80th year Yurzeit of Harav Teichtal who went from being an enemy of Zionism to an enthusiastic supporter!

by 

מנחם רהט

 

I loosely Translated his column from Hebrew!

Rabbi Yissachar Teichtal was murdered by the Nazis, but his ideology, which proves itself correct every day, has not yet penetrated the teachings of some of the Chareidie  leaders, one of whom (rabbi Dov Landau) mocked the "confused fighters with knitted yarmulkes" and longs for an Arab government that would grant an exemption from military service to Chareidie young men

1. Two historical events took place 80 years ago: in May 1945, the Nazi beast was defeated, and four months earlier, in Shevat 5705, Rabbi Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal, one of the first to sit in the Malchus of Torah in all European countries, was brutally murdered by the Nazis.

 Rabbi Yissachar Teichtal (hereinafter referred to as the Rabbi) was a giant of the generation: the Rosh Yeshiva of a Yeshiva for excellent students which he founded in the city of Pieshtian, Czechoslovakia, and was a well-known Av Beit Din who sent halachic responsa to all corners of Europe (and these were compiled in the ingenious Mishnah Shachir teshuvois).

Rav Teichtal understood quite early on that the Nazi devil was destining the Jews for total extermination. At that time, he still saw Zionism as the handiwork of the corrupting devil, as he was a clear follower of the greatest enemy of Zionism in those days, the Rebbe of Munkács (who, for comparison, hatred of Zionists by the Satmars and the other anti-sects paled in comparison to the enmity of Munkács).

The Rabbi did not sit idly by in the face of the imminent danger. In 1942 he fled Slovakia from Nazi Amalek to Hungary, where Jews were less persecuted (although Jews also suffered from Hungarian anti-Semitism). In the end, Hungary's sympathy for Germany did not help, which too was occupied by the Nazis in March 1944. The Rav returned to Slovakia and hid in an attic in Bratislava (which the Jews called Pressburg), but in the end he was caught due to informants and sent like the rest of his brothers on the death train to Auschwitz, where he was a burnt offering like the rest of his people.

2. From between the slits of the attic, he witnessed the Nazi devil's abuse of the Jews, and he caught chilling rumors about the extermination machine – and realized that he had lived his entire life a mistake by his opposition to Zionism. The transformation he underwent was complete. He saw the Zionist movement as an emissary of Divine Providence, which provided a safe haven for the persecuted Jewish people; And its people were perceived by him as emissaries of God to save the people and ensure the continuation of Jewish existence.

His new expression of this new ideological upheaval was recorded in his  Torah book which he wrote in  the same attic, "Ein Habanim Semeicha" (86, p.), in which all the quotations quoted from dozens of Torah books were written down from his genius memory, without the sources before his eyes. 

In his book, he expresses enthusiastic support for Zionism, immigration to the Land of Israel and its settlement, and expresses utter contempt for the rabbis and Rebbes who stopped the Jews from fleeing and reaching a safe shore in the Land of Israel, and compares them to the meraglim who slandered the land: 

"The spies were bribed by the biases that were hidden in their hearts. It is also in our time! Even rabbis and rabbis and Chassidim – this one has a good rabbinate, this has a good Rebbe, and this one has a good business or a good fabric or a good and honorable position – if they go to Eretz Yisrael, their situation will be weakened... Most of the time, a person deceives himself and thinks that his actions are for the sake of Heaven, and in fact he is managed by the bias that lies deep within him... that a person sees only what he wants to see" (pp. 38-39 in "Eim Habanim Semeich").

In all his greatness, the Rabbi humbly admits his ideological error, and notes in the face of the horrors of the Holocaust that he made a bitter mistake, like many of the rabbis of his generation:

 "In my eyes, too, I was disgusted of this enterprise of building the land... And only after we were afflicted with this exile did I examine this halakha, and God enlightened my eyes that I was  mistaken  and those rabbis who opposed it were also mistaken " 

And in another place: "All those who are... Against the immigration, against the building, and against the settlement of the land, they are the plague of the meraglim. And all those who choose Aliyah are the plague of Yehoshua and Kalev," says the Rav Teictal, calling on the public "to take upon ourselves for raising the keren arzeinu... And let us walk arm-in-arm in this holy enterprise, and then the work of our hands will be satisfied before the Holy One... And this will ultimately trickle down to us all... bringing Moshiach in our times " (p. 667).

3. However, the rabbis of the Chareidie communities in our time, who have already merited and continue to enjoy in the Land of Israel the pleasures of the national home established by the Zionist movement in the Land of Israel, kick all this goodness, and refuse to go "arm-in-arm in this holy enterprise." 

Not only do they not allow their followers  to participate in their defense and the defense of the land, but they also slander and curse those who do the holy work, and there were those who forbade the sending of food to the soldiers during the last war, for the evil reason: it is clear that the soldiers will not recite a blessing over the food, and this will be because "you shall not place an obstacle before the blind." That's it.

It's true that not everyone is like that. There are Chareidim who volunteer to pay out of their own pockets for soldiers who were spotted in an ultra-Orthodox restaurant. "Your bill has already been paid," restaurant owners say to the soldiers who sacrifice their lives for the defense of the nation in the Land of Israel – including the Chareidim . At the very least, they fulfill the mitzva of gratitude, which Judaism commands (see Sefer Ha-Chinuch).

For example, Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, one of the leaders of the Chareidie  community and Nasi of the Committee of Yeshiva Heads (who died a year and a half ago), compared the soldiers who gave their lives for the people and the land to those who were killed in Lod –

The story recorded in Talmud about  two ordinary Jews that gave their lives to save Klal Yisrael and were rewarded with a glorious reward from heaven. 

Rabbi Edelstein said: "Secular Jews who are not observant of Torah and mitzvot, if they give their lives to save others out of love for others, they have a world to come like those who were killed in Lod who gave their lives for the benefit of the people of the city. ...

What is nationalism? Love of the people. Secular people in the army give their lives to save others., Isn't this just the Lod fatalities? If the secular is willing to sacrifice his life more than the Chareidie, he is greater than him... Jewish nationalism is different from non-Jewish nationalism, and it is the love of the people of Jews and is blessed."

4. But there are also those who continue to insult and curse, and they are from the mainstream, not from the Jerusalem sect. 

Rabbi Dov Landau, known in the Lithuanian world as the leader of the generation, recently mocked "those  with knitted kippahs, who are confused" who give their lives for the salvation of the Jewish people; And despise God: "They are killed because their rabbis teach them a distorted Torah, whoever knows the Zionist idea, what used to be, the Bnei Akiva movement, it still exists, but I don't wish them any blessing."

Rabbi Landau also claimed – and this is a complete distortion – that if HaMedina had not been established and replaced by an Arab government, our situation would have been excellent. 

It has forgotten the pogroms that Arabs caused against the Jews of the country, even before Zionism. Thus, for example, the riots perpetrated by Arabs against the Jews of Safed in 1834, decades before Zionism, in the style of the Gaza massacre: dozens were murdered and wounded, many women were raped, and the rest fled with only their clothes for their bodies to be like animals in the mountains and valleys. Is this the paradise that the ultra-Orthodox yearn for?

I wonder what the Rav Teictal would have said about the Rav Landau's thoughts.