'Soon, No Liberal Will Be Able to Live in Israel. The Army Has Already Fallen to Messianic Ideology' - Israel News - Haaretz.com
Please introduce yourself.
I'm married to Dikla and the father of three children, a lawyer by profession and a worried citizen. For several years, I've been fighting the growing power of messianic ideology. We are at a historic moment, and if we don't get our act together, no one from the liberal camp will be able to live in Israel.
Let's dwell for a moment on your biography, because your activism is targeting your original milieu.
My father, Rabbi Michael Zvi Nehorai, was one of the closest disciples of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook [a founder of religious Zionism]. I remember many of today's "go-to" names – like Rabbi Zvi Tau [leader of the anti-LGBTQ Noam party] or Rabbi Dov Lior [an ultranationalist rabbi] – from my childhood home. At a certain point, my father wrote an article criticizing an idea presented by Rabbi Kook, and he in return threw my father out of the yeshiva. My father entered academia and joined Meimad [a moderate religious movement]. So, yes, the foundations of my understanding of the Kook doctrine come from home. But it's important to me that people understand that I'm not fighting my father's battle – I'm not settling scores.
I see a genuine danger. I wasn't raised to believe that our role in the world is to hasten redemption. In that sense, my father's views and education were aligned with religious Zionism, which in its essence isn't messianic. The worldview of Rabbi Kook's Hasidic sect, in contrast, is messianic – and it took over the "religious Zionism" brand from within.
So you've left that way of life.
Yes. My father wasn't happy, obviously, but he has accepted it. Today I pray and go to synagogue on a regular basis.
- One of the few Israelis with a direct line to Gazans urges public to confront horrors
- Israel's next election will decide the battle between the Zionist and messianic camps
- One of Israel's most powerful groups believes the Gaza and Iran wars herald the Messiah
When did you realize you wanted to fight messianism? Was there a seminal moment?
When [then-education minister] Naftali Bennett awarded the Israel Prize to Rabbi Eli Sadan [in 2016]. That 's when I realized we were on a slippery slope and that in a twinkling we could lose the state.
Can you elaborate?
Eli Sadan is a general in the army of Zvi Tau – the Noam party president – and he established the pre-army preparatory program in [the West Bank settlement of] Eli with one clear goal: to foment a religious revolution in the country. He won a prize for being a 'bridge' between different parts of Israeli society while founding an institution that is the biggest project for subverting Israel's democratic values. For decades, he and his staff have been transmitting all the messianic values to young people: opposition to secular Jews, Reform Jews, Conservative Jews, LGBTQ people, leftists. To the principles of justice and equality.
Let's talk about what he terms the "Elkana method."
Sadan invented the "Elkana method" [named after a biblical figure] to foment a religious coup. The idea is to integrate into Israeli society, whether by taking over senior positions in government, particularly in the army, or by setting up "Torah bases" within civil society. That's the infrastructure for the coup. He understood early on that if he conquered the army, he could succeed in taking over senior positions.
But in 1988 there were only hesder yeshivas [which combine religious studies with military service] – army service of a year and four months and the rank of corporal at most. So he created pre-army preparatory programs. The messianic programs he founded, throughout the country, constitute the recruitment base for the messianic army that is poised to stage a coup in Israel.
You surely understand why people say your thinking sounds conspiratorial.
Conspiratorial? He [Sadan] says himself, in a video clip, that the Torah and the state must become one. How? He goes on to say that one person isn't enough to have influence. "Today we have something like 5,000 to 6,000 graduates scattered everywhere – across the army, the Shin Bet security service, the Mossad, the public sector."
He also explicitly says this is what guided him 35 years ago; that when it happens, the ultra-Orthodox public will join. And afterward, even the secular public.
Eli Sadan turned the Israel Defense Forces into a messianic army. His people hold very high-ranking positions in the IDF. Among them, of course, is Maj. Gen. David Zini, an alumni of Rabbi Kook institutions aligned with Rabbi Tau. His father is a member of the [Noam] party and so is his brother-in-law. [Journalist] Ben Caspit wrote that Eli Sadan personally recommended Zini's appointment [as the next head of the Shin Bet].
So will Zini be loyal to the king? To the kingdom? To the Messiah?
