I reckon you’re being consistently, churlishly, hypocritical. For example:
You pick on the tiny minority who act like hoodlums at Meron, and use that to paint the entire crowd.
Similarly, you joke at a Chabadsker shliach enabling a bracha levatalah (what you’re referring to I’m unsure) and discount the obvious and magnificent amount of chessed that they do enable - you know, only one of the three pillars of civilsational foundation.
You keep accusing people of maximal deviation from the norm - if Lenzner says the Rebbe is alive, he must also believe he is the occulted essence of G-d (perhaps he explicitly states that elsewhere, but you haven’t shown it).
If some Chassidim dance around a fire, you j’accuse with Chasam Sofer’s condemnation, not with standing his own tolerance: ואם כי כל כוונתם לש"ש שכרם רב בלי ספק.
And then it’s entirely hubristic to declare that the Meron stampede was a consequence of tolerating this toeivah - obviously, none of us know how Divine Providence works without prophecy. If you want to apply some rationalism, probably the straightest line was the lack of respect of basic safety precautions i.e. not observing ונשמרתם מאד לנפשתיכם.
In summary - I agree with you that all of the things mentioned are bad, even BAD. They are spiritually harmful, for the discerning worshipper. But when speaking of the less discerning, the Chassidic innovation of tolerance, ala Chasam Soifer, is a worthy strategy, rather than larping as Eliyahu on a jihad against abizrayu d’avoda zara
The evergreen 'these things are bad, but what's really bad is pointing them out'.
My advice to you is to write a list of red lines that, if crossed, would convince you that this is a crisis, keep the list somewhere and review it every couple of years so you use it to sanity check the part of your brain that is devoted to justifying and excusing each new outrage that happens week after week. For instance you could write 'a convicted sex offender who taught his pupils that he was performing גילוי עריות to effect a kabbalistic tikkun was given an official bonfire at Meron funded by the Israel government', but don't write that one because it happened last week!
**
I agree with you about the comment about grape juice. It wasn't directed at Chabad per se, but rather lame MO apologetic for them, nevertheless it fell flat. My experience is that the Chabad people who do good things are overwhelmingly of the 'he might be Moshiach' or 'he *will* be Moshiach when he comes back' crowd, whereas proper meshichists concentrate int their centers and build tunnels. I also think it should be born in mind the cynical and sometimes borderline criminal acts Chabad take to undermine Jewish communities so they can claim to be the only ones providing Jewish services. Nevertheless, I will delete that line.
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.
On the second read, I think I took your tone in the wrong way. It seems you're not using it as a dumb mechanism of attack, rather showing that the halacha would lean against it. Apologies.
David Berger's warning of the hierarchy of Judaism with "Orthodox" at the top breaking down into an anarchy where all forms of Judaism are equally valid is a wet dream for secular Jews in Israel.
Imagine many different "kosher" signs on food products and restaurants, each by an organization from a different sect (even one for Reform Jews, lol).
Each such organization must now be independent, separate from the government, as there's no justification for one over the others. Public transport on Shabbat? X and Y sects say it's ok, so how can the government justify a universal ban? Maybe the reason America went with separation of Church and State it that they couldn't choose one denomination of Christianity to make official.
That part of David Berger's prediction didn't pan out. What happened was that Orthodoxy was defined down to being against the Documentary Hypothesis. This actually proves to be quite a stable definition, sociologically speaking, the problem is that Orthodoxy is becoming an insane asylum.
I think Marc Shapiro was wishcasting with that one. For example, since 2017 theTorah.com has totally fallen apart and is now a venue for dumpy lesbians and Christians to write weird divrei Torah. The founder is now a more or less open atheist.
What has happened, and is happening, is that the mental pressures of maintaining the Documentary Hypothesis as the sole boundary of orthodoxy is causing more an more extreme dysgenic attrition rates among everyone except Chassidim, and this is definitely going to blow up very spectacularly eventually (in fact, I think it already is, which is the point). I don't have a solution to this, but I also choose to fight against it to the best of my abilities.
That reminds me. I thought you would love this, if you haven't seen it yet. It has all your favorite things https://www.gashmius.org/ (edit: in case it wasn't clear, I'm joking)
This is exactly the reason for the establishment clause in the First Amendment. Presbyterian/Methodist evangelicals, Anglicans, and Congregationalists were majorities in different regions and each feared the imposition of the other. This is why the first amendment only applies to the Federal government, as individual states were in fact allowed to ‘establish’ churches (as many did) until the 70s.
