R Yitzchok Adlerstein vs R Leib Tropper

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein:

“Learning gives you depth. Learning gives you humility. Learning contributes to your kedusha. It makes you quicker and wiser. It makes you a conduit of Hashem’s knowledge.”

Rabbi Leib Tropper*:

"I wanna shkweeeze you!"

*Rabbi Tropper was educated at the Rabbi Jacob Joseph school, the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia, the Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland, and then at Yeshivas Torah Ore in Jerusalem, under the leadership of Rabbi Chaim Pinchus Scheinberg. He received four semichas: from Rabbi Serayah Deblitzky, a student of the Chazon Ish; Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, former Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel; Rabbi Betzalel Zolty, Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Jerusalem; and Rabbi Elazar Shach, a rosh yeshiva at the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Israel. Rabbi Tropper is the author of a sefer on Hilchos Yichud.

What if the Gedolim were women?

R Yitzchok Adlerstein, who has been sounding increasingly chareidi as of late (though friends of his insist that in reality he is more modern), writes about the women rabbi issue/phenomena/flash in the pan/new wave of orthodoxy/[insert your POV here].

He claims that arguing halacha is pointless because

"Without a Sanhedrin ready to rule authoritatively, too many halachic arguments can be opposed by opposing halachic arguments".

Well, so much for halachah then.

Instead, RYA insists that our only reliable guide to ratzon HKBH are those "individuals of greatest Torah achievement". Or as Steve Brizel puts it: "Mesorah [i.e. Daas Torah] is the white space between the black lines of halachah, and anyone who doesn't get that is missing one of the major ikkarim" (no. 14 I presume?)

Sounds nice, except that those "individuals" often tend to be the most cloistered people living in very male dominated societies. So they might be a bit biased, dontcha think?

But then again, maybe RAL and RHS (the Gedolim of the RWMO world) have modern dominant wives, and perhaps their motivation is just the opposite - Modern Orthodox women have TOO much power already, let's at least save the shuls for us men. I could hear that (I can also hear Michael Douglas yelling at Demi Moore in the movie Disclosure - "When did I ever have the power, when???")

Recently, there were a number of articles concerning the meltdown on Wall street, and whether it would have happened had women run the street. The theory goes that male traders have high levels of testosterone and then make overly ambitious or crazy trades (apparently this is a well known phenomena), but that women, who have much lower levels of testosterone would remain calm and cautious, even after making a huge trade and winning. The rampant greed and lack of risk management just wouldn't have happened had women been in charge.

Likewise, maybe you could make the argument that if Orthodoxy was run by women, it would be more compassionate and inclusive. Or maybe more bitchy and exclusive? It depends I guess.

Judaism however, has always been a male dominated religion. We take this for granted, since Christianity and Islam are too, but there were a great many pagan religions were female goddess figures were key, and of course there's always Mrs. God, a.k.a Asherah.

My personal feeling on the matter is that there just aren't enough people supporting this phenomenon to make it happen on a wide scale. so I don't know why everyone is getting so bent out of shape about it. Are we talking about anything more than just a handful of large shuls in trendy neighborhoods with multiple rabbis anyway?

Perhaps the fear is that small, out of town shuls may end up with women rabbis. Perhaps the fear is that we'll become too feminized, like those Reform Jews. Perhaps it's just fear of change.

Or maybe it's fear of women? I mean, Men may have testosterone, but women have estrogen and all sorts of other crazy-ass hormones. I'll take testosterone over estrogen anyday (figuratively speaking).

Someone else made the point that if JOFA et al really cared about women, then rather than agitating for women LWMO Rabbis, they should concern themselves with helping poor chareidi women who have few rights, or victims of the shidduch crisis, or I guess anyone in dire straits as long as they have female genitalia and cover their hair. This is a good point too.

