Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein, who is usually one of the more sane contributors over there, has a truly offensive and obnoxious post. Adlerstein comments on a NYT article about how with the advent of sperm donors and surrogates who can now enable otherwise childless couples to have kids, there are complications, especially when the donors are related e.g. sister of the mother. Adlerstein compares this new 'modern' family to Eisav's progeny "replete with many intimations of incest and other illicit relationships".
That's right - according to Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein, childless couples who use relatives as surrogates are basically like Eisav and his descendants. Nice going.
I love Cross-Currents. I truly do. Is there any other medium which so blatantly and articulately exposes Chareidi Judaism for what it has become - a hot mess of inane nonsense, often horrible values and sometimes questionable morality?
Cross-Currents: The ultimate anti-kiruv tool.
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33 comments:
" Chareidi Judaism ...a hot mess of inane nonsense, often horrible values and sometimes questionable morality? "
Agreed. This is what happens when you worship halacha, and not God. Unfortunately, you see the same thing in many MO circles too.
OTOH, an unbiased observer would admit that there are still many chareidi individuals who true yirei shamayim and act accordingly. Their demerit, if any, is their tacit acquiescence to the tyranny of the majority of loonies.
Moshe -
Perhaps those true yirei shamayim can have a productive interfaith dialogue with their counterparts - peace loving Muslims (a religion of peace from the prophet of peace, peace be upon him).
MZ,
Religion, in a sense , is a lot like science. It can be utilized for good or ill. Shall we abandon science because some scientists build nuclear bombs?
"worship halacha, and not God"
what does that even mean? god gave us halacha - we are doing gods will
Ksil,
Halacha is the means, not the end in itself.
moshe, how does one "worhip" halacha?
we follow halacha, becasue god said "shake that tree branch!" so we do what he wants us. how is that "worhiping" halacha....
Is there any other medium which so blatantly and articulately exposes Chareidi Judaism for what it has become - a hot mess of inane nonsense, often horrible values and sometimes questionable morality? Answer - Yes, the comments section of Vosizneias.
Ksil,
We worship halacha when we make punctiliousness in the observance of halachic minutiae the be all and end all of our religious existence, and neglect the inner religious experience.
To use your example: When we shake the Lulav, are we thinking about being brought closer to God, or are we merely engaged in a sort of religious obsessive-compulsive behavior.
We also worship halacha when we engage in lengthy and intricate pilpul to invent new chumros, and then go out and desecrate God's name in our personal conduct. As Ramban observed (on the first pasuk in parshas kedoshim, if memory serves), one can be a scoundrel within the bounds of halacha, and that is not what the Torah tells us that God wants.
And as chazal put it, God gave us the mitzvos only to refine our character. He doesn't need us merely to shake tree branches. He wants us to also shake our souls, and thus become better people.
Moshe, whatever floats your boat ... if waving a lulav "shakes your soul", I guess I'm happy for you. But given the variety of human types and human experience, it's foolish to imagine that all human beings will experience soul rocking from shaking the lulav. There are other ways of achieving spiritual growth - just ask practitioners of other religions.
So if you think of halacha as THE way to achieve closeness with God, how is that not worshiping halacha?
Please don't tell me the mesora tells you that the Torah is the truest way. That has already been so demolished.
Our people has been through this before (probably several times). Refer to Isaiah 1:11-20 [below]. In summary - we've been told before that our punctilious and precise ritual observance is rejected by God in the absence of bein adam l'chavero. The key is to understand that ignoring bein adam l'chavero isn't just about overemphasizing ritual, it is a rebellion against God.
11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? saith the LORD; I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. 12 When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample My courts? 13 Bring no more vain flour offerings; it is an offering of abomination unto Me; new moon and sabbath, the holding of convocations--I cannot endure iniquity along with the solemn assembly. 14 Your new moons and your appointed seasons My soul hateth; they are a burden unto Me; I am weary to bear them. 15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood. 16 Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes, cease to do evil; 17 LEARN TO DO GOOD; SEEK JUSTICE, RELIEVE THE OPPRESSED, JUDGE THE FATHERLESS, PLEAD FOR THE WIDOW. 18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. 19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; 20 But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword; for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken.
>what does that even mean? god gave us halacha - we are doing gods will
Ksil,
You ever hear the chassidish expression (paraphrasing)
"chassidim ovdim Hashem, litvish ovdim shulchan aruch"
Tesyaaa,
"So if you think of halacha as THE way to achieve closeness with God, how is that not worshiping halacha?"
Halacha is part (a very large part, admittedly, but not the entirety) of the way a JEW comes close to God.
"Please don't tell me the mesora tells you that the Torah is the truest way. That has already been so demolished."
Like, OMG, it's SO not polite for you to tell ME what not to tell YOU.... :)
Non Jews can come close to God in other ways. "The righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come."
ZO,
"The key is to understand that ignoring bein adam l'chavero isn't just about overemphasizing ritual, it is a rebellion against God."
