Are you against Zionism? So don't live in the Zionist country. Do you want to live in the Holy Land? There is a lot of space in the Palestinian Authority, in Gaza and in southern Lebanon. And if you live here, don't go to the elections, don't sit in the Knesset and certainly not in the government. Do not enjoy the funds of the Zionist state and its services: social security, property tax discounts, public transportation and more; Health, police, fire department, social service and more. Roads, electricity, water, gas, internet, communication and more.
Come on, that critique missed the mark. It's totally normal to live in a country while disagreeing with some of its core beliefs. In any big, diverse nation, people will have different takes on its history and values.
We're complex creatures with loyalties to all sorts of groups - family, hometown, religion, ethnicity, you name it. Someone can feel deeply rooted in their country's culture and history while still taking issue with parts of its politics or worldview. That's not a contradiction.
Plus, a nation's founding principles aren't set in stone - they change through debate between different groups in society. Minorities play a key role in challenging the status quo. Just look at the civil rights movement in the US - those activists called out the country's hypocrisy on equality, and they were no less American for it.
Sure, if someone totally rejects the state's right to exist, that's dicier. But we should be careful about telling folks to get out over political disagreements. Dissent coming from a place of commitment is valuable. There's a balance between protecting national unity and allowing minority views.
For haredim in Israel, many see themselves as part of the eternal Jewish presence there, even if they're critical of Zionism. Their bond to the land goes way beyond the current political debate. Boiling that down to just citizenship misses the bigger picture.
Disagree with some of its core beliefs all you want. (You think Religious Zionist soldiers don't disagree with many aspects of secular Zionism?) That doesn't absolve you in any way from your duties as a citizen, which include army (or other national) service.
A nation's founding principles are indeed not set in stone. Israel today is hardly the ideological twin of that of its founding generation. But despite having had much influence on its transformation over the years, the charedi world insists that Israel indeed remains set in the ideological stone of 1948, and uses that as an excuse not to serve. Which is so unfortunate, given how much more influence the charedi world could have had on the army from the inside.
It is not at all "totally normal" that ultra-Orthodox in the Knesset and the government decide that part of my taxes go to ultra-Orthodox who in advance decide not to contribute anything in the field. It is not at all "totally normal" that ultra-Orthodox in the Knesset and the government decide that I serve in the army for years and years, endangering my life and the integrity of my family when the ultra-Orthodox determine in advance that they will not contribute anything in the field. Whoever does this is an anti-democrat and rules Israel and the coalition majority over the minority in the Knesset.
I agree with all of that. I was specifically pushing back on the "are you against Zionism" part. Zionism is typically understood to be an ideology. It's a motte and bailey fallacy: you must be a Zionist, because it's unethical to live in a country and not contribute
Charedim in Israel are openly contemptuous of democracy. I am not sure you understand what democracy is either. democracy is not about exploiting the system for personal gain, with no concern for the common good and compelte lack of loyalty to country, such that you wont even fly the flag, sing the national anthem or celbrate independance day. This is called cynical exploitation of democracy. You cant love the Land for relgious reasons and then refuse to take part in the institutions that allows you to live there. that is a very disfunctional sort of love.
Your definition of democracy is both correct and incorrect. why? Because there is "majority rule" which is different from "democracy". in what? In majority rule, the leaders use power to advance the interests of the majority even if they harm the minority. In a democratic government, the concern must be equal to all voters when the damage is divided equally between the voters of the government and the opposition. For example, a progressive tax table is allowed in a democratic government. But tax relief for the group in power only, is prohibited.
Abortion laws and a democratic state are connected through the lens of individual rights and governance. In a democratic state, the laws and policies are ideally reflective of the will and values of the majority, while also protecting the rights of minorities. The issue of abortion often touches upon deeply held beliefs and values, including religious, ethical, and moral considerations.
In democratic societies, the debate over abortion laws often revolves around the balance between a woman's right to make decisions about her own body and the state's interest in protecting potential life. This debate highlights the tension between individual autonomy and state regulation.
For proponents of abortion rights, laws that restrict access to abortion may be seen as infringing upon women's rights to make choices about their own bodies, and can be viewed as contrary to democratic principles of personal freedom and autonomy.
On the other hand, opponents of abortion may argue that protecting the rights of the unborn aligns with democratic principles of equality and protection of the vulnerable. They may see abortion laws as a way for the state to uphold certain moral or ethical standards within society.
Ultimately, the connection between abortion laws and a democratic state lies in how these laws are formulated and implemented, reflecting the complex interplay between individual rights, societal values, and governmental authority.
First the claim that those who oppose charedim politically and ideological, dont understand their values an dontudnerstand the importance of Torah and TOrah education, is profiundly insulting ands false when it comes to the a very large percentage of non- charedi voters and politicians.
Second do you agree that if done by democratic means, the government has the right to draft charedim, demand that they give basic state mandated secular education and refuse to fund instutions that do not follow government guidlines?
"First the claim that those who oppose charedim politically and ideological, dont understand their values an dontudnerstand the importance of Torah and TOrah education, is profiundly insulting ands false when it comes to the a very large percentage of non- charedi voters and politicians."
Are you saying that those who oppose charedim politically and ideologically, DO understand their values and DO understand the importance of Torah and Torah education, and oppose them anyway?
I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.
For one thing, how could you possibly expect anyone brought up in the secular world to even begin to understand the importance of Torah and Torah education? Where and when would they ever have been exposed to that?
The best (and most self-serving, win-win) thing the charedi political establishment could possibly do, for its own constituents and for the whole nation, is to propose a law whereby the charedi world would universally implement "core studies" in their schools' curricula, in exchange for which the secular school curriculum would return to include basic Jewish education (Torah/Tanach, basic Jewish knowledge, Jewish history before 1880, holidays, etc.). If they were really serious they'd even draft a sample curriculum.
If you don’t want to follow “their rules”, just pontificate your unassailable true-believer prescript — God Is With Us— a pernicious platitude that raises hokum to its proper unfalsifiable rank.
Evangelical Christians are willing (in fact, they are among the most willing) to volunteer to defend America, contribute to civil life, and American's economic future.
My point was that pro life evangelicals are active participants in American civic life and generally do not view themselves as a separate political and religious entity.
I am not sure what your comment has to do with mine.
Ah, heck yes, let's conflate the two. Because not one of us has the means to see into anyone else's soul and to fully comprehend what the other person means by that, or what the Eibishter has led them through which has brought them to that place. Not one. Only Hashem is bochen klayot, Jerry. Not you, not me, not even Rabbi Doctor Slifkin.
All we can judge people by are their actions and habitual behaviors. Mobs of violent, enraged "haredim" = Mobs of violent, enraged Kaplinistas.
Because you think the best way to increase Torah study is to throw government money at the yeshivas without any screening for student suitability or performance, with no transparency regarding where the money goes.
Oh, and you expect my sons and husband to die while haredi "boys" and their rabbanim get my (meager) money for "yeshivot for non-learners". For starters.
Charedim are the biggest Zionists in the country. How do I know? Which group in Israeli society has the highest voting percentage in elections? Which group in Israeli society is the largest net beneficiary of govt benefits versus tax paid? Which group is the largest net beneficiary of security provided by the state versus contributions of people towards it?
If Dovid Kornreich really believes what he says he should join the ranks of the Neturei Karta that refuse to vote in elections or take govt benefits and encourage his community to do the same. Funnily enough, it's his Rabbonim who encourage their followers to do the exact opposite. That's why the rest of Israeli society have so little respect for them and he has no credibility. Is integrity one of those things that charedim have no use for like the state of Israel?
He clearly already belongs to Neturei Karta, and doesn’t have to join.
Note that the Agudah were signatories to the Declaration of Independence (R”Itche Meir Levin). In 1937 R’Moshe Blau, of the Palestinian Agudah and the leader of the Old Yishuv, participated in the St James’ “Roundtable Conference’ in London, together with Chaim Weizmann, and declared Haredi support for the Balfour Declaration. After the rise of Hitler to power, Haredi opposition to the Zionist movement essentially melted away. Plus, of course, R’Yoel Teitelbaum was happy to avail himself of the services of the Zionist movement to escape from Europe on the Kasztner train. Only when he was safely in Brooklyn (after first trying to ‘make it’ in postwar Jerusalem) did he turn on Zionism and the Jewish State. Roughly equivalent to someone who is rescued from a burning house and then campaigns to ban the Fire Service. Kornreich, of course, has ‘form’ as a leading campaigner against the Zoo Rabbi……
Kornreich's points are that chareidim don't need the Zionist state, as chareidim live just fine in many other parts of the world. In addition, he claims they disagree with the ideas and goals of Zionism, which is secular Jewish sovereignty. In addition, he claims that terrorism is the Zionist's fault, and so chareidim shouldn't have to serve to clean up the Zionist's mess. I think most chareidim would disagree with the last point, and would agree with the first two, but consider them irrelevant to the question of the draft. But your main counterargument is about how wonderful Zionism was 75, 80, 90 years ago, how it and it alone saved thousands of Jewish lives, and all the chareidi ancestors would have died if not for Zionism. These are all completely unprovable counterfactuals and are very nice if you want to believe them, but won't convince anybody not already convinced and are in any case irrelevant.
Also, your part IV is false. "The victory and rule of the Hasmoneans is regarded highly positively, even though most of them were not even religious!" - Anybody who has said על הניסים would know this is not true, the celebration is טמאים ביד טהורים, רשעים ביד צדיקים, זדים ביד עוסקי תורתיך. The exact opposite of the secular Zionists, who can be better compared to the Hellenists.
as for all hanisim- I dont know where anyone Got the idea that the maccabim were not frum. But what are you saying, if God miraculously saves not frum Jews and even save JEws through the agency of not frum Jews, it not a miracle? We dont need to thank God? The arrogance of the charedi worldview is that they think they can dictate to God how He should save us. bottom line is, we do live and proseper in the Land as result of the vast labour and sacrifceof largely non frum Jews,. The Torah demands we show hakaras hatov- just the Torah demands we show hakaras hatove to the Egyptians for living there all these years! If all of this is so problematic to you theologically than the only moral and intellectual honest response would be to refuse to live in the State of Israel and benefit from it. fortunately, since 1993 it has also been the Will of God that we no longer controll large areas of Eretz Yisroel. You could move to Shechem.
We barely hear even minimla expressions of hakaras hatov such as this from Isralei charedi leadership. A number of years back, a leading magid shiur at the Mir, publicly stated that the community cannot teach hakaras hatov to the state and the army, becuase it would undermine the values of the absolute suprmacy of Talmud Torah. In either event, how do you think such hakaros hatov should beexpressed? Do you think charedim in Israel should mark Yom Hazikaron and Yom haatatmaut as part of harkarat hatov to the State and the Army?
1. Hakaras hatov had nothing to do with the halachic question of saying Hallel. Also recognizing the Yom haatzmaus has become synonymous with ideologies we disagree with. And we don't believe that this is called geula until iyH it becomes such. A secular state is galus.
2. I strongly disagree with that person from the mir.
There is more generous assistance in the US then in Israel. But regardless, the availability of the government dole doesn't make or brake the charedim.
I know lots of charedim in the US. They are all working. Many have advanced degrees from universities. The men do learn every day. But so do I. I also never served in the military. Am I charedi? Or have the charedim in New York City beem broken?
Because the charedy community in Israel is entirely dependant on Government support. In the states as well, many chasidic communites are welfare sinkholes. In Lakewood, many families are dependanet on Government aid to one degree or another, obtained legitimately or otherwise. Charedi poverty in the US is a very real and signifcant issue.
And R. Slifkin's point about the Hasmoneans has a good source - the Rambam in Hilchos Chanukah 3:1:
וגברו בני חשמונאי הכוהנים הגדולים, והרגום והושיעו ישראל מידם; והעמידו מלך מן הכוהנים, וחזרה מלכות לישראל יתר על מאתיים שנה
The Hasmoneans were not paragons of Torah virtue for a large part of that "over two hundred years", and yet the Rambam refers to the malchus yisrael aspect positively.
