What Is Zionism For?

Mashiach ben Yosef, Mashiach ben David, and the Unfinished Work of Religious Zionism

My friend Adam Louis-Klein and I have been studying the book Kol HaNevuah—The Voice of Prophecy—together.

It is the great philosophical work of Rabbi David Cohen, the Nazir, one of Rav Abraham Isaac Kook’s closest students. The book makes a fascinating argument about Jewish philosophy itself: Western philosophy, the Nazir argues, has largely privileged the visual. It seeks clarity, definition, form—the object that can be held steadily before the mind.

Jewish consciousness, by contrast, is fundamentally auditory.

Revelation comes as a voice.

Shema Yisrael.

Listen.

Adam and I can only study Jewish philosophy for so long before we inevitably start arguing about Zionism.

Recently, Adam brought up one of Rav Kook’s most fascinating texts: his 1904 eulogy following the death of Theodor Herzl, generally known as HaMisped B’Yerushalayim, “The Lamentation in Jerusalem.”

Interestingly, Rav Kook never actually mentions Herzl by name.

Instead, he talks about two messiahs.

Mashiach ben Yosef.

And Mashiach ben David.

And that distinction has gotten under my skin.

Yosef and David

The idea of Mashiach ben Yosef is itself post-biblical. One of its foundational rabbinic appearances is in the Talmud, Sukkah 52a, which interprets the mourning described in Zechariah 12:10 as mourning for Mashiach ben Yosef, who has been killed.

Over the centuries, Jewish tradition developed an elaborate two-Messiah schema: a preliminary messiah associated with Joseph, followed by the final Davidic redeemer.

Rav Kook does something fascinating with this tradition.

He reads Yosef and David as forces operating within Jewish history.

In Rav Kook’s telling, Mashiach ben Yosef represents the restoration of the material and national life of the Jewish people.

A people needs a body.

It needs land.

It needs an economy.

It needs political institutions.

It needs the capacity to defend itself.

It needs agriculture and technology and culture and language and all the ordinary structures through which a people exists in history.

That was the astonishing accomplishment of secular Zionism.

Herzl and the early Zionists might have understood themselves as engaged in a modern nationalist project. Rav Kook saw something happening underneath that project. Secular Zionists, whether they knew it or not, were restoring the body of Israel.

They were doing the work of Yosef.

Adam’s argument, as I understand it, is that this is precisely why secular Zionism can’t be the end of the story.

Yosef isn’t David.

Mashiach ben David represents the spiritual vocation of the Jewish people: Torah, holiness, the distinctive religious life of Israel, and ultimately the purpose toward which Jewish national existence is directed.

And so, Adam argues, perhaps this is a moment when we need to lean into Religious Zionism rather than away from it.

Secular Zionism accomplished something extraordinary. It restored Jewish national existence.

But secular nationalism cannot finally answer the question:

What is Jewish sovereignty for?

For that, Adam suggests, we need David.

I think that is exactly the right question.

I’m less certain that contemporary Religious Zionism is the answer.

Because I find myself wondering:

Is contemporary Religious Zionism actually Mashiach ben David?

Or is it sometimes Mashiach ben Yosef masquerading as Mashiach ben David?

What Is Mashiach ben David Supposed to Do?

This becomes much more interesting if we stop treating “secular” as synonymous with Yosef and “religious” as synonymous with David.

Look again at the categories.

Land is Yosef.

Sovereignty is Yosef.

Political power is Yosef.

Military strength is Yosef.

Economic flourishing is Yosef.

National self-assertion is Yosef.

Those things don’t suddenly become David because the people pursuing them wear kippot.

So what would David actually look like?

The biblical tradition gives us some clues.

Isaiah describes the Davidic figure:

“The spirit of YHVH shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength, a spirit of knowledge and awe of YHVH.”
— Isaiah 11:2

And the test of this Davidic ruler is profoundly ethical:

“With righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the humble of the earth.”
— Isaiah 11:4

And where does Isaiah’s vision lead?

“They shall neither hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of YHVH as the waters cover the sea.”
— Isaiah 11:9

The Davidic horizon isn’t simply successful Jewish sovereignty.

It is a transformation of what human beings do with power.

Rambam’s Messiah

Maimonides is especially useful here because his Messiah is about as concrete as one can imagine.

This is no disembodied metaphor for universal peace.

In Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melakhim u’Milchamot 11:1, Rambam begins with an extraordinarily concrete Messiah:

“The King Messiah will arise and restore the kingdom of David to its former sovereignty. He will build the Temple and gather the dispersed of Israel.”

