Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Chasam Sofer: Israel had to be conquered militarily not through miracle

Rashi (Bereishis 1:1) quotes Rabbi Yitzchok – What was the reason that the Torah started with Bereishis and not with the Redemption from Egypt? Rabbi Yitzchok answers that it was to establish that G‑d created the world and thus He can give the land to whomever He wants. Otherwise the goyim are going to claim that the Jews are robbers by conquering the land of Israel from the Seven Nations.

Chasam Sofer (Derasha to Simchas Torah page 57b #11) asks why did the goyim object that the Jews took the land away from the Seven Nations by military conquest. After all isn't this the normal way all people take land away from it current inhabitants. So why should the Jews be considered thieves  more than any other nation? An explanation is that all the ancient people believed that each people had a spiritual representative in Heaven and who provided them with a homeland. The ancient people believed that G-d was just one of the national spiritual representatives and He was the representative of the Jews. They also firmly believed that G-d did not work in the normal natural manner but rather everything that He did was through miracles in a supernatural way. Consequently when they saw that the Jews were conquering the Land of Israel in a natural manner – rather than through miracles – they accused the Jews of unlawful seizure of the land and said that they were no more than thieves. That is because they knew that G-d only worked through miracles. It was to counter this mistaken understanding that the Torah begins with the story of G-d creating the world. This showed that G-d also works in a natural manner. If the Torah started with the Redemption of Egypt, that would serve to reinforce the mistaken view that G‑d only works through miracles. Therefore now that the Torah begins with Bereishis, the Jews were able to explain that they were not thieves. They conquered the Land of Israel in a normal manner through war, because G‑d wanted a natural conquest of the land rather than a miraculous conquest. However in truth this requirement of a natural conquest was not arbitrary but was the result of the sin of the Golden Calf and the breaking of the Tablets as is well known.  
So in fact there were two reasons that the Torah started with Bereishis in order to provide an answer to the Nations of the World. The first was because the Redemption from Egypt was totally miraculous so the Nations of the World mistakenly thought that all of G-d's actions were only through supernatural miracles. The second was that the breaking of the Tablets required that the conquest of land be done in a nature manner through war. [...]

14 comments:

  1. What's this got to do with the Brooklyn Bridge?

    Certainly is has nothing to do with the Zionist Enterprise and how it came to the modern Zionist State of Israel.

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    1. How about we just read Parshas Bereishis last Shabbos? And given that this was just after YT, Rabbi Eidensohn did not have any time to post on that parsha?

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    2. Dan Q: Brooklyn /America was also founded on the conquest of the Europeans. in fact, the Spanish were called Conquistadors.
      However, this is also the argument brought by the Zionist enterprise, or at least the dati sector. Contrary to those who speak of Moshiach only being able to bring us back into our Land, they argue that no, it is like any other mitzvah, we have to take practical steps, hechsher mitzvah, to fulfill it.

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  2. The Chassidish school I went to in Boro Park many years ago taught us that the Holocaust was the work of Hashem, because Hashem controls everything, and the Nazis were just tools. But the State of Israel is the work of the evil zionists. Hashem had nothing to do with it.

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  3. Bunsa... You fool ... Hashem makes ניסם through צדיקים alone ... Stop blabbing shallow cliches and go learn the beginning of al haguela...

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    1. I assume you refer to על הגאולה ועל התמורה, which I have studied. Here are some interesting points made in that book:

      1) The journalists who described the victory in '67 as miracles were bribed.
      2) The only miracle was that the גדולים were seduced by שטן into believing that there were miracles.
      3) Those secular Zionists who were inspired by the victory and became בעלי תשובה were in fact phonies and not true בעלי תשובה.

      Look at ספר חסידים תקמ"ט (I found the citation in a ספר by R' Menashe Klein):
      ופעמים תמצא שנסים נעשו לרשעים כמו לצדיקים מפני שזכו אבותיהם
      (See it here: http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=38149&st=&pgnum=103)


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    2. Obzerver - if the Shoah was a supernatural act, and controlled by Hashem, but He works only through tzaddikim, then according to this logic, the tzaddikim woudl chas v'shalom be the murderers. And the victims, were mainly frum haredi yidden, who were not Tzaddikim?
      This ideology is so corrupt it beggars belief.

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  4. Observor, I am no fool because I recognize chasdei Hashem. Tell me, if Hashem were to hand you a gift, would you hand it back and say, "No thank you, Hashem. I don't like the way you wrapped it."

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    1. Another gift was the holocaust.

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  5. Bunsa fool... The 1948 "gift" cost 6000 yidisha lifes... Somebody else paid ... אכמל

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  6. The tradgedy could have been avoided... See the books by segev and kurtzman... If u have no סבלנות meizels collected the מקורות...

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  7. Speaking in cliches is a sIgn of a shallow-non thinker as the chassidic books say about אותו איש...

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  8. I see that the Naturei Karta cult is growing a very active internet presence.

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  9. I don't really see the point in the Chasam Sofer derasha, but the it's amazing how prophetic Rashi is. The (United) Goyim are accusing Jews of stealing palestinian land. And in the meantime most Americans believe that God gave it to the Jews and that's the main factor in American support for Israel.

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