The new quasi-Kookean meta that you see Conservative Israel supporters use is basically that Israel is a light upon the nations not by being a beacon of peace but by demonstrating to the west how to not be woke and deal properly with Arabs. It is also possible that Israel prevails because they are the only modern economy not self destructing through birth rate decline, although I don’t know if Israel winning the century by default is what Kookeans had in mind
Slifkin's blog has become repetitive, but that's the nature of chronic problems. The Charedi burden on Israel keeps increasing, and he's one of the few who track its progress and provides context, in a way that appeals to Anglo Orthodox Jews. Anecdotally (the plural of which is anecdotes), his writing shifted my own views over time, and I doubt I'm unusual in that, though perhaps if I was quicker on the uptake it wouldn't have taken me as long. It's less fun than his zoological material but likely more consequential.
As for Zionism: whatever you think of its theology, it worked in terms of at least one of its primary aims. Israel exists, and is the home for over half the world's Jews. It has the fourth highest life expectancy in the OECD
Any state-building project needs some form of national ideology. The West's own demographic and civic decay stems partly from having too little of one, and you're only too aware of the resulting consequences of mass immigration. Kookian mysticism is certainly out there, but I don't see any real evidence Slifkin actually subscribes to it. He liked a song - you're attacked him for a music video he never endorsed.
His theological caution on Reshit Tzemichat Geulateinu (https://www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/reishit-tzmichat-geulateinu) suggests he's closer to Reines or Sacks than to mystical messianism. That his son's rosh yeshiva holds certain views proves nothing about Slifkin's own positions unless you can show he's endorsed them, which you haven't. That's guilt by distant association masquerading as an argument.
As for his "rationalism": the categorization works better as a heuristic than an intellectual taxonomy, I'll grant you. Yet the underlying distinction remains both sound and relevant. The Rambam is hardly likely to have sanctioned "Torah protects" as a society-level magic spell exempting from civic responsibility. In that respect, his critique of Israeli Charedism is rationalist: it accepts material reality at some level. Climbing on top of cranes is a bad idea given what we know about gravity, which is a start.
First of all, I want to be clear that my primary objection is to the song, the enjoyment of which I consider to be absolutely disqualifying. You might think that's a weird thing, but I'm a weird guy. I didn't randomly pick the video, it's 'the' video for the song. I presume Slifkin deliberately picked a different one because of the mixed dancing, but
Secondly, I think Slifkin is definitely not a Kookian. I don't even think he is really a religious zionist. What he is is a typical clueless Anglo who has no idea what Religious Zionism is and therefore assists in its proliferation. It's one thing to have a general pan-orthodox position that includes everyone from Satmar to Bat Ayin, but once you have pasuled half of orthodoxy based on their politics/hashkafa (he literally said their wine should be treif), then passive endorsement of the other parts counts as active endorsement. However, it's not even necessary to make that inference because he explicitly expresses his great admiration for Rav Weizmann, and therefore for Kookism. He has also done the same for other Kookist Rabbis including one who is quite active in efforts to convert the last remaining important non-Kookist RZ Yeshiva to Kookism.
Thirdly, though I don't buy these curated hasbara statistics, I actually agree at some level that Israeli nationalism keeps the 85-100 IQ class more moralised than in most western countries. I think early 20th century atavistic nationalism did much the same thing. Problem is that it requires ever bigger doses to achieve the same effect and then suddenly you're at war with all your neighbours and descending to the level of beasts. But, yes, how to deal with this would be a legitimate concern in a theoretical NonZionist political arrangement.
I went to the demo today and managed to get someone holding a נמות ולא נתגייס sign to admit that they would actually rather do three years in the army than die. I was very pleased with myself.
Considering how Israel is the only developed western adjacent country that is still confident in its traditional identity and more importantly, actually reproducing, I would argue that Rav Kook was absolutely correct. You like to critique aspects of Israeli society that bother you but have yet to offer an alternative vision. It would be better for your peace of mind to accept these things as simply Sowellian trade offs that come with the difficult task of nation building.
Perhaps what really gets to him is the that the slogan עם ישראל לא מפחד really fits for Charedim much more than for him.
