KiloBear, what you write is so totally beyond the pale of what every Jew knows from elementary school. Are you denying that there was a Soviet Jewry movement from the 1960’s through the 1980’s? Why did my school send the entire student body every year on Solidarity Day along with countless other schools and organizations and shuls of all stripes (and the most distinguished US politicians would speak) to free the Soviet Jews who were denied religious freedom and even the right to emigrate. Are you saying this was all a major hoax perpetrated by non-Jewish swindlers who managed to fool the entire world into thinking they were oppressed Jews so they could pull off a get-rich quick scheme by coming to Israel where the streets were paved with gold because of the super economy the State of Israel was blessed with? I am astounded, really. We were all a bunch of fools because they were never Jewish to begin with. The number 3 million we would always hear was a fiction. All the Jews of the USSR who were there for hundreds of years mysteriously vanished. My baby sitter’s husband who was moser nefesh to line up for matzah Erev Pesach in the USSR secretly at 5 am and keep with his family whatever Judaism they knew were all a bunch of liars. (How did all these non-Jews know yiddish so well?)
There was no Essas who studied Torah in hidden basements of the USSR, and then finally was let out and went to the Mir in Yerushalayim where he sat and learned yomam valaylah? There was no Mendelevich who sat and learned in Merkaz Harav (I believe) yomam valylah? (But indeed there was a Mendelevich, because I was privileged to eat a Shabbos meal with him at the home of my HS principal.)
What is all the more strange is that above, you knocked the Israeli economy and said it is all a sham and they have no competent drug companies or high tech industry, despite the fact that we read every day about their successes. So you have contradicted yourself, since you claim that was why all the non-Jews made aliyah.
I have come to the conclusion that there is not one bit of reality that you will not twist and distort to support your sinas chinam. Even if you have to twist it one way today, and exactly the opposite tomorrow, whatever works at that moment is fine.
Jothar, there is something called a shaas hadechak and hefsed merubah and tzorech rabim that allows leniencies. Your unwillingness to acknowledge that these families are going through a difficult situation through no fault of their own shows a lack of compassion. Very easy for you to say that because my family had no such difficulty, I am a great tzaddik and will tell you that your family is inferior and if you seek a solution, you are a conservative and a kofer. Very convenient to be frum on somebody else’s cheshbon. How does it hurt me to pasul somebody else’s family. life is great for me, and I am frum and perfect and my family is super-Jewish, and who cares about the other family, why should I be flexible since it has no bearing on my situation.
I tend to think if your family was in a bind, all of the sudden you would see things a but differently, and look for a halachic way out. I am not knocking you personally, I am only showing the fallacy in this way of thinking. Vahavta lreacha komocha means I treat yenem the same as myself and put myself in his shoes.
We all seem to have forgotten the lesson of Avraham Avinu who told the Ribbono Shel Olam the sharf words Chalilah lecha, hashofet kol haaretz lo yaaseh mishpat! And who was he defending? The Anshei Sdom who were not Jewish and were among the worst people on earth in both bein odom lamakom and bein odom lachaveiro. They were far worse than any Soviet Jew and any Zionist and any modern Orthodox YU graduate. The compassion of an Avraham Avinu is why he was zocheh to be the father of our nation.
I will not be posting any more on this thread, since I am getting too aggravated at people trying to reinvent the beautiful yiddishkeit I was taught all my life (and reinvent history, as well, for that matter). Believe me, if the kannai’s view of Judaism ever becomes the norm, I will be the first to go OTD. Who needs such an ugly religion?