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Jan. 22nd, 2003 05:03 pm[Hazony].
Few today remember that when the idea of establishing a sovereign state for the Jewish people was made the goal of the Zionist Organzation, it was greeted by many leading Jewish intellectuals as an abomination. ... And for much the same reason. All of them argued that the Jewish people was in its essence an achievement of the "spirit", which would be degraded and corrupted ... the moment it was harnessed to tanks and explosives, politics and intrigue, bureaucracy and capital - in short, to the massive worldly power of the state. This did not, of course, mean that no Jew should be involved in politics, but rather that no state should be a Jewish one, so that Judaism as a whole (or Judaism as a faith) could itself be retained in its perfect purity as an ideal.
Hmm.
Few today remember that when the idea of establishing a sovereign state for the Jewish people was made the goal of the Zionist Organzation, it was greeted by many leading Jewish intellectuals as an abomination. ... And for much the same reason. All of them argued that the Jewish people was in its essence an achievement of the "spirit", which would be degraded and corrupted ... the moment it was harnessed to tanks and explosives, politics and intrigue, bureaucracy and capital - in short, to the massive worldly power of the state. This did not, of course, mean that no Jew should be involved in politics, but rather that no state should be a Jewish one, so that Judaism as a whole (or Judaism as a faith) could itself be retained in its perfect purity as an ideal.
Hmm.
