Religious Zionism And The Six Day War

This book offers a new insight into the political, social, and religious conduct of religious-Zionism, whose consequences are evident in Israeli society today. Before the Six-Day War, religious-Zionism had limited its concern to the protection of specific religious interests, with its representatives having little share in the determination of Israel’s national agenda. Fifty years after it, religious-Zionism has turned into one of Israeli society’s dominant elements. The presence of this group in all aspects of Israel’s life and its members’ determination to set Israel’s social, cultural, and international agenda is indisputable. Delving into this dramatic transformation, the book depicts the Six-Day War as a constitutive event that indelibly changed the political and religious consciousness of religious-Zionists. The perception of real history that had guided this movement from its dawn was replaced by a "sacred history" approach that became an actual program of political activity. As part of a process that has unfolded over the last thirty years, the body and sexuality have also become a central concern in the movement’s practice, reflection, and discourse. The how and why of this shift in religious-Zionism – from passivity and a consciousness of marginality to the front lines of public life – is this book’s central concern. The book will be of interest to readers and scholars concerned with changing dynamic societies and with the study of religion and particularly with the relationship between religion and politics.

The Six Day War in 1967 profoundly influenced how an increasing number of religious Zionists saw Israeli victory as the manifestation of God's desire to redeem God's people. Thousands of religious Israelis joined the Gush Emunim movement in 1974 to create settlements in territories occupied in the war. However, over time, the Israeli government decided to return territory to Palestinian or Arab control. This was perceived among religious Zionist circles as a violation of God's order. The peak of this process came with the Disengagement Plan in 2005, in which Israel demolished all the settlements in the Gaza Strip and four settlements in the West Bank. This process raised difficult theological questions among religious Zionists. This book explores the internal mechanism applied by a group of religious Zionist rabbis in response to their profound disillusionment with the state, reflected in an increase in religious radicalization due to the need to cope with the feelings of religious and messianic failure.

In this book, Rubinstein Grapples with the question of what happened to the Zionist dream by reviewing historical Zionist ideology and tracing its development and the development of other ideological, political, and conceptual responses to what Jewish nationalism should be. The Six Day War is viewed as a turning point in Zionist and Israeli history. He analyzes the conditions that gave rise to "gush emunim" and religious militant political groups. In "the end of the Sabra myth", Rubinstein describes the new Israelis and concludes that Israel's future depends on its ability to return to some of the traditional Zionist values.

This timely volume asseses the long-term consequences of the Six-Day War. That war was one of the most momentous events of modern history and had a truly revolutionary effect on the belligerents and far beyond.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.

A critical history of how religious leaders have influenced the practice of Judaism to serve personal conceptions critiques Orthodox Judaism's doctrines concerning marriage and divorce, conversion, and women's rights.

Until the present day, wide-spread confusion regarding the meaning of the terms Judaism and Zionism persists both inside and outside Israel. The popular opinion is that the terms are synonyms. But this implies the false assumption that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. As Ruth Esther Schwarz shows the Israeli right-wing regime uses this dangerous shortcut in order to justify its ongoing colonization of Palestine. Based on the work of Israel’s New Historians, Schwarz’s book aims at deconstructing the mainstream mindset concerning Judaism and Zionism. Therefore, she analyses the nature of the principal ideological streams and their complex interconnections before and after 1948. She focusses on orthodox Judaism, religious Zionism, Jewish radical messianism, Jewish fundamentalism, the ideological change of traditional Zionism and, last but not least, the role of Christian Zionism in the United States. Keywords: - Judaism; - Zionism; - Israeli-Palestinian conflict; - religious Zionism; - nationalism; - fundamentalism

Israel's 1967 victory in the Six-Day War ironically led to persistent and pervasive struggle. In addition to international scrutiny, regional uncertainty, and the management of an occupied Palestinian population, Israel has been engaged in an internal struggle revolving around settlement of the occupied territories. Religious Zionism constitutes one faction within this struggle. Religious Zionism is a middle-road ideology between secular Zionism, founded by Theodore Herzl in 1897, and the traditional rabbinic teaching that rejects human efforts to secure a return to the ancient land of Israel. Religious Zionism is founded on the belief that Jews have an obligation to return to Israel; such a return is considered a divine commandment. The occupation created the conditions for the religious Zionist movement to force a clash with the secular Israeli government. Religious Zionists wanted to possess and settle the newly occupied territory regardless of national security concerns. I argue that the small religious Zionist movement has had significant influence over the settlement policies of the Israeli government disproportional to its demographic numbers, an influence whose consequences extend to the fate of the peace process and the future of the Middle East.