27 October 2010

From personal back to national

The rabbinic regime has come to deny the need for the Moshiach. Over the centuries, for going on nearly two millennia, Diaspora Jewry managed to move itself from a collective understanding of its identity to a personal one. Judaism became a religion denuded of its political teachings. Orthodoxy pays lip service to the notion of a Moshiach but has for all practical purposes eliminated him from functioning as a reality in Jewish life. 
The program of the ultra-Orthodox is to redefine the State of Israel so that establishing a homeland would not require the dismantling of the rabbinic regime even though the rabbinic regime is essentially diasporic. The true threat to the Jewish people in the eyes of the ultra-Orthodox is an Israeli nation that understands its mission not in terms of personal fulfillment but rather in terms of national fulfillment. The challenge for the ultra-Orthodox would thus be to figure out how to dismantle the rabbinic regime for the nation while preserving the teachings of the rabbinic regime for the individuals. 
The question is how to deal with intrinsically national festivals like Pesach and intrinsically national holidays like Yom haKippurim
The question is how to integrate the transcendental and the mystical with the political in Jewish thought? 

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