How can you have Religious Zionists who write poetry and music as a religious quest but who also want to override government decisions? How can you have some who want meditation, spirituality, and trips to India combined with violence? Does the vision of Rabbi Kook expect adherence to the state or to an individual intuition? Shlomo Fischer wrote a book about religious Zionism as a romantic movement, in which he answered the questions.
The book is called Expressivist Religious Zionism: Modernity and the Sacred in a Nationalist Movement (Routledge, 2024), where he deals with Religious Zionism as a form of individual expressionism. Unfortunately, the book is incredibly expensive, even as an academic monograph,
Shlomo Fischer studied at Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavne and in ITRI yeshiva. He did his BA in Columbia College (History) and his PhD. in Hebrew University (Sociology). He has lived in Israel since October 1976. Fischer taught in the School of Education of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem until his retirement. He is now a Senior Fellow, Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), Jerusalem, and the Area Head for Sociology and Jewish Identity. He has published extensively on the intersection of religion, politics, and social class in Israel.
Many of us are familiar with Fischer’s ideas from the numerous articles that he published over the years. They are all worth reading and posted at academia.edu. But this book collects his ideas into a single volume. There is great originality in his thinking,g making connections that seem obvious after he makes them. Religious Zionism is understood based on the tensions in Romantic thought, within the tensions with the French Revolution, and even with the ideas of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. Religious Zionism is treated as a thoroughly modern phenomenon, akin to other modern revolutionary movements. After reading his essays, one understands how this movement, with its dual emphasis on the nation state and inner human will is different than the modern voluntaristic view of society and human interaction. The important analytic category is that Religious Zionism should not be compartmentalized into the categories of messianism or fundamentalism; rather, it should be compared to other movements.
The interview starts off with questions about his book, then a question on a paper he wrote comparing Religious Zionism to American Orthodoxy. The final two questions on Bezalel Smotrich and Naftali Bennett expand his paradigms to contemporary issues, as well as a conclusion with a comparison to Daesh. The book does not deal with music, poetry, or spirituality of the movement. Nor does it deal with the recent turn to Religious Zionist Indigeneity, where they seek to return to Biblical times to farming, winemaking, and adapting Bedouin dress as well as the recent turn to the Biblicism of Joshua-Judges in discussing war, which is chosen over the rabbinic tradition.
I must repeat, this blog is about theology and religious philosophy, not contemporary politics. Please do not contact me about Middle Eastern politics or the war.
The ideas in the book should be foundational to any understanding of Religious Zionism. Many of us have been positively influenced by Fischer’s articles for years. It is worth reading this interview in its entirety to understand his views.
- What is your book about?
My book is about religious Zionism, but it is not a chronological history of Religious Zionism. Rather, it wants to make a series of analytical claims about the movement as a romantic nationalist movement with a strong emphasis on self-expression. The book describes the two “moments” of expressivism – the first part of the book is devoted to the “collective moment” of expressivism in the period (1967- ca.1994), and the second part is devoted to the current “individual moment” of self-expression (1995-2025).
2) Explain your concept of seeing in Religious Zionism, individual expressionism, and national bohemianism.
Israeli Religious Zionism exhibits an underlying philosophical core rooted in the modern notions of self-expression and the realization of the free and authentic self. This shapes the way that it thinks about religion, politics, nationalism, the individual, and the collective.
According to the philosopher, Charles Taylor, who coined the term, the expressivist philosophical approach which was elaborated by such thinkers as Herder, Goethe, and Hegel, contains three central Ideas which are also represented in the religious philosophy of R. Kook and the school of Religious Zionism that is associated with him.
(1) Spiritual ideas become ultimately clarified and realized when they are expressed in a material medium, such as language, music, painting, and social institutions. Thus, God is concerned to express His Divine ideals in the mundane material world in order to complete His perfection.
(2) All thinking is carried out by natural, material human beings whose true authentic inner will must be recovered. Religious Zionist ideology assumes that all created human beings have their inner will to return to their source in God. This inner will needs to be recovered since it is obscured by natural drives and passions.
(3) The unity of life and existence. In principle, the physical and the spiritual, thought and matter, body and soul are not separate realms but are unified in holistic fashion.
