Oct 31, 2007 10:26 PM
From the comments on the previous post:
YOU say you want to live an Orthodox life, not I. You say you want to be Orthoprax, but it is uncomfortable. I say if being Orthoprax is part of the good life for you because here is your community, then what more do you need to act? As for belief, believe it or not or suspend belief or stop worrying and study something that is true lechol hadaos or...If the only option you can think of is living in anguish then there has to be an explanation. It takes a special effort to maintain the theoretical contradiction front and center, especially since you are ok at the practical level with the community and life style.
You can of course be not frum at all without any contradiction, but you then say that would be even more painful to live without the many benefits of community and Torah. So there you have it...net, net you are in an optimal position where you are, except for grizhin sich (aggravating,eating away at yourself). Hence my Henny Youngman line,stop grizhin !
I’ll say it differently.I honestly believe the shleimus hanefesh you seek is not available to many religious Jews. Happiness, the good life, nachis from work and children, a life worth living do not require shleimus hanefesh, and many times the quest for shleimus can wreak havoc with these other pursuits. A characteristic of our times is the self is frequently split, one way or the other. Religion –science is just one example.
evanstonjew
I've gone through what you are going through. I'm not at all through it yet, but I feel one important positive change in my perspective and ability to deal with these tensions is to realize that the purpose of religion isn't to be true. Religion is a set of assumptions. The assumptions tell us what is good and bad, they give us hope for a better future, a feeling that what we do matters, and they provide solace during times of pain. To say it isn't true misses the point.
It's unfortunate that we live in a critical age when we are trained to evaluate our stories based on the evidence. This often serves us well, but not always. Remember, your critical capacity is a tool. It serves you and not the other way around.
Pretend for a moment that you are a cell in someone's body. You have always been able to "stay balanced" because your body produces insulin, but, suddenly, the pancreas in your body has stopped producing insulin; you've become a diabetic. Fortunately, your brain tells you to go see an endocrinologist who prescribes insulin for you. The only problem is, your brain refuses to allow you to take it. It says it's not "real insulin." It's just a fake, made by bacteria. Of course, your brain is right, but it misses the point. The insulin is what you need to be healthy, and truth has nothing to do with it.
Religion keeps you healthy, but truth has nothing to do with it. People evaluate claims critically in the modern world, and so kiruv clowns arise to convince people to swallow the stories. Let everyone buy the stories; it's good for them. You might even want to pretend it's all true for a while yourself.
I think part of the problem is your getting caught up in the word true. (No, don't worry, we're not going PoMo here.) Religion is good at concretising ideas for us, and this is the most powerful way for us to relate. Thinking about goodness in the abstract isn't nearly as powerful as recalling our forefather Abraham who fed wanderers in the desert. Trying to feel safe in a turbulent world isn't easy without thinking about our powerful God who redeemed us from slavery. Dealing with our mortality is much more manageable when one can conjure up an image of the feast we will enjoy in the next world with our family and friends.
At one stage in my grappling with these issues, the approach I took was to try and take these paths and make them rational. I think you might relate to this attempt. If Abraham didn't live, well, goodness is something we all believe in anyway. If there is no God, well, there is still our ability to redeem each other. If there is no World to Come, there is at least the fruits of our good deeds which through which we shall live.
But thinking like this is still living entirely in the rational world. Thinking like this still doesn't leave me comfortable teaching my kids about our redemption from Egypt or the World to Come.
We need to recognize that we are not rational beings. Our critical thinking is a tool to be employed when needed, but our desires and emotions are much more fundamental to us. Revel in the symbolism of Abraham, the Exodus, and the World to Come. Let their redemptive qualities wash over you. Leave the excavations of Kadesh Barneya and Divon buried in the back of your mind where you really want them. Not in an attempt to supress the "truth," because, like me, you're unfortunate enough to know the truth. Leave them there because they're not useful to you, because they interfere with your hopes and needs. Teach your children the symbols not in an attempt to indoctrinate falsehood, but rather in an attempt to build a strong and solid foundation of emotional security and an aspiration to goodness.
anon
[XGH: Feh. I don't care for these type of approaches. Why? Because they are ideologically, theologically, and philosophically thin. There's really nothing to them except regular utilitarian Orthopraxy, with a 'Don't Worry Be Happy' thrown in for good measure, wrapped up in a whole lot of fluff. It's not intellectually honest, and anyway, the religion itself (the OJ version) holds itself to be 100% really true, not just pretend true. I'm looking for something more substantial.]
--
Oct 31, 2007 4:12 PM
Dude, what's up with your community?_
I have always liked the local Chareidi community. For the most part (except for some crazy BTs) they are a sensible somewhat LW UO bunch of very decent people. The local Chareidi Rav (and assistant Rav) are both big mentches, and even the Rosh Kollel is a sensible guy. We are further 'out of town' than the average community, and so we tend to attract the type of people looking to get away from all the New York, Lakewood and Monsey craziness.
So I was particularly surprised (and disappointed) to see the choice of speakers coming to town for various events in the near future.
First off, the local Torah True day school (where I once almost sent my kid) is bringing in Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky for a fundraiser. Orlofsky! Only the biggest clown in kiruv, and someone whose personal behavior leaves something to be desired. I would have let that lie, because he is actually very entertaining (though I think Jackie Mason is funnier, and probably a better role model too), but now I notice an even worse choice.
The local Torah True yeshivah is bringing in Rav Uren Reich! Uren Reich, only the craziest, most extreme delusional English speaking Rav there is! Do I need to remind my readers of Uren's craziness? Here is a quote from his speech at the Agudah convention a couple of years ago, talking about Science and Chazal:
…If the Gemara tells us a metziyus, it’s emes veyatziv. There’s nothing to think about. Anything we see with our eyes is less of a reality than something we see in the Gemara….If the [Vilna] Gaon says that he could bring down kol galgal hachamah on this table and show it to Aristo[tle] – do we have a safek that what Chazal HaKedoshim said is emes? Ra’u mi’sof haolam ve’ad sofo – ain leharher achar divrei haGemara.
Is this the kind of role model we want to be presenting to our kids? I am generally happy to support the local institutions, but this is getting ridiculous. Dude likes to argue that there is no connection between his community and the crazy extremists, but this is evidently not the case.
I should point out that by all accounts Rav Reich seems to be a very nice and genuine fellow. The only explanation I can think of is that the Yeshivah is trying to send a subtle message to their kids - you can be as crazy fundamentalist as you like, as long as you have good middos! OK, not a bad message to give, especially in a wacky BT atmosphere, but still, I could think of better choices for a speaker.
I think this represents the problem in a nutshell. The local Chareidim might like to think they are way more normal, but ultimately, they are anchored to the craziness. They are connected to Ner Yisrael, which via Rav Aharaon Feldman is connected to Rav Elyashiv. That's it - two degrees of seperation from Rav Elyashiv.
What's also funny is that the local Kiruv industry is certainly comfortable with Science and Torah reconciliations (at least when they're on a kiruv project), of the type which would give Uren Reich a heart attack. So how do they deal with such contradictions?
Of course, that's a dumb question. They deal with them just like everyone else does. Denial and delusion. It's the way of the world. I agree with Reich on one thing, When Chazal said olam sheker hu, that was definitely emes veyatziv.
Oct 30, 2007 11:05 AM
PEOPLE! Is anyone paying attention??_
I can't believe the lack of response to my post about Proff. Yeshaya Leibowitz. The guy said the Torah could be factually untrue. And he wasn't talking about Breishis, he was talking about THE WHOLE DARN TORAH. And he writes a book about it, and Tradition does a nice review on it, and no one complains.
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?? WHAT AM I MISSING??
HELLO? ANYONE HOME??
Oct 30, 2007 11:05 AM
What's bothering (me about) Rashi?_
Everytime I hear about Rashi, I hear the same thing. Rashi was the greatest parshan that ever lived. You can't learn Chumash without Rashi. Rashi is awesome. Yet Rashi himself says in a famous letter to the Rashbam (Ihis grandson) that if he could do it all over again to take into account 'new peshatim that are being invented every day' he would. So what value is his commentary, if he himself said he would have liked to do a complete do-over?
Worse yet, whenever there is a chance to give a rational explanation, Rashi usually goes for the fanciful Midrashic explanation. Rashi is so engrained in our psyche that most people think many of these Medrashim are actually mefurash in the Torah. Now imagine if Rashi has been rational like the Rambam or the Ibn Ezra, the whole of Judaism would be different! Rashi has a lot to answer for.
I hear that the Chief Rabbi is bringing out a new Chumash. Well, my advice to him is to leave Rashi out. We don't need it. Instead include a rational Rishon like the Ibn Ezra, or better still, write a new commentary, leaving out all the crazy medrashim and just focusing on peshat.
The only exception is where the Medrash has some deeper explanation (Simi Peters style), then by all means include it, with the explanation. But is there a deeper explanation for Moshe being 20 feet tall?
Oct 29, 2007 6:35 PM
A lot of people have been asking me to post about my personal experiences, why I changed my mind, what my wife thinks etc etc. I don't know why anyone is interested, it's really not that fascinating. It's gona bore me to write it and bore you to read it. But for the die hard XGH fans out there, the kind who would even buy Roger Hodgson albums because they like Supertramp so much, here goes.
(Note some details have to be ommited to protect the guilty)
Childhood
Unlike most skeptics, I had zero doubts or skepticism thoughout my entire childhood. I attended schools which were mixed MO and UO (this was in the 70s and early 80s where such things were still just possible in remote corners of the world), and the way they avoided any tension was to be 100% hashkafah free. We never learned hashkafah, we never spoke hashkafah, the subject didn't even cross my mind. We learned Baba Kamah and Halachah. And a bit of Chumash and Nach which I don't remember (sorry Mr P!). And, I guess that had the side benefit of creating no skeptics, because when you never learn anything at all about hashkafah, you don't think to question it. Or at least I didn't. This could be a testament to my education and upbringing, but more likely is a testament to my utter cluelessness, lack of awareness, teenage addiction to TV, shallow involvement in Judaism or Spirituality (beyond learning and regular ritual) and more.
Beis Medrash
I went to quite a Chareidi Beis Medrash, for various reasons which seem quite cluess now. I had no doubts there, except for one brief period when I was suddenly beset by non intellectual nagging doubts - What if God was really an evil alien? By co-incidence, in afternoon seder I sat next to the son of a famous Rabbi who was a Talmid Muvhak of Rav Dessler, and who used to give weekly hashkafah shiurim. So the son arranged a visit for me with his father. The famous Rabbi wasn't particularly friendly, and after I had explained my doubts he gave me a withering glance and asked 'Do you really believe that?', and I chickened out and replied 'No, of course not', and he said 'Well don't waste my time then!'. I guess his approach worked, because after that I never had any more doubts in yeshivah.
College
After Beis Hamedrash, I went to college. This was genuine hard core college, not a night course in Psyhcology at Hopkins while I spent my days at Ner Yisrael. Why did I go for this option? Sorry, can't say. I had no doubts at all in college. I didn't even frie out in college one bit, or drop my standards. I didn't hang out with girls, or even talk to them. Every afternoon I went to learn in a Chareidi Yeshivah. All the courses I took were 100% kosher, and no piece of 'bad' information ever crossed my path. Amazing but completely true.
Single Life on the UWS
A couple of years after I finished college I went to live in the UWS. Why did I pick such a 'modern' place? Well, I was still single and needed to get married. I was living in the boondocks and it wasn't happening, so I moved to New York. I tried living in a basement in Flatbush but I hated it. I guess (at that time) I could have been OK in Queens or Highland Park, but I visited the UWS and met some nice people there who were looking for a roomate, so I ended up moving there. While I encountered many different types of Jews on the UWS, and was even roomates for a short while with a Conservative type of guy, none of this ever had any effect on me (theologically at least). One time I dated someone who wore pants on the date and I was quite horrified and embrassed, and tried to avoid walking down Columbus avenue with her. I'm not saying I was a big tzadik, but theologically I had no doubts at all that Zionist RW MO was the one true subsect of the one true sect of the one true religion, and I could certainly prove it to you if you had the time.
Married life in an MO community
After I got married, I did the typical UWS thing and moved out to an MO community (though not Riverdale like everyone else). Again, no theological doubts whatsoever. Not a single one.
So what happened?
Well, I started a blog. My blog was really intended to just be an experiment, a bit of fun, nothing serious. I expected to have about 4 readers, and post once a week or something like that on whatever topics sprang to mind. It was really no big deal. I hadn't ever been an English major, hadn't ever really written anything much, and didn't particularly think of myself as a witty or engaging writer or anything like that. I could put together a good PowerPoint but that was about it. It was just a bit of fun.
But two things heavily influenced my choice of topics. Firstly, the whole Science and Torah debate was just starting, and I found it fascinating for various reasons. Secondly, I saw a couple of skeptic blogs, most notably Mis-nagid, and I was quite horrified. These people were rejecting OJ, because of the Chareidim! If only I could show them the rational MO way, they wouldn't be going OTD. So I started baiting Mis-nagid into debates. Simultaneously, I was determined to show the Chareidim that they had no clue either, and started to get involved in the whole Science and Torah debate in a serious way.
So I ended up battling on two fronts, which is never a good idea, just ask Napolean.
Half my time was spent battling the Chareidim, showing them (using logic and reason) why they were so wrong, and the other half of my time was spent battling the skeptics, trying to show them why they were so wrong too.
I found it trivially easy to win all the debates againt the Chareidim, because I had logic and reason (and truth) on my side. But I kept losing against the darn skeptics, time after time. Even worse, the kinds of arguments that the skeptics were using against me were exactly the same type of arguments that I was using against the Chareidim. (You know, the arguments which discount unprovable faith when it contradicts all known evidence and instead argue that we should come to the most reasonable conclusion, given what we know for sure.)
I began to realize that beating the Chareidim was a hollow victory if the exact same arguments could be used to destroy my position too. It then became my goal to see if I could stake out some middle position which was impervious to the attacks of both sides. If I could do that, then good, but if I couldn't, then I had the intellectual honesty to realize that my debates with the Charedim were flawed and that really I had no good position.
I remember one moment vividly, early on. I had come up with some creative (I thought, naively) approach to the whole thing. I was so pleased with myself. And then someone asked me how that was any different than Conservative Judaism, and even helpfully provided a link to Ismar Shorsh.
I was horrified! I had become Conservative and didn't even know it. It was downhill from there. Every time I came up with something that might have slowed my slide (e.g. 'eleph' means army troop, not 'thousand'), some well meaning (but ultimately terribly destructive) Chareidi type would point out that this was a clowny peshat and could no way be credible. Meanwhile, the very clever skeptical debaters were consistently trouncing me (and everyone else) in every debate.
