Tisha Be’Av: The Zealots Are Winning Again
As the day of Tisha Be’Av approaches, Jews around the world will engage in historical and spiritual reflections, which carry little meaning if they do not lead to practical action. Sure, the stories about Jerusalem’s destruction carry great lessons about the need to improve our character, be less divided, and be kinder to one another, but they also carry the horrifying truth: a sovereign Jerusalem can be destroyed.
Nobody believed that to be true before the destruction of the First Temple; no one thought that to be true before the destruction of the Second Temple, but there it was, it happened. If we do not believe that is a possibility right now, we too will be repeating the mistake of those generations, which later became known as “Dor Hachurban”, the generation of destruction.
Listing the causes for Jerusalem’s destruction, the famous Talmudic section telling the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza (Gittin 55b), cites a verse in Mishlei as the common denominator for all reasons leading to Jerusalem’s destruction. “Fortunate is the man who is always afraid, but he who hardens his heart will fall into evil.” (Mishlei 28, 14).
Let us begin with our reality. While there are many Israeli achievements to celebrate, the fact is that since October 7th, close to three thousand Jews have been killed for being Jewish. That is an astronomical toll we should never accept as normal. From victims of October 7th, brave soldiers of the IDF killed in combat, to the victims of missiles and rockets, that number is an unspeakable tragedy. Thousands more have been injured, and many thousands more souls have not returned as they were from combat; some have taken their own lives.
Thousands of homes in Israel have been destroyed or severely damaged, and many have lost their livelihoods. As a religious zionist who sees Shivat Tzion and the rebuilding of the land of Israel as a miracle and an ideal, seeing more than 80,000 Israelis leave Israel, with another staggering 73% of Israeli workers are considering “relocation” since October 7th, is also a Churban– a destruction to be lamented.
In the diaspora, things are not that simple either: sky-high antisemitism unparalleled in its intensity since the Holocaust, violent attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions, and a growing societal acceptance of antisemitism. Hate against us has been normalized. In many cases, it has even been rewarded. There are no indications that this hatred and isolation will subside any time soon.
To address these real crises, we must begin by openly discussing our old-new reality. In the period preceding the destruction of the First Temple and Second Temple, we silenced those who portrayed things as they were and penalized those who questioned the status quo. We cannot repeat that mistake.
When Herzl and other zionist leaders felt the storms coming over Europe, they did not cower in fear. They felt the ground shaking under the feet of European Jews and did something. They went on to hold conferences, think of solutions, recruit the best and brightest minds of the generation, and create countless organizations that later were all woven into what became the miracle we call Israel.
That is not what we are doing.
Let us begin with our leadership. Turning to the Talmudic story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza and the destruction of Jerusalem, it is hard not to see the similarity between the silence of the rabbis as part of the destruction then and the silence of rabbis and communal leaders today. While today’s silence is not the silence of looking at someone being humiliated in public and giving that silent consent, it is still silence.
While many rabbis, organizations, and community leaders understandably and rightfully choose not to discuss divisive topics at these times in which we need our unity more than ever, others are simply afraid to talk — even about things we must discuss. Why? Simply put, too many rabbis and Jewish community leaders today are afraid to talk. They will tell you in private what they think, they will point out what is seriously problematic about how things are going for us as a people, but they won’t say it in public.
I don’t blame them.
The price to be paid for expressing opinions that deal with the hard truths we must confront is often high. With the prevalence of social media, rabbis and leaders who speak out open themselves to online abuse, professional consequences, and bad-faith attempts to misrepresent what they have said.
In the United States, large Jewish organizations and modern orthodox rabbis–a group that has historically been outspoken on matters of day-to-day life, current events, and orthodox public policy–are visibly silent on many of these pressing issues. Unlike the British Board of Jewish Deputies or the Chief Rabbi of England, American leadership is all too silent.
Crushed between modern orthodoxy’s shrinking numbers, wanting to toe the line with the demographically advantageous Charedi community, and the rise of the Israeli brand of nationalist Chardal (Charedi Dati Le’umi), moderate rabbis and organizations find themselves unable to speak. While many moderate rabbis choose silence in the name of unity in time of war, the Ben Gvir and Kahanist factions of our people have not. From unprecedented Temple Mount practices, unprecedented violence from hitop youth extremists, and (yes, this is real) talk about a biblical conquest of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, for them, the time since October 7th only expanded their niche. They will go to the New Yorker, to CNN, and to Piers Morgan and put their niche agenda out there at the expense of the rest of us.
Those who do not preach these niche opinons must remain with the generic messages. Want to share bombastic nationalistic talk and reassure the Jewish people that everything is just fine, that all is good? Great.
Have something difficult to share? Have a concern, think that our people are not headed in a great direction? Think about whether there’s something we can change internally to stop that? You better remain silent. Speak out, and there will be a price to pay.
Like the zealots at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, today’s online trolls, anonymous accounts, and outright cyberbullies are there to make sure the price is there to be paid. Leaders with oratory and moral greatness similar to those American Jewry saw fifty years ago do exist today as well. So why have we been stumbling with little guidance? Because someone is there to make them pay a price. So they remain silent. Who wants to endure the indignity of being dragged through the mud by internet trolls or those who would label you as a traitor after you dedicated your life to the Jewish community? Clearly, no one.
