Radical Millennial Movements in Contemporary Judaism in Israel

 

RADICAL MILLENNIAL MOVEMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY JUDAISM IN ISRAEL yaakov ariel

In the mid-1980s Israelis were shocked to hear about the arrest of Jewish settlers in the former West Bank of Jordan and the Golan Heights who had created an underground movement, stocked weapons and explosives, and carried out attacks against Palestinians. A decade later Israelis were again dumbfounded when a small group of students in a major Israeli university planned the murder of Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in an attempt to halt the eventual withdrawal of Israel from the territories it had conquered in 1967. While only a small minority of nationalist Jews resorted to such extreme actions, they signified an unexpected change in the Israeli religious and political culture from the pre-1967 decades. They demonstrated the rise of radical religious-political Jewish groups that adhered to catastrophic millennial beliefs and expected the near realization of universal and national redemption. During the 1970s through the 2000s, Israeli society and the Jewish tradition in general have moved, at least partially, from progressive millennial ideologies to catastrophic millennial faiths. The resurfacing of catastrophic millennialism in Judaism in the latter decades of the twentieth century corresponded with larger cultural and political developments. Since the 1960s a Jewish “counter-reformation” has worked to diminish much of the impact of the Enlightenment on Jewish thought and practice. The ongoing wars between Israel and its neighbors, the terrorist activities carried out against the

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Israeli population, and long-rooted Jewish feelings of vulnerability contributed to a move toward belief in catastrophic millennial solutions to what Jews have come to see as nonsolvable political and cultural realities. More than other occurrences, the Six-Day War in June 1967 and the Israeli takeover of historical Jerusalem have brought to surface Jewish catastrophic millennial hopes. Another influence has been the new interaction between Charismatic Christians and Orthodox Jews, which has resulted in Charismatic Christians providing Jews with financial and moral support, as well as with contemporary examples of direct communication with the divine. This essay explores the cultural, social, and political forces that have given rise to radical Jewish groups and point to the developments that have brought about the resurgence of long-suppressed catastrophic millennial beliefs and political radicalism within the Jewish tradition. It sheds light on the relation between radical religious movements in contemporary Judaism and other political, cultural, and religious groups with which they interact, and from which, at times, they receive encouragement. Studying the rise of radical Jewish groups can teach us a great deal about the social and cultural developments that promote certain brands of millennial thinking over and against other types, and the dynamics that occur as different millennial groups compete with and oppose each other. It can therefore enlarge our knowledge on radical religious groups and the atmosphere in which they operate.

Judaism Turns away from Radical Thinking From the second century c.e. until the twentieth century the Jewish tradition discouraged political radicalism as well as catastrophic millennial belief. Radical catastrophic millennial groups had operated during the Second Temple Period (515 b.c.e.– 70 c.e.). Some of them were organized in separatist communities that set rigid standards of day-to-day piety. The Dead Sea Scrolls have given voice to the Essenes, who possessed a dualistic worldview and saw themselves as a unit in the army of the Lord. One of their major tracts, The War Scroll, offers a vivid description of the Apocalypse and the future battle between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (Vermes 1997; see also chapter 2 by Eugene V. Gallagher and chapter 13 by James Tabor, both in this volume). Stirred by radical catastrophic millennial groups, the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 70 c.e. resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Another major revolt of Palestinian Jews, in the second century c.e., spearheaded by a messianic leader, also resulted in defeat and destruction. Wishing to survive as a dispersed people in the Roman and Persian Empires, Jews had to re-create their religious tradition as a docile, exilic community. Rebellions of the kind launched against the Romans in the first and second centuries c.e. did not repeat themselves. The Talmudic ruling “Dina de Malhuta dina,” “the Law of realm is abiding as if it is Divine Law,” guided the Jews for long centuries.

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Keeping together an international religious community without a center, a temple, or an authoritative priesthood was a challenge for Jews. Until its destruction, the Temple in Jerusalem was the ultimate spiritual center and a unifying symbol. Significantly, Jews have related to different periods in their history in terms of the Temple: the First Temple Period (1006–586 b.c.e.); the Second Temple Period (516 b.c.e–70 c.e.); and the postdestruction (of the Temple) period. For the exiled Jews, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem symbolized a breach in a harmonious relationship, which they believed had existed in ancient times between God and his people, and which they wished to restore in the fullness of time. Throughout long centuries, however, Jews developed new institutions and mechanisms of coping with the loss of their spiritual and national center. Instead of a Temple, Jews focused on sacred texts, turning themselves into “People of the Book.” Texts could be transferred from place to place and their meanings could be negotiated throughout long periods of time. Synagogues, which came about during the Second Temple Period, developed after the Temple’s destruction into the Jewish houses of worship and learning par excellence. Jewish homes had also become minitemples, with ordinary Jews performing priestly rites, such as differentiating between sacred and profane time, and consecrating wine and bread. Instead of a physical temple, Judaism promoted a “temple in time,” a weekly holy day, similar in sanctity to a holy place (Heschel 1951; Ariel 2005). Divine revelation and prophecy were considered to have ceased, and no further texts could be added to the sacred Hebrew Scriptures. The rabbis emerged after the destruction of the Second Temple as the legitimate interpreters of the texts. In the Judaism that they developed there was no room for prophecy. Prophecy would have upset the quest for unity, uniformity and communal survival and cause fragmentation and factions. Always a dangerous endeavor, which could put social and religious institutions in jeopardy, prophecy had a particularly destructive potential for an exilic religion. Prophets could appear in different locales, provide conflicting messages, and unsettle long standing institutions. The rabbinical tradition declared an end to prophecy. “Following the destruction of the Temple, prophecy was given only to fools and infants,” Rabbi Yohanon declared (Babylonian Talmud 1925, 126; see also chapter 13 by James D. Tabor, this volume). However, yearning for global and national redemption did not disappear and Jews prayed to see Jerusalem and the Temple rebuilt and the people of Israel resettled in their ancient homeland. Rabbis spent much time in the generations after the destruction of the Temple discussing issues relating to the Temple, its dimensions, its sacrificial system, and the alms and donations presented to it (Mishna, Kelim, 1, 8, in “Har HaBayit” 1975, 575–92). However, the messianic time and the fulfillment of biblical prophecy were postponed to an unspecified, almost theoretical future. Maimonides (1135–1204), an authoritative Jewish philosopher who labored in Egypt at the turn of the thirteenth century, mentioned belief in the coming of the Messiah in his list of thirteen principles of Judaism. But the wording of the clause leaves no doubt as to his progressive millennial interpretation of the messianic time (Maimonides 1926, Introduction to Tractate Sanhedrin).

