Israel – The New Zionists: Ultra-Orthodoxy Has Effectively Surrendered To The Zionist Idea

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    Health Minister, Yaakov Litzman (L) with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after being sworn as a Health Minister in the plenum hall of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem on September 2, 2015. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90 Israel – WITH ORGANS installed in synagogues, German inserted into prayer books, Jewish scholars disowning the messiah, and Jewish schools teaching history, philosophy and math, a flabbergasted Rabbi Moshe Sofer (1762-1839) ruled: “All that is novel is forbidden from the Torah.”

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    Two centuries on, ultra-Orthodoxy’s resistance of religious change remains as fierce as it was when its revered founder consecrated the slogan that still remains its emblem, rallying cry and mission statement. However, in the war that his successors initiated generations later – the war on Zionism – ultra-Orthodoxy is in the throes of a grand retreat.

    The ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) war was declared the morning after Zionist prophet Theodor Herzl published in 1896 his own mission statement, “The Jewish State,” the platform for the Jews’ political resurrection, which most rabbis rejected as blasphemy.

    On the Hasidic end, Rabbi Sholom Dov Ber Schneersohn (1860-1920) ruled that even if the Zionists had been observant, and “even if there had been room to believe they will achieve their aim,” observant Jews “should not listen to them” because the Talmud forbade the Jews to undo their exile, and a Jew’s hope is that “our redemption will be brought about by God himself.”

    Anti-Hasidic sages went a step further and ordered their followers to boycott Zionism.

    Jews must avoid “connecting with what amounts to religion’s destruction and an obstacle to the house of Israel,” wrote Lithuanian sage Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, while the chief rabbi of Lodz, Eliyahu Meisel, wrote that “anyone with God’s fear in his heart shall distance himself from them [the Zionists], will not walk with them, and will keep his legs from their paths.”

    One hundred and twenty years on, a Hasid is a minister in the Zionist government; thousands of ultra-Orthodox men serve in the Zionist army and a plethora of ultra-Orthodox colleges lead thousands into the Zionist state’s economic beehive and social mainstream.

    Reform Judaism, which also originally opposed Zionism claiming the Jews had already been redeemed when Europe emancipated them, humbly changed its mind after Hitler’s rise to power, and in 1937 formally adopted the Zionist idea.

    Ultra-Orthodoxy delivered no such note of surrender; not after Hitler’s rise to power, not after the Holocaust, not after Israel’s establishment, and not even after the 1967 Six Day War, which other religious Jews interpreted as proof that Zionism was God’s will.

    Addressing his followers in the summer of 1967, Lithuanian-born and Bnei Brak-based Haredi leader Rabbi Elazar Menachem Shach (1899-2001) accused a victory-drunk Israel of having “completely deviated from the manner and the course in which we have walked throughout our exile.”

    Like the rabbis of Herzl’s time, he still saw in Zionism a reincarnation of Judaism’s great messianic trauma, the Shabtai Tzvi affair, when most rabbis accepted a 17th century Ottoman Jew as the messiah only to eventually see him convert to Islam.

    Moreover, Shach resented the very marriage of Jews and power. Recalling longingly the days when the Jews were “one sheep among 70 wolves,” the Haredi sage claimed that the newly warring Jews had suddenly emerged as “the arbiter between the wolves.”

    Alarmed by the euphoria about him, Shach reiterated ultra-Orthodoxy’s original dismissal of the Zionist quest to transform the Jews into an active nation. “Things have turned around,” he said lamentingly, “and the people of Israel enters a situation whereby it is a factor among the nations, and who knows what this situation’s results might be.”

    Unimpressed with Israel’s military victory, he preached, “There is neither redemption nor the beginning of redemption here… we remain in exile, which remains as bitter as it ever was.” The Torah, he noted on another occasion, was given in the desert. “We didn’t have the Land of Israel then, or ‘territories,’ yet we were an eternal nation.”

    That, in brief, was the mindset with which a bloodied, minuscule and humbled Haredi community struggled to build itself in the shadows of the Zionist enterprise that its founders derided as heresy.

    The result would be an improbable journey into a joint future, a political voyage and social odyssey during which Israeli ultra- Orthodoxy grew in numbers, space and sway until its formula of accommodation with the Jewish state became the victim of its own success.

    Numbering hardly 30,000 in 1948, the young Jewish state’s Haredi community was on the defensive – ideologically, socially and politically.