Rambam goes on to describe a Davidic king immersed in Torah and mitzvot who compels Israel to follow Torah, fights the wars of God, builds the Temple and gathers the exiles. (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melakhim 11:1, 4)

This is a robustly particularist Jewish messianism.

And yet look where Rambam takes it.

Once the Messiah has accomplished these things, Rambam says:

“He will then improve the entire world to serve God together.”

Rambam connects this with Zephaniah:

“For then I will transform the peoples to a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of YHVH and serve God with one accord.”
— Zephaniah 3:9; cited in Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melakhim 11:4

And then, near the end of the Mishneh Torah, Rambam makes an extraordinary clarification.

“The Sages and Prophets did not yearn for the Messianic era in order that they might rule over the whole world, or dominate the gentiles, or be exalted by the nations, or in order that they might eat, drink and celebrate. Rather, their aspiration was to be free to involve themselves in Torah and its wisdom.”
— Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melakhim 12:4

And the final image with which Rambam ends the entire Mishneh Torah is this:

“In that era there will be neither famine nor war, neither envy nor competition…. The occupation of the entire world will be solely to know God.”

And then Rambam returns to Isaiah:

“For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of YHVH as the waters cover the sea.”
— Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melakhim 12:5, citing Isaiah 11:9

That is an awfully high bar for Mashiach ben David.

Which means that if we want to identify something as Davidic, we have to ask more than whether it is religious.

We have to ask what religion does to power.

Does holiness merely sanctify Jewish power?

Or does holiness transform our understanding of what power is for?

Does David simply tell Yosef that his army and his land and his state are sacred?

Or does David ask Yosef:

Now that you have a body, what kind of soul will inhabit it?

Which Religious Zionism?

And this is where the argument gets more complicated, because there is no single Religious Zionism.

Consider Rav Yehuda Amital.

Amital was hardly an outsider throwing stones at Zionism. He survived the Holocaust, fought in Israel’s War of Independence, founded Yeshivat Har Etzion and became one of the major Religious Zionist thinkers of his generation.

Yet Amital increasingly resisted the tendency to identify the unfolding political history of the State of Israel straightforwardly with a knowable messianic timetable.

His Religious Zionism emphasized moral responsibility, human welfare, Am Yisrael, and the kind of society Jews were creating.

Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, his partner at Har Etzion, represented another version of this Religious Zionism: intensely committed to Torah, Jewish sovereignty and the State of Israel while insisting upon moral complexity, human dignity and ethical responsibility.

For Amital and Lichtenstein, the religious meaning of Jewish sovereignty could not be exhausted by possessing sovereignty.

The question was what kind of society Jews would create with it.

Then there is the enormously influential trajectory running through Rav Kook’s son, Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook, Merkaz HaRav and eventually Gush Emunim.

After 1967, this school increasingly interpreted Jewish possession and settlement of the biblical Land of Israel as itself a stage in the redemptive process. Students of Rav Zvi Yehuda became central to Gush Emunim, and settlement in Judea and Samaria acquired explicitly messianic significance.

The land itself became increasingly central.

Settlement became redemptive action.

Territorial compromise could therefore become something more profound than a political disagreement. It could become interference with redemption itself.

And these ideas have descendants in contemporary Religious Zionist politics.

Consider figures like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Their politics are very different from Amital’s and Lichtenstein’s, but what interests me here isn’t whether their politics are “good” or “bad,” nor whether they are authentically religious.

I’m interested in the theology.

Because sovereignty, settlement, territorial control and Jewish political power carry enormous religious significance in this strand of Religious Zionism.

But viewed through Rav Kook’s own Yosef-David distinction, something strange happens.

Settlement is Yosef.

Territory is Yosef.

Sovereignty is Yosef.

Military power is Yosef.

National self-assertion is Yosef.

These things may be important.

They may even be sacred.

But they are precisely the kinds of things Rav Kook associates with the restoration of Israel’s national body.

So what makes their pursuit Davidic?

Gush Emunim understood its mission as extending far beyond ordinary nationalism, toward the redemption of Israel and ultimately the world.

But its concrete program placed extraordinary emphasis upon sovereignty and settlement of the Land.

Perhaps that is David transforming Yosef.

But there is another possibility worth considering.

Perhaps sometimes it is Yosef speaking in David’s voice.

The national project remains centered on territory, sovereignty and power.

It simply acquires religious language.

Yosef puts on a kippah.

Why Are We Still Praying for Zion?

Which brings me to another question Adam and I keep circling.

Why are we still praying for Zion?

Every day, in the Avodah blessing of the traditional Amidah, we pray:

V’techezena eineinu b’shuvcha l’Tzion b’rachamim.

“May our eyes behold Your return to Zion in compassion.”
— Amidah, Retzeh/Avodah blessing

But I’ve been to Jerusalem.

