to joyfully announce the arrival of Cross-Currents, a blog written by several eminent members of the Orthodox establishment. It's been a long time in coming. I look forward to making it part of my daily round of the blogs.
P.S. If you need to add to your roster, I know a rabbi who would be willing to contribute...
This post, written by a sincere and self-described simple Jew, somewhere on the path of Chabad Chassidus, presents an idea with which I disagree.
This is his summary of the post:
Kashrus is an area for continual improvement. No matter what level you keep now, there are always still levels above you to aspire to.
I can understand why someone would think that. The Modern Kashrus Industrial Complex (MKIC) presents people with a hierarchy of Kashrus standards. In Israel, you have regular Rabbanut, Mehadrin, and the various Badatz's, whose hierarchy I couldn't even figure out.
Then in the USA you have the Hechsheirim that many frum people don't trust because of decades of complex decentralized word-of-mouth campaigns whose beginnings are in the dark shadows. This is followed by the standard companies, followed the Heimishe brands.
In the meat department, there’s non-glatt and Glatt. With milk, there’s Cholov Yisroel and not.
Over the centuries, acharonim in particular would often pasken that while something was baseline Kosher, it should not be eaten by Baalei Nefesh.
However, this is not what Kashrus is about. The Torah, via Rabbinic interpretation, determines whaat may not be eaten. It is only because of confusion and sofeik over the centuries that disputes have led to rabbis saying “better don’t take a chance”. This is the mode of all chumras, not limited to kashrus alone.
But to suggest that the essence of Kashrus is the image of a ladder where we should ideally become more and more stringent as our spiritual stature increases, is wrong. I would consider it more worthwhile to use one’s increased spiritual capital on mitzvos like tefilla, or tzedaka, or
Just a thought.
Due to the spam problem, the comments section will be closed until the webmaster of baltiblogs can defeat the evil spam-masters. I know he is trying hard. Constructive comments will still accepted via e-mail and AIM.
Much success, Mr Maphet.
The Yehupitzer Rebbetzin was away in her hometown for a few days in the recent past. A school friend of hers with whom and with whose husband I have no relationship told the rebbetzin that she reads my blog.
This worried me. I thought that besides a few (not all) very close relatives and fellow bloggers, my secret was safe...
If you think you know who I am, please e-mail me. I want to know if my cover is totally blown.
Thank you Gil for saying just what needed to be said. No more and no less.
This past Wednesday was Asarah B'Teves, the date Nebuchadnezzar began his siege around Jerusalem approximately 2500 years ago, give or take 166 years!
So I fasted. Not only did I not find it pleasant to fast (who really does?), but sadly, I felt no impetus to teshuvah as a result of the hunger. This has gotten me thinking in the past about the whole concept of taanis.
It is apparent that centuries ago, nothing motivated people to think about teshuva and introspection like one or three days of fasting. In the Megilla, Esther tells Mordechai to have all Jews in Shushan fast for three days! The people of Ninveh fasted when Yonah warned them of God's wrath. The prophets instituted fast days. The Arizal recommended specific numbers of fastdays in relation to specific sins! (As quoted in Igeres Hateshuva by the Baal Hatanya)The Jews have three millenia of fasting tradition behind us.
Then at some point, rabbis began to discourage the practice. I don't know exactly when it happened. but it seems to coincide with the early stages of the Chassidic movement. I've read stories of different rebbes telling people not to fast.
Did it stop working as a successful tool? (For me it stopped working!) Why was it ever successful? Why is it no longer? I find that on Yom Kippur, since I'm davening and teaching all day, it doesn't bother me at all. It's on these "working fasts" that I feel the deprivation and the associated headaches.
I have no solution.
Charles Krauthammer wrote the following:
I'm struck by the fact that you almost never find Orthodox Jews complaining about a Christmas crèche in the public square. That is because their children, steeped in the richness of their own religious tradition, know who they are and are not threatened by Christians celebrating their religion in public. They are enlarged by it.
He lost me at "They are enlarged by it". I don't know what he means. Perhaps he means that we are enlarged by the need to contemplate our differences with the christian world? I don't know. But the rest of the paragraph makes perfect sense. First of all he's right about his observation. Secondly he's on target with his analysis, except for the enlarge bit.
-------------------
Someone who disagrees with Krauthammer wrote the following:
1 - Orthodox Jews, generally, don't complain about Christmas, not because they feel secure in their religion, but because they feel insecure in their American citizenship. The more towards the right you go on the religious Jewish spectrum, the more often you encounter Jews who imagine themselves to be barely tolerated guests in America. This isn't our country, they mistakenly reason, so why complain about a display honoring the man who inspired the death of millions and millions of Jews? The goyim hate us anyway is the thought behind their silence. Not feelings of religious self-confidence.
Hey, it's a hyposthesis. But it's wrong. I don't know if he got this from his conversations with his fellow "Ortho-sheigetz" friends or what. But any Orthodox Jew knows that it's just false. And cynical. And projecting his cynicism unto the world. But that's his trademark after all.
Thank you David Gerstman for posting this link to Charles Krauthammer's latest column in the comments section.
Who kvetches about "christians being our mortal enemies for two thousand years" anymore? Sheesh! That's so...Jackie Mason!
There really is very little for me to say to DovBear's rebuttal. He wrote a rather long post. One would think that with all those words he must have had a lot to say. But his entire post can be summarized with his closing remarks.
