AviraDeArah

If overturned, it would be a kiddush Hashem, because at least some states would be able to completely criminalize and prosecute abortion as a crime, since as noted, it’s clear that bnei noach are commanded against abortion. It would be a cultural step in the right direction of lesaken olam bemalchus shakai.

What could be wrong?

Social media personality who exposes far-left teachers…

I met a shomer shabbos yid who was a member of the polar bear club. They swim in the ocean in the middle of winter.

You find it weird that Hashem would give us halacha to follow because it’s what’s best for us and that sin is harmful? Hashem gave us mitzvos that are arbitrary? Some muslim philosophers believed that, that was their version of chukim.

Ever go to 6th grade day school and learn that treif is metamtem es halev? I learned that in an MO school.

The mitzvos and halacha are called an aitz chaim, they are ki haim chayenu…this is “weird”?

That’s how seforim explain the difference between yiras shomayim and yiras chait; yiras shomayim is fear of Hashem, either punishment or awe of His greatness, and yiras chait is fear of the spiritual damage of the sin itself.

That’s what we have gehinnom for, to cleanse us of the lichluch hacheit.

If there’s anything “welrd”, it’s your notion that such basic judaism is “weird”.

What it sounds like, is that everyone is simple minded neanderthals, and that you’re god’s gift to humanity – a being of pure reason who is a shining beacon amid a sea of uneducated and unintelligent subhumans.

Read your own statements again; the arrogance is hard to describe. Who if not people in yeshiva understand gemara? Just you? Just academics who study it the way they do Shakespeare?

Rav belsky told me that the OU checks every chabad shochet to see if they have elohistic views.

Kuvult, not only do 10 year old non frum kids play differently, they live completely different lives. That was true when i was a kid, and is even more true now, with twisted gender, alphabet soup ideology being fostered onto preschoolers.

When i was a kid, if you didn’t want your 10 year old to have a Gameboy, want to watch TV, movies, etc, you would keep him away from people who had those things.

In our time, 10 year old kids have smartphones, or at least access to them. They do play very, very differently than yeshiva kids.

Believing in a man-god is a true/false issue. There aren’t two sides to it, unless you think they and Christians have a valid opinion.

Nome, does Holocaust denial bother you? If so, is denying the Holocaust a worse evil than denying Hashem?

What about people’s opinions of…slavery, racism, etc? Does it bother you? Why does it bother you and not torah issues – is it perhaps because *let people think what they want* only applies to issues which you’re dispassionate about?

Kuvult – who arbitrarily decided that middos (one mitzvah) is more important than kedushas aynayim? Isn’t that also a character element? Or are we going just by who’s “nicer”?

We’re disagreeing not on the need to shield one’s children from objectively bad and harmful things, as I’m sure you’d agree that you wouldn’t want your kids visiting classmates homes who are operating a meth lab and who smoke and drink with their children.
We’re differing on what is harmful. I believe halacha decides what is harmful, and unfiltered internet, television, the potential for inappropriate mixing in with siblings of friends of the opposite gender, and food that might not be even kosher, all are individually enough of a reason to prevent unnecessary contact.

If you think those things are “petty”, well, “אם לחשך אדם…על תתגר במרעים, דע שאינו אלא מהם”

My former “friends” completely abandoned me the minute i stopped watching movies with them and donned a black hat. They repeatedly tried to influence me to not become more observant (i am not referring to the hat; i know some will say “you mean a black hat makes you frummer?”…. that’s not my intention)

Nomesorah, as a talmid of one of the biggest talmidim of rav aharon (who only having been there for a year was approached to write mishnas rav aharon; he declined and went to rav berel subsequently at the encouragement of a friend who also became a major rosh Yeshiva), i am sorry but this is simply mistaken. It’s as demonstrably false as the people who go around saying that the satmar rov wasn’t *really* anti zionist. Talmidim of the talmidim are all still around, go and speak with them instead of getting information online or from people who left the yeshivos. My rosh yeshiva never referred to rabbi yoshe ber as the bostoner rov, i believe you are conflating that term with what the brisker family of rabbonim refer to him as – “the bostoner soloveitchik”. If anyone was a “bostoner rov” among briskers it would have been rav Mordechai savitsky, who was a major posek and lamdan who was rov of the yeshivishe sector in boston.

