Loss of Identity

“They began to call Berlin Jerusalem and G-d sent a strong wind to uproot them!”
- Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk
(Meshech Chochmah on Bechukotai)

By eating from the Tree of Knowledge, Moses Mendelssohn removed the intellect from the emotion. Many European Jews had become “intellectuals” living in the world of rationale. But as a result, the heart became numb. In order to understand the implications of the Tree of Knowledge, when one leaves the realm of absolute truth (where existence is unified) and descends to the level of subjective intellect (where reality is scattered into individual components), it is worth examining the reactions of four prominent Jewish thinkers that emerged in the wake of Mendelssohn’s Haskalah.

Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch

Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch was an illustrious Torah leader of German Jewry. Raised in Hamburg, he was a gifted Talmudic scholar from an early age. He entered the University of Bonn, where he excelled in the fields of secular wisdom. Disturbed by the growing assimilation among European Jewry, Rabbi Hirsch created Neo-Orthodox Judaism (forerunner of the Modern-Orthodox movement) in order to demonstrate that traditional Judaism and Western culture can be compatible without sacrificing strict adherence to Torah Law.

After a period of time, Cain brought an offering to HaShem of the fruit of the ground; and as for Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and from their choicest. HaShem turned to Abel and to his offering, but to Cain and to his offering He did not turn. This annoyed Cain exceedingly, and his countenance fell.

And HaShem said to Cain, “Why are you annoyed, and why has your countenance fallen? Surely, if you improve yourself, you will be forgiven. But if you do not improve yourself, sin rests at the door. Its desire is toward you, yet you can conquer it.”

Cain spoke with his brother Abel. And it happened when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

HaShem said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”

And he said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Then He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground! Therefore, you are cursed more than the ground, which opened wide its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. You shall become a vagrant and a wanderer on earth.” (BEREISHIT 4:3-12)

After Adam ate from the tree, which brought him down to a state of relative morality, his son Cain murdered his other son Abel. One would think that the appropriate penalty for fratricide would be death. But Cain was instead forced into exile. Upon closer examination, however, one sees that Cain was not forced into exile for the crime of murder. Rather, he was forced into exile because he did not recognize his brother. He asked “am I my brother’s keeper?” and for this he was exiled. In truth, a Divine punishment is not an act of vengeance from above, but simply a reflection of a person’s unhealthy situation. For example, if one speaks evil gossip about another (which is an attempt to cause that person to be ostracized from the community), the gossip monger himself must be quarantined outside the camp in order to attain refinement. When a person does not recognize his brother, that person cannot exist securely in one place. Therefore he must wander in exile. This can be understood through the story of Yaakov’s sons, who did not recognize their brother Yosef. They sold him into slavery, but in doing so, sold themselves as well. Because of their act, the entire nation suffered a brutal Egyptian exile. Therefore, exile is the natural consequence of not recognizing one’s brother. The nation of Israel was exiled from our Land for the sin of senseless hatred between brothers. Because we did not recognize our brothers, we were turned into vagrants to wander the earth. And only when we are able to truly recognize our brothers and feel a genuine love and sense of responsibility towards them, can the exile be annulled so that we may come home and unite in the Land of Israel.

Rabbi Hirsch rejected this understanding of the exile. Instead, he saw in the exile itself, not an unhealthy situation that must be annulled, but the current mission of the Jewish people. This mission, according to Rabbi Hirsch, became Torah im Derekh Eretz – “Torah and the way of the land”, where he advocated full engagement with Western society while maintaining complete adherence to Jewish Law. This redefined the mission of Israel from establishing a nation in a Land that will shine a light throughout the world to an individual Jew that should be a gentleman in his country of residence. In this, Rabbi Hirsch created the idea of the “Israel-Mentsch” – a Jewish gentleman and enlightened religious personality, who could fulfill the Jewish task of being a “light unto nations” while scattered throughout the exile, thus showing the world how cultured and enlightened the Jewish people are.

