Doing away with mitzvos

"In essence they (the Zionists) are propagating the concept that mitzvos are irrelevant and obsolete." (Rebbe Rashab Kuntres U’Maayon 45-53)

The Xtians did away with mitzvos by replacing them with that man, but not at first. The sentiment at the beginning was to combine the two. Then the mitzvos fell away. Gradual seduction is key. Some Jews fell for it, but others weren’t going to betray their religion. Then came the haskalah. Again, the sentiment was to combine the two. Then it became a replacement. There it didn’t seem like replacing one religion for another, just getting away from religion altogether. It didn’t seem to be as perfidious. But many Jews were too loyal for that. Then came Zionism. Again, it was a combination at first and even there the new element wasn’t new at all, it was a mitzvah of some kind. But in the end, they did away with mitzvos. Today, they don’t’ even care about ‘thou shall not kill.’ Still there were loyal Jews around who didn’t fall for Zionism, at least not full blast. Then came Pilpulism. That’s when the entire religion is built around Talmudic lomdus. At first it was a combination and with a core mitzvah as the focus. What could be bad about that? But it led also to a doing away with mitzvos. What neo-Litvack pilpulist encourages mitzvos? A neighbor of mine once asked me what I had been doing lately. I said, “Mitzvos.” He corrected me “Torah and Mitzvos.” If I had said, “Torah,” would he have said, “Mitzvos and Torah” or “Torah and Mitzvos”? No, not a chance. 

If you ask a Pilpulist to defend himself, he’ll point to the first Mishnah in Peah:

These are the things that have no definite quantity: The corners [of the field]. First-fruits; [The offerings brought] on appearing [at the Temple on the three pilgrimage festivals]. The performance of righteous deeds; And the study of the Torah. The following are the things for which a man enjoys the fruits in this world while the principal remains for him in the world to come: Honoring one’s father and mother; The performance of righteous deeds; And the making of peace between a person and his friend; And the study of the Torah is equal to them all. (Peah 1:1)

The last line is what they care about, Torah is equal to them all. And the interpretation given is that the reward for Torah study is equal to that of all the mitzvos put together. And that gets stretched to one word of Torah study is equal to all of them. And that gets stretched to one word of study is greater than all of them put together even those done throughout your life. And then the Torah study is converted to Brisker lomdus. That’s a lot of stretching and converting. 

Let’s unpack this. Firstly, the word used in the Mishnah isn’t equal, it’s k’neged, which means adjacent to, not equal. The woman is ezer k’negedo, a helpmate alongside of him. And it certainly doesn’t mean greater than. Secondly, the Mishnah doesn’t reference Briskers lomdus which didn’t exist until the late 19th century. 

Thirdly, why would we say that this Mishnah is discussing volume of reward, as one rabbi asserted to me when I asked him why the religion in my experience as a baal teshuvah switched from a focus on mitzvos to being entirely about study. He said that the Mishnah is talking about reward. But is it? I say that it’s talking about at least two topics. The first is a small group of mitzvos, four to be exact, that don’t have a fixed measure of performance. The Mishnah starts by talking about performance, action, unlimited action. Then, it talks not about quantity of reward, but where one receives it. Then it moves to a vague statement that one can take many ways. Indeed, Rabbi Joseph Solveitchik, a Brisker Talmudist, says it means that Torah study leads to performance of mitzvos. 

His view fits in well with the Gemara in Kiddushin where the rabbis debate what’s greater study or action. Rabbi Tarfon says action and Rabbi Akiva says study. The group concludes that Torah is greater because it leads to action. (I heard once that this debate raged on for a year, so obviously the topic isn’t as simple as Pilpulists try to make it.) Rashi explains the conclusion: “because both are in one’s hands.” This suggests that Torah, which is a mitzvah in itself, leads to other mitzvos, so it brings about two mitzvos, the study of a mitzvah and its performance. In that way it is greater. It is a single mitzvah times two, not that one word today equals all of your mitzvos throughout your lifetime, but that study about an action is a mitzvah if it leads to action. Of course, a Mishnah in Avos tells us that one mitzvah brings about another, so even this idea isn’t so simple. 