R. Yoel Katan (editor of HaMaayan) makes this point nicely here:
I don't think that's a good diyuk in the Rambam at all. The Rambam is not explaining with that line why we celebrate Chanukah, which was already instituted before the Chashmonaim turned wicked. There is no hint that he is trying to tell us that Jewish sovereignty of wicked reshaim is positive. To the contrary, the sovereignty of wicked Jews led to the churban of both the bayis rishon and bayis sheini. If there is something positive about the wicked Jewish kings, it's that they were not as bad as the wicked Hellenist kings.
Of course the Rambam sees מלכות לישראל in a positive context. Otherwise he wouldn't have added the words וחזרה מלכות לישראל יתר על מאתיים שנה, and certainly not the last four words.
Not at all. The Rambam is telling us history for context. But obviously the reason for the celebration of Chanukah, which is the main subject, has nothing to do with חזרה מלכות לישראל יתר על מאתיים שנה. And certainly there is no implication from the Rambam that wicked Jewish kings are something positive, which is what Slifkin is trying to say, absurdly.
If the Rambam didn't see malchus returning to yisrael for over two centuries in a positive light, he wouldn't have mentioned it here. The context is something positive happening.
I don't see that as a strong diyuk at all. He is giving historical context. The context is the history surrounding the events of Chanukah. Maybe you are right that Jewish sovereignty is good, but only when we use it positively. I don't see the Rambam saying that sovereignty of wicked kings is good, that's just totally unwarranted.
Answer the question. Why do we need historical context if it's irrelevant to הלכה? And if it relevant to Halacha, how is it relevant? How would have הלכה been different had the dynasty not existed, but the יונים remained as rulers allowing religious autonomy?
"How would have הלכה been different had the dynasty not existed, but the יונים remained as rulers allowing religious autonomy?"
Oh, finally a different question. This is a question on you also. What halacha would have been different the יונים remained as rulers allowing religious autonomy? Your answer is... nothing... but the Rambam wouldn't have been able to randomly insert a line praising secular Zionism. Great pshat, dude.
Plenty of Israelis "could live just fine in many other parts of the world". But the fact is that they are in Israel, and a Jewish state in Israel, which the Charedim are part of and benefit from, requires military defence. Whether bnei Torah should be involved in that defence is another question.
"as chareidim live just fine in many other parts of the world."
Chareidim live fine in many other parts of the world precisely because of the existence of Israel. The nations of the world know that we have 'a home'. Homeless people are 'bullied'. People who have a home, even elsewhere, are significantly 'stronger'. Without Israel, worldwide anti-semitism will be much higher.
I appreciate you, with your black and white textual view of the world, may not have clue what I am talking about, 'safely' ensconced in Lakewood or wherever. And no, I cannot 'prove' any of the above.
How do you know it is 'bad' speculation? On what grounds? Even l'shitoseich that it is speculation (as opposed to being based on human nature), maybe it is just 'speculation'?
עד שריחם עליהן אלהי אבותינו והושיעם מידם, וגברו בני חשמונאי הכהנים הגדולים והרגום, והושיעו ישראל מידם, והעמידו מלך מן הכהנים, וחזרה מלכות לישראל יתר על מאתים שנים עד החורבן השני:
The Rambam clearly states that the Jewish rule for over 200 years was a very good thing from hashem even though many of those kings were not very religious and some even anti religious. Jewish sovereignty is a good thing.
As I said above, this is not a good diyuk at all and makes no sense in the context of the Rambam. The Rambam is giving us historical context into the Chanukah miracle.
Nope. He sees the defeat of the Greeks as a good thing. He certainly doesn't see wicked Jewish things as a good thing. According to you that the Rambam is celebrating wicked Jewish kings, that definitely has nothing to do with the Chanukah miracle. According to me, he is giving historical context into who this dynasty of Cohanim who defeated the Greeks and purified the Bais Hamikdash were.
That is just silly. The Rambam doesn’t just give historical context like that. He says that because it’s part of the נס חנוכה that Jewish sovereignty was returned to the land of Israel for a long period of time.
the ideas and goals of Zionism, which is secular Jewish sovereignty. - That is an outdated, narrow definition of Zionism which is not accurate at this time.
It's just not true, so it is important. Zionism of 100 or 50 years ago is not the same as in 2024. It's a new metziyus. Chareidim in the Knesset, Chief Rabbi's, Dati L'umi communities, etc etc
Come on, 75, 80, 90.years ago, secular Zionism was a new and untried cause, and tainted with Socialism, the god that failed. But these overworked, bossy people were uncommonly willing to work hard and to sacrifice their lives and comfort for the Jewish people, and they managed to keep more of them alive in the physical world to be able to ascend to more spiritual realms. You are jealous of their success and their physical sacrifice, and that's why you hate them, plus, it's pretty difficult for you not to benefit from the fruits of their labors, which you could not have achieved.
The land was sparsely populated, the zionists had to buy it, which consequently drove them into relatively empty parts of the territory, and much of the Arab population was attracted to Israel by the economic opportunity created by Zionism.
The case for the morality of Zionist settlement is overhelming. The high level arguments you are doing here do not justice to the detailed historic reality. Bravery, ingenuity, and generosity. More than ever, light for the nations.
This is actually a debunked historical narrative rejected even by right wing Zionist historians, The was no great influx of Arabs after the arrival of the Zionists. the is zero evidence for this. The msot likely explantion for the groth of the Arab population in this period is that unlike the Jews, they had a very high rate of reporduction in the first decades of the 20th century.
Apart from the immigration, yes, the local population growth also came from the early demographic transition resulting from Zionist induced development.
It's important to some irrelevant moralistic debate. It's not relevant to whether Zionism was a smart idea. The Arab population was going to expand by the 1900s anyway. Indeed, even if you are right it's still completely irrelevant unless the Zionists weren't planning on economically developing the country.
It is important because the Zionist settled a relatively un-populated country by mostly peaceful means. Israel in the 1948 borders is an entirely legitimate enterprise.
In the 1967 borders, is a different issue. In my view, the Palestine state does not exist because of Palestinian decisions, so I cannot condemn the current occupation, but in terms of legitimacy, the core state (1948 borders) is among the most legitimate states in word history. Statehood is never clean, but in comparative terms, Israel is among the best.
It’s not horrifying at all to see such a view expressed in The Times of Israel by someone who is a product of a popular yeshiva for Anglos.
Rather, it's gratifying, as he says out loud the part that's usually kept quiet (when speaking to outsiders -- including parents who send their children to said yeshivos and seminaries) but well-known among those who are insiders..
Thank You R' Kornreich and thank you to other haredi spokespersons who have done the same.
Much better than the smiley pseudo-intellectual kiruv that deflects one's attention from what the speaker actually believes.
Not a source of pride, but a source of information. Showing one's true colors.
Most fascinating to me (from psychological perspective) was how Kornreich could have thought that publishing this in The Times of Israel would make people more sympathetic to his beliefs, rather than less so.
One of the criteria I use (kind of subconsciously) for evaluating posts/arguments is - how much of the post is allocated to labeling the other guy and his arguments with negative adjectives rather than just making your argument, aka "name calling" or "ad hominem argumentation."
In Slifkin's post I count:
1. "Now here’s a post that I wasn’t expecting to have to write."
2. "which many will find shocking"
3. "Incredibly, in his opposition to Zionism..."
4. " It’s horrifying to see such a view expressed in The Times of Israel ...
5. "Rabbi Kornreich’s accusations of the existence of Israel being responsible for Jewish suffering and deaths are ridiculous as well as sickening"
6. "The idea that Jews around the world are suffering because of Israel is incredibly naive."
7. "All of the above shows why Rabbi Kornreich’s alleged justification for charedi non-participation in the IDF is ill-informed and immoral."
8. "It’s tragic that a rabbi who has been studying Torah in yeshivah for thirty years does not grasp any of this."
In Pinni Dunner's article I count:
1. "Kornreich’s article is a “word salad” – nothing more, nothing less. The confusion and lack of constructive direction in his arguments is beyond obvious, while the high-handed conviction of their accuracy only makes it worse. His perspective, while claiming to represent a principled stand ingrained in Haredi ideology, is first-and-foremost remarkably self-serving."
2. "is jaw-dropping in its self-serving navel-gazing superficiality."
3. "Using tired anti-Zionist mantras to prop up an indefensible objection to military service may make Dovid Kornreich feel good ..."
In Kornreich's article I found no such name-calling or ad hominem characterizations - which doesn't mean Kornreich is correct ...
Rashi (I forget the source) says on "eilu v'eilu divrei elokim chaim" not that both views are correct, but that both antagonists were "liban l'shomayim," i.e., their only desire was to discover the truth ... I personally find it harder to view an author who uses name-calling as a way of making his points to be liban l'shomayim
Although I also prefer more even-keeled writing in argumentative pieces, I don’t think this is a fair analysis here.
Rabbi Kornreich was setting out a worldview, while the others were criticizing his piece. It’s easy to avoid negative characterizations when one is not writing a work of criticism. Critical essays are by definition attempting to carry a negative light on the other side; negative characterizations therefore logically follow.
Also, none of the Rabbi Slifkin quotations you supply are examples of either name-calling (which is calling one’s interlocutor an unflattering name) or ad hominem arguments (which is arguing that the interlocutor is bad and therefore his argument is faulty). They are expressions of outrage about (starting from number 3) his opposition, his view, his accusations, his idea, his alleged justification, etc. - not about him.
I'm just now noticing that Korenreich refers to them as "yeshiva *boys*", which is telling on a bunch of levels.
One thing I find absolutely hilarious is that Kornreich *voluntarily made aliyah*, thus placing himself, nebach, in the situation of having to benefit from the State. It must keep him up at night.
You can go to the land as a tourist if you are aloud but you can't enjoy the benefits of zionism without the burden. This is a basic morality principle even by Charedi standards.
The whole "Zionism" debate is a red herring. Very few people who are true philosophical Zionists these days. It would actually be helpful if the term were retired altogether.
The point is (and this is what most people mean when the say support "Zionism" - certainly non-Jews), using the normal standards of morality and geopolitics Israel has a right to exist. Except for the woke self-haters in the West, no one cares about the "original sins" of any other country in the world.
It is beyond disgusting that the same Chareidim who challenge Israel's right to exist squeal like pigs when their free handouts are taken away by the State of Israel. At least Satmar is consistent. Cut off the money and security protection from Toras Moshe and see how fast they go into hysterics like little children. Dovid Kornreich is a fool.
To start off: I think it’s highly relevant (and something that R’ Slifkin points out), that this is coming from someone on the extreme end of the Charedi spectrum (close to Satmar, Brisk, Neturei Karta, and Eida Charedis). Therefore, it doesn’t full represent the mainstream Chareidi viewpoint.
In general, for a very good scholarly book on the various religious viewpoints towards Zionism, see Aviezer Ravitzky's “Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism” (https://www.amazon.com/Messianism-Zionism-Religious-Radicalism-Chicago/dp/0226705781). It was published in 1996, but it’s still very relevant. It’s much better than 99% of the culture war rhetoric that exists today. Here’s the blurb, from Amazon:
“
The Orthodox Jewish tradition affirms that Jewish exile will end with the coming of the Messiah. How, then, does Orthodoxy respond to the political realization of a Jewish homeland that is the State of Israel? In this cogent and searching study, Aviezer Ravitzky probes Orthodoxy's divergent positions on Zionism, which range from radical condemnation to virtual beatification.
Ravitzky traces the roots of Haredi ideology, which opposes the Zionist enterprise, and shows how Haredim living in Israel have come to terms with a state to them unholy and therefore doomed. Ravitzky also examines radical religious movements, including the Gush Emunim, to whom the State of Israel is a divine agent. He concludes with a discussion of the recent transformation of Habad Hassidism from conservatism to radical messianism.
