https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/434560
Rabbi David Stav, chairman of the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization, has criticized what he described as the Religious Zionist movement’s priorities over the years, arguing that its focus on settlement in Judea and Samaria came at the expense of influence over issues concerning Israel’s Jewish identity and religious institutions.
“Unfortunately, the cheapest thing for prime ministers on both the right and the left was to sell off the country’s Judaism and hand it over - or, more accurately, abandon it - to the haredi parties," he said.
“Unfortunately, we in the Religious Zionist community also abandoned these areas. In return, we successfully secured settlement in Judea and Samaria, which is an impressive and tremendous achievement," he said.
He's saying that religious institutions inside Israel are largely hareidi run, eg the Rabbanut. But there are more hareidi seats in the Knesset than RZ. And the rz party led by smotrich, who is not a talmid Chacham.
ReplyDeleteThe rz have been sidelined. The chief rabbis need to be modern rz, not hareidi.
I've been saying this for decades. And a long time ago there was a group called Realistic Religious Zionism that advocated backing away from settlement support as the 1st and only community priority and returning to the purpose of RZ, to create as much as possible a halakhic state through influence.
ReplyDeleteWhile RZ leaders were (and in a way appropriately) pushing for Jews to return to Yesha, the Chareidim took over the organs of the State that they hate and twisted them to their agenda. Generations where RZ could've influenced the religious direction of the state and encouraged more seculars and even Chareidim to adopt this synthetic approach were lost.