The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount
2001; Middle East Institute; Volume: 55; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1940-3461
Autores Tópico(s)Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies
ResumoThe End of Days: Fundamentalism and Struggle for Temple Mount, by Gershom Gorenberg. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Singapore: The Free Press, 2001, 250 pages. Notes to 267. Index to 275. $25. A belief in End of Time has been a staple in Abrahamic tradition for over two millennia. Occasionally, it is associated with political militancy, but mostly it hovers on pietistic side of religion. Believers dream that God will someday sweep away evil and bring justice and a Day of Judgement. But for secular people, religious passion can seem irrational and perhaps dangerous. Even word fundamentalist, which originally meant an adherence to fundamentals of faith, is often a hostile word. Gershom Gorenberg has avoided these problems. He treats his subjects with respect, not as mental cases. He summarizes their views faithfully and differentiates between groups with similar vocabulary. Focusing mostly on Jewish and Christian perspectives, he has written a useful journalistic study of Jerusalem and End-of-Days theology. It is a briefing book filled with interviews, texts, and quotes. Gorenberg distinguishes between faith and threat. When televangelist John Hagee writes of Third Temple, it is not same as when an Israeli Prime Minister (Binyamin Netanyahu) gives an Archbishop a silver relief showing Dome of Rock replaced by that Temple (p. 239). Hagee has a television show. The Prime Minister of Israel has an army and a nuclear capability. Netanyahu was the true example of politician as sorcerer's apprentice. He spent his career calling up religious energies without understanding And if politicians must show caution, so must clergy. To suggest that Dome be blown up is clearly an incitement to violence. To say that giving up land is a capital offense is also an incitement, even if rabbis later deny that they had wanted Prime Minister killed. To quote an Israeli security official: a rabbi has something to say, let him say it, but he has to keep in mind that in eighteenth row there's that one student who's interpreting his (p. 242). If underestimating impact of words causes problems, so does overestimating them. In 1993 raid on Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents refused to listen to Bible babble. They treated rhetoric as danger and made disastrous decisions based upon a false reading of religious words. …
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