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Kalt, bikur cholim is amazing, but as someone who has spent time with multiple family members in the hospital, the relief to myself and the patients from having someone we know bring us jomemade food is a lot more than mass produced meals – im not, chas veshalom, knocking bikur cholim – they’re amazing! They are part of the chesed army that makes klal yisroel’s holiness visible yo the entire world, helping tens of thousands of people.
Gadol, that’s not altogether simple – rabba shachteo lerebbe zayra; it aas during purim drinking. Granted he was an amorah with the power of techias hameisim and revived him, but still…
We also see this by regular damages; if someone’s property is damaged during simchas purim, he’s exempt from paying – this could be either because of a universally agreed mechilah(in which case it has nothing to do with an outsider on purim) or because he was involved in something permitted, in which case it would apply to people not involved in the festivities.
Of course, the police don’t care about halacha, but it’s an interesting question for us
Aaq, there was no moshiach fighting those wars, unless you think ben gurion was Messianic…
Until such a person arises, we are bound by the shevuos.
A state is not a messiah; we need a person.
Coffee, comparing the yeshiva worlds shtultz issues to modern orthodoxy is like comparing a blood test with an amputation.
MO is rife with institutionalized sin and heresy.
On second thought, rav don is probably a levi, but i don’t know…
Rav don segal, rav tzvi meir zilberberg come to mind
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.
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”
Da, you’re forgetting the 3rd shevuah, to not bring the geulah too fast. Since “ain bein…eleh shibud malchios,” having a state is clearly an issue. And rav meir simcha didn’t write anything; it is said that he said that; I’m not saying he didn’t, but it’s not clear exactly what he said and what he meant.
The un vote likely was annulled when the zionists made a state on their own before having full permission in any case
Mdd, i think I’ve known about a dozen satmar chasidim in my entire yeshiva career; i have no connection with the chasidus. My shitos are straight from my mostly litvishe rebbeim, and from what I’ve seen from rav shach, rav baruch ber, rav elchonon, the steipler, rav Reuvain, the brisker rov, the chazon ish, and others who had absolutely nothing to do with satmar. Rav Reuvain wrote that all gedolim have the same basic view of zionism, that it’s nationalism, goyishe, not torah, and that the state was a big mistake.
When will zionists stop the “only satmar” argument?
Perhaps the children think that any drunkenness is automatically laughable, because you taught them so? So when they see a rebbe drunk, they are “shocked” – how come I’ve never been shocked at my rebbeim being drunk? How come all they ever do when drunk is make purim torah jokes, say real torah, dance around and say grammen? Either your kids go to a very strange yeshiva or they’re just programmed to think that drunkenness is automatically bad.
Ujm, i do differ, possibly, in one way – there were gedolim who had positive views of the state early on, including the ponevezher rov. That doesn’t mean that they would say so now, or that we are even allowed to follow them in contrast with the gedolei olam such as the chazon ish and brisker rov who did not hold that way. But that view doesn’t mean that they believed in nationalism, or other foreign ideologies – they viewed the state as a Hatzolah, not as an ideal.
Aaq, it might sound like a no true Scotsman fallacy, but if you think about it, what we’re really saying is that to be a gadol beyisroel, one needs to be free of all foreign influence. One must have pure daas torah.
And the rabbis who are known as scholars who claim that one can and even should be influenced by outside things, and who don’t believe in daas torah, or the authority of gedolim the way the yeshiva world does, and who claim that past gedolim have been… they’re excluding themselves from the yeshiva worlds definition of the term gadol. So why are they upset when we don’t call them gedolim? They don’t believe in the construct to begin with!
Aaq, rav belsky was very anti zionist and did not mean to downplay the shevuos; he said they’re real, and very important. And what he says fits into what the “derech moshol” might mean in the iggeres, but in no way has any authority ever said that the shevuos just don’t matter, or we can disregard them because they’re “just agadeta”, again, whatever that means.
