http://www.al-bushra.org/Promisedland/elmer.htm
Editor, M.T. Mehdi copyright 1970 by M.T.Mehdi
Israel: Fulfillment of Biblical Prophecy?
By Dr. Rabbi Elmer Berger
Since the seventh pre-Christian century, which
was distinguished by the emergence of the great literary Prophets of the
Old Testament, there have been two streams of thought or ideology in Judaism.
The one stream avowedly stressed the national and particularistic characteristics
of Judaism. The other stressed the universal. Occasionally, a personality
- or a group - attempted some even-balanced synthesis or fusion of the
two, essentially opposing forces. But more often than not, from the days
of Amos -- the first of the great literary Prophets -- Jews were divided
sectarianly between the two interpretations of their faith. In any effort
to evaluate the Biblical bases- or lack of them -- for the present State
of Israel, recognition of these two interpretations of Judaism is essential.
For it cannot be denied that the school which
emphasized the nationalistic and particularistic regarded an eventual return
to Zion as theologically important. For the school which pursued the universalistic
emphases of Judaism, the "Return to Zion" was -- in a physical,
political sense -- no consideration at all. To this group, therefore, whatever
the Bible may say about the "Return to Zion" is no more binding
than what the Bible -- or any of the subsequent, interpretative, Rabinic
literature -- has to say about the dietary laws, the minutae of priestly
conduct, or the laws pertaining to the sacrificial practices of the ancient
Temple.
These Jews, following the universalistic leadership
of the Prophets, are frankly and self-confessedly "protestants."
They are no more bound, in their religious conduct, by any effort -- however
good or bad it may be -- to understand the literal word of Scripture than
the protestants of any other religion of man. This was made clear, in 1885,
in what is still the classic statement of this protestant or Reform Judaism
(as it is known in the United States), in a document called the Pittsburgh
Platform. A group of the most distinguished Reform Rabbis of the day, meeting
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, declared:
"4. We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical
laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and
under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and
spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly
holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to
further modern spiritual elevation.
"5. We recognize in the modern era of universal
culture of heart and intellect the approaching of the realization of Isarael's
great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice
and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but
a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine,
nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration
of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.
" In any political context therefore -- and
the question of the relationship to the Bible of the political act of
establishing the State of Israel is surely a political context -- this
group of Jews must be excluded from any who suggest any stake in Israel,
predicated upon Biblical mandates. Those of this group who are Zionists
or pro-Zionists, have been persuaded by considerations which have derived
from pragmatic and expedient reasoning. It may be true such protestant
Jews are in a minority. There is almost no way to prove this. The obvious,
denominational divisions within Judaism -- Reform, Conservative and Orthodox
-- are no real barometer of adherence to stringent interpretations of Old
Testament texts.
For example, it is generally conceded that the
Conservative movement is overwhelmingly "Zionist." Since what
Zionism means is, in itself, a sub- ject of debate within the movement,
it is by no means easy to be sure even of this. But whatever it means and
despite a considerable amount of "official," public support for
Israel and Zionism, a bitter battle took place, at the 1959 biennial Convention
of Conservative Judaism's most responsible body, over the question of whether,
or not, the entire movement should move, en masse, into the World Zionist
Organization.
According to the New York Times for November
18, 1959, The United Synagogues of America argued "the wisdom
of a religious group's joining with what many delegates considered a 'politica
body .. . "The issue arose at a session set aside for speeches on
the role of the World Council of Synagogues. . . "Dr. Abraham J. Heschel,
Professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary
in New York, said he would be unhappy to see the Roman Catholic Church
join the Democratic Party, or the National Council of Churches (Protestant
and Eastern Orthodox) join the Republican or Democratic parties."
The convention of these Conservative Jews determined not to join the World
Zionist Organization -- at least for the present. The action does not mean
that many, if not most, of the representatives are not Zionists, or, at
least, strongly committed to pro-Israelism. But it does mean that to a
substantial number of these representatives of Conservative Judaism, "The
Return to Zion" is something not to be entrusted to a political mechanism.
And the political mechanism not only is no part of their Judaism, but they
resist any fusion of the two. It is only a logical deduction therefore,
that the State of Israel, brought into being by the World Zionist movement
and still nurtured by it, is also not considered by these leaders of Conservative
Judaism to be a part of their faith. It cannot be considered, by them,
to be a fulfillment of the Old Testament. This leaves, for consideration,
only those who follow the traditions of Orthodoxy in Judaism. For this
denomination -- unlike Reform which rejected it -- the Messianic hope includes
"The Return to Zion." But to these same Orthodox traditionalists,
the phrase has a variety of meanings and the realization of the Messianic
dream is to come about through a highly complex process - none of which
has been fulfilled in the es- tablishment of the State of Israel. For to
the genuine Orthodox Jew the Messianic "Return to Zion" is an
integral part -- indeed the climax - of a spiritual process. It is the
culmination of mankind's redemption; and it will take place when, in the
judgment of God, the race or man has meticulously fulfilled the perfectionist
pre-requisite for the utopian "return" This is why the Orthodox
- and most Conservative -- Jews pray for the "Return to Zion"
and recite, with frequency, the familiar passages from the Psalms and the
Prophets which herald the return.
