(Copyright (c) 2007. The Jerusalem Report)

With the holy places firmly back in Jewish hands, the Six-Day War could have melted hostilities between the Zionist state and the ultra-Orthodox. It did not.

In 1956, 22-year-old sergeant Shlomo Alexander Levenstein was killed in the battle of the Mitla Pass in Sinai. He wasn't an ordinary soldier, at least not by today's standards. His father, Meir David Levenstein, was a member of Israel's first Knesset from the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel party, and one of the signers of Israel's Declaration of Independ-ence. The third of seven children, Shlomo studied in the elite ultra-Orthodox Ponovez yeshiva in Bnei Brak, and was a member of Agudat Israel's young guard. Shlomo was interred for 10 months in a makeshift military cemetery, and when the question of a permanent burial place arose, his father consulted Ponovez yeshiva spiritual leader Rabbi Joseph Kahaneman, who suggested the Zikhron Meir cemetery in Bnei Brak, where ultra- Orthodox rabbinic luminaries Avraham Karelitz (the Hazon Ish) and Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky (the Steipler Rav) are interred.

Shlomo's is one of only a dozen military graves among the 10,000 plus graves in the Zikhron Meir cemetery. Ten years after his death, military service for young ultra-Orthodox men like Shlomo Levenstein had become unusual. By June 1967, religious deferments from military service had become the norm, says Bar-Ilan University sociologist Prof. Menachem Friedman, an authority on the ultra-Orthodox. Even during the tense weeks in late May, when Egypt's President Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran, ultra-Orthodox leaders did not call on students to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. "Almost no haredim [ultra-Orthodox] were killed in the Six-Day War," says Friedman.

But even if they didn't fight in the war, the anti-Zionist haredim, along with many other Israelis, were swept up in a messianic euphoria following the conquest of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. For religious Zionists, the war and the conquest of the Land of Israel, signaled the next step (after the Jewish state's founding) toward religious redemption. With Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook of Jerusalem's Merkaz Harav yeshiva, the grandson of revered former chief rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, as their spiritual mentor, religious Zionists became key players in shaping the country's religious and social destiny by advocating settlement of the biblical lands. The government, too, jumped on the messianic bandwagon, and despite its announced readiness to relinquish the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula just nine days after the war, adjusted its policy regarding returning the West Bank to suit the euphoric public mood, says Ben-Gurion University of the Negev public policy professor Arye Naor.

If redemptive prophecies had a profound effect on religious and secular alike, the ultra-Orthodox found themselves in a curious new theological dilemma. "How could one comprehend the miracles, the lightning victory of the Israel Defense Forces against all the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan? The historical conception of Orthodox anti-Zionist society was now even more intensely shaken," noted Friedman in a landmark paper on the theological conundrum of the ultra-Orthodox published in "The Israeli State and Society, Boundaries and Frontiers" (State University of New York Press, 1989), an anthology edited by the late Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling. "After all how could the heretical Zionist state liberate the sacred Western Wall?" Friedman says today.

The war also raised contradictions inside the ultra-Orthodox courts. In the days after the fighting ended, insiders relate that extreme anti-Zionist Satmar hasidim desperately tried to make their way to the newly open Western Wall before a forthcoming ban by Satmar spiritual leader Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum against visiting the Zionist-liberated holy site went into effect.

Nevertheless, the war did surprisingly little to soften long- simmering ultra-Orthodox hostility toward Zionism or the state. If anything, the war underscored the ideological conflicts between the ultra-Orthodox and the secular. "The 1967 war did not bring about any dramatic change in their anti-Zionist theology or behavior," says Friedman. Instead it stimulated the development of an alternative historical narrative, which would explain away the military's lightning victory as an act of God.

According to Friedman, the Yom Kippur War in 1973 was more significant for the ultra-Orthodox because it deflated national spirits and thus alleviated the "burdens" presented by the "wonder and miracles" of the Six-Day War. "The Zionists were finally cut down to size," he says, adding that the 1977 defeat of the Labor Party, the perceived bastion of secular Zionism, was the political icing on the cake.

The 1967 war also sharpened theological differences between religious nationalists and the ultra-Orthodox camp, whose anti- Zionist leadership, embodied by such preeminent thinkers as Rabbi Eliezer Schach, the leader of the Lithuanian yeshiva mitnaged camp, sought to neutralize the messianic factor precisely because it was a product of the heretical secular Zionist state. Friedman says Schach stuck to his position that God had deliberately dispersed the Jewish people and therefore did not intend there to be a Jewish state until the Heavens willed it so.