In his prayer book, Rabbi Hirsch argued that “During the reign of Hadrian when the uprising led by Bar Kochba proved a disastrous error, it became essential that the Jewish people be reminded for all times of an important, essential fact, namely that Israel must never again attempt to restore its national independence by its own power; it was to entrust its future as a nation solely to Divine Providence.”

The idea of the return to Zion did not exist for Rabbi Hirsch as a tangible goal. He saw it as an abstract spiritual ideal beyond the current reality with no practical implications regarding Jewish behavior. He agreed that there would be a return to Zion as a final act of Redemption, but that this would be a miracle for G-D to perform. Meanwhile, we are forbidden from making any practical attempts to return to our soil but rather should behave as loyal citizens in the countries of our dispersion. Rabbi Hirsch, an extraordinary giant of Torah, even went so far as to argue in his 19 Letters of Ben Uziel that “we must pray for Germany and exalt Germany. Even if Germany does evil to me I must strive for the greatness of Germany”.

In the year 5657 (1897), Rabbi Hirsch’s students, the Orthodox leaders of Germany, will succeed in preventing Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl was holding the first World Zionist Congress in Munich. In 5679 (1919), however, no one will prevent the Nazi party’s formation in that very city.

Abraham Geiger

Abraham Geiger received a traditional Jewish education while at the same time being introduced to the world of German culture. He studied Greek and oriental languages in the University of Bonn, where he befriended Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch. The two worked together in the Jewish Student Society and, like Hirsch, Geiger became a rabbi but continued to participate in more scientific approaches to Judaism.

Geiger was horrified by the mass exodus of intellectual Jews from their faith. The cream of German Jewry was embracing German nationalism and Geiger viewed this as a tremendous loss. Wishing to make Judaism more modern and palatable to the intellectual Jews of Europe, he eventually split away from Rabbi Hirsch to create the Reform movement – a movement that would allow Jews to maintain their Jewish identity while remaining German patriots.

Geiger argued that Rabbi Hirsch was a hypocrite for praying to G-D for a return to Jerusalem while viewing Germany as his homeland. Geiger also believed Germany to be his country and felt a deep loyalty to it. He therefore took out all mention of returning to Zion from the Reform prayer books. Rabbi Hirsch at the time minimized the threat of this radical alteration but would later reject Geiger’s movement due to other innovations more related to individual observance of ritual and family purity.

In the winter of 5600 (1840), Father Thomas, the superior of a Franciscan convent at Damascus, disappeared with his servant. Upon his disappearance the anti-Semitic French consul at Damascus, Ratti Menton, instituted investigations in the Jewish quarter. A confession was extorted by torture from a Jewish barber named Negrin and eight of the most notable Jews of Damascus were imprisoned. Their teeth and beards were pulled out and they were burned to persuade them to confess an imaginary crime. In spite of the courage displayed by the tortured, Menton decided on the guilt of the accused in view of words resembling a confession that had escaped them in their agony. While Menton published libels against the Jews in French and in Arabic, the populace fell upon the Synagogue in the suburb of Jobar, pillaging it and destroying religious artifacts. There was a great outcry from the Jews of Damascus to their brethren throughout the world. Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch and Abraham Geiger were both curiously silent on the issue.

Rabbi Yehuda Chai Alkalai

A Kabalist in Sarajevo, Rabbi Yehuda Chai Alkalai saw what was occurring in Damascus and proclaimed it to be the great shofar coming to awaken us from our slumber. Our hearts, which were asleep during our dispersion, must now be awoken to the suffering of our brothers, which comes only as a warning to return promptly to our Land. By reacting to the Damascus blood libel in our hearts, Israel could internalize the warning and return home in time to be saved. In fact, Rabbi Alkalai warned at this time that we had one hundred years from the Damascus blood libel to create a political movement aimed at uniting the Jews in our Land. If not, Rabbi Alkalai warned, “there would come a king worse than Haman to devastate us in our exile”. Rabbi Alkalai also taught that he who leads this political endeavor will be the Mashiach ben Yosef, forerunner to the final champion, Mashiach ben David. Rabbi Alkalai explained that the Messianic effort is initially a human effort and is not brought about through miracles from Above. It is interesting to note that Rabbi Alkalai’s student, Shimon Lev, had an assimilationist son who eventually Germanized his family name to Herzl. He in turn had a son who, after witnessing the pain of French Jewry during the Dreyfus affair, wrote The Jewish State and established the Zionist movement in order to reunite the Jews together in the Land of Israel.

