Struggling Over Israel’s Soul byElazar Stern, Gefen, Jerusalem, New York; ISBN 978-965-229-576-7 ©2012, $18.00, p. 373, plus notes and indices.
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
WINCHESTER, California — The struggle for Israel’s soul is hardly new. From without, the Hellenists fought for it from the time of Alexander the Great’s conquest of Israel until their defeat by the Maccabees. The Christians and Muslims have been fighting for it since the inception of their religions. From within, the Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots, and Essenes literally waged war over control of Judaism beginning sometime during the second century BCE.
The first century CE Jewish historian Josephus records that in the struggle for leadership, Simon bar Giora, a successful military leader and Zealot, rejected by the moderate forces besieged in Jerusalem and Joseph of Gischala, the leader chosen by the insurgents, torched each other’s food supplies and killed more of their fellow Jews during the siege of Jerusalem, in 70 CE, than did the Romans under the leadership of General Vespasian and his son Titus. More recently, the Hasidim of Eastern Europe opposed the Mitnagdim, who accepted a more “enlightened” Judaism, and the struggle continues even now between orthodox and non-orthodox branches of Judaism.
Perhaps nowhere are the battle lines more important than in the modern State of Israel, where the religious right, opposed by secular Jews, wants Israel to operate by the orthodox-rabbinic interdictions of Judaism. Right-wing religious Judaism manifests itself by such things as refusing to allow talis-wearing women to pray at the Western Wall and denying remarriage to a female divorcée who did not receive a traditional get from her husband.
In the opinion of Israeli Defense Force General Elazar Stern, in his autobiographical book Struggling Over Israel’s Soul, most troubling for Israel’s future is that right-wing religious Judaism is becoming right-wing political Judaism. Stern, a yarmulke-wearing religious Jew who has risen to the very heights on the Israeli army, has felt the disdain of his fellow orthodox Jews for following orders and forcefully expelling Jews from Gaza. But he doesn’t care, for he believes that if radical streams of Judaism go unchecked, we will lose many Jews along the way. In a sense he accepts the separation of synagogue and state: citizens of Israel, regardless of their religious point-of-view must take orders from the military and not the other way around.
Israeli’s military is as much a melting pot for Israeli’s divergent population—Druze, North African, Russian, and Yemenites, to name a few, as the military and public schools are in America. Non-combatant orthodox soldiers want to be Shomer Shabbat; non-orthodox soldiers want to listen to the soccer game on the radio. How does one reconcile diametrically opposing positions? In Struggling Over Israel’s Soul, Stern tells us how in his positions from brigade commander to Head of the Israeli Human Resources Directorate he uses his authority and power to develop programs and create structures that bring together soldiers with different perspectives about God and Judaism.
But, Stein does much more. Through his eyes we learn lessons about handling lying soldiers and recalcitrant superiors. We laugh with Stein when he introduces Israeli music to foster national pride and become overwhelmed at the success of his bringing new recruits to Poland’s concentration camps in full uniform, watching Israeli jets flying low over the camp below.
Struggling Over Israel’s Soul provides nearly four decades of lessons learned through the eyes of an Israeli general, and that’s something you can’t get every day.
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Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of The Standard Guide to the Jewish and Civil Calendars; Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and Reclaiming the Messiah. The author can be reached through his website, fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com.