Finally! We have a Rabbi!!!!

http://theorthopraxrabbi.wordpress.com/

Rescuing Hassidism from the Hassidim: ej on arthur green on Hassidim

There is an interesting article by Rabbi Arthur Green on how Hassidim went wrong in last week's Forward. Both DovBear and Harry Maryles picked up on it, with predictable results. ej writes the following:

Rabbi Green says today ”most chasidim are imitation chasidim, and “we” need to rescue the Baal Shem Tov from his current followers.” That remark is needlessly provocative and insulting. I believe the current chasidim are the closest successors to the Besht and the first two generations that followed than any other group in the Jewish world. If the Baal Shem returned, is it even conceivable that he would opt for Green’s utopian vision over the actual chasidim we have today. I urge those readers who are in doubt to read Rabbi Green’s latest book Radical Theology, and then judge.

Arthur Green would like to create a new type of American chasidus, without the xenophobia of traditional chasidim. Kol hakavod. But until he can show that his reading of chasidus has some staying power, and can amount to more than studies, lectures and retreats, it’s really not cricket to rain on everyone’s parade. Today, any one of the groups he dissed, Satmar, Bobov, Lubavitch, Belz and Ger are more substantive in so many different ways than the entire Jewish Renewal movement. There is no reason for a sophisticated Jewish Renewal theologian to copy those who would define themselves by what they are not.

I would add Rabbi Green has to prove that his neo-chasidus could grow into something substantive without the outfits, the birthrate, a rebbe however second rate at the helm, and some commitment to Orthodoxy. I would say all these conditions are necessary, and the burden is on Rabbi Green to show otherwise.

I find this attitude strange. Of course the Jewish renewal movement is small, and the amount of people in it who are truly invested in any real form of Hassidut (whatever that even means) is even smaller. Maybe it's just Green, Zalman Shechter Shalomi and a a few nuts out in Colorado. But the Besht started out small too. Much of today's Hassidim is xenophobic in the extreme, and has strayed far from its original roots as a religion of joy for the common man (though Chabad, and maybe Breslov in Israel are the exceptions), so it would make sense for someone to try and rescue it. Kol Hakovod to Rabbi Green for trying.

Now, whose going to rescue Torah and Mitzvot from the Fundies?

Morris The Monkey!

This is funny.

One of my favorite British TV Shows

Today's news!

The hypocricy of Cross-Currents on Emanuel

Unlike Yaakov Menken, I don't have "sources in Emanuel". I don't know if the (allegedly)offending parents are racist or intolerant, or maybe both, or perhaps neither. But I do know hypocricy when I see it, and I'm seeing it in spades in Cross-Currents.

Yes, of course no American Court would ever sentence parents to jail because they don't like their public school. DUH. But that's because here in America we have a thing called RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, human rights, and seperation of church and state.

They don't have that in Israel.

If someone in Israel wants to get legally married in a secular ceremony they simply can't. NOT ALLOWED. Likewise for other aspects where religion creeps into law.

So Yaakov Menken and Yitzchok Adlerstein, if you want the Israeli court system to act like the US court system, then stop requiring that religious law be the law of the land. Advocate for separation of church and state. Allow Reform and Conservative full rights in Israel. Then you might stop being such hypocrits.

And of course, it goes without saying that an Israel under Chareidi rule would certainly not respect anyone's rights, except for the Chareidim. Ashkenazi Chareidim no doubt.

Rav Kook / RADVAZ - It's ossur to criticize a kofer!

An amazing find - page 55 in Maamarei Hariyah (hilchos Tzibur):

(sorry, can't type the original in Hebrew)

Kol shetoeh be'eyuno, ayn olov onesh, vecholiloh levazoso, afilu im hatous he beinyan shel ikar

Anyone who makes a mistake in his 'investigations' (i.e. into hashkafah), has no sin, and it's forbidden to humiliate him, even if the mistake is in one of the fundamentals of faith.

He also explains that if someone is genuinely searching for truth, even if he makes a mistake in a fundamental of faith, he gets no punishment, because he is genuinely searching for truth, and so is like an 'onus' (i.e. forced). However, can a chareidi or RWMO person be counted as someone genuinely searching for truth? I don't think so. Such people therefore would not qualify for the RADVAZ's hetter.

Myth, myth! Yeth?

Once you accept that the Torah is mostly mythology, the next question is, now what? And to some degree, I think the answer hinges partially on how the ancients themselves approached myth. I'm no expert on myth, but I have heard the following three approaches:

1. Of course the ancients believed their mythologies. Duh!

2. Of course the ancients didn't believe their mythologies. Duh!

3. The ancients did not distinguish between myth and reality like we do. They had a whole different conception. Therefore the question is invalid.