    Ideologically, it had to explain its thinkers’ failure to see the approach of calamity, a rabbinical blindness that contrasted Zionism’s foresight and was morbidly symbolized in the Warsaw Ghetto’s last Seder. Held with the Zionist-led uprising’s fire exchanges already audible outside, the Seder was led by Rabbi Eliezer Meisel, one of the ghetto’s last deportees to Auschwitz and grandson of Rabbi Eliyahu Meisel, who had boycotted Zionism.

    In addition to this moral burden, Israel Orthodoxy had to rehabilitate from the Holocaust’s blow to its demographics and reach an accord with the Jewish state that would somehow help its restoration in the shadows of Zionism’s victory and demands.

    THE HOLOCAUST was explained away as God’s will. “There is an account in all this,” said Shach in a sermon titled “And a Storm Rages.” God, he explained, “conducted a one-on-one account, a long account spanning centuries until the account accumulated to six million Jews, and that is how the Holocaust happened. That is what a Jew should believe, and if a Jew is not wholesome in this faith then he is a heretic.”

    While Zionists, both secular and observant, dismissed this narrative of guilt as escapist and denialist, all ended up saluting ultra-Orthodoxy’s political maneuvering opposite the Jewish state. Launched unassumingly in 1948, it was based on the formula that was revolutionized in 1977 and is now coming undone.

    The undeclared aim was to restore the proverbial ghetto, where thick and tall social walls would keep rabbinical authority unquestioned and modernity’s temptations at bay.

    The key to such social resignation lay in the Jewish state’s leading social welder – the army. If Haredi men joined the army, they might cease to be ultra-Orthodox. If exempted, their distinctiveness would be preserved and, in fact, deepened.

    Haredi rabbis, therefore, met with David Ben-Gurion while the War of Independence was still raging and requested that the IDF not conscript their young men. Hitler, they said, burned Europe’s network of Talmudic academies and they were out to rebuild it. Though himself a deeply secular man, Ben-Gurion was moved by the argument and agreed to grant deferments from military service. He had, however, some conditions.

    First, he extended only 400 deferments, which even in 1948 was but a fraction of one percent of the newborn IDF’s 115,000 conscripts. Second, Ben-Gurion demanded that the undrafted indeed study Torah, as the rabbis said they would.

    It was a modest beginning, memorably animated by Ben-Gurion’s meeting four years later with the ultra-Orthodox leader of the time, Avraham Karelitz, better known as “the Hazon Ish,” or “a man’s vision,” as he titled one of his books of Talmudic exegesis.

    Unlike subsequent meetings between secular and Haredi leaders, that one was not about political horse trading. Initiated by the intellectually curious Ben-Gurion, it was about ideas. “If two camels meet on a narrow path,” said the rabbi, “one burdened with a cargo and the other carrying no cargo, the one without cargo is supposed to make way for the one with the cargo.”

    Borrowed from a Talmudic ruling, the parable’s moral was that those not burdened by the demands of Jewish law should make way for those who choose to bear this burden.

    Though insulted by the comparison, and though later noting that the rabbi had no recipe for a Jewish state’s attitude toward freedom of conscience, Ben-Gurion left intact his deal with the ultra-Orthodox. The ghetto’s slow but steady construction now proceeded unopposed. By 1968, the 400- man quota had doubled, and by 1977, an aggregate 25,000 Haredi men had already avoided full military service since Israel’s establishment.

    This social nucleus of the emerging ghetto incubated in the secluded neighborhoods where the ultra-Orthodox lived with their rabbis close to their schools, yeshivas and shops. This self-segregation was further cemented by the men’s failure to acquire vocations, in line with their commitment to spend their time studying Torah, all of which reduced to a minimum their daily contact with the rest of society.

    Economically, since breadwinning was left to the women, who in turn worked mostly as underpaid teachers, ultra- Orthodox households soon counted among the country’s poorest.

    This formula, of maximum piety alongside minimum livelihood, service and social integration, allowed ultra-Orthodoxy’s growth during the early years. By the Six Day War, major Hasidic groups like Gur and Belz, which were decimated in the Holocaust, were back on their feet, while Shach’s Ponevezh Yeshiva, the Harvard of ultra- Orthodoxy, had already produced a generation of Israel-born Talmudic scholars.

