I came across a book called the Dawn of Redemption. It's a Zionist work which tries to make the argument that the long awaited redemption has begun in the form of Medinat Yisrael. It's a translation of אילת השחר which was written by Yaakov Filber a student of Tzvi Yehuda Kook.
But the trouble begins on the first page, actually with the Table of Contents.
Section I - The Land of Israel.
א - The Holiness of the Land
ב - The Praises of Eretz Yisrael
ג - The Land and the Torah
etc.
Let me ask, is that what redemption is about? Is the essence of redemption that we are returning to the land or that we are returning to Ha-Shem? Why is the first section of this book all about the land?
What does the prophet have to say about redemption: "The world will be filled with the knowledge of HaShem as the waters cover up the ocean bed." (Habakuk 2:14)
What do we say in the Amidah: "Sound the great shofar for our freedom; raise a banner to gather our exiles, and bring us together from the four corners of the earth into our land. Blessed are You L-rd, who gathers the dispersed of His people Israel."
There we are are talking to Ha-Shem. He's the starting point. We ask Him to sound the shofar call for our freedom. What is that shofar? Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer, 31, tells us that it's one of the horns the ram that Avraham, in his service of Ha-Shem, sacrificed in place of Yitzchok. The other horn was sounded at Har Sinai when Ha-Shem revealed the Torah to us, that Torah we follow in service to Ha-Shem.
What is the purpose of this blowing of the shofar during the redemption?
"And it shall come to pass on that day, that a great shofar shall be sounded, and those lost in the land of Assyria and those exiled in the land of Egypt shall come and they shall prostrate themselves before the Lord on the holy mount in Jerusalem." (Isaiah 27:13)
It is blown so that we can come to the Temple Mount and prostate ourselves before Ha-Shem. We are not coming to the land. We are coming to Ha-Shem.
What is our freedom? It's to be free of golus so we can serve Him better. It's all about G-d and service of G-d. In the end, we will do it on the land, which is the setting for this service. The land is not the focus.
What do we say in the Aleinu:
"We therefore put our hope in You, Adonoy our God, to soon behold the glory of Your might in banishing idolatry from the earth, and the false gods will be utterly exterminated to perfect the world as the kingdom of Shadai. And all mankind will invoke Your Name, to turn back to You, all the wicked of the earth. They will realize and know, all the inhabitants of the world, that to You, every knee must bend, every tongue must swear [allegiance to You]. Before You, Adonoy, our God, they will bow and prostrate themselves, and to the glory of Your Name give honor. And they will all accept [upon themselves] the yoke of Your kingdom, and You will reign over them, soon, forever and ever. For the kingdom is Yours, and to all eternity You will reign in glory, as it is written in Your Torah: Adonoy will reign forever and ever. And it is said: And Adonoy will be King over the whole earth; on that day Adonoy will be One and His Name One."
There redemption means the elimination of idolatry, which is by definition a turning away from G-d, and a turning of all mankind to G-d.
By contrast, none of the forty or so chapter headings in this Zionistic book that's supposed to be about redemption mention G-d. The closest it comes is a chapter called The King's Palace, which again is all about the land.
And most importantly the book starts by talking about the land. The Chumash starts with G-d. "In the beginning, G-d created the Heavens and the Earth." Where you start says much about you. Here it's the land.
Wanna know why? I'll get right to it if you haven't figured it out yourself. Because that's the deity to these people. Their religion is built around the land. When they say that it's holy, they mean that it's magical. The sentiment is similar to how a druid regards trees.
This is why Zionists are willing to die for the land, because it's their deity.
Ironically, most people in Israel have little to do with the land. Most people live in urban areas on concrete. That's why Section IV is all about the medinah, the army, and the alleged miracles that surround them. The early Zionists were interested in the land. But that didn't hold up too well both because it's empty and because it's impractical. So their ideological descendants focus on institutions.
The middle chapters are about the nation.
The nation is special. It's magically special. It's not special because it serves the Creator. It's just special. It's different. It's extraordinary. This is how the chapter on the nation begins.
Idolatry is always polytheistic. The nation is the second deity. If you want to say that the book casually mentions that G-d is involved in some way in making the land and the people special and magical, that doesn't help as the Rambam explains:
During the times of Enosh, mankind made a great mistake, and the wise men of that generation gave thoughtless counsel. Enosh himself was one of those who erred.
Their mistake was as follows: They said that G‑d created stars and spheres with which to control the world. He placed them on high and treated them with honor, making them servants who minister before Him. Accordingly, it is fitting to praise and glorify them and to treat them with honor. [They perceived] this to be the will of G‑d, Blessed be He, that they magnify and honor those whom He magnified and honored, just as a king desires that the servants who stand before him be honored. Indeed, doing so is an expression of honor to the king.
After conceiving of this notion, they began to construct temples to the stars and offer sacrifices to them. They would praise and glorify them with words, and prostrate themselves before them, because by doing so they would—according to their false conception—be fulfilling the will of G‑d.
This was the essence of the worship of false gods, and this was the rationale of those who worshipped them. They would not say that there is no other god except for this star. (Rambam, introduction to the laws of idolatry)
No single expression of idolatry can stay around forever because it becomes boring. You start to see through it. So today we don't have star worship. For the goyim, science made that impossible so science became the idol. For troubled secular Jews, there's that and celebrity worship and Ivy League college worship, all kinds of gods. But for many Jews who see themselves (incorrectly) as religious, there's worship of the land and the people but only those people who worship the land (the rest are disdained). And then there's the worship of the state that the people formed, with violence, on the land. That's the remainder of the book, the magical wars and the magical redemption that's happening gradually, that is to say, without G-d (perish the thought).
This book, like every one in its genre, goes point by point to eradicate principles of Judaism such as G-d being the focal point, mitzvos being our way to serve Him, redemption requiring teshuvah, the danger of sin on the land, the edict against forcing the redemption or taking the land by force, and the pivotal role of Moshiach.
What they are saying here is that they don't need G-d or His Torah or His Messiah. We, the mysteriously magical people, will take matters into our own hands. The land, the people, and the state institutions become the deities. And the whole concept of the people and the land being special because of the service of the people to G-d via mitzvos, justice, and holy action on the land, that is stripped away. It's like the stars in the times of Enosh. They became the focus. They became not the creations of the the Deity, but the deity.
The attitude is captured by this ridiculous meme:
And what are we left with? We are left with a secular fascist Jewish supremist state that is capable of mass murder because it has divorced itself from all principles of Judaism and even humanity. Spirituality has been sucked out of Jewish life. Even the basic human principle of "Thou shall not kill" has been lost. The goyim are outraged by what's going on in Israel and the country's assault on democracy and humanity. Zionists have become like the idol worshippers that gentiles used to be.
It's all in this book. It's like red flags in a shiduch. It's all there for us to see.
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