When one’s heart is numb and he alleviates himself of responsibility for Hebrew suffering, it is easy to proclaim that our security is the duty of G-D. But when a person feels the torment that the other is suffering, even though he himself is not actually experiencing it, he becomes one with that person and can give the pain meaning by transform it into power. Then G-D intervenes and creates miracles to assist those acting responsibly. By internalizing the pain of the Jews in Damascus, Israel could have avoided the Holocaust which came a century later. But because the heart was numb, among both the Orthodox and Reform leadership (who both fought fiercely against Herzl and the Zionist movement), a king worse than Haman emerged out of Germany to rob us of six million before we could awaken.

Although Rabbi Alkalai possessed tremendous vision through Kabalistic insights, there were many kabalists and scholars of Torah who did not see what he was able to foretell. What makes Rabbi Alkalai so different from his colleagues is that he lived above the level of the intellect. He lived on the level of compassion. And it can be proven through another Jewish thinker that one need not be a kabalist, or even religious, to be able to attain a wisdom of the heart – a wisdom allowing one to see and feel what others are too numb to discern.

Moshe Hess

Moshe Hess was born in Bonn, Germany in 5572 (1812). When his father moved to Cologne for business reasons, Hess remained behind to be educated by his religious grandfather. At age 14, however, he moved to Cologne to join his father in commerce. Like Rabbi Hirsch and Geiger, Hess attended the University of Bonn, where he studied philosophy but did not graduate. As a young man, Hess felt himself thoroughly German and advocated assimilation as the best course of action for the Jewish people.

In Cologne, Hess helped found the first socialist daily newspaper and became its Paris correspondent. For years, he moved around between Paris, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany. Initially, Hess was a utopian socialist but following his acquaintance with Karl Marx he moved toward a more scientific determinist understanding. Hess became an active communist and contributed toward Marx’s Communist Manifesto written in 5608 (1848), particularly the term “religion as the opium of the masses”. As a result of his father’s death in 5611 (1851), Hess inherited enough money to provide for an independent lifestyle, including marriage to his Christian girlfriend, Sybille Pesch. Hess was a successfully assimilated German Jew but at some point following his marriage, his world view underwent a radical change.

In 5622 (1862), Hess authored Rome and Jerusalem, a classic work of Zionist theory. In it, he writes:

“After twenty years of estrangement I have returned to my people. Once again I am sharing in its festivals of joy and days of sorrow, in its hopes and memories. I am taking part in the spiritual and intellectual struggles of our day, both within the House of Israel and between our people and the gentile world. The Jews have lived and labored among the nations for almost two thousand years, but nonetheless they cannot become rooted organically within them.

“A sentiment which I believe I had suppressed beyond recall is alive once again. It is the thought of my nationality, which is inseparably connected with my ancestral heritage, with the Holy Land and the Eternal City, the birthplace of the belief in the dive unity of life and of the hope for the ultimate brotherhood of all men.

“For years this half-strangled emotion has been stirring in my breast and clamoring for expression, but I had not the strength to swerve from my own path, which seemed so far from the road of Judaism, to a new one which I could envisage only vaguely in the hazy distance.

“Twenty years ago, when news came to Europe from Damascus of an absurd accusation against the Jews, a feeling of agony, as bitter as it was justified, was evoked in the hearts of all Jews. Once again we were face to face with the ignorance and credulity of the mobs of Asia and Europe, which are as ready today as they have been for the past two thousand years to believe any calumny directed against the Jews. I was painfully reminded, for the first time in many years, that I belong to an unfortunate, maligned, despised, and dispersed people – but one that the world has not succeeded in destroying. At that time, though I was still greatly estranged from Judaism, I wanted to cry out in anguish in expression of my Jewish patriotism, but this emotion was immediately superseded by the greater pain which was evoked in me by the suffering of the proletariat of Europe.”