    By the mid-70s, there already were some 200,000 ultra-Orthodox Israelis, representing a more confident community, but still one on the social margins where it might have remained but for a political earthquake that rattled the outside world, and whose many aftershocks included an offer that ultra-Orthodoxy’s politicians could not refuse.

    The earthquake was Labor’s loss of power in 1977, and the offer that came from the winner of that seminal election, the Likud’s Menachem Begin, was as simple as it was sincere: unlimited draft deferments, generous budgets and senior government positions in return for a long-term alliance between ultra-Orthodoxy and the right.

    Ultra-Orthodoxy embraced the deal that became a pillar of the political order, unaware that from the viewpoint of its founders’ war on Zionism it would prove a Faustian bargain.

    The upside, from the Haredi viewpoint, was that what began with an annual 400 draft deferments quickly mushroomed to thousands, while government funds flowed directly into the budgets of yeshivas, seminaries, elementary schools and kindergartens, and assorted tax breaks and incentives helped ultra-Orthodox households increase their available income.

    MOREOVER, THE deal included unprecedented power, highlighted by an ultra- Orthodox politician’s appointment as chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee.

    Hoping to stick to its guns in its war on Zionism, ultra-Orthodoxy avoided taking cabinet positions ‒ benefitting from the Zionist enterprise was one thing; legitimizing and accepting responsibility for its actions was another. And so, the original formula of minimum service for maximum piety made way for what critics now derided as maximum authority for minimum responsibility.

    At the same time, Haredi women were bearing more than twice as many babies as secular women while their households were developing a dependency on the state’s child allowances, which, thanks to formulas concocted by ultra-Orthodox politicians, could reach a monthly $2,000 for a family with 10 kids. This was besides a plethora of budget transfers and tax breaks custom-tailored for Haredi beneficiaries.

    By the turn of the century, the annual number of ultra-Orthodox men avoiding full IDF service had crossed 7,000 ‒ enough to man two combat brigades.

    Besides provoking the middle class, where many felt they were financing a celebration of draft-dodging and voluntary unemployment, this arrangement also perverted the Jewish tradition that, while cherishing lifelong study, had never financed it for more than a select few.

    It was an anomaly that had to explode, and it did.

    The first setback to the formula of 1977 came in 1999, when ultra-Orthodoxy’s political deal fueled the rise of a political party dedicated to this formula’s eradication.

    Led by outspoken journalist Tommy Lapid, it won six Knesset seats that year, and 15 four years later.

    Lapid’s electoral success both expressed and fanned popular anger in the middle class that serves in the army, fuels the economy, pays taxes and feeds the budget that, in his view, ultra-Orthodoxy abused.

    While this electoral dynamic pressured the ghetto walls from outside, economics would pressure them from within following new legislation in 2002.

    With the Treasury fearing that the budget would soon be unable to finance the growing number of non-working Haredi men, a bill written by a public panel allowed ultra-Orthodox men to go to work at age 23 in return for shortened military service.

    On the face of it, this acceptance of reduced service further bolstered Haredi privilege, as Lapid indeed charged and the Supreme Court later agreed, prompting the Knesset to rewrite what is known as the “Tal Law,” named after its formulator, Justice Tzvi Tal. Yet, this legislation signaled to ultra-Orthodoxy that its deal had exhausted itself: if their community were to survive, its men would have to work.

    The following year, the 1977 deal was dealt its most devastating blow when Ariel Sharon left the ultra-Orthodox out of his coalition ‒ the first time the right had done such a thing. The long-term deal signed with Begin proved to have an expiration date, and it had arrived.

    Faced with a harsh recession, Sharon and his finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, cut in half the child allowances that had become central in many ultra-Orthodox families’ livelihoods. Prodded by Lapid, who was now deputy prime minister, they also trimmed government funding for yeshivas and other Haredi causes.

    Ultra-Orthodox politicians felt choked.

    With 65 percent of ultra-Orthodox males unemployed and their average income less than half that of the rest of the population, Haredi rabbis realized they needed a new deal with the Jewish state.

    The ideal of non-work was, therefore, quietly abandoned. Ultra-Orthodox vocational schools began to sprout in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, initially training plumbers, mechanics, electricians and nurses, and then spreading to computer engineering, accounting and law.

    A decade after the passage of the Tal Law, 12 mainstream universities and colleges were offering special programs in which 7,000 students were enrolled and 8,000 had already graduated. It has since become a groundswell. Last year, the Council for Higher Education reported that 9,000 ultra-Orthodox students were studying for an undergraduate degree, following the previous year’s 8,300.

