An Unkosher State part 1: A Rabbi rejects Zionism

A Warning: The Jewish authority who tried to excommunicate the early Zionists

In the 1880s, as the Zionist movement was becoming what it is today, my grandfather’s great uncle was one of the most renowned rabbis in Jerusalem. Rabbi Yehoshua Lieb Diskin was born in 1818 and is considered something of a hero in Israel today with streets named in his honour, but he would have been horrified by what has happened there - indeed he was horrified by secular Zionism at its very inception. This is the story of one of the giants of Jewish thought, offered in honour of his blessed memory and as a testament to his intelligence and foresight. It is for those who want to understand the relationship between Zionism, Judaism and Israel, and to equip people on all sides of the arguments with details of history, scripture and tradition.

Rabbi Diskin’s peculiar way of thinking was often inspiring, sometimes challenging, and in many ways suggestive of autism. This biography is also written with neurodiversity in mind, as an exploration of the particular gifts that a neurodivergent perspective can bring to the world - and what happens when they are ignored.

Rabbi Diskin

ברוך אתה יהוה אלהינו מלך העולם שחלק מחכמתו ליראיו

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has given wisdom to those who revere Him [blessing said upon meeting a great scholar]

Fanatical, uncompromising and very pedantic

The hagiographies of great rabbis (rabbiographies?) often read like legends, and picking out fact from fantasy is not simple. Accounts of Rabbi Diskin counting the bricks in a wall or the leaves on a tree with a single glance seem to evidence supernatural powers, but if true we would call him an autistic savant today. One biography describes him as “fanatical, uncompromising and very pedantic”, all of which are common autistic traits, as was his encyclopaedic knowledge of Jewish law and the fact that he followed that system meticulously without concern for consequences. At 25, he took over from his father as the rabbi of his native Lomza in Poland, which he did with zeal; as soon as he learned that a community member planned to open his shop on the Sabbath, he immediately ran to his house to shout at him.

After seven years, his style got him kicked out of Lomza, and that became a pattern for the next 25 years. He would arrive at a Jewish community, impress the locals with his wisdom, and serve as a rabbi until he inevitably offended so many people that he had to leave again. After being kicked out of Mezritch, Kovno and Shklov, he spent four years in Brisk before criminal accusations were made against him. During a two-hour interview with a lawyer, Rabbi Diskin refused to look at him, and when finally asked why, he commented from behind closed eyes that “it is forbidden to look at the face of a wicked man, and you told me that you do not observe Torah and mitzvot (commandments).” The lawyer concluded that a man who would not relax his moral code even when it might help him into jail could do no wrong, so the accusations had to be lies.

Rabbi Diskin narrowly escaped jail but was forced into exile. He moved to Ottoman-controlled Palestine in 1877, where he was welcomed by other beardy pedants and began setting up soup kitchens, centres of learning and an orphanage that bears his name (my name) today. He became the leading rabbinical authority there, turning down the position of Chief Rabbi of New York in order to serve Jerusalem during a turbulent moment in its history. After his passing, he was honoured with a title: “the Maharil Diskin”.

Another reason to believe that he was autistic is more personal. There are many ways to diverge, of course, but my family tree tends to bear fruit of the fanatical, uncompromising and extremely pedantic variety. Many of the men, in particular, had sharp minds that blossomed early and developed hyperfocus and encyclopaedic knowledge in some particular area. Many also developed a reputation for being extremely difficult, and left a trail of frazzled relationships behind them. In many ways, I have more in common with his defence lawyer than the Maharil himself, but like him I’d rather not look at someone if I feel that they are being hypocritical. Difficulty maintaining eye contact is a classic autistic trait that my mother helped me overcome, but it is still too much if I’m disgusted with someone. Sadly, this is not an uncommon situation (though I never had the chutzpah to justify my shifty side-glance with scripture).

I’m not recommending any of this as a way of life. One day I hope to stop collecting enemies and getting kicked out of organisations because it doesn’t get any easier with time. Rabbi Diskin couldn’t help but rub people up the wrong way, endlessly throughout his long life, and he was accused of all sorts including indictable crime. But as far as I’m aware, no one ever accused him of being factually incorrect. My point is that Rabbi Diskin knew the Torah as well as anyone else in history, and those who disagree with him on matters of fact regarding Jewish law are - to put it bluntly, as a Diskin is wont to do - wrong.

With that in mind, the Maharil’s perspective on Zionism is worth considering, regardless of your position on the matter and especially if you are Jewish.

“Excommunicate the Zionists”

His response to Zionism was as follows:

Write letters in my name to three of the gedolei hador [the most prominent Torah scholars], asking them to call a meeting of rabbis to decide how to stop this movement before it is too late. There is a fearful danger looming on the horizon of Judaism, a danger the likes of which never existed before. This movement is likely to bring destruction on the Jewish people! Write that in my opinion, the rabbis should get together and excommunicate the Zionists from the Jewish people. They should forbid their bread, their wine, and intermarriage with them, just as Chazal did to the Kuthites. I am certain that if we do not take this step, the Jewish people will eventually regret it.

