“Beyond exile and redemption”. A new religious Zionist consciousness in the thought of Aviezer Ravitzky

The contribution of Aviezer Ravitzky (1945) to contemporary Jewish thought is an important example of historical-critical consideration of various religious attitudes that have developed within the Jewish tradition regarding the lived experience of peoplehood, always suspended between nomadism and sedentarism, history and meta-history, dispersed diasporic communities and independent commonwealth. Ravitzky’s work focuses on the analysis of the Zionist revolution and the impact it had on religious perspectives on the land of Israel and Jewish political theology. Contemporary Orthodox theological responses to the nationalist movement are presented in a comprehensive conceptual model, connecting pragmatic existential positions to models of religious thought. The paper aims to critically examine these trends to retrace the intellectual journey that led Ravitzky to propose an alternative paradigm of existential consciousness for contemporary religious Zionism, seeking to solve its dilemma be...

The contribution of Aviezer Ravitzky (1945) to contemporary Jewish thought is an important example of historical-critical consideration of various religious attitudes that have developed within the Jewish tradition regarding the lived experience of peoplehood, always suspended between nomadism and sedentarism, history and meta-history, dispersed diasporic communities and independent commonwealth. Ravitzky’s work focuses on the analysis of the Zionist revolution and the impact it had on religious perspectives on the land of Israel and Jewish political theology. Contemporary Orthodox theological responses to the nationalist movement are presented in a comprehensive conceptual model, connecting pragmatic existential positions to models of religious thought. The paper aims to critically examine these trends to retrace the intellectual journey that led Ravitzky to propose an alternative paradigm of existential consciousness for contemporary religious Zionism, seeking to solve its dilemma between perpetual exile and imperfect redemption. Ravitzky’s scholarship is analysed in the context of his left-wing leaning, showing that he attempted to find a political pragmatical but still Orthodox response to Zionism outside the confines of messianism.