Nobody ever seems to bring any real proofs for the above approaches. And I think that proof may be impossible, how could you prove one way or another? And of course it could vary from culture to culture or myth to myth.

There's an interesting book that I read a while back, When They Severed Earth From Sky, about ancient myth. The argument there was that myths were memorable ways in which ancients encoded important information. For example, rather than tell their kids that a certain mountain was prone to volcanic eruptions, they invented a myth about a devil with long red hair (lava flows) that inhabited the mountain. IS that true? I don't know.

I started reading Michael Fishbane's book, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking, but it wasn't what I thought it would be. Rather than an extended exposition of how and why Chazal made up myths, instead it focuses on particular myths, e.g. Rahab the sea monster. A good book, but it didn't answer the question.

And what is the question exactly? I think the key question is - Did Chazal themselves believe their own myths? Did they actually believe that Moshe sat in on Rabbi Akiva's shiur? Did they really believe in literal TMS? I wish I knew the answer to this question.

A Non Fundamentalist Conception of TMS

H for Heterodox makes the following argument to me :

"Why do you think that being a quiet OPer in MO land is "fake"? Surely, your approach, to try and "create" some kind of OP theology, is even more fake, as you are creating a theology to fit your lifestyle, not adjusting your lifestyle to fit your theology. Just be confortable with your lifestyle, and more importantly your IDENTITY, which is as an OPer in LWMO land, and in truth is no different than 50% of the other people in shul. Why can't you just be comfortable with that?"

I don't have a fully coherent or cohesive answer, (as H probably noticed as I spluttered my response!). I suspect that much of this simply comes down to personality types, some people are more comfortable with fuzziness or fakery, some people less so. Right brain vs. Left Brain. INTP vs. EFPJ, Engineer v.s. (Bullshit) Artist.

However, there's also an important point here. I do believe that religious language and mythology has value, whether the myth is true or not. In fact that aspect of religion is "true". Also, I need something to tell my kids rather than just - yeah it's all a bunch of bs, sorry we sent you to fundi schools. Finally, and most importantly, I feel that Torah is valuable, even if rationally the DH is true.

I think that maybe a Conservative type Theology will do the trick.

Like this one:

http://bitterchocolate.faithweb.com/Torah%20Min%20HaShamayim5769.pdf

Is MO Stupid?

In a recent comment thread I made the assertion that I don't think Chareidim are stupid, because they live in a fantasy world, and how could they know any better. However the MO, who are supposedly living in the modern world, should know better. Two responses below:

From jer:

Why "stupid"? Can't we just say "wrong" and leave it there? Were you stupid when you believed in TMS? Did your IQ suddenly jump after you stopped believing? Clearly we are talking about intelligent people who have been indoctrinated a certain way, have a huge investment to lose if they stop believing, may lose family and friends, will lose certainty in the goodness and meaningfulness of the universe, and will have to admit that there's at least a chance that the nihilistic view is correct. (Having ticked all those off, I'm kind of wishing I could believe again.)

Yeah, their methods are galling and some of them are downright obnoxious. But still, some sympathy is in order.

Gil and the Rationalist Rabbi are trying to preserve what's best in the tradition without succumbing to the insanity, corruption and incompetence we've seen throughout these past few years (Slifkin ban, child molesting cover-ups- way to go, Agudah, you and the Catholic Church killed another bill this week, theft, Lipa ban, ad nauseam). Go ahead and show how they're wrong or evasive, but ultimately, as an Orthopraxer, you need to recognize them as allies.

So jer makes two points:

1. They're not stupid, just brainwashed and biased.

2. They are our allies against the chareidim, so let's be nice to them.

I agree with point 1 though there comes a certain point when brainwashed and biased becomes pretty stupid. I didn't have a skeptical bone in my body until January 2005, age 37. Even though I lived in the modern world and prided myself on being very smart. Does that make me stupid? Well, my IQ hasn't changed, but in some respects I would have to say yes. How could I have been so incredibly clueless? Plus, as soon as I was exposed to skeptical thought I came to my senses pretty quickly. The same can't be said for the MOs in similar situations. So maybe stupid is the wrong word. I'll agree to brainwashed, biased and clueless. OK?

As for the second point. I can't address the Rational Rabbi in any way whatsoever (seriously). I should never have mentioned that topic in the first place and will never do so again. As for Gil and friends, yes they are fighting against the Chareidim. And it would be tragic if the only approach to orthodoxy was Chareidi. But I feel exactly the same about the MO! We need to fight the MO in the same way the MO fight the Chareidi! We need to ensure that the fundamentalist approach (i.e. MO and CHareidi) are not the only approach to Orthodoxy (i.e. committed, practicing Judaism).

