You know what's funny? In the intro to Natan's book he talks about his ideal of defining the differences between "rationalist" (sic) worldview and the regular jewish one, so that we can all recognize where each other are coming from, and respect each other better.
Then he puts up posts like this.
But if he gets ripped apart for the sheer ignorance, data mining, and superficiality of its analysis, he'll put up another self righteous pathetic snivel about how all the "sharks" are attacking him, but he's a martyr and will brave it out.
Ha ha. This post is SOO funny. Only an am ha'oretz d'oiraysa can be completely oblivious to the overwhelming amount of ma'amarei Chazal that teach about the protective nature of limud hatorah. I guess that's what's nice about having a modox readership. You can basically get away with murder and your readership will be none the wiser. Keep it up, Natan. Thanks for giving me another good reason to add to the list for why we need Kollel.
>>>Only an am ha'oretz d'oiraysa can be completely oblivious to the overwhelming amount of ma'amarei Chazal that teach about the protective nature of limud hatorah.>>>
There are assertions made in the Talmud that objectively appear to refer to the universe as it is, and yet we know that they are off the mark. Let's take Slifkin's mud-mouse example. Was that a metaphor or an allegory? I can't say, because I'm not familiar enough with that piece of Talmud, but it seems that such a comment would have been intended to be taken literally. As a scholar of R"H, I am much more familiar with certain comments made about how the flood waters of the great flood originated. The Talmud, along with help from Rashi, explains how various stars of various constellations were removed to permit a sort of celestial faucet to form, through which the flood waters originated.
I wonder about these flood water comments. Did anyone ever take them literally? By what mechanism would water from outer space come to planet Earth? How are stars removed form a constellation? When one understands that constellations don't actually even exist, and are mere optical illusions, how should we understand this piece of Talmud? (A constellation is a 2D rendering of various bright stars might appear to form the corners and edges of a creatively devised connect-the-dot drawing of a man or a goat or a swan. But upon further investigation, it's clear that the stars have no objective relationship. In fact, in the 3rd poorly appreciated dimension [i.e. depth] from the the earthling's perspective, the stars we think are close to one another in the drawing may be way farther from one another then stars considered to be in the next constellation, or even 3 constellations away. And if we were in another location of the universe (or perhaps even as close as somewhere very far away in our own solar system) it would be clear that the constellations change completely, then isn't it obvious that the constellations are mere constructs of our minds and do not actually exist as entities, and certainly not entities that rule over us or affect us in any manner? So what was the Talmud talking about? Well, it seems that it was just parroting what everyone else at the time was saying, and what still goes on on the second to last page of People Magazine -- just plain silliness and ignorance of how the universe works, thinking that these things matter or are real when clearly they deserve no greater attention that any other patterns we see. It's just that the ancients could perceive the patterns in the nighttime sky, and so they talked about that, rather than the microscopic patterns in, say, myelin sheaths or the cuboidal epithelium in the glandular ducts. Cuboidal epithelium is quite rare in the body (vs squamous and columnar) and I'm sure we could make up lots of stories as to why the three dimensions were made equivalent and what lesson it purportedly teaches us.
But the ancients didn't know that this was silly -- they really thought that astrology was real. Consider that for a moment -- not just as a discussion point or a cliched throwaway comment, but really consider what it means that the ancients paid so much attention and wasted so much time looking at the stars and making up stories, but spent no time at all on the variations in tortoiseshell patterns or the chromosome count of various grains. Patterns are everywhere, but you can't talk about them unless you know they exist. Which is why the ancients had so much poetic literature based on lions and bears and deer and griffon vultures, and the Native Americans had their myths about the walrus and the raven and the eagle. But interestingly enough, there are no widespread myths about the aye-aye and the potto. Why not? Because Madagascar and central Africa are so isolated that stories were either never told or made no sense. How come people ask why there are no dinosaurs mentioned in the Torah, but no one asks why there are no penguins mentioned in the Torah? How come someone accused Slifkin in these comments of being a chameleon, but not of being a cuttlefish? Cuttlefish are much better and much faster at changing their colors than chameleons. It's because these thoughts and ideas are old and long ago, people didn't know about cuttlefish physiology or pottos -- I wonder if anyone reading this even knows what a loris is, let alone the specific loris known as a potto.