    At the same time, the IDF opened special units for ultra-Orthodox men, who increasingly realize that proper military service is the best entry ticket into the workplace.

    What began with a lone infantry battalion, soon became three, and then spread to the air force and navy where former yeshiva students are now mechanics; to intelligence, where they became analysts; to computers, where they became programmers; and to human resources, where they became personnel clerks.

    Last year, a record 2,400 ultra-Orthodox men enlisted out of 8,000 called, and the numbers keep rising. Meanwhile, the Israel Police last year trained and hired 15 ultra- Orthodox criminal investigators. This is besides the hundreds who are doing National Service at first aid stations, old age homes, hospitals and charities.

    Most symbolically, following a Supreme Court ruling that deputy ministers cannot function as de facto ministers, ultra- Orthodoxy’s Council of Sages approved its senior politician, Yaakov Litzman’s acceptance of a full cabinet membership as Health Minister.

    The rabbis’ longstanding refusal to let their representative swear allegiance to the Zionist government and to become responsible for its deeds – was thus abandoned, reflecting the steady retreat from the historic formula of maximum authority and minimum responsibility.

    This is not to say, however, that the previous reality is now history.

    Ultra-Orthodox Israelis still live in separate neighborhoods; most Haredi men still don’t serve, work or study to acquire a profession; some in the units the IDF opened for them are not fully ultra-Orthodox; the laws that ease Haredi men into the workforce are still unfair to the rest of the population and remain a political bone of contention; ultra-Orthodox schools still refuse to teach a core curriculum of secular studies; and a hard core of diehard fanatics is fighting to uphold ultra-Orthodoxy’s seclusion.

    Still, the walls of the ultra-Orthodox ghetto have been breached and thousands are pouring out, much the way the Jews of Germany, Austria and Hungary did when their own ghetto walls fell between the times of Moshe Sofer and Herzl.

    Back then, it took hardly two generations before the newly freed Jews became lawyers, doctors, dentists, scientists, publishers, journalists, bankers, and tycoons.

    The same process is underway in Israel – the Zionist creation where more than half a million ultra-Orthodox Jews now speak no language other than the Hebrew that Zionism revived; the Jewish state where thousands of ultra-Orthodox men now hold rifles and swear on the Bible that they are prepared to die in its defense; the Jewish state where Haredi young adults increasingly mesh daily in the workplace with the secular majority; the Jewish state where every Sunday morning a broad-bearded Gur Hasid removes his fedora while taking his seat around the cabinet table and joining the business of realizing what started off as Theodore Herzl’s dream and most rabbis’ nightmare.


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    42 Comments
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    lazerx
    lazerx
    8 years ago

    There is a large difference between before the creation of the state and the present situation.
    Before the creation of the State of Israel, many observant people who became Zionists became non-observant. This is what was feared and it was the reality.
    Today as the religious public must deal with the reality that a Jewish state exists and there are many observant Jews living there, we must do our best to insure that observance in the State grows, and BH, it is growing.

    kehati
    kehati
    8 years ago

    Wonderful piece because it does not center on stereotypes and name calling..
    Instead it presents an accurate picture of the sea changes that have occurred in recent years in Eretz Yisrael/State of Israel.

    berylyoseph
    berylyoseph
    8 years ago

    ‘Atzas Hashem hi sokoom’ Israel is becoming secular Zionists worst dream, with the Torah world and Baalei Teshuva having crossed the 1 million mark, and are on their way of becoming the Jewish majority, Ironically, even Satmar and its ilk have grown by leaps and bounds, spreading out of its enclave in Mea She’arim to other neighborhoods in Yerushalayim, Bnei Brak, Beit Shemesh, Elad, and now Tverya,

    8 years ago

    This is the most ridiculous article I have ever seen. In Germany the Yidden R”L were leaving the religion to become doctors lawyers etc. Today they are doing this within the confines of Orthodoxy and Hareidism. So as the secular Israeli dwindles to the ills of all kinds of liberalism Orthodoxy gets stronger in quality and quantity.

    hashomer
    hashomer
    8 years ago

    Excellent article, kudos to VIN. And may HaShem continue to bless and protect the Zionist Medinat.

    LebidikYankel
    LebidikYankel
    8 years ago

    very very interesting!

