Thank you for writing this. I wanted to write a piece responding to Ash basically along these lines (ironically in defense of OTD crowds) but you've spelled it out better than I can. I do understand where Ash is coming from and where you are coming from. This is ultimately the consequence of poor choices by Jewish society. I am sorry it was not a home for you. It took much for me to rediscover my home in Judaism. I wish you luck in navigating this newfound freedom. It would be almost impossible to feel at home when you do not feel welcome. This is something I can resonate with.
You are essentially agreeing with my point! I was not criticizing the OTDers for not feeling at home. That is gaslighting them. I was criticizing the culture that made them not feel at home.
The OTD truth seekers exchanged one religion for a secular one. Your mistake was seeking Ultimate Truth which only HaShem knows. You as a religious New can only know human limited Truth. Torah truth for humans and somewhat decided by humans. "It is not in heaven" . Humans have a role to play in developing that Truth in this world. Let us say within the 13 Articles of Faith.Return to your Faith! Not necessarily to your Yeshiva Faith. You scorned YU and it's Roshei Yeshivot.
Torah and Madah I was taught there and have been developing all my life! " Not in heaven" not necessarily by your Roshei Yeshivot. I am faithful to the Torah not necessarily the Torah of your Roshei Yeshivot but more to my Roshei Yeshivot and Orthodox religious thinkers. That is your OTD problem. You can regain your zeal and dedication to Torah by rejection some of what was your previous "Truth" Their are many religious "Orthodox"approaches to Torah not only the ones you have been exposed to. You were exposed to what
we call "Girsa De Yankuta". Stand up and be Counted!
>>>Your mistake was seeking Ultimate Truth which only HaShem knows
Do you see how your reason for believing here is explained as you already believing? That's very circular of you.
>>>You as a religious Jew can only know human limited Truth. Torah truth for humans and somewhat decided by humans.
More circular reasoning. You might as well say that "we must believe that god is real because he's real."
>>>That is your OTD problem
You seem very angry here, and you're also rambling.
Do you have any constructive critiques, or does your entire position consist of "You need to believe the Torah because the Torah says that you need to believe" and "We know the roshei yeshiva are teaching the truth because the roshei yeshiva have told us that they are teaching the truth"?
>>>This is ultimately the consequence of poor choices by Jewish society. I am sorry it was not a home for you.
I wonder what about this piece makes you think "this is ultimately" what it's all about, when it seems clear that he wrote about how the problem with Judaism is that it pretends to be true when it's not. This is not a bad outcome based on poor choices by Jewish society, or even a segment of Jewish society.
Rather, this is the inevitable result of the original teachers of Judaism pretending in the original era to the early practitioners of Judaism that this was real. Maybe from then onward, each subsequent generation of practitioners was sincere, but that doesn't make it true. And then we get to now, after 1000 or 2000 or 3000 years of it being upheld by its practitioners as true, and it had previous eras when no one had access to information and guidance regarding deep thought and critical analysis. It's inevitable, then, that a false belief that has only recently been assessed as such will trigger rejection by the people who are insufficiently blinded by emotional bias to observe and react to it.
What can be done about this? Well, it certainly depends on what the objective is. One way to fix this is to just admit that Judaism isn't true, but that it's just the way we want to live. Like all the people who play catch with their kids when they're 5 years old and then graduate to playing with mitts when they are 10 years old and taking the kids to games and eating the crackerjacks and memorizing the stats and collecting the cards...all the things that can be considered an American pasttime where grandfather and father and son can bond over their love of baseball. It's just culture, and any comments to the effect that "baseball is the best thing" is just something they say to promote the thing they already think. But it can't actually convince anyone that doesn't already believe it. So when a kid goes OTD and says, "ehh...baseball is for losers, I like basketball!" the grandfather and father can't complain. Maybe the kid doesn't like their parents and wants to rebel, so it's an emotional rejection, and so maybe the way to confront that is with an emotional apology, to say sorry for whatever emotional damage there was in the relationship that led the kid to reject baseball as a proxy for rejecting the father and the grandfather. But no one in this analogy would ever say that baseball is better because it's actually better. Because there are families where the thing that ties the generations together IS basketball...or fishing, or whatever else.
But I imagine that Judaism can't and won't do that. Because it's staked out its position for too long and with too much enthusiasm that it's embarrassing to admit, "oh, you're right...this is just what we want to do, like baseball."
>>>I am sorry it was not a home for you.
Even if people leave because they were manhandled by Judaism (metaphorically speaking), it's still not true, and so many people care about that today. Not everyone. But let's please not pretend that it's not a question and it's not a problem for Judaism that it's very demanding and not true.
To say, "don't step on the crack or you'll break your mother's back" is something you can say that's not true. And it becomes burdensome very quickly...there are a lot of cracks. But who cares if it's not true, one might ask. Your parents did it and your grandparents did it and people died for this belief. Some people just don't care about truth, and that's fine...no one's here to tell them what to do. As they say, it's a free country. But please just don't pretend that it's true and admonish people for not believing in your nonsense. Go do your nonsense, if that's what you want to do.
>>>It took much for me to rediscover my home in Judaism.
You might have felt alienated, but you must not have felt the lack of validity, because I don't see what comfort you could have reached after that unless you stopped looking.
I cannot tell you how much I identify with what you write. As someone who has learned in Kollel for 13 years with tremendous "hasmadah", and mastered large sections of Shulcan Aruch B'iyun, this strikes a deep chord with me.
You are correct in saying that if Judaism would've been just a culture, I would've never have even had reason to question its truth claims.
My issues started when I actually took everything seriously. When a question in Hilchos Shabbos, Niddah, Cheilev (all "issuray kareis") became an almost life-threatening question (as it can affect one's eternity and possible murder one's children), my Judaism morphed into an all-consuming nightmare of trying to avoid evil while shunning any pursuit or even people that were not conducive to furthering my tally of Olam Haba points. Being the expert in Halacha that I was, these fears expanded to every possible action, speech or thought. According to the Frum therapists I developed OCD, though in my opinion, it just depends on if you actually believe this BS or not.
Great thought provoking post. I will write a response when I get a chance.
1) may I cross post this to my own blog?
2) I was extremely careful NOT to blame anyone who went otd of doing so due to tayvos. It was a reflection of what frum Jews should be asking themselves, why would people render themselves deliberately less happy just to escape said religion. I also am extremely careful not to say that my own versiom wouldn't have had you leave, merely that you would have left with less contempt. You end of your article is part of the point I'm trying to make.
3) I do not think we should have a culture of pushing things down ones throat. This is my main point. The sefardim are actually pretty good at avoiding this and such parents are included in the system, unlike ours.
4) The edit was quite ironic in that sense, I see what you mean.
5) That alsk is precisely my point. The geshmak of contemporary limmud hatorah is pretty much based on a lie. Theyres no attempt of trying to figure out original pshat, or attempt to use modern methods of learning, or updating ones halachic conclusions based on ones learning lekula. So that dishonesty will meet with contempt and hatred. And the geshmak in my mind is largely artificial because it needs to be based on truth, as opposed to a culture which need not.
6) I still would prefer to raise my kids in modern day Lakewood culture than secular culture when all is said and done, as I'd rather my kid know brachos than, as OTD writer Sholom Auslander writes, know every move of the Superbowl halftime show dance and the singers that perfotm it. They aren't going to replace brachos with ABCs, I assure you.
"And yet, with all that passion, with all that love, we still couldn’t reconcile it with the claims of truth we were taught. It wasn’t for lack of exposure to the beauty or richness of the tradition. We lived it, we cherished it, and we embodied it; many of my friends sitting around the fire sharing the same pepperoni pizza far more than I. But love alone couldn’t override the nagging, unrelenting, and often horrifying realization that the foundation we had built our lives upon didn’t hold. This wasn’t a rejection born of ignorance or rebellion. It was the heartbreaking acknowledgment that what we had so deeply revered no longer made sense as a source of ultimate truth."