And so it's SOO funny to me that people accuse others of being ignorant when they themselves are ignorant. When Chazal discussed the protective nature of Torah, isn't it obvious that they were merely saying things without real substance? The same way the Talmud claims that God can't reverse his own oath, and so when he decrees rain for a nation that sours in their obedience, he must make the rain fall at inopportune times in inopportune locations is the same way that rabbis talk about Torah being protective. These are comments of legendary nationalism (in the sense that the nation values Torah) and legendary pep-talking (in the same way that Yankee fans shout "Yankees rule!" when it's so clear that they can't actually rule, since there's no actual entity of "the Yankees" and the makeup of the team changes completely every decade and they don't win every year and it's just rah-rah sisboomba emotional talk, rather than a reflection of reality) -- of course the people who value Torah are going to say it's supremely awesome and tell stories about how learning Torah can cause birds flying overhead to turn into ash mid-air.
>>>I guess that's what's nice about having a modox readership. You can basically get away with murder and your readership will be none the wiser.>>>
But you're right about this. I think Outfoxed said it best above (or below) when he called out the rationalistic approach. I wonder how to reconcile subjecting the Torah to a little bit of rationalism.
There are proofs in math, but not anywhere else, really. All we do is collect data until the preponderance of this data points in a single direction, and the most plausible rationale that explains the outcomes is the one we go with, until further notice.
The way to demonstrate that Torah learning on a bus doesn't protect it is to review multiple buses in the same danger, some with Torah learning and others without and see if the collected buses in one arm of the experiment fared any better than the ones in the other arm. Ideally, we would run such an experiment prospectively (in the sense that we'd plan everything out beforehand), but retrospective data is not unuseful (in the sense that merely observing what happened without prior planning is also informative).
Proper planning (in other words, prospective experimentation schemes) helps because it permits the data collectors to standardize things as best as possible. We like to equalize as much as possible so that we can focus on the one thing we're looking at -- the dependent variable. It's no good to see if you got periodontal disease and I didn't if everything about the way we operate is permitted to continue. But if we plan things out in a proper fashion beforehand, and match each participant in the test group with another in the control group of the same age, gender, smoking habits, socio-economic level, race, etc until the last little variable we can think of that might matter (so we don't necessarily ascertain that if you have a pet cat, that I need to have a pet cat also), and the only thing we leave free of restraints is that your diabetes is poorly controlled while mine is well controlled, then is there's a difference in the study outcomes and the effect is large enough (in terms of mm or some other measurable difference between control and test members) and broad enough (in terms of effects measured across the entire sample populations), then we might be able to demonstrate that uncontrolled diabetes does correlate with poor periodontal health. Further testing would then need to be carried out to pinpoint interaction, direction of effects, etc. But the point here is that we know how to figure out if things work or not.
If you're suggesting that prayer or Torah learning or wearing red string bracelets or seat belts or having air bags or maintaining sufficient tire tread matters, we take those hypotheses and we test them and we see that the latter 3 have been shown to work, while there is no data for the first 3. This doesn't mean that the first 3 don't matter -- it just means we have no data. And if we can't imagine that there's a mechanism by which the first 3 would work, that could mean that we either are just not creative enough to figure out how these things work (but that they actually could) or that, in fact, they wouldn't matter.
Since these tests obviously take a lot of time and effort and money, the things we study are carefully selected, although you can run your own study. For the next 25 years, flip a coin (that will be our randomizer) to see whether or not you'll say tefilas haderech on any given road trip / drive into work and take careful notes of all incidents. Make sure not to inform anyone else about this, and it's best if you're not directly involved in the responsibility for the success of the trip (so you shouldn't be driving or making sure to keep the driver awake, but you should also not have the ability to distract the driver). Try to be a fly on the wall. And if you travel 50-200 times each year in those 25 years, you will get a good sample size to review after 25 years. I don't know what would constitute a "safe" vs "unsafe" trip -- do you need to avoid death or severe personal injury, or is avoiding a flat tire sufficient? Try to figure that out beforehand to minimize ad hoc fiddling of the data to meet your expectations or desires.
Anyway, it's likely that tefilas haderech will have no effect, but perhaps that mere cynicism and perhaps it will have an overwhelming effect. If you could get 25 friends to do this for a year, you could run this experiment much quicker, but you'll have to standardize things to ensure proper inter-operator uniformity because different people do different things in different ways.
