The work of the Sitro Achro

Alan Brill, a Modern Orthodox Jewish studies professor, posted recently a write-up of the thought of Eli Sadan, who Brill calls “the leading intellectual influence of the Religious Zionist world” and “the architect of the religious military preparatory programs, Bnai David, which in turn became a model for the others.” According to Brill, “the average school principal or teacher is a product of his worldview.” It is important to note that Brill admires Sadan and his book His Hands Remained Steady, which Brill summarizes. As disturbing as what follows may be, Brill is not trying to portray something negative but something positive. The write-up gives us a glimpse into the values of the RZ world and how they differ from Torah values and sanity. Some excerpts (I put in bold the most telling sentences):

“The main purpose of Sadan’s preparatory program and of his teaching is to mediate the tension between the ideal Torah view and the requirements of the State, the government and the army (described here in a prior post by Elisheva Rosman-Stollman). To do this, Sadan invests the government and the army with messianic import as the realistic arm by which God’s providence takes place, similar to the kings in the Bible.”

“In his vision, there is never a heresy in the authority of the state. Religion and Torah scholars define democracy. Refusal of orders is not an option.”

“The most important chapter is chapter four where he defines democracy as the collective work of the Jewish people to realize the messianic vision. He is against any form of minority rights, civil rights or liberal democratic principles. Additionally, since the government is like the kings of ancient Israel, he affirms Divine right of Prime Minister and he thinks the military police advance humanity. The message is that the current state is the Divine presence on earth and we have to study the current events through Torah eyes. This is a very strong exceptionalism outside of all secular and liberal understandings of politics and in which everything in the world and in Israel revolves around religious Zionism.

“It is worth comparing this pre-millennial dispensation model to the Evangelical versions in the United States or the anti-liberal democratic Muslim thinkers. How does this compare to American dominionists like pastor Hagee or Islamic democrats like Yusef Al-Qaradawi. My own interest is what does this make of the Jewish religion? Torah study, prayer, ethics, and mizvot take a back burner to realizing the millinarian vision. One should compare this Torah to other recent formulations of Torah, either spiritual or intellectual conceptual.”

“The Third Chapter is on the ideological battle his students will face. For Sadan, there is no freedom of thought in Israel because the left controls everything. Liberal pluralism is entirely wrong and nonsense. We need truth and justice of the Torah to be stressed in the public sphere. Pluralism is not tolerance but against truth and the Torah. For example, didn’t Bibi Netanyahu’s  "Terrorism: How the West Can Win"  1986  already prove that all Palestinians are terrorists but this truth does not matter to the Israeli pluralists and the media who ignore the truth.  Bibi’s book becomes part of the secrets of the redemption.”

“Chapter Six is on the holiness of the State. The building of the state is a mizvah of Torah. The centrality of inheriting the land is the pillar of the Torah. Statements in the Bible such as being a “nation of priests”  or “one nation” and all other statements are about nation building. The whole Torah and its very essence is about state building.  The State of Israel is God’s presence on earth.”

“Chapter Eight is on the possibility of tensions between religious Zionism and the State. He answers that there are not any tensions if everyone is working for the collective. The Prime minister should be treated as an angel of God; he is like a king of ancient Israel given by God. There is a divine right of prime Ministers as God’s chosen leader. We are not to change what most people want.  We need to pray for the success of the Prime Minister.” (End of excerpts. Full post here: https://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2017/07/16/rabbi-eliezer-sadan-rav-eli-sadan-his-hands-remained-steady/)

For me, these are some of the most disturbing words I have ever seen. They resemble the writings of Italian dictator Mussolini. He wrote, “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” and “The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.” And mostly chillingly, “Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.”

Mussolini's fascism ruled Italy before and during World War II, which is approximately the same period in which fascism ruled in Germany, Spain, and Romania and totalitarianism in Japan, the USSR and elsewhere, the same period in which the State of Israel emerged. Coincidence? We see otherwise from the writings of Sadan. It is worth noting that Romanian fascism utilized theology and religious symbolism.

I can't decide which of Sadan's views, as summarized by Brill, is the most off the rails but this one is a good candidate, "The whole Torah and its very essence is about state building." This is such crazy comment that I struggle to see why I need to refute it for any Jew that has ever studied the Torah. Sefer Bereshis and the trials and wanderings of the Avos and Imahos – state building? What about Shemos and slavery in Egypt, the receiving of the Torah? Or Vayikra and its detailing of mitzvos? Was the Talmud, which discusses so many topics, in essence about state building? Can we say anything more absurd? Tractates Kiddushin, Gittin, Brachos, Rosh Hashanah, Yoma, Baba Kama? Rebbe Shimon Bar Yochai in the cave with his sons studying Torah -- state building? How? What was 2,000 years in Exile about? Would Sadan say that the lives of Rav and Shmuel, Rav Ashi, Sadya Gaon, Rashi, the Rambam, the Maharal, the Vilna Gaon, the Baal Shem Tov, the Chofetz Chaim, and R' Moshe Feinstein, to name just a few, who lived in exile, were only a preparation for us and our magnificent work in pouring concrete.