How can he claim to be לא מפחד when his entire rally call is that we must have such deep fear that we must turn Gaza to rubble, kill 60-100k men, women and children and most importantly, constantly vilify (comparing them to עם ישראל's worst enemies) and imprison those who don't toe the line on this and instead prefer with healing the demographic crisis at it's core?
Otoh, the Charedim certainly exemplify the motto of the gemara in berachos (60,a) that only with regards to Torah should one have fear, all else is a sin. He seems (or at least claims) not to comprehend the foundation of the Charedi mindset here, but they definitely are at least somewhat aware of the risks of their isolationist mindset, when it comes to their own livelihood, life (living in Beitar with minimal security, not buying private heath insurance etc.) yet they do it because they steadfastly believe in this Gemara and עם הנצח לא מפחד.
DO they overdo it? Probably. Definitely one boy at the protest did ל"א. But at least they deserve the slogan עם ישראל לא מפחד. He definitely doesn't.
Let it also be noted that the vast vast majority of Israelis are not by any means ideologues. They are not caught up in all the issues that we on these blogs seem so engaged in. They are normal people who have endured quite abnormal circumstances for the better part of a century . As humans they have human faults and frailties, but as a society Israel has much to commend
We are as entitled to a Jewish State as the Moslem world that has its many states . And frankly, a bit more so after the Holocaust left the remnant of European Jewry bereft of any moorings. In the US we have the luxury of all the accusations and counter accusations in the blogosphere - A farmer , store owner, merchant , teacher , professional etc etc etc is far too busy with life and his or her desire to preserve and cultivate a homeland to spend time criticizing and critiquing every nuance of Israeli life.
Although there is much to commend in your article, I have to complain that the level of cynicism in the writing makes it hard to read and digest. If others write that way, you need not. As Luzzato commented in the Mesilas Yesharim, such cynicism has the ability to undermine taking anything seriously.
Sounds like only problem with Rav Kook's theology is that the Arabs didn't agree with it. If they had, they could be happily hewing our wood and drawing our water as we speak.
Say what you want about the Lehi, (they wanted to make a deal with Nazis, some of there people went to make a pro Soviet party and get involvd in greater Semitic nationalism and the like) but at their anthem is awesome.
Honestly it seems to parallel the decline of the IRA(whom the Lehi copied). First they fought the British to restore independence, then they made car bombs to shake hands over the last northern bit and now....
The עם הנצח video highlights yet another dimension to the Chareidi instinct to reject army service out of hand. Imagine how many Jewish men have now actually killed people during this war. Months and months of getting up day after day-- to kill other human beings. That has got to fundamentally change you as a person.
There's no being chareidi again with nothing on your mind besides davening and learning and Shabbos and Yom Tov after going through that.
The video highlights the glorification of war and military might in general Israeli society--especially in right-wing RZ circles. Wanting your kids to serve effectively as good killing machines in the army when he turns 18 shapes your whole approach to how you will raise them.
What a bizarre post. I didn't even watch that video. And you claim that I must be pushing its message, and the only reason that I didn't show it was because it has mixed dancing?! Seriously strange.
Hmm this is driving home the realization that no one believes anything like my steelman of kabbalah, but I might as well write it up somewhere in case enough people then come to believe it and try to implement it in good faith:
Human brains are enough like general computers that there are various protocols implemented on them with different purposes, that cooperate across brains, and we might like the results of some more than others.Some event in the past produced some parasitic protocols we don't like, that caused related and mutually reinforcing sorts of domination, superstition, and idolatry to take over a lot of human attention, so that we're spending much of our time in a world of illusion responding to imaginary threats that pit us against each other, wreck our health, etc. Some unpacking of this:
Traditional halakhic Judaism contains a ritual structure designed (albeit imperfectly by humans with limited understanding of God, the world, and themselves) to emulate a protocol of life-aligned law running on top of the superstition protocol. E.g. some mitzvot like the Shema, tefillin, etc seem specifically oriented towards binding words and actions, and others like festival and marital laws are unusual among strong legal systems in affirmatively mandating health- and evolutionary fitness-promoting behavior, not just discouraging aggression or insubordination.
