The Difference Between Judaism and Zionism | Jerm Warfare

Jerm (0:30)

My name is Jerm, this is Jerm Warfare, the battle of ideas.

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, thank you for joining me in the trenches. Tell me if I've got this mostly right, you finished high school at around 16, and then you immediately went into studying under the top rabbis. And then you were a pulpit rabbi, I think for what, around 30 years in New York.

Yaakov Shapiro (0:52)

A little more. Yeah, now I'm a regular, I spend my day now studying, praying, spending time with my family, and now dealing with questions about Zionism.

Jerm (1:05)

And you've written, I think, five books, is that right?

Yaakov Shapiro (1:10)

It is.

Jerm (1:10)

Is How Zionism Has Stolen Jewish Identity?

Yaakov Shapiro (1:13)

Well, that's one book. The other four books were written in Hebrew, and they're on biblical or rabbinic topics, legal topics, biblical exegesis and the like.

In 2018, my book came out. It's called The Empty Wagon, Zionism's Journey From Identity Crisis to Identity Theft. And the name The Empty Wagon is the rabbinic nickname for Zionism that caught on based on a meeting that a great sage, Rabbi Karelitz, his name was had with David Ben Gurion. Where Ben Gurion came to Rabbi Karelitz to try to discuss how Jews, the Orthodox Jews and the Zionists can get along and join with each other. And turns out they couldn't.

So Rabbi Karelitz is asked by Ben Gurion, so what do we do now if we're incompatible? So the Rabbi Karelitz told him about a Talmudic law. The law is if that you have two wagons on a single lane road, coming at each other from opposite directions. The question now is which wagon has to go off the road to make room for the other. And the law is that if one wagon is full and the other is empty, the empty wagon needs to move out of the way so the full wagon can continue on its way.

Said Rabbi Karelitz to Ben-Gurion, our wagon, Judaism, is a full wagon. We have thousands of years of tradition. We've been around all this time and we have content. As opposed to Zionism, which is empty, an empty wagon. So you guys got to move out of the way to make room for us. That's what he told him. And Ben-Gurion got really upset, really, really upset after he actually took him a few moments to figure out what Rabbi Carell, it's the ramifications of what he said. But that's the name of the book. It's named after that story. Zionism is described as the empty wagon.

Jerm (3:31)

When we talk about Judaism and when we talk about Zionism, what are we talking about?

Yaakov Shapiro (3:37)

Judaism is a religion. It was according to the Jewish religion, which we believe in, in the story, the Biblical story in Exodus where Moses leads the Jewish people or leads the people out of, I want to be precise here so you can understand, out of Egypt at the base of Mount Sinai, then God gives them the Torah. So that Torah had 613 commandments, not just 10, long story, but that's the Judaic belief. And all those people and the as yet unborn souls of their descendants who were at Mount Sinai and accepted that Torah willingly, it was kind of like the Christians, the most similar thing based on my experience being told when I tell over the story by Christians, what it's similar to, it's a calling. God gave a calling to these people, meaning obligations. God said, this is how I want you to live. And they actually accepted it, them and their souls, the souls of unborn children, meaning today's Jews. And whoever is obligated in that covenant between God and the people of Moses are called Jews. The religion makes the Jews. There were no Jewish people until then. And at that moment, the ragtag refugees from Egypt became the Jews. And it's a lifestyle. It's a priestly lifestyle. That's why we look different. We wear yarmulkes. We eat kosher food. We have our own prayers. And to whatever extent a person chooses to be religious, that's the extent he's fulfilling the Covenant. The rest of the world, God gave Adam or perhaps Noah, it's complicated, but let's just call it the Noahide Covenant now. When he came out of the Ark in the story in Genesis, so God said to him, look, it's a world out there where people have to be civilized. There are seven general rules. We'll call them laws, but they're general rules that the world has to fulfill. You can't kill, you can't steal sexual deviation.

You can't worship idols. You can't, this is one of the rules technically, rip a limb off a live animal and eat it before you kill the animal. You have to set up a courts of law and justice. Doesn't have to be according to Jewish law. Justice, law, and morality. That's also one of the rules. And that the whole world is expected to fulfill.