New book – “HaChareidim V’Haaretz”

For all those interested in the debate about Zionism and the Chareidim – An excellent, well sourced, and highly readable new book (in Hebrew) has recently been published called החרדים והארץ by Refael Rafaelov.

The main points he makes are as follows:

1. The “Old Yishuv” was proactively involved in attempting to found new agricultural settlements decades before the “First Aliyah”. The reasons those attempts failed until the 1870’s were due to factors outside of their control, which began to change in the last third of the 19th century. This fact was formally acknowledged in writing by no less than David BG himself…

2. The history of the Chovevei Zion movement, and the central role of Chareidim in its founding, is discussed and documented. How the Maskilim and later the Zionists hijacked the movement for their purposes is also discussed.

3. The settlements of Petach Tikvah, Rosh Pina, and Mikveh Yisrael were founded by Chareidim from the “Old Yishuv”, in the decade and a half before the “First Aliyah”. They became secular later on. How and why that happened is discussed at length. (See item nine.)

4. Six out of seven of the first settlements built by the “First Aliyah” were at first religious (except for “Gedera”).

5. The official Israeli version of history makes a big deal about the secular socialist ביל״ו movement, and how they supposedly led the “first Aliyah” despite the fact that only 20 of their people ever actually made it to the Land, and the only Yishuv they founded by themselves was the aforementioned “Gedera”.

6. That is directly due to the Mapai – Labor dictatorship (who controlled Israel as a de facto one party state for the first 30 years) rewriting history in their own image.

7. The “Second Aliyah” brought the first major influx of virulently secularist settlers, but most of the physical labor (the much vaunted “Avodah Ivrit”) was done by religious Sephardi and Yemenite immigrants who also began arriving in the Land at the same time (for very different reasons…) The Maskilim preferred writing poetry about drying the swamps to actually doing it themselves…

8. The secular settlements were dependent on financial support from Jews abroad, no less than the “Old Yishuv” was. (The Kibbutz Movement was never a financial success story, even after the State, but the post-48 era is not the subject of the book.)

9. Enormous efforts were made by the secular Zionists of the Second Aliyah to lead the children of the earlier religious settlers away from Yiddishkeit, mainly by infiltrating existing settlements and taking over the educational system. These efforts were unfortunately “successful”.

10. The battle for and against Shmittah observance is discussed, as well as the relationship of the Baron Edmund Rothschild to Yiddishkeit and his distaste for the nihilistic/bohemian ideology and practices of the Socialists.

All of these things shaped the relationship between the Chareidim and the secular State down to today, although that is not the primary focus of the book. The main subject and focus is the Chareidi contribution to the early stages of building the Land, and the secular Zionists rewriting of history to minimize that contribution. The overwhelming majority of the sources quoted are from people who were/are far from being Chareidim themselves, including contemporary journalists of the era being discussed as well as secular or RZ academics. This is NOT a hagiography either in style or sourcing of content. (Agav, some of his points contradict hagiographic misconceptions of the Old Yishuv from within the Chareidi world…) Check it out yourselves.