Who Speaks for Jewish Tradition?

Sixth and final in the series "The Kippah and the Flag," on religious Zionism and how it fits, or does not fit, into the Jewish religion. Earlier installments are here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

This series began with a question asked in good faith, and it deserves to be stated one last time at full strength. If Zionism is a modern nationalist movement and not Judaism, why does the world see so many religious Jews carrying its flag? The settlers are observant. The minister on the Temple Mount wears a kippah. Modern Orthodox synagogues display the Israel flag beside the ark containing the Torah scrolls. Either the argument is wrong, or something needs explaining.

Five articles have now done the explaining, and the answer can be given in a few sentences. A movement arose a century ago that grafted European nationalism onto Jewish practice, and the leading Torah authorities of that generation saw it while it was happening and rejected it vocally and in writing. A doctrine then arose that declared the secular state the beginning of the world's redemption, which allowed the Israeli flag to stand beside the ark, Yom Ha'azamaut (Israel's Independence Day) to enter the prayer book, and the Israeli army to be called holy. Around the movement, a century of relentless messaging created an atmosphere, so that many sincere Jews who never studied the question absorbed its assumptions from the street. And the world's cameras, drawn to conflict, photographed the results and called them Judaism.

That is the history. What remains is the lesson, which is bigger than this one controversy. It is about how an honest person, standing outside any tradition, can tell who truly speaks for it.

Three tests that work

The first test is the texts. A tradition's teaching is written down, and the writing has dates. The Torah, the Talmud, the law codes, and the prayer book of the Jewish people existed for millenia before anyone had heard of nationalism. A reader can ask of any practice: where does it appear in these books? The flag, the state holiday, and the holiness of the army appear in none of them. The love of the Land of Israel appears throughout, and so does the teaching that the exile is God's decree and that redemption comes by His hand. The books are open, and they speak with authority.

The second test is the tradition's authorities. Every living tradition recognizes certain figures whose mastery is beyond dispute, the ones to whom the faithful themselves bring their hardest questions. When the new movement appeared, those figures ruled on it, in real time, and their verdicts are recorded, with signatures and dates. A century later, no one has to guess what the recognized authorities of Judaism thought about religious nationalism. They said it plainly while it was being born.

The third test is continuity. Ask of any practice: how long has it been done, without interruption, by the communities that kept everything else? Jews prayed toward Jerusalem for two thousand years without a flag. They mourned the Temple every year without a state. They loved the land, moved there to live and die in holiness, and never once organized an army to take it, because their books told them the exile ends when God ends it. The practices this series examined are all younger than the automobile. The tradition they sought to interrupt is far older than Rome.

Three tests that fail

Against these stand the tests the world uses, and each one fails in the same direction.

Visibility fails, because cameras select for conflict. A barricade is news and a study hall is not, so the most photographed Jews are the most politicized ones, and the millions of hours of quiet observance that make up actual Jewish life never reach a screen.

Volume fails, because passion is loudest at the extremes. The people most certain that history is ending are the ones with the most reason to shout, and a doctrine that reads the news as prophecy generates certainty the way a fire generates heat.

And sentiment fails, because sentiment can be manufactured. A hundred years of messaging, aimed at Jew and gentile alike, taught the world that the flag and the faith are one. Counting how many people absorbed the message tells you how strong the message was. But it tells you nothing about what Judaism teaches, any more than a survey of congregants' politics would tell you a church's doctrine.

Why an outsider should care

It would be fair to ask why any of this should matter to you. Three reasons, each of which has run through every article this publication has ever printed.

The first is fairness to living people. When the world judges Judaism by the barricade, every Jew becomes answerable for Zionism's conduct, and one of the worst confusions of the modern world—the equation of the Jews with the state of Israel—gains one more day of life. That equation has a criminal record. Jews have been attacked on the streets of London and New York because of it. Refusing it, deliberately, in one's own reading of the news, is a small act that protects your fellow human beings.

The second is understanding the world. The politics of the Holy Land cannot be understood by anyone who believes the settler's theology is ancient. It is not ancient. It has a recent birth certificate, a founding school, and a doctrine that the tradition's own guardians rejected on arrival. A reader who knows that will read the news with open eyes.

The third is respect for the tradition itself. A faith that has carried its books and beliefs for over three thousand years, through every empire and every fire, deserves to be judged by what those books teach, and not by the political costume a modern movement has draped over it.

The two garments

The communities that never joined the movement are still here. They fill study halls in Jerusalem and Brooklyn, in London and Antwerp, keeping the same Sabbath their great-grandparents kept, praying the same words toward the same city, waiting for the redemption with the same patience the tradition has taught for two thousand years. They were here before the flag, and their books instruct them how to wait long after any flag. They ask for nothing from the world except to be seen as what they are.

So we end where the series began, with the picture on the screen: a kippah on a man's head, a flag in his hand. The kippah is three thousand years old. The flag is younger than many people reading this sentence. The two were sewn together within living memory, by a movement the tradition's own guardians refused, and the world has spent a lifetime mistaking the seam for something ancient. An honest observer can now see the stitching. The head covering belongs to the oldest living faith on earth. The flag belongs to a modern state, with a state's wars and a state's politics. Keep them apart, in judgment and in blame, and two things happen: the state can finally be seen as a state, and an old and patient people can finally be seen as themselves.

That clear sight is the entire request of this series, and it costs the reader nothing but attention. The Jews who kept the original faith have been waiting a century for the world to look closely.

Look closely.