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Bayit Yehudi’s budding religious Zionist revolution

02/12/2013 20:34 By EVELYN GORDON

Long cowed by the haredim and its own hardal wing, mainstream religious Zionism is fighting back

Photo by: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post

Ever since Election Day, public attention has focused on whether the new government will finally end the anomaly whereby most haredi men neither work nor do army service. But the spotlight on the haredim has obscured the equally significant crossroads now facing another community: Will religious Zionism finally emerge from the haredi world’s shadow?

Religious Zionism has long suffered from an inferiority complex toward the haredim. On numerous religious issues that affect the functioning of the state, from conversion to shmita (the rules governing agriculture during the sabbatical year), religious Zionist rabbis have been afraid to confront their haredi counterparts head-on and boldly push their own halachic interpretations. Instead, the community has repeatedly sat back and let the secular High Court of Justice decide such issues. This was a declaration of religious bankruptcy: We can’t compete on the religious field, it said; we can prevail only in a nonreligious arena.

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Bayit Yehudi’s budding religious Zionist revolution

Long cowed by the haredim and its own hardal wing, mainstream religious Zionism is fighting back

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