@yankel – Thanks for the compliment. We will have to agree to disagree. I try to remain fact-based although the anti-Zionist triumverate here makes it exceedingly difficult.
Micro P:
You’ve strung together a series of Satmar polemics together with what may be at best considered a chiddush and presented them as an airtight theological fortress. While your devotion to a single 20th-century text is charming in its simplicity, your grasp of Halachic methodology and historical record is, to put it delicately, rather malnourished.
You are remarkably confident that the Midrash found in Maseches Kesubos 111a is binding Halacha. If the oaths were indeed “brought down Li-Halacha throughout the ages”, one would expect to find them in the actual codes of law. Can you point me to the chapter in Mishneh Torah where he codifies these oaths? Perhaps Rif? Or Shulchan Aruch? How about Ramban? Nothing? That’s because they’re absent. Totally, completely and utterly absent. The primary arbiters of Jewish law – Rif, Rambam, Rosh, Tur and Shulchan Aruch as well as Levush omitted them because they understood a fundamental rule you seem to be unable to grasp: we do not derive binding Halacha from Aggadic passages.
In addition, none of the following major Halachik authorities and Rabbinic leaders from the Geonim to the Acharonim mention it as a binding obligation of any kind: Rav Saadia Gaon, Behag, Rabbeinu Tam, Raavad, Or Zarua, Meiri (he explains the Gemara in Ketubos but frames the Oaths as a metaphorical warning about the difficulty of the journey, not a legal ban); Ritva explicitly notes that these are Aggadic in nature, which explains why they aren’t in the codes; Magen Avraham never mentions the Oaths as a factor in daily law; Chayei Adam does not mention of a prohibition against organized Aliyah; Aruch HaShulchan records no such prohibition; and finally, the Mishnah Berurah – who would be expected to write them as biding law because he lived during the rise of polticial Zionism – did not. To goto the modern era, Rav Shlomo Kluger, Rav Chaim Vital, Rav Meshulam Rath, Tzitz Eliezer and Rav Shlomo Goren disagree with you.
Thus your claim that “every Gadol” supports your view is nonsense, and the bottom line is that The Halachik record shows that only Rav Yitzchak de Leon, Maharal, Shelah HaKadosh, Maharsha, Rav Hirsch and the Satmarer take your position. But it is only the Satmarer who attempts your beloved chiddush that elevates these Oaths to the status of yehareg v’al ya’avor. No one else agrees.
You can kindly stop now.
But let’s play your game for a second. If the Oaths are a legally binding contract, let’s look at the fine print. The Oaths were a reciprocal agreement. One oath was that the Jews wouldn’t rebel; the other was that the nations of the world would not “oppress Israel too much”. Do you honestly intend to argue, with a straight face, that the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Pogroms, and the Holocaust do not constitute “oppressing too much”? If the nations broke their side of the bargain – and they did, in a spectacularly horrific fashion too – the Jewish people are legally and logically released from theirs. To suggest otherwise isn’t piety; it’s a theological suicide pact.
Bringing up the Ben Koziva (Bar Kochba) revolt as a proof for the Oaths is historically illiterate and a red herring. Bar Kochba’s failure is attributed by the Gemara and the Rambam to his arrogance or the fact that the generation was not yet worthy, not because he violated an “Oath” from Shir HaShirim. In fact, Rabbi Akiva, the greatest sage of his era, supported the revolt. Was Rabbi Akiva unaware of the “universally accepted” oaths, or did he simply possess a clearer understanding of the Torah than a 20th-century revisionist? And for the record, I also won’t point out what is probably the more obvious reason why Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students died – and it has nothing to do with a lack of respect and flies in the face of the oaths.
In addition, what AAQ said is true: These debates and fights are from 100 years ago and irrelevant today despite your attempt to keep them alive and relevant. The only relevant questions are associated with how to deal with the State and that is a discussion I will only have with those living in EY.