If masses of Jews in Eretz Yisroel violates the oaths, what about the Jews between the destruction of the Temple and Bar Kochba?

A quick question regarding the hypothesis of your book.

How do you understand the time of Bar Kochba,as I’m sure you would be quick to agree, at that time the oaths did apply halachacly speaking, the proof for that is that we see from Chazal that the Jewish people got punished for transgressing the oaths.

If this is the case though, according to the opinion of the Satmar Rebbe and yourself, that the oath of “not going up as a wall” means we can’t be in Eretz Yisroel with a a lot of people while we are supposed to be in exile, why were the Jewish people only punished for the oaths when they started fighting? Already before then, they were transgressing the oath!

Thanks in advance for your response.

The oaths are about reversing our state of golus. Thus the Satmar Rebbe holds that in our time, when just 100 years ago 99.9% of Jews lived outside Eretz Yisroel, coming en masse to Eretz Yisroel was a reversal of golus and was ossur. (Just to be clear, I don’t take a position on this between the two great gedolim, the Avnei Nezer and the Satmar Rebbe.)

However in the time of Bar Kochba, and for about 200 years after the destruction, there were still a lot of Jews in Eretz Yisroel who hadn’t left yet. They were slowly going into golus, little by little. So those Jews who were still there, no matter how many there were, weren’t transgressing the decree of golus by still being there. Hashem didn’t say that as soon as the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed, suddenly everyone had to be out of the land. The gezeiras hagolus was that as they were expelled or forced out by circumstances, they had to see their expulsion as part of Hashem’s decree and not make any organized effort to resist it. So it was Bar Kochba’s retaking of sovereignty, not their living in the land, that was the violation of the oaths.