Comments on the Aussie Echo blog
So we're supposed to take your opinion over 3 generations of Chabad Rebbes just because???
Please enlighten us, Hirshel. What was the Rebbe Rashab's opinion of Yom Haatzmaut? And what did this blogger say that was inconsistent with the way the Rebbe treated the State of Israel?
The Rebbe Rashab's view of the Zionist enterprise is published and available for everyone to read. You know it very well, Joe. The Rebbe's attitude to the State of Israel is also well-known. He saw it as חשך כפול ומכופל, and as an entity that has declared כתבו לכם על קרן השור אין לי חלק באלקי ישראל. He also saw it as a government that holds the lives of millions of Jews in its hands, and is criminally negligent with their safety.
At the same time he recognised it as the government of millions of Jews, which had to be dealt with just like the government of the USA or any other country where Jews live in freedom. When the government was prepared to do good, he acknowledged that and cooperated with it, rather than resisting it as an inherently evil entity from which no good could ever come.
We can appreciate Eretz Yisrael and the government which currently controls it, but celebrating the 5th of Iyyar implies that something significant happened on that day. What was that? Were the Jews any safer on the 6th of Iyyar 5708 than they had been on the 4th? Were they any freer to learn Torah and do mitzvos? The war had already begun months before, and would go on for another year. All that happened on that day was a political declaration, a declaration that the Rebbe utterly rejected.
There is, however, one good thing that can be acknowledged about that event. Amid the chilul Hashem of the "tzur yisrael" compromise, and the inherent undesirability of the whole Zionist enterprise, there was also a glimmer of kiddush Hashem: the fact that the declaration was made in the afternoon of the 5th, instead of at midnight on the 6th, was because of kedushas Shabbos. The British mandate didn't expire until midnight, and that's when Ben-Gurion had planned to declare independence, but in order to get the religious to sign he had to move the ceremony back to Erev Shabbos afternoon. That is something worth at least a bit of celebration.
The Rashab couldn't have had any opinion of yom-haatzmaut, as his passing preceded it by quite many years. What his opinion WOULD have been, however, based on his published writings on the dangers of zionism, is obviously a lot closer to saying kinos rather than hallel.
Millhouse has explained the Rebbe's position regarding the State of Israel quite accurately.
In reponse to Milhouse - The Zionist movement of the Rebbe Rashab's day is no longer around: it's one of the intellectual heirs of modern Zionism; no more. As for the Rebbe's view of the State of Israel - I think you're contradicting yourself when you say that the Rebbe simultaneously held it to be "חשך כפול ומכופל" and that he acknowledge that "the government was prepared to do good".
In practice the Rebbe certainly held friendly relations with figures in the Israeli government and Chabad figures have not been shy about exploiting their relationship with the State. As for calling the events of the 5th of Iyyar political: of course they were! And as a result of those political events Jews are able to organise their civil society in a way which accomodates Judaism, and hence there are more students learning in yeshivos and kollels and so forth than there have been since the days of King Chizkiyahu. We should celebrate the existence of the Jewish State, and if the State asks us to do it on a particular day it makes sense to do so.
In response to Mike Mandel - we don't need to search for what we think that the Rebbe Rashab would have said if he were to have lived post-1948. If the LR didn't tell us to say Kinot then we can understand that the Rebbe Rashab wouldn't have done so either.
I remember back in the 70s I heard about a community of Jews in Toronto (I then lived in Western New York State) whose position was no return to Israel without The Messiah. Most American gentiles assume religious Jews and Zionism go hand and hand, but a closer look finds this not to be the case.
It's a very complicated issue because situations change, ideologies change, but prejudices remain. Zionism in Tsarist Russia was one reaction to the institutionalised antisemitism of the government, which itself was a manifestation of the age-old Jewish Question: how can Jews be part of a nation that is practically and officially Christian? One response to this was assimilation: the government had a deliberate policy of Russification that promoted this. Another response was to reform the national identity via a secular revolution: Communism. A third reaction was to create a nation that would itself be Jewish: Zionism.
Zionism was a nationalist response. The old Jewish identity wasn't nationalist, which meant that Zionism was committed re-defining Jewish identity as a commitment to the planned future State rather than to the Jewish religion. You could have religious Zionists (and there were many) but their identity as a Zionist necessarily meant that they accepted the broad range of secular and non-Orthodox fellow-Zionists as comrades. IMHO this re-shaping of the Jewish identity is why the Rebbeim could not compromise with the Zionism of their day: they could not accept a movement which placed other values ahead of the Torah.
All this was before the establishment of the State of Israel. That event ended old-style Zionism and replaced it with patriotism, nationalism, and romanticism. Modern Zionists are not people who have committed themselves to a non-religious Jewish identity: they're merely people with an excess of these emotions. I can't see any reason why Chassidim ought to be Zionists (to the extent the word has any meaning nowadays), but I can't see any reason other than historical sentiment for them to treat the word with contempt.
Interesting to note some of the comments of the Rebbe Rashab regarding Zionists (ok Joe - the Zionists of his time):
"Even if these men were loyal to Hashem and His Torah, and even if there were a chance that they would achieve their goal, we must not listen to them in this matter, to make our redemption with our own power."
(Here comes the part where current Lubavitch philosophy seems to differ from the time of the Rebbe Rashab. He continues
"Is it not forbidden to force the end with excessive prayer [Rashi-Kesubos 111a]? All the more so that with power and worldly methods, that is to leave exile by force we are not permitted.......
.....And this is against our true hope, that Hashem will bring us Moshiach Tzidkeinu soon and our redemption will come through Hashem Himself." - (Ohr Layesharim,p.57)
The Friediker Rebbe (who was very much alive at the time and referring to the Zionists of the late 1940's) is much more direct. He wrote:
"I am against the proposed Jewish state. It would be a calamity for the Jews, and in a short time they will realize what a calamity it is." (Igros Kodesh 947)
Once again the "author" of this site,hiding behind the mask of anonymity, shows their ignorance to the reasons and actual stance of Chabad on the state of Israel..
Using this as another opportunity to smear the name of Chabad , of which they never seem to bore, this blogger seems content to appear as an elitist ,both calculating and hateful.
But, in reality I think this blogger is far more pitiful. And, indeed, certainly uneducated in regards to the many Jewish sects beyond the narrow interpretation they received while growing up in Australia, or observations made through the extremely limited expose to these "Chareids" that Australia has to offer beyond standing in Glick's erev Shabbos waiting for some Challas.
Ignorance may be bliss but arrogance and small-mindedness seem to be the trademark of this anonymous "commenter".
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