yankel> pretends to know better than the rabbanim much greater than him both in torah and yirat shamayim and pikchut , how to deal with the �rav of the town trotsky came from�
I beg your pardon – I am just quoting a maaseh of Chofetz Chaim that is presumably as reliable as other stories about him, that is “possible”. And in no way I am “judging”. We are look at the events 100-200 years later. We see many tools and institutions developed that make communities stronger. We might still not fully know which ones and under what conditions are the best, but we are surely doing better than in 19th century. It is not the literal “fault” of those rabbis that they didn’t develop philosophies and kiruv movements overnight, but it is a fact that some views that simply shamed people for “following their hearts” instead of doing as in “good old days” was not effective. Some, rare, people understood the problem and tried to find solutions. Some solutions were not helpful, others developed into something coherent over time … Those were not easy times, and we all do not know what we would have done.