Still Fuming At Rabbi Belsky And Mishpacha

To zalman…I have followed the various postings on this subject and I have not seen cantoresq. attack any Rabbonim and certainly not imply that they were complicit in murder. Unless you mean his questions on the satmarer rebbe zz’l… If anything, I have been more vocal on questioning the authority of rabbonim than the other bloggers…So, you can direct your criticism at me, and, of course, you will be able to show me the mekor for women/girls being prohibited from learning gemoro…You cannot? OH, MG, is there really no mekor for this? tssk, tssk…

Berliner,

Reb Elchonon Wasserman ZT”L, a talmid muvek of the Chofetz Chaim, in his sefer Kovetz Mamorim quotes the Chofetz Chaim as saying the Zionists are the offspring of Amalek.

Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian, in the name of Rabbi Elchanah Wasserman quoted the Chofetz Chaim about the importance of preparing for the final war of Gog and Magog:

I heard in London from the holy Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, quoting the Chofetz Chaim, that Chazal say the War of Gog and Magog will be threefold. After the First World War, the Chofetz Chaim said that this was the first battle of Gog and Magog, and in about twenty-five years time (1942) there would be a second world war, which would make the first one seem insignificant, and then there would be a third battle . . . Rav Elchanan concluded that one must suffer the pangs of Moshiach, but the wise man will quietly prepare himself during that time . . . perhaps he will be worthy of seeing the comforting of Tzion and Yerushalayim. (Leiv Eliyahu, Shemos, page 172)

The Chofetz Chaim himself spoke about the arrival of the redemption, and points out the need to demand it:

Several times a day we request redemption, but requesting is not enough. We must DEMAND redemption, just as a worker demands his salary. For, the halachah is that if he does not, his employer need not pay him that day. (Commentary on the Siddur, section 168)

Refuting Anna Porter’s defense of Rudolf Kastner:

http://www.hirhome.com/israel/leaders4_5.htm

cantoresq:

“Hecht’s book is not sourced as it happens. He gave no footnotes, rendering his book uesless as a piece of scholarship.”

Obviously you haven’t even read Perfidy in your zeal to defend Kastner. As it happens, Perfidy IS sourced and DOES have footnotes, 205 to be exact. Additionally, a majority of the body of the book is verbatim quotes from the trial. So instead of attacking the author with false charges, why not read the material? And if you then still disagree with some aspects of it, kindly comment on his monumental work, not on the person — a sure sign of someone who lost the argument is they stoop to argumentum ad hominem.

Joseph has left a long, long paper trail on various YWN threads.

He is quite adamant in his views (as are yourselves and am I), but I have never seen him express anything but ahavas yisroel on a personal level.

He has apologized for his slip-of-expression.

I am sure he feels quite bad about it (as he explained, he too lost family members in the shoah, as did almost all European families) and would never deliberately call you such a thing.

Thank you.

ICOT

P.S.

P.P.S.

Joseph –

I haven’t forgotten that I still owe you an answer re: dina dimalchusa. I told you that I’m a terrible procrastinator!

Zalman

Member

And cantoresq, fully granted Eichmann is a Nazi ym’s. But what he says a) corroborates what others say and proof indicates AND b) what purpose has he to lie at that point? Kastner was already dead and he was THE MOST intimate player in this matter (he dealt personally and directly with Kastner). I think that interview (on top of the last page) is very telling.

Posted 19 hours ago #

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Eichmann was about to be executed. The only think he could do was try to shape his legacy. He took the opportunity to paint Jews, the Zionist movement in particular, with which he had a long antagonistic fascination, as comlicit in his crime. Nazis don’t look so bad when Jews work with them. His motive to lie is clear.

cantoresq:

“Let’s not forget that on appeal, the Israeli Supreme court completely reversed Judge Silberg’s findings and Order. Silberg was a political hack and his conduct during the trial reeked of cronyism.”

