Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART ONE PROLOGUE
- PART TWO THE PARENT ORTHODOX MODERNIZING MOVEMENTS
- 2 Torah-im-Derekh Eretz
- 3 Religious Zionism
- PART THREE THE RELIGIOUS KIBBUTZ MOVEMENT
- Afterword
- Appendix A The Religious Kibbutz Federation settlements
- Appendix B About the religious kibbutz members quoted in this book
- Appendix C Ideological periodicals referred to in book
- Notes
- Index
3 - Religious Zionism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- PART ONE PROLOGUE
- PART TWO THE PARENT ORTHODOX MODERNIZING MOVEMENTS
- 2 Torah-im-Derekh Eretz
- 3 Religious Zionism
- PART THREE THE RELIGIOUS KIBBUTZ MOVEMENT
- Afterword
- Appendix A The Religious Kibbutz Federation settlements
- Appendix B About the religious kibbutz members quoted in this book
- Appendix C Ideological periodicals referred to in book
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Religious Zionism constitutes a national response to the identity crisis which arose within Orthodox Jewry as a result of the confrontation between tradition and modernity. In contrast to the vigorous development of Torah-im-Derekh Eretz that was elaborated into an innovative cultural subcenter within Orthodox Judaism principally by one person, Religious Zionism was established by various figures and organizations over several generations. Crystallized for the most part in the pre-Emancipation setting of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe – for it was not until the 1917 revolution that most East European Jews were awarded equal civil rights – Religious Zionism did not, generally speaking, develop an articulate and coherent modernizing ideology, as did Torah-im-Derekh Eretz in Germany. Thus, while it sought to overcome the dualism between the universal modern values fostered by East European Jewish Enlightenment, and particular Jewish values – a dichotomy epitomized by the slogan “Be a man in the street and a Jew at home” – Religious Zionism never quite achieved a systematic integration of traditional religious and modern cultures.
This may have something to do with the fact that Religious Zionism matured under the shadow of traditionalistic rabbinical authority which looked askance at religious change. Notwithstanding the deterioration of the traditional Jewish order in Eastern Europe in the course of the nineteenth century, the religious leadership that constituted the supreme authority for most of the Jews in that region almost until the end of the century, refused to acknowledge modernity.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Judaism and Modernization on the Religious Kibbutz , pp. 46 - 66Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992