Btw nonzionism (I have no idea how to type or say your username), as one of your apparently few gentile readers, this has rapidly become one of the few substacks that I regularly check for updates. Always very interesting. I grew up with a lot of Jewish friends so it is interesting to read about the dynamic across the pond.
In the interest of not rambling on too long I have a thought followed by a question for you. As a fellow moldbug enjoyer and a Methodist myself, I’ve always agreed with his description of Judaism as socially functioning as a denomination of American mainline protestantism. In your previous pieces you have rightfully torn into the idea that anti-semitism is actually that common in American life, and this zionism isn’t as necessary as people argue. But isn’t that exactly the problem from a Jewish perspective? In the absence of anti-semitism creating an immovable distinction what is preventing Jews from going the way of every other white non-ghettoized group in American life -> slow protestantization by way of intermarriage. Its not something that I take issue with but it seems like the type of thing you aren’t very excited about.
Sure, American Reform is really a denomination of liberal Protestanism (hence 'Judeo-Christianity', which actually made a lot of sense in the 1950s American context when it was invented). But orthodox Judaism is growing very rapidly with no meaningful discrimination. It took a few generations to crack the formula, but now it works fine, sociologically speaking. The rest, no doubt will continue to assimilate, but that was something baked into the cake a while ago.
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.
I still think you'll inevitably end up at some variation of my argument.
Why are Chazal an authority? How are some books canoninzed in Tanach, while others discarded?
At some point, it will always come down to collective acceptance. Not necessarily unanimous either, but over a long enough time frame the majority invariably wins out. Hence Karaites are a historical footnote, and the Talmud is deemed binding.
The same will eventually happen with Zohar, if it hasn't already, and it'll follow the same process as the Gemara.
Your definition also doesn't work. The majority of Jews don't keep Shabbos, so according to your model not keeping Shabbos is canonized as authentic Judaism, or at least will be at some date in the future. What you have to do is define certain Jews as not keeping Judaism and say they don't count, and then define Judaism as whatever the remainder does, but this is obviously subjective if not outright circular.
An obvious analogy is Communism. The largest Communist party in the world is the CCP and it certainly has more members than all other communist parties put together, probably multiple times over. The CCP is committed for some indefinite period to a market economy and also de facto practices Han nationalism. So, according to your model, the definition of Communism is free market economics and Han nationalism. In reality, though, we all agree that some Communist party with 300 members may still more accurately represent Communism than the CCP.
Finally, your theory is also contradicted over and over again in Tanach, which clearly teaches that the majority of Am Yisrael conducted illicit worship for hundreds of years.
So I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I also believe we should try and find them and not simply give up and equate Judaism with Jewish ethno-narcissism.
To your first point, Jews who don't keep shabbos by and large don't claim any sort of continuity, they aren't attempting to define themselves as practicing Jews.
The CCP analogy doesn't quite work because Communism is an umbrella term for lots of different ideologies, the CCP define their particular variation of it, not the concept as a whole.
Regarding ancient idolatry, if that practice had been retained in 2nd Temple period, then that's what Judaism would be today. But it dissipated. Not because they discovered 'authentic judiasm' but because they redefined themselves in that cultural context.
Whatever you call Judaism will inevitably be based on communal precedent, I simply cannot see any other method working out.
That is the American excuse. But in Israel, most non-observant Jews identify as Jewish and believe that their way of life is a/the legitimate continuation of Jewish history.
Judaism, as a historical phenomenon, is also an umbrella term for lots of ideologies.
OK, I know that's what you think, but I believe in God, and orthodox Jews claim to as well. The problem with your definition is that the people in whose name you are defining Judaism completely reject your whole approach.
It doesn't impact my approach if they agree with it or not. It's still what they're doing.
Nor does believing in god, because that belief is framed by a consensus, the specifications of that belief - who he spoke to, what he said, the entire system of halachik practice is all defined by what people do or say.
It will always come down to accepting precedent, consensus, prior sources, tradition, historical continuity, you name it. There's nothing you can point to and say 'aha! That's the religion God transmitted' that doesn't depend on that.
But my main point wasn't this, my point is judaism as a religion is decentralised, we've never had one single authority, at least not for over a thousand years, who could assert what Judaism is. So the religion we have today is the result of an anarchic plurality. Hence, I don't see how anyone can claim Kabbalah is 'not authentic Judaism'. By what yardstick?