In my estimation, Kook's sect and Tau's court expect Zini to marshal the resources of the Shin Bet to further the redemption process, promote a state based on halakha(religious law) and act against liberal Israel and the protest movement. We must wake up and understand that these people – among whom are also wonderful, good and decent people who would give their life [for the country] – are leading us to a halakhic state.
Maj. Gen. David Zini, whom Netanyahu wants to appoint as head of the Shin Bet. "The army has fallen. It's already lost."Credit: Sraya Diamant
You've already realized this, so you started a small content-production project and you teach secular people about messianism.
I write and publish things all the time. I travel around the country and give talks. All on a volunteer basis.
People call you wacky, crazy, vengeful.
They call me everything: "instigator," "obsessive." Eli Sadan and the Bnei David preparatory program filed two lawsuits against me: one for slander, the other for copyright infringement. Three days before he was due to testify, the lawyers announced that Sadan was too sick to attend, and a month later they withdrew the case citing his "worsening illness." I objected, but the court accepted their request and erased the suit. Last month we appealed to the Supreme Court, because we have evidence that despite his claim of being too ill to appear in court, he continues giving lectures and making appearances. Additionally, a slander suit was filed against me by the Otzem preparatory program and Rabbi Assaf Naumburg. I stand by everything I said. These are suits aimed at silencing. I'm more than happy to face the plaintiffs in court. I'm not afraid.
You used their materials.
Yes. Filmed classes at the preparatory program. So that the LGBTQ community will see how they're educating people to think that they [the community] are perverts. So women will see how [program head Rabbi] Yigal Levinstein mocks female combat troops, and so Reform people will see that Eli Sadan teaches that they're auto-antisemites.
That's exactly the accusation levelled against you: that you patch together all their most extreme statements and construct an agenda out of them.
If so, they had a wonderful opportunity to challenge my remarks in court.
Forget about them. What about the casual observer? Let's say I've never heard of Yair Nehorai. And then he shows up with a quote from here, a quote from there. How do you convince me this adds up to a worldview?
I also run seminars – four hours in which I teach about messianism and messianic thinking.
The liberal public's push to draft Haredim is disastrous – it's liberal Israel's collective suicide. We're creating a religious, messianic army, and who's going to command it? The rabbis.
Yair Littman Nehorai
Let's try to condense your seminar into a few hundred words. What would we learn?
We would learn that the greatest threat to Israel's character today comes from this group of followers of the Kook approach. People who say they are part of "religious Zionism" today but actually belong to a messianic ultra-Orthodox stream. They have a redemptionist worldview. From their viewpoint, our whole existence is a divine play whose end is foretold, that the whole world will acknowledge the oneness of the Creator. The Jewish people's role is to make that happen.
Explain the concept of atchalta de'geula [literally, the beginning of redemption, a core religious Zionist ideal].
It's when God decides that the time for redemption has come. Redemption has two stages. The first is the material stage they call "Messiah ben Yosef." [Son of Joseph]. The role of Messiah ben Yosef – of secular Zionism, ostensibly – is to establish a functioning state with an army. Herzl, Ben-Gurion, Netanyahu – that's Messiah ben Yosef. After the material stage, the spiritual stage begins. It's called Messiah ben David. During this stage, a halakhic state will be established over all the territories of the Promised Land, the Temple will be rebuilt, and the whole world – even the Eskimos – will recognize the oneness of God.
The judicial coup is in effect a religious, messianic struggle, signifying the transition from Messiah ben Yosef to Messiah ben David – or, in their language, from the rule of the "seed of the beast," to the rule of the "seed of humanity." Secular people are seen as the seed of the beast, because we're caught up in the bestiality of life. They [messianists] learn that secular heresy is, effectively, a divine invention: God needed bestial souls to build the land, because the believers wouldn't leave their religious study halls.
That reminds me of the teachings of Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh. He maintains that the state, the army, the judicial system and the law are just the shell – it must be shattered in order to get to the core: the halakhic state.
It's all from the same family. It's part of the kabbalistic worldview [of Jewish mysticism].
In any event, the idea is that the democratic state is a temporary solution – a way station on the road to the true objective. The difference between them is just about when it's supposed to happen?