"...the beauty, the richness of the tradition...we lived it, cherished it, embodied it..."??? Really? Not embellishing just a little bit?
And what did you suddenly encounter that made the foundations crumble and all of it no longer make sense? Some academic Jewish studies?
1 - The smell test? What are you, Shlomo Hamelech?
2 - Am I am embellishing? I don't know. It was very real and very awesome and filled every facet of my existence. As somebody who's been in Yeshiva for many years, do you not relate to my description?
3 - it was a long journey, I was very shelter from the internet, and I started out with very simple questions in the rambam, the yud gimmel ikkrim, the cruelty of some of the mitzvos, etc. I was certain there was answers, but the more I looked, the stranger the picture became. Only much later did I start to online research to see if anyone discuss these things and kind of discover the whole blogsphere apologetics world. I was already basically a full atheist before I heard the word "kuzari".
Which of the 13 ikkrim were problematic? Which mitzvos could you not find moral justifications for? And most importantly, Where did you look to find answers?
>>>Which mitzvos could you not find moral justifications for?
[The secular definition of morality would be non-standardized, as secular just means "rejects the claims of religion." There is nothing binding secularists together, much as there is nothing binding non-astrologers together or non-fairyists together (i.e. Trump, Harris, Clinton, Putin, Zelenskyy, Netanyahu and Sinwar are/were all non-fairyists). I will use definitions broadly accepted and used by the likes of Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty.]
Morality can be defined as promoting well-being by secular thought, but by religionists, it's more in line with being in line with the will of a god. As secularists reject the claims of a god, there can be no agreement among religionists and secularists. There might be massive overlap in a Venn diagram of things that would both promote well-being and be claimed as the will of god, and so the phenotype of morality might be aligned. But as the way one arrives at these conclusions would not at all be the same, the genotype would not be aligned.
Now I can answer your question.
All commandments, both biblical and rabbinic, which promote well being can be candidates for moral edicts. All that are immaterial to reality, and so necessarily not promoting well being, would not be moral.
Some commandments are not just neutral but actually run counter to well being, and so I would refer to them as immoral.
>>>And most importantly, Where did you look to find answers?
I respect you too much to think that you really find the Torah a moral book, and so I would maintain that all reasonable people, you included, get our morals from the same place in the modern age. We look to our sense of fairness and compassion and love and derive our sense of morality from there.
Do you think homosexuals should be put to death for their sexual acts? Do you think the penalty for sabbath violation should be death? How about the abominable treatment of women in Orthodox Judaism? It's only because of your indoctrination, perhaps, that you do not consider the misogyny of Orthodoxy as a problem.
Let's take a look at Deuteronomy 21:10-14
10 When you go to battle against your enemies, and God delivers them into your hands, and you take them captive
11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her, and take her as a wife
12 you will bring her home and she shall shave her head and trim her nails
13 and she shall remove the clothing of captivity, and shall remain in your house, and mourn for her father and her mother a month, and after that you take her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife
14 And if you have no delight in her, then you shall let her go, but not sell her for money, you shall not treat her as a slave
Society has improved in civility over the centuries since this was written, and if anyone were to act this way today we'd be appalled by their behavior. In fact, Hamas seems to have acted in this way, and there hasn't been enough outcry over the behavior of the captors towards their captives, but what is the problem? Hamas found girls among the Israelis captured and they raped them, which is what is described here in Deuteronomy. Would you consider Hamas' behavior immoral, and if so, why? Because they didn't permit the girls to shave their heads and trim their nails...does skipping this step make the forced sexual activity immoral? No...because we've improved in our perspectives since these atrocious directives were first codified. We don't care that Hilchos Islam permits attacking enemies, whether in defensive or even offensive war. We don't care that their version of Tosfos might say that protecting land is like pikuach nefesh. We don't care you can find an imam or a conservative cleric who would say that jihad is really in your heart, and that innocents can't be killed. We don't care that maybe there's a sha'as hadchak heter to kill and rape and lie and back out of negotiations. Even if the koran and the hadith do not explicitly permit most or any of this, we don't care if there's a general minhag that would endorse or suggest or permit it. But what if they do? If your view is that your god is real (even without any good evidence) and that his instructions are real (even without good evidence), then how can you complain when they make the same claims, also without evidence. It's been said that we should respect one another's religions, and maybe you didn't make such a claim and so I can't hold you to that. But if they have their own made up god, they will have their own made up god-given morality, just like the Jews who think you can't pass your wife the car keys after she menstruates and you can only sit with her at the table alone with a bottle of hair spray situated between the two of you.
We wonder when we read about women not being able to travel abroad or attend university or previously even to drive without express permission from and perhaps even with direct supervision from the males in their lives (fathers/husbands), but we do not permit women to divorce without their husbands' permission. And it's atrocious. And we all know it...but we're too busy protecting our needlessly harmful way of life to do anything about it, all because we love Shabbos zmiros and Purim costumes.
So I find answers the same place you would want to if you permit yourself to think for yourself. Judaism is only more moral than it was once because of the friction of secular morality forcing it to change from the outside. But from the inside, the Torah is perfect, so how can there be any progress? It's only when one considers these things deeply, when perhaps one's sister is an agunah or one's son is gay, that one might take these issues of morality as seriously as they ought to be.
I'm not here on this thread to convince anyone of anything. For the third time, I want the author to back up his incredible claim: that he went from deeply committed Ben Torah to a full blown atheist by just learning classic Torah sources in the BM with a critical eye-- without any help from academic literature.
I'm not buying it.
And this will underscore a point I want to make when I finally get an honest admission.
If you want to have a separate discussion about the evidence for and against the 13 Ikkarim, you can e-mail me.
For me personally, my belief in chazal, prophecy, Torah misinai, prayer, moshiach, and several other ikkarim was strongly eroded before any real engagement in external sources, primarily through engagement in traditional sources alone. But I'll be honest I never considered atheism until I read up on atheist literature and found some of their arguments convincing.
Have you never read his other blog Ma Limaala? He describes how he lost faith because of stories about murdering babies. Maybe @Ben Torah could link to it
I want to focus on the theological and ethical angles because the author claims he became a full atheist just by what he encountered in the course of his Torah learning--before any exposure to information found outside the Beis Midrash.
This is the part that I don't find credible--because in all my years of experience with frum skeptics, no-one lost their emunoh because he bumped into Rav Akivah Eiger's unanswerable kashe in Yevamos about tzaras habas...
That's not what people mean when they say theological issues. These would include the problem of reconciling a clearly deterministic universe with divine reward and punishment, the entirely subjective process of public perception being ultimately responsible for which popular books became considered Gods word, the entire underlying reason for all of this being reward and punishment yet this is wholly invisible in all of God's written covenant in fact a very different conception of the afterlife is clearly alluded to, how a few conmen introduced a fabricated belief system (Kabbalah) in the early second millennium which fundamentally changed our halachic practice in numerous ways etc. Those are just a few
No offense, but since the author made his claim, I'd prefer that the author respond about his own personal journey from the beis midrash to atheism without any exposure to outside literature. You don't encounter notions of "a clearly deterministic universe" or "entirely subjective processes", or any of the other issues you mentioned while learning a Tosfos in Bava Kamma.
>>>No offense, but since the author made his claim, I'd prefer that the author respond about his own personal journey from the beis midrash to atheism without any exposure to outside literature.
Also...maybe the author is wrong? Maybe he's the dumbest guy anyone has ever met. This doesn't mean that Judaism is true. He's not the high priest / pope of Atheism (capital A) such that if you demolish his position and how he got there, we all need to follow suit.
Contrast this with so many of the people I meet who, let's say, look to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks as their go-to guy for inter-religious understanding and teachings. He speaks and writes about this topic in a way that your standard Lakewood and YU and everywhere in between rabbi does not, and so many look to him as their authority on all things hashkafa.