Very nice point. BTW, I apologize for my typo above, where I abbreviated your moniker as "MZ" instead of "ZO".
"Non Jews can come close to God"
well, i am so glad you think that! Shout it from the rooftops and tell them! I am sure they woudl love to hear that...
"and neglect the inner religious experience."
most orthodox jews i know shuckle so hard during davening - most of them observe the minutae of halacha to acheive this religious experience -
not sure what you are referring to when you paint an entire group with a broad brish that "they engage in lengthy and intricate pilpul to invent new chumros, and then go out and desecrate God's name" - Rov of the people in the group you are referencing are not like this - so find another tree to bark up, you are way off base
What are you complaining against now Ksil, or just complaining for the sake of complaining?
Ksil,
See, for example, "RUPTURE AND RECONSTRUCTION:THE TRANSFORMATION OF CONTEMPORARY ORTHODOXY", by Haym Soloveitchik.
http://www.lookstein.org/links/orthodoxy.htm
Hh, huh?
Moshe, that paper is just so strange, i have to say.
Here it is in a nutshell: darn! Why do we have all these tools like pencils and priniting presses and books. Dar those books! I wish we could go back in time where veryone was soo soo uneducated and ignorant of halacha. Where only the rabbis knew what we are suupised to do. Yea, who needs schools and such, let us rewind the clock, back to a time where the hamon a, did not know how much matza to eat, or how to eat certain foods on shabbat so as to not violate halcha. Gosh, i hate knowing gods will in such detail.
Ksil,
No, the nutshell is
"I think it safe to say that the perception of God as a daily, natural force is no longer present to a significant degree in any sector of modern Jewry, even the most religious. ...With the shrinkage of God's palpable hand in human affairs has come a marked loss of His immediate presence... With this distancing, the religious world has been irrevocably separated from the spirituality of its fathers....
It is this rupture in the traditional religious sensibilities that underlies much of the transformation of contemporary Orthodoxy. Zealous to continue traditional Judaism unimpaired, religious Jews seek to ground their new emerging spirituality less on a now unattainable intimacy with Him, than on an intimacy with His Will, avidly eliciting Its intricate demands and saturating their daily lives with Its exactions. Having lost the touch of His presence, they seek now solace in the pressure of His yoke. "
Interesting idea, Moshe. But as a former believer, I felt God's presence regularly in trivial and sometimes significant turns of events in my life. I also had a real sense of purpose - tachlis! - for much of that time as well. I have to imagine the deeply frum can feel the same.
Later - age, tribulations of adult life, and a voracious appetite for evolutionary biology popped my cherry. But I truly believe that humans have an immense capacity to imagine a present and interactive godhead. I recommend "the belief instinct" by Jesse Bering to dig deeper.
Solomon,
"But I truly believe that humans have an immense capacity to imagine a present and interactive godhead."
I respect your belief. One cannot deny the pervasiveness of religious belief, in all its forms, throughout history. I wonder, though, whether the pervasive sensing of a higher power that you refer to may not actually have been implanted in us by the Deity Himself [perhaps via the mechanism of evolution], so that we would seek Him out.
[Time saving aside to my skeptic friends--no I cannot prove what I just wrote; it's just my intuition. And yes, you may intuit things differently. It's a free country, thank God].
As for the tribulations and the study of evolutionary biology--I have experienced both. Most adults have (at least the tribulations). There are times when I have my doubts. But, as R. E. Rackman once wrote, Judaism does not require the absence of all doubt. Such complete absence of doubt is the hallmark of the fanatic, not of the pious Jew. Just as real courage does not imply complete absence of the fear of danger (which would merely be insanity), but rather action in the face of such fear, so too does authentic Judaism imply a dual leap of faith and action, despite one's doubts.
We are not called "Israel", one who struggles with God, without reason.
XGH ...you say Charedi Judaism has become - a hot mess of inane nonsense, often horrible values and sometimes questionable morality" "They're all a bunch of fools, fakers or in some cases, both"
I object to this language and my reason is this: You would never talk this way about some other religion. Such words are unacceptable in a liberal political society. For all practical purposes at this point charedi Orthodoxy is a separate religion. Even if you think we are discussing how the Jewish people should behave and not across some great religious divide, liberalism recognizes that different conceptions of right and wrong whether applied to actions or the acceptance of beliefs are built into the very fabric of modern society, and therefore should be governed by limitations on public, political discourse. I raise this point not as mussar but as a topic for discussion...what kind of respect do charedim deserve and how should a tolerant, liberal Jewish world deal with such different conceptions of morals and reality. Rawls deals with this topic in his book Political Liberalism, and though it’s a tortuous 400 page read it is worth studying.
I disagree, we dont need to be tolerant of intolerance.
Any religion, on the extremes, is bad. Period. Charedism, is the extreme.
The charedim are not exactly intolerant. They don't want to mix it up with non-Orthodox Jews, non-Jews and to a lesser extent MO. They practise austritt in the Hungarian verion of the SRH doctrine.