Religious Zionists applied these ideas to the collective plane as they sought to realize divine ideals in the Land of Israel. Thus, they engaged in founding the state, defending it , and developing the Land of Israel including the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) after the Six Day War.
In the nineteen nineties, they turned to the individual plane, to realize their inner will to connect to God through embodying spiritual ideas in the material world through poetry, cinema, performing arts, sex, relationships, progressive education, personal reading of the Bible etc. Hence, starting in the nineteen nineties, there was a turn to individual expressionism, however, without giving up collective commitments. Hence you have nationalist bohemianism. For example, wildcat, “outpost” settlements in the West Bank that offer “spa” like activities and Yoga and meditation.
3) What is the relationship between collective will and individual expression in Religious Zionism, especially Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook?
Expressivist thinkers have to deal with the problem of recovering the true inner will. The early expressivist thinker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau answered that question in double fashion. His first answer is by entering into the social contract and identifying with the general will a person can overcoming his/her particular, egoistic will, I recover, in my role as a citizen, my rational and moral self. The second answer, given in Emile: Or Treatise on Education, is by bringing up a child in isolation from society and thus letting his natural self grow and flourish without reference to the wishes or expectations of others.
R. Kook and others in his wake also suggested these two paths. In certain passages he advocates identifying with the general collectivity of each ontological level – Israel, humankind and the entire universe in order to connect with the Divine All. In other passages R. Kook takes the individualist path. He talks about connecting with the voice within one of pure, faith and natural morality, which he held had the quality of revelation. Contemporary Religious Zionist figures develop the individual approach to one’s inner voice. They view Hasidic prayer and meditation, poetry and art, relationships and sex as paths to uncover the authentic voice within them.
The more one delves into one’s soul, the more one finds at the root of one’s soul the organic connection to the national community. This combination is what is responsible for “nationalist bohemianism” consisting of the simultaneous cultivation of one’s unique self together with commitment to the nation and nationalist aims.
4) What’s new in your approach to Rabbi Kook?
Unlike previous research that pointed out parallels in specific ideas between expressivist thinkers, such as Fichte and Hegel with the thought of Rav Kook, I show that the parallel is with the entire intellectual style of expressivist thought. Furthermore, I show the relationship between this configuration of thought and modern nationalism. R. Kook’s religious philosophy takes place upon the background of modern Jewish nationalism, in which the idea of a national will has to be expressed.
My major thesis is that Rabbi Kook’s thought embodies different inner tensions such as that between the emphasis on the individual or on the collective. There is also a tension between the bottom-up path for effecting the unity of the material and the divine, that is, the path that starts with the human being and the recovery of his inner will to join to God or the “top-down” path that identifies with the divine light clothing itself in the mundane world in dynamic fashion. I show that favoring one or the other paths has had far reaching political implications in regard to the relationship of Religious Zionism to the Israeli government and its policies.
5) How did the 1970s create an expressive political identity in Religious Zionism?
Religious Zionism ideology needed to integrate the two separate components of their identity: their commitment to modern nationalism and their commitment to Orthodox Judaism. To solve that problem, the Religious Zionists developed the notion of the Torah State. This meant that they imbued modern nationalist activity such as settlement, agriculture, economic development, defense and military activity with religious significance and at the same time tried to bring it under religious regulation.
In the 1920’s, members of HaPoel Hamizrachi, the Religious Zionist Workers movement, developed this guiding idea first in regard to the local community – the religious kibbutz and moshav. In the nineteen fifties and sixties the generation that grew up under the state, organized the Young Guard of the National Religious Party, trying to implement this idea on the national level. However, they ran into difficulty as they tried to formulate a clear, consistent, and practical program.
The Six Day War and the conquest of the Greater Land of Israel (including the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Northern Sinai Peninsula) provided them with a solution. The program of settling and incorporating the Greater Land of Israel provided them with a clear practical program for implementing the Torah state. In this way, they developed a Torah program in regard to the key policy issues of defense and foreign relations. Because of the romantic-organic way of thinking that characterized the expressivist stream in religious Zionism, the Land of Israel was thought of as an organic unified entity which cannot be divided or reduced. You cannot have half of the Land of Israel just as you cannot be half pregnant.
