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Acknowledgements
Introduction

PART I The Jewish Problem
1. The Jewish Problem Defined
2. Origin of the Problem in its Historical Context

PART II The Alternative Path
3. The Hidden Path
4. Origin of the Fourth (Zealot) Philosophy
5. The 700 Year Struggle Against Rome

PART III Principles of the Fourth Philosophy
6. The Declaration at Masada
7. Social Justice
8. Our Cause
9. Our Covenant
10. Leadership
11. Honor
12. Sacrifice
13. Truth
14. Proselytism
15. Sovereignty
16. Land
17. War

PART IV The Accumulation and Exercise of Power
18. The Lessons of History
19. Strengthening Israel Internally
20. Full Sovereignty
21. Israel and the World
22. ”And I will Make of You a Great Nation”

Works Cited
Index
Notes
 

BOOK EXCERPTS : © Copyright 2004

Introduction
 

In 1948, Zionism achieved its goal with the recreation of a Jewish State. However, Israel’s leadership had, and still has, no real vision for the state's future. Israel's constant struggle for survival has obscured the pressing need for such a vision.

 

Beginning in the early 1990s the Israeli elite, having no vision of its own for Israel's future, adopted that of her enemies. They deluded themselves into believing that Israel’s struggle for survival was over and became obsessed with a false peace "process." Since its collapse, Israel has been a country adrift, her leadership reeling from crisis to crisis with no apparent plan. Yet, even had peace actually been achieved, Israel would still be facing the same questions she faces today and has faced from her creation: Where do the Jewish People wish to take their state from here. What ultimately is Israel's purpose? Even true peace cannot be Israel’s vision for her future. If the goal had been simply to achieve peace in and of itself, there would have been no need to create the Jewish state in the first place. The first step in achieving a vision for the future of Israel is to define one, something Israel has until now failed to do.

 

This book offers Israel and the Jewish people a vision for their future. This vision differs from any now contemplated, yet its roots lie deep within Judaism. This vision is attainable but will require nothing less than a complete reinterpretation of Jewish history and a revolution in traditional Jewish theology. The task is great and will take generations to fully realize, but we must not shrink from it. The alternative is a return to Jewish powerlessness and suffering, at best, at worst, the end of Jewish history.
 

There is a hauntingly beautiful melody sung in synagogues every Sabbath accompanied by equally moving words in which the congregation in a slowly rising tone pleads with God to “renew the life of our people as in former days.” No Jew who hears it remains unmoved. The tremendous emotional power of this prayer comes from its genuine heartfelt expression of the disillusionment and the hope of a great people oppressed for almost two millennia. No nation has a monopoly on human suffering, but neither has any suffered more, over as long a period of time, as have the Jews.

 

This book will demonstrate that the Jewish people have the power to fulfill their own prayer that they may escape the darkness of suffering and return to that bright place they have never forgotten. The memory of that place is like a tiny light in the distance; so dim it does not quite pierce our consciousness but becomes ever clearer and brighter as we approach its source. In truth, the way is not far but the path we are now on does not lead there.

 

Before we (and by we I mean all those who support Israel's cause) can solve Israel’s current predicament, we must first identify its true cause. In Part I of this book I will demonstrate that the cause of Israel’s current problems and centuries of Jewish sufferings are one and the same: a trend within Judaism eschewing the responsibilities of power in pursuit of a utopian moral purity. In Part II, I will examine the roots of the problem. Our journey will take us back long before the creation of the state, through Jewish history and philosophy, for therein lies both the problem and its solution. Necessity dictates that this book be not a political treatise alone but a work of history and philosophy as well, for it is impossible to fully understand the politics without knowing the philosophy behind them; it is impossible to understand the philosophy outside of its historical context. We must allow history and philosophy to inform, but not dictate, our future.