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In spite of the attempts of the intellectual elite to suppress political radicalism and catastrophic millennialism, Jewish communities, or parts of them, followed at times messiahs or prophets. The largest and most comprehensive Jewish messianic movement was stirred in the 1660s by Sabbatai Zvi (1626–possibly 1676), a Jewish mystic who lived and worked among the Ladino-speaking population of the Ottoman Empire (see chapter 15 by Rebecca Moore, this volume). Zvi presented himself as the Messiah, while his impresario, Nathan of Gaza (1643–80), claimed to be a prophet. Scholars of Jewish messianic movements have noted that millennial aspirations had run under the surface of mainstream Judaism like a subterranean stream (Scholem 1995). The messianic hope offered Jews a more dignified future than their current reality as a vulnerable minority in Muslim and Christian lands, and at certain moments they embraced it enthusiastically. When Sabbatai Zvi converted to Islam and Nathan of Gaza’s prophecy seemed to have failed, the opposition of the Jewish elite to millennial movements that proclaimed the imminent arrival of the Messiah hardened even more. The Jewish encounter with the European Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and with modernity in the nineteenth century would further diminish the role of catastrophic millennialism in Jewish life.

Progressive Millennialism Takes Over For hundreds of years Jews had put their yearnings for the Messiah on hold, but they continued to view biblical prophecies as destined to be fulfilled figuratively in a remote future. This changed dramatically in the wake of the Jewish encounter with the ideas of the European Enlightenment. Jewish thinkers, such as Benedictus Spinoza (1632–77), contributed to the rise of a skeptical attitude toward traditional Jewish and Christian modes of interpreting biblical prophetic texts. One of the first openly secular Jews, Spinoza dedicated the first chapters of his seminal Tractus Theologico-Politicus to prophecy. In line with his philosophical system, Spinoza distinguished between philosophy and faith. He rejected the perspective of Maimonides and doubted the authenticity of biblical texts (Spinoza 1670; Yovel 1988; Goldstein 2005). Starting with a small group of intellectuals, in the latter decades of the eighteenth century and the early decades of nineteenth century, Western and Central European Jews went through a process of liberalizing their tradition and secularizing their day-to-day lives. This process took place against the background of political emancipation and the gaining of citizenship as well as the rise of secular nationalism, democracy, and demands for social reform (Meyer 1988). Secularized or liberal Jews were, by the mid-nineteenth century, a majority in Western and Central Europe. By the end of the nineteenth century, secularization was making significant inroads into Jewish communities in Eastern Europe as well. These developments transformed Jewish life and practices, with Jews giving up on

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what they considered to be irrational elements of their faith (Katz 1998). Jewish reformers, or secular thinkers reinterpreted the biblical texts in light of humanistic values, as well as in light of what they considered to be rational and scientific standards of thinking (Meyer 1988). They eliminated long-held popular concepts such as “heaven” and “hell,” or belief in a personal, universal and national redemption brought about by an actual human messiah. Liberal and secular Jews embraced the idea of progress, believing that human beings could build, through education, political, and social reforms and the advancement of technology, a better world (Bartal 2006). Progressive millennial beliefs accompanied liberal forms of Judaism, both religious and secular, up until the late twentieth century, at which time the Jewish counter-reformation had seriously eroded, especially in Israel, the influence of such notions. Zionists, too, embraced the idea of progress, and, adjusting it to their national goals, assumed that they could form a utopian European commonwealth on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean (Herzl 2000/1902). The Zionist immigration of the first third of the twentieth century created a mostly secular Jewish community in Palestine, which, at least in principle, was committed to the ideas of the Enlightenment and to a society divorced from the supernatural. Viewing themselves as representing a new brand of Judaism, loyal both to the Jewish past and to universal values, their millennial convictions were secular and progressive, centering on the building of a new nation, through education, science, the arts, and Western modes of government. This is not to say that Zionists ignored the Jewish historical ethos. They embraced the Jewish biblical narratives, offering them what they considered to be secular rational interpretations. Zionist leaders and thinkers, such as Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion (1886–1973), embraced the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, enthusiastically, viewing it as a historical source that attested to the early history of the nation of Israel and to its long relation to Zion. Ben Gurion and other leaders assumed a prophetic role, interpreting the building of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies (Ben Gurion 1954, 1972). Not all Zionists held to the same vision. Members of HaShomer HaTsair were socialists; those of Mapai were social democrats, while the General Zionists were liberal democrats. The Revisionists were nationalists, while HaMizrahi advocated modernized Orthodoxy. But they were all progressive millennialists who emphasized the building of a new commonwealth through human efforts; none of them promoted a catastrophic millennial outlook. A number of radical Zionist groups became active in the 1920s through the 1950s, promoting extreme versions of progressive millennial ideologies. The Canaanites were a small but influential group of artists and writers who came together in the 1930s. They viewed current Palestinian Jews to be the forerunners of a new Hebrew nation, which they believed should divorce itself from the exilicoriented Jews in the Diaspora and their beliefs and rites (Shavit 1987; Porath 1989). Influenced by the American model, the Canaanites suggested an inclusive attitude toward citizenship, not based on pervious religious or ethnic affiliations, but on the

