Yes, I Exist
Thanks to all those who commented both here as well as at Bloghead and GodolHador.
First of all, I want to say that reports of my non-existence are greatly exaggerated. I've learned in mussar yeshivas but even there my claims of being a gornisht were met with a sarcastic oikh mir a gornisht. So I suppose I exist (even if some people would prefer that I didn't).
Many people wonder why I don't just become modern orthodox. I'm sure they all mean well. To them I ask the following: Suppose you suddenly realized that what your rebbes had taught you was all based on narishkeit. Would you respond by becoming Conservative? I don't think so.
Why did RAF's letter hit me so hard after all the nonsense that has been spouted already? Until RAF's letter I had fooled myself into believing that this was a battle between kannoim and normals. This was a wake-up call. There are no normals.
But it's not just that I realized that you must believe lies to be frum. Something more important happened. My emunah was always based on the half-baked idea that Jews are miraculous. They're smarter than everyone else, they're more erlich than everyone else. That was the best proof that there must be something real about Yiddishkeit (though I was never quite sure what). RAF's letter wasn't just stupid. Dishonesty spilled out of every word. Dishonesty, insecurity, hollow gaiva. The whole idea that the Jews are better than anybody at anything suddenly seemed worse than arrogant. It seemed nauseating.
More than being disgusted with RAF or any of the others, I found myself disgusted with myself for having lived with so many self-serving shkarim. The first few days, I couldn't bring myself to daven. I couldn't bring myself to wear arbo kanfos. Within a few days not doing aveiros seemed almost unbearable.
If some of you smug wiseguys find this melodramatic, maybe you also don't want to face something. Or maybe you're just spoiled brats who coast through life so anyone actually taking something seriously seems like a drama queen. Here's my advice: don't be smug, it can happen to you.
P.S. In case you're wondering what treif I ate, it was a non-kosher cracker. I thought of trying a cheeseburger but I'm not there yet and it is a bit of a cliche. Besides I'd probably have spit it up and besar nevelah be-chalav isn't assur behana'ah. (On the other hand, then I could've been mekayem the Rambam's nekudah nifla'ah. Hmm.)
posted by Ben @ 11:32 AM
22 comments
22 Comments:
Pplease seemy comment on previous post.
I am taking dictation from HaRav Moshe Eisemann who is calling me from Bnei Brak to send this message to you:
"Dear Eliyahu Zecharia,
I am using Henoch Moshe Levin's good services to contact you, because I don't really know how to handle blogs, and I am temporarily in Israel, paying for my Internet connection, so this way is simpler.
My name is Moshe Eisemann. I am a rebbe at Ner Israel in Baltimore, and somebody forwarded your letter to Rabbi Feldman to me. I would really like to meet with you to discuss the matter. If you happen to live in Israel, I am here until next Tuesday. My cell phone number in Israel is 052-875-8322. My e-mail address is eisemann AT erols DOT com. If you happen to live in America, I hope to be back next Tuesday. My telephone number is 410-484-7396.
And needless to say, you are under no obligation to contact me, but I would be delighted if we could get together.
Best wishes,
Moshe M. Eisemann"
(1) "First of all, I want to say that reports of my non-existence are greatly exaggerated. I've learned in mussar yeshivas but even there my claims of being a gornisht were met with a sarcastic oikh mir a gornisht. So I suppose I exist (even if some people would prefer that I didn't)."
Cleverly written, but we still have nothing more than your assertions, v'al zeh anu danim.
Surely you understand that if you are willing to question the authenticity of a tradition of thirty-three hundred years, it is reasonable for us to question a blog ben yomo.
2) "Until RAF's letter I had fooled myself into believing that this was a battle between kannoim and normals. This was a wake-up call. There are no normals."
Your hava amina is essentially correct; your maskonah is wrong. And false. You must know that there were and are many gedolim in Torah who would never deem a view the Rambam stated clearly [in M.N. 2:8 and 3:14] as kefirah. If you want to know which camp will be considered the yotzei dofen many years from now, it will be the one that posels the Rambam.
3) "(On the other hand, then I could've been mekayem the Rambam's nekudah nifla'ah. Hmm.)"
Great mareh mokom; thanks. But I don't get your humorous angle: The Rambam there in Peirush HaMishnah, Kerisos 3:4, is explaining why you are *not* violating the issur of basar v'chalav in addition to issur neveilah, despite the fact that basar v'chalav would add an issur hanaah. So what's the joke?
