Bad rabbis are the problem

As the blog title suggests, we are trying to do things differently here. And by differently, I mean as differently as we need to do. For me, being Torah observant has been a miserable experience. Somehow I have stayed, sort of. I know a slew of people who have left and I'm often on the fence too. But I'm willing to take drastic action to keep things going.

Interestingly, by drastic action I don't mean formulation of a whole new halacha. I know people who try that. Could be that's a way to go but frankly I don't even care enough to try that. Requires way too much work. I'm not looking for a new high, for maximal impact, for vibrancy, for something updated to better match the era. I don't even have enough hopes for the thing to want to do that. What I'm talking about is a different outlook because the one I have seen is negative and destructive and degrading. And I don't want to live like that anymore. I can't. 

To me, the fundamental problem is bad rabbis. Yes, things like washing before bread to stay in practice for Moshiach is really weird. But whatever. I can live with it. Same with not swimming on Shabbos because I might come to make a raft. So is the length of niddah day counting. It's too much. Length of birchos hamazon is too long. I know one guy who is trying to change that. Have fun trying. I'll just say it. I'd have to be much more knowledgeable to know where to change all that and I really don't enjoy halacha study enough to even begin to think about it.

But there's one thing I will change and that is the role rabbis play in my life. Now for many that's the most radical change of all. For most people, it's more unacceptable, shocking, horrible to say that rabbis can be pricks than it is to stop keeping Shabbos. Because rabbis have become the religion. They are the avodah zarah, the idols. 

Do they see themselves as idols? I think so in many cases. But largely the bad ones just like power and due in large part to the sickness that is called zionism they have no other way of earning a living except off of you. In israel boys are not allowed to work lest they lost their draft exemption. The real cause for unemployment of Charedim in israel is the israeli government - may its ministers spend eternity in hell - and the utter worship of the military there. So an entire culture of learning too much Torah has taken hold. By too much I mean people learning when they should be working. And the result of that is too much power for rabbis. It's a long schmooze. Let's just say that there's idol worship everywhere today - worship of rabbis, worship of the state of israel, worship of soldiers, worship of the military, and worship of the Torah. Idol worship. It's all idol worship. It's not subtle. It's so overt that it has become the culture. You might not notice it because it's so common, like a Roman polishing his statue.

So what about rabbis? Let's put it this way, an extremely high percentage of my encounters with rabbis were depressing and degarding. Who the heck are these people? Do they all go to obnoxiousness school? I know one rebbe at a local school who is generally nice to me, but he is a rarity. There is something very sick about rabbinical culture today.

I am not talking about the Moshe Feinstein's of the world. I never met him. Never met anyone from that generation; although I did see Shlomo Zalman Auerbach walking down the street once. And he seemed cool. I saw the Lubavitcher Rebbe a few times. No complaints. He was cool. Not talking about those people. Rav Soloveitchik, Rav Kamenetsky. Not talking about them. I have heard nice stories. And I will believe the stories.

I'm talking about the two seconds before Moshiach generation of rabbis, the pricks who only seem to seek to ruin you, to lord over you. I don't know what they are drinking - probably Brooklyn and Israeli culture ruined them all. Ever see the movie Saturday Night Fever? That's Brooklyn culture. It's low class, coarse, aggressive, profane, greedy, and selfish. Israeli culture is even worse. And unfortunately the frum world is dominated by those two sick places. Maybe that's the whole problem, that plus the two World Wars and Communism erasing what came before. 

So I could give you the long history, how nearly every piece of advice I ever got from any rabbi (much of the time it was not requested but voluntary delivered) just completely screwed me up. I'm talking about major life decisions, minor life decisions, and even decisions about how to look at life.

But I have journals for that. I won't bore  you with it. I ask you to look at your own life. Were rabbis ever helpful? I mean, could be. But I have heard many really scary stories.

Want to hear stupid? In a certain city in the mistake of israel, the charedi schools do not participate in the city ulpan because the influence is deemed negative. Only Chabad has enough sense to realize that if you don't teach the kids proper Hebrew you are going to drive them to insanity. Is the city ulpan so bad? Nah, it's alright. Biggest problem is the screaming israeli teachers. But that's standard in the mistake of israel. And what about these schools that don't participate. We have learned all about them in the last year, how utterly secular they are with their plays and their government this and that and tests and their honoring of secular politicians and their forcing every child on the Internet. They are so traife but too frum for ulpan. All these schools have rabbinic advisors and may even be run by clowns with the title rabbi before their names. None of them are really rabbis. It's all erev rav and just Brooklyn and israeli animalism.

