|
Introduction: The Holy Land in American Religious Thought
Observations
 In essence, the data through 1948 show that American religions shared remarkably similar concerns with sacred territory, scripturally defined. Together, they participated in the dialectical pattern from the initial Puritan stage until 1948. They were drawn toward specific religious themes: (1) Man's passive or active role under the aegis of God. (2) Jerusalem as this-worldly or otherworldly. (3) America's negative or positive role for the Land, and the restored Holy Land's negative or positive implications for the world and world Jewry. (4) The redeemed Land's negative and positive meaning for the residents and local culture. (5) The Jew's radically negative or positive status in the apocalypse.
These common themes point to and reflect a common source, the sacred territory of Scripture. The religions of America projected their absolute hopes into it, and from it they all drew spiritual sustenance. The territory functioned in an a priori way, as part of the collective consciousness of American religions, and in an a posteriori way, as generated by cultural experiences. The commonality also engendered conflict. Judaism, Christianity and their respective subdivisions were now situated within the same boundary. This forced them to sharpen their self-definitions and differences--even their mutual exclusivities. Only when the religious approach was emphatically universal and transcendental--notably the liberal Protestants and secular Zionists--did the conflict tend to disappear. The America-Holy Land relationship has been intensely symbiotic. The religions have been drawn as much into common values as into attacks upon one another.
1--Puritans and Congregationalists:
The Americanization of Zion
Observations
The idea and spiritual reality of the Holy Land entered America with the first Puritans and Congregationalists from England. Bradford and Winthrop viewed themselves as Israelites who came to the Promised Land within salvational history. In order to fulfill that history, however, great obstacles had to be overcome; their followers needed to pass with Christ from despair to hope. In this way, Christianity became ingrained in the original soil of the American Holy Land. The religious thinkers of the next generation--John Norton, Increase Mather, Urian Oakes, John Higginson, and Cotton Mather--reaffirmed the scriptural aspect of the entry into America. They brought the ancient myth of exodus, liberation, and entry into wilderness and Promised Land into a new time and new space. Whether parallel, similar, or coincident, the two expressions of the single myth were intimately related and equally evocative of the Holy Land experience.
Again, Christianity was written into the American Holy Land; the journey was made possible and overseen by Christ and would hopefully culminate with a complete Christian community.
The transfer of the Holy Land into American time and space implied the restoration of the ancient theocracy, in the form of a holy commonwealth where civil law would be sublimated to one degree or another into religious law. Further, it brought history closer to its culmination, its eschaton: the Reformation was made more complete, a model Christian kingdom was expected which would reverberate around the world, the apocalyptic scenes of Revelation were anticipated. That is, the renewal of the ancient Holy Land in America involved the ultimate sacred territory. Samuel Langdon spelled out the failure of ancient Israel to realize the potential of the Holy Land polity, and the new opportunity presented by America. The key was the recognition of Christ, the integration of Christianity into American law. If properly pursued, the new opportunity could be used to establish a new, complete Zion of righteousness.
The transfer of the Holy Land into American space and time was reflected in and simultaneously reinforced by the currency of Hebrew Scripture. As could be expected, scriptural language was used in the new Land of the Bible--and use of Hebrew in turn deepened the presence of scriptural myth. The Christian succession to Judaism, and the pivotal role of Christianity in bringing the Holy Land to America, were captured by using Hebrew for the purpose of converting Jews to Christianity.
The Puritans and Congregationalists who came to America in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw themselves within a scriptural context. For them, Moses, Nehemiah, wilderness, sin, and resurrection had reality in the present. Early Americans were part of the mythic eternity provided by the scriptural past; only the location had changed, from the ancient Near East to America. The spatial shift involved another change, one that enabled the transfer: Israel was passing from Judaism to Christ. The Jewish tradition became a ladder for Christianity to ascend. Thus the expected kingdom of God was in Christ. The Puritan and Congregationalist interest in Hebrew had missionary ramifications; indeed, the first university instructor in Hebrew converted from Judaism to Christianity. Ancient Israelite history and Hebrew Scripture became transformed into preludes for Christian Israel and the New Testament. The wilderness of ancient Israel's experience became open space for a holy territory which was Christian, ultimately a kingdom of God in Christ. This sacred Christian territory preserved the Holy Land in America, where it became implanted in religious consciousness. In terms of America's collective memory, it was there to be drawn upon later by Jewish "Israelites" (Reformers) and Conservative and Orthodox Jews--many of whom would seek to return the Holy Land to its original soil.
