Never been a Kahanist, but I like your style so I'll be your first commentator. I think the answer is that there are no possible means to achieve the two goals you laid out. Even if you somehow got a Kahanist dictator in power, he would probably fall short of both, for the following reasons:
Maimonidean Halakhic state – a system like this can’t be imposed (even by force) without a critical mass of the people to buy in ideologically, 30-40% at minimum. It can’t work with a population that is half hilonim and where most of the rest are either galuti hareidim or mesortim/datiim that are basically total hellenists by kahanist standards.
So you would need a massive kiruv/reeducation effort to get enough people to both become frum and also adopt the right Torah ideas. If you try to do this as an open “extremist” you are going to scare off most of your potential audience. If you try to put on a friendlier face and sell people a watered down version, you will be indistinguishable from the Tzohars of the world and run into the same failures.
Not sure what the path forward here can possibly be.
Kicking out the Arabs - you have to admit that actually doing this runs at least some risk of getting South Africa-style sanctions. I’ve never heard a good Kahanist plan for this scenario - from what I can tell Rav Kahane always just said it wouldn’t happen. But since he died, the “international community” has massively sanctioned Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Burma and now Russia, and apartheid in South Africa itself collapsed under sanctions. All bigger economies than Israel. There is zero reason to think they won’t do it to us too if we do actual ethnic cleansing.
And unlike those countries, we aren’t built for sanctions. We don’t have significant natural resources and hardly produce any of our own food, steel, fuel. We usually start to run low on bombs after a month of limited operations in Gaza. If we are cut off from the international economy, how long would it be before we are out of everything and unable to fight a war?
Maybe you’ll say we can import from Russia and China if the West cuts us off. But they can just as easily side with Iran and Syria, why wouldn’t they?
Whatever problems we have with the Arabs, this scenario would be worse. Without a good plan to deal with the worst case, no rational leader will take the risk. So I don't see it happening, no matter who is in power, without some massive global geopolitical and economic changes that are way beyond our control.
Maybe you have good responses to these challenges, I’ll be interested to read them. But if you don’t, you are basically an engineer analyzing why an airliner failed to reach the moon.
>Maimonidean Halakhic state – a system like this can’t be imposed (even by force) without a critical mass of the people to buy in ideologically, 30-40% at minimum.
30% is doable. About that number daven daily for a theocratic monarchy. Further, success brings in people, who, as Osama Bin Laden said, like the strong horse.
>So you would need a massive kiruv/reeducation effort to get enough people to both become frum and also adopt the right Torah ideas.
There are plenty of kiruv organizations. Think of it as a marketing funnel. You don't have to be at the top of the funnel.
>If you try to put on a friendlier face and sell people a watered down version, you will be indistinguishable from the Tzohars of the world and run into the same failures.
I believe Chabad and others have solved this problem. The issue is, of course, what happens once you get kiruved. The yellow flag etc only take you so far, unless you're a very specific kind of person.
>But since he died, the “international community” has massively sanctioned Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Burma and now Russia, and apartheid in South Africa itself collapsed under sanctions. All bigger economies than Israel.
How are those Russian sanctions going? These economies may be bigger but ours is hooked into much more crucial and less fungible parts of the Western economy. I should also point out that the Zionist espionage and blackmail apparatus precedes the existence of the State and has grown to such proportions that it would be difficult for Western politicians to cut us loose; Little St. James Island was not a Burmese operation.
>And unlike those countries, we aren’t built for sanctions. We don’t have significant natural resources and hardly produce any of our own food, steel, fuel.
We have about 6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, and that's just what's been found so far. We produce tremendous amounts of food. Software has eaten everything over the last two decades, and we produce a lot of software. Further, with sanctions and the shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world, Russia needs all kinds of tech and Europe needs gas (and will soon need food and fertilizer.) We are naturally positioned for the role of a middleman.
>Maybe you’ll say we can import from Russia and China if the West cuts us off. But they can just as easily side with Iran and Syria, why wouldn’t they?
Because Iran and Syria are, frankly, trash countries which couldn't even manage to get a handle on a few thousand Sunni jihadists armed by the CIA, necessitating Russia blowing a huge amount of resources to prop up their loser client. Iran can't go a week without some fiasco-nuclear research centers blowing up, tons of documentation disappearing, intelligence officials getting shot in the face in downtown Teheran. With friends like this, who needs enemies? When the West cuts off Russia from chips, software, machine tools, Iran isn't gonna step in to fill the gap. And all that intel we have on the West would be very valuable.
>I don't see it happening, no matter who is in power, without some massive global geopolitical and economic changes that are way beyond our control.
Fortunately, those changes are in progress right now, if you notice. While a massive wave is out of a surfer's control, he can still be ready to surf it. And after every wave there's another wave.
