ההלכה הציונית-דתית - משיח הלכתי לשיח פאסטורי: מקרה המבחן של היחס לאוננות

"Halakhah" is a concept denoting a clear and defined normative system, which operates on the basis of its own rules. And yet, Halakhah engages in a complex relationship with changing reality: it does not necessarily accept its impositions, but often responds to it. Religious Zionism is a distinct and well known sociocultural and religious phenomenon that reflects a revolution and a transformation in religious society. The fundamental question of this article is: Is this transformation also evident in the halakhic realm? Is the internalization of modern values, characteristic of the religious Zionist group, translated also into halakhic matters? To examine this question, we chose masturbation as a test case because concealed in the attitude to masturbation is the contradiction between the halakhic norm that forbids it and the modern values that view masturbation as a practice belonging to the personal intimate realm protected by the liberal outlook. Masturbation is also perceived as a healthy and reasonable human act. Our analysis showed that most religious Zionist halakhists chose to deal with this question by changing the halakhic discourse per se rather than by resorting to standard halakhic argumentation. The discourse became pastoral. A decisive majority of religious Zionist halakhists ceased dealing with the normative status of masturbation, and focused on questions of identity and redemption. In the context of the article, we examine the various modes of halakhic and pastoral discourse developing in religious Zionism and examine the reasons for change in the halakhic discourse. As we show, this change is the most significant proof of some degree of internalization of modern values in religious Zionism, because a pastoral discourse is one that internalizes the basic modern values that place individual identity at the core