A "shvantz" is a tail in Yiddish,
There is one particular guy, I'm guessing he is ex Satmar guy who has a twitter account and goes by the handle
@Yakovolf.
All in all I agree with a lot of his tweets but when it comes to Israel, he goes insane with his sheer hatred of the State.
I have found that a lot of ex-Satmars when they go off or become "tuna -beigels" still have this hatred towards the State of Israel, because it is so embedded in them that they cannot shake it.
And even those who shake off Satmar traditions including Torah Umitzvois still keep hating Israel because it remains in their blood.
I am not suggesting that
@Yakovof is not frum; I believe he is.
In his tweet below, he mocks those who set up a new holiday, "Yom Ha'atzmot, " writing that
"There is no Yom Tov commemorating the entrance into the Land of Israel led by Yehoshua, nor is there a celebration for the construction of the First Beis Hamikdash by Shlomo Hamelech, the rebuilding of the Second Temple, or the return of Ezra to Eretz Yisroel."
he then goes into a rant stating:
"But on the day a secular state was founded by Kofrim and Mechalelei Shabbos somehow, religious Zionists say Hallel'"
I had
posted last week, that the Satmar Rebbe of Monroe in 1995 mocked the entire Lag Be'omer ritual and yelled that this is "not our mesorah"and prohibited his sheep from flying to Israel to celebrate Lag Be'omer in Meron. He threatened to throw out those bochrim that went.
But should you glance at Satmar social media, you can see full page invitations to the "Hadlaka in Monroe"
So much for that not being in "our mesorah!"
It turns out that the Satmar Rebbe may actually be right!
The question is really whether we can establish new holidays.
Despite
@Yakovof tweet, this is not a simple matter with many great poiskim stating that it is in fact permitted and not only permitted but Hallel should be recited.
In fact, ironically, if you read the Chasam Sofer you can clearly see that Lag Be'omer is not a Mesorah, and yet the Zionist Yom Hazmaot may very well be a holiday and Hallel should be recited in full with a bracha, according to the Chasam Sofer.
The Chasam Sofer (Teshuvot Chasam Sofer, YD 233) is critical of those who celebrate Lag Ba'omer, as the day is not mentioned anywhere in rabbinic literature and doesn't commemorate any miracle or salvation., (which was the Satmar Rebbe's argument back in 1995) But then the Chasam Sofer states that "establishing a festival to mark a miraculous event, is a Biblical requirement, and one who does not to do so in violation of not performing a positive mitzvah.
The Chaya Adam (155:41) also ruled that it is a mitzvah for an individual or a community to establish a holiday. He relates how he himself established a holiday on the day when he and his family were spared after a powder keg explosion destroyed a number of homes including his own, claiming the lives of 31 people.
Both the Magen Avraham (OC 686:5) and the Mishna Berura (OC 686:8) record that a community can create a "Purim" for themselves and for future generations, on a day in which they experienced a miracle.
All agree including the Chazon Ish that Israel winning the war in 1948 was a miracle.
It is ironic that he is mocking a new holiday that religious Zionists established, which has a basis in halacha according to poiskim, as millions of Jews now call it their home, while ignoring new holidays that Satmar itself established, for example, the anniversary of the day that the Satmar Rebbe hopped on a Zionist Train to save himself, is a huge event with celebrations going on all day.
And recently they established another brand new holiday a "Hadlaka" on Lag Be'omer that the Satmar Rebbe himself mocked and the Chasam Sofer says is NOT a holiday!
As far as his remark that there is "no Yom Tov commemorating the entrance into the Land of Israel led by Yehoshua" that is misleading, but how would the "shvantz" know that, they don't teach Tanach in Satmar.
All the Jews save for a handful died in the midbar, they were not circumcised, and when they were still alive they hadn't celebrated the holidays written in the Torah for 40 years. So those who entered Eretz Yisrael with Yehoshua had not ever in their entire lives experienced ANY Yom Tov. In fact, Yehoshua had to circumcise them so that they could observe the very first Yom Tov which was Pesach. Every Yom Tov after that was a totally new experience to them, there was no need to establish an additional Yom Tov, they were first learning how to observe properly the Yomim Tovim written in the Torah, in addition, most of Eretz Yisrael was not conquered, in fact Yehosuah was punished because of that, as he didn't finish the job he was instructed to do.
There was in fact a celebration for the construction of the First Bais Hamikdash see Mo'ed Katan 8b where the gemarrah relates that the celebration continued into Yom Kippur and Chazal at the time permitted them to eat. It must have been a huge celebration if they ate on the holiest day of the year.
As far as the Second Bais Hamikdash is concerned, very few Jews wanted to return from Bavel and build the Bais Hamikdash, Ezra cursed them. I don't think they were in a mood to celebrate.
But the reason that
@Yakovof is a huge "shvantz" is because there is no comparison of the miracle of the gathering in of the exiles from four corners of the earth after 2,000 years, an event which never ever happened to Jews or any other nation in world history, truly a miraculous event, compared to the building of the Bais Hamikdash. When the Jews left Mitzrayim, all Jews had lived in one place, Mitzrayim. When the Jews went up to with Ezra from Bavel, 99.9% of all Jews lived in one place, Bavel. But the miracle of the State of Israel is like no other in the sense that the Jews coming back, come from all over the world. In just a year, the majority of all the world's Jews will be living in the State of Israel!
The State of Israel was surrounded by five, count them, 5 armies vowing to destroy them and murder every single Jew. The IDF miracuously overpowered all of them. Truly a miracle.
The building of the Bais Hamikdash was not a miracle, though there were miracles,h ere and there but the building itself was not a miracle, not the first and certainly not the second. The few Jews that returned to Eretz Yisrael in the times of Ezra was a pitiful few, so few that all the families that made Aliya from Baval are named by Ezra.
The Satmar shvantz should first mock his own "NEW" Yomim Toivim established in Monroe before mocking a Holiday concerning the only Jewish country in the entire world, that has the most Torah learned in it, and whose government supports Torah Moidois to over $300 Million every year.
The gemarra in Sanhedrin 94a relates that Chizkiyahu Hamelech could have been made the Meshiach but for the fact that he failed to give praise upon the downfall of the wicked Sancherev, King of Assyria. Chizkiyahu failed to give this profound experience a religious expression.
We dare not make the same mistake.
Yom Haatzmaot and Yom Yerushlayim possess profound religious significance and meaning. These are days of great Divine Providence-miracles and wonders- and deserve religious expression. By celebrating Yom Haatzmaot and Yom Yerushlayim as festivals, we express our thanks to the Ribbono Shel Olam for the tremendous gifts of the State of Israel and Yershulayim.
