As an outsider, I sure hope this is read and understood as seriously as it was clearly intended. You can call it "internal politics" if you like, but if the religious community doesn't police itself somehow, and get itself into a shape where it can exert some positive moral influence on its host nation... well, you're really not going to like the consequences, already visible on the horizon.
Gentiles will, and do, judge the entirety of Jewry by the worst excesses that it tolerates. Unfair, sure. You can't change that, but perhaps you can still do some teshuvah for your people.
At the end of the day, any group that protects its own but does not police its own will become an organ of its lowest common denominator. To judge a group by what it fails to police is both a necessary survival instinct and a motivator for the group to change, when intrinsic motivation clearly fails.
Is there even any supposed justification for jumping random Druziim? "Hashem like when I beat up gentile monotheist for no reason because it make feel happy ook ook awk awk" I mean, that's what I'm getting from this.
"I doubt you can find a gentile one, though it’s a big world."
A long time ago I picked up a copy of "Raven", a biography of cult leader Jim Jones, at a used book store in San Francisco. It was an eye opener. The best way to understand that guy was that everything he did was based on having power over other people and it showed in his friendships, his religion, everything. Predictably he made extensive sexual use of his male and female followers but it was just another way of marking himself as dominant over them. In the end he was backed into a corner, wanted to die, and by becoming the last victim of a mass suicide he was able to perform one last exercise of control over his followers before checking out.
Gurus aren't exactly a unified gentile movement but they seem to have a very disproportionate level of sex scandals relative to other religious figures. Scott Alexander even wrote about this (https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/16/is-enlightenment-compatible-with-sex-scandals/). I think wanting to become a guru is itself a sign of wanting undue power over others. I like having children who love me and graduate students who respect me but the important thing is that I am helping them grow up. It is wrong to want others endlessly in your thrall, and it is no surprise that people who seek such relationships are bad and sexually exploitative. Hence it is no surprise (as you wrote in your last piece about them) that the most guru-centred branch of Judaism is off the charts worse about this stuff.
As an aside. I do think the Catholic Church had its own, very different and non-guru-like pattern of sexual abuse, to the point where it was perhaps not an order of magnitude worse than Breslav. It's funny how intellectually respectable they are now on religion Substack, how many serious conservatives are converting to Catholicism. Their stock has risen a lot from a low 10 - 20 years ago.
What if guruism in, say Denmark, coalesced into a movement with one overarching ideology, and politicians from the one half of the political spectrum paid regular homage to its more prominent leaders who weren't in prison. Wouldn't that be a national emergency?
Oh, I'm not trying to downplay how bad this is, just thinking about parallels to the gentile world. I mean, the Jim Jones thing turned out pretty badly!
Since you mention it, Jones was able to command a lot of political homage in San Francisco right up until he killed a congressman and then his whole movement. For a while every Chicago politician had to pretend to like Farrakhan. Then there's the strange Moonie-LDP relationship in Japan. That's another guru/cult thing I guess, ability to interfere in secular politics effectively.
The problem with pedophilia in the Catholic Church was not how common it was, it really wasn't, but the lengths leadership in so many diocese all over the world independently of one another went to protect predators as a misguided attempt to avoid bad press.
It was the exact inverse of the guru pattern of sexual abuse. Gay priests were not protected by their leadership nor trusted by victims because they were so charismatic but because they were viewed as representatives of the Church.
Because the Catholic Church had had a harder line on abstinence, they are more likely to attract homosexuals who seek a female-free environment with some lads. Because Protestantism has generally encouraged marriage, it is a natural attractor for men who seek to cultivate a heterosexual role in which they may become a big leader. That's the main source of difference.
I wonder if it's because evangelicalism has so strongly cast its lot with the political right/MAGA/power in America, while Catholics and their Pope have kept their distance. Maybe the "serious conservatives" see something laudatory in that. (I certainly do, but I'm not a serious conservative.)
Maybe at some point you just have to regard all irrational belief as what it is, irrational. Is there really any "rational" version of any religion? I don't think so. Some people think their rebbe is talking to God, some people think the Pope is talking to God, some people think THEY are talking to God. Is there really a difference?
I took your article to reflect a view that investing faith in the godliness of human personalities was irrational. Did you mean that it was merely inconsistent with some other set of irrational beliefs?
