Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 21, 2024

RABBI ELCHANAN POUPKO (Op-Ed / VINnews) Whether quietly or outline, many voices in the frum and Hasidic community, post-October 7th, have felt vindicated about the Charedi approach to Zionism. No one looking at what has happened or what is happening right now on Israels northern border and its South, can reflexively feel this is Atchaltach DeGeula (beginning of the redemption), or a vindication of the Zionist vision.

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Rabbi Aharon Lopiansky, Rosh HaYeshiva of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington, in the Pesach issue of Mishpacha magazine, wrote a column alluding to this approach of vindication:

For almost 200 years, the common wisdom was that all our woes were a byproduct of our homeless existence.The solution was thought to be obvious, if difficult. Become a normal people. Have a country that is yours and everything will fall into place. Sure, there will be birth pangs, but those are productive pains, like that of a dislocated shoulder being pulled into place. Once that initial stage has passed, life should be natural and smooth.

Rabbi Aharon Lopiansky, went on to question the current state of Jews in the state of Israel: Can anyone explain how, almost a century later, with magnificent armed forces, sophisticated and brave beyond words, we are still not safer than we were at the beginning of our venture? That no fewer Jews are killed in the ongoing skirmishes than in the pogroms of Europe?

For the historical record, it is important to note that in no place did the early leaders of the Zionist movement make the above statements. Zionism was founded by people who had a tragically accurate vision of what was going on in Europe and understood that the Jews of Europe were facing an existential danger. Zionist leaders saw the pogroms of Eastern Europe and the failure of modernization and emancipation in Western Europe to curb the European vicious lust for Jewish blood, and they dedicated themselves to finding a new safe home for the Jewish people. Some are mocked to this day for entertaining the option of Jewish statehood in Uganda, but the fact is that they and their Zionist peers read the atmosphere in Europe terrifyingly accurately.

It is hard to say how many Jewish lives would have been saved had everyone listened to Zionist leaders when they said what they said and what would happen had Britain not reneged on the Balfour declaration and established a Jewish state in the 1920s, but surely millions of Jewish lives would have been saved.

There was nothing religiousor anti religiousabout their outlook on this matter, they simply did not see a future for Jews in Europe. This was proven to be tragically true in the years before the Holocaust, during the Holocaust, after the Holocaust, and to this very day.

As a frum person, you do not demand that your doctor be frum, nor is there a need for a frum outlook on the vision for a Jewish state. It simply has to do with thinking forward about the future safety of the Jewish people.

But it isnt just the Holocaust.

Jews from Iran, to North Africa, Turkey, most recently Ukraine and Ethiopia, found refuge in the land of Israel in the hundreds of thousands and in the millions. It turns out that having a homeland where the Jewish people can run to in times of need, is a really good idea. I shudder at the thought of what would have happened had so many Jews from Soviet Russia, Yemen, or Egypt would have no place to flee to. For centuries Jews were pogromed in tens and hundreds of thousands, expelled from country to country, and persecuted in the most horrible ways, and now all that is needed is a flight to the modern state of Israel.

Was that state always perfect? Of course not.

There were some terrible things that happened in the many difficult moments since its birth, such as the episode of Yaldei Teiman, Yemenite children removed from their families, to other incidents that came with a young state clamoring for its very life. It is important to recall those episodes not only for the record of what wrongs were done, but also to ask what the alternative could have been. In the case of Yemenite, Syrian, or Iraqi Jews, they likely would be mostly murdered by violent Islamists because as it turns out, not every Jew in the world is born with an American passport and a house in Lakewood or Maryland.

In fact, especially as you compare the Jews who fled to Israel with the Jews who fled to America, you realize what a miracle Israel has been for the Jewish people. We can now safely say that an unintended consequence of Herel and Zionist leaders work was to build a national shelter against Jewish assimilation that maintained the Jewish identity of many millions of Jews.

This is not about the past or just historical Monday morning quarterbacking. This is about the very future of millions of Jews.

No matter what your Hashkafa is, making sure Jews are safe and with a strong Jewish identity is a goal everyone should share.

Here is where I will deviate from my fellow religious zionists. Keeping this miracle called the modern state of Israel requires an extraordinary amount of Hishtadlus and the efforts of millions of Jews. If those efforts are not made, the state of Israel will collapse on its inhabitants, will be destroyed, and those who survive that destruction will go into exile, just like so many of those who survived the Bar Kovcha rebellion have.

The irony of the destruction of the third Jewish commonwealth that could come, is that if it does, it will be a self fulfilling prophecy. As the frum, not-Zionist or anti zionist community in Israel grows, it will not be willing to make the immense sacrifices needed to maintaining the unfathomably miraculous sate of Israel. Once those needs are not met and those sacrifices are not made, the State of Israel will cease to exist.

The common Charedi Hashkafa regarding the state of Israel, is a luxury of being a minority. Yet as the frum community goes on to constitute a majority of Jews living in Israel, and as the frum community in the diaspora goes on to grow in numbers and percentages of the broader Jewish community, the question of who will care for the future of Jews living in Israel, becomes unescapable. The frum fantasy of thriving as a minority community with no zionist ideology, becomes less sweet when you realize Hamas and those who committed the atrocities of October 7th, are the alternative to the modern state of Israel.

I once had a friend in Jerusalem from the Old Yishuv, who came from the Aurbach family, known to live in Israel for over 150 years. While most Charedim do not descend from people who had lived in Israel for that long, he had. He made to me the legitimate argument against the modern state of Israel saying: my family came here before the state of Israel. You cooked a porridge, eat it. None of Israels problems are my problem, he concluded.

While I respect this position, upon discovering that millions of Jews living under the rule of Hamas is the alternative to the modern state of Israel, it is time to call off the bluff. The bluff claiming that millions of Jews in Israel should or can just get on an airplane and move to suburban Maryland, or Upstate New York is practically impossible and Halachically discouraged.

It is time for the frum community to leave the vindictive or theoretical mode, and start asking what each and every one of us could do to ensure the lives and existence of 6.6 million Jews living inside the modern state of Israel. Futile debates over how religious Hertzel and Ben Gurion really were, how secular were members of the early Kibbutzim, or who the true villain was in the Kasnter affair (Kastner in my opinion) or what did the Brisker Rov and Satmar Rebbe really mean when they said the state of Israel would not survive longer than ten years must fall by the wayside. Any Yid who cares for Klal Yisrael should be losing sleep at night to ask themselves what we can do to ensure the success and survival of the state of Israel for the coming fifty years. Do we really want to bet our options on being right and seeing the national home of millions of Jews collapsing on them in bloodshed, humiliation, and a Chilul Shem Shamayaim we havent seen in our lifetimes, or would we like Yidden to live in safety and peace? If the latter is our answer, then standing with and fighting for the future of the state of Israel should be our highest priority right now.

Whether it is the early Zionists deep concern about the future of European Jews in the years to come, or the yearning of Talmidai HaGra, Talmidei HaBaal Shem, and countless other Jews for the land of Israelevery frum person must be asking themselves now how to sustain the future of the modern state of Israel. If we do not, we will lost it with all the death and destruction such a loss would ential. Let us double our commitment to securing this future.

The writer is an eleventh-generation rabbi, teacher and author. He has written Sacred Days on the Jewish Holidays, Poupko on the Parsha, and hundreds of articles published in five languages. He is a member of the executive committee of the Rabbinical Council of America.

Original post:

R POUPKO: Post October 7th Zionism, Response to Rabbi Lopiansky - VINNews

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