Since this post is somewhat rambling, I'll close with a fisk of a rather stupid comment from Rabbi Adlerstein, who should know better (is there a correlation between sliding to the right and making stupid comments - I think so):

"Those who reject [Orthodoxy] do so for a variety of reasons. Some, perhaps the largest group, don’t want to accept the yoke of mitzvos, which gets in the way of what they want to do, and of their sense of autonomy.

[XGH: Eh, this is bs. The largest group reject OrthoDOXY because there's no hava aminah that it should be true in the first place. Kinda like why we all reject Christianity or Islam]

" They don’t want to believe in a G-d Who micromanages their lives."

[XGH: More bs. Who ever said God micromanages people's lives? What is he talking about? We have bechirah, no?]

"Some just don’t believe in Him, plain and simple."

[XGH: True, though I question how many Reform laity are atheists]

Some can’t believe in a halachic system that takes seriously the notion that G-d spoke to Man in a manner that has normative significance.

[XGH: I'm not mekabel. How could anyone not accept this obvious fact? Could God have created the world without an instruction manual? Heck, even a carton of milk comes with instructions, kal vechomer the whole universe! And could God have given the instruction manual to everyone? Of course not! It could only have been given to a select group of people, for them to interpret the instructions. Had the manual been given to everybody, then everybody would know the instructions, and what fun would that be?]

Or they believe that the text that supposedly records that conversation was a forgery by multiple R’s who put together J and E and burnt the revered originals. Multiple, because the first R was followed by R2 who merged JE with P, and then a third, who got away with it once again and added D. Maybe we could call him R2D2.

[XGH: Yes, that silly Documentary Hypothesis! All those silly academics laboring away in their so called "Bible studies department" with their so called "theories" about "textual authorship". I say FEH to all that! Well, FEH and a Star Wars pun. That'll show them!]

RYA, you disappoint me. I don't see RMB talking like that.

How is your relationship with Hakodosh Baruch Hu?

My Rabbi often talks about our relationships with HKBH. I once asked him what exactly he meant by that, but I didn't get much of a response. Whether God exists or not, and if He does exist, what exactly is He, are questions that no one really knows the answer to. As far as I know, even the biggest Chareidim don't claim that God speaks to them, and anyone who does claim that is nowadays considered a fraud or crazy.

So how can you have a relationship with someone or Something that you can't see or hear?

Of course according to Rationalist Jews this is a great example of Nishtaneh Hatevah, unlike worms or lice where it is apparently ludicrous to believe that lice used to spontaneously generate, but now they don't. Or likewise, believing that Rabbis used to have the spiritual power to kill people with their eyes, but now they don't, is completely absurd. However positing that people used to hear God, but now they don't, why, that's perfectly normal! Anyways, I digress.

So, considering we all agree that no one actually hears God, or sees God, what kind of relationship are we having exactly?

I mean, if I told you I had a relationship with the Queen of England (or Britney Spears), because I sent her letters regularly, would you agree? So maybe you'll argue that's different, because the Queen probably isn't reading my letters, whereas HKBH hears all. OK, so let's say I leave voicemails for someone and I know they hear them, but they never actually respond or pick up the phone. Is that a "relationship"?

Seems to me, especially following the Rambam, that none of our simplistic conceptions of God are remotely true, and that whatever image we have in our mind of God is simply wrong. Likewise, whatever relationship we think we have with God, is simply a fantasy in our mind - whether or not God actually exists. In fact, even if God is actually an old man in the sky with a big white beard and Chareidi leanings, our relationship with Him is still just a fantasy in our minds.

Psychologically speaking, everyone has an inner voice, or a "superego", that we imagine talking to, or talking to us. It's just a normal feature of humanity. This same feature is no doubt the cause of the Christians intense belief that Jesus is in his heart, or the Moslems thoughts about Allah.

Again, God may be 100% real, but that doesn't justify calling your rich inner fantasy life a "relationship".