Yes. Up until 10 years ago, they believed we didn't know when Messiah ben Yosef would complete his task. In 2019, Rabbi Tau declared this was it – it had happened. The era of the "seed of the beast" was over, they [secular, liberal Israelis] had fulfilled their role. We're no longer the "messiah's donkey" – but just an obstacle in their path to a messianic dictatorship. That's the reason the Bennett government fell. Theoretically, Bennett appears to be the ultimate fantasy of every religious person: [former] director general of the Yesha Council of settlements, a military man. His government collapsed over the High Court case about chametz [leavened bread during Passover] in hospitals – which, by the way, I filed.
Netanyahu on a visit to Bnei David. "Eli Sadan established the pre-army preparatory program in Eli with one clear goal: to foment a religious revolution in the country."Credit: Amos Ben Gershom / GPO
That's not really the reason that government fell.
No – but it was the trigger. Why? Because from their point of view, that episode showed Bennett teaming up with the High Court, the very institution they dream of crushing and shattering to impose Torah law and conquer the country. The judicial coup you're seeing today started with them. Not with [Justice Minister] Yariv Levin.
No more handcuffs
You showed me a video from March 2020. The speaker, the head of the Ramat Gan hesder yeshiva, says that once the right wins 61 Knesset seats, the "High Court-attorney general dictatorship" will go back to where it came from. He then details how: the Knesset will seize control of the Judicial Appointments Committee, the Supreme Court's seniority system will be abolished, the attorney general's powers will be separated from the state prosecutor's, there'll be an override clause.
Everything was ready, down to the last detail. He says there: "We'll get rid of the handcuffs." They are the original architects of the judicial coup, and they're lying when they claim it's about governance. Nonsense. It's a religious coup. How did he know, back in 2020, that it was necessary to cancel the seniority system?
And now the state is also headed by a corrupt person facing criminal charges, whose personal interest intersects with theirs. How manifold are Thy works, O Lord.
You don't get it. The indictment against Netanyahu is also part of the divine plan. It's what makes it possible to "go up a notch" and smash the judiciary. Nothing happens by chance. Why did Donald Trump rise to power? That, too, is part of the whole divine play – to move the redemption forward.
There's no doubt that it's moving forward quickly and very effectively. Maybe it really is a divine plan.
verything is part of the divine plan. Everything. Why did the Holocaust happen? Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook will tell you that, in terms of historical processes, the Holocaust had a purpose: to advance redemption. Fact: The survivors arrived in Israel. Why did October 7 happen?
So we can return to Gaza.
Very good. You're starting to speak like a messianic. The war in Gaza also put a stop to the fight against the judicial coup, because "together we will win." And why was it necessary for so many people to be killed? Because that way we could turn all of Gaza into Amalek and conquer it. When we look at October 7, we're appalled. We feel our home has been destroyed. From their point of view, it's something else altogether ... From their point of view, it's all signs of the advent of the Messiah. Remember what the rabbi from the IDF Nahal Brigade training bases said just a few days after the war started: "Apart from those who were killed, it's the happiest day of my life."
The messianics declared war on us – with the judicial coup, and with the new theology that says our role is finished – and we have to stop thinking this is just about a few extreme rabbis and understand where we're living.
Yair Littman Nehorai
You can't argue with that logic. All is foreseen. Nothing is bad. Every disaster heralds the good that is to come.
There is only good. Redemption. Nor is there any need for a state commission of inquiry. [Rabbi] Levinstein already knows who's to blame for October 7: the liberals.
It's not because of the Oslo Accords?
Not Oslo. Gaza. Who carried out the disengagement [from the Gaza Strip, 2005]? You did. You decided to leave Gaza. That's treason. The process of redemption applies to Greater Israel. You're giving up parts of the Land of Israel? Is it even yours to give up? The leftist liberal stream betrayed the divine mission of the people of Israel, and because of us, they're being killed. Eli Sadan teaches his pupils that the secular public is a knife in the back of the nation. From his point of view, they're paying the price for our conceptions. The war in Gaza is a war of mitzvah. That means you take what's yours – and you're allowed to kill them all. They succeeded in introducing the Amalek narrative into the discourse, and thanks to it the idea that "No one [in Gaza] is innocent." We're in the midst of a religious war.
How and why did Tau conclude that secular Zionism has reached the end of its road?
