Insensitive and Over-sensitive

[Many people today]...act like children and experience religion like children. This is why they accept all types of fanaticism and superstition. Sometimes they are even ready to do things that border on the immoral. They lack the experiential component of religion, and simply substitute obscurantism for it....After all, I come from the ghetto. Yet I have never seen so much naïve and uncritical commitment to people and to ideas as I see in America....All extremism, fanaticism and obscurantism come from a lack of security. A person who is secure cannot be an extremist. (Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, from a talk with social workers).

And how much worse it is today. He was talking 40-50 years ago. The extremism today in secular politics and the Orthodox world is frightening. Do you really have to advocate either oil wells on every beach or abortions in every home? Are there no other options, something in the middle perhaps. Likewise in the frum world it's either black suits or lady rabbis leading Friday night davening. Every time I enter a shul I feel the pull one way or another.

We can talk long and hard about the elements to this. One of them is that the right tends to be insensitive and the left over-sensitive. Many on the right don't yield for anything, don't work the halacha for the person's situation even when they can. Certainly Moshe Feinstein was known to find heterim for people. I'm talking about today's leaders and middle-management rabbis in particular. On the left, they can be too accommodating. Let's not offend anyone ever. I heard of an interesting case where a moslem was interested in Judaism but the shuls were afraid he was a terrorist. I suggested, have him eat pork. If he respects Judaism, well Judaism sees no problem in a goy eating pork. If he's a secret Moslem he won't eat the work (we hope). People on the left said to me, you can't make him eat pork he was raised a moslem. But the whole point is that he no longer wants to be one, so if he thinks it's false there's no problem. They said it will offend his Jewish leanings. I said it's like having the gentile violate shabbos during his conversion process. A rabbi told me I don't make people do that, it's silly. I think he means also it's insensitive. I say, it's better than pushing him away. The over-sensitiveness actually causes a greater hardship on the guy. I couldn't get these people to understand this.

Another example is not putting pressure on young people to get married (not necessarily to any one person but to somebody). You have to remind them that going through life alone generally (not always) is a disaster. This seems so insensitive to them. But isn't it worse to let them ruin their lives?