Reply To: IDF’s New Haredi Division

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HaKatan
Participant

Chaim87:
Your refusal to educate yourself does not change the reality. No, it’s not “whitewashing”; that’s what you’re doing.
Of course, they could have – and many did, in seforim and elsewhere – oppose Rabbi Kook. But when they needed his services, they addressed him as was needed.

Again, read the sefarim from the Satmar Rav, read the documented public letters from the Gerrer Rebbe and the Brisker Rav (on which many others signed, too). No, there are not two sides to the frum world about Zionism, and there never were. There were certainly many Jews who were confused by Zionism early on – and still today, like you – but the gedolim then knew even decades before the “State” was founded that Zionism was a non-starter and evil. Again, there are sefarim on this, even from then.

I am intentionally omitting the source of this, for hashkafic reasons:
“In 1900, just three years after the First Zionist Congress, a book called Ohr Layesharim was published by ultra-orthodox activists in Warsaw. This book articulated a firm rejection of Zionism…contained dozens of letters condemning Zionism, written by a broad spectrum of the most prominent rabbis of the era, including Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk, and Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn of Lubavitch.

Antipathy towards Zionism, and particularly towards Zionist leaders, formed the backbone of the Haredi attitude during the pre-state era…each with their own approach – such as Agudath Israel, who were willing to work with Zionists without formally recognizing them as authentic representatives of Judaism, and others, such as the Munkatcher Rebbe, Rabbi Chaim Elazar Shapira, who would not contemplate showing Zionism or Zionists any kind of recognition or even acknowledgement – broadly speaking, the Haredi world maintained its stance, namely, that Zionism was created by heretics, and therefore, in every iteration, it continued to be an outgrowth of heresy.”