Lna’ar Hazeh Hispalalti? The Dissonance of Redemption

Hate of The Jews – A Historical Inheritance [2020 – printed in Gaza]
No Future [for the Jew] within the Nations [2008 – printed in Algeria]

These are the titles of the books , published by Dr Alhazar , Founding Father and Member of Politburo of Hamas and ex Foreign Minister of the Hamas government of Gaza.

In it , the esteemed author makes several extremely popular statements. Popular with his readership , the Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank. And with the Palestine – supporting outsiders . A copy of his book was found on the ‘humanitarian’ 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla whose travelers’ ostensible goal was nothing more than providing aid to suffering Gazan Arabs .

Within those books the following gems are to be found ….

– The Jews were killed in Germany because they helped the enemy

– All misfortunes suffered by the Jews anywhere over the generations are their own fault

– The Koran encourages the killing of Jews

– All Jews have to be driven out of Palestine

– The Jew is the historical center of evil, hated by the entire world

– The endgame is the total uprooting of the Jew , which will happen at the End of Days, may it happen with Allah’s help

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These are the friends of somejew , of ujm , flamingOTD and katan

These are the people who are naturally next in line to take over governance of EY , when the fervent wishes of somejew , katan , flamingOTD and ujm for the collapse of the hated medina will materialize …

The very minute the IDF stops its work , those ‘people’ are taking over ….

No one besides the IDF is prepared to suffer dead and wounded to stop those ‘people’

No outside force will risk the lives of their soldiers to confront those fanatics

This is clear to anyone not bribed by ideological blinkers ….
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somejew: Well done refuting ZSK’s Herzl/BenGurion-aligned views.

ujm: He hasn’t refuted anything I said. He also hasn’t refuted Simcha or Eval’s point either. I will give him credit for being excellent at firing off polemics laced with logical fallacies.

As for being Herzl/Ben-Gurion aligned, no, not really, but nice try with the incorrect description. I have expressed my position more than once on this forum. Viewing the state as a positive thing (along with saying certain tefillos on Halachik grounds, not philosophical grounds) and possibly being Zionist insofar as Shivas Tzion is concerned is not the same as Political Zionism and being a political Zionist. If I am a Zionist, it’s maybe so far as Rav Kook was. The fact that you cannot grasp any of this is as baffling as SJ’s demonstrably incorrect argument that Rambam was a literalist vis-a-vis Midrash and Aggada and required a miraculous Geula.

pekak > Car damages aren’t more difficult than “bull fighting”. The basis for nezikin is the beginning of Bava Kama.

Yes, you can take your car damage case to a talmid chochom and he might be able to apply Bava Kama to your car bumper by looking at responsa as you are saying. This is not the usual way. Just several hundreds years ago, a Jewish farmer would (or at least could) know what to do what he will owe when his cow eats neighbor’s grass and would also know to take care that this does not happen. Nowadays, there is no “mishna” that teens could learn before getting a driving license. Just for comparison – how often you see someone in a “frum” levush eating a cheesburger – not often, right. How about driving reckelessy? Pretty often. This is not only due to the haraas shaaa that we need to be “frum” first and middos later. In older times, such person would have his cow “muad” pretty quickly and he would be responsible for damages. In our times, nobody is going to take him into a beis din (as far a I know, prove me wrong!) – his insurance will pay. Also, car damages are happening less often but with more damage, I think (although maybe I never met a raging bull).

A little example how shallow our halachik knowledge is nowadays: I was listening to a yeshiva rov teaching halochos of washing/hamotzi/benching in an airplane – even if the meal says “mezonos” and even as only benching is meduaraita, if this is your real meal – you should do all 3. I asked him – if there is an inyan of bothering people (and also of those people who can read “hamotzi” and then see you bothering them anyway) – would it follow that benching is still a hiyuv, but one can skip washing? He said “good question”, thought for some time, and said “if so” [which I read – if you are so sensitive], then you should wash and start eating in the airport. My observation here is that our rebbeim did not yet collect all these halochos into one coherent set.

pekak, first, I did not specify who you can ask. If you so medakdek – one definition of “talmid chochom” is indeed as you are saying – someone who can answer shailos in the maseches he is learning. A “chochom” is someone who knows to answer in all masechtot.

Frankly, when a question is tricky, I prefer asking a “chochom” – as many shailos crossover multiple areas, as in the brocha on the airplane example above: you need to know brochos, you need to understand what is person’s culture – is pizza a lunch or a desert for him, you need to know middos – are you bothering people around you …

But do you agree that those who lived among cows and learnt Bava Kamma were better informed about halochos of daily life than those who drive cars and did not learn anything about halochos of cars.

Another example: a bochur was driving R Kamenetsky on coney Island and tried to maneuver around a slow bus. Rav stopped him, explaining that “rabim” have preference. This halocho is as commonplace in our days. I presume the bochur knew what to do about a camel and chanuka candles in reshus harabim … why didn’t he know this one? Of course, there might be a bus lane already on Coney Island by now, so someone learnt that lesson.