Maskil, I don't know how you can say that the practice of celebrating Rashbi's Yahrtzeit in Meron has no traditional source. It's an explicity טעמי המנהגים!!!
Again I understand your originalist thinking, but is not really reflective of the reality that is Judaism and Jewish Law. I am definitely with you that there are red lines in Judaism that Chabad often crosses. On the other hand, I do not agree that lighting bonfires on Lag Bomer gets even close to activity that would be inappropriate under Jewish law. There exist discretion as to how to celebrate holidays, and if lighting bonfires is a progressive innovation that adds to the richness of Judaism, so be it! I do not see a problem.
While I sympathise with his general inclination, I think Leibowitz was quite deficient in his scholarship and believed many clearly untenable and sometimes absurd things, and these 2 interviews are full of them.
I reckon you’re being consistently, churlishly, hypocritical. For example:
You pick on the tiny minority who act like hoodlums at Meron, and use that to paint the entire crowd.
Similarly, you joke at a Chabadsker shliach enabling a bracha levatalah (what you’re referring to I’m unsure) and discount the obvious and magnificent amount of chessed that they do enable - you know, only one of the three pillars of civilsational foundation.
You keep accusing people of maximal deviation from the norm - if Lenzner says the Rebbe is alive, he must also believe he is the occulted essence of G-d (perhaps he explicitly states that elsewhere, but you haven’t shown it).
If some Chassidim dance around a fire, you j’accuse with Chasam Sofer’s condemnation, not with standing his own tolerance: ואם כי כל כוונתם לש"ש שכרם רב בלי ספק.
And then it’s entirely hubristic to declare that the Meron stampede was a consequence of tolerating this toeivah - obviously, none of us know how Divine Providence works without prophecy. If you want to apply some rationalism, probably the straightest line was the lack of respect of basic safety precautions i.e. not observing ונשמרתם מאד לנפשתיכם.
In summary - I agree with you that all of the things mentioned are bad, even BAD. They are spiritually harmful, for the discerning worshipper. But when speaking of the less discerning, the Chassidic innovation of tolerance, ala Chasam Soifer, is a worthy strategy, rather than larping as Eliyahu on a jihad against abizrayu d’avoda zara
The evergreen 'these things are bad, but what's really bad is pointing them out'.
My advice to you is to write a list of red lines that, if crossed, would convince you that this is a crisis, keep the list somewhere and review it every couple of years so you use it to sanity check the part of your brain that is devoted to justifying and excusing each new outrage that happens week after week. For instance you could write 'a convicted sex offender who taught his pupils that he was performing גילוי עריות to effect a kabbalistic tikkun was given an official bonfire at Meron funded by the Israel government', but don't write that one because it happened last week!
**
I agree with you about the comment about grape juice. It wasn't directed at Chabad per se, but rather lame MO apologetic for them, nevertheless it fell flat. My experience is that the Chabad people who do good things are overwhelmingly of the 'he might be Moshiach' or 'he *will* be Moshiach when he comes back' crowd, whereas proper meshichists concentrate int their centers and build tunnels. I also think it should be born in mind the cynical and sometimes borderline criminal acts Chabad take to undermine Jewish communities so they can claim to be the only ones providing Jewish services. Nevertheless, I will delete that line.
old-man-yells-at-cloud.jpg
(If you learn the chassidus you’re hard pressed to not believe he’s the occulted essence of G-d)
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.
On the second read, I think I took your tone in the wrong way. It seems you're not using it as a dumb mechanism of attack, rather showing that the halacha would lean against it. Apologies.
David Berger's warning of the hierarchy of Judaism with "Orthodox" at the top breaking down into an anarchy where all forms of Judaism are equally valid is a wet dream for secular Jews in Israel.
Imagine many different "kosher" signs on food products and restaurants, each by an organization from a different sect (even one for Reform Jews, lol).
Each such organization must now be independent, separate from the government, as there's no justification for one over the others. Public transport on Shabbat? X and Y sects say it's ok, so how can the government justify a universal ban? Maybe the reason America went with separation of Church and State it that they couldn't choose one denomination of Christianity to make official.
That part of David Berger's prediction didn't pan out. What happened was that Orthodoxy was defined down to being against the Documentary Hypothesis. This actually proves to be quite a stable definition, sociologically speaking, the problem is that Orthodoxy is becoming an insane asylum.
> What happened was that Orthodoxy was defined down to being against the Documentary Hypothesis
According to the latest scholarship, it's not that either https://www.academia.edu/61794537/_Is_Modern_Orthodoxy_Moving_Towards_an_Acceptance_of_Biblical_Criticism_Modern_Judaism_37_May_2017_pp_1_29
> Orthodoxy is becoming an insane asylum.