Mdd, the elements of satmar shitah that are a minority opinion are his(and basically all other Hungarian poskim) stance on voting and taking money from the state(in this he is joined by bais brisk). In all other ways, rav Reuvain grozovsky, of agudah, famously wrote that there’s really no difference between satmar and the rest of the torah world. The difference is mainly in those 2 practical issues.
Satmar also spends more time on zionism than other groups; others don’t regard it any differently than reform, or any other “ism” – in this, there’s a mixed bag… Every circle of klal yisroel has its things that it emphasizes more… Satmar holds very strongly about spending time on zionism.
Aaq, even according to rav belsky’s pshat, it’s still very much theological, just like anything else the gemara tells us to do and warns us of the consequences should we not do so.
Actually, according to his pshat, the state presents a constant danger to the security of klal yisroel, as the government is constantly provoking the anger of foreign nations.
What a jew should do in galus, is what rav yosef chaim zonnenfeld wanted; a goyishe state with jewish communal autonomy. Let America take over the land and use it as a base like the russians used Cuba during the cold war… it’ll be better for everyone all around.
AAQ, whichever reason the rambam had for not mentioning the shevuous, it’s plainly obvious that he held they are in force; I’ve heard a different reason from Rav Belsky, who said that the shvuous might not be a din, but they are a metzius – meaning if you do this, it will lead to redifos and yidden being hunted down like animals. Same way the rambam doesn’t bring the gemara about how the chachamim would learn and emulate yaakov avinu’s behavior with eisav before they met goyishe leaders – it’s a torah attitude and a reality, but it may not be a din. So even if they’re not a din, they reflect the ratzon Hashem as clearly stated in the gemara.
And in ’48, the british were not the baalei batim anymore; they basically threw their hands up – arab countries were being formed at that time.
But yes I agree that fighting in self defense AFTER the state had already been established is fine according to most. And even during the war of independence, if you were in danger, there is no chiyuv to let yourself be killed. and some of the fighting did affect the frum areas, too.
Baby, that caricature of a mizrachi worldview has been thoroughly demolished on here by myself and others – it’s just more declarations and statements without any torah sources to begin to back it up.
“be strong” “dont be weak”…..ok? The anti-side is built on mesorah. The zionists came and invented the “tough Jew” persona that you were fed as mother’s milk – before that, we were all Mah Yofis Jews, and we had a longer life span as a people.
I’ve been inspired by many of my rebbeim who would get drunk on purim; I saw the torah coming out of them, the simcha…chazal say you can see what a person really is from when they’re drunk, and you don’t need emunas chachamim to understand it.
Parents who had rebbeim who got drunk in front of their families and talmidim have no problem “letting” their kids go to such houses. I personally don’t get drunk on purim, but I love being around those who do. And you would too if you’d drop the “drunk is bad” preconceived notion.
I think it’s seen as immature because most adults are not small enough to physically climb on a counter without hurting themselves or it.
So it’s a matter of association more than anything.
Spoken by someone who has clearly never been to the home of a mesivta or beis medrash rebbe on purim
Mdd – talking in shul led to tach vetat… I only hope the flippant attitude you’re expressing is in an attempt at seeing the good in Jews and not part of a general laxity in yiddishkeit, but if we look at which communities are the most concerned with seeing the good in apikorsim and their state… Their yiddishkeit suffers, because how serious can you be about Torah while not being bothered by those who are against it?
Re, rav meir simcha – he reportedly said after the Balfour declaration that the pachad of the shevuos has passed, because the sole baalei batim of the land at the time had given expressive permission. However, he likely was referring to mass aliyah and not a government, which is what the declaration promised, in the word “homeland”.
As for the tzitz eliezer, you’ve got to understand that many, many rabbonim were sympathetic to the state, including yeshivish ones. It doesn’t mean it’s what the gedolei olam held, and their own talmidim went on to be as anti zionist as the rest of the Yeshiva world once the fantasies had faded and the reality of the horrific chilul Hashem had set in. I cannot imagine the olam haba of a person like the TE who sat and learned bekedushah all the days of his life and wrote dozens of seforim, but it doesn’t mean we are supposed to listen to his opinions stated at a time when there was mass confusion and a powerful urge to leave the oppression and violence that we, BH cannot imagine.
