Anti-Zionism with Integrity

Walking the Walk, not just Talking the Talk

Rav Dov Landau, the leader of the charedi Lithuanian community, is not very popular outside of the charedi world. And this is with good reason. After all, he’s against charedim serving in the army or even helping soldiers. And this is aside from the problem of charedim being underemployed and draining the economy.

Still, I’m actually going to praise him for something.

The World Zionist Organization is, unsurprisingly, a Zionist organization. The WZO was founded by Herzl at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. Its mission statement speaks all about the centrality of Zionism and Jewish statehood. Its goals are to strengthen Zionism.

Agudas Yisrael, the charedi political organization, emerged directly in opposition to the WZO. Charedim do not believe in Zionism. They do not believe that statehood has value. They do not believe in uniting with other types of Jews to work together. They believe that being separated in their own way of life is of absolute paramount importance.

Yet, bizarrely, a few years ago a charedi initiative called “Eretz HaKodesh” emerged to join the WZO. Why? Well, they speak about decreasing the strength of Conservative and Reform votes. But it seems pretty obvious that the real reason is money. The WZO influences billions of dollars in funding. Either way, the platform of Eretz HaKodesh doesn’t mention any of the WZO’s values, because it doesn’t share any of them.

Which brings us back to Rav Landau. Recently he gave his Daas Torah that charedim should not join in any Zionist organizations, which includes not voting in the WZO. And his reason was very, very straightforward: charedim do not believe in Zionism!

It’s refreshing to see someone actually sticking to their values, even at personal cost. Of course I wish he would go the full course, and not even try to take money from the nation via Knesset politicking. But at least this is a step in the right direction.

The money directed by the WZO was given for the sake of developing the State of Israel, with the Zionist values of promoting a healthy economy and national responsibility for its material and security needs, all under the auspices of Jewish statehood. If you don’t agree with that ideology and mission, then it’s wrong to join that organization and take the money.