Dear Rabbi
Your Talmudic Advice Column
Dear Rabbi,
On Shabbat morning in the Orthodox synagogue that I attend the chazzan chants a prayer for the State of Israel after the Torah reading, before the Musaf service. Everyone in the shul stands up for this prayer, except for one man who apparently, to show his disapproval of the modern state, makes a point of sitting through the prayer. His act of passive defiance toward Israel annoys me and other people. What can I do?
Proud of Israel in Paramus
Dear Proud,
There has always been diversity in the religious response to Zionist movement. And there has often been opposition in the Jewish community of the diaspora to the methods and tactics of some Zionists.
Nevertheless you do know that the several different major streams of Zionists joined together over a period of decades to found a Jewish State. Among the streams were groups of Political, Social, Cultural and Religious Zionists who worked sometimes independently, and sometimes together, toward a common goal.
The state of Israel has always combined together diverse contributions from the politics of the left and the right, from policies and programs for society of secular socialists, from the creative artistic expressions of Jewish culture through art, music, poetry and fiction, and from the practices, devotions and traditional learning of religious Jews.
Back in the 1950s my father, Rabbi Zev Zahavy, was one of the few Orthodox rabbis who spoke and wrote often about the significance of the new State of Israel. He voiced in his sermons his view of the new state as a spiritual and cultural center for world Jewry. He was quoted on many occasions in the NY Times and elsewhere. I’m proud of how he stood up and spoke out for Israel while many of his rabbinical colleagues sat silently on the sidelines.
