The historical model seems very roughly thus:
- For whatever reason, religious leadership mostly stops criticizing their followers for specific sins (including those of statism), stops threatening them with worldly punishment for them and generally stops helping them repent.
- The State or other sins’ manifestation subsequently destroys lives, directly and otherwise, more easily than ever before.
- The masses lose faith in their religious leaders! If you cannot help us on earth, what are the chances you can help bring us to heaven?
- New religious (?) leadership is born.
This is what happened with the Cantonist Decrees. Rabbis\Torah scholars did nothing significant. They didn’t call for emigration or armed revolution against Shmad. They didn’t kill Jewish kidnappers of Jews. And dependant on the wealthy community leaders for their daughters and salaries, the rabbis were virtually silent when these “leaders” would hand over poor orphans to the Czar’s army in place of their own children. Those Torah scholars who offered even token resistance were very few.
Worst of all, literary hints aside, the rabbis had not given a prior warning or suggested alternative behavior. That is, the implication was “We are fine with Hashem and He is fine with us, too”. Chassidim, especially, clearly said things would only get better and better until Mashiach, both physically and spiritually (all except for Rabbi Nachman of Breslov who said a great “darkness” of Emunah was approaching and explicitly validated the talk of upcoming Cantonist decrees).
But the Jews were not actually righteous, as demonstrated incontrovertibly for posterity by the severe events which soon befell them. Whatever it was, (the difficulty actually lies in narrowing the list down!) the rabbis didn’t speak out against it. They didn’t care about (others’?) sins or preferred their positions secure, at least in the short term. In fact, they encouraged many Aveiros.
So, why the surprise “all of a sudden, everyone jumped ship as fast as they could. Anything but Judaism; Zionism, 10 brands of socialism, assimilation, etc.”?
Something similar happened with the Black Death and the Chooch (although Cursedianity is not a real “religion”, see elsewhere).
Historians speak of the economic damage wrought by the plague, but what of the economic situation which rendered it so potent in the first place? The pandemic wouldn’t have caused such harm if not for earlier, heavily destructive taxes, an unseen contributing factor in the later biological destruction.
Rothbard explains – here’s an excerpt (best see it inside for proof):
Originating as a response to wartime “emergency,” the new taxes tended to become permanent: not only because the warfare lasted for over a century, but because the State, always on the lookout for an increase in its income and power, seized upon the golden opportunity to convert wartime taxes into a permanent part of the national heritage.
From the middle to the end of the 14th century, Europe was struck with the devastating pandemic of the Black Death — the bubonic plague — which in the short span of 1348–1350 wiped out fully one-third of the population. The Black Death was largely the consequence of people’s lowered living standards caused by the great depression and the resulting loss of resistance to disease. The plague continued to recur, though not in such virulent form, in every decade of the century.
But the Chooch elite was
a part of the state, so they didn’t protest nor prevent the taxes heading to their pockets. The well-to-do Pierceds (read:
priests) fled the cities where the plague hit hardest (in contrast to many rabbis neglecting to escape during the Holocaust).
The mainstream Chooch didn’t severely condemn the masses for anything concrete before the plague, so they had no license to speak of ultimate causes when a third of the population perished.
They didn’t have a license to speak of much anything anymore. John Wycliffe became a newly
popular “outsider”. Renaissance humanism began spreading. And then, via printing technology, the Protestant “Reformation” exploded. (So I gather
from Gary North here.)
Faith is placed in those who unpopularly call for change
before disaster strikes. Austrian economists and their followers who condemned the Federal Reserve before
the Housing Crisis finally
got a hearing by some of those who heard only positive prophecies from others.
Ron Paul “got on the map”, as we say.
Next recession/depression this will hopefully happen again, gaining Austrianism even more adherents. And again… Given enough time, who knows what can happen?
(Yes, I’m being sarcastic!)
I hope and trust the same “ישן מפני חדש תוציאו” occurs in our own community!