The fact that they believe other Jews are sinners and will pay the price is no different than any Christian believing salvation can be found only thru Jesus, etc.Actually that's the point...liberalism recognizes these incompatible beliefs are here for the duration.
Besides we are talking about civil discourse. If we talk like mentschen to Evangelicals why ought we not to be civil to our own charedi kin? And when applicable, why ought we not be civil to the group from which we come.
Well, ej, you are wrong. You are so wrong that your words are not worth reading. It's certainly not worth debating with you because your so-called "learning" is too shallow and you have been irretrievably contaminated by all those goyische "philosophers" you quote.
Now let me apologize. The words above were for rhetorical effect only. I find your comments and insights valuable. But what I wrote above is how I think that many people in the charedi world think about the non-charedi OJ world. Christians (some of them) think we Jews are wrong when measured by their New Testament criteria (and their own "mesorah"). But we can easily ignore that. Charedim think we are wrong by Torah criteria. And that raises hackles.
It is surprising how many people had their cherry popped by the evolutionary biology reading. IMHO, this attests to a very literal understanding of Torah's narratives, to begin with. I cannot serve as an example, being a BT and having been raised in an environment squeaky clean of any religious idea.
But...
a) I've had quite a few opptys to observe the life of several secular societies from within. Being a thoroughbred Jew by birth, I did not know anything about Jewish orthodoxy and stumbled into it by sheer chance. But, once exposed to the life and functioning of the J orthodox community I immediately recognized that it is free of the numerous and worst problems that beset the secular way of life. The life of the J orthodox community is based on Torah; humanity was unable to produce anything better. THAT I can claim through all experience of my life, spanning 5 countries, Christian and Muslim, on 3 continents. No amount of evolutionary biology reading can shake this life experience. Torah is perfect and restoring soul? Yes, yes and yes once more!
b) It would be a very proper thing to call myself a religious person. Now - yes, I am. I've never received religious education, but I came to religion out of revulsion and disgust for moral dislocations that are so abundant in secular life. I'm a shomer Shabbos, taught myself Hebrew, and keep progressing down the derech. At the same time it would never come into my head to argue with the evolutionary biologists. I wholeheartedly trust them. I think, we should be intellectually honest. That is, if we use all the accomplishments of modern science - medications, cars, X-rays, nuclear bombs, electricity etc - and if another segment of modern science tells us that the evolution took place some millions years ago - we must either accept it or stop using inventions brought to us by modern science.
Question - how to reconcile the Torah's Bereishit with the evolution? I do not know. I'm not a rabbi, this is not my business. But both concepts peacefully coexist without any conflicts in my conscience and my mind.
"how to reconcile the Torah's Bereishit with the evolution? I do not know"
there are books on this...
i'll stop there.
;)
Ten Jew...I hear you, and you do have a point. As a child we played a game of thinking up new and more horrible insults and curses in Yiddish. Chasidim especially are very fast and sharp, a talent they acquire before they walk.lol.
My own experience has been generally quite good. The bigger the learner the easier it is. Sometimes a very frum but simple guy becomes defensive and decides to become God's cossack. I should point out at the same time I am warm and friendly in these discussions, I am not trying particularly to defeat anyone. My goal is always to hit a single, allow the other keep his dignity and defenses intact, and if possible give the other the last word. I also never over-reach. I don't race people.
The main exception is politics especially Israeli politics where unwittingly I put people over the top.(See the comments to the last post.)
Did you see this post on the limits of Natan Slifkin's rationalism?
http://www.rationalistjudaism.com/2011/07/limits-of-rationalism.html
ej - I'd boil it down to this. Are you (1) trying to understand the other person and arguing to find a truth (I won't say THE truth); or (2) trying to win.
When discussing this entre nous, I think it's not unreasonable to agree that the Other Guy is misguided, mistaken, ignorant ... even inane ... but that's just self-stroking. It doesn't do any good to take that position when discussing ideas with him.
"God's Cossack" ... I like that.
Berl, you must be new here
:)
Hello--
Sometimes I post comments, that appear and then disappear almost immediately. Any reason?
DrJ
Ksil,
I am. :-)
I'm new to orthopraxy and have been catching up on the last few years of J-blogsphere.
I just found it interesting to see a so called rationalist write clearly that we should be careful to only use rationalism when it doesn't pose a threat to our beliefs.
this is funny,,,,he belongs to the church of the flying spaghetti monster and is required to wear a pasta strainer on his head at all times....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14135523
Godol,
You are such a douchebag.
You usually have a better debating technique than to make an ad-honimem conclusion like "according to... childless couples who use relatives as surrogates are basically like Eisav and his descendants."
I can live with the childish name-calling though they weaken your points (Fundies, fakers etc.) if that strengthen you convictions.
But this is just so poorly thought out. And only adds insult without meaning.
One can absurdly summarize anything to sound offensive. Like those old kvetches "Are you saying I'm not JEWISH?!"
feh
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