Greek mythology has 12 major deities - the Olympians - and on top of that is has primordial deities, Titans and Titanesses, Gigantes, Personified concepts, Chthonic deities, Sea, Sky, Agricultural, Sleep, Charity, and Rustic deities, Muses, Deified mortals, and other assorted deities. You got to hand it to the Greeks, they had a fertile imagination.
Of course, really they are building off of the big world that Hashem created. Since they didn't believe in Him, they operated from their fears and concerns and invented deities and many legends around those. That's how it works with idol worship. A person chooses to wrap his mind, which is formidable in all humans -- it's a gift from Hashem -- around the life that he sees. The result is mythology.
So it goes with Zionism too. The quantity of mythology in Zionism is Greek like. Aliyah salesmen in America manipulate you into moving to Israel or longing to move there via tactics that you come to see as mythology once you get here.
There's so many that I could write a book. Here are a few of the major ones:
1. You have a mitzvah to live in Israel. A good Jew is vulnerable to that because he tries to keep mitzvahs, so comes the aliyah salesman to hijack that good intention. But like any mitzvah, you have to know what is meant by mitzvah. I once heard a rabbi from Shapell's tell a group of baal teshuvah men that moving to Israel was a mitzvah like Shabbos. No different, he said.
Really? Shabbos is built on lavim violation of which one gets stoned. Not all lavim have that repercussion and lavim are different than mitzvahs aseh. To not violate a lav you give all your money, to not fail to do an aseh it's 1/5.
Now these vulnerable BTs might not know the difference and that's what's so diabolical about this 'rabbi' taking advantage of their ignorance by spreading his mythology.
I hear Rabbi Hershel Schachter often say without qualification that everyone agrees there's a mitzvah to live in Israel. He doesn't clarify what kind of mitvah it is for it's not so simple. Rav Moshe Feinstein, the posek hador, tells us that it's an optional mitzvah, meaning you get credit if you do it, but you are not obligated. Big difference.
Zionists like to point to the Ramban as saying it's a regular positive mitzvah, but the Ramban himself didn't move here until the last 2 years of his life, after he was essentially forced out of Spain.
You want to say it was dangerous then? And it's not dangerous now? How can Zionists say that simultaneously everyone has to be in the army because we are surrounded by enemies and everyone has to move here? If the former is true, then it's a sakanah, a danger, just like in the Ramban's time. There were no atom bomb's in the Ramban's day and Israel is convinced enough that Iran is going to get one and use it that it bombed Iran.
You want to say that America is equally dangerous? That's absurd. America is the most formidable military power in history, by far the biggest in the world, and it is protected by two oceans, Canadian tundra, and a third-world country that can't even handle its own gangs.
You want to say that America will collapse into a Nazi regime? I have been hearing that for half a century, but in that half century Jews continue to assume leadership positions in Congress, state legislatures, banks, universities, media. Besides, 70% of the weapons that Israel uses come from America. If America were to collapse into an anti-Semitic regime, Israel would be finished.
In Israel, every week somebody gets killed from terrorism or war, lately several in a week. How often does that happen in America? I remember an incident on a Manhattan bridge 30 years ago. It was so unusual for America that the city named the entrance ramp for the poor kid that was killed.
So we have two mythologies here, one that you are obligated to live in Israel, and two that you are safer here than in America.
The second mythology goes to such ridiculous proportions that many Zionists utter it even more after October 7! They are disconnected from reality.
2. The future for your children is in Israel
Why? It's a cute line like Choosy Mothers Choose Jiff. Is it true that choosy mothers choose Jiff? Is it true that the future is in Israel. We say five times a day that if you sin the land will spit you out. 85% of Israelis don't keep Shabbos. They have done a million abortions here, killing more babies than the Nazis did. The persecute religious people. Is the future here? Here might not exist tomorrow. Is the economy growing? Barely. This continues to be a very difficult place to live. There's no affordable housing. A 3 bedroom apartment outside of the city will cost you $800,000. Does having a place to live count as part of having a future? Where will your kids live? The whole notion of the future being in Israel is built entirely on the fantasy that the geulah has come. Who says that it has? Rabbi Soloveitchik said that saying so is "stupidity." Many other gadolim objected to any notion that the state was a sign of geulah. Saying that the future is in Israel is mythology. It's a Greek god.