As for rav shlomo kluger… Source? The idea doesn’t add up – the shevuos were not made between us and the goyim, they were made between us and Hashem. And further, the goyim definitely broke their oath when they killed Jewish boys in mitzrayim, yet the bnei efraim were killed when they left early.
This whole “they broke theirs so we break ours” is a non starter.
People made up tons of things about rav moshe; you probably heard this from his one zionist son in law. His talmidim, and sons, were and are not zionist in the least.
And how is the maharal a stretch? He simply says that we shouldn’t go even if the goyim are forcing us on pain of death… Not very complicated.
As for “sources” which just throw out kashas and ignore what’s readily available, as mizrachi rabbis do, I’ve been enough. I’ve also seen the pretzel they make out of the rambam, where they say that while the megilas ester on the rambam quotes the oaths to explain why the rambam holds there’s no mitzvah of yishuv EY, and the rambaN disagrees about the latter part, that we should “pasken” like the rambaN because he’s a lot bigger than… The megilas ester.
It’s purim torah, pardon the pun; all the ME is doing is explaining the shitah of the rambam; he’s not arguing on the rambaN.
I have no idea what makes you think the satmar rov said “thing that aren’t emes” to fight zionism. Did you ever learn his sefer? Or are you just listening to zionist rabbis?
Damoshe – I’ll try to get around to it; square’s points were more general and needed to be answered first
square…where do I begin.
The rambam in the letter you quoted tells the taimanim NOT TO VIOLATE THE OATHS…why do you care that he calls it “al derech mashal” when he clearly, black and white, says not to break them..this cutting out of a sentence of the rambam is the height of dishonesty.
But chazal already said that wherever the apikorsim find a source for their kefirah, the answer is be’tzidah, next to it. And here, next to the words “al derech mashal” is the rambam’s clarion call never to violate them.
The rambaN also cites the oaths in mamar al hageulah, so any shtikel torahs you can read into the fact that he holds that yishuv EY is a chiyuv nowadays is invalid. Zionists like to say, well, if the ramban holds that the mitzvah is obligatory, how can the oaths be halacha, if everyone does the mitzvah, wont that break the oaths? The kasha is good, but the terutz is krum, The avnei nezer answers the kasha and says that individually, the rambaN holds that everyone should try and go, but Hashem will ensure that not everyone will in practice go.
The oaths are in the gemara, how are you suppposed to ignore them, especially when chazal say that the bnei efraim were killed because they violated them – if it were “just aggadata” (whatever that means) why would the bnei efraim be killed in their violation?
As for why the shulchan aruch and mishneh torah dont quote them, there are many answers. One is that the shevuous arent a special din, but rather part of denying bias hamoshiach; they’re a way of doing so, and not indepedently forbidden. The same way poskim dont have to cite every possible way of blaspheming Hashem’s name; the idea is there already.
As for the rambam’s “al derech mashal” – what he means is that we don’t apply things like ain shavuah chal al shavuah, etc…it wasn’t a literal oath, but rather it was placed on us.
as for the kabalah sources; if this were the correct reading of them, then achronim who were mekubalim like rav yonasan eybeshuts wouldnt quote them halachikally, but they do, and the maharal goes further, saying that they are yehereg velo yaavor.
What the arizal meant is complicated; im not a mekubal, and neither are you, and neither are the mizrachi rabbis who quote this, but the satmar rov was, and he dealt with it a lot in his sefer vayoel moshe.
as for the land “being given to us” – what happened the day the state was declared? arab armies swarmed EY. they clearly didnt want to give it to us. And the UN’s decision hadn’t been implemented; it was still pending when the zionists made trheir declaration of a shmad state.
