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110-656: During the days of the Babylonian captivity , writings by the Israelite prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel encouraged their people with the promise of a future gathering of the exiles to the Land of Israel. Since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, the continual hope for exiled Jews ' return to the Land of Israel has served as a core theme of Judaism . Maimonides , a prominent medieval Jewish scholar, connected

220-596: A Knesset seat. Though he had originally been a staunch supporter of the National Religious Party , he broke with them in 1974 after they entered the Rabin government over his opposition. In his letter of support to Kahane , he stated: "The presence of Rabbi Meir Kahane and his uncompromising words from the Knesset platform will undoubtedly add strength and value to the obligatory struggle on behalf of

330-583: A fulfillment of prophecy that Ephraim would have the birthright and responsibility for helping to gather scattered Israel in the last days. Babylonian captivity The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile was the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were forcibly relocated to Babylonia by the Neo-Babylonian Empire . The deportations occurred in multiple waves: After

440-570: A law passed in 1950 in memory of the Holocaust, allows every Jew the right to make Aliyah to the State of Israel and to receive a certificate of Aliyah , which grants the certificate holder an Israeli Citizenship immediately. This stems from Israel's identity as the Jewish State, which is connected to the idea of the gathering of Israel. Yom HaAliyah ( Aliyah Day ) ( Hebrew : יום העלייה )

550-561: A life of secluded study and, conversely, among anti-semites. Sometimes among his acolytes called the "prophet of Greater Israel", Kook's father had taught that settlement of the land should come about by peaceful means, not by war. In 1938 the rabbi of Tel Aviv, Moshe Avigdor Amiel (1883-1946), argued that even if the redemption were to be enabled by killing Arabs, that option would have to be repudiated since it would mean redemption through bloodshed. Nonetheless, his mystical meditations on war, published in 1921 and edited by Zvi Kook with

660-457: A man who was forcefully expelled from his home, which others seized and trespassed upon. That is exactly what happened to us. Rav Kook stressed that the Arabs had, and have, absolutely no national right to the land. If they deny the justice of our cause, and choose to go to war against us, we must persuade them – he said – with our tanks. The teachings of Zvi Kook are considered to be the source for

770-522: A messianic activism to thwart territorial compromises. Surrendering territory was, he taught, as strictly forbidden as eating pork, since foreign sovereignty over any part of the Land of Israel would be treif . Eventually Zvi Kook came round to considering the Israeli government itself as illegitimate, as a tyrannical dictatorship. It was an offense to God to seek Gentile support. Referendums thermselves were illegitimate because they could never overturn

880-617: A number of serious effects on Judaism and Jewish culture. For example, the current Hebrew alphabet was adopted during this period, replacing the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet . This period saw the last high point of biblical prophecy in the person of Ezekiel , followed by the emergence of the central role of the Torah in Jewish life. According to many historical-critical scholars, the Torah

990-556: A purely monotheistic people and therefore, in their case, the conflict with Jews would be a passing matter. The rights of individual minorities were to be respected. When the Israeli High Court ruled that the Elon Moreh group of settlers had to evacuate lands under Palestinian ownership and belonging to the village of Rujeib , the rabbi told his followers to abide by the court's verdict, even though his ideological view

1100-700: A religious authority on the fundamentalist rabbis who drove the settler movement has been thought of as to some degree analogous to the impact of religious figures like Sayyid Qutb and Ayatollah Khomeini on younger generations of intellectuals who were to figure prominently in the radicalization of Islam . The most well known among his students are rabbis Shlomo Aviner , Zvi Thau , Yisrael Ariel Zalman Melamed , Yitzchak Sheilat , Dov Lior , Zephaniah Drori , Yoel Bin-Nun , Eliezer Melamed , David Samson , Haim Drukman , Moshe Levinger , and Yaakov Ariel . Several of these students are among those whom he encouraged to establish settlements and moshavim . Most of

1210-610: A significant portion of the Jewish population chose to remain in Mesopotamia. This decision led to the establishment of a sizable Jewish community in Mesopotamia known as the golah (dispersal), which persisted until modern times. The Iraqi Jewish , Persian Jewish , Georgian Jewish , Bukharian Jewish , and the Mountain Jewish communities are believed to derive their ancestry in large part from these exiles; these communities have now largely emigrated to Israel . In

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1320-641: A spiritual complement of secular Zionism. In 1922, he married Chava Leah Hutner in Warsaw . Chava Leah died childless in February 1944, and Kook refused to remarry, remaining a widower until his death nearly 40 years later. From 1923, he served as the administrative director of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva. After Harlap died in 1952, he became Rosh Yeshiva until his own death. The yeshiva assumed its present stature only much later. Kook père had died in 1935, at

1430-564: A surviving member of the royal family assassinated Gedaliah and his Babylonian advisors, prompting many refugees to seek safety in Egypt. By the end of the second decade of the 6th century BCE, in addition to those who remained in Judah, there were significant Jewish communities in Babylon and in Egypt; this was the beginning of the later numerous Jewish communities living permanently outside Judah in