Umm, actually Silberg was an appellate Judge, NOT the trial judge. But don’t let the facts get in your way cantoresq. Go ahead and call Halevi, the trial Judge, all sorts of names now. In fact, conveniently transfer all the ad hominems you made against Silberg, to Helvi. That should do the trick, and “win” the argument in your mind. After all defending Zionism, and by extension Kastner, IS your ultimate duty. For with Zionism shown for the corrupt murderous regime it is, what have you left in your religion?

Zalman

Member

Berlin, I never said anything about girls learning Gemorah. So get your facts straight (something you are demonstrably unable to do in this matter as in other matters… tsk tsk)

Pashut, Kastner is merely an example of the full Zionist enterprise being complicit and in collaboration with the Nazis ym’s.

cantor, You (and Berlin, but he always ends it with a disclaimer “but I’m not charging them with this chet” after charging them) keep blaming the Rabbis for telling the Jews not to leave Europe and therefore being responsible for their deaths. (See Rav Hutner ZTL’s response to that in the extensive quotes from Gedolim a few pages back.)

Posted 14 hours ago #

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If that’s what you mean, then yes you’re correct. Klapei Shmaya I think thos rabbonim have to answer for their actions/advice

Will Hill

Member

cantoresq:

“Let’s not forget that on appeal, the Israeli Supreme court completely reversed Judge Silberg’s findings and Order. Silberg was a political hack and his conduct during the trial reeked of cronyism.”

Umm, actually Silberg was an appellate Judge, NOT the trial judge. But don’t let the facts get in your way cantoresq. Go ahead and call Halevi, the trial Judge, all sorts of names now. In fact, conveniently transfer all the ad hominems you made against Silberg, to Helvi. That should do the trick, and “win” the argument in your mind. After all defending Zionism, and by extension Kastner, IS your ultimate duty. For with Zionism shown for the corrupt murderous regime it is, what have you left in your religion?

Posted 2 hours ago #

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Will Hill, you might make a decent cite checker. You’re not much of a scholar, but you sem to be a decent research assistant. BTW you ahve ye to address of my substantive posts. Feel free to avoid them and instead pick up on inconsequential errors in details. I guess that’s about all you can handle. I made you an offer. In fact, I’ll tell you I plan to re-read Perfidy regardless. After twenty eyars, I should have some more nuanced persepctive in my treatment of it. Do you plan on reading Porter’s book? Are ready to risk your pre-concieved notions, or are you afraid to entertain the possibility that Kasztner might have been one of the good guys? Were you to come to that realization, what might that do to your religion?

ICOT, Thank You.

Yes, I still await that answer; Dina Dmalchusa Dina (for some reason) has always been a halachic topic of interest to me. I’d love to hear another perspective.

BTW I cannot seem to find the original thread this was discussed under. I mentioned that in many secular legal matters, DDD is inapplicable. (Such as capital punishment, since you brought it up, as it is enforced by secular courts without any input from beis din.)

Another interesting thing about DDD is that it is inapplicable in Eretz Yisroel (as discussed in the famous Ran in Nedarim.)

P.S. You point about calling chumras (and other disliked halachas — most notably tznius) “Talibanization” is something I’ve been yelling about for a long time here!

To Will Hill and Doc……

A famous comic once said : ‘ Who are you going to believe, your own eyes or what I am telling you?” You can talk till you are blue in the face about the “evil medinah”, the “corrupt regime”, the “death of zionism” etc…and you will believe what you want to see.

As I told someone on a different post, go to your gemach and borrow money for a trip to Eretz Yisroel. I may even contribute to this loan. Go and see whether your silly comments have any basis.Go and see the mosdos hatorah in Mir, Ponevez and countless of other yeshivos., The Kiryot of Wishniz, Belz, Ger, Seret Wishnitz and dozens of other chassidische Courts who have rebuilt their shattered homes in That “evil medina”.