Rabbis are not always the solution, sometimes they are the problem, that's my experience. Again, I'm talking about this era. What does every rabbi have in common -- in my experience, heartlessness. They are all opinions and smug certainty, and it will rub off on you. The irony is it's easy to get away from rabbis. In 35 years there was only one time a rabbi ever called my house to say hello and none have ever visited me. This includes when I moved into small towns and one shul towns. These people don't even know you exist so you can stay away from them easily really. Oh yeah, you'll hear their names. They'll speak between mincha and maariv. Here's a trick. Go to a yiddish speaking place where you won't understand anybody.  Protect your brain.

Rabbis today are an intelligentsia. Read Tom Sowell's book Intellectuals and Society. It talks about how intellectuals screw up the world with their crazy notions. Today's rabbis operate this way much of the time, maybe not absolutely all the time, but even a stopped clock is accurate twice a day.

Tipping point

There’s a tipping point where you go from a thinking, probing independent, human being who is trying to move his life forward to a slave. As Steve Hassen notes, nobody knowingly joins a cult. You get tricked. You don’t realize what is happening to you. With Orthodox Judaism, it’s not after you met the first frummie for at that point you are looking on with suspicion at the strange dress, practices, and speaking manner of this odd colony of penguins. But after enough exposure, you get accustomed to their rabid confidence and their bold promises about how wonderful it’s going to be for you to join them. You don’t know that whoever you are talking is interested in getting paid in cash or a bigger payout in the world of upstairs prizes.

You’ve expressed your hesitations about how you don’t want to give up your friends, your life, and your mind, and he comes back with doublespeak that sounds like doublespeak, but you move forward anyway. Because they are all so quick to answer. And they sound alike so you get fooled into thinking you have encountered a new school of thought. They are so sure of themselves and they make you doubt yourself. You, little pathetic you, can't understand all this. You need decades of study and even then will not be equipped. You must trust us. And you think, we’ll, I can’t understand their crazy oversized books that are written in that cryptic language they refuse to teach me. Maybe I am dumb. Your brain slowly gets beat down. Your eyebrows no longer pop up when you hear of their disgust for the human race, their self worship, and their justifications for every bizarre thing they do. In the beginning, they were strangers. They had as little credibility in your mind as an Islamic Imam or a Catholic priest. Eat a wafer? What? Go away. But over time they become more familiar, not so shocking, and their particular threats of hell take hold of you. You meet more and more of them. Once upon a time, you knew zero people like this. Now you know a hundred. Their jargon and cliches become familiar. If one or two were actually ever being nice to you, you might pretend you have a new home. They talk of the nation, the club, and it's wonderful acts of wonderfulness. You never seem to witness it but like the joys of Torah study and Sabbath observance you hear about it. The problem must be you. They tell you so. The advertising is relentless. And this weakens your resistance further. 

And there comes a point, particularly after they start pounding you with the rabbinical authority talk and the fantasies about these magical wizards they call gadolim, that you give up your mind. They’ll tell you to give up your mind. They tell you how faulty it is. You can’t trust yourself. You need a rabbi. He’ll think for you. He’s so much better than you. But who is he? You are not impressed. You cringe when he says anything. The coarse bravado characterizes so many of them. But they call him rabbi. You know the title means nothing, that it's easy to buy one. But you are trained to utter the name with reverence and to stand up for them all. 

You are excoriated for not having one of your own. You search for one of your own. You beg some strange stupid obnoxious man to be your leader. He gives you six seconds of his precious time and you think he must be important. It all hurts. You start to crave pain. The pain feels like pleasure. If he is humiliating you, he must be your leader. And then it's game over. You have tipped. 

It can take a long time, decades, to get your mind back. You are not allowed to question anymore. You can never question the leaders. How dare you? Do you want to burn for eternity? They have so many ways of describing all the ways you'll regret your actions, so many ways that you'll burn. Questioning the leaders is an act of arrogance, an act of evil. You can't express your complaints. If you do, magical punishments will happen to you. The company is watching. They have invisible little spies. You will be seen. You will be found. You can never question the company, certainly not before the world. You are terrified into silence. 

