Monthly Archives: January 2019

Two years ago, I spoke at Van Leer Jerusalem Institute (VLJI) on contemporary spirituality about the use of pop-psych and contemporary non-Jewish spirituality in American Orthodox Jewish spirituality.  I presented a range from  Aryeh Kaplan’s use of Huxley to Abraham Twerski’s 12 step and self esteem psychology to those Orthodox spirituality books of the 21st century who are using Anne Lamont, Tony Robbins, and various new age concepts.

One of the attendees at the conference was Noa Lea Cohn, an Israeli graduate student in art history who wanted to apply my research to her field of contemporary orthodox art. I sent her a half dozen emails of bibliography on various aspects of the topic. In turn, she asked me to write an introduction for an exhibition catalog of a show she was curating on Hasidic pop -art as part of the Jerusalem Biennale called “Popthodox / Black Humor.”  

She called the exhibition Black Humor after the Israeli slang expression for the ultra-Orthodox, who are called “blacks” for the dominant color of their clothes, and exposes for the first time a new pop art genre called Pophoddox. The exhibition  wanted to show a two-way view: interior and exterior. The exhibition’s artists “use introspective, inner humor that belongs to the public in which they belong to the thin nuances within it. On the other hand, humor enables them to direct an external critical eye on themselves” as a “self-conscious stranger.”For her, it showed the sociological processes taking place under the radar in ultra-Orthodox society.

I was already familiar with several of the artists and already actually had a prepared lecture with a handout with some of the art as part of my Hasidut class.  Below was my short entry in the exhibition catalog. (There were several other entries more concerned with the art itself.)

Hipster Hasidic Pop-Art –Alan Brill

The Baal Shem Tov taught that the Creator is found in all things and that one should serve God in all of one’s ways. Hence, some Hasidic groups, especially Chabad, encourage their followers to use their God-given talents to serve the Almighty. Following this expansive view, some contemporary Orthodox artists serve God through creativity and individuality.

Contemporary Hasidism is not outside of culture nor does it have to bridge the worlds of art and Orthodoxy. Rather, Orthodoxy is embedded in the wider culture around it. One should not conceive of Chabad adherents as otherworldly nineteenth-century mystics, unfamiliar with technology and new ideas. Rather they are media savvy enough to create advertisements, appear on Oprah, and host non-Jewish Hollywood stars in their fundraisers. Hasidim walk the same streets, buy the same consumer goods, and use the Internet as everyone else. Media, graphic design, and popular culture are everywhere in their daily lives.

In recent years with Chabad’s strong emphasis on outreach, its adherents have become masters at using popular culture to bring in unaffiliated Jews. They might almost be considered another form of modern Orthodoxy in that they adopt a modern sense of urban life, media use, and material culture. In order to reach people they have created a rich world of popular psychology, motivational posters, graphic design, and cool evenings devoted to the cutting edge in food, eyeglasses, or design. Many young Chabad Hasidim work in web design or online marketing, so they are well aware of recent trends and are conversant with Photoshop.

One does not have to go to art school to learn about the official pop art of the 1960s. Rather, people with open eyes appreciate the graphic designs that are all around them. The famous designs of the 1960s of Milton Glazer, Peter Max, and Robert Indiana continue to inspire artistic descendants to create pop art on packaging, on housewares, on children’s toys, and on city streets. In living their embedded life in the vibrancy of New York City, Chabad Hasidim are exposed to the pop styles of Keith Haring, David Hockney, and Barbara Kruger. From daily life, they know of the commercialized images of commodified art such as famous cartoon characters, as well as the pop use of them.