And who says that the UN are baalei batim over the whole world? The arabs were opposed; thats enough to no longer conisder it “permission”
one of the oaths is not to fight goyim, too, which would mean it’s better for us to flee EY if we’re under attack than to fight.
In practice, however, many poskiim allow fighting nowadays for self defense, for a variety of reasons; while it might be better to run away, how would we take millions of jews, including elderly, babies, etc…? it would be pikuach nefesh.
What difference does the chomer make? It’s a demonstration that Jewish people abrogate the ratzon Hashem.
Which answers your other question about chu”l vs. EY – the main issue is that the state claims to be the representative nation and people of the Jewish people. That makes it a massive, heretofore unmatched chilul Hashem of worldwide proportions, committed every second of every day, when the states officials are seen as representative of all of us, while most of them are not frum and many are anti frum.
However, it is worse that it happens in EY, as aveiros and mitzvos are weightier there, as it is Hashem’s land. It also adds the additional violation of the oaths and an element of false redemption.
I’d feel very similar if secular jews made a country elsewhere.
Lake, there were chasidim too, like the bas ayin early on, and later rav shlomke zeville, which come to mind
Nom, you’re right that most yidden, be they chasidishe, litvishe, Hungarian, etc…were more tolerant of Zionism. We don’t have the same nisyonos that they had, not even close, and it’s unfair to judge them. If we had been alive then, I’m sure we would have fallen worse.
Hindsight is 20/20, and it’s no coincidence that gedolim of the past 4 decades have been increasingly more anti zionist across the board, as are yeshivaleit.
Baalei batim tend to be the same in attitude as their Holocaust survivor parents.
More alcohol for the rest of us!
I’m kidding; i don’t get drunk either.
mdd – and your point is? Medrabanan aveiros are still aveiros. And in chazal’s time, most reshuos were also derabanan, except places like Mechuzah, and yet they still were mevatel the mitzvos.
Also, I’m not so sure that mitzvos hatluyos baaretz are still derabanan nowadays; it’s possible that the majority of Halachik Jews are actually in eretz yisroel, as most censuses take into account reform and conservative “gerim” and the products of intermarriages with patrilineal descent, of which there are a ton.
coffee, Israel has a world-class military, world-class firepower, and world-class trained soldiers. The Palestinians have old kalashnikovs, poorly trained fighters, and very little resources. No, it is not a neis nigleh that Israelis can trounce them.
Please don’t think I’m being sympathetic to the Palestinians; I’m not, I’m merely pointing out the facts that Israel is far, far superior to them and most of the Arab world in every facet of its military.
It’s like stepping on ants.
Baby, rav miller was vehemently anti zionist and would often…. Actually it’s in every one of his own hashkofa seforim, castigate zionism and zionists. I don’t think he would have said that it’s some sort of present with a nisayon attached to it – it doesn’t fit what he wrote in his seforim.
did you hear it on a tape? Or did you hear it in his name? Because people misquote him quite a lot. I believe rav pam may have said something similar to what you’re quoting.
Aaq, good points. When I said “support,” I’m referring to political solidarity; we American jews do a lot of lobbying for Israel, and not only does it play into the dual-loyalty trope, but it services a system which, like i said, is a net loss for the klal. Much of our resources are spent on “hasbara” and a lot of campus kiruv work involves trying to get secular jewish college students to not only learn about yiddishkeit, but support the “jewish” state which they’re constantly being told is evil to Palestinians. How many students have been turned off to yiddishkeit because they believe their professors’ claims over thw kiruv rabbis? We should, at the very least, adopt a non-zionist approach with these kids, not to alienate the pro israel ones, and not to turn off the anti Israel kids either.
How to deal with the frei in EY is very complicated; organizations like keren hashviis do amazing things, and many frei farmers have embraced shmitah because of the help they offer. That’s an example of what American jews can do to stem the tide of chilul Hashem etc… But in any case, we’re not in a position to impose halacha at this point in time.