2--Sephardic Jewry: Present and Future Zion
Observations
After the Puritans introduced the sacred reality of the Holy Land into American history and geography, the Sephardim both brought the process forward and reversed it. They saw the events of American history as new expressions of eternal Hebrew Scripture. The central concern was the American Revolution, which revalidated the ancient truth of divine participation in history and assured that it would continue and reach fulfillment in the messianic future.
Paradoxically, the same American landscape which brought salvational history into the present provided assurance that the people of Israel would leave exile (including America) and return to their own Land. Puritans and Sephardim both thought of America in scriptural terms, but for Christians it was the last stage in redemptive history, while for Jews it was the next to last.
Seixas brought these ideas into an apocalyptic framework. He spoke of the American Revolution as the transitional midpoint between biblical past and messianic future and identified it with the sufferings which were to precede the redemption. There was an existential counterpart to the apocalyptic transition. American Jews, provided by God with as much as could be expected in captivity, were responsible for leading America--and through America the world--in eliminating sin. God was closely and specifically involved in the welfare of America and its Jews, while Jews remained obliged to fulfill their role in the ontological change from worsening exile to redemption. Seixas viewed the entire process in scriptural terms.
3--American Indians: Ten Lost Tribes and Christian Eschatology
The theme of the connection between the Ten Tribes and American Indians was of serious concern for American Protestants for some 200 years--and still is for Mormons--even if the exponents remained oblivious to the distinction between historical data and scriptural language, and in some cases (Crawford, Ethan Smith, and Simon) relied on secondhand reports.
Observations
Some Protestant writers (Williams, Penn, Edwards) confined themselves to general observations about similarities between the Ten Tribes and American Indians and to conjectures about a probable genealogical tie. Adair presented exhaustive evidence. Several (Eliot, Beatty, Crawford, Boudinot, Ethan Smith, Simon) integrated the data with Christian triumphalist interpretations of Jewish history. Dwelling on the Jewish sins against God, crucifixion, and ultimate conversion, they brought the issue into an eschatological and apocalyptic framework. The land of America would be the scene of the onset of the universal messianic kingdom, and its native inhabitants would participate, as newly converted Christians, in the ingathering of the people of Israel in their ancient Holy Land. These writers identified the tribes of Judah and Benjamin with the act of crucifixion and consequently saw them as subject to greater punishment than the Ten Lost Tribes. The land to be abandoned by the converted Indians would revert to Christians living in America. The triumphalists thought that American Christians were obliged to convince the Indians of their special heritage--even if the Indians would find it difficult to understand. Convinced of the Indian-Lost Tribe tie and its eschatological import, they wrote excitedly about living at a crucial point in history, the threshold of the messianic kingdom. The increasingly numerous discoveries of the sacred origins of the Indians went hand in hand with intensified apocalyptic concern. M. M. Noah's radical transformation of the issue into a Jewish drama was striking; he used the arguments for the Christian eschaton as rationale for a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel. The Mormons were part of the tradition described here, but they felt the Ten Lost Tribes would convert to the Mormon religion, and they had two ultimate Zion centers, the old Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem.
In the sense that religious consciousness is collective and develops historically, it could be said that these writers were indebted to the Puritan and Congregationalist belief in the holiness of the land and purity of America. They added the sanctity of the land's natives, their pivotal role in eschatology--and their expected departure to Jerusalem at the end of history.
