'The prototypes of political parties are Masonic lodges, that's where they actually originated’: Kabbalist Rabbi Shmulevich
Mysticism and politics. Part 1
By Avraham Shmulevich
10.11.2009
Yuri Khalturin: At first glance, mysticism and politics are opposite to each other. Mysticism is deeply individual, introverted, turned to the transcendent. Politics deals with the masses, is turned outway, political practice unfolds horizontally, not vertically. Nevertheless, these two spheres of human activity somehow interact, and I would like to understand how such interaction is possible, especially in the current situation.
Avraham Shmulevich: First of all, these are not opposites, it's actually the same thing. Any real politics comes out of mysticism, it is connected with mysticism, it feeds on mysticism, it is, in fact, the embodiment of mysticism. We are now at the stage before the change of world formations, including political and spiritual, so things are ossified a little and it is not visible. But the entire modern so-called Western European civilization grew exclusively out of mysticism: mystical movements, whether English Protestant sects or before that Catholicism. Even the Russian autocracy seemed to be such an oblique system, nevertheless, it considered itself as a manifestation of divine will on earth. Another thing is that the mechanisms that provided this have already died out. For example, the prototype of political parties is Masonic lodges. Actually, that's where they came from.
It's just that in history it happens that those ideas that at first seem revolutionary, new, esoteric, they gradually take over the masses, become commonplace, ossification, and new generations of revolutionaries are already fighting against what was once revolutionary ideas.
Yuri Khalturin: How are Masonic lodges and parties connected? After all, by definition, a party is a part of society, party politics is a policy of conflict, while the Masonic box is a place where conflicts (political, ethnic, religious) should not exist in the idea.
Avraham Shmulevich: A party, in theorion, is a group of people (one of the meanings of the word "party" is just a "group", as well as a "part") that sets itself the task of implementing certain political goals, the task of forcing society to follow a certain ideology. People unite in a Masonic lodge according to the principle of commitment to a certain system of values, ideology. Those who do not share that ideology will not be accepted into the lodge. And within this ideological group, conflicts, in the east, should not exist. In the conditions of an absolutist feudal society, there were no parties in their modern form yet, and Masonic lodges were just such ideologically motivated groups, and aimed to impose a certain system of values on society, in fact, this is just a system of values of modern "liberal" society. And the Masons aimed to spread this ideology to the whole society - they acted for this purpose with the methods that were available in this era.
Yuri Khalturin: Do your words mean that all mysticism is revolutionary?
Avraham Shmulevich: Yes. Mysticism is a connection with the Creator. God is the father of the Revolution. The first and most important Revolution in the history of the universe was the Act of Creation,
Yuri Khalturin: What do you mean by revolution?
Avraham Shmulevich: Revolution is a movement. Revolution is change. Revolution is life.
Mysticism is the doctrine of the mystery, that is, the true essence of things. And that's why mysticism not only does not contradict politics, but simply without it there is no politics. And we, the hyper-zionists, the Bead Artzeynu Movement, are really the only political, at least on the scene of modern Israel, movement that thinks about such things. All the rest, both political forces and religious forces, including official Judaism, support homeostasis. There is a big problem with any official religion, institutional religion, that the clergy is always a protective institution, i.e. it must protect tradition. In those few, in fact, few periods of history, when there are no sudden changes and everything goes as it goes, it works. But as soon as the situation actually changes, the spiritual tradition must change with it. And the clergy by nature opposes any changes, and this is the cause of the crisis of religious systems, including the crisis we are experiencing now. Modern religions, including modern Judaism, they don't think about politics.
What is politics? Politics is life. Aristotle considered politics the highest of arts. That is, it is not just art, but the quintessence of the arts, it is the doctrine of the organization of the human community, and there is nothing outside the human community. But traditional religions, including Judaism, they stopped thinking about the embodiment of the ever-changing divine truth,
Yuri Khalturin: How can the divine truth change, because God is eternal?
Abraham Shmulevich: God, of course, is eternal and unchanging in His essence. But He reveals Himself to His creation - outside of Himself, in interaction with the world. And this His function, the function of revealing His Eternal Essence, it will change all the time along with the world. And man can know God (as well as creature in general) only in the process of change, in the process of movement, in the process of constantly renewing interaction of God with the world created by Him. (Remember the image of the Divine Chariot from the Vision of the Prophet Yehezkiel). Such a constant change, constant renewal - that's the revolution. This is the pulse of the Almighty, which is afraid in our world
There are always people in the world who keep their hand on this Pulse.
And they come all the time for organizations like ours, which at first are in the minority, and almost underground, at least in the intellectual underground. And after some time, they begin to be the force that determines the spiritual and political nature of society. Take even the same Jesuits who saved the Catholic world. Or the Renaissance - there were about several hundred humanists who made the Renaissance, these are people who really made all modern culture. Therefore, it's not about the number, and not even about the quality of people, but about the ideology that these people put forward.
In the entire history of Jewish civilization, after the destruction of the Second Temple, only four ideologies were put forward.