The rishonim discuss the southern hemisphere, it’s not really consequential, because chodesh aviv applies to the korban pesach, which can only be brought in Yerushalayim. What other halachos depend on the seasons? And like i said, poskim say it’s better not to live in questionable areas like Hawaii or other places close to or on the international date line, because the halacha isn’t clear.
American, I’ll give it to you that you have quite the imagination
Coffee, it’s true that chazal only suspended mitzvos in circumstances which weren’t constant, such as YT that falls on shabbos, but not fully, because tefilin are a mitzvah that medoraysoh is fulfilled at night, and chazal forbade it, because you might fall asleep, etc…chazal also, in the times of amoraim, forbade yibum because of abba shaul. There are other times when chazal suspended mitzvos too, as you said, yesh koach etc…
Also, with muktzeh, i think you’re mixing up cause and effect. An esrog in only muktzeh on shabbos because chazal said there’s no mitzvah; they didn’t cancel the mitzvah because it’s muktzeh.
In the beis hamikdash they didn’t have shvusim…i think i remember seeing meforshim say that the cohanim are nizharim and won’t come to violating issur shabbos. But don’t quote me on that. Either way, I don’t see what that has to do with the discussion.
Am i correct that you’re saying that according to my logic, no one should live in EY because some might sin, and you’re saying that we see that chazal only forbade mitzvos partially, allowing others to do them? If so, there’s a misunderstanding. I never said that no one should live in EY – no gedolim to my knowledge ever said that literally no one belongs there. There was always a torah community in some form in EY, as there should be. It’s an incredible mayloh in one’s torah and avodas Hashem if they can live there, but it’s also a lot worse to be a sinner there, too.
Not supporting the state doesn’t mean no one should live there – but supporting it in many ways does. At least it means that you’re supporting the frei who currently live there to continue living under a government which does not require shmiras hamitzvos. To those who say that the state is a good thing, because it facilitates mitzvos, my answer is that since it facilitates and encourages aveiros, that outweighs any good that it might do, since chazal viewed the loss of an aveirah as more devastating to the klal than neglecting a positive mitzvah.
However it should also be said that mitzvos in general weigh a lot more than aveiros, and this, says the tomer devorah, is the reason why Hashem doesn’t cancel out mitzvos and aveiros and just give us olan haba without gehinnom. The ramak says that it would be a horrific loss for us, because the schar for one mitzvah is far, far more than the punishment for an aveirah.
But that’s on an individual level. On a societal level, we see that chazal did everything in their power, even being mevatel mitzvos, to prevent jews from sinning. How much more so should we not support an institution which encourages and facilitates those and worse sins.
As for kiruv, we’re doing our hishtadlus according to halacha. We can’t force people to become frum, and if they end up sinning after we invite them for shabbos, it’s not on our cheshbon – but the halacha is that you must make accomodations for them available, because otherwise the poskim say that it is takeh lifnei iver.
Aaq, halacha was given with galus in mind, and it was also given before there was a bais hamikdash. Nowhere in normative halacha do we find discussions of such things. To put ourselves in situations where the best we can do is posit ad-hoc theories about what the halacha “might” be, is to push avodas Hashem on the back burner and put our own interests first. This is what “I” want to do, now let’s see how we can fit halacha into it… that’s not an eved to a master, it’s a person who is living for themselves and trying to assuage his guilty conscience.
Gadol, perhaps that has less to do witu bias and more to do with the cumulative accomplishments, innovations, social movements, and historical events with worldwide repercussions of one population versus another…
Old yishuv yidden were a mix of Hungarian, litvishe, chasidishe… I don’t think one was more dominant than another.
Gadol, what does the topography have to do with the zmanim? There’s no sun, no moon…these are things which are only relevant here
Avram, as you mentioned yourself, there are means in halacha for applying mitzvos outside eretz yisroel. Hashem told us we’d go there, and we indeed kept the mitzvos in the midbar for 40 years before going into EY. The chinuch writes by every mitzvah, almost, that they are applicable in all areas.