The Sephirot are a map of various human capacities that add up to agency if you do all of them, but independently are stereotyped fragments, like Enneagram types, e.g. chochma (idea-generation) vs bina (discriminating true from false ideas), obviously you don't want just one of those.
Doing the mitzvot helps propagate the law-emulation vibe described above through yourself and your social connections, and developing the sephirotic capacities both makes you more agentlike, which have convergent, mutually reinforcing benefits.
If the law-emulation vibe plus more agency reaches critical mass, we'll have ten righteous men who can talk with each other, which is a big enough network brain / has enough coordination capacity to run a city sensibly and to figure out how to get 32 righteous men talking with each other, which is in turn enough coordination capacity etc etc to make the world a paradise compared to what it is now. This is basically the "Friendly AI intelligence explosion" thesis, but without the dissociation from already being part of a powerful networked mind.
Basically no Quakers were as honest as Spinoza, and ten Spinozae would have gotten radically better results than one, not just 10x better.
Part of the mythical structure of kabbalah is to project this capacity into the past as a "before the fall" thing, but obviously if things had been working that well before, there wouldn't have been a fall.
The new quasi-Kookean meta that you see Conservative Israel supporters use is basically that Israel is a light upon the nations not by being a beacon of peace but by demonstrating to the west how to not be woke and deal properly with Arabs. It is also possible that Israel prevails because they are the only modern economy not self destructing through birth rate decline, although I don’t know if Israel winning the century by default is what Kookeans had in mind
Yes, we're even getting some comments here to that effect.
Slifkin's blog has become repetitive, but that's the nature of chronic problems. The Charedi burden on Israel keeps increasing, and he's one of the few who track its progress and provides context, in a way that appeals to Anglo Orthodox Jews. Anecdotally (the plural of which is anecdotes), his writing shifted my own views over time, and I doubt I'm unusual in that, though perhaps if I was quicker on the uptake it wouldn't have taken me as long. It's less fun than his zoological material but likely more consequential.
As for Zionism: whatever you think of its theology, it worked in terms of at least one of its primary aims. Israel exists, and is the home for over half the world's Jews. It has the fourth highest life expectancy in the OECD
(https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timesofisrael.com/israelis-life-expectancy-rises-to-83-8-making-it-4th-among-oecd-countries/amp/); it ranks fifth in the global happiness index (especially high among the young); and its R&D spending as a share of GDP is the highest anywhere. You can dislike the music videos, but it's hard to call the civilisation degenerate as a whole.
Any state-building project needs some form of national ideology. The West's own demographic and civic decay stems partly from having too little of one, and you're only too aware of the resulting consequences of mass immigration. Kookian mysticism is certainly out there, but I don't see any real evidence Slifkin actually subscribes to it. He liked a song - you're attacked him for a music video he never endorsed.
His theological caution on Reshit Tzemichat Geulateinu (https://www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/reishit-tzmichat-geulateinu) suggests he's closer to Reines or Sacks than to mystical messianism. That his son's rosh yeshiva holds certain views proves nothing about Slifkin's own positions unless you can show he's endorsed them, which you haven't. That's guilt by distant association masquerading as an argument.
As for his "rationalism": the categorization works better as a heuristic than an intellectual taxonomy, I'll grant you. Yet the underlying distinction remains both sound and relevant. The Rambam is hardly likely to have sanctioned "Torah protects" as a society-level magic spell exempting from civic responsibility. In that respect, his critique of Israeli Charedism is rationalist: it accepts material reality at some level. Climbing on top of cranes is a bad idea given what we know about gravity, which is a start.
Solid comment.
First of all, I want to be clear that my primary objection is to the song, the enjoyment of which I consider to be absolutely disqualifying. You might think that's a weird thing, but I'm a weird guy. I didn't randomly pick the video, it's 'the' video for the song. I presume Slifkin deliberately picked a different one because of the mixed dancing, but
Secondly, I think Slifkin is definitely not a Kookian. I don't even think he is really a religious zionist. What he is is a typical clueless Anglo who has no idea what Religious Zionism is and therefore assists in its proliferation. It's one thing to have a general pan-orthodox position that includes everyone from Satmar to Bat Ayin, but once you have pasuled half of orthodoxy based on their politics/hashkafa (he literally said their wine should be treif), then passive endorsement of the other parts counts as active endorsement. However, it's not even necessary to make that inference because he explicitly expresses his great admiration for Rav Weizmann, and therefore for Kookism. He has also done the same for other Kookist Rabbis including one who is quite active in efforts to convert the last remaining important non-Kookist RZ Yeshiva to Kookism.