Strictly religious cultures create an interest inversion: the more religious it is, the more a particular group has to create its own art. The paradox is that the more the Orthodox community becomes part of an open society, the more it partakes of the general secular culture, and the more it experiences its own sectarianism. When this happens, it must descend into the realm of popular culture in order to produce more accessible products for the Orthodox community.[1]

Since the 1990s there has been a trans-Atlantic hipster subculture of young creatives who distinguish themselves by their quest for authenticity, especially in material culture, as well as by a lifestyle distinguished by its rejection of mass produced consumerism.[2] Journalists noted a subtrend of cross acculturation of Chabad Hasidism and hipster subculture in which the former were seen to adopt various cultural affinities similar to the local hipster subculture.[3] In the hipster Hasidic pop art trend, they have given up the more sentimental and romantic images of dancing Hasidim done as illustrative realism in favor of depicting their authentic lives with the contemporary popular culture they live within

Those in the world of Hasidic hipster religious pop art do not think that art has to have an overt outreach message and be adaptable for a worship service. Rather, they strive for emotional vibrancy and honesty. In this approach, there is a need to be able to see eyn od milvado, all things as connected to God, as a total celebration of Judaism. Many young Orthodox Jews note “there is nothing besides Him” as their religion on Facebook. The question is not whether or not pop art should be used to convey a religious message; rather anything can be used, as long as one believes it will lead to authenticity and commitment.

This is part of the larger trend of religion and religious art around them. Just as Hasidim appeal to finding God in all things, contemporary hipster Evangelicals appeal to the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit in the riches of art, even art that does not line up with their theology. Many Evangelical pastors are following the lead of hipster trendsetters blurring the lines of cool and religion.

Evangelicals want to leave behind the early decades when, owing to their sole focus on outreach, religious art was fuddy-duddy, kitsch, and unconcerned with broader trends. They are even ironic about these earlier trends. Now they can portray Christian images as pop art with hipster sensibility. Conversely, they offer a redemptive gesture toward the objects of the recent past, in this case pop art.[4]

Hipster Christian pop art culture makes extensive use of the hipster interpretive tool of irony and suspicion of popular mainstream culture, thereby allowing multiple perspectives. For some, this is a path for moving out of the constraining community. For others it is a limited rebellion against conservative elements. Hipster Christianity sends mixed signals.[5]

The Hasidic pop art in this exhibit shows a similar spectrum from the colorful to the mild rebellion to the critique of the system. Some use the art as a criticism of their social limits and some are already pointing outward toward new lives. They are not all inside the system; rather, there are those who are completely in the system, those who have minor adaptations to the system, and others who are already looking at the community with a sense of distance.

On the one hand, we have Moully with his goal of showing that Hasidim are not homogeneous and that they can appreciate color and pop art. His emphasis is on individuality and creativity. Moully was even featured on a program featuring Oprah’s exploration of the Hasidic community of Crown Heights in 2012. Her religious teachings of individual spiritual journey are filtering down into Orthodoxy. (Notice the Individuality of the Orange Socks.)

On the other hand, we have those who use their art for more sustained social criticism. Shai Azouly shows the incongruity of Hasidic life with many ordinary aspects of daily living even when not prescribed by religious law or tradition. The Hasid with a well-coiffed poodle highlights a contradiction between the community’s aesthetic and social practices and the wider world, while his image of Hasidim gathered around a museum exhibition of a dinosaur illuminates the problematics in the Hasidic intellectual world.

In a similar perspective, Yiddy Lebowits draws attention to professions that are currently not associated with being Hasidic, such as doctor, fireman, astronaut, or tai chi instructor. The art allows one to push against the current aspirational limits of the community.

We see a very different approach in the bricolage of Yom Tov Blumenthal, who portrays a football player as getting his power from Kabbalah, as indicated by the magical emblems all over his uniform. The image plays with the meaning of power and strength: does strength actually come from religious ritual or can this ritual be compared to secular strength.

Finally, Anshie Kagan’s defining “Hashem is here” with the digital icon of a pinpoint in the way places are defined on a GPS or foursquare is highly insightful for its misplaced concreteness and irony, which leads us to reconsider what it means when we say God is here.

In the work of all of these artists, the use of pop designs allows for an isolated individual image without background or landscape. In many ways, this is a reflection of the artists themselves grappling with issues beyond their Hasidic backgrounds. In the absence of meta-narratives, atomized individuals follow media inspired mini-trends. The show thrives on the fact that nothing is black and white. Even when it is ironic, it acknowledges that there is also a post-ironic.