And it wasn't just that the skeptics won the debate on facts, they won it through the wayb they argued. Believers would constantly censor debates, appeal to faith or highly subjective arguments, whereas the skeptics by and large stuck with the facts. I say by and large because nobody is perfect, and often skeptics (including me) would resort to clever put downs and sarcastic comments instead of reasoned arguments, but this wasn't the ikkar. The ikkar was the realization that for all it's talk about 'blending the best of modernity with religion', RW MO was as intellectually hollow (from a modern POV) as the Chareidim were. That was a shock.
Present Day
Anyways, to cut a long story short, I will jump to the present day. What do I believe? Who knows? Not me. I'm pretty convinced that from a rational, objective POV, all fundamentalist religion looks absolutely untrue. God might exist, but the rest is totally bogus. From a rational POV. But since when are any of us totally rational and objective in real life? I'm not. I was well indoctrinated as a child, and that kind of thing can be hard to shake. So I have conflicted feelings (and probably beliefs too).
My Rabbis
What do my Rabbis think of all this? For some strange reason they seem to like me, or at least that's what they tell me. Maybe they're just scared of what I could do to them. Maybe they see me as Anthony from that freaky Sci-Fi story, 'It's a good life' - 'It's all good, really, it's all good XGH!'
Or maybe they hope to be mekarev me one day. Good luck with that! Or maybe, like most educated MO Rabbis, they're all seceret kofrim themselves, living out their kefirah fantasies vicariously through me. (I don't really think that, just kidding).
My Wife
And what does my wife think of all this? Well, she values actions much more than beliefs. Just like God! So we're ok. Phew.
Oct 29, 2007 6:35 PM
I was reading a magazine article (in The Jerusalem Report I think) about Shemittah, and they talked about how a manager at NDS in Israel has decided to observe Shemittah in the High Tech industry. He argues that Shemittah doesn't have as much relevance in today's non agrarian society, and therefore to make it meaningful we need to re-apply the same concept to our current lifestyle.
How does this work? He suggests that to observe Shemittah in high tech we must do the following:
- No software upgrades or improvements for the shemittah year (bug fixes are ok I think)
- No infrastructure upgrades or additional servers (not sure about additional CPUs or RAM)
I think that's great. But what about other industries apart from high tech? For example, how about the Services industry? They could have rules like this:
- Car Rental Industry: No replacement of ageing vehicles
- Hotel Industry: No refurbishment of old dirty rooms
- Local makolet: No cleaning up of the store
In fact, going by my recent experience in Israel, they pretty much seem to be doing this already.
OY, now I feel bad for speaking loshon horoh about Israel, so I'll say something nice. The airport is awesome, probably one of the nicest airports anywhere. Good food options, short lines, mostly well organized, except for one GLARING problem. Why ON EARTH can't they just implement ONE line for checkin, like EVERY SINGLE OTHER airport in the whole freakin civilized world. Is that SO hard to do? Just get some of those posts with retractable ribbons, and have people form ONE civilized line. It would save SO much stress about which line people are in, and who is pushing in, and we always seem to join the slow line. They do it for the security check, but then after that it becomes a balegan at the actual check in desk. Why oh why?
If anyone reading this knows anyone who works at Ben Gurion, can you please ask them why they can't do this one simple thing?
Oct 29, 2007 6:35 PM
What's up with Reshimu? They still have 11 contributors, yet they do about one post a day in total, if that. I'm just one guy, and I can do 11 posts in one day. That makes me, like, errr, ummm 11* 11, err 121 times more productive than each individual Reshimu contributor! Also I notice that AddeRabbi is no longer listed as a contributor.
So here's my suggestion for Ben Atlas. Let me take over Reshimu, and turn it into a blog for LW MO skeptical type of people. You can keep any income that comes out of it, that's fine. I'll also change the URL (probably). So basically, I'm asking for the code framework. And it better be SOA.
Oct 29, 2007 6:35 PM
From a comment on my blog:
I don't know if YCT has an 'official' position on Biblical literalism, or how I would go about proving such a position. What I do know is that YCT has taken the position, through its learning programs, choices of teachers, and content of its rabbinic education classes that Orthopraxy, rather than current Orthodoxy, is what is required by God. I was there when Marc Shapiro came to speak about the 13 ikarim. I was there when R. Linzer spoke about the Ibn Ezra, and I was there when R. Helfgott spoke about the question of literalism in the 6 Days of Creation.
The real measure of where the school lies does not come from its administration and rebbeim though. Ultimately, YCT's students and graduates are not biblical literalists. They do not believe in a young earth, and many of them believe in a Documentary Hypothesis of one kind or another. Few of them believe in the Exodus as written. R. Helfgott may choose to distance himself from some extreme comments, but the Hashkafot of the students do not fit into the Torah MiSinai rubric, in my opinion.
Wow. Can anyone validate this? I could, but I can't.
Oct 29, 2007 2:19 AM
The Sixth Sense by X G Shmagodolyan_
[Idea for a screenplay]
Movie opens on a stormy night, as Dr Baruch Willis returns to his Flatbush apartment.
Baruch has been honored by the Association of Chareidi Outreach Workers, for his incredible work helping frum kids at risk. He opens the front door to his house, but is suddenly confronted by a terrifying sight - a crazed man stands before him, brandishing a copy of 'The God Delusion'...
'You couldn't help me with my doubts!' the man cries, as he lunges towards Baruch. Baruch gasps in horror. It is Doniel Wahlburg, a former patient of his! He had tried and tried to help Doniel with his doubts, but to no avail. Doniel has gone off the derech. 'You're gonna pay for this!' yells Doniel....
Cut to a few months later, Baruch is at work. His encounter with Doniel has shaken him badly, but he is determined to get back to doing what he loves, helping kids at risk from going OTD. He now has a new patient, Yoel Osment, who suffers from terrible doubts.
'I see doubtful people' said Yoel. 'Everyone around me is doubtful! Of course fundamentalist religion isn't true, but no one can admit to it.' Baruch is shaken, what can he say? Yoel continues, 'And worst of all, the doubtful people don't even realize how doubtful they are, they think they believe, but really they don't '...
Baruch goes to learn with his chavrusoh. Lately, things haven't been going well. His chavrusoh seems to be ignoring him. Baruch comes up with all sorts of incredibly creative and novel peshatim, but his Chavrusoh just totally ignores them. What is going on?....
His chavrusoh is staring at Baruch's shirt. Baruch looks down, and sees his button is opened, and through the opening he sees...no tzitzit! He's not wearing tzitzit! Suddenly all becomes clear.
On that fateful night, Doniel had succeeded in persuading him to doubt, and now Baruch has gone skeptical too. His chavrusoh was ignoring him because Baruch's peshatim were full of kefirah. Now he gets it. Baruch is a frum skeptic himself, and he didn't even know it.
Baruch has developed the sixth sense - common sense.
[OK, it needs work, but it could be viable]
Oct 28, 2007 12:15 PM
Wow, I just found out from someone I know quite well that something quite important is happening sometime this week, headed by a quite well known somebody, and also by another quite well known somebody, to do something about quite an important something which is of quite considerable significance to readers of this blog. Unfortunately, he told me not to blog about it.
So, use your imagination.
Oct 27, 2007 11:06 PM
Tradition supports Leibowitz??!!_
[XGH: This blew me away. In the Winter 1995 edition of Tradition, edited by Rabbi Emmanuel Feldman, there appears a book review of 'Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State by Yeshayahu Leibowitz'. The reviewer is Daniel Rorlich, who is a physics professor at Tel Aviv university. What is surprising is that the reviewer talks about Liebowitz's ideology, and his famous statement that the Torah isn't actually true, and doesn't in any way criticize him! Usually, when Tradition reviews even a slightly LW MO book, they bash it to bits, yet here is a totally OTD ideology and they don't say a negative word. Amazing. Also, I was mechaven to quite a few things here, so I'm kvelling. I have highlighted the good bits. All of the following is an extract from that review, it can be hard to distinguish which is straight from Leibowitz and which is the reveiwers opinion.]
Faith has a bad name. Science, the product of human reason, dealt it a blow from which it has never recovered. Jewish education seems not to have met this challenge. Much of what it offers is intellectually embarrassing to minds that are learning how the world really works. Does Judaism mean believing five impossible things before breakfast every morning? If so, how can we take it seriously?
If not, what is it? Faith has a bad name, and—it seems--only a scientist can make faith respectable again. There is no shortage of fundamentalists, or of mystics who declare that science and Torah are one; but their "science" is a sham. A very different figure was the late Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, born in the same year as Leibowitz. He studied mathematics, physical sciences, philosophy, and logic at the University of Berlin. The two young scholars must have sat in some of the same lectures, though they never met there. Leibowitz held R. Soloveitchik in unique high regard among contemporary rabbis, and their approaches to halakha are very close. But R. Soloveitchik—who appreciated science and discussed analogies between mathematics and halakha—was a more modest personality. He did not stare modernity in the face the way Leibowitz does.
Where does a rational critique of faith begin? The great mathematical physicist Pierre Simon de Laplace said of God, "I have no need of that hypothesis!" But a critique of faith cannot begin by denying God. It can, however, deny conceptions of God, and Leibowitz does so absolutely. God is beyond conception; we know Him only in that we realize that we do not know. For some people, Leibowitz's critique of faith seems negative, even destructive. Yet Leibowitz is no more destructive than the comment by Rashi which he cites: "All the prophets looked through a dark glass—and thought they saw Him; Moses looked through a clear glass—and knew that he did not see His face."
We cannot have a conception of God, but we can have a conception of faith. But very often, a conception of faith presupposes a conception of God. For example, one may observe the mitzvot out of desire for reward, or fear of punishment. Such a faith presumes that God functions as a benign or severe parent. That is, God plays a role in our world. But a transcendent God is beyond our world. If we accept that God is beyond conception, then faith cannot be tied to reward or punishment. Thus, in Leibowitz's critique, faith in God must be unconditional: faith lishma. The term lishma means, literally, for that very end, without ulterior motives. Pirkei Avot teaches us to serve our Master without expecting reward. The morning prayers express the wish that we may come to study the Torah lishma. Maimonides, in his commentary on the Mishna (Tractate Sanhedrin) explains the term in an extended metaphor: a child studies for the sake of rewards, such as candy; an older child looks down on candy but desires fine clothes; at later ages, money is the reward; and money, in turn, yields to honor and prestige. All these, according to Maimonides, are what the Sages called not lishma, and they all miss the mark. The study of Torah is itself the reward, "for truth has no purpose but to know it; the mitzvot are truth and thus their purpose is to do them."
A conception of God as beneficent may inspire a self-serving faith that expects to be rewarded. The faith of Maimonides, on the other hand, is heroic, it makes demands on us, not on God. The demands are the mitzvot. The mitzvot do not originate in our desires. By accepting the mitzvot, we transcend our desires. "Who is a hero?" asks Pirkei Avot, and answers, "One who conquers desire." Maimonides provides reasons for the mitzvot, but their ultimate reason is transcendent. They are inherently paradoxical: they refer to what we do in the world, but they aim beyond this world. For nothing in the world is God; the essence of idolatry is to identify God with anything in the world. Accepting the mitzvot makes a statement about the ultimate value of the world; indeed, we may say that a Jew who accepts the mitzvot is the ultimate snob, for nothing in the world is good enough for him.
Leibowitz points to the opening words of the halakhic code Shulhan Arukh: "Gird strength like a lion and arise at morning to serve the Creator." In this exhortation, he sees a hint that the mitzvot may demand more than human effort. Perhaps the mitzvot are beyond us. Nevertheless, our effort to live by them has value, and faith demands this effort—all our heart, all our soul, and all our might. This faith does not arise from knowing. What we know we cannot unknow, but faith is always a choice. "Faith is a decision and not a conclusion," as he puts it.
Chapter 13, "Religion and Science in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Era," confronts Judaism and science directly. Judaism has always had a normative aspect, but today, when information belongs to science, this aspect appears as the essence of Judaism. The Torah is normative, not informative: it sets before us the task of serving God through His mitzvot. "Does religion supply information? Medieval man took this for granted, since he did not distinguish between information and meaning. ... Today we extract meaningless information from science and do not have to attribute cognitive content to religious thought." As the physi¬cist Stephen Weinberg wrote, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." For science does not supply meaning, just as Judaism does not supply facts. But for many religious Jews, the second part of the statement is as difficult to accept as the first part is easy. If the Torah is not factually true, then why keep the mitzvot? The question confuses two senses of the word `belief'; belief as faith that neither requires nor is subject to facts, and belief as conviction based on facts.
There is a children's story about an elephant with enormous ears. "You can fly just by flapping your ears," said a mouse, but the elephant didn't believe him. Finally, the mouse said, "Here is a magic feather. It will make you fly as long as I ride on your head and hold it." He thus convinced the elephant, and off they went. "Your magic feather is wonderful," shouted the elephant to the mouse as they flew. The mouse shouted back, "What magic feather? I threw it away!" To insist on the factual truth of the Torah is to turn it into a magic feather.
For two centuries, Judaism has been in crisis. Assimilation has eroded the faith that formerly defined the Jewish people. Today, the vast majority of Jews are secular. Faith no longer defines the Jewish people, and nothing has taken its place. Leibowitz does not prescribe a cure. But in these essays, he confronts the condition and points to some measures that would promote a recovery. One of these, as we have seen, would be to disentangle the roles of religion and science. Judaism does not need miracles. A second measure concerns the role of religion in the State of Israel. Israel is the natural context in which to resolve the identity crisis of the Jewish people. But the official Rabbinate is a branch of the Israeli government. This arrangement neutralizes religion as a social force and saps its vitality, as Chapter 16 describes.
A third measure would be to drive out Judaism's sacred cows, which include the "holiness" of the Jewish people and of the land of Israel; for there is no holiness apart from God. This is the urgent mes¬sage of an outstanding essay, "After Kibiyeh" (Chapter 17). In 1953, after murderous attacks on Jews by Arabs infiltrating from Samaria, the Israeli army attacked the Arab town of Kibiyeh there. The soldiers killed fifty civilians and leveled forty houses. How could Israeli soldiers com¬mit such an atrocity, Leibowitz asks, and then points to the ideology per¬vading their education: the State of Israel as the supreme value. Religious notions, torn from their context, have been sewn into this sec¬ular ideology. As a Palestinian woman said to me, "An Israeli is someone who doesn't believe in God, but believes God gave him this land." This ideology breached the boundary between the sacred and the profane, and justified all actions. In pointing to this breach, Leibowitz breathes new life into the prohibition against taking the Lord's name in vain.