Thus said HaShem: A voice is heard on high, wailing, bitter weeping, Rachel weeps for her children; she refuses to be consoled for her children, for they are gone. Thus said HaShem: Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears; for there is reward for your accomplishments – the word of HaShem – and they will return from the enemy’s land. There is hope for your future – the word of HaShem – and your children will return to their borders. (YIRMIYAHU 31:14-16)

After years of assimilation, Moshe Hess was awoken by the power of Rachel – the power of compassion, which allows one to transcend the level of the intellect and reach a plane of absolute truth. By reconnecting his intellect to the power of his heart, Hess was brought to a level of intuition where he could instinctively, and not intellectually, decipher between good and evil. He could now innocently look at reality in its nakedness.

Like Rabbi Alkalai, Hess warned that unless the Jews unite and return to Zion, their fate would be a terrible annihilation in the exile. But without the kabalistic understandings of Rabbi Alkalai, how did an assimilated Jewish communist arrive at this conclusion? Through a caring heart reconnected to his thinking, he was no longer an “intellectual”. The power of compassion is the power that brings one back to clarity. This – and not how religiously observant or knowledgeable one is – is what separates between those with the ability to act responsibly and those who delude themselves with intellectual assessments and rationalizations (such as “Hitler doesn’t mean those things but is just saying them in order to get himself elected”). Without compassion, clarity is impossible and one cannot figure out the events transpiring around him. The power of compassion is the power to clearly understand what is going on without the rational delusions people employ for the purposes of denial and self-comfort.

Compassion returned Moshe Hess from the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life. Through sensitivity, Hess was able to take responsibility and foresee the terrible hatred that would eventually sweep across Europe. By admitting to himself who he was – a Jew and not a German, he was able to recognize who his brothers were; to what nation he belonged. And by recognizing his brothers, he was able to visualize the danger of European anti-Semitism before this hate force was mature enough to strike. Hess turned to the Jewish national concept and espoused that Jews should preserve their national identity in exile while practically striving for their political restoration in Palestine. Judaism, he felt, was the best means of preserving Jewish nationality and should be left unchanged until the establishment of a Jewish entity in Palestine, where a Sanhedrin (supreme Jewish court of 71 Sages) would be elected to modify Torah Law in accordance with the needs of the new society.

So here we have four prominent thinkers advocating two opposite initiatives for what action European Jewry should have taken in the wake of Moses Mendelssohn, the Enlightenment movement and the Damascus blood libels. Each of the two proposals was advocated by a giant of Torah and by a non-observant Jew. Therefore, we cannot contend that one line of reasoning was the “religious” perspective. Nor could the disagreement be decided by asking whose Torah scholarship was greatest, as Rabbi Hirsch and Rabbi Alkalai were both illustrious scholars. But what can be brought in order to settle the dispute (without the obvious benefit of hindsight) is a sincere and genuine German. Perhaps by seeing the Enlightenment through a gentile perspective, we can break the tie and conclusively decide the argument.

Richard Wagner

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzato writesin The Path of the Just that the lowest level a person can fall to is that his enemy knows who he is while he does not recognize his enemy because he does not even know himself. In other words, the enemy knows him better than he knows himself and he is therefore not aware of his enemy.