Thus, R. Tzvi Yehuda Kook imbued the political program of incorporating the Greater Land of Israel with cosmic theological significance, and at the same time instilling practical, material significance into the religious philosophy. The Greater Land of Israel was a metonym for an entire theological approach and way of life, which is the implementation and embodiment of Divine ideals in the concrete, material and mundane world. Hence it its concreteness it “is bound in an essential way to the life of the nation” (Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook Orot, 1,1).
6)How did this expressionism lead to the anti-establishment position and the creation of the underground (mahteret), which culminated in the assignation of Rabin and the disengagement protests?
The will to retain and incorporate the Greater Land of Israel was considered by expressivist Religious Zionists to be an expression of the objective, metaphysical inner general will animating the Jewish people, orienting them towards returning to their source in God. This idea, which was expressed in R. Tzvi Yehuda’s broadsheet, Lo Taguru , received its validation in the demonstrations against the Separation of Forces Agreement negotiated by Henry Kissinger in the spring of 1974 and in the settlement attempts in Judea and Samaria in 1975, in which masses of people from different walks of life participated. With the government turnover in 1977 and the ascension of the Likud to become the ruling party, settlement of the Greater Land of Israel became official government policy.
The Likud government, nevertheless, opened peace negotiations with Egypt and began to return territory – Sinai and Yamit- which was met with wide support for peace.
However, R. Tzvi Yehuda stated “The public is not with us.” So, the dilemma that presented itself to the expressivist Religious Zionists was how to respond when the empirical general will of the Jewish people as expressed in its empirical political life differed from, or contradicted the objective, metaphysical general will that was attributed to the Jewish People.
This dilemma was similar in structure to that of the Jacobins in the French Revolution: Should one follow, the objective general will given by reason and embodied in the rule of the enlightened and virtuous (Robespierre and Saint-Just), or should one follow the will of the empirical majority? Robespierre claimed that since he was uncorrupted and totally dedicated to the common good and exclusively used his reason, he had access to the objective general will even if the mass of ordinary citizens disagreed with him. Hence, he and the fellow members of the Committee of Public Safety were entitled to dominate France, including sending people to the guillotine.
Here too in Religious Zionism, two approaches were formulated about embodying Divine ideals in the material world. The revolutionary approach was formulated by Yehuda Etzion of the Jewish Settlers Underground in three remarkable articles written from his prison cell. This approach maintained that one should implement the “true” inner metaphysical general will. Etzion argued that through the spontaneous engagement of the activist the activist recovered the objective, metaphysical general will of the Jewish People. Through his active and conceivably violent response the activist “plugs into” the general and divine will and charismatically achieves “the lower rung of prophecy”, thus attaining religious authority and legitimating his violent actions.
The other approach, represented by Rabbi Tzvi Thau, derives from the “top down” path, in which the divine light devolves gradually into the lower material world – the state of Israel- shaping it according to divine ideals. The Divine Providence chooses to bring the redemption by natural means, through the empirical public collective life of the will of the Jewish people. The redemptive process necessarily involves setbacks and disappointments. Violent activism is the worst thing one can do because it weakens the very vehicle of redemption, the State of Israel, thereby constituting a revolt against God’s Providence and Sovereignty.
- 7) What is the relationship of the ideology of the post-1967 Gush Emunim and the current post-1990’s expressivist individualist Religious Zionists?
My study interprets the earlier founding generation of Gush Emunim in the light of the developments of the last thirty years. My premise was that the newer phenomena of individual self -expression were rooted in the religious culture of the founding generation of romantic Religious Zionism.
The first part of this study based on my doctoral dissertation was devoted to reinterpreting the founding generation (up to the Disengagement from Gaza in August 2005) as a movement focused on various facets of collective self-expression. The second part of the study is indeed devoted to the recent emergence of an emphasis on individual self-expression.