In Parts II and III we will discover the alternative path. The path of a dynamic Judaism unafraid to engage and challenge the world, a tradition that predates Rabbinic Judaism that flows directly from the Torah itself and which the ancient historian Josephus called "the Fourth Philosophy." I hope you will learn much of great value along the way, as did I. You will learn who has suppressed authentic Judaism and why. I will explain to you the origins, principles and history of The Fourth Philosophy. Only then can we arrive at the solution to Israel’s current problems contained in Part IV, for the Fourth Philosophy provides the intellectual underpinning for our vision of Israel’s future.

This new vision presents Israel as a major power. I will argue that only this goal justifies the tremendous historical suffering of the Jewish People and the continued sacrifices asked of the people of Israel, that this is the only way to end their suffering, that only this goal is worthy of them, and that it is indeed the fulfillment of the Jewish mission and the thrust of all Biblical prophecy.

 

We must allow posterity to work out the details. Only those who actually make the journey will encounter its obstacles and find their solutions. I will, however, describe the worthy goal awaiting us, and the general direction (indeed the only direction) that leads to it. We will arrive at our destination through reason alone, with out conjecture, or suspension of judgment. You will see, too, all other paths we have attempted have been dead ends, have led only to suffering and that this way alone leads out towards the light. Do not despair, dear reader, a bright future for Israel awaits and with it hope for the world. So come and let us put an end to Jewish suffering.


CHAPTER 1

The Jewish Problem Defined

Judaism is one of the great civilizations of mankind. It is the only great civilization however, which has attempted to maintain itself for thousands of years without temporal power. In one sense, this has been Judaism's strength. Having no earthly power, she had none to lose. Judaism was unconquerable. She has indeed outlasted all other civilizations, but at what cost to her adherents! Judaism survived in spirit, but the Jewish people have suffered immensely in the flesh. Millions of innocent Jews have paid with their lives to defend a civilization that could not, in turn, defend them.

 

Why has a civilization as great as Judaism failed to accumulate the temporal power necessary to safeguard her peaceful existence? There is a strong trend within Judaism that in seeking to achieve a utopian moral purity has come to view power as evil in and of itself. These Jews are, in principle, adverse to the accumulation and exercise of power inherent in the actions of every other nation. Their refusal to take into account real world power politics and has brought upon the Jews one tragedy after another. This trend did not begin (or end) with "post-Zionism" or the Oslo accords of the 1990's but has ancient roots going back to the Pietist movement of the second century B.C.E.

History, on the other hand, indicates that a people with its own unique culture wishing to remain true to itself must either accumulate the power to defend that culture or abandon it in favor of a more powerful one. Most nations have chosen the latter path. For the past 1,900 years, the Jewish people have attempted to remain true to themselves, in the face of a hostile world, without accumulating the power necessary to enable them to do so. Moreover, not only do the Jews have their own culture but a unique religion as well, a religion with a universal message. The problem is therefore compounded by the basic contradiction between the particularism and exclusivism of the Jews as a people and the universality of Judaism’s message. Any group claiming to possess a universal message but making no attempt to disseminate it to outsiders will likely incur their suspicion, envy and hatred:

 

They learn and practice and revere the Jewish law, and all that Moses handed down in his secret tome, forbidding to point out the way to any not worshipping the same rites, and conducting none but the circumcised to the desired fountain. (Juvenal)1

 

For two millennia, the Jews have attempted various solutions aimed at solving this problem: the escapism of the Essenes, Pietists, and Kabbalists; the assimilation attempted by the ancient Hellenists; Germans of the Mosaic religion; modern “post-Zionists” and the resistance of the heroes of Masada, Mainz, York and the Warsaw Ghetto. All have failed to end Jewish suffering:

 

Theodore Herzl believed that the Jews’ problems would end once they again had their own state. He did not consider the power of the Jewish state or the reasons for the destruction of previous Jewish states. It is true that we are better able to defend ourselves now with our own sovereign state, and our situation has fundamentally improved over the powerlessness of the ghetto. However, while we have often succeeded in defending Judaism from a world bent on its destruction, we have not rid ourselves of the terrible burdens associated with our having to do so. The state of Israel may have survived decades of war and terror forced upon her, but tens of thousands of the flower of her youth have paid with their lives to make this possible, with no end in sight to this continuing human sacrifice.