“
I agree with one of the commenters that a lot of R’ Slifkin’s defense of Israel is based on supposing even-worse counterfactuals, and supposed knowledge (by early Zionist leaders) of even-worse counterfactuals. And these counterfactuals are not clearly correct.
Contrary to what R’ Slifkin claims, almost no one, including Zionists, foresaw any of the following:
1) the Holocaust (except for maybe Jabotinsky)
2) The Arabs (whether inside the Jewish state, or outside of it) causing so many issue for a Jewish state
3) The existence of a Jewish state causing violence against native Jewish populations in Arab countries
Additional comments:
(Bolding mine:)
>"Yes, there was a problem of the large Arab population. But most Zionist leaders figured that, one way or another, some sort of political accommodation/ compromise would be worked out. They knew that the Arabs would not be happy about the Jews arriving in large numbers, but what choice did the Jews have? It was either that or be slaughtered in Europe [...] We had to flee to the Land of Israel in large numbers."
These lines have a strong hindsight bias, no Zionist (besides maybe Jabotinsky) foresaw the Holocaust.
>"Rabbi Kornreich’s accusations of the existence of Israel being responsible for Jewish suffering and deaths are ridiculous as well as sickening. First of all, while Zionism creates a new framework for antisemitism, antisemitism has always existed in one form or another and always will. The idea that Jews around the world are suffering because of Israel is incredibly naive."
Just because anti-semitism always existed, doesn't mean that the existence of Israel didn't exacerbate its manifestation greatly. For example, anti-semitism is obviously less of an issue in 21st-century US than it was in Nazi Germany.
>"many hundreds of thousands or even millions more would have ended up suffering or killed in Russia, perhaps as cannon fodder for Putin’s war today."
This is 70 years later, many Russian Jews left Russia, especially in the 1990s. Also, it's mostly people in the Russian periphery who are in the Russian army. Jews are mostly in greater Moscow, and people in greater Moscow are barely affected by the war.
>"While the 1948 war did result in Jews being driven out of Muslim countries, their lives there would hardly have been stable otherwise. How many tens or hundreds of thousands would have died in various Arab conflicts? What would have happened to the Jews of Iraq, of Iran, of Yemen, of Libya, of Syria, of Egypt?"
Likely not so many. Jews would have left for the US, in the same way that most of the Iranian Jewish community left after the Revolution there in the 1970s.
Finally, a comment on R’ Dunner’s piece, linked in R' Slifkin's post: “Zionism” can have a wide range of meanings in actual discourse, like many such terms. R’ Kornreich’s usage of Zionism to mean “proud believer in a functionally-secular Jewish state” (roughly equivalent to “a patriotic American”) is not unreasonable
Since we are on counter-factuals, here's one to ponder. After 1948, the Jewish population of Lebanon increased because at the time it was a pretty swell place to live. Presumably, if there was no Israel, Jews would have gone to Lebanon when things got rough in Iraq, Syria etc.. Perhaps, the combination of Jews arriving and Palestinians not arriving would have allowed Maronites to hold on to power and preserved the France of the Middle East as a center of the sanity and civilization in this turd of a region.
But the point is that no-one knows or will ever know. What we do know is that the Zionist plan failed.
1) Jewish immigrants did not demographically overwhelm the local Arab population.
2) The surrounding Arabs did not just get over it and agree to cooperate
3) The immense resources spent buying and developing EY only to end up a minority in the country in 1947 could have been used to bribe countries around the world to take in Jews saving literally millions of lives.
I think there's lots to admire about the OG Zionists, not least their admirable commitment to not whining endlessly, all the time. Contemporary Zionists could learn a lot from them. But their project was a pretty zany and was based on assumptions that proved wrong.
Some failure - Israel's population is 10x higher than when it was founded. Its GDP per capita is higher than much of Westem Europe, and far above that of its neighbours. Its life expectancy is 15th highest in the world and it comes 5th in the latest global happiness rankings (2nd for young people). Sure it has plenty of problems, but your perspective is cartoonishly jaundiced.
The original plan failed. The backup plan (I won't intervene here in the debate about when and how this plan was formed) of kicking 800,000 Arabs out of their homes and being a permanent militarised state went OK I guess. People quite like militarism as long as its kept in proportion. But the wheels do appear to be coming off at the moment. Maybe someone will figure out a way to sort things out, but given the precipitous collapse of human capital, it's hard to see how.
You think there wern't many attempts to bribe countries around the world to take in Jews? Antisemitism was so high in the 1930s that even with financial incentives, no country was interested in taking in Jews. There was never anywhere that was going to take in so many Jews that "millions of lives" could have been saved.
Not only that but once that money was used up, Jews would once again have nowhere to go if they were forced out. But Israel and the law of return has ensured that all Jews have somewhere to go since 1948 without relying on trying to bribe the high reliable goyim who we can be sure would have agreed to take in the Jews for money.
There have been two large waves of immigration to Israel. The first was from Arab countries and wouldn't even have happened if not for Zionism. The second was from the Soviet Union and we know they had somewhere to go because Yitzchak Shamir lobbied the U.S. government to not let them.
Jews are not going to be forced out of America or any other first world country. There are problems with 3rd world immigration for sure, but everybody shares these problems and the solution is pretty simple (stop it). The only real problems diaspora Jews have are spillovers from the Israel-Palestine war. Sure, some completely unexpected thing could happen to make everything turn to s**t, but it's a lot more likely that will happen in Israel. It might already be happening.
Absolutely! The technical achievements of the Zionists truly place them among the greats of human history.
The problem is that because the basic assumptions behind the project were all wrong, each tactical success just set up bigger problems down the line.
- The successful establishment of the Yishuv under very trying conditions led to Palestinian nationalism.
- Victory in the war of 1947- 48 led to the creation of nearly a million permanently radicalised refugees. an essentially limitless source of recruits for irredentist militias.
- Victory in 1967 placed a large proportion of this population under military occupation, stimulating the development of ever more depraved and difficult-to-control forms of terrorism.
But it's even worse than that because while each iteration of this story creates harder problems to solve, Israel's human capital is crashing. Regardless of where you fall on the nature-nurture spectrum is doesn't matter because dysgenic breeding patterns are out of control *and* the education system is one big car crash. So now we have sabich-brain colonels going rogue and murdering friendly aid workers for no discernible reason. It's not at all clear how to get out of this hole, but the first step is to stop digging, which means admitting Zionism is dumb.
"Dysgenic breeding patterns"? The opposite! The tiny Ashkenazi gene pool is the cause of many genetic diseases, not to mention bland food and overcooked vegetables and boring music.
Typical self-loathing Right Wing Zionist. Really gross. Don't run crying when your kid gets beaten up for the 50th time by Yossi in the playground and the school doesn't do anything.
My daughter, I am ultra-Orthodox, went to a neighborhood that I am opposed to her going there. Therefore, after she was kidnapped and raped every day, I don't interfere even if they finally kill her. She is to blame and has to fend for herself.
If this is the Jewish halacha of the ultra-Orthodox, then it is worth garbage. If this is the Jewish morality of the ultra-Orthodox, then crows are better than them. If this is the feeling of the father of the ultra-Orthodox, then every gentile in the world is better than them.
While counteractuals are impossible to prove, some commenters here are bending over backwards to assume that the all the Jews in the DP camps and across the Middle East would have been just fine without Israel, which is hardly obvious.
It is clear that a large proportion of Jews in the DP camps desired to move to Palestine, which factored into UNSCOP's partition plan recommendation.
What is also clear is that many of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were in Palestine during WW2 would otherwise have been in Europe, with all that that entailed. Zionism saved many of their lives.
From a religious perspective, a comparison of diaspora Jewry beyond the Orthodox community with its Israeli counterpart is instructive, whether in terms of intermarriage rates or marking Shabbat and chagim.
"He introduces it by noting that he’s not claiming to be representing anyone else’s views."
As the product of decades of sworn allegiance to דעת תורה he's gone rogue and is spouting his own בעל הבתישע opinions. His own opinions? Pardon the echo, but these are not his own opinions just copy and pasted tropes- a kind of knowledge that is a sure indicator of ignorance. For example, someone who mentions Herzl's first scheme to end Jew hated & nothing after, is not is not in possession of some sophisticated knowledge- but deep ignorance. DK's ignorance is so abysmal that his list of Zionist crimes ends some 70 years ago! Can't he do better? And what's the deal with including anti-British violence and pro-British collaboration in the same list?
But the most despicable part of the column was the part where he insists that Hamas poses no existential threat. This indifference to the suffering of his people is inexcusable. It's morally bankrupt and should be placed alongside the false condolences of the "friends" of איוב. (Never mind that it's anti-Halachic: even קש ותבן can be a casus belli.) The only significance he attributes to the Hamas attack is the failures of the IDF. And he starts the paragraph with his assessment that it's a "blessed reality"- a harsh dissonance with his earlier citation of Rav Chaim Soloveitchik about the high value "of a single Jewish life".
"Where were the Jews going to go? There weren’t a lot of options, although several were explored. After 1924, America was severely restricting immigration. Various options were explored in Uganda, Tasmania, Angola and elsewhere, and none proved feasible. Palestine, which at that time was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, was not only the natural choice based on our historical roots, but also pretty much the only viable choice. "
The fact that the other options had problems, doesn't mean the Zionist option wins by default. Had the incredibly high prices paid for the land in EY plus the enormous amount of organisation and lobbying that went into it been put into other options they would have become just as 'viable'. The only reason why EY won over the other options is because it was the only Schelling Point (Google it) which enough Jews could agree on, but this does not mean it was the best option.
"Yes, there was a problem of the large Arab population. But most Zionist leaders figured that, one way or another, some sort of political accommodation/ compromise would be worked out."
Clearly, then, they were wrong. When the facts change you change your mind.
" And they were very happy to avail themselves of Zionist assistance to do so."
Kind of a moot point since the Zionists refused to allot permits to religious Jews and lobbied to take the permits allotted to the Aguda (by the way, I don't even have a problem with this per se, but that's the reality).
"And many hundreds of thousands or even millions more would have ended up suffering or killed in Russia, perhaps as cannon fodder for Putin’s war today."
They would be in America or Western Europe, and there would be basically no anti-semitism, since 99% of anti-semitism is Israel related.
"Rabbi Kornreich’s accusations of the existence of Israel being responsible for Jewish suffering and deaths are ridiculous as well as sickening. First of all, while Zionism creates a new framework for antisemitism, antisemitism has always existed in one form or another and always will."
This is the same excuse made by Charedim who run welfare fraud schemes. The reality is that anti-Semitism goes up and down based on numerous different factors. It went down sharply after US victory in WW2. The upwards trend today is because of Israel.
"While the 1948 war did result in Jews being driven out of Muslim countries, their lives there would hardly have been stable otherwise. How many tens or hundreds of thousands would have died in various Arab conflicts? What would have happened to the Jews of Iraq, of Iran, of Yemen, of Libya, of Syria, of Egypt?"
The smart ones would be living in LA and the others would be in the Middle East. Not the end of the world. Have you walked around Afula recently? Not much better than Baghdad.
"It’s tragic that a rabbi who has been studying Torah in yeshivah for thirty years does not grasp any of this. "
Obviously, all the rishonim and acharonim who did literally nothing to create a Jewish state in EY except praying just didn't understand Judaism until Herzl explained it them. QED.
It goes up and down. Some periods and places have been good for Jews and some have been bad. In every case, you can identify historical factors that have caused relations to get better or worse. (Of course, if you are religious, you see anti-semitism as punishment from G-d, but that's an act of faith not a historical argument). The contingent reason for increase of anti-semitism *today in Western Europe and the United States* after a long period of very good treatment is opposition to Israel. This is so even if you think opposition to Israel is completely unjustified. To claim that there would be massive rallies across western cities against Jews in the absence of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is simply absurd.
