The Religious Meaning of the Six Day War

What is the theological meaning of Israel’s improbable triumph in the Six Day War? In 1968, Tradition convened leading Jewish thinkers from both Israel and the United States to consider the religious significance of the reunification of Jerusalem. Rabbi Norman Lamm, Michael Wyschograd, Pinchas Peli, Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen, and Rabbi Walter Wurzburger all contributed reflections. Here is Michael Wyschogrod’s initial statement:

No believing Jew who lived through that harrowing Monday in June of 1967 when the fate of the two million Jews of Israel hung in balance will ever forget the overwhelming gratitude that filled Jewish hearts when the magnitude of the Israeli victory became apparent. When for the first time in almost two thousand years many of the holiest places in the Land of Israel were once again under Jewish jurisdiction, it became difficult not to see the redeeming presence of God in the momentous events of the day. At such moments it is not easy to contain the pent-up messianism that in spite of the tragic disappointments of the past, is never far below the consciousness of the believing Jew. Nevertheless it is necessary to proceed with caution, listening obediently to the Divine Word, rather than human emotion, and the to the judgment of God on the affairs of men.

All events, as events, are equivocal. To the eyes of non-belief there is always the natural explanation that refuses to transpose the historic order into a theological event. Concerning the events of the Six Day War, I hear the voice of unbelief pose the following dilemma: The government of Israel either had good military reasons to expect victory or it did not. If it did not and still embarked on the course it did it acted irresponsibly. And if it did have good reasons then the outcome was only as foreseen and no miraculous claims are justified. The voice of unbelief is difficult to still.

Jewish faith is therefore not based on events as such, be they events that appear redemptive or those, such as the holocaust, that seem to point to God’s powerful anger with the people He loves above all other. Jewish faith is based on events as they are transformed by the Word of God from the realm of ambiguity to that of clarity. The events of the Red Sea become a fulcrum of Jewish faith because they are memorialized in the Biblical text by “And God on that day saved Israel from the hand of the Egyptians” (Ex. 14:30).

Without these clear and simple words which speak to the man of the 20th century as they have to all those who preceded him, the events of the past would have their inherent ambiguity compounded by the further shadow-existence that envelopes events of the past, particularly the remote past. It is the Divine Word, not one of which “returns unfulfilled” (Isaiah 55: 11), which thus becomes not a report of the saving event but its theological center, the very meaning that God bestows on that which transpires.

Because we in our day do not have such a Word concerning the Six Day War we remain in the realm of ambiguity. What we have witnessed may have been the opening of the redemption or it may have been merely one further chapter in a story that has many chapters. That God’s solicitude never leaves his people is certain; as such we must be grateful for his acts again and again. But to make solid messianic claims and to tie the fate of Judaism to the fortunes of the State of Israel, for whose preservation and prosperity we all fervently pray, is simply unauthorized and therefore irresponsible. Along this path could lurk, God forbid, a catastrophe similar to those that was the fate of other messianic claims.

Read the whole thing in Tradition.

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The Religious Meaning of the Six Day War

Read the whole thing in Tradition.

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