There are direct flights.

There is a Jewish state.

There is a government.

There is an army.

There are universities and hospitals and highways and high-tech companies and tax authorities.

If returning to Zion simply meant restoring Jewish political sovereignty in the geographical Land of Israel, then perhaps it is time to remove those prayers from the siddur.

Mission accomplished.

Except we haven’t.

Because Zion has never been only a physical place.

Zion is also a spiritual state.

And here I sometimes think Zionists become oddly obsessed with peshat.

Judaism has never read its sacred language only literally.

Egypt is Egypt.

And Egypt is Mitzrayim, the narrow place.

Pharaoh is Pharaoh.

And Pharaoh is also the hardened place within us.

The Exodus is an event in our people’s history.

And the Mishnah tells us:

“In every generation a person is obligated to see oneself as though one personally went forth from Egypt.”
— Mishnah Pesachim 10:5

Jerusalem is Jerusalem.

And the rabbis can also speak of Yerushalayim shel matah, the Jerusalem below, and Yerushalayim shel ma’alah, the Jerusalem above. In Taanit 5a, Rabbi Yochanan reads Psalm 122:3 to suggest a mysterious correspondence between the earthly and heavenly Jerusalems.

So why, when we arrive at Zion, should all those other levels of Jewish reading suddenly disappear?

Zion is a place on a map.

And Zion is a world in which justice and holiness dwell together.

We have returned to Zion.

And we are still desperately waiting to return to Zion.

Both can be true.

Religious Nationalism or Religious Civilization?

This is also why I resist describing Judaism as “religious nationalism.”

Adam and I agree on something fundamental: Judaism is not simply a religion in the modern Western sense.

We are a people.

We have languages, land, memory, law, literature, music, food, ritual, kinship, history, argument and civilization.

Mordecai Kaplan’s famous formulation still strikes me as extraordinarily useful:

Judaism is the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people.

Every word matters.

Jewish people.

Yes.

Civilization.

Absolutely.

Religious.

Yes.

And:

Evolving.

An evolving religious civilization is different from religious nationalism.

Nationalism tends to make the flourishing and perpetuation of the nation a central good.

A religious civilization has to keep asking what the nation exists for.

And Judaism has been asking that question from the beginning.

God tells Abraham:

“All the families of the earth shall be blessed through you.”
— Genesis 12:3

Torah repeatedly commands Israel to care for the stranger:

“You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
— Deuteronomy 10:19; cf. Exodus 22:20, Leviticus 19:33–34

Isaiah dreams of a day when:

“Torah shall go forth from Zion, and the word of YHVH from Jerusalem.”

And then:

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
— Isaiah 2:3–4

And Rambam ends his monumental codification of Jewish law with a humanity devoted to the knowledge of God. (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Melakhim 12:5)

Jewish particularity and Jewish universalism are not easily resolved.

They live in tension.

Maybe they are supposed to.

And maybe something about that tension lies inside Rav Kook’s relationship between Yosef and David.

Listening for David

Which brings me back to the Nazir.

Perhaps there is something wonderfully appropriate about Adam and me having this argument while studying a book devoted to the proposition that Jewish consciousness begins in listening.

Because the temptation of sovereignty is visual.

Here is the border.

Here is the flag.

Here is the army.

Here is the settlement.

Here is the Temple Mount.

Here is the land.

Here is the map.

Look.

We are home.

But the prophetic question is auditory.

What do you hear?

Do you hear the widow?

Do you hear the orphan?

Do you hear the stranger?

Do you hear the Palestinian who also calls this land home?

Do you hear the voices within Judaism that challenge your certainty?

Do you hear the kol demamah dakah—the “still, small voice,” or perhaps more literally the “sound of sheer silence”—that Elijah encounters at Horeb? (I Kings 19:12)

Maybe Mashiach ben Yosef gives the Jewish people a body.

Maybe that body was desperately needed.

Maybe Zionism accomplished something genuinely miraculous by rebuilding it.

But Mashiach ben David asks a different question:

What are we going to do with this body now that we have it?

Isaiah gives one answer.

Rambam gives another.

Rav Kook gives another.

Amital and Lichtenstein tried to give answers from within Religious Zionism itself.

And those answers suggest that the movement from Yosef to David cannot simply mean more territory, more sovereignty, more power, more Jewish control—with more Torah attached to it.

If David is really David, something has to happen to Yosef.

Power has to become responsible to something beyond itself.

Particularity has to open toward something larger.

The body has to discover what it has a soul for.

Perhaps, then, the great unfinished project of Zionism is no longer simply getting the Jewish people back to Zion.

Perhaps it is discovering what Zion actually means.