In short, you're a fool and a spoiled brat. A fool because you let the most delicious of lifestyles drop from your hands for a cracker, and a spoiled brat because you have a wife, kids, you have been privileged to learn Torah, you're bright and (assumedly) in good health. I work as a hospital chaplain and I see pain and real anguish each and ever day often times accepted with great grace and faith, and yet you kvetch about one Rav's opinion and cry out to your mommy (and in public no less!) that you've been hit. Get a grip, brother!
What I'm wondering, was the cracker really not kosher?
I mean, just because it didn't have a hasgacha, doesn't make it treif, just something we don't eat. :)
While I don't think your extreme reaction is appropriate (at least at this stage), I understand what's bothering you to a large degree. I actually wrote on my blog about how people from the black-hat world can't move to a MO world because we've been taught that the chareidi/yeshivish way is the only truth. Discovering the gaping holes in this supposed truth is incredibly disconcerting.
I don't want to sound preachy as if I'm trying to "save" you, but I would advise you to just make sure you're only throwing away that which you are really convinced is false. Just because something is tenuously connected to the sheker doesn't mean that it doesn't have value in itself. Try to distinguish between the rabbis, the extremists, the halacha, the gemara, the torah, the society, the culture, the masses, your family, your own values, etc. It's not all one big glob that is passeled from one single aspect. Some of the aspects are interrelated and also affected by any underlying sheker, but some are independent and can still be a valuable feature of your life.
Many people wonder why I don't just become modern orthodox. I'm sure they all mean well. To them I ask the following: Suppose you suddenly realized that what your rebbes had taught you was all based on narishkeit. Would you respond by becoming Conservative? I don't think so.
Why not become modern Orthodox or Conservative? That's what people did 100 years ago when confronted with a similar situation. How do you think JTS got its original faculty?
You realize, I hope, that to take you at face value implies you are doing several irrational things:
1. Believed that men, even gadolim, were infallible or more then men, which is counter to Judaism historically and common sense.
2. "Suppose you suddenly realized that what your rebbes had taught you was all based on narishkeit. " No, thats not this at all. Clearly, there is more going on then you write here. I believe the RAF is just an excuse for something you already want to do. You know you can have broader legitimate issues that cause you to leave - please at least be honest whatever your motivations are.
3. Leave a religion because one rabbi you respected, whose view is not authoritative, wrote a letter you considered insulting to your intelligence and based on a world view you don't like.
4. And buddy, to leave on a cracker is just dumb. From my conversations, the non-kosher generally consider cheese burgers to be fast-food, not good food.
I find it insulting to my intelligence that you expect me to believe that RAF's letter singlehandedly drove your from Torah.
Mistake #1 is that you thought that Rabbi Feldman was not a "kannoi." While it's true that he has a bit more polish and sophistication, it ain't for nothing that he was asked to start the Yated and executed a hit job on Rav Steinsaltz's english gemara in the pages of Tradition Magazine some 15 years ago or so.
Your other Rebbes did not lie to you; they were simply ignorant of certain things. That does not make them dishonest.
As anyone can see from the intelligence of many of the responses to the bans and letters, there is a lot of intellectual and moral strength within the Frum World -- whether or not some of its "leaders" demonstrate similar levels of intelligence and moral fiber.
As a simple Ba'al Habus, trying to make ends meet every day, I have learned to ignore the nonsense fed to me by the propaganda machines of the "Gedolim" and instead look to the guy next to me on the subway, trying to finish his daf as he heads for another day of work at job he hates (but does anyway in order to pay his kids' tuition), for inspiration.
As anyone who has worked with suicide attempts can tell you, most (if not all) attempts are simply desparate ways to attract attention. No intention for actual and final death. Same with this guy. He may not have actually "jumped the bridge" as he has claimed, but he does need the attention and has called attention to a festering problem in the yeshivish community. "Religious suicide" is no different than actual suicide and it is the community's responsibility, as much as the inner family and immediate social circle's, to
deal with this issue. So yasher koach to ploni almoni rabinovich for declaring about the jump.
I realise there is some risk in suggesting that you go off and read a Xtian.
But I don't believe that anybody with a solid Jewish education is actually going to be attracted to Xtianity - and Scott M Peck in the Road Less Travelled, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond etc has probably the most accessible discussion on stages of faith (Rav Kook say similar things, but a) rav Kook is not easily accessible, and b) we all know Rav Kook wrote kefira - so I couldn't possibly reccommend him ;-).)