1540-509: A time when religious thinkers had a negligible impact on the Yishuv and his ideas had failed to attract much attention among both religious and Zionist Jews. The yeshiva's fortunes waned, and it struggled to survive down to the 1960s, when it managed to attract a spare 20 students. In the mid-sixties, its standing rapidly improved as a result of frustrations encountered among elite graduates of Bnei Akiva when their attempts to exert influence in

1650-463: A war against Western Christendom . Rummaging through two millennia of sources uncritically, such as Toledot Yeshu , he revived a tradition of anti-Christian polemics which, according to some critics, had not seen the likes for over a millennium. Key points in this attitude affirm that Christianity is a Jewish heresy; that whereas the Christian god is dead, the Jewish god is alive. He asserted that

1760-422: A watershed moment for his thinking. In its aftermath, his views underwent a sea-change. He vigorously opposed proposals to yield territory such as those being advanced by Henry Kissinger , whom he dismissed as "the goy woman's husband", arguing that God's desire for the territorial integrity of the Land of Israel, in his view a single sacred entity, overruled any human desire for negotiated compromises. The laws of

1870-611: A yeshiva and served as a parish rabbi. There Kook studied Talmud under the guidance of Rabbi Reuven Gotfreud, the son-in-law of Yoel Moshe Salomon , one of the founders of Petah Tikva . Later, from 1999 onward, Kook was also tutored by Benjamin Menashe Levin, a guest of their family. His father, until his dying day, was to remain Kook's principal teacher, though at this time he hired a private tutor to teach his son Russian. In 1904, at age 13, Kook moved to Jaffa , when his father

1980-456: Is a forgery. 3. Balfour Declaration : "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or

2090-555: Is a new Israeli national holiday officially passed into law on June 21, 2016. Yom HaAliyah is to be celebrated annually on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan ( Hebrew : י’ ניסן ). The day was established to acknowledge Aliyah , immigration to the Jewish state, as a core value of the State of Israel, and honor the ongoing contributions of Olim to Israeli society. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe in

2200-553: Is more than likely that we would gleam with the spirit of salvation, fortunate are the "ones who" take part in "bringing merit unto the masses" Haredi Judaism and Chabad movement takes the writings of the Maimonides literally: The messiah is assigned the mission of completing the ingathering the exiles of Israel. Until then, the Jewish community living in Israel is defined as a Diaspora of Israel, though they give their consent to

2310-719: Is written in the Torah of Your servant Moses: "Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, from there He will fetch you. And the Lord your God will bring you to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will make you more prosperous and more numerous than your fathers. The prayer is commonly recited in Religious Zionist and Conservative Judaism synagogues, but generally not in Haredi synagogues. The Law of Return (Hebrew: חוק השבות, Hok ha-shvut ),

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2420-609: The heter mechirah (sale permit) for the Sabbatical year attached to his father's work Shabbat Haaretz , which was published in 1910. Feeling that he had not devoted enough time to Torah study he first went to Porat Yoseph , the leading Sephardic yeshiva of Jerusalem. Then, on Binyamin Levin's suggestion, he left for Halberstadt , Germany to teach at the local yeshiva and study philosophy. In addition to his own studies, Kook taught Talmud, halakha , and Bible to young men in

2530-738: The Jewish Diaspora . According to the book of Ezra , the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the exile in 538 BCE, the year after he captured Babylon. The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so-called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David ) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of

2640-683: The Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Žeimelis in Northern Lithuania ), where his father served as rabbi and was a prominent local Zionist . His mother was his father's second wife, Reiza Rivka, the niece of Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim , Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem together with Shmuel Salant . Kook was named after his maternal grandfather, Zvi Yehuda Rabinowitz-Teomim. In 1896, his father, with his entire family, moved to Boisk , Latvia , where he ran

2750-664: The Land of Israel . "We are not a nation of conquerors. We are returning to the land of our fathers. No one, no prime minister, has the authority to renounce any part of the country. It belongs to the entire people of Israel, to the Jews of Pakistan, the United States and the Soviet Union." According to the widow of Rabbi Meir Kahane , Kook greatly admired Kahane. When Kahane formed a political party, Kook endorsed his bid for

2860-482: The National Religious Party were met with a rebuff. Thereafter, this group, which constituted a secretive fraternity called Gahelet (including such rabbinical figures as Eliezer Waldman , Moshe Levinger and Haim Druckman ) shifted their attentions towards Kook and his yeshiva. After the Six-Day War in 1967, of which he has been called 'the ultimate theologian,' he induced the Israeli government to approve

2970-503: The Palestinian exodus in 1948-49 – in his view they had all simply ran away of their own accord, through cowardice or exaggerated fear – Zvi Kook thought those remaining could stay provided they accepted that the land was Jewish and acquiesced in their status as a minority. Prior to 1967, he considered the conflict between Arabs and Israelis as ethnic not religious. They were in his view unlike Christians, whom he considered idolatrous,

3080-721: The Pentateuch took place in the Persian period following the exile, and the Priestly source , one of its main sources, is primarily a product of the post-exilic period when the former Kingdom of Judah had become the Persian province of Yehud. In the Hebrew Bible, the captivity in Babylon is presented as a punishment for idolatry and disobedience to Yahweh in a similar way to the presentation of Israelite slavery in Egypt followed by deliverance. The Babylonian captivity had