 

Many people have enemies who persecute them. Either they overcome them or succumb. We have done neither. Hence we continue to be persecuted and continue to suffer. The harsh reality is that with or without a state, the world will not allow the Jewish people to exist in peace as a small nation. Perhaps, dear reader, the outlines of our destination already begin to appear before you.
 

I fear to say too much lest the timid now flee back to the place with which they are most familiar and comfortable: the moral purity of powerlessness. Over time, our enemies have convinced many Jews that this prison is their true home. Many have even come to believe that we, and not our enemies, choose it for ourselves. We are often more comfortable with the moral certitude of the victim than with the moral dilemmas of those who exercise power, but it was not always so. Persia, Fourth century B.C.E:

 

On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month-that is the month of Adar-when the king’s command and decree were to be executed, the very day on which the enemies of the Jews had expected to get them in their power, the opposite happened, and the Jews got their enemies in their power. Throughout the provinces of King Ahasuerus, the Jews mustered in their cities to attack those who sought their hurt; and no one could withstand them, for the fear of them had fallen upon all the peoples… So the Jews struck at their enemies with the sword, slaying and destroying; they wreaked their will upon their enemies…

The King said to Queen Esther. “In the fortress Shushan alone the Jews have killed a total of five hundred men, as well as the ten sons of Haman. What then must they have done in the provinces of the realm! What is your wish now?...“If it please your Majesty” Esther replied, “let the Jews in Shushan be permitted to act tomorrow also as they did today,; and let Haman’s ten sons be impaled on the stake.”

The rest of the Jews, those in the king’s provinces, likewise mustered and fought for their lives. They disposed of their enemies, killing seventy-five thousand of their foes; but they did not lay hands on the spoil. That was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar; and they rested on the fourteenth day and made it a day of feasting and merrymaking…

And the city of Shushan rang with joyous cries. The Jews enjoyed light and gladness, happiness and honor. And in every province and in every city, when the King’s command and decree arrived, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a feast and a holiday. And many of the people of the land professed to be Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them. (Esther 8:15 - 9:18)

 

These events in ancient Persia represent a very different Jewish response to an anti-Semitic attack, the sort of response for which Jews were famous throughout the ancient world. These Jews were a tiny minority, in a country not their own, and with no Jewish state existent, yet we did not find them engaged in hand wringing or lengthy debates over what to do about the danger to their community. They did not passively await salvation from the powers that be but merely asked for the right to defend themselves. Having done so, they did not sink into a morass of self-doubts and guilt over the loss of enemy life. On the contrary, they celebrated their victory and declared it a holiday, a holiday now known as Purim, and celebrated to this day by Jews everywhere. Not content with merely defending themselves, the Jews went on the offensive, hunting down and annihilating their enemies, killing not only their leader but his ten sons for good measure. When the King asks Esther what the Jews would like to do next, she boldly replies: more of the same! This too, is our history and our tradition. The book of Esther is Holy Scripture. It was the greatest of all the Rabbis, Rabbi Akiva, who insisted that it be canonized, and not without reason.

Four centuries after these events in Persia, Philo, the famous Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, relates that the tenacity of the Jews in defending their religion and liberty was such that "all people in every country, even if they were not naturally well inclined towards the Jewish nation, took great care not to violate or attack any of the Jewish customs or laws."

 

What then, happened between the ancient and medieval worlds that so changed the Jewish response to persecution? The turning point of Jewish history was a series of Roman-Jewish wars lasting seven centuries (63 B.C.E. - 614 C.E.) and ending with the destruction of our national sovereignty and our national home in Israel. This catastrophe lies at the heart of our national trauma, the defeatism of our leadership and the tragedy of our subsequent history.

 

The key to Israel’s future lies in analyzing the cause of her destruction in ancient times and more importantly, the tragic error of our response to it. It is for this reason that I ask you, dear reader, to travel now with me, back to the ancient world.