[Avodah] Dr. Mendel Hirsch on the Founding of a Jewish State

[Yitzchok Levine]

The following is from Dr. Mendel Hirsch's commentary on the 
Haftoroth. Dr. Hirsch was the eldest son of RSRH. The selection below 
comes from his commentary of the Haftorah for Shabbos Chol Moed 
Pesach pages 592 - 593.

  (Written in 1896 I.L.) "So that even if to-day, through some 
miraculous chain of events, Palestine were to be placed at the 
unconditional disposal of the Jews, and they could return to the 
"Land of their Fathers" and found an independent state there: 
nothing, nothing at all, would be gained as long as the causes have 
not disappeared which once brought about  the downfall of the state 
and the destruction of the Temple, yea which made that downfall 
unavoidably necessary for the preservation of Judaism and thereby 
Jewry. A Jewish National body without Jewish spirit would be, and 
remain, dead; a Jewish State, that does not, in making the laws of 
the Torah a reality, present a picture of the realisation of the 
eternal laws of justice and love of one's neighbour based on the 
sound foundation of purity of morals, would be a still-born creation, 
and irretrievably doomed, to dissolution, even as it was thousands of 
years ago. But this is just by way of parenthesis!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20090412/ef9c8997/attachment-0001.htm>