When he has a sit down with Richard Dawkins and comes out looking like a fool for the maneuvers he makes, you have two options:
1) Follow the route of inquiry and admit that Dawkins was better and give up
2) Hold out, complain that Sacks betrayed you and the Judaism and find someone else to follow.
While you may not like #1, that seems more honest. While you may prefer #2, that seems quite unreasonable. It's seeing the outcome and then re-deciding how you should position your argument so that you don't chas v'shalom reach an unpalatable end point.
Fair enough, but to be clear nothing I mentioned is reliant on information gleaned from outside literature. It should bother anyone that Rambam completely made up a list of 13 concepts he considered fundamental which became the standard in all of judaism, without them needing to know that he did this wholly from Islamic influence. And there are many more problems visible purely from the inside of a sefer. Hundreds of differences seen between the talmudic version of the torah and our Masoretic version are all compiled by R Akiva Eiger in M. Shabbos I believe. That is a major issue. Idk his personal journey but there are many many huge internal issues without even considering science or history.
As I sit - though worlds תרתי away - and read through (Blackbird humming back of my head), I can't but connect to your post - yours and his. Most of all to the nostalgia.
I've experienced it myself, in a way. I was of different age, with a different set of friends, different situation, different outcome. Still, all the same. I still find myself back there, occasionally.
Nice to connect for a bit on this lost corner of the internet.
Wishing you well. Cheers.
(Random rec If you haven't already: found Chaim Grade's "My Quarrel" utterly beautiful, as well as Shmuel Ben-Artzi's short שבתי. They take me back every time.)
Judaism comes in many flavors. The fact that the Lakewood version is not compelling for many speaks a lot to the 'derech' of the litvishe gedolim and not to yiddishkeit itself.
A friend once told me, before someone goes OTD it should be mandatory to try another version.
How can someone even think that they have mastered yiddishkeit because they are boki in shas and poskim? How about picking up a Tanya? How could it be that people would literally give up their life for something that makes no sense? There has to be more than whatever BMG have to offer.
“A wife with very long hair asked her husband for a new comb because her old one broke. The husband apologized that they couldn't afford it because he needed to purchase a new watch, which he needed for work. That night, he shows up at home to surprise her with a new comb because he changed from a field worker to an office worker, and now can use the clock in the room...only to find that she had cut her hair that day and sold it to buy him a new watch. Very profound.”
There is an active online community that during Covid met virtually weekly. It is less active now but it still occasionally meets either online or in person
A famous line comes to mind. “Hate the player, Don’t hate the game”
I sometimes feel that we get into our heads a little too much. And it’s hard to get out. I see how the act of eating treif can help you do this.
But maybe it’s more about getting out of overthinking everything?
Which I realize is also something certain parts of the frum community would have a problem with.
Just a question, once you finish the pizza, bentch, and wrap up for the evening. What comes next? I don’t mean to be facetious I just worry that acts of defiance without a structure or a game plan result in directionlessness.
I find your conclusion funny, because the Torah claims to have made us benei chorin. Only someone who follow it's ways is truly free. Can it be you find it freer to veer off the path?!
Oy, vey, Ash. Your note on this seems even worse than your previous post.
Do you really want that Judaism should be "just as a Mexican celebrates Cinco De Mayo without believing in Mexico and an Italian celebrates Columbus Day"?
If so, I'm out. I have zero interest in being just another culture in the melting pot of America.
And if I would have such an interest I don't know if would choose Judaism as my culture.
No. My point is though if that we can both believe the Torah is a divine document that needs to be followed and created a culture of acceptance and warmth. The sefardim do it very well in Israel, where you can have in one family a range of frumkeit. No reason it can't be done in the Ashkenazi community as well.
I agree that the approach should not be one of harshness and harping on Gehenom etc. I had the impression that the community was moving in that direction anyway though there is still much to be desired.
whereas I think there is objective criteria to measure the beauty of Judaism, such as the unparalleled high rate of marriages, low rate of divorces, high fertility, and the fact that Charedim are demonstrably the happiest people in the world (as Israelis consistently rate as one of the happiest people in the world and Charedim consistently rate as the happiest people in Israel).
I think you are missing 3 fundamental points which enabled Judaism to survive and thrive, to the point where after thousands of years it is the only culture which has proven itself capable of standing up against the melting pot of the monoculture and continuing to thrive.
1. It has a Truth claim, stronger than that of any other religion.
2. It has a strong element of irrationality.
3. (built on the first 2) It has a rigidity which doesn't bend to every wind.
Now, I definitely agree that the current Charedi culture takes all these 3 points way too far. I think we should be capable of forming a Judaism which satisfies all these 3 requirements and is palatable to highly intelligent highly rational people.
But ch"v that Judaism should be just another culture.
I mean that’s expected. Different people come to different conclusions even when faced with the same fact set. I understand some people finding things compelling that I simply don’t. Do you not understand how some people might come to different conclusions than you?
Perhaps because you haven't considered things from outside your perspective. It's very difficult to do so and can be extremely harmful to the things you hold dear. But if you're already here, I don't feel bad getting you to question your own ideas.
As Matta Dillahunty would ask, do you care if your beliefs are true or not?
Some people will answer no, and if you respond in this way here, then it provides you with an off ramp to the discussion points found here and in similar parallel substack pages. But if you DO care, then you ought to question your beliefs and challenge them to see if they will remain intact after rigorous scrutiny. And if someone does that and finds that these beliefs are unable to withstand critical analysis, then how can one still believe?
I think that's what is meant by "the foundation eroded beneath us."
>>>What I wrote above were a number of notions which popped into my head when I thought about the profundity of the Torah. When profundities pile up, it makes me think and act like there is much more to this than a mortal man could invent.
I think you're just reiterating what you've heard from charismatic rabbis who don't actually produce any substance in their comments. Profundities in storytelling abound, which is what separates Candyland-level writing from Chess-level writing. For example, it's very profound to make Voldemort's wand be a brother to Harry's wand. She could have developed that more, but she didn't. This story is also very profound:
A wife with very long hair asked her husband for a new comb because her old one broke. The husband apologized that they couldn't afford it because he needed to purchase a new watch, which he needed for work. That night, he shows up at home to surprise her with a new comb because he changed from a field worker to an office worker, and now can use the clock in the room...only to find that she had cut her hair that day and sold it to buy him a new watch. Very profound.
Can you point to even one thing in the entire Torah that couldn't have been written by a mortal man of the Bronze Age?
>>>Look at the natural world and tell me this was random.
The theory of evolution does not posit random changes, but directed changes. It's the opposite of random. The term "natural selection" means that nature selects for those traits which are best suited for the environment they find themselves in, and you subscribe to this view because you experience it...you might just not have realized it.
For instance, male fish of a particular species can be anywhere from bright to dull on a spectrum. The females are choosy for bright males, and so the brighter the male, the more his genes will make it to the next generation. But if he's too bright, he'll be more likely preyed upon prior to mating, and that will prevent his genes from making into the next generation. That's called sexual selection, which is a sub-type of natural selection because females naturally will often select for the brightest or the loudest or the strongest male. All of these superlatives are essentially wasteful. It's a tremendous waste for the male elephant seal to consume so many calories just so he can beat up the rest of the males when they make it to shore before the females and stake out territory on the beach. But nature is not about making sense...it's about who can win if there's an opportunity to take advantage. So it's like complaining at your interview that you didn't get the job because of how wasteful it was that the other guy got his MBA from Harvard instead of online at the University of Phoenix. Complain all you want, but he'll get the job. And also complain all you want that he has wore a custom tailored suit while you went to Kohl's, and complain all you want that he was wearing a Rolex while you got a $2 watch from Temu.
While the small males are complaining to the non-existent god or peanut gallery, the bigger and bulkier male will impregnate all the females in his territory. There are no referees in nature.