3190-714: The Ten Lost Tribes , in India and Nepal among Tibetan-Burmese peoples such as the Mizo and Hmar . Though initially considered a "crackpot", Avichail succeeded, after conferring on these peoples the ethnonym Bnei Menashe , in having some two thousand relocated in Israel, especially in the Israeli settlement near the Palestinian city of Hebron , namely Kiryat Arba , through financial assistance from his philanthropical sponsor Irving Moskowitz . Though his own father

3300-484: The missing years in the Jewish calendar , rabbinic sources place the date of the destruction of the First Temple at 3338 AM (423 BCE) or 3358 AM (403 BCE)). The first governor appointed by Babylon was Gedaliah , a native Judahite; he encouraged the many Jews who had fled to surrounding countries such as Moab , Ammon and Edom to return, and he took steps to return the country to prosperity. Some time later,

3410-678: The siege of Jerusalem in 597 BCE, around 7,000 individuals were deported to Mesopotamia . Further deportations followed the destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple in 587 BCE. In the biblical account, after the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem, which resulted in tribute being paid by the Judean king Jehoiakim . In the fourth year of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign, Jehoiakim refused to pay further tribute, which led to another siege of

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3520-810: The " Jewish diaspora ", unless this is considered to have begun with the Assyrian captivity . In Rabbinic literature , Babylon was one of a number of metaphors for the Jewish diaspora. Most frequently the term "Babylon" meant the diaspora prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. The post-destruction term for the Jewish Diaspora was " Rome ", or " Edom ". The following table is based on Rainer Albertz's work on Israel in exile , itself based mainly on biblical texts. (Alternative dates are possible.) Zvi Yehuda Kook Zvi Yehuda Kook ( Hebrew : צבי יהודה קוק , 23 April 1891 – 9 March 1982)

3630-500: The 5th to 4th centuries BCE. A 2017 exhibition in Jerusalem displayed over 100 cuneiform tablets detailing trade in fruits and other commodities, taxes, debts, and credits accumulated between Jews forced or persuaded to move from Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar around 600 BCE. The tablets included details on one exiled Judean family over four generations, all with Hebrew names. Most Jews who returned were poor Jews and either saw

3740-469: The City of Judah and on the ninth day of the month of Adar he seized the city and captured the king. He appointed there a king of his own choice and taking heavy tribute brought it back to Babylon. Jehoiachin's Rations Tablets , describing ration orders for a captive King of Judah, identified with King Jeconiah, have been discovered during excavations in Babylon, in the royal archives of Nebuchadnezzar. One of

3850-544: The Jewish people, as opposed to individual aliyah , depended on the direct intervention of the Messiah. The Kooks' innovation consisting in elaborating a theology that bridged the gap between a faith that saw Zionism as a heresy, and the Zionist programme for the development of a secular state for Jews. As Kook's father phrased it, a Jewish polity must "build secularly and sanctify afterwards." Zvi Kook, together with Harlap,

3960-570: The Jewish rule of Israel, and see the advantages of it. 1. Cyrus's Declaration (538 BC), Ezra 1:3 Who is among you of all His people, may his God be with him, and he may ascend [va'Yaal / Aliya] to Jerusalem, which is in Judea, and let him build the House of the Lord, God of Israel; He is the God Who is in Jerusalem. 2. Napoleon, in his Proclamation to the Jews of Asia and Africa (1799), called for

4070-540: The Land of Israel gives its fruit nicely, then the End is near, and there is no more [to the] revealed End [than this]." According to his disciple, rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, who founded the immigrant organization Amishav in 1975, Kook himself advised him to search for dispersed communities of Jews who had lost contact with their roots, prepare them for conversion ( giyur ) and facilitate their "return" to Israel. He believed he had discovered such lost Jews, putative remnants of

4180-462: The Lord, and I will return you to the place whence I exiled you. In chapter 20 the Book of Ezekiel says: 41. With a pleasing savor I shall accept you when I take you out of the nations, and I shall gather you from the lands in which you were scattered, and I shall be hallowed through you before the eyes of the nations. 42. And you will know that I am the Lord when I bring you to the land of Israel, to

4290-572: The Lord, your God, will bring back your exiles, and He will have mercy upon you. He will once again gather you from all the nations, where the Lord, your God, had dispersed you. 4. Even if your exiles are at the end of the heavens, the Lord, your God, will gather you from there, and He will take you from there. 5. And the Lord, your God, will bring you to the land which your forefathers possessed, and you will take possession of it, and He will do good to you, and He will make you more numerous than your forefathers. The Nevi'im (Prophets) prophesying after

4400-562: The Mercaz HaRav yeshiva ( lit.   ' The Rabbi's Centre ' ) founded by his father in Jerusalem, which became "the flagship yeshiva of religious Zionism", where hundreds of future militants, opposed to territorial compromises and promoting Israeli settlement of the Occupied Palestinian Territories , received their formative education. Zvi Yehuda Kook was born on the eve of Passover in 1891 in Zaumel in

