Does it Get Any Easier?

Greg LeMond “It doesn’t get easier, you just get faster.”

Feeling Human

If you make the religion all about pain and punishment, you’ll wind up doing avairyos just to relieve the pressure and feel human, which is actually how you are supposed to feel, just refined human.

Dogma and Eruv Rav

Some out there have redefined Torah as being extreme and dogmatic even though in the kiruv seminars they promise 70 faces. You start to view rationality as non-religious and compassion as goyish or liberal. You wonder if these people are the eruv rav. We are in our own gog u'mog here with the final assault on the Jews coming not just from within. It's fascinating.

Modern Orthodoxy’s Welcome Alternative

http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/haredi-dropouts-should-try-modern-orthodoxy-first/2013/06/20/

Many of the talented and motivated individuals who leave the Haredi world could choose Modern Orthodoxy, but they don't.

By: Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot

God caused the establishment of the state of Israel

R. Ya'akov Kamenetsky writes in his Emes Le-Ya'akov Al Ha-Torah (Exodus 12:2 n. 17):

It is incumbent on us to understand that the establishment of the state of Israel in our day, after the the great destruction and despair that overtook the remnant, and given the desperate and destroyed status of Russian Jewry, God caused the establishment of the state of Israel in order to strengthen the connection to Judaism and to sustain the link between the Jews in exile and the Jewish nation.

http://hirhurim.blogspot.com/2005/05/religious-zionism-debate-v.html

Inspire You

The great commentators knew they had to inspire you. Didn’t think you could rely on threats. That’s a recent madness and crudeness brought to a peak in the borough of Brooklyn.

Religious Zionism

http://hirhurim.blogspot.com/2005/05/religious-zionism-debate-v.html

R' Meshulam Roth

R' Meshulam Roth was born on 14 Elul 5635 / 1875 in Gorodenka, Galicia (now in Ukraine). His parents were R' Shimon and Elka Roth. At the age of nine, young Meshulam was first taken to the Chortkover Rebbe, R' David Moshe Friedman, and from the Rebbe, the boy learned not only specific modes of behavior, but also to love every Jew and to feel responsible for the well-being of all Jews. R' Roth's teachers in Talmud and halachah were R' Yaakov Weidenfeld (rabbi of Grimaylov and father of the Tschebiner Rav, R' Dov Berish W.), R' Avraham Mendel Steinberg (rabbi of Brody) and R' Meir Arik (rabbi of Bucach, and perhaps the leading Galician sage of the period). For a time, R' Roth also studied with R' Yehuda Modern of Sighet, from whom he gained a strong attachment to the works of the Chatam Sofer.

R’ Roth gained fame as a prodigy, and he became expert in all aspects of the Torah. He also taught himself mathematics and science. After his marriage, he served unofficially as rabbi of his wife’s hometown. Later, he was elected rabbi of Chorostkiv (Ukraine). Although his candidacy was opposed at first by those who did not want a Chortkover chassid as their rabbi, he quickly impressed most of the community with his inaugural derashah, which lasted six hours and was delivered using no more than a Tanach, with no notes or other books.



http://torah.org/learning/hamaayan/5763/tetzaveh.html

Winkler

http://www.unpious.com/2011/06/an-interview-with-rabbi-gershon-winkler/

“You know what? This was a very bad experience, it was sad and sacrilegious in the way that my rich tradition was presented to me, because it wasn’t presented to me, it was clobbered over my head. And it was clobbered over my head with disrespect to my dignity as a human being and my capacity to think for myself.”