3. Aliyah is coming home. Really? Coming home to what? What is home? Isn't home a place with people who are loyal to you? Isn't home a place with people with whom you have shared experience? Isn't home a place with people who love you? What has that to do with Israel. Israelis don't love you, are nothing like you, and have no history with you. They pride themselves on not caring about strangers. I harbored fantasies about Israelis being so impressed that I made aliyah. They couldn't care less. The people in my first apartment building never had us in their apartments even one single time. The only exception to that would be that I stood at the doorway of the apartment manager when I came to pay the monthly dues. I was never invited it. These are people who saw our lift, our shipping container. I never received an offer of help, advice, anything. The olim are no better by the way. The most selfish people in the world move to Israel. I got a job early on (and was laid off after a year - that's common here) and there were several American olim who lived in my town. They knew that I was brand new. They never invited us even for a Shabbos meal. One had some kind of new apartment house party and didn't invite me.
The idea that Israel is coming home is based on an abstraction that since ultimately, someday this will be our land, that coming here is coming home. This is no more substantive than pagan mythology.
4. Israel is a world leading high-tech society.
Sometimes they sell weapons systems that have been tested on Arabs. I'll give you that. Otherwise, it's a primitive place. I was at the airport recently. The first two passport reading machines that I tried didn't work. The ATM machine didn't work. The card reading machines on the buses here (and they only got them recently) fail about 1/3 of the time. The card reloader machines work around half the time. And they are never usable during the day because they don't have shields from the blaring sun and you can't read the screen. The stop the bus buttons fail to work around 1/3 of the time, and around 1/2 the time when they work, you don't know that they did because they don't light up the "Stop" light at the front of the bus. In other words, you have no idea if the driver got the message. The medical system isn't much better. For an MRI, there's a four month wait. For mammograms it's the same. Four months to see a surgeon to even discuss surgery.
You want to talk about Nobel prizes now? There's a widespread myth that Israel is a leader in Nobel prizes. This is utterly false. According to Wikipedia, People from the State of Israel have won 13 Nobel Prizes. 3 are peace prizes. One of the peace prizes went to one of Zionist terrorists who killed 17 Jews at the King David Hotel. Another of the peace prizes went to one of the Zionist commanders who sank the Altalena, killing 19 Jews.
Of the remaining 9 (one in literature), 4 were born and educated elsewhere. They have minor associations with Israel. Maybe they lived here for two years. Switzerland, Austria, and Sweden which each have roughly the same population as Israel, have 27, 22, and 32 prizes respectively. The Netherlands, which is double the population as Israel, has 21 prizes. Denmark, which has half the population of Israel has 13 prizes. So the claim "Israel has long punched far above its demographic weight when it comes to the Nobel Prize." is just plain false. This claim was made by an otherwise good article that defended Charedim in Israel. If you want to argue that the Nobel Prize was started before the State of Israel was founded, Switzerland has won 16 prizes (all in science) since 1948. That’s 4x the amount per capita won by actual Israelis. Sweden has won 20 Nobel Prizes since 1948.
Jews comprise 20% of Nobel prize winners. That means 178 Nobel prizes (of 889) have gone to Jews. (This includes some that have a Jewish father only, which means that they are not halachically Jewish.). So in fact, given that half of the world's Jews live in Israel, Israel does very poorly in Nobel prizes. Jews outside of Israel won 166 Nobel prizes. Jews who have any association with Israel have won 12 (that includes 2 terrorists). Jews outside of Israel earn Nobel prizes at a far, far higher rate than Jews in Israel. Something about Israeli society actually holds Jews back. You are welcome to hypothesize what it is. Whatever your analysis, I wouldn’t go around bragging about people in Israel winning Nobel prizes.
5. The frum Jews in Israel are frummer. Oh, no they are not. They are more militant, like everything here. What is frum? Is chesed part of being frum? Outside of Meah She-arim, which is little place, a small portion of the million frum Jews here, they do very little. Is having good middos part of being frum? You think only the Chilonim have bad middos? That's another myth of Israel, that the religious Jews are totally different from the secular ones, that you can live here as a religious Jew and shield yourself from the secular influences. Is studying Torah at a high level part of being frum? They don't study here at a higher level. They shout. Don't confuse shouting with quality Torah study. Usually, it's the opposite because it comes from being locked rigidly into a position. Bochurim from Brisk have told me that generally the Americans learn at a higher level than the Israels. I am not surprised at all to hear that. Are they more tznius here? Well, the Dati Leumi/Modern Orthodox are far less. As for the Haredim, they are a bit more, not more than hard core Lakewood or Monsey, but a bit more than some other places. But along with that comes a ferocious atmosphere of judging, nixing shiduchim, not associating with people. It's all kind of mean. Sometimes we have American guests over, seminary girls and yeshiva guys. I am amazed at how much nicer they are than the Israelis in my building (except for the Sephardic guy). Is that part of being frum? I think so. I'm not telling you who is better but I am telling you that the Israelis are not frummer. It's another myth, another false god.
There's five of the fake gods of Zionist mythology. I can list two dozen more, three dozen if you give me a day. The whole thing is pagan. It's inventing gods from what you imagine about what you see.
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