I’ve recently finished “The Empty Wagon” by Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro. It’s a big ole book, but one worth every page. And regardless of your views on Israel, Jews, or Zionism, you’ll be challenged and benefit from Rabbi Shapiro’s exhaustive knowledge of history and the Jewish faith. I can’t possibly hope to cover all of the points in the book, but I’ll hit just a few themes. First, he is adamant that the Jewish people are only a people insofar as they are a religion—devoted to Hashem and to the Torah. No Torah, no Jewish people. He points out that there are, in fact, Jewish people in near every nation, and of every nationality, all bound together by the Torah and nothing else.
The upshot of this is that Jewishness pertains only to the religion—that is, that there are some who identify as Jewish merely because their great-grandparents were Jewish, but they themselves are not Jewish in any important way—because they are a part of the covenant, they ought to be a part of the Jewish faith and observe the Torah, but because they deny God and deny the Torah, they are not Jewish in the sense of belonging to *Klal Yisroel*, the covenantal community. Shapiro makes an important distinction here: Those born Jewish remain obligated to observe the Torah, even if they reject it. They do not cease to have those obligations, but according to Shapiro’s understanding of the Torah, they lose the privileges of belonging to the Jewish people as a religious community. I’ve always been fuzzy on this, and Shapiro clears everything right up.
An interesting fact—there is no separately recognized Israeli nationality in the legal sense of a common nationality replacing Jewish, Arab, and other classifications, though Israeli citizenship certainly exists. There are Arab Israelis and Italian Israelis and Jewish Israelis. But Israel is the state of the Jews (so say the Zionists). They define Jewishness as an ethnicity or nationality, in opposition to Shapiro’s claims, which he makes extraordinarily simple and elegant arguments for.
And it’s this part of the book where something really surprising happened: the author began to read uncannily like Paul, the one who wrote Romans. In fact, other than Christ missing, Shapiro and Paul make strikingly similar arguments in this respect—that being the physical sons and daughters of Abraham is not, by itself, what makes one part of the people of God, for, as John the Baptist said, God could raise up out of the stones sons for Abraham. The author insists, as Paul does, that “the people of God” are not a race or an ethnicity, but are a people of faith. But where Paul says the key is Jesus, Rabbi Shapiro argues that it is in keeping the Torah and loving Hashem.
So then, about 75% of the Israeli population is classified as Jewish, and of those, roughly 58% self-identify as something other than secular, according to recent Israeli statistics. I did the math, and that means that about 43% of the Israeli population falls into both categories. But Shapiro’s definition of *Klal Yisroel* depends upon belief in the fundamentals of Judaism, not simply how someone identifies on a survey, so that number doesn’t tell us precisely how many qualify by his definition.
And here he makes a point that Christians—attempting to help Jews—are instead helping those who are distorting and even destroying Judaism. I’d put it like this: If somewhere, for some reason, some country decided to “help” the Christians, but instead sent aid and support to some minor sect that has a steeple, or maybe even a cross, but denies Christ was the Son of God, denies he died on a cross, denies he died for our sins, denied that he rose from the dead for our justification, and denies the necessity of repentance of sins. This, he argues, is essentially the way that we “help” the Jews by helping Israel and the Zionists.
Another thing I found extremely interesting is his view on Eretz Yisroel (the Land of Israel). He argues that it is a holy land, and it is where Hashem dwells. He argues that Jews can go and live there and follow the Torah and dedicate their lives to God and that, in so doing, be blessed. But it isn’t for the beauty of the land, the land itself, and certainly not for politics or a state.
He is adamant, and it checks out, that for 2,000 years the Jews have seen the Diaspora both as punishment for the rebellion of the Jews and as part of Hashem’s plan. He argues that it’s an act of rebellion against God for the Jews to move on their own and to attempt to reestablish a Jewish nation-state there, while it is fine for Jews to sojourn there while in the Diaspora. (A short note here on this point, As Christians, we believe that no one can be right with God, no one can come to the Father but through the Son, so from a Christian point of view, to repent and turn to God, the Jews would need to repent and believe in Jesus.)
Here Shapiro appeals to the Three Oaths found in Kesuvos 111a. In short, these prohibit the Jews from returning to the land en masse by force, from rebelling against the nations, and prohibit the nations from excessively oppressing the Jews. Shapiro argues that these oaths prohibit the Jewish people from attempting to end their exile by their own political and military efforts. Not all Orthodox rabbis agree with this interpretation, particularly religious Zionists, but it is central to Shapiro’s argument.
