Weiss

Hillel Weiss is convinced that the building of the Temple should begin immediately, that the Sanhedrin (the Jewish `supreme court' during the Second Temple period) should be reinstated and that a king should reign over Israel. Weiss, one of the founders of the settlement of Elkana and a professor of Hebrew literature at Bar-Ilan University (BIU), speaks with complete clarity, is aware of all the details of the reality surrounding us, and even has a complex attitude toward the Palestinians. He recently published "Derech Hamelekh" ("King's Way: Politics-Literature-Documents," ACPR Publishers, 2003), a collection of essays and articles that present his philosophy, the main focus of which is "to soon reach the hoped-for day in which God himself will be the king of the entire world, before the eyes of all living beings."

"Today the word `messianic' is a dirty word," he says. "But during the 1930s, as demonstrated by post-Zionist researcher Hanan Hever, it was the central theme of poetry, and not only that of Uri Zvi Greenberg [a right-wing Zionist poet], but of writers such as T. Carmi and Avraham Shlonsky as well. Today, in the situation to which democracy has deteriorated, this folly, everything looks different."

"Weiss seems to me completely sane, and even pleasant," says Rosenthal. "He's definitely not a fool. At first I liked him, because I saw him as a kind of hip guy with a kippa [skullcap]: He had humor, mischievousness, clever use of language. But, intellectually, he has gone mad. Today he is happy to show me that he has progressed another step toward what I see as insanity, and what he sees as putting another finishing touch on his world view. He has ceased to interest me for that reason - because there is nobody with whom to argue. He has removed himself not only from the consensus, but from the Israeli language itself."

At least in one sense, Rosenthal is mistaken. Simply because Weiss doesn't bother to camouflage himself behind "rational" security claims, he is a good representative of the logic underlying the settlement movement. In that sense, he speaks in an Israeli language that is much more real than that of others. His claims may make arguing with him impossible, but without them it is almost impossible to understand the political reality in which we are living.

Nevertheless, it's easy to agree with Rosenthal's words about Weiss' pleasant personality. The words of Maccabit Eldar, a doctoral student in the literature department of BIU, are a representative example: "Although I'm on the opposite end in terms of politics, I have managed to create excellent mutual inspiration with Weiss. He is a person with whom it is very pleasant to work, an excellent mentor, who knows how give encouragement and support. It's a great honor to work with him."

In his academic work, Weiss focuses on the study of the works of the Israeli Nobel Prize laureate S.Y. Agnon, and he is now putting all Agnon's writings on the Internet. The interview took place in his office at the BIU campus, an ordinary lecturer's room, with a sticker saying "Let the Messiah come" on his door.

Weiss: "I see redemption as a situation in which the Land of Israel in its biblical borders is in the hands of Israel; most of the nations love the Jewish people and come to the Temple to worship God (they don't have to convert); the Sanhedrin exists; there is a kingdom in Israel and the king is the messiah, his representative or his descendants. My role as an intellectual is to try to prove that this model is not naive or utopian, but rational, essential and beneficial to all people. I'm not certain that I'm capable of it, but I hope to succeed with the help of a great deal of listening and dialogue."

Weiss listens attentively, is quick to stop talking as soon as someone asks a question, and tries to answer it to the best of his ability. Nevertheless, he leads his words down a very associative path, quickly jumps from one topic to another, and if one doesn't stop him, his replies can be very lengthy. An example:

"The `Peace in the Galilee' war [Israel's official name for the 1982 Lebanon War] is a Beginistic [i.e., having to do with Menachem Begin, who was prime minister at the time] is an idiotic name, and that's why I don't mind at all using the terminology of the left. When I wrote the dedication I thought about the connection between Lebanon and the Temple Mount. Lebanon is the Temple Mount. The withdrawal from Lebanon reminded me of all the verses from Psalms that describe how the enemy cuts down the cedars from which the Temple was built. Yehuda Etzion [one of the leaders of the Temple Mount Faithful movement] has already written about the connection between the withdrawal from Lebanon and the attitude toward the Temple Mount. But I don't want to tell you stories. Soon there will be goyim [non-Jews] coming here, reporters from German television, to interview me about anti-Semitism in Europe. I'll tell them that the main reason for anti-Semitism is Jewish self-denial.