There’s a big difference.

Kuvult, nost MO graduates are far worse than their upbringing, or far better. Of my graduating class of around 20, 5 became yeshivishe, another 5 became frummer, 10 or so went off or practically off.

The period when we started growing apart I’d say was in the late 80s and early 90s. Kolel was a strong force on the klal, bochurim brought back toras eretz yisroel with them. Yeshivos such as my own switched to white shirts…that was incremental. The divide between non MO and MO grew vastly during this time. I’m in my early 30s; i grew up in the 90s. Kids my age were being told not to go to little Harry’s house, because we(myself included) were not a good influence on yeshivishe children.

If you want to know about the yeshiva world – talk to the guys who learn in yeshiva. Not the ones who are stragglers who hang out outside beis medrash. Not the ones who daven withoit hats and jackets who happen to be in Lakewood for one reason or another.

Talk to the core, center of lomdei yeshivos and kolelim. While you’re at it, talk to roshei yeshiva and roshei kolel. They won’t tell you that rabbi kook is more poular than before. They won’t tell you necessarily that he’s the way I’m describing, because like i said, most talmidei chachamim have better things to do with their time than ponder the legitimacy of someone they don’t have any connections with. It’s history, and it interesrs some people! Myself included, but my interest is due to my interactions with teenagers who are at risk of being affected by rabbi kook and others. I don’t talk about rabbi kook with my yeshiva friends, chavrusos, or anyone else for that matter, because there’s no need. No one is “gores” him.

Prior to the gerus issue, i noticed many yeshivishe rabbonim were pleased with eliezer melamed; we try to be accepting and open to those who are mevakhei Hashem, but time and again we are shown to not be so trusting…

edited

Y18, i have to say that this is probably the most civil conversation of zionism I’ve had on here, and i appreciate your tone and willingness to hear the other side.

I think that when we say chazal speak in melitzos umesholim, they’re chazal, and there’s a mesorah (be it kabalistic, metaphoric, or otherwise) in how to interpret what they’re saying – they know that they’re transmitting Torah, and they’re speaking its language. It’s not that they’re personally involved or emotional and thus inhibited from being able to be clear about their intentions.

Nomesorah; unless you’re experience in the yeshivos is reading online bloggers who call themselves charedi, can you please tell me which talmidim of ponevezh, mir, chevron, or lakewood, mirrer Brooklyn, chaim berlin, etc have written perushim on rabbi kook’s seforim? I’d be pleased to know.

Rather, what it sounds like is analogous to my experiences with chabad bochurim. They come frequently to my yeshiva on kiruv missions, on yat kislev mostly, and on some yomim tovim. One time they remarked that my yeshiva was chabad oriented because, while ignoring dozens of woefully unfamiliar names(that the rest of the frum world mostly knows well) they noticed one of our roshei yeshiva was a chabad chosid (prior to the rebbe’s ascension as head… I’m not sure what his feelings were of him). It’s with that kind of myopia that they and religious Zionists view pur world. To be honest, i might be the same way if I visited a religious zionist school and noticed a picture of, say rabbi tzvi yehudah kook sitting next to rav shlomo zalman – it’s natural to notice things you’re familiar with, but the difference is that I’m aware of it and won’t draw conclusions based on such feelings.

It was precisely rabbi kook’s grafting of nationalism on to Judaism that was his major, overarching issue. The shevuos are an issue too, but disagreeing about their applicability is an area which one can argue in halacha(erroneously, according to the vast majority, more on that later) and still be completely within the mainstream of halachik judaism.

Nationalism means that a nation is defined and distinct based on characteristics like a shared language, land, culture, and ethos.

Judaism always believed that being a jew is defined by following the Torah. The din of yisroel is passed down by mothers, but it can also be acquired by conversion. Thia, rav elchonon writes, js the greatest refutation of zionism. Secular zionism believes in redefining the jew from a religious construct, created in the midbar (hayom hazeh nihiyaysi l’am, today you are a nation to me – by matan Torah, not in eretz yisroel), to a nationalistic one, a person defined by shared lineage, land, history and language.

Religious zionism said that one is a jew because of (insert italics) both things. This is precisely why rav elchonon said “zionism is avodah zara, and religious zionism is religion mixed with avodah zara”

Rabbi kook was the architect behind this ideology.

