Medinah

It is ok to be ambivalent towards political movements, but that does not mean that you need to reject the good out there. One Rav told me that when someone asks him whether he is a Zionist, he refuses to say “no”. He says instead – yes, in the sense of “mehazir shechinato leZion”

Happy, thanks for the kind words, but I’m not a talmid chacham – i was, however, zocheh to be among many.

The avnei nezer is one shitah in what the rambam held; he’s not the only one to say it either. But what are the gedorim of the mitzvah according to the AN’s pshat in the rambam? Would the rambam hold, for instance, like the rivash that the mitzvah is to be mafkiah midei akum and can be accomplished remotely by buying land?

The rambam does bring hakol maalin, but he doesn’t mention a reason. He also brings the din that a husband can force his wife to go to Yerushalayim, when there certainly is no chiyuv to move from one place to another in EY.

Does the rambam perhaps hold like rav chaim cohen in Tosfos, that there’s no chiyuv in practice to go up, because we can’t do the mitzvos properly… But there would be a chiyuv theoretically?

The rambam also conspicuously leaves out a mitzvah of kibush, but mentions dinim such as an immediate obligation of mezuzah in EY mishum yishuv haaretz, the heter to make plans to buy on shabbos, etc..

So maybe the rambam held like the rivash?

Re, bar kochva – “matunach” – the fact that the rambam mentions that his conquest was supported by rebbe akiva as part of bias hamoshiach, and that he himself was thought to have been moshiach, shows that he holds of the shevuos! We are definitely not bound by them in the wars of moshiach – how else is he supposed to fight them? The rambam also writes that Moshiach must, in fact, fight those wars to establish himself as a candidate,and he is only moshiach vadai if he builds the Bais hamikdash, etc.. but it’s clearly part of his job, and rebbe akiva only supported him because he thought he was moshiach – if he had been a stam crusader for jewish liberty, no one would have supported him at all.

Regarding the Gra:

The gra writes in shu”a (EH 75, 17) that there is a mitzvah in our time, but only in order to be mekayam EY -related mitzvos, not in itself.

What you’re quoting fron sidur hagra, I don’t have available to me, but i do have the perush hagra on shir hashirim itself, and on the pasuk, the gaon writes that Hashem has “pain” so to speak, if we bring the geulah before its time, and quotes the shevuos in ghe gemara in kesuvos as written, simply.

As for the kol hatur, it was not known until recently; no one had it, and gedolim such as rav Moshe shternbuch, who is an ainikil of the gaon, say it is not reliable in the form we have, or that it never existed to begin with.

As for rav shlomo kluger, i haven’t been able to look up the sefer Damoshe quoted, but i did see him quote menachem kasher’s tekufah gedolah as some sort of source – it’s been exposed as a forgery; kasher forged signatures of gedolim who had passed away, as saying that the state is ashchalta etc..

Ths brisker rov would refer to kasher as “the biggest traifah,” a play on his name.

He was frummer than most zionists though, I’ll grant him that. But a forgery is a forgery, and he’s not a reliable source for such information.

But the claim is, as i said, not very reasonable, because first,the shevuos were between us and Hashem, not between us and the goyim, and more importantly, chazal say that the bnei efraim were punished for breaking them with annihilation,and the Egyptians had definitely broken “their side” of the “deal”

Joe,

You forget that wars fought over territory is binding if the other side retreats (look at Russia with Ukraine) now that is part of Israel and UN can’t say no, if that was the case Russia has to give back whatever they captured and good luck with getting them to do that!

Re, rebbe zerah,and yoma 9:

There’s not an “alternate pshat” or even a stirah – going up in the times of ezra was al pi nevuah; it was an end of a galus. Yirmiyahu said clearly that at 70 years they would return. What the gemara in yuma is saying is that if we all had listened to the navi, we would have had an eternal stay in EY and it would have been a geulah shlaima, instead of it being temporary.

These are also two completely separate pesukim. the pasuk quoted in yoma is shir hashirim 8, 9.

The pasuk of nishbati, with the shevuos, is 2, 7.

Just because the two maamarim use the expression chomah doesn’t mean that they are two pshatim.

And that’s exactly what rebbe zerah records in medrash rabba, that the beis hamikdash would not have been destroyed if we had done what we were told to do.

But now that we’re in galus, the gemara in yoma didn’t say that we should go up like a wall now, rather, that we should have back then.

Or I should say better once it’s nullified for a little bit it’s totally nullified

CA: The argument presented was that it is nullified because the Goyim gave permission. But the Goyim only gave permission for a small part of what the Zionists took.

If the Goyim gave permission to make a state just in, say, Sfas, it is illogical to claim the vows are nullified and they can take 100x what the Goyim gave them.

Re; expanding territories: indeed, if Jews are legitimately settled in EY, they are entitled to protect themselves, including creating defensive borders. If Arabs did not attack, one could have argued that there was no basis for expanding.

Avira, I see your point, we need a kosher leader who has a potential. Let’s put it this way – early Zioni settlers had some leaders among R Kook’s students, and even Menachem Begin later on… Can we join Ben Gurion expecting him to do teshuva? not an impossibility.

But probably a better answer would be to observe that Jews were coming not as a wall, many driven by persecution and economic problems, and the actual war was not a conquest but a defensive war. Presume, Israel is not formed yet, and Jews live comfortably in USA. I would also be not in favor of forming a Jewish army to attack, unprovoked, a unified Arab state that consists of Egypt/Palestine/Syria to conquer EY absent major signs min hashamayim.