The New Sabbatianism?

The New Sabbatianism?

by Asher Keren

Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Holy Ari, died in 1572, about 64 years before the birth of Sabbatai Zevi. By this time Lurianic Kabbala had spread to all corners of the Jewish world and it would be the young Sabbatai Zevi, along with Nathan of Gaza, that would extend the Lurianic system into areas of mystical experience that would ultimately lead to disaster for the Jewish people.

More recently, the death of Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook, in 1935, preceded the government of Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria by approximately the same amount of time that separated the death of the Ari z’l from the birth of Sabbatai Zevi. Although I claim no mystical knowledge, perhaps this is no small coincidence. Further, perhaps simple historical analysis is enough to explain this time gap without need for mystical explanation.

It takes a couple of generations for a people to simultaneously absorb a message and to twist it accordingly. This article claims that many of today’s Rabbis and other students and followers of Rav Kook are in danger of extending his teachings to conclusions that are as misguided as those that Sabbatai Zevi made based on Lurianic Kabbala. This is not an academic article by any means; merely some thoughts, although I do invite serious scholars to follow note and to take up the challenge. My call is an urgent one, as the times demand us to get our feet back on the ground and to face reality.

Lurianic Kabbala introduced the idea of the ‘breaking of the vessels’, whereby evil remained in this world in the form of ‘klippot’, or membranes that hid the ultimate good and truth. The Ari z’l gave personal prescriptions to his followers to rid themselves of their ‘klippot’ as much as possible. This was a way for personal ‘tikkun’, or repairing of one’s soul. Sabbatai Zevi took these ideas and made redemption a chiefly mystical process, whereby he abandoned the need for moral constraint (chiefly, but not solely, sexual constraint) as prescribed by Jewish Law so that the evil ‘klippot’ could be redeemed by face to face confrontation.

This is by no means a simple matter. The implications of this are tremendous. The Ari z’l, although probing in revolutionary manner the depths of the Jew’s personal soul as well as that of the nation, did not abandon the Torah prescribed methods for achieving a holy and moral life. He expanded traditional ways of understanding these ideas, revolutionized previous mystical understandings and developed ascetic methods for achieving holiness, but he never turned Jewish law on its head, as prescribed by Sabbatai Zevi.

Evil is something that need be confronted, but to claim that its redemption demands the active participation in evil itself, as did Sabbatai Zevi, is to confuse and make hazy those very boundaries which Torah makes clear should never be violated. There is a certain knowledge that can only be had by experience, but there is no less a truth in realizing that to actively touch certain forms of evil is usually a form of self aggrandizement and no more. This was the chief problem with Sabbatai Zevi, as proved by his personal life. He did not touch evil and redeem it; rather, he only weakened his already problematic character, making his subsequent conversion to Islam quite a testimonial as to the depth of his personal convictions and discipline. Had he kept some boundaries in his personal life, his tragic ending may have been quite different.

There are truths which are not to be touched in the day to day life of individuals or nations, except in the most theoretical of realms. While it is clear that the highly religious and spiritual soul is laden with complexity and so much more so that of an entire nation, especially the Jewish people, it is equally as clear that there need be boundaries as to how far the expression of this deep truth should extend. Further, there is a significant question as to how far the acquiescence to this complexity is tolerable.

When the political and secular Zionists returned to the physical building and settling of the Land of Israel, Rav Kook’s revolutionary and mystical take on the deep urging of the nation to return to its roots in the Land was a veritable theosophical volcanic eruption. Rav Kook looked into the deepest mystical truths of the nation Israel, incorporating into his thought all the possible considerations of what we had been through and to where we were going in order to make sense of the fact that our return to the Land was very much a secular accomplishment. There was both reason for hope and even partial acquiescence in light of secular Zionism’s tremendous accomplishments.

Rav Kook’s followers took his insights into national redemption into the practical sphere by working hand in hand with the secular Zionists, despite the fact that there were tremendous religious compromises in doing so. Although not by any means simple, Zionism’s tremendous accomplishments culminating in the Six Day War and the return of the Temple Mount into Jewish hands lent a strong sense of justification to Rav Kook’s revolutionary ideas.

But over the years, the secular populace of the state has furthered itself more and more from even the most rudimentary identification with Judaism and has, since the Oslo accords, begun a process of disenfranchisement from the classic Zionist ideology of Jewish settlement in the Land. With last summer’s disengagement and the further planned abandonment of vast tracts of Judea and Samaria, the secular leadership of the country has reversed the pioneering aspirations of their Zionist forefathers. This, coupled with an almost total abandonment of Jewish values, has led to a reality far different than that confronted by Rav Kook.