He argues that the Israelis—those who are Zionists, even those who claim to be religious—are violating the Torah by establishing sovereignty over the land and trusting in the IDF rather than in God.
What’s missing is any sustained discussion of the political claims of the Arabs or the Palestinians. The book isn’t about them, though they are discussed at some length when Shapiro recounts the history of Zionism and its consequences. A shocking discovery is that Zionism didn’t begin after the Holocaust. Perhaps you thought, as I did, that Israel just sprung up after World War II. It was actually half a century in the making, and among the originators was Theodor Herzl. Relief from the pogroms, mainly in Eastern Europe, was one of the movement’s selling points. But Shapiro argues that the founders’ deeper objective was to replace traditional Jewish religious identity with a modern national identity.
Herzl didn’t follow the Torah; he openly rejected it, as do most Israeli politicians today. Among his earlier schemes was a proposal for all the Jews to simply convert to Christianity. His particular scheme never succeeded, though some Jews independently attempted assimilation and conversion. But the antisemites still saw converted Jews as Jews, so that wouldn’t work. Indeed, Shapiro spends a good bit of time pointing out the absurdity of defining Jewishness, that many Jews leave the definition of Jewishness to the antisemites—that if those who hate Jews say someone is a Jew, then they must be a Jew. And the antisemites, in turn, have nothing firm by which to nail down a definition, simply defining Jews as anyone whose family is Jewish.
Herzl’s later plan was for the Jews to establish a national home, ultimately in the land that would become Israel, not because he believed the land was holy, but because its historical and religious associations could be used to attract support, including from “Christian” governments across Europe. Shapiro also points out that historically, Jews had often fared better among Arabs and other Muslims than among the Eastern Europeans.
Then he goes into the history of the Zionist movement—and how non-Zionist Jews were used as pawns to advance the establishment of the Israeli state. About how Zionism benefits from antisemitism abroad, and even makes moves, some perhaps unintentionally, and others, Shapiro argues, deliberately, with the intent to sour relations between the natives and the Jewish people.
For instance, the Jews in Iraq were not generally Zionists, but found themselves fleeing to Israel amid increasing hostility and persecution. Shapiro argues that Zionist agents deliberately contributed to this by carrying out bombings to cause strife between the Arabs and the Iraqi Jews. This is a disputed historical claim, however, and Iraqi government repression and discrimination also contributed to the exodus. Historians continue to disagree over responsibility for the bombings.
He spends a fair amount of time chronicling and condemning Zionist terrorism, both against the native Arabs in the land and the British authorities, particularly during the British Mandate and the years following World War II. Indeed, Rabbi Shapiro speaks about violence in much the same way that Jesus did. Shapiro argues that the Jews should be quiet, be amenable, and let their light shine, and endure persecution, giving thanks to God.
But, again, there isn’t much talk of Gaza or the West Bank as contemporary political controversies. It is in no way a book primarily advocating for the Palestinian national cause, but a book about real Jewishness, Zionism’s attempt to hijack it, and his expounding on why establishing a Jewish state is in violation of the Torah.
You see, he does not primarily question the actions of the IDF or the policies of the state of Israel on political grounds, except to show how far afield from real Judaism they have gone, which he does. He spends some time going over the utter godlessness of the culture within the IDF and the policies of the civil government: among other things, a coed swimming pool right there in Jerusalem; forcing women to serve in the IDF; and such things that a secular American would be bored by.
He argues that even if the Jewish state were Torah-observant—even if they didn’t allow these evils and more, even if the state were actually a Jewish—a religious state and observed the Torah—it would still be wrong for the state to exist because it was established by the hand of man, in defiance of God’s decree of exile, rather than through the redemption promised by God.
If you read this book, you’ll learn a lot, and a lot you’re not likely to find anywhere else. But you’ll also weep that an author, so great in intellect and learning, and so devout, and so committed to the law, will likely not come to faith in Christ.
I read Rabbi Shapiro’s book with the internet handy and referenced his sources, texts, and claims. In what I was able to verify, I found his scholarship remarkably thorough, though I recognize that some of his historical interpretations are disputed nothing that has foundational bearings on his main themes are at fault. The point on which I fundamentally disagree with him is his rejection of Christ as the Messiah, and on that point, he has been in my prayers since I began reading his book. I pray that God would open his eyes so that he might truly serve God and enjoy him forever.
Andrew Hayes
is a farmer and rancher in SW Oklahoma.
he can be reached at hayes@mises.com