    Sholi-Katz
    Sholi-Katz
    8 years ago

    The idea of taking, taking and more taking…. with no responsibility and doing nothing to become productive citizens that participate in building society seems to be coming to and end. I guess the free lunch is over.
    This is the best thing to happen to the Israeli society. Just think how great Israel will be with everyone participating.
    Kol Ha’kovoid

    TZI-DER-ZACH
    TZI-DER-ZACH
    8 years ago

    Oh my! so the satmar’s are the only ones holding chasam sofar’s tradition???

    EmunasChachomim
    EmunasChachomim
    8 years ago

    What a shameful excuse for news. Drooling over the prospect of bnei Torah abandoning their sedarim and equating it with the doctors and lawyers of Berlin? Disdainfully referring to gedolim by their last names. This is what passes for news?? I should be shocked to find such disrespectful “reporting” on Vosizneias. But I’m not. It’s par for the course.

    BarryLS1
    BarryLS1
    8 years ago

    “Jew’s hope is that “our redemption will be brought about by God himself.”

    How can anyone be so sure that the State of Israel, given all the nissim that continue to take place, is not min Hashomayim? By now it should be pretty evident. Historically, every stage in preparation for the Geulah, from Yehuda and Tamar, etc. had the appearance of being treif, all designed to fool the Sitra Achra. Who is to say that the secular Zionist founders weren’t just one more aspect to this, especially when you consider that they were the only ones willing to make this effort.

    It is quite understandable for us to oppose the secular Zionist ideals, but in reality, they succeeded in recreating the State, but thankfully failed to bring about their vision. Secular Zionism is dead. Most Zionists today are Frum.

    The article left off a main point. We were prohibited from fighting to regain the Land. We didn’t, the world voted to give it back. Fighting for self defense was always permitted.

    We may still have trouble, because the Geulah is not complete. We need to help it along and not act like sonei Yisroel or act like the Meraglim.

    ermn8
    ermn8
    8 years ago

    The one thing missing is simple appreciation for Torah. Of course if you have no idea what Torah is all about then the whole concept does sound crazy.

    Logical_Abe
    Logical_Abe
    8 years ago

    Wishful thinking of the author and many commentators. Not only have the ultra-orthodox not surrendered to the Zionists and only about a handful of ultra-orthodox are in the military, they became much more powerful against the Zionists and their anti-Torah philosophy and wouldn’t even allow it in any of their schools. What kind of nonsense is the author trying to convince the readers?

    sane
    sane
    8 years ago

    All this silly bickering. Everyone should just mind there own business, worry about their own shortcomings and try to overcome them, help others, have hakaros hatov to the IDF and Israeli govt for building and protecting such a beautiful country and be a mentsch. Let G-d take care of the rest.

    knowitall1
    knowitall1
    8 years ago

    This article is an opinion piece written from the secular or religious zionist viewpoint. Its cozy and comfortable and a cute wishful thinking piece, again for them. However there is a totally other analysis that is much more accurate. In short, the Gedolim were never against balabatim going to work, it was the zionist reshaim that made it impossible for us to get work if we did not serve in the army. Besides those who were apt at self employment, we could not get jobs. Even the tens of thousands of jobs that do not need education were not open to charaidim. Bezek, Egged etc wouldnt hire anyone who had not served in the Army. This is pure discrimination which should have been outlawed but it served the zionists well. All this while the reshayim were calling charaidim parasites but keeping them out of the workplace. Yair Lapid did us all a favor, with his hate for us he actually helped us, by “forcing” us into the workplace. What he actually did is forced the secular world to accept charaidi employees whether or not they had served in the Army. Granted, with a huge charaidi population not making money it did force a third generation who grew up too poor with many going off the derech to make moves that the American Agudas Yisroel did thirty years ago with COPE Institute, to open hundreds of learning centers teaching vocations and training centers in a myriad of employment options. The Litvish Gedolim never had an issue with these sort of learning centers or going to work. As far as the MK moving into the Minister position, if they want to see this as some sort of victory, let them, we will however look at the half million men sitting yomam velaila shteiging in Toras Hashem as the obvious and true victory of the Gedolim past! Its pretty laughable that with that huge number of men and bachirm learning Torah and with baalay teshuva by the thousands, they feel the need to declare victory when it has clearly been a Victory for the Toirah Hakedosha for the past 66 years!

    8 years ago

    So, first they said that a person is allowed to sell his young daughter as a slave, and then they retracted?