In time, the popular ultra-Orthodox shift to the political right and support for the settlers blurred the theoretical lines between the two religious camps, and even gave rise to a third group: the ultra-Orthodox nationalists known by the Hebrew acronym "hardal" (for haredi-leumi), who combine a strictly traditional lifestyle with a fervent Zionist nationalist ethos. According to Peace Now official, Dror Etkes, the ultra-Orthodox are now the fastest- growing settlement population. "But this is due to economic and not ideological reasons," he says. Today, Friedman observes that any ultra-Orthodox leader who would call for the return of the Western Wall to Palestinian control would find himself "in splendid isolation."

Perhaps not surprisingly, the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War has been barely acknowledged in the ultra-Orthodox community. Though they were direct beneficiaries of the war - haredi neighborhoods in northern Jerusalem were no longer located on the Jordanian border and worship at the Western Wall and Bethlehem's Rachel's Tomb became popular - the occasion was largely ignored. Books on the subject could not be found in Jerusalem or Bnei Brak bookstores catering to the community, nor were there memorials to the soldiers who fell in the Old City battles. The topic was not discussed in schools. A spokeswoman for the ultra-Orthodox-dominated municipality in Bnei Brak said no special events were being planned.

One notable exception was the pre-Passover appearance of a lavishly illustrated 80-page glossy souvenir publication entitled "Six Days in Iyar," put out by Hamishpacha, a popular Hebrew language weekly magazine, which appeals to a more modern and hip segment of the ultra-Orthodox population. Acknowledging the drama of the June 1967 war, the magazine coverage focused on the haredi experience during and after the days of battle, and gave voice to the community's collective memory of the event. But more significantly, the souvenir issue reflects the ultra-Orthodox theology, which developed after the euphoria over the Six-Day War died down, and is in step, say some critics, with other ultra- Orthodox alternative histories.

Included in the special issue are upbeat remembrances of first- ever visits to the Wall and Rachel's Tomb by religious figures such as then-Agudat Yisrael Knesset member Menachem Porush, Ponevez's Kahaneman and the hasidic grand master of Sanz.

The news that the Western Wall had returned to Jewish sovereignty caused "an entire nation to stand up and cry emotionally," says Porush in an interview. There were also testimonies of self- sacrifice at Jerusalem's sandbagged Mir yeshiva, where spiritual leader Rabbi Haim Shmuelevitz warned students not to leave the study hall because doing so was like "deserting an army"; accounts of small miracles (a certain Jerusalem rebbetzin hung laundry out to dry and when it was retrieved, it was filled with bullet holes); and prophecies of victory from the Vizhnitzer and Lubavitcher rebbes. Noting the era's grudging ultra-Orthodox patriotism, Hamishpacha recalls that even Agudat Yisrael's anti-Zionist mouthpiece Hamodia produced blaring wartime headlines, which the magazine acknowledges are "unimaginable these days" for their implicit Zionist/military pride, such as "On the Miracles That Happened to Our Pilots" and how the plumes of smoke in the sky "adorned the glory of Israel," and separately, whether soldiers can transport their tefillin with them on the Sabbath.

But, underscoring the triumphant tone is the unmistakable post- war ultra-Orthodox narrative: The Six-Day War's lightning military achievement was an act of heavenly grace that went unrecognized by the secular Zionists who were drunk with military over-confidence - which laid the groundwork for future defeats. In an editorial entitled "Two Wars, One Lesson," Hamishpacha editor Avraham Rosenthal draws comparisons between Israel's 1967 victory and the difficulties of the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, blaming failures on "boastful" attitudes after 1967. "Everything happened because of that same aggressive and corrupt arrogance." Using a contemporary metaphor, Rosenthal says an independent investigative commission of the Six-Day War would have determined that "not the brave IDF won in 1967, not its commanders, or the courageous soldiers determined the outcome but a hand of a higher force, the very finger of God, the 'kiss of the Illuminated Face,' that did it."

The Six-Day War, with its subsequent widespread return to religion movement, Rosenthal goes on, could have been the catalyst for a broader religious and political development but, instead, "the majority preferred to dance in town squares and praise their army." Summing up the ultra-Orthodox post-1967 theological position, Rosenthal writes that even if secular Israelis won't admit to it, "they well know that just the prayers that soared up to the heavens, the study of Torah and Jewish faith... stood behind the IDF victory in the war, and no genius tactics or brilliant strategic planning."