4510-467: The People of Israel return to their homeland, the land of Israel. The act of ingathering of the exiles of Israel in the land of Israel, a Kibbutz Galuyot , will bring about the coming of the messiah, as the hand of God is in the events of the creation of the State of Israel, obviously a different reality then Maimonides depicts, though they see the writings of Maimonides as a way of learning the importance of

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4620-624: The Persians conquered Babylon. Exiled Jewish commoners were nostalgic about Judah and, due to circumstance, were forced to abandon temple-based worship. They mostly worshipped in private homes and kept some religious traditions such as circumcision, Sabbath observance, reading of the Psalms and Law . The Cyrus Cylinder , an ancient tablet on which is written a declaration in the name of Cyrus referring to restoration of temples and repatriation of exiled peoples, has often been taken as corroboration of

4730-532: The Second Temple in the period from 521 to 516 BCE. Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem, his capture of its king, his appointment of another in his place, and the plundering of the city in 597 BCE are corroborated by a passage in the Babylonian Chronicles : In the seventh year, in the month of Kislev, the king of Akkad mustered his troops, marched to the Hatti-land, and encamped against

4840-519: The Torah took precedence over secular law. At a 1974 lecture delivered at Merkaz Haraz in the presence of Moshe Dayan , he stated that moves to yield the Golan , and the West Bank would lead to a war, one that would be fought "over our bodies and limbs". The Gush Emunim movement predominantly formed by religious Zionists soon came under the dominating influence of graduates from Mercaz HaRav driven by

4950-559: The Torah), because the gathering is an Atchalta De'Geulah ('the beginning of the redemption'), as attested, "I will yet gather others to him, together with his gathered ones" (Isaiah, 56:8), and see Yebamoth , page 64, "the Divine Presence does not rest on less than two myriads of Israelites", especially nowadays in which we have seen the great desire inasmuch as in men of lesser importance, mediocre ones, and upright in heart, it

5060-408: The Torah. 2. Anyone who does not believe in him, or whoever does not look forward to his coming, denies not only the other prophets but also the Torah and of Moses our Teacher. For the Torah attested to him, as it is said: "then, the Lord, your God, will bring back your exiles, and He will have mercy upon you. He will once again gather you from all the nations... Even if your exiles are at the end of

5170-439: The adjacent West Bank under Jordanian rule . On the eve of the outbreak of hostilities he shocked his students by speaking of the "truncated" state of the Land of Israel, inducing in them a sense that they had sinned in forgetting about places like Hebron , Shechem and Jericho . He hailed Israel's 1967 victory as proof of the emergence of God's leadership over both Israel and the entire world. The Yom Kippur War proved to be

5280-537: The area. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Kook was arrested as a citizen of the Russian Empire, an enemy of Germany. After several weeks in a detention camp in Hamburg , he was released and allowed to return to Halberstadt, where he needed to report once every two days in the local office. Only the following year, at the end of 1915, was he granted permission to leave Germany and join his father, who

5390-472: The authenticity of the biblical decrees attributed to Cyrus, but other scholars point out that the cylinder's text is specific to Babylon and Mesopotamia and makes no mention of Judah or Jerusalem. Professor Lester L. Grabbe asserted that the "alleged decree of Cyrus" regarding Judah, "cannot be considered authentic", but that there was a "general policy of allowing deportees to return and to re-establish cult sites". He also stated that archaeology suggests that

5500-567: The building of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and sent his students to that mission. He subscribed to his father's view that the Chief Rabbinate in Palestine was the precursor of the future Sanhedrin . Kook wrote little in his final years. His remarks were elliptical in their allusive references to rabbinical traditions many of his followers were unfamiliar with, and his authority rested more on his charismatic figure – charisma

5610-469: The city in Nebuchadnezzar II's seventh year (598/597 BCE) that culminated in the death of Jehoiakim and the exile to Babylonia of his successor Jeconiah , his court, and many others; Jeconiah's successor Zedekiah and others were exiled when Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem in his 18th year (587 BCE), and a later deportation occurred in Nebuchadnezzar II's 23rd year (582 BCE). However,

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5720-474: The city's destruction in 587 BCE. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city wall and the Temple, together with the houses of the most important citizens. Zedekiah and his sons were captured and the sons were executed in front of Zedekiah, who was then blinded and taken to Babylon with many others (Jer 52:10–11). Judah became a Babylonian province, called Yehud , putting an end to the independent Kingdom of Judah (Because of

5830-570: The dates, numbers of deportations, and numbers of deportees vary in the several biblical accounts. The Bible recounts how after the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the Achaemenid Empire at the Battle of Opis in 539 BCE, exiled Judeans were permitted by the Persians to return to Judah . According to the biblical Book of Ezra , construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem began c.  537 BCE in

5940-530: The destruction of the First Temple had encouraged the Babylonian exiles by reiterating the words of Moses. In chapter 11 the Book of Isaiah says (the gathering here is mentioned as being done for the "second time". What this means remains cryptic): 11. And it shall come to pass that on that day, the Lord shall continue to apply His hand a second time to acquire the rest of His people, that will remain from Assyria and from Egypt and from Pathros and from Cush and from Elam and from Sumeria and from Hamath and from