And to you ,doc, those few idealists “with white hair” that you are talking about live in Hebron and Karnei Shomron. They live in countless of other villages and cities on OUR HOly Land and live “betsimsum”,unlike you who lives in a godless country and benefit from the riches of gentiles…”Shomanto, Oviso, Kosiso”.

THEY are the Yidden who live in full accordance with our Chazal and our Rishonim and you are the prime example of the maamar chazal ” kol hador bechutz lo-oretz domeh kemi she-ein lo elokai”. Go translate this maamar chazal and cry for not living in that ‘evil medinah”

I still am tickled by the irony, as someone pointed out several weeks ago, that the 2 biggest Zionists in our midsts, rabbiofberlin & Pashuteh Yid’s children are black hatters who have returned to the fold! This is the almost universal experience…

Zalman, do you also believe the US was complicit in 9/11? Were the Merkaz boys HY”D complicit with Nazism, as well? What about the Hesder boys in Sderot, are they also Nazis?

You and the others here are nebach torturing yourselves to grasp at any straw to find fault with the State of Israel. It is so sad that your whole chiyus comes from a negative hashkafa and you can’t allow yourself the satisfaction of being modeh that it is the most wonderful thing that we have the state. I believe now, that most Chareidim are gradually moving over to that viewpoint, as well.

Keep on looking at everyting with an ayin ra. This is what the RBSH wants. He gets great nachas listening to you knock the state, despite the fact that it has enabled Torah learning on a scale not seen in hundreds of years.

The only people who think Israel is a murderous regime are Arabs and leftists. If this is the company you want to keep, so be it.

Doc, my son has not yet started high school. I send him to a chareidi yeshiva because yiras shomayim and stress on learning is essential for the younger years. I insist that he wear a hat altz minhag hamakom.

However, I am ever-present to filter any negativity that he might hear against any other yidden. That includes Zionists, YU, Chabad, Hesder or whatever. The other day we were at a chasuna, and had the privilege to see Rav Mordechai Willig from YU. I took my son over and showed him how he is an ehrlich talmid chochom muvhak, surely a godol by today’s standards, and behold, he talks and acts as refined as any other talmid chochom (but without any sinas chinam). I tried to get my son to speak in learning with him about anything he may have learned.

It confuses me terribly that I just received a tefillah for shmiras haloshon from the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation, and it says (my translation from memory): I will resolve not to speak loshon hora against any individual, and certainly not the klal, or any part thereof. Yet unfortunately, you tell me, is this actually followed by the chareidi world as a whole? Please be honest, as I would really like to know.

But the truth is that there are many ehrlich chareidim who spend their days learning and doing chesed, and do not get involved in all these politics. It is really only a minority here who are extremely loud, that give the impression that all chareidim are crude extremists. As I had opportunity to hear from a few of my close chareidi friends recently, that the views expressed here do not represent chareidim as a whole. Most are sweet aidele anavim who sincerely want to make the world a better place through the zchus of their learning, and are not interested in knocking everything and anything that crosses their path. Unfortunately it is a few shady characters that get into the the news and make all the rest look bad.

rabbiofberlin,

Perhaps did the thought occur to you that Matisyahu is not a full-time YW commentor like youself, since oh perhaps he has a job, learns Torah and has family matters to settle? B’H, you seem to be retired and can expend your entire day on YW and even berate people for not responding to you in the time you allotted to them.

BTW those Yeshivos you mention, ask any of them, any they will advise you that they are ANTI-zionist. But keep using their names in your arguments supporting zionism, since you’ve ran out of any other arguments.

Pashuteh, I’m sorry you believe the CIA killed JFK. I cannot help you. I see that YOUR son (like rabbiofberlin’s) moved away from your viewpoints, another obvious proof klal yisroel is moving in the RIGHT direction (away from modern liberal zionism).

