Are Jews, anti-Semites, more united than they realize?

If you want to see the Shechinah in this world, then occupy yourself with Torat Eretz Yisroel.                                                                                                                                                                               Shochar Tov, Tehillim 105

Do Jews, and the haters of Jews, share a common — probably unconscious and not-realized — by either party– approach to how they think about and deal with the existential Jewish condition? That is, do ahavat Israel and seinat Israel ­ share similar philosophical foundations?

The Religious Zionist movement offers a clue, which is particularly apropos to consider this year. 2025 marks an important landmark in the movement — the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the Women’s Mizrachi Federation of America, a forerunner of AMIT.

The three tenets of the foundation of the contemporary Religious Zionist movement, which shape the way many believing Jews (excluding some members of the haredi a-Zionistic or anti-Zionistic community) think, and practice their relations with Judaism, have their roots in Jewish tradition. The tenets:

• Am Israel, the people and peoplehood of the Jewish community.
• Torat Israel, the theological concepts, dating back to Mount Sinai, which shape a Jew’s day-to-day behavior.
• Eretz Israel, the divinely promised homeland, whose sanctity and security have come under increasing fire in recent days.

They are based on this pattern:

• First, we, a goy, whose roots date back to Canaan, became an Am, a people with a common purpose when we made our exodus from slavery in ancient, paganistic Egypt.
• Then, standing at the foot of Har Sinai, we became an Am kodesh when we accepted the Torah, whose details and precepts were expounded upon during 40 years of wandering in the Sinai wilderness, before our ancestors entered …
• … the Promised Land, where we were to fulfill our communal destiny, and eventually, in various stages, gain sovereignty in our Divinely-promised borders.

These three focus on three defining aspects of Yehudut:

• Who are the people at the center of G-d’s covenant.
• What do they believe, and what do they do to act in accordance with it.
• Where do they do it.

Understanding this concept can answer the subsequent why, how and when questions that determine the quality of a Jew’s spiritual life. Questions that are especially relevant on Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel Independence Day, which is marked this year on Thursday, May 1.

This paradigm of three fundamental Jewish beliefs is not unique to Religious Zionism, but was developed by its leaders as a credo that consolidated in a single phrase (“Am Yisrael, b’Eretz Yisrael al pi Torat Yisrael”) the three long-established inseparable facets of Jewish identity. (One might read “Torah in the Land of Israel” as the “Torah of the Land of Israel.”)

Those three, ironically, provide a roadmap for the types of anti-Semitism, both historically and, to our sorrow, today, which have put Klal Israel in the crosshairs of the outside world.

That is the sequence in which we honored G-d’s pledges to us … and in which the hostile nations have attacked us. In other words, it reflects the sequence of patterns of which, according to historians of anti-Semitism, enemies of Jews (and of Judaism) have taken aim at us:

• Individual Jews or groups of Jews became targets. The The people are attacked.
• And the beliefs of Jews, based in the Torah, became targets. The Our credo is attacked.
• And the land of the Jews, Medinat Israel, has become the primary target of Jew haters. Anti-Zionism has, to a large degree, supplanted outright anti-Semitism. The Our country is attacked, both physically and verbally.

The prevailing brand of anti-Semitism is an outgrowth of this progression.

We are living in the era of the third category. While it is not fashionable, outside of unvarnished Jew-hating circles, to engage in acts or words of outright anti-Semitism, it is OK to do it in the guise of anti-Zionism.

The trio of Religious Zionism fundamental beliefs point to this end result.

In other words, the way we (or shapers of Religious Zionist thought) relate to each other, as objects of ahavah, parallel the behavior of the way that sinei Israel, haters of Jews, relate to Jews – as, no matter how we define ourselves, ethnic Jews, or as religious Jews, or as Zionistic Jews. (It is noteworthy that the three traits do not exactly follow the pattern of historical anti-Semitism that many experts say have predominated through the eons – first religious anti-Semitism, then political Zionism, then racial anti-Semitism. But no one disputes that, in whatever sequence, they are similar to the three readily identifiable forms of “the world’s oldest form of hatred” that have surfaced.)

A disconnect in any of the three results in a disconnect of all three, according to 18^th Century Rabbi Jacob Emden. Citing the sin of the Spies, he declared that the people’s rejecting of the Promised Land created an “imbalance” in Am Israel and Torat Israel.