At that point, you change in every way, in immoral ways that at least give you entrée into the lower realms of their club. It’s like any cult. Don’t think Orthodox Judaism is immune to engaging in the worst tricks of any cult. It invented half the tricks. Before long, your money is gone, your friends are gone, and your identity is gone. And you are terrified of becoming one of those who leave. They have an entire vocabulary, an entire literature about those terrible people who assimilate, who go lost, the losers, the ones who give into their evil urge and leave the sacred club. The penguins before you are those who stayed. Don't you want to be one who stays? Or do you want to be evil? You should ask, maybe joining these people resulted from an evil urge. Aren’t you sort of evil now? Aren’t you crazed, over-confident, immoral, heartless, and twisted? Don't you feel superior to the entire human race even as you feel pathetic within your own group? Aren't you sort of stupid now? 

You sort of don’t notice because you are surrounded by people exactly like that. You went from a person of some educational capability to something that would be a step down for Archie Bunker. You are a boor now and so is everyone around you. They are racist even against their own sub groups, they are sexist against both sexes in different ways. Only the leaders are safe from the ridicule. Like billionaires they steal all the profits, all the praise, all the complements. They have all the money. You find yourself now around people that used to revolt you. And you are ordered to love them and to hate everyone else. You aren’t allowed to be around anyone else. It’s an old cult trick. Us versus them. We are good. They are bad. The truth is here, not anywhere else. Is this how they talked on that first day? It was all promises and high minded talk that day. If someone had said, hey want to feel like garbage? Want to see your life be destroyed? Would you have joined. Like a pimp, they slowly seduced you. You are a whore now. How the heck did that happen? Then comes this. No sex, no romance unless you are married. Your body starts to boil. You are so unhappy but marriage will save you. You see the photos in people's houses. You see the entire society obsessing about marriage and leaping up and down at weddings. That's the answer. That's the missing piece. So you start the dating process and get degraded even more. Now every part of you is assaulted and humiliated. Your mind, your body, your sense of being a human being. You hate the people you are meeting but are told your job is to make one of them happy. Serve her. She is conventional. She doesn't grasp that she is in a cult and you must join if you are to have her. You have been turned out. You are no better than a fag in prison. You don't know how to proceed. Every date makes you feel as bad as every encounter with a rabbi, as every unending Shabbos lockdown. It's all so boring, all so artificial. You barely even know that you don't like this person at all. But on paper it's close enough. They pressure you. And you move forward with it. You get your day of jumping up and down and the rabbis are there again with their paperwork and their devilish glare. You are trusting them again. And you marry some nut who is completely ill fitted for you. And now you can’t ever get out. Even if you figure this all out, you are stuck. They got you. They came in for the kill and they killed you. Oh, the devil knows all the tricks. 

To sum it up

You hadn't been keeping mitzvos. Now you keep them. That's the main thing. That, and trying to do it with your dignity and sanity in place. All the hype, and ambition, and fanaticism only ruins it. Don't worry about being a talmid chochom, or a kollel guy, or living in Israel, or even being a tzadick. You don't even know what all that means so how can you insist on it? That's all irrelevant. You keep mitzvos now. That's it. Everything else is whatever. Mostly jive talk. To keep your sanity, you have to stay away from people because most of the frum world is crazy, especially the rabbis. They are mostly nutjobs and megalomaniacs. Keep your brain and try to manage a peaceful life, with a normal spouse. Don't rush into marriage. Wait for a good pitch. Take your time with dating. Date the person for a damn year if you need to. Never, ever, ever marry in less than 5 months. And if there are red flags, end it or take a break until you get your mental clarity back. Make sure you are comfortable. And men, you are not a beast a burden. If the fucking woman can't get on board and contribute to the dating you don't want her. It's not worth it to marry one of these childish selfish assholes. Wait for a good pitch. Get yourself a home. And proceed from there. Every day you will meet another kook who tries to ruin you with his extremism. It's the greatest danger of being Jewish, all the arrogant douchebags who think they know it all, who try to take over your brain. Stay away from those people and just do your thing. They don't know any better than you. Most of them have never seen anything about life and what they have seen is warped by their looney minds. Don't go near those people. You can survive. You don't have to love Eretz Yisroel or Klal Yisrael. Both are pretty damn hard to love. Pains in the assess. And the state of israel you can't love at all. It's disgusting. So forget all that. Yeshiva is a bad idea in most cases. More crazy rabbis to take you out of reality. Just buy a few books. It's good enough. You try that's all, in a normal healthy way. Good things will come. Don't try to be rich. Don't try to be a leader and a bigshot. Just be normal and happy and private. Happiness is very important. You will not last as a Jew if you are unhappy. So live somewhere that you like with someone you like and keep your hobbies and try to be happy. 