Finally, Judaism needs vigorous development of the halakha to respond to our changing world. Bold halakhic innovation, in response to the destruction of the Second Temple and ensuing exile, enabled Judaism to survive when its world fell apart. Leibowitz refers to the exile then and the return now as mirror-image crises. At that time, the challenge was to live without a Jewish state; now, the challenge is to live with one. There are other challenges: how does the halakha deal with the Jewish people when the vast majority of Jews do not recognize its authority? How does it define our relations with the Gentile world when it is no longer feasible (let alone desirable) to cut off from it? How does it respond to women in social roles never imagined two thousand years ago? These questions must be addressed by those who accept the halakha as binding. In Israel, unfortunately, few religious institutions have such a broad vision.
Readers of this book will appreciate Leibowitz's honesty and courage, and his clear, direct language. They will miss something of the kind, inspiring gentleman behind the book. Leibowitz responds to a steady stream of visitors, listening, questioning, and answering. On one occasion, a very intelligent woman came to him to describe how she had recently become religious. Her young boy had fallen ill and the doctors had given up on him. She turned to prayer, and the boy recov¬ered. "I found faith," she told Leibowitz, "when, by the grace of God, the boy recovered." Leibowitz (who has lost two sons to illness) said gently, "I know a woman who had a sick boy, and by the grace of God, the boy died." The woman thought and replied, "I have to thank you, Prof. Leibowitz, for opening my eye to what faith really means." This is transcendent faith, faith lishma.
Oct 26, 2007 12:41 PM
Don't take charity for granted_
This New York Times story is unbelievable, it describes how people in Japan can starve to death because their benefits have been cut off. However the most interesting quote of all is:
With no religious tradition of charity, Japan has few soup kitchens or other places for the indigent. Those that exist — run frequently by Christian missionaries from South Korea or Japan’s tiny Christian population — cater mostly to the homeless.
Can you believe that?! No religious tradition of charity? A concept which we take absolutely for granted, hardly exists in the East! I have said this before and I will say it again: A lot of the basic values, such as freedom, human value etc, which the skeptics take for granted as 'normal', are really the products of our Judeao-Christian traditions.
I see the same fallacy commited by Hitchens and company: anything bad in the world is blamed on religion, but anytime religion does anything good, then the skeptics claism that's just 'natural' morality which religion 'stole'. The bias here is pathetic, especially coming from the so called 'rational' element.
Oct 26, 2007 12:41 PM
_This is a great idea! Gedolim Cards of more modern / religious Zionist gedolim. I think I shall start my own collection, we need Rabbi Sacks, Rabbi Cardozo, Rabbi Berman, Rabbi Halivni, Rabbi Greenberg and all the rest of the more modern LW MO Rabbis. Vehoyu eneycho roeh es morechah! (The HOD campaign would be a good source I think).
And don't these guys look so much sweeter and b'echeynadick than their Chareidi counterparts, or is that just my (biased) imagination?
Hat tip: Krum
Oct 25, 2007 10:22 AM
The end of this blog is nigh! Kiruv workers everywhere rejoice_
This blog is coming to an end! Why? Because my work is going to change radically, and I'm going to have very limited time to blog. Plus, there will be a slight change in direction (see below).
I may have more time at night, and some interesting things may be happening in my life. But all that is going to be on a new blog. A lot of good discussion happens during the day, and unfortunately I won't be there to participate or moderate, so the new blog will be more of a reshimu type thing: I post and people read, but the comment discussion is virtually non existant.
Unless of course people want to discuss amongst themselves. With RG and Kendra on each post, I could reach 300+ comments every time. Unfortunately with their commenting styles, Halocsan will be needing a new SAN frame about once a month, so I don't think I will be encouraging that.
Will the new blog be different than this one? I think so. I will try and cut out any mocking and any negativity, and try and be positive. It will be difficult, but I'll try. What will the religious character of the new blog be? I think it will start with the following assumptions:
1. Fundamentalist religion really doesn't look very true at all. I mean seriously, it just doesn't. Could it be true? Sure, anything could be true. Jesus could be our Lord and Savior. It is possible. But I'm not going to count on it. Should we have absolute unshakeable faith in something which doesn't look true? Tzarich Iyun Godol Meod. But probably not.
2. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and company are wrong. Their books weren't very good, and neither were their arguments. In fact, I just got Anthony Flew's new book, 'There is a God: How the world's most notorious atheist changed his mind' and will be blogging about that soon.
Also, please be on the look out for my new book, 'Moshe really was 20 feet tall: How the worlds most notorious frum skeptic changed his mind', coming next fall.
3. There is great value in religion. Not all religions of course, but some of them. I think there's value in Judaism. I think there may be a lot of value in Orthodox Judaism. Life is all about value, so we'll be talking about value a lot.
4. Older singles are picky. Not all of them, and maybe not Esther Kustanowitz. But a lot of them are. But we won't be talking about singles a lot.
So stay tuned. I would give this blog a few more weeks, probably till after Thanksgiving. Let's wrap up any loose ends, and mock anyone who deserves to be mocked while we still can.
I'm also thinking that my new blog won't be anonymous. Why the radical change? A few reasons:
1. I was never crazy about being anonymous, I just didn't want to embarrass my family and community.
2. Anonymous bloggers carry less weight, I think I want a more serious voice.
3. Anonymity encourages people (ok me) to say things I might not say in public. My Rabbi tells me this is bad, and I think he's probably right. Of course there is a huge upside to anonymity, people say things they couldn't say in public, and all sorts of interesting scandals and other things come to light. But I'm not in that kind of situation (Baruch Hashem). Plus I have too much integrity to lead a double life. If I'm convinced of something, I don't want to hide it. And if I can't say it in public, then I'm not saying it on a blog either. Coming 'out' will force me to be more responsible about what I write. This is also one of the motivating factors for me changing my work situation, I need to be more responsible.
Another possibility entirely is to create a group blog of people on the LW of MO who desire change, or a more open Orthodoxy. Of course 'Open Orthodoxy' is no longer good enough, so we shall have to be 'Open Torah True' instead.
The conditions for this new group blog would be as follows:
1. Real names only! (for all the reasons above). I am very serious about this condition. Contributors are welcome to have other blogs on the side, even anonymous blogs, where they can vent or whatever. This would be similar to the way the Avodah discussion group works - contributors to the group use their real names, but many of them have skeptical blogs on the side, using fake names.
2. You should be interested in promoting a more 'open' Orthodoxy. What does Open Orthodoxy mean? I don't know, that's what we'll blog about!
3. The time for bashing Orthodoxy as being (somewhat/mostly/entirely) untrue is over. That particular horse has been beaten to death, revived, beaten to death again, ressurrected, beaten to death yet again, ressusicated, beaten to death another time, re-incarnated, beaten to death yet again, buried, dug up, post mortemed, buried again, exhumed, reburied, grave robbed, cremated, scattered at sea, and we've said kaddish and had five hespedim. The truth (about the truth) is poshut. If you feel otherwise, you are welcome to blog about it elsewhere, and send me the link.
Anyone interested? If not, I'll just have my own sad and lonely little blog and post occasionally at night.
Oct 24, 2007 8:13 PM
For Christianity read Judaism (or whatever)_
Oct 24, 2007 2:13 PM
Sometime I think we ignore half the planet. For example, in this Reshimu post, Tony Montana writes:
As for the b'nei Keturah, Eastern civilization, they're in a parallel universe altogether. They may as well be on Mars. They live in a world whose underlying dynamic is not the struggle between Yaakov and Eisav. In the West, which is defined by this struggle, there is a constant conflict between spirituality (Yaakov) and civilization (Eisav). Westerners can't have both. To be more spiritual is to be primitive and backward. To be more civilized is to be self-reliant and agnostic. But in the East, where there is no such conflict, spirituality and civilization go hand-in-hand. Spirituality is civilization.
In almost all of our discussions, there has been very little talk of the East. People just ignore the Eastern religions as being non relevant (me too). Most probably, because we know nothing about it. The only person who seems knowledgeable on that topic is Satyaman. I did buy the Jew in the Lotus, but haven't read it yet. And I've been meaning to get the Dummy's Guide to the Eastern Religions for a while. But this probalem is not just limited to my blog, the jblogosphere, or even OJ jews. Almost every book I have on religion, comparative religion, theism etc etc, entirely focuses on Western religion, and sometimes even just Christianity.
So, is Easter religion irrelevant? Nothing more than just Yoga and some folk wisdom, practiced by backwards people, background players on the world stage? Dunno. But a lot of Westerners in the 60s and 70s (and lots of Jews) seemed to think that Eastern religion is THE solution to the problem of religion in the West.
Oct 24, 2007 2:13 PM
An amusing post from GoingGoingGone, talking about a fancy frum wedding she attended:
As I sat at the chuppah, I looked around and wondered about the collective value of the fake hair sitting upon the women's heads in the room. I'm sure it could have fed the poor of a small country.
Well, a fancy wedding usually has around 700 guests. Presumably 350 of those are female, and since this was a very frum and very fancy wedding, I'm going to assume there were probably 300 fancy sheitels there. So how much does a really nice sheitel cost? Let's say around $3000. So 300*$3000 is ummm $900,000. That's a lot of sheitel!
She goes on:
While I can manage to put myself together nicely, these women were the epitome of frum sophistication. Their sheitels were long and expertly cut, dyed and styled. One woman referred to her sheitel as "her baby."
Yuch. But, on the positive side, I'm sure all these people do lots of chessed and give lots of tzedakah. (Seriously) There were probably very few drug addicts there (if any), and low incidence of adultry and crime. Compared to the wealthy of the secular and goyish worlds, they compare quite well I think. Are sheitels a huge waste of money? For sure. But not as much of a waste as plastic surgery and b*** jobs.
So what's with this new positive outlook? I'm trying it on for size.
You see, I started to realize that everything is bull. First I figured out that the technology world was full of bull, and over-hyped concepts (SOA anyone?). Then I realized that the entire Corporate world was full of bull. And I already knew that Consulting was often a con game. Then I found out that Government sponsored 'centers' are messed up, Non profits are often dishonest, and of course government and law are as slimy and sleazy as you can get. Real estate too. And even my doctor friends aren't hapy with the way the 'system' works. Shuls and schools and institutions are full of politics, nepotism and favoritism, and families are usually dysfunctional. Wildfires are threatening California, and a severe water shortage is affecting Georgia and Alabama. The Israeli security siuation is as bad as usual, and everything there is corrupt anyway, including the Rabbinate. The planet has 2 billion crazy believers, and trillions of dollars are wasted on false religious concepts. The Middle East is a disaster zone in terms of human rights and morality, and so is much of Africa. Russia seems to be heading back to some very bad habits, and South America is a mess as usual. Plus global security is threatened by crazy terrorists. There will be either global warming or an ice age coming, and either way apparently every major city in the world will be flooded and ruined. And that's only if a rogue asteroid doesn't hit us first and pulverize the planet. Finally, the Sun will burn out in a few billion years no matter what we do and that's the end of the planet anyway. It's all a bit depressing really.
So, given all that, let's try and be positive. And, maybe I'll even tell my wife that her new 'baby' looks nice on her.
Oct 23, 2007 3:12 PM
By golly Jeeves, I think we've found our muse! A quote from Goethe, who according to S, almost had kaddish recited for him in the shul of the Maharatz Chajes:
...I have found no confession of faith to which I could ally myself without reservation. Now in my old age, however, I have learned of a sect, the Hypsistarians, who, hemmed in between heathens, Jews and Christians, declared that they would treasure, admire, and honour the best, the most perfect that might come to their knowledge, and inasmuch as it must have a close connection to the Godhead, pay it reverence. A joyous light thus beamed at me suddenly out of a dark age, for I had the feeling that all my life I had been aspiring to qualify as a Hypsistarian. That, however, is no small task, for how does one, in the limitations of one's individuality, come to know what is most excellent?
Oct 23, 2007 3:12 PM
[XGH: Rejewvenator has also been commenting as of late. (evanstonjew and Shai too, I will get to you guys later). Here is an interesting comment from him:]
The Orthodox Judaism that I was taught was not 'sold' on the basis of it being smart, or accurate, or able to answer all challenges. It was sold on a far more addictive and pleasurable belief - that of superiority to others.
I grew up being taught that Jews were special, and that orthodox Jews were the REAL Jews, to whom all the brachos and nice things in the Torah REALLY applied.
The rest is all apologetics. Once you're sold on believing that you're better than everyone else, how you explain the mabul is no big deal. For most people, faith than an appropriate answer exists is sufficient. Only a small group actually try and figure out that answer, and an even smaller group reject the possible answers - and only a portion of that group become frei.
No, I think what people are rejecting in going OTD is the notion of Jewish superiority, and our failure to establish a concept of Jewish peoplehood that is not fraught with racism, ideological agendas, and a moral superiority complex that is partially-earned, at best.
Today's cahllenge is not so that of exile, the challenge of no Eretz. Nor is it so much the challenge of atheism and modernity - of Elokim. Today, people are more open then ever to spirituality and to a guiding force in their lives.
Rather, our challenge is that of Am, of who we are as a people, and why it is important to define that at all. And we in the Orthodox movement have no compelling answer for that broad question. We draw many exlcusionary lines, ostensibly for the sake of halacha, but we end up reading out more millions of Jews from our nation than were ever lost to the furnaces.
[XGH: I saw someone recently suggest that the solution to assimilation (and possibly OTD) is to make Judaism 'cool', by saturating the media with very Jewish concepts etc. This would be relevant to the above. I think if people were proud to be Jewish this would help]
Oct 23, 2007 3:12 PM
Kendra, my new star commenter_
[XGH: A new commenter called Kendra has recently been posting some very long and interesting comments on my blog. Who is Kendra? I have no idea, but it seems she lives, and is, abroad. I hope she doesn't turn out to be Wiccan, or not even Jewish. (not that there's anything wrong with that). Here is one comment, litely edited for style, spelling and grammer.]
It's not that rationality is bad, but we live in age where rationality has been emphasized and developed to a huge extent. Rational thought and logic and the scientific method have made us masters of the world, compared to our forbears.
Strange how all that power and control hasn't made us happy though.
However, it is too much to expect that 'reason' is the key to solving the problems of "why should I hope humans can be better than they are" or "why should I care about the world when I'm just going to die anyway".
This seems to me like expecting that since we have mastered particle physics, we can master psychology, economics, and political science just as thoroughly.
I see no reason to think we will ever understand these areas with the same precision that we can use to build a bridge or launch a rocket. We may learn a lot of useful lessons, but our reach will always exceed our grasp on human behaviour-oriented subjects.
Scientific analysis requires circumstances that are not always available in the world of feelings and experiences. For example, with human feelings and perceptions, we cannot always isolate a variable. We cannot always manipulate a variable. We cannot always measure a variable. Things that appear to be constants may turn out to be variable. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Sometimes, even with feelings and perceptions, we do have favorable circumstances where reason can be used, but usually only in dealing with ourselves. When reason can be used, we should use as much of it as can be reasonably applied. The problems of moral living are too big not to use every tool at hand as vigorously as we can.