6050-405: The emergence of scribes and sages as Jewish leaders (see Ezra ). Prior to exile, the people of Israel had been organized according to tribe. Afterwards, they were organized by smaller family groups. Only the Tribe of Levi continued in its temple role after the return. After this time, there were always sizable numbers of Jews living outside the Land of Israel ; thus, it also marks the beginning of

6160-430: The entire Land of Israel." The announcement of his support of Kahane and his letter were made available to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency . According to his student Rabbi Uzi Kalheim, however, Kook's support of Kahane was more nuanced. The rabbi approved of Kahane's activities in the U.S. to protect Jews and bolster Jewish pride. But in Israel, Kook did not agree with Kahane's positions but felt that Kahane should have

6270-447: The establishment of the State of Israel, a contemporary expression of the Davidic Kingdom ; (b)the restoration of complete Jewish sovereignty against Amalek ; and, once these two preconditions were satisfied (c) the Third Temple would be established on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Within Gush Emunim, now defunct, his words were often reported and taken to be akin to prophecies. In Kook's vision, Jews were unique,

6380-420: The exile as "spiritual regeneration" or "divine punishment for sins". One reason why wealthy Jews stayed in Mesopotamia includes economic opportunities, which were relatively uncommon in Judah. The exilic period was a rich source for Hebrew literature. Biblical depictions of the exile include Book of Jeremiah 39–43 (which saw the exile as a lost opportunity); the final section of 2 Kings (which portrays it as

6490-445: The formation and activities of the modern religious settlement movement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza , largely through his influence on the Gush Emunim movement, which was founded by his students. Many of his ideological followers established such settlements, and he has been credited with the dissemination of his father's ideas, helping to form the basis of Religious Zionism. Kook presided for nearly six decades over

6600-400: The heavens, the Lord, your God, will gather you from there, and He will take you from there. And the Lord, your God, will bring you... (Deuteronomy 30:3-5). These words, explicitly stated in the Torah, include all the statements made by all the prophets. Other Jewish scholars view this differently from Maimonides. They argue that the Torah attested to a period, not a person, the period in which

6710-414: The islands of the sea. 12. And He shall raise a banner to the nations, and He shall gather the lost of Israel, and the scattered ones of Judah He shall gather from the four corners of the earth. In chapter 29 the Book of Jeremiah says: 14. And I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will return your captivity and gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says

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6820-470: The land that I lifted My hand to give to your forefathers. In Law of Kings, Maimonides writes: 1. The Messianic King will arise in the future and restore the Davidic Kingdom to its former state and original sovereignty. He will build the Temple and gather the dispersed of Israel. All the laws will be re-instituted in his days as they had been aforetimes; sacrifices will be offered, and the Sabbatical years and Jubilee years will be observed fully as ordained by

6930-402: The late 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah was a client state of the Assyrian empire. In the last decades of the century, Assyria was overthrown by Babylon, an Assyrian province. Egypt , fearing the sudden rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire , seized control of Assyrian territory up to the Euphrates river in Syria, but Babylon counter-attacked. In the process Josiah , the king of Judah,

7040-420: The literal gathering of Israel: That all of the lost tribes will be returned and gathered together around the time of the second coming of Jesus Christ. Members of the church receive patriarchal blessings in which their lineage is declared: They are declared as being a descendent (literal or adopted) of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Many members of the church today are a part of the tribe of Ephraim ,

7150-401: The materialization of this return with the coming of the Davidic Messiah . This gathering of the Jewish diaspora became the foundation of the Zionist ideology and later the central theme of the Israeli Declaration of Independence . It defines aliyah , the act of diaspora Jews migrating to Israel , since Israel is considered to be spiritually higher for the Jewish people than any other of

7260-517: The national goals of the Jewish community living there. Aliyah Bet started only modestly in the midst of the nineteen-thirties. The idea of the ingathering of the exiles of Israel in the land of Israel (a Kibbutz Galuyot ) was the basis for the establishment of the State of Israel, being mentioned in the Israeli Declaration of Independence . After the Holocaust, the United Nations General Assembly , in its decision-making process on United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine , perceived this idea to be

7370-475: The new Persian province of Yehud Medinata . All of these events are considered significant to the developed history and culture of the Jewish people , and ultimately had a far-reaching impact on the development of Judaism . Archaeological studies have revealed that, although the city of Jerusalem was utterly destroyed, other parts of Judah continued to be inhabited during the period of the exile. Historical records from Mesopotamia and Jewish sources indicate that

7480-468: The ongoing tension among Israeli settlers between the idea that the state of Israel is sacred, and doubts whether its secular authority could be exercised independently, Initially, Zvi Kook had expressed unreserved support for Zionism, and was fiercely opposed to orthodox critics of that ideology, seeing Zionism as a vehicle embodying God's will for the redemption of the Jews. Even before the Six Days War Kook expressed concern for Jewish Biblical sites in