The shevuos are a different issue; the taanos you mentioned (and fhere are others) are invalid for a few reasons:

Consent of nations: this is a machlokes in concept, and the maharal holds it isn’t valid. According to those who hold it is valid, including thw avnei nezer, the Balfour declaration was not agreed upon (insert italics) by the people who lived in eretz yisroel, and their suroundings, hence the war that started the day of the declaration of independence. England also reneged from this agreement as a result of widespread terrorism on the part of the Zionists and intense pressure from the Arabs. They were mesalek themselves from the whole issue, letting the Zionists hash it out with the Arabs, and that they did.

The question of the oaths being mutually violated is a bit more nuanced. There is one opinion which says this, but it’s not mentioned by the rishonim and achronim, such as the ramban, rambam, rashbash, piskei riaz, maharal, etc. Even according to that one shitoh, which goyim violated their oath? Germany and a few other European nations. The grand mufti supported Hitler(largely because of animum to zionism!) But did not kill or even expel any jews, and neither did the arabs living there, nor did the British, who were fighting Hitler and his killing machine.

So why should one nations violation of their oaths invalidate ours to others?

To answer 3, nikraim ke’echad on shabbos is necessary because of the shiur of melechea machsheves being 2 intelligible characters. On tefilin implication alone is sufficient

Nomesorah, what backlash did rav elchonon receive for his statements? The satmar rov did receive criticism for his resistance to the majority who permitted voting and his issur chitun with them, but for calling out rabbi kook? Who was bothered by that to the point of public condemnation?

Aside from the very unique exception of Rav Yaakov emden’s statements about rav yonasan eibeshutz(an issue that rav hutner said is the one area of Jewish history that is impossible to understand) we don’t have any other machlokes in which one side considered the other to be reshoim. Sharp differences, yes, but not to that level. Like i said, that’s an excision on a personal level, but rather than dwell on rabbi kook the gavra, i focus more on the individual opinions and actions he professed. Before him and after him, no one condoned such beliefs or statements. Therefore, he was not mesorah-based, and any statements by gedolim about him need to be taken with that in mind. Haskama on a gavra to me means very little if the same gedolim would recoil in horror if you told them that it’s ok to praise chilul shabbos and that such people are better than the frum.

I’d like to reiterate that if we take rabbi kooks words with a grain of salt….is there such a thing as a gadol too caught up in poetry and philosophy that we cannot take his words directly as torah? That itself is a disqualification. We might not take mekubalim at face value, because they were talking to people who were on a very high level of learning… The arizal was talking to other mekubalim, after all. Rabbi kook was talking to everyone…where do we have a person accepted as a gadol whose words cannot be accepted as they are because of their personality? Torah makes a person above personal bias.

I will agree that at one point, rabbi kook learned a lot of torah(this is why i continually refer to him as rabbi), and the only context where it is appropriate to point out his non-gadol-ship is a constructive conversation about why his views are incorrect. That’s my policy on rabbi yoshe ber too, though his issues are probably less consequential than rabbi kook’s, in my opinion.

As for my own, i used to think only European people made chicken soup from bones… because my european grandparents did so, and my parents never went to the trouble.

AAQ, how is the chofetz chaim not wanting to be known as a kanoi and desiring all jews – even unobservant or heretical ones – to learn toras Hashem make him sympathetic to rabbi kook or zionism?

There’s a world of difference between rabbonim who were happy to have a place to go after the Holocaust, and those who were nationalistic, who believed in a state as an ideal, in contrast to the mesorah of how jews ought to behave in galus. Rabbi kook in oros wrote that the souls of the ochlei nevelos and mechalelei shabbos and kofrim bashem were “yoser mesukanos”, on a higher level than frum jews.

This is the pri chatas of not believing that only Torah matters, only Torah makes us Jews, only mitzvos connect one to G-d. All the kabalah in the world cannot go against that basic fact.

Religious Zionists as a result routinely give weight to other things besides torah. They believe it valuable to serve in thea army, that any and all soldiers are martyers and holy, despite living with women in the same barracks.

They turn to tanach instead of chazal to justify their positions, believing themselves to be heirs to the davidic dynasty. A false moshiach if there ever was one.