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sharing of the same territory and language (Diamond 1986). One can argue that the Canaanites radicalized ideas, which in milder forms were promoted by the secular Jewish mainstream in Palestine of the 1920s–1950s. Leaping over eighteen hundred years of rabbinical tradition and diaspora experience, Zionists looked back with pride at a past of independence in Zion. Even socialist Israelis taught their children Tanach as building blocks of national identity (Kuzar 2001). Biblical archaeology became a particularly important tool for the reinforcement of new national selfperceptions, attracting generals and politicians whose findings fascinated the public (Yadin 1966). Until the 1960s secular progressive millennialists were the leading voices in the Jewish state. Following in the footsteps of their more innovative secular brethren, Orthodox Jews played a secondary role; for the most part, their practice of Judaism was mild and accommodating. The majority of Israel’s intellectual, literary, scientific, artistic, military, political, and diplomatic elite were overwhelmingly nonobservant and understood Judaism in nonreligious terms. The country was devoid, at least on the surface, of mystical elements, with no significant groups embracing the supernatural or advocating catastrophic forms of millennialism (Weiner 1961). Not much yearning for the supernatural was seen in Israel, and very few people proclaimed the imminent arrival of the Messiah. The traditionalist Ultra-Orthodox, including the Hasidic wing, seemed to be almost extinct in the aftermath of World War II (Friedman 1990). But a series of political, social, and cultural developments worked to change this reality and create an atmosphere congenial to the rise of more radical groups, who would embrace the supernatural and the idea of imminent catastrophic messianic developments.

A Prophetic Moment: The Six-Day War and its Effect One of the major developments that worked to reverse the tide and bring about the return of the supernatural into Jewish religious and national life was the Six-Day War in June 1967. In the weeks preceding the war many Jews were afraid that Israel would face a long and bloody war or be destroyed altogether. The swift and unexpected Israeli victory seemed to them to have significance far beyond a military success (Oren 2002). Many Israelis offered messianic interpretations of the outcome of the war, claiming that it proved that the Zionist vision of creating a permanent commonwealth for the Jews in their ancestral homeland was no dream. It was in that euphoric atmosphere that Hatnua Leman Eretz Israel Hashlema, the Movement for Greater Israel, was born. A small group within the Israeli secular elite began advocating the annexation of the conquered territories to Israel. Among them were such figures as Yitzhak

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Tabenkin (1888–1971), the ideological leader of one of the major kibbutz movements, and Nathan Alterman (1910–70), whose poetry during the 1940s–50s represented the anguish and aspirations of large sections of the secular Jewish population in Palestine. These people did not settle in the conquered territories and within a few years the group disbanded. A much larger and more persistent movement, this time of Orthodox nationalists, made it its goal to settle the conquered lands. The Settlers movement, which began in 1968, was motivated by the resurfacing of long-suppressed elements of catastrophic millennialism within Judaism (Aran 1986). A mixture of messianic fervor and political frustration enhanced the radicalization of the Orthodox nationalists and turned many of them into adherents of the belief in the imminent arrival of the Messiah. The atmosphere created in 1967 seemed to them to indicate the imminent creation of a restored Davidic kingdom in the Land of Israel. However, the obstacles toward the realization of that dream seemed insurmountable, except through messianic intervention. First and foremost among these obstacles was the existence of a large Arab population in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, which, as a rule, viewed Jewish settlements in their midst as an intrusion, and the creation of a Greater Israel as a theft. At that time the Israeli government prohibited the settlement of Jews in the occupied territories and opposed any changes to the status quo on the Temple Mount. In 1977 the Likud government lifted the ban on Jewish settlements, but continued to oppose all Jewish attempts to gain a foothold on the Temple Mount. When Israelis took over East Jerusalem in 1967, the Temple Mount was a holy Muslim site called al-Haram ash-Sharif (Sacred Noble Sanctuary), containing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque. The Israeli government chose to protect the Muslim status on the mountain, insisting on maintaining the status quo antebellum on the Temple Mount as well as in other Muslim and Christian holy sites. While the Israeli government wished to avoid a regional, if not international, conflict, the policy also represented a lack of interest among most Jews in rebuilding the Temple. Judaism had moved such a long way since the destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e., that by 1967 most Jews had no wish to rebuild the Temple in any immediate way, viewing the building of the Temple as either postponed to a remote future or as totally irrelevant. In the wake of the 1967 war, Jewish rabbinical authorities declared that Jews were forbidden to enter the Temple Mount. However, the mood in Israel changed after the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Settlers and Temple Builders Paradoxically, external threats to Israel’s territorial gains, whether through war or peace negotiations, have inspired Jewish religious nationalists to take a more proactive and radical stand. They became determined more than before to see the new

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territories turn into Jewish domain and the Temple rebuilt (Inbari 2005). If necessary they would initiate divine intervention and help bring about the apocalypse. Internal political developments worked to their advantage. While the Six-Day War of June 1967 created a united front in Israeli public life and strengthened the government’s power, this was hardly the case after the surprise Syrian and Egyptian attack on Israel in October 1973. The authority of the Labour leadership and its secular progressive millennial ideology weakened considerably. Ironically, it was in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War that the messianic excitement that followed the Six-Day War came to the surface in Israeli public life in more pronounced terms. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, a psychologist of religion who has studied the history of religious groups in Israel, suggests that fears over the future of the Zionist endeavor encouraged the rise of supernatural solutions to contemporary issues and thus of catastrophic millennial faiths. He points out that the messianic groups that developed in Israel after 1973 have emphasized public salvation instead of personal salvation (Beit-Hallahmi 1993, 69–70). The Orthodox Zionist camp, which before 1967 was a junior and peaceful part of Israeli society, became, especially after 1973, radical and aggressive (Ravitzky 1993). In October 1974, during the Jewish feast of Sukkot (Tabernacles), thousands of young people, mostly veterans of Orthodox Zionist youth movements, left their homes in the center of Israel, settling temporarily or permanently in Judea and Samaria, the former West Bank of Jordan (Aran 1997; Sagi and Stern 2005). At this stage the Settlers’ activities were illegal, in defiance of the government’s orders. Israeli television broadcasted unprecedented scenes of Israeli soldiers and police officers trying to stop Settlers from entering sites of settlements and engaging in verbal and physical clashes with them. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s government, however, proved itself incapable of stopping the zealous Settlers completely. By 1974 this segment of Israeli society considered God’s commands to settle the Land of Israel to stand above the laws of the Jewish state (Sprinzak 1991). The ideological leader of the new Settlers movement, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook (1891–1982), was the head of a Zionist-oriented yeshiva (rabbinical academy) in Jerusalem, which his father had founded half a century earlier. The father, Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook (1865–1935), a humanitarian Orthodox mystic, who served as chief rabbi of Palestine between 1920 and 1937, considered the Zionist endeavor to be a preparation of the ground for an eventual, progressively built, messianic age (Ish-Shalom 1993). Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the son, developed a very different view of the process of redemption, which resembled that of catastrophic millennial Christians. Looking upon history as a deterministic course, he believed that humans could deduce God’s plans for humanity. He further asserted that the imminent messianic age was putting demands on God’s followers. “We do not hasten the End Times,” he claimed. “It hastens us” (Kook 1996, 148). Strengthened by a proactive millennial theology, Rabbi Kook’s disciples organized in 1974 as Gush Emunim, the Bloc of the Faithful, to settle the former West Bank of Jordan and the Golan Heights. The Gush leaders saw their mission as

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taking part in a divine plan, thus causing a rift in Israeli society over the nation’s goals and values. Gush Emunim’s controversial program of settling in the midst of dense Palestinian populations enjoyed, however, the sympathy of nationalist Jews who remained in the heart of Israel, and after the Likud rise to power in 1977, the settlement program began receiving direct governmental support and grew considerably. While many secular Israelis resented the ideology and agenda of Gush Emunim, they were even more concerned over Jewish attempts to build the Temple. Not surprisingly, many of the Settlers of the West Bank are also Temple Builders, and the two movements share a great deal theologically (Aran 1997; Sprinzak 1991). After 1973 a number of groups of Temple Builders came on the scene. These groups reinterpreted Jewish texts and concluded that the ban on entering the Temple Mount was based on erroneous interpretation of talmudic texts (Inbari 2006). Moreover, they rejected the long-held belief that the building of the Temple should be left for the Messiah to accomplish at the fullness of time. The first visible group of Temple Builders was the Temple Mount Faithful. Led by Gershon Salomon, a disabled Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran and a Jerusalemite lawyer, the Temple Mount Faithful gave voice at its inception to a large variety of Jews interested in the building of the Temple. They included Orthodox and secular Jews, Labour supporters and Free Market advocates. The group’s aborted attempts to enter the Temple Mount and organize prayers there have enjoyed much media coverage. But even this rather small group could not stick together for very long, and factions and dissent reigned. Far from the eyes of the cameras, new groups began congregating, studying texts, and publishing newsletters. Some of these groups went a step further than the Temple Mount Faithful and began preparing for the reinstatement of the sacrificial system in a rebuilt Temple (Sprinzak 1991, 264–69, 279–88). In the late 1980s Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, a leader of Gush Emunim, established an institute for the halachic study of the Temple and its rebuilding. In a series of publications he has pointed to what he considered to be the redeeming merits of the Temple and the sacrifices therein, which he has viewed as essential for reconciling God and humanity, as well as for bringing about the messianic age (BinNun n.d.). Other groups of Temple Builders that congregated during the 1980s–2000s have included: Jerusalem First (Reshit-Yerushaliim), an academy for studying Jerusalem and the Temple; the Movement for the Building of the Temple (Ha Tnuaa Lekinun ha Mikdash); the Temple-Laws Yeshivah (Yeshivat Torat HaByit); Unto the Mountain of the Lord (El Har Adonai); the Movement for the Liberation of the Temple Mount (Ha Tnuaa LeShihrur Har HaBayit); and The Priests’ Crown Yeshivah (Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim), to name a few of the groups (Ibane HaMikdash 1979; Shragai 1998). The proliferation of groups of Temple Builders came about in the wake of a Jewish movement of counter-reformation, which brought with it a yearning for the supernatural and for the arrival of the messianic times.