But sometimes we have to stop trying to eat our broth with a fork. I think we have to forgive reality. There is real peace in accepting that just because reason provides _a_ key to overcoming struggles and challenges, it is not the universal pass-key to every problem.
The main problem associated with religion is how to maintain sincerity and inspiration. Without sincerity, all too often, rules and lessons will be used to justify wrongdoing. Without inspiration, the adversity of uncertainty and suffering will crush our motivation to go on.
Nothing I've seen leads me to believe you can "solve" how to create sincerity and inspiration as though you were doing algebra homework or statistics.
Perhaps you should go through a day or week in your life and explain where a "rational" Jewish Orthodoxy would improve your life. Specific conflicts and consequences...
For my part, I would love a more rational Jewish community. I would feel MUCH more comfortable there. I would actually be allowed to belong to a frum community which would be wonderful. [XGH: allowed? red flag]
But changes have costs. A Frum community which was changed so that I could belong and be comfortable would incur costs. Costs in stress, costs in people who had barely been ok with the community to start with who would be alienated. Costs in ego contests between champions of change and advocates of the status quo. The list goes on.
I'm not sure the benefit to me would be worth the cost to the community.
Even making that community from scratch would have high costs. I don't think that all the costs would be paid up front either....they would trickle in over years or even generations.
How I feel about that depends what day you ask me about this stuff on (laughs). I love your vision. Now that I think really hard, I don't know if it would be as good in reality as in our heads. My feelings are very torn, too.
Seeing how Reform and Reconstructionism have worked out I sometimes think that Orthodox Judaism holds as much rationality as a religion can hold and still work...and if it becomes more rational big losses in sincerity or inspiration are very hard to head off.
Oct 21, 2007 11:15 PM
The conflict between the spiritual and the intellectual_
The selling point of religion has typically been emotional, not intellectual. There were some places and times in history (12th century Spain for example), where Judaism reached an intellectual peak, but in general, this has not been the case. And it most certainly is not the case nowadays, where almost all fundamentalist religious dogma is so far removed from being intellectually credible (from a modern POV) that the very idea is beyond laughable. Seriously. And if you can't see this, you need to get honest.
This is probably the major factor in why kids and adults are going OTD today: Mechanchim and Kiruv Workers are trying to deal with people's heads, rather than their hearts. But this is never going to work. You got to go heavy on the kugel guys, that's the only way.
If there is really a phenomenon of more people going OTD, I think it probably has a lot to do with the fact that people are not finding OJ very emotionally and spiritually uplifting. I look around shul during davening and I don't see many people being very uplifted. People need to be uplifted, and then they will be willing to put aside the doubts. But if they're not uplifted, then bogus kiruv explanations aren't going to help and will probably make things worse.
This is also why a very very smart Rabbi I know, who knows Rambam backwards, and has a phd from Harvard and is a professor in Jewish Philosophy, says that the Rambam's rationalism is ultimately a dead end in today's world. Because if you are going to be rational, you might as well chuck religion out the window. The real payoff in religion is in the spiritual side.
I think this is why some very smart people are able to continue being religious, despite knowing about the outside world. They are so emotionally fulfilled in their religion, that the existence of these tough questions and challenges hardly affects them. It's much deeper than simple bias.
This also explains the differences I notice between skeptics. Some skeptics seem quite happy to discover that OJ is bogus, and seem quite comfortable being Atheists and being frie (apart from community and family pressure). However other skeptics (me included) are terribly pained by this realization, and struggle against it, and have no intention of going OTD.
Why is this? I think that maybe the skeptics who are quite comfortable being secular atheists are the ones who were never that invested emotionally or spiritually in Judaism. Finding out that OJ was bogus just affirmed what they felt all along. However those people who really felt (and continue to feel) the spiritual side of Judaism, and then realize that the (OJ) basis of it is bogus, are very conflicted. There is suddenly a gaping and painful hole where OJ once sat, the intellectual foundation of their lifestyle has been removed.
What can fill the hole? Another strain of religion? A new Orthodoxy? The hole must be filled somehow. And quick. A commenter accused me of being bi-polar. Well, I'm not that bi-polar (maybe borderline), but there clearly is a huge conflict going on here.
On the one hand, from an intellectual perspective, many of the fundamentalist dogmas that are (apparently) essential to Orthodoxy look completely false. On the other hand, we are emotionally (and intellectually) invested in Orthodoxy in every possible way. This inevitably leads to a major conflict within the psyche (or brain, or heart or whatever you want to call it).
How can we resolve this conflict? I see no easy solution here.
Oct 21, 2007 10:06 PM
I have always maintained that Judaism is 'better' than the other religions. We have committed less fewer moral atrocities, and have contributed more to global civilization. Well, the latest scandal from Israel, about a bunch of chareidi men beating up a woman on a bus just proves my point.
That's right, it PROVES my point. If this was Iran or Afghanistan, the woman would have been beaten to death, stoned to death, buried alive or gang raped. Or most likely all the above. Instead, she just got a mild beating.
Seriously, I'm not kidding. I know someone who had a lot of problems with kannoim. Everytime he complains to me I tell him the same thing: You should thank your lucky stars that you are Jewish! If you were an Orthodox Moslem, they would have beheaded you by now.
Mi Keamchah Yisrael!
Oct 21, 2007 10:06 PM
Why am I not 'buying' it? Cos it's utter crap_
[Note: This post is not aiming at attacking R Harry, and I hope it doesn't come off that way. R Harry is a very fine individual and I know that through personal experience. Rather, I'm decrying the attitudes present on his blog, mostly in the comments.]
Harry posts about why kids today (and many adults) are not 'buying into' Torah (i.e. The 21st Century Orthodox version of Torah). He writes:
So, when an adolescent come up with difficult question about Emunah based on information they received on the internet, our Mechanchim better be able to answer them…. honestly! No brush offs. No lies. No fudging. Just a truthful response from a caring and understanding teacher that does not disparage a child for asking the question.
Ironically, Harry doesn't follow his own advice, because on the previous post about the Mabul, he rejects allegorization as being quasi heretical, and writes:
So how do I solve this conundrum? I don’t. I simply remain with a question.
And even worse, in the comments, he writes:
I have no desire to debate skeptics on this issue. I start from a position of belief... and we examine the issue from that perspective.
No brush offs? No fudging? Just a truthful response? I must be missing something. Either you are committed to the truth or not. If you start from a position of belief (no matter what the evidence), and have no interest debating the 'skeptics', then don't be surprised when anyone honest isn't buying it.
I appreciate that people have a tremendous emotional investment in their religion. I appreciate that for someone brought up their whole life in OJ, being able to admit to themselves the possibility that it might not be true can be difficult, if not impossible.
Imagine someone brought up as a devout Christian, who has felt the loving presence of Jesus their whole life. And then you go and tell them that Jesus was just a no good heretical Jew who is boiling in hell in vats of semen (ow was it faeces?) They're just not going to be able to accept it.
Same here.
Go check out the comments on Harry's mabul post. That says it all. People quoting Avigdor Miller, fringe Science, and all sorts of other nonsense, in a desperate attempt to save their misguided faith. If the intellectual behavior of the Chareidim on this and similar issues doesn't convince you that religion makes people crazy dishonest then I don't know what will.
Everyone today sees with their own eyes the incredible success (and accuracy) of Science. We literally trust our lives to Science everyday. And some Rabbi who knows diddly squat about Science is going to convince me that really there was a global flood, when every reputable (non biased) geologist world wide says it didn't happen?
It's just plain stupid. Actually it's beyond stupid. It's an insult to our intelligence. And really, it's an insult to God, assuming He exists. Does God really want us to squander our precious time and intellectual energy debating the physics of a fairy tale? That's so not God. At least not the real God. But it could be the ridiculous god of the fundamentalists. That god is stupid enough to do anything.
So you want to know why smart, young people today are not buying 'it'? It's not a problem on the buy side, it's a problem on the sell side. You're selling crap, and smart people don't want to buy crap. It's as simple as that.
Clean up your act, get some sechel, and then the secheldik will buy in. Sell crap, and all you'll attract (if you pardon the crude expression) are people with sh** for brains.
Oct 19, 2007 4:53 PM
Left Wing Rational Modern Orthodoxy - Where are you?_
I know all the arguments about why attempting to create a new Modern Orthodoxy which will accept all of Science and Biblical criticism etc is a waste of time, and ultimately won't be successful, and anyway it's no different than Conservatism and look what happened to them etc etc etc. I know all that. In fact, I argued much of that myself.
HOWEVER, I keep coming back to this idea.
Why? Because I like certain things about OJ, and don't want to lose them. On the other hand, I can't deny reality. Or lie. Or subscribe to some crazy PoMo theory. So, the only choice is to continue to search and see if there is a version of 'Orthodoxy' which makes theological and practical sense.
Furthermore, I know this is important to many other people too. I see it in the blogs, and I see it in the real world. And, if R Yaakov Horowitz is to be believed, pretty soon the entire Orthodox world is going to be seeing it too.
I know plenty of individuals who are quite rational and yet remain kinda OJ. Each one has their own unique approach. Each one labors on in solitude. What we need to is to band together to create a movement. There are small groups here and there but no unified organization.
I recently met up with an old friend who had learned by R Tzvis but now davens in an egalitarian minyan in Yerushalayim (Shira Chadashah I think it's called). I know that he and his wife have some interesting ideas. I also know some MO Rabbis who have interesting ideas (but are way too scared to repeat them in public for fear of being villified by the right wing).
There's also a bunch of people in the blogworld who are intelligent, educated and have an interest in a more sensible Orthodoxy. If the RW MOs that I talked about in the previous post are too busy looking over their right shoulder to help us, then we are going to have to do it ourselves.
We need to band together, and get organized. We need to stop complaining, and actually do something. I vote we do something! Yes, I know this all sounds suspiciously like the scene from the Life of Brian where the Judean People's Front (or was it the People's Front of Judea?) are trying to get motivated, but seriously, we need to do something!
I feel so strongly about this that I would even become non-anonymous to do it. Maybe we can start by gathering a list of institutions and Rabbis who share similar goals. Obviously YCT, KOE and similar would be on the list. Any other suggestions? How about individuals?
Oct 19, 2007 1:30 PM
Someone actually wrote this in all seriousness on the Avodah discussion forum. I have to say that this statement is the icing on the cake, the creme de la creme, the crown jewel of intellectually dishonest statements. This one really just says it all! You couldn't imagine a more intellectual ly dishonest statement if you tried. The only thing more intellectualy dishonest than this would be idf this person then went around and told people how intellectually honest he was. Which he probably does.
David S suggests that I should stop attacking the childish faith of the believers and just move on to discussing more interesting matters with adults. He's probably right.
But here's the reason I do it, and here's the reason it bugs me so. If you look at where much intellectual energy is being spent by the likes of Micha Berger, Gil Student and similar, it is on silly reconciliations, and fighting with right wing nutjobs about whether the earth goes round the sun or not. Just look at some of the recent debates in the Jewish Press. All this is just a retarded waste of time.
The intellectual challenge to Orthodox Judaism is not coming from right wing nut cases like Amnon Goldberg, Simcha Koffer or similar. Rather, it is coming from very cool headed, very very knowledgeable, and very very pursuasive 'skeptics', scholars , academics and similar.
When are the bright, knowledgeable people in Modern Orthodoxy going to rise to this challenge?
I guess its easier for them to argue with the fundie nut jobs and think they have proven something. This is the real problem here. And this is what makes me crazy. There is a well known kiruv style Rabbi who I constantly criticize for this, but he too doesn't want to hear it.
If I was cynical I would say this is because these people know they will lose big time if they go up against the skeptics. But they themselves insist this is not the case. It's very easy to fight the crazy fundies and win, especially when you never dare to deviate from things which have support from well accepted Rishonim and Ahachronim. (And then be labelled as 'courageously honest' by mainstream newspapers). But how about fighting the skeptics?
When are you people going to rise to the challenge? When are we going to see a group of Modern Orthodox knowledgeable people have unmoderated, uncensored debates with skeptics? Until we see that, my opinion and approach will continue to be one of ridicule and scorn for these people.
Oct 19, 2007 1:30 PM
Avodah: The Ohel Moed was a Secure Download Site, and Hashem transmitted the Torah in .zip files!_
I'm not kidding. That's what they're saying on Avodah.
Hashem gives entire Torah at Sinai. The entirety of this Torah is NOT given directly to Moshe at that time, rather Hashem transmits the software/firmware into Ohel Mo'ed. All of Torah that had been in shomayyim has been taken down from the mountain, but not all of it is known.
The transfer of Torah continues during the Arvos Mo'ab experience until by Moshe's death the corpus is complete. Matan Torah is 100% at Sinai From HKBH. Transmission is complete and much of it is in zip files or as a ‘software Oracle’.
For those who have seen Superman I the Movie, Jor-el Talks to his Son Kal-el based upon pre-recorded modules of Chrystal. Jor-el himself has exited, but he created an oracle for future consultation.
Kabbalas Torah is now an on-going process of taking stuff from the 120 days and nights at Sinai, plus further downloading by Moshe from the MiBein Hakeruvim. This was password protected from others doing the same download.
And is it possible that Moshe did not download ALL of Torah? Well maybe Moshe JUST downloaded the 5 humashim but the havayos of Abbeye and Rava are downloaded later. Hence continuous revelation.
But continuous revelation is not Hashem continuing to REVEAL new Torah, it is merely that WE are accessing more of the original download. This dovetails with the Gmara in Brachos that says all Megillos etc. are also miSinai. This also answers how a G'zeria Shava could be between Humash and Megillah.
It also answer how could there be bechira. The download had not yet been deciphered or accessed as of yet. It could also accommodate that Yerushalayyim was chosen at Sinai and that Z'man Skimchaseinu referred to Binyan Beis haMikdash at Sinai, but was not known yet. It would also explain how the AriZal downloaded NEW Torah w/o resorting to tradition.
Yes! Because the Arizal had the secret password, and he knew how to do the download from the Mbain Hakruvim. He also knew how to talk to the animals. Maybe he got that from the secure download site? Could be.
But how can we download ‘new Torah’ today? And what is the password? Well, I have hacked into the download site and disabled password authorization. Just click here!
Oct 19, 2007 9:17 AM
Micha Berger on Skeptics and the Documentary Hypothesis_
or.. "Permission to believe neo Aristotelian Philosophy'
The Avodah discussion group is a veritable goldmine of quotable quotes. It's also a goldmine of silly arguments, where people will spend days discussing whether a particular diyuk in the Rambam allows for an ancient earth or not. If you read the Ramban one way, then yes! The world can be 15 billion years old. But if you read the Ramban a different way, then the world just has to be 6,000 years old! Just brilliant.
