God said it was ok...

Rabbi Slifkin posted this

Which got me thinking...

The only reason people accuse terrorists of being wrong is not because of their actions. Everyone, Radical Jihadist Muslims included agree that killing people is basically wrong. However, Jihadists believe that for the greater good and because, and this is important, Allah wants it - that an exceptions must be made.

Our disagreement boils down to contesting that very assumption i.e. that Allah wants it

Jews, Christians and other theists disagree because Muhammad and the Quran do not accurately represent the will of God.

Atheists disagree because they believe there is no God.

But I think most would agree that given that there is a benevolent and all knowing God, and given that this God wants you to kill some people, that that would be ok. Any moral offense you might personally feel to this directive stems from your short-sightedness. How can a puny mortal questions GOD's morality?

That being said killing Amalek is exactly the same as Jihad. The only difference is targets. The Orthodox Jew thinks that Biblical Jews knew who God really wanted killed and Muslims just happen to have got the wrong people. It follows that the act of religious killing itself is not the problem, the problem is one needs to make sure you got the right guy.

For an Orthodox Jew, I don't think you can object to religious killing per se, unless you deny God or literal word for word revelation. Since these are both tenets of Orthodox faith - I think it's time for Orthodox Jews out there to either rethink themsevles or rethink their visceral repulsion to Muslim terrorism.

Nebach! The poor terrorists are just trying to do Hashem's will, but unfortunately they just made a mistake when they ascribed divinity to the wrong prophet thus killing the wrong people...

Tisha B'Av

There are things to mourn, a lotav shit has happened to us Jews - and I figure one day a year its worth thinking about, but I'm very selective in what I'm commemorating.


I refuse to say kinnot which attribute our misfortunes to our sins. One of the biggest themes in the Tisha B'Av liturgy is how we are supposed to take heart of the misfortunes that befall us and reflect on our sins. I don't believe in many things but this I not only don't believe in but find offensive. People create a God in their own image and strive to imitate their ideal being, people who worship a vengeful God will themselves be vengeful. When one says God punishes sinners one is making more than an ontological statement - one is saying that sinners DESERVE to be punished. And since I disagree with a value that I find so abhorrent, I therefore reject even discussing God in such terms.

I also refuse to mourn a loss of some idyllic age for the simple reason there was never such an idyllic age. The Jewish people have never been better off than they are today, Israel and Jerusalem have never been as prosperous as they are today. I kindav imagine God listening to people crying and saying Nachem on Tisha B'Av and him saying "Jeez! What do these people want from me?! I gave them a whole f'ing country and they're still whining about some fires 2,000 years ago!"

And finally, I honestly don't really care about a Beit HaMikdash. Seems a little silly to me sacrificing hoards of animals to feed/please God. I mean I guess tefillin and lulavs and all sorts of other things are equally silly but I suppose they have more of a tradition behind them. Rabbinic Judaism really only became what it is today in Shuls and Study Halls - not in a Temple. I think my point is that some Jews feel they are not complete without a temple and that their religious practice is somehow not good enough, I however am more than happy to keep doing things the way we've been doing it for the last 2,000 years - i.e. without a Temple.

Even without those things there is still enough to mourn.  We've had a difficult past let's not forget it.

History Shmistory

Harry Maryles just posted on Emes V'Emuna criticizing Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky for refusing to say the bracha "Sh'lo Asani Isha" "Who did not make me a woman" - because nowadays such a bracha is a "chillul hashem".

Of course Chas v'shalom that anyone should change the halacha! It is written it shall be done!
 Harry even admits that this halacha bothers him yet refuses to do anything about it!

And he says such things as:

"It is one thing to question why Chazal instituted something or ask why it was instituted in a specific way – one which seems to contradict our modern day sensibilities. But to reject a mandate of Chazal as recoded in the Shulchan Aruch (OC 46:4) is more than just modifying tradition."

he also says

"It is one thing to not understand the reason Chazal enacted certain things..."

What do you mean "not understand"? What kind of silly rhetoric is this? There is no "question here"! It is more than clear why Chazal enacted this bracha. And I wish Harry would say it straight out. The reason Chazal instituted this bracha was simply becasue they were SEXIST. Say it like it is! None of these vague statements about "offending our modern sensibilities" and "questioning Chazal's reasons". Harry won't even say that one word which explains it all so well - SEXISM.

I don't blame Chazal for being sexist in a sexist world anymore than I blame them for not using antibiotics.

But the fact is that if you follow Chazal in such things you have to admit that you are a modern day man/woman following an antiquated sexist law code.

It is an utterly strange philosophy that would require us to OBEY laws which were clearly legislated in a sexist spirit. It is a symptom of the ridiculous anti-historicism which allows Orthodoxy to continue...

Wake up people! Halacha was not created in a vacuum! It was formed in very specific historical contexts! Treating it like it is some eternal unchanging LAW is the height of stupidity.

Divrei Torah

The way to give a good Devar Torah is to "connect" it to our lives. How does the Chumash speak to me? What lesson can we learn from this pasuk? How do God's words apply to us?