7590-507: The other Babylon. After Nebuchadnezzar was defeated in battle in 601 BCE by Egypt, Judah revolted against Babylon, culminating in a three-month siege of Jerusalem beginning in late 598 BCE. Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, died during the siege and was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin (also called Jeconiah ) at the age of eighteen. The city fell on 2 Adar (March 16) 597 BCE, and Nebuchadnezzar pillaged Jerusalem and its Temple and took Jeconiah, his court and other prominent citizens (including

7700-452: The past, and so said Moses: 1. And it will be, when all these things come upon you the blessing and the curse which I have set before you that you will consider in your heart, among all the nations where the Lord your God has banished you, 2. and you will return to the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and you will listen to His voice according to all that I am commanding you this day you and your children, 3. then,

7810-421: The prescriptions of the Torah He opposed Menachem Begin 's peace negotiations with Egypt – in his view the Sinai formed part of Biblical Israel -and also Begin's proposal to allow West Bank Palestinians administrative autonomy. These ideas, if acted on, would constitute in Kook's view treason and would cover Israel with "eternal shame" Though Kook disapproved of religious coercion in Israel, he argued that

7920-429: The process was evidenced in the development of Israeli agriculture where every tomato and banana was invested with "sanctity". He based this idea on ( Ezekiel 36:24–28 ): But you, O mountains of Israel, will produce branches and bear fruit for My people Israel, for they will soon come home, and Rashi 's gloss on the way it had been interpreted as an indication of the End by Rabbi Abba at Sanhedrin 9 . Rashi wrote: "When

8030-507: The prophet Ezekiel ) back to Babylon. Jehoiakim's uncle Zedekiah was appointed king in his place, but the exiles in Babylon continued to consider Jeconiah as their Exilarch , or rightful ruler. Despite warnings by Jeremiah and others of the pro-Babylonian party, Zedekiah revolted against Babylon and entered into an alliance with Pharaoh Hophra . Nebuchadnezzar returned, defeated the Egyptians, and again besieged Jerusalem , resulting in

8140-592: The rabbinical concept of peace, shalom reflected a state of absolute justice, which required at times the force of coercion, and did not entail, as in the modern assumption, an implicit renunciation in principle of recourse to violence. Peace will only obtain when the Biblical Land of Israel is revived, with the Temple, and the subservience of the nations of the world to the Chosen People . He staunchly opposed any political moves to relinquish parts of

8250-522: The reason for adopting the decision on a Jewish State . Expressions of yearning for the gathering of the exiles of Israel in the land of Israel can be found in the Prayer for the State of Israel , which was authored by Israel's Chief Rabbis during the first years of Israel's existence. Israel's bodies of authorities have expressed their opinion on this matter by passing the Law of Return , which granted every Jew

8360-421: The return of the Jewish people: Bonaparte has published a proclamation in which he invites all the Jews of Asia and Africa to gather under his flag in order to re-establish the ancient Jerusalem. He has already given arms to a great number, and their battalions threaten Aleppo . The French scholar Henry Laurens holds that the proclamation never took place and that the document supposedly proving its existence

8470-465: The return was a "trickle" taking place over decades, rather than a single event. As part of the Persian Empire , the former Kingdom of Judah became the province of Judah ( Yehud Medinata ) with different borders, covering a smaller territory. The population of the province was greatly reduced from that of the kingdom; archaeological surveys suggesting a population of around 30,000 people in

8580-420: The right to a place in the Knesset and express his views there, even though Kook did not assent to them. He is quoted as explicitly writing that his support for Kahane was "without any identification with or connection to the specifics of his words and aims". Kook's view was that Israel's struggle with the Arabs over the Land of Israel is a national one. While denying that Jews had ever expelled Palestinians in

8690-516: The right to make Aliyah to the land of Israel. The Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel is recited on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays in many synagogues around the world. The prayer appeals to God to bless the land of Israel, to assist its leaders, and an appeal using the words of Moses: Lead them, swiftly and upright, to Your city Zion and to Jerusalem, the abode of Your Name, as

8800-720: The rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." The First Zionist Congress of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) , assembled in Basel in August 1897 and adopted the Zionist platform, which came to be known as the Basel Program , which stipulated the following goal: "Zionism seeks to establish a homeland for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel secured by public law". Aliyah Bet

8910-560: The role of the messiah, since the Maimonides was a scholar not a prophet, and did not live up to see the event of the establishment of the State of Israel. Zvi Yehuda Kook , one of the leaders of the Religious Zionist Movement , used to quote from the Responsa book, Yeshuot Malko , of Israel Yehosha of kutna, in conjunction with Aliyah (10:66): "There is no doubt that this is a greater Mitzvah (a commandment of

9020-401: The same tract:- Until such happy times as it will be feasible to conduct an independent national policy without recourse to vicious and barbaric practices.. it is not in the interest of Jacob to wield sovereignty, when this entails wholesale bloodshed and ingenuiity of a sinister kind. Zvi Kook, with his irredentist perspective, ratcheted up a notch his father's theology of war. Every one of

9130-430: The secular state already embodied in nuce the hidden spark of the sacred, he argued that the messianic age of redemption had already arrived This task was to be furthered in the present age by extending Jewish rule over the land occupied by Israel in 1967, also by means of settlements. This redemptive process across generations would, he argued, involve three stages, the first of which had already been achieved: (a)