It is also populated by elitist machshavahnicks who think that if you would only learn a R Tzadok you would see that Judaism is true. Well, I've been learning the Ishbitzer, and soon I'm gonna start on R Tzadok, and so far, nothing. So what does that prove? They'll probably just dismiss me as a leitz, as in this comment by R Micha Berger:
Rav Chaim Brisker's famous response applies to anyone who is writing 'leitzanus' on a blog:
'I can answer questions. I can't answer answers.'
Right, cos all we have is answers, no questions here! Sure. He continues to write:
If the person wants an answer, then they want to sit down with the classics of machashavah and get a deep understanding of what Yahadus teaches. They need to be willing to take RYBS's point that sometimes the religious duty is to grapple with the unanswerable, and be willing to live with questions.
So which is it Michah? You have answers to our questions, or the answer is to live with the question?
I shouldn't pick on Micha though, he one of the more sensible Avodah contributers (though I don't know if that's saying much). He even agrees with me about the Documentary Hypothethis, and writes:
"It is possible to embrace DH with minimal damage to the rest of yahadus"
That's what I have been saying! And Rav Kook too. And Micha must be right, cos he has learned R Tzadok. And also the Ramban.
The other funny thing about Avodah is that all the major frum skeptics are on there, using their real names! The group is infested with skeptics, all pretending to be very nice and frum (though occasionally dropping carefully worded 'kefirah bombs').
In the same post, R Michah talks about what it would take for him to stop being frum, and take off his kipah. (His hat too?). He writes:
'We will never find evidence of redeeming features of Amaleiqi culture. I would say that if it would happen, I don't think I could remain an Orthodox Jew.'
Awesome! And just what is Amaleiqi culture? And how on earth could an archeologist discover a 'redeeming feature' ? And what would be a 'redeeming feature' be anyway? They were nice to their mothers? Would an archeologist have to dig up an ancient Amaleiqi Mother's Day Card?
I guess we don't have to worry about RMB going OTD anytime soon. Baruch Hashem.
Oct 18, 2007 3:01 PM
My Approach to raising Children in the Age of the Neo Haskalah_
Here is my approach to how I *think* I'm going to raise my kids.
(Note: this is entirely provisional since I haven't consulted my wife yet and she's in charge.)
There's no way I want my kids to go through what I went though i.e. 30 years of sheltered OJ followed by exposure to the truth. On the other hand, I do want them to be kinda OJ. I don't want them to go OTD, and I don't want them to be Conservative. (The reasons why are complex, and not important for this particular post.)
So how do we stop our kids from going OTD?
My idea is to innoculate them against 'modernity'. In other words, when they hear about the Documentary Hypothesis, or an ancient world, or dinosaurs, or the fact that all religions make unsubstantiated claims, this won't bother them at all, because they will have heard it all before.
How will they have heard it all? From me. I'm going to teach them that Judaism is valuable for it's own sake, and not because we believe that every word in the Torah was dictated to Moshe by God. I'm going to teach them that Halachah is important, and not just because it was all handed to Moshe at Sinai. I'm going to teach them that Shabbos and learning and Kashrus and even Kabalah have value, even if it's all man made.
And what will I do when my kids come home from school crying that their friends are calling them apikorsim?
I will take them aside and explain to them that they are smarter than all the other kids. Just like their daddy is smarter than all the other daddies.
Oct 18, 2007 3:01 PM
New Game: Guess the Frum World's reaction to the Neo-haskalah_
So let's say that this problem of kids and adults at risk intensifies. Let's say the Neo Haskalah does actually start. What do you think the reaction from the OJ world (Chareidi or MO) will be?
Will it be:
1. Ban, ban, ban!
Circle the waggons and ruthlessly attack and rout out any whif of kefirah (or general knowledge).
2. Ignore, ignore, ignore!
Pretend the problem doesn't exist and never talk about it in public again. Threaten R Yaakov Horowitz that he better stop posting this stuff or else.
3. Compromise
Relax the hashkafic nonsense. Accept Science. Go easy on the chumros. Turn OJ into a feel good religion which jells well with the 21st century.
Somehow, I don't think 3 will be the reaction, but you never know. Could be.
Oct 18, 2007 3:01 PM
New Game: Guess The Blog(ger)!_
[True conversation. All names have been removed to protect the guilty]
Skeptic 1: X is a frum maskil. X's blog is *great* evidence for a neo-Haskalah, exhibit A.
Skeptic 2: Absolutely. Every time he mentions Louis Jacobs he is corrupting
yeshiva boys.
Skeptic 1: He's more dangerous to the deep yeshiva world than all the
apikorsus blogs combined, because they don't read apikorsus blogs.
Skeptic 3: Yup, X is a trojan horse. I tip my hat to him.
Oct 18, 2007 3:01 PM
The Return of the Haskalah: Coming soon to a community near you. Rated X_
Well, it looks like Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz agrees with me about people going OTD. Look at what he writes:
I am getting a new wave of parents begging me to speak to their children. The profile is chillingly similar: 13-14 years old boys and girls. High achieving in school. No emotional problems; great, respectful kids from great homes. Well adjusted. They just don’t want to be frum. Period. They are eating on Yom Kippur, not keeping Shabbos, not keeping kosher; et al.
No anger, no drugs, no promiscuous activity. They are just not buying what we are selling. Some have decided to ‘go public’, while others are still ‘in the closet’. In some of the cases, their educators have no idea of what is really going on.
I personally got about 10 of these calls in the past 3-4 months – and our Project YES office got an additional 5 calls of this nature. Just do the math and try to figure out how many kids like that are in our school system. I can only tell you that in more than twenty-five years of dealing with at-risk kids, this is a brand new experience for me. I have some very strong thoughts on why this is happening, and plan to write about it. But this is very, very scary stuff.
...
My friends, I have no other way to say this other than “we are running out of time.” The kids are finding each other via cell phones, chat groups, Facebook and My Space. They are “making their own minyan.” Many minyanim in fact.
This phenomenon is also playing itself out in a similar manner among frum adults. Just look at the response on my website to Rabbi Becher’s excellent column, Adults at Risk.
May Hashem give us the wisdom and courage to make the changes that are necessary to reverse these frightening trends. [Assuming He exists]
Wow. Is this the start of the neo-haskalah? Or is it just the 'me' generation acting out?
Oct 18, 2007 3:01 PM
God used to be my buddy. Now that I'm older, wiser, and a little more cynical, I sometimes feel a bit like Sholom Auslander; Good one God! I'll say. That's so God, I'll think. Or mostly 'Why, God? Why????'
What has been the cause of this change? Mainly my anxiety, distress and frustration on realizing that things are not as simple as they seemed in 12th grade (or maybe even 1st grade). Is our religion true? Is any religion true? Is there an afterlife? Does God even exist? These are the questions which swirl around my mind, distracting me from thinking about work and other mundane things during davening.
Yesterday a commenter said that we should embrace doubt, love the process of questioning, live our lives with questions, because this is the whole point. But I don't feel like that. There are some very real and very serious ramifications here, and I want to know the answers.
If God exists, and there is an afterlife, then I will try and be the best I can be. And not just because of the love of reward and fear of punishment, but also because I feel it is meaningful and important, and I am obligated.
If God doesn't exist, and everything is just random, then I really won't bother to try so hard. Sure, I won't commit crimes or anything really bad, but I simply won't be that motivated to go the extra mile.
What if God exists but there is no afterlife? I think I would still try hard, out of a sense of gratitude and obligation, and possibly fear of an untimely death. But if God doesn't exist I really don't see the point in trying very hard. Skeptics will say that proves I'm just not a very moral person at heart. Maybe so.
How could God have put us in such a crazy situation? That's so NOT God, surely? Since we can't figure it out with any degree of certainty, what is God playing at? Maybe this is proof that really we could figure it out, if were just able to overcome our desires to be 'porek ol' (translation: fool around with girls and eat cheeseburgers).
Or, alternatively, maybe it's proof that God doesn't really exist, because a good God would never have set up such an absurd world. Or, maybe God does exist, but He's some kind of prankster, far removed from the God of Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaakov.
So which life vision to adopt? The world is random, there's no afterlife and it doesn't matter what you do. Or, every second counts and you have an ultimate goal and meaning in your life?
Maybe God gives you the choice.
Maybe God allows each individual to choose what they want - If you want to chose the meaningless version with no afterlife (and no consequences either) then fine, you live, you die and that's it. No olam habah for you! But if you choose the meaningful life with reward and punishment, then God gives that to you, and you get an afterlife. This is kinda strange though, would God really operate like that? That's so NOT God, surely.
Or maybe the reason God makes it confusing is because if you knew for sure there was a God and an afterlife, then your morality and behavior would forever be tainted by your desire for reward and fear of punishment - it wouldn't really be intrinsically moral, kind of like Kant?'s moral theory. But if you make the personal choice to be moral and good, even without knowing whether God really exists or not, then that shows your goodness is real. And that's what God wants.
But, at the end of the day, since we don't know for sure, why bother to try and be good in the first place? Where's the motivation? It's all very confusing.
Bad one, God.
Oct 17, 2007 4:12 PM
What causes frum people to become skeptics?_
According to Steve Brizel:
The bottom line is that dysfunctional families, schools and educators that can't or won't deal with hashkafic issues and communities that view mindless conformity as an ideal are unfortunately the factors that give rise to this phenomenon. A more open minded view of hashkafah certainly would be an important tool in combatting this plague, but so would also focusing on parenting,and dealing with the lack of hashkafic materials and mindless conformity.
Steve is wrong. Dead wrong. I don't come from a dysfunctional family, and I certainly was not pushed into mindless conformity. Also, I never had hashkafic problems in school. And many skeptics I know didn't have any of these issues either. The simple fact is that when you honestly look at the arguments for and against religion, the arguments against tend to win, from a straightforward, rational, objective and most importantly HONEST perspective.
Now, it's true that there are some famous skeptics who do come from dysfunctional backgrounds, such as Shalom Auslander, and DovBear (joke). But the majority of skeptics that I know are simply very smart people who have the ability to rise above their own biases and take an objective view at the truth. And of course they want to fool around with girls. (joke)
I can (somewhat) respect a frum person who says they personally believe, no matter what the evidence. However I cannot respect someone who insists that anyone who doesn't believe is a result of a dysfunctional family or other issue. On the contrary, I would say the people who do believe despite all evidence are the ones with issues, most importantly, lack of honesty.
Also, I must comment on Steve's suggestion of 'a more open minded view of hashkafah'. I have seen similar suggestions in kiruv type books. However all these suggestions suffer from the same problem - they are dishonest in the extreme. Because of course Steve is not open minded in Hashkafah, in fact Steve himself is a particularly narrow minded RW MO nick (nothing personal, I'm sure Steve is a nice guy), who thinks even YCT is way off the derech! This is what makes Steve's suggestion so particularly laughable.
But even if Steve was more 'open minded', and accepted YCT, the suggestion would still be laughable, because Steve isn't going to accept UTJ. Or Reconstructionst Judaism. Or anything truly open minded. So all these suggestions about being 'open minded', or allowing 'moderated enquiry' always come with caveats - typically the 13 ikkarim, or even more stringent caveats.
It's like telling someone - 'Sure, investigate whatever you like, as long as you come to the specific conlcusion that I approve of, and none other'. And that's intellectually dishonest.
Fortunately for Steve, most of the masses are actually quite dim, and fall for this approach very easily. Just pretend to be open minded, allow some moderated enquiry, make a big deal about how we are so modern and so honest and so corageous and we accept science and we accept evolution (of course only because we can find 10 Rishonim and 20 Acharonim who said its ok) and go on about how intellectually honest we are compared to the silly Gedolim and the Chareidim, and of course you can't have a closed minded view of Hashkafah but you must learn the Rambam and the Ramban and RYBS (as if these people were 'open minded' !) and the dumb masses will fall for it hook, line and sinker.
It's also pretty damn pathetic that the current hallmark of 'intellectual honesty', 'courageousness' or 'open-mindedness' in the OJ community is when someone quotes a well respected Rishon or Acharon to argue with a contemporary extremist Chareidi!
Could it get much worse?
Oct 16, 2007 4:47 PM
Struggling with doubt or doubting the struggle? Which type of skeptic are you?_
I often hear people say they struggle with doubts (about religion and God). But it strikes me that there are two types of struggle:
Type 1: Struggling with doubt
The type 1 person desperately wants to believe, but is plagued by a little voice in his head which says ‘what if it isn’t true?’. This kind of person searches for eitzos, answers and other ways to turn off the doubts so that he can return to full emunah and have peace of mind. Perhaps all skeptics start off this way.
Type 2: Doubting the struggle
The type 2 person has significant doubts about whether Judaism is true or not. Like type 1, he wants to know ‘the answer’, so that he can find peace of mind. However his quest is for the true answer, no matter what it may be. He might ideally prefer for the answer to be that Judaism is true, but if that’s not the answer, then so be it. His commitment to the truth over-rides his personal bias.
The Type 1 person isn’t really on a quest for truth. The type 1 person is rather on a quest to remove these niggling doubts. If you could offer the type 1 person some segulah for removing doubts he would probably go for it. (The Type 2 person might also go for it, but that would be as a scientific test to see if segulos work!)
In Rabbi Lamm’s famous essay on ‘Faith and Doubt’, he seems to say that the Type 1 doubter is nice and frum, but the Type 2 doubter is wrong and bad. This may well be true, from an OJ perspective. But from a rational objective perspective, the Type 1 doubter is a biased fool, whereas the type 2 doubter is an honest, truth seeking individual.
So which type of doubter are you? Here is a simple test to figure it out. If I could offer you a simple and harmless pill which would immediately remove your doubts and give you full Emunah (and it works scientifically, not mystically), would you take it or not? If you answer yes, then you are type 1. If no, then you are type 2.
Oct 16, 2007 2:47 PM
Adults at Risk and the Neo Haskalah_
REVISED
So, are we on the verge of a new Neo Haskalah or not?
In this article, Rabbis Becher & Gordon coin the phrase 'Adult at Risk'. However they seem to be focusing more on adults who don't feel the geshmack of yiddishkeit, rather than skeptics:
Based on the comments of Rav Bulman, Z”TL, we may define the “risk” that is under discussion as the risk of going through life as a “spiritual zombie.” In other words, living an Orthodox lifestyle out of habit and convenience because it is a familiar routine; a good way to get off from the office a few extra days a year, and good for the kids, as long as it does not involve too much sacrifice.
On the other hand, they then say:
In short, if Yeshivah graduates were better equipped from a philosophical, hashkafic and emunah perspective, they would not become unglued and de-stabilized when they face challenges to their beliefs, questions about Torah, or just the inevitable bumps in life’s journey.
Which implies they are talking more about skeptics. In fact, one commenter points this out quite convincingly, that the solutions they propose almsost all involve answering doubts about religion, rather than just revving up people's spiritual engines a little.
