Reply To: New book – “HaChareidim V’Haaretz”

AAQ – Yes it is in the Gemara on Sotah 49. There is a parallel Midrash Rabbah Eichah (which existed as a Beraysa that was actually quoted by the Gemara). The Gemara is talking about how the Chachomim made a gezerah NOT to learn ???? ?????. The beraysa is brought as a counter example, to which the Gemara responds ???? ??? ??? ?????? ???? ?????? ??????.

Gedolei Yisroel know how to read between the lines and chap what was really going on. This whole elaborate hishtadlus, which needed a special hetter from the Chachamim, (which is the whole point of the Gemara that you completely missed), was in order to keep a line of communication with the Romans – in order to prevent exactly the scenario which actually happened in the end. Maybe that has something to do with why we stopped doing it that way. Maybe you can try to understand how that is the point of the whole Gemara, especially when read in context.

The business with trafficking babies was not the central element of the program, it just goes to show the enormous moral turpitude of the secular Ashkenazi Zionists and their total disdain for the people they (and you) claim they were “saving” and “protecting”.

The claim the Zionists were “saving” the Sephardim from hostile countries is classic arsonist-become-firefighter. How did those countries, where Jews had lived for over 2,000 years, become hostile to Jews in the first place? Not that antisemitism didn’t exist before, but there was no urgent need to flee until a very specific point in history… Something you totally ignore…

Your conflating na�vet� with laxity in observance is another example of misreading. In the shtetl in Europe 200 years ago, or in the Middle East 100 years ago, one could “go with the flow” passively and still remain a fully observant Jew. The challenge of Haskalah and modernity etc. forced a need for more proactive education and being more careful about things that used to be taken for granted.