1. For the interview (in Hebrew), see Yaniv Kalif, “The Spread of the Corona Virus in Israel: Health Minister Ya’akov Liztman in an Exclusive Interbview with Yaniv Kalif,” Hamal News, March 19, 2020, https://www.hamal.co.il/post/-M2mfwikR1Z2RY5n4CDk.
2. See Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Letters of the Re’ayah, vol. 3 (Machon Har Beracha), 88.
3. See, in this context, Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer, Derishat Ziyyon (1862).
4. BT Ketubot 111a.
5. See Yirmiyahu Cohen, I Will Await Him (Natruna Publishers, 2018). See also Shmuel Silberman, “A Controversial Halakhic Case Against the State of Israel,” Lehrhaus, January 3, 2019, https://thelehrhaus.com/culture/a-controversial-halakhic-case-against-the-state-of-israel/.
6. On Teitelbaum, see Shaul Magid, “The Satmar Are Anti-Zionist. Should We Care?” Tablet, May 21, 2020, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/satmar-anti-zionist.
7. On the Hazon Ish, see Benjamin Brown, The Hazon Ish: Halakhist, Believer and Leader of the Haredi Revolution (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2011).
8. Tom Segev, A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), 474–75.
9. See Richard Primus, “Black and Blue: The Road to Haredi Zionism” (A.B. thesis, Harvard College, 1992), on file with the author and available in Harvard University archives, http://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/990026024640203941/catalog.
10. Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman, The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).
11. See Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 34b; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim 12:2.
12. Both were based in Brooklyn: Williamsburg for Satmar and Crown Heights for Chabad. Their followers even fought some gang-like street battles in the early 1980s. Kenneth A. Briggs, “2 Hasidic Groups in Brooklyn Involved in Complex Conflict,” New York Times, June 21, 1983, https://www.nytimes.com/1983/06/21/nyregion/2-hasidic-groups-in-brooklyn-involved-in-complex-conflict.html.
13. More than ten other, less precise replicas exist around the world. Only the one in Kfar Chabad is said to have been built “on the Rebbe’s instructions.” See “How Many 770s Are There?” Anash.org, September 10, 2020, https://anash.org/how-many-770s-are-there/.
14. See https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/306097/jewish/A-Soldiers-Blessing.htm; https://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/1202/jewish/The-Rebbe-Said-Thank-You.htm.
15. See, e.g., Joseph Telushkin, Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), 249–68.
16. M. Safra and Yaakov Hanon, Just Imagine! COVID-19 (Beitar Illit: Tfutza Publications, 2021).
17. Cf. Genesis 45:26.
18. On the founding in 1982 by a group including Roman (also called Romem) Aldubi, see https://www.jgive.co.il/new/en/ils/charity-organizations/1535.
19. See https://www.odyosefchai.co.il/.
20. See https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/sites/default/files2/update_june_1.1989.pdf (“May 29—Several dozen civilians, apparently students at the Joseph’s Tomb Yeshiva, at Nablus, arrived at the village of Kifl Haret near Ariel. They fired in all directions, killed Ibtisam Abdul Rachman Buzia, aged 16, and injured two villagers, one of them severely. They also caused much damage to property, and shot at livestock. Two donkeys were killed and one wounded. The police detained suspects.”).
21. The yeshiva was not disbanded, ultimately. In 2020 the Israeli government said it would pay retrospective compensation to the yeshiva. “State to Pay NIS 400,000 Compensation to Yeshiva Seized by Military in West Bank,” Times of Israel, November 16, 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/state-to-pay-nis-400000-compensation-to-yeshiva-seized-by-military-in-west-bank/.
22. For a report of Ginsburgh’s followers singing him the “Long live” song, see “A Group of Rabbi Berland’s Hasidim Are Going Over to the Sect of Rabbi Ginsburgh and Joined in the Singing of ‘Long Live Our Master the King Messiah Forever,’” April 8, 2013 (in Hebrew), on the blog Be-‘olamam shel haredim, https://bshch.blogspot.com/2013/04/blog-post_6214.html?m=1. See also Noah Feldman, “Violence in the Name of the Messiah,” Bloomberg, November 1, 2015, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-11-01/violence-in-the-name-of-the-messiah.
23. Assaf Harel, “‘The Eternal Nation Does Not Fear a Long Road’: An Ethnography of Jewish Settlers in Israel/Palestine” (Doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University, 2015), 306.
24. Harel, “The Eternal Nation Does Not Fear a Long Road.”
25. Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, Torat ha-Melekh: Berurei Halakhah be-‘Inyenei Malkhut u-Milhamot: Dinei Nefashot bein Yisrael la-‘Ammim (Lev ha-Shomron: Yeshivat Od Yosef Chai, 2009). Yitzhak Shapira was Ginsburgh’s successor as head of the yeshiva.
26. Shapira and Elitzur, Torat ha-Melekh. The metaphysical dimension is equally shocking. The authors write, “In a perfected situation, there would be no prohibition on the killing of a non-Jew, because the existence of a non-Jew who does not fulfill the basic commandments is not legitimate.” Behind this position lies a mystical view that the soul of the non-Jew has less value than the Jewish soul. Indeed, the authors opine that a Jew may kill an innocent non-Jew to preserve his own life, although he may not kill an innocent Jew for the same purpose.
27. Yonah Jeremy Bob, “High Court: No Basis to Indict Torat Hamelech Authors for Incitement,” Jerusalem Post, December 9, 2015, https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/high-court-no-basis-to-indict-torat-hamelech-authors-for-incitement-436795.
28. Noah Feldman, “Virtual Reality and Dangerous Fantasy in Jerusalem,” Bloomberg, December 4, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-12-04/virtual-reality-and-dangerous-fantasy-in-jerusalem?sref=EBhNhdBZ.