Tag Archives: Religious Zionist

Jew of the Week: Nathan Birnbaum

The First Zionist (and the First Modern Ba’al Teshuva)

Nathan Birnbaum (1864-1937) was born in Vienna to a traditional Jewish family of Hungarian and Galician heritage. He studied law and philosophy at the University of Vienna, where he founded Kadimah, the first nationalist Jewish student association. He also started a new magazine called Selbstemanzipation! (“Self-Emancipation!) In fact, it was in an 1890 article for his magazine that Birnbaum coined the terms “Zionism” and “Zionist”. Two years later, he coined the term “political Zionism”, as distinct from the religious Zionism that has always existed in Judaism. Birnbaum’s writings were hugely popular and helped ignite the modern Zionist movement. They also played a role in inspiring Theodor Herzl. At the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Birnbaum was elected Secretary General. However, he soon had a change of heart when he saw how Zionism was becoming too secular and too political. Instead, he began to advocate for “Jewish cultural autonomy”, also called golus (or galut) nationalism. He hoped Jews would be recognized as a distinct and semi-autonomous people within the countries in which they dwelled. Birnbaum ran for Austrian parliament and while he did win the election, corruption and anti-Semitism prevented him from taking his seat. Birnbaum was a huge proponent of “Yiddishism”, and to make Jews proud of their culture and language. In 1908, he convened the first Conference for the Yiddish Language, and even traveled to America to promote the revival of Yiddish. During this trip, he had a meeting with US President Teddy Roosevelt. Birnbaum eventually realized that true salvation for the Jews can only come from adherence to Torah and Jewish law. In 1916, he became a ba’al teshuvah and began to live a strictly Orthodox life. Three years later, he became the General Secretary of Agudas Yisroel (originally an umbrella organization for Eastern European Orthodox Jews, and today also a political party in Israel). He wrote a popular text called Gottesvolk (“God’s People”), where he outlined his plan for reviving Judaism and laid out a vision of the ideal Jewish community. He argued passionately against “modern paganism” and warned about the dangers of godless secularism, quite accurately foreseeing how it could destroy society. He affirmed that settling and living in Israel was still important, of course, but for spiritual reasons, not political ones. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Birnbaum fled with his family to the Netherlands, where he lived out the last few years of his life. Today there is a street in Jerusalem named after him. He has been called a “prophetic personality” and the “first modern ba’al teshuvah”.

Yom Kippur Begins Tuesday Evening – Gmar Chatima Tova!

9 Yom Kippur Myths and Misconceptions

The Kabbalah of Yom Kippur

Words of the Week

When one stands in prayer, he should place his feet together side by side. He should set his eyes downwards as if he is looking at the ground, and his heart upwards as if he is standing in Heaven.
– Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (“Maimonides”, 1138-1204), Mishneh Torah