Thirdly, though I don't buy these curated hasbara statistics, I actually agree at some level that Israeli nationalism keeps the 85-100 IQ class more moralised than in most western countries. I think early 20th century atavistic nationalism did much the same thing. Problem is that it requires ever bigger doses to achieve the same effect and then suddenly you're at war with all your neighbours and descending to the level of beasts. But, yes, how to deal with this would be a legitimate concern in a theoretical NonZionist political arrangement.
Gravity, like evolution, is only a theory :😀
Not the dunk you think it is
I went to the demo today and managed to get someone holding a נמות ולא נתגייס sign to admit that they would actually rather do three years in the army than die. I was very pleased with myself.
When I read his post I was wondering what you would say LOL
Considering how Israel is the only developed western adjacent country that is still confident in its traditional identity and more importantly, actually reproducing, I would argue that Rav Kook was absolutely correct. You like to critique aspects of Israeli society that bother you but have yet to offer an alternative vision. It would be better for your peace of mind to accept these things as simply Sowellian trade offs that come with the difficult task of nation building.
Perhaps what really gets to him is the that the slogan עם ישראל לא מפחד really fits for Charedim much more than for him.
How can he claim to be לא מפחד when his entire rally call is that we must have such deep fear that we must turn Gaza to rubble, kill 60-100k men, women and children and most importantly, constantly vilify (comparing them to עם ישראל's worst enemies) and imprison those who don't toe the line on this and instead prefer with healing the demographic crisis at it's core?
Otoh, the Charedim certainly exemplify the motto of the gemara in berachos (60,a) that only with regards to Torah should one have fear, all else is a sin. He seems (or at least claims) not to comprehend the foundation of the Charedi mindset here, but they definitely are at least somewhat aware of the risks of their isolationist mindset, when it comes to their own livelihood, life (living in Beitar with minimal security, not buying private heath insurance etc.) yet they do it because they steadfastly believe in this Gemara and עם הנצח לא מפחד.
DO they overdo it? Probably. Definitely one boy at the protest did ל"א. But at least they deserve the slogan עם ישראל לא מפחד. He definitely doesn't.
Let it also be noted that the vast vast majority of Israelis are not by any means ideologues. They are not caught up in all the issues that we on these blogs seem so engaged in. They are normal people who have endured quite abnormal circumstances for the better part of a century . As humans they have human faults and frailties, but as a society Israel has much to commend
We are as entitled to a Jewish State as the Moslem world that has its many states . And frankly, a bit more so after the Holocaust left the remnant of European Jewry bereft of any moorings. In the US we have the luxury of all the accusations and counter accusations in the blogosphere - A farmer , store owner, merchant , teacher , professional etc etc etc is far too busy with life and his or her desire to preserve and cultivate a homeland to spend time criticizing and critiquing every nuance of Israeli life.
Although there is much to commend in your article, I have to complain that the level of cynicism in the writing makes it hard to read and digest. If others write that way, you need not. As Luzzato commented in the Mesilas Yesharim, such cynicism has the ability to undermine taking anything seriously.
How much of your non-Zionism is rooted in Israel just being a disappointing country spiritually?
All of it, no?
Fair enough, but you've also said you don't think Israel made Jews safer on net, which is a very different complaint.
Sounds like only problem with Rav Kook's theology is that the Arabs didn't agree with it. If they had, they could be happily hewing our wood and drawing our water as we speak.
Once had lunch with slifkin after he was a guest speaker at my shul. He is not as socialized as you suggest in the first paragraph.
Say what you want about the Lehi, (they wanted to make a deal with Nazis, some of there people went to make a pro Soviet party and get involvd in greater Semitic nationalism and the like) but at their anthem is awesome.
https://youtu.be/1u5Z0GZ1WsE?si=NH40lVT5qjY-USud
The right-wing music back then was better in general
https://youtu.be/H5kktOf5b0s?si=wstfA2MCl6ldroAl
The Baathist and Arab Nationalist/socialist movements were also kind of retarded but their music and aesthetics were on point.