Postmodern religion, including much of Chabad, accepts its role as a commodity more than as authentic spirituality. But the semi-ironic gives place for the non-commodified change in people’s lives. The pop art leads to utopian change through its use of irony, immanence, and individuality. The art re-establishes a critical distance between the individual and his society, and recognizes the need for an examination of the material condition of the religious life. Popular culture plays, and will continue to play, an increasing role in Orthodoxy, as one needs products that relate to the first-person journey through life.

[1] Many of these ideas are further developed in Alan Brill, “The Emerging Popular Culture and the Centrist Community,” in Developing a Jewish Perspective on Culture. Ed. by Yehuda Sarna. (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2014) 16–66.

[2] Bjørn Schiermer, “Late-Modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Popular Culture,” Acta Sociologica 57:2 (October 8, 2013) 167–181; Linton Weeks, “The Hipsterfication of America” (November 17, 2011) https://www.npr.org/2011/11/16/142387490/the-hipsterfication-of-america (accessed October 12, 2018).

[3] Nicole Greenfield, “Birth of Hipster Hasidism?” Religion Dispatches (February 2, 2012).

[4] James Bielo, Emerging Evangelicals: Faith, Modernity, and the Desire for Authenticity (New York: NYU Press, 2011), showed how the quest for authenticity of the 1960s counterculture fed into the turn to Evangelical Christianity in later decades. There is a similar connection in Judaism.

[5] Brett McCracken, Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2010).

Nick Rynerson, “The Problem with Writing Off ‘Un-Christian’ Art,” MAR 12, 2013 christandpopculture.com (accessed October 12, 2018).

Here is the third of a series of responses to Rabbi Pesach Wolicki’s Biblical centered Judaism that converges with Christian Zionists. The first response by Rabbi Arie Folger was here.  The second response was by Nechemia Stern and the third is by Tomer Persico.

Tomer Persico is the Koret Visiting Assistant Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies, Dept. of Near Eastern Studies, Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies, Center for Jewish Studies at U. C. Berkeley, and Shalom Hartman Institute Bay Area Scholar in Residence. He is also the author of  Jewish Meditation: The Development of Spiritual Practices in Contemporary Judaism [Hebrew] which we dedicated two long blogs to an interview about his book – Part I and Part II

Evangelical Christian Zionists 

The Jewish Religious-Zionist and Evangelical-Zionist romance is heartwarming. After two millennia of a tense, at times absolutely deadly, relationship, it is certainly a comfort to see the hatchet buried and old bygones be bygones. As is well known, a lively romance includes a subtle play of revealing and concealment. I do however believe that Rabbi Wolicki has invested a bit too much on the concealing side. He is certainly right when he says that “there are many different kinds of Christian Zionists”, and indeed, many of them are not deeply invested in end-time predictions and visions of the coming Armageddon. And yes, most of Christian Zionism is about being a part of the simple fulfillment of the words of biblical prophets on the return of the people of Israel to their promised land.

But when he states that “Christian Zionists [don’t] think about the Book of Revelations end game nearly as much as Jews think they do” it’s important to understand which Christian Zionists we are talking about. If we’re talking about the many volunteers working in different centers in settlements in Judea and Samaria, that might be true. But if we are talking about their leaders, it is false in at least a few important examples.

Let’s take two prominent Christian Zionist leaders – the ones that President Trump chose to speak at the inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem: Pastors John C. Hagee and Robert James Jeffress Jr.. Hagee is founder and chairman of the Christians United for Israel organization, and Jeffress is a passionate supporter of Israel and Israel’s right-wing government.

Both have also written quite a lot about what they foresee in Israel’s future. In his 2015 book (whose sub-headline did not age well) Countdown to the Apocalypse: Why ISIS and Ebola Are Only the Beginning, Jeffress writs that “There is a Millennium coming. Jesus is going to sit on the throne of David in Jerusalem”. Based on the bible Jeffress predicts that “a future invasion of Israel by certain nations to the north and east of Israel” and insists that “It won’t be long now”.

