A Frum Off the Derech?

I offer you two simple lines:

Speaker at the siyum haShas: "Torah study isn't just another mitzvah."  - Reform Judaism? Antinomianism? Do we not value mitzvot anymore?

"Everything else in the world is imaginary." - Hinduism? Hashem didn't make a real world where our actions matter? When I was in India I become quite upset by how the Indians ignored all the poor street kids running around in their filth and bare feet. "It's all imaginary," my Indian coworkers assured me. That's how they view the world. It's an illusion so pain isn't really pain, injustice isn't really injustice. Your job is to see how it's imaginary. That's what they'll tell you.

But such are the ways of antinomian outlooks. Torah is different. The Lord is One means that He is not divorced from the world. Rather He cares about it and runs it. Just as He is involved with the world so should we be. We just channel our actions through mitzvot that all. All mitzvot are wonderful. Torah study is one of them. Rabbi Joseph Solvoeitchik explained the meaning of "Talmud Torah c'neged culam" is meaning that Torah study connects you to the other mitzvot by teaching you about them.

Beautiful Thought from Tim Tebow

"I believe everything happens for a reason. I don't know what my future holds, but I know who holds my future and in that there is a lot of peace and a lot of comfort."


http://espn.go.com/new-york/nfl/story/_/id/8865345/tim-tebow-forced-new-york-jets-owner-woody-johnson-ted-sundquist-says

ALL the Mitzvot

Wandering between two worlds, one dead

The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head

Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.

     Matthew Arnold

In our times, we are divided into groups, maybe as never before. Each group has mitzvot it keeps, those it ignores, and those it rejects. Some ignore tzniut, staying away from the gentiles in their negative ways, seriousness of demeanor, kedushah, marrying young, and dressing with dignity. Some ignore humility, greeting people with a smile, compassion and compassion for all of God's creatures, betzelem elokim in the sense of respect for people's individual minds as God created them, stumbling block in the sense of not giving people bad advice, bearing grudges, and using the seichel. I don't accuse everyone of course just widening swaths of the groups.

Increasingly the right is giving all the impression that Torah study is the only mitzvah. There are 613 mitzvahs. We need them all to become complete people.

Across the Spectrum: Nahum Rabinovich

Nahum Eliezer Rabinovich (born 1928) is a prominent Israeli Orthodox rabbi and posek, and head of Yeshivat Birkat Moshe in Maale Adumim. Rabinovich began studying with Rabbi Pinchas Hirschsprung at age 14. At age 20, he studied in Yeshivas Ner Israel, Baltimore, where he received Semicha from Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman. He also obtained a masters degree in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. In 1951 he married Rachel Malka Shuchatowitz, the niece of Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman. (Wikipedia)

Text and Tradition Entry by Gidon Rothstein  
"he has written extensively, in particular his 14 volume יד פשוטה on Rambam’s Mishneh Torah.  What makes שיח נחום stand out for me is that it gives us a sense of how he, as a rabbi and posek, approaches halachic issues, not only how he goes about interpreting and understanding others’ works. And that sense is extraordinarily pleasant, since it shows us a man in control of significant swaths of Rabbinic literature, who operates with the substance, tone, and tenor of traditional sources to seek their most proper application to the pressures of everyday life. "

on youtube  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoLASlOVCwo

Accross the Spectrum: Yaakov Ariel

Yaakov Ariel

Rabbi Yaakov Ariel (Hebrew: יעקב אריאל) is the chief rabbi of the city of Ramat Gan, Israel and one of the leading rabbis of the religious Zionist movement. Ariel had served as the rosh yeshiva of the yeshiva in the abandoned Israeli settlement of Yamit in the Sinai desert until 1982 and is currently the president of the Ramat Gan Yeshiva (rosh yeshiva is Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira). He also served as the rabbi of Kfar Maimon for about 25 years.

wikipedia entry

from Marc Shapiro: "I have to say that the more I read by Ariel the more impressed I am, as everything he writes is carefully formulated and full of insight. He strikes me as very open-minded with a good grasp of Jewish philosophy. He is, of course, also an outstanding posek."

Modern Orthodoxy and Academia

Modern Orthodoxy has close ties to academia and often looks to it for wisdom and style. Often this has good results. This is nearly impossible for people on the right to understand, that something goes on in colleges other than fornication and teachings about evolution. I won't explain here why this show ignorance about the true chochmah and maddah that can be found in academia. But what the Modern world often forgets is the problems of the elite university upper west side of Manhattan kind of world. Even the liberal side of that world often forgets just how much big business and big aggressive government is tied into universities. Nearly all the famous ones have big bucks and that shouldn't be surprising. At the University of Michigan nearly all the great buildings were donated by rich guys: Rackham is from Ford money, the Law school from a Wall St. lawyer, Clements from Panama canal money. I'm not trying to sound anti-business and I'm not criticizing wealthy people for donating money to the school. I'm just saying that sometimes academic types live in a bubble and pretend they live in some cloud lined fantasy land. They are above money. Oh yeah sure.

The universities themselves take the life savings and future earnings of millions of kids that really have no interest in being intellectuals and only want to make a living, something schools don't really try to give them, despite appearances and promises otherwise. This whole fantasy effete quality of academia seeps into Modern Orthodoxy, often with very bad results. It's fine for the well paid leaders but not so good for the average Joe. Pre-nups are an example. This is a glamour issue, everyone loves to write papers about it. Does it really help the average couple to start off with a divorce plan? Does it really help every couple to start off life with massive debt from graduate degrees they'll never use? This is a problem with the typical American. How much worse for people living under the frum tax. Same with marrying late for the sake of that graduate degree. Academia feels like a religion. It all seems so holy and truthful. Some of it is truthful. Never forget though, it's built on money to a large extent and where there's big money, there's big untruths and selfishness.

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?