A cynic might say that the BT market has been saturated, and what we have here is really a classic case of a solution looking for a problem. Becher and friends need a new target demographic. But I won't be that cynical. Let's say that they are correct, and that there are truly many adults at risk, and these kiruv pros are genuinely concerned for their spiritual welfare.
But what is the risk exactly? Certainly, there are many adults who are 'spiritual zombies', and I guess the risk there is that they won't get much schar in Olam Habah. But they are only a risk to themselves (and maybe their apathy will spill over to their kids a little).
A much bigger risk is clearly the adults who turn skeptical. The risk here is that they may start infecting their communities and other people, either through personal interaction, or through blogs and similar.
What can we do about such a risk? With kids at risk, it is somewhat easier, since we have legal control over them. We can force them to go to Jewish schools, where they will be indoctrinated with Judaism. But this is more difficult to do with Adults.
I have some suggestions, other suggestions are welcome in the comments:
Possibly we can ostricize such people from the community - anyone caught spreading kefirah can be put in cherem. After all, the Torah prescribes the death penalty for anyone caught disseminating anti-Torah ideas, so cherem is the least we can and should do.
I would also recommend a similar process to what was implemented for Tay Sachs screening. Every family would take a hashkafic test implemented by a recognized standards body. The results would be kept secret, but for any potential shidduch, the names of the two families would be submitted and a 'yes/no' answer would be provided. In this way at least the kefiradick families could be constrained to marry into other kefiradick families, with less resultant damage.
Another option might be mandatory 'Gateways' Weekends for all adults, kind of like the continuing education requirement that the Legal profession has. (CLE). This would also have the added benefit of providing maximal income to Gateways.
Finally, the old classic of banning access to information, and re-inforcing the stigma of asking questions works well. Though it should be pointed out that you need some reverse psychology here. If you simply ban all inquiry, people will get suspicious and turned off. Rather, you allow some questions, have some answers, and give the appearance of being open and rational. But true free inquiry is obviously dangerous and not to be allowed. In fact, I recently read a kiruv style book which states exactly that.
Any other ideas?
Oct 16, 2007 2:47 PM
Are you Torah True? Or merely Orthodox?_
You heard it here first guys. NCYI using the phrase 'Torah True' (rather than Orthodox) to describe the correct hashkafot of YI Rabbis is a defining moment. From now on, 'Orthodoxy' just isn't frum enough. I guess the pre-cursor to this was when YCT decided to use the phrase 'Open Orthodoxy' to decribe their movement. From that moment on, 'Orthodoxy' became pass-nisht.
So, no longer will DovBear and I strive to remain labeled as Orthodox. From now on, the goal is to be Torah-True. (Which will actually be a whole lot easier, because the DH is in fact very Torah True.)
Oct 15, 2007 10:24 PM
Rav Kook gives us an out with Ikkar Number 8_
_Thanks to Mevaseretzion for providing a translation of the Rav Kook below. Here it is, but really all you need is the first paragraph:
The truth is as our received tradition states, that nothing has changed the Torah, which has been preserved always with utmost care. However, even according to the incorrect idea that some portions were written later or that certain scribal errors found their way into it, this does not affect in any way the Torah or its authenticity.
The authenticity of the Torah is dependent on the acceptance of the Nation, and the Nation accepted and continues to accept it with love. The Nation used [and uses] the Torah in its present form as a symbol of our covenant of faith in God. Therefore, it is impossible for an individual to remove himself from the plural [the Nation], for by the nature of any bond of covenant that is made by general [national] consensus, and by the nature of actions that are accepted [by all as powerful and binding] as national language, and [like] ethics [social norms -ed.] that are accepted by all, no individual is able to change [the covenant ] in opposition to the plural consensus. When one does try to change [his participation in this covenant ], he oppresses his own soul.
Now we can understand well the Godly bond that is present in the Torah, no matter how it reached us, and there is no difference whatsoever what circumstances brought it to us in this [its present] form. Since the pieces are all woven into the Torah, they are included in the Divine holiness. In this Israel is unique [מצויין can also mean noted. -ed.] from all nations, in that the existence of the Nation is bound in being known by the name of the Lord of the world, by which [Whose name] it [the Nation of Israel] is called.
Therefore, the commandments in their entirety, which are bound in the Divine bond, since they are tied to the Torah and written in it, are all in the grasp of the covenant of God. He who keeps them keeps the covenant, and he who breaks them, acts against the covenant . And if there are things which need to be strengthened or weakened [דברים שימצא צורך להחמיר או להקל באופן אחר קצת], the issue is given to the power of the Beit Din [when there are reasons, they have the power even] to uproot actively a part of the Torah. Meanwhile, without a central Beit Din accepted by the Nation, and with, additionally, a national stronghold, we are unable to the spiritual center of the nation for nothing...
When the Torah is upheld by Israel, the feeling is so pure and refined, and the bond to the Torah is so great, that those who have true intellect come to an inner knowledge that there is no place at all for those questions [questions from biblical criticism], for they recognize the hand of God that is spread out over us, who did wonders for us from then until now, so that we cleave to him with love. From a recognition of the greatness of Torah, we recognize its Divinity, so that all the stutterings are done away with from their root, and Israel does well, and the Torah of God is its stronghold."
All the naysayers had a similar reaction - Rav Kook was only talking about a few mistakes or later additions, not the whole DH. But what difference? All I need is for an OJ Rabbi to accept the possibility that the Torah wasn't all from Moshe MiSinai, but rather is a composite document.
The entirety of the DH is far from proven anyway. In fact, there is no 'DH' as a single theory, rather there are lots of opinions and nobody agrees on all the details. The key element of the 'DH' is that the Torah is a composite document written by many Authors. And Rav Kook says that's not a problem. That's all we need. And it also makes no difference that Rav Kook himself doesn't agree with the DH. As long as he says its OK that's what's important.
Compare Rav Kook with the 8th ikkar:
Principle VIII. That the Torah is from heaven [God]
And this is that you believe that all of this Torah that was given by Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, that it is all from the mouth of God. Meaning that it was received by him entirely from God. And it is not known how Moses received it except by Moses himself, peace be upon him, that it came to him. That he was like a stenographer that you read to him and he writes all that is told to him: all the events and dates, the stories, and all the commandments. There is no difference between “And the sons of Cham were Kush, and Mitzraim, and his wife was Mehatbe’el” and “Timnah was his concubine” and “I am Hashem your God” and “Hear Israel [Hashem your God, Hashem is one]” for it was all given by God. And it is all Hashem’s perfect Torah; pure, holy, and true. And he who says that these verses or stories, Moses made them up, he is a denier of our sages and prophets worse than all other types of deniers [form of heretic] for he thinks that what is in the Torah is from man’s flawed heart and the questions and statements and the dates and stories are of no value for they are from Moses Rabbeinu, peace be upon him. And this area is that he believes the Torah is not from heaven. And on this our sages of blessed memory said, “he who believes that the Torah is from heaven except this verse that God did not say it but rather Moses himself did [he is a denier of all the Torah].” And this that God spoke this and that, each and every statement in the Torah, is from God and it is full of wisdom (each statement) and benefit to those who understand them. And its depth of knowledge is greater than all of the land and wider than all the seas and a person can only go in the path of David, the anointed of the God of Jacob who prayed and said “Open my eyes so that I may glance upon the wonders of Your Torah” (Psalms 119). And similarly the explanation of the Torah was also received from God and this is what we use today to know the appearance and structure of the sukka and the lulav and the shofar, tzitzis, tefillin and their usage. And all this God said to Moses and Moses told to us. And he is trustworthy in his role as the messenger and the verse that teaches of this fundamental is what is written (Numbers 16) “And Moses said, with this shall you know that Hashem sent me to do all these actions (wonders) for they are not from my heart.”
Point Proven.
Oct 15, 2007 10:24 PM
The NCYI (National Council of Young Israel) has announced a new policy regarding Rabbis in their shuls - from now on they will have a set of standards, and will not just allow anyone with semichah to be a Rabbi in a Young Israel. Pretty much everyone is seeing this as reaction to YCT, however my Rabbi says it's a policy whose time has come. With the major organizations losing power, and semichah not being what it used to be, it was inevitable that YI would have to create a policy like this.
I suppose NCYI has the right to set any standards they like, even stupid counter-productive ones guaranteed to cause machlokes, but I would question their choice of phraseology - 'Traditional Torah True', that's pretty dumb. But it's exactly as I predicted a few days ago - now that the boundaries of 'Orthodoxy' have been pushed, being 'Orthodox' just isn't going to cut it anymore. Now you're gonna have to be 'Torah True'.
My local Young Israel is looking for a Rabbi. They sent out a questionnaire a few weeks ago asking what type of Rabbi we wanted; I requested someone between 5'8" and 5'10", with a medium trim beard. But I will tell you this - if our choice of candidate is not accepted by the NCYI Rabbinical board, then either the shul will have to quit the NCYI, or I will have to quit the shul. If I wanted a 'Traditional Torah True' Rabbi I would go daven with the Chareidim down the street. The kiddushes are better there too.
Oct 15, 2007 12:09 AM
Popout
I’d Like To Hold God Accountable
Mixing anger and humor, Shalom Auslander rails against an Orthodoxy he says ‘reeks of ancient stupidity.’ A cast-off takes his licks.
Sandee Brawarsky - Special To The Jewish Week
Dressed in black, Shalom Auslander wears three tiny silver blocks on a chain that falls close to his neck, with Hebrew letters spelling out the word “Acher,” or other. This was a gift from his wife when he completed his memoir, “Foreskin’s Lament” (Simon & Schuster). Acher was the name given to Elisha ben Abuya; a learned second-century rabbi, after he adopted heretical opinions. Auslander says he smiles whenever he looks in the mirror and sees the chain.
Both humor and anger run deep in this memoir, two excerpts of which have appeared in The New Yorker. The author of the story collection, “Beware of God,” Auslander, 37, grew up in the fervently Orthodox world of upstate Monsey, from which he is now estranged.
“I’m completely religious,” he says, in an interview in New York City. While he no longer observes the laws of Judaism, he’s rarely without the fear of God, or negotiating with God, on his mind.
“If I could get rid of it, I’d be thrilled. I would love to have that atheistic sensibility that’s flying around now, to get some rest.”
The memoir is framed as the story of Auslander’s son, from learning of the pregnancy, to deciding whether to circumcise him, to the child’s first birthday. Auslander first describes the terror of God he grew up with, and then skips ahead to his wife’s doctor’s visits and his unrelenting fear that the baby will miscarry, or his wife will die during childbirth, or that they’ll all die on the way back from the hospital. “That would be so God,” he writes.
He talks about God without a trace of reverence. His God is a personal God: vengeful, brutal and tormenting. While Auslander believes in God, he’s not entirely comfortable with the word believer, which suggests that God is an answer.
“I’d like to hold God accountable,” he says. “I’m all for a bit of revolution. As a parent you start to realize that you’re trying to create a person who moves away from you to become himself. Maybe that’s what God is waiting for, for us to reach adolescence, to say it can’t be right, to come to a new understanding. The way it is now reeks of ancient stupidity.”
For an article about him in The New York Times, Auslander took a reporter on a driving tour through Monsey, and he says that he didn’t realize they had made plans for the second day of Rosh HaShanah. But he is aware that it’s Sukkot on the day we meet. Orli, the more traditional of the pair, likes to hang branches with birds and leaves in front of their Woodstock home, and their 3-year old son Paix (rhymes with Max, and means peace, as his name does, but “without the God part”) calls it “thukkah.”
“Woodstock is a town of foreskins,” he says, using his term for people like himself who are cut off and cast out. “The place is filled with people who come from elsewhere, looking for something new. I found it in the solitude.”
There’s a Reconstructionist synagogue in town, but Auslander stays away. When he once attended services, he recognized that some people found comfort in the guitar-playing rabbi’s presence. But he couldn’t get the voices of his rebbes out of his head, dismissing the place as watered-down Judaism or worse.
In the narrative, his own account of growing up is the back story to his son’s. He describes attending the Yeshiva of Spring Valley with its competitive blessing bees. When the father of a classmate dies, the teacher advises the students to pray to God for forgiveness so that He wouldn’t decide to kill their fathers, too.
He then thought he could make everything in his unhappy home better: by pleasing his mother by winning the blessing bee, and sinning so much that “Hashem would have to kill my father.”
His father was an alcoholic, violent with his two sons. His mother is a sad character, trying to keep up appearances of a normal home life. Incessantly reading decorating magazines, she harbors the hope that if she rearranges their furniture well, they’ll have a peaceful home.
The reader learns that his mother is the sister of Rabbis Maurice and Norman Lamm, one a best-selling author and the other the chancellor and former president of Yeshiva University. While growing up, she had wanted to be a doctor, but her father used the money saved for her tuition to pay for her brother’s rabbinical education. Soon after she married, her husband’s father died, leaving his fortune, thought to be millions, entirely to charity. Early in their marriage, Shalom’s parents lost a baby son.
As a young boy, Auslander began sneaking out of the house on Shabbat afternoon; a first transgression was to ride his bike to a local store, but then he couldn’t get himself to step on the electronic pad to open the door, another transgression. But soon after, he was taking taxis to the mall, shoplifting small items and sneaking non-kosher foods. By the time he was in high school at MTA, the Manhattan Talmudic Academy, he was shoplifting the kinds of expensive clothing his classmates wore, smoking dope and skipping classes to go to museums, bookstores and porn shops.
When he was caught with more than $500 of stolen clothing and some marijuana in his pocket at Macy’s, he was sentenced to community service and a heavy fine. He worked at a local hospital, doing filing on Sundays, until he learned that he could also fulfill his service at a religious institution. He then went off to study at a yeshiva in Israel, pasting a poster of a bikini-clad Cindy Crawford above his bed.
Most of the rebbes there had stories of their own — they had been on drugs or in street gangs and then found God. While their tales were meant to be inspiring, for Auslander they were cautionary. He mostly skipped class and prayer services, and occasionally showed up stoned. But even he experienced the phenomenon of return. After accepting invitations to a rebbe’s home, he felt loved and accepted — as he had never felt before — as long as he agreed to live as they did. He returned to New York still wearing his black hat, and while studying in a Queens yeshiva, worked nights as a shomer, watcher, in a funeral home. Not the most traditional of watchers, he’d get high and fall asleep on the gurney.
Six months after he was introduced to his London-born wife, who had been through her own traumas, they married and moved to the East Village, shifting further from religion and their families. Auslander didn’t go to college and took a job as an advertising copywriter. Later, he began writing journalism, including articles for Esquire. He found the personal voice that he now uses a few years later, when writing a letter to his mother about halting communication.
“I cried as I read the letter to my wife. Then I thought, this is wrong — this is sad for my mother but freedom for me. I rewrote the letter funny — as funny as a don’t-call-me-ever-again letter could be. That was the first time I wrote something for myself.