As Scott Peck would describe it, you are having a classic stage 2 to 3 transformation. I would hesitate to say it is normal, but it is not uncommon. And yes, the issues surrounding the Slifkin ban, and particularly writings such as RAF's are highly likely to precipitate such transformations in those teetering on the edge.
The difference is that Scott Peck would say that:
a) this is part of a maturing process that is healthy; and
b) and this is the critical bit, if you can get yourself through stage 3 as well, and not get stuck there, you will end up with a far more sophisticated, mature and healthy faith. That you will understand that a stage 2 level faith, which is what you had, is a necessary prerequisite, especially for a child, but it is possible and it may even be better to, grow up.
So my advice to you is - don't spend your time and energy on treif crackers, they really aren't worth it - spend your time and energy exploring ideas (and after all, if you really are angry at Rav Feldman, don't forget that what he wishes to ban are what he regards as treif ideas).
And there is a world of theology out there, both from within and outside the frum and Jewish world the likes of which were never dreamed of in a classic yeshiva education.
But a lot of the frum Jewish sophisticated stuff (like Rav Kook) assumes that you have read Kant and Kierkegaard etc etc - so my suggestion would be to start with a non Jewish populariser like Scott Peck.
Kol tuv, and don't let your journey get too derailed by anger. While anger is one of the stages of grief (have you ever studied these, because one grieves over lost ideas and lost identities as well as people, and you strike me as grieving over lost certainties) and while one can get stuck in any stage of grief, anger is probably the most common and is a swamp you can get sucked into, never to come out.
Good luck
Chana
you poor asshole, you seem to have ended up with all of the world's dumbest and most boring pricks commenting on your blog. For the love of christ(!) to follow their entangled sentences should require a PhD of some sort. Maybe smicha.
Look buddy, I don't know why mr. feldman's the one who did you in. in fact, I'd say that the very fact that you consider the world to be more than 6000 years old - almost entirely unheard of 30 years ago - oughta show you that you're already done in. See, here's how it works:
"What everyone knows" to be True Torah Judaism changes every so often. A mul it took a good hundred years to change, today it takes only around 20. Nevertheles, change it does - and you, my friend, as a Rambam reader, know that.
The name of the game however (if you're a godol, so you 'good boys' out there hoping to occupy the seat at the head of the tabel at next decade's in-shabbos, listen up) - the name of the game is to claim that azoy was it always. What we all know today, chazal (and all the rest of unzere gdolim through the generations) knew yesterday. The problem though is that in today's world where things are changing so amazingly fast that Slifkin's heretical thesis (accepting an ancient world! and evolution!) is yawningly accepted by most american jews, the gdolim (who oughtta get out more often) are occassionaly a bit too late in stepping up to their responsibility of claiming that "we knew it all along".
Some, like Kaplan, Ohr Sameach and Aish (though not chabad, owing to their needs-to-be-updated rebbe in hibernation) were quicker than others to find the odd mekors for evolution and thus managed to appear unscathed - at least before the hamon am who know not a damn thing about science -- or critical thinking for that matter.
Now the fact that feldman's still a few years behind the times and a bit late in claiming victory in the face of obvious defeat shouldn't be what puts you over the edge. What puts you over the edge should be a round earth, physical (not living) stars, the female egg, the length of the persian empire an d around ten thousand other sillinesses that the malachim of previous generations assumed with the same wrongness (yeah, that's the word I'll use), that they assumed with the same wrongness of ancient primitives of all cultures.
And think about this. If you'd'a been away for a few years and were to only show up ten years hence when the reigning gdolim agree with the fact of evolution (pardon me IDesign), would there then be no reason to question frum beliefs?
On the other hand: Karl Marx wasn't wrong. Religion is the opiate of the masses, but you've gotta admit (with the exception of mind-numbing iyun), it's not a bad opiate.
I'm touched that R'Eisemann cares enough about a fellow person to offer his phone number and his time; it shows that however defective the ultra-O philosophy is, it is still a community which contains many kind and caring people.
However I'm not sure R'Eisemann yet realizes that this is but one cry out, and there are many yet unheard. Really, it's like a finger in the dike.
"However I'm not sure R'Eisemann yet realizes that this is but one cry out, and there are many yet unheard. Really, it's like a finger in the dike."
So let all those contained by the dike contact him.
He has concern and compassion for them all.
Mayim rabim lo yuchlu lichabos es ha'ahavah.
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