So maybe I'm being too literal. Maybe all this "relationship" talk is just a new age fad, borne from the 60s, and it doesn't actually mean anything other than belief in God. Or maybe it comes from Martin Buber's I and Though philosophy?

Do any acharonim talk about relationships with God? Presumably there's some Chassidic thought in a similar vein, but I would be interested to know if they talk about a relationship.

Does your Rabbi talk about relationships with God?

Saints and Sinners: A great game for the Shabbos Table!

In the topsy turvy world of modern Chareidi Jewry, where Western 21st Century morality mixes uncomfortably with the morals of 5th Century BCE desert nomads and 2nd Century CE Babylonian urbanites, it's sometimes hard to tell who exactly is a Saint and who is a Sinner. To test your knowledge of contemporary Chareidi society, here's a little pop quiz. For each question, please answer Saint or Sinner. This is a great game for the kids by the Shabbos table, and can be an invaluable tool in teaching them mussar lessons!

Here's some example questions. All similarities to actual persons are entirely non-coincidental.

1. A Rabbi who runs a Yeshivah day school, but molests little boys. Saint or Sinner?

2. A Baal Teshuvah, who brutally murdered a park ranger. Saint or Sinner?

3. A big baal tzedakah, who also committed federal fraud. Saint or Sinner?

4. A huge macher and friend to the Gedolim, who possibly slept with a goyah?

5. A popular Rabbi, who tried to give semichah to a woman?

6. A godol, who refused to act on allegations of child abuse?

Feel free to make up you own questions.

What's so wrong with child abuse anyway?

Marc Shapiro makes a comment as to why the Chareidi world seemingly doesn't care as much as the Western world about child abuse:

"There is another theory as to why the sectarian hasidic world in particular has had so many cases of covering up and defending child sex abusers. It is that they simply do not regard these people as so terrible. The evidence for this appears obvious, in that in case of after case we see that they continue to allow sex abusers to teach and refuse to turn them over to the authorities and warn the parent body. Had they caught the rebbe eating at McDonald’s, you can be sure he would have been fired, but not so when it comes to fooling around with kids. The question is why do they have this outlook, and how come they don’t regard child sex abusers as so terrible? Here is a possible answer (which a wise person suggested). Look at where these societies get their information about human nature, the information that they regard as authentic and true. It does not come from modern psychology, but from Torah sources and folk beliefs. If you look only at traditional rabbinic literature, you won’t conclude that child sex abuse is as terrible as modern society views it. Yes, it is a sin and the person who commits it must repent as he must do with all sins, but there is nothing in the traditional literature that speaks to the great trauma suffered by the victim. How do we know about this trauma? Only from modern psychology and the testimony of the victims. Yet this type of evidence does not have much significance in the insular hasidic world (unless it is your own child who has been abused). Certainly modern psychology, which is often attacked by figures in that community, is not given much credence, especially not when they are confronted with an issur of mesirah. This theory makes a lot of sense to me and I am curious to hear what others have to say."

I think this is obviously true. A famous example is that of Rav Scheinberg who said that as long as there is no penetration, nothing happened (halachically). Also, I'm no expert, but I would imagine that there are no teshuvas or any other mention of abuse whatsoever in halachic or mussar or any other Jewish literature whatsoever. Of course you won't find much mention in secular literature pre 1960? But the point is that the secular world updates their canon all the time, whereas we spend an inordinate amount of time studying 2,000 year old texts. Was abuse a problem in Babylon circa 200CE? I'm not sure, but probably it was a facet of life back then too.

There were also two comments highly worthy of posts of their own:

"Marc makes an interesting point with respect to how traditional rabbinic literature may influence the Charedi community's attitude on child mlestation. My perspective is that the influence between rabbinic literature and community attitudes can flow in both directions. Witness this alert regarding child molestation from the Flatbush Shomrim, posted on Yeshiva World yesterday:

"The Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol continues to have a zero tolerance policy for Pedophiles, Predators and Abusers ... In accordance with Daas Torah, you will be arrested and prosecuted."

