This post has it all wrong.
Yes, there is a Jewish advantage to keeping the custom of one's avos. But to suggest that a person has to look back two centuries to find the customs kept by his great-great-great-grandfathers when they were frum, find a little village in the Ukraine and base his whole avodas hashem on that is unreasonable, unless it's a hobby. But to say you will stop learning a sefer or drive yourself crazy in order to learn another way to put on tefillin is really pushing it. Man, you need a guide.
B'Ahavah,
Yehupitz
It is clear that the Jewish Blogosphere has come out strongly in support of Slifkin. Or, more accurately, it has come out against the process that has condemned him in absentia. The leaders of the Chareidi hierarchy have seriously reduced the support of their strong American centrist (RC) base that usually supports them.
I have just discovered that the Biur Chametz blog put out a request almost two weeks ago for me to comment on the issue. I haven't been a regular reader of that blog, and missed the request until today when I checked the tracking system. In the future, if anybody links to me, expecting me to respond in some way, please e-mail me as well.
I really don't have time right now to type, but I have read yet another series of blog comments that just don't get it. Gil gets it, but many members of his comment community don't.
For weeks, people have been criticizing Cross-Currents, Rabbi Adlerstein, Rabbi Emanuel Feldman and other Orthodox rabbis for not slamming the Slifkin ban and its signatories hard enough. Sure, these people claim, the rabbis are quietly supportive of the general theories, but they're not coming out and denouncing the closed-minded medieval yada yada yada...
Let's get some things straight.
Everybody should realize that there are numerous gedolim and well- respected rabbis who thought the Kol Korei was ridiculous. But an opposing Kol Korei would not do any real good.
There is an Orthodox world out there. There are some...right-wing elements and some left-wing elements... For years, a number of rabbis of a more centrist persuasion have adopted a policy known by one correspondent of mine as "Pas d'enemies a droite", French for "no enemies on the right". I have been told that this was Rabbi Bulman's position. I can testify that in my perspective this is the attitude of Rabbi Eisemann of Ner Israel. What this means is that there is a group of people, including rabbis and gedolim, who feels that the right end of the Orthodox spectrum is quite often wrong or not completely correct.
HOWEVER, as a matter of general policy they feel that since things always gravitate towards greater polarization anyway (a la "It was the best of times it was the worst of times...") it is holier and smarter and wiser and more effective to stay with the right wingers and try to effect things behind the scenes. It's one thing to have enough skill to walk a tightrope. It's far more difficult to cultivate a community of tightrope walkers. That is why despite Rabbi Eisemann's unorthodoxly outlandish views, his children and grandchildren are chareidi poster-children. It's a decision a large segment of the American RC (Reasonable Chareidi) community has made. And in my opinion, it should be respected, even if it makes progress seem slower.
Rav Dovid Cohen spoke about Judaism and science for over an hour at the conference in a standing room only, overflowing out of the room session. He pointed out Judaism's historical relationship with science, going over a laundry list of prominent Jews who were responsible for the main inventions of the western world. He even claimed that a Jew named Berliner invented the telephone, sued Alexander Graham Bell for patent infringement, and WON in court. (Bell Atlantic could have been Berliner Atlantic!)
He quoted the Rambam and Vilna Gaon on the importance of science to yahadus. He quoted the Chazon Ish and other chareidi gedolim who pointed out that Chazal were quite knowledgeable in scientific areas. He did say that there were backlashes at times in history when the rabbonim saw that scientific pursuit was leading to kefira, much in the same way lhavdil that the study of NAch was discouraged for a time when it led to kefira for unrelated reasons.
He proceeded with another laundry list of examples where Chazal have been shown to have scientific knowledge of things that only became known to western scince in the 20th century.
More importantly for Slifkin purposes was his statement that we have been getting way too worried about these apparent questions science poses to Judaism. He stated that there are far more questions on various scientific and medical theories that are still not answered. The scientists who are asked these questions acknowledge the difficulties, look for solutions, don't always find them ,and move on with their lives. We should do no less, and not get all panicky when someone asks a question.
More on AJOP later...
So did AJOP address l'affaire Slifkin?
Not officially, but the issue was brought up or alluded to in two sessions I attended.
Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz M.D. addressed the issue in a session having nothing really to do with science per se. It was a session that had to do with how to present Torah material. It was in that context that he quoted R Moshe Shapiro, one of the primary signatories to the "ban". He said R Shapiro is of the opinion that it is not appropriate to have two Torahs, i.e. one for frum people and one for prospective Baalei Teshuva. He would not be in agreement with the opinion of R Yaakov Weinberg z"l quoted by R Ari Kahn that this type of conciliatory material is acceptable for BT's but not for other groups. R.Dr. Tatz said that all Torah, even when taught to the non-frum, needs to be "pure", and apologetic. If they're not ready to hear something, don't speak of it. But don't fudge it or say something that is not glatt from a frum perspective.
I am paraphrasing Dr. Tatz's views.
More later...
I know that a real blog would have provided live-blogging of the AJOP convention. Alas this blog is not of that caliber. However, for those who are interested, I will provide some highlights of the convention over the next few days.