Jew of the Week: Menachem Begin

In Memory of an Israeli Founding Father

Menachem Begin (1913-1992) was born in what is today Belarus to a religious and Zionist family that came from a long line of great rabbis. Interestingly, the midwife that delivered him was the grandmother of fellow Belorussian Jew Ariel Sharon! Begin went to a religious cheder elementary school, and then a religious Zionist high school, and was also a member of Hashomer Hatzair, the Zionist youth movement. In law school at the University of Warsaw, he organized a Jewish self-defence group to fight rampant anti-Semitism. After graduating, Begin joined Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Betar organization and soon became the head of its Polish and Czech branches. When Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939, Begin fled to Lithuania. The following month, Lithuania was invaded by the USSR and Begin was imprisoned for his Zionist activity and for being a supposed “British imperialist”. Begin was tortured and sentenced to 8 years in a labour camp. He was released in 1941 and put into a Polish resistance force to fight the Nazis. By the end of 1942, Begin’s commander issued him a leave of absence so that he could go to Israel to fight for the Zionist cause. Begin arrived in the Holy Land and joined the militant Irgun, arguing that the Zionist leadership was too soft and that the British had to be expelled. Against the wishes of the Jewish Agency, Begin organized a revolt against the British, with a step-by-step plan that he modeled on the Irish independence movement. The insurgency was launched in February 1944. Begin’s plan worked, and the British would leave three years later, allowing Israel to declare independence. Throughout this time, Begin was Britain’s “most wanted” man and stayed in hiding, appearing in public rarely and usually disguised as a rabbi. Begin went on to sign a deal with Ben-Gurion to combine their forces and create the IDF, though the process was far from smooth. He then formed the right-wing Herut party, winning 14 seats in Israel’s first election. The Herut party was sidelined as “extremist” and only participated in the governing coalition briefly following the Six-Day War. It only became more prominent in 1973 when, following the Yom Kippur War, Herut joined several other parties to form the new Likud coalition. In the 1977 election, Begin won a landslide in what has been called the mahapakh, a “revolution” in Israeli politics. The main reason for his win was that Begin reached out to Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews, who long felt like second-class citizens under Israel’s Ashkenazi establishment. Begin did not disappoint, and as prime minister started a “Project Renewal” to inject major funding into Mizrachi communities, transforming 82 “slums” into thriving towns. He also pioneered major education reform in Israel, making secondary education compulsory and removing tuition fees for it. Begin’s “economic transformation” shifted Israel away from a socialist economy towards a free-market economy (which saw several hiccups, and admittedly came with both positives and negatives). Most famously, Begin met with Egyptian president Sadat to negotiate the Camp David Accords, resulting in Israel’s first peace treaty with an Arab adversary, for which he won a Nobel Peace Prize. Nonetheless, Begin was severely criticized within his own party, accused of no longer being the hawk he once was, and reneging on his own principals. Perhaps to mitigate this, Begin launched a massive campaign of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) and Gaza, quadrupling the Jewish population in these regions, and later formally annexed the Golan Heights. Begin’s other famous achievement was Operation Opera, in which Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 1981. This gave rise to the “Begin Doctrine”: that Israel would never allow an enemy state to develop nuclear weapons. In November 1982, Begin’s beloved wife passed away and he fell into a deep depression. Together with his own failing health, and Israel’s quagmire in Lebanon, Begin resigned as prime minister and left the post to Yitzhak Shamir. Begin lived out his life in seclusion, leaving his apartment only to say Kaddish at his wife’s grave. Begin died of a heart attack and had requested a simple Jewish funeral, with no state honours. Unlike other leaders who are buried at Mount Herzl, Begin asked to be buried at the Mount of Olives. His funeral was attended by some 75,000 admirers. Altogether, Begin served on the Knesset for 34 years, and over that time had stints as Minister of Communication, Justice, Labour, Transportation, Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Agriculture. He wrote two books. Next Monday is his yahrzeit.

Historic Footage: Menachem Begin and the Lubavitcher Rebbe

Words of the Week

I am completely and unequivocally opposed to the surrender of any of the liberated areas [of Israel] currently under negotiation…
– Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe

From the Jew of the Week Archives: Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky

Jew of the Week: Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh

“The Angel”

HaRav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

Yitzchak Feivish Ginsburgh (b. 1944) was born in St. Louis, Missouri and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He was recognized as a math prodigy when still a child. While spending a year in Israel as a teenager, Ginsburgh began learning Torah and becoming more religiously observant. He went on to study philosophy and mathematics, and got a Master’s degree in the latter. He left his Ph.D studies to go yeshiva in Jerusalem instead, becoming a rabbi. After the Six-Day War, he was one of the first people to move into the newly-liberated Jewish Quarter. Around this time, he met the Lubavitcher Rebbe for the first time and became his disciple, eventually resettling in Kfar Chabad. During the Yom Kippur War, he served as the Rebbe’s emissary to the IDF, and even delivered a lulav and etrog to Ariel Sharon on the front line for Sukkot. After this, Ginsburgh founded the first Chabad House in the Sinai, which was later destroyed when Israel gave up the area in its peace treaty with Egypt. The rabbi went on to head the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva near Joseph’s Tomb. He has written over 120 books on a variety of subjects, in both Hebrew and English. He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on Hasidism and Kabbalah, as well as gematria (Jewish numerology), Torah and science, Jewish psychology, and meditation. He is a pioneer of “Hasidic psychotherapy” and is the dean of the Torat Hanefesh School of Hasidic Psychology. Rabbi Ginsburgh is also an avid musician and has composed dozens of popular songs. He has met some controversy in the past for his passionate support of Jewish settlement across all of Israel’s ancestral lands, and for his opposition to government concessions to Israel’s enemies. Despite some of the negative press he has received from the mainstream media, Rabbi Ginsburgh is well-known for his humility, righteousness, profound wisdom, and gentle demeanour. Many refer to him as HaMalakh, “the angel”. Rabbi Ginsburgh has thousands of devoted students around the world, and still presides over a network of Jewish schools in Israel. He is undoubtedly among the greatest contemporary Jewish scholars and religious leaders. Today is his 77th birthday.

Words of the Week

Ours is the first generation in modern times to understand the truly universal human condition and to seek to bring all peoples of the earth together in peace and harmony.
– Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh