Transcripts are lightly edited—please excuse any imperfections.
Elli Fischer: Throughout and in a number of places in Tanakh, the word geulah comes up specifically in context of kibbutz galuyot, right? The ingathering of exiles, the Jews coming back to Eretz Yisrael. Since the founding of the state, millions of Jews have made aliyah from dozens and dozens of countries. So to look at this and say this is not a geulah, I think that that’s just denying the straight facts on the ground. This is what geulah means. Hi, I’m Elli Fischer, a writer, translator, editor, historian, and this is 18 Questions,40 Israeli Thinkers for 18Forty.
Sruli Fruchter: From 18Forty, this is 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers, and I’m your host, Sruli Fruchter.
18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers is a podcast that interviews Israel’s leading voices to explore those critical questions people are having today on Zionism, the Israel-Hamas War, democracy, morality, Judaism, peace, Israel’s future, and so much more. Every week, we introduce you to fresh perspectives and challenging ideas about Israel from across the political spectrum that you won’t find anywhere else. So, if you’re the kind of person who wants to learn, understand, and dive deeper into Israel, then join us on our journey as we pose 18 pressing questions to the 40 Israeli journalists, scholars, and religious thinkers you need to hear from today.Today’s guest is Rabbi Ellie Fischer, a previous guest on the 18Forty Podcast for our Zionism series, and the book journey leader of one of 18Forty’s three-month book journeys exploring whether Jewish law can govern the Jewish state. That makes sense for someone like Ellie, who deals extensively with the relationship between halakha, Torah, and the State of Israel.
Ordained by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate and working toward a doctorate in Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, Elli’s original writings on religion and politics in Israel, the interplay between legal and non-legal elements in the Talmud, Jewish religious culture, and Central European Jewish history have been widely published. He is a founding editor of The Lehrhaus, and also the translator of By Faith Alone, the story of Rav Yehuda Amital. And for those who might be learners of the Peninei Halakhaseries by Rav Eliezer Melamed, he is the one who has translated them into English. One of the reasons why it was so exciting to have Elli on is because he’s not just a voice coming from within Israel who has dealt extensively, both in theory and in practice, with the active questions of religion and state, but he is someone who has absorbed, processed, and shared much of the teachings, philosophies, and theologies of many of the Religious Zionist leaders and thinkers over the last century or so.
It was a real pleasure to speak with him, and I think that you will really enjoy our conversation. So, before we get into the episode, if you have questions that you want us to ask or guests that you want us to feature, please shoot us an email info@18Forty.org. Be sure to subscribe and share with friends so that we can reach new listeners. Without further ado, here is 18 Questions with Elli Fischer. So, we’ll begin where we always do.
As an Israeli and as a Jew, how are you feeling at this moment in Israeli history?
Elli Fischer: Okay, first of all, I don’t do the whole “as a” thing. It’s like sort of like, uh
Sruli Fruchter: But you are an Israeli and you are a Jew.
Elli Fischer: I am an Israeli and I am a Jew.
Sruli Fruchter: And if you weren’t, then your perspective wouldn’t be as as uh noteworthy.
Elli Fischer: I don’t know. I try not to, in general, I try not to inject, we’ll probably get into this later. I try not to inject those sort of identitarian markers …Yeah, into, you know, into I don’t think that I speak with any more authority just because because I know something that other somebody else doesn’t or maybe because I’ve experienced something that
Sruli Fruchter: But we we hold you in high regard. It’s not the authority that with why we preface, it’s that they they probably those those points of your identity probably inform your experience of the question.
Elli Fischer: Okay. And that should come out.
Sruli Fruchter: So we’ll put a disclaimer that no one should think that you have any particular
Elli Fischer: You say that about me as a but like, you know, that that should come out in whatever I answer. If it makes sense to you and if it’s something that if I can speak from reason or or from knowledge or from or from experience, then I’ll do so.
Sruli Fruchter: We’ll keep the disclaimer in. I think it’s good.
Elli Fischer: Yeah, I like the disclaimer and it’s also it’s sort of like, you know, it’s part of the brand.Right? I don’tdo the whole as a rabbi, as a Jew, as a whatever.
Sruli Fruchter: As an Elli Fischer.
Elli Fischer: Yeah. And not eventhat.
Sruli Fruchter: All right, so then, how are you feeling at this moment in Israeli history?
Elli Fischer: A lot of mixed feelings.
A lot of mixed feelings. Let’s start with the positive. The really positive, really, really positive is I spent a lot of time over the last year and a half talking to kids and seeing kids in action. They have taken the weight of this whole country on their shoulders and they’ve done they’ve done amazing things.
Now, I’m not going to say that like they’re suffering for it, right? And there’s a lot of they’re going through a lot of trauma, a lot of trauma. But I’ve been just absolutely blown away by the way that these kids have have carried themselves and it just gives me a lot of optimism about the future of this country that that this is our future and we’re in good hands.
Sruli Fruchter: When you say kids, you mean…
Elli Fischer: The kidsthat are fighting, the soldiers.
Sruli Fruchter: Oh, okay, fine, like young adults …
No, at first I thought at first I thought you were talking about like like uh school children and then, yeah.
Elli Fischer: I’m sorry. I mean, the soldiers.
Sruli Fruchter: That wasn’t a Mel Barinholtz uh edit if you’re familiar, but …
Sruli Fruchter: Some of the 18Forty listeners will know.
Elli Fischer: Okay. But uh, yeah. So that’s that’s the optimism that the kids are amazing. That the young adults, the 18 to probably 25, 30, I mean, if you reserve duty also, they’ve really stepped up and there’s a lot of they’ve inspired a lot of confidence. I’ve had like real conversations with some of these kids, kids who have really seen a heck of a lot. People who have done things that, you know, it’s weird to like talk to a kid who’s in your shul and, you know, child of friends of yours, who has taken lives, right? It’s a strange thing to do, right? We don’t think about it.
It’s not, you don’t expect to encounter people like that in your shul, in your community. And here, I know, I I actually, you know, wanted to talk to the kid about one particular thing, and I knew what he did in the army. And like we sat down over … I was worried about this point. I was worried because you saw on Twitter and on, you know, on social media and sometimes on in the mainstream media, things about, you know, the, you know, Israeli soldiers who were, you know, misbehaving.
Right? Davening in the muezzin like in the in a mosque or something like that or, you know, trying on the whole wardrobe when they took over a house somewhere. And I’ve wanted to know like, okay, like what’s how are these soldiers really I call them kids, I’m sorry.
Sruli Fruchter: No, no, no. I it was a it was a point of clarity, not a correction.
Elli Fischer: They’re adults. They’re all, you know, they’re grown-ups. I wanted to sort of get more of an understanding of what they’re going through and whether or not these things are the norm and whether or not that like or like does the average soldier, is there a point at which they’ll say like, I can’t follow that order? Those are the kinds of questions that I wanted to ask him. And you know, and he told me some of the things that he had experienced.
You know, he he said this, he mentioned that he he he’s responsible for the deaths of of enemies in wartime. But it’s still, I I can’t imagine, you know, we say, we talk about, oh yeah, it’s, you know, enemies and we justify it and it’s justified, but like I still can’t imagine taking the life of another human being as even as much as that other person is trying to kill me, as much as that other person might deserve it. It’s not something that I can imagine. I never served.
I never I was never a soldier. I was never a combat soldier. So yeah, I think that the kids with all they’re going through are are amazing.
Pessimism. I’ll tell you. I my biggest fear is that and let’s say this is going to get a little bit theological. The way, you know, my understanding, and I think that this is really pshat, is that there are two different covenants. Eretz Yisrael was promised to Bnei Yisrael in two different, through two different covenants.
One is the Brit Avot, the Bris Avos, if you will. It’s the Bris Bein HaBesarim, the covenant between the parts. It’s unilateral. Hakadosh Baruch Hu says to Abraham, you’re going to suffer, you’re going to be enslaved, 400 years.
At the end, you’re going to come back. I’m going to bring you back. That requires nothing on our part. It’s also cyclical, right? That’s what we’re talking about in Vehi Sheamda at the Seder, right? Shelo echad bilvad, bechol dor vador, right? And it also it comes up in other in other contexts as well, like in Parshat Bechukotai, which we’re going to read next week.
Right? Vezacharti lahem bris rishonim, you know, vezacharti es bris Avraham, ve’es bris Yitzchak, ve’es bris Yaakov ezkor. That’s what it’s talking about. And that’s where it says ve’af, ve’af kol zos biyosam be’eretz oyveihem lo me’astim velo ge’altim lechalosam lehafer brisi itam. That’s I’ll
Sruli Fruchter: take your word for it.
Elli Fischer: That’s promise. And the Gemara talks about how it’s like, oh, this is lo me’astim, that’s the the galus of Bavel, and lo ge’altim, that’s the galus of Paras. And this one’s Yavan, and this one, meaning it’s over and over again, right? It means that this bris, this covenant is you’re going to suffer, but at the end of the suffering, at the end of the exile, you’re going to come back. And then there’s the bilateral covenant, which is the Torah itself, meaning that’s the covenant of Torah and mitzvos.
And that’s, you know, we get to stay in the Land as long as we’re upholding the Torah and doing the mitzvos. And if not, you know, we just read, you know, the Land will spit us out. So, clearly there’s some kind of grace period, right? You get it unilaterally, it’s a promise, it’s a fulfillment of a promise. I think that’s where we are today, right? The State of Israel, the modern state of Israel, I view it as a fulfillment of that promise.
I think that’s why we barbecue on Yom HaAtzmaut, right? Because like the the barbecuing is like a zecher for the Bris Bein HaBesarim, right? Like we’re we’re eating pieces of meat, chopped up pieces of meat. But how long is that grace period going to last? And are we living up to it? Are we, you know, do we, you know, at what point? … I don’t understand the confidence of people who say that like, oh, this is this we were promised that this time we’re never going to lose it again.
Like, I don’t know, I read Chumash. Maybe there maybe there is some kind of promise. Maybe there is some kind of I just don’t know how you could be so confident in it, right? One says there’s a promise, one says there’s not a promise. There are a lot of people that have tried to figure out God’s playbook and what things are going to look like at the end of days.
I just I cannot for the life of me understand how anybody has that kind of confidence to say it really doesn’t matter because we can’t give it up. We can’t lose it. There’s no way we could lose it.
Sruli Fruchter: But onthe same topic of kind of where we are in this moment in Israeli history, what would you say has been Israel’s greatest success and greatest mistake in the war thus far?
Elli Fischer: The greatest success in the larger war has been sort of like the breakup of the Iranian axis. Right? Syria has fallen.
Hezbollah has been completely neutralized. Iran has lost a lot of their capabilities. And so Hamas is no longer a part of a broader axis of terror in the region. We still have the Houthis who are sort of like the, my daughter calls them the friend who’s like thinks they’re part of the friend group but isn’t really part of the friend group.
They’re sort of like, okay, fine, like the like the sympathy member of the group. I don’t know, Peter Pettigrew if you’re a Harry Potter fan, right? And this obviously she thought of this while we were sitting in our in our mamad, in our in our reinforced room, probably at 4:00 in the morning during one of the after one of the sirens. She’s like, you know, you know what the Houthis are like? I think that’s probably the greatest success. I think the greatest failure has just been the complete lack of transparency about what we’re trying to accomplish and how we’re trying to accomplish it.
To this day, you know, we don’t know what, and I’ve I don’t know. And and the truth of the matter is it’s not my job to know, but the sense that I get is that it’s, you know, there were there are opportunities here, there have been opportunities here to get other things done, to get, you know, a broader a broader deal and that there’s been, there hasn’t been any sort of effort, there hasn’t really been an effort to either define an objective and then, you know, a concrete objective and then do that, or to define a diplomatic horizon and try to achieve that. It’s just stringing it along, going along, and it’s we’re getting tired and that’s really not where you want to be.
Sruli Fruchter: How have your religious views changed since October 7th?
Elli Fischer: I’m going to what do you mean by religious views?
Sruli Fruchter: You tell me. Whatever you want to qualify.
Elli Fischer: I suppose that my religious views have I don’t know if this is really a change because I kind of felt this way beforehand. The Hesder program, and just say it like this, I’m not a believer in Hesder. Hesder is the is the combination of military service with studies in yeshiva. I believe in Hesder not because I think that it’s the most wonderful, like I don’t romanticize military service.
I don’t think we should be romanticizing military service. I think that military service is a necessity. It’s a civic duty, it’s a national duty, it’s it’s a mitzvah, right? The but I I think that the way that the Hesder soldiers in particular have sort of carried themselves and handled themselves in this war and and how they’ve suffered, like the I don’t know if you’ve been following the I don’t know, the boys from Yeruham, the eight boys from Yeruham that were killed and then there were six from Yeshivat Har Etzion. And every single story, every single one of these was just an absolute gem.
Absolutely just wonderful, wonderful young men. And it’s it’s really painful, but it really has reinforced that like this is this is the cream of the crop. This is, you know, this is what everybody should be aspiring to. And I’ve sort of I’ve lost a lot of, I don’t know if this is a religious change, but I feel a lot more disappointment, frustration, exasperation, anger toward the the segments of Israeli society that that don’t serve in the army than I did beforehand.
Sruli Fruchter: We’re going to get to talking about the army a little bit soon.
I want to take a little bit of a turn and talk more about just Israeli society in general and your relation to it. And we’ll start with when you’re deciding which Knesset party to vote for, what do you look for in deciding which Knesset party to vote for?
Elli Fischer: Whichever one makes me least nauseous. It’s like I think that’s it. No, there are certain, there are certain issues, meaning I generally I want to vote for a party that at least has a good chance of being in the governing coalition.
Uh, I want to vote for a party that is, you know, on on the basic level, you know, representative of my views, of my political views. And I I got to say, I think part of it has to be like I’m I’m voting for I’m voting with my, you know, from with my wallet, right? Meaning I send my kids to certain kinds of institutions. I live in a certain kind of community, in a certain kind of city, and I want to vote for the party that’s going to bring those issues to the fore, meaning that it’s going to get money for those institutions, it’s going to build roads in my city or whatever. And those are just, you know, I mean just basic self-interest, I think is ultimately the main thing.
And obviously there’s a broader national, you know, there’s something national that we want to look. I trying to steer clear of the identity politics, and there’s a lot of identity politics here. Identity politics is, you know, I’m Dati Leumi, so I vote for the Dati Leumi party. I’m Charedi, so I vote for the Charedi party.
I’m Arab, so I vote for the Arab party, right? Regardless of what they stand for, regardless of what regardless of what their platform is. I also try to stay away from um cult of personality, and there are a number of those. Some of them have sort of graduated. I think that Yesh Atid when they first started, they were much more of a cult of personality.
And I think that now they’ve stabilized somewhat and they’re not as much of a cult of personality, but there are other parties that are cults of personality, so I steer clear of those. So yeah, that’s the basic.
Sruli Fruchter: Which is more important for Israel? Judaism or democracy?
Elli Fischer: Oh, Judaism.
Sruli Fruchter: Yeah. Can you say more?
Elli Fischer: The world has a lot of democracies, the world doesn’t have a lot of Jewish states.
Now, I don’t know what it means to be a the question of a Jewish state is also it’s a complicated question. I don’t think a state can in any meaningful way be what makes a state Jewish? Okay? What makes a state Jewish is, okay, the language is Hebrew and its calendar is, right, its day of rest is Shabbat and its calendar is the Jewish calendar, right? Everybody gets off and all the stores are closed on, you know, on our holidays, right? Which sometimes can be annoying because it’s like there’s no Great Adventure on Chol HaMoed where we have the run of the place. You know what I’m saying? Because like here, I I the way that I would put it is and it’s something that we’re still learning how to do this. Here in Israel, we’re the goyim.
Okay? This is what I mean by that is like we’re the majority, the entire rhythm and routine of the country is our calendar, it’s our language. In that sense, you know, the non-Jew who lives in Israel, and it’s 20% of the population, they have to know when Sukkot is, just the same way as a Jew in America has to know when Christmas is because that’s the routine that they have to adapt to. It’s our natural rhythm. It’s the Jewish rhythm.
So in that sense, it’s a Jewish society. Right?
Sruli Fruchter: So is that the element that you’re saying is more important than democracy?
Elli Fischer: So, what I’m saying is that I want the Jewish state to be democratic. Right? But to me, it’s more important that there’s a place in the world that, we’ll use Robert Frost’s definition of a home, the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
It’s more important to me that there’s such a place like that in the world than what its government looks like. Right? That’s, now let’s take a step back. Me personally, I don’t know if I would want to live in a non-democratic state. So in that sense, you know, it’s if it’s a question of me personally, I don’t know what I would choose.
If it’s a question of there needs to be a place in the world for the Jews, is it important that that place is democratic? It’s important, but it’s more important that such a place exists. I guess that’s
Sruli Fruchter: Meaning, I guessthe point of the question is that often many of the issues that Israel is dealing with, and I think they’re always subject to different interpretations, whether it’s judicial reform or whether it’s something else that’s in the political sphere, there’s this tension between those two identity markers of Israel being the Jewish state and being the democratic state. It seems like, I mean why I’m a little bit confused with your answer, it seems like in some
Elli Fischer: Okay, so amI. So let’s let’s walk it back.
Sruli Fruchter: Meaning, it seems like to to some effect or to some degree, you understand the idea of Judaism in Israel to be more of the cultural fabric in the sense that there, you know, what the language is, how the calendar works and so on. But then there also seems to be an identity for the the state of Israel being a state for Jewish safety. But I guess when you are thinking about what the Jewish identity and the democratic identity are, how do you how do you define, what do those two things mean to you?If the question is too hard, we can go back to the beginning where we do the I am Elli Fischer and this is 18 questions.
Elli Fischer: Yeah. Um, so it’s interesting.
My gut reaction is Jewish is more important and now I’m like trying to think like, why was that my gut reaction? Like
Sruli Fruchter: But I guess what do you mean when your gut reaction is saying like what is like take away the word Jewish and like the definition of what you’re saying is what is more important?
Elli Fischer: I guessI’m thinking like if if it had to be like, let’s say one or the other, right? Israel could stop being Jewish or it could stop being democratic, I would say let it stop being democratic. I think that’s what I’m trying to say. Israel’s democracy is funny. I don’t think that a country of Jews could be undemocratic on a certain level because Israeli democracy is kind of like the democracy of the shuk.
Everybody’s yelling at each other and at the end like you you agree on a price, right? It’s like it’s it’s not democracy … It’s chaotic and it’s more like we’re just all handling, right? And it’s all and a lot of it is just a show. And I don’t think that can be taken away.
Meaning democracy is ultimately is a is an agreement that we’re going to settle, we’re going to settle things through dialogue and the vote and, you know, and and governance rather than through force. That’s essentially what it is. It’s like saying that like, okay, the guns are off the table, if we have disagreements, this is how we resolve our disagreements. We resolve our disagreements in ways that are non-violent.
Sruli Fruchter: Like a Beit Midrash.
Elli Fischer: Maybe, maybe like a Beit Midrash, but I’m saying, but the point is that it’s no violence.
Sruli Fruchter: So on that note, I guess there’s a follow-up to the question is, should Israel treat its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens the same?
Elli Fischer: So, again, I think it would depend on how you define that, right? Um
Sruli Fruchter: How doyou define it?
Elli Fischer: Okay, sowhen it comes to civil rights, I think that everything has to be everything has to be equal. Right? And this is it’s it’s it’s in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Now, you might say, okay, does that have any halachic weight? And I would argue that it probably does.
Why? The state of Israel was accepted by the United Nations. It was recognized by other countries. I’m trying to do this fast, right? It’s recognized by other countries, it was recognized by other states on the on the premise that it is going to be a democracy, a state of all of its citizens where everybody would have equal rights irrespective of, you know, race, creed, color, religion, all those nice things. Now, if Israel made that promise, even if other people broke the promise and even if it didn’t really mean it and even if it’s against halakha, it doesn’t matter.
Where do we get that from? From the story in Givonim in Sefer Yehoshua. Right? The story of the Givonim is that there was this tribe that lived here in Eretz Yisrael, they duped Yehoshua. They, you know, they made pretend that they were, you know, some, you know, refugee tribe and they made a deal, they made a a treaty with Yehoshua and then they found out that they’re, you know, that they were faking the whole thing, that they were liars and they just got, you know, they just weaselled their way into staying in Eretz Yisrael in the time of Yehoshua. But it was like, yeah, yeah, but you made a promise so you have to keep it.
Even though it’s going against what the Torah wants us to do and even though they duped us, right? Meaning they got us, they duped us into a deal under false pretenses.
Sruli Fruchter: Do you think that there is uh there’s halachic weight to the actions of the State of Israel?
Elli Fischer: Okay, there are 613 mitzvos, right? Some of those mitzvos are mitzvos that the individual has to perform. Some of those mitzvos are, some of those mitzvos are mitzvos that it’s on the community to perform. For example, one example would be Shoftim veshotrim titen lecha bechol she’arecha.
Som tasim alecha melech, right? These are mitzvos that are devolved upon the entire tzibbur. Those are a little bit pie in the sky, but let’s take something that’s very relevant today. Something like pidyon shevuyim, redeeming captives. The State of Israel on behalf of its citizens engages in efforts to redeem captives.
Is that saying that the State of Israel collectively on behalf of all Jews everywhere is performing a mitzvah? I think the answer would be yes. Right? So in that sense, I think that there is halachic weight to the actions of a state because or milchemes mitzvah, right? The the mitzvah to defend Jews from enemies. That’s a mitzvah that it it’s not an like an individual, what can an individual do? I’m an individual, I’m not an army. Collectively, we have a we have a mitzvah to defend ourselves.
Sruli Fruchter: So does thisanswer in some sense your earlier question about what a Jewish state means?
Elli Fischer: It does andit doesn’t. Meaning, it doesn’t mean that everything that a state does has halachic weight. And I don’t believe that everything that the state does has halachic weight. Right? And sometimes it might have halachic weight but that doesn’t mean it has halachically meaningful weight.
For example, uh economic laws, right? Laws regarding buying and selling or laws regarding all of those things. It might have halachic weight in the sense that dina demalchusa dina, but that means that it has the same halachic weight as the laws in America or the laws in English, the laws that govern commerce, right? Which in some ways, in some in some instances, in many instances, overrides the Torah’s economic rules, right? I’m not talking about Torah and mitzvos, I’m not talking about like the I’m not talking about issur veheter. I’m talking about if the if the secular court or if in Israel or anywhere else says Reuven owes Shimon money, then according to halakha, Reuven owes Shimon money, right? As long as it’s part of this as long as it’s a commercial it’s a purely commercial decision.
Sruli Fruchter: Yeah. That could kind of good segue to the next question I was going to ask, which is, should Israel be a religious state? And I know it’s a loaded question.
Elli Fischer: Yeah, but I don’t even know what that means, right?
Sruli Fruchter: Well, I mean let’s take as an example like I think the visions of whether it’s like um
Elli Fischer: Well, this was my earlier podcast.
Sruli Fruchter: No, no, I yeah, yeah, I know. I was going to say this is a good for for the listeners, they should go through the original 18Forty, but separate podcast.
Um, like with Herzl or Rav Goren or or you know, some visions of Rav Kook or so on. A, I’m curious like what it would mean for you to for Israel to be a religious state. Like if you when I ask that question, someone’s coming up for you. And B is like, is that actually the ideal? Should there in fact be a religious state?
Elli Fischer: Okay, first of all, the ideal clearly is a religious state because that’s the Torah ideal is a religious state.
I’m going to start with a Gemara. There’s a Gemara in, I think Sanhedrin daf chaf vav, chaf zayin, page 26, 27, says that 40 years before the destruction of the Second Temple, so we’re talking about the year 30 of the Common Era or thereabouts, the Sanhedrin, the High Court of the Jews voluntarily went into exile. It says misherabu harotzchim, right? Once once the murderers proliferated, there were a lot of murderers. So Rashi explains, what does that mean? He says there were so many, so so they went into, they went into exile.
They moved out of their office in the Beit HaMikdash on Har HaBayit, and by doing that, no courts could then try capital cases. Meaning there were courts all over the country, and the halakha is that it’s only permissible for any court to try a capital case and put somebody to death if there’s that, if there’s that Supreme Court sitting in the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. When the Sanhedrin stepped out voluntarily and went into a storefront in Jerusalem, no no courts from then on could could judge capital cases. They dinei nefashos.
And Rashi says because there were too many murderers. So I think about that in a couple of ways. One of the ways that I think about that is that first of all, when a court puts someone to death, right, it should be shocking. And that’s that comes out from the Mishna in Makkos, when it says a court that kills more than once every seven years is considered like a killing court.
Another one says, you know, there’s another opinion there that even if it’s once in 70 years, it’s a murderous court. That’s like, it’s really got to be shocking. So I think part of what’s going on here, it’s not just that the case load was overwhelming the dockets, right? Like they just couldn’t handle it and so therefore, okay, just let the murderers go, let the murderers run rampant. I don’t think that’s the only thing that’s going on.
I think that part of what’s going on is that, okay, the Sanhedrin, which is the representative of Torah, which is the representative of, you know, this is, you know, it goes back to Moshe Rabbeinu, who was the first, convened the first Sanhedrin. It functions when, you know, when when the ideal Torah law can be perceived in a particular way, right? If a court is putting somebody, let’s say, you know, stoning somebody to death that breaks Shabbos. Okay. If you’re in a society where everybody keeps Shabbos and and it’s a really and again, in order to be put to death for breaking Shabbos, you have to do it in a very wanton way, in a very open way, and and everybody is a everybody keeps Shabbos, right? The idea of like, oh yeah, today we should just, you know, put what? 80% of the like 90% of the Jewish like it’s insane, right? Nobody’s like nobody thinks in those terms because it’s just it it’s not just because we don’t have the power to do it, and not just because we don’t we have the we we we don’t have the manpower, the, you know, we don’t have enough judges to sit on courts to put every mechalel, every Shabbos desecrator to death.
That’s not what it’s about at all. The point is that it does it wouldn’t mean anything. It would just be murder. It would just be killing people.
It wouldn’t have any kind of deterrent effect, it wouldn’t have any, it wouldn’t improve society in any way. And therefore, the Sanhedrin voluntarily stepped off of Har Habayit. And said, we can’t do the we can’t judge these cases anymore because if we do judge these cases, it it it would have no effect. We would just be putting people to death for no reason.
So we will we will no longer, we will no longer judge these cases and we will no longer, we will no longer try capital cases because it just wouldn’t mean anything. Okay? So I think to me that’s a paradigm of how of how a a halachic state might work, meaning a halachic whoever is governing a halachic state, and again, this is like we’re really I don’t I don’t think this has anything to do with the state we live in now, right? I would I would think, I would hope that there’s a sense that like, all right, we have to we have to know what we can control. We have to know what we can’t control.
We have to know where the people are. I would hope that a a Sanhedrin doesn’t come and say, all right, from now on, Ashkenazim can eat kitniyot. From now on, right, here is the nusach, the correct nusach of tefillah, and everybody has to daven this way. No, I don’t want that.
I want Nusach Sefard to continue davening Nusach Sefard and the Yemenites and the Moroccans and the Iranians and the and the Hungarians and the Germans and the Litvaks. They’ll all continue to daven as they were davening. Sometimes, you know, minhagim amalgamate, sometimes they don’t. I don’t think we need to force, you know, I I don’t want to impose changes like that.
I wouldn’t want a Sanhedrin that comes along and says, right, well, you know, Ashkenazim do things this way and Sefardim do things that way.
Sruli Fruchter: Does the fact that you don’t want it mean it’s not necessarily what should be?
Elli Fischer: So, I think that I would hope that the Sanhedrin would realize, like, that’s not necessary, right? It’s not, we don’t need uniformity on that. Right? It’s not, like there’s going to be certain issues that we will need to, that really do require a a public consensus.
Sruli Fruchter: And you think that if Israel were a religious state, then that would be a cost to it?
Elli Fischer: Well, I again, I would I would hope that they would let things be. Right? If Israel were a religious state, it’s not. If Israel were a religious state, I would hope that that didn’t mean that we, you know we’re enforcing what’s going on in people’s houses, right? That there’s like a …
I wouldn’t want it to be a religious police state. Mhm. I wouldn’t want it to be a religious state, meaning I just don’t think we’re there.
But if I were in a religious state, I would hope that it would be that the that the religious leaders would recognize that not everything has to be imposed. It’s okay to let people live their lives as long as they’re not doing flagrant, they’re not doing anything flagrant. But again, this is all like way too theoretical. I don’t even like thinking about the state of Israel in that in those terms because it just encourages the people that think that this is just around the corner and it’s not.
Sruli Fruchter: We won’t make you do it any longer. Now that Israel already exists, what’s the purpose of Zionism?
Elli Fischer: Oh gosh. I don’t even know what Zionism means anymore.
Sruli Fruchter: Why?
Elli Fischer: It meant so it’s mean it meant so many things over the last 125 years.
Sruli Fruchter: Can you give me a couple?
Elli Fischer: Well, atone point it referred to a specific movement, right? With members, right? That movement and its membership, they ended up becoming the government here. They ended up founding the state. And so, anybody that wants to live in the state sort of has to play ball with them, but that doesn’t mean it’s just because they’re the government. You know, there were plenty of non-Zionist Haredi groups, groups that were encouraging aliyah, groups that were founding settlements here in Israel, I’m saying like in the pre-state era, who were encouraging people to move here, who were complaining that the Zionists were taking all the all the certificates for, you know, for aliyah.
Even, you know, things like Agudah, right? Organizations like Agudah, they never, first of all, they never became Zionist. To this day, they wouldn’t call themselves Zionist, they don’t call themselves Zionist. But they’ve cooperated to various degrees with the Zionist movement over the course of the last 100 years, right? And this is like the thing like, ah yeah, these all these rabbis were anti-Zionist and it’s like, Okay, you want to be anti-Zionist, great. You know, I say Jews today it’s like, I’m not Zionist, I don’t want to be Zionist.
Be an anti-Zionist like the Klausenberger Rebbe, okay? Be an anti-Zionist like the Klausenberger Rebbe. Build a hospital in Netanya, bring an entire community to live in Eretz Yisrael, and be an anti-Zionist. Be anti-Zionist like that. Right?
Sruli Fruchter: So, do you think that Zionism has a purpose today? Or a function?
Elli Fischer: Meaning, today, I think Zionist basically means either you live in Israel or you’re pro-Israel. And I hope that’s like a just a different, it should be a different term. If Zionism means that I believe that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination. I think this is like the bottom line baseline definition.
I believe that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination within their ancient homeland. Doesn’t mean that they have a right in their entire ancient homeland or that they should have their whole, you know, we can we can share, we can play nice if we need to. It it doesn’t have to be that. It’s not a, yes, it made common cause with colonial powers, it made common cause with the Ottomans, it made common cause with the Brits.
But that doesn’t mean that it was a colonial project in any sense other than, you know, like the same way that they called, you know, Jewish settlements in the Southern Ukraine colonies, right? Whenever anybody set up a a farming community, they called it a colony. It doesn’t mean that it’s, you know, linked to colonialism in that way. Right? Um, or or at least that the term colony had a broader semantic range than white people who don’t belong here coming here to dispossess the locals, right?
Sruli Fruchter: I mean, personally I think that like my my next question was was kind of going to be on the on the inverse.
Do you think that opposing Zionism is inherently antisemitic?
Elli Fischer: I don’t think that opposing Zionism is inherently antisemitic. I just think that if you would like draw a Venn diagram of like antisemites and anti-Zionists, there would be there there would be plenty of antisemites who are not anti-Zionist, but there would be very few anti-Zionists who are not antisemites. Meaning, like that Venn diagram like I don’t know how I would draw it exactly, but like it’s really there are not a lot of anti-Zionists who are not antisemites, right? It’s like, I know a guy, like exactly. You know a guy, right? They’re not a lot.
Okay? And that’s certainly once you leave, once you leave the Jewish community. Like, you know,
Sruli Fruchter: But you’re saying meaning is the opposition to Zionism the vehicle through which they become antisemitic or you’re saying separately from that?
Elli Fischer: I think it’s both. Meaning, first, I think that if you deny Jewish peoplehood, right? If you say something like, why should the Jewish people have a right to a state? Judaism is just a religion. Where there are Jews who there have been Jews that believe that.
But if you’re not Jewish, you don’t get to make that call. Meaning, we, who are Jews, in in what what is it? The Pittsburgh Platform in 1886, it actually says it. Like this was the the official position of the Reform community in the United States was we consider Judaism to be no longer a nation, but only a religion. But it was a choice.
Right? Meaning, it’s not saying historically we weren’t a nation. It’s like, today, you know, we are, right, and you had all this rhetoric in the time of emancipation. We are French or Germans or Hungarians of the Mosaic faith, right? We’re Jews. We’re allowed, you know, if we want to make that choice, we can.
And other Jews will consider that a might consider that a betrayal, and did consider that a betrayal, right? Of peoplehood, of that nationhood that we have that goes beyond religion. Right? In fact, you know, there was a a a major thinker almost, you know, 175 years ago who was not so well known today, Rav Akiva Yosef Schlesinger. He says that Jewish peoplehood both chronologically and ideally precedes the Jewish religion. Right? He quotes the pasuk in Yonah.
It’s a famous song now, Ivri anochi v’es Hashem Elokei hashamayim ani yarei. Right? First is Ivri anochi, right? I’m a I’m a member of a tribe, I’m a Hebrew, right? And then you have the religious part. V’es Hashem Elokei hashamayim ani yarei. Right? And that’s the religious component, and I believe in God, right? And he says that we became a nation in Egypt.
We got the Torah only afterwards. Right? And so those things that we have, you know, our our collective identity, our Jewish identity, which we had in Egypt, that precedes the Torah and in some ways is more constitutive than the Torah. And he says that if you give that up, even if you keep the Torah, and he says this. If you give that up, if you give up the peoplehood aspect without even if you keep the Torah, it’s,he doesn’t say it’s, I don’t know, I don’t know if he says it’s nothing.
He doesn’t have nice things to say about that. That’s, you know, so he’s pushing back. He’s pushing back on this sense of, you know, on this idea that Judaism is just a religion.
We can have that debate. The Jewish people, we can have that debate because it’s us and it’s an internal debate.
Sruli Fruchter: But fromoutsiders, it’s
Elli Fischer: Outsiders who are usually like, you know, if 80% of the Jewish people, 90% of the Jewish people votes with their feet that we feel like, I mean, just imagine the following conversation. It’s like, Hey, are you Jewish? Like, yeah.
It’s like, do you believe in God? No. It’s like, Okay, I guess it’s possible to be Jewish without being religious, right? I guess it’s possible that Judaism isn’t just a religion because there are people with no religious identity to speak of who still consider themselves Jewish, right? If the people are voting with their feet, if the Jewish people collectively are voting with their feet and saying, we belong to a certain people, right? And somebody from outside comes along and says, well, you’re actually not a people, really you’re just a, you know, you’re a religion. Yeah. And in the last, I don’t know, 150 years, you made up that you’re also, you have this peoplehood or that you have this nationhood, and therefore you decided that you’re going to come and take somebody else’s land.
If that’s how you think, then you are an antisemite because you’re denying our experiential reality of peoplehood, our self-perception as being a people and not just a religion.
Sruli Fruchter: If you were making the case for Israel, where would you begin?
Elli Fischer: I would begin, I don’t know where I would begin, but I would go back pretty far. I would begin with maybe I would begin with the institution of the shadar. You know, it goes back only like four or five hundred years.
But I think that’s enough for these purposes.
Sruli Fruchter: What is shadar?
Elli Fischer: A shadar, shluchei derabanan. These were these emissaries.
That this the rabbinic emissaries that the communities in Eretz Yisrael, the four primary communities in those days were Tzfat and Tzfat, Tiberia, Yerushalayim and Chevron. They would send these out, they would send out fundraisers. And they would go through the entire, all through the Jewish world, collecting money to support the Jews of Eretz Yisrael. Right? And you have, first of all, like you have people like the Chida, who are emissaries, and you have others, like you had like major talmidei chachamim, uh who were emissaries, but you also have, like they kept really good records.
And you have like they have these these notebooks where they visited hundreds of communities in every like every little, you know, everybody’s giving a couple of pennies. Right? This idea that, you know, this is something that just happened now, that this is something that just happened, you know, that that that just happened in the last 150 years, like no. Like the kinetic energy was released in the last 150 years, but the potential energy has been building up for centuries, maybe even millennia. If you open up the siddur.
Right? And you’d see just how much of our daily Shemoneh Esrei is centered on Eretz Yisrael. If you think about it, right? Like the like six, seven brachos in a row. The bracha of kibbutz galuyot, right? The bracha of Hashiva shofteinu kevarishona.
The bracha of es tzemach David, v’liYerushalayim ircha, Retzei Hashem Elokeinu b’amcha Yisrael u’l’tefilasam she’ei, v’hashev es ha’avodah lidvir beisecha, right? It’s like like six brachos, one third of Shemoneh Esrei is about is centered on Eretz Yisrael. Oh, and yeah, it’s a machlokes about the about the the Birkat Hashanim, right? Birkat Hashanim may or may not be about Eretz Yisrael. Probably not. But the rest of them, kibbutz galuyot.
I know the Satmar Rebbe has a an opinion that it’s not about Eretz Yisrael, that kibbutz galuyot is going to be somewhere else. Okay? Aside from the Satmar Rebbe, you know, it’s kibbutz galuyot, we, you know, the the ingathering of exiles, we talk about that as that happening here.
Sruli Fruchter: So thatthis concerns making the case for Israel, but another note, I’m curious. Can questioning the actions of Israel’s government and the army, even in the context of this war, be considered a valid form of love and patriotism?
Elli Fischer: I think that of course. Most Israelis today are against what the government’s doing now.
Sruli Fruchter: So, what do you think is the most legitimate criticism leveled against this war?
Elli Fischer: Right now, I think that it’s uh the optics of meaning, it’s a black box.
I don’t know why they’re running the war in the way that they are, but it sure looks like Netanyahu is doing what he can to stay in power. You know, there are things that have been going on, just, I mean, he’s it’s not just the failure of the war. I mean, it was on his watch.
Yes, there were other people that made mistakes and the mistakes have been building up and there was a whole they call a conceptzia, right? a whole way of thinking that sort of led to this moment, but it was on his watch. Right? And he it’s it’s been his watch for the last, you know, what, 14 out of the last 15 years or something like that? Like, he’s been on the watch, it’s been on his watch for a while except for that one year where he wasn’t prime minister. And what’s going on with Qatar, stuff is it’s like there’s stuff that’s going on that’s really opaque. And that if, you know, a healthy immune system would be fighting and the immune system is not healthy.
You know, I think that call elections, if people reelect you, fine. It means that what you’re doing, people want you to continue to do. But I don’t understand how you can assume that just because, you know, you were elected in 2022, it means that people are satisfied with what you’re doing today because frankly, he done messed up. And, you know, and this this, you know, this survival mode is really like nobody,
Nobody wants to take blame for anything, nobody wants to take responsibility for anything. I think it it it’s toxic.
Sruli Fruchter: Should all Israelis serve in the army?
Elli Fischer:Meaning, should all able-bodied Israelis, Israeli males serve in the army?
Sruli Fruchter: You can qualify however you’d like. Meaning among your requirements are able-bodied male.
Elli Fischer: Yes. Like I don’t think
Sruli Fruchter: Non-Jews as well as Jews?
Elli Fischer: Well, put it put it this way. Ideally non-Jews as well as Jews. But I get that it’s hard to conscript somebody to force somebody to fight against their family members.
It really is. Right? And and we know this from our own Jewish experience, right? World War II, it was not Jew against Jew. It was meaning the Jews were on one side and ultimately the winning side, but we all know that we paid a very, very, very high price before the war was won by the the good guys or in the case of Stalin, the less bad guys or the slightly less bad guys. Whatever.
World War I, it was Jew against Jew. Like there were Jews on either side, there were either side of the war and it was it created a lot of dilemmas. Like there were Jews that wanted to not fight, that wanted to not serve and there are shailos, tshuvos about this. Can I not serve because I might have to kill another Jew? Because he’s on the other side.
Right? And I get that and I get that question and I also get that if you conscript an Israeli, you know, an Arab citizen of Israel into the Israeli army, you know, the the the guy on the other side might be a cousin, right? Families were did end up on different sides of the fence in 1948.
Sruli Fruchter: Outside of Arabs, how do you view? I mean, you had touched a little bit on the on the question or alluded to Yeah. question of like the Haredi draft which is, you know, has been in the news for very, very long time and a lot more recently. I guess I’m curious, have you spoken to Haredim about why they don’t with the drafted, those who have like actual authority in some sense and understanding of the community.
Elli Fischer: I have. I’ve had a few conversations, mainly I’ve had conversations with people that I can have conversations with. I have Haredi family members. I did try to have, I had a conversation lasted about an hour towards the beginning of the of the war.
And you know, and and I’ve been to, I’ve also been to like several, I guess, town hall type meetings, and I’ve had other one-on-one interactions. My feeling is one of frustration and exasperation and sometimes anger.
Sruli Fruchter: Was there ever a point when you had more sympathy, so to speak, for the Haredi perspective?
Elli Fischer: Oh, absolutely.
Sruli Fruchter: When was that?
Elli Fischer: Oh, for the Haredi perspective, I just didn’t think I I never imagined that the stakes were so high.
I never really thought that like I always thought that it was something of a cop out. Meaning, you look around, I I’ve spent I spent six years in Hesder Yeshivas. I spent three years at Kerem B’Yavneh. I spent three years in the Gush.
I’ve seen a lot of Hesder students. And it’s possible, it’s possible to be a soldier and a talmid chacham. Right? My son’s Rebbe is is is still going to miluim. He’s a guy in probably his early 40s, got a whole bunch of kids.
He’s a Rebbe in he’s a Rebbe in a Yeshiva, a high-level, you know, like he’s he’s a first year Rebbe in a yeshiva. He’s teaching 19 year olds, right? He’s teaching teaching them Shev Shmaytsa, right? And and he’s spending a lot of time in the army because he that’s how he came up and that’s how he learned and that’s So I I just think that the whole you can’t really become a talmid chacham.
Sruli Fruchter: Wasn’t it also a concern about religious attrition? I think is the right is the correct word.
Elli Fischer: There theytalk about a religious attrition.
It’s true. And I’m not going to say that there’s no religious attrition in the
Sruli Fruchter: People go off the derech, for those who aren’t familiar.
Elli Fischer: So, look, I’m going to I’m going to draw a little bit from my experience as a as a JLIC Rabbi, even though it was almost 20 years ago, from 2004 to 2000, more than 20 years ago. 2004 to 2006, right? So, that’s another one of the bugaboos, right? Oh, secular university, you go and you’re going to become, you know, you’re going to you’re going to go off the derech. From my experience, the the the students who stopped being, who who stopped being religious, who stopped, you know, being observant. It didn’t happen gradually over four years.
It happened by like Chanukah of their first semester on campus. Sometimes the yarmulke was off or the whatever, the skirt was off by the end of orientation. Right? It was not a drawn out process. Meaning, you educate people to become adults, right? Now, you want to you want to handel about at what point is someone an adult, old enough to make their own decisions, set enough to be, you know, so that they they’ll be stable and won’t be and won’t be tempted by everything that’s going on.
You want to say it’s 18, 19, 20, 21, fine. Let’s have that conversation. The idea that you’re going to sit until you’re, you know, whatever, 30 years old and have four kids and then maybe you’ll go out and and either join the workforce or join the army for six months service. Like, that’s not in the realm of possibility.
There’s a Gemara. And I think this is a really important Gemara for today. Okay? The Gemara says that if somebody walks, I’m trying to remember this by heart. If somebody walks past a place where, you know, it’s just where women were doing laundry.
If a man walks past a place where women are doing laundry in the in the river, and the presumption is that they would be, you know, they would be in a state of immodesty and so the a man has to avoid walking there. And if he walk if he walks there, he’s considered a rasha. And the Gemara asks, but what if there’s no other way? … They’re saying, if he if there’s no other way … He, you know, he had no choice.
He had to walk that way. You do what you can. Hakadosh Baruch Hu will help you out and you’ll withstand the temptation, hopefully. Right? If there’s another way around, right, if there’s another way to go and you go the way that there’s an immodesty, then then you’re considered a rasha, you’re considered wicked.
Maybe, maybe, maybe you could argue that until recently there was another way around, right? It wasn’t necessary and there were other things you could do. Today, I think that it’s there’s no other way. We we can’t continue like this. There’s no other way.
So yeah, it means taking spiritual risks. It means that you’re going to have to walk past, you’re going to have to walk that path where there are going to be temptations on that path. But the Gemara says, if there’s no other path, that’s the path that you have to take.
Sruli Fruchter: Do you think the State of Israel is part of the final redemption?
Elli Fischer: I would say the State of Israel is part of a redemption. I think that I can say that with a great deal of confidence. Okay? Because if you look at how the word redemption is used in Tanach, I’m actually cribbing from Rav Yoel Bin-Nun because I’m editing his Haggadah and he has a whole piece on this and I’m convinced. We say it in davening every day.
You quote a pasuk, ki fada Hashem es Yaakov. God, he ransomed Yaakov. U’ge’alo and redeemed him miyad from the clutches, from the hands, chazak mimenu of somebody who was stronger than him. Right? What’s geulah? We are released from that kind of bondage.
We are released from being under the thumb of someone stronger than us. Okay? Throughout in in several places in a number of places in Tanach, the word geulah comes up specifically in context of kibbutz galuyot. Right? The ingathering of exiles, the Jews coming back to Eretz Yisrael. Since the founding of the state, millions of Jews have made have made aliyah from dozens and dozens of countries.
So to turn to look at this and say this is not a geulah, I think that that’s just denying the straight facts on the ground. This is it, this is this is what geulah means. The Jews coming back here kayonim el aruboseihem, like like like doves to their dovecotes. That’s geulah.
That’s a geulah. Is it the final geulah? I don’t know. I’m not a prophet.
Sruli Fruchter: Is Messianism helpful or harmful for Israel?
Elli Fischer: Messianism is one of those words that it gets a really bad, it gets a really bum rap. Okay? What does messianism mean? Fundamentally, messianism means that the world is perfectible. That history can have an end point. That the world can get to a point where it it’s we made it.
We finished all the levels. We knocked out all the, we killed all the beasts on the way up and we won. We got there. Right? Messianism means that the world is perfectible.
We can we can get there. I think that losing that belief, I think that believing that the world is not perfectible is far more dangerous than believing that the world is perfectible. So in that sense, I think that that messianism is crucial. We should all be messianic.
Sruli Fruchter: And in a colloquial sense?
Elli Fischer: Now, in the colloquial sense, it’s meant as though as, you know, like, well, I have specific knowledge about how this world perfection is going to unfold because either because my guy is going to be the guy that brings the world to that, or because I know exactly what I have to do in order to in order to make it happen, or because I know that this is going to happen or I know that that can’t happen. Those are things that I think can be dangerous, can be very dangerous. Once somebody feels like they have God’s playbook, almost, you know, the ends justify almost any means.
Okay? And I think that that’s really dangerous. I think that we can believe that the world is perfectible. The basic recipe that we have for making the world better is ultimately Torah and mitzvos, right? The Torah is the blueprint for that. And to go outside the bounds of the Torah in order in our pursuit of this final redemption, I think that that’s something that’s deeply problematic and really dangerous.
Sruli Fruchter: Do you think peace between Israelis and Palestinians will happen within your lifetime?
Elli Fischer: I don’t.
Sruli Fruchter: You don’t think so?
Elli Fischer: I don’t. I think it’s possible, but I think that, I mean, look.
Sruli Fruchter: My dad quipped that I should ask as a follow-up, how about in my lifetime?
Elli Fischer: Yeah, I think it’s more possible in your lifetime.
I think it’s more possible in your lifetime. I’m already hitting, you know, I guess it depends on, you know.
Sruli Fruchter: What gives you doubt that there wouldn’t be peace?
Elli Fischer: Every Palestinian alive today hates us. I’m not saying that they all want to kill us.
I don’t think that’s true. I think that if you’re a Palestinian and you’ve seen what Israel has done to Palestinians over the last year and a half, we can talk amongst ourselves, justified, not justified, whatever. If you’re a Palestinian, you’re not going to say like, well, yeah, it’s true there, you know, however many tens of thousands dead, but I kind of understand where Israel’s coming from because we did do that whole 10/7 thing with the the October 7th thing. That’s not going to be their perspective.
Their perspective is, they’re the ones shooting bombs at us, they’re our enemy. I hate them. Right? So I really don’t think that there’s a Palestinian alive today that doesn’t hate Israel. And hate us as citizens of Israel.
And if there’s going to be peace, there has to be a there has to be a a completely different generation. A generation that didn’t experience this, a generation that grew up in in in relative peace and prosperity and that can look across the fence and see in Israel somebody that, oh yeah, it’s possible that, you know, maybe we’ll maybe we’ll get along and maybe we can get along with them. I don’t think that’s that’s not there now. I’m not without assigning blame, without saying like, oh we started, they started, without even getting into that.
You know, I think it’s going to take a long time before there to be a Palestinian generation that doesn’t hate us.
Sruli Fruchter: Where do you identify on Israel’s political and religious spectrum and do you have any friends on the quote unquote other side?
Elli Fischer: Like everybody else, I identify as a centrist.
Sruli Fruchter: Really?
Elli Fischer: Yeah. No, I’m saying like, I think that most people think that their views represent some kind of center.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I have voted for centrist parties in the last few elections, but like I think that that’s part of the self-perception is that, you know, okay, those guys have some good points and those guys have some good points and You know, it’s it’s hard to, like there are so many issues and you can fall, you know, to the, you know, on one side and one issue and another side on another issue.
Sruli Fruchter: And religiously?
Elli Fischer: That’s not a political question.
Sruli Fruchter: No, no, but where do you identify religiously then?
Elli Fischer: So, okay. So, here’s a really crucial distinction when it comes to religion.
My religious identity identity is Jewish. Right. My religious affiliation, well, I belong to a synagogue. So here’s the thing.
I don’t even think that there’s such a thing as an Orthodox Jew, or a Reform Jew or a Conservative Jew or whatever. I think that there are Reform and Conservative and Orthodox institutions and there are Jews who affiliate with those institutions. Okay? Meaning because we’re all different. We’re all doing different things and like just because I daven in an Orthodox shul doesn’t mean that I
Sruli Fruchter: Doesn’t that usually refer to a certain meaning within each denomination if there’s a general ideology or framework where most people identify with and then therefore they’d say okay fine, you know, the same way you talk about a Democratic Jew or
Elli Fischer: I think that’s actually backwards.
Sruli Fruchter: It look it may be backwards, but it’s still
Elli Fischer: Well, but I’m saying no, I think that even in reality that it’s a bunch of Jews get together, decide that they’re going to make a shul, they’re going to make a community, they’re going to make a place to daven together, right? They’re going to do what they feel comfortable with, and then they’re going to look around and say, which umbrella organization does it make more sense for us to affiliate with?
Sruli Fruchter: So if someone says Elli Fischer is an Orthodox Jew, are you going to say, no, that’s incorrect?
Elli Fischer: I’m not going to say that because I know how people use the term, right? And because I’m a rabbi, it’s like, well, where did I get smicha from, right? Like, okay, I’m an Orthodox rabbi, right? I’m going to be like a mashgiach on a cruise soon, right? And it’s like, I don’t want people to be like, it’s like, is this kosher? I was like, well, I, you know, my identity is this, that, and the other. It’s like, no, I I’m serious about halakha. Okay? So in that sense like, yes, to use the colloquial term, of course, Orthodox.
Sruli Fruchter: Religious Zionist?
Elli Fischer: Religious Zionist. Again, there are people that would say that I’m not.
Sruli Fruchter: Like if I said, Ellie Fisher is a Religious Zionist Jew. Am I, am I wrong?
Elli Fischer: Okay. I would say that it’s too complicated, but I can’t stand when people do that.
So I wouldn’t say anything. Okay, fine. Like I don’t like it when people are like, oh, I’m too complex for your little boxes. Like, so like, fine.
If that’s what you want to label me, I let other people do the labeling. Okay, perfect. Someone wants to call me an Orthodox Jew, an Orthodox rabbi, a Religious Zionist, whatever. It has to be the institutions that I affiliate with, or that my family affiliates with, that’s where it tends to be, right? I only have a membership in one shul and it’s, you know.
Kehillat Shaarei Yonah Menachem in Buchman, Modi’in.
Sruli Fruchter: That’s a good shout out for them.
Elli Fischer: Yeah, I know. Several members of our of our shul have been interviewed on 18Forty in the past.
Oh, you had the Samters not long ago.
Sruli Fruchter: Oh yeah. They were great. They were great.
I’ll tell you, for this podcast, a couple of the people I had all go to um Kol HaNeshama right next to uh Nitzanim.
Elli Fischer: Okay. Yeah, South Jerusalem is not my jam. It’s like we’re the bourgeoisie Modi’in people. We’re the ones.
My favorite part of the Samters podcast was that David was, you know, said, uh, said something like, you guys could be like sitting on in the back in the five towns, sitting on Central Avenue, sipping your lattes and instead, you know, you’re in Israel and you have a kid fighting in in you have kids fighting in Gaza. And like I was thinking it when David said that and then Bayla actually like verbalized exactly what I was thinking. It’s like, you know, we can be sitting in Modi’in at our cafes sipping our lattes and we still have kids fighting in Gaza. Right.
Like that’s Yeah. That’s where we are. That’s what it is.
Sruli Fruchter: So, last question, not necessarily about identity, but about something longer lasting. Do you have more hope or fear for Israel and the Jewish people?
Elli Fischer: Right now, fear. At this moment, fear.
Sruli Fruchter: Can you say more about that?
Elli Fischer: Let’s go back to what we talked about a little bit at the beginning, that there’s a grace period and I don’t know how long that grace period is going to last. I’m not a my fear is that this amazing and wonderful and grand experiment that’s been going on for 77 years called the State of Israel. I think it’s much more part of our consciousness now, but I always had it in the back of my mind like, what’s the guarantee that it’s going to is it going to last forever? I don’t know.
Who knows? It’s very hard to I mean we it’s been five minutes in historical terms. Right? There are states that lasted much, much longer and are no longer and But within the fear, there’s hope. Meaning, I think that even if that like we’re not going away. We’re going to we’re going to be around.
We’re going to be around forever. The Jewish people are never going to die out. And so does that mean that after the next debacle, after the next Beitar, it’s going to be another 2,000 years before we get we get the opportunity to try this all again? I don’t know. That’s that’s the fear. But the hope is that at the end of all that, v’atem b’eretz oyveichem, lo maastim v’lo ga’altim l’chalotam l’hafer briti itam.
It’s cyclical. It’ll we’ll come back. We’ll get back here. Someday.
Sruli Fruchter: All right, well Elli Fischer, thank you for answering our 18 questions.There are so many things that Ellie spoke about and touched on that are such profoundly complex and deep topics that I really encourage, as with all of our guests, to read some of his writings, to read some of the writings he mentioned, the works of the people he mentioned, and to continue to expand and explore more of this very relevant topic.
So until next time, if you have questions you want us to ask or guests that you want us to feature, please shoot us an email info@18Forty.org. Elli Fischer is the 35th Israeli thinker we have interviewed. We have five more to go. As always, thank you to our friends Gilad Brounstein and Josh Weinberg for editing the podcast and video of this podcast, respectively.
I’m your host, Shloimy Fruchter, and until next time, keep questioning and keep thinking.
This transcript was produced by Sofer.AI.