“God is Still Speaking” – The Religious Thought of the Religious-Zionist Labor Movement in Mandatory Palestine, 1922-1948
Creators: name: Haklai, Iddo
Publisher: name: Brandeis University
Year: 2025
Subjects: Israel Studies
Jewish Thought
Orthodox Judaism
Religious Zionism
Jewish History
Religious Studies

description: The religious-Zionist labor movement in Palestine, associated with the Hapo’el Hamizrahi party and labor union and the Torah Va’avodah Movement, was a highly influential current within The Jewish Orthodox community of Mandatory Palestine and represented most religious-Zionists
description: in the country on the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel. During the 1920s, 1930s, and
description: 1940s, it mostly consisted of Jewish immigrants from Europe who created a fascinating
description: combination of fidelity to the tenets of Orthodox Judaism with a strong commitment to Zionist and
description: nationalist ideas and democratic socialists or social-democratic principles.
description: Reviewing the theological, ideological, and philosophical writings of most of the leading
description: thought-leaders of the movement against the backdrop of the rise of “the immanent frame,” as
description: defined, described, and analyzed by the contemporary Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor,
description: allows us to identify the core characteristic of much of their intellectual work as a passionate
description: rejection of the immanent frame aspect of modernity: a refusal to accept the premise that humans
description: operate in a world in which at least some areas of conduct and thought are being experienced and
description: engaged with as if God does not exist or as if His existence is irrelevant to them.
description: Most of the leading thinkers of the religious-Zionist labor movement in Palestine dedicated
description: much of their intellectual efforts to conceptually reconstitute vast areas of human activity and
description: involvement as immersed in religious meaning. They sought to portray history, politics, morality,
description: economics, law, the public sphere, the connection to nature, and societal arrangements in general,
description: as both an expression of divine ongoing involvement in this world and as God’s clarion call for
description: specific human actions.
description: However, a more complete and careful reading of the theological works written by thinkers
description: of the Hapo’el Hamizrai and the Torah Va’avodah Movement leads us to view it as a coalition
description: of two sub-currents: The first current, the much larger one, represented in this dissertation by
description: Shmuel Haim Landau, Rabbi Yeshayahu Shapira, Yeshayahu Bernstein, and Shlomo Zalman
description: Shragai, and associated with immigrants from Poland and Ukraine who were mostly raised in
description: Hasidic families, indeed unequivocally rejected the immanent frame. It viewed every aspect of
description: human life as having an inherent transcendent meaning that can and should be “deciphered” by
description: contemporary Jews, viewed morality as dependent upon revelation, and constructed a political
description: worldview that resulted from “the hearing of the calling voice of God” through events and
description: developments in the present and near past. The second current, much smaller in size, represented
description: in this dissertation by Moshe Unna, and associated with immigrants from Central and Western
description: Europe (mainly Germany), can be characterized as demonstrating a “partial acceptance” of the
description: immanent frame: viewing the religious meaning assigned to areas of human activity as being
description: non-inherent, dependent upon human consciousness and action, considering morality as
description: independent of revelation, and constituting a political worldview in which a much greater room
description: is granted to human agency in figuring out what is it that God demands.