9240-430: The sense that the redemption of the world was contingent on Israel, an idea that proved influential with the early Hapoel HaMizrachi thinkers. Kook saw in the establishment of the modern State of Israel a major step in the redemption of the Jewish people (Atḥalta de-geulah) . Many Torah scholars envision redemption as a future era that arrives complete from the very start, and not an ongoing process. Kook claimed that

9350-468: The tablets refers to food rations for "Ya’u-kīnu, king of the land of Yahudu" and five royal princes, his sons. Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian forces returned in 589 BCE and rampaged through Judah, leaving clear archaeological evidence of destruction in many towns and settlements there. Clay ostraca from this period, referred to as the Lachish letters , were discovered during excavations; one, which

9460-606: The temporary end of history); 2 Chronicles (in which the exile is the "Sabbath of the land"); and the opening chapters of Ezra, which records its end. Other works from or about the exile include the stories in Daniel 1–6, Susanna , Bel and the Dragon , the "Story of the Three Youths" ( 1 Esdras 3:1–5:6), and the books of Tobit and Judith . The Book of Lamentations arose from the Babylonian captivity. The final redaction of

9570-530: The term min/minim apostates in rabbinical literature indeed denoted Christians. When the Vatican hoisted the Israeli flag on the occasion of Golda Meir 's visit to Pope Paul VI in 1973, Kook sneered at the pope as an old galakh (shaven, i.e. tonsured Christian priest) unashamedly raising a symbol that signified the destruction of Christendom. He wanted to rid Israel of Christian and ultimately Western influences, something that extended down to opposing

9680-644: The time before deportations. In Mesopotamia, the exiled Judeans were relocated to agricultural settlements, with one notable settlement being Tel-Abib near the city of Nippur . Biblical scholar Niels Peter Lemche suggests that the exiled Judeans experienced a lifestyle scarcely less prosperous than what they were accustomed to in their homeland. However, there is evidence for hardship. For example, exiled Jewish leaders were suspected of national disloyalty and were reduced to peasantry, where they worked in agriculture and building projects and performed simple tasks such as farming, shepherding and fishing. This ended when

9790-456: The title Orot me-Ofel (Lights from the Gloom), which would assume great significance after 1967 among his son's settler acolytes, could be read as providing Kook's rabbinical endorsement for using war to appropriate land, as in the following passages: When there is a great war in the world, the power of Messiah is aroused.The time of song ( zamir ) has arrived, the scything ( zamir ) of tyrants,

9900-642: The use of the Gregorian civil calendar . He avoided reading his father's works in the light of Western philosophy because that would be a form of "spiritual miscegenation". This influenced his views of Judaism, the authentic version being that practiced and taught in modern Israel as opposed to the Judaism of the exilic diaspora, which was, he thought, irremediably inflected by the deleterious effects of living among Christians. His writings on this theme circulate among Israeli settlers, or Torah purists aspiring to

10010-498: The wars engaged in, prior to the establishment of the state down to the Yom Kippur war, were, in his interpretation, stages on the path of Israel's redemption. While ruling out aggressive war , Zvi Kook did preach that recourse to military force was justified if Arabs refused to acknowledge Jewish rights to the land and if they also opted to wage war. According to his former student, David Samson He compared [our situation] to

10120-413: The wicked perish from the world, and the world is invigorated and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The ability demanded of the Jewish people is the ability to appropriate the powers of the nations, Esau 's aggressive powers, and to use them on the path to the "celestial Jerusalem." At the same time, dissenters could challenge this use of Kook's authority by citing another passage from

10230-555: The world's lands. Since 1948, the mass migration of diaspora Jews to Israel has been likened to The Exodus from ancient Egypt , especially in the context of the Jewish exodus from Muslim-majority countries . In the latter parts of the Book of Deuteronomy , when Moses' death was near, he prophesied about the destiny of the people of Israel. Their destiny would not be promising – curses would come upon them and they would go into exile  – but when they return to their homeland later, their situation will be as good as it had been in

10340-494: The yardstick for mankind, with Judaism forming the core of humanity and reality itself, and Israel analogized to the soul while the world at large was likened to the body. In this context, Zvi Kook extended the ideas of his father and his fellow student of kabbalah Harlap, who had an outlook of hostility to Gentiles and asserted that the failure of the peoples of the world to surrender to Israel would cause their downfall. Kook took this Jewish nationalism as in fact cosmopolitan, in

10450-402: Was a form of idolatry , a blasphemy against the divinity of Jews. He refused to back away from the antisemitic notion that Jews bore responsibility for Jesus's crucifixion . This apparently was one of his ways of repudiating the victim mentality ascribed to Jews in diaspora . He began to outline his opinions in this regard in 1952, after concluding that Israel's establishment constituted

10560-466: Was an ultranationalist Orthodox rabbi . He was the son of Abraham Isaac Kook , the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine . Both father and son are credited with developing Kookian Zionism, which became the dominant form of Religious Zionism . He was Rosh Yeshiva (dean) of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva. Kook's fundamentalist teachings were a significant factor in