"The goyim expect the Jews to be Jews, and not to deny their identity. It's not a matter of a desire for victory. The nation is now desecrating God's name. When the people of Israel are humiliated, we will be devoured - ostensibly that is proof that there is no God or that he has abandoned the nation. Without Jews, the world is without God, disoriented. And before peace is achieved, there have to be several preconditions. For example, God forbid, catastrophes. But there doesn't have to be a catastrophe. I have no wish for a catastrophe, nor a Trotskyite belief that the worse things are, the better they will be. The problem is that today the entire world is being drawn into a catastrophic situation, and it doesn't look as though that will be stopped - despite all the attempts to make peace, such as [the accord signed recently in] Geneva. I reject this document because it erases the Temple Mount, and transfers sovereignty over it to the Arabs. Thank God that [former prime minister] Ehud Barak didn't have the courage or the suicide wish to cross this threshold. But I'll tell you one positive thing about Geneva: This document is at least not post-Zionist, because it provides a place for the self-definition of the Jewish people."

Weiss is the father of the concept "post-Zionist," without which it is difficult to imagine contemporary Israeli discourse. He first used it in an article he wrote in 1974 about the absence of heroes and heroism in Hebrew literature (it was published in the Religious Kibbutz Movement's periodical Amudim). That was only two years after the ideological revolution he underwent, from the extreme left of the national religious movement to its right wing. In the early 1970s, Weiss participated, together with the late Prof. Ariel Rosen-Zvi, in the founding of the Oz Veshalom movement, which today is called Netivot Shalom, and is considered the representative of the left wing in religious Zionist politics.

"I'm originally a leftist," confirms Weiss. "I don't say that, like a pig trying to prove it's kosher, it's the truth. There is no doubt, for example, that my anarchism stems from the left lobe of my brain. The right side only directs these powers. Even now I am opposed to religious parties, although I have voted for the National Religious Party all my life, and only in the last elections did I vote for Baruch Marzel [a member of the extreme right-wing Herut party]."

He has published many political articles in the newspapers Hadashot, Davar and Hatzofeh and after the signing of the Oslo Accords - like many others in the rightist camp - his anti- government statements became more extreme. In 1993, he even tried to found a movement called Hatikva, to consolidate the ranks of the right, but the party died out quickly. A month before the murder of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, Weiss petitioned the High Court of Justice, calling on it to try Rabin and Shimon Peres, who was foreign minister at the time, for betraying the Land of Israel.

Two days after the murder of Rabin, Weiss was penitent and wrote in the now-defunct newspaper Davar Rishon: "We thought that people don't die from curses ... Murder and bloodshed, which include humiliation, are the most extreme human deterioration, which should never take place ... My statements - at least the violent part of them, today seem to me superfluous and very wrong ... In order to refrain from any violence, including verbal violence - which may contribute to physical violence as well ... we should speak the truth quietly, and behave simply and honestly ... Let everyone examine his deeds, and consider himself guilty and his friend innocent."

Today Weiss sounds like a person who has returned to his old ways, and he sticks to the conspiracy theory: "I have no problem with what I wrote before Rabin's murder, as long as they don't investigate the Avishai Raviv affair and the contribution of the Jewish division of the Shin Bet security services, may its name and its memory be erased, to the murder. How is it possible that they told Rabin's wife `Nothing has happened to your husband'? Or the cry `dummy bullets'? It was a conspiracy of Rabin against himself. There was an attempt to stage a murder. That's why someone shouted `dummy bullets.'"

Weiss, 58, a father of five and grandfather of seven, grew up in Ramat Gan and studied at the religious Tzeitlin High School in Tel Aviv. In the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), he served in the Nahal Brigade (which combines active duty with life in outlying agricultural communities), and after his discharge he studied law at the Tel Aviv branch of Hebrew University, and literature at BIU, where he started to teach in 1973. He attributes his departure from the left wing of the national religious movement to the reserve duty stint that he did in the summer of 1972 at the IDF Command and Staff School.

"I was the assistant to a sergeant who glued maps, and I saw the army at its worst," he says. "I saw the officers at the school cheating in exams, the decadence in the staff dining room, the way they ate from fine china, the separation between officers and enlisted men - these were things I hadn't seen when I served in the Nahal. I saw the hedonism, the corruption, the trips with mistresses to Sharm el-Sheikh, that's what interested them. That's not how I had imagined the army ... An army like that, an army of vice - not only can't it win, it mustn't win. It wouldn't be just for it to win."

After the reserve duty, he says, he returned home and for two months, holed up and read 50 Israeli novels, every day from 8 A.M. to 11 P.M. "I didn't find in the books even one positive reference to a hero or to heroism in battle. Then I understood that Hebrew literature is sick, and causes tremendous cultural and security damage to the state. The hollow reality in Israeli life is dominant, and therefore concepts of heroism and a hero were impossible. In an egoistic situation, in a situation of disintegration, there cannot be love - for the homeland, for one's wife, for God. And if there is no destiny and purpose, there is no hero, either."

