Lag B'Omer Thoughts
Inspirational and uplifting words of chizuk
Another Jew post, but I made a bit more effort to translate this one.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how the Minister of National Security in the government of Israel visited the center of Neo-Sabbateanism in the United States and gave his assent to the propositions that (i) Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) is still alive, (ii) that he is resident at 770 Crown Heights, Brooklyn, (iii) that he is Messiah, king of the world, and (iv) that from there he ‘gives strength to the world’, all of which was recorded on video. Subsequently, as has also been recorded on video, a large number of those present then hounded a random woman down the street yelling obscenities for what appears to be the better part of an hour.
Self-evidently, this is quite disturbing for a range of different reasons. Naturally, given that I am addressing people literally addicted to self-pity, allergic to introspection, and thoroughly convinced that religious doctrines invented in the last few hundred years that met with near-universal condemnation on their emergence are in continuity with historical Judaism, responses tended to clump into the following categories.
(1) Why are you ragging on Chabad? Messianics are just a tiny minority of their numbers. Why don’t you focus on all the good that they do?
Answer: if it is indeed true that messianics are a small minority of Lubavitch adherents, then it makes it all the more willfully perverse that Itamar Ben Gvir would specifically choose to endorse their beliefs, and that his fellow ministers would acquiesce in his doing so.
(2) Can you prove that believing that a man who has been dead for 31 years is running the universe and that we need to dedicate our lives to imploring Jews around the world to acknowledge his kingship in order to bring about redemption is outside of Judaism?
Answer: I don’t need to because it has already been done.
(3) Here’s a handful of aggadata originally identified by converts to Christianity for use in medieval disputations to prove that the Talmud hints at the messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth, repurposed by Sabbateans to prove the messiahship of Shabtai Tzvi, then dredged up yet again by Lubavitch to prove the messiahship of Menachem Mendel Schneerson. This very clearly proves that Chabad messianism is very kosher and not at all like Sabbateanism!
Answer: delete your account Baruch.
There is one objection, though, that perhaps merits dealing with more closely since the premise, at least, is true.
(4) Obviously Ben Gvir doesn’t actually believe Menachem Mendel Schneerson is alive, physically present at 770, is the Messiah and will return to redeem the world when enough people acknowledge him. He’s just being a politician.
Now, to repeat, I think that is almost certainly true. Compare the two following videos. The first is Ben Gvir’s friend, Yaakov Lenzner who brought him to 770.
This man is a heretic or no-one ever again is a heretic. However, Lenzner does have one kind of excuse. When he says that his purpose in life is to conquer the world for Menachem Mendel Schneerson who is alive and in the room with him, or, as he corrects himself, to reveal the conquest that has already occurred, he does literally think that’s true.
One the other hand, here’s Ben Gvir:
When he asks ‘the Rabi’ for permission to speak, he knows how it will be taken, after all the big whoop of applause is the whole point. But does he believe that Schneerson is in the room and has given his assent? No, of course not. Ben Gvir does not believe that Menachem Mendel Schneerson is the occulted essence of God to whom one must travel to 770 to petition and seek blessing, he just finds the whole question of whether Menachem Mendel Schneerson is that to be entirely uninteresting and irrelevant. He isn’t a heretic, he is indifferent to heresy.
But why am I picking on Chabad all the time? Here is a song that, if you have children in Israel, you will have heard.
The money lines are:
Rabi Nahman, our holy Rabbi,
I have come to you,
Fix my head.
Rabi Nahman, we have ceased to ask,
To draw close to you is worth everything to me.
(I would like to say that it loses something in the translation, but it doesn’t really.)
Now, asking a Religious Zionist whether it might be dubious for their children to implore a dead Rabbi to fix their head - the results of which request, we may say delicately, vary - is like asking a brick wall why blood is streaming out of your nose after you repeatedly headbutted it, except that at least the brick wall will maintain a dignified silence and not try to explain to you why nothing at all matters as long as his kids feel ‘attached’ to the Torah. Fussing about whether they are worshipping God or a holy man is kind of bigoted and old fashioned, and Rav Kook said not to be that. After all, it’s possible that the people singing these lyrics all have some kind of internal intention that is entirely compatible with monotheism, therefore they actually do.
In short, actually existing Religious Zionism (sorry Gushniks, keep trying!) can be summed up as follows:
It’s not really important what you believe or what your worship is directed to as long as God’s in the mix somewhere.
It’s good to keep mitzvos, but there’s no real downside to not doing so, hence Tzvika Fogel can be an Otzma MK.