“I laughed and kept writing,” he says, adding, “You can choose. There’s you and a hundred other voices in your head. It’s about not letting yourself live in someone else’s movie.”
He agrees that the best humor comes from anger. “That’s the stuff that makes me laugh, starting with Aristophanes, Beckett, Heller, Vonnegut. They’re pissed off and funny about it.”
“I’m a bit of a screwball pitcher, I can’t throw a fastball up the center,” he says of his humor, which often comes from his juxtapositions. “When you’re not expecting a light to be shined on an object in that way,” he says, “it brings the thing into relief — it makes me laugh.”
Does he worry about writing things that will upset his family?
“My basic feeling is that I’m entitled to my story and I’m entitled to talk about it.”
He’s no longer in touch with any of his family members, including his well-known uncles. He last saw his parents when his son was born. For his son’s first birthday, the inscription on the cake read, “Happy Birthday, Paix. From Mommy, Daddy, Harley, Duke [their dogs], and no one else in our families because they are bitter miseries who’d rather drag us into the morass of their bleak, tragic lives that share for a moment in our joy. And many more.”
“Writing is cathartic, not curative,” he says. When he began therapy, he told his doctor that “I didn’t want him to take away whatever it was that made me write. Writing was the only thing that made me feel good. He knew that was anger and would never take it away. It would be like declawing a cat, taking away its defense. It has been dissipated through a loving marriage and son.”
“I’m not blowing buildings up. I’m not suing anyone. I’m not trying to shut down the Yeshiva of Spring Valley. It’s a good kind of anger. It’s just my way of living.”
Does he pray?
“I hope someone isn’t killing my wife when I’m talking to you. Is that prayer? Nowhere does it say that Abraham or Moses davened. They spoke to God, beseeched him. For me, prayer is talk. I talk to God. I’m unhappy with Him.”
Oct 13, 2007 9:26 PM
HOLY MOLY!!!!!!!! RAV KOOK SAYS THE DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS IS NOT A PROBLEM!!!!_
THIS IS IT!!!! THE FIND I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR FOR THE PAST YEAR!!!! THIS IS MAJOR!!!!!!!! YOGAATI UMOTZATI!!!!!!! BARUCH HASHEM!!!!!!!!!!!
Last year a visiting Rabbi told me that there was a Rav Kook somewhere where he said that the Documentary Hypothesis (DH) was not a problem, because even if the Torah was written at various times by different people, its kedushah derived from its acceptance by the Jewish People. I searched high and low for this Rav Kook but never found it. I blogged about it, but people said it didn't exist, and this guy was making it up.
Well, it does exist! I have seen it! In fact, I have it in my sweaty little hands as we speak! It's in a rare book of Rav Kook's writings which was only just published!!!! Do you realize how significant this is???!!!!
This means Rav Kook is the ONLY bona fide Orthodox Rabbi of the 20th Century who addressed the DH! And, he also addressed Evolution and everything else. He makes RYBS's 'I have never been bothered by these problems' approach look pathetic.
This needs wider dissemination. If nobody else does it, I'm going to publish a book on Rav Kook's response to modernity. It's going to take me a while to fully translate and explain Rav Kook's approach, in the meanwhile the following pictures and short summary will have to suffice.
This amazing Rav Kook appears in a newly published book (2006) of his writings. It's on page 132, in a note marked 91.1, which was edited out of his other books for being too radical. The note addresses the four main challenges (in Rav Kook's view) which lead to kefirah. Amazingly, my experience over the past 2 years is that Rav Kook is exactly correct, these are indeed the four main issues which lead to kefirah.
So what are the four main challenges to Orthodox Judaism ?
1. The fact that acceptance of Torah and Mitzvos seems to make people look pathetic and even depressed. Rav Kook was probably referring to the fact that the 'Old Yishuv' was full of pathetic people who survived on handouts and didn't do mcuh all day except maybe learn, and were totally uninspiring. In our day we have the same problem, Chareidi Jews (for the most part), and especially in Isreal, are just not that inspiring, and can even be downrigth uninspiring.
2. The fact that there are multiple religions, each one claiming to be the one true religion, makes them all seem rather false. Readers of my blog will know that this question has seriously bothered me, since it makes all religious beliefs seem very non credible.
3. Challenges to Torah from new discoveries of Science. Rav Kook lived around the time when evolution was becoming popular, and an ancient earth was the standard model. He also lived pre Big Bang (the theory, not the event), so in his day it really seemed that Breishis was totally bogus.
4. Challenges to the Torah from Biblical Criticism. Enough said!
Now, in this particular note, his responses to the first 3 challenges are very, very brief. Almost disappointing. However in other parts of his writings he does address these much more substantially. His writings were random, he wrote for himself, not for books. What I will do (eventually) is to compile all his relevant writings into one place, so we can see the full breadth, depth and amazing radical-ness of his approach. If this would have been anyone less than Rav Kook it would not be so amazing. It would 'just' be Tamar Ross, or Louis Jacobs, Abraham Heshchel or Mordechai Kaplan. But this is Rav Kook we are talking about! If Rav Kook can say it, then so can we!!!!
Very briefly then (for now), here are his four answers:
1. True religion makes a person strong and inspiring. The flaw (of weakness) is in the people, not the Torah.
Now, this sounds rather lame at first glance. But elsewhere in his works he writes extensively on this topic. Luckily, one of my Rabbis is a major Rav Kook expert, and I will be getting sources from him.
2. All religions have truth! Just like the Chief Rabbi said! Only Judaism has the best approach (I have always agreed with that, and there is plenty of objective evidence to back this up). Again, in this note he only writes a few lines, but elsewhere he has pages and pages on this.
3. The Torah is deeper than just the literal meaning. Again, rather terse here, but he has a long letter where he accepts evolution as 100% ok and says we must build the 'Palace of Torah' on the foundation of Science. And furthermore, I don't believe that Rav Kook was talking about the silly reconciliations that people do.
4. The majority of the note addresses the fourth question, that of Biblical Criticism. As I stated, he says that even were this to be the case, that different parts were written in different ears, it makes no difference, because the covenant of Judaism is that Klal Yisrael accepted the Torah and made it Kadosh.
Obviously many questions immediately spring to mind. How could Rav Kook write such a thing? How could he overturn one of the ikkarim!? How could he ignore 2,000 years of Mesorah??!! Was he being serious? Are these notes intended for the masses, his final thoughts, or just some musings? How does he fit this with the Mesorah? And a hundred other questions.
Our task now is to take Rav Kook and expand on it. To read his other writings and create a holistic theology. Unfortunately, Rav Kook's major talmidim, headed by his son Rav Tzvi Yehudah Kook, went in a somewhat different direction, and chose to focus on the very nationalistic aspects of his theology, rather than his responses to modernity, and this in turn has created a radical and somewhat militant Zionist element. There's an interesting article in Tradition I think which talks about the two camps of Rav Kooks talmidim -the MO camp and the militant Zionists, and about how each think the other has distorted Rav Kook. But I'm not interested in that. We are going to take Rav Kook and really get to the heart of what he is about.
Rav Kook was in truth an amazing figure, an old world East European Rabbi who had such an incredible persona that he astounded hardened atheists who came to know him. He dealt favorably with the secular Zionists, and had little regard for the 'chareidim' of his day. Yet the Gerrer Rebbe said he was one of the greats of the generation! He is truly the most amazing Rabbinic figure of the 20th century, and it's a travesty that his writings and philosophy are not more well known. Well, this is going to change, starting now!!!!!
_
And this couldn't have come at a better time! I was reading Shalom Auslander's new book (a pretty devastating read), and was feeling about the lowest I have ever felt about religion. I was truly on the verge of chukcing it all in. But Rav Kook has saved the day!!!
Thank you Rav Kook!! Thank you Rabbi D for showing me the Rav Kook!!! Thank you unidentified Israeli? for showing Rabbi D the Rav Kook!!!
Oct 12, 2007 5:48 PM
Q. How did Noach fit all the animals in the Teyvoh?
A. He used baby animals. A baby panda is really really small you know. Alternatively it was a nes.
Q. After the mabul, how did the Kangaroos get to Australia?
A. They hopped. Alternatively it was a nes.
Q. Why didn’t the mabul waters wash away the 30,000 year old cave paintings?
A. They used water resistant paints. Plus they aren’t 30,000 years old, because carbon dating is unreliable. Also, the paintings are probably a forgery anyway. Alternatively it was a nes.
Q. How come there’s evidence of continuous civilization in many parts of the world? Wouldn’t the mabul waters have killed everybody, and then the area would have been repopulated by different people at a much later date with an entirely different culture?
A. When the areas were repopulated, the new inhabitants didn’t bring much stuff with them, because there was so much left over from the previous civilization. Therefore the archeological digs show consistent cultural artifacts. This is also the reason we don’t find huge gaps in civilization; after the mabul, people knew that there were many places globally with pre built cities and plenty of pots and pans just lying around, so there was a lot of incentive to move there quickly. Alternatively it was a nes.
Q. If the mabul waters covered the mountains, there must have been trillions and trillions of tones of water. How come it left no trace?
A. Sure it left a trace. The grand canyon, fossil beds and all the other geological phenomena which the atheist scientists use to ‘prove’ that the world is billions of years old were all in fact caused by the waters of the mabul. Alternatively it was a nes.
Q. How come people think the mabul actually happened when every piece of evidence in every possible area shows that no way did such a thing ever happen, and that the story is obviously mythical?
A. People are stupid, especially when it comes to religious beliefs, they’ll believe anything. Millions of people are convinced that Jesus is the son of God. Millions of people are convinced God wrote the Bible. Millions of people are convinced Muhammad went to Heaven on a winged horse. What’s even more stupid is that all these millions of people are well aware of all the other millions of people and their ridiculous religious beliefs, yet they are all still convinced that their own ridiculous religious beliefs are not only 100% plausible, but actually even provable.
Q. How is such an absurd situation possible?
A. Beats me. We live in an absurd world. As Chazal say: olam sheker hu.
Q. How come the Science and Torah reconciliators avoid talking about the mabul being metaphorical? Do they think the mabul is real?
A. Of course not, but since no Rishonim or Acharonim have ever talked about it, they are too scared to approach the subject.
Q. Will Orthodox Judaism collapse if we admit that Noach is a fairy tale?
A. No, but Chareidi Judaism might.
Oct 12, 2007 12:43 PM
Did God write Parshat Noach? Gil Student and R Menachem Kasher say no_
Yesterday I wrote that no way did God write parshat Noach. Some people called me a kofer for saying so, but it turns out that Rabbi Gil Student has said exactly the same thing. [UPDATE: Gil got it from R Menachem Kasher]
In this essay, he writes
… our forefathers Avraham, Yitzchak, and Ya'akov, and even those who preceded them like Adam and Noach, wrote down personal histories and theological works that were kept by their descendants. As prophets, their writings were sacred and treated like holy books. They were studied by their children and handed down from generation to generation…
Throughout the stay in Egypt and the desert, the scrolls of the forefathers were treated as sacred books and studied. These books, which were written under prophetic inspiration, form the basis of the book of Genesis.
So, the Avos, Noach and whoever else wrote Breishis under ‘Divine’ or ‘Prophetic’ Inspiratio’. Not God. What exactly is ‘Divine Inspiration’? It could mean anything. Heck, even my blog could be written under ‘Divine Inspiration’.
The only real requirement here is that God gave his ‘Haskamah’ to the content. What does it mean that God gave his ‘Haskamah’? It could mean anything. If it’s anything like most Haskamas, it probably doesn’t mean very much.
It’s pretty darn obvious that early Breishis is a collection of ancient mythological stories from various eras in Israel’s pre-history. Had things turned out differently, Breishis would have a different set of stories in there.
This may seem disturbing to some people, since how can we make drashas on Breishis if the text is so contingent? The answer though is obvious. Everyone makes whatever drashas they like out of Breishis (and every other parshah for that matter). Chareidim spin Charieid drashas, MOs spin MO drashos, and Conservatives spin Conservative drashah. So it really doesn’t make much difference what’s in there, it will be spun mercilessly anyway.
Oct 12, 2007 4:19 AM
[Various quotes from the Chief Rabbi on faith collected from Hirhurim]
"Faiths are like languages. There are many of them, and they are not reducible to one another. In order to express myself at all, I must acquire a mastery of my own language. If I have no language, I will still have feelings but I will be utterly inarticulate in communicating them. The language into which I am born, which I learn from my parents and my immediate environment, is where I learn self-expression. It is a crucial, perhaps even an essential, part of who I am. But as I venture out into the world I discover that there are other people who have different languages which I must learn if we are to communicate across borders."
"A faith is like a language. I am at home in my own language as I am at home in my own faith. True conversions are rare. But I am not compromised by the existence of other languages. To the contrary, the more languages I can speak, the more I can communicate with others and the more I am enriched by their experience. To believe that our faith is the only religious reality there is, is rather like the old-fashioned British tourist who believed that you could communicate with the Spanish by speaking English very slowly and very loudly. After Babel, the religious reality, like the linguistic reality, is inescapably plural."
"God has spoken to mankind in many languages: through Judaism to Jews, Christianity to Christians, Islam to Muslims."
"No one creed has a monopoly on spiritual truth; no one civilisation encompasses all the spiritual, ethical and artistic expressions of mankind"
"In heaven there is truth; on earth there are truths ... God is greater than religion. He is only partially comprehended by any faith."
"Orthodox Judaism isn't true."
[OK, I made that last one up. But he might as well have said it].
Oct 11, 2007 3:27 PM
More advice for older singles: ditch the shomer negiah to get married faster_
I hesitate to post this because in general I am pro Halachah, and don't encourage people to break Halachah, except maybe if they are about to kill an Amalekite baby. But this is important.
During my years on the UWS, I was treated to the annual Rabbi Allan Shwartz singles drashah, where he told his congregation, usually aiming at the females, that they should try be shomeret negiah. His reasoning was that by allowing the guys to have fun, they were less motivated to commit to marriage, whereas if the girls held out, the guys would get desperate and propose.
I think this is exactly 100% wrong.
Of course the UWS guys are, shall we say, rather hormonal. And of course the girls are too. This is only natural and healthy. But if the girls aren't giving any, the guys are going to get their kicks elsewhere. Firstly, it doesn't really require anyone else if you know what I mean. And that's just a fact of life. And a recent study from the American Cancer Society (or something like that) found that this activity reduced the rate of prostate cancer. So it may even be good for you.
Secondly, ever hear of 'yezizim' ? There's an english term for it as well, but I can't use such words here. Basically it's a 'special' buddy. So the guys will get their kicks. Girls too.
