{"id":50584,"date":"2014-12-01T12:15:36","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T12:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=50584"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:14","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:14","slug":"zionists-throw-themselves-onto-the-messianic-wagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/12\/zionists-throw-themselves-onto-the-messianic-wagon\/","title":{"rendered":"Zionists Throw Themselves onto the Messianic Wagon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"temple-wide_1355306i<\/a><\/p>\n

A model of the second (Herod\u2019s) temple which, like the model of Solomon\u2019s (the first), was made using the measurements given in the bible. The existence of Jewish building on Temple Mount is in dispute, and further archaeological research cannot be made because of the sensitivity of the site. According to Haaretz \u2018no archaeological evidence for (the first temple\u2019s) existence, let alone its location, has been discovered, and no extra-biblical records of it have survived\u2026In fact there is no archaeological evidence of the modest Second Temple either, though there is evidence that Temple Mount was inhabited during this period. But unlike the First Temple, the existence of this second one is corroborated by Jewish, Greek and Roman extra-biblical sources.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is rich archaeological evidence for the grand temple King Herod built in its stead, starting in 20 BCE, though its construction only ended 80 years later, well after his death.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

The Temple Mount and the end of Zionism<\/a><\/p>\n

Zionism is one of the success stories of the 20th century, but it has not properly addressed its religious core \u2013 <\/em>\u2028<\/em>specifically the Temple Mount, which can no longer be ignored. Second of two articles* on the Temple Mount.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Tomer Persico, Haaretz
\nNovember 29, 2014<\/em><\/p>\n

On June 10, 1967, just three days after Col. Mordechai \u201cMotta\u201d Gur had famously declared, \u201cThe Temple Mount is in our hands,\u201d Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman said that halakha (traditional religious law) forbade Jews to visit the site. Two weeks later, a leading Sephardi authority, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, stated that even flying over the site was forbidden. On a similar note, the religious affairs minister, Zerah Warhaftig, said that, according to halakha, the Third Temple has to be built by God. \u201cThis makes me happy,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause we can avoid a conflict with the Muslim religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

My previous article (\u201cWhy rebuilding the Temple would be the end of Judaism as we know it,\u201d Nov. 13*) examined the transformation in the thinking of significant segments of the religious-Zionist movement about the Temple Mount. The change, which overturns the tradition with regard to visiting the site, stems from the strengthening of the national over the halakhic element, and by the infusion of a messianic eros, which did not realize itself under the old Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) paradigm. In short, the struggle for the land shifted to the Mount.<\/p>\n

Still, we should consider all aspects of the national aspect of the modern yearning for the Temple Mount, as this longing is interwoven with the Zionist movement and modern nationalism on a number of levels.<\/p>\n

\"Jews<\/a>

Jews on the Temple Mount \/ Haram al-Sharif<\/p><\/div>\n

First, in the simplest sense, the yearning for the Temple Mount and the Great Temple is a result of the concrete possibility of reaching it. Technically, that is, it is contingent on Israel\u2019s establishment in the Land of Israel and on the conquest of Jerusalem. Thus, the practical possibility exists to change the physical reality to enable a new temple to be built.<\/p>\n

Second, and more important, the desire to build the Temple is related to the desire \u2013 which also became a realistic possibility upon the modern ingathering of the exiles and Israel\u2019s creation \u2013 to unite the whole Jewish people under one national-religious leadership. While during the ancient temple\u2019s time the Jewish people were never united, it is the imagined community of the modern nation-state that ironically makes this presumably possible.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, however, yearning for the Temple Mount and the Temple is intertwined with Jewish nationalism because it is the end point of Zionism \u2013 the point at which Zionism self-destructs. For Zionism, which proposed the secularization of Judaism and its conversion from religion to nationality, built itself on the ancient messianic scaffolding of the hope for the ingathering of the exiles. The ultimate goal of the Jewish messianic tradition was always to establish a kingdom, and the independent Jewish state definitely meets the initial conditions to that end.<\/p>\n

However, the messianic myth also has as-yet unrealized conditions: Temple and king. The question, then, is whether secular Zionism could decide to halt its headlong dash on the messianic track at a particular point only because it would be less convenient to continue further.<\/p>\n