Almost everything about secular Zionism, or as it is so tellingly labeled these days, ‘post-Zionism’, has changed. It is impossible to predict what Rav Kook would have written today about the situation, although it is known that he had warned of this possibility. Still, many of his followers act and write of a situation today in frames of reference identical to what Rav Kook wrote almost one hundred years ago. It need not matter that in Rav Kook’s time the secular were building, not destroying, the Jewish presence in the Land. It further need not matter that in Rav Kook’s time the secular were composing their own versions of the Passover Haggada or their own thoughts on Shavuot, whereas today they can be found either in the disco, on the beach or even in a foreign land for the Jewish festivals. Finally, it apparently need not matter to Rav Kook’s followers that today the religious Jewish settlers are amongst the most hated and vilified of the country’s populace whereas the original secular and religious pioneers found a common – Zionist – language, despite their great ideological differences.

Many of Rav Kook’s current followers tend to close their eyes in order to redeem today’s evils by dancing together with its perpetrators, a modern day version of the Sabbatian idea of abandoning all moral norms in order to touch the most sour and dangerous of ‘klippot’. They have lost all touch with any moral order and still insist that the entire nation is in redemptive mode. Perhaps they are correct on the most mystical of levels, but it is not a truth for day to day living. Torah, including two of its most illustrious interpreters, the holy Ari z’l and the Rav Kook, always recognized that certain boundaries must never be crossed.

Rav Kook once wrote that the redemption will come through unfettered love between all Jews that knows no bounds and is independent of the various ideologies prevalent amongst our people. This statement of Rav Kook is a favorite quote of his followers. But just as parents have such a love for their children, this does not mean that this love contradicts the need for education and sometimes punishment as well. To the contrary, punishing our youngsters when they are seriously out of line is prerequisite to true love for them. But this is missed by many of Rav Kook’s followers. To them, this love means no punishment and even an embracing of those that perpetrate such abhorrent acts as the physical expulsion of Jews from their homes for no reason at all except to satisfy American demands (in the case of Northern Samaria) or for the desire to set up a casino for corrupt politicians with business interests (in the case of the Northern Gaza Strip settlements). In this way, they hope to stifle the immoral trends of secular Zionism by showing them love despite the crossing of boundaries that by all accounts are crimes against humanity. This is a modern day version of Sabbatianism.

The new Sabbatians, rather than ordering their students to not participate in any way, shape, manner or form in any further cruelties while serving in the army, teach them to evict together with their fellow secular soldiers. This, despite the recognition by military experts in Israel and abroad, that it is a practical given that the forced eviction of Jews from their homes in Judea and Samaria will open the relinquished territory to almost unrestrained Hamas and Hizbollah attacks on the entire State of Israel. And this makes no mention of the basic violation of human rights inherent in evicting people from their homes. In other words, moral order has been lost upon those that would twist the teaching of Rav Kook, just as it was lost by Sabbatai Zevi and his followers. By adopting false Sabbatian mystical notions, they will end up endangering physically the entire country.

Even worse, their mystical basis of excusing any action by the Israeli government may lead to civil war. Just as with Sabbatai Zevi hundreds of years earlier, had the authorities used full force to stop his reckless Messianic aspirations, many less people would have gotten hurt when the lie was exposed. Today, by refusing to participate in government actions or apparatuses that consistently go against all Jewish and even Zionist principles, there may be a chance of stemming the tide before things get violent. There is a limit to what people are willing to suffer, be it through evictions or anti-religious legislation or other actions. To stem the tide now is to preempt violent confrontation. But again, false Messianic and mystical pretensions take the moral responsibility out of one’s hands and place it at the doorstep of God. This is not Judaism, but it is sure very close to Sabbatianism.

It is indeed telling that many of Rav Kook’s students have fought against the publishing of his harsher criticisms against secular Zionism and seem to only quote from his more positive and mystical treatises. They must know deep down that they are entering forbidden waters, that their lack of taking a stand against the immoral and often blatantly anti-Semitic acts of current Israeli secular society is a jump into dangerous Sabbatianism. And if they choose to continue to dance with the devil in order to release the Messiah from the throes of the evil ‘klippot’, as per Sabbatai Zevi and NOT as per Rav Kook, they will face the responsibility of sending the Jewish people into another disastrous spiral downwards.