That's how you you practically demonstrate whether Torah learning or prayer or avoiding lashon hara or whatever has an effect, to the limits of your study parameters. It's possible that waking up the morning of the trip and speaking lashon hara about Slifkin or R' Schachter (hmm...I did just call him rabbi...interesting) will override whatever effect lashon hara avoidance during the actual trip, and further investigation will then be necessary.
We may have such a thing - Charedi vs regular busses in Israel. Assuming 1) that most dangerous traffic accidents happen on motorways, 2) the Charedi bus from say Jerusalem to Bnei Brak and non-Charedi bus from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv run the same "dangerous" section of motorway and 3) More people on the Charedi bus "learn" Torah 4) equally skilled bus drivers - we could compare road traffic accident injury or fatality data between the two lines.
Oh yes -- we could definitely compare those two things and a have a very thorough analysis of the independent variables (the things we are trying to keep constant and not actually study) such as length of routes, road conditions, driver skill, etc, and with sufficient numbers (because the power of research comes with great denominators within which to catch sufficiently high numerator incidences) we might be able to test or the efficacy of prayer on a bus.
However, things are complicated by the fact that prayers, being metaphysical, have no known rules. Can I pray for you? Can I pray for you if I don't know you? Can I pray for you without you even knowing it? What if you learn on Tuesday -- does that protect you only for Tuesday, or does that protect you for 3 days? Must you learn on the bus to avoid trouble on the bus? When they say kaddish in shul and someone says "al yisrael v'al r'bannan" does that mean that you're protected even without Torah study? Yes, one may argue that prayer and Torah learning do nothing, but if you're actually going to research this, you need to open your mind and permit all reasonable possibilities. How do we separate out the base rate protection for those who are protected on a regular basis? Maybe all of the crashes and terrorist attacks are what occurs after the protection has been granted and we cannot even measure what unprotected status looks like because there's always someone who prayed for all of Israel?
I have a number of favorite portions of the prayer services; one of them, for example, is "l'olam...modeh al ha'ames" as you could imagine. Another one is in the nefilat apayim section of tachanun, where we recite a portion of the story from 2 Samuel 24. King David is approached by the prophet Gad to offer him 3 options for punishment. We see here collective punishment because of David's sins -- famine and pestilence. How can we then understand prayer and its effect? If I am the mayor or the governor or the rabbi of the shul or some other community leader, do you suffer for my sins like the nation would potentially suffer for David's sins? And then what did David ask for? He pleaded "niplah na b'yad Hashem...u'viyad adam al epolah" -- "please let me fall under the control of God, but not fall under the control of man." In other words, David chose to suffer from a more directly divine punishment, like pestilence (or famine) rather than marauders, because, presumably, when people are given reign over other people, they can act in a way contrary to what God planned. I wonder if the two choices were 7 years famine or marauders, would he still have said the same thing and chosen the famine? But I digress...
The point I am trying to make is that there are so many contradictory comments made about the effects of sin and the effects of prayer and the effects of their interaction that I wonder if any study could be made on the metaphysical. And by that, I mean to say any meaningful data collection and analysis, because the faithful will be able to point to all of this and more to disrupt attempts at base-rate analysis or variables in general. When we're talking about things that are understood, we can group them and label them and identify them. But we don't even know what any of this metaphysical stuff even means, let alone how to count it. What is kavana and how do you have it? Many people know that story of the ignorant little boy who went into the synagogue on YK and blew his flute and the people wanted to punish him but the rabbi proclaimed that the Heavens had been closed on account of the sins of the community but that the pure note from the ignorant little boy who didn't even know how to say aleph-bet was what came to save the day.
For those who do not believe in the metaphysical, these are not problems, because there is no metaphysical. But for those who do, there can be no evidence against their worldview because their world view has not been established via reason. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't get into through reason. All you can do is show them that everything they think they know has been given to them through indoctrination. Some will hear you and others will not. I know, because I specialize in speaking with troubled youth and adults who find me, and these are their stories and their problems.
With all due respect Dr, the variables in COVID were not the same. For example simple advice to prevent the spread of a known virus was ignored and less care was taken to protect "vulnerable people" - two significant attributable factors to the higher death rate. A similarly densely populated community, with similar disregard for restrictions would be an accurate control set.
And shortly after Covid, Hashem sent the vaccine. Israel was one of the first countries to roll it out. Covid was blip on the historical radar. This is the problem with your pseudoscientific "experiments". You only think in the short term, and your eyes which have read too much kefira can't see past your secularist nose. Hashem thinks long term and sees everything. לא מחשבותי מחשבותיכם.
