israel
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One State, Two States: Reviewed
In 2009, Israeli historian Benny Morris published a book called One State, Two States on the history of proposed solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, attitudes toward them on both sides, and possibilities for the future. He paints both solutions as undesirable: the two state because the borders are unnatural and difficult to draw, the water…
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The WZO Election
Five years ago, Pesach Lerner started a party called Eretz Hakodesh within the World Zionist Organization, and set about convincing chareidi Jews to vote for it. In a way, we have to thank him for bringing the issue of Zionism to the fore so that gedolim around the world had the opportunity to come forward…
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Changing Israeli Demographics – Diluting the State’s Jewish Population
Proponents of the one-state solution are faced with daunting challenges. Yes, it would solve the halachic issue of a Jewish state before the messiah. (The number of Palestinians, Israeli Arabs and other non-Jews already today outnumber Jews between the river and the sea.) And it would offer an opportunity for Israelis and Palestinians to live…
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Your book is outdated; today we have to see Zionism as a Jew’s inner yearning to reconnect with his Jewish self
Dear Rav Yirmiyahu, I saw a copy of your book/ Sefer in shul which grabbed my attention and spent some time reading sections of it. This topic is one that I have given a great deal of thought to out of my own interest and having taught Modern Jewish History for over 20 years. At…
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To Be a Jew Today, by Noah Feldman
I was pleased to see I Will Await Him cited by Harvard professor Noah Feldman in his recent book To Be a Jew Today (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2024). In the chapter entitled “Israel Without Zionism”, Feldman discusses how it came to be that so many Traditionalist Jews, who opposed or at least did not…
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Rabbi Dovid Soloveitchik: Zionism results in the Jewish casualties, as punishment for violating the oaths
The Zionists claimed that they would save the Jews from government persecution [in Russia], and already then Rabbi Chaim Brisker, of blessed memory, said that their entire purpose in founding a state was in order to have a way to uproot the Torah from the Jewish people and to transform them into a nation like…
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Okay, but what do we do about it now?
The purpose of my book was to raise awareness of a problem. How to solve it is another story. In fact, many people have questioned the purpose in studying a subject when we have no workable solution. Therefore, I’ve dedicated this section of the site, “The Future” to talking about the solutions that have been…
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Zionist Argument: The nations of the world already violated their oath
Claim: Two of the three oaths are for the Jews, and one is for the nations of the world. Since the nations of the world violated their oath and persecuted the Jews too much (i.e. the Holocaust), the Jews are allowed to violate theirs. This claim is based on the Midrash and the Zera Shimshon…
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Zionist Argument: Permission of the Nations
Claim: The oaths do not apply to the State of Israel, since it was founded with the UN’s permission. Facts: 1) One of the oaths is that the Jewish people must not go up to Eretz Yisroel as a wall. There is a disagreement among the commentators as to whether this oath applies to any…
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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.…
I Will Await Him 