A strange distortion of Judaism has developed in the West Bank
The redemption of captives held for ransom takes precedence over sustaining and clothing the poor. You do not find a mitzvah greater than the redemption of captives, for captivity is in the same category as famine, drought, or exposure, and one stands in danger to one’s life. (Maimonides The Mishneh Torah , Laws and Gifts for the Poor 8:10)
A very strange form of Judaism has been developing in the West Bank for many years. It is the Judaism of Joshua, of conquest, control and forced emigration, not the Judaism of the prophets of the Bible or the rabbis, which taught and preached a completely different Judaism that was normative in Israel and the world until lately.
This is a Judaism of vengeance and revenge. Its leaders are well known. Some of them are in the super extremist government formed by Bibi Netanyahu 2 ½ years ago to keep himself in power, and keep the rest of us as hostages to him and his autocratic whims: Betzalel Smotrich (former anti-government rabble-rouser from the far-right), Minister of Finance and Minister of Ethnic Cleansing in the Defense Ministry; Itamar Ben Gvir, (another rabble rouser and anarchist from the West Bank), who is Minister of National Insecurity and Racism (which used to be the Police ministry), Orit Struck from Hebron, who is Minister of Hatred and Revenge, which actually has the name of “Minister of Settlements and National Missions”; and there are many more with names you have never heard of and don’t want to hear about who are promoting this mutation of normative Judaism and Zionism in many ways throughout the political system of Israel. These “leaders” didn’t come out of nowhere. They used to be in the opposition, where they attacked the Israel government for decades and protested in the streets against any policy that sought peace and coexistence with other Jews or with Palestinians. Now they are in charge, thanks to Bibi’s despotism and desperate desire to stay in power.
Moreover, the Judaism that these people practice politically comes from some very extremist rabbis who have written some radical monographs and books, and who have taught in fanatic West Bank yeshivahs for a long time. One of the most famous of these rabbis is Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, an American-born Israeli rabbi affiliated with the Chabad movement. He is currently the president of a number of extremist educational institutions in the radical right-wing community of Yizhar in the West Bank.
According to Professor Motti Inbari (Haaretz, May 24, 2023) who has written extensively about this phenomenon:
Yitzhak Ginsburgh, who is 78, was born in the United States and moved to Israel at a young age. He became religiously observant. Basically, he belongs to circles of the Chabad Hasidic movement, but the students and groups that are his followers do not necessarily belong to Chabad, but rather to what’s known as “hilltop youth.” They are the young generation of settlers in the territories, who are in revolt against the worldview of their parents and grandparents – those who actually established the settlements. What distinguishes Rabbi Ginsburgh’s doctrine is the radical theocratic worldview that emerges from his speeches and writings.
Ginsburgh has written dozens of books and pamphlets that have heavily influenced thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, including many of the so-called “hill-top youth” who have learned with him and from him over the years. According to Inbari, Ginsburgh’s views advocate resistance to the Jewish state:
Ginsburgh maintains that in a situation in which the State of Israel is effectively attacking the Land of Israel, loyalty must go to the latter, not the former. He doesn’t believe in change “from within,” through such democratic mechanisms as elections, legislation and so forth. He preaches disengagement from the state, entrenchment in a religious enclave and deployment for the moment of truth, at which time it will be possible to seize control of the state by force. From the outside.
One of Ginsburgh’s most famous essays is called “Baruch Hagever,”(“Blessed be the man” or alternatively “Baruch the Hero”), which is a treatise about the massacre of 29 Muslim worshippers perpetrated by [extremist settler] Baruch Goldstein in 1994. In the essay, he presents two central ideas that are relevant to our time. One is the notion of the supremacy of the Jewish race, the other is the theology of revenge. According to Inbari, these ideas are reflected in Ginsburg’s writings in two ways:
In the wake of publishing the article in 1995, Ginsburgh was placed in administrative detention [incarceration without trial] for 21 days, but that was the end of it. In “Baruch Hagever,” he maintains that Goldstein’s action was praiseworthy, because Jewish blood is worthier than gentile blood. According to kabbalistic conceptions, the Jews are above nature, and therefore, in a situation in which a gentile intends to kill a Jew, the gentile must be liquidated in order to protect the Jew.
In Ginsburgh’s worldview, revenge has a special value, a vitality of its own, and God esteems it. If you behave vengefully, but in the sanctification of God’s name, and your blood is shed – as was the blood of Baruch Goldstein, who lost his life in that incident – God will be obligated to avenge you. Goldstein committed the murder for God, and now God will intervene and avenge Goldstein’s blood. That is the viewpoint, that is the rationale.
Ginzburgh’s teachings—and the teachings of other West Bank radical rabbis — are evident in the statements of some of Israel’s most radically right (read: wrong) political leaders such as Smotrich and Ben Gvir. For example, in March 2023, Smotrich called for wiping out the West Bank town of Harare, after the pogrom by settlers in a Palestinian town, following the killing of two Jews the day before.
There are other rabbis who support these ideas. In 2009, Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, who head the “Od Yosef Chai” Yeshivah in the West Bank, wrote a book that permits murder. This book –which was endorsed by Rabbi Ginsburgh–is called Torat HaMelech (The King’s Torah), and it is a theoretical and practical manual on how Jewish law can justify hatred and violence. This shocking book received official rabbinic endorsement by prominent orthodox rabbis in Israel including Rabbi Dov Lior, who is employed by the State as the rabbi of Kiryat Arba, the home of Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, also a settler. Among other things, the authors wrote:
There are times in which we will want to harm the innocent from the outset. And their presence and their killing are actually beneficial and helpful to us. For example, harming the infants from the wicked king’s family, who are currently innocent; their killing helps us to harm and pain the king so that he will stop fighting us.
The writings of these outrageous rabbis (I prefer the term outrageous to “orthodox”) have become the basic texts which are behind rampant settler violence in recent months and weeks in the West Bank. They form the theological basis of this mutation in contemporary Judaism which we can call “Settler Judaism”. While not all settlers in the West Bank subscribe to this, many thousands of them do, especially Ben Gvir, Smotrich and their followers, the “hilltop youth” and other young radical Kahanist Jews who can be found in legal and illegal outposts all over the West Bank. And many of the other hundreds of thousands of settlers in the area support this tacitly and silently. One rarely hears objections by other rabbis and settler leaders to these ideas and actions (except when they cross “red lines” by attacking IDF soldiers, as they have done in recent weeks).
By the way, Smotrich and Ben Gvir, who are students of these rabbis, are the very same politicians who are opposing the current plans for a cease-fire and end to the Gaza war, which may be announced in Washington DC this week. Among other things, they have shown no sympathy for the plight of the hostages in Gaza, despite the fact that a central obligation of Judaism is to redeem hostages.
This strange distortion of Judaism is a moral stain on Judaism, the Jewish People, and the state of Israel. It ought to be rejected by most Jews in Israel and the world, but unfortunately since it has been “normalized” and part of the government, there is far too much acceptance of it.
This phenomenon has to be curbed. One way that it will less influential in Israeli society is when Bibi and his extremist coalition partners will lose in a big way in the next elections in Israel, which hopefully will come well before October 2026. Not only must these dangerous politicians who come from this distorted and dangerous Jewish world view be rejected by the overwhelming majority of Israel’s citizens, but their form of Judaism should be repudiated in no uncertain terms by more moderate and compassionate rabbis from Modern Orthodoxy and real religious Zionism in Israel. Authentic religious Zionism should have a completely different and inclusive vision of the minorities within our midst and how to reach out to them.
Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:19)
