Thursday, March 8, 2007

Clean Shaven Rabbis formulating opinions

Reader "N" commenting on Vashti's tail and other Tales:

regarding jumping elephants...its a good article (fun), on the whole and my limited intellect agrees with his positions without identifying any flaws in his approach but there are some things that bother me emotionally;
This Rabbi (Yitzchok Adlerstein?) is clean shaven with a tie and respects secular scientists/science to the same degree as he does talmiday chachomim. He is not completely subservient to Halacha/torah/tradition in the way that an ideal chosid or rosh yeshiva would be....his lot is not primarily within a Jewish society...his lot is with his intellect.......he is not risking anything by floating theories, on the contrary, he is becoming a bit famous. He quotes anonymous Rabbis. This is the very silly. If he was a chosid, with a beard, and he was a conventional guy with a family within some sort of chareidi context (belonging to a society) i could embrace his opinions (which intellectually make sence already).

Also, as the Rabbi described this elephant jumping, I went back and forth,,,, in my anticipation of where this dialogue would go jumping or not jumping and what tosfos meant. This Rabbi took it as far as he could logically but that doesn't mean that his conclusion is the only logical end of this 'thread'. So really, no answer that he posits is necessarily the final answer.

Also, context means a lot. Within a 24/7 Jewish life, week after week, year after year, these seemingly 'contradictions or lack of knowledge exhibited by those who are 'expected' to have ruach hakoidesh' are so relatively miniscule. If you evaluate them quantitatively in the context of all of torah its a drop of water in the ocean. if you do it quanitatively given a lifetime of activity, sleeping, eating, working, learning, davening, these contradictions occupy one seond within a lifetime....

It seems that in the cholent of life and history and Torah there are a handful of random tiny particulars of something that appears to be treif at worst like jumping elephants. It doesn't seem logical to feel threatened by this on the level of learning, nor is it something that should unseat anyone's Yiddishkeit, learning, Yiras shomayim. Nevertheless, if this Rabbi assembles a book detailing these seeming 'inconsistencies', the tiny particulars massed together then seem to embody a really treif cholent, despite them being completely botil in the context of life and torah. If the book is available for scholar types, i don't see it as a problem nor would i have a problem with the Rabbi. But if its created for the masses , I believe the Rabbi is serving himself rather than truth, G-d, or the Jewish people, and skewing the torah for his own notoriety.

8 comments:

  1. Rabbi Adlerstein is not clean shaven, but he does wear a tie.
    Mah inyan "tie" etzel har sinai?

    ReplyDelete
  2. This was a rsponse to this article:

    http://www.zootorah.com/essays/jumpingelephant.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't Slifkin is clean-shaven either, neither is Osama Bin Laden for that matter, or was Charles Darwin, so I guess a beard IS all you need in N's opinion.

    ReplyDelete
  4. For the Lubab, Father Kratzmech is more of a yid than a boy from Lakewood without a beard.
    (for us Jews Father Kratzmech is also more of a yid than your average Lubab-elokist)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Looks like we got ourselves another Snag who's got J---- on his mind. What is it about this Christianity infatuation? It may be time to take the Minchas Elozor's statement re: Snags seriously....

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hey, Tzig.Why don't you check out onionsoupmixs blog to see the post about how real ffb Lubavitchers mix up your rebbe and the Bashefer?
    You are the guys with the J.. problem, not us Jews.You've been gang brainwashed, yingeleh.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ay di velt, iz a shmoller brik, un der ikker, verren shikker un nisht naaren zich.

    ReplyDelete
  8. The whole world is a very strange carrot, and the farmer is not at all afraid.

    ReplyDelete

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