As for your objection about the religious community being corrupted - that is correct. If Moshiach appeared tomorrow most Rabbis would be upset because they would lose their comfortable positions of prominence in the Diaspora, etc. Hypocrisy needs to be called out and changes made in religious leadership. This is every bit as important, and more so, as changes in political leadership.
A Sanhedrin needs to be formed. It takes One (person or otherwise) to begin the process.
There is a Moshiach ben Joseph that precedes Moshiach according to most opinions. It is unclear exactly when the Sanhedrin will be formed in this process, or whether the Temple will be begun before or after Moshiach. I claim no special expertise on this subject.
But if you are working towards a goal that includes a Halachic state as a conclusion, by definition it cannot exist without a Sanhedrin.
Of course it seems unobtainable now. If it didn't we wouldn't need HBKH.
That is definitely not a first step. Who would reconvene the Sanhedrin? Previous attempts have mostly been the purview of fringe weirdos. If you want to mainstream the idea, you'll have to take serious steps. And consider that practically nobody with pull in the religious world would be interested in the project.
Kahanism is proposing a Halachic state, no?. How is this possible without a Sanhedrin? As for who would reconvene? Certainly not the people in the current government. Obviously there would need to be behind the scenes discussions/agreement among the religious community. In the 16th century this idea was proposed by some significant Rabbis in Tzfat (didn't work out).
Of course it seems unserious at this time, and probably is, and dangerous as well, but so does the whole idea of Kahanism, frankly if you want to look at it that way. I certainly don't think a Sanhedrin will be formed tomorrow, but if you want an alternative government, IMHO this is the way.
Kahanism proposed kicking out the Arabs in lieu of a halachic state. It doesn't matter-Kahanism is dead, as I explained. It failed.
There is no religious community as such to have behind the scenes discussions, unfortunately.
The Mishne Torah implies that imposing halacha on the people of Israel is one of the main criteria of the Moshiach. Not some gerousia-who would form this gerousia in our current climate? Did you not see the performance of our religious leadership during corona?
What do you think about Ben Ari? From all the kahanists, he seems to be the most reasonable and knowledgeable - that’s why he probably couldn’t get into the Knesset.
Like the rest of the post-Kahane Kahanists, I am not aware of Ben Ari ever doing anything useful to anybody on the political front, though some of his performance art was funny
Never been a Kahanist, but I like your style so I'll be your first commentator. I think the answer is that there are no possible means to achieve the two goals you laid out. Even if you somehow got a Kahanist dictator in power, he would probably fall short of both, for the following reasons:
Maimonidean Halakhic state – a system like this can’t be imposed (even by force) without a critical mass of the people to buy in ideologically, 30-40% at minimum. It can’t work with a population that is half hilonim and where most of the rest are either galuti hareidim or mesortim/datiim that are basically total hellenists by kahanist standards.
So you would need a massive kiruv/reeducation effort to get enough people to both become frum and also adopt the right Torah ideas. If you try to do this as an open “extremist” you are going to scare off most of your potential audience. If you try to put on a friendlier face and sell people a watered down version, you will be indistinguishable from the Tzohars of the world and run into the same failures.
Not sure what the path forward here can possibly be.
Kicking out the Arabs - you have to admit that actually doing this runs at least some risk of getting South Africa-style sanctions. I’ve never heard a good Kahanist plan for this scenario - from what I can tell Rav Kahane always just said it wouldn’t happen. But since he died, the “international community” has massively sanctioned Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Burma and now Russia, and apartheid in South Africa itself collapsed under sanctions. All bigger economies than Israel. There is zero reason to think they won’t do it to us too if we do actual ethnic cleansing.
And unlike those countries, we aren’t built for sanctions. We don’t have significant natural resources and hardly produce any of our own food, steel, fuel. We usually start to run low on bombs after a month of limited operations in Gaza. If we are cut off from the international economy, how long would it be before we are out of everything and unable to fight a war?
Maybe you’ll say we can import from Russia and China if the West cuts us off. But they can just as easily side with Iran and Syria, why wouldn’t they?
Whatever problems we have with the Arabs, this scenario would be worse. Without a good plan to deal with the worst case, no rational leader will take the risk. So I don't see it happening, no matter who is in power, without some massive global geopolitical and economic changes that are way beyond our control.
Maybe you have good responses to these challenges, I’ll be interested to read them. But if you don’t, you are basically an engineer analyzing why an airliner failed to reach the moon.
>Maimonidean Halakhic state – a system like this can’t be imposed (even by force) without a critical mass of the people to buy in ideologically, 30-40% at minimum.
30% is doable. About that number daven daily for a theocratic monarchy. Further, success brings in people, who, as Osama Bin Laden said, like the strong horse.