Was the Jewish Agency the presence of God when it was cutting off the peyos of Jewish children in the 1940s? And what about the State and the Yemenite children in the 1950s? When he refers to the military police advancing humanity is that the same military police that knocked three teeth out of the mouth of the little boy in Meah Sha'arim last month? When the national anthem of the country doesn't mention God can it be the anthem of the instrument of God? When the founder of modern Zionism Herzl proposed that all Jews convert to Catholicism was he serving as an instrument of God of the Jews?

And to think that RZs have taken over many leadership positions in the military. One can see why the Charedim want no part of the military as the military is not just a defense force, particularly in the religious units. It's an idol worship, a brain washing, and a madness. For the best rebuttal of all, I give you the words of the world-renown Torah sage and leader HaGaon HaRav Chayim Ozer Grodzensky zt'l ((1863-1940):

“Your honour knows that in the matter of the Zionists and the Mizrachi, I am in correspondence with the Gaonim of this generation, and all of them have decided that Zionism is the work of the Sitro Achro with all its seductions and incitements for the purpose of turning Israel from the good path, and that a great danger arises from it for all the Congregation of the Exile--Heaven forbid--and that all those who venture to defend the Zionists, are no better than they.

“To our shame, some rabbis in our country have joined the Zionists and have founded an organisation under the name of Mizrachi, and they have rejected all the rebukes of the Gedoilei Hatorah, and they pretend to be men with respect for the Word of the Lord. They have founded committees and it is likely that they will turn to your honour. I am therefore informing your honour that all the Gedoilim in our land are perplexed at the matter. In the books of the Poskim there is no suggestion that it is our duty to found a kingdom. On the contrary, our sages, the Tenoim and the Amoiroim, have expressly forbidden this. These rabbis of the Mizrachi have no faith, and do not trust in the salvation of the Lord and their minds have become deranged into believing that in a state founded by the hands of man there will be peace for us.”

[HaGaon HaTzadick HaRav Chayim Ozer Grodzensky zt'l in the Transformation (Brooklyn, NY: Hachomo, 1989) p. 187)] 

Women's violence: Truth revealed after 50 years

Truth revealed after 50 years 'Study determines women most at risk of being harmed by men are those who themselves engage in physical violence against men'.

Prof. Zeev Weinstock of the University of Haifa, one of the world's leading experts on violence between spouses, revealed this week the truth about violence between spouses, a truth hidden from the public.

Weinstock made an emotional speech at the first ever meeting of the Distributive Justice and Social Equality Committee, headed by MK Mickey Zohar (Likud). "For almost 50 years we have known that men's violence towards women takes place in similar proportions to the violence that women use against men in intimate relationships, in almost every culture and society that we know," said Weinstock, "from traditional societies to liberal Western societies.

Advice

"Only take advice from someone you really respect and if that advice doesn't suit you man, don't listen to it." Mitch Hedburg

songwriting is channeling

songwriting is channeling
i've learned to get out of my own way and be surprised by the song

john mellencamp, paraphrased

ORA and Agunos

Important Material

Rashbo in VII:414

David Eidensohn You are fighting a battle with emotion. I leave emotion alone. I present proofs from the poskim, Shulchan Aruch, etc., and that is final. Who can permit pressuring a husband for a GET in defiance of the Shulchan Aruch, the Ramo, the Vilna Gaon, the Beis Shmuel and the Chelkaas Mechokake? Nobody disagrees. The Rashbo in VII:414 clearly teaches that it is forbidden to pressure a husband to give a GET and nobody in the Shulchan Aruch Even Hoezer 77 par2-3 disagrees. Also, when a woman humiliates a husband or forces a GET from him in secular court or other places, and she remarries and has children, those children are probably mamzerim. Yes, let's leave out the emotion. Let's talk facts and mamzerim. They will do the job.

Dorothy lived in Kansas

Dorothy lived in Kansas a wind destroyed four came seeking home the rabbis say wisdom

This is a how the Gemara might tell the story of the Wizard of Oz. This is not to say that the Gemara is a bad story teller but that it is not a story teller. It is a notebook written in short hand. The rabbi is supposed to tell the full tale. The Gemara just reminds him of the barest elements of the story.