The Torah learning in Eretz Yisroel is DESPITE the attempted interferences by the medinah. As far as money, many Yeshivos refuse it. Those that do accept it, pay more in taxes than they take in funding. Even they would benefit from breaking their financial relationship with the medina (both ways).

cantoresq,

Which Rabbi(‘s) advised anyone who had the means to leave (visa, available transportation, etc.), not to leave Europe? And on what scale (wholesale, individual)? Specifics, times, and sources please. (Especially sources.)

Since you made such scurrilous allegations, I would expect you already have this information.

PashutehYid:

I am literally sickened to the core at your sick reference to the Merkaz boys and the Hesder boys being Nazis.

And I don’t care for your excuse about making an example, relaying a message, talking about others opinions, your a big Zionist so your okay saying it, etc. Fech.

cantoresq,

Which Rabbi(‘s) advised anyone who had the means to leave (visa, available transportation, etc.), not to leave Europe? And on what scale (wholesale, individual)? Specifics, times, and sources please. (Especially sources.)

Since you made such scurrilous allegations, I would expect you already have this information.

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There is a famous letter from R. Elchanan Wasserman to a yeshiva student advising him not to leave Europe, where he would die a mere physical death, and emmigrat to america where he would die a spiritual one.

cantoresq – Please. Porter is a FICTION novel writer. Your going to take a novelist over an anthropologist? (And because some dead link gave you misinformation to boot!) I must say you betray an agenda, not a search for the truth. Prove me wrong please.

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Kol haposel b’mumo posel.

Without even addressing the veracity of your Rav Elchanon claim, all you have is one purported letter advising one purported student not to emigrate? And with that you slandered many Rabbonim?

P.S. About your comment above, you are incorrect. Vrba was in Budapest. (He in fact hand delivered his report to Kastner.)

Without even addressing the veracity of your Rav Elchanon claim, all you have is one purported letter advising one purported student not to emigrate? And with that you slandered many Rabbonim?

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I nevr slandered many rabbanim. I have however spoken in condemnatory tones about R. Elchanan Wasserman z”l for advising people to stay in Europe rather than leave to the United States. And By the way, this is a personal matter for me. The rav who taught me more Torah than any other rav, who have me tremendous hadracha in learning, R. Shlomo Elimelech Drillman, zt”l was a close talmid of R. Elchanan Waserman in Baranovich. I only with I had known about R. Elchanan’s stance on this issue before R. Drillman died. Perhaps he might have clarified matters for me, perhaps he would have agreed with me, I’ll never know.

cantoresq – Your logic would dictate that no one other than Eichmann and Kastner can speak of the events in question, since they were the only two in the negotiating room. And since Eichmann is ruled out, you must insist that we take Kastner at his word – since you deny any other parties ability to impugn what was negotiated between him and Eichmann.

And regarding Hecht vs. Porter vs. White, you are the party who constantly resorts to ad hominems to disqualify anyone expressing facts not to your liking.

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Indeed only those who were there for the negotiations knew what actually happened. But there is more to it than just that. The type of conspiracy you and others allege just seems so implausible. How could Eichmann have pulled it off? How could he get it by his superiors in the Reich? How could the Jewish community not have found out what Kasztner was up to, asuming he was doing something so nefarious? My father was in Budapest at various relevant times, and I’ve met others who were there as well. Budapest was a rumor mill of epic proportions. Nothing in the Jewish community was a secret. Everyone knew what was coming. Even in the hinterland, Jews knew that Auschwitz was a train ride away. At my bar mitzvah my father spoke of the last package he recieved from his parents. He was a student in the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest and his parents were in Kisvarda. They sent him a package from the ghetto shortly before they were deported. That package contained a few pairs of socks, some smoked goose liver (my grandmother’s specialty), and all the family photos and vital documents. My grandfather also wrote my father that he knew the family would probably not survive what awaited them in Poland (my grandmother had diabetes, my uncle suffered from some form of muscualr dystrophy and my grandfather was not a robust man. They knew they would not last long in Poland, and in indeed my grandmother and uncle were killed upon arrival in Auschwitz. At best my grandfather lasted a few weeks), and that my father should do everything in his power to avoid falling under the Russians; the Americans would be safer. They knew; everybody knew. A cousin of mine told me how he traveled to Kisvarda from Munkacs, to save his father from deportation with a forged Swedish passport. His father preferred to be deported with his wife, and could not bring himself to abandon her. They knew, everybody knew. Incidentally, my cousing gave the passport to a friend rather than waste it. The friend survived the war as a result. No one needed Kasztner to tell them anything. Hungarian Jews just hoped that war would end before the deportations began. Sadly they miscalculated.

