1) The Jewish Horseshoe

The Horseshoe Theory of politics asserts that the extremes on the far right and the far left actually have more in common with each other than they do with the center. In American politics, a great litmus test for Horseshoe Theory rests in how someone views Zionism and the State of Israel: with the far-right Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens sharing identical views on the subject to Ralph Nader and Jill Stein on the far-left. Within the Jewish community itself, not surprisingly, Israel is the great litmus test as well. The far-right Neturei Karta and the far-left Jewish Voice for Peace share the same language and rhetoric on the subject.

Horseshoe Theory even often works on the level of physical appearance. I remember an old website called “Hipster or Hasid dot com” which showed a close-up picture of a bearded man in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and you had to guess: Hipster or Hasid?! Consider a pair of real-world cases: The far-left wing anti-Israel professors Shaul Magid and Daniel Boyarin each sport the long, shaggy beards of neohasidic hipsters. And, in justifying their anti-Zionism, they each also draw heavily on the thought of R. Yoel Teitelbaum zt’l, the Satmar Rebbe.

This is, of course, risibly disingenuous of them. The anti-Zionism of Satmar is not based in notions of universal progressive human rights. It’s based in the ultra-Conservative ethos that the conditions that prevailed for Jews in the 19th century should continue in the same way until the messiah comes. This doesn’t only apply to Jews remaining in exile. It also means that Jews ought to remain separate and ghettoized, not partaking in secular knowledge or culture, and with no close relationship to gentiles. And it also means that the religious status of women should remain roughly frozen where it was in the 19th century.

And even so, Satmar Hasidim still face the Land of Israel three times a day and pray for the restoration of complete Jewish sovereignty therein, just like all other faithful Jews have done throughout the ages. They simply long for that vision to be realized tomorrow; they don’t recognize that it has been properly realized today. In other words, their opposition to Zionism is entirely circumstantial, and not based on any notion that Judaism actually opposes the idea on any objective, anti-nationalist grounds.

This all exposes an uncomfortable truth for Boyarin and Magid: that there is no significant progressive anti-Zionist tradition from within Orthodoxy whatsoever. The only Orthodox case for Anti-Zionism is to be found in the anti-Modernist streams; and the anti-Zionism cannot be coherently separated from that very anti-Modernism itself.

In any case, their pragmatic and political anti-Zionism actually places these two professors in league with the Neturei Karta, and in explicit opposition to the policies of Satmar, which has repeatedly condemned Neturei Karta for going too far! What is the nature of the dispute between Satmar and Neturei Karta?

Satmar........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)