10670-473: Was appointed Chief Rabbi of the city, then part of Ottoman-controlled Palestine . Like his father, he would celebrate each year the date of his aliyah (emigration to the Land of Israel ) on the 28th day of Iyyar . In 1906, Kook, by then 15, went to study at Torat Haim under its rosh yeshiva , Zerah Epstein. Some years later he returned to his father's home in Jaffa, where he continued his studies. It

10780-435: Was around this time that he developed a close relationship with Yaakov Moshe Harlap , with whom he studied Kabbalah . Harlap formed part of his father's close circle. In 1908, he began to edit his father's writings, a task he continued down to his death, as he considered himself the only person capable of authoritatively interpreting them. It has been claimed he contributed to the preface on halakha (Jewish law) regarding

10890-440: Was burnt to rubble in 587 BCE and utterly destroyed. Archaeological excavations and surveys have enabled the population of Judah before the Babylonian destruction to be estimated to have been approximately 75,000. Taking the different biblical numbers of exiles at their highest, 20,000, this would mean that perhaps 25% of the population had been deported to Babylon, with the remaining majority staying in Judah. Although Jerusalem

11000-612: Was carried out by the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet , a branch of the Jewish Defense Association ( Haganah ), the paramilitary organization that was to become the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). During Aliyah Bet's 14 years of activity, 115,000 Jews made Aliyah to the Land of Israel. The British Mandate for Palestine attempted to limit the number of immigration certificates in a way which contradicted

11110-528: Was destroyed, with large parts of the city remaining in ruins for 150 years, numerous other settlements in Judah continued to be inhabited, with no signs of disruption visible in archaeological studies. Archaeologist Avraham Faust suggests that between the deportations and executions caused by the Babylonians, plus the famines and epidemics that occurred during the war, the population of Judah may have been reduced to as little as 10% of what it had been in

11220-516: Was heir to a tradition of messianic demonizing thought going back at least to Judah Alkalai , in which the redemption of Jews in Israel was a premise for, and precursor to, the general uplifting of mankind. Whereas his father viewed Zionists as unwitting agents in the divine plan for redemption, – only a "slim membrane" was all that separated antinomian messianism, of the type disastrously exemplified by Shabbatai Zevi , from authentic messianic redemption, - Zvi Kook went one step further. Believing that

11330-399: Was killed in a battle with the Egyptians at the Battle of Megiddo (609 BCE) . After the defeat of Pharaoh Necho's army by the Babylonians at Carchemish in 605 BCE, Jehoiakim began paying tribute to Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. Some of the young nobility of Judah were taken to Babylon. In the following years, the court of Jerusalem was divided into two parties, one supporting Egypt,

11440-551: Was long tempted by the antinomian strain of Jewish messianism, World War I had led him to conclude that the great source of contemporary evil lay in the antinomian dispensation of Christianity. Zvi Kook's ideology, reflecting his father's "intense loathing" or theological disdain, is characterized by a staunch hostility to Christianity, which he regarded as a "crime against Israel", the "refuse of Israel", an image recalling Talmudic traditions of Jesus, "the criminal of Israel" ( poshea Israel ), being boiled in excrement. Christianity

11550-400: Was probably written to the commander at Lachish from an outlying base, describes how the signal fires from nearby towns were disappearing: "And may (my lord) be apprised that we are watching for the fire signals of Lachish according to all the signs which my lord has given, because we cannot see Azeqah." Archaeological finds from Jerusalem testify that virtually the whole city within the walls

11660-407: Was redacted during this time, and began to be regarded as the authoritative text for Jews. This period saw their transformation into an ethno-religious group who could survive without a central Temple. Israeli philosopher and Biblical scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann said "The exile is the watershed. With the exile, the religion of Israel comes to an end and Judaism begins." This process coincided with

11770-602: Was something his father stressed – than his writings. He died in Jerusalem on 9 March 1982, which coincided with Purim that year, and was buried in the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery . His passing created a leadership vacuum within Gush Emunim, which subsequently moved in the direction of collective decision making. Zionism began as a secular movement often led by disbelievers many of whom rejected Jewish religious traditions, one of which held that any collective "return" of

11880-603: Was stranded in St. Gallen , Switzerland, due to the war. There he continued to study under his father's guidance, until the latter left to fill a rabbinic position in London in 1916. In 1920, he returned to Palestine (then under the British Mandate) and began teaching at Netzakh Israel school. A year later, he went to Europe to promote his father's new movement, Degel Yerushalayim ( lit.   ' Standard of Jerusalem ' )

11990-411: Was that "there is no such thing as Arab land in Eretz Israel ." Benny Katzover recalled: "The rabbi told us several times, 'We cannot damage land belonging to Ahmad and Mustafa', that we couldn't touch lands that had belonged to Arabs for generations." On several occasions he sent letters to newspapers expressing his displeasure over reports that Arabs were being maltreated. Zvi Kook's influence as

12100-559: Was the code name given to illegal immigration by Jews to Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and 1948, in violation of the restrictions laid out in the British White Paper of 1939 , which dramatically increased between 1939 and 1948. Aliyah Bet was organized by the Yishuv (the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel before Israel's establishment as a country) from 1934 until the State of Israel began in 1948. Aliyah Bet

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