Hagee strikes a similar tune. According to his 2006 book Jerusalem Countdown “The final battle for Jerusalem is about to begin. Every day in the media you are watching the gathering storm over the State of Israel”. Hagee is much more detailed then Jeffress. He predicts a “nuclear showdown with Iran”, aided by Russia, that will “sweep the world toward Armageddon”. Some of the Jews in Israel will be saved, some not. All shall be free from their “spiritual blindness […] concerning the identity of Jesus Christ as Messiah”, as Christ will be descending from heaven. “I believe”, Hagee sums up, “that my generation will live to see Him sitting on the throne of King David on the Temple Mount in the city of Jerusalem.”

These are very clear words. Both Jeffress and Hagee expect the terrible war of Armageddon quite soon, and the Jewish people to become quite Christian. It is one thing to say that notwithstanding a few theological disagreements we, as Jews, appreciate the support of these generous Christians and agree to delay the argument over the exact scenario of the End of Days to the end of days. It is another thing to pass over these disagreements and present a harmonious picture of a mutual messianic path and/or vision. No such mutual path or vision exists.

Rabbi Wolicki writes that “there is a lot more talk of the Christian beliefs in rapture and the millennial kingdom from Jews who are suspicious of Christian motives than there is among Christian Zionists”, but I think that two whole books on the rapture and the millennial kingdom from two central Christian Zionist figures is not something we can brush gently under the rug.

One last thing. Rabbi Wolicki says that he “categorically reject[s] the notion that Islam believes in the same God as we do”, and that only Jews and Christians actually believe in the same God. But Pastor Jeffress differs. In the book mentioned above he writes that “As followers of Christ, we do not share a ‘generic’ God with other religions […] Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe in one God, but not in the one, true God. All three believe in one God, but not in the same God.” It seems others can play this triumphalist game.

Now, I’m not going to deny Rabbi Wolicki’s main point on this subject: yes, Muslims do not take the Hebrew Bible to be a canonized text the way Christians do. But perhaps our objective should be finding what’s mutual between the religious traditions, not what they’re antagonistic about, and certainly not bicker about who’s got the best God. The latter path is taken by those who wish to keep the antagonism alive, and it’s a pity that our Christian friends are that kind of people.

Here is the second of a series of responses to Rabbi Pesach Wolicki’s Biblical centered Judaism that converges with Christian Zionists. The first response by Rabbi Arie Folger was here. 

Nehemia Stern has a PhD in Religious Studies from Emory University. His research focuses on contemporary forms of Jewish religious Zionism in Israel. Currently he is a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Adjunct lecturer in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Ariel University in Samaria. We featured on the blog Dr. Stern’s MA thesis on Post-Orthodoxy and the changes of 21st century Orthodoxy in 2010 and the thesis is now available online

In a recent article of Stern’s, he showed how the direct turn to the Bible in Religious Zionist circles is parallel the early Zionist turn. The Bible is now being used as a direct source to debate conscientious objection to military service in which “Biblical texts are often intimately intertwined in particular social and political contexts that are “publically manipulated, pushed and pulled by different social actors.” In his article, Stern compares the Israeli use of the Bible to the work of James Bielo in his studies of the Evangelical community in which Bielo shows the “social life of the Scriptures’” (2009). Working off his ethnographic studies of Christian Evangelical Bible study groups, Bielo argues that “the social life of the Bible” is not simply a matter of reading and exegesis but includes various forms of action in the world’ (2009, 160).

In his response below, Stern offer a variety of directions to think about this Evangelical and Religious Zionist convergence.

Christian and Jewish Religious Zionism: Between an ‘Oy Gevalt’ and a ‘Hallelujah’

By Nehemia Stern

Jews have been debating the fine line between ‘inter-faith’ and ‘intra-faith’ relations with Christianity since about the time Saul (later Paul) saw the light and fell to the ground on his way to Damascus. Currently, with the establishment and flourishing of the State of Israel, and the return of the Jewish People to their native lands, a conversation that was perhaps cut off prematurely has since reemerged, and with renewed vigor.