Without opening up the Daas Torah can of worms, I see this as an illustration of rabinnic opinion being slowly reshaped in light of community attitudes (which are in turn influenced by factors such as compemporary morality). As Charedi society comes to the realization that child molestation is indeed catastrophic, rabbinic literature will fall into line. Sources will be dusted off, drashas and lessons rooted in traditional literaure will materialize, and the ArtScroll books our great grandchildren read will take the uncontested position that Orthodox scholars and laymen alike have vehemently been at the forefont of the battle against the perilous hazards of abuse (their likely wording) since time immemorial.

...All denominations change as society moves forward, but Orthodoxy is uncomfortable grounding changes in contemporary morality, and must instead revisit and reinterpret traditional sources. This faciliates the required modification but mitigates the hazards associated with reopening the rulebook."

And then S has this doozy:

"Maybe that's true, but this leaves strange questions. Are not hirhurim itself supposed to be a major major sin? What about hatzaas zera levatala? It seems strange that all this goes out the window for the special mitzvah of molesting boys. It seems to me there must be more to it than that hypothesis."

I think the answer to S's question is that hirhurim raim are a recognized part of life. Sure they are bad, but nobody is going to get put in cherem for hirhurim raim. On the contrary, it is expected that everyone has hirhurim, but you fight against them. As for zera levatalah, again I think it's pretty much the same thing. It is understood that everyone does it, and despite certain seforim (I recall one from my yeshivah days called Taharas Habris or something similar -endless pages of hellfire visions!) it's just one of those things that people struggle with, like loshon horoh. The real answer is like Marc wrote, Chareidim (and more so Gedolim) just have no idea about contemporary morality, how could they?

[Note the rest of that post was pretty interesting too, one day I'll post about it].

Mamash Tragic

Severely disabled, is she still a mom?

I knew this girl very well. All she ever wanted was to get married, have kids and raise a nice family. We were at her wedding, we even made sheva brachos for her. I can't blame the husband because who can fathom what hell he has gone through. What a tragedy. The only thing I can say is that maybe with advances in medical technology, maybe one day she might get a little better? We can only hope. In the meanwhile, I support Abbie's parents request that she see her children, and I would respectfully urge Dan to allow this. Children are remarkably resilient, and they (and Abbie) have a right to see each other.

Finally, proof that spirituality is chemical

From The New York Times:

"Scientists are especially intrigued by the similarities between hallucinogenic experiences and the life-changing revelations reported throughout history by religious mystics and those who meditate. These similarities have been identified in neural imaging studies conducted by Swiss researchers and in experiments led by Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins.

In one of Dr. Griffiths’s first studies, involving 36 people with no serious physical or emotional problems, he and colleagues found that psilocybin could induce what the experimental subjects described as a profound spiritual experience with lasting positive effects for most of them. None had had any previous experience with hallucinogens, and none were even sure what drug was being administered."

Fundies and Rationalist Reconcilers: Do they deserve to be bashed or debated?

Apparently my previous post upset some people - it was too "mocking". I didn't intend it that way at all, I thought it was expressing an important point in an amusing way, as is my style. Had I wanted to go on the attack ... well you can only imagine what the post would have looked like! But anyways, I apologize if I hurt anyone's feelings.

The truth is there are very few people who deserve any kind of personal attack. Even people like Rabbi Avi Shafran, who frequently makes my blood boil with his inane articles, might not deserve it. After all, it's his job to defend the Agudah, you can't blame him for trying.

Possibly the only person in the past few years who really, really deserved a good bashing was Tropper. Certainly many of the fundies are in the category of "tinok shenishbah", or maybe "sheayno yodeah lishol". We should certainly attack their specious arguments, but not they themselves.

