ABSTRACT
Like many other groups regarded as "fundamentalist", a misused term in the late twentieth century, Gush Emunim as a group functions outside the established political system, while having a powerful effect on it. Its animating principle is constituted not by a political manifesto, although such a document does exist, but by texts of a different kind. These consist primarily of the biblical text and its amplification by Halakhah, and various Jewish historical texts which serve to become the Gush's founding myths. One of these is the story of Massada which was an important source also of Israel's founding mythology. Even the myths of Iphigenia and Antigone are cited by certain Gush writers to illustrate the notion of sacrifice and a willingness to die for the sake of justice. People of the Gush live a continuity of history, with modernity another chapter within that continuity. For the Gush, Rabbi Akiva, Bar Kokhba and the Macabbees are components of that continuity, together with today's Israeli politicians on all sides. The past becomes an eternal present in a largely a historical construction of history based on a selective appropriation of events from the "past". The Gush's founding mythology refers to the periods of the first and second Jewish commonwealth - the 13th to 6th century B.C.E., and the second century B.C.E. to the second century C.E. These prefigure the third commonwealth now being created through the pangs of messianic redemption. 1
