Old timers like me probably still remember the Pete Seeger song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" The title inspired the title to this article, although the themes differ.
Given the fact that Israel has been in engaged in difficult wars for three years now, one would have expected Diaspora Rabbis to urge their able-bodied congregants to rush to bolster Tzahal’s manpower shortage which has placed a heavy burden on reserve soldiers and on the home front in Zion. In addition, because of the undeniable increase in antisemitism throughout the world, one would have expected Diaspora Rabbis to urge their congregants to pack up their bags and make Aliyah.
Instead, there is a thundering silence. I can’t recall any Diaspora Rabbi of stature rallying his troops to come to the aid of Israel. Nor have I heard any Diaspora Rabbi or Diaspora leader call to the millions of Jews in the exiles of the West to make Aliyah. \
In fact, the Rabbis of Australia vow to preserve Jewish life in the Outback no matter how much the Jews are hated, and Chabad opens giant new centers in Miami and Los Angeles, and new Chabad houses all over the world, giving Diaspora Jews the message that Jewish life will thrive forever amongst the gentiles no matter how much their presence is despised. There was a Rabbi in France who told his congregation that there was no future for French Jews in France, but an immediate backlash from other French Rabbis and Jewish leaders caused him to retract his words the next day.
Is it possible that so many Diaspora Rabbis can err? In the Torah portion of Vayikra we encounter a situation where the Torah Scholars who comprise the Sanhedrin make a mistake in judgment which causes all of the community of Israel to sin (Vayikra 4:13, Rashi). This teaches that even great Torah Scholars are not immune to mistakes.
Here is another example. The evil decree in the Purim story came when the Jews of Shushan attended the feast of Achashveros which celebrated his false understanding that the Jews would not return to Eretz Yisrael to build the Beit HaMikdash. Apparently, Mordechai was the only Jew who protested. He begged the Jews not to participate, but they were happy to attend, insisting that the food and drink would be glatt kosher. The cause for the celebration - the belief that the Jews were freed of the obligation to return to the Land of Israel and to rebuild the Beit HaMikdash did not seem to bother anyone save Mordechai.
There is no record that the other leaders of the time, supported Mordechai’s vehement protest. Obviously they erred in attending a gala party which celebrated the disconnection from Eretz Yisrael and an open door (they thought) to acceptance amongst the Gentiles and assimilation.
HaRav Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook, of blessed memory, former Rosh Yeshiva at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem, warned his students that great Rabbis and Tzaddikim can also make occasional mistakes, as seen in the pre-Holocaust opposition to Zionism held by many European Rabbis. Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook and other important Rabbis urged them to lead their congregations to Eretz Yisrael before the disaster erupted, but they refused to listen. In spite of his great reverence for Torah Scholars, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda wanted his students to understand that even great Torah Gedolim can err.
The Torah testifies about Korach and his followers that they were outstanding Torah Scholars, stating: “They were princes of the congregation, the elect men of the assembly, men of renown" (Bamidbar, 16:2), yet they made a terrible mistake in their opposition to Moshe and Aharon. Datan and Abiram even went so far as to call Egypt, “a land flowing with milk and honey," the very special expression the Torah bestows upon Eretz Yisrael. For their own personal reasons, they turned the words of the Torah upside down.
HaRav Tzvi Yehuda Kook repeatedly reminded his students of the tragic sin of the Spies who rebelled against Hashem in the wilderness by trying to convince the Israelites to refuse to go up to Eretz Yisrael. They were the outstanding Talmidei Chachamin of the era, the Chiefs of the Sanhedrin, the heads of the Tribes, whose sin was so severe the entire generation was punished with death in the wilderness (see “Mesillat Yesharim," Ch.19, on Honor). Furthermore, our Sages inform us that this sin was the foundation of the destruction of the First and Second Temples (Tanhuma, BaMidbar, Shelach, 11-12).
The Gaon of Vilna, certainly one of the greatest Rabbis of modern times, stated that the taint of this sin still exists in the Nation and even Talmidei Chachamin are affected by it:
“In the time of Mashiach, the Sitra Achra attacks the Guardians of Torah with blinders… Many of the sinners in this great sin of ‘They despised the cherished Land,’ and also many great Torah Scholars, will not recognize or understand that they have been sucked into the Sin of the Spies in many false ideas and empty claims, and they cover their ideas with the already proven fallacy that the mitzvah of the settlement of Israel no longer applies in our day, an opinion which has already been disproven by the Torah giants of the world, the Early and Later Torah Authorities" (Kol HaTor, Ch.5; see Shulchan Aruch, Pitchei Tshuva, Even HaEzer, Section 75, Sub-section 6).
The Gaon of Vilna sent his students to settle the Land of Israel long before Herzl was born. He lived in the thriving Torah community of Vilna, where great yeshivot abounded, yet he wrote: “Since the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, our spirit and our crown departed, and only we remained, the body without the soul. And exile to outside of the Land of Israel is a grave. Worms surround us there, and we do not have the power to save ourselves from the idol worshippers who devour our flesh. In every place, there were great Jewish communities and yeshivot, until the body decayed, and the bones scattered, again and again. Yet, always, some bones still existed, the Torah Scholars of the Israelite Nation, the pillars of the body - until even these bones rotted, and there only remained a rancid waste which disintegrated into dust - our life turned into dust."