So if bigger males can command larger beach territory and protect it from smaller males, the larger males win and they get the females, who show up a few weeks later to give birth to last year's pups and are impregnated by the biggest and strongest males from this year's beach fights. That's how genes get passed on. It's the biggest or the fastest or or most elaborate or the sneakiest males who get their sperm into the females eggs and yes, it's all natural and it's all so wondrous. We mustn't contaminate that beauty by positing an unnecessary god.
Now, which mutations pop up in order to be selected? Yes, that's random. But no more random that which old lawyer or computer programmer died that triggered there to be an open spot at the firm that then needed to hold interviews. No one would say that getting a job is random, even though parts of the system (open spots, for example) are essentially random relative to the new people who are looking for positions.
>>>free will vs. that Hashem is managing the world
I'll direct you to Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky and others on free will. But it seems you've confused something here, as the religious people often say that there is a god and humans have free will, while many atheists will maintain that there is neither a god nor free will.
>>>Why is there evil in the world?
I don't really understand your question. What do you think evil is? Are deaths due to earthquakes evil? Are deaths due to crocodiles evil? Are deaths due to malaria evil? Are deaths do to bank robbers evil? I wonder if you could clarify your position and your thoughts so we could flesh this out more.
>>>Why be a Jew?...There is G-d consciousness and we bring it into the world.
Again, this is a non sequitur. There is no reason to pose a god and so there is similarly no good reason to assume a god consciousness. What does that even mean?
You seem to repeatedly begin with conclusions and work backward to justify your premises as though they are so obvious and clear, but they're not.
>>>Why the Jews? Why are we in the news all the time? It doesn’t make sense unless there’s some bigger Plan.
Again, another non argument. Since the Jews promote themselves, they are in the news. The homosexuals and transexuals also promote themselves, and they're in the news...why? There must be some big gay plan.
>>>I look at answers in Judaism and it just makes sense.
So far, you have presented no answers and nothing you've said makes any sense as an argument for Judaism. Do you observe that, at least? Can you see that you're essentially being asked "Why do you assume a god?" and you essentially continually respond, "because I assume there's a god."?
Sass will make you feel better, but it doesn't take the place of good answers to damning questions.
Slifkin just published an updated version of Al HaNissim:
-------------------------------------
And we thank You for the miracles, for the redemption, for the mighty deeds, for the saving acts, and for the wonders which You have wrought for our nation in these days, at this time—
In the days of Netanyahu, along with Gallant and the entire IDF, when the wicked Hamas launched a terrible attack for which Israel was appallingly unprepared, and then Arab militias and governments rose up against Your people Israel to slaughter them with guns and rockets and missiles and drones. But You, in Your abounding mercies, stood by the Jewish People in the time of their distress and sacrifice for the nation. You helped them wage their battles and defend their rights. You helped the Mossad neutralize Hezbollah fighters with pagers and walkie-talkies, you helped the Air Force neutralize their rocket arsenal, you helped the air defenses of Israel and its friends successfully defend the country against ballistic missiles from Iran and the Houthis, you helped the brave and committed soldiers of the ground forces in Gaza and Lebanon. You performed dazzling miracles with Syria collapsing overnight and Iran's axis of offense collapsing. You effected a great deliverance and redemption for Your people Israel against terrible threats, and may the world recognize this. May Your children be able to return soon to their homes in the Gaza periphery and the north, may our hostages return home, may our soldiers be successful and safe, and we shall give thanks and praise to Your great Name.
-------------------------------------
How can one differentiate between all of this happening in a world where there's actually a god vs in a world where people are merely wishfully thinking there's a god?
I was giving you another opportunity to provide good reason to believe any of these supernatural things you say you believe. After a certain amount of time exposed to the idea that you can't just say you believe when you have no good reason to do so, the observant must recognize that their observance is mere orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. If one is no longer under the justifiable assumption that it all makes sense and that one's doing these things for real and good reasons, then one transforms into someone doing these things for bad reasons.
>>>You’re just going to have to accept that I don’t need “proof”
This is what the person dangling from Orthodoxy over the sea of orthopraxy says. Just like the orthodox have no suitable justification for their belief, they similarly have no good justification for saying "I can do whatever I want!"
Of course you can do whatever you want. But that's the same as saying I can move the queen like a knight. You can do it, but you're no longer playing chess. So, too, if you have no good reasons to assume there's a god, then to just say, "yes, but I still do because I want to" is no different than saying "I want to move the queen two steps forward and then one to the left." So you might think that you don't need proof or evidence of good reasons, and you think that this is a good rebuttal. But when you're asked why you don't think you need any of this and how can you tell the difference between thinking you're right and actually being right, you have no answer. Religious people are making a type one error when they think they see or observe or perceive a god, because they do so when he's not really there. How can one respect a god, as Happy is so intent on demanding, when he's not there?
>>>You’ll never have proof for your side.
The more you respond, the more it's apparent that you have misunderstood the opposition. Of course the natural would couldn't have come about randomly! If that's what you thought, then no wonder you thought religion was something true and therefor valuable to cling to. And here's another profound misunderstanding...that you have no evidence but that the atheist also has no evidence. No evidence is needed to reject the null hypothesis.
You have no evidence that fairies exist and I have no evidence that fairies do not exist. What is the reasonable thing to do in such a situation? I would say that it's to disbelieve in fairies until such time as there's sufficient evidence to warrant belief, and when there is, we'll be compelled to do so. It's not a matter of choosing. Only the people who have been indoctrinated and are unsure of the mechanics of belief would suggest that they can choose to believe something, like you are doing now.
And so we don't have evidence for fairies and we don't have evidence for god. Or for Santa, or for angels or for goblins or for magic. They're all the same.
>>>I see more evidence that there is one
You've said this about 8 times now, and have yet to provide even 1 piece of good evidence. Do you think this reveals something to yourself and everyone reading it, that all you can do is say "I have so much evidence!!" but can never, ever produce it? Do you recognize that the Christians and the Muslims and the Hindus also shout out "We have a god and we have so much evidence!!" but they also have nothing to say past that? They, too, can only pull evasive maneuvers like you and everyone else here on this blog who says something like this, such as:
"I don't have to prove anything to you"
"I don't have time to talk to you right now"
"I'm too busy dealing with Houthi missiles to reply"
"It's almost Shabbos, so I can't talk right now"
"I don't need to justify myself to you"
"I don't like your tone so I'm not going to respond"
"I didn't come here to talk about what I think about it"
The idea behind the supposedly Orthodox rejecting the position of the orthoprax becomes quite ironic when the Orthodox repeatedly demonstrate that they themselves are really orthoprax and that was the problem that the OTD were confronting the entire time. It's just that the orthoprax are honest with themselves while the Orthodox are too busy and they didn't come to defend themselves.
Thank you for writing this. I wanted to write a piece responding to Ash basically along these lines (ironically in defense of OTD crowds) but you've spelled it out better than I can. I do understand where Ash is coming from and where you are coming from. This is ultimately the consequence of poor choices by Jewish society. I am sorry it was not a home for you. It took much for me to rediscover my home in Judaism. I wish you luck in navigating this newfound freedom. It would be almost impossible to feel at home when you do not feel welcome. This is something I can resonate with.
You are essentially agreeing with my point! I was not criticizing the OTDers for not feeling at home. That is gaslighting them. I was criticizing the culture that made them not feel at home.
The OTD truth seekers exchanged one religion for a secular one. Your mistake was seeking Ultimate Truth which only HaShem knows. You as a religious New can only know human limited Truth. Torah truth for humans and somewhat decided by humans. "It is not in heaven" . Humans have a role to play in developing that Truth in this world. Let us say within the 13 Articles of Faith.Return to your Faith! Not necessarily to your Yeshiva Faith. You scorned YU and it's Roshei Yeshivot.