It could be that what this Mishnah is asserting is the following: Many mitzvos are limited in their time and place, e.g. Krias Shema. But others should be expanded. Don’t just leave over a tiny piece of your field. Leave over a lot. More is better if you can afford it. It’s the same with Gemillas Chassidim (good deeds in the translation here.) It is ironic that Pilpulists have converted this Mishnah into a call for study to the exclusion of everything else when the Mishnah starts by talking about tzedukah. As for first fruits and offerings on the regel, likely these should be expanded because they are expressions of gratitude to Ha-Shem. They are expressions of the heart. There’s irony again as Pilpulists have converted this entire Mishnah into a call for cold activity of the brain. The Mishnah actually discusses action, emotion, and thought.

Now that the Mishnah has instructed us regarding deeds and emotions, it moves on to the intellect. See the Tanya for much more on Torah life including all three. We could have spent all our time on the first two, but you need Torah study to instruct us in the first two. An ignoramus cannot be a chassid. People who mean well but lack wisdom can actually do harm. So we are reminded that Torah is adjacent to all of these. It instructs us how to go about doing. 

Another irony is that the part of the Mishnah that talks about reward (where to receive it), talks only about mitzvos between people: honoring parents, acts of kindness, and making peace between people. If you are to say that the last piece, study of Torah being k’neged, goes with the second piece, then three of four concern other people, and this piece of the Mishnah starts with that.

In sum, it’s quite a stretch to offer this Mishnah as a proof for the Pilpulist doctrine. It’s dishonest. It stretches here, shrinks there, misreads key words until you wind up with a reading that doesn’t fit the Mishnah and misses clear messages of the Mishnah. It all reminds me of what Zionists do in every book they produce. They strip Judaism of basic tenants, one after the next: redemption without repentance, redemption without the Messiah, gradual redemption rather than the exciting miracles we have been promised, and events of sin, violence, and chillul Ha-Shem being redemption. Then there’s how they mangle the Three Oaths. It’s been nullified, it’s only Aggadata as if that makes it non-binding. Manipulation after manipulation to fit their real aim of tossing away of mitzvos. Both sides have the same goal. They just use different methods.  

neo-Litvish rabbis

 

We gotta get you married

I was under the influence of a rabbi (some call that having a rav) who used to say "We've gotta get you married." This is strange wording for numerous reasons. Firstly, he didn't do a damn thing to help me. There was no we. He never arranged a shidduch, never spoke to another party to help out the shidduch, never spent more than 10 seconds talking to me about any one shidduch. He didn't even come to my wedding.

But besides that, it's strange because most of the world says, I hope you find a good woman and then if you really get along for a while you can get married. But be careful. And that's a world that allows divorce. The crazy OJ world punishes and shuns you or more accurately your children if there's a divorce but rushes you into marriage with a stranger even if it's not going well.

This rabbi is saying, just get married, to anyone. Many rabbis talk like this. They slap people together. Or oftentimes, they encourage a decent match for the woman but tell the man marry to anyone who will have him. The idea of a good match for the man is ridiculed. 

As a result, the man caters to the woman during the dating so she'll marry him, and then he can get on with being a proper OJ man. We men just get married and serve God in our misery. Actually we serve the rabbis. The woman is caught up in romantic foolishness, so the man must fool her. He doesn't pay attention to how he feels when he is around her. That's goyish. Just try to make her feel good so she'll marry you and you'll have sons that might become Torah scholars, or daughters who will marry scholars, but if not, (and it's not likely) they will help fill the yeshiva buildings where you'll send big checks for tuition, thus supporting the rabbis who run them. Everything is built around the ruling elites if you haven't noticed. Of course, nobody tells you that at the kiruv singles gathering. 