There are a few points to consider here. Firstly, this wasn’t an opinion voiced between sips of chicken soup; he was suggesting a psak halakha, a formal public interpretation of ancient Jewish law in response to modern questions (like a Catholic papal bull or an Islamic fatwa) - and he was in a position to issue one. Had his wishes been followed, it would have become a matter of religious observance for the international Jewish community.

Secondly, he was not expressing a radical viewpoint - quite the opposite. He was drawing upon Jewish norms first recorded around the 5th century which prohibit ending the exile “ahead of time” (ie. before the return of the Messiah). Jewish law covers minute details to deal with every moral question and aspect of life, when to say which blessing, and exactly when to not say a blessing over fire because the smouldering coals have become dimming coals. The Talmud alone runs to over 5000 pages, but among all of the positive and negative commandments, only two are in the class of oaths equal in importance to the Biblical oaths, and both are relevant to Zionism: (i) Jews may not enter the land of Israel en masse (“as a wall”), and (ii) they may not fight against the nations of the world.

Rabbi Diskin was a traditionalist explaining the details of his tradition to its adherents, and his perspective was shared with the overwhelming majority of Jews in the late nineteenth century (with the exception of a few radical modernisers). One reason the rabbis chose not to issue this ruling is because they didn’t believe that such an unpopular idea as Zionism would catch on amongst Jews anyway.

Finally, he was responding to “political Zionism”, which is different to “religious Zionism” - the reason the Maharil himself went to Palestine and raised money for other Jews to join him. It was also different to “labour Zionism”, a movement among communist and anarchist idealists who wanted to grow melons in the Levant unencumbered by the evils of capitalism. Neither of those groups sought a state for the Jews, in the early days at least. Palestine was to be a home for the Jews, and they envisioned sharing their home with Palestinians as they had done for many centuries.

A synagogue in Palestine, 1893. From +972 Magazine

The communists and anarchists were not generally motivated by religion - many were atheists. The only religious tradition at that time that proposed a pre-Messianic Jewish state as the fulfilment of a prophecy was Christian Zionism (and some would say the Masons). This movement in the 1800s was as theologically confused about Jewish scripture as it is today, and it was weaponised by ethnonationalists and imperialists in a similar way.

Race, religion and Herzl’s Christmas tree

Political Zionism was outlined in 1896 by Theodore Herzl in his manifesto Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), and he founded the World Zionist Organisation the following year. The idea was his response to “the Jewish question”, namely: what is to be done with a people who refuse to assimilate? This was a pressing question in the 19th century, partly because Enlightenment science and its racial theories were redefining people as bloodlines with attributes. Also, the newly coagulated European nations such as France, Germany and Italy were constructing their constitutions and defining their national identities by contrasting themselves with the foreigners beyond their borders and the Jews and Gypsies within. This led to a new type of prejudice and a new term: antisemitism, which was coined by an antisemite as we shall see in the next part of the series.

In the light of these new national, racial and political realities (or unrealities), Herzl took it upon himself to answer the Jewish question from his own perspective. He is mentioned in the Israeli Declaration of Independence as the visionary who inspired the Jewish state, but given that he was speaking on behalf of millions of people with over three millennia of history, we might ask what kind of a Jew he was.

Herzl was an atheist who divided Jews into two categories: good Jews and Mauschels:

Who is this Mauschel anyway? A type, my dear friends, a figure that keeps reappearing over the ages, the hideous companion of the Jew and so inseparable from him that the two have always been confused with each other. A Jew is a human being like any other – no better and no worse, possibly intimidated and embittered by persecution, and very steadfast in suffering. Mauschel, on the other hand, is a distortion of human character, something unspeakably low and repugnant.

Herzl was speaking here about people like my grandmother on the other side, Elsa Kupferschmied, a Hungarian Jew like Herzl but a peasant rather than a “civilised” Jew; she was one of 24 children, most of whom were sent to die in Dachau. Herzl’s vision was that Jews of a more traditional bent would leave behind their “shameful Jewish characteristics”. To this end, he refused to circumcise his son born in 1891, and four years later he “was just lighting the Christmas tree for my children when Gudemann [the Chief Rabbi of Vienna] arrived” to pay him a visit. Three months later, he published his manifesto.

The Jewish state was, however, the second solution Herzl came up with - the year before publishing it, he slammed a playwright for his naivety in suggesting that a return to Israel was possible. His original brainwave was that he would personally persuade the Jews, and the Pope, that his people should be converted en masse to Catholicism “on a Sunday, in St. Stephen’s Cathedral, in the middle of the day, with music and pride, publicly.”

This says something about what kind of Jew Herzl was, and also what kind of a person.

Part 2: A Dark Alliance: How antisemites and Zionists solved the Jewish problem