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The Jewish Counter-Reformation Large-scale cultural changes made catastrophic millennialism and direct communication with the divine acceptable to large segments of the Israeli population as well as to many American Jews. Until the 1960s, the Israeli elite, composed mostly of European-born secular social democrats, took pride in “rational” thinking, and looked upon the building of a Jewish home in Palestine as a progressive messianic endeavor. Their sons and daughters did not find the goal of building a Zionist utopia fulfilling anymore. Israel was already a fait accompli, and it was not the utopian community that the first generations of Jewish settlers there dreamed of building. During the 1970s–1980s thousands of Israeli baby-boomers began embracing the supernatural and searching for spirituality in their lives (BeitHalahmi 1993). Much of the Jewish movement of Return to Tradition arrived in Israel from the United States, brought over by American Jewish baby-boomers who had settled in the country or visited it for lengthy periods of time (Danziger 1989; Ellwood 1994; Oppenheimer 2003). What started as an American Jewish hippie movement turned into an Israeli phenomenon. While previously it seemed that the tide was running only in one direction, from observance and tradition to secular or liberal ways of thinking and living, now the tide reversed, as thousands of young, secular Israelis chose tradition and adherence to a more mystical and supernatural outlook on life (Beit-Hallahmi 1993). Hasidic groups such as Chabad and Breslav recruited thousands of young liberal Jews. Non-Hasidic Orthodox groups, such as Eish HaTorah, also began to engage in outreach, and likewise earned the loyalty of thousands of new returnees to tradition. Israelis were not only taken by the charm of their own ancient tradition. Throughout the 1970s–2000s, thousands of Israelis joined non-Jewish new religious movements, ranging from the Unification Church to Transcendental Meditation (Beit-Hallahmi 1993). Thousands became Messianic Jews, amalgamating Jewish identity with evangelical, often Charismatic Christianity (Rausch 1982; Feher 1998; Harris-Shapiro 1999). In the 1980s–2000s, Sephardic and Mizrahi Israeli outreach leaders carried their own campaigns of return to tradition. Under the banner of taking pride in their roots, many Asian and African Jews rejected the secularization program of their European brethren and openly reembraced the supernatural. They relegitimized visits to the tombs of saints or to the courts of live tzadikim, who are believed to serve as intermediaries between God and humans. During the 1980s, the home of Baba Sali (1890–1984) in Netivot in southern Israel became the largest such center, with tens of thousands of people coming annually to ask the tzadik for help with marital or health problems. During the 1990s, another major tzadik came on the scene, the Jerusalemite mekubal (mystic), Rabbi Nisim Kaduri. Kaduri became so sought after for his supernatural powers that many secular Israelis, by now much less committed to modern notions of rationalism, came to obtain his blessings. Among them were leading politicians and high-

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ranking army officers. By that time the idea that some persons had a direct contact with God became more acceptable in mainstream Israeli society than a generation earlier. Soothsayers, too, became fashionable. Not only astrology, but other means of predicting the future, such as numerology or reading Tarot cards, which were previously unheard of in Israeli culture, became popular. Shops opened in Israeli cities catering to the new spiritual needs of the population by selling amulets to protect homes or cars against the evil eye, or photographs of tzadikim, whose supernatural powers can also provide much needed protection. A renewed interest in Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition, has also taken place in Israel and America. Popularizing Kabbalah and making it accessible to people without previous Jewish education, Rabbi Philip Berg established centers and published numerous tracts to teach Kabbalah to anyone interested, both Jews and non-Jews. While in previous generations Jewish leaders and activists had wished to present Judaism as a rational tradition, compatible with the ideals of the Enlightenment, now Judaism’s mystical and nonrational side was presented (Odenheimer 1999). A visible return of the supernatural to Jewish life was the open campaign of the Chabad Hasidic movement that aimed at promoting awareness among Jews (and non-Jews, too) of the imminent arrival of the Messiah. Under the guidance of its sixth and seventh Rebbes (spiritual leaders), Chabad has developed a millennial outlook that can be defined as catastrophic, coupled with some progressive elements. In the 1950s through the 1980s Chabad turned itself into a global Jewish outreach movement. In a manner reminiscent of Christian evangelists, the Chabad leadership wished to prepare the scene for the arrival of the Messiah. The sixth and seventh Rebbes saw in the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry “the Time of Jacob’s Trouble” (Jer. 30:7) that was to precede the Messianic Age (Ravitzky 1993). The group’s duty, the seventh Rebbe believed, was to bring Jews to fulfill at least some mitzvot (commandments), as well as to promote awareness among the Gentiles of the need to follow the Nohaiic laws. While the Rebbe encouraged his followers to work hard toward bringing the Messiah, whose arrival now depended on their efforts, in the 1980s–90s, a more radical messianic group came about within his own movement. The seventh and last Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994) had no children. The Rebbe lost his siblings in the Holocaust, and so he had neither a son nor son-in-law, not even a nephew or a nephew-in-law acceptable to his movement, to inherit his position and carry on his work. In the 1980s it became evident to his followers that the Rebbe had no heirs and that with his death the group would remain without a leader. Some members of the group began to speculate that the Rebbe might not die and would soon reveal himself to be the Messiah. In their admiration for their Rebbe the followers were convinced that their charismatic leader was fully deserving of that role. A group developed within the Chabad movement, openly advocating the messiahship of the Rebbe, who died in 1994. Some non-Hasidic Jews were scandalized by the rise of a messianic movement that presented a contemporary personality as the Messiah (Berger 2001). But the Chabad millennial movement persisted

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(see also chapter 8 by Lorne Dawson and chapter 9 by Melissa M. Wilcox, both in this volume). In the atmosphere that developed in Judaism of the later decades of the twentieth century, the secular progressive millennial ideology found itself seriously diminished (Shahar 1983). The door was opened for radical catastrophic millennial movements to make their mark on Israel.

