A gainst Method 31
of Hapo'el Hamizrachi ceased the publication of HatorahVehamedinah, having given up hope that the leading rabbinical sages would participate in its enterprise.**
Observers suggest various reasons for this failure.*> Some attribute the silence of the poskim to yir‘at hora’ah, which we might translate as“judicial humility,” the traditional reluctance of rabbinical authorities to issue rulings on substantive, controversial legal questions. Some Orthodox authorities also feared that the nonobservant public acting, for example, through the secular legislature— might misinterpret and misapply far-reaching and creative halakhic decisions, thereby distorting the“true” halakhah.* First and foremost, though, this failure was the inevitable outcome of a longstanding clash of ideologies within the Orthodox community. Many, particularly among the charedim (“ultra-Orthodox ”), opposed Zionism , even of the religious variety, on theological and halakhic grounds. They denied that the Jewish people was entitled to establish a sovereign state prior to the coming of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the Temple. That state would be governed by a Davidic monarch and not by some political institution exercising the powers of malkhut in the absence of a legitimate king. In their view, the creation of the secular state of Israel was a violation of the divine order of Jewish history, a trespass upon the limits that God had set at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple.*’ Those who held this opinion, who (to use Yisraeli’s language) saw the creation of the state as a gezeirah min hashamayim, would hardly interpret contemporary Jewish history in the same light as those who regarded Zionism as a sign of God ’s deliverance.
The argument over Zionist halakhah, in other words, could not be settled by the application of halakhic“method.” The technical rules and procedures that comprise traditional halakhic analysis did not- nor could they- produce demonstrably correct answers to questions of Jewish law as they related to issues of government and society in the sovereign Jewish state. This failure was not for lack of