Every part of the world has a shkiah, a tzeis…and yes, living in problematic areas such as Hawaii or Shanghai are discouraged bh poskim, because it isn’t clear how to keep zmanim.
But outside the earth, there’s no shkiah at all, no levana, no calendar based thereon, and no materials such as trees. Trees planted hydroponically or in an atzitz sheaino nakuv aren’t considered gidulei karka for things like schach, etc… according to most poskim.
American, the mitzvos are all earth-centered; zmanim, 4 minim, all food related mitzvos, etc, are all based on earth. It’s untenable that they would go to a place where they can’t keep mitzvos properly
Aaq…i have no idea where you’re going with this
M – you’re reading tanach from cover to cover….like a book. You’re reading it the way the goyim do, when they refer to it as the “bloody old testament” because from a superficial reading, you’d think everyone’s killing people lawlessly all the time.
Maybe open a rashi on tanach and then come to the table? But even without rashi, we can look at some things in the pesukim and see that there’s a lot going on between the lines. Eliyahu was able to eat food from the table of izevel, because despite her baal neviim, even she ate glatt kosher food! The rishonim say that she actually converted.
Klal yisroel kept the Torah in eretz yisroel, and the dreadful downfalls were the exceptions. Check out rav avigdor millers seforim on tanach to see more of this.
The old zionist narrative that we always had sinners and they’re part of the klal, and that we’re the same as we were in the times of neviim… They really need to learn chazal, rishonim… It’s just a lie taught to children in school without any basis in mesorah.
The Torah WAS given outside eretz yisroel, on purpose, because eretz yisroel isn’t what makes us a nation. The Torah did. Eretz yisroel is a precious tool to serve Hashem in the optimal way, but we lost it because of our sins. It’s not ours unconditionally – Hashem told us in the tochacha that if we sin, we will lose it. And we did.
Coffee, i hear your perspective, but i preempted it by saying that chazal cancelled mitzvos due to the mere possibility of people sinning. Klal yisroel’s shofar, 4 minim… Aren’t worth it if one jew *might* carry… Accidentally!!
Kal vechomer it’s not worth it for us to have eretz yisroel in order to keep shmitah etc if the MAJORITY will sin WILLFULLY, even if they’re tinokos shenishbu, which is far from clear. I think you’d agree that at least some chilonim aren’t, if they grew up somewhat religious.
Right, chazal say that we are not supposed to fight with goyim in galus. It’s one of the three oaths that we swore to Hashem. And what will happen if we break that promise? Hashem said that He would allow our flesh to be eaten like animals.
What we did before galus has no bearing on the behavior demanded of us during galus. And lest you dismiss an open genara as “agadeta”, whatever people mean when they do that, yhe rambam, who I’m sure you love quoting when he says to go to work, wrote a letter to the oppressed Yemenite community not to rebel and to keep the oaths.
Also, torah communities thrive in any western country – the US makes it a lot easier to be a kolel family than israel does, with limitless opportunities for the women to work, and with better government programs.
And if you think that the state has contributed to Torah learning, and that there’s an obligation of hakaras hatov for what they give us…i will aay that they take from us more than what they give. They are unauthorized to take taxes, yet they do. They repeatedly try to draft our young people into the shmad army, to make them frei when they don’t even need them. They bar us from many jobs with discrimination. They treat us horribly during protests for our freedom to live undisturbed in our neighborhoods. They stole the frumkeit of 1 million sefardim and many Taimanim who were driven out of their ancestral homes. They and their “rabbis” pollute klal yisroel with fake gerim and mamzerim.
They took the soul of our people.
So if they throw us a little money, does that solve it? They give more to secular people in the form of public schools and better infrastructure in their cities. They give less to the frummer.
But is there a chiyuv hakaras hatov despite all of that? Perhaps there is. We have hakaras hatov to paroh for giving us a place during galus, after all. But do we sing his praises? Did we support him and his country? Did we accept his ideology? No. We take their gerim after 3 doros… that’s the extent of it.