Christians and Contemporary Israeli Radicalism Christians contributed to the return of the supernatural to contemporary Judaism, to the rise of Jewish movements holding to catastrophic millennial faith, and to the groups’ proactive programs in their attempts to bring about the Messianic Age. In other times and places the relationship that developed between evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews would have been considered to be in the realm of the imaginary. Many evangelical and Charismatic Christians have shared the hopes of Orthodox Jewish nationalists to create a Jewish commonwealth in “the Greater Land of Israel” and rebuild the Temple. Since the 1970s, conservative Protestants have provided a morale boost, as well as financial support, to Jewish messianic groups. The idea that the Jews will fulfill a central role in the Messianic Age, and should go back to Palestine and rebuild a Jewish commonwealth there, became predominant among pietist, Puritan, and evangelical Christian groups in the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. A school of Christian messianic hope that has assigned the Jews a particularly important role in its theology is Dispensationalism (see chapter 25 by Jon R. Stone and chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, both in this volume). This eschatological faith and philosophy of history became part of the conservative evangelical Christian worldview in the twentieth century, meshing well with its pessimistic outlook on contemporary culture. Dispensationalist Christians view the Jews as historical Israel, destined to play a prominent role in the events leading to the messianic kingdom, as well as in the Messianic Age itself. In this school of catastrophic millennialism, the Holy Land, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount serve as the arena in which the central events of the Apocalypse are expected to unfold (Ariel 1991). Conservative evangelical Protestants have responded enthusiastically to the rise of the Zionist movement, the building of Jewish towns and villages in Palestine, and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Such events have reinforced their messianic hopes, convincing them that they had read the Bible correctly and that prophecy was unfolding according to the predictions of their eschatological faith (Davis 1931). More than any other moment, the Six-Day War in June 1967 stirred the Christian messianic imagination. The unexpected Israeli victory, the accompanying territorial gains, and most importantly, the Israeli takeover of the historical parts of

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Jerusalem, strengthened the evangelical Christian conviction that Israel was created for an important mission in history and was to play a vital role in the events that were to precede the Messiah’s arrival (Bell 1967). Following the war, interest in Israeli life and politics increased immensely among conservative Protestants. Evangelical Christians holding to the Messianic faith became more active in their support of Israel, with leading evangelists such as Billy Graham (b. 1918), Hal Lindsey (b. 1929), Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) and Pat Robertson (b. 1930) expressing their opinions that Israel was vital for the fulfillment of prophecy (Lindsey 1973). Dozens of Christian pro-Israel organizations sprang up in the United States and elsewhere, with conservative evangelical Christians turning into Israel’s most ardent supporters in America, as well as in other parts of the globe (Lienesch 1993). During the 1970s through the 2000s, millions of conservative evangelicals came to Israel as tourists, volunteers to kibbutzim or archaeological digs, and some even settled in the country, evangelizing among the Jews or waiting for the apocalyptic events to begin (Ariel 1996). Especially during the 1960s and 1970s prophecy became an acceptable expression of evangelical Charismatic Christian faith; now it was imported to Israel. Paradoxically, it would be Orthodox Jews, Settlers, and Temple Builders, who would encounter Christians who communicated directly with God and would adopt some of their practices. No aspect of Israeli religious, cultural, or political life fascinated evangelical Christian proponents of the Second Coming more than the prospect that the Jews would rebuild the Temple, and thus start the unfolding of the Apocalypse (Cox 1968; Couch 1973). The blocked rebuilding of the Temple seemed to evangelical Christians to be the one development standing between this era and the next (Lindsey 1973). In the 1970s evangelical Christians discovered to their great joy that groups of nationalist Orthodox Jews were interested in rebuilding the Temple. An unprecedented measure of cooperation began taking place between evangelical, mostly Charismatic Christians and Jews eager to rebuild the Temple. Since the 1970s, a number of Christian groups and individuals have openly promoted the building of the Temple through a variety of activities, most of them centered on helping Jews prepare for the construction of the Temple. Some of these Jews were studying the Temple architectural measurements and rituals, manufacturing utensils to be used for sacrificial purposes according to biblical or talmudic specifications, or have been trying to breed a new brand of red heifers, whose ashes would purify Jews and allow them to enter the Temple Mount. Christians were encouraged by the Jewish preparations. Such activities have served to sustain their faith that “the Rapture of the Saints” and the events of the Endtime were about to take place. If Jews were preparing themselves to carry out the Temple’s work, the Messiah must be coming soon (Stewart and Missler 1991a, 157–70; Ice and Price 1992). In the early 1980s Chuck Smith (b. 1927), a noted minister and evangelist whose Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, has been one of the largest and most dynamic Charismatic churches in America, invited Stanley Goldfoot (d. 2006), a leader of a Temple Builders group from Jerusalem, to lecture in his church. Smith’s