Rabbi Pesach Wolicki forcefully argues that the relationship between Christian Zionism and Jewish religious Zionism is an intra-faith one that “expands upon common points of faith and builds the relationship around what is shared”.   According to Wolicki, what is shared between Christian and Jewish religious Zionism is not necessarily a similar theological attempt to “understand and systematize” our understanding of God, but rather a focus on some of the same foundational Biblical and prophetic texts. Both Jewish religious Zionists in Israel and Evangelical Christian Zionists share similar ways of interpreting scriptural lessons as well as “the role that people of faith play in historical processes”. The return of Jewish sovereignty to the Land of Israel is the precondition for this ‘intra-faith’ relationship.

As an anthropologist of religion who has specifically focused on religious Zionism in Israel, I have to ask: when does a close resemblance between two faiths turn into something uncomfortably familiar? Anthropologists love cross-cultural observations, so I’d like to make a few.

Both Christian and Jewish religious Zionists see in the reestablishment of Jewish statehood after 2000 years of exile a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. For Jewish religious Zionists this return creates an opportunity to refocus educational and religious attention to the biblical text itself. Rabbi Wolicki used the phrase Bible-believing invoking a Protestant sense of sola scriptura. Similar to evangelical Christians (and Martin Luther’s scriptural return), some Jewish religious Zionists directly engage with biblical stories and biblical characters in ways that sometimes marginalize accepted rabbinic tradition. In contemporary Israel this technique is called Tanach b’gova einayim or reading the Bible at eye level- reading the Bible outside of the traditional commentaries. Here the faults and foibles of characters like Jacob, Samson, or David are critical in understanding the Bible’s moral, social, or political lessons. This technique is controversial among some Jewish religious Zionists precisely because it forces the classical medieval biblical interpretations of Rashi, Ramban, Ibn Ezra etc. to take second place to a straightforward reading of scripture.

In a recent academic article of mine titled The Social Life of the Samson Saga in Israeli Religious Zionist Rabbinic Discourse, I demonstrated how various groups of religious Zionists debate their own contemporary political differences through their interpretations of the Biblical tales of Samson. These ‘eye level’ interpretations I argued, are a textual method through which religious Zionists debate not just the narrative of Samson itself but also the very current political and moral questions surrounding issues like personal vengeance towards Palestinians, assimilation, and sexual impropriety. The social life of passages of the Bible becomes a means by which to justify or critique the violence of  Israel’s contemporary Hilltop Youth. For example, a minor textual difference in how the Meforshim (the classical medieval Rabbinic commentators) read Samson’s final call for vengeance in Judges 16:28 can be used by more modern observers to justify violent acts of personal vengeance against Palestinians just as they can also serve as the basis for more statist responses to terror.

Evangelical Christians generally share a similar relationship with Biblical texts. They too seek an unmitigated experience of the Bible centering on a straightforward reading of the text itself.  Their readings of the first few chapters of Genesis for example resonate with just as much political force in political debates surrounding issues of abortion, stem cells, or even educational funding for evolution studies. And I dare say, the consequences of these interpretations can sometimes be just as violent.

Indeed, the relationship between Evangelical Christianity and Religious Zionism may run even deeper than modes of biblical interpretation.  As Rabbi Wolicki noted “the largest most vocal group” of Christian Zionists are dispensationalists. Dispensationalism isn’t a sect, a religious movement, or a denomination. Dispensationalism is a way of reading the Bible and interpreting history (which itself is always a way of commenting on the present and of predicting the future).  In a nutshell, dispensationalism offers a progressive understanding of God’s role in the salvation of humanity, in which the end time is slowly revealed. Redemption becomes a gradually unfolding process that is divided into epochs or dispensations. In each, God presents humanity with a different road to salvation toward the end time.  Humanity fails to fully realize the opportunity, is punished, which in turn begins a new dispensation.