So what hakaras hatov should we have for zionists? Great question, and i don’t know the answer to it. But it never can involve violating the Torah by doing chanifah, supporting the state, accepting zionism, or anything else of the sort.
user – exhibit A.
and yes, it would be vastly different if run by frum people, because it wouldn’t be a massive chilul Hashem that broadcasts to the world that this is the Jewish people. the Jewish people eat treif, are mechalel shabbos, do whatever they want with whoever they want, embrace toevos in the streets of the holy city…and you’re using the “if it were frum it wouldnt bother you so much”…..as a “gatcha”?
Are you saying that I’m biased…towards frumkeit? I’ve heard many MO people say this before, in an attempt at “neutrality,” that the torah perspective is “biased” towards religion, and that “they” see the full truth…it’s one of the apikorsus mindsets that have evaded my many discussions here of MO/religious zionism, and if you bought into it…well, you failed the nisayon. plain and simple.
And yes, everyone asks me to support it. If you don’t support the state, you’re a fanatic, neturei karta/satmar person who doesn’t deserve to be called up for aliyos in many shuls. Not believing in the state is more disqualifying than outright kefirah in many circles, and Rabbi yoshe ber soloveitchik bemoaned this openly, saying that unfortunately, one can disagree with Moshe rabbeinu, but not, chas veshalom, menachem begin.
How is having the land the greatest gift? what has it brought us? More people sin with it by not keeping shmita/terumah/maaser….isn’t that a net loss? Didn’t chazal cancel mitzvos in order to not do aveiros, like lulav and esrog on shabbos, because maybe, maybe one yiddeleh would carry? All the mitzvos hatluyos baaretz aren’t worth the aveiros of those who break them, every day, every shmitah, all the time.
menachem, like i said above, there likely could be resources on other planets, be it mineral, livestock, plants, etc…, but the fascination that people have with it is pure atzas hayetzer; it is because people don’t understand that our world is the only world that really matters, and that people are the only creations that are important…and not just people, but the am hanivchar, and not just the am hanivchar, but the bnei torah are what the world was created for, as the rambam writes clearly, as well as the first rashi in chumash.
that came out wrong – medrashim are torah, but I meant that they shouldn’t be quoted as implications against basic jewish hashkofa. we have many medrashim that we don’t understand.
some kiruv rabbis like to entertain people who are curious about aliens with medrashim about “arur maroz” and such, instead of trying to inculcate what rav chaim mintz wrote – basic judaism, clear as day.
Right, great question – the challenge of the eigel was to see if klal yisroel would follow Hashem, or believe in Moshe rabbeinu independently of Him, explains the meshech chochma. Moshe was only an emissary of Hashem, with no independent powers of his own.
The challenge of the success of the zionists is more fundamental – will we believe in the false promises of nationalism, the avodah zara of adding European zeitgeist ideology into judaism, the acceptance of the secular jewish identity as valid, the claims that the gedolim were wrong about making aliyah and that the zionists were right, the claims that we should be militant and not behave like jews have for thousands of years in galus….the list goes on.
And unfortunately, those who legitimatize the state and believe in the “miracles” being a stamp of approval from shomayim continuously fail in all or most of these challenges. Not to mention that their frumkeit suffers in general from their influence from the zionist culture which they refuse to disavow and rebuke, in their worldview that such rebuke is sinas chinom.
Granted, the rabbonim who espoused such beliefs did not end up like that – they were yereim veshlaimim, and some were tzadikim way, way above our understanding, including the ponevezher rov zy”a, but as time went on, those opinions were not kept by the next generation of gedolim. After the dust cleared and the truth became clearer, we aren’t presented with the same challenges of Holocaust survivors who suddenly had a reprieve from years of torture at the hands of non jewish oppressors. We have our own nisyonos which the previous generations would have laughed at, such as technology.
But those who are mamshich darcham of such figures as the ponevezher rov do not refrain anymore from reciting tachanun on 5 iyyar. And there’s a good reason for that.