Torah and Madah I was taught there and have been developing all my life! " Not in heaven" not necessarily by your Roshei Yeshivot. I am faithful to the Torah not necessarily the Torah of your Roshei Yeshivot but more to my Roshei Yeshivot and Orthodox religious thinkers. That is your OTD problem. You can regain your zeal and dedication to Torah by rejection some of what was your previous "Truth" Their are many religious "Orthodox"approaches to Torah not only the ones you have been exposed to. You were exposed to what
we call "Girsa De Yankuta". Stand up and be Counted!
.
>>>Your mistake was seeking Ultimate Truth which only HaShem knows
Do you see how your reason for believing here is explained as you already believing? That's very circular of you.
>>>You as a religious Jew can only know human limited Truth. Torah truth for humans and somewhat decided by humans.
More circular reasoning. You might as well say that "we must believe that god is real because he's real."
>>>That is your OTD problem
You seem very angry here, and you're also rambling.
Do you have any constructive critiques, or does your entire position consist of "You need to believe the Torah because the Torah says that you need to believe" and "We know the roshei yeshiva are teaching the truth because the roshei yeshiva have told us that they are teaching the truth"?
Yep!
>>>This is ultimately the consequence of poor choices by Jewish society. I am sorry it was not a home for you.
I wonder what about this piece makes you think "this is ultimately" what it's all about, when it seems clear that he wrote about how the problem with Judaism is that it pretends to be true when it's not. This is not a bad outcome based on poor choices by Jewish society, or even a segment of Jewish society.
Rather, this is the inevitable result of the original teachers of Judaism pretending in the original era to the early practitioners of Judaism that this was real. Maybe from then onward, each subsequent generation of practitioners was sincere, but that doesn't make it true. And then we get to now, after 1000 or 2000 or 3000 years of it being upheld by its practitioners as true, and it had previous eras when no one had access to information and guidance regarding deep thought and critical analysis. It's inevitable, then, that a false belief that has only recently been assessed as such will trigger rejection by the people who are insufficiently blinded by emotional bias to observe and react to it.
What can be done about this? Well, it certainly depends on what the objective is. One way to fix this is to just admit that Judaism isn't true, but that it's just the way we want to live. Like all the people who play catch with their kids when they're 5 years old and then graduate to playing with mitts when they are 10 years old and taking the kids to games and eating the crackerjacks and memorizing the stats and collecting the cards...all the things that can be considered an American pasttime where grandfather and father and son can bond over their love of baseball. It's just culture, and any comments to the effect that "baseball is the best thing" is just something they say to promote the thing they already think. But it can't actually convince anyone that doesn't already believe it. So when a kid goes OTD and says, "ehh...baseball is for losers, I like basketball!" the grandfather and father can't complain. Maybe the kid doesn't like their parents and wants to rebel, so it's an emotional rejection, and so maybe the way to confront that is with an emotional apology, to say sorry for whatever emotional damage there was in the relationship that led the kid to reject baseball as a proxy for rejecting the father and the grandfather. But no one in this analogy would ever say that baseball is better because it's actually better. Because there are families where the thing that ties the generations together IS basketball...or fishing, or whatever else.
But I imagine that Judaism can't and won't do that. Because it's staked out its position for too long and with too much enthusiasm that it's embarrassing to admit, "oh, you're right...this is just what we want to do, like baseball."
>>>I am sorry it was not a home for you.
Even if people leave because they were manhandled by Judaism (metaphorically speaking), it's still not true, and so many people care about that today. Not everyone. But let's please not pretend that it's not a question and it's not a problem for Judaism that it's very demanding and not true.
To say, "don't step on the crack or you'll break your mother's back" is something you can say that's not true. And it becomes burdensome very quickly...there are a lot of cracks. But who cares if it's not true, one might ask. Your parents did it and your grandparents did it and people died for this belief. Some people just don't care about truth, and that's fine...no one's here to tell them what to do. As they say, it's a free country. But please just don't pretend that it's true and admonish people for not believing in your nonsense. Go do your nonsense, if that's what you want to do.
>>>It took much for me to rediscover my home in Judaism.
You might have felt alienated, but you must not have felt the lack of validity, because I don't see what comfort you could have reached after that unless you stopped looking.
Gotta say, nice to hear from a real מומר לשמה.
Do you think being modern orthodox style or masorti would allow for more flexibility in the re interpretation of Judaism?
Less controlling
Wow!
So much to unpack here.
I cannot tell you how much I identify with what you write. As someone who has learned in Kollel for 13 years with tremendous "hasmadah", and mastered large sections of Shulcan Aruch B'iyun, this strikes a deep chord with me.
You are correct in saying that if Judaism would've been just a culture, I would've never have even had reason to question its truth claims.
My issues started when I actually took everything seriously. When a question in Hilchos Shabbos, Niddah, Cheilev (all "issuray kareis") became an almost life-threatening question (as it can affect one's eternity and possible murder one's children), my Judaism morphed into an all-consuming nightmare of trying to avoid evil while shunning any pursuit or even people that were not conducive to furthering my tally of Olam Haba points. Being the expert in Halacha that I was, these fears expanded to every possible action, speech or thought. According to the Frum therapists I developed OCD, though in my opinion, it just depends on if you actually believe this BS or not.
Great thought provoking post. I will write a response when I get a chance.
1) may I cross post this to my own blog?
2) I was extremely careful NOT to blame anyone who went otd of doing so due to tayvos. It was a reflection of what frum Jews should be asking themselves, why would people render themselves deliberately less happy just to escape said religion. I also am extremely careful not to say that my own versiom wouldn't have had you leave, merely that you would have left with less contempt. You end of your article is part of the point I'm trying to make.
3) I do not think we should have a culture of pushing things down ones throat. This is my main point. The sefardim are actually pretty good at avoiding this and such parents are included in the system, unlike ours.
4) The edit was quite ironic in that sense, I see what you mean.
5) That alsk is precisely my point. The geshmak of contemporary limmud hatorah is pretty much based on a lie. Theyres no attempt of trying to figure out original pshat, or attempt to use modern methods of learning, or updating ones halachic conclusions based on ones learning lekula. So that dishonesty will meet with contempt and hatred. And the geshmak in my mind is largely artificial because it needs to be based on truth, as opposed to a culture which need not.
6) I still would prefer to raise my kids in modern day Lakewood culture than secular culture when all is said and done, as I'd rather my kid know brachos than, as OTD writer Sholom Auslander writes, know every move of the Superbowl halftime show dance and the singers that perfotm it. They aren't going to replace brachos with ABCs, I assure you.
1 - for sure.
2-6 - let me think about your points.
Done. I added a small introduction.
Move to the Upper West, or some similar community. There are other options besides clannish isolationism and pepperoni.
Something about this doesn't pass the smell test:
"And yet, with all that passion, with all that love, we still couldn’t reconcile it with the claims of truth we were taught. It wasn’t for lack of exposure to the beauty or richness of the tradition. We lived it, we cherished it, and we embodied it; many of my friends sitting around the fire sharing the same pepperoni pizza far more than I. But love alone couldn’t override the nagging, unrelenting, and often horrifying realization that the foundation we had built our lives upon didn’t hold. This wasn’t a rejection born of ignorance or rebellion. It was the heartbreaking acknowledgment that what we had so deeply revered no longer made sense as a source of ultimate truth."
"...the beauty, the richness of the tradition...we lived it, cherished it, embodied it..."??? Really? Not embellishing just a little bit?
And what did you suddenly encounter that made the foundations crumble and all of it no longer make sense? Some academic Jewish studies?
1 - The smell test? What are you, Shlomo Hamelech?
2 - Am I am embellishing? I don't know. It was very real and very awesome and filled every facet of my existence. As somebody who's been in Yeshiva for many years, do you not relate to my description?
