JEWS, NATIONALITY, AND JUDAISM: THE CASE OF HA-RISHON LE-ZION, RABBI MEIR BEN ZION HAI UZIEL

Shalom Ratzabi

It is well known that orthodox Judaism did not emerge in the Sephardic Jewish world, that is, in areas such as the Ottoman Empire or North Africa and other countries which were in the midst of the Islamic cultural world. Thus, in the Sephardic world we must speak of Jew- ish traditional society and not of orthodox society as is spoken of in east and central Europe. In other works I have dealt with the various implications of these different developments. Here I will focus on one important implication of this difference that is refl ected in the relation between traditional religious Jewish identity and the new idea of Jewish nationalistic identity. To demonstrate this difference I will examine the thought of a representative Sephardic rabbi, Ha-rishon Le-Zion, Rabbi Meir Ben Zion Hai Uziel. Rabbi Meir Ben Zion Hai Uziel was the fi rst Rishon le-Zion, the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of the State of Israel—a position he held from 1939 until his death in 1953. He was born in 1880 in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. His father, Rabbi Yosef Raphael, was the head of the Sephardic rabbinical court of Jerusalem. In this setting, it was only natural that Uziel be trained from his early childhood to be a rabbi. And indeed, even after the death of his father when he was a young boy, Uziel managed to complete his religious and secular studies. As a young man, he taught at Yeshivat Tieferet Israel as well as in other institutions in Jerusalem. Then, in 1911 he was appointed Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv and Jaffa. Shaped in the rabbinical world of the Old Settlement in Eretz Israel, Uziel can be seen as a representative fi gure of Sephardic rabbis. Rabbi Uziel began his halachic and philosophical enterprise in the fi rst decade of the 20th century when he became the Sephardic Rabbi of Jaffa and Tel-Aviv. It is clear that as the rabbi of a Zionist settlement he was involved in the Zionist movement in Eretz Israel almost from the beginning and had a vast infl uence on the relationship between religion and State in Israel. Moreover, Uziel published many books that gained

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him notoriety. Among them are the following books: Michmanei Uziel (1939), which includes lectures, addresses and sermons; Hegyonei Uziel, which appeared in his later year and deals with the basic issues of Judaism in the modern era; seven volumes of his responses on halachic questions, Mishpatei Uziel (1935–1964). The importance of these books is that they can be regarded as an enormous treasure of the halachic problems and general issues which religious Jews confronted in Eretz Israel from the beginning of the 20th century until the fi rst years of the State of Israel. The modern Jewish identity appeared in the fi rst decades of the 19th century with the Jewish emancipation which challenged traditional Judaism. Orthodox Judaism was the response to that challenge. Thus, in order to understand the problems that were launched before tradi- tional Judaism, we must begin with the emergence of orthodox Judaism. Although I do not intend to discuss in detail the relation between ‘life and religion’, hachaim ve-hadat, as it has developed during the last three centuries in Eastern and Western Europe, it is important to note that this development continues and its effects are seen in the contempo- rary political, social and cultural life of Israel. For the purpose of this discussion, suffi ce to examine the more characteristic features of the gap between orthodoxy and the modern and national culture as it is revealed in the halachic perspective. It is well known that the processes of enlightenment and moderniza- tion burst into Jewish society in Central Europe, and later in Eastern Europe, together with the process of secularization in the 19th century. Many of the pioneers of the Enlightenment and many of the fi ghters for modernization in Jewish life were not satisfi ed with secular posi- tions. Very often they preached against the traditional religion and in particular against the religious commandments and rabbinical authority. In the name of ‘life and reason’ they denounced the Jewish tradition of the Oral Law as fossil medieval culture. They claimed that the progress of the Jewish people and the improvement of its conditions required fi ghting to get rid of the authority of the Halacha. They asked to abolish the autonomic Jewish society and all traditional limits whose sources are rooted in rabbinical law. This was not the fi rst time that we see in Jewish history a group of people who rejected Jewish observances. However, those Jews who did not accepted the rabbinical authority and did not obeyed the Oral Law left the Jewish community or were compelled to leave it by religious ban or by other means. This was the fate of the Karaites in the medieval era

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