I agree. The idea of the modern State of Israel as a "Super Sparta" is a fantasy.
In my studies of history of the Bronze age, especially the catastrophic Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BCE (which would have occurred roughly during the period of the Shoftim), I was especially interested in the shift to the dawn of the Iron Age (roughly during the period of Sefer Shmuel).
Bronze is an alloy of 96% copper and 4% tin. Separately, each is too malleable to make swords or spokes for chariot and wagon wheels. When melted together, the resulting Bronze alloy is strong and can poured into molds to make many useful things.
While Copper was plentiful in the Mediterranean region (i.e. Cyprus/ Copprous, and the Timna copper mines north of Eilat), Tin is rare in the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean.
The closest reliable source of Tin were mines in Afghanistan. During the Bronze age, Tin Routes were established to transport Tin to the Yafo Port, where it was distributed to Egypt, the Minoans on Crete, the Myceneans in Greece and across the entire Mediterranean.
With the sudden catastrophic Bronze Age Collapse, the Tin Routes also collapsed, bringing the Bronze Age to an abrupt end.
Luckily, the adage that "Necessity is the mother of invention" proved true. For a thousand years during the Bronze Age, people discovered that the process of refining copper ore (those green and blue rocks) was more efficient if you threw a few of those red rocks (iron ore) into the fiery hot kiln (they figured out that the iron acts as a catalyst in the chemical reaction), and when everything cooled, you were left with an ugly iron slag at the bottom, a beautiful copper disc in the middle, and a liquid silica (the molten sand) that was drained away while everything was still hot. After cooling, the iron slag was easily separated from the pure copper disc with a hammer, and the useless iron slag was tossed onto an ever growing slag waste pile because no one knew what to do with it, it was considered useless.
The refined copper disc was melted in a crucible with tin in the correct proportion, and this molten bronze alloy was poured into a mold to make whatever you desired.
The reason that the solid iron slag was considered useless was an issue of technology. The kilns could get hot enough to reach the melting point of copper at 1084 degrees C, and tin at just 232 degrees C, but iron melts at 1538 degrees C and no one could figure out a way to make a fire hot enough to melt it. They would throw the iron slag onto the fire, and it would just sit there.
Now it's 1200 BCE and the Tin Routes have collapsed along with all the great civilizations in the region and no one can make Bronze without Tin. So someone looks at the Iron Slag waste pile and says "what can we do with this stuff?".
They throw it on the fire and it turns red hot but doesn't melt, and up until now everyone thought in terms of pouring molten metal into molds.
Eventually, they realize that while the iron slag doesn't melt, it does get red hot and somewhat softer, and if you hit it with a hammer, the excess molten silica flys out in a shower of sparks and the red hot iron gets more and more workable and you can keep hitting it with a rock or a hammer over and over, and put it back on the fire to keep it red hot and soft, until you finally work it and hammer it and stretch it into the shape of the tool or knife or nail that you need.
(This discovery democratized metal work throughout the world, because Iron is among the most abundant elements on earth. You don't need to import copper or tin from far away places. You find a nice red clay soil anywhere and you have lots of raw iron).
Thus, the art of iron working was born and Saul and David became early Iron Age kings, and even they understood that whatever you lack locally needs to be imported from afar (think the cedar wood imported from Lebanon for the temple).
The moral of this long story is that when your Tin Route collapses (think about lithium in our modern age, or oil from the Persian Gulf, or rubber for tires and tank treads), sometimes you get lucky and find a work around solution and sometimes you don't.
Fortunately, the profit motive has provided a huge incentive for people around the globe to build global supply chains that can provide everyone with anything that they need (think Iranians who buy sophisticated centrifuges for purifying Uranium to weapons grade quality).
No man is an island, and you find that to be especially true when the world turns against you, implements trade sanctions, cuts you off from the global banking system, limits academic, scientific and technological cooperation, etc.
I pray that the zealots among us who don't understand this will study history and economics, and fast!
The early English settlers of Virginia began iron production in 1619. Everything was destroyed in an attack by the Powhatan Confederacy that killed 1/3 of the population of the colony. The exact site of the iron furnace was lost and was only rediscovered a few decades ago. It probably used bog iron and charcoal.
If I'm not mistaken, according to Aviezer Ravitzky's understanding of the situation a great deal of Rav Tzvi Yehuda' ideology was specifically that since 1967 we are already currently living in age of Geula. Mashiach may not have officially arrived, but nothing can undo the redemptive process that has already begun. And this is the very ideology that has influenced Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and the settler movement. These people are under the impression that Israel will come out on top no matter what.