The nut job rabbis do something else as well. They glorify and disparage women. Women are on a higher plane yet they are irrational, materialistic, and hypersensitive. They marry for foolish romance but they are superior. [They aren't really on a higher plane. That's a myth to go along with all the other myths.] You must indulge them to get to marriage and then again for fifty years for the marriage to survive, yet they are superior. If they were really spiritually superior, you wouldn't have to indulge them. You can't have both at the same time. And so the OJ world is full of contradictions. Just get married to a random person, but it's forever. Women are the best and the worst, all at once. Marriage is going to be wonderful, endure the misery.

Of course you can't question any of this because the divorce rate is lower in the OJ world, so we must be superior. And what about the pain rate? If you go by the angry looks on people's faces and the nasty comments that emerge from their mouths you might say it's much higher for us lucky OJers. If we didn't punish children by making shiduchim impossible for them what would the rate be? 

Destruction is not the goal

 "The Lord will cause your enemies who rise up against you, to be beaten before you; they will come out against you in one direction, but they will flee from you in seven directions." (Devarim 28:7)

"The Torah's ways are pleasant ways and all its paths are peace." (1) Therefore even the defeat of the enemies of the Jewish people need not lead to the annihilation of those foes. Instead, they will flee from the Jewish people but continue to live, thereby enabling them to make peace with the Jewish people and ultimately conduct themselves according to G-ds desires, observing the Seven Universal Laws Commanded to Noach and his descendants." (2)

Lubavitcher Rebbe

Likutei Sichos, Vol. 29, p. 307 in The Divine Prism, p. 210.

(1) Proverbs 3:17

(2) Mishneh Torah Hilchos Melachim 9:1

Kiruv the yeshivish way

So you're a sophomore at Rutgers. Your mother says, why don't you meet a Jewish girl. Your friend takes you to this Friday night dinner where singles meet and you go and see all kinds of attractive young women in various states of dress and this young rabbi stands up and he's full of energy and jokes and starts talking to you about this thing called Shabbos, a day of rest, just like God had when He made the world. It's a weekly paradise he says of family and warmth and good food and meaning. You are intrigued. You are dizzy from all the chatter and pretty faces. 

The rabbi invites you to a class where you'll hear more ideas and even get paid $50 for it. You need the money. Why not? Maybe you'll see that young woman in the red dress again. 

The class is held at a lawyer's office in a room with paneled walls. The lawyer too is energic and friendly as he invites you to come to this thing called Shabbos which means an overnight stay at his house. No professor ever invited you over and you are thinking of going into the law, but a stranger's house? His wife will be so overjoyed to have you over, he says, and the kids love guests. Wife and kids and a professional with a fancy office, and they are Jewish. You figure it must be safe. Gotta try things, you think. You go to this gorgeous house on a street with more of the same. They take to the guest room where your very own towel is folded for you and then off to synagogue where you haven't been for years. The confusion about what's going on leaves you dizzy again but your host explains and seems to care. It all seems so organized and communal and a little bit spiritual. Is this Shabbos?

Afterward, he introduces you to people who keep asking you where you're from, and all the attention from grownups with careers is something you are not used to, but it feels kind of nice, and you go back to the big house for dinner in a lovely dining room where dish after dish is served. It's a new kind of food. You keep hearing the word kugel. It's tasty. Ah and then red meat. These people know how to live you think. The children are noisy and cute as they are paraded before you telling over tales they learned in school.  You head is spinning now from all the faces and songs and food and friendliness and wealth. You wonder, can you have all this?

Fast forward one year. It's six-thirty in the morning. A knock on the door wakes you up and you mutter some words you recently memorized in Hebrew, a language you don't understand, but even the translation doesn't make much sense. You wash your hands with water from a dirty plastic cup that looks deformed with its two handles as you sit on the bed trying not to get wet. You stand up and drape a weird stringed shawl over your head and mutter some more words, then put on your pants and shirt as you try to dangle the strings to your sides. Your roommates are doing the same. You step outside into the noisy Jerusalem street past dull beige buildings and grumpy, unfriendly faces, and head to shul, as they call it. You pass a few bearded rabbis (the guy at Rutgers was clean shaven) who glance at you disapprovingly without speaking and you hope that the way you dangled your strings meets their approval. You feel as if you failed.

