page_title: Religious Zionism
section_title: Organizations
hierarchical_section_title: Religious Zionism / Organizations
caption_attribution_description: A Modern version of the Bnei Akiva Logo (semel)
context_page_description: Religious Zionism is an ideology that combines Zionism and Orthodox Judaism. Adherents are also referred to as Dati Leumi. The community is sometimes called כִּפָּה סְרוּגָה Kippah seruga, literally, "knitted skullcap", the typical head-covering worn by the men.
  Before the establishment of the State of Israel, Religious Zionists were mainly observant Jews who supported Zionist efforts to build a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.
  After the Six-Day War, and the capture of the West Bank, a territory referred to in Jewish terms as Judea and Samaria, right-wing components of the Religious Zionist movement integrated nationalist revindication and evolved into Neo-Zionism. Their ideology revolves around three pillars: the Land of Israel, the People of Israel, and the Torah of Israel.
  The Hardal are a sub-community; stricter in observance, and more "statist" in their politics.
context_section_description: The first rabbis to support Zionism were Yehuda Shlomo Alkalai and Zvi Hirsch Kalischer. They argued that the change in the status of Western Europe's Jews following emancipation was the first step toward redemption (גאולה), and that, therefore, one must hasten the messianic salvation by a natural salvation – whose main pillars are the Kibbutz Galuyot ("Gathering of the Exiles"), the return to Eretz Israel, agricultural work (עבודת אדמה), and the revival of the everyday use of the Hebrew language.
  The Mizrachi organization was established in 1902 in Vilna at a world conference of Religious Zionists. It operates a youth movement, Bnei Akiva, which was founded in 1929. Mizrachi believes that the Torah should be at the centre of Zionism, a sentiment expressed in the Mizrachi Zionist slogan Am Yisrael B'Eretz Yisrael al pi Torat Yisrael ("The people of Israel in the land of Israel according to the Torah of Israel"). It also sees Jewish nationalism as a tool for achieving religious objectives. Mizrachi was the first official Religious Zionist party. It also built a network of religious schools that exist to this day.
  In 1937-1948, the Religious Kibbutz Movement established three settlement blocs of three kibbutzim each. The first was in the Beit Shean Valley, the second was in the Hebron mountains south of Bethlehem (known as Gush Etzion), and the third was in the western Negev. Kibbutz Yavne was founded in the center of the country as the core of a fourth bloc that came into being after the establishment of the state.
caption: Bnei Akiva youth movement, combining Torah and work
exif: {}