Health, I am orthodox. Daas, thank you for proving my point. The first thing you thought of to do was to discredit me as a non-believer. (at least in torah sheBaal peh) simply because I pointed out to you that it doesn’t actually SAY that talmud torah k’neged kulam. And furthermore, there would never be anyone who would believe that to the point that they would actually put that into practice. Want a cheeseburger? Go ahead!! I did morning seder today and after all, talmud torah k’neged kulam right? Do you really believe that statement? Would you put it into practice? No. You wouldn’t. Because the thrust of the statement is to enforce the importance of talmud torah, and that learning serves as the base of all observance. No rav in the world (past or future) would ever take that statement literally. If they did it would spell the end of torah observance as we know it.
Now that I have established what I meant we can move on to the larger point. In general , there is a trend toward the right in orthodox Judaism today. It is resulting in a lot of discord because instead of it being a machlokes in learning we have moved it out of the theoretical and made it a real machlokes. We have even taken minhag and elevated it to the status of halachah. (a different conversation altogether) And those we see not following what we deem to be the right way we immediately dismiss as kofrim, goyim, whatever (sound familiar Daas?) Ad hominem attacks like :
“Unless I’m misunderstanding, C-A-D doesn’t consider Torah sheba’al peh part of Torah. If Mishnayos wasn’t good enough, why would S”A be better?” DaasYochid
are part of the problem. Did you really think that?
We need to step back from the brink. Sometimes at night before I go to bed I pick up some nach for some “light” reading and I am astounded at the repetition of history. I have often wondered if there is some navi out there, or some chronicler who is writing this stuff down, all the petulant arguments and all the divisiveness. We certainly havent learned our lesson from our own history. Maybe when our great great grandkids read our story they will get the message. Maybe. But I’m not holding my breath.
As for the original post by FarEast, Yes, you are finding that the more out there opinions may be quashed. It is simply a function of the rightward trend in Orthodox observance. I am positive that the “taliban women” are convinced that they have the “true” observance of tznius. Do they? Are we kofrim in their eyes? would they let you post your opinions on tznius on their forum? (yeah, yeah, the internet is ossur. I know) Here is another example. Some younger kollel guys I know referred to me the one day (in my presence) as “Harry” (an apparent reference to my MO looks and therefore shaky observance right?) not knowing that I am aware of the meaning, and certainly not knowing of my years spent in beis medrash. The “inside” joke being that “ha ha he doesn’t know how superior we are to him because we are spending time in kollel and he goes to work every day”. I brushed it off as youthful indiscretion, but it really bothered me that they couldn’t accept that there actually may be other ways to be orthodox then their definition. And that they quite possibly really thought that I was some lesser Jew than them. And that is the crux of it. We are slowly fracturing into splinter groups that can no longer tolerate each other. What are we to do? What are we to do…..