Avi – shimon ben shatach was making a kidush hashem…very simple. Re, the meiri; while it’s possible that the reason why his psak is not mentioned in the achronim, as in the nosei keilim and gedolei poskim, is that they didn’t have access to it – that’s not clear. I didn’t invent the idea that he wrote that psak under duress; it’s in….i believe the aruch hashulchan, but i have to check into it.
And yes, i do dismiss the psak of people who are incapable of seeing past the egel hazahav of zionism; it’s actually a pretty good litmus test to see if someone is motivated by emotion or pure daas torah, because the impulse towards it was extremely powerful….im pretty sure if i had lived under oppression as they did i would have fallen prey to it as well. It doesn’t mean someone is a bad person or unintelligent, just that to pasken halacha to the extent that i will be machnia my daas to them, one need be of a purely torah mind, and adding in nationalism, haskalah, rebbe-messianism, feminism, or other abberations to your Judaism disqualifies one from being so.
Re, rav hirsch; he wasn’t the only yekkishe rov who said that, but prior to his time, none of the yekkishe poskim report it. That includes the aruch lenair. It’s not a stretch that if the meiri wanted to keep peace with goyim, that rav hirsch would not also be so motivated…even more so as he was trying to package judaism in a way that would be appealing to enlightened german jewry.
It doesn’t change the fact that the rishonim and achronim; rambam, tur, rosh, ran, rif, mechaber, rema, sm”a, shach, chelkas mechokek, gr”a, nesivos, rav Akiva eiger, chasam sofer…. dismiss it by omission. The fact that it is appealing to rabbonim who were justifying judaism to its detractors in a hostile environment doesn’t change that we have no reason to pasken like it whatsoever.
Humanism and other such foreign motivations don’t count; if this would be any other shailoh you wouldn’t dig up a meiri and change established halacha based on it. Or mayeb you would, which is even scarier. The chazon ish in michtavim writes that we cannot do so and that whatever prints of the rishonim were in the possession of the achronim are halacha, all else is “ravcha lemilsa”