David Nirenberg is a subversive left winger and a bad person (but I repeat myself) who wants to argue that western civilization is inherently evil and deserving of being dismantled because of its innate bigotry against Jews. It's disheartening to see a right wing nationalist in a right wing nationalist country citing him in support of his paranoid worldview, but hardly surprising.
" To claim that there would be massive rallies across western cities against Jews in the absence of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is simply absurd. "
There's plenty of hatred of individual Jews who are anti-Zionist but nevertheless are affiliated with groups/ideas that are met with massive rallies. Consider Soros. Or Jews with some connection to WEF. Or Hollywood/media. Consider all the Christian Zionists who are passionately opposed to the left. Were it not for Israel, these people would have no Jews to love.
Silly comparison. Of course living in Iraq or Syria would be worse for Jews over decades than a one-off horrific massacre and the occasional terror attack. Life expectancy in Israel is well above elsewhere in the Middle East, for a start.
Not all of the Middle East is that bad. Morocco isn't for a start and the Jews who remain are a lot better off than Moroccan Jews in Israel. Of course, the Jews of Iraq would have to have gone to America or something.
I know some Egyptian Jews whose parents went to London after Suez. They live in a 7 bedroom house in Hampstead. I guess they must be really kicking themselves that they didn't go to the ONLY SAFE HAVEN FOR JEWS.
Um, Israel was the best option because Jews had been praying to return to Israel for 2,000 years. And because, you know, it's a mitzvah to move to and live in Israel and it's what God wants us to do.
Lots of Rishonim and Acharonim (and Amoraim) worked as hard as they could to actually make aliyah, and large numbers of them succeeded. Do you want a list?
"you know, it's a mitzvah to move to and live in Israel and it's what God wants us to do."
Given the beliefs of the vast majority of Zionists, clearly this is just plain false as an explanation of their motivations.
""Um, Israel was the best option because Jews had been praying to return to Israel for 2,000 years."
That's what I said. It was a Schelling point. But basically for reasons that make no sense. Herzl knew this, but was hobbled by the irrationality of his followers and the propaganda of various poets. Kalman Katzenelson (Google him) wrote well about this.
"Lots of Rishonim and Acharonim (and Amoraim) worked as hard as they could to actually make aliyah, and large numbers of them succeeded. Do you want a list?"
Don't need it thanks. Name one who did anything - literally anything - to establish an independent country.
No one made an attempt to establish an independent country until the last empire to rule the land collapsed. History, you can learn it.
You can also look up the beliefs and practices of the "Zionists" who came to Israel in the 1860's, 1870's, and even beyond. It might shock you out of the charedi propaganda you've been fed since cheder.
"No one made an attempt to establish an independent country until the last empire to rule the land collapsed. History, you can learn it."
Of all the insane cope takes, this must be the most legit retarded.
"You can also look up the beliefs and practices of the "Zionists" who came to Israel in the 1860's, 1870's, and even beyond."
Are you seriously going to claim that the majority of Zionists chose EY because "it's a mitzvah to move to and live in Israel and it's what God wants us to do." I know you are on a mission to be the internet's most blockheaded and deranged hasbaroid, but this is a bit much even for you.
"It might shock you out of the charedi propaganda you've been fed since cheder."
You're asking a question. You should be telling us that you indeed did " look up the beliefs and practices of the "Zionists" who came to Israel in the 1860's, 1870's, and even beyond" and summarize what you found. Asking a question indicates that you don't know what Nachum is talking about.
Nah, he's beyond help. Here's a list of the words he uses in just this one post: "insane cope" (whatever that means), "legit retarded", "blockheaded", "deranged", "hasbaroid", and "dolt".
I remain convinced that every anti-Slifkin troll commenting on his posts is either twelve years old or has the maturity of a twelve year old. And they have no idea what this makes the charedi world look like to normal, polite outsiders.
The correct girsa in Sifrei is והלא ידוע שעשו שונא את יעקוב and it has literally nothing to do with anti-semitism. This is well known and even Horowitz's edition from 100 years ago pointed this out. You are an ignoramous and so are your teachers.
This phrase has been used to express the idea that anti semitism and hatred of the Jews will be around forever by many people much greater then you. Rav Moshe writes (חו"מ חלק ב סי' עז)
צריך לידע שהשנאה לישראל מכל האומות היא גדולה גם ממלכיות שנוהגין בטובה, וכבר אמרתי על הלשון שהביא רש"י בפירוש החומש פ' וישלח (לג, ד) על קרא דוישקהו ארשב"י הלכה היא בידוע שעשו שונא ליעקב דמה שייך זה להלכה, דהוא כמו שהלכה לא משתנית כך שנאת עשו ליעקב לא משתנית דאף אלו שנוהגות באופן טוב שנאתן גדולה בעצם
While it is certainly regrettable and frequently problematic that Charedi gedolim (and, let's be honest, most DL ones too) lack even remedial knowledge of the advances made in establishing accurate editions of Hazalic texts over the past 200 years, they do have the excuse of learning gemoro all day, and being genuinely learned within the sphere of traditional talmudic scholarship. You, on the other hand, are clearly modern enough to comment on an internet forum, so you are also modern enough to use Google and discover this very well known fact. You didn't and accused me of 'denying Chazal' because you are an ignoramous.
I can tell you that the fact that Rashi's reading is not attested in the few MSS that we have hardly proves it "wrong". Question really what do the MSS of Rashi say? If our Rashi is well attested, the fact that Rashi thought this is what the sifrei said, is almost as good evidence as a manuscript.
Yes, you are useless. 'Narrativity' is not a thing. Go do something real.
1) There are six MSS, not 'a few' and all read והלא בידוע, as does Yalkut Shimoni.
2) הלא ביודוע is a attested phrase used in halachic midrashic literature and fits perfectly in this context, whereas הלכה is never used even once in a way that would make any sense at all in this context. (Please resist the urge to say Lectio difficilior potior).
3) Rashi is not a reliable witness to Sifrei for the simple reason that we find numerous examples of messed up girsas of both Sifrei Bemidbar and Devarim frequently among Ashkenazi Rishonim, and often completely fabricated quotations. This is all discussed in the intro Prof. Kehana's critical edition, where this is cited as an example. You should read it maybe and find out what real scholarship is. (I mentioned Horowitz's edition above only because it is widely available - I picked up my copy at Manny's - and thus people who cite this fake girsa as being from Hazal to justify their paranoid victimhood complex are not not merely mistaken but culpably ignorant.)
Insults are the refuge of the insecure. You completely missed the point. This statement of chazal has been used by many gedolim throughout the ages to make the point I made. Whether that is the original meaning of that statement is irrelevant to the discussion. The bottom line is that anti Jewish hatred is understood to be durable and never ending.
"Not the end of the world. Have you walked around Afula recently? Not much better than Baghdad."
Baghdad without its Jews has gone nowhere but downhill, even with petroleum resources. And have you seen Vilna and Galitzia lately?
You Ashki boys aren't nearly as smart as your mothers told you, believe me. And usually not good looking either. Hybrid vigor works much better than inbreeding, as the Amish and the Mormon polygamists can tell you.
No idea what point you are trying to make or what you are addressing. Just seems like random Arutz 7 clichés randomly strung together. Is this LikudGPT?
Not only do you resort to junior high level name calling, but you openly flaunt one of the ugliest and most anti-Torah faults of the Ashkenazi haredi community, their blatant racism against Sfardi Jews.
But that tends to provide its own punishment in a rate of genetic diseases not quite as high as the Arabs (who consider first cousin marriage מהודר), but much higher than any other ethnic groups.
If you think that's bad, you are going to FLIP when you hear what this Ben Gurion guy had to say!
But actually Israel's dysgenic disaster is too serious for jokes. Of course, the headlines are all about the demographic takeover of MENA Jews (not sephardim)* that R***toid cringleords crow about, but the real problem is dysgenics across all groups. The dumb Ashkenazim are outbreeding the smart ones, the dumb sephardim are outbreeding the smart ones, the dumb mizrahim are outbreeding the smart ones, and the dumb mixed population are outbreeding the smarts ones. If you want a sneak peak of what a society looks like after a few generations of selecting for dumbness, take a peak at Gaza. It's not pretty.
*Actual sephardim of genuine Spanish descent are quite rare. The biggest population was Salonika and they all died in the Holocaust.
Good comments, nuanced and well-said. Similar to a comment I made as well. Although I live in Israel and love Israel and am a Zionist, I find the rhetoric supporting it often overblown
Let's get real this is just as excuse. I wonder how many herideim, yeshiva crowd would be willing to be drafted (if they had one) the the USA army or any other country.i am sure he would come up with another excuse.
Are you against Zionism? So don't live in the Zionist country. Do you want to live in the Holy Land? There is a lot of space in the Palestinian Authority, in Gaza and in southern Lebanon. And if you live here, don't go to the elections, don't sit in the Knesset and certainly not in the government. Do not enjoy the funds of the Zionist state and its services: social security, property tax discounts, public transportation and more; Health, police, fire department, social service and more. Roads, electricity, water, gas, internet, communication and more.
Come on, that critique missed the mark. It's totally normal to live in a country while disagreeing with some of its core beliefs. In any big, diverse nation, people will have different takes on its history and values.
We're complex creatures with loyalties to all sorts of groups - family, hometown, religion, ethnicity, you name it. Someone can feel deeply rooted in their country's culture and history while still taking issue with parts of its politics or worldview. That's not a contradiction.
Plus, a nation's founding principles aren't set in stone - they change through debate between different groups in society. Minorities play a key role in challenging the status quo. Just look at the civil rights movement in the US - those activists called out the country's hypocrisy on equality, and they were no less American for it.
Sure, if someone totally rejects the state's right to exist, that's dicier. But we should be careful about telling folks to get out over political disagreements. Dissent coming from a place of commitment is valuable. There's a balance between protecting national unity and allowing minority views.
For haredim in Israel, many see themselves as part of the eternal Jewish presence there, even if they're critical of Zionism. Their bond to the land goes way beyond the current political debate. Boiling that down to just citizenship misses the bigger picture.
Disagree with some of its core beliefs all you want. (You think Religious Zionist soldiers don't disagree with many aspects of secular Zionism?) That doesn't absolve you in any way from your duties as a citizen, which include army (or other national) service.
A nation's founding principles are indeed not set in stone. Israel today is hardly the ideological twin of that of its founding generation. But despite having had much influence on its transformation over the years, the charedi world insists that Israel indeed remains set in the ideological stone of 1948, and uses that as an excuse not to serve. Which is so unfortunate, given how much more influence the charedi world could have had on the army from the inside.
Agreed
It is not at all "totally normal" that ultra-Orthodox in the Knesset and the government decide that part of my taxes go to ultra-Orthodox who in advance decide not to contribute anything in the field. It is not at all "totally normal" that ultra-Orthodox in the Knesset and the government decide that I serve in the army for years and years, endangering my life and the integrity of my family when the ultra-Orthodox determine in advance that they will not contribute anything in the field. Whoever does this is an anti-democrat and rules Israel and the coalition majority over the minority in the Knesset.
I agree with all of that. I was specifically pushing back on the "are you against Zionism" part. Zionism is typically understood to be an ideology. It's a motte and bailey fallacy: you must be a Zionist, because it's unethical to live in a country and not contribute
Let's not conflate political (secular) Zionism to loving the land for religious reasons.
Otherwise, welcome to democracy.
Charedim in Israel are openly contemptuous of democracy. I am not sure you understand what democracy is either. democracy is not about exploiting the system for personal gain, with no concern for the common good and compelte lack of loyalty to country, such that you wont even fly the flag, sing the national anthem or celbrate independance day. This is called cynical exploitation of democracy. You cant love the Land for relgious reasons and then refuse to take part in the institutions that allows you to live there. that is a very disfunctional sort of love.
