brekin » Thu Jun 27, 2013 8:44 pm wrote:If I'm following correctly, compared2what you are basically saying that Israel is not and never has been a religiously justified country and Judaism doesn't call for it to be there but certain political factions have created the impression that it is so in Israel (and elsewhere)?
No.
I'm saying several things.
One is that Israel was flatly, explicitly, unambiguously not founded on religious grounds, as a plain matter of historical fact and relatively recent history. Because there's not actually any debate about that. It wasn't. It's not justified by religious privilege or entitlement, as it went down, in reality.
There is none, to speak of. As you know, a number of Orthodox sects consider it heretical. In fact. Most can live with it. But most (afaik, maybe all) of them don't think it's a literal here-and-now entitlement because He promised.
Another is that zionism did not originate because it's a central tenet of the Jewish faith that there's a literal, permanent real-world entitlement to the land of Israel.
It's not central, or even a tenet. That it's a good, right, true and godly thing for Jews to live there, with or without the nation of Israel was and is an extant argument. Must-be-done is for abstruse sects. Meaning: That interpretation, that it's mandatory, is possible. As is the reverse. (Forbidden.)
And, who cares? The entitlement still isn't a thing, in reality, on religious grounds. That's a rhetorical convention, not a plank of the religion.
(Barely a part of it, ftm. Arguments to the contrary exist. But as I said: That's true of everything, almost.)
It's just not literal, brekin. That's a Christian belief.
Non-Christian zionism arose as a response to anti-Semitism, both via the Dreyfuss Affair and via the desire to provide a haven -- as one might say, "a Jewish homeland" -- for persecuted Jews in (at the time, primarily) Russia. But it was really Dreyfuss. Because in the period before and around that, there had been (for the very first time) a broad cultural shift in Europe towards non-persecution in the form of emancipation and so forth and so on.
Which is obviously very major for people who generally hadn't been/couldn't be citizens of most of the countries they and/or their ancestors might have been living in since 70 AD for very long at a time, if at all, with no guarantees that they wouldn't be stripped of their possessions and expelled when whoever was in power found it fiscally or politically convenient. I mean, it was the nineteenth century. That stuff had been going on for quite a while. Emancipation looked good.
Had well enough been left alone, most people would probably have assimilated by now. In fact. But no. Herzl was an urbane, non-religious, non-persecuted Jew. So he was shocked by Dreyfuss (and other stuff) into what turned out to be a kind of: OMG!-This-will-never-end! self-fulfilling tizzy. So he thought a homeland was needed.
Yada, yada, yada. He initially picked up a mix of Christian-zionist, a-religous-political, and concerned-world-Jewry support. The Jewish part of that picked up quite a bit after his death, and religious zionism (Jewish) became a thing, at some point.
There was also that Ethiopia proposal somewhere in there.
But anyway. It isn't and wasn't religious. It doesn't come from the Jewish religion, except in a "Hey! I know! What about PALESTINE????" way. It's not religiously motivated or justified.
Except ex post facto, and even then, mostly rhetorically.
Was that clear?
If so, I don't know if it is so easy to separate religion and politics. Especially religiously backed politics. My understanding is many in the occupied territories and in the settler movement in Israel and their sympathizers believe that they have justifiable manifest destiny to occupy the land that was promised to them by God. So in a sense many believe the creation and expansion of Israel is religiously justified. Of course, not having been that's my armchair analysis.
Yes. Some of the ultra-orthodox settlers believe that. Or something like it. But they're crazy extremist sects.
That's sort of like saying (actually less accurately representative than saying) it's a central tenet of Christianity that Christ's return is imminent at any second as soon as the Jews get settled in the Promised Land so no effort should be spared in seeing to it that it happens, pronto, come what may just because some branches of some denominations do believe that.
I can't think of a more proportionately fitting example, off the top of my head. You get my point, though, right? That's not a mainstream belief for Christians. Most reject it. It can't really be described as what Christianity teaches. And what you're talking about is the same wrt Judaism.
Further, it's not where zionism or Israel came from or how they were justified anyway. From either faith. So moot point.
Its power is as a narrative convention, for the most part. Myth, one might say.
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ON EDIT: Fixed a typo, asked myself how I had failed.