"We learn from Mishlei that the temptation of idolatry is like that of a woman. To become a Christian is to forsake your wife for a stone cold 10, with a PhD, and a dowry, and, for some reason, she is incredibly into you. You shouldn’t do it. It’s wrong. God is real, Jesus was just a man and now he’s dead. But if you do it, we know why. To choose Breslev is to forsake your wife for a diseased, whore with lesions on her face. You didn’t want better; you just wanted different. Desperately wanted it."
- The obvious implication here was it would be better just to convert to Christianity if you consider rational grounds alone.
I think I'm going to block you and desist from further interaction. In some ways you mean well, but effectively you are a מסית. You've just decided Avodah Zarah is fine if it's a type you like and you have no ability to reason beyond that. It makes your entire project to reboot the yeshivish world a farce.
I don't think you can be part of frumstack without interacting with someone you consider a Kofer (regardless of Hashkafah). (Not you in specific anyone is either interacting with a kosher or a racist/sexist/whatever liberals hate)
Clearly coming from someone who has clearly, never studied Chabad Chassidus in any serious way. (Other then perhaps reading some articles online or books, where some quotes are handpicked and removed from context in order to support a narrative….).
Ask anyone who has somewhat spent serious time learning Chabad Chassidus what is the most important, principle, foundation, core idea, and most basic and essential teaching of Chassidus.
You will get a unanimous consensus on the following: Achdus Hashem.
Essentially, the whole Chassidus came to explain how g-d is absolutely one and alone, there is zero plurality, zero existence outside of his truest essence etc.
There is no other part of Torah today that takes the absolute oneness of g-d as seriously as Chabad and to the extreme that Chabad Chassidus takes it.
Ein of milvado - there is no existence aside from G-d alone.
Don't trust me. Go learn it for yourself.
Chassidus is not something you can get right from observing from the outside. It is very nuanced, abstract, subtle and deep.
If you're truly sincere about getting to the bottom of it, I highly recommend you find someone to teach you the following two things. Both from the Tzemach Tzedek. Sefer is called derech mitzvosecha.
Achdus Hashem
Shoresh mitzvos hatefila
You will find all of your shallow arguments fully addressed and you will hopefully have your mind opened to a whole new world you are currently totally ignorant about.
I think you owe it to yourself and your audience. Go do some real (maybe inconvenient research). You will not be disappointed.
But you will need a really good teacher. These are not texts you will understand correctly without someone who is very experienced and well versed in it.
Isn’t he just an AZINO (AZ in name only)? As far as I can tell, he only embraces breslover trappings (he thinks it’s fun) but basically doesn’t engage with its actual theology. He pretends its theology is something else, so gezunte heyt.
It shouldn't really be shocking per se. Let's say for a second that maskil earnestly thinks AZ is at stake. It's not crazy then to treat it as such, is it?
You can say the same thing in reverse. Perhaps Breslov is full of people who would have been happy anyways. The natural response to this is: we have good reason to believe that there is a causal relationship from the movement to happiness. But we have good arguments for causation from the movement to rape (rabbinic deification is an enabler).
Since It's the first time I've seen you mentioning Jesus in your blogs. Have you ever thought doing a post about Christianity (in case you think you have something interesting to share)? Have you ever had any meaningful interaction with Christianity or with practising Christians in general?
How much of frumstack is people making long, long posts, just to take potshots at each other? (How much of all substack is that?)
I guess I kid, because there is an underlying serious tenor to this post, but there’s an awful lot of internal politics going on here.
As an outsider, I sure hope this is read and understood as seriously as it was clearly intended. You can call it "internal politics" if you like, but if the religious community doesn't police itself somehow, and get itself into a shape where it can exert some positive moral influence on its host nation... well, you're really not going to like the consequences, already visible on the horizon.
Gentiles will, and do, judge the entirety of Jewry by the worst excesses that it tolerates. Unfair, sure. You can't change that, but perhaps you can still do some teshuvah for your people.
At the end of the day, any group that protects its own but does not police its own will become an organ of its lowest common denominator. To judge a group by what it fails to police is both a necessary survival instinct and a motivator for the group to change, when intrinsic motivation clearly fails.
That's fair. That's why I judge all gentiles by Nazi Germany.
I guess your "ban" was greatly exaggerated. Maskil must be a real tzadik to put up with reddit-grade trolling like yours.