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followers helped to finance Goldfoot’s activity, including the exploration of the exact site of the Temple. Lambert Dolphin, an associate of Smith, who directed a research group called the Science and Archeology Team, was ready to use sophisticated technological devices and methods, such as wall-penetrating radar and seismic sounding, in his search for the ruins of the Temples. In bringing his instruments into Israel and preparing to explore the Temple Mount, Dolphin worked in cooperation with and received help from Jewish Temple Builders. However, facing Muslim opposition, the Israeli police refused to allow the use of such technological devices on or near the Temple Mount. Christian proponents of building the Temple have also searched for the lost Ark of the Covenant, adding a touch of adventure and mystery to a messianic prophetic endeavor (Wead, Lewis and Donaldson n.d.). The search for the “lost Ark” has inspired a number of novels and a movie based, in part, on a real-life Charismatic Christian archaeologist. He and other Christians have also searched for the ashes of the Red Heifer, which are necessary, according to the Jewish law, to allow Jews to enter the Temple Mount. Other Christians have supported Jewish attempts at breeding red heifers or began breeding such heifers on their own (Wright 1998). A new interest has arisen in evangelical and Charismatic Christian circles in the interior plan of the Temple, its sacrificial works, and the priestly garments and utensils (Stewart and Missler 1991b; Ice and Price 1992; Sleming n.d.). The rebuilt Temple has played an important role in evangelical novels. The most popular of them have been the Left Behind series, which was published in the late 1990s and early 2000s and sold tens of millions of copies (see chapter 26 by Glenn W. Shuck, this volume). The novels’ plots describe the struggles and travails of non-Christians during the Great Tribulation, the period between this era and the Messianic Age. One of their major challenges is the rise to power of the Antichrist. The series describes one of the Antichrist’s “achievements” as orchestrating the removal of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque from Temple Mount to New Babylon (LaHaye and Jenkins 1995). According to the series, while initially many Jews will be misled by the Antichrist, many of them will turn into Antichrist’s enemies and help create an underground Christian opposition. In the novels, the Wailing Wall (Western Wall) in Jerusalem becomes the site of miraculous preaching of the Gospel on the part of Jews. The movie version includes scenes in which an old Jewish prophet proclaims, in our time, the Word of God (Sarin 2004). The Left Behind novels point to a new development. While Christians and Jews had initially cooperated with each other on a give and take basis, they have eventually come to appreciate each other. The close relationship between Christian and Jewish proponents of building the Temple has brought some Christians to modify their understanding of the role of the Jews in their vision of the Endtime. Initially, the Temple in Christian evangelical eschatological hopes was supposed to be the creation of the Antichrist and had no real value from a Christian point of view, except as a stepping stone toward the arrival of the Messiah. However, as Jewish activists working toward the rebuilding of the Temple began discussing the details of the Endtime with their Christian friends, the Christians reassured them that they

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expected the Temple to survive the rule of Antichrist and to function gloriously in the millennial kingdom and not only in the period that precedes it (Ice and Price 1992). In the Left Behind series, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins have taken a revolutionary step and changed the traditional Dispensationalist understanding of the Antichrist. In their novels, Antichrist is no longer a Jewish leader, but they also do not return to the more historical Protestant understanding of the Antichrist as the pope. Instead LaHaye and Jenkins have moved to what seems to most readers of the novels as a neutral option. Their Antichrist is a Romanian Greek Orthodox; Roman, perhaps, but neither a Roman Catholic nor a Jew. The Left Behind series improves in general on the popular conservative evangelical Christian image of the Jews. In the novels, Jews are depicted as misguided but well-meaning people, who eventually realize the truth and take the proper action (Ariel 2004). Jewish Settlers and Temple Builders have also changed their opinion of Christians. Jews have been impressed by the keen Christian interest and support. Those Christians, they concluded, were more enthusiastic over the prospect of rebuilding the Temple than most Jews. Jewish Settlers’ magazines began publishing sympathetic and appreciative essays on Christians (Luria 1989). Moreover, the theology and messages of leaders of Jewish millennial groups, such as Gershon Salomon, have become increasingly more universalistic, at least in the sense that they have come to include Christians as important participants in the divine drama of salvation. In a manner reminiscent of the attitudes of the contemporary Chabad Hasidic group, Salomon has put a great premium on the traditional Jewish idea of the Noahide covenant. According to that thinking, since the days of Noah, all of humanity is in covenant with God and is commended to follow elementary laws, such as “Thou shall not kill.” Jews such as Salomon now claim that Christians, like Jews, have to work hard toward the advancement of the Messianic Time (Kaplan 1997, 100–126). Helping Jewish groups such as his own is therefore a sacred duty for Christians. In the late 1980s, Pat Robertson, the renowned minister of the 700 Club television program, began offering his support to the Temple Mount Faithful and its leader, Gershon Salomon. In August 1991, the 700 Club aired an interview with Salomon. Robertson described Salomon’s group as struggling to gain the rightful place of Jews on the Temple Mount. Salomon, for his part, described his mission as embodying a promise for a universal redemption: “It’s not just a struggle for the Temple Mount, it’s a struggle for the . . . redemption of the world” (Friedman 1992, 144–45). Amazingly, but tellingly, in the early twenty-first century, the website of the Temple Mount Faithful is entirely in English, as are all the group’s publications (Temple Mount and Eretz Yisrael Faithful Movement [2008]). Its readership is composed mainly of English-speaking Christians. More importantly, Salomon’s language has become reminiscent of that of Charismatic Christians. Jews have been praying for the return of the Prophet Elijah, who would precede the arrival of, or accompany, the Messiah, Son of David. While not declaring himself to be Elijah, Salomon has begun claiming direct channels of communication with God. His

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descriptions of such divine encounters are reminiscent of those of Charismatic Christians. Moreover, in building his arguments, Salomon relies on the Tanakh and especially on biblical prophecy, paying little attention to postbiblical texts. He is closer to his Christian friends than to many Orthodox Jews (Inbari 2006, 166).