This is not a question of government decisions or military capabilities, but one that concerns the internal logic of a particular ideology: whether the ideology can develop critical reflexivity and demarcate an internal boundary that entails a halt or change. Additionally, it is a question about the encounter between modern consciousness and the religious and mythical elements that are churning in its depths, between the modern, secular subject and the primeval religiosity that is embedded in its psyche and interwoven into its culture.<\/p>\n

This last issue, reflecting the explosive encounter between rationalism and mysticism, between secularity and religion, is almost taboo in the world of modern research. Nevertheless, it needs to be asked. In fact, if we believe that we do not possess a pure and immortal soul, and that our inner life reflects only a complex, integrated crystallization of genetic and cultural conditions, the question of their design is doubly important. For if we are in our essence not separate from this world and its material conditions, it follows that those conditions are what our psyche consists of, and, as such, determine its mode of existence and guide its path.<\/p>\n

If we add the supposition that not only present-day culture, but also the entire course of history and development exert influence in shaping us, we can conclude that ancient cultural forces continue to reside within us, and that even if they have undergone various transformations and sublimations, they continue to guide our behavior in covert ways.<\/p>\n

Was this not what the scholar of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem, was referring to in his famous letter, in 1926, to the theologian Franz Rosenzweig? That was the gist of this \u201cdeclaration of allegiance to our language,\u201d as the letter became known, and that was its warning: that in the long term, it would not be possible to evade ancient residues latent within our culture.<\/p>\n

According to Scholem, the renewed encounter with Hebrew and its innate sanctities was a \u201cthreat [that] confronts us [as] a necessary consequence of the Zionist undertaking \u2026 Will its submerged religious power not erupt one day?\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on: \u201cEach word that is not newly created but taken from the \u2018good old\u2019 treasure is full to bursting with explosiveness. A generation that inherited the most fruitful of all our sacred traditions \u2013 our language \u2013 cannot, however mightily it could wish, live without tradition \u2026 God will not stay silent in a language in which he is invoked a thousandfold back into our life \u2026 The revivers of the [Hebrew] language did not believe in the Day of Judgment, to which they destined us by their acts. May the recklessness which has set us on this apocalyptic path not bring about our perdition.\u201d [Based on published translations of the text by Gil Anidjar, Jonathon Chipman and Alexander Gelley.]<\/p>\n

Scholem is talking about secularized Hebrew, but secular Zionism itself, with its project of ingathering the exiles and establishing a sovereign state, is no more than the secularization of the Jewish messianic tradition. Can it be the case that not only language but a national framework, too, can revivify dormant mythic seeds and allow them to flower?<\/p>\n

\u2018Water of life\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

In March 1936, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung published an essay about events in neighbouring Germany. Jung viewed the rise to power of the Nazi Party as a process of mass psychological enthralment. Indeed, as a surrender to ancient mythic forces that were repressed for thousands of years and now, as he watched, terrified, were returning to seize the consciousness of the Germans.<\/p>\n

The essay\u2019s title, \u201cWotan,\u201d indicates the primal source of the resurgent myth: Wotan was the god of storm, rage and war of the ancient Germanic tribes. For Jung, Wotan is not an autonomous heavenly entity, but a collective archetype implanted within the heart of a human community, a nation.<\/p>\n

According to this viewpoint, German culture has never freed itself of Wotan, and the god\u2019s patterns of existence are waiting to be realized in the culture\u2019s forms of expression. \u201cAn archetype is like an old watercourse, along which the water of life has flowed for centuries, digging a deep channel for itself,\u201d Jung wrote. \u201cThe longer it has flowed in this channel, the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return to its old bed.\u201d<\/p>\n

