Reply To: �Shabbos, Shabbos” (Rally in Yerushalayim)

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#651758
Jothar
Member

Here are the direct quotes from the book. You are welcome to argue on Rav Shlomo Lorinz in what the Chazon Ish really held of NK, but please don’t mind if I take his version as more authoritative than yours.

Page 92 in the book “In Their Shadow” by Shlomo Lorincz, translated by Yonasan Rosenblum, Feldheim publishers:

The Chazon Ish was careful to distinguish between true kano’us (zealousness) for the purpose of building and false fanaticism that seeks only to destroy. He nevr lost sight of the fact that even good intentions and good deeds can prove counterproductive if the time or place is not right…

(page 93 at bottom)

Once a group of representatives of Neturei Karta came to the Chazon Ish to demand that he condemn one of the great (p. 94) Torah leaders of Bnei Brak for being insufficiently Anti-Zionist. the chazon Ish became very upset and answered them sharply, “You come from Jerusalem and you presume to tell us how to behave?”

His closest students related that one of the younger members of the delegation spoke disrespectfully to the chazon Ish. he did not live out the year.

On another occasion, the Chazon Ish once described Neturei Karta to me as “Jews from before Matan Torah”, by which he meant that their zeal was not shaped by the ways of the Torah. On yet another occasion, he compared them to an alarm clock. “It is very well that they rouse people from their sleep, but in life one must decide if it is really time to get up, or if one can sleep a bit longer!”

Page 95:

Though the chazon ish fought against both anything that smacked of kefirah and the official representatives of all false ideologies, he was careful to distinguish between the ideologies themselves and the individual Jews who had fallen prey to them. The latter he drew close with cords of love.

Page 96: The din [of fighting evil doers with moridin velo ma’alin] …(no longer applies today) because it would be viewed by the larger public as an act of cruelty and violence… It is incumbent upon us to bring them back with cords of love and to show them the light of the Torah to the best of our abilities (Chazon Ish, Yoreh Deah 2:16)

Paraphrase of Page 97, based on Chazon Ish shevi’is 12:9: (causing the am ha’aretz to hate you) is a violation of lifnei iver.

Page 98, on the case of the bar mitzvah boy whose father ate rabbit:But today, when (the sinners) constitute the majority, estranging them will not cause them to repent, but will only cause them to distance themselves further and arouse their hatred.

Page 99 quotes kovetz igros 3:102:

It is impossible to impose the authority of the Torah upon the masses. rather, it is only through the select individuals among the people for whom torah and mitzvos are their life and soul and who have elevated themselves from the mediocrity of the common people, whose mitzvah observance is purely rote, [that the masses are elevated].

Brisker Rav quotes about NK from page 195, 197, and 199 later.