We *are* taking part in it. By learning and doing mitzvos and keeping His laws. Now I welcome you to Charedi Judaism.
And you're wrong about democracy. See my post https://irrationalistmodoxism.substack.com/p/chareidim-in-a-democracy
Your definition of democracy is both correct and incorrect. why? Because there is "majority rule" which is different from "democracy". in what? In majority rule, the leaders use power to advance the interests of the majority even if they harm the minority. In a democratic government, the concern must be equal to all voters when the damage is divided equally between the voters of the government and the opposition. For example, a progressive tax table is allowed in a democratic government. But tax relief for the group in power only, is prohibited.
Important distinction, true. But it this example: Are abortion rights good for all or bad for all?
Abortion laws and a democratic state are connected through the lens of individual rights and governance. In a democratic state, the laws and policies are ideally reflective of the will and values of the majority, while also protecting the rights of minorities. The issue of abortion often touches upon deeply held beliefs and values, including religious, ethical, and moral considerations.
In democratic societies, the debate over abortion laws often revolves around the balance between a woman's right to make decisions about her own body and the state's interest in protecting potential life. This debate highlights the tension between individual autonomy and state regulation.
For proponents of abortion rights, laws that restrict access to abortion may be seen as infringing upon women's rights to make choices about their own bodies, and can be viewed as contrary to democratic principles of personal freedom and autonomy.
On the other hand, opponents of abortion may argue that protecting the rights of the unborn aligns with democratic principles of equality and protection of the vulnerable. They may see abortion laws as a way for the state to uphold certain moral or ethical standards within society.
Ultimately, the connection between abortion laws and a democratic state lies in how these laws are formulated and implemented, reflecting the complex interplay between individual rights, societal values, and governmental authority.
First the claim that those who oppose charedim politically and ideological, dont understand their values an dontudnerstand the importance of Torah and TOrah education, is profiundly insulting ands false when it comes to the a very large percentage of non- charedi voters and politicians.
Second do you agree that if done by democratic means, the government has the right to draft charedim, demand that they give basic state mandated secular education and refuse to fund instutions that do not follow government guidlines?
"First the claim that those who oppose charedim politically and ideological, dont understand their values an dontudnerstand the importance of Torah and TOrah education, is profiundly insulting ands false when it comes to the a very large percentage of non- charedi voters and politicians."
Are you saying that those who oppose charedim politically and ideologically, DO understand their values and DO understand the importance of Torah and Torah education, and oppose them anyway?
I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.
For one thing, how could you possibly expect anyone brought up in the secular world to even begin to understand the importance of Torah and Torah education? Where and when would they ever have been exposed to that?
The best (and most self-serving, win-win) thing the charedi political establishment could possibly do, for its own constituents and for the whole nation, is to propose a law whereby the charedi world would universally implement "core studies" in their schools' curricula, in exchange for which the secular school curriculum would return to include basic Jewish education (Torah/Tanach, basic Jewish knowledge, Jewish history before 1880, holidays, etc.). If they were really serious they'd even draft a sample curriculum.
Exactly!!!!!
The right? Sure!
The next time you get called up to jury duty, say, "Welcome to democracy" and see if they let you go.
Nothing to do with anything. A better example would be Christian's fighting against abortion in America from an atheist's perspective
Um, no, it isn't. You live in a place, you follow its rules. Yechezkel says that about "galut*, kal v'chomer about a Jewish state.
We don't follow their rules when they are against God's. Let's therefore debate the point and not these side things once again
@Jerry S.
What an asinine , self serving, smug response.
If you don’t want to follow “their rules”, just pontificate your unassailable true-believer prescript — God Is With Us— a pernicious platitude that raises hokum to its proper unfalsifiable rank.
Where have we heard that before?
what Israeli rules are against Gd's?
Evangelical Christians are willing (in fact, they are among the most willing) to volunteer to defend America, contribute to civil life, and American's economic future.
Is your problem that there are too many Charedim?
My point was that pro life evangelicals are active participants in American civic life and generally do not view themselves as a separate political and religious entity.
I am not sure what your comment has to do with mine.
Ah, heck yes, let's conflate the two. Because not one of us has the means to see into anyone else's soul and to fully comprehend what the other person means by that, or what the Eibishter has led them through which has brought them to that place. Not one. Only Hashem is bochen klayot, Jerry. Not you, not me, not even Rabbi Doctor Slifkin.
All we can judge people by are their actions and habitual behaviors. Mobs of violent, enraged "haredim" = Mobs of violent, enraged Kaplinistas.
Right all Charedim are angry hafgana-crazies. Our actions are absolutely clear
For the tenth time, not all haredim support the full time learning for all paradigm, let alone go out wilding.
As don't I. So what are we arguing about exactly?
Because you think the best way to increase Torah study is to throw government money at the yeshivas without any screening for student suitability or performance, with no transparency regarding where the money goes.
Oh, and you expect my sons and husband to die while haredi "boys" and their rabbanim get my (meager) money for "yeshivot for non-learners". For starters.
Charedim are the biggest Zionists in the country. How do I know? Which group in Israeli society has the highest voting percentage in elections? Which group in Israeli society is the largest net beneficiary of govt benefits versus tax paid? Which group is the largest net beneficiary of security provided by the state versus contributions of people towards it?
If Dovid Kornreich really believes what he says he should join the ranks of the Neturei Karta that refuse to vote in elections or take govt benefits and encourage his community to do the same. Funnily enough, it's his Rabbonim who encourage their followers to do the exact opposite. That's why the rest of Israeli society have so little respect for them and he has no credibility. Is integrity one of those things that charedim have no use for like the state of Israel?
It's not just government benefits. Anyone living in Israel benefits from the government every time they put their shoe on the sidewalk.
or breath the air.
He clearly already belongs to Neturei Karta, and doesn’t have to join.
Note that the Agudah were signatories to the Declaration of Independence (R”Itche Meir Levin). In 1937 R’Moshe Blau, of the Palestinian Agudah and the leader of the Old Yishuv, participated in the St James’ “Roundtable Conference’ in London, together with Chaim Weizmann, and declared Haredi support for the Balfour Declaration. After the rise of Hitler to power, Haredi opposition to the Zionist movement essentially melted away. Plus, of course, R’Yoel Teitelbaum was happy to avail himself of the services of the Zionist movement to escape from Europe on the Kasztner train. Only when he was safely in Brooklyn (after first trying to ‘make it’ in postwar Jerusalem) did he turn on Zionism and the Jewish State. Roughly equivalent to someone who is rescued from a burning house and then campaigns to ban the Fire Service. Kornreich, of course, has ‘form’ as a leading campaigner against the Zoo Rabbi……
"Charedim are the biggest Zionists in the country..."
The relationship you describe- which is motivated by mundane expediency, implies that they are secular Zionists.
Kornreich's points are that chareidim don't need the Zionist state, as chareidim live just fine in many other parts of the world. In addition, he claims they disagree with the ideas and goals of Zionism, which is secular Jewish sovereignty. In addition, he claims that terrorism is the Zionist's fault, and so chareidim shouldn't have to serve to clean up the Zionist's mess. I think most chareidim would disagree with the last point, and would agree with the first two, but consider them irrelevant to the question of the draft. But your main counterargument is about how wonderful Zionism was 75, 80, 90 years ago, how it and it alone saved thousands of Jewish lives, and all the chareidi ancestors would have died if not for Zionism. These are all completely unprovable counterfactuals and are very nice if you want to believe them, but won't convince anybody not already convinced and are in any case irrelevant.
Also, your part IV is false. "The victory and rule of the Hasmoneans is regarded highly positively, even though most of them were not even religious!" - Anybody who has said על הניסים would know this is not true, the celebration is טמאים ביד טהורים, רשעים ביד צדיקים, זדים ביד עוסקי תורתיך. The exact opposite of the secular Zionists, who can be better compared to the Hellenists.
"These are all completely unprovable "
You really are in denial, aren't you.
Uh, ok. Do you have something of substance to add?
you clearly dont have anything of substance.
as for all hanisim- I dont know where anyone Got the idea that the maccabim were not frum. But what are you saying, if God miraculously saves not frum Jews and even save JEws through the agency of not frum Jews, it not a miracle? We dont need to thank God? The arrogance of the charedi worldview is that they think they can dictate to God how He should save us. bottom line is, we do live and proseper in the Land as result of the vast labour and sacrifceof largely non frum Jews,. The Torah demands we show hakaras hatov- just the Torah demands we show hakaras hatove to the Egyptians for living there all these years! If all of this is so problematic to you theologically than the only moral and intellectual honest response would be to refuse to live in the State of Israel and benefit from it. fortunately, since 1993 it has also been the Will of God that we no longer controll large areas of Eretz Yisroel. You could move to Shechem.
https://irrationalistmodoxism.substack.com/p/the-gratitude-attitude
We barely hear even minimla expressions of hakaras hatov such as this from Isralei charedi leadership. A number of years back, a leading magid shiur at the Mir, publicly stated that the community cannot teach hakaras hatov to the state and the army, becuase it would undermine the values of the absolute suprmacy of Talmud Torah. In either event, how do you think such hakaros hatov should beexpressed? Do you think charedim in Israel should mark Yom Hazikaron and Yom haatatmaut as part of harkarat hatov to the State and the Army?
1. Hakaras hatov had nothing to do with the halachic question of saying Hallel. Also recognizing the Yom haatzmaus has become synonymous with ideologies we disagree with. And we don't believe that this is called geula until iyH it becomes such. A secular state is galus.
2. I strongly disagree with that person from the mir.
I agree we should show hakaras hatov to the secular Zionists, just like we do to Egyptians.
We that should at mean that chareidim should accept a halakha of לא תתעב ציוני. R. Kornreich clearly rejects such a din.
"chareidim live just fine in many other parts of the world."
Not on the government dole.
There is more generous assistance in the US then in Israel. But regardless, the availability of the government dole doesn't make or brake the charedim.
I know lots of charedim in the US. They are all working. Many have advanced degrees from universities. The men do learn every day. But so do I. I also never served in the military. Am I charedi? Or have the charedim in New York City beem broken?
you ignorance of the the economics of the charedi community in the US and Israel is staggering.
What makes you say that?
Because the charedy community in Israel is entirely dependant on Government support. In the states as well, many chasidic communites are welfare sinkholes. In Lakewood, many families are dependanet on Government aid to one degree or another, obtained legitimately or otherwise. Charedi poverty in the US is a very real and signifcant issue.
I think university professors, especially in the useless field of "Talmudic studies" are much bigger welfare sinkholes.
Why is it an issue if its self-imposed?
If the funds are cut off, people will adapt. I think it would be beneficial for the charedi society, but it is not likely to happen soon.
But it would break them here.
Brake?
As in stop or slow down. Or it could be a typo.
Or a lack of education.
And R. Slifkin's point about the Hasmoneans has a good source - the Rambam in Hilchos Chanukah 3:1:
וגברו בני חשמונאי הכוהנים הגדולים, והרגום והושיעו ישראל מידם; והעמידו מלך מן הכוהנים, וחזרה מלכות לישראל יתר על מאתיים שנה
The Hasmoneans were not paragons of Torah virtue for a large part of that "over two hundred years", and yet the Rambam refers to the malchus yisrael aspect positively.
R. Yoel Katan (editor of HaMaayan) makes this point nicely here:
https://www.machonso.org/hamaayan/?gilayon=16&id=757
I don't think that's a good diyuk in the Rambam at all. The Rambam is not explaining with that line why we celebrate Chanukah, which was already instituted before the Chashmonaim turned wicked. There is no hint that he is trying to tell us that Jewish sovereignty of wicked reshaim is positive. To the contrary, the sovereignty of wicked Jews led to the churban of both the bayis rishon and bayis sheini. If there is something positive about the wicked Jewish kings, it's that they were not as bad as the wicked Hellenist kings.