3 - it was a long journey, I was very shelter from the internet, and I started out with very simple questions in the rambam, the yud gimmel ikkrim, the cruelty of some of the mitzvos, etc. I was certain there was answers, but the more I looked, the stranger the picture became. Only much later did I start to online research to see if anyone discuss these things and kind of discover the whole blogsphere apologetics world. I was already basically a full atheist before I heard the word "kuzari".
Which of the 13 ikkrim were problematic? Which mitzvos could you not find moral justifications for? And most importantly, Where did you look to find answers?
>>>Which mitzvos could you not find moral justifications for?
[The secular definition of morality would be non-standardized, as secular just means "rejects the claims of religion." There is nothing binding secularists together, much as there is nothing binding non-astrologers together or non-fairyists together (i.e. Trump, Harris, Clinton, Putin, Zelenskyy, Netanyahu and Sinwar are/were all non-fairyists). I will use definitions broadly accepted and used by the likes of Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty.]
Morality can be defined as promoting well-being by secular thought, but by religionists, it's more in line with being in line with the will of a god. As secularists reject the claims of a god, there can be no agreement among religionists and secularists. There might be massive overlap in a Venn diagram of things that would both promote well-being and be claimed as the will of god, and so the phenotype of morality might be aligned. But as the way one arrives at these conclusions would not at all be the same, the genotype would not be aligned.
Now I can answer your question.
All commandments, both biblical and rabbinic, which promote well being can be candidates for moral edicts. All that are immaterial to reality, and so necessarily not promoting well being, would not be moral.
Some commandments are not just neutral but actually run counter to well being, and so I would refer to them as immoral.
>>>And most importantly, Where did you look to find answers?
I respect you too much to think that you really find the Torah a moral book, and so I would maintain that all reasonable people, you included, get our morals from the same place in the modern age. We look to our sense of fairness and compassion and love and derive our sense of morality from there.
Do you think homosexuals should be put to death for their sexual acts? Do you think the penalty for sabbath violation should be death? How about the abominable treatment of women in Orthodox Judaism? It's only because of your indoctrination, perhaps, that you do not consider the misogyny of Orthodoxy as a problem.
Let's take a look at Deuteronomy 21:10-14
10 When you go to battle against your enemies, and God delivers them into your hands, and you take them captive
11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her, and take her as a wife
12 you will bring her home and she shall shave her head and trim her nails
13 and she shall remove the clothing of captivity, and shall remain in your house, and mourn for her father and her mother a month, and after that you take her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife
14 And if you have no delight in her, then you shall let her go, but not sell her for money, you shall not treat her as a slave
Society has improved in civility over the centuries since this was written, and if anyone were to act this way today we'd be appalled by their behavior. In fact, Hamas seems to have acted in this way, and there hasn't been enough outcry over the behavior of the captors towards their captives, but what is the problem? Hamas found girls among the Israelis captured and they raped them, which is what is described here in Deuteronomy. Would you consider Hamas' behavior immoral, and if so, why? Because they didn't permit the girls to shave their heads and trim their nails...does skipping this step make the forced sexual activity immoral? No...because we've improved in our perspectives since these atrocious directives were first codified. We don't care that Hilchos Islam permits attacking enemies, whether in defensive or even offensive war. We don't care that their version of Tosfos might say that protecting land is like pikuach nefesh. We don't care you can find an imam or a conservative cleric who would say that jihad is really in your heart, and that innocents can't be killed. We don't care that maybe there's a sha'as hadchak heter to kill and rape and lie and back out of negotiations. Even if the koran and the hadith do not explicitly permit most or any of this, we don't care if there's a general minhag that would endorse or suggest or permit it. But what if they do? If your view is that your god is real (even without any good evidence) and that his instructions are real (even without good evidence), then how can you complain when they make the same claims, also without evidence. It's been said that we should respect one another's religions, and maybe you didn't make such a claim and so I can't hold you to that. But if they have their own made up god, they will have their own made up god-given morality, just like the Jews who think you can't pass your wife the car keys after she menstruates and you can only sit with her at the table alone with a bottle of hair spray situated between the two of you.
We wonder when we read about women not being able to travel abroad or attend university or previously even to drive without express permission from and perhaps even with direct supervision from the males in their lives (fathers/husbands), but we do not permit women to divorce without their husbands' permission. And it's atrocious. And we all know it...but we're too busy protecting our needlessly harmful way of life to do anything about it, all because we love Shabbos zmiros and Purim costumes.
So I find answers the same place you would want to if you permit yourself to think for yourself. Judaism is only more moral than it was once because of the friction of secular morality forcing it to change from the outside. But from the inside, the Torah is perfect, so how can there be any progress? It's only when one considers these things deeply, when perhaps one's sister is an agunah or one's son is gay, that one might take these issues of morality as seriously as they ought to be.
All of them. Have you read Shapiro's "The Limits of Orthodox Theology"?
But let's start with number 1. Why do you think there's a god?
I'm not here on this thread to convince anyone of anything. For the third time, I want the author to back up his incredible claim: that he went from deeply committed Ben Torah to a full blown atheist by just learning classic Torah sources in the BM with a critical eye-- without any help from academic literature.
I'm not buying it.
And this will underscore a point I want to make when I finally get an honest admission.
If you want to have a separate discussion about the evidence for and against the 13 Ikkarim, you can e-mail me.
For me personally, my belief in chazal, prophecy, Torah misinai, prayer, moshiach, and several other ikkarim was strongly eroded before any real engagement in external sources, primarily through engagement in traditional sources alone. But I'll be honest I never considered atheism until I read up on atheist literature and found some of their arguments convincing.
Have you never read his other blog Ma Limaala? He describes how he lost faith because of stories about murdering babies. Maybe @Ben Torah could link to it
Oh, I have never seen that! I think your link might be broken, but I looked up Grossman's work with google.
The truth claims crumble from almost any angle. Historical, theological, ethical, scientific, archeological, etc
I want to focus on the theological and ethical angles because the author claims he became a full atheist just by what he encountered in the course of his Torah learning--before any exposure to information found outside the Beis Midrash.
This is the part that I don't find credible--because in all my years of experience with frum skeptics, no-one lost their emunoh because he bumped into Rav Akivah Eiger's unanswerable kashe in Yevamos about tzaras habas...
That's not what people mean when they say theological issues. These would include the problem of reconciling a clearly deterministic universe with divine reward and punishment, the entirely subjective process of public perception being ultimately responsible for which popular books became considered Gods word, the entire underlying reason for all of this being reward and punishment yet this is wholly invisible in all of God's written covenant in fact a very different conception of the afterlife is clearly alluded to, how a few conmen introduced a fabricated belief system (Kabbalah) in the early second millennium which fundamentally changed our halachic practice in numerous ways etc. Those are just a few
No offense, but since the author made his claim, I'd prefer that the author respond about his own personal journey from the beis midrash to atheism without any exposure to outside literature. You don't encounter notions of "a clearly deterministic universe" or "entirely subjective processes", or any of the other issues you mentioned while learning a Tosfos in Bava Kamma.
>>>No offense, but since the author made his claim, I'd prefer that the author respond about his own personal journey from the beis midrash to atheism without any exposure to outside literature.
Also...maybe the author is wrong? Maybe he's the dumbest guy anyone has ever met. This doesn't mean that Judaism is true. He's not the high priest / pope of Atheism (capital A) such that if you demolish his position and how he got there, we all need to follow suit.
Contrast this with so many of the people I meet who, let's say, look to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks as their go-to guy for inter-religious understanding and teachings. He speaks and writes about this topic in a way that your standard Lakewood and YU and everywhere in between rabbi does not, and so many look to him as their authority on all things hashkafa.
When he has a sit down with Richard Dawkins and comes out looking like a fool for the maneuvers he makes, you have two options:
1) Follow the route of inquiry and admit that Dawkins was better and give up
2) Hold out, complain that Sacks betrayed you and the Judaism and find someone else to follow.