And you're one of the patients, congratulations!
I think Marc Shapiro was wishcasting with that one. For example, since 2017 theTorah.com has totally fallen apart and is now a venue for dumpy lesbians and Christians to write weird divrei Torah. The founder is now a more or less open atheist.
What has happened, and is happening, is that the mental pressures of maintaining the Documentary Hypothesis as the sole boundary of orthodoxy is causing more an more extreme dysgenic attrition rates among everyone except Chassidim, and this is definitely going to blow up very spectacularly eventually (in fact, I think it already is, which is the point). I don't have a solution to this, but I also choose to fight against it to the best of my abilities.
Find a schelling point quick
That reminds me. I thought you would love this, if you haven't seen it yet. It has all your favorite things https://www.gashmius.org/ (edit: in case it wasn't clear, I'm joking)
Ha! Before I clicked, I thought it was going to be a place to buy malt whisky and embroidered bekeshes for the kiddush club crowd.
Any guesses as to how many adherents / believers/followers there are in that derivative of orthodoxy interpretation?
> What happened was that Orthodoxy was defined down to being against the Documentary Hypothesis
very interesting
> Orthodoxy is becoming an insane asylum.
Could be a good post
This is exactly the reason for the establishment clause in the First Amendment. Presbyterian/Methodist evangelicals, Anglicans, and Congregationalists were majorities in different regions and each feared the imposition of the other. This is why the first amendment only applies to the Federal government, as individual states were in fact allowed to ‘establish’ churches (as many did) until the 70s.
Btw nonzionism (I have no idea how to type or say your username), as one of your apparently few gentile readers, this has rapidly become one of the few substacks that I regularly check for updates. Always very interesting. I grew up with a lot of Jewish friends so it is interesting to read about the dynamic across the pond.
In the interest of not rambling on too long I have a thought followed by a question for you. As a fellow moldbug enjoyer and a Methodist myself, I’ve always agreed with his description of Judaism as socially functioning as a denomination of American mainline protestantism. In your previous pieces you have rightfully torn into the idea that anti-semitism is actually that common in American life, and this zionism isn’t as necessary as people argue. But isn’t that exactly the problem from a Jewish perspective? In the absence of anti-semitism creating an immovable distinction what is preventing Jews from going the way of every other white non-ghettoized group in American life -> slow protestantization by way of intermarriage. Its not something that I take issue with but it seems like the type of thing you aren’t very excited about.
Sure, American Reform is really a denomination of liberal Protestanism (hence 'Judeo-Christianity', which actually made a lot of sense in the 1950s American context when it was invented). But orthodox Judaism is growing very rapidly with no meaningful discrimination. It took a few generations to crack the formula, but now it works fine, sociologically speaking. The rest, no doubt will continue to assimilate, but that was something baked into the cake a while ago.
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.
That's what the other Substack is about. I took a very preliminary stab at that here: https://mekormayimhayim.substack.com/p/its-not-yet-a-mitzvah-to-be-happy
Yohanan's series is about working out a comprehensive account for halacha, but hashkafa is harder.
But what's the conclusion?
I still think you'll inevitably end up at some variation of my argument.
Why are Chazal an authority? How are some books canoninzed in Tanach, while others discarded?
At some point, it will always come down to collective acceptance. Not necessarily unanimous either, but over a long enough time frame the majority invariably wins out. Hence Karaites are a historical footnote, and the Talmud is deemed binding.
The same will eventually happen with Zohar, if it hasn't already, and it'll follow the same process as the Gemara.
Your definition also doesn't work. The majority of Jews don't keep Shabbos, so according to your model not keeping Shabbos is canonized as authentic Judaism, or at least will be at some date in the future. What you have to do is define certain Jews as not keeping Judaism and say they don't count, and then define Judaism as whatever the remainder does, but this is obviously subjective if not outright circular.
An obvious analogy is Communism. The largest Communist party in the world is the CCP and it certainly has more members than all other communist parties put together, probably multiple times over. The CCP is committed for some indefinite period to a market economy and also de facto practices Han nationalism. So, according to your model, the definition of Communism is free market economics and Han nationalism. In reality, though, we all agree that some Communist party with 300 members may still more accurately represent Communism than the CCP.
Finally, your theory is also contradicted over and over again in Tanach, which clearly teaches that the majority of Am Yisrael conducted illicit worship for hundreds of years.
