Writersoul – I don’t know if I can comment on everything you wrote right now, but I do want to make a few important points:
1. Just for the record, originally when KJ chassid wrote that Futuregirl should be looking for a school that teaches Torah not zionism, I thought he meant something very different. I thought he was just saying that one should choose a school based on how much Torah you will learn there and not based on the politics. One of the things I found out about B’eer Miriam is that even though they are tzioni, they teach Yiras Shamayim, not hashkafa. I had thought that was what he meant.
I am not really interested in discussing his posts – I just wanted to point that out, since I think I was “maskim” to that post.
2. In terms of Gedolim and zionism, I thought I made it clear that I was not expressing an opinion. There are many reasons for this; one of the primary ones is that I do not feel qualified to do so.
You quote me as saying that I don’t agree with pluralism, and as saying that there are Gedolim who are zionistic. I did not make either statement and I do NOT KNOW if I agree with either statement.
What I did say is that it is POSSIBLE that there are people who have what they think is a Torah-based hashkafa when in fact it is not.
Amongst other proofs of this statement is basic logic as follows:
If you think that all hashkafas that claim to be Torah-based are in fact Torah-based, then you must acknowledge that KJ’s hashkafa that there are hashkafas that claim to be Torah-based and really aren’t is a Torah-based hashkafa. Therefore, you can not say that anyone has a right to say that your hashkafa is not Torah-based, since according to your hashkafa, they have a right to say it.
Basically, if you are really going to be pluralistic, then you have to acknowledge that others have a right to say that your hashkafa is wrong and not a Torah-hashkafa.
Besides for which, obviously there can be people who think that their hashkafa is Torah-based when in fact it isn’t! That has always been the case. Why should the fact that someone considers their hashkafa to be Torah-based NECESSARILY make it so?
That was my point about pluralism. There is no concept in Judaism that EVERYONE is right. There can be people who are wrong (Reform, Conservative, OO, maskilim, Korach, Shabtai Tzvi and those who followed him, etc.)