“Many people speak about this [the ills of Zionism], and many people hear and understand, but in their hearts they still kiss the idol. Every small child cannot understand today how they made the Eigel and danced for it and how the Spies and Korach did what they did — and everyone wonders and is astounded and cannot understand the yetzer hara of those days. But so, too, this is how the yetzer hara [for Zionism] works today, as everyone dances with it. And when, someday, this ye- tzer hara will be replaced by a different one, people will then see that today as well, it was like the Eigel and the Meraglim ... this is blind- ness that causes people not to feel the evil in it.
"It has come to a point where you cannot even talk against today’s yetzer hara [for fear of reprisals]. There are only a few leftover groups that do not follow after the Eigel: In Brisk there are those; and among the Yerushalmis there are people who do not want anything to do with the Zionists and understand we need to distance ourselves from them; and so, too, did the Satmar Rav and his chassidim distance themselves from them. But the rest of the chareidim travel on the train of Zionism and are partners with them in all matters.”
Shiurei R. Dovid Soloveichik, pp. 517–518.
"When during the reign of Hadrian, the uprising led by Bar Kokhba proved a disastrous error, it became essential that the Jewish people be reminded for all times of another important fact; namely, that Yisrael must never again attempt to restore its national independence by its own power; it was to entrust its future as a nation solely to Divine Providence… This fourth Blessing is an acknowledgement that it has always been God and God alone Who has given us, and still gives us to this very day, that good in which we have had cause to rejoice and that for future good too, we may look to none other but God, and none beside Him." Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch on Birchos HaMazon
It was not the land that Moses had been commanded to proclaim to his people at the outset of his mission as מורשה, as the inheritance they were to preserve (Ex. 6,8). The Law, to be translated into full reality upon that soil, was to be the true מורשה, the one true, everlasting inheritance, the one true center around which the nation and its leaders were to gather as one united community. Herein lay the goal and the destiny, the character and the significance of the people.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch "The Kehillah," Collected Writings, Vol. VI, p. 62
Israel was not given the Law so that it might win political independence and national prosperity; rather, Israel was given political independence and national prosperity so that it might be able to observe the Law. תורה, the Law, remains the eternal, unchanging goal, the purpose of the national existence of the Jew. This purpose does not vary with the degree of independence or prosperity that the Jewish nation enjoys at any given time. Freedom makes it easier for Israel to observe the Law; prosperity enables the people of Israel to accomplish its mission more fully. Political pressure will make observance of the Law more difficult, and lack of independence will leave the fulfillment of Israel's mission incomplete. But all of Israel's apparent fate signifies only a greater or smaller allotment of means for accomplishing the mission assigned to it by the Law of God. Israel's mission as such remains unchanged, and hence also remains the one unchanging bond that unites the larger Kehillath Ya'akov as a whole, as well as each small Kehillah that exists only as a daughter branch of the great, total Kehillah.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch "The Kehillah," Collected Writings, Vol. VI, pp. 64-5
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