As was the case at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, the price for extremists hijacking much of our discourse brings a price that we all pay. Yes, international institutions like the UN or the ICC, much of the media, and the TikTok generation are rigged against us, but it didn’t have to be this bad.
What if fewer IDF soldiers serving in Gaza shared images of themselves smiling outside burning houses, doing funny videos that can be taken out of context while at war, or sharing other highly regrettable and damaging content that is then amplified by all of our enemies? What if we stood with Israel’s right to defend itself, but called on soldiers and the army to understand how those images reverberate around the world and are used by our enemies? What if we made it very clear that the few among us who share on social media their hallucinatory ideas for conquering Syria, Lebanon, and other highly damaging ideas shared widely by our enemies to misrepresent us all?
What if religious zionist rabbis in the US conveyed with urgency to our counterparts in Israel how Minister Amichai Elihau, who said nuking all of Gaza is an option, or that we should “wipe out Gaza” and make it Jewish is being amplified by all of our enemies? What if we made it much clearer that Ben Gvir and his destructive behavior are not things we can consider a legitimate part of the Zionist movement?
The biased and antisemitic ICC ruling against Israel is not filled with quotes from Ha’aretz or some far-left-wing Israeli professor; they are filled with quotes from members of Israel’s current government. What if we did more to make clear that those stances are both immoral and extraordinarily harmful to us all? What if we helped create a discourse that does not allow such rhetoric to remain part of our mainstream politics?
What would happen if Religious Zionist in the diaspora could convey in the most urgent terms to religious Zionist rabbis in Israel how every graffiti, arson, murder, and de facto pogrom carried out by the hilltop youth (who are not that young anymore) are immoral and devastating Israel’s legitimacy around the world? The science is there; I have done it. But for the most part, we can’t do that, because we are afraid.
If our moderates spoke out more fiercely, we would still face many challenges, albeit fewer. We would still be having disagreements, but we would have lost far fewer young Jews to the poison of anti-Zionism.
In 1994, after Baruch Goldstein’s heinous terrorist attack on Muslims worshiping in Me’arat Hamachpela in Hebron, Rabbi Ahron Lichteinstein Zt”l, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, did the most obvious thing that every Jewish organization in the diaspora knew it had to do: he strongly condemned this heinous attack.
In response, Rabbi Lichteinstein got this letter from Roshei Yeshiva of Hesder Yeshivas (published in Tradition here). They wrote to Rav Lichteinstein: “As is well known, your honor supports the political process (The Oslo Accords) and all that accompanies it, which includes, if even only de facto, the legitimization in the eyes of the entire world of the arch-terrorist (Yasser Arafat), who has spiled the blood of Jews and others like water, and the terrorist ideology he represents, thereby causing a terrible and awful desecration of God’s name, a hillul Hashem nora ve-ayom, and indescribable damage to the Jewish people everywhere. Therefore, although it is clear to us that your honor’s intentions are for the sake of Heaven, his words in this matter are not to be heard. For where there is desecration of God’s name, one does not grant due respect to sages.”
Having seen thousands of rabbinic responsa and discussions, never have I encountered a response so grotesque. One in which one of the greatest minds of the Yeshiva world of the time was simply told he should move aside and be quiet.
Sadly, the unforgivable message of telling Rav Ahron Lichteinstein that “his words on this matter are not to be heard” has not only dominated Religious Zionism inside Israel, but now also the reality of religious zionism in the diaspora.
Indeed, Rav Lichtenstein’s students from the Gush are serving in schools and communities throughout the diaspora, just as Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai’s students were found throughout Jerusalem on the eve of the destruction of the Second Temple. Still, the zealots have taken over public discourse. No, they will not burn your food warehouses like they did back then, but they will find a way to silence and malign those who speak out against them. We cannot accept this as the new normal.
Zionism was born out of the idea that sitting and lamenting our difficult situation is just not going to solve any of our problems, but that there is something we could and should do about it. The solutions were not just slogans like “make Aliya” or “we should teach them a lesson”; they included the most thoughtful conversations about what a Jewish state should look like, what its economic model should be, and how we should tackle the challenges of being Jewish in a hostile world.
We must refuse the temptation to lament antisemitism and the unprecedented hate for Israel and accept it as our reality. It is time for us to get up and ask ourselves what we can do to confront it. If there are indeed things we can do differently internally — and there are plenty — then we should make those changes.
As we sit and lament the destruction of Tisha Be’Av, we ask ourselves what we would have done differently to stop what our tradition teaches us was a preventable tragedy. Yes, abandoning divisiveness – sinat chinam – is a major part of that. But had we lived back then, it would not have been enough. Making sure that our nation is not kidnapped by reckless zealots who believe that Rome is just a minor threat, that focusing only on Temple Mount is what will save us, and that moderate rabbis are the enemies from within, all hallmarks of Ben Gvirism, are also vital to our survival.
As we lament the Churban and exile on Tisha Be’Av, and as we still have not come close to recovering from the Churban and devastation of October 7th, let us commit ourselves to healing, rebuilding, and ensuring that no further destruction befalls us again.
Menachem Begin famously said about the modern-day return to Zion: “We have not returned with the merit of power, but with the power of merit–lo bizchut ha-ko’ach, ella be’ko’ach hazchut”. Let us focus on rebuilding our merit, our ability to convey a sophisticated and thoughtful message to the world, and ensure that we are once again a light to the nations, with a clear and powerful message that resonates with all.