Of course the Rambam sees מלכות לישראל in a positive context. Otherwise he wouldn't have added the words וחזרה מלכות לישראל יתר על מאתיים שנה, and certainly not the last four words.
Not at all. The Rambam is telling us history for context. But obviously the reason for the celebration of Chanukah, which is the main subject, has nothing to do with חזרה מלכות לישראל יתר על מאתיים שנה. And certainly there is no implication from the Rambam that wicked Jewish kings are something positive, which is what Slifkin is trying to say, absurdly.
If the Rambam didn't see malchus returning to yisrael for over two centuries in a positive light, he wouldn't have mentioned it here. The context is something positive happening.
I don't see that as a strong diyuk at all. He is giving historical context. The context is the history surrounding the events of Chanukah. Maybe you are right that Jewish sovereignty is good, but only when we use it positively. I don't see the Rambam saying that sovereignty of wicked kings is good, that's just totally unwarranted.
"The Rambam is telling us history for context. "
What context would be missing if he didn't tell us?
https://www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/yes-we-needed-israel/comment/53085884
"The Rambam is not explaining with that line why we celebrate Chanukah,"
Then why does he mention it? Why does he mention anything of the history at all?
"If there is something positive about the wicked Jewish kings, it's that they were not as bad as the wicked Hellenist kings."
So you're celebrating יום העצמעות this year? I'm not saying you should go so far as not to say תחנון- I mean maybe skip the sackcloth this year.
Why do you ask the same question three times? What would be missing if you asked it once?
Irrelevant.
Answer the question. Why do we need historical context if it's irrelevant to הלכה? And if it relevant to Halacha, how is it relevant? How would have הלכה been different had the dynasty not existed, but the יונים remained as rulers allowing religious autonomy?
Why do you ask the same question three times? What would be missing if you asked it once?
"How would have הלכה been different had the dynasty not existed, but the יונים remained as rulers allowing religious autonomy?"
Oh, finally a different question. This is a question on you also. What halacha would have been different the יונים remained as rulers allowing religious autonomy? Your answer is... nothing... but the Rambam wouldn't have been able to randomly insert a line praising secular Zionism. Great pshat, dude.
Plenty of Israelis "could live just fine in many other parts of the world". But the fact is that they are in Israel, and a Jewish state in Israel, which the Charedim are part of and benefit from, requires military defence. Whether bnei Torah should be involved in that defence is another question.
"as chareidim live just fine in many other parts of the world."
Chareidim live fine in many other parts of the world precisely because of the existence of Israel. The nations of the world know that we have 'a home'. Homeless people are 'bullied'. People who have a home, even elsewhere, are significantly 'stronger'. Without Israel, worldwide anti-semitism will be much higher.
I appreciate you, with your black and white textual view of the world, may not have clue what I am talking about, 'safely' ensconced in Lakewood or wherever. And no, I cannot 'prove' any of the above.
Sorry, this is total speculation, and bad speculation at that.
How do you know it is 'bad' speculation? On what grounds? Even l'shitoseich that it is speculation (as opposed to being based on human nature), maybe it is just 'speculation'?
Read the Rambam 3:1 hilchos Megilla vchanuka
עד שריחם עליהן אלהי אבותינו והושיעם מידם, וגברו בני חשמונאי הכהנים הגדולים והרגום, והושיעו ישראל מידם, והעמידו מלך מן הכהנים, וחזרה מלכות לישראל יתר על מאתים שנים עד החורבן השני:
The Rambam clearly states that the Jewish rule for over 200 years was a very good thing from hashem even though many of those kings were not very religious and some even anti religious. Jewish sovereignty is a good thing.
As I said above, this is not a good diyuk at all and makes no sense in the context of the Rambam. The Rambam is giving us historical context into the Chanukah miracle.
And yet it is clear from the Rambam that he sees that fact as a good thing.
Why else would the Rambam mention that? It has nothing to do with the actual chanuka miracle.
Nope. He sees the defeat of the Greeks as a good thing. He certainly doesn't see wicked Jewish things as a good thing. According to you that the Rambam is celebrating wicked Jewish kings, that definitely has nothing to do with the Chanukah miracle. According to me, he is giving historical context into who this dynasty of Cohanim who defeated the Greeks and purified the Bais Hamikdash were.
That is just silly. The Rambam doesn’t just give historical context like that. He says that because it’s part of the נס חנוכה that Jewish sovereignty was returned to the land of Israel for a long period of time.
That makes no sense. He is explaining why they instituted Chanukah, and the reason is because of something 200 years after they instituted Chanukah?
the ideas and goals of Zionism, which is secular Jewish sovereignty. - That is an outdated, narrow definition of Zionism which is not accurate at this time.
I'm pretty sure that's the one Kornreich is going with. Not going to debate semantics.
It's just not true, so it is important. Zionism of 100 or 50 years ago is not the same as in 2024. It's a new metziyus. Chareidim in the Knesset, Chief Rabbi's, Dati L'umi communities, etc etc
"Anybody who has said על הניסים would know this is not true, the celebration is טמאים ביד טהורים, רשעים ביד צדיקים, זדים ביד עוסקי תורתיך."
So you're saying '48 and '67 were bigger miracles?
Huh?
There were צדיקים who served in '48. If they were fewer than during חנוכה, the miracle in '48 was greater according to your standard.
Do you even know what you are saying? If you have a question, ask it straight out. I'm not interested in reading your word salads.
Come on, 75, 80, 90.years ago, secular Zionism was a new and untried cause, and tainted with Socialism, the god that failed. But these overworked, bossy people were uncommonly willing to work hard and to sacrifice their lives and comfort for the Jewish people, and they managed to keep more of them alive in the physical world to be able to ascend to more spiritual realms. You are jealous of their success and their physical sacrifice, and that's why you hate them, plus, it's pretty difficult for you not to benefit from the fruits of their labors, which you could not have achieved.
The land was sparsely populated, the zionists had to buy it, which consequently drove them into relatively empty parts of the territory, and much of the Arab population was attracted to Israel by the economic opportunity created by Zionism.
The case for the morality of Zionist settlement is overhelming. The high level arguments you are doing here do not justice to the detailed historic reality. Bravery, ingenuity, and generosity. More than ever, light for the nations.
This is actually a debunked historical narrative rejected even by right wing Zionist historians, The was no great influx of Arabs after the arrival of the Zionists. the is zero evidence for this. The msot likely explantion for the groth of the Arab population in this period is that unlike the Jews, they had a very high rate of reporduction in the first decades of the 20th century.
It is well known among economic historians:
https://www.meforum.org/522/the-smoking-gun-arab-immigration-into-palestine
Apart from the immigration, yes, the local population growth also came from the early demographic transition resulting from Zionist induced development.
I guess the Zionists must have induced population growth in every other Middle Eastern then too, and the whole 3rd world for that matter.
The “early” is the important word there.
It's important to some irrelevant moralistic debate. It's not relevant to whether Zionism was a smart idea. The Arab population was going to expand by the 1900s anyway. Indeed, even if you are right it's still completely irrelevant unless the Zionists weren't planning on economically developing the country.
It is important because the Zionist settled a relatively un-populated country by mostly peaceful means. Israel in the 1948 borders is an entirely legitimate enterprise.
In the 1967 borders, is a different issue. In my view, the Palestine state does not exist because of Palestinian decisions, so I cannot condemn the current occupation, but in terms of legitimacy, the core state (1948 borders) is among the most legitimate states in word history. Statehood is never clean, but in comparative terms, Israel is among the best.
The Peel Commission report is "zero evidence"?
it talks about massive Arab immigration? could you send me a link?
It’s not horrifying at all to see such a view expressed in The Times of Israel by someone who is a product of a popular yeshiva for Anglos.
Rather, it's gratifying, as he says out loud the part that's usually kept quiet (when speaking to outsiders -- including parents who send their children to said yeshivos and seminaries) but well-known among those who are insiders..
Thank You R' Kornreich and thank you to other haredi spokespersons who have done the same.
Much better than the smiley pseudo-intellectual kiruv that deflects one's attention from what the speaker actually believes.
So, תוכו כברו, just in the wrong direction. What a source of pride.
Not a source of pride, but a source of information. Showing one's true colors.
Most fascinating to me (from psychological perspective) was how Kornreich could have thought that publishing this in The Times of Israel would make people more sympathetic to his beliefs, rather than less so.
One of the criteria I use (kind of subconsciously) for evaluating posts/arguments is - how much of the post is allocated to labeling the other guy and his arguments with negative adjectives rather than just making your argument, aka "name calling" or "ad hominem argumentation."
In Slifkin's post I count:
1. "Now here’s a post that I wasn’t expecting to have to write."
2. "which many will find shocking"
3. "Incredibly, in his opposition to Zionism..."
4. " It’s horrifying to see such a view expressed in The Times of Israel ...
5. "Rabbi Kornreich’s accusations of the existence of Israel being responsible for Jewish suffering and deaths are ridiculous as well as sickening"
6. "The idea that Jews around the world are suffering because of Israel is incredibly naive."
7. "All of the above shows why Rabbi Kornreich’s alleged justification for charedi non-participation in the IDF is ill-informed and immoral."
8. "It’s tragic that a rabbi who has been studying Torah in yeshivah for thirty years does not grasp any of this."
In Pinni Dunner's article I count:
1. "Kornreich’s article is a “word salad” – nothing more, nothing less. The confusion and lack of constructive direction in his arguments is beyond obvious, while the high-handed conviction of their accuracy only makes it worse. His perspective, while claiming to represent a principled stand ingrained in Haredi ideology, is first-and-foremost remarkably self-serving."
2. "is jaw-dropping in its self-serving navel-gazing superficiality."
3. "Using tired anti-Zionist mantras to prop up an indefensible objection to military service may make Dovid Kornreich feel good ..."
In Kornreich's article I found no such name-calling or ad hominem characterizations - which doesn't mean Kornreich is correct ...
Rashi (I forget the source) says on "eilu v'eilu divrei elokim chaim" not that both views are correct, but that both antagonists were "liban l'shomayim," i.e., their only desire was to discover the truth ... I personally find it harder to view an author who uses name-calling as a way of making his points to be liban l'shomayim
Although I also prefer more even-keeled writing in argumentative pieces, I don’t think this is a fair analysis here.
Rabbi Kornreich was setting out a worldview, while the others were criticizing his piece. It’s easy to avoid negative characterizations when one is not writing a work of criticism. Critical essays are by definition attempting to carry a negative light on the other side; negative characterizations therefore logically follow.
Also, none of the Rabbi Slifkin quotations you supply are examples of either name-calling (which is calling one’s interlocutor an unflattering name) or ad hominem arguments (which is arguing that the interlocutor is bad and therefore his argument is faulty). They are expressions of outrage about (starting from number 3) his opposition, his view, his accusations, his idea, his alleged justification, etc. - not about him.
I'm just now noticing that Korenreich refers to them as "yeshiva *boys*", which is telling on a bunch of levels.
One thing I find absolutely hilarious is that Kornreich *voluntarily made aliyah*, thus placing himself, nebach, in the situation of having to benefit from the State. It must keep him up at night.
You can go to the land as a tourist if you are aloud but you can't enjoy the benefits of zionism without the burden. This is a basic morality principle even by Charedi standards.
The whole "Zionism" debate is a red herring. Very few people who are true philosophical Zionists these days. It would actually be helpful if the term were retired altogether.
The point is (and this is what most people mean when the say support "Zionism" - certainly non-Jews), using the normal standards of morality and geopolitics Israel has a right to exist. Except for the woke self-haters in the West, no one cares about the "original sins" of any other country in the world.
It is beyond disgusting that the same Chareidim who challenge Israel's right to exist squeal like pigs when their free handouts are taken away by the State of Israel. At least Satmar is consistent. Cut off the money and security protection from Toras Moshe and see how fast they go into hysterics like little children. Dovid Kornreich is a fool.