The Mishnah is even more succinct. Here's how it might describe the USA's constitutional system:

Three groups. One enacts, one judges, one wages war.

Is there more to the subject? I think there's a little more to say about a political-legal system that came to dominate the planet earth.

Let us not forget what we often forget that the Oral Torah was not supposed to be written down, so when the danger of losing it all due to exile necessitated redaction, the redaction was kept to a minimum. The Talmud is not a textbook and not any kind of contemporary book. In our era of computer based publishing, it's pretty darn easy to put many words on a page, much easier even than in the movable type era, where is was incomparably easier than in the era of monks writing in long hand, which was easier still than in Mishnaic times where paper was a commodity. We are used to books spelling out every detail of a message. This is not how most Torah commentary was written over the centuries.

This means that a shiur cannot consist merely of reading from a text. However, that is exactly what shiurim have become, particularly regular shiurim. Sometimes, you get the photocopy of sources which the speaker uses to patch together a lesson of some kind. That he reads the sources too quickly without telling you where to find them on the page is a separate problem of our problematic approach to Hebrew instruction. I have discussed that elsewhere. But the regular shiur, the kind we experience much of the time, is a reading. Whether it be Daf HaYomi, Mishnah, Mishneh Berurah, Duties of the Heart, or Tanya, the "maggid shiur" just reads without offering much in the way of background, explanation, or insights.

For baal habatim attending an hour a week class, it's survivable, even though not edifying. For children in school it's soul murder. The boredom is crushing. The kids - boys in particular - go 8-5 in a crowded barren classroom listening to a reading of cryptic material. The rebbe's don't explain. It's almost as if doing anything but reading straight text is considered "goyish." I say, reading straight from the text without commentary is goyish. But mostly it's just ignorance.

Many rebbes today are not educators. They are kollel guys who needed to find work. Some are warm people but that doesn't make them interesting, doesn't mean they know how to teach. Teachers have to get into the minds of students. They need technique. Oftentimes, the best teachers were not the best at their subjects. Thus, they developed tricks for acquiring the material. The gifted student is often the worst teacher. A teacher, like anyone in any profession, needs skill.

This involves more than warmth and even caring. I think many of the more well meaning people in Jewish education or rabbinics have gone a little bananas with personal warmth, stories, and song. I once spent a Shabbos with a family that does kiruv at an elite university. I was shocked, stunned to see this very well meaning nice guy fail to share with the students any Torah at his Shabbos table. His whole angle was warmth, singing, and showing off his children in an attempt to advertise the joys of family life - as if non-frum people cannot have family life. Is he really going to compete with the world of secular entertainment with a few zmiros? What he needed to do was say something meaningful before these very bright and intellectually included college students.

Perhaps because Torah Jews, particularly the children, are a captive audience, many schools don't make an effort to be engaging. After all, you have no choice but to attend the school and they can always threaten you with gehennom, that catch all for religious motivation. The focus, particularly in Israel, seems to be more on gaining admission to school, ie the family winning over the school, than the school winning over the family or the student. Also, there is an assumption today, an arrogant one, that the yeshiva world conquered Reform, is sitting pretty, and can wow anyone with the magic of Torah. By magic of Torah I don't mean the magic of true Torah thought, but anything connected to Torah. A cold reading of a cryptic text will do. Just open the book and the magic just flies off the page. Yes, this is magical thinking and possibly avodah zara.

You can always spot avodah zara by the child sacrifice that results from it. Sending boys to stupid wars is an example of martial avodah zara. Ruining children through needless divorce is an example of the feminist avodah zara. Sending non-Hebrew speaking teenagers on aliyah is an example of Zionist avodah zara. And so there's a Torah avodah zara that turns the Torah into a book of magic that doesn't make for a very good school teacher. It may move galaxies but it doesn't move children.

What is the connection to Torah Im Derech Eretz? Just look at Rav Hirsch's writings, he makes ideas come alive. He doesn't just recite them. The German approach is to focus on the world that we actually live in, not mysterious higher worlds. As Rav Hirsch wrote:
God's Law does not deal with things that are supernatural or not of this world; instead, it includes every aspect of a full life which can be lived here below. Therefore these laws are עדות, the testimony of God's truths for all our earthy relationships, and hence they are עדות, because they crown all our earthy affairs with the ornament of human nobility which find favor in the eyes of God. The prerequisite for the true fulfillment of God's laws is knowledge, as thorough as possible, of all the realities of human affairs on earth. (Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on Tehillim 119:99)
I fear that the contemporary focus on schar limud Torah, that compared to other mitzvos, and the kabbalistic effects of limud Torah have produced an other worldly approach to it. This combined with our forgetting that the Oral Torah is Oral even when printed in books has resulted in some very poor educational practices.