Very true. It's what Rabbi J. Sacks called premessianism, a malady from which large parts of the Dati-Leumi and Chabad worlds suffer, albeit in very different form. When secular political opponents of Smotrich and Ben Gvir criticize their messianism, what they're really criticizing is their premessianism. This premessianism meshes with an irrationalism which teaches that the more irrational you are, the more faithful you are to Torah.
In fact, for all the charedi disdain of Zionism, they also suffer from premessianism, because it's clear that the sort of society they want now (no one working, everyone learning) could only exist in non-natural messianic conditions (assuming, of course, that the messianic era will be non-natural, which is another question...).
This was summed up for me 30 years ago when a student in a charedi kiruv yeshiva in Israel asked one of the rabbis how Israel could resist its enemies if everyone learned and didn't fight. His reply was that if we all did that, moshiach would come, so it wouldn't matter. And these people now have the whip hand in the Knesset. It's frightening.
Absolutely right. We are already taught that success is never solely the result of our own efforts: כֹּחִי וְעֹצֶם יָדִי עָשָׂה לִי אֶת הַחַיִל הַזֶּה. Equally, we are taught not to rely on miracles, אין סומכין על הנס, but to do our own hishtadlus while believing that everything Hashem does is ultimately for the good. We are also reminded to be a light unto the nations, אוֹר לַגּוֹיִם, and to strive to make a קידוש השם wherever we find ourselves.
Indeed, divining “historical inevitabilities” is akin to astrological prognostication. And we know what the Rambam thought of military snd political decisions based on such intuition (“Letter on Astrology”,
(איגרת אל חכמי מונטפשליר)
וזו היא שאבדה מלכותנו והחריבה היכלנו והגיעתנו עד הלום, שאבותינו חטאו ואינם, לפי שמצאו ספרים רבים באלו הדברים של דברי החוזים בכוכבים... טעו ונהו אחריהן, ודימו שהן חכמות מפוארות ושיש בהן תועלת גדולה, ולא נתעסקו לא בלמידת מלחמה ולא בכיבוש ארצות, אלא דימו שאותן הדברים יועילו להם..."
I agree. The idea of the modern State of Israel as a "Super Sparta" is a fantasy.
In my studies of history of the Bronze age, especially the catastrophic Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BCE (which would have occurred roughly during the period of the Shoftim), I was especially interested in the shift to the dawn of the Iron Age (roughly during the period of Sefer Shmuel).
Bronze is an alloy of 96% copper and 4% tin. Separately, each is too malleable to make swords or spokes for chariot and wagon wheels. When melted together, the resulting Bronze alloy is strong and can poured into molds to make many useful things.
While Copper was plentiful in the Mediterranean region (i.e. Cyprus/ Copprous, and the Timna copper mines north of Eilat), Tin is rare in the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean.
The closest reliable source of Tin were mines in Afghanistan. During the Bronze age, Tin Routes were established to transport Tin to the Yafo Port, where it was distributed to Egypt, the Minoans on Crete, the Myceneans in Greece and across the entire Mediterranean.
With the sudden catastrophic Bronze Age Collapse, the Tin Routes also collapsed, bringing the Bronze Age to an abrupt end.
Luckily, the adage that "Necessity is the mother of invention" proved true. For a thousand years during the Bronze Age, people discovered that the process of refining copper ore (those green and blue rocks) was more efficient if you threw a few of those red rocks (iron ore) into the fiery hot kiln (they figured out that the iron acts as a catalyst in the chemical reaction), and when everything cooled, you were left with an ugly iron slag at the bottom, a beautiful copper disc in the middle, and a liquid silica (the molten sand) that was drained away while everything was still hot. After cooling, the iron slag was easily separated from the pure copper disc with a hammer, and the useless iron slag was tossed onto an ever growing slag waste pile because no one knew what to do with it, it was considered useless.
The refined copper disc was melted in a crucible with tin in the correct proportion, and this molten bronze alloy was poured into a mold to make whatever you desired.
The reason that the solid iron slag was considered useless was an issue of technology. The kilns could get hot enough to reach the melting point of copper at 1084 degrees C, and tin at just 232 degrees C, but iron melts at 1538 degrees C and no one could figure out a way to make a fire hot enough to melt it. They would throw the iron slag onto the fire, and it would just sit there.
Now it's 1200 BCE and the Tin Routes have collapsed along with all the great civilizations in the region and no one can make Bronze without Tin. So someone looks at the Iron Slag waste pile and says "what can we do with this stuff?".
They throw it on the fire and it turns red hot but doesn't melt, and up until now everyone thought in terms of pouring molten metal into molds.
Eventually, they realize that while the iron slag doesn't melt, it does get red hot and somewhat softer, and if you hit it with a hammer, the excess molten silica flys out in a shower of sparks and the red hot iron gets more and more workable and you can keep hitting it with a rock or a hammer over and over, and put it back on the fire to keep it red hot and soft, until you finally work it and hammer it and stretch it into the shape of the tool or knife or nail that you need.