Other members of the ultra-Orthodox community who lived through the period have more modest memories and say the ultra-Orthodox were in awe of the military, and frustrated that they could not physically participate.

Rabbi Avraham Shor, 57, is an official of the Karlin-Stolin hasidic sect, whose adherents first arrived in the Holy Land in the mid- 1800s, and underwent an internal split when the Stoliner rebbe started accepting financial assistance from the Israeli government in the early 1990s, giving a perceived winking nod to Zionism. An educational director of a Jerusalem girls' school, Shor was 17 years old at the time and living in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Geula. He remembers feelings of "intense unity between religious and secular" before the outbreak of the war, which continued through the battle, and that yeshiva students like himself yearned to help out, "but we had no outlet back then, not even organized volunteer groups like today." Shor says the ultra-Orthodox did not just pray for miracles. "We listened to Chaim Herzog's military analysis on the radio round the clock."

Anti-Zionist feelings were held in abeyance in ultra-Orthodox strongholds like Geula. "The army was widely regarded as brave and talented, and prayers for the soldiers' welfare were said in most hasidic shtiebels [houses of prayer]," Shor says, adding that only after the war did feelings of unity dissipate. "The secular emphasized their military prowess so we countered with the hand of God and miracles. Thus, we parted ways.'' But uneasily. Shor says that Israel's capture of the Temple Mount, site of both Solomon's and Herod's Temples, raised ultra-Orthodox anxieties that Israeli Jews might visit the sacred spot and violate complex purity laws.

But maverick Orthodox politician Tzivia Greenfield, who ran for the Knesset on the left-wing Meretz party slate, and who was raised ultra-Orthodox and dons a wig but whose sons have served in the military, blames the ultra-Orthodox camp for not making peace with the secular precisely at the historic juncture. Instead of seeking a rapprochement with the secular, she says, the ultra-Orthodox wasted "a golden opportunity" bequeathed by the stunning victory and sank into what she calls "their tedious and ugly" cynicism. "The post- war period was such a thrilling and redemptive moment for all Israelis. It could have changed everything and opened up a whole new discourse. But it dissipated very quickly into mutual hatred and distrust."

Greenfield, who authored a best-selling 2001 book, explaining the shift to the political right of Orthodox Israelis in the last three decades, believes the failure of the ultra-Orthodox to act in favor of unity after the Six-Day War is part of an ultra-Orthodox "structure of estrangement" from secular Zionist and modern Orthodox Jews, and is rooted in the community's refusal to confront pressing and painful theological questions raised by the Holocaust, and the subsequent rehabilitative role of Zionism. "The ultra-Orthodox cannot explain the profound failure of their leadership prior to World War II, and why the Zionist state saved Jews and later beame central to Jewish life, any more than they can explain why the IDF liberated the holy sites in 1967. They have evaded these interconnected questions for years, preferring instead to sit on the sidelines, keep their sons safe from battle, trivialize the subject and create alternative histories."

Meir David Levenstein, who was born in Copenhagen and died at age 93 in 1995 was one of the last surviving signers of the Declaration of Independence. He did not leave any memoirs which might shed light on his theological insights into the complexities of Zionism and its demands. His grandson Tuvia Levenstein, a resident of Kibbutz Shalavim (of the now defunct Poalei Agudat Yisrael party), remembers both his grandfather and uncle Shlomo as being strictly ultra- Orthodox in their worldview. Tuvia says Meir David was fiercely opposed to compulsory military conscription for women, and encouraged prime minister David Ben-Gurion to make service optional for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students. And yet both father and son were clean-shaven and employed. Meir David left the Knesset after the first term, turned to private business and resided in Tel Aviv; Shlomo was employed as an apprentice in the Elco factory in Ramat Gan, notes the Ministry of Defense memorial website.

Tuvia says his grandfather supported Shlomo's conscription to the army. "Many ultra-Orthodox were drafted in the 1950s. His other sons also did military service. It wasn't quite so uncommon then." A younger brother, Yossi Levenstein told The Report that after Shlomo was killed, his parents never spoke about their bereavement, ultra- Orthodoxy or the sacrifices demanded by the Zionist state. "They apparently accepted the loss as God's will and never said a word," he said. They are buried, as was their wish, near their soldier son in Zikhron Meir.