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Nation-Statist Soteriology and Traditions of Defeat: Religious-Zionism, the Ninth of Av, and Jerusalem Day

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2022

Yaacov Yadgar Open the ORCID record for Yaacov Yadgar [Opens in a new window]  and
Noam Hadad Open the ORCID record for Noam Hadad [Opens in a new window]
Yaacov Yadgar*
Affiliation:
School of Global and Area Studies and Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Noam Hadad
Affiliation:
Independent scholar, Nahariya, Israel
*
Corresponding author: Yaacov Yadgar, E-mail: yaacov.yadgar@area.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

We ask how the theopolitics of a nation-state, and especially its soteriology, engage with traditions that preceded the state and relay messages that contradict this theopolitics. To discuss this question, we address the evolving (re-)interpretation of the Ninth of Av—a ritual commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of Jewish (Judean) self-rule in ancient times—by Religious-Zionist commentators. We further compare this interpretation to the Religious-Zionist appropriation of Jerusalem Day, a civic holiday celebrating the establishment of Israeli control over East Jerusalem in the June 1967 war. We argue that the statist imperative of the superiority of nation-statist theopolitics suggests that traditions are co-opted to fit in with its soteriology, with varying degrees of resistance or willing accommodation by carriers of these traditions. This co-opting may result in either the de-politicization of what the statist view would see as religion or the religionization of the state's own civic and so-called secular holidays.

Keywords

ZionismNationalismtheopoliticssoteriologyIsraelJudaism
Type
Article
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 506 - 525
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association

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