The brilliant and renowned scholar, the holy Rabbi Eliyahu of Greidetz, wrote: "Human intellect dictates that we initiate the process of redeeming the Land of Israel and then Hashem will complete it. One must understand the great importance of this matter, for the evil forces, the kelipot, gain strength even among the most righteous individuals, in order to nullify this great good. This is so because the entire strength of the kelipot (impure opposing forces) depends on the Exile. When the Exile dissolves, so will the kelipot, as the Talmud states in tractate Sukkah" (See “Eim HaBanim Semeichah" Pg.11).
The holy Tzaddik, Rabbi Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal, a onetime leader of the Haredi community in Hungary and author of the famous book, “Eim HaBanim Semeichah" was murdered 80 years ago while being transported in a crowded railway car from Auschwitz to the death camp Mauthhausen. Once a fierce anti-Zionist, he realized his error when he was forced to go into hiding in Bucharest during the Holocaust. Without any books whatsoever, he reviewed the entire Torah with his extraordinary photographic memory and reached the conclusion that, “The sole purpose of all the afflictions which smite us in our exile is to arouse us to return to our Holy Land…." In his treatise, an encompassing Halakhic examination of the mitzvah to live in the Land of Israel, he concludes that the horrors of his time were the result of the failure of the Jewish People to heed the Torah’s call to return to the Land of Israel.
He writes: ‘The purpose of this work is to raise our Land from the dust and stimulate love and affection for it in the hearts of our Jewish brethren, young and old alike, so that they may yearn and strive to return to our Land, the Land of our forefathers, and leave the lands of exile... The essential point is that Hashem is waiting for us to take the initiative, to desire and long for the return to Eretz Yisrael. He does not want us to wait for Him to bring us there."
In light of the heartfelt and Torah-based arguments cited above, the silence of Diaspora Rabbis today - in not urging their congregations to make Aliyah - cries out for rectification. Even if we could fool ourselves into believing that the frightening rise in anti-Semitism will not last, the continuing soaring of assimilation throughout the Diaspora should be enough reason for its Rabbis to tremble and cry out “Aliyah Now!"
In his famous “Letter from Teman," the Rambam writes: “If a Jew will stay in a place where he sees the Torah is waning, and where the Jewish People will be lost with the passage of time, and where a Jew cannot stand by his faith, and say, ‘I will stay here until the Mashiach comes and survive where I am,’ this is nothing but an evil heart and a great loss, and a sickness of reasoning and spirit."
HaRav Tzvi Yehuda Kook stated: “After the Holocaust, during which almost his entire Hasidic movement was murdered, when the Rebbe of Belz came on aliyah, he said, ‘We realize now that we erred in our estrangement from Eretz Yisrael.’ Other Gedolim also repented over their shortsightedness. If this repentance had occurred 30 years before, preceding the Holocaust, prompting the mass aliyah of devout God-fearing Jews, the spiritual situation is Israel would be very different today."
“The beginning of the Zionist awakening was filled with uncertainty in the eyes of many Rabbis, but today there aren’t any doubts. We see eye-to-eye the acts of Hashem revealed in the ingathering of the exiles and the incredible rebuilding of the Nation in the Land. And it has become increasingly clear that those who supported the return to Zion were right."
If the leaders of Diaspora Jewry refuse to open their eyes and embrace this reality then the sobering teaching of the Torah Giant Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk (author of the “Meshech Chochmah" and “Ohr Sameyach") may soon come to pass:
“Behold," he writes, “Ever since the Jews have lived among the nations - for so many years, during which no one believed that they would survive in such a unexplainable fashion… Divine Providence functioned as follows: The Jews find rest for close to a hundred or two hundred years. Then a storm wind arises and disperses its myriad waves, utterly destroying and washing them away without mercy, until they are scattered about, all alone. They run, they flee to a far-off place where they unite and become a people once again. They intensify their Torah learning; their wisdom succeeds greatly, until they forget that they are strangers in a foreign land. They think that this is
their place of origin and they no longer anticipate Hashem’s spiritual salvation at its designated time. Then, an even stronger storm will visit that place and call out in a
thunderous voice: ‘“You are a Jew!’"
As the song says at its end: “Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn?"
Tzvi Fishman was awarded the Israel Ministry of Education Prize for Jewish Culture and Creativity. Before making Aliyah to Israel in 1984, he was a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He has co-authored 4 books with Rabbi David Samson, based on the teachings of Rabbis A. Y. Kook and T. Y. Kook, most recently The Torat Eretz Yisrael Anthology and with Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, the book Like Father, Like Son about Rav Avraham HaCohen Kook and his son Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook. His other books include: "The Kuzari For Young Readers" and "Tuvia in the Promised Land". His books are available on Amazon. Recently, he directed the movie, "Stories of Rebbe Nachman."
