Aggression & Defense as Revolutionary Challenges.

Early in the 1940s, speaking at one of the kibbutzim in the Valley of Yizra'el, then considered the exemplar of Jewish settlement in Palestine, he called the entire valley a huge cemetery - referring thereby to the extremely low birth-rate in the region at the time. His listeners considered him a crank. Today, few people would deny the critical significance of the demographic factor for the future of the Jewish state. During the late 1930s & the 1940s Yeshayahu Leibowitz was preoccupied with the inability of the rabbinical establishment to appreciate the halakhic implications of the Zionist effort & had been active in organizing a company of religiously observant people within the Hagganah, the Jewish self-defense organization, which eventually became the nucleus of the Israel Defense Force (IDF).

At the tome, observant Jews found it difficult to integrate directly into the Hagganah organization because their insistence on observing the Sabbath brought them into conflict with the command. However, it soon became evident that military activity, even within the ranks of the observant, raised difficult halakhic problems resulting from unprecedented situations ...

Rabbinic authorities tended to shy away from taking a stand: they seemed to hint that religious Jews might keep away from such matters, which could be better-handled by the non-observant? This brought YL up against what he considered to be a parasitic tendency that bided I'll for the future of the Jewish religion in the future Jewish state. For millennia, religious authorities had not been confronted with the functions of a normal sovereign authority: these had been in the hands of the foreign governments. It was therefore necessary to deal with questions of internal and external security and the economic needs of an all-encompassing society, as distinct from those of individuals.

Much of YL's writing during this period was devoted to pointing out the need for a novel approach to halakhic decision under conditions of independent statehood. With the new emergence of the state of Israel, such questions became acute. In the 1950s & early 1960s YL took up cudgels in a variety of causes ......

He was active in a committee of scientists &public figures which agitated against the introduction of nuclear weaponry to the Israeli arsenal: his detestation of parasitism in any form led him to join a heterodox group fighting for a change in the economic order.

During the mandatory period political parties in Israel engaged in agricultural settlement & a variety of economic enterprises.

This was especially true of the Labor party .........
02 mrt 2011 - bewerkt op 02 mrt 2011 - meld ongepast verhaal
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