The important thing is to have Jewish pride 🇮🇱, be strong and assertive 💪, and show the world that we are the ba’al habayit here.
The only mitzvah we actually have to keep is killing our enemies, and then God will always back us up because He loves us no matter what, unless we don’t kill enough people then He won’t.
Which is great, except that it systematically contradicts the entire Bible in the most obvious way possible. Indeed, one could say that the Book of Jeremiah is really just one long extended polemic against this very idea.
That brings us to tonight’s festivities. In this case, it’s Charedim that we’ll be having a pop at, but Religious Zionists are never content to just sit it out and let others engage in lunacy and paganism. Mostly, they have copy-cat events round the country where they show their great love for Eretz Yisrael by burning toxic plastics, but they have been muscling in recently at the central shrine too.
Don’t be lighting no fires
Meron is a very holy place. It’s mentioned a couple of times in the Yerushalmi, which is very holy, and, a mere one thousand years after he died, someone pointed at a hill and said Rabi Shimon was buried there, which means it must be true. But the way you really know that Meron is holy is the great spiritually uplifting effect it has on all that go there.
As is well known, I am an effete snob, so I cannot appreciate the true holiness of beating a random stranger with metal chairs. Heaven willing, after a few more iterations of the redemptive process, we will not merely act like chimpanzees, but literally become physical chimpanzees, with thick black hair and everything. I’m sure there’s a midrash about it somewhere.
But let’s cut the clowning around. The facts about the fire ceremonies on Mt. Meron are not in dispute. The practice started about 250 years ago. It is allegedly based on kabbala, but even Yitzhak Luria had apparently never heard of this practice. It celebrates a yahrzeit that has no greater than a 1/354th chance of being on that date and, even if it were, yahrzeits in traditional Judaism are observed as days of somber reflection, and sometimes fasting.
If you believe that ‘Judaism is what Jews do’, then none of that matters very much, but, if you don’t, there are some pretty obvious tests you can perform.
Is it mentioned in or supported by any traditional Jewish sources in any way whatsoever? No.
Was it endorsed by Rabbis who were asked about it when it first emerged? No, it was explicitly condemned.
Are there traditional sources that indicate it would be forbidden? Yes, the Tosefta lists dancing to a fire as a forbidden Emorite practice.
Are there numerous dubious practices associated with participation in this practice like singing songs addressing a dead Rabbi, seeking assistance from a dead Rabbi, or ascribing supernatural blessing to the will of a dead Rabbi? Is there anything except that?
But I really want to go anyway, and unless God sends me some kind of sign that He is against it, I’m going. So about that.
You can’t say that!
Another great feature of contemporary Judaism is how everything is direct divine intervention except the most blatant and overt forms of divine intervention. We’ve all heard a bellyful of great hashgaha pratis stories: ‘I was waiting for a taxi, and I said “Hashem please send a taxi”, and then the taxi came’. But if there is a novel religious practice, with no basis at all in Jewish law or tradition, that clearly in multiple respects imitates primitive gentile festivals, and was resisted consistently by rabbinic authorities right up till the present day, and then a bunch of participants die in the biggest civilian mass death event in Israeli history, well it’s all just a big mystery that we can’t possibly understand. Maybe it’s this pet issue you have, maybe it’s that pet issue I have, who knows, but the important point is to not think about it too much and never under any circumstances consider that a religious act that gives you subjective feelings of wellbeing may actually be bad.
Things are tough right now, but God will step in to save us from enemies on every side. Why wouldn’t He? After all, there’s a religious awakening happening in Israel and, as God told us through his prophets, He isn’t super fussed about what or how we worship, as long as we aren’t Left Wing and SECULAR, right? Right?
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Calling Jewish things you don't like idol-worship is reactionary and not useful. Lag Ba'omer has grounded credibility with mainstream Jews as a Day, and it's fair to not like the elements that masses take out of proportion, but it's obviously not emorite idol worship to circle the fire. The criticism is valid but the attempt to tie it to halcha is stupid.
You say that "If you believe that ‘Judaism is what Jews do’, then none of that matters very much, but, if you don’t, there are some pretty obvious tests you can perform."
And then proceed to list "traditional sources" and "Rabbis." as counterarguments.
But what makes them traditional, what makes those Rabbis authoritative?
You’ve accepted that Judaism is defined by the judgments of prior Jews, you’re just choosing which ones to count. If you have a better model of what Judaism is other than what Jews do, name it. But once you start pulling out the Tosefta or 19th-century condemnations, you're just reaffirming my argument.