Rav Kook on Campus Radicalism

Rav Kook believed that all political and cultural controversies represent a fundamental failure to grasp the fullness of God.

Culture war is a symptom, in Kabbalistic terms, of shevirat hakelim (the broken vessels of divine Creation). Since God is involved in all things, all views have an aspect of divine truth, but they are also flawed and partial. To arrive at a higher truth you need to moderate your own view while seeking to elevate the view of your opponent.

What might this method yield for a fresh perspective on Israel / Palestine? What do the chants of Hamas apologists like “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free” demonstrate that is true?

First, they remind us that the core conflict, from first principles, is about the right to the whole land. We can talk about dividing the land and “land for peace” as a second order matter (pragmatism, competing values, etc.), but regarding the metaphysics of the debate, we are talking about Greater Israel vs. Greater Palestine. You do have to choose. But how?

Second, they remind us that arguments for land ownership on the basis of indigineity are relative and contestable. Both sides can and do claim they were there first or more recently or use some other metric by which to lay claim to the land. For the record, I am more compelled by the Jewish claim to indigineity and ownership than the Palestinian one, but that's not the point for now, since I regard this debate as a matter of rabbit/duck.

Third, they show us that arguments from secular, nationalist identity politics (the pure right to self-determination) are relative. Israeli-ness and Palestinian-ness are both historical constructs. In our culture, if someone says they identify as a goat you have to believe them; if you deny their right to identify as a goat you can go to a DEI workshop to be reprogammed or end up in some postmodern gulag-lite where you are no longer invited to speak at TED. So Palestinians born in Texas can say they identify with the Naqba and you have to validate it. A Jew who identifies with the story in which Abraham buys Hebron should also be validated as a matter of identity (though it's not owing to double standards). Putin identifies with Greater Russia, but we don't call it dysphoria, we call it megalomania. Hitler identified with Greater Germany when he annexed Eastern Europe. The problem is that when people’s identities conflict, there is no metaphysical resolution to the subjectivism. Where national borders end is fundamentally insoluble, and inevitably war-prone, when framed as a matter of identity.

It’s funny, the campus radicals claim to be anti-colonial yet still very much wedded to European nationalism. Real anti-colonialism would involve aligning with Hamas's bold, pro-active, theological vision to create an Islamic republic, not simply with secular, reactive Palestinian nationalism. At the end of the day, their anti-Europeanism is deeply European.

So what comes to transcend this stand-off and elevate the oppositional views to a higher synthesis? God. Covenant.

Ultimately, relative claims from Lockeian theories of property and Cartesian claims from subjectivist identity are locked in zero-sum battle. There is a higher debate which is the debate about whether you believe the land is given by God to Jews or to Muslims or Christians.

Here you would think we come to another stand-off. Perhaps we do. For remember all controversies represent a limited view of God. But at least it would force the protesters in the Western world to take a stand on this question. Second it would show that the fundamental Zionist idea is religious. Leo Strauss knew as much; he argued that secular Zionism would not be able to sustain itself in the Athenian mold but would eventually become compelled by the mold of Jerusalem.

The land isn’t just a haven from enemies, but the site of a covenantal destiny. We don’t have this debate, because it’s uncomfortable, especially for secular materialists. I respect the theological arguments against Israel more than the political ones. That would be a fun debate, far more colorful, than debates about history. Are the protestors who wave the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah ready for this debate? Are we?

The counter-argument to my point is that the West invented secularism as a way to handle the insoluble nature of theological and metaphysical debate. The bloody wars between Catholics and Protestants required the peace of Westphalia and the politics of tolerance that now enable us to trade with one another despite condemning one another to Hell. Hundreds of years later, the only Western heresy is contesting whether this arrangement was a good idea.

But even if we are glad to live in a society where we tolerate one another so long as GDP compounds at 2% per annum, we must admit that secularism is no longer what it was. Originally, secularism was born of a religious desire for peace; it was a religious virtue. Now, it is not a choice, but the default. What fills the void left by the death of religion, is not more rationality, but worse religion and more nihilism and cynicism.

Campus protestors make an obsession of Palestinian liberation because they have nothing else to give their lives meaning. It is their rite, a nostalgia for nostalgia. They represent an inevitable pagan turn enabled by the so-called “Death of God.” Religion may be the opiate of the masses, but pseudo-religion in the form of Ivy League Marxism is the fentanyl of the elites. Read Kabbalistically, and through a Kookian lens, we can have compassion on those whose desire for transcendence is misplaced. The whole spectacle is itself a kashya on secularism. And it is deeply fitting that its scene is the university—the pantheon of modernity.