What in fact happens to the people who are resolutely shomeret negiah when dating is that they never get into a healthy relationship, and they don't get married. They close themselves off from normal physical intimacy, and so the guys are disinterested, and date other people. It has the exact opposite effect of what Rabbi Shwartz thinks will happen. Conversely, the people who have 'normal' relationships create a bond, and as long as they're not too picky, will get married.
Of course I am not advocating moral degeneracy, one night stands, or anything like that. And if you want to argue that singles must be shomer negiah because that's the halchaha, no exceptions, then fine. But I'm pointing out that Rabbi Shwartz's rationale is dead wrong. And maybe we even have a situation of 'es laasos' here. But as always, do not pasken from this blog. Consult your local Orthodox Rabbi. But not Rabbi Shwartz.
Luckily, most of the singles all ignore Rabbi Shwartz's advice anyway. But yet they still don't get married. Why is that? Too damn picky.
Oct 11, 2007 3:27 PM
Noach: The Ultimate Urban Myth_
_Every society has flood stories. There are literally thousands of them, some similar, some different. Why is this? Well, I guess there were a lot of floods. Also, the end of the ice age, and the massive flood about 8,000 years ago in the Crimea may have left some memories.
Most of ancient mythology is actually based around natural events such as floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, meteors, eclipses and similar. In fact, if you imagine the very ancient world, these kind of things would have been the most monumental and literally earth shattering events that happened. There were no world wars, no TV, no 24hr entertainment. So when a volcano or earthquake or flood happened, it would have spawned a massive amount of story telling and mythology. For more details read ‘When they severed earth from sky’.
So what about Noach? It’s a story. It didn’t happen. There was no Teyvoh with all the world’s animals. There was no massive flood, global or regional, where everybody got wiped out. There may have been a massive flood 8,000 years ago, but that’s not the story of Noach. It’s just mythology.
Why would God write such mythology?
The obvious answer is that He wouldn’t. No way would Melech Malchei Hamlochim Hakodosh Boruch Hu write a fairy tale about all the animals in the world being saved from global destruction on a boat. It’s just mythology. And, like all mythology, much meaning can be read into it. Jews are especially good at reading meaning into things, just look at this long list of divrei torah.
It’s mind boggling to me the lengths that religious fundies will go to insisting that God write this story. In fact, assuming God exists, this is a tremendous insult to Him. What kind of retarded god would write a nonsense story such as this? Don’t be stupid, God didn’t write the story of Noach, man did. And it’s insulting to God to claim He wrote it.
Oct 10, 2007 9:17 PM
Esther Kustanowitz misses the boat again_
It really pains me to read Esther Kustanowitz's endless ramblings about singles. In the Sept 28th Jewish Week she's at it again, waffling on about who is to blame, ending with some vague plea for everyone to be more tolerant.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Maybe I'll have to keep saying it until it manages to enter Esther's brain.
The Singles Problem is primarily due to Singles being too Picky.
What's 'too picky'? Too picky is when you've gone out with 10 eligible people and haven't found one you would marry. Am I serious? Absolutely. Picky singles want everything to be just right:
Looks
Hashkafah
Life goals
Family
Money
Job
and a thousand other variables. They want it all, and they want it now. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. I lived on the Upper West Side for years and years. The people who got married were the people who were willing to compromise, and had essentially positive outlooks. The people who didn't get married were picky picky picky. It wasn't the good looking ones who got married while the ugly ducklings lingered. It wasn't the skinny ones who got married while the fat ones stayed home. It was the normal emotionally healthy people who got married while the picky ones didn't.
Picky singles are people who are too intolerant of others. They constantly look for flaws and non compatabilities. This kind of attitude is very prevalent in general in our consumer culture, and these singles have it in the extreme.
Esther famously once wrote 'I'm not looking for Mr Right, just for Mr Right for me'. Well guess what - Mr Right for you DOES NOT EXIST. Mr 'Good enough for' you exists in spades, but you've rejected him 100 times over. NOBODY is just right for you. The fact that you've been dating for years means that the list of attributes that you are looking to match on is so extensive and unusual that the odds are you will never find it. Believe me, you aren't improving with age, and your odds of finding Mr Right for you aren't improving either.
I'll bet that there are tens if not hundreds of guys you know or have dated who would have perfectly fine for you. But you were too picky.
But it's not just stam picky that's the problem here. If you have a fantastic catch who's reasonably picky about wanting an equally fantastic catch, they'll probably get married sooner or later. But the type of picky that virtually guarantees that someone will remain single is when the flawed person doesn't realize how flawed they are and has an over inflated sense of self. I have seen this so many times it's not funny. Deathly boring guys who dump every girl they go out with because 'they're not exciting enough'. Plain Janes who won't date nerdy looking guys. And every other combination.
THERE ARE NO, I REPEAT NO, NON PICKY EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY older SINGLES WHO HAVE A REALISTIC SENSE OF SELF WHO CANNOT FIND A MATE.
If you show me an older single, I can GUARANTEE that that person suffers from one or more of the following issues:
1. Way too picky. Has a list of 'must have requirements' which is too long, or which the combination thereof is one in a million. Will reject anyone who doesn't match their list. Which basically means everyone.
2. Is flawed in one or more ways, and doesn't acknowledge it. Doesn't want to acknowledge that they're ugly, or boring, or just stam a bad catch for one of a million reasons. Will reject anyone who is equally flawed.
3. Serious emotional issues. Not willing to work on themselves to fix the issue. Not willing to marry someone with equal issues.
Here's my advice (assuming you're basically psychologically healthy):
PICK THE THREE THINGS THAT ARE MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU IN A MATE. THEN COMPROMISE ON TWO OF THEM.
Follow this advice and you'll get married within a year.
Don't work on your marriage and you'll get divorced within a year. But first get married and then we'll work on the marriage advice.
I'm not kidding.
Oct 10, 2007 9:17 PM
Is Gil Student Orthodox? How about James Kugel? Am I? DovBear? Who the frikkinheck is Orthodox?_
I was away for Yom Tov, and am just catching up, so forgive me for being late to the party, but I just noticed this post from Gil about James Kugel. Gil writes that no way is Kugel Orthodox. He later changed the post to write that no way are Kugel's views Orthodox, but declined to comment about Kugel personally. Predictably, many of the comments lambasted Gil for conducting a witch hunt.
I'm a bit conflicted here, so let's think this through.
When someone says 'Orthodox', they could mean one of two things:
1. A socially defined label
2. The one true derech as defined by God.
Now, as far as (1) goes, in general it is true that Orthodoxy today typically includes a belief in TMS. In fact TMS is pretty much a foundational belief in Orthodoxy. At least officially. Off the record, in private, there are all sorts of games you can play with TMS; Ibn Ezra, Marc Shapiro and all the rest. Gil plays these games too, so it’s a bit hypocritical of him to call out Kugel, but then Gil has proven himself a hypocrite on multiple occasions so no surprises there.
Personally, I can't stand all the lying and hypocricy here. Gil and friends justify this with a Maimonidean elitist type of defence - the masses aren't ready for this etc etc. I think it's a load of bull. Basically these people believe in far less than they make out in public, but won't ever admit to it (except in private). I know this for a fact because I have heard this personally from many of them - before I went very skeptical. In fact that was a factor in my getting more skeptical, the rank dishonesty in most of that world about what they really believe and what they admit to in public.
It's also a bit ironic - the clever ones who have figured out that all is not as it seems are also the clever ones who have all the clever (but secret) answers about how really it is ok that all is not as it seems. I suppose you can say that’s ok but to me it seems like a load of bs.
Anyway, I digress. So can you disbelieve in TMS and still be socially 'Orthodox'? In reality, most of LW MO don't really believe in TMS when pushed, but still identify as 'Orthodox', so you probably can, as long as you don't make a big deal out of it. But if you're a famous Bible scholar who accepts the DH, then probably not.
Of course if we get enough Kugels, especially if we get a Yerushalmi Kugel (getit?!), then the social definition of Orthodoxy will change, and then you could be Orthodox and still disbelieve in TMS. But, if that happens, then 'Torah True' will be the thing to be, and being Orthodox won't be worth zip, so it won't help much.
As far as (2) goes, of course JK isn't Orthodox. But Mordechai Kaplan might be.
I used to care about being called Orthodox. Nowadays less so. I really like Orthodoxy, but should I really care so much to identify with something which is clearly false? Also, I don't want to be another Noah Feldman, desperately seeking validation from the very group I have despised.
A famous fraudulent kiruv rabbi recently asked me what my goals where (he also said I'm intellectually dishonest, which is so freakin ironic I almost wrote Alanis Morissette to ask her to include it in her song). So what are my goals?
I guess that no matter what I hope my goals to be, I am inevitably driven by my personality, so maybe it would be more honest to describe my personality.
1. I like the facts. I can smell bull*** a mile away. I can spot flaws from 100,000 feet. I can't tolerate stupidity. If you bs me, I will bash you.
2. I am an iconoclast. I am a davkanick. I play devils advocate. This can conflict with 1 above.
3. I like humor. I like sarcasm. I like making very very serious points couched in jokes. Often people totally miss my point but to be honest I don't really care as long as e-kvetcher gets it.
4. I like to think and write about interesting things, or things that are intellectually stimulating.
5. I would like to figure out the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.
So am I Orthodox? I guess if you mean definition (1) above, then kinda yes, as long as my blog stays anonymous and I go with the flow in shul, then yes, I'm Orthodox. If you mean definition (2) above, then hell yes! I'm about the most Orthodox you can possible be. In shamayim I'm going to get front seats. Except for the fact that I don't give enough tzedaka, and don't do enough chessed. Yeah, I guess I'll probably be nearer the back actually. Assuming that God likes tzedakah and chessed of course. Which I think He does. Assuming He exists. Which I think He might. At least I hope He does. I daven that He does but thats a bit ironic too.
Oct 10, 2007 2:36 PM
My daughter is a very smart and inquisitive three year old. She insists on going with me everywhere and so last week she ended up coming with me to the cemetery to visit a grave. Of course she then started asking me questions about what it was all about, and she would not be mollified with my brush off answers. I finally tried to explain to her that people have a body and a soul, and that the body is in the grave, but the soul goes to Heaven. She thinks about this for a while, and then asks me, 'But how do they go potty if they don't have a tushy?' I explained that you don't need to go potty in Shamayim. But she still wasn't done, and asked me 'But how do you eat if you don't have a mouth?' I explained that you don't need to eat in Shamayim. Then she asked me 'But how do you know that?'. I had to admit defeat. 'I don't know for sure, it's just a guess' I replied. She was okay with that.
When you read a Science book or a news report, you know you are (mostly hopefully) reading facts. When you read fiction, you know it's all made up. When you read an opinion column, you knows it's just an op ed. But religious speeches and books are presented as factual, and yet of course they (mostly) aren't. Practically every religious book I read, every paragraph I'm thinking 'But how do you know that?!' (This is especially true of any hashkafah books, especially from Rishonim).
After a while I began to realize that the answer was of course the author doesn't 'know' that at all. It's just his opinion, or maybe something he picked up from someone else who had an opinion. It's funny really, it's all presented as unasailable fact, whereas in reality it's almost 100% opinion. But once you can get past that hurdle, it's not so bad. You begin to realize that people's opinions about religious matters can be quite interesting and revealing. Useful even. And maybe even in some sense 'true' (NOT a PoMo sense).
So nowadays, when I hear some drashah, instead of thinking cynically 'But how do you know that?', and dismissing the whole thing as fabricated nonsense, instead I think 'What motivates the speaker to say that? Why that and not something different? What's the motivation behind this particular interpretation? And questions like that.
In reality, this applies to all of religion. There's obviously more going on than just what appears on the surface. In fact, for a skeptic, there may be even more to discover than for a believer. I mean from a chareidi POV, many things are simple 'al pi kabalah', and we can't know the reason. But from a skeptical POV, nothing developed by chance, there were reasons why Parah Adumah (for example) came to be, and it can be quite fascinating figuring it all out.
More surprisingly, sometimes when you figure out the true 'back story', it can make the ritual (or law or drashah or whatever) even more meaningful. Sometimes.
Oct 10, 2007 2:36 PM
However skeptical I might get, I can never shake my belief in Hashgachah Prattis. It's really true! And, unlike how the Rambam holds, it works for everybody, even skeptics. Here is one true example:
I asked a friend to get me arbah minim in Israel, since I was there for Yom Tov, and was only going to be arriving the day before. True, you can always get arbah minim last minute, but I ddn't want to takie any chances. So, I arrived in Israel, saw the pile of Arbah Minim waiting for me, and was happy. But, I didn't check it too closely, I just assumed it was all ok, since this friend is a reliable person.
Anyways, about an hour before Yom Tov I double checked and saw that there were two packets of aravot but no haddasim! I ran to the local shuk last minute thinking that this serves me right because I made fun of people shaking palm branches, so Hashem decided to punish me.
Then I got to the shuk and it was all closed up. I accepted my onesh with ahavah and contrition. But then suddenly, I saw a chassidish kid standing on the corner, waving a packet of haddasim! I ran over to him to buy them, but he wanted 150 shekel. 150 shekel for haddasim! At that point my skepticism (and cheapness) kicked in. That's ridiculous I thought, I could spend that money on cancer research, or something truly valuable, no way am I spending 150 shekels (about $35) on some twigs. Also I was pretty annoyed at the kid's behaviour, but I couldn't figure out how to say "price gouging' in ivrit.
So I walked home, without arbah minim, and yom tov started.
But my dear holy brothers, the story does not end there. No, the story continues, with the holy dear godol hador deciding to take a walk (guitar strumming). A late night walk through the holy streets of Yerushalayim, to show the holy succos of yerushalayim to the dear little kinder. And on that holy holy walk through the holy holy streets of yerushalayim, the holy godol suddenly saw something out of the corner of his eye, lying on the road.
And you know my dear brothers what it was? Can you imagine? Can you visualize? Yes! It was an unopened packet of haddasim! (with no simanim in a public place at midnight so for sure the owneer was misyaesh and there was no question of hashovas aveidah or lulav hagozul). So the holy godol took it home, and had arbah minim for yom tov.
But he still felt like an idiot waving a palm branch around in all directions.
Oct 10, 2007 2:36 PM
with a message from Rebbetzin Tina.
A prisoner of my faith
Entangled in its web
Long emails in the night
Im captured by your rules
I'm not touched by your shows of emotion
You seem fractured by my lack of devotion
Should i, should i?
You better be good to me
Thats how its gotta be now
Cause I dont have no use
For what you loosely call the truth
You better be good to me
I think its also right
That we dont need to fight
We stand face to face
And you present your case
And I know you keep telling me that it's true
And I really do wanna believe
But did you think Id just accept it in blind faith
Oh sure bro, anything to please you?
You better be good to me
Thats how its gotta be now
Cause I dont have the time
For your over loaded lines
You better be good to me
