I have gone recently into a local beit midrash that has books from some of the recent great Litvak sages. I have a lot of respect for the depth and thoroughness of their thought. But I am not convinced about the general negative approach they had towards the State of Israel. The so called ''Hareidi'' world still goes with that approach refusing to serve in the IDF and continuing  their constant slander against fry yidden [secular Jews] in the privacy of Shabat meals while pretending ''we are all one happy family'' when they need money from fry yidden.

And I have been looking at some of the halachic decisions of Rav Elyashiv, and the Chazon Ish. I am impressed, but not to the degree of thinking of them as infallible, or innocent of biases--conscious or otherwise,-- certainly nothing approaching of what in common jargon could be called ''Daat Torah''.

And perhaps here I should include my own bias which is totally ''רבינא ורב אשי סוף הוראה'' [''Ravina and Rav Ashi are the end of the ability to make a halachic decision.''] [That is brought down in the Gemara]. So after Ravina and Rav Ashi [around 500 A.D.] there is no such thing as a ''posek''-- except in the sense of trying to figure out what the Gemara would hold on any legal decision. Of course, some of the final conclusions are already written in the Gemara,  and rules of how to decide are written there. The difficulty is that sometimes these rules contradict. Just for an example in Eruvin, you have the order of which Tana to go by when they argue. In Sanhedrin and Bechorot you have the idea of when a Beit Din makes a mistake when they decide against a ''stam sugia''--subject where the Gemara takes one opinion as a given. The list goes on and on, and it is hard to know of all the rules, which ones the Gemara holds override the others.