Weiss' love for his homeland includes the Temple, the Sanhedrin and the kingdom. "In the chapter about the constitution in his book `Der Judenstaat,' Herzl speaks of a democratic monarchy," says Weiss, citing a secular source. "And why is he opposed to plain democracy? Perhaps he understood where such a democracy can lead. Today what we have is not democracy, but an oligarchy that wants to lead the people. I am very opposed to globalization: Those who are leading Israel are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Supreme Court and the state prosecutor. That's not democracy, it's a fake. On this issue I have common `war' with the Arabs, including the Palestinians, against the United States."

"When redemption comes I assume that people will find internal spiritual content; there won't be hunger for bread, but for the word of God. There won't be competition over basic urges, but over wisdom and enlightenment. Not economic competition like today, which causes people to be the race of Cain."

On the economic-social plane, he says, he hasn't abandoned his leftist positions. When in the summer there was a discussion about the need to dismiss young lecturers from BIU's department of Jewish literature, Weiss suggested that he and other veteran lecturers give up part of their salary to allow the younger people to remain. The source of his social motivation lies in religious faith, and he speaks in religious terms about the evil of world capitalism and globalization, which he considers the polar opposite of Judaism: "I admit that to be a Jew is constant fear of destruction, and therefore every Jew pulls at his foreskin - so people won't see that he's circumcised. As they said about Peres - I don't know if it's true - that he said that he hopes that all Israeli children will be linked to the Internet and to Nike. There is no greater contrast to Jewish authenticity than those things."

Weiss' attitude toward non-authentic Jews - i.e., secular ones - is complex. On the one hand, he is convinced that the divine promise to the patriarchs will not be fulfilled if the Jews don't observe the commandments, and therefore he believes that they are delaying redemption. On the other hand, he has no doubt that even the secular are considered a chosen people, and he has no hatred for them.

"I'm not trying to stone wayward women," he says. "As Jesus said: `Forgive them for they know not what they do.' Unfortunately, people consider `chosen people' a racist, arrogant concept. The media and the academic world take it in a Nazi direction. That's a victory for Hitler, because belonging to the Jewish people is not a matter of biology - after all, anyone can convert."

Weiss had arranged in advance that at the time of our meeting he would be giving an interview he had promised to the crew of a German television channel - and he answers the interviewer's questions about anti-Semitism in a mixture of excellent Hebrew, mediocre English and terrible German: "The Europeans still behave like wild men toward the Jews, but the Jews also have a great part in this. Unfortunately, the Jews inflame anti-Semitism in various ways. I consider the [Jewish] leftists miserable people, I pity them. Poor guys. They are one of the greatest causes of anti-Semtiism. If only they would repent."

He isn't satisfied with the situation in religious society either. "The leaders of the National Religious Party drive me crazy," he says. "They have the screwed up chip in the brain - the submissive chip of the `dossim' [a derogatory term for ultra-Orthodox Jews]. I didn't see Shaul Yahalom [an MK from the NRP] lying down to protest the Arab excavations on the Temple Mount, which are turning it into dust. Even the leftists, [writers] Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and S. Yizhar, petitioned the High Court of Justice against the digging, together with the Israel Antiquities Authority. There is no greater desecration of God's name than the agreement of Barak, [Ariel] Sharon and [Benjamin] Netanyahu to the excavations on the Temple Mount - they are erasing the remains of the Temple. How can there not be anti-Semitism when one sees such garbage Jews?"

After all this, it is surprising to discover that the group that makes him angriest is the ultra-Orthodox community. "My greatest heartache is the sectarianism and the attempt to preserve the hegemony of the Lithuanian Jews and of the Council of Torah Sages and of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, without understanding the terminal existential responsibility placed on this group regarding the Jewish people and the entire world," he says. "They should have been forced to create a forum for joint halakhic [traditional Jewish legal] discussion with the Sephardim [Jews of North African and Middle Eastern origin] and with the religious Zionist rabbis. And there is no sin - it's much greater than that of Oslo and Geneva - that will cause the destruction of the entire Jewish people like the absence of a central forum to discuss halakhot, a Sanhedrin.