One of my conclusions is that there is no simple division between “liberals” and conservatives, or “fundamentalists” vs. moderns or moderates. Not only does inward individualism go together with collective commitments but the same energy towards individual self-actualization that fuels creativity in music, theology, poetry etc. can also fuel self-actualization through violence and revenge.
Thus, the broad milieu of the “hilltop youth and the outpost culture” fuels both violence and vandalism against Palestinians and significant musical, literary and theological creativity. Conversely, the conservative and authoritarian school of R. Thau advocates civic moderation and obedience to State authority figures and upholding as it were, the rule of law.
- 8) You distinguish between two Orthodox cultures: American “Centrist Orthodoxy” and Religious Zionism. How do they differ?
American “Centrist Orthodoxy” and Religious Zionism differ from each other in terms of their roots and underlying problem that they respectively address.
Centrist Orthodoxy addresses the dilemma generated by the possibility of integration into the surrounding American non-Jewish society: To what extent should one engage in non-Jewish practices and activities (such as studying secular subjects) in order to advance. In Centrist Orthodoxy the issue is that of steadfast loyalty to the heteronymous Halacha despite the integration. This ongoing dilemma results in a discourse concerning Jewish practice formulated in terms of what is permitted and what is obligatory and wherein lie the true obligations.
The assumption underlying Centrist Orthodox practice and discourse is that there are constant, social, cultural and psychological obstacles to fulfilling the will of God and hence rabbis must constantly encourage such fulfillment. Accordingly, the legitimation of such engagement with the secular studies offered by such figures as R. Lichtenstein z”l.is that secular knowledge, including humanistic knowledge and culture enhances one’s ability to do the mitzvot in an enhance and enriched way. Furthermore, it makes one God’s partner in the creation and maintenance of the world.
In contrast, the engagement of Israeli religious Zionism is not with the non-Jewish world but with secular Jewish nationalism, consisting of the tension between the sovereign autonomy of nationalism and the demands of religion. The basic thrust of nationalism is that the nation determines not only its own fate but also its own values and goals. This, of course, is a challenge to God’s sovereignty. R. Kook’s religious philosophy offers a resolution of this tension by identifying the inner will of the nation as a whole and its individual members with the universal cosmic striving towards God. Thus, the inner autonomous national will becomes sanctified and an expression of the highest religious aspiration. Israeli Religious Zionism culture is focused upon uncovering the authentic self and inner will of the collective and its members.
In addition, the two communities differ in their relationship to the Haredi world. The American Centrist and Haredi communicates essentially address the same problem – loyalty to the heteronymous religious tradition in the face of the attractions of American modern society. This is one of the reasons why the boundaries between the Centrist Orthodox and yeshivish Haredim is not very sharp or non-porous. Centrists and the Haredim offer different solutions to their common challenge, but these can be arranged in a spectrum. More engagement with the modern world perhaps offers a richer and broader religious experience but it also increases the risk of defection. The Haredim will settle for a safer if poorer religious environment. They can also claim more prestige insofar as they are more authentic, rigorous and consistent in their adherence to the Halacha. Thus, they have influence over Centrist Orthodoxy.
In Israel, Religious Zionists and Haredim live in different spiritual universes. They are not addressing the same issues. Israeli (Ashkenazic) Haredim tend to deny the sanctity of this worldly national phenomena and especially the national will. Thus, Israeli Religious Zionists do not feel beholden to the Haredim.
9) What do you do at the Jewish People Policy Institute and what are your other activities?
At the Jewish People Policy Institute, I am the house sociologist. I analyze Israeli society, and I also include within my purview research and analyses of Diaspora Jewish communities, especially North American ones. In recent years, together with colleagues I have written reports on American Evangelicals and on polarization in the American Jewish community. Every year in the context of a project called the Jewish World Dialogue I conduct focus groups with a few hundred American Jews. This year we are focusing on the relationship of young Jews at universities and other places to progressive identity politics. We are interested in whether and how young Jews are (re)negotiating their personal and collective identities after Oct. 7 I. Until my retirement, I taught in the School of Education in Hebrew University for over thirty years.