Often I've prepared a good, sound Devar Torah and have needed to consult with someone to come up with a good ending. An ending which makes people feel like this isn't some abstract scholarly discussion (which would be more than enough for me) but is a moral and edifying lesson.  Sometimes I just bullshit an ending that has only the most tenuous connection to the actual Torah. (And therefore we should all be good!) But hey, it's all about pleasing the crowd I guess...

What bothers me is people taking the text and treating it anachronistically. Which is almost inevitable  seeing as the lessons of the text are intended primarily to teach pastoral nomads how to behave when they've plundered a city and the correct way to rape captives. The text's original intent has very little to offer us.

But hey I'm a pretty post-modern guy. I can live with a Death of an Author mentality. I actually like taking a text and imbuing it with new meaning. The text becomes fluid and eternal. The words rise up from their humble beginnings and become something so much more.

So why does it bother me when other people do it?

Because other people don't understand that they're not discussing original intent. They think that the text originally intended to portray Moshe as tzitzit wearing tzadik with a black hat. There is no difference to them between the Torah as it was written and the Torah as it was interpreted. To them there is THE TORAH. And THE TORAH has some great lessons to discuss around the table over some cholent.

And that just bothers me. That people are too ignorant to tell the difference.

My ideal is someone like James Kugel who is cognizant of both the original intent of the text and also appreciates its interpretation and the new meaning it is given as something religiously meaningful..

Incorporeality

It's interesting that modern Jews, at least in my experience, seem so adverse to thinking of God as a corporeal being.

Obviously Maimonides had a huge influence on Jewish conceptions of God to the point where it is considered heresy nowadays by most Orthodox Jews to talk about God's hand or face...

But I think it's more than that. People feel, or at least I used to feel, that a corporeal God was a ridiculous idea. God as a man on a mountain with a big white beard was an absurd notion... Of course God has no body! How could one even think otherwise?

But if you think about it. The notion of a big man with a flowing white beard and a huge golden throne perched on Russel's teapot and directing the events of the world - has just as much evidence supporting it as an incorporeal God.

And I can understand what a big man is, I can imagine it... I can't understand what "incorporeal" means or even explain it. "It's there but it's not physical" What the hell does that mean?

So as far as I'm concerned - if you believe in God - God should be described corporeally - for the simple reason that you can imagine a big skyfather. Jews shouldn't fancy themselves sophisticated just because they avoid describing God with a body. Truth is it's just as silly.

Evidence is evidence and if it's lacking it doesn't matter whether God is an invisible force or a glowing Olympian God.

Judaism Believes...

It really bothers me a lot when people say "Judaism says: ...." or "Judaism believes..." As soon as one has let those two words slip s/he has already said a lie. Judaism is not a monolithic philosophical system. Saying "Judaism believes" is roughly equivalent to saying "philosophers say" or "Americans believe"

When it comes to what "Judaism" thinks about life the universe and everything - pretty much anything which could be thought has been thought. So at least philosophically speaking you cannot say the following things:


Judaism believes in free will and denies determinism


Judaism believes in Heaven and Hell


Judaism believes God is incorporeal


Judaism believes in a Messiah


Judaism believes in creation ex nihilo


All these statements which I've heard way too many times are false. Although one can say that historically Jewish thinkers tend to believe in free will, creation ex nihilo and the Messiah, one cannot state categorically that Judaism believes in these things - unless of course you don't want to include Chasdai Crescas, the Ralbag and some forms of Chassidut in the category of "Judaism".


People don't like uncertainty. They don't want a choice between thinkers. They don't want someone to tell them "Some people think this, and some people think that." No! People want their religion served on a plate. They want sturdy foundations and unquestionable tenets. They cannot accept heterogeneity.

Texts Meaning What They Say

As far as I can tell until the advent of Modern Literary Scholarship, people made a very interesting assumption about any text that they were presented to interpret.

They assumed that the text did not mean what it says.

When it says God raised his hand he didn't really raise his hand.

When the Mishna says one thing it actually means another.

When Reuven slept with Bilha he did not actually sleep with her.

When the Gemara mentions a giant bird it doesn't actually refer to a giant bird. 

The concept of taking a text at face value, of actually taking the words in a text seriously, and assuming that people write what they mean is a very modern concept. It is I believe THE fundamental difference between approaching a text in a modern way and approaching a text in a traditional way.

It's interesting that this does not seem to be intuitive at all. I cannot say at any point in my life before I was introduced to the modern approach, that it ever occurred to me to read a text as it was. I think this has to do with cultivating a sense of objectivity. Our natural inclination is to interpret any text by our standards and sensibilities. Due to almost unbridgeable cultural gap between me and a person living a thousand years ago it is almost inevitable that I will interpret a text differently than the original intent if I try to impose my own sensibilities on it.

Setting objectivity as a goal actually one of the most counter-intuitive things a person can we tend to interpret a text in light of ourselves and put ourselves into the text....