"With not even an iota of respect for you, I am
DovBear"
That's really all there is to it. The rest of your two posts is all about that. (I was just tempted to itemize it, but decided I don't want to waste my time.) You could have said that in your first post, or the first time you commented on my site.
Oy, the time can't be reclaimed.
I'm not interested in discussing the whole church/state thing right now. Dovbear is so interested in discussing it that he missed the point of my post, where I quoted the following:
Yet every year I’m baffled by the animosity toward Christmas symbolism. The same secularists who think that playing Grand Theft Auto:Vice City while listening to gansta rap has no affect on children act as if hearing “Merry Christmas” will turn little Johnny into a Pat Robertson clone.
The point I was making was one about the influence that media has on us. In effect, I posted because I wanted to emphasize the second phrase. Thank you Dovbear for forcing me to specify my intentions. I wasn't clear on that point. In fact, I will confess that the title of my post added to your confusion. My sincerest apologies.
As an aside, I think Dovbear's post is yet another excellent example of left-wing condescension, which I refered to here. Look at the first paragraph of his post. Dailykos is another example. Not even Ann Coulter gets that nasty.
Dovbear a Torah-true Jew? Unlikely.
Once again I will plug Robert Avrech's website. It's not like he will get any traffic. I'm no instapundit. But I just admire the man and the site so much that if I can refer one extra person his way, it would make me feel good.
The evangelical outpost is a blog listed on Steven Weiss' religion blog, the canonist. An article released today explains some of the frustration they feel as christians when the ACLU attempts to remove any mention of their religion from public property. Well one quote in particular stood out, and I reproduce it here.
Yet every year I’m baffled by the animosity toward Christmas symbolism. The same secularists who think that playing Grand Theft Auto:Vice City while listening to gansta rap has no affect on children act as if hearing “Merry Christmas” will turn little Johnny into a Pat Robertson clone.
(Why is the rov looking at an evangelical website? Because Yehupitz is a very 'red city', and I practice "Dah Mah L'Hashiv" very frequently.)
I finally watched the video. The 40 minute one. Let me tell you, I was afraid to watch the movie. I knew that nothing I would see would make me a vegetarian. I trust the rabbis at the OU who wrote this and this. I know some of them personally. But I thought that the video would make me rethink things.
With that in mind, I will tell you that the video was far LESS shocking than I thought it would be. I was told that the people were hacking live animals. I was envisioning some sort of Eiver Min HaChai. The video showed nothing of the sort. The most disturbing scene was the very first one. In it, the cow is released from the pen and starts to stand up, and staggers to the back, a few feet away. He then collpases. A few seconds later, the technician hoists it. In the foreground, you see another couple of cows shechted that stop moving instantly.
The pulling out of the trachea didn't disturb me at all. Call me callous, but I really fail to appreciate the need to be "kind" in the few seconds prior and following the slitting of a living being's throat! The animal doesn't like being upside down?! Well I imagine he likes being killed even less.
So many congregants and residents of Yehupitz have asked me what I think of the "The Red Tent" by Anita Diamant that I felt a responsibility to read the book in order to give them a real appraisal. Yehupitz Public Library had a copy.
Having read fifty pages so far, I can make the following statement:
If you are interested in reading a work of fiction, then that is what the Red Tent is. It's an easy read. Interesting things happen to the characters. Diamant has a good imagination and can weave a story pleasantly enough.
If you are interested in discovering new layers of understanding about the lives of the Biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs, stay away from this book like it is the plague. I assumed I would read a story that dealt with the Jacob, wives and Dina from the Bible, with some embellishment. The truth is that Diamant wrote a novel about some shepherd's family of 4000 years ago and gave her characters familiar names from the Bible.
To consider this book new-age "Midrash" or some sort of innovative interpretation of the Book of Genesis on any level, serious or comedic, is not only a religious crime, but a literary crime as well.
Levi ben Avraham, I am very disappointed in you.
I am not a "follower" of Dennis Prager. I find some of his views on Judaism flawed, though his politics often agree with mine. But the past year has transformed him from a writer/speaker on moral matters to a writer/speaker who spends most of his time promoting candidates and attacking "liberals".
I noticed the same transformation with the likes of John Leo, another writer I liked.
I have always thought that politics is the extension of morality to the
public sphere. So I don't think Prager and Leo are wrong to devote ink to
political matters. They justly felt that the stakes were high enough to
justify this new approach. I just don't find them as interesting to read
anymore.
But I found this quote of his on War in this article to be right on the money.
"To cite but one of many examples, take the widely held liberal slogan "War is not the answer." It is pure irrationality. War has ended more evil than anything the left has ever thought of. In the last 60 years alone, it ended Nazism and the Holocaust; it saved half of Korea from genocide; it kept Israel from national extinction and a second Holocaust; it saved Finland from becoming a Stalinist totalitarian state; and according to most of the people who put "War is not the answer" stickers on their bumpers, it saved Bosnian Muslims from ethnic cleansing."
One reason it resonated with me is that it has been taken for granted in the
past forty years that war is evil. The pro-war side has done little to
combat the claim.
The rest of the article is fine too. I can't comment on its truth (are liberals oversensitive?) since the experiences he describes haven't happened to me.
My insane vegetarian congregant wants to eliminate our meat kitchen as a result of the current Rubashkins mess.
Folks, we all remember the wigs mess and the water mess. The video disturbed me, yes. But let the experts figure this one out and be "mesunim b'din" before deciding anything.