Morning services take an hour. It's long. You still can't believe that you have to do this every day along with the afternoon prayers and the ones at night. You feel bad that you don't really enjoy it. It's because your head is so full of filth they tell you. You try to concentrate on words that you don’t understand. The hour passes slowly. You try to follow and just when you think you are getting it, they surprise you with new passages that hadn't heard before. Nobody explains it, they just do it, and you try to find the words in your siddur. By the time you do, the men in the room are saying new things.

Afterwards is what they call breakfast, which means cornflakes and white bread on a dirty table in a dirty room. Then it's off to the beis midrash, the study hall, for three hours of Gemara learning, as they call it. You think, it's studying. Learning is not the right word. You learn a skill. You study a book. The word choice seems off like so many things here. The room is so noisy that you can't hear yourself think which may not matter because the material is so confusing.

The book is written in Hebrew letters which you are learning but in a language that's not quite Hebrew. It's very old and doesn't use complete sentences or seem to utilize a coherent grammar. At least it doesn't seem coherent but you aren't sure because you don't study the grammar like you did in French class. You just say it over and over again. Break your teeth on it they say.

You feel stupid all the time. The rabbis are so smart. That's what they say about one another. And everyone around you holds them in such high regard. You feel yourself getting pulled in by the sentiment even as it doesn't feel quite right.

You didn't know this before but your whole life has been a waste. College was a sewer they tell you. Never go back. America is dying and God wants you in Israel. The rabbis are very aggressive and seem to have an opinion about everything.

They tell you that some day you'll be married. They will let you know when you are ready.  In the meantime, you are horny as hell and that's exactly where you'll go if you touch yourself. Don't even think of going out to meet a girl. You have to hold off for four years until you get enough Gemara under your belt. Four years? You hadn't gone three days without relief since you were fifteen. You hope that you will win the approval of the rabbis so that they'll introduce you to a woman. You remember that Friday night at Rutgers. 

You think about your life in New Jersey. That's gone now. You are saved. You are so lucky. You could have wound up burning in hell. Your old friends are dissolving in your mind like tissue paper dipped in hot water.

This is your new life. You must learn Torah. That's why you exist. What about money? Don't worry about money. The money will appear if you learn Gemara. The rabbis all live in nice apartments, not like that fancy house where you spent your first Shabbos. But you don’t need that they tell you. That’s a baal habayis who isn’t souring. He’s getting reward in this world. He’s not like the rabbis. You wonder if he wonders what happened to you and why isn’t he living in Israel.

You have spent every last penny on tuition. The yeshiva will loan you the rest but you must pay it back someday. You couldn't even begin to pay for a plane ticket to go back to America. But why would you want to. It's dying. The future is in Israel they tell you. You look around at all the soldiers and junky buildings and hear people shouting at one another and think, how can this be the future. But what do you know? Your head is full of filth. The rabbis will straighten you out.

It's eleven PM now. You are exhausted. You feel as if you need permission to go to bed. Your roommates are laying down on their cots so you figure permission is granted. 

You mutter some more words that you are supposed to say at night. You pray that Hashem, that’s the word for Him, doesn't kill you for your sins. It’s a strange word, sounds almost like a pagan deity. They don’t talk about Him very much, except to tell you how scary He is. An image of Yankee Stadium flashes in your mind. You hate yourself for thinking of such foolishness. You hope that Hashem wasn’t paying attention, but you remember that He sees all your sins. He reads your mind. What happens when He sees your dirty thoughts? Does that enrage Him? You think of Yankee Stadium again and fall asleep.

You wake up to knocks on the door, mutter the same words from yesterday, wash your hands, and put on the shawl. You fix your strings and head off to shul. It will be an hour there, then cornflakes, then Gemara. 