"I'm not talking about something magical: A central Torah authority is an existential-physical precondition for the survival of the Jewish people. The rise of Shinui, the immigration policy, the foreign workers and the non-Jewish immigrants - it's the fault of the rabbis. They benefit from the state's money, and as [the late philosopher] Yeshayahu Leibowitz said, it ends with a relationship such as that of the priests with Ahab and Jezebel. The 1999 demonstration organized by the Haredim [ultra-Orthodox] against the Supreme Court [for decisions they considered anti-religious and contrary to halakha] was a one-time act of cowardice. If there were constant activity, they would have won long ago. The NRP is sitting in this government only because there is no sovereign-religious body, otherwise they wouldn't dare."

Weiss is willing to recognize the purity of the political intentions of some of his ideological rivals, such as Amos Oz. "He has no criminal intention," he says. "He thinks he is representing the Jewish people as well as he can." But his tolerance for Oz's opinions ends with his writings. "In my opinion, he is first and foremost a seducer of underaged girls," states Weiss. "His books are full of cheap, stylized erotic charm. As Baruch Kurzweil wrote about `My Michael': Hannah Gonen [the book's heroine] is more dangerous than all the Arab armies together - because of the sanctification of psychological and erotic submissiveness. She expresses the desire of the victim to have sexual intercourse with a predatory force: blacks, Arabs, Sephardim. The attraction to the wild is a well-known motif in all Western literature since `Lady Chatterley's Lover.' Hannah Gonen is a very dangerous woman because she prepares the ground for betrayal and grants legitimacy to satisfy one's urges everywhere."

Here, he says, begins "the story of the Four Mothers movement, and all the feminism. In other words, the Israeli man is a variation of the eunuch Michael Gonen, and the Arabs are not eunuchs. Feminism is a terrible thing, Sodom. The fact that the woman is adopting traits of autonomy, power, will destroy the world, and she is shattering the entire world: her female friends, her family, everyone. What attorney Yehoshua Resnick said in your magazine about women in the state prosecutor's office - he's 100 percent correct. I want the woman as a goddess of mercy and a goddess of fertility, not a goddess of the hunt. Be a mother, not a dictator. Feminism has destroyed the family unit and it has destroyed justice."

Justice is a controversial subject. Many people think it ends at the checkpoints, but Weiss is convinced they are mistaken: "Were it not for this cruelty and this brutishness of the Border Police, the Golani Brigade, the Druze and the Bedouin - we wouldn't survive. If we were all only readers of Haaretz and dossim, we wouldn't survive. The Jewish people had to undergo a personality change, to take a sword and kill, simply in order to survive. And there's nothing to be done, there's something wholesale about cruelty, and the individual suffers even if he is innocent. I don't think that an old man with kidney disease should be delayed [at the checkpoints], but there has to be a policy of checkpoints, because if the Paratroopers behave like sissies, and the Four Mothers dominate the army, we're lost."

However, this same cruelty, according to Weiss, is not justified when its victims are Jews from his camp. "The harassment of the Jews of Hebron by the Jewish division of the Shin Bet, may its name and its memory be erased, is intolerable," he says angrily. "What they did to Noam Federman [a member of a Jewish terror group accused of weapons possession], I wrote a letter about it to [Defense Minister Shaul] Mofaz. Here I strongly relate to the left - there's no such thing as administrative detention. It's not a means of punishment. If you have proof, then bring him to trial. I'm sure this man hasn't done anything, it's all revenge by the Jewish division of the Shin Bet, may its name and its memory be erased, against the power and the strength that this man inspires in opponents of the regime."

Despite what he said about the necessary cruelty at the checkpoints, Weiss is not motivated by hatred of Palestinians. He reveals that he feels no emotional connection to the philosophy of Kahane (the late racist, right-wing rabbi) and in "Derekh Hamelekh," he even wrote: "It's true that the Jews, and particularly the authorities in all the governments, didn't treat the Arabs properly. They humiliated them, discriminated against them unnecessarily and occasionally ill-treated them ... The solution is to be humane in the most profound Jewish sense, toward Jews as well as Arabs, which means to love both your brother and the ger toshav [a resident who is a foreigner], and to hate the enemy."

"It will be terrible. A horror. There will be a sudden war much worse than the Yom Kippur War. The IDF will have no answer at first. The missiles of the Egyptians will be activated. And those of the Syrians. And those of the more distant countries. There will be hundreds of thousands of dead here. Then the UN and the Europeans will come here. But it will end well - with redemption, with the Temple, with the coming of the messiah. As it is written: `Let thy tender mercies speedily come to meet us, for we are brought very low' [Psalms 79, 8]."