While you may not like #1, that seems more honest. While you may prefer #2, that seems quite unreasonable. It's seeing the outcome and then re-deciding how you should position your argument so that you don't chas v'shalom reach an unpalatable end point.
This gets tricky when the theology of judaism involves rabbis.
Fair enough, but to be clear nothing I mentioned is reliant on information gleaned from outside literature. It should bother anyone that Rambam completely made up a list of 13 concepts he considered fundamental which became the standard in all of judaism, without them needing to know that he did this wholly from Islamic influence. And there are many more problems visible purely from the inside of a sefer. Hundreds of differences seen between the talmudic version of the torah and our Masoretic version are all compiled by R Akiva Eiger in M. Shabbos I believe. That is a major issue. Idk his personal journey but there are many many huge internal issues without even considering science or history.
Hi! I do recommend reading Grossman’s work on the claims regarding Rambam’s Ikkarim, definitely insightful (and an entartaining back and forth) https://irrationalistmodoxism.substack.com/p/the-limits-of-academic-criticism
Kol Tuv
As I sit - though worlds תרתי away - and read through (Blackbird humming back of my head), I can't but connect to your post - yours and his. Most of all to the nostalgia.
I've experienced it myself, in a way. I was of different age, with a different set of friends, different situation, different outcome. Still, all the same. I still find myself back there, occasionally.
Nice to connect for a bit on this lost corner of the internet.
Wishing you well. Cheers.
(Random rec If you haven't already: found Chaim Grade's "My Quarrel" utterly beautiful, as well as Shmuel Ben-Artzi's short שבתי. They take me back every time.)
Can you elaborate on how your foundation eroded?
Was it moral issues? Historical? Issues with Biblical criticism?
Judaism comes in many flavors. The fact that the Lakewood version is not compelling for many speaks a lot to the 'derech' of the litvishe gedolim and not to yiddishkeit itself.
A friend once told me, before someone goes OTD it should be mandatory to try another version.
How can someone even think that they have mastered yiddishkeit because they are boki in shas and poskim? How about picking up a Tanya? How could it be that people would literally give up their life for something that makes no sense? There has to be more than whatever BMG have to offer.
Maybe they should wave a moshiach flag?
“A wife with very long hair asked her husband for a new comb because her old one broke. The husband apologized that they couldn't afford it because he needed to purchase a new watch, which he needed for work. That night, he shows up at home to surprise her with a new comb because he changed from a field worker to an office worker, and now can use the clock in the room...only to find that she had cut her hair that day and sold it to buy him a new watch. Very profound.”
Do you know where this comes from?
Still fascinated about the Yeshivish adult OTD scene in Lakewood.
1) About how many good learners are actually OTD?
2) How well known is this phenomenon to the average person?
3) Do you guys have virtual meetups as well?
There is an active online community that during Covid met virtually weekly. It is less active now but it still occasionally meets either online or in person
Late to this party I guess.
I get it. I don’t agree, but I get it.
Pepperoni tastes good.
A famous line comes to mind. “Hate the player, Don’t hate the game”
I sometimes feel that we get into our heads a little too much. And it’s hard to get out. I see how the act of eating treif can help you do this.
But maybe it’s more about getting out of overthinking everything?
Which I realize is also something certain parts of the frum community would have a problem with.
Just a question, once you finish the pizza, bentch, and wrap up for the evening. What comes next? I don’t mean to be facetious I just worry that acts of defiance without a structure or a game plan result in directionlessness.
I find your conclusion funny, because the Torah claims to have made us benei chorin. Only someone who follow it's ways is truly free. Can it be you find it freer to veer off the path?!
Oy, vey, Ash. Your note on this seems even worse than your previous post.
Do you really want that Judaism should be "just as a Mexican celebrates Cinco De Mayo without believing in Mexico and an Italian celebrates Columbus Day"?
If so, I'm out. I have zero interest in being just another culture in the melting pot of America.
And if I would have such an interest I don't know if would choose Judaism as my culture.
No. My point is though if that we can both believe the Torah is a divine document that needs to be followed and created a culture of acceptance and warmth. The sefardim do it very well in Israel, where you can have in one family a range of frumkeit. No reason it can't be done in the Ashkenazi community as well.
Ok.
I agree that the approach should not be one of harshness and harping on Gehenom etc. I had the impression that the community was moving in that direction anyway though there is still much to be desired.
My issue was that you made it sound as if the beauty of Judaism is primarily about having kumzits' with all Jews together, or some vague "I know it when I see it" https://daastorah.substack.com/p/a-sad-post-from-lakewood/comment/80850507
whereas I think there is objective criteria to measure the beauty of Judaism, such as the unparalleled high rate of marriages, low rate of divorces, high fertility, and the fact that Charedim are demonstrably the happiest people in the world (as Israelis consistently rate as one of the happiest people in the world and Charedim consistently rate as the happiest people in Israel).
Do you want me to provide sources for all this?
I agree with that. Yes.
I think you are missing 3 fundamental points which enabled Judaism to survive and thrive, to the point where after thousands of years it is the only culture which has proven itself capable of standing up against the melting pot of the monoculture and continuing to thrive.
1. It has a Truth claim, stronger than that of any other religion.
2. It has a strong element of irrationality.
3. (built on the first 2) It has a rigidity which doesn't bend to every wind.
Now, I definitely agree that the current Charedi culture takes all these 3 points way too far. I think we should be capable of forming a Judaism which satisfies all these 3 requirements and is palatable to highly intelligent highly rational people.
But ch"v that Judaism should be just another culture.
I think this guy has it best and I think you should ask him to write a guest post.
https://exit98.substack.com/p/mamish/comment/80138834
I mean that’s expected. Different people come to different conclusions even when faced with the same fact set. I understand some people finding things compelling that I simply don’t. Do you not understand how some people might come to different conclusions than you?
Can you try to elaborate on what you don't understand?
Perhaps because you haven't considered things from outside your perspective. It's very difficult to do so and can be extremely harmful to the things you hold dear. But if you're already here, I don't feel bad getting you to question your own ideas.
As Matta Dillahunty would ask, do you care if your beliefs are true or not?
Some people will answer no, and if you respond in this way here, then it provides you with an off ramp to the discussion points found here and in similar parallel substack pages. But if you DO care, then you ought to question your beliefs and challenge them to see if they will remain intact after rigorous scrutiny. And if someone does that and finds that these beliefs are unable to withstand critical analysis, then how can one still believe?
I think that's what is meant by "the foundation eroded beneath us."
>>>but I don’t understand how a person can reject the Torah itself.
Simple. Because there's no reason to assume that it's true.
>>>What I wrote above were a number of notions which popped into my head when I thought about the profundity of the Torah. When profundities pile up, it makes me think and act like there is much more to this than a mortal man could invent.
I think you're just reiterating what you've heard from charismatic rabbis who don't actually produce any substance in their comments. Profundities in storytelling abound, which is what separates Candyland-level writing from Chess-level writing. For example, it's very profound to make Voldemort's wand be a brother to Harry's wand. She could have developed that more, but she didn't. This story is also very profound:
A wife with very long hair asked her husband for a new comb because her old one broke. The husband apologized that they couldn't afford it because he needed to purchase a new watch, which he needed for work. That night, he shows up at home to surprise her with a new comb because he changed from a field worker to an office worker, and now can use the clock in the room...only to find that she had cut her hair that day and sold it to buy him a new watch. Very profound.
Can you point to even one thing in the entire Torah that couldn't have been written by a mortal man of the Bronze Age?
>>>Look at the natural world and tell me this was random.
The theory of evolution does not posit random changes, but directed changes. It's the opposite of random. The term "natural selection" means that nature selects for those traits which are best suited for the environment they find themselves in, and you subscribe to this view because you experience it...you might just not have realized it.