To start off: I think it’s highly relevant (and something that R’ Slifkin points out), that this is coming from someone on the extreme end of the Charedi spectrum (close to Satmar, Brisk, Neturei Karta, and Eida Charedis). Therefore, it doesn’t full represent the mainstream Chareidi viewpoint.
In general, for a very good scholarly book on the various religious viewpoints towards Zionism, see Aviezer Ravitzky's “Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism” (https://www.amazon.com/Messianism-Zionism-Religious-Radicalism-Chicago/dp/0226705781). It was published in 1996, but it’s still very relevant. It’s much better than 99% of the culture war rhetoric that exists today. Here’s the blurb, from Amazon:
“
The Orthodox Jewish tradition affirms that Jewish exile will end with the coming of the Messiah. How, then, does Orthodoxy respond to the political realization of a Jewish homeland that is the State of Israel? In this cogent and searching study, Aviezer Ravitzky probes Orthodoxy's divergent positions on Zionism, which range from radical condemnation to virtual beatification.
Ravitzky traces the roots of Haredi ideology, which opposes the Zionist enterprise, and shows how Haredim living in Israel have come to terms with a state to them unholy and therefore doomed. Ravitzky also examines radical religious movements, including the Gush Emunim, to whom the State of Israel is a divine agent. He concludes with a discussion of the recent transformation of Habad Hassidism from conservatism to radical messianism.
“
I agree with one of the commenters that a lot of R’ Slifkin’s defense of Israel is based on supposing even-worse counterfactuals, and supposed knowledge (by early Zionist leaders) of even-worse counterfactuals. And these counterfactuals are not clearly correct.
Contrary to what R’ Slifkin claims, almost no one, including Zionists, foresaw any of the following:
1) the Holocaust (except for maybe Jabotinsky)
2) The Arabs (whether inside the Jewish state, or outside of it) causing so many issue for a Jewish state
3) The existence of a Jewish state causing violence against native Jewish populations in Arab countries
Additional comments:
(Bolding mine:)
>"Yes, there was a problem of the large Arab population. But most Zionist leaders figured that, one way or another, some sort of political accommodation/ compromise would be worked out. They knew that the Arabs would not be happy about the Jews arriving in large numbers, but what choice did the Jews have? It was either that or be slaughtered in Europe [...] We had to flee to the Land of Israel in large numbers."
These lines have a strong hindsight bias, no Zionist (besides maybe Jabotinsky) foresaw the Holocaust.
>"Rabbi Kornreich’s accusations of the existence of Israel being responsible for Jewish suffering and deaths are ridiculous as well as sickening. First of all, while Zionism creates a new framework for antisemitism, antisemitism has always existed in one form or another and always will. The idea that Jews around the world are suffering because of Israel is incredibly naive."
Just because anti-semitism always existed, doesn't mean that the existence of Israel didn't exacerbate its manifestation greatly. For example, anti-semitism is obviously less of an issue in 21st-century US than it was in Nazi Germany.
>"many hundreds of thousands or even millions more would have ended up suffering or killed in Russia, perhaps as cannon fodder for Putin’s war today."
This is 70 years later, many Russian Jews left Russia, especially in the 1990s. Also, it's mostly people in the Russian periphery who are in the Russian army. Jews are mostly in greater Moscow, and people in greater Moscow are barely affected by the war.
>"While the 1948 war did result in Jews being driven out of Muslim countries, their lives there would hardly have been stable otherwise. How many tens or hundreds of thousands would have died in various Arab conflicts? What would have happened to the Jews of Iraq, of Iran, of Yemen, of Libya, of Syria, of Egypt?"
Likely not so many. Jews would have left for the US, in the same way that most of the Iranian Jewish community left after the Revolution there in the 1970s.
Finally, a comment on R’ Dunner’s piece, linked in R' Slifkin's post: “Zionism” can have a wide range of meanings in actual discourse, like many such terms. R’ Kornreich’s usage of Zionism to mean “proud believer in a functionally-secular Jewish state” (roughly equivalent to “a patriotic American”) is not unreasonable
Since we are on counter-factuals, here's one to ponder. After 1948, the Jewish population of Lebanon increased because at the time it was a pretty swell place to live. Presumably, if there was no Israel, Jews would have gone to Lebanon when things got rough in Iraq, Syria etc.. Perhaps, the combination of Jews arriving and Palestinians not arriving would have allowed Maronites to hold on to power and preserved the France of the Middle East as a center of the sanity and civilization in this turd of a region.
But the point is that no-one knows or will ever know. What we do know is that the Zionist plan failed.
1) Jewish immigrants did not demographically overwhelm the local Arab population.
2) The surrounding Arabs did not just get over it and agree to cooperate
3) The immense resources spent buying and developing EY only to end up a minority in the country in 1947 could have been used to bribe countries around the world to take in Jews saving literally millions of lives.
I think there's lots to admire about the OG Zionists, not least their admirable commitment to not whining endlessly, all the time. Contemporary Zionists could learn a lot from them. But their project was a pretty zany and was based on assumptions that proved wrong.
Some failure - Israel's population is 10x higher than when it was founded. Its GDP per capita is higher than much of Westem Europe, and far above that of its neighbours. Its life expectancy is 15th highest in the world and it comes 5th in the latest global happiness rankings (2nd for young people). Sure it has plenty of problems, but your perspective is cartoonishly jaundiced.
The original plan failed. The backup plan (I won't intervene here in the debate about when and how this plan was formed) of kicking 800,000 Arabs out of their homes and being a permanent militarised state went OK I guess. People quite like militarism as long as its kept in proportion. But the wheels do appear to be coming off at the moment. Maybe someone will figure out a way to sort things out, but given the precipitous collapse of human capital, it's hard to see how.
You sound like you read Richard Hanania. Am I right?
Of course, everyone does. But I'm not a Hananiac or anything.
You think there wern't many attempts to bribe countries around the world to take in Jews? Antisemitism was so high in the 1930s that even with financial incentives, no country was interested in taking in Jews. There was never anywhere that was going to take in so many Jews that "millions of lives" could have been saved.
Not only that but once that money was used up, Jews would once again have nowhere to go if they were forced out. But Israel and the law of return has ensured that all Jews have somewhere to go since 1948 without relying on trying to bribe the high reliable goyim who we can be sure would have agreed to take in the Jews for money.
There have been two large waves of immigration to Israel. The first was from Arab countries and wouldn't even have happened if not for Zionism. The second was from the Soviet Union and we know they had somewhere to go because Yitzchak Shamir lobbied the U.S. government to not let them.
Jews are not going to be forced out of America or any other first world country. There are problems with 3rd world immigration for sure, but everybody shares these problems and the solution is pretty simple (stop it). The only real problems diaspora Jews have are spillovers from the Israel-Palestine war. Sure, some completely unexpected thing could happen to make everything turn to s**t, but it's a lot more likely that will happen in Israel. It might already be happening.
Pretty impressive sucesses given how zany it was.
Absolutely! The technical achievements of the Zionists truly place them among the greats of human history.
The problem is that because the basic assumptions behind the project were all wrong, each tactical success just set up bigger problems down the line.
- The successful establishment of the Yishuv under very trying conditions led to Palestinian nationalism.
- Victory in the war of 1947- 48 led to the creation of nearly a million permanently radicalised refugees. an essentially limitless source of recruits for irredentist militias.
- Victory in 1967 placed a large proportion of this population under military occupation, stimulating the development of ever more depraved and difficult-to-control forms of terrorism.
But it's even worse than that because while each iteration of this story creates harder problems to solve, Israel's human capital is crashing. Regardless of where you fall on the nature-nurture spectrum is doesn't matter because dysgenic breeding patterns are out of control *and* the education system is one big car crash. So now we have sabich-brain colonels going rogue and murdering friendly aid workers for no discernible reason. It's not at all clear how to get out of this hole, but the first step is to stop digging, which means admitting Zionism is dumb.
"Dysgenic breeding patterns"? The opposite! The tiny Ashkenazi gene pool is the cause of many genetic diseases, not to mention bland food and overcooked vegetables and boring music.
Typical self-loathing Right Wing Zionist. Really gross. Don't run crying when your kid gets beaten up for the 50th time by Yossi in the playground and the school doesn't do anything.
My kids? My *daughter* sent a male playground bully home in tears.
My daughter, I am ultra-Orthodox, went to a neighborhood that I am opposed to her going there. Therefore, after she was kidnapped and raped every day, I don't interfere even if they finally kill her. She is to blame and has to fend for herself.
If this is the Jewish halacha of the ultra-Orthodox, then it is worth garbage. If this is the Jewish morality of the ultra-Orthodox, then crows are better than them. If this is the feeling of the father of the ultra-Orthodox, then every gentile in the world is better than them.
A comment worthy of a Slifkin's follower
While counteractuals are impossible to prove, some commenters here are bending over backwards to assume that the all the Jews in the DP camps and across the Middle East would have been just fine without Israel, which is hardly obvious.
It is clear that a large proportion of Jews in the DP camps desired to move to Palestine, which factored into UNSCOP's partition plan recommendation.
What is also clear is that many of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were in Palestine during WW2 would otherwise have been in Europe, with all that that entailed. Zionism saved many of their lives.
From a religious perspective, a comparison of diaspora Jewry beyond the Orthodox community with its Israeli counterpart is instructive, whether in terms of intermarriage rates or marking Shabbat and chagim.
"He introduces it by noting that he’s not claiming to be representing anyone else’s views."
As the product of decades of sworn allegiance to דעת תורה he's gone rogue and is spouting his own בעל הבתישע opinions. His own opinions? Pardon the echo, but these are not his own opinions just copy and pasted tropes- a kind of knowledge that is a sure indicator of ignorance. For example, someone who mentions Herzl's first scheme to end Jew hated & nothing after, is not is not in possession of some sophisticated knowledge- but deep ignorance. DK's ignorance is so abysmal that his list of Zionist crimes ends some 70 years ago! Can't he do better? And what's the deal with including anti-British violence and pro-British collaboration in the same list?
But the most despicable part of the column was the part where he insists that Hamas poses no existential threat. This indifference to the suffering of his people is inexcusable. It's morally bankrupt and should be placed alongside the false condolences of the "friends" of איוב. (Never mind that it's anti-Halachic: even קש ותבן can be a casus belli.) The only significance he attributes to the Hamas attack is the failures of the IDF. And he starts the paragraph with his assessment that it's a "blessed reality"- a harsh dissonance with his earlier citation of Rav Chaim Soloveitchik about the high value "of a single Jewish life".
Well said. The trope I love the best, by the way, is when they refer to "Mizrachi" Jews. Sort of the way American charedim refer to "Young Israel."
"Where were the Jews going to go? There weren’t a lot of options, although several were explored. After 1924, America was severely restricting immigration. Various options were explored in Uganda, Tasmania, Angola and elsewhere, and none proved feasible. Palestine, which at that time was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, was not only the natural choice based on our historical roots, but also pretty much the only viable choice. "
The fact that the other options had problems, doesn't mean the Zionist option wins by default. Had the incredibly high prices paid for the land in EY plus the enormous amount of organisation and lobbying that went into it been put into other options they would have become just as 'viable'. The only reason why EY won over the other options is because it was the only Schelling Point (Google it) which enough Jews could agree on, but this does not mean it was the best option.
"Yes, there was a problem of the large Arab population. But most Zionist leaders figured that, one way or another, some sort of political accommodation/ compromise would be worked out."
Clearly, then, they were wrong. When the facts change you change your mind.
" And they were very happy to avail themselves of Zionist assistance to do so."
Kind of a moot point since the Zionists refused to allot permits to religious Jews and lobbied to take the permits allotted to the Aguda (by the way, I don't even have a problem with this per se, but that's the reality).