I'm not concerned with why he came to that conclusion. What matters is that today, he's the political body that steers me. They declared war on us – with the judicial coup, and with the new theology that says our role is finished – and we have to stop thinking this is just about a few extreme rabbis and understand where we're living.
What's his plan for us? Where will we go?
You don't have to go. You can stay. It's of no interest to him. They'll be in power and there will be a halakhic state here.
I'm a secular woman who lives in Tel Aviv. What will my life look like?
Like the life of every woman who lives in a Haredi city.
You're talking about two main arms toiling to realize the vision: the Garin Torani movement – religious core groups that settle in secular or mixed communities to bolster religious identity – and the messianic pre-army programs.
Today, unfortunately, I would also include the army. Who mediates Jewish tradition to the soldiers? The Military Rabbinate. It has a monopoly. The chaplain general today is Brig. Gen. Eyal Krim, who was brought in by Rabbi Avichai Rontzki. Rontzki, appointed by Eli Sadan, replaced the entire military rabbinate and turned it into a branch of Rabbi Kook's sect. Reform and Conservative [Judaism] don't exist. Only them. Sadan wrote with great pride about the amazing processes Rontzki was spearheading. About how he was replacing the whole system, filling it with people from their yeshivas, changing the face of the IDF.
The combination of religion and warfare doesn't sound desirable to me in any form. Say a military rabbi were a Conservative Jew, would that really make a difference?
Very much so. At the very least, we'd know what he wouldn't say. He wouldn't tell soldiers that we're fighting a war of redemption and that Gaza is part of the divine plan. Rabbi Kook's sect is using the awful situation we're in to recruit soldiers to a messianic worldview. In the yeshivas aligned with Kook, they learn that before the war, the Jewish people were shouting "Democracy, democracy," but now, in the midst of war, the soldiers are starting to call out the name of God.
Years ago, I interviewed sociologist Prof. Yagil Levy. That was exactly his argument: that under the radar, the army was slowly being theocratized.
He's right. And it's a process from which there is no return. It's already lost. The army has fallen.
You're against drafting the ultra-Orthodox.
The liberal public's push to draft Haredim is disastrous – it's liberal Israel's collective suicide. Look at what already exists: Netzah Yehuda, Hashmonaim [ultra-Orthodox IDF battalion and brigade, respecively]. They are organic religious units, committed to the Torah and to conservative Orthodoxy. No rights for women or LGBTQ people. We're creating a religious, messianic army and who's going to command it? You? No. The rabbis. They'll integrate into the army on their own terms – excluding women and so on. I wouldn't be surprised if, one day, the policing force responsible for enforcing the laws of the Torah comes from there.
Basic training graduation ceremony in the Netzah Yehuda Battalion. "From their perspective, the war in Gaza is a war of mitzvah. That means you take what's yours – and you're allowed to kill them all."Credit: Alex Levac
The revolutionary guards.
And we're building it with our own hands. Absolute insanity. Who builds a messianic army while fighting a religious war? Unfortunately, even Yair Golan [head of the left-wing Democrats party] – for whom I wish 20 Knesset seats – doesn't see it. If the Haredim enter the army in separate units, who will they fight for? The State of Israel – or the Land of Israel?
On paper, the pre-army programs are supposed to swear allegiance to the State of Israel.
That's their task, according to the law. They're supposed to educate their trainees to identify with the values of the State of Israel, as they appear in the Declaration of Independence and the Basic Laws.
Let's say I'm a student in one of those programs. I know that it has sworn to accept the values of the State of Israel. But then I'm taught the exact opposite. What do they say – that it was lip service?
They brush it off. If you're a pupil in a preparatory program and you come from the believing religious public, you see Eli Sadan as Moses descending from the mount with the Torah.
But internally, I feel dissonance.
No dissonance. He tells you that it's your divine mission – to foment a religious coup.
Then why, rabbi, did we swear allegiance to the State of Israel and its values?
Regrettably, he'll never be asked that question, but he would reply that democratic Israel is a necessary stage of the redemption, and now it's time to end it. Take note of the dialectics. Sadan always talks about the unity of the nation. He'll say that he loves the secular public, that their thinking doesn't come from evil. On the one hand, you're a knife in the back of the nation; on the other, without you, none of this would exist.
