in education,
in artistic creation and in the
intellectual-spiritual life.
Because in order to do battle
against the messianic myth, a
counter-myth is needed, one that
does not lie within the realms of
religion and meta-earthly
redemption, but in the imperfect
world of humankind. It alone is
capable of providing a substitute
for the temptations of the diverse
types of political messianism and
of providing human beings with a
horizon free of all supernatural,
theistic, utopian or redemptive
qualities.
A
Messiah is needed – so that he
will not come.