The year 2025 presents a rare confluence of circumstances that can lead to a dramatic change in the realities of the Jewish state.
This includes a shift of power in the Middle East, the fall of Syria, Israeli presence in Lebanon and Gaza, and indeed, a new American president who is not deterred by audacious ideas – from Greenland to Indonesia.
Are bold changes in Israel’s interest? Bearing in mind that seismic changes come with enormous risks, should Israel’s objective be to go back to a somewhat improved version of the pre-October 7 status quo?
Or should it aim for dramatic post-war paradigm shifts on key strategic issues?
In thinking through this question, we can learn from two episodes in our history when similar bold decisions needed to be made.
Herzl setting an avalanche
In January 1896, as Theodor Herzl was set to publish a book that would forever alter Jewish realities, he was under intense pressure to abort its publication.
Jews at the time were enjoying unprecedented stability, security, and peace in Europe. The ideas of his book, The Jewish State, could be misunderstood and threaten the safe and inclusive environment for Jews in Europe.
After his Jewish milieu failed to dissuade Herzl, his boss, the editor-in-chief of the prominent Austrian liberal newspaper, Neue Freie Presse, summoned him for what Herzl called a “showdown discussion.”
The editor, Moritz Benedict, a Viennese Jew himself, warned Herzl about the magnitude of the danger: “No individual has the right to take upon himself the tremendous moral responsibility of setting this avalanche in motion and endangering so many interests,” he told Herzl.
Benedict was right; Herzl had not been elected or chosen by anybody to take such a risk on behalf of the Jews, and indeed what Herzl was about to launch was nothing short of an avalanche that would alter Jewish realities.
Benedict warned Herzl: “We shall no longer have our present fatherland [Austria], and not yet have the Jewish State.”
Herzl, who foreshadowed those ideas in an article, rejected his boss’ pleas, telling him, “It no longer belongs to me but to the Jews.”
Moses starting an avalanche
Similar dynamics existed some 3,300 years earlier in Egypt as Moses was set to change Jewish realities by killing an Egyptian man who hit a Hebrew.
The situation in Egypt then, as in the Europe of the late 19th century, seems to have been tolerable: While taxes were high (then, as in King Solomon’s time, taxes were levied in the form of slavery) and edicts strict, it could have been much worse (as, indeed, it became later).
Moses risked it all in killing the Egyptian. Just like Herzl, Moses too was not elected, nor chosen by God at that time (this was long before the burning bush revelation and his interactions with Pharaoh).
Moses’ “showdown discussion” came the next day, as he intervened between two fighting Hebrews. One of them, described as the rasha (evil), brought up the killing of the Egyptian and reprimanded Moses in a manner similar to that of Benedict in reprimanding Herzl: “Who made you a ruler and judge over us?”
While Moses and Herzl did not have the authority at the time, they saw something that others did not:Herzl realized that underneath the polite European pleasantries hid a deeply rooted opposition to Jews and Judaism, which was about to explode in lethal ways.
Similarly, Moses possibly realized that underneath the merely “political issue” of “over-taxation” lay a danger to the survival of the nascent nation of Israel.
It is the same today. Under the surface of Western pleasantry lies a rapidly expanding attempt to negate the idea of the Jewish state and, through it, the idea of Judaism. As discussed in this column and in my book, The Assault on Judaism, this attempt is becoming ever more mainstreamed and codified into Western culture.
The Jewish state must take this into consideration as it decides if to angle for monumental paradigm shifts in 2025 - when it comes to its alliances and arrangements with its enemies, arrangement with its Arab neighbors, its borders, and exercising its right to Judea and Samaria.
Just as was the case with Herzl and Moses, the answers are not obvious, but this time there is something different.
The authority to set avalanches
As discussed, neither Moses nor Herzl had the perceived authority to act on behalf of the Jewish nation at the time that they set off their avalanches. Moses’ mandate from God was decades away, and Herzl’s convening of the First Zionist Congress occurred over a year and a half later.
But unlike Moses and Herzl, the people making the big decisions for the Jewish nation today do have the authority to do so.
The Jewish state that was established thanks to the daring actions of Moses and Herzl has elected leaders and so does the United States, the Jewish state’s staunch partner in its battle for survival.
We, as journalists, pundits, and citizens, do not have the full picture. They do. We should pray that God bestows our leaders with wisdom and good advice to make the right decisions.
As the nation of Israel is now at a crossroads, it is time for a bit more humility and a lot more faith.
The writer is the author of a new book, The Assault on Judaism: The Existential Threat Is Coming from the West. He is chairman of the Judaism 3.0 Think Tank and the author of Judaism 3.0: Judaism’s Transformation to Zionism (Judaism-Zionism.com). His geopolitical articles can be accessed at the following website: EuropeAndJerusalem.com