So I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I also believe we should try and find them and not simply give up and equate Judaism with Jewish ethno-narcissism.
To your first point, Jews who don't keep shabbos by and large don't claim any sort of continuity, they aren't attempting to define themselves as practicing Jews.
The CCP analogy doesn't quite work because Communism is an umbrella term for lots of different ideologies, the CCP define their particular variation of it, not the concept as a whole.
Regarding ancient idolatry, if that practice had been retained in 2nd Temple period, then that's what Judaism would be today. But it dissipated. Not because they discovered 'authentic judiasm' but because they redefined themselves in that cultural context.
Whatever you call Judaism will inevitably be based on communal precedent, I simply cannot see any other method working out.
That is the American excuse. But in Israel, most non-observant Jews identify as Jewish and believe that their way of life is a/the legitimate continuation of Jewish history.
Judaism, as a historical phenomenon, is also an umbrella term for lots of ideologies.
OK, I know that's what you think, but I believe in God, and orthodox Jews claim to as well. The problem with your definition is that the people in whose name you are defining Judaism completely reject your whole approach.
It doesn't impact my approach if they agree with it or not. It's still what they're doing.
Nor does believing in god, because that belief is framed by a consensus, the specifications of that belief - who he spoke to, what he said, the entire system of halachik practice is all defined by what people do or say.
It will always come down to accepting precedent, consensus, prior sources, tradition, historical continuity, you name it. There's nothing you can point to and say 'aha! That's the religion God transmitted' that doesn't depend on that.
But my main point wasn't this, my point is judaism as a religion is decentralised, we've never had one single authority, at least not for over a thousand years, who could assert what Judaism is. So the religion we have today is the result of an anarchic plurality. Hence, I don't see how anyone can claim Kabbalah is 'not authentic Judaism'. By what yardstick?
Maskil, I don't know how you can say that the practice of celebrating Rashbi's Yahrtzeit in Meron has no traditional source. It's an explicity טעמי המנהגים!!!
But more seriously, it looks like it was something done by the Arizal and his disciples https://seforimblog.com/2011/05/printing-mistake-and-mysterious-origins/#:~:text=Avraham%20Yaari%20and%20Meir%20Benayahu%20cite,was%20begun%20by%20the%20Mekubelei%20Tzefat.
I know that you hold they are all a bunch of lunatic idolaters, but it's more than 250 years old.
Not with bonfires, and not as the yartzheit of Rabi Shimon.
Nu nu. When dealing with such exalted ענינים, we can't get too pedantic.
Again I understand your originalist thinking, but is not really reflective of the reality that is Judaism and Jewish Law. I am definitely with you that there are red lines in Judaism that Chabad often crosses. On the other hand, I do not agree that lighting bonfires on Lag Bomer gets even close to activity that would be inappropriate under Jewish law. There exist discretion as to how to celebrate holidays, and if lighting bonfires is a progressive innovation that adds to the richness of Judaism, so be it! I do not see a problem.
R Asher Weiss has an extensive shiur in which he sets forth many bases in Poskim for burning clothes on LagzBaOmer
Police, I would like to call in a murder! 🤣 😂 🤣
Your halakhic philosophy and disdain for Kabbalah seem to parallel Leibowitz
https://web.archive.org/web/20090602131650/http://www.radicaltorahthought.com:80/idol%20worship%20is%20still%20within%20us.htm
While I sympathise with his general inclination, I think Leibowitz was quite deficient in his scholarship and believed many clearly untenable and sometimes absurd things, and these 2 interviews are full of them.
?למשל
Some of his grossly false claims in those interviews are:
- The text of lecha dodi does not contain kabbalistic imagery
- The Shulhan Aruch does not have kabbalistic influence
- There is one halachically mandated version of the siddur.
I'm with you about the qabbalah stuff. I know one other guy in my town that is into the anti- kaballah/chasidic discussion.
At least link to the Breslovers song with actual Kefira.
https://youtu.be/nWB2VRT_Jgg?si=0uvo70kt2I4_gfDT
That song is fine.
If your ancestors had heard their children singing either song, they would have sat Shiva.
If they saw what the goyishe children are listening to they would be doing aninus…
TL;DR, zesty chilonim singing about rebbe nachman with the same terminology rebbe nachman encourages people to use when in hisbodedus?
The Zohar is a PLAGUE!
Ben gvir is a politician, I'm surprised people dont realize this. He's working within the current regime.