And this one from ej:

XGH...Once you agree that with charedim, who live in a pre-modern world with different rules, are not stupid , why are you so certain MO are stupid? Certainly RWMO are not different from charedim in this regard. Even LWMO to the extent they insist on TMS should be thought of as charedi in this respect. Remember they are saying God dictated all of chumash to Moshe who wrote/engraved it on a stone tablet, word for word with no distortion, and that our Masoretic text is identical with the text Moses transcribed from God's words speaking in Hebrew. Furthermore God also told Moses the entire Oral Torah. In turn this Torah sheah baalpeh was transmitted accurately for around a thousand years until it was written down. This view is not one that seems plausible using modern methods of histiography; possible certainly, plausible no. With respect to TMS, MO are willing to jettison secular rationality, in order to hold onto pre-modern beliefs.

Your arguments work with people who totally accept the scientific method as the way of telling us how reality looks. But for those people, most EVERYTHING about Orthodoxy is not real. How is Shabbos possible, time is uniform? How do we know there are real properties like kodesh-chol, kasher-treif, tahor- tawmeh etc that obey the laws of chazal? Once you adopt a positivist account of reality all of Torah becomes arbitrary rules/conventions that define non empirical properties which we cannot perceive directly. Most Reform Jews do not believe that these properties are real empirical properties like color, size and shape. The fact that most everyone who is Orthodox thinks of treif as a real property of an object is already an indication that there world view is not modern.

ej makes two points

1. When it comes to beliefs, MO ARE Chareidi

2. A strange (interesting?) point about the reality of Shabbat.

As regards point 1, I agree, I have been arguing that for years. However see my response above to jer. As regards point 2, I'm not sure you have to really believe that Shabbat is "real". I FEEL the reality of Shabbat, even though I'm a skeptic. Likewise Kashrut etc. I don't think that MOs think that "treif" is a real property of an object, certainly not in any physical sense. And maybe not even in any spiritual sense, unless they are particularly mystically inclined. But that's an interesting topic for debate, some other time.

I think the major debate here is the same debate I have with H for Heterdox. Should we be quiet little lambs, and not make any waves, because we need the MO. (And we need them in two respects, 1) to have shuls and communities we can belong to, and 2) to fight the chareidim).

Or should we fight for what we believe in (or rather fight for what we don't believe in, lol).

I can hear both ways. To be completely honest, I haven't fully made up my mind yet, which is why the "fight" is mostly confined to the blog world, with only some very minor spill-over into real life.

But once I make my mind up, watch out MO! (Or maybe I'll shut down my blog. Could go either way).

Hilchos Epistemology: Perek Bays

Rentsy (who the heck is rentsy?) writes:

We all proceed under assumptions that cannot be properly scientifically tested. You assume other people exist. I assume God exists. Neither of us is bothered by the fact that absolute truthiness of either of those propositions can ever really be known. We simply proceed with our lives, you and me both.

Funny. So why do you assume that God exists? Do you assume that Thor and Odin exist? I don't think so. So why God? Because OF COURSE you have REASONS to "assume" that God exists, and you don't have reasons to assume that Thor and Odin exist. So this isn't about pure assumptions, it's about reason and evidence, just like I said.

Also, I think the ani maamin's according to you would be quite amusing:

"I assume with a complete assumption that God exists".

Somehow I don't think that's what the Rambam was after.

So you might say, what's the difference between an assumption and a belief? They're the same thing. I don't want to get into a semantic argument here but I think in general a belief is something you truly believe as 100% true, whereas an assumption is something that you are recognizing is just an assumption, and may not actually be true. I doubt rentsy just assumes God exists, he (she?) presumably actually believes it.

But anyways, this is all beside the point. Nobody knows anything about ultimate reality, and it's a false dichotomy to claim that ultimate reality is either God or Science; there's an infinite number of possibilities, and furthermore there's an infinite number of those which we can't even comprehend.

So, since we have no idea about ultimate reality and probably never will, and considering the way we humans are wired, I think a belief in some kind of good or meaningful ultimate reality is just as valid as believing in a meaningless ultimate reality, and only slightly less rational than withholding any opinion. Given all this, regarding the average person, I'm inclined to be maykil here.

So the halacha is like this:

It is muttar to have a belief in an ultimate good reality, as long as you don't start believing in details about that reality (unless you are clear that those details are mythological), and you also don't use such beliefs to crash planes into buildings.

However a ben rationality should be machmir.

A day in the life of a POMO Intellifundie

My heart goes out to Kant (the commenter) and friends. It must be a hard life being a POMO Intellifundie. One can only imagine!

Morning

Wife: Honey, it's garbage collection day today, don't forget to take out the garbage.