4--Protestant Pilgrims: Disjunctions between Expectation and Reality
Observations
The American Protestant pilgrims of the nineteenth century set out to integrate their lives with ancient Scripture by experiencing the sacred religious context, in particular the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. For some pilgrims--for example, Philip Schaff (1819-1893) in 1877--expectations coincided with reality:
At last I have fulfilled a long-cherished desire to see with my own eyes and to tread with my own feet the most sacred and the most classical Land in the world...I found the country and the people pretty much as I expected, but I trust I understand both better than before. My faith in the Bible has not been shaken, but confirmed. Many facts and scenes which seem to float ghost-like in the clouds to a distant reader, assume flesh and blood in the Land of their birth. There is a marvelous correspondence between the Land and the book. The Bible is the best handbook for the Holy Land, and the Holy Land is the best commentary on the Bible.
For J. W. Greenwood, an Episcopal priest who visited the Holy Land in 1884, the sacred was inseparable from what he saw in the night at the Sea of Galilee:
A solemn and precious hour, a night whose holy and far-reaching thoughts will go with us beyond the grave to recall our earthly vision of a region stamped with our incarnate master's footprints and where we read the gospel written on nature's varied page. Christ, Peter, James, John, saints, and apostles had been there before us, looking on the same hills and little sea which things at least, have never changed. [The following night we] saw several men engaged in fishing and many women toiling beneath their black goatskin sacks of water up the difficult hill. Weary workers, such as those upon whom Christ was doubtless looking when, somewhere in this very region, He graciously said, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" [Matthew 11:28]. But neither the elements of that peaceful scene, nor the feelings of its pilgrim spectators, can I properly describe. To attempt the one would be a forlorn hope; to speak too freely of the other would be sheer irreverence.
But the predominant experience was that reality upset religious expectations. Prime resolved the disjunction and ascended into the sacred outside time and space. Melville blended his disappointment in the Land with the tragic religious experience of Clarel but retained the scriptural indices to Clarel's tribulations and his own messianic hopes. Twain resolved the disjunction by separating scriptural myth and its sacred content from Holy Land reality; he felt disappointed and was happy to go back to America. Fulton solved the problem by focusing on religious rituals, in which both empirical and nonempirical factors worked themselves out. Talmage blended present reality with Scripture by dwelling on religious history, sacred or otherwise, as it moved into the messianic future. Altogether, the idea of the Holy Land survived its journey with the pilgrims to the actual Holy Land of Israel; its power endured the vagaries of time and space.
5--Protestant Missionaries: Jewish Conversion; and Christ's Return
Observations
Missionaries of the nineteenth century helped replant the sacred territory of Scripture from America to the Land of Israel, including its eschatological ramifications. The Jews of the Land were regarded as an obstacle to the ultimate holiness of the Land but, through conversion, as a potential instrument for the Jerusalem-centered second coming of Christ.
The travels of Parsons, Fisk, and King in the Land were guided by Scripture. Scriptural reality filled their time and space: time passed into eternity and space intermingled with the myths of ancient Israel and primitive Christianity. The Jews had to be restored to the Land and converted in order for Christ to return, and the way to do that was to expose them to the truths of Christianity. Out of gratitude for what the children of Israel gave to original Christianity, the missionaries made every effort to impart those truths.
The missionaries debated reputable scholars, most of them members of the Kollel Perushim, which was vibrant with messianic and eschatological expectation. The issues discussed, as reported by the missionaries, were Christ-centered: continuity between Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament and the discontinuity between Hebrew Scripture and Talmud; Jewish rejection of Jesus and the need to recognize Him; Christian implications of Isaiah; Adam's sin, Satan and the messiah; Jewish sin and the destruction of Jerusalem; the messiah's identity (Shiloh, son of Ephraim, descendant of Jeroboam, Hezekiah, Jesus); the timing of the messianic age; Israel's material and religious condition during the onset of the messiah; and truth and ingathering during the messianic age. The rabbis were open to learning about Christian Scripture, the missionaries to postbiblical Hebrew literature, and there were moments of cordiality. But as Fisk's biographer recorded, while some inroads were made, Christian truth was generally resisted. He wrote that in the May 1823 debates Fisk was principally occupied in discussing religious subjects with Jews, Turks, Catholics and Greeks. He constantly appealed to Scripture, and they in some instances appeared to manifest a conviction at the time that he was right and they wrong. More frequently, however, truth was opposed by the authority of the Talmud, the tradition of popery, and the strong prejudices of a darkened understanding and depraved heart. A prevalent vice observed was profaneness. Almost every assertion made was accompanied with an oath.