The highlights of the conference included
Rabbi Michel Twerski of Milwalkee
Rabbi Mordechai Twerski, formerly of Denver, now of Brooklyn
Rabbi Dovid Cohen of congregation Gvul Yaavetz, Brooklyn
Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, Executive Vice-President of the Orthodox Union
These men were not highlights because they are well known. They were the highlights of the convention, including Shabbos, because they were simply incredible. I would recommend this extended weekend to people who have no involvement in outreach whatsoever just for the pure spiritual and intellectual pleasure and growth that these people provide.
More later.
I find this very embarrassing. As Gil pointed out, and I quote:
This is nothing that R. Aryeh Kaplan and Dr. Gerald Schroeder (who lectures frequently for Aish HaTorah) have not said many times already.
The kind of approach that attempts to reconcile the first chapter of Genesis with the various theories that claim the word is billions of years old is very old. I even blogged about it over a year ago!
The only surprise in that whole letter is the name of Rabbi David Feinstein. I don't understand that. Everyone else's name made sense, sadly.
I have a confidence built on faith that if my Rosh Yeshiva Z"L was alive, he would never have signed that thing.
I feel sorry for the various apologists who are probably going to have to pretend that the "Proclamation" is a good thing.
To those of you who have wondered why posting has been so sparse of late, I confess to being a wimp. Being attacked hurts, and when that blogger who is no dove, and is bare of middos, persisted in being despicable, despite my polite requests that he stop attacking a human being, I just withdrew.
I would laugh at the problem if the Yehupitzer Rebbetzin didn't have it. You see, my heilige rebbetzin is l'maala min hazman. her holy wrists stop watches. Actually, I can't vouch for the connection between her holiness and her watches stopping, but they DO stop. All the time.
She decided to consult the Great Oracle of the Universe. (I know, I know, "Tamim Tihyeh Im Hashem Elokecha". But the temptation was too great!) It provided this list of possible prophecies. We chose the second offering. Scroll to the bottom of the page to read about similar experiences.
Please permit me a personal reflection. Today, 22 Teves, is my grandmother's sixth yortzeit. I was quite close with her. While most parents seem to have learned their lesson from Jacob and refrain from favoring one child over other children, grandparents seem not to have taken the lesson to heart. I don't think my grandmother did either. I was her undisputed favorite. But don't tell her other grandkids!
She had an extremely difficult life. My father told me that her parents did not get along with one another. She was married and had a girl when the Germans invaded Lithuania in 1941. The Lithuanians took the invasion as an opportunity to stage a pogrom and killed her husband HY"D, who was from a wealthy local family. Her daughter and mother HY"D were then killed in one of the German Aktions later in the war. Her friends told my father of many stories of her heroism during the war. She was also quite open with many details of her life before and during the war, not keeping it bottled up like my grandfather had.
Her father died in a concentration Camp after the war ended. HY"D. There are two versions of the story of his death. According to my father, named for his grandfather, he died because of the excess food he ate on a withered stomach, after liberation. According to my grandmother's brother, he died in a Typhus epidemic that went through the Camp, also after liberation.
She returned to Kaunas and met a male acquaintance in the street. They asked one another if there was any surviving family. (Each had a surviving sibling.) The man said that his three year-old daughter was alive, having lived with a non-Jewish family from 1943 onward. He asked her if she wanted to be the girl's mother. She said yes. With the shidduch thus arranged between her and my grandfather, my father was born a year later.
They were behind the Iron Curtain till 1971. My grandfather spent one or two years in a Soviet prison for the same reason as Leo Kovalensky, forcing my grandmother and teenaged father to go look for work.
She got on with her life, but there was never any consideration of consolation or of God fitting in. And I understood. Pirkei Avos advises us not to console someone whose dead relative lies before them. The Holocaust affected her in that way. Her dead were always before her in that sense.
Her last years, disabled by a stroke, were an aberration in an otherwise heroic and pro-active life. T'N'TZ'B'H.
Natan Sharansky and his book The Case For Democracy received a lot of press in the USA these last couple of months as the news spread that President Bush liked the book and was recommending it to his aides. I like Sharansky, but the stories didn't actually motivate me to see what the book was about. I assumed it was a book that made the case for democracy. Hence the name. In the USA the concept of democracy being a good thing is really not novel, so I looked no further.
Until a friend of mine sent me a link to this article in the Jerusalem Post that discusses the book. I think it's a great article. The stories alone in the article that depict how Sharansky has been fighting an uphill battle to convince people of his view make the article worth reading. Go to bugmenot dot com for a password if you need one.
I know I know. It's annoying when blogs do nothing but cite other blogs. But I have been a staunch critic of "Oz V'Hadar Levusha" by R Falk of Gateshead since I saw an early draft-pamphlet of it in 1996. I believe in tznius very forcefully. But this book was just so bad on so many levels that I don't want to begin a list of those levels now, lest this post never end.
I have never put my opposition in writing.
With gratitude, I report that Chakira has.
Thank you, Chakira.
Why on earth is an Orthodox Jewish Blog called cross-currents?
Now some of you might think I am over-reacting, or kidding. And in a way, I am. But these writers, with a yeshiva background, should know when something is not tzugepasst...