POMO: Ah, but you are forgetting that no objective reality has its own ontological/ontic existence.

Wife: Just take the garbage out you freaking weirdo!

Afternoon

Boss: I think we can't win this case. All the evidence points against us. It really doesn't look like our client is telling the truth.

POMO: Oy vey, do you even recognize the logical absurdity of this statement? People have been disagreeing what "true" means for thousands of years. Every great thinker in every culture dealt with the question and they often came up with very different answers, many of which were not "corresponding to reality" which of course itself is not one answer itself since great thinkers have debated what is the nature of the "reality" which we must correspond to.

Boss: Just convince him to settle, you freaking weirdo!

Evening

Son: Dad, you promised to help me with my homework!

POMO: Your assertions constantly imply a particular epistemological stance. Plenty of people disagree regarding epistemology. Plenty of the world's greatest thinkers throughout the ages disagree.

Son: Just help me with my homework, you freaking weirdo!

The Flotilla Discussion if Hamas were POMO Intellifundies

IDF: You attacked us with knives and metal bars! We have evidence! Our soliders had to defend themselves.

Hamas: Ah, but truth means different things to different people! Plenty of people disagree regarding epistemology. Plenty of the world's greatest thinkers throughout the ages disagree but you want us to believe that you have less bias than everyone else in the whole wide world. You want everyone's epistemology to consist of accepting the concensus of academic opinion on any given field (except for philosophy which you exclude and refuse to bow to academic concensus) and chalk it up to your wonderfully powerful "common sense". You want me to believe that the peace activists attacked the soldiers. But I say they didn't.

IDF: Are you crazy? We have evidence! You can see the attacks! Anybody with common sense can see the evidence!

Hamas: Your assertions constatly imply a particular epistemological stance. Whether your assertion that an epistemology is only valid when it can come to one conclusion at the expense of all others (eg. any epistemology that states it is valid to believe in TMS but is also valid for other faiths in bogus). Or you constantly assert that the same epistemological criteria must be applied for all areas of life (eg. you are a filthy hypocrite if you believe in TMS but still consider it safe fly in an airplane becasue applying the criteria by which you arived at the latter to the former is invalid). These meta-epistemological positions are not at all obvious in contemporary discourse.

IDF: Oh, okay then.

The Dead Parrot Sketch if the Shopkeeper was a POMO Intellifundie

Customer: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint.

Owner: We're closin' for lunch.

Customer: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.

Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?

Customer: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!

Owner: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.

Customer: Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now

.
Owner: Ah, but truth means different things to different people! Plenty of people disagree regarding epistemology. Plenty of the world's greatest thinkers throughout the ages disagree but you want us to believe that you have less bias than everyone else in the whole wide world. You want everyone's epistemology to consist of accepting the concensus of academic opinion on any given field (except for philosophy which you exclude and refuse to bow to academic concensus) and chalk it up to your wonderfully powerful "common sense". You want me to believe that this parrot is dead! But I say he's just resting.

Customer: All right then, if he's only restin', I'll wake him up! (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) 'ELLO POLLY!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock alarm call! (Takes parrot out of the cage and thumps its head on the counter. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)

Owner: The non-correspondance epistemologies are by no means exclusively or even primarily the products of religious thinkers and appologists. If we just look at the pomo school, it is primarily a secular movement with secular thinkers. Their challenge to the correspondance theories was not based on a need to justify a religious dogma but rather based on other philosophical considerations. Further, just a cursory reading of the history of thought shows that not everyone agrees with one particular approach to truth. You are up a creek without a paddle on this one.

Customer: 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!

THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

Owner: Your assertions constatly imply a particular epistemological stance. Whether your assertion that an epistemology is only valid when it can come to one conclusion at the expense of all others (eg. any epistemology that states it is valid to believe in TMS but is also valid for other faiths in bogus). Or you constantly assert that the same epistemological criteria must be applied for all areas of life (eg. you are a filthy hypocrite if you believe in TMS but still consider it safe fly in an airplane becasue applying the criteria by which you arived at the latter to the former is invalid). These meta-epistemological positions are not at all obvious in contemporary discourse.

Customer: Oh, okay then.

My one and only flotilla post

This video says it all.

IDF: "Oh no! They have real weapons!"

Err, WTF were you expecting, real peace activists? Unbelievable.

We want Moshiach, We want him so bad

Nothing so terrible happens in this movie, but a bunch of teenage chabad girls (for some reason chabad girls always seem to the err, em wildest type of frum girls) parodying lady gaga songs is never going to be the most tzniut thing in the world, especially when they hold a wet tichel contest. Still, my daughter loved it! You have been warned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia_SAGMBzyw