The Talmudic Opposition to the Modern State of Israel

Rabbinic interpretations of the Three Vows at the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog: 1888-1959; Chief Rabbi of Ireland (1921-1936), and Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Israel (1936) and first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel until his death. From his "Collected Writings," 1977. (Sources below adapted from Dr. Reuven Firestone's Holy War in Judaism.)

Herzog's responsa begin as answers to questions that were posed to him.... One question asks whether the prohibition of the Three Vows forbidding Jewish from ascending to the Land of Israel en masse was still in force.... [He wrote:] "I do not understand the nature of the question. There is no ruling that forbids us from establishing a Jewish state with the permission of the nations before the coming of the redeemer. [He cites the Ketuvot passage and Shir H. verses.] ...the Three Vows have validity...only in relation to the nations that rule over the Land of Israel.... [it] has no validity in relation to the nations that do not rule, for this is not their business."

Firestone writes: "In other words, the British Mandate government was the ruling power over Mandate Palestine, and it acquieced to the U.N. Partition Plan that included the establishment of a Jewish state. Neither the Arab irregulars nor the armies of neighboring states represented the ruling power over Palestine, so any fighting against them would not represent rebellion."

Firestone later writes: "Until 1967, one recurring and unanswered question found in the literature was whether what was recognized by some as the breaking of the two vows made ...was justified by the establishment of the state. The two vows are pledges God required of Israel that it would not engage in mass immigration to the Land of Israel and that Jews would not attempt to rebel against their degraded position among the gentiles. According to the schema, the third was God's requirement that the Gentiles pledge not to oppress the Jews too much in return for the Jews remaining true to their pledges.

The religious critics of Zionism had claimed that the mass immigration to the Land of Israel and the determination of the state to set is own independent political course even sometimes against the will of the United Nations, were violations of this agreement. This criticism was occasionally countered by religious Zionists by the claim that Zionist activism and the establishment of the state were justified cosmically by the Gentiles' breaking of their vow not to persecute the Jews too much during the modern period, first by the Russian pogroms of the late nineteenth century and then particularly by the Holocaust.

"The driving force behind Herzog's views is the commandment of saving lives in the the wake of Holocaust and the tremendous fear of Palestinian Arab irregulars and neighboring national armies on the eve of independence. He expresses a palpable fear that if the Jews would fail to establish a sovereign Jewish state, the likelihood of violent acts of revenge by the Arabs would lead to massacres and, he hints, perhaps even something like another Holocaust.....

"To most Orthodox Jews, the 1967 War put to rest any doubt about the Zionist Enterprizes.... The miraculous victory of the war was a clear sign that God intends for Israel to conquer and settle all of the Biblical Land of Israel.... Would it not be great failure of the Jewish people if they were to defy the command explicit in the miracle of this victory."

Rabbi Shlomo Goren [(1917-1994); first IDF Rabbi; Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv and third Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel until 1983)] cited various reasons why the Oaths were no longer operational. The Balfour Declaration was a public declaration concerning the establishment of Jewish national home in Palestine, hence mass immigration to Palestine could no longer be considered rebellion against the nations. Additionally, he considered the right of the Jewish people to defend itself from attack a biblical mandate of self-defense, a commanded war.

After 1967, Rabbi Shelomo Shragai delivered an address in which he declared: "At this time when we have seen such miracles and wonders, the vow, or what is called the "Three Vows," has fallen and is annulled." Israel's successful military victory in 1967 "shows that the Three Vows no longer exist."