Richard Wagner originally fought for the Jews to be accepted as equals in German society. But when he eventually saw the Jew up close, he was disgusted. He then wrote an essay, The Jews and their Music, explaining why Germans should not feel ashamed for their abhorrence of the Jews. He argued that this hatred is instinctive and reveals that the German national organism is healthy. If something indigestible were to enter a person’s body, the most beneficial act the body could perform would be to eject it. The fact that the German people cannot digest the Jews, but rather wish to eject them from society, is to the credit of the German people and a sign of national health. Here Wagner admitted his true feelings and instead of engaging in rationalizations of denial, he took responsibility for them. Unlike many liberal German thinkers, who championed the cause of emancipation for the Jews (but whose grandchildren would later become Nazis), Wagner was honest with himself and encouraged German society to be honest as well. He declared that his hatred for the Jews was because the Jew had no authentic identity of his own and instead attempted to assume the guise of a German. The Jews, according to Wagner, had no culture, no language, no land and no identity. So they instead sought to usurp the German culture, language, land and identity. In Wagner’s view, even if a Jew were to write the German language or compose German music better than a native German, he could still never be a true German because the Jew is a parasite with nothing of his own, forever feeding off from the cultures of others.

In effect, G-D sent Wagner to teach us to discover who we are. What our culture is. What our language is. Where our homeland is. What our identity is. Who our brothers are. Are they the German gentiles or the Jews of Damascus? If the Jewish people had understood Wagner, we would have remembered that we were exiled from our true soil. Instead of desiring to be Germans, whether religious or assimilated, we would have come back to ourselves and sought a way to reunite in our Land.

Wagner became the ideological father of Adolph Hitler. Hitler obviously understood Wagner’s teachings. The first anti-Semitic laws that Hitler put forth upon his accession to power were the Nuremberg laws, also known as the “laws to defend the purity of the Aryan blood”. These included a prohibition against Jews flying German flags or blessing Germany in their places of worship, so that Jews should learn that they are in fact not German. The problem is that we did not understand Wagner and therefore necessitated the rise of Adolph Hitler. In vain, the leading rabbis of Germany wrote to Hitler exclaiming that they were in fact loyal Germans who were patriotic citizens and had fought valiantly for Germany during the Great War.

There are two types of love: dependent love and independent love. A Jew that wishes to be a German is infatuated with Germany and experiences a dependent love based on being accepted in that society. His entire identity and feeling of self-worth is dependent on his being received into German culture. He wants to stand out as a German and excel in his field as a German, bringing honor to himself and to Germany. He therefore becomes dependent on Germany loving him and refuses to concede that his love is not reciprocal. Because his heart is numb, he refuses to internalize the message of Richard Wagner and is unable to be honest and return to who he is. Like a battered woman in an abusive relationship, the German Jew was dependent on his tormenter and was unable to envision any alternate purpose for his life than advancing in German society. This assessment is expressed by Rabbi Hirsch in his 19 Letters of Ben Uziel where he states that “even if Germany does evil to me I must strive for the greatness of Germany”. The thinking of the German Jewish leadership is very well represented by these words. They had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and were emotionally immature. All they needed was the Damascus libels to awaken them and remind them of their true identity. And after that was ineffective, G-D sent Wagner to shake our hearts from slumber. Had we understood the message of Wagner, it could have been a tremendous blessing. We would have realized that we were in fact not Germans but Israelis who must return to our borders and establish an independent state. There would have been no need for a Nazi movement. But we had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and were trapped in a dependent and superficial love.

This dependent love is currently evident among United States Jewry. If there were to be a visible increase in American anti-Semitism, would the Jewish leadership mobilize to protest the injustice or would they lead a mass migration of their followers to Israel? If they opt to protest the anti-Semitism, it would be apparent that they have a dependent love for the United States – a yearning to view themselves as Americans – and refuse to internalize the hate and its message. If they mobilize a mass emigration of Jews from America to Israel, then it would be clear that they understand the message and have matured to the level of an independent love, which allows a person to excel as who he really is. A Jew becomes independent and is able to return to his homeland, expel the British occupier and establish a Hebrew state. To experience independent love, one need not be a scholar or even ritually observant. One need only be emotionally mature enough to hear one’s own heart speak. And this was the greatness of both Rabbi Alkalai and Moshe Hess. Although Mendelssohn had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and numbed the hearts of European Jewry, these men were sensitive enough to the suffering of their brothers that they were able to internalize the pain. Then, through giving it meaning, they sought to find a solution to the predicament of the entire nation.

