Reply To: Zionism, Why the Big Debate?

Earlier I posted two quotes of R’ Soloveitchik’s position, but I used secondhand (one of them was actually thirdhand)) sources because I couldn’t find my copy of Hamesh Derashot. Well I found it, so here is the firsthand source (although it is an English translation of a Hebrew translation of R’ Soloveithik’s speech in Yiddish):

We all know the story of the “oven of Achnai”. When in the course of a talmudic dispute, a legal discussion over a question of ritual impurity, R. Eliezer ben Hyrkanus tried to adduce miraculous proofs for his view, to the extent that a Heavenly voice proclaimed him to be in the right, the other Sages refused to accept his opinion and ignored those signs. When he then refused to accept the majority view, they banned contact with him – and he remained in that bitter state until his death. Subsequently, the death and suffering of colleagues and students was attributed to their treatment of him. We still remember the days when we had earned, trembling and with tears in our eyes, about R. Joshua b. Hanania standing up and proclaiming: “The Torah is no longer in Heaven!!”

God handed over technical legal matters to the authority of the Sages, to rule on what is clean and what unclean,to decide between obligation and exemption, forbidden and permitted. But in historical questions, not those relating to the legal status of ovens, food, or determination of fixed monetary obligations, but those relating to the destiny of the Eternal People, God Himself decides as to whose interpretation shall become the “law” (the historical development). Nor can anyone dispute the ruling of God in this domain. In the controversy between Joseph of yore and his brothers thousands of years ago, God decided in accordance with Joseph’s interpretation of the historical process. In our days, the Creator of the universe similarly decided that the (historical) “law” will be as Joseph of 5662 (religious Zionists) had predicted – in accord with the view of him who had little faith in the future of East European Jewery and who dreamed of another land and other conditions.

I would like to ask a simple question: what would the yeshivot and Torah scholars rescued from the holocaust – these burning embers taken from the fire – have done if the Joseph of 5662 had not trod a path for them in the Land of Israel, and had not made possible the transplanting of the Tree of Life of Lithuania and other lands in the Holy Land?

I sometimes think that were the great brethren of the “Joseph” of 5662, world reknowned genius personalities in Torah and sublime saints, living today, they would also discern the Divine miracle in the establishment of the Sate of Israel, and they would utter song and praise to the Holy One, blessed be he.

(Excerpted from And Joseph Dreamt a Dream printed in The Rav Speaks)