For instance, male fish of a particular species can be anywhere from bright to dull on a spectrum. The females are choosy for bright males, and so the brighter the male, the more his genes will make it to the next generation. But if he's too bright, he'll be more likely preyed upon prior to mating, and that will prevent his genes from making into the next generation. That's called sexual selection, which is a sub-type of natural selection because females naturally will often select for the brightest or the loudest or the strongest male. All of these superlatives are essentially wasteful. It's a tremendous waste for the male elephant seal to consume so many calories just so he can beat up the rest of the males when they make it to shore before the females and stake out territory on the beach. But nature is not about making sense...it's about who can win if there's an opportunity to take advantage. So it's like complaining at your interview that you didn't get the job because of how wasteful it was that the other guy got his MBA from Harvard instead of online at the University of Phoenix. Complain all you want, but he'll get the job. And also complain all you want that he has wore a custom tailored suit while you went to Kohl's, and complain all you want that he was wearing a Rolex while you got a $2 watch from Temu.
While the small males are complaining to the non-existent god or peanut gallery, the bigger and bulkier male will impregnate all the females in his territory. There are no referees in nature.
So if bigger males can command larger beach territory and protect it from smaller males, the larger males win and they get the females, who show up a few weeks later to give birth to last year's pups and are impregnated by the biggest and strongest males from this year's beach fights. That's how genes get passed on. It's the biggest or the fastest or or most elaborate or the sneakiest males who get their sperm into the females eggs and yes, it's all natural and it's all so wondrous. We mustn't contaminate that beauty by positing an unnecessary god.
Now, which mutations pop up in order to be selected? Yes, that's random. But no more random that which old lawyer or computer programmer died that triggered there to be an open spot at the firm that then needed to hold interviews. No one would say that getting a job is random, even though parts of the system (open spots, for example) are essentially random relative to the new people who are looking for positions.
>>>free will vs. that Hashem is managing the world
I'll direct you to Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky and others on free will. But it seems you've confused something here, as the religious people often say that there is a god and humans have free will, while many atheists will maintain that there is neither a god nor free will.
>>>Why is there evil in the world?
I don't really understand your question. What do you think evil is? Are deaths due to earthquakes evil? Are deaths due to crocodiles evil? Are deaths due to malaria evil? Are deaths do to bank robbers evil? I wonder if you could clarify your position and your thoughts so we could flesh this out more.
>>>Why be a Jew?...There is G-d consciousness and we bring it into the world.
Again, this is a non sequitur. There is no reason to pose a god and so there is similarly no good reason to assume a god consciousness. What does that even mean?
You seem to repeatedly begin with conclusions and work backward to justify your premises as though they are so obvious and clear, but they're not.
>>>Why the Jews? Why are we in the news all the time? It doesn’t make sense unless there’s some bigger Plan.
Again, another non argument. Since the Jews promote themselves, they are in the news. The homosexuals and transexuals also promote themselves, and they're in the news...why? There must be some big gay plan.
>>>I look at answers in Judaism and it just makes sense.
So far, you have presented no answers and nothing you've said makes any sense as an argument for Judaism. Do you observe that, at least? Can you see that you're essentially being asked "Why do you assume a god?" and you essentially continually respond, "because I assume there's a god."?
Sass will make you feel better, but it doesn't take the place of good answers to damning questions.
Slifkin just published an updated version of Al HaNissim:
-------------------------------------
And we thank You for the miracles, for the redemption, for the mighty deeds, for the saving acts, and for the wonders which You have wrought for our nation in these days, at this time—
In the days of Netanyahu, along with Gallant and the entire IDF, when the wicked Hamas launched a terrible attack for which Israel was appallingly unprepared, and then Arab militias and governments rose up against Your people Israel to slaughter them with guns and rockets and missiles and drones. But You, in Your abounding mercies, stood by the Jewish People in the time of their distress and sacrifice for the nation. You helped them wage their battles and defend their rights. You helped the Mossad neutralize Hezbollah fighters with pagers and walkie-talkies, you helped the Air Force neutralize their rocket arsenal, you helped the air defenses of Israel and its friends successfully defend the country against ballistic missiles from Iran and the Houthis, you helped the brave and committed soldiers of the ground forces in Gaza and Lebanon. You performed dazzling miracles with Syria collapsing overnight and Iran's axis of offense collapsing. You effected a great deliverance and redemption for Your people Israel against terrible threats, and may the world recognize this. May Your children be able to return soon to their homes in the Gaza periphery and the north, may our hostages return home, may our soldiers be successful and safe, and we shall give thanks and praise to Your great Name.
-------------------------------------
How can one differentiate between all of this happening in a world where there's actually a god vs in a world where people are merely wishfully thinking there's a god?
>>>Don’t understand this comment.
I was giving you another opportunity to provide good reason to believe any of these supernatural things you say you believe. After a certain amount of time exposed to the idea that you can't just say you believe when you have no good reason to do so, the observant must recognize that their observance is mere orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. If one is no longer under the justifiable assumption that it all makes sense and that one's doing these things for real and good reasons, then one transforms into someone doing these things for bad reasons.
>>>You’re just going to have to accept that I don’t need “proof”
This is what the person dangling from Orthodoxy over the sea of orthopraxy says. Just like the orthodox have no suitable justification for their belief, they similarly have no good justification for saying "I can do whatever I want!"
Of course you can do whatever you want. But that's the same as saying I can move the queen like a knight. You can do it, but you're no longer playing chess. So, too, if you have no good reasons to assume there's a god, then to just say, "yes, but I still do because I want to" is no different than saying "I want to move the queen two steps forward and then one to the left." So you might think that you don't need proof or evidence of good reasons, and you think that this is a good rebuttal. But when you're asked why you don't think you need any of this and how can you tell the difference between thinking you're right and actually being right, you have no answer. Religious people are making a type one error when they think they see or observe or perceive a god, because they do so when he's not really there. How can one respect a god, as Happy is so intent on demanding, when he's not there?
>>>You’ll never have proof for your side.
The more you respond, the more it's apparent that you have misunderstood the opposition. Of course the natural would couldn't have come about randomly! If that's what you thought, then no wonder you thought religion was something true and therefor valuable to cling to. And here's another profound misunderstanding...that you have no evidence but that the atheist also has no evidence. No evidence is needed to reject the null hypothesis.
You have no evidence that fairies exist and I have no evidence that fairies do not exist. What is the reasonable thing to do in such a situation? I would say that it's to disbelieve in fairies until such time as there's sufficient evidence to warrant belief, and when there is, we'll be compelled to do so. It's not a matter of choosing. Only the people who have been indoctrinated and are unsure of the mechanics of belief would suggest that they can choose to believe something, like you are doing now.
And so we don't have evidence for fairies and we don't have evidence for god. Or for Santa, or for angels or for goblins or for magic. They're all the same.
>>>I see more evidence that there is one
You've said this about 8 times now, and have yet to provide even 1 piece of good evidence. Do you think this reveals something to yourself and everyone reading it, that all you can do is say "I have so much evidence!!" but can never, ever produce it? Do you recognize that the Christians and the Muslims and the Hindus also shout out "We have a god and we have so much evidence!!" but they also have nothing to say past that? They, too, can only pull evasive maneuvers like you and everyone else here on this blog who says something like this, such as:
"I don't have to prove anything to you"
"I don't have time to talk to you right now"
"I'm too busy dealing with Houthi missiles to reply"
"It's almost Shabbos, so I can't talk right now"
"I don't need to justify myself to you"
"I don't like your tone so I'm not going to respond"
"I didn't come here to talk about what I think about it"
The idea behind the supposedly Orthodox rejecting the position of the orthoprax becomes quite ironic when the Orthodox repeatedly demonstrate that they themselves are really orthoprax and that was the problem that the OTD were confronting the entire time. It's just that the orthoprax are honest with themselves while the Orthodox are too busy and they didn't come to defend themselves.