As the differences deepened, the confrontations led to verbal abuse, condemnations, and death threats. In pinning theological destiny upon Jewish submission to Christ, the missionary precipitated a no-win choice for the Jew--either join Christianity or provoke enmity. The American factor was present, in allusions to American Jews, the Ten Lost Tribes and American Indians. There was nothing specifically American-Christian in the missionaries' theological positions. But the Congregational missionaries presumably had imbibed the Holy Land atmosphere brought to America, along with its eschatological ramifications, and carried that with them as they went about their work in the Land of Israel.
6--Consuls: Jews and Holy Land History
Observations
The nineteenth-century American consuls contributed to the shift of the Holy Land idea from America back to the Land of Israel, a shift inseparable from Christian triumphalism. Cresson was the exception. Initially committed to converting Jews to Christianity in a metahistorical context, once in the Land he converted to Judaism, risking family and fortune to contribute to the onset of the shekhina. Rhodes concerned himself with the bad traits of the Jews in the Land of Israel, evidence of their hopeless status in history, and wished they would become Christians for the sake of their own humanity. De Hass was disappointed with the realities of Jewish life in the Land, although he gave Jews humanitarian help. He found solace in the sacred Christian reality which enveloped that life--physically under the Land's surface; historically in the Christian view of history; geographically in the reverberations of Jesus' life throughout the country, especially in Jerusalem; and transtemporally in the eternity of Christian Scripture. Merrill did not think Jews were really interested in developing the Land--he thought them incapable of doing so through agriculture. Gillman, like de Hass, assisted Jews on a humanitarian level, but he focused on their bad traits, evidence of squandering their special blessings from God, sinning against Him and eventually killing Christ. Unlike Merrill, Wallace believed in Jewish Zionism, but he envisioned a "spiritual" religion which would ultimately envelop both Judaism and Christianity, a spirituality indistinguishable from Christianity.
7--Christianity among Blacks: The Spiritual Holy Land
Observations
In the American black Christian experience of the Holy Land during the nineteenth century, the social reality of suppression and the existential plight of sin and repentance were transformed and elevated into scriptural myth. Within that myth the black Christian found liberation and salvation. Through spirituals the singer became part of biblical suffering and redemption. Dorr--whose religious background is not known--visited the holy places with a tourist's frame of mind, reflecting at times on Christian experiences. He pointed to facts about biblical lands to assert his black identity and call for racial equality in America. Seaton tried to demonstrate a "Hamite"--i.e., black--tie to the Holy Land and spoke confidently about Christian triumphalism. Walker was an authentic pilgrim who found himself shifting between past, present, and future as he made his way through the Holy Land. He became caught up in the scriptural drama of redemption, which he was intent upon sharing with his black congregants in Atlanta.
For Dorr, the plight of black Christianity pervaded his interest in the Holy Land; ancient Scripture was a potential source for black cultural dignity and liberation. Seaton was interested in Hamitic origins, presumably to provide dignity to his people by demonstrating their link to Scripture. But he did not integrate this interest with his Christian triumphalism vis-à-vis Judaism. Walker, like Seaton, felt the pitiable condition of Jews stemmed from their rejection of Christ. He wished to enliven his congregants' beliefs in the scriptural dimension to their lives but did not feel a need to demonstrate ties between blacks and the biblical period.
8--Protestant Literalists: Jewish Return and Christian Kingdom
Observations
In 1874 an eminent historian of the "second advent message" categorized the beliefs concerning the return of Jews to Palestine:
1. Jews would return first and then be converted to Christ along with the gentiles. The millennium and the judgement would follow.
2. The advent of Christ would be tied to the return of the Jews.
a. Jewish return would be prior to and a sign of His advent.
b. Jewish return would be immediately after His advent.
3. Only the true Israel would return, namely Christians of all ages including those of Jewish and gentile origin.
The Millerites, Adventists, and Dispensationalists were all committed to restoring the Land while differing on the Jewish role. The Millerites and Ellen White believed (3), and Minor believed (1) and (2a), specifically that Jews should bring themselves to Christ through agriculture and help prepare the Land for His advent. Blackstone believed (1) and (2a) as well, but in much more radical fashion. All saw their efforts as human counterparts to mythic dramas based upon the Christian Bible.
