[Avodah] RAYK and the end of chol

[T613K at aol.com]

R'n SB wrote:


:  Can anyone honestly say, after seeing Israel export fruit and vegetables 
to  
: the world, when comparing the situation here to what it was 120 years  ago 
- 
: when it was a land of swamps and desert, that something hasn't  changed?
 
and in Avodah Digest, Vol 25, Issue 116 dated 3/31/2008 RMB  wrote::



(Tangent: Obviously, Agudists can. Anti-Zionists will agree  something
changed, but they will say it's the introduction of a nisayon.  But the
neutral non-Zionist can say that it's not a fundamental  change.)

>>>>>
I don't agree that this is a fair statement of what Agudists believe.   I 
consider myself an Agudist and, like most Agudists, I believe that something  HAS 
changed in Eretz Yisrael.  And no, the flowering of flowers, of fruits,  of 
vegetables, and of yeshivos and kollelim is NOT just "the introduction of a  
nisayon."  
 
Rather, we do live in a time when we can hear the footsteps of Moshiach  
approaching, and we do live in a time where we can see many the fulfillment of  
many ancient prophecies, the beginning of kibbutz galuyos and the first  
stirrings of the Ge'ulah.   When you see Yerushalayim built up and  full of Yidden, 
when you see the desert turning green and the farms producing  bountiful 
harvests, it would be very difficult for a Torah Jew not to see that  miracles are 
happening before our eyes.
 
What happened was that there was "something in the air" and the Zionists  
picked up a whiff of it and ran with it -- in the wrong direction.  Away  from 
Torah, rather than back to Torah.
 
Those secular Jews who participated in the physical work of rebuilding  Eretz 
Yisrael no doubt have a huge zechus and will have great schar for  it.  At 
the same time, those secular Jews who tried to eradicate  Torah -- especially 
the rabidly anti-religious socialist Ashkenazi elite --  will have to answer for 
all the evil that they have done.  
 
As for Religious Zionists -- they have been and are a very mixed  bag, as 
some of them have aided and abetted some of the worst  activities  of the secular 
Zionists, while others are talmidei  chachamim and tzaddikim, among the most 
idealistic and admirable Jews  of our time.  
 
My father once said to me (I have mentioned this before) that there  was 
nothing wrong with Mizrachi that wouldn't be corrected by Torah learning,  that 
whatever was wrong with Mizrachi -- laxity in mitzvos, or in tznius  -- stemmed 
from amaratzus and a lack of Torah knowledge, and that when they  began to 
seriously learn Torah, these faults would be corrected.  Many  years later he 
reminded me of that conversation and said, "Do you see the  talmidim of Mercaz 
Harav, how careful they are with halacha, how medakdek  bemitzvos, how their 
wives are so tzniusdik?  It's just what I said, they  are talmidei chachamim and 
their Torah observance is impeccable."  I'm not  saying that he agreed with DL 
ideology, but he certainly considered them to  be part of the Torah camp.
 
Today even many of the DL are anti-Zionist by the standards of yesterday's  
"Zionism."  They no longer worship the army and the government, after Oslo  and 
Gaza.  
 
To see that something wondrous has been happening in Eretz Yisrael over the  
past century, and to see simultaneously that there is something rotten about 
the  present government, is not a contradiction at all.  It was always a 
mistake  to conflate Zionism with ahavas Eretz Yisrael.  
 
The Zionist enterprise has been ohr vechoshech mishtamshim be'irbuvyeh  (like 
so much human activity!).  Yes, there is a nisayon involved in the  return to 
E'Y -- many nisyonos -- but the flowering of Jewish life is not "just"  a 
nisayon. It is also a Divine gift.  It is a sign that the Jewish  people has not 
been abandoned and forgotten after all these centuries of galus,  it is a 
Divine smile, a hint and a promise that the Geulah is coming.  


--Toby  Katz
=============





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