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I only saw this book, Torat Hamelech a few days ago, so I felt repulsion and rejection
encountering these texts. But I want to talk less about the content of the book, maybe
even as little as possible, and to address this special encounter that is happening here
today between religious Zionism, the religious Kibbutz, and the blue chultzot. I would
like to clarify what do we have in common that brings us here today, and maybe also
look at the joint path that makes this meeting today possible and meaningful.
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Something is burning in the courtyard of religious Zionism. There is some sort of
burning. We might feel comfortable than to come and support. But what about what is
burning in our courtyard? This does not belong to today's agenda, but to a different
day. But then we will not invite religious Zionist and the religious Kibbutz. We will
either hold that meeting or we won't. And my point of view thinking of the value of
today's meeting is by wondering: what happened to the two main historical streams of
Zionist hagshama- the socialist chalutznik Zionism and the religious Zionism- in
?recent generations
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The relation to the other or to minorities may be a part of that, but the problem is that
both courtyards of these two streams can breathe each other's fire. Today we will look
at the delirious messianic extreme right, and tomorrow we will look at the

assimilating, post Zionist extreme left. When will we look at ourselves? Meaning- the
vibrant, educational living center of the two movements? The two historic streams?
When will we deal with these two factors and what essentially is in common of them?
The thing that is importantly in common is that the two important streams of
hagshama are declining. It is not just in the political field- where is religious Zionism
in today's politics? Where is the Zionist left in it? And so on but rather let us
wonder on the sub currents of these processes. And I would name one title to this
evening: that the messianic spell that is active at the edges of both of these streams is
eating the core and crumbling the spinal cord of these movements.
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Stating that, how long do we actually have for this introspection and how much do we
actually need to repair? For what is in fact at stake here is the fate of Zionism! I meanif these two streams are in a process leading up to their shattering: there is an
educational- ideological crisis on both sides: on one side it is halachic and on the
other side its ideological- than it means that there are processes that take their toll on
Zionism, the crisis is of Zionism! The messianic spell is active as a nationalist pole on
one camp, and the same messianic spell had started to be manifested in processes of
"now-ism" of peace and "now-ism" of giving up on Zionism on the other camp.
However what really is facing us, all those seating here tonight, each and every one of
us, is the gray, hard, long path of hagshama and of the continuation of maintaining life
and building of our lives. That is why we are not at the end of days, but in the days
themselves. Not at the end of history but within history.
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How do you make these facts to once again become the corner stone of the Zionist
hagshama movements? How can we immune these bodies against the messianic spell
that is biting the edges and poisoning the souls? Making the center incompetent in
dealing with the magnetism of the margins? Take a look at what post Zionism is
doing to the academy, and take a look at the yeshivas and what a certain part of that
world causing there, this book being a good example.
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Where did this thing come from? Is it the hardships of Zionist Haghsama that created
it? Is it the hard, day-to-day, long road? The Jew cannot be linked to some messianic
anchor, some end-of-days type hope. And Zionism is constantly infected. the heart of
the matter is that we, after sixty something years of statehood and so and so years of
Zionism, are in fact in the midst of a struggle on how to recover the foundations of a
people in their homeland, a peoples sovereignty, an armed nation, with its own
court, its own language and culture, its batei midrash, its Judaism, its Zionism
?where is the Zionist spinal cord in all of this reality
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reading this book, such repulsive literature, I feel like some of its writers thought
Zionism to be no more than revenge and payback on everything that was done to the
Jewish people for centuries of exile, filled with pogroms and suffering. And now we
came here not in order to build and be built but in order to find a basis for our revenge
and pay them back. This combination of constant humiliation in exile with military
euphoria is a hollow and filthy. It is a spiritual gangrene that is spreading because the
socialist- Zionist center is in crisis. Had there wasnt a crisis the spell would have
broken. this is the spell of the margins that are not trying to bare the weight of reality
and to take responsibility for the sometimes harsh historical implications of us coming
to this land, inside this meddle east, inside this Islam, inside this world.

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And I ask myself- what was defiled in us in the Golah and came back through certain
?phenomena in Judaism and in Am Israel? What did we get back from there with
These people- I dont know if they were born in Israel of came here, but they had
brought the defilement of the Golah with them. They did not come here to build but to
continue killing and revenge for the killing of our brothers and fathers and children in
the past. They do not have even the slightest clue of how to build a defense and
military force, and they wrote a book that is meant to guide soldiers and commanders.
They better return to the four corners of their Beit Midrash and discuss halachic laws
in stead of dealing with killing non Jews and their babies.

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I want to say a word about not being a pacifist. Pacifism is sentimental but also
immoral. It has no moral stance but only a valid emotional stance, that need to be
listened to at times. But morality goes hand in hand with the Jew that is holding a
gun in order to defend its land and its people. Not like this awful book orders, but
as a historical approach of the builders of Jewish defense in this land. Purity of

weapons is a reflections of purity if the heart and of intentions. Like what Brenner
once said at the end of WWI- what we heard from the commanders of the Haganah is
the voice of the innocent spirit telling us it will hold arms. How hard, how hard it is
to be both humanist and moral! Not just to recite psalms and listen to the humanist
voice of the sages. How hard it is for a Jew in this land, to a Jew in general, after the
holocaust.
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I was 13 the day the war of independence started. And I realized back than that that
war is in fact a continuation of the holocaust: the Arab countries invaded Israel not in
order to correct the borders, but in order not to leave a single living Jew. They did that
with their Palestinian partners that started the war, and joined them later on. Being a
young boy I already understood that we are fighting for our existence. And the
problem is not just about loving the foreigner. We need to love ourselves. Today there
is a coalition of Nazi jihad. I live in Rosh Hanikra, and I know that 1 km above me at
the border sits what ideologically speaking is an S.S troupe. Gazas reality is similar,
and we are all aware of what Iran is doing and why it is building its strength and
aiding Syria and so on. Well, it is easy to preach moral sources and it is extremely
important to listen to the moral side of our sources. it is much harder to prepare
yourself day by day to an existential war and stand what seems to be very hard
challenges we are about to face, and in that historical catastrophe, in the agony of war
and maintaining the army- to remain human. To pass the test of war in an existential
war is the most moral test. How to stand it- how to live it- that is the most important
educational question. To live the existential war not in messianic categories, nut in
categories of building strength, like building life, building a culture, building a
family
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I would like to finish by quoting Berl, which said in the 21st Zionist congress, 10 days
before WWII, as a conclusion of 3 years of the Arab riots. He sees their terror not as a
national liberation movement but as a Fascist movement that is also relying and
funded by the Fascist regimes of that time. In his eyes the Mufti is a religious
fundamentalist that came not to liberate but rather to destroy a hated people and a
rivalry party. This is the Fascist terror. That is why he is saying these lines
against Jewish terrorism that started to commit blind revenge attacks against Arab
civilians:
but if the Jews are coming now to suggest these methods of war, they are in that
making us politically ridiculous, and even more so- nationally ridiculous. This s a
proposal to assimilate. Is this why we left Europe and America and their cultural
assimilation, to come here and assimilate with the Mufti, imitate his methods and
be infected with his immorality? It is a shame that the Zionist movement did not
work hard enough to show the world how much this Mufti is linked to the axis.
through that the world may have understand us better, and we ourselves would
have understand better what is sometimes suggested to us- from w i t h i n .

What we need is not to assimilate.

This book, Torat Hamelech, is a suggestion to assimilate into historys most ugly
movements.
And we will keep believing in our way.