>So you would need a massive kiruv/reeducation effort to get enough people to both become frum and also adopt the right Torah ideas.
There are plenty of kiruv organizations. Think of it as a marketing funnel. You don't have to be at the top of the funnel.
>If you try to put on a friendlier face and sell people a watered down version, you will be indistinguishable from the Tzohars of the world and run into the same failures.
I believe Chabad and others have solved this problem. The issue is, of course, what happens once you get kiruved. The yellow flag etc only take you so far, unless you're a very specific kind of person.
>But since he died, the “international community” has massively sanctioned Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Burma and now Russia, and apartheid in South Africa itself collapsed under sanctions. All bigger economies than Israel.
How are those Russian sanctions going? These economies may be bigger but ours is hooked into much more crucial and less fungible parts of the Western economy. I should also point out that the Zionist espionage and blackmail apparatus precedes the existence of the State and has grown to such proportions that it would be difficult for Western politicians to cut us loose; Little St. James Island was not a Burmese operation.
>And unlike those countries, we aren’t built for sanctions. We don’t have significant natural resources and hardly produce any of our own food, steel, fuel.
We have about 6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, and that's just what's been found so far. We produce tremendous amounts of food. Software has eaten everything over the last two decades, and we produce a lot of software. Further, with sanctions and the shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world, Russia needs all kinds of tech and Europe needs gas (and will soon need food and fertilizer.) We are naturally positioned for the role of a middleman.
>Maybe you’ll say we can import from Russia and China if the West cuts us off. But they can just as easily side with Iran and Syria, why wouldn’t they?
Because Iran and Syria are, frankly, trash countries which couldn't even manage to get a handle on a few thousand Sunni jihadists armed by the CIA, necessitating Russia blowing a huge amount of resources to prop up their loser client. Iran can't go a week without some fiasco-nuclear research centers blowing up, tons of documentation disappearing, intelligence officials getting shot in the face in downtown Teheran. With friends like this, who needs enemies? When the West cuts off Russia from chips, software, machine tools, Iran isn't gonna step in to fill the gap. And all that intel we have on the West would be very valuable.
>I don't see it happening, no matter who is in power, without some massive global geopolitical and economic changes that are way beyond our control.
Fortunately, those changes are in progress right now, if you notice. While a massive wave is out of a surfer's control, he can still be ready to surf it. And after every wave there's another wave.
As for your objection about the religious community being corrupted - that is correct. If Moshiach appeared tomorrow most Rabbis would be upset because they would lose their comfortable positions of prominence in the Diaspora, etc. Hypocrisy needs to be called out and changes made in religious leadership. This is every bit as important, and more so, as changes in political leadership.
A Sanhedrin needs to be formed. It takes One (person or otherwise) to begin the process.
There is a Moshiach ben Joseph that precedes Moshiach according to most opinions. It is unclear exactly when the Sanhedrin will be formed in this process, or whether the Temple will be begun before or after Moshiach. I claim no special expertise on this subject.
But if you are working towards a goal that includes a Halachic state as a conclusion, by definition it cannot exist without a Sanhedrin.
Of course it seems unobtainable now. If it didn't we wouldn't need HBKH.
Seems to me, if serious, the first real step would be to reconvene the Sanhedrin.
That is definitely not a first step. Who would reconvene the Sanhedrin? Previous attempts have mostly been the purview of fringe weirdos. If you want to mainstream the idea, you'll have to take serious steps. And consider that practically nobody with pull in the religious world would be interested in the project.
Kahanism is proposing a Halachic state, no?. How is this possible without a Sanhedrin? As for who would reconvene? Certainly not the people in the current government. Obviously there would need to be behind the scenes discussions/agreement among the religious community. In the 16th century this idea was proposed by some significant Rabbis in Tzfat (didn't work out).
Of course it seems unserious at this time, and probably is, and dangerous as well, but so does the whole idea of Kahanism, frankly if you want to look at it that way. I certainly don't think a Sanhedrin will be formed tomorrow, but if you want an alternative government, IMHO this is the way.
Kahanism proposed kicking out the Arabs in lieu of a halachic state. It doesn't matter-Kahanism is dead, as I explained. It failed.
There is no religious community as such to have behind the scenes discussions, unfortunately.
The Mishne Torah implies that imposing halacha on the people of Israel is one of the main criteria of the Moshiach. Not some gerousia-who would form this gerousia in our current climate? Did you not see the performance of our religious leadership during corona?
It only takes One.
One is not a Sanhedrin.
What do you think about Ben Ari? From all the kahanists, he seems to be the most reasonable and knowledgeable - that’s why he probably couldn’t get into the Knesset.
Like the rest of the post-Kahane Kahanists, I am not aware of Ben Ari ever doing anything useful to anybody on the political front, though some of his performance art was funny