The first ideologem is the ideologem of Khazal (khazal - i.e. "hahameinu, zichronam levraha" - "our sages, blessed memory" - an abbreviation adopted in Hebrew for rabbis and sages of the Talmud era), i.e. the sages of the Talmud: we close ourselves, as they say, in the four cubits of Galachi, we must preserve what was. This is a fence around the law, we cut off our ties with reality.
The second ideology is assimilation. That is, Jews must dissolve among other nations for the benefit of each individual Jew. And there were people who made quite purposeful efforts to do so.
The third ideology is reformism, to one degree or another, starting from Karaimism, ending with modern reformism, which says that we must correct the Torah, "adapt the Divine Tradition to modernity", remove from the Jewish tradition all things that contradict the traditions of the surrounding peoples: to be, for example, simply "Germans of the Moses Law", "Arabs of the Moses Law", or some "Peruvans of the Moses Law". This, of course, doesn't work very well either.
The fourth ideology is Zionism, political Zionism, which said that Jews should become a political force, set themselves political tasks, but attach themselves to some great power, that is, fit into the political process that is going on, as a secondary force, and thus find their place on the world map. And, in fact, Israel is the implementation of this project, and now it is obvious that it has already exhausted itself.
And the fifth project is my project, hyperzionism: the Jews must return to the role they have already spontaneously begun to play in the world European civilization, and which, in fact, is the commandment of Judaism - to be a force that guides human civilization, which sets the standards of human civilization.
This is actually the story that happened before the destruction of the Second Temple, starting with the Maccabean Wars. It was a struggle between Jewish civilization and Roman civilization for who would set the spiritual standards of humanity. This struggle ended in a draw, i.e. modern civilization is a kind of amalgam of these two.
Remember, in the Gospel there is a phrase: "scribes and Pharisees, who bypass the sea and the land, in order to convert at least one." That is, Judaism is not some tribal religion, and Judaism should return to this role, that is, to the role that was bequeathed to the Forefather Abraham - to be the people of priests. Actually, all the prophets talked about it. And, I repeat, this is the task, the political task that our movement sets for itself.
Yuri Khalturin: Is this a political task, and not, rather, spiritual or cultural?
Avraham Shmulevich: Spirituality, especially culture, exists only in society.
Accordingly, our methods of achievement cannot be massive at the initial stage, I think that the time will come for this by 2011-2012, and, I think, according to a number of signs, by 2018 we will be the leading movement.
Yuri Khalturin: How do Rabbi Cook's hyper-Zionism and religious Zionism relate? - what you are saying is very similar to the ideology of this trend.
Avravah Shmulevich: It's still two different things. Rav Cook and religious Zionism are among our forerunners. Rabbi Cook's religious Zionism was one of the first attempts to get Judaism out of this cocoon, but Rabbi Cook never thought in political terms.
The fact that it has now been turned into a kind of symbol is, in fact, a defensive reaction of the system. Rabbi Cook was the chief rabbi of Palestine, but he did not make any significant changes, political changes. Moreover, he preserved the system that developed in Galut.
One of the most blatant examples here is two rabbinates, Sephardic and Ashkenazi. Another example is when in the late 1920s and early 1930s there was a dispute among the kibbutz movement to abandon non-Jewish labor. There was a problem with milking cows on Shabbat - this is a forbidden work on Shabbat, you can't violate Shabbat, and without it it is impossible - the cows will just die, and that's it. And when the kibbutzniks asked him a question, he said: "Hire Arabs." He was so unaware of what was happening. That is, Rabbi Cook did not think in political categories.
At the same time, it is also necessary to take into account that most of his heritage of Rabbi Cook is still in manuscripts, and has not yet been published, and these are his most explosive ideas and it is not by chance that with all the alleged feast before Rabbi Cook, which is shown by both the state and the structures of religious Zionism related to the state - his archive has not yet been published in full and even most of it has not been published.
In fact, Rabbi Cook became a symbol, and his teaching became the leading ideology of political Zionism only somewhere in the 70s. Until that time, other portraits hung on the walls of most schools and yeshivas of religious Zionists - Rabbi Kalisher, Rabb Alkalai, Rabb Gutmacher, Rabbi Herzog, but not Rabbi Cook. Yeshiva "Merkaz a-Rav", a yeshiva founded by Rabbi Cook and led by his son Rabbi Zvi-Yehuda Cook, has not yet occupied the unalternative position it occupies now.
Perhaps the main "supplier of personnel" for the synthesis of the state and religion in the forties andties was the yeshiva Hebron (before the Hebron massacre of 29 - the year of TARPAT - it was called "Slobodka"), and the "modern ideological baggage" of religious Zionism did not consist almost exclusively of the legacy of Rabbi Cook as it is today - religious Zionists taught both the books listed above and other authorities.
And I think that when the old system realized that religion could actually become a political factor, they actually raised Rabbi Cook on the shield to protect themselves.
With all that, of course, he is one of our ancestors. But he doesn't have a political action program.
In general, this is an amazing thing, but Judaism was not engaged in almost in the 20th century the halakha of the state - what the state should be from the point of view of the law. There were only a few people, the largest of them is Rabbi Hirshenzon, and Rabbi Cook is not one of them. He doesn't have a program of practical actions.
(To be continued)