In a chapter entitled Zionism as Liberation, Revolution and Renaissance, Professor Israel Eldad asks in The Jewish Revolution why Zionism experienced several decades of slow motion from the time of Herzl’s death until the end of World War II. Was it because of objective conditions preventing a revolutionary ingathering of the exiles to Zion? Was it due to the paltry vision and insufficient daring of the Jewish leadership? Or could it have been all the various subsidiary objectives that Zionism tried to accomplish along the way, weakening its impact and diverting precious resources from the main effort of evacuating the Diaspora? Eldad leaves the question unanswered but hints rejection at the first possibility. As a student of Nietzschean philosophy (nearly all Hebrew translations of Nietzsche were accomplished by Eldad), Eldad believes in the idea of “Will to Power”, considering no endeavor impossible. If we failed to rescue six million Jews it was because we did not try hard enough to save them. There are two proofs for this theory.  The first is Raoul Wallenberg. Without any armies or even a small fraction of the resources held by the Zionist movement at the time, Wallenberg succeeded in defying the Nazis and rescuing one hundred thousand Jews from Adolph Eichmann in Hungary. If Wallenberg could achieve such a feat on his own, how many Jews could the Zionist movement have saved?

The second proof comes from Eldad’s own experiences. After the murder of Yair Stern, Eldad became one of the three joint leaders of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (along with Yitzchak Shamir and Natan Yellin-Mor). This underground movement, commonly known as the “Stern Gang” or Lehi, advocated the forced expulsion of the British from our soil and the immediate establishment of a Hebrew state. This demand for an armed revolt against Great Britain began with the founding of Lehi in 5700 (1940). At the time, of course, this policy was regarded by the Zionist leadership as a dangerous fantasy, not connected to political reality. In fact, the Jewish establishment sought to suppress Lehi and its activities for fear it would bring calamity on Palestinian Jewry. But eight years later, with the assistance of Menachem Begin’s Irgun Zvai Leumi (and with the reluctant support of the Zionist establishment), Lehi was victorious in finally ousting the British foe. So one might ask, had the larger organizations lent their support in 5700, could the British have been ejected then as they in fact were eight years later? It must be remembered that the Nazi Wannsee Conference, which decided on genocide rather than forced emigration as the final solution to the Jewish problem, took place in 5702 (1942). Could a Hebrew state in 5700 have been able to save the Jews of Europe? If so, the blame would squarely fall on the paltry vision and insufficient daring of the Jewish leadership.

In the Midrash Agadah, Shir HaShirim Rabbah, three oaths appear where Israel are made to swear that they would not force the Redemption from exile, revolt against the nations or immigrate en mass to the Land of Israel. An additional oath is added that the nations would not persecute Israel too much. The classic interpretation over the years has always been that this last oath belongs to the gentiles and that they must be careful not to exceed the appropriate level of persecuting us in the exile. But what then is the actual definition of too much? Is it one Jewish child being called a name on his way home from school? Is it the desecration of a Jewish cemetery or Synagogue? Is it six million Jews being systematically killed? Too much is an incredibly vague term without a clear definition. An alternate understanding would make the last oath ours as well.

For example, Moshe saw one Egyptian hitting one Hebrew. Moshe did not hear the voice of HaShem telling him to kill the Egyptian. In fact, had Moshe been at all familiar with the history of his nation, he would have known that there was a specific number of years which Israel was meant to be enslaved that had not yet come to pass. But still Moshe reacted to what he saw by slaying the Egyptian and burying him in the sand. Moshe could have rationalized the situation by telling himself that he would one day be Pharaoh and then could quietly set the Hebrews free. Until then, he might as well keep a low profile on issues concerning the slaves. But Moshe was not a political opportunist, even one with the best of intensions. One Israeli being beaten by one Egyptian was too much for Moshe to bear. And at that point he had to force the Redemption. He had to revolt against the gentiles and bring Israel on mass aliya. And then, when it became clear how much Moshe felt the pain of his people, G-D spoke to him.

Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl, an assimilated Jew, advocated a mass conversion to Christianity as the solution to Jewish suffering in the world. But when, as a journalist, he witnessed the Dreyfus Affair in France, and the ferocious reaction of the French toward the Jews, this was too much for Herzl. His heart awoke suddenly and began to genuinely feel. He then wrote The Jewish State and founded the Zionist movement, with the sole objective of solving the problem of the Jewish people by uniting them in their borders.

Too much, therefore is not an additional oath that the gentiles must adhere to. It would be ludicrous to assume that one could show Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin the Midrash and hope that they would live up to their side of the agreement. Too much is meant for Israel and depends on the truth of one’s soul. How much compassion and sensitivity one possesses will determine what one considers too much. And when a Jew feels that something is too much, his soul forces him to revolt. He will then struggle to force the Redemption, revolt against the nations and make aliya. For an extraordinarily healthy soul, too much might be being called a dirty Jew. For an extremely unhealthy soul, six million dead might not yet be too much (had the Holocaust been too much for American Jewry they certainly would have made aliya directly following this catastrophe and Israel’s establishment). What each individual considers too much is a reflection of the sensitivity in that person’s heart. Eating from the Tree of Knowledge, however, suppresses sensitivity, disconnects the intellect from the emotion and prevents the heart from feeling and the soul from being healthy.

As Rabbi Alkalai and Moshe Hess considered the Damascus libels too much, Lehi viewed foreign rule in the Land of Israel as too much. Because this shame was not too much for the Zionist establishment, they related to Lehi as an internal threat. When six million would later be killed, however, this will be too much for the community in Palestine and the Hebrew revolt will expel the British occupier. But had the average Jew in Palestine been as sensitive as Lehi to Jewish suffering, Israel might have been able to expel the British eight years earlier, declare our independence and evacuate European Jewry to our newborn state in 5700 (1940), thus preventing the catastrophe.

Zionism constitutes not a philanthropic institution but a complete revolution based on the aspirations of all Jews until Mendelssohn ate from the Tree of Knowledge. The Zionist revolution – springing from the Messianic yearnings shared by all Jews until the Haskalah – includes the transfer of an entire population from a scattered exposed position to a united location of refuge, the revival of a language dead for thousand of years as a vernacular, the development of a modern economy for a people without a proper farming or working class and the liberation of our Land from the hands of foreign nations. Like a globe, Eldad writes, the Zionist revolution is kept moving by the impetus of its own momentum. The existential need for a Hebrew revolution is the only driving force required to keep it spinning forward. Had the revolutionary character of the Zionist movement not been substituted after Herzl’s death by an evolutionary philanthropic character, Israel today would be populated with over ten million Jews and the achievements of the state would be many times as great as they currently are.

The State of Israel, in Eldad’s view, is Zionism’s most precious instrument for achieving its revolutionary aspirations. A state could never be the end goal of Zionism. Rather the supreme value in renewed Jewish statehood lies in its being the tool for accomplishing an act of Redemption not complete so long as there remains a Jewish Diaspora. And current Diaspora leaders who profess Jewish safety in the lands of their dispersion are guilty of a criminal irresponsibility no different from the German Jews of the previous century. In fact, this kind of immature thinking is merely an ideological superstructure erected over a foundation of complaisance, hedonism and establishmentarian expediency. Any Jewish leader who claims today’s Diaspora to be in any way secure is behaving irresponsibly, not only with his own life, but with the lives of millions who might once again pay with theirs.

For most of our nearly two thousand year exile, the Jewish people considered themselves to be strangers in strange lands, forcibly removed from our native soil and yearning for a return to Jerusalem. It was the Haskalah that created a separation between our individual religiosity and our collective national identity and aspirations. From the day Moses Mendelssohn ate from the Tree of Knowledge, a race began between the crematoria of Auschwitz and the revival of the State of Israel. As the Redemption process is not yet complete in our day, one might assume that a new race has begun and that there might be a price to pay, G-D forbid, if we fail to rise above the Tree of Knowledge and return the compassion, sensitivity and revolutionary character to the Zionist movement before we again face an avoidable tragedy.