On the topic of Torah protecting, a lot of the disagreement comes from confusing the general and specific. Yes, generally speaking, the more aveiros Jews do, the worse off we'll be. However, the appropriate response to a direct, immediate threat is to take direct immediate real-world action.
(Incidentally, I always found the "What If" books fairly silly. They are more geared towards entertaining your family at the Shabbos table than containing real shailos and teshuvos. R' Zillberstein doesn't write them; they are adapted from a Hebrew source and edited.
The danger from the series however, is that people can get the impression that serious life questions can be easily solved with simplistic, cutesy answers from a medrash, as well as getting a distorted view of what serious psak actually looks like.)
The amount of lies and half-truths in one post beggars belief.
I will quote one:
This fatalistic phrase did indeed originate in World War One, though it’s not clear if the Ohr Somayach was the original source.
Now nobody knows when it originated, it has not been traced to earlier than WW1. Does that mean it originated there? Of course not. But why not write something with no backing, when it's Charedim that are the topic?
There are more of these small half-truths, and twists of phrase. Just enough to make you think that he actually knows what he is talking about.
But as has been proven again and again - the only way the Slifkin characters of the world can hold their opinions is through lies. Not just outright bald-faced lies, but the kind of lying that permeates everything they say, with opinion and fact mixed together, misquotes and general dreikoperai.
Iv'e only recently come across this blog. I distinctly remember the scandal that broke out when Slifkin wrote his book and how it was banned by many rabbis, and have I all but forgotten the affair since. I find it fascinating to rediscover Slifkin some 15+ years later in his present form.
The rabbis who banned his book stand vindicated. Slifkin was apparently indeed a wolf in sheep's clothes. Either that, or the ban on his books pushed Slifkin over the edge. (History is replete with authors of poisonous books who went off the deep end when they encountered resistance to their works). Even if so, this means that Slifkin was already on the brink at the time. All this should restore our faith in our rabbis when they take steps that can seem radical to us.
Since I don't plan on visiting this site too frequently I'll drop some quick observations and musings about Slifkin and his blog right here.
The name under which this blog operates is nothing but a veneer. It is a platform dedicated solely to maligning Chareidi Jews, Torah and Chazal, cleverly disguised as "Rational Judaism" . It has nothing remotely to do with that. A cheap gimmick.
Slifkin would like to have us believe that Chareidim are a recent invention of "radicalized" Jews. Hey Slifkin, it's the opposite. Jews always were Charedi. You think the medieval Jews wore Srugis? They were dressed in black and white (of the day) were sequestered in their own culture , usually in squalor, and lived lives completely dedicated to Torah. They did not join the culture around them. It's the "modern" Jews who broke the mold. THEY experimented with things like Haskalah , Zionism (even the religious variety), Modoxism and the rest. And most ended in abysmal failure.
Obviously Nathan Slifkin's only deity is science. He worships it. Science uber alles. He will give twisted interpretations beyond recognition to anything found in Chazal that contradicts science . And if he can't, he will simply discard the Chazal. He won't hesitate to say that Chazal were flat out wrong. This is what we call a kofer ((אפילו אומר על ימין שהוא שמאל ועל שמאל שהוא ימין and don’t bother arguing the point. The only thing I'll give him credit is that he posts comments that disagree and even attack him. He is not averse to a challenge. Granted.
The author's singular obsession with attacking Torah values at every turn borders on the insane. Post after post dripping with hate, snarky cynicism and ridicule show an unhealthy rage beneath the surface. Seek help.
As pointed out by others, the irony is that the author is exactly the type of shnorrer he ridicules, just in a different form. His site and museum are listener/donor funded. Which means he is not producing any profit- making ventures, and is supported by others. It all boils down to a matter of values. We Chareidim value learning Torah and will gladly support it, while he and his supporters believe in the study of fossils and exploring exotic versions of Noah's ark. The Asian one versus the Christian one (do we need all this ? Do we not have Midrashim which are Torah Misinai to tell us about the Ark? SMH)
Deep down I feel sad for Slifkin. The before and after. The cute yeshiva guy from 20 years ago with a great future ahead of him, to the embittered scientist with a sneer on his face and a srugi. In the long run Slifkin will go down in the dustbin of history as a forgotten nobody, while the Torah world continues to live and embody it's great sages such as R' Y.C. Zonnenfeld, The Satmar Rebbe , R' Aharon Kotler , The Brisker Rov The Chazon Ish and so many others.
