Reply To: Divide among Torah Schools of Thought: YU/RIETS vs The Greater Yeshiva World

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Chaim87
Participant

This is very complex question that needs to be broken down into many pieces. Firstly what’s Zionism ? Is it the idea of having our own country or is it about cooperating with secularists who are anti Torah ? Then there is the pre war to post war . Then there is Agudah vs mizrachi. Then there is peleg vs main agudaj
So before the war there were many pro the idea of a state just not a secular state. Yes R elchanon and r Chaim were anti as were of course the yershalmi tzadkim. But then you had R isser zalman zl and R Areya levin and even R Chaim ozer to an extent who were pro Zionism as in a state and supported R kook .
After the war , the punvitcha rav and R Lazer yudel Zl raised the flag and somewhat supported Zionism.
In the USA and Canada most RY supported the agudah faction with some like R Shrage fievel very supportive of Zionism. All of them held that secularism is evils and we need to oppose the govt of Israel because it’s secular and not because having a country is bad. R JB Zl on the other hand supported mizrachi and not agudah thereby saying he supports even secular Israel. So they differed then But they both held that once Israel is here to stay let’s work with them.

Fast forward to 2025 . The American yeshiva system became influenced by the hard core Hungarian chasdim like Satmar and by brisk. So that slowly morphed into this new ideology that essentially opposes Israel completely but because of R Aron zl traditionally being part of agudah it’s somehow still Agudah even though it’s closer to Satmar now .