The Millerites adamantly denied Jews a role in the restoration as Jews. To do otherwise would destroy the messages of Christ Himself and His apostle Paul. Only the righteous were to be part of the Jerusalem-centered kingdom of the second advent, and Jews "in the flesh" did not belong to that category. After a series of disappointments regarding Christ's predicted return, Minor struck out independently to stress the preparation for His advent, eventually going to Palestine. She found in Scripture her calling to go to the Land to precipitate the second advent; presence there would accelerate purification and eventually coincide with Christ's actual coming. Minor chose agriculture as the avenue for Jews to prepare themselves. She refuted "the common idea of the indolence of the Jews" and instead associated farming with positioning the Jew for Christ's love; economic independence from outside charity haluka was implicitly linked to theological independence from Judaism. Minor was a passive missionary. She expected the process of conversion to happen naturally in working the Land and culminate with the arrival of Christ, when Israel would reach her higher truth and be sublimated into the word of the Redeemer.
Blackstone was a "Zionist" who admired Orthodox commitment to Zion. But this was part of his Dispensationalist scheme, according to which Jews would return to the Land so that Christ could come and administer apocalyptic conversion through fire. Blackstone attacked secular Zionism for not being religious and Reform Judaism for not being Zionist: his Dispensationalist expectations required an authentic, religiously based return prior to the apocalypse of Revelation. That is, Blackstone's intense Zionism and his justification for Jewish return and restoration were all part of his intense expectation of Christian apocalypse. While Minor employed agriculture to preserve Israel and prepare her for the advent of Christ, into which Jewish Israel would be sublimated, Blackstone used politics, both Jewish and American, to bring Jews into Jerusalem for their ultimate exclusion from the Christian millennium.
9--Mormons: Dialectical Holy Lands
Observations
The dialectical Zion of the Mormons, with its synthesis in America, was expressed, effectuated, and reinforced through Zion-as-Land-of-Israel activity. Orson Hyde traveled in Europe to stimulate the repentance and return of the Jews and prayed to God in Jerusalem to accelerate the onset of Christ-centered eschatology. George Adams set out to precipitate a Jerusalem-centered apocalypse by building the Land. The pilgrims of 1873 experienced the sacred Land and enunciated triumphalist Mormon theology. Overall, Mormon involvement with the Land had negative implications for Jews and Judaism. It developed in terms of the end of sinful Judaism and envisioned bringing about Christ's kingdom--as sublimated into the spiritual realm revealed to Joseph Smith.
10--Judaism: American Impact and Internal Divisions
Observations
Nineteenth-century Judaism divided into various positions vis-à-vis the Holy Land. The Reformers split into two wings. Those who identified Zion with America ranged from the view equating America with ancient Palestine (Poznanski), to the view that history moved ahead and America represented the latest and best expression of the components of Zion (Einhorn), to the view that Zion in the Land of Israel was a regression to primitive beliefs (Enelow). Those who identified Zion with the Land of Israel took either the mediated position, that life in America was appropriate for the present and that return to the Land was for the messianic future (Harby), or identified Judaism with an ethnic center which required an immediate political context to survive (Felsenthal). Historical-Conservative thinkers ranged from the view that historical conditions demanded human initiative in what was ultimately a divinely arranged drama of return (Leeser) to the view that there must be a homeland for Jewry now, one which was spiritual rather than political and part of worldwide spiritual Judaism (Mendes). Within Orthodoxy, Lesser took the mediated position, that Americans were to be loyal citizens without compromising their hopes for a messianic future; Raphael had an immediate plan for building a Jewish homeland; and Finkelstein believed that Tora life was incompatible with materialism and ultimately possible only in the Land, although later in life he was content to live in America and enjoy her sociopolitical and spiritual benefits.