For dispensationalists, the Jewish people are the agents through which this end-time process is meant to unfold, yet their specific contribution to salvation is up for debate. For some Christian dispensationalists, the Jewish rejection of Jesus’ messiahship critically hindered the ultimate redemption. At the same time, God’s original covenant with Abraham (and thus the Jews) was never nullified, making both the Jews and the Church two distinct and theologically legitimate entities. Whether or not ultimate the end-time salvation requires Jewish conversion is left vague for some evangelical Christians.

Those conversant with religious Zionist thought -especially as expounded by Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, his son Tzvi Yehuda, and their many contemporary disciples – might see something familiar here. This messianic brand of Israeli religious Zionism views the drama of redemption (which admittedly, is somewhat different from ‘salvation’) as an overarching mystical and historical process. My favorite example of this kind of thinking can be seen in how Rav Abraham Isaac Kook gave historical, ethical, and redemptive significance to the mass slaughters of the First World War. As he wrote in the Lights of War, a collection of notes published in the years following the conflict;

We were thrown out of world politics by a force that had within it an inner will, until such a happy time when it would be possible to administer a kingdom without evil and barbarity. This is the era that we are hoping for. It is obvious that in order to achieve it, we have to awaken with all our strength, and use all the means that the era brings. Everything is in the hand of the creator, but the delay is necessary, for our souls are sick of the terrible sins of the kingdoms in this era. And now the time has come, it is very close. The world is becoming sweetened, and we can already prepare ourselves for that moment when we can manage our kingdom on the foundations of Goodness, Wisdom, Righteousness, and the clarified illumination of the divine.

For Rav Kook, the forceful exile of the Jewish People was one stage in a larger mystical and ethical drama. It allowed the renaissance of Jewish nationalism to occur at a time where the violence and barbarity that characterized the trenches of WWI, were coming to an end. Much like Woodrow Wilson’s ‘the war to end all wars’, the naivete of this prediction, doesn’t take away from its theological and ethical force. What Rav Kook is implying here, is that the Jewish People slowly move through a series of mystical and moral stages which ultimately lead to nothing less than world redemption. The reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel is the precondition for this process.

Interestingly for religious Zionists in the Kookian mode, the role of non-Jews is just as ambiguous as that of Jews for dispensationalists. Where do the nations of the world (including Palestinians) fit into the grand process of redemption?  For Rav Kook were the vast casualty lists, the blight of war in general, or of Sin itself, just an unfortunate means to a better future? Can violence and suffering be so easily sanctified? For many religious Zionists these are open question with real world political implications.

Rabbi Wolicki was certainly consistent in questioning Rabbi Joseph B Soloveitchik’s non-messianic “interpretation of the State of Israel and the ingathering of exiles”. In contrast, mystical and messianic religious Zionism in the framework of Rav Kook offers a vision of redemption that is structurally quite similar to Christian Zionist dispensationalism. Rav Soloveitchik was extremely skeptical of these sorts of progressive messianic redemptive claims. For him, the State of Israel was less an outcome of mystical messianism than it was a pragmatic expression of a renewed Jewish power and political presence after the Holocaust – which itself was a sign of God’s continued love for his people.

Indeed, in my anthropological fieldwork I met many mystical and messianic religious Zionist rabbinic figures in Israel who criticized this aspect of Rav Soloveitchik’s thought. They felt his philosophy simply did not offer an uplifting worldly vision – something they were so used to hearing in Rav Kook’s thought. In their view how could one not see a progressively redemptive message in the Jewish drama of the twentieth century? These religious Zionist debates between followers of the ideologies of Rav Kook and Rav Soloveitchik, are really two modes of viewing God’s hand in the tragedies and triumphs of his people in the 20^th century, and they play themselves out in Rabbi Wolicki’s worldview expressed in his interview.  It is curious though, that many who support a closer theological relationship between Christian Zionism and Religious Zionism come out of an American Modern Orthodox context, where Rav Soloveitchik’s skepticism towards messianic Zionism (and inter-faith dialogue) simply cannot be ignored.

