Summary
Eliezer Schweid, a secular ultranationalist ideologue of Gush Emunim and, in Lustick’s words, one of its most sophisticated polemicists, whose writings state the movement’s claim to privileged knowledge of the redemption process and pose its unanswered questions about democracy and the halacha (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 4, lines 4119-4400; Chapter 5, lines 5900-6118).
Details
- Schweid is named in Chapter 3 among the Herut and Revisionist veterans who supplied Gush Emunim with publicists and, in Chapter 5, among the leading ideologues of the nonreligious wing, which comprises no more than 20 percent of Gush activists (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2800-3200; Chapter 5, lines 4850-5118).
- On the fundamentalist claim to read history as God’s communication, Schweid writes: “The weight of the opinion of those who know the truth about the burgeoning of Redemption, a truth discerned through study of the Torah, is greater than the weight of the opinions of leaders who do not see anything but what exists in the present and can only guess at the future” (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 4, lines 4119-4400).
- After the arrest of the Jewish Underground in the spring of 1984, Schweid argued that two more basic questions had to be confronted: whether democracy is seen as having value in and of itself or only as a means, and whether the absolute and enforced authority of the halacha is preferred to a basis of humane and moral sentiments (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 5, lines 5900-6118).
- With the partial exception of Moshe Ben-Yosef, no one in the movement has systematically attempted to answer Schweid’s two questions (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 5, lines 5900-6118).
Related pages
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Gush Emunim, Jewish Underground, Jewish Fundamentalism