That is the theme of most of Maskil Binas posts/rants.
Breslav is ideological opium for the neurotic litvak masses.
( jk..jk)
What if the real Chassidut was the friends we made along the way?
Is there even any supposed justification for jumping random Druziim? "Hashem like when I beat up gentile monotheist for no reason because it make feel happy ook ook awk awk" I mean, that's what I'm getting from this.
I think it's safe to say they were high on drugs.
"I doubt you can find a gentile one, though it’s a big world."
A long time ago I picked up a copy of "Raven", a biography of cult leader Jim Jones, at a used book store in San Francisco. It was an eye opener. The best way to understand that guy was that everything he did was based on having power over other people and it showed in his friendships, his religion, everything. Predictably he made extensive sexual use of his male and female followers but it was just another way of marking himself as dominant over them. In the end he was backed into a corner, wanted to die, and by becoming the last victim of a mass suicide he was able to perform one last exercise of control over his followers before checking out.
Gurus aren't exactly a unified gentile movement but they seem to have a very disproportionate level of sex scandals relative to other religious figures. Scott Alexander even wrote about this (https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/16/is-enlightenment-compatible-with-sex-scandals/). I think wanting to become a guru is itself a sign of wanting undue power over others. I like having children who love me and graduate students who respect me but the important thing is that I am helping them grow up. It is wrong to want others endlessly in your thrall, and it is no surprise that people who seek such relationships are bad and sexually exploitative. Hence it is no surprise (as you wrote in your last piece about them) that the most guru-centred branch of Judaism is off the charts worse about this stuff.
As an aside. I do think the Catholic Church had its own, very different and non-guru-like pattern of sexual abuse, to the point where it was perhaps not an order of magnitude worse than Breslav. It's funny how intellectually respectable they are now on religion Substack, how many serious conservatives are converting to Catholicism. Their stock has risen a lot from a low 10 - 20 years ago.
What if guruism in, say Denmark, coalesced into a movement with one overarching ideology, and politicians from the one half of the political spectrum paid regular homage to its more prominent leaders who weren't in prison. Wouldn't that be a national emergency?
Oh, I'm not trying to downplay how bad this is, just thinking about parallels to the gentile world. I mean, the Jim Jones thing turned out pretty badly!
Since you mention it, Jones was able to command a lot of political homage in San Francisco right up until he killed a congressman and then his whole movement. For a while every Chicago politician had to pretend to like Farrakhan. Then there's the strange Moonie-LDP relationship in Japan. That's another guru/cult thing I guess, ability to interfere in secular politics effectively.
The problem with pedophilia in the Catholic Church was not how common it was, it really wasn't, but the lengths leadership in so many diocese all over the world independently of one another went to protect predators as a misguided attempt to avoid bad press.
It was the exact inverse of the guru pattern of sexual abuse. Gay priests were not protected by their leadership nor trusted by victims because they were so charismatic but because they were viewed as representatives of the Church.
Because the Catholic Church had had a harder line on abstinence, they are more likely to attract homosexuals who seek a female-free environment with some lads. Because Protestantism has generally encouraged marriage, it is a natural attractor for men who seek to cultivate a heterosexual role in which they may become a big leader. That's the main source of difference.
I wonder if it's because evangelicalism has so strongly cast its lot with the political right/MAGA/power in America, while Catholics and their Pope have kept their distance. Maybe the "serious conservatives" see something laudatory in that. (I certainly do, but I'm not a serious conservative.)
Vance and Newt Gingrich are two of the converts though.
Exceptions that prove the rule? I don't know. Need a new Pew.
>because the next installment is supposed to be about Maskilim, and I don’t know anything about them
Odd, because I had pigeonholed you as a neo-maskil.
I get you are frustrated with DY, but I don't like that you've blocked him, because now we can't read your comments.
I changed it to mute, but I don't know if that undoes whatever happened.
It does 😁
Maybe at some point you just have to regard all irrational belief as what it is, irrational. Is there really any "rational" version of any religion? I don't think so. Some people think their rebbe is talking to God, some people think the Pope is talking to God, some people think THEY are talking to God. Is there really a difference?
I didn't use the word 'rational' one time in this article or any other articles on the subject! (Why do people keep responding with this?????)