In all, with the notable exception of Raphael, American Jewish thinkers of the nineteenth century confirmed the positive experience of America but differed in the degree of their confirmation. Several Reformers (Einhorn, Wise, Franklin, Enelow) wanted America and rejected the Land of Israel; Historical-Conservative and Orthodox thinkers combined America and the Land and resolved the relationship through time. They differed on man's role vis-à-vis God, with Leeser passing from a heteronomous position where God controlled all to a heteronomous-autonomous position, Lesser opting for a God-given drama, and Finkelstein supporting human efforts within a divine context. The Jewish thinkers did not take hard "party" lines. There was more in common between Harby and Lesser than between Enelow and Felsenthal; more between Raphael and Leeser than the realist Leeser and the spiritual Mendes. That is, the American experience became the crucial index for their deliberations.
11--Protestant Liberalism: Universal Ideals
Observations
Protestant liberals distinguished themselves within American Christianity by not invoking the Christian-Jewish dilemma. Their concern was with the people of Israel, American principles, and Arabs. Berle looked to the Land for the revival of world morality under Jewish leadership. Fosdick, a Christian pilgrim, supported Jewish life in the Land but only to the extent it did not threaten Arabs. Niebuhr was committed to the Land as the means of Jewish ethnic survival. The themes of democracy, freedom, pluralism, and social morality pervaded their thinking. Liberals spoke of the present world in idealistic terms rather than of history as the way to Christian fulfillment. Instead of a narrow line of development in which Christianity or Judaism, but not both, would occupy center stage, their world was of the broad present, in which American principles--or Christianity sublimated into American principles--allowed Judaism and Christianity to co-exist.
12--Catholicism: Holy Land of Christ's Crucifixion
Observations
There are constant elements in the variety of American Catholic perspectives on the Holy Land, from the time Vetromile went there in 1870 through the creation of the Jewish state: desire to preserve the holy places; resistance to undermining the identity of traditional holy spots through archaeological and historical study; belief in the Land as a reflection of the life of Christ--and in the New Testament as historical geography; romantic longing for the Land as it existed in Christ's lifetime; and living memory of the crucifixion and its Jewish perpetrators in the mind of the pilgrim. Once the idea of Jewish sovereignty became reality, concern for Arab welfare--perhaps rooted in the identification of Arabs with the Land in the time of Christ--became major. With the Holocaust, human compassion in Christ's name was separated from the idea of Jewish refuge in a sovereign Land. The source of that separation lay in commitment to Christ's suffering for mankind, fear of what a Jewish government would do to the holy places, and the incongruity of Jewish sovereignty in the Land where Jews killed Christ.
13--Judaism: Centrality of the Land
Observations
In twentieth-century Judaism through 1948, concern for the Land of Israel revolved around whether it should have centrality for Jewish life and thought, and if so in what form. Some Reformers continued to deny its centrality either nationalistically or politically and even spoke of Zion in America, but most made it central, either culturally and spiritually or politically. For the latter, human initiative was expected, and the role of divine--but not midrashic--oversight was deemphasized. Conservative Judaism, in contrast to Reform and Orthodoxy, did not subdivide vis-a-vis the Land but developed cohesively. It viewed the Land as the counterforce to the death of diaspora Judaism. That is, the assertion of the Land of Israel's centrality was accompanied by reviving life in exile. The discussion in Reform over choosing America or the Land of Israel was sublimated into a "both." In its new vital role, the Land was seen as cultural-spiritual and political reality together. The Orthodox were split. Some supported restoration culturally and politically and viewed it as a joint effort by God and man. Others considered restoration exclusively divine, possible only after all human initiative was removed, both in America and in Palestine. Some were convinced that diaspora Judaism was dying and believed Jewish life was possible only in the Land; others believed that Tora Judaism was being suffocated in the Land and that Jewish life for the present was possible only elsewhere. Unlike Conservative Judaism and, with the exception of Silver, Reform as well, Orthodoxy's tie to the Land had apocalyptic currents. For those outside the three denominations of Judaism, universal principles which America espoused or realized were central. For some, Zionism was the receptacle for trans-Jewish ideals; the restored Land's cultural and political identity was part of the greater category of democratic absolutes. Other secularists looked to the Land as realists and saw it either as supplementing Jewish life in America and Europe or as a necessity given the fact of antisemitism. |