The similarities between the two philosophical-historical strains, apparently unrelated and contradictory worldviews (loving Jews, or seeking their elimination), raise a question: which came first? Did one influence the other? Or, which seems to be the case, do both draw their philosophical and historical sources from a common independent set of verities, a common source?

In other words, are the three concepts built into G-d’s designs for us? Did the paradigm of types of animus towards Jews/Torah/Israel develop as part of G-d’s creation of His chosen people, just as the early shapers of religious Zionism find that the trio naturally reflects theological reality? Or do the three just happen to parallel each other? Do the movement’s beliefs serve as a measure-for-measure defense against the hatreds that confront us?

And is the historical pattern of anti-Semitism an equally inevitable reality?

A review of Jewish history suggests that it is. Which prepares us for the inevitable confrontation with sinah – we are forewarned. We know the dangers that Israel, and the defenders of Israel, are sure to face. And we know that G-d, Who has protected us through the millennia, will protect the land that He promised to us – before we became a people, before we accepted the Torah.

Are the three tenets inseparable? Do our enemies realize that attacking one amounts to an attack on all three, hence on Jewish unity? Is that, or just unshakable and unthinking instinct, their intent? Do they distinguish between attacking one of the pillars or the other? Or do they care – as long as they strike out at one of the targets?

And above all, how does an answer to these relationship help us to understand and deal with the enemies, both in the past and today, who challenge us as a religious and political nation? If we understand whence came the millennia-old hatred, how do we combat the modern-day manifestations?

The answers really don’t matter. We know that hate abounds. We know that we have to deal with it. But in an era when rabid opposition to Zionism (i.e., Eretz Israel) has seemed to replace blatant, outspoken anti-Semitism, an answer to this question seems nevertheless particularly apropos. On college campuses, in the media, at the U.N., etc.

History provides an insight.

Rabbi Doron Perez, executive chairman of the Mizrachi World Movement, discusses the origins of this three-headed premise in “The Jewish State: From Opposition to Opportunity” (Gefen, 2023). Citing various biblical and rabbinic precedents, especially the Tanach-based opinions of the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Perez explains the biblical roots of these historical strains of anti-Semitism. “The three types of antisemitism attack what the Gaon called the three pillars of holiness; Torah Judaism, the Jewish People, and Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.:

According to Rabbi Perez, the Torah offers the models of “Moabite spiritual enmity” (“opposition to Jewish values”), “Edomite physical destruction” (“opposition to Jewish nationality or race”), and “Philistine political denialism” (“opposition to Jewish governance and sovereignty in the Land of Israel.”)

All are ancient nations whose hostile feelings about the Jewish people have lasted through the centuries.

These three ancient peoples, the rabbi writes, “felt somehow threatened by Israel’s mere presence and proximity, as all three are archetypal enemies of Israel … their opposition parallels the three principles of holiness that encompass what the Jewish People and Judaism are about.”

This is reflected in the contemporary type of anti-Semitism, which often stems, in the Arab and Muslim communities, from support for the “Palestinian” people.

Rabbi Perez likens modern Palestinian nationalism, and its bloody attempts to eliminate the State of Israel, to the antagonism of ancient Philistines – people with putative Greek roots who assimilated with indigenous Canaanites, and are not related genetically to Arab Palestinians. “The unusual picture [about today’s Palestinian aspirations] that emerges is this,” Rabbi Perez writes – “Modern Palestinian nationalism has been less about self-determination and more about denying the right of others to self-determination. It has been less about their collective right to the land and more about rejecting any collective Jewish right. It has been about refusing any refusing any compromise to share sovereign control of the land in any way. It is a perplexing type of oppositional nationalism – not positively promoting oneself but negatively denying others.”

Sound familiar?

“The Philistines’ main spiritual function [was] to oppose the Jewish People’s claim to any form of sovereign presence” in the Promised Land, according to Rabbi Perez. Ditto for the Palestinians. “While not biological descendants at all, they are the spiritual heirs of the ancient biblical role so sharply defined by the Gaon of Vilna.”

The situation since October 7 is a constant reminder of this.

When we hear Palestinians and their advocates in the West rallying for “the right of return” to the land that G-d promised to Abraham, it should remind us of the ancient Philistines.

Are the Philistines still around?

We are!

As we celebrate Israel’s 77th anniversary this year, in an atmosphere of mounting hostility to the Jewish State and the Jewish people, it would do us well to keep in mind that today’s anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not purely modern phenomena, but have roots as old as the Torah – roots that traditional Jews, exemplified by the Religious Zionism movement, would recognize as foundations of their own beliefs.