Can Millennial Hopes Bring the Apocalypse? Unlike liberal Jews and Christians, who have taken part in interfaith dialogues and have come to respect many religious expressions, Christian Dispensationalists and Jewish Settlers are committed to fulfilling God’s commands, as they understand them, regardless of the feelings of adherents of other faiths. Both Christian Dispensationalists and Jewish Settlers perceive Islam as a hostile faith, at least as far as preparations for the Messianic Time are concerned, and see Muslim and Arab opposition as an obstacle to the fulfillment of ancient prophecies (Elson 1991; Ariel 1997). These Christian and Jewish groups look upon the Temple Mount, the Muslim al-Haram ash-Sharif, as the Mountain of the Lord, the place where the Temple is to be rebuilt. The presence of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque seem to be a mere technicality that needs to be overcome. Ironically, just as something of a symbiosis developed between Charismatic Christians and Orthodox Jews who wish to see the Temple rebuilt and the Messiah arrive, so has an adversarial symbiosis developed between Muslims, and Jewish and Christian Temple Builders. The latter have stirred strong negative reactions among the former, offering them a focal point to galvanize for protest (Zilberman 2001; Wasserstein 2001; Reiter 2001). Paradoxically, the Muslim opposition to the building of the Temple, as well as the decision of mainstream Israeli society to block the construction of this symbol of the coming Messianic Time, enhanced a more proactive catastrophic millennial approach on the part of Christian and Jewish Temple Builders. In one extreme case, an evangelical Dispensationalist who had divine revelation decided to prepare the ground physically for the building of the Temple (Ariel 2001). Dennis Michael Rohan (b. 1941) was aware of the insurmountable obstacles that stood in the way of building the Temple. After spending some time as a volunteer in an Israeli kibbutz, the young Australian Dispensationalist visited Jerusalem in July 1969 and there, convinced that God had designated him for the task, set fire to the al-Aqsa Mosque. The mosque was damaged and Arabs in Jerusalem rioted. Rohan was arrested, put to trial, found insane, and sent to Australia to spend the rest of his life in an asylum. Protecting the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque became a priority for the Israeli security services (Inbari 2005, 3). In the mid-1980s a number of Jewish and Jewish-Christian groups were caught planning to blow up the shrine and the mosque. This included the Jewish underground, which became known as Ha

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Mahteret ha Yehudit, a group consisting of religious nationalist Settlers inspired by the teachings and messianic beliefs of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook (Aran 1997). The group collected arms and explosives, to serve as the Judean Army, in case of an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. Its plans to blow up the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque were intertwined with the group’s larger messianic vision. In 1984 the Israeli police arrested another catastrophic millennial group that had planned to bomb the shrine and the mosque, the “Lifta Gang.” Israeli newspapers described a commune on the outskirts of Jerusalem, led by a leader who was blessed with prophetic visions. According to one source, the group was associated with, and received assistance from, Charismatic Christians in America (Ledeen and Ledeen 1984). The activities of other Messianic groups have had at times also volatile and explosive consequences. The Temple Mount Faithful have made it their habit to try to enter the Temple Mount on Jewish festivals in order to conduct prayers. On Sukkot, October 1990, the Temple Mount Faithful planned to lay a cornerstone for the future Temple. However, the police would not allow them to enter the Temple Mount and they left. But Muslim worshippers on the Mount felt threatened and, incited by the muezzin, threw rocks at Jewish worshippers at the Wailing Wall, down below the western wall of al-Haram ash-Sharif compound. Muslim demonstrators chased the small police unit off of the mountain, and units of Israeli anti-riot police stormed the area a short while later. Dozens of demonstrators and police officers were killed or wounded. The volatile consequences of even an aborted attempt of a symbolic preparation of the ground for the arrival of the Messiah became painfully clear.

Conclusion The Jewish tradition has a long history of yearnings for universal and national redemption. However, throughout long centuries, Jewish rabbinical and communal leaders have suppressed as best they could catastrophic millennial hopes, turning Judaism into a tradition that postponed the arrival of the Messiah indefinitely. The encounter of Judaism with the Enlightenment and modernity gave rise to progressive millennial Jewish movements, which contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel. The emergence of openly catastrophic millennial movements in contemporary Judaism, therefore, constitutes a breach with Jewish millennial thinking as it developed throughout long centuries, and corresponds with the rise of radical political views and dualistic thinking. The rise of Temple Builders and prophets on the Israeli scene demonstrates larger developments in Israeli political and cultural history. A major development has been the counter-reformation that has taken place in contemporary Judaism, which created an atmosphere congenial to the resurfacing of catastrophic millennial faiths as well as belief in direct contact with God in defiance of secularist norms

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of rational thinking. Not only Orthodox nationalist Jews, but the Israeli populace in general, have come to accept what previously had been considered irrational beliefs and behavior. In a society where ordinary people as well as the elites consult with soothsayers, prophecy is merely an additional step. The Six-Day War of 1967, which many had seen as the unfolding of a messianic moment, stirred both Jewish and Christian imaginations. The inability and unwillingness of Israel to rebuild the Temple frustrated Orthodox nationalists, some of whom have tried to “hasten the End.” The relationship that developed between Charismatic and evangelical Christians and observant Jews in recent decades has also contributed to the rise of prophecy and millennial expectations in contemporary Judaism. Unexpectedly conservative Christians have become the patrons and supporters of Jewish millennial groups. The fascination of catastrophic millennial Christians with Jewish groups of Temple Builders has transcended the familiar historical dynamics of Jewish-Christian interactions. What started as a marriage of convenience, turned along the way into a more affectionate relationship, with both groups modifying their understanding of each other and coming to appreciate each other’s efforts. Some observers, however, have been troubled by the volatile potential of the new Christian-Jewish cooperation. While most Christians and Jews holding to catastrophic millennial faiths are law-abiding, the millennial excitement has also given rise to groups that answer to divine authority instead of to what they consider to be the short-sighted policies and regulations of humans. Jewish and Christian groups and individuals have resorted at times to terrorist tactics concentrated mostly on attempts to change the existing reality on the Temple Mount, with the aim of bringing about the Messianic Age. Such activities have, at times, added fuel to Palestinian and Israeli misunderstandings, radicalizing existing conflicts.

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