manitou (…continued):
Anyway, the following is R. Teichtel’s explanation of why The Minchas Elozor was against “Yishuv HaAretz”. I promise I am not making this up:
First, he tries to establish that whether the redemption will come miraculously or slowly and naturally depends on whether Moshiach’s coming will be because we “deserve it” (“zachah”) – in which case it will be miraculous, or because Hashem sent it to us despite our not deserving it, in which case it will be natural. Then he says, quote:
“And with this we have an open response to the entire objection of our master and rebbi, the holy scholar, the Minchas Elozor ZT”L of Munkatch, regarding being involved with building the land. For I myself was one of his group, and I knew that his entire objection was base don the fact that the redemption is going to come miraculously, not naturally … But his honor remains intact, for he on his high level believed that the entire world is on the high level where they deserve Moshiach, like he was. But the truth is that this last generation, unfortunately, not deserving of Moshiach, and therefore the redemption will come couched in natural methods.” – Aim Habanim Semechah p.98
I promise I did not make that up. In other words, the Minchas Elozor mistakenly and naively thought the whole world was Tzadikim like he was, but in reality he didn’t understand that the world doesn’t really deserve Moshiach.
Now never mind how R. Teichtel decided he can judge the world and decide whether they deserve Moshiach or not; never mind that he has not one Halachic shred of evidence to back up this position of his; but to say that the Minchas Elozor naively looked at the whole world as much more righteous than they actually are, as deserving of redemption when in fact they don’t deserve it, is beyond ludicrous. It’s downright absurd, and for anyone who knows anything about the Minchas Elozor, totally dishonest. If there was one person in the past hundred years who we would say is not guilty of over rating the world, it could very well be the Minchas Elozor. If he’s not first on the list, he’s second.
And to attribute such an attitude to him of all people, is nothing less than the stuff of la la land. And that’s besides the arrogance of saying that he is more able to discern how deserving Klal Yisroel is of greeting Moshiach than the Minchas Elozor. This is a Halachic treatise? Nope. Sorry. It would have been one thing if they would have left it as a sermon or a drush, but because the Zionists don’t really have any serious Halachic backing, they took this sefer and made it something of an icon. It’s a big pity.
BTW, R. Teichtel’s sefer comes without any Haskomos (approbations) form anybody. But he did want Haskomos, so what he did was – I am not making this up either, I promise – he took Haskomos out of another sefer, and printed them in his sefer, saying that the Haskomos would certainly apply to his sefer too, since the two seforim generally say the same things. But none of the rabbis of his time – not a single one – wrote him a haskama.
Another note: Aim HaBanim Semechah speaks basically about building the land. The topic of creating a sovereign state – which was the major objection to Zionism – is almost completely ignored. Perhaps this is what the Lubavitcher Rebbe meant (told to the author’s son, quoted in the introduction, p. 21 ) when he told the son of author to “publicize that your father was a G-d fearing Jew who was far away from Zionism”. I would think this is because in his sefer he never argues in favor of a Jewish State, but rather in favor of building up the land.