Rabbi Chaim Avrohom Dov Ber Hakohein Levine, known as the Malach (1860-1938), once said in the name of the Rogachover Gaon, “The Yerushalmi says that the Christians have a secret plan, so secret that they are not aware of it themselves, to prevent the coming of moshiach by defiling Eretz Yisroel.” Rabbi Yaakov Schorr interpreted this to mean that they would defile it by giving the Zionists permission to establish a state.
Rabbi Avrohom Zanvil Gertner told this over to the Satmar Rebbe, who asked excitedly, “Where is this Yerushalmi?” Reb Zanvil didn’t know. Reb Yaakov Schorr later explained that it wasn’t an explicit Yerushalmi; it was the way the Rogachover learned pshat in the Yerushalmi. (Printed in Sefer Shloshes Haro’im, Perek Zikaron Divrei Harav p. 268)
Both Schorr and Gertner were among the Torah Vodaas students who became the Malach’s close followers.
The sefer Tiferes Yoel quotes someone who suggested that the Yerushalmi in question was Sanhedrin 10:5: “Rabbi Yochanan said, the Jewish people went into exile only because they became 24 sects of minim (heretics).”
The Rogachover in a letter (printed in his Shailos Uteshuvos Tzofnas Paneach, v. 2 number 69) connects the Talmudic term “minim” with the early Christians, as well as the Zionists. Here is the letter, written in the Rogachover’s characteristic style of rapid fire quotations from Chazal.
13 Teves 5660 (1900). I received your letter about the stubborn movement calling themselves by the name of Zionists. It’s not a coincidence that they picked this name; it’s based on Rashi on Yuma 77b who says that Zion is outside Jerusalem. It is the upper marketplace mentioned in the Yerushalmi Shekalim 8:1 (“All spittle found in Jerusalem is tahor, except for in the upper marketplace…”), and it is the non-Jewish clothing washers mentioned there (“Rabbi Avin said in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi: Non-Jewish clothing washers were there.”) – because the well-known minim (heretics) are mentioned in many places in Chazal as being in the upper marketplace – see Avodah Zarah 18a [17a]. (“Once I was walking in the upper marketplace of Tzipori, and I met one of the students of Yeshu HaNotzri, and his name was Yaakov of Kfar Sechania…”)
This is the meaning of the Yerushalmi Taanis 4:2, “We have checked the entire Tanach and not found any place where the Jewish people is called Zion, other than this: ‘To plant heaven and found earth, and to say to Zion, you are My people.”Only through Torah and avodah will we be called Zion. And in Sanhedrin 99b it says that we were created only for the labor of Torah. And the Rambam in his commentary on the Mishnah, first chapter of Sanhedrin, says that the geulah will come when we repent exceedingly to Hashem Yisborach and His Torah. Now, it’s obvious that this movement has nothing of that at all.
But, fearing that it would be better if I kept silent, as the Rosh wrote to the Re’em in Minchas Kanaus Letter 99, I have written and signed, Yosef Rozin.
Hence, the Yerushalmi in Sanhedrin would mean, “The Jewish people are stuck in exile, and the geulah will be delayed, only because they became 24 sects of minim – including Christians and Zionists.”
The Rogachover attributes a sinister motive to the Christian Zionists. However, the Pnei Yehoshua on Kesubos 111a predicts that non-Jews will support Zionism for a friendly reason. After stating that all six oaths derived from the verses in Shir Hashirim have to do with Hashem’s desire to keep the exile in effect and not allow the geulah to come early, the Pnei Yehoshua asks how the oath against revealing the secret to the nations fits into this picture. He answers based on Rashi’s second explanation, that “the secret” refers to the reasons behind the Torah. When the gentiles learn the reasons and secrets of the Torah, they will come to recognize the great love between Hashem and the Jewish people, and they will then stop ruling over them and will arouse the redemption before its time.
In any case, it was indeed Christian Zionists who first brought up the idea of a Jewish mass return to Palestine, starting in Britain in the 1840s. Lord Shaftesbury, Alexander Keith and Lawrence Oliphant all advocated for it. George Eliot published Daniel Deronda in 1876, before the first Zionist aliyah. Arthur Balfour and Lloyd George were evangelists.
It is commonly claimed that the Balfour Declaration was issued because of war time needs, such as getting America into the war, although America joined the war 6 months before the Declaration. Keeping Russia in the war against Germany was another. (This aim evaporated almost immediately when Lenin took over in Russia 5 days after the declaration was signed and made a peace treaty with Germany.) Once the war had been won some of the claimed reasons were of little relevance. However, there was another component of the reasons for the declaration which did not get included in official documents. These were the beliefs of the people making the decisions.
Geoffrey Alderman wrote in the Jewish Chronicle, Nov. 8 2012: “The Balfour Declaration was born out of religious sentiment. Arthur Balfour was a Christian mystic who believed that the Almighty had chosen him to be an instrument of the Divine Will… perhaps as a precursor to the Second Coming of the Messiah”.
Israeli historian Anita Shapira writes that even Jewish Zionism was a product of Christian Zionism: ‘… until the nineteenth century the Bible was considered secondary to Jewish oral law… It was the Protestants who discovered the Bible …Even the idea of the Jews returning to their ancient homeland as the first step to world redemption seems to have originated among a specific group of evangelical English Protestants that flourished in England in the 1840s; they passed this notion onto Jewish circles. It might seem that the idea of returning to the Land of Israel had been part of the Jewish people’s spiritual beliefs from time immemorial…. But there was an essential difference between this yearning and Zionism. … Instead of passively awaiting the coming of the Messiah, the Jewish people would take their fate into their own hands and transform their situation through their own action.” (Israel, a History, p.15)
I Will Await Him 
Leave a comment