An archetype is a track, a pattern of thought and action. Like a neurological path in the brain, which steers the individual toward habitual actions, an archetype steers cultures toward actions which, even if forgotten later on, in the present, are faithful to their collective psyche, more available and inviting than other paths. Observing the rise of the National Socialists to power in Germany, their political posturing and the fascist aesthetic of their symbols and parades, Jung concluded that the old pagan god had recaptured the hearts of the Germans, deftly brushing aside the Christian framework they had ostensibly assumed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are always convinced,\u201d Jung wrote, \u201cthat the modern world is a reasonable world, basing our opinion on economic, political and psychological factors \u2026 I venture the heretical suggestion that the unfathomable depths of Wotan\u2019s character explain more of National Socialism than all three reasonable factors put together \u2026 a god has taken possession of the Germans and their house is filled with a \u2018mighty rushing wind.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Without any desire to draw a demagogic comparison between present-day Israel and 1936 Germany (a baseless and deplorable comparison, of course), and even if one doesn\u2019t subscribe to Jung\u2019s overall approach (I certainly don\u2019t) \u2013 his remarks invite us to reflect on the power of the cultural archetype in our contemporary context. According to Jung, an archetype acquires access to modern consciousness when the individual becomes part of the mass, or when he encounters a situation which resists standard treatment. Have Zionism and Israel reached that point?<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s kryptonite<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like Scholem, Baruch Kurzweil \u2013 the Israeli literary and cultural critic \u2013 also discerned the danger of implosion created by the Zionist state\u2019s sovereign rule over the Temple Mount. Back in 1970 he wrote, \u201cThe year 1967 confronted pragmatic Zionism, which can be only political and state-oriented, with its most critical decision \u2026 Zionism and its offspring, the State of Israel, which reached the Western Wall by the route of military conquest, as the fulfilment of earthly messianism, will never be able to abandon the Wall and forsake the occupied sections of the Land of Israel, without denying their historiosophic [philosophy of history, a term coined by Scholem] conception of Judaism. Pragmatic Zionism is caught in the web of its achievements.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbandoning them would mean admitting its failure as the voice and executor of Judaism\u2019s historical continuity \u2026 It is inconceivable to halt the headlong rush of a messianic apocalypse in order to allow the passengers to get out and look at the spectacular views of the Day of the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n

These words remain startlingly relevant. Is it indeed the case that, apart from obvious practical obstacles, there is another reason, internal and inherent, that explains the enormous difficulty Israel encounters whenever it tries to retract its military achievements in that fateful war? Kurzweil is talking about the conquest of Judea and Samaria as a whole, but certainly the jewel in the imperial crown is Jerusalem, and its apex is the Temple Mount. We have reached the time when the State of Israel faces a confrontation with them, its most intractable internal rivals. Its kryptonite.<\/p>\n

In this regard, Kurzweil would say, Zionism is laid bare, stripped of the secular covering it assumed, its naked theological core revealed. Zionism grasps that it was always only an outer shell for traditional Judaism \u2013 more precisely, for the messianic tradition. Under the force of this revelation, its self-image crumbles and is voided of content.<\/p>\n

Oedipus discovered that he was of royal lineage at the very moment of realizing that he had killed his father and slept with his mother. Zionism discovers that it is of religious lineage at the very moment when it conquers Judea, Samaria and the Temple Mount. Its underlying driving force of messianism is revealed, even as the Western liberalism it had imagined was its foundation is shaken.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Temple Mount also represents deadly internal logic for halakhic Judaism. Building a temple, completing the messianic tradition, will render halakhic Judaism obsolete. Those who yearn for a new temple dream of a pre-halakhic Judaism: the period of the priesthood, when blood was splattered on the horns of the altar. In the priestly paradigm, control is in the hands of a priestly caste that is centred not on schools of Torah study but on one temple; one that does not pray but sacrifices animals, does not seek God in holy actions and at holy times, but at one special holy site.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the entire halakha can be said to be a delayed-action mechanism of the messianic myth, or a vast jigsaw puzzle that is never completely assembled. The Temple is the last piece of the puzzle, and once in place it creates a whole picture that obscures the import of each separate part, each religious injunction. The fact that once there is a temple there will no longer be a halakha is grasped, consciously or not, by the leading rabbis who oppose visiting the Temple Mount.<\/p>\n

House of prayer for all<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was not by chance that Zionism sanctified the Western Wall nationally, and not by chance that the rabbinate did so halakhically: Both sides found it convenient to see the Mount but not to approach it. Until now, the halakhic consensus has spared Israel the need to address the possible realization of the myth that is churning in its depths, by curbing religious passions with religious force. But as Orthodoxy grows weaker and ethnic nationalism and Temple-driven messianism gain strength, the Israeli state must resort to the use of secular-bureaucratic tools to restrain the religious-mythic thrust. This is a formidable task for the state, as the messianic forces are dislodging it from its traditional course.<\/p>\n