Trust Your Gut Feeling: 4 INTUITIVE Rules to Avoid Bad Relationships- Sam Vaknin

 

Ignore the anti-religious statement or two from this ex-Israeli and consider instead his advice on how to stay in touch with your instincts. He argues that religion is mostly about intuition. And yet, in the yeshiva world, they crush all intuition. 

Guard your heart

Instincts are crucial tools for living. Sometime a voice comes into your head telling you exactly what you should do. You don't have so many facts. You aren't so well informed about your options. Instincts say "Do it." Or they say "Don't do it." Many times it turns out that the instincts were right.

It is a still, small voice however. You must be quiet and listen. You mustn't overwhelm this gentle voice with force of habit, the force of convention, or bullying of oneself via the channeling of voices of others.

When you become frum, there's lots to do that you are not used to. It doesn't always feel good as you train yourself in this new way of life. Part of you objects. You force yourself. There's lots of this on the road to teshuvah. But one must be careful not to overdo it.

You want to eat a cheeseburger. You tell yourself no. You have no choice. You want to drive on Shabbos. No. 

But there are many areas in the life of the BT where you have choice and pushing yourself can be unhealthy. 

For me, trying to fit into the different groups did me harm. First there was the yeshivish people. The Talmud itself says to study what you want to study, but yeshiva people steer you away from all kinds of material. They tell you to live in their neighborhoods. They tell you to drop out of college. They make fun of your tweed jacket. 

There are no halachic requirements in all of that. So, too, hating goyim. I tried that for decades. It never worked. Disparaging secular studies. Never worked. It only shut down my feelings, shut down down my instincts. 

I felt the same way about traveling to shiduchim. To me, it's outrageously unfair to force the man to do all the work, particularly for older women who have been saying no for decades. It's not just unfair, it's impractical, because it seemed to me that when the man schleps to the woman he looks pathetic in her eyes and that causes her to reject him. But I made long trips anyway because I was told to, over and over again.

Living where I didn't want to live, doing work that I didn't enjoy-- yeshivish rabbis pushed me into all of that. The result was a comprehensive shutting down of my instincts that tried repeatedly to be heard by me, but I had become deaf.

The modern orthodox people have an agenda of their own. Chief among them is an obsession with the state of Israel. It is hard to function in that world if you aren't in love with the state of Israel and everything it does. I have had as much trouble with that as I have had trying to hate goyim. 

And then there's all the feminism. I once said to a modern orthodox rabbi that I could appreciate the attempts to make religious life more palatable to women but felt that we should do the same for men. He blurted out, "I don't know what you're talking about," and walked away. 

To fit in with such people meant to shut myself down. And I did that thousands of times. I did it all day long.

I reached a point where even my religious observance wasn't my own. I was just pleasing my masters and trying to stay out of hell. I was dead inside. I operated from a kind of depression. That must be what Avodas Hashem means, I thought. 

It was not just the rabbis. It seemed at times that it was everybody I met in the frum world. It's not a society where people accept one another. The women in shiduchim were particularly outrageous. They had their requirements and that was that. The modern wanted you modern. The yeshivish wanted you yeshivish. It didn't matter what they were or were not. They made demands all the same. Making lots of money was one of those demands.

The Rambam recommends the middle path. Yes, there is halacha, i.e. basic halacha, but you don't have to pursue chumrah. Yes, there are social conventions and pressures, but you can't say no to yourself all the time. Living in a part of the world that suits you, working in a profession that's tolerable to you, studying the parts of Torah you enjoy, pursuing the kosher secular activities that enliven you, and approaching shiduchim in a way that doesn't sicken you -- these are reasonable accommodations that will protect your individuality and your instincts. 

Be brave. Have faith. Pursue the middle path and ignore the ideologues who push you to their extremes. Be careful who you go to for advice because most of the time what you get isn't advice but rather a dagger in the heart. That's not good for preservation of instincts. And you need them. People will come and go, but your own mind is your best friend in the end. Shlomo the King said, "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." (Proverbs 4:23)