Honestly, I prefer haTikvah by a lot.
haTikvah has nothing to do with violence though, that's why I chose the Lehi anthem to compare to the example you brought up.
I see. Yes, a precipitous decline.
Honestly it seems to parallel the decline of the IRA(whom the Lehi copied). First they fought the British to restore independence, then they made car bombs to shake hands over the last northern bit and now....
As I was reading the article, I played the American slop song. Within 15 seconds, my brother in the next room said “turn that BS off”.
You’re point is proven
The עם הנצח video highlights yet another dimension to the Chareidi instinct to reject army service out of hand. Imagine how many Jewish men have now actually killed people during this war. Months and months of getting up day after day-- to kill other human beings. That has got to fundamentally change you as a person.
There's no being chareidi again with nothing on your mind besides davening and learning and Shabbos and Yom Tov after going through that.
The video highlights the glorification of war and military might in general Israeli society--especially in right-wing RZ circles. Wanting your kids to serve effectively as good killing machines in the army when he turns 18 shapes your whole approach to how you will raise them.
No Chareidi parent is willing to do that.
What a bizarre post. I didn't even watch that video. And you claim that I must be pushing its message, and the only reason that I didn't show it was because it has mixed dancing?! Seriously strange.
You should write a response saying I am stupid so your subscribers know.
Hmm this is driving home the realization that no one believes anything like my steelman of kabbalah, but I might as well write it up somewhere in case enough people then come to believe it and try to implement it in good faith:
Human brains are enough like general computers that there are various protocols implemented on them with different purposes, that cooperate across brains, and we might like the results of some more than others.Some event in the past produced some parasitic protocols we don't like, that caused related and mutually reinforcing sorts of domination, superstition, and idolatry to take over a lot of human attention, so that we're spending much of our time in a world of illusion responding to imaginary threats that pit us against each other, wreck our health, etc. Some unpacking of this:
https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/guilt-shame-and-depravity/
https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/excerpts-from-a-larger-discussion-about-simulacra/
Traditional halakhic Judaism contains a ritual structure designed (albeit imperfectly by humans with limited understanding of God, the world, and themselves) to emulate a protocol of life-aligned law running on top of the superstition protocol. E.g. some mitzvot like the Shema, tefillin, etc seem specifically oriented towards binding words and actions, and others like festival and marital laws are unusual among strong legal systems in affirmatively mandating health- and evolutionary fitness-promoting behavior, not just discouraging aggression or insubordination.
The Sephirot are a map of various human capacities that add up to agency if you do all of them, but independently are stereotyped fragments, like Enneagram types, e.g. chochma (idea-generation) vs bina (discriminating true from false ideas), obviously you don't want just one of those.
Doing the mitzvot helps propagate the law-emulation vibe described above through yourself and your social connections, and developing the sephirotic capacities both makes you more agentlike, which have convergent, mutually reinforcing benefits.
If the law-emulation vibe plus more agency reaches critical mass, we'll have ten righteous men who can talk with each other, which is a big enough network brain / has enough coordination capacity to run a city sensibly and to figure out how to get 32 righteous men talking with each other, which is in turn enough coordination capacity etc etc to make the world a paradise compared to what it is now. This is basically the "Friendly AI intelligence explosion" thesis, but without the dissociation from already being part of a powerful networked mind.
A more normal-sounding version of this proposal is written up here: https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/levels-of-republicanism/
Past attempts to establish radical trust like Quakerism, Calvinism, and the English Civil War got as far as joint stock corporations, and physics, but didn't yield enough people willing to be radically honest about politics and violence: https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/calvinism-as-a-theory-of-recovered-high-trust-agency/
Basically no Quakers were as honest as Spinoza, and ten Spinozae would have gotten radically better results than one, not just 10x better.
Part of the mythical structure of kabbalah is to project this capacity into the past as a "before the fall" thing, but obviously if things had been working that well before, there wouldn't have been a fall.