But what about the "Rationalist Reconcilers" - those people who 5 years ago I spent every waking minute defending, until I realized that they didn't have any (good) answers either? They are sufficiently educated and intelligent to know their own arguments are often lame. Do these people deserve to be bashed? Maybe so, maybe not. However I certainly agree that reasoned debate is better than bashing.

And I would like to debate those people intellectually (and politely), though many of them refuse to debate. I wonder is this is because they think/know they will lose? One thing to Gil's credit, he does engage in some limited debate.

Then again, for many of these figures, the fact that they are in public positions, including Rabbis of shuls or members of the RCA, means that they just can't be honest about their true views, even if they wanted to. And maybe this is why they don't debate, because it would be too frustrating for them as they would have to muzzle their true opinions, and argue for things they themselves don't really believe in.

It's a tangled web we weave.

Traditionalist vs. Academic Koran Study

Guest post by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Growing up, I learned exclusively in radical Islamic institutions, including eight years in a madrasah in Pakistan. Recently, I have been exposed to academic Koran study, and I am fascinated by the differences between the traditionalist approach to the Koran and the academic/ rationalist approach. I do not feel that one or the other is better in absolute terms - rather, each has its advantages and disadvantages.

The academic/ rationalist approach is superior in terms of ascertaining the historical reality of what is actually going on in the Koran. But the traditionalist approach is generally superior in terms of imparting religious devotion. Of course, in some cases, and for some people, the traditionalist approach is a major turn-off from Radical Islam. But in general, it is a more inspirational and motivational approach.

This dichotomy is unavoidable. Reaching truth requires intellectual honesty and objectivity; this requires a detached, critical analysis, which harms the reverential experience required for religious inspiration. Whereas those who devote themselves to Koran study with passion often end up unable to evaluate matters objectively.

Which is ultimately more important - reaching historical truth, or attaining religious inspiration and growth? I certainly don't feel qualified to answer that question. But I certainly couldn't have convinced my boys to bomb the World Trade Center through detached, critical analysis!

Nickleodeon vs. The Midrash Says: Which is better?

I recently spent a few days with some yeshivah people. We had kids of very similar ages, but of course our kids are brought up somewhat differently. My kids spend (too much) time watching Disney Channel, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network (iCarly, Chowder, Fairly Odd Parents and assorted Japanese action crap), their kids watch zero TV, and are fed a constant diet of Medrash Says, Rebbe Stories, Hanoch Teller type stories and other assorted chareidi errr stuff. They didn't like the TV my kids were watching, I didn't like the over the top medrashic stuff that they were constantly teaching their kids as if it was gospel truth.

Conventional wisdom would say that my kids should be more violent, obnoxious or just generally have worse middos, while their kids should have better middos. Maybe it's too soon to tell, and this will develop in adulthood, but my (possibly biased) opinion was that kids are kids, and I couldn't really see any significant difference overall. Could this be the case?

Could it be that being fed a constant diet of "goody goody" stories doesn't actually teach kids good middos? And conversely, letting kids watch crap on TV (in moderation) doesn't really teach bad middos? Maybe the kids let off steam by watching crap and then behave better in real life? (Obviously I'm not talking about way too much TV or overly violent inappropriate shows).

Or maybe I'm completely wrong and there is a huge difference. I wish I could tell.

Chillul Hashem at Great Adventure and Jenkinsons

Reb Harry posts about the YWN letter about the massive chillul hashem at Great Adventures (Six Flags) over chol hamoed perpetrated by chareidim. Although the allegations are quite believable, I have to say I was at GA Safari and also at Jenkinsons boardwalk (Point Pleasant) which was also almost 100% chareidi and I saw no misbehavior at all (and believe me I was on the lookout). Though it was a bit incongruous seeing yeshivah bochrim on the gambling machines. I also saw a lot of chareidim on the beach, even though it was warm enough for some women to be in bikinis, I guess frumkeit gets a pass on chol hamoed. Anyways, I'm now back from my Pesach vacation so expect some new posts some day soon.