My research on Religious Zionism expressivism stemmed from my educational endeavors. After the Rabin assassination, I founded together with colleagues an organization called Yesodot whose aim was to advance education for democracy in the State Religious school system. It was a very tough sell. Aside from all the negative responses that we received we did receive one interesting response that repeated itself over and over. This response said that we are not interested in democracy in the political sense, but we are very interested in school democracy, dialogue, student choice, open education etc. In other words, they wished to include a degree of expressive individualism in their very Orthodox yeshiva education. I started to ask myself where does this interest in expressive individualism come from in this fundamentalist ultra-nationalist movement?
10) Where do Bezalel Smotrich or Naftali Bennett fit in?
The difference between the hard right wing of contemporary Religious Zionism headed by Bezalel Smotirch (who is focused upon traditional concerns of land and settlements) from Naftali Bennet and Matan Kahana (who are more moderate, statist or civic) is precisely the question of the relevance and applicability of the expressivist higher synthesis of religious elements with secular nationalist and liberal ones, as formulated by R. Kook in his concept of the Supreme Holy redemptive synthesis.
The conservative elements have reservations about such a redemptive synthesis. Many feel that they can dispense with any partnership or even consideration of secular or liberal points of view and simply enforce hardline religious and nationalist policies. This is partly due to their perception of the widespread acceptance of religious nationalist ideology by wide sectors of the Israeli public.
Rabbi Thau, leader of the conservative Hardal movement, has not rejected this idea of a synthesis of religious and liberal-secular elements entirely since he remains committed to R. Kook’s religious philosophy. Yet, he is very reserved about its immediate application. For him, we should now use the current era to strengthen the religious element, so that when we do accomplish such a synthesis, it will be truly transformative and redemptive. In addition, according to him some liberal and secular ideas are simply too evil or unnatural to take part is such a synthesis.
Looking at the other side, Naftali Bennet is not well versed, personally, in R. Kook’s teachings, nor is he mainly oriented towards theology. Nevertheless, among his supporters there are those who were firmly ensconced in the Kookist, expressivist tradition. These include Kookist intellectual and writer Motti Karpel, R. Eliezer Melamed (Rabbi of the Har Bracha settlement near Nablus) , Sarah Eliash and R. Yoel Bin Nun of the veteran leadership of Gush Emunim. These seem to be open to partnership with the secular and liberal or centrist hi-tech elites that Bennet is in close contact with. Through such partnership, they will “elevate” the secular elements religiously and nationally, but they will also benefit from the secular/liberal commitment to morality and universalism. Some of these rabbis and religious elites regard this partnership as providing “hints” or “footsteps” of the redemptive higher synthesis. Some of these religious figures affiliated with Bennet have implemented or advocated relatively liberal policies regarding non-Orthodox streams, conversion and Kashrut.
11) This approach seems similar to Daesh’s, with its emphasis on expressive individualism and use of poetry.
The comparison with ISIS is very valid. The case study of Religious Zionism reinforces the important insight that most of the violence of extremist religious or national religious groups is not connected to their anti-modern, “fundamentalist” religious nature, but to their modernity.This study is therefore continuous with Olivier Roy’s scholarly research on the European volunteers of ISIS, who were not particularly Islamic in their behavior or observance of Salafi norms. Rather, they were embedded in European youth culture. Similarly, their nihilist desire for death, both of themselves and their targets, staged according to the aesthetics of Hollywood action films and video games, is more connected to generational revolt and similar instances of contemporary mass violence, such as the shootings at Columbine and the Baader-Meinhof group, than it is vertically descended from the writings of Ibn Taymiyya and Hasan al-Bana.
Even though the religious, sociological, and political contexts of the Islamic State and Religious Zionist Hilltop Youth are very different, as is the nature and manifestation of the violence, ISIS being vastly more murderous, there are crucial points of contact. Both participate in forms of youth culture claiming that their elders have “sold out”, are inauthentic, and practice inauthentic religion. Both seek authenticity in poetry and in various forms of expressive individualism. Both also tie this quest for truth and authenticity to violence. Thus, the violence of both the Hilltop youth and that of ISIS is modernist violence and links up to figures such as Conrad (Heart of Darkness), Ernst Junger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon.
The Book of Doctrines and Opinions: 