Dangerous for a person to lower himself more than necessary

from Bitachon Weekly:

Chazal say since Yaakov lowered himself before Eisav, calling him Adoni my master eight times, therefore Hashem granted Eisav eight kings before Yaakov had any kings. Reb Yerucham Levovitz points out that from this we see how dangerous it is for a person to lower himself more than necessary; as it can turn around the entire world history. The Ramban says, during the second Bais Hamikdash we caused our own downfall into the hands of Edom by being Mach’nia ourselves to them. This was a result of the Jewish kings making a Bris pact with the Romans, and some even going to Rome which was lowering themselves to Edom. Because they put their trust [Bitachon] in the Romans, Hashem let them fall into their hands. The whole long Galus we are in, came as a result of our lowering ourselves into the Romans hands, as the Passuk says צַדִּיק מָט לִּפְנֵי רָשָע משלי כה כו  a tzaddik lowers himself to fall before a rasha, and Chazal say if a person flatters a rasha, he will end up falling into his hands. Now we can understand how important your self-esteem is for your well-being. It can change your entire destiny. How imperative it is for a person to have a high opinion of himself [and of others]. 

בראשית רבה ]עה יא[ באותה שעה שקרא יעקב לעשו אדוני, אמר לו הקב"ה אתה השפלת עצמך וקראת לעשו אדוני ח' פעמים , חייך אני מעמיד מבניו שמנה מלכים קודם לבניך, שנאמר ]וישלח לו לא[ וְאֵ לֶה הַמְ לָּכִּ ים אֲשֶ ר מָּ לְכּו וגו'. 4 ספר דעת תורה ]לימודי מוסרי התורה מאת רבינו הגאון רבי ירוחם הלוי ליוואוויץ זצ"ל אשר לימד לרבים בישיבה הקדושה דמיר, פרשת וישלח, עמ' רא[ 

First completely forget the past

“And it came to pass, when her soul departed for she died that she named him Ben Oni, but his father called him Binyomin” (35:18) Rochel called her son Ben Oni (“The son of my pain”). Her objective was to commemorate for all eternity that her son had survived a birth during which she was to die, thereby praising Hashem for the miracle of his survival. However, even though her intention was to focus on the positive aspect of her personal tragedy, Yaakov nevertheless felt that it would not be appropriate for his son to bear a name that would serve as a reminder of Rochel’s death, and, to this day, he is known as Binyomin, meaning Ben Yamin, “the son of right”, signifying goodness, physical and moral strength, success and chesed (see Ramban and Alshich). Yaakov wanted his son’s name to serve as an impetus for keeping Torah and mitzvos joyfully with gevuro without any hint of Rochel’s death.

When tragedy occurs, ideally we should be on the level where we realize that, in the divine plan, even seeming tragedies are no less aspects of Hashem’s chesed than any other event. Sometimes this becomes apparent very quickly, sometimes after a long time, and sometimes it will only be understood when moshiach comes. Nevertheless, Yaakov’s intervention (the only time he took an active part in the naming of one of his children) teaches us that the correct approach when tragedy strikes rachmono liztlon, is not to look back at all but only forward with optimism and faith in Hashem’s absolute goodness and to endeavor to continue to serve Hashem with happiness. The name of Binyomin Hatzaddik reminds us that with gevuro (spiritual fortitude) we are capable of overcoming tragedy.

Similarly, a baal teshuva must first completely forget his past, and think only about the future and building up a Jewish home full of Torah and mitzvos, because thinking about past misdemeanors would make it very difficult for him to live joyfully in the present. Part of the mitzvah of teshuva consists in forgetting about the past and living exclusively in the present. Only subsequently, once he has become totally accustomed (or re-accustomed) to living a Torah lifestyle, should he contemplate gradually atoning for past transgressions.