I took your article to reflect a view that investing faith in the godliness of human personalities was irrational. Did you mean that it was merely inconsistent with some other set of irrational beliefs?
It's inconsistent with belief in the God of the Torah.
Ah, option #2.
"We learn from Mishlei that the temptation of idolatry is like that of a woman. To become a Christian is to forsake your wife for a stone cold 10, with a PhD, and a dowry, and, for some reason, she is incredibly into you. You shouldn’t do it. It’s wrong. God is real, Jesus was just a man and now he’s dead. But if you do it, we know why. To choose Breslev is to forsake your wife for a diseased, whore with lesions on her face. You didn’t want better; you just wanted different. Desperately wanted it."
- The obvious implication here was it would be better just to convert to Christianity if you consider rational grounds alone.
Hmmm.
The fact that a mental hospital is full of mental patients disproves nothing.
Breslov probably made these nutjobs happier and more fulfilled. They would have been rapists either way.
A movement that helps crazy people feel good about themselves will attract crazy people.
It's still better than Mekorism.
I think I'm going to block you and desist from further interaction. In some ways you mean well, but effectively you are a מסית. You've just decided Avodah Zarah is fine if it's a type you like and you have no ability to reason beyond that. It makes your entire project to reboot the yeshivish world a farce.
I don't think you can be part of frumstack without interacting with someone you consider a Kofer (regardless of Hashkafah). (Not you in specific anyone is either interacting with a kosher or a racist/sexist/whatever liberals hate)
Such an ignorant take on Chassidus!
Clearly coming from someone who has clearly, never studied Chabad Chassidus in any serious way. (Other then perhaps reading some articles online or books, where some quotes are handpicked and removed from context in order to support a narrative….).
Ask anyone who has somewhat spent serious time learning Chabad Chassidus what is the most important, principle, foundation, core idea, and most basic and essential teaching of Chassidus.
You will get a unanimous consensus on the following: Achdus Hashem.
Essentially, the whole Chassidus came to explain how g-d is absolutely one and alone, there is zero plurality, zero existence outside of his truest essence etc.
There is no other part of Torah today that takes the absolute oneness of g-d as seriously as Chabad and to the extreme that Chabad Chassidus takes it.
Ein of milvado - there is no existence aside from G-d alone.
Don't trust me. Go learn it for yourself.
Chassidus is not something you can get right from observing from the outside. It is very nuanced, abstract, subtle and deep.
If you're truly sincere about getting to the bottom of it, I highly recommend you find someone to teach you the following two things. Both from the Tzemach Tzedek. Sefer is called derech mitzvosecha.
Achdus Hashem
Shoresh mitzvos hatefila
You will find all of your shallow arguments fully addressed and you will hopefully have your mind opened to a whole new world you are currently totally ignorant about.
I think you owe it to yourself and your audience. Go do some real (maybe inconvenient research). You will not be disappointed.
But you will need a really good teacher. These are not texts you will understand correctly without someone who is very experienced and well versed in it.
Isn’t he just an AZINO (AZ in name only)? As far as I can tell, he only embraces breslover trappings (he thinks it’s fun) but basically doesn’t engage with its actual theology. He pretends its theology is something else, so gezunte heyt.
Seriously?!
It shouldn't really be shocking per se. Let's say for a second that maskil earnestly thinks AZ is at stake. It's not crazy then to treat it as such, is it?
I always thought he was being semi ironic
I always thought he was being semi ironic
You can say the same thing in reverse. Perhaps Breslov is full of people who would have been happy anyways. The natural response to this is: we have good reason to believe that there is a causal relationship from the movement to happiness. But we have good arguments for causation from the movement to rape (rabbinic deification is an enabler).
Chaim Walder raped away and he wasn't breslov.
He also wasn't a rabbi
And there are happy people who aren't breslov. Neither point is relevant
95%+ settler terrorism is committed by Breslovers?
Yes
Like Mormonism?
Since It's the first time I've seen you mentioning Jesus in your blogs. Have you ever thought doing a post about Christianity (in case you think you have something interesting to share)? Have you ever had any meaningful interaction with Christianity or with practising Christians in general?
I know a lot about Christianity. No particular plans to write about it.
Have you ever met Christians in Israel? Did you find them different from those in the UK (any kind, Anglicans, Catholics, Lutherans..)
Only missionaries.