Roots! Study the roots to discover or uncover the potential fruits!
Good studying the history on all sides this week, as we roam. Reading a book this week on the roots of Zionism! Good helpful study when considering current events!

There were of course two streams in early Zionism: religious and secular. It’s good to understand and distinguish both (Hertlz’s and Kook’s ways) both in deciphering the times now. One represented by someone like Rav Kook, saw a the Jews having a spiritual mandate over the land of Israel, including the West Bank.

The other borrowed more the european idea of nationalism, and Marxist state building, and european ideas of nationalism, which were so popular during de-colonialization period, thinking in wanting a homeland nation for the Jewish people. They converged eventually to form the state of Israel. But for very different reasons.

Rav Kook of course, was known to be kind to all of humanity, and specifically non practicing Jews. Many of the religious Jews didn’t like this. They felt only God should establish the land of Israel, not nationalist.

It’s still a complex set of motivations for statehood. And it never fully dealt with those already living in the land, such as the Arabs—the Jew’s semitic brothers. (Both sons of Shem)

Of course, everything was heightened by persecution in Europe and the holocaust being the worst example. Jews needed a place to go also after Russian polgroms. This was about 20 years before official zionism, but laid its foundations.
These were the first aliyah to come and try to settle the land. They were generally students who decided to make collective farms. They had borrowed ideas of Marx and european nationalism. They failed but made a pattern for future zionist settlements.

It’s interesting to think and consider both the secular and religious root systems in Zionism to more sharply discern core motivations, which are still working themselves out over there.

I’m also reading a book on Arab nationalism. Every rock you turn over, in that area of the world, there are more than one caves beneath it. Good historic excavations this week though…keeps you searching for Love’s Way in the midst of the middle east, as elsewhere!