Dear Nomesorah
I am a Zionist and an observant Jew. I don’t say frum because I know from experience that many Jews, mostly chassidishe do not regard me as frum. Kippah srugah, tzitzit in my pants, no peyos, you get it (yes beard)…No matter.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I do not detect any animosity from you in our interesting discussions here, and I’m not sure why others are calling you out. No matter. Whether you live in Israel is immaterial for this discussion. I live at the western tip of Eretz Binyamin.
I think the reason that the three oaths have merited a revival is that for almost two thousand years they were irrelevant. In the traditional understanding of them , till the Zionists showed up, they had never been put to the test, and could be ignored. The ant-zionist Rabbis , knowing shas very well, pulled them out and gave them supreme authority over the future of the Jewish people. To an objective observer, this comes as a surprise. If these oaths are so powerful, where are they battled out in the Rishonim? Why is there total silence in the sifrei halachah and pre-sifrei halachah? The Rosh, the Tur, Or Zarua, Maharam, Ra’avyah, Mechaber, Rama, where is it? The obvious answer is that it is another example among thousands of aggadic discussion, and has minimal if any weight in determining the required behavior of the Nation of Israel .
As I mentioned, I have a non-traditional but fully “frum” understanding of the three oaths. For another time…