For all the reasons noted above, the myth cannot be simply repressed, still less annulled. (I am indebted to Prof. Haviva Pedaya for her assistance with this insight.) Zionism\u2019s underlying political theology must be coped with directly and creatively. Secular Zionism\u2019s practice of ignoring this, and its exclusionary attempts in regard to the Temple Mount \u2013 and in regard to the content of traditional Judaism as such \u2013 must end. In addition to the self-denial involved, this posture is allowing fundamentalist, antidemocratic forces to appropriate Judaism and, in the absence of an alternative, to attract those seeking an answer.<\/p>\n

If, as I believe, Zionism is a true and authentic continuation of the Jewish tradition, it must posit a valid alternative to the narrow interpretation of the Temple as an altar around which a family dynasty of priests revolved. Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, spoke of a modern temple as a kind of philanthropic international institution. However, we also need to consider a religious \u2013 and inter-religious \u2013 centre that will be responsive to the religious elements of the messianic vision. In fact, the myth itself allows us to propose this: \u201cfor My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,\u201d as Isaiah [56:7] prophesies.<\/p>\n

Understandably, this approach obliges respectful and close co-operation with the Muslim institutions that are traditionally responsible for the Al-Aqsa compound. To begin with, Israel\u2019s leaders must make it unequivocally clear that Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine are an integral, eternal part of every skyline and every future vision for Jerusalem, and that the Muslims\u2019 rights of worship will be upheld fully.<\/p>\n

In addition, all talk supposedly hinting at the building of a temple in place of the Islamic holy places must be roundly condemned \u2013 that can be done only alongside them, preferably with them. Even though a joint arrangement seems far-fetched now, there is reason to hope that when the national component of the conflict is resolved, or on the way to resolution, the way will be opened to cooperation at the religious level.<\/p>\n

Zionism is one of the most dazzling success stories of the 20th century, both pragmatically and conceptually. However, it has not properly addressed its religious core. And within it, at its centre, the Temple Mount, which can no longer be a black hole of insignificance. This is the time to talk about it, to reinterpret it. And, as explained earlier, this is also in the interest of the halakhic clergy.<\/p>\n

Beyond this, even if it were possible to build a temple without being plunged into a religious war with the whole Muslim world, a temple in its premodern sense would simply be a disappointment. It would be the end of the myth\u2019s existence as a fruitful conceptual framework and the onset of its existence as a limited reality; the end of its existence as an erotic, creative force, and the start of its collapse into a caricature of men in white robes \u2013 a grotesquerie of blood, sweat and guts.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn archetype is like an old watercourse, along which the water of life has flowed for centuries,\u201d Jung says. \u201cRestore our fortunes, O Lord, like watercourses in the Negev,\u201d the famous Psalm prophesies. Both Jung and the psalmist draw a connection between the realization of the myth and the water that flows into the dry riverbeds of the desert.<\/p>\n

At this time, many waters are again filling the dry riverbeds of our consciousness. The question is not how to block the waters; the question is how and where to channel them.<\/p>\n

*Apocalypse now!<\/a> Why rebuilding the Temple would be the end of Judaism as we know it, Tomas Persico, November 13th, 2014<\/em><\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

Jews for Justice for Palestinians is a network of Jews who are British or live in Britain, practising and secular, Zionist and not. We oppose Israeli policies that undermine the livelihoods, human, civil and political rights of the Palestinian people. We support the right of Israelis to live in freedom and security within Israel\u2019s 1967 borders. We work to build world-wide Jewish opposition to the Israeli Occupation, with like-minded groups around the world and are a founding member of <\/em>European Jews for a Just Peace<\/em>, a federation of Jewish groups in ten European countries.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jfjfp.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No archaeological evidence for (the first temple\u2019s) existence, let alone its location, has been discovered, and no extra-biblical records of it have survived\u2026In fact there is no archaeological evidence of the modest Second Temple either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}