This will be my final post on this subject. I’ve grown weary of it. I perused Perfidy over Shabbat and I read a good deal of Gil White, as well as an attack on his intellectual credibility by Jared Israel on a related subject. At the end of the day, I really can’t definitively conclude if Kasztner ended up a Quisling or a saint. The scholarly community looks favorably upon him, but as someone, in a different discussion of Kasztner said “he just can’t seem to wash clean.” Ben Hecht certainly succeeded in rendering him a traitor to the Jewish people. But at the same time, I wonder if Hecht would have gone to all the effort had Kasztner been Revisionist zionist ala’ Jabotinsky, and not a Labor zionist? There is no doubt that Shmuel Tamir was a better trial lawyer than Haim Cohn. There is no doubt that Kasztner was a terrible witness. His arrogance and conceit along with the psychological damage done to him during the war, coupled with his poor Hebrew made him his own worst enemy. Indeed he also made himself a number of enemies during the way for his conduct during the war. As I said before when you lay down with dogs you wake up with fleas. Anyone who didn’t make it on to the train had good enough reason to hate Kasztner. Since the allies were determined not to bomb the railways leading to the death camps, Vrba would naturally be frustrated and incensed by the lack of a tangible response to this report. That he blamed Kasztner is not surprising since he entrusted Kasztner with a copy of his report. I long ago conceded that Kasztner may had made errors in judgment which become apparent only with the benefit of hindsight. The next time a tyrant stands to annihilte us, those who endeavor to save Jewish lives might learn from the sad experience of Israel Kasztner. But I simply don’t believe that he began his activities intending to sell out Hungarian Jewry simply to save his family. After all, if that is all Kasztner wanted to do, his father in law and other family members in Cluj could have simple walked to Romania and survivied the war there. No I think Kasznter had the best of intentions. They paved his road to Hell.

but you said who did they think they are for telling others to stay. Who do you think you are for writing in such chutzpa???? And why do you assume that it was better for someone to do aliya and lose his yiddishkeit than die listening to his Rosh Hayeshiva as a fru yid.

Agav, about Kastner, it seems like (some of) you are maybe his frum cousins so are personally nogeah, lets drop the issue.

(Not that I agree that the Vrba report was in fact unbelievable. And I certainly fault Kastner for essentially burying the Vrba report.)

lesschumras,

Please read the comments carefully prior to commenting. catoresq did not state his father knew what the Nazis ym’s were doing to their brethren elsewhere in Europe. And my family (we came from Hungary) has told me on numerous occasions that the Yidden were not aware. I’ve never heard anyone claim that it was common knowledge amongst Hungarian Jewry what the Nazi’s ym’s were doing in Europe. It was not, or the Jews would have attemted to escape (or perhaps resist) on a far grander scale. They only ones who “knew” what was going on, were those like Kastner who received (and kept secret) a copy of the Vrba-Wetzler report.

cantoresq, It was not common knowledge what the Nazi’s ym’s were doing to the Jews in Europe amongst the Hungarian Jewish masses. What Kastner knew, he did not share, most unfortunately.

The Belzer’s brother explained why the Rebbe was going to Eretz Yisroel. He didn’t know that annihilation awaited the kedoshim and made no such claim.