Unbridled messianism based on peculair moral inversions. The redemptive scenario of the philistine as discardable tool in god’s grand design. War as cosmic necessity. This kind of ideology does seem wacky, out there, off the beaten track and over the cliff, forget under the bus; that place seems reserved for women. Yet, his thinking cannot be forgotten as an annoying nuisance since it reflects the views of growing numbers who have molded a vision of redemption that rejects any and all ethical claims, secular claims associated with a version of liberalism and traditional orthodox belief willing to embrace and engage with the rest of the world.It almost like Heidegger’s vision of endorsing nazism as part of divine providence. Given the ardent loyalty and devotion of the disciples and followers, the impact of Rabbi Tau’s views beyond the Yeshiva and onto the world stage could indeed be apocalyptic.
How can a brilliant mind evoke and posit such twisted ideology? He recognizes the Palestinians as the Biblical Philistines, a recognition that is hardly favorable, given the interpretation of them being space occupiers in the Israel in the role of eternal war opponents and terrorists in god’s historical plan and have to be swept out in one way or another. As contrary to other orthodox view that assert that Israel as a state has served to delay the redemption, Tau promotes the opposite tack whereby Jewish statehood in Israel constitutes one of the last steps in climbing the stairs of redemption. Divine ordination in which this school of thought falls back on the idea of the “chosen select” of which Tau is central figure- kind of Jehovah Witness, Mormon, Christian Science in this view- who are active engagers of celestial providence due to a gifted talent in decoding the divine plan.
—Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, made an unscheduled stop at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday afternoon, and both placed a prayer in one of the wall’s many cracks.
Mr. Romney’s visit coincided with Tisha B’av — a solemn holiday commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Jewish Temples of Jerusalem — but Mr. Romney’s security detail and name recognition rendered the scene at the Western Wall a bit more scene-y than usual. Barricades were set up to block off the front area, and women stood on chairs to peer over at Mr. Romney from their segregated section to the right.—Read More:http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/romney-visits-western-wall/
( see link at end)…A leading nationalist-Zionist rabbi has written a treatise claiming that home is a women’s place, and “not the domain of social activity,” thus reflecting further radicalization among religious Zionists.
Rabbi Zvi Tau, president of Har Hamor Yeshiva and a leader of the more extreme orthodox trend among the national-Zionist public, wrote the treatise for internal use. The leaflet promotes the opinion that too much education for women would “harm the quality of life of the nation.”
Austria-born Tau was for many years a student of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, and one of the heads of the Merkaz Harav, religious-Zionism’s most prestigious yeshiva. In 1997 he turned his back on the yeshiva and created the Har Hamor yeshiva, but is still considered one of the leading rabbis of the movement and a notable supporter of the concept of nationalism, which considers the state of Israel holy and opposes refusal to follow orders in the IDF.
—For the persecuted, the otherworldly longings of traditional Jewish messianism are a deep wellspring of hope. For those holding power, they are a constant temptation that can easily blind one to the damaging effects on flesh and blood of ideological abstractions.
For his part, Zvi Tau, grasping the significance of the steady intellectual and spiritual collapse of classic political Zionism, has replaced it with a powerfully suggestive interpretation of the metaphysical significance of Jewish statehood. Those who hope to steer Zionism—and religious Zionism in particular—by more humane and sustainable lights would do well to ponder his example, and propound other interpretations. —Read More:http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/859/features/messianic-temptations/ image:http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1628118,00.html
Tau publicly supported former President Moshe Katzav, who was imprisoned for rape, and called on him, at the time, to refuse to resign.
Two months ago Tau wrote, for internal use, a treatise called “who created me as he willed,” a quote from the prayer said by women every morning dealing with the proper place of women according to the Torah. Tau’s position is radical, often more than orthodox concepts.
Tau writes that men and women have different roles. Indeed,it seems that the woman is discriminated against but it isn’t so, he writes. Women, according to Tau, have more emotional power, while men are more cerebral. This division is needed because of the world’s limitations, since it is unable to contain full realization of both emotion and mind. Women, due to nature’s needs, were not meant to occupy themselves with “the depths of science and morals,” but rather with carrying, giving birth to, feeding and raising children. Rabbi Tau claims that this is woman’s “natural vocation, and God created within her the necessary talents and an inner orientation for these issues,” which negate the possibility of “commiting oneself to the depths of science.”
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—Zoltan Kluger. 1948. —Read More:http://israelinostalgia.blogspot.ca/2012/02/zoltan-kluger-1933-1958.html
Tau adds that the worldwide trend of allowing women equal education, and striving for equality, can only guarantee short-term profits. In the long run this trend “will harm the quality of life of the nation and society, since the true female character will not be realized and will be missed by the world. Society and the nation should rather be built on perfecting the special attributes imprinted in women.”
Tau continues to explain that children born to couples including women who devote themselves to their career will be “weak and flaccid.”
So what can women do? Rabbi Tau answers: “Home is the natural habitat for women to express their special tendency … not the domain of social activity. At home, without the bustle … is where a woman can fully live her life.” Read More:http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/leading-religious-zionist-rabbi-a-woman-s-place-is-in-the-home-1.454794
This divine plan that orchestrates the puppet show of world history consigns the Palestinians (Philistines) a central if paradoxical role. Their resistance against Jewish statehood over the entire Land of Israel serves only to intensify and increase a metaphysical power intrinsic within the Jewish people,an ethnocentric view, which allows Israel to preserve the very statehood against the desires of the Philistines ( Palestinians).
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…A brilliant man, Tau treats the elder Kook’s vast corpus as sacred text, one that offers a perfectly consistent key to the inner life of the world. His reading of Kook, and through Kook of Jewish statehood, reflects an exquisite balance between esoteric knowledge available only to the few and active engagement with the institutions of governance. The elder Kook’s struggles and debates with himself are transformed by Tau into a seamless, and seductive, theology whereby Jewish sovereignty, realized in admittedly flawed institutions, becomes the expression of nothing less than the divine presence on earth.
Esoteric as it is, this reading of Jewish statehood has great practical consequences.
Tau and his disciples view themselves as members of an elect who see through society and politics into the underlying and necessary spiritual reality that is Israel’s nature and mission. This does not imply a simple acceptance of secular authorities on their own terms. Rather, in Tau’s teaching, one must participate in the state and its institutions in full recognition of their fallen nature; for, no matter how fallen they seem, they are charged with divine significance.
And that is where Moshe Katsav comes in—not the person of Moshe Katsav, who is almost incidental, but the fact of his occupancy of Israel’s presidency, an institution with its own charisma and its own necessary place in the redemptive unfolding of the divine plan. In a deep sense, deeper than any president himself could understand, the president of Israel cannot do wrong. As for the judiciary that condemned him, it perversely misapprehended the meaning of law in a Jewish state.
In line with this grasp of history, Tau has encouraged many of his disciples to limit their time in the study hall and seek careers in the military, which he sees as the road to power and influence within Israeli society; a growing number of leading IDF senior officers are his students. In time, Tau confidently believes, the current occupants of positions of power in Israel will yield their place to those who alone understand the subtle dialectics of God’s movements through history. Read More:http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/859/features/messianic-temptations/
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