The one modification I would mention to your otherwise great comment is that it's not "in the long run"; he has already long since gone down in the dustbin of history. The truly sad and pathetic thing about Dr. Slifkin is that he has devoted 18 years and counting of his life to taking revenge on the chareidim by belittling them on his blog, and (like you) virtually no chareidim are aware that he even [still] exists.
What's funny is that he considers the relative lack of critical response to his vitriol (with a few notable exceptions) as some kind of vindication; what he doesn't realize is that almost everybody who has what to respond doesn't know or care that he said anything.
As someone new to this blog you may not realize that all this has been said about Slifkin on numerous occasions, but usually without a substantive response to the actual subject at hand. Do you have one?
According to your take on Slifkin, Outfoxed, why do you think he maintains such hypocrisy? Does he not see himself or realize it, or is he very aware and he feels stuck?
I think he is very aware of his hypocrisy. However he is stuck for 2 reasons:
Firstly, his reputation would be destroyed if he admitted that there's no God and the Torah is made up. Furthermore, this admission would vindicate his opponents who knew he was an Apikorus all along.
Secondly , his family, community, donors etc would all leave him thereby destroying his social, financial, communal stability.
It's a tough situation to be in ... but he brought this on himself and intellectual honesty isn't always easy...
While you have a good point, I think it is possible that he believes in some Heavenly force. Limiting God to some disconnected Heavenly force is also kefira, but I don't think it's accurate to say that he thinks that there is NO God. Not that I am being intentionally charitable to him, but I've never seen him imply otherwise, and he does have at least some modicum of respect towards Hashem and Judaism, at least at his understanding of it.
Additionally, being an atheist is also not simple. Science still has a lot of explaining to do on how it's possible. So we have:
1. The fact that he was born and raised as an observant Jew.
2. The fact that he currently lives and raises his family in an observant community.
3. The fact that he currently teaches Torah and makes a living off of it.
4. The fact that he has never insinuated that he doesn't believe in any God, even though he has dropped hints at other heretical beliefs, such as the Documentary Hypothesis.
Due to the above factors, I think it's unlikely that he is an atheist in the conventional definition of the word, but I do think that he views God as an abstract disconnected force, which is nothing short of kefira.
How is refraining from answering challenges also not considered kefira? If the one asking the question read Dawkins and merely asks Dawkins' question, and the one receiving the question did or didn't read Dawkins but has no response, isn't the one asking the question and the one receiving the question the same?
How does merely saying "no, I believe" relieve the one being questioned from having to respond and protect him from being labeled a kofer by virtue of now being aware of the question, which is what you'd suggest is the proper way to handle the one asking a question?
Ok Slifkin what about Rashi on Avos 3:7 that says that if somebody is learning the Satan does not have permission to harm him...…Or the gemara about King David learning to protect himself from death?
See also Chagiga 12b, Bava Basra 79b.Bava Basra 7a
(BTW I own a Glock and a Kel-tec, practice MMA and workout and 'rationally" can protect myself better then you can. if you really believe what your saying I expect you to purchase a weapon and train.)
I'm not sure what you think that those sources prove, but here are some sources that actually prove that, practically speaking, Torah does NOT protect:
I fail to see how you answered up the sources I cited.
Rashi explicitly says that Torah protects.
The impression I got from your article (correct me if I am wrong) is that you don't believe that there are any Torah sources that mention torah having a protecting effect.
I cited a few of them (all of them being canon)
This does not mean G-d cant decide to negate the effect and punish us and we should also do our due diligence and be able to defend ourselves with worldly means.
Now it seems like you are not having a sources argument and you don't care about sources.
Bait and switch.
Explain why the above sources are not valid please.
And you have not answered why you are not by Caliber 3 training right now.
It's possible that you don't see how weak your argument here is, HGL, but for everyone else (in Ben Shapiro style), I'd like to respond to you.
Tic-tac-toe is a simple enough game, with very few moving parts (2 players) and a very restricted playing field (9 spots) and very restrictive rules (each player can only go once before the other player gets to go and there is no bumping another player's move from their spot, etc.) and so we can use it as a model with glaring success. If you understand the game and you apply some rules of thumb, you can turn the game into a very boring endeavor because you can guarantee that you'll never lose. You can guarantee that you'll never get double trapped and you'll guarantee that you'll never be surprised. It's a battle