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Israel as a Religious Reality (The Orthodox Forum Series)

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This 1994 book is part of a series; other volumes in the series are: Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy (The Orthodox Form Series), Engaging Modernity: Rabbinic Leaders and the Challenge of the Twentieth Century (Orthodox Forum Series), Tolerance, Dissent, and Democracy: Philosophical, Historical, and Halakhic Perspectives (Orthodox Forum Series), Jewish Tradition and the Non-Traditional Jew (Orthodox Forum Series), Toward a Renewed Ethic of Jewish Philanthropy (Orthodox Forum), Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah (Orthodox Forum), Tikkun Olam: Social Responsibility in Jewish Thought and Law (Orthodox Forum Series), Yirat Shamayim: The Awe, Reverence, and Fear of God (The Orthodox Forum), Jewish Perspectives on the Experience of Suffering (Orthodox Forum Series), etc.

The editor wrote in the Preface, "The organizers and participants in the Third Orthodox Forum (in which the articles in this book were initially presented) ... perceive the State of Israel as a religious reality having halakhic significance for all of Judaism and Jewry... the fact that Israel will probably be the home of the majority of world Jewry within the foreseeable future gives even more halakhic significance and means that two of the three criteria suggested by Rambam (Maimonides) for the Messianic era will have been realized."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"Recognizing in 'Galut' ('exile') a radical, ultimately intolerable dislocation of the Jewish people, we allow that Galut has, nonetheless, enriched our spirits as surely as it has vitiated our lives." (Pg. 26)
"The most forceful way of nursing an awareness of Galut, however, is to dwell on anti-Semitism... I need not remind you that our mistrust of the Gentile world is amply justified by history and present reality." (Pg. 39)
"Israel has not produced an educational institution combining the scope and depth of Yeshiva University. Israel is unlikely to do so in the near future... I offer no solution to this dilemma." (Pg. 41)
"A great many of those Jews who are counted 'Orthodox' in the United States and West Europe would not be defined as 'religious' in Israel." (Pg. 48)
"(T)he majority of Jews have found their path, their deliverance, and their redemption in the United States and similar countries, under the aegis of democracy, and they believe that they will always live there---a sentiment shared by many." (Pg. 98)
"Contemporary halakhic sanction for a national rabbinic authority must be sought, then, without regard to the classical Sanhedrin." (Pg. 121)
"What certainly needs to be reduced (in the rabbinic establishment), however, is politics, bureaucracy, and, above all, illusion." (Pg. 133)