| This study explores the relationships between religious concepts and the dilemmas and challenges that animate those concepts within the everyday lives of Jewish Political Pietists (religious Zionists) in Israel. It argues that religious experience reflects particular modes of political practice. A focus on religious ideas and concepts must rest alongside the political, economic, and cultural factors that motivate or give 'meaning' to the daily lives of religious nationalists.;Using this paradigm, this analysis ethnographically reexamines the category of 'messianism' in relation to contemporary religious Zionism. For many religious Zionists in the era after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, 'Messianic Redemption' referred to a social, religious, and political process that centered on the sovereignty of the State of Israel within the Land of Israel, coupled with the collective presence of the People of Israel on that land. Currently, however, Religious Zionism is being practiced and experienced in ways that do not expressly revolve around collective state sovereignty or messianic redemption.;This study will ethnographically document the ways in which religious concepts and sociopolitical practices interact with one another in the daily lives of religious Zionists in Israel. It will focus on issues of Jewish settlement, Torah study, violence, military service, travel, etc, to point to the ways in which values of collectivity, freedom, and state sovereignty manifest themselves within a political pietistic context. The ethnographic data presented here can be used to clarify certain political and social tensions that are occurring within religious Zionism, and which impact not only the State of Israel, but the region as a whole. |