(This discovery democratized metal work throughout the world, because Iron is among the most abundant elements on earth. You don't need to import copper or tin from far away places. You find a nice red clay soil anywhere and you have lots of raw iron).
Thus, the art of iron working was born and Saul and David became early Iron Age kings, and even they understood that whatever you lack locally needs to be imported from afar (think the cedar wood imported from Lebanon for the temple).
The moral of this long story is that when your Tin Route collapses (think about lithium in our modern age, or oil from the Persian Gulf, or rubber for tires and tank treads), sometimes you get lucky and find a work around solution and sometimes you don't.
Fortunately, the profit motive has provided a huge incentive for people around the globe to build global supply chains that can provide everyone with anything that they need (think Iranians who buy sophisticated centrifuges for purifying Uranium to weapons grade quality).
No man is an island, and you find that to be especially true when the world turns against you, implements trade sanctions, cuts you off from the global banking system, limits academic, scientific and technological cooperation, etc.
I pray that the zealots among us who don't understand this will study history and economics, and fast!
The early English settlers of Virginia began iron production in 1619. Everything was destroyed in an attack by the Powhatan Confederacy that killed 1/3 of the population of the colony. The exact site of the iron furnace was lost and was only rediscovered a few decades ago. It probably used bog iron and charcoal.
https://unitedstatesghosttowns.com/falling-creek-virginia-ghost-town
https://marcliebman.com/bog-iron-beginnings-of-the-u-s-steel-industry/
If I'm not mistaken, according to Aviezer Ravitzky's understanding of the situation a great deal of Rav Tzvi Yehuda' ideology was specifically that since 1967 we are already currently living in age of Geula. Mashiach may not have officially arrived, but nothing can undo the redemptive process that has already begun. And this is the very ideology that has influenced Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and the settler movement. These people are under the impression that Israel will come out on top no matter what.
Yep. A very dangerous misconception.
Very true. It's what Rabbi J. Sacks called premessianism, a malady from which large parts of the Dati-Leumi and Chabad worlds suffer, albeit in very different form. When secular political opponents of Smotrich and Ben Gvir criticize their messianism, what they're really criticizing is their premessianism. This premessianism meshes with an irrationalism which teaches that the more irrational you are, the more faithful you are to Torah.
In fact, for all the charedi disdain of Zionism, they also suffer from premessianism, because it's clear that the sort of society they want now (no one working, everyone learning) could only exist in non-natural messianic conditions (assuming, of course, that the messianic era will be non-natural, which is another question...).
This was summed up for me 30 years ago when a student in a charedi kiruv yeshiva in Israel asked one of the rabbis how Israel could resist its enemies if everyone learned and didn't fight. His reply was that if we all did that, moshiach would come, so it wouldn't matter. And these people now have the whip hand in the Knesset. It's frightening.
Embarrassingly, 30 years ago I also believed that.
"He told King Tzedkiah to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, or else Judah would be destroyed and the people would be massacred."
Navi isn't taught in Yeshivot!
Absolutely right. We are already taught that success is never solely the result of our own efforts: כֹּחִי וְעֹצֶם יָדִי עָשָׂה לִי אֶת הַחַיִל הַזֶּה. Equally, we are taught not to rely on miracles, אין סומכין על הנס, but to do our own hishtadlus while believing that everything Hashem does is ultimately for the good. We are also reminded to be a light unto the nations, אוֹר לַגּוֹיִם, and to strive to make a קידוש השם wherever we find ourselves.
Indeed, divining “historical inevitabilities” is akin to astrological prognostication. And we know what the Rambam thought of military snd political decisions based on such intuition (“Letter on Astrology”,
(איגרת אל חכמי מונטפשליר)
וזו היא שאבדה מלכותנו והחריבה היכלנו והגיעתנו עד הלום, שאבותינו חטאו ואינם, לפי שמצאו ספרים רבים באלו הדברים של דברי החוזים בכוכבים... טעו ונהו אחריהן, ודימו שהן חכמות מפוארות ושיש בהן תועלת גדולה, ולא נתעסקו לא בלמידת מלחמה ולא בכיבוש ארצות, אלא דימו שאותן הדברים יועילו להם..."
https://jewishaction.com/religion/shabbat-holidays/churban/whats-the-truth-about-the-cause-of-the-destruction-of-the-beit-hamikdash-2/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Tishah+B%27Av+2026+Newsletter+(1)&utm_content=&spMailingID=36317390&spUserID=MTMyNTAzNDU5ODk0S0&spJobID=3184142517&spReportId=MzE4NDE0MjUxNwS2