The Satmar Fallacy: Opposition to Jewish Renewal
The list keeps growing.
Rishonim followed the sages in determining when certain commandments were in force or effect, and that is why Maimonides and the SefereHahinnuch, for example, always note if certain commandments apply bifnei habayith, while the Temple is standing, or not, or if biath kull’chem, the presence of the entire Jewish people, is a factor in applicability. Even Maimonides promised that all of the commandments will once again be observed in Messianic times. To him and his colleagues, it was a promise and an ideal, that despite the Torah being incomplete for so long, it was always eternal, and even if we could not fathom how the commandments would return, they still would.
However, as the centuries turned to millennia, and the Jewish losses kept piling up while the wins were non-existent, the idea that a commandment would return with the advent of the Messiah became less of a prayer and more of a critical criterion, that because practically speaking the commandment in question could not return without the Messiah, it could only return with the advent of the Messiah, and therefore would not return without the advent of the Messiah, and therefore should not return without the advent of the Messiah. The optimistic qualification thus became a veto, and those seeking to reintroduce certain commandments should be opposed and perhaps even thwarted if no Messiah has yet been revealed.
This fallacious line of reasoning has been applied to anything that would move us in the direction of the Redemption, for example: against the renewal of rabbinic ordination since the times of the Beith Yosef until today, against mass immigration to the Land of Israel, and now against renewing various aspects of the Temple service. This will be called the Satmar Fallacy, after the Orthodox Jewish sect known for vehement opposition to Aliyah and the founding of a Jewish state because of this perceived halachic principle, despite the overwhelming Torah evidence demanding that Jews live in Israel and the requirement of them to run their own state. (This does not mean that they did it right eighty years ago.)
From Rabbi Avi Grossman, here.