President Reuven Rivlin shakes hands with Rabbi Eli Sadan at the 2016 Israel Prize award ceremony.Credit: Haim Zach / GPO
That's not dialectics, it's gaslighting.
Call it what you will – but they live harmoniously with it. Sometimes I envy that. I wish I could get up every morning with the conviction that I'm saving the world.
Every liberal envies those narratives. In the battle for truth, liberals will always lose – because the narrative is complex, full of holes, riddled with contradictions. The other side has a tight-knit, sewed-up narrative. I saw it in videos of classes: how the truth about the world is explained to them, the truth that's beyond the understanding of the secular public.
And beyond the fact that the preparatory programs' participants are young people who don't really have a critical perspective, their rabbis, whom they perceive as role models, speak to them in slogans. Bottom-line statements. Everything's clear and decisive. They make them feel like they possess the whole truth.
And only they know it? What about the other soldiers? Are they just plain blind?
What are you asking, really? What does Eli Sadan teach his pupils to think about secular people? He tells them there's an abyss of consciousness between the "people of the protest movement" and the people of faith. That the "protest people" are sick – mentally ill.
Is the war in Gaza the first religious war?
No. From their point of view, it's all about religious wars. It's just now that things are out in the open – and yet we still don't get it.
All of Israel's wars were religious wars?
All of them. All the wars are a divine imperative meant to move the redemption forward. We don't see it. They're geniuses at concealment – at blurring. They constantly enumerate the Bnei David [preparatory program] alumni who've fallen, and then liberal Israeli society says: that's holiness. I also believe that anyone who gives their life is holy, but they make cynical use of it.
I don't think we can accuse them alone of doing that, because liberal Israel treats militarism as a supreme value, as well. We are a militaristic society, and the liberals also take part in the horror of counting the fallen.
True. But we were naïve. We didn't understand what they were doing. We have a desire for a statesmanlike approach, a desire for Judaism – and they exploit that. Consider [former Defense Minister Moshe] "Bogie" Ya'alon, who now speaks against the program in Eli, but used to be one of the biggest supporters of Bnei David. Rabbi Levinstein said Bogie has undergone a "mass psychosis."
To them, everything is part of the divine plan. The indictment against Netanyahu is too. Why was it necessary for so many people to be killed on Oct. 7? Because that way we could turn all of Gaza into Amalek.
Yair Littman Nehorai
It's odd that he used the _expression_ "mass psychosis," which isn't standard or widespread. It's used in contexts of persuasion, propaganda, psychological manipulation. It sounds like he's studied the subject deeply.
I don't know. I just know that we're flooded by powerful forces, which liberal Israel didn't know how to cope with or couldn't cope with. They won, we're not leaving Gaza. We have to understand that – that they won, that we're in the midst of a religious war. We have to let go of this idea of "together we will win." What is "together we will win"? It means "I will use you to win my war." We have to get rid of that.
For what purpose? Is it us or them?
Yes. There's no "Together we will win." It's either liberalism or Iran. Only when we understand that will we win.
How?
Look at the country. There are Haredi and messianic cities. They have separate schools. A separate army with bases. The only place where a battle is still being fought is within the liberal camp. We have to understand that we're a proper sector of society, and demand equal rights.
Use sectoral politics to our advantage. Like the Haredim do.
It's our right. After all, we have the economic and intellectual power. We should be demanding our own education, our own public spaces. Take Meretz and the [now-defunct] National Religious Party. I'm close to Meretz ideologically. But Meretz was in opposition for years and never really succeeded in promoting its public. The NRP, with the same number of seats, sat in every government and established an education system that changed the face of the country. That's what we need to do. There is no "together." We have to stop kowtowing to the religious sector and start looking for a solution that lets us live under the same roof. Without shared laws and without "together."
Let's say there are democratic elections. And let's say, for the sake of argument, that what the liberal public hopes for happens and the present coalition drops to 50 seats. Bennett rises to power. What happens then?
The pre-army preparatory programs will be the crowning glory. Messianic judges will be appointed. The army will continue filling key posts with messianic officers. The coup will continue – without noise and shouting, but in a fun way. Seamlessly. That's what we fail to understand. These processes are much bigger than Netanyahu. Than Bennett. Than us. Bigger than anything else.