I’m still waiting for SJ to explain why Zionism is like Catholicism in a more clear fashion.

AAQ – Sorry for the delay. Obviously we don’t actually know what occurred during those three days, but Rambam saying Avraham did so is something Rambam would write. However, it’s really ancillary to my point, which was (and still is) that SJ doesn’t have a clue about Rambam – who was very consistent with what he wrote.

Re Gemara: When you look at it, it is ancient case law that was frozen in time, along with ton of another related material. Nezikin does primarily consist of civil and criminal law. Again, that isn’t heresy and it doesn’t detract from what it is – the recorded details of our legal system and all the discussions of the highest courts and institutions at that time. What Pekak said is true – Sifrei Shu”t are practical applications of Halachik issues (which is why they are usually more interesting than Gemara itself).

You could indeed presume that if the Gemara was written down in the modern era, it would contain a ton about car accidents. That’s logical.

ZSK> What Pekak said is true – Sifrei Shu”t are practical applications of Halachik issues (which is why they are usually more interesting than Gemara itself).

Right, I am just asking whether we-all live accordingly. 500 years ago, someone who learned gemora would be able to navigate his daily life. A lot of issues we are facing today are post S’A and post Mishna Berurah that created some unified halochah. Responsa differs by a group, most people do not learn it directly, so we are back to pre-gemorah mode where each one is asking his local rav and hope that he’ll ask the right posek.

Theoretically speaking, “gemora” means not the fixed dafim, but abilty to analyze sources of halochs (see Rambam). so learning how to navigate road traffic is no different from watching your cows.

@zsk
Exile is a Divine decree and Moshiach is the cure (this is one of the 13 principals of faith). Any false replacement for this Moshiach, i.e. any attempt to end the exile and take control of the destiny of the Jewish people that is not by means of the specific prophet that Hashem decrees as the redeemer, is a “moshiach sheker”, a “false messiah”.

Unfortunately, the tempting “promise of riches” that false messiahs use is (for obvious reasons) always tied to a core rejection of Torah and Mitzvos either for oneself or for others (this is obvious because a movement that would demand real mass tshiva is the actual Torah prescription for bringing the real Moshaich).

for the notzrim, the false messiah was their idol who taught that Jews can’t possibly keep Torah so just follow him – don’t worry about eh Torah – and he (the fake messiah) will redeem them.

the zionists similarly taught that if you build a state and an army you can take control of your own destiny (no Torah required) and save yourselves from the exile (just send your children off to die in wars, not a big deal, just like all the non-jewish nations).

They are both equally evil moshiach sheker who provided excuses for Jews to not keep the complete Torah. (as i known, both the Notzrim Preists and the Religious Zionist Priests teach that some or even almost all the Torah should be kept, all except for the ones that interfere with their false messiah or otherwise too difficult. “all part of the process”, they claim.)

SJ:

For the record: you and I both agree that dechikas haketz is not a good thing. However, again, you’re wrong about Rambam. Exile as a “Divine Decree” is NOT one of the 13 Principles of Faith. Principle 12 is belief in the coming of the Moshiach; 13 is belief in the Resurrection of the Dead. Nowhere in Rambam’s list—nor in any authoritative Halakhic codification of these principles—does it say “I believe with perfect faith that Exile is a Divine decree that we are forbidden to end”. In fact, the Rambam himself writes in Mishneh Torah that if a leader arises, fights the wars of God, and builds the Temple, he is presumed to be the Moshiach. He focuses on action, not passive waiting.

Stop distorting Rambam.

Now to the rest.

Equating Zionism with Christianity is not just a theological error; it is a historical obscenity and a profound intellectual insult. If you want to argue about Dechikas HaKetz (forcing the end), there is a legitimate Halakhic discussion to be had about the Three Oaths. But the moment you claim that a Jew holding a rifle to defend his family in the Galilee is “equally evil” to a religion that spent two millennia burning Jews at the stake and demanding the total abolition of the Torah, you have moved from theology into delusion.

Christianity is a replacement theology. Its “Messiah” claimed the Torah was a temporary “tutor” and that the “New Israel” (the Church) replaced the “Old Israel” (the Jews). It is fundamentally an exit strategy from being Jewish. Zionism is the exact opposite. It is the refusal to disappear into the “non-Jewish nations” that the author claims to despise. To compare a movement that forces the world to recognize Jewish identity with a religion that sought to erase it is a total inversion of reality.

A Moshiach Sheker (False Messiah) is someone who claims Divine authority to change the Law or replace God. Christians created a god-man. The Zionists, for the most part, didn’t claim to be Moshiach at all. They claimed to be a rescue party. If a building is on fire and a team of men puts up a ladder to save the children inside, only a sociopath stands at the bottom screaming, “Don’t use the ladder! It’s a false messiah! Wait for the divine elevator!” To call the survival of the Jewish people a “tempting promise of riches” is a disgusting trivialization of the blood spilled in the Kishinev pogroms and the Holocaust.