Rav Moshe Sternbuch

Biggest of the challenges

Biggest of the challenges

There are many challenges in becoming Torah observant. The general life changeover is challenging, changes in diet, in clothing, in daily routine, in social associations. Losing friends is very difficult. I'll never get over that. Saying goodbye to 98% of the human race isn't easy, this idea that everything is for klal Yisroel. That's a big pill to swallow for people raised under secular humanism. Limitations in where one can live take getting used to. The style of the literature takes a while to adapt to, abrupt changes in narrative, intentionally non-parallel word order, lessons learned from extra letters - all that stuff, plus that it's all written in a foreign language. The subject matter is challenging, particularly the parts about genocide and slavery and capital punishment for lighting a match on the wrong day. And that's just the Chumash. The Gemara is another ball of wax altogether. And then there's a myriad of halachos: kashrus, chometz, lashon hara, shatnez, perfect honesty in business, taharas hamishpacha, shmiras einayim. And there's the enormous financial burdens. And then there’s feeling like a second-class citizen. And this is the short list. There's so much more.

Just as difficult as all of that, as difficult as it has been, is the sexual frustration, at least for men. Women may not be able to relate. For the men, it's a kind of gehennom. Given how we grew up, to go completely cold turkey, you can lose your mind. For many, this goes on for years. For some it continues in marriage. So if you want to get some grasp on what men go through in that area, consider how hard all the other stuff is put together. Pretty difficult, no? Put it all together. That’s what the sexual stuff is like for the men.

But believe it or not even harder than that is getting used to the negative aspects of the contemporary Jewish personality. By that I mean headstrong, opinionated, stubborn, angry. Few people respect other people's thoughts. In conversation, you can't get in a word. If you try, it's a battle for air time. It's brutal. Your own brain gets stuffed with competing dogmas and you can't think. You feel you are not allowed to think. You are told you are not allowed to think. This makes all the aforementioned stuff 5x harder. Because when you don't think, you can't solve problems, you can't adapt intelligently to the new way of living and seeing life.

There are many challenges in joining the Jewish people. The biggest of the challenges are the Jews themselves. And I’m not a ger. I have Jewish family. And they are quite difficult. But I wasn’t surrounded by that kind of person and authority figures weren’t necessarily that way.

This message isn't intended to scare anyone away. The solution is to get busy thinking and to avoid overbearing people. At least don't take them seriously. Yes, you are allowed to think. You are required to think. The concept of having a rav has become comically exaggerated. It never meant turning off your brain. It means getting some assistance in your thinking, with major decisions. In many respects, we all have to be our own rav. You have to lead your life with intelligence. That means thinking. With that, and God's help, you can get through all the other stuff and arrive at a beautiful destination, one that makes it all worthwhile. 

Teaching a beginner

"One can't begin by teaching a beginner 613 laws or encouraging him to commit to several new practices all at once. Rather encourage him to take on a single good deed.  Ensure that he knows this is one of many good deeds about which he will learn at a later stage. Right now, however, focus on this one good deed. And then we have God's promise that when he will do that deed, it will have tremendous success. Rabbi Saadya Gaon taught, repeated by the Baal Shem Tov, quoted many times in Chasidic teachings, "When you grasp a part of the essence, or a small amount of it, you grasp the entire thing." By encouraging a Jew to observe one of the 613 commandments, it is in fact "a part of the essence." So ultimately it influences that Jew, such that he becomes connected with the essence. Or as the Mishnah puts it, one mitzvah leads to another and the Jew continues to increase in the light of Torah and mitzvos. Moreover, ultimately, this Jew himself teaches others, bringing other Jews to Judaism. He "expels nations" and implants the Jewish vine after banishing non-Jewishness from his own portion of the world. And when many Jews join together, each one transforms the materialism of his own portion of the world and "You implant it." This becomes God's plant. His handiwork in which He takes pride." We go to greet the true and complete redemption when all mankind "will serve God with one purpose." the entire world will be affected to serve God by performing their commandments. And the Jewish people radiate to the nations an eternal light through holding the light of Torah and the candle of mitzvos."

7th Lubavitcher Rebbe, JEM, New World, Old Song, 840