    LionofZion
    LionofZion
    8 years ago

    #20 , You make some accurate points, but there is a huge misunderstanding as well. Yair Lapid is trying to get Chareidi men to work out of love, not hate. From inside the ghetto it looks like everyone is out to get you, but the reality is very different. Israelis resent when their children go off to war while Chareidi boys pretend to learn. Is it really that hard to see where they are coming from? And for the Chareidi boys who are actually learning, it is not impossible for them to take time Bein Hazmanim and in their generous amount of free time to contribute by joining the army, or at least do something worthwhile, like Shirut Leumi. It continues as the boys become men and they cannot get jobs at Bezeq and Eged, as #20 states, but not because the companies refuse to hire them, rather because the the religious deferral from the army exists only as long as the men are “students” in Yeshiva. This legally holds them back from ever holding legitimate jobs. Who cares, not the Roshei Yeshiva, Rebbelach or Chareidi Knesset members! The only one fighting for the sensible and correct approach, that a man be able to feed his own family is Yair Lapid.

    Eppisaguy
    Eppisaguy
    8 years ago

    This appears to be an article by an NK sympathizer, intending to poke fun of the central Haredi standpoint and misinterpret its relationship with the state of Israel, by misrepresenting the standpoint of previous Gedolim as vehemently anti Israel in effort to accentuate the “new” current standpoint. Seems like a Natruna piece. The Haredi Gedolim, such as the Chazon Ish and others had no sympathy for Zionism, but believed that one must deal with a country as the governing power de facto, and act accordingly. This approach causes the manner of dealing with the country to change based on the circumstances, but to say that the attitude towards the State of Israel and Zionism, is a gross misrepresenting.

    thegreatone
    thegreatone
    8 years ago

    Nebach Nebach and how heaven is crying.

    True Torah observant Jews were always the minority. True orthodox Jews are those who dont negotiate Judaism no matter the circumstances.אני מאמין באמונה שלמה, שזאת התורה לא תהיה מוחלפת ו

    True Torah observant Jews are those who follow the teachings of all Gedolim and Tzadikim of previous generations who said that Zionism is the worst thing that happened to Jews. An atheist as Herzl can not be the savior of Jews,is what the real Gedolim said. And even IF the entire population and its government are religious still it is not allowed to have a Medina before the coming of Moshicah.

    The great Godal and Tzadik the Chofetz chaim said that the Zionist are Amalekites . So writes R’ Elchonon Wasserman who was one of his closest Talmidim.

    Too bad my comment is not the first.

    savtat
    savtat
    8 years ago

    Things change. Today, Chassidim and Mitnagdim are allowed to marry. Sephardim can daven in an Ashkenaz shul…. Let’s daven that when Hashem sees all of us working together and helping, he will strengthen out hands and send us bracha and shalom.

    LiberalismIsADisease
    LiberalismIsADisease
    8 years ago

    Major problem with the medina is SOCIALISM, No socialism means no class warfare. They also have a problem with those who arent serving or didnt serve to work. If you think people want to live in the shadows you are out of your skull.

    LionofZion
    LionofZion
    8 years ago

    It is funny how quickly the Oilem moves on. Just a few weeks ago evverryone was up in arms because some bozo in Brooklyn declared that the Jews killed in the Holocaust were not Jews. Now, his equally uninformed colleagues from Brooklyn are claiming that “real Jews” don’t believe in Israel and are quoting long gone rabbis, 100 years out of context, to justify their stubborn stand against the majestic Kiddush Hashem that is Israel.

    Yaakov2
    Yaakov2
    8 years ago

    There is a wrong education given in many Yeshiva which is simply dead wrong according to Torah.

    And don’t let anyone tell you that it’s in accordance with any so called “gedolim”.

    It’s impossible for any godol to say anything contrary to Torah and if anyone says anything contrary to Torah he can’t possibly be a godol.

    Torah demands that a Yid make a Keli in Derech Hateva for Parnasa and to fulfill his obligation in his Kesuba to be mefarnes his wife and same in regard to his children.

    This is the Aleph Beis of Torah and even school children know this, so there is no way any so called godol could disagree with Torah, even if it’s in anyone’s personal interest to have everyone not work for 40 years after their Chasuna refusing to work, while sitting in Fakewood or in Punchavitch etc.

    It’s not a sustainable system and opposit of hashem’s will in his Torah and is against Shulchan Aruch “not to work” for a living.