It is interesting to observe, by the way, that
Christian Protestant denominations which also accept the Biblical
texts literally, look forward to this "return." To them, the
reconstruction of Zion and the "return of the children of Israel"
is not the climatic chapter in the Messianic process, but a necessary pre-requisite
to the climax. The climax itself is to be the personal re-appearance of
the Christ, or the Messiah. The re-gathering of the "children of Israel"
into Zion must precede the resurrection.
Now it is an incontestable fact that no Orthodox
Jew believes the present State of Israel has come into being in a process
which fulfills the injunctions of the Old Testament. There are Orthodox
Jews who actually repudiate the present Israeli sovereignty as a profanation
of the Biblical texts. This attitude is most vigorously and dramatically
represented in precisely that part of the State of Israel where the most
traditional Judaism is observed -- the Mea Shearim quarter of the city
of Jerusalem. Here lives the Netore Karta who regard the present State
of Israel as a subversive phenomenon to their faith and who, themselves,
indulge in frequent acts of defiance of the governmental authority of the
State of Israel. There are less well known but equally convinced followers
of the same position among the Orthodox Jews of the Unite States.
These groups, at times, have made representations
the United Nations. They are particularly agitated over the claims to the
New City of Jerusalem advanced by the State of Israel. They prefer internationalization
of a Jerusalem once again uniting the Old and the New cities. This attitude
cannot necessarily be equated with an anti-Israel position, although there
are those in these groups who do oppose the present state and who agree
it came about, not through the fulfillment of the word of God, but as a
result of the secular-political activities of Zionism. It cannot therefor
be a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy; and it does not represent,
for these people, the Messianic dream. They regard Israel as a secular
state, devoid of Zion. Some reluctantly try to make their peace with it.
Many bear the State a deep resentment, because
it demeans the noble, spiritually pure and exalting climax of their religious
fait. Even the appropriation of the name "Israel" is a source
of rsentment to many such Jews. For to them "Israel" is a religious,
spiritual concept, sanctified in a tradition of holiness which they do
not find in the existent, secular State. Finally, there remains to be considered
those Orthodox - and perhaps also some Conservative -- Jews who do regard
Israel as the fulfillment of the Messianic dream. A fair amout of ink has
been spilled on paper and a fair amount of orator has been used to audiences
in all parts of the world to prove or disprove this contention by examination
of the relevant Biblical texts. And it may fairly be said that the net
result of all this written and spoken verbiage is to end up with an argument,
at the best, stalled on dead center. For if "the devil can quote Scripture,"
so can Zionists and anti-Zionists.
It is a brave man, indeed, who today, in view
of the still expanding archeological finds and the changing theories of
history, would take an irrevocable stand on the precise meaning of most
( the Biblical texts. The extensive controversies over the Dea Sea Scrolls,
and their significance, is only one example in point. The furious debates
which continue, seemingly without end, among the Biblical literalists,
is another.
To the less lieral-minded, the Scriptures, long
ago, became a source of great and inspired history, but ceased to be the
literal, the exact, the definitive formulation of the Divine revelation,
unalterable in specifics. There will be no attempt therefore, in this article,
to examine and debate the explicit meaning of the texts frequently cited,
either to support or to oppose the contention that the present State of
Israel is the fulfillment of these Old Testa- ment prophecies.
It is sufficient to say only two things,
by way of comment on the theory that Israel does represent such fulfillment.
1. None of the great national or international
tribunals which have, in the past, wrestled with the political complexities
of the Palestine problem has ever admitted that these ancient prophecies
established any legal validity to the Zionist political claims to all,
or part of, the Holy Land.
2. Even those Zionists who claim, ex post
facto, that the State of Israel does fulfill the Biblical prophecies do
not defend, as meeting the Biblical injunctions, the methods used to establish
the State. The best these people can say is that the Zionist-nationalist
movement became the Divine instrument. The closest these people come to
logic is to plead the expediency and the necessity for human intervention
and political efficiency to speed up the process which, they fully realize,
was to require God's own ime.
Their efforts to equate the result of Zionist
power politics with the Biblical injunctions therefore, have produced an
awkward situation. For as chief-of-state of their Messianic fulfillment
is the secularist -- probably the ag- nostic - David Ben Gurion. The Minions
of the Lord - The Israel Defense Forces -- conscript women. And in the
politics of the State itself, the religionists are engaged in unremitting
warfare with the essentially secular government over education, the definition
of a "Jew," the questions of legitimacy resulting from conflicting
ideas about valid marriages and other rites.
The most charitable construction which can be
put upon the State of Israel therefore, in the context of considering its
Biblical legitimacy, is that through methods having no sanction in the
Bible at all, a political sovereignty has been established. In a majority
population of Jews, a minority is still engaged in a furious, political
battle to compel the State to adopt a character which could be equated
with the Biblical prophecies.
The equating is not accomplished today. The
fulfillment is not even remotely near realization. Neither the process
which gave birth to Israel nor the result, in the form of the State itself,
can -- by any theory with the integrity which is central to all genuine
religion -- be regarded as justified by the magnificent ethical and religious
declarations of the spiritual giants whose words are immortalized in Scripture.