"And many hundreds of thousands or even millions more would have ended up suffering or killed in Russia, perhaps as cannon fodder for Putin’s war today."
They would be in America or Western Europe, and there would be basically no anti-semitism, since 99% of anti-semitism is Israel related.
"Rabbi Kornreich’s accusations of the existence of Israel being responsible for Jewish suffering and deaths are ridiculous as well as sickening. First of all, while Zionism creates a new framework for antisemitism, antisemitism has always existed in one form or another and always will."
This is the same excuse made by Charedim who run welfare fraud schemes. The reality is that anti-Semitism goes up and down based on numerous different factors. It went down sharply after US victory in WW2. The upwards trend today is because of Israel.
"While the 1948 war did result in Jews being driven out of Muslim countries, their lives there would hardly have been stable otherwise. How many tens or hundreds of thousands would have died in various Arab conflicts? What would have happened to the Jews of Iraq, of Iran, of Yemen, of Libya, of Syria, of Egypt?"
The smart ones would be living in LA and the others would be in the Middle East. Not the end of the world. Have you walked around Afula recently? Not much better than Baghdad.
"It’s tragic that a rabbi who has been studying Torah in yeshivah for thirty years does not grasp any of this. "
Obviously, all the rishonim and acharonim who did literally nothing to create a Jewish state in EY except praying just didn't understand Judaism until Herzl explained it them. QED.
Antisemitism has thrived for thousands of years in all kinds of societies. The idea that it basically only exists now because of Israel is ridiculous.
https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Judaism-Western-Tradition-David-Nirenberg/dp/0393347915
It goes up and down. Some periods and places have been good for Jews and some have been bad. In every case, you can identify historical factors that have caused relations to get better or worse. (Of course, if you are religious, you see anti-semitism as punishment from G-d, but that's an act of faith not a historical argument). The contingent reason for increase of anti-semitism *today in Western Europe and the United States* after a long period of very good treatment is opposition to Israel. This is so even if you think opposition to Israel is completely unjustified. To claim that there would be massive rallies across western cities against Jews in the absence of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is simply absurd.
David Nirenberg is a subversive left winger and a bad person (but I repeat myself) who wants to argue that western civilization is inherently evil and deserving of being dismantled because of its innate bigotry against Jews. It's disheartening to see a right wing nationalist in a right wing nationalist country citing him in support of his paranoid worldview, but hardly surprising.
" To claim that there would be massive rallies across western cities against Jews in the absence of the Israel-Palestinian conflict is simply absurd. "
There's plenty of hatred of individual Jews who are anti-Zionist but nevertheless are affiliated with groups/ideas that are met with massive rallies. Consider Soros. Or Jews with some connection to WEF. Or Hollywood/media. Consider all the Christian Zionists who are passionately opposed to the left. Were it not for Israel, these people would have no Jews to love.
Ah yes, I'm sure the Jews in the Middle East would be thriving, just like other religious minorities.
Maybe they would mowed down by their hundreds in a music festival by Islamic fundamentalists.
Silly comparison. Of course living in Iraq or Syria would be worse for Jews over decades than a one-off horrific massacre and the occasional terror attack. Life expectancy in Israel is well above elsewhere in the Middle East, for a start.
Not all of the Middle East is that bad. Morocco isn't for a start and the Jews who remain are a lot better off than Moroccan Jews in Israel. Of course, the Jews of Iraq would have to have gone to America or something.
Generally the ones who stay behind are the ones who have a lot of assets.
What is your point? Do they have more assets now they live in a tenement building in Teverya?
Look at how great the Copts in Egypt are doing.
I know some Egyptian Jews whose parents went to London after Suez. They live in a 7 bedroom house in Hampstead. I guess they must be really kicking themselves that they didn't go to the ONLY SAFE HAVEN FOR JEWS.
Um, Israel was the best option because Jews had been praying to return to Israel for 2,000 years. And because, you know, it's a mitzvah to move to and live in Israel and it's what God wants us to do.
Lots of Rishonim and Acharonim (and Amoraim) worked as hard as they could to actually make aliyah, and large numbers of them succeeded. Do you want a list?
"you know, it's a mitzvah to move to and live in Israel and it's what God wants us to do."
Given the beliefs of the vast majority of Zionists, clearly this is just plain false as an explanation of their motivations.
""Um, Israel was the best option because Jews had been praying to return to Israel for 2,000 years."
That's what I said. It was a Schelling point. But basically for reasons that make no sense. Herzl knew this, but was hobbled by the irrationality of his followers and the propaganda of various poets. Kalman Katzenelson (Google him) wrote well about this.
"Lots of Rishonim and Acharonim (and Amoraim) worked as hard as they could to actually make aliyah, and large numbers of them succeeded. Do you want a list?"
Don't need it thanks. Name one who did anything - literally anything - to establish an independent country.
No one made an attempt to establish an independent country until the last empire to rule the land collapsed. History, you can learn it.
You can also look up the beliefs and practices of the "Zionists" who came to Israel in the 1860's, 1870's, and even beyond. It might shock you out of the charedi propaganda you've been fed since cheder.
"No one made an attempt to establish an independent country until the last empire to rule the land collapsed. History, you can learn it."
Of all the insane cope takes, this must be the most legit retarded.
"You can also look up the beliefs and practices of the "Zionists" who came to Israel in the 1860's, 1870's, and even beyond."
Are you seriously going to claim that the majority of Zionists chose EY because "it's a mitzvah to move to and live in Israel and it's what God wants us to do." I know you are on a mission to be the internet's most blockheaded and deranged hasbaroid, but this is a bit much even for you.
"It might shock you out of the charedi propaganda you've been fed since cheder."
I grew up on Zionist propaganda you dolt.
I'm just curious: Did you learn to be so crass and insulting in yeshiva or all on your own?
"Are you seriously going to claim that....?"
You're asking a question. You should be telling us that you indeed did " look up the beliefs and practices of the "Zionists" who came to Israel in the 1860's, 1870's, and even beyond" and summarize what you found. Asking a question indicates that you don't know what Nachum is talking about.
Nachum, can you help MB out?
Nah, he's beyond help. Here's a list of the words he uses in just this one post: "insane cope" (whatever that means), "legit retarded", "blockheaded", "deranged", "hasbaroid", and "dolt".
I remain convinced that every anti-Slifkin troll commenting on his posts is either twelve years old or has the maturity of a twelve year old. And they have no idea what this makes the charedi world look like to normal, polite outsiders.
Seriously, "insane cope".
So you deny chazal who said הלכה היא, בידוע שעשו שונא ליעקב? You really think anti semitism woukd go away if there were no state of Israel?
The correct girsa in Sifrei is והלא ידוע שעשו שונא את יעקוב and it has literally nothing to do with anti-semitism. This is well known and even Horowitz's edition from 100 years ago pointed this out. You are an ignoramous and so are your teachers.
This phrase has been used to express the idea that anti semitism and hatred of the Jews will be around forever by many people much greater then you. Rav Moshe writes (חו"מ חלק ב סי' עז)
צריך לידע שהשנאה לישראל מכל האומות היא גדולה גם ממלכיות שנוהגין בטובה, וכבר אמרתי על הלשון שהביא רש"י בפירוש החומש פ' וישלח (לג, ד) על קרא דוישקהו ארשב"י הלכה היא בידוע שעשו שונא ליעקב דמה שייך זה להלכה, דהוא כמו שהלכה לא משתנית כך שנאת עשו ליעקב לא משתנית דאף אלו שנוהגות באופן טוב שנאתן גדולה בעצם
Do you think Rav Moshe was an ignoramus?
While it is certainly regrettable and frequently problematic that Charedi gedolim (and, let's be honest, most DL ones too) lack even remedial knowledge of the advances made in establishing accurate editions of Hazalic texts over the past 200 years, they do have the excuse of learning gemoro all day, and being genuinely learned within the sphere of traditional talmudic scholarship. You, on the other hand, are clearly modern enough to comment on an internet forum, so you are also modern enough to use Google and discover this very well known fact. You didn't and accused me of 'denying Chazal' because you are an ignoramous.
As a useless professor of "Talmudic Studies"
I can tell you that the fact that Rashi's reading is not attested in the few MSS that we have hardly proves it "wrong". Question really what do the MSS of Rashi say? If our Rashi is well attested, the fact that Rashi thought this is what the sifrei said, is almost as good evidence as a manuscript.
Yes, you are useless. 'Narrativity' is not a thing. Go do something real.
1) There are six MSS, not 'a few' and all read והלא בידוע, as does Yalkut Shimoni.
2) הלא ביודוע is a attested phrase used in halachic midrashic literature and fits perfectly in this context, whereas הלכה is never used even once in a way that would make any sense at all in this context. (Please resist the urge to say Lectio difficilior potior).
3) Rashi is not a reliable witness to Sifrei for the simple reason that we find numerous examples of messed up girsas of both Sifrei Bemidbar and Devarim frequently among Ashkenazi Rishonim, and often completely fabricated quotations. This is all discussed in the intro Prof. Kehana's critical edition, where this is cited as an example. You should read it maybe and find out what real scholarship is. (I mentioned Horowitz's edition above only because it is widely available - I picked up my copy at Manny's - and thus people who cite this fake girsa as being from Hazal to justify their paranoid victimhood complex are not not merely mistaken but culpably ignorant.)
Insults are the refuge of the insecure. You completely missed the point. This statement of chazal has been used by many gedolim throughout the ages to make the point I made. Whether that is the original meaning of that statement is irrelevant to the discussion. The bottom line is that anti Jewish hatred is understood to be durable and never ending.
It's not a statement of Hazal, dipstick.
And the ישמח משה some decades earlier asserted that it's הלא הוא בידוע.
"Not the end of the world. Have you walked around Afula recently? Not much better than Baghdad."
Baghdad without its Jews has gone nowhere but downhill, even with petroleum resources. And have you seen Vilna and Galitzia lately?
You Ashki boys aren't nearly as smart as your mothers told you, believe me. And usually not good looking either. Hybrid vigor works much better than inbreeding, as the Amish and the Mormon polygamists can tell you.
No idea what point you are trying to make or what you are addressing. Just seems like random Arutz 7 clichés randomly strung together. Is this LikudGPT?
Not only do you resort to junior high level name calling, but you openly flaunt one of the ugliest and most anti-Torah faults of the Ashkenazi haredi community, their blatant racism against Sfardi Jews.
But that tends to provide its own punishment in a rate of genetic diseases not quite as high as the Arabs (who consider first cousin marriage מהודר), but much higher than any other ethnic groups.
זיי געזונט!
If you think that's bad, you are going to FLIP when you hear what this Ben Gurion guy had to say!
But actually Israel's dysgenic disaster is too serious for jokes. Of course, the headlines are all about the demographic takeover of MENA Jews (not sephardim)* that R***toid cringleords crow about, but the real problem is dysgenics across all groups. The dumb Ashkenazim are outbreeding the smart ones, the dumb sephardim are outbreeding the smart ones, the dumb mizrahim are outbreeding the smart ones, and the dumb mixed population are outbreeding the smarts ones. If you want a sneak peak of what a society looks like after a few generations of selecting for dumbness, take a peak at Gaza. It's not pretty.
*Actual sephardim of genuine Spanish descent are quite rare. The biggest population was Salonika and they all died in the Holocaust.
I wouldn't know, I haven't heard Arutz 7 in 25 years.
Good comments, nuanced and well-said. Similar to a comment I made as well. Although I live in Israel and love Israel and am a Zionist, I find the rhetoric supporting it often overblown
You should watch the episode of the Simpsons where Bart reconciles Krusty with his father.
Yes but not while having citizenship and living in the land. You can't enjoy the benefits while ignoring the responsibilities.
Let's get real this is just as excuse. I wonder how many herideim, yeshiva crowd would be willing to be drafted (if they had one) the the USA army or any other country.i am sure he would come up with another excuse.