Little ethnographic research has been done on how religious Zionists in Israel reflect on the similarities between themselves and evangelical Christianity. It is possible that some religious Zionists have intuited echoes of this intra-faith paradigm and these similarities have aroused a healthy debate regarding the relationship between Evangelical Christianity and religious Zionist communities in Judea and Samaria.

Not all mystical and messianic religious Zionists are as enthused by the close relationship – both pragmatic and philosophical – between their own communities and the many evangelical Christians who visit and volunteer within their West Bank communities. Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of the Ateret Cohanim Rabbinic seminary for example has forbidden accepting monetary donations from Christian organizations writing that, “It is there ticket into the nation of Israel to convert us”. Indeed, Rabbi Aviner went further and claimed that American Evangelical Christians who support Israel politically, also “love our souls, and want to bring us to them. Politics – yes. Business – yes. Friendship – no. Money – no.”

Conversely, in 2011, a hilltop community adjacent to the settlement of Har Bracha, objected to the presence of Evangelical Christian volunteers living and working within their neighborhood. The Rabbi of that settlement, Eliezer Melamed however, has come out in support of these volunteers. “Judaism does not intend to cancel or destroy other religions but to raise them up to the source of Israel [presumably a universal kind of divinity] …there is a process of transcendence that has not been seen yet in Christianity. Therefore, with all of the necessary caution, it is our spiritual and moral duty to relate to this process in the most positive manner possible”.

There is this great scene in the Frisco Kid, where Gene Wilder playing Rabbi Avram Belinski had just escaped from being accosted and robbed by two highwayman. He’s wandering around tired, lost and hungry in the wilderness. Suddenly in the distance he sees a group of farmers wearing black hats and long black frock coats. He runs towards them shouting “Landsmen! Landsmen!”. A they embrace and begin to speak a similar Germanic language that is unintelligible to both, he sees a book with a cross. With an “Oy Gevalt”, Reb Avram promptly faints. Sometimes that which seems most familiar can also feel the most threatening.

Jewish and Christian religious Zionists share certain political goals and have a common outlook on social and cultural life both in the United States and in Israel. It’s only natural that an alliance advancing conservative principles and policy goals would form between the two. But the relationship that Rabbi Wolicki describes as “intra-faith” is a world apart from this kind of policy pragmatism.  While he doesn’t like talking theology’, what he is actually describing are two extremely similar theological modes of understanding the divine role in the universe. It’s understandable that this might be worrying to some Orthodox Jews

I think there is much to be gained from a deeper engagement with Christian Zionism and with Christianity in general. Yet, I would however just like to offer a word of anthropological warning. Cultural dialogue is never a one-way street. It’s somewhat naïve to think that religious Zionists can open up ‘yeshivas’ for evangelical Christians, give presentations at churches, invite volunteers to live and work within Jewish communities without being at all being influenced by Evangelical Christianity. It’s never a one-way street.

Recently, a Neo-Hasidic research contact of mine in a Northern West Bank Settlement posted a Facebook status where he came out in favor of wishing Christians a ‘Merry Christmas’. “There is a brotherhood between us, and this shouldn’t alarm us”, he wrote. “I am happy to wish them a happy holiday, full of joy and brotherhood. That together we will move the entire world towards the eternal divine values of respect for others, love of man, and that we will defeat the darkness that covers the earth”. In this case who would object to the common values of respect and love for one’s fellow man? And what religious person would deny that these values have their source in some spark of divinity?

But here lies the catch. This formulation of common divine values assumes a common understanding of divinity. There is and will be increasing Christian influence from these Jewish- Christian contacts and commonalities. I’m not entirely sure that Israeli religious Zionism is ready for the immense repercussions that will come out of this. Religious Zionism can’t expect to influence, without something being reciprocated or transformed. What are we risking when our dialogue with Evangelical Christianity moves beyond pragmatism and beyond even abstract cross-cultural curiosity, to touch upon the experience of faith itself? Our answer might necessitate a little bit more of Reb Avram’s “Oy Gevalt”.