Also, you can stop calling RZ Rabbonim “priests” now. It’s an unnecessary ad hominem. Religious Zionism produces some of the most rigorous Talmidei Chachamim (Torah scholars) in the world. They didn’t “ignore” the Torah; they rediscovered the parts of the Torah that the author has conveniently forgotten in the comfort of his Exile—the laws of Yishuv Ha’Aretz, the laws of Jewish sovereignty, and the laws of Pikuach Nefesh on a national scale.

As for “sending their children off to die in wars… just like the non-Jewish nations”. For 2,000 years, Jewish children were slaughtered like sheep because they didn’t have an army. To imply that there is no difference between a Jew dying as a helpless victim of a Cossack and a Jew dying as a soldier defending EY is an insult to the Kedoshim.

@AAQ – That’a very specific question. I will IY”H look it up.

ZSK, thanks a lot for looking it up! I am glad the story is confirmed. Would anyone know what charedi poskim say about such matters – either early on or now.

@ZSK

chazon ish famously compared usage of electricity on shabbat in EY , to

a sefer torah burning and a fellow needing fire for his smoke , lights his cigarette on that fire

technically he did not transgress , but who could bring himself to do such a thing …
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ZSK, use of electricity is not the same as dealing with public order.

I hope someone looked into how modern electric grid works. I presume most of it can be automated, so it is a question of metziyut – whether it is. Also, possibly you can establish a “kosher” station that puts enough electricity into the grid? In US, you can “buy” electrons from different companies, even as they are delivered over the same grid. You can also get solar panels, except you might be empowering their chinese producers that can come back and enslave you later.

@AAQ – That argument is that the power company isn’t a public utility producing power for emergency purposes, it’s a company that earns money. Thus they are making money on Shabbos by operating the grid or when people make use of electricity.

I haven’t had a chance to read the shu”t literature about it in depth, but my understanding of the Charedi position is that the grid is prohibited because Jews are violating Shabbos by maintaining the power grid, even if it’s mostly automated and run by a computer and various automated algorithms. Even the fact that there is a Jew present watching the systems makes it prohibited to use.

ZSK,
I get it, but your references are from the last century, I presume. You should be able to start your own solar-panel based shomer shabbat business and have electricity at least during the sunny days.

WRT electricity, police, etc. on Shabbos in Israel.

If the State truly cared about Shabbos, many things could be done by non-Jews. There are PLENTY (some would say too many) of non-Jewish police officers in Israel. Same for the electric company. Many utilities have long since been automated to a great extent, as has been pointed out. A little creative ingenuity (that Israel so prides itself on) and a few non-Jewish Shabbos supervisors, and they could be good to go Halachically IF THEY CARED ENOUGH. There is a tendency among RZ Rabbis to immediately invoke the ‘But how will the Heiliger State manage if we keep Shabbos/Shemittah/Tzniyus/etc. without any shtick?’ clause. Actually, the biggest Shabbos challenges are factories that use extreme high-temperature furnaces (Phoenicia Glass and the Haifa oil refinery being the most infamous) that take much time to warm up and to cool down (and therefore almost never shut down). There are actually Halachically and technically viable suggestions that have been made how to deal with those issues, based on technology that has been used in other places, but the management isn’t interested.

ZSK said – For 2,000 years, Jewish children were slaughtered like sheep because they didn’t have an army.

That statement is kefirah. Leaving aside discussions of hishtadlus with regard to individuals, the Jewish nation as a whole is subject only to Divine Hashgacha and nothing else. At the time of the Churban, and afterwards at the time of the Bar Koziva revolt, they had an army, but it didn’t help because Hashem didn’t want it to. Whether making an army is permitted altogether in Galus (which we still are in) is directly connected to the sugya of the Three Oaths, which you acknowledged is at least “a legitimate Halachic discussion”. By the way, the Russians had a very strong army (Cossacks you said?), and they lost 22,000,000(!) people in WWII, more than the entire Jewish people worldwide.

ZSK said – To imply that there is no difference between a Jew dying as a helpless victim of a Cossack and a Jew dying as a soldier defending EY is an insult to the Kedoshim.

What difference is there that makes a difference Jewishly? Because the soldier died with ‘honor’? Sorry to burst your bubble, but that doesn’t come from Judaism. What about the ‘helpless victims’ of the עשרה הרוגי מלכות or all the real קדושים of the generations? The ones the word ‘Kedoshim’ was meant to describe? And what about a non-Jewish soldier who dies for his country? Is he a ‘Kadosh’ according to your religion?

RightJew (who is wrong on many points) quotes an uncensored version of Hilchos Melochim and blames Chabad for ‘hiding’ the real Rambam. It shouldn’t shock anyone to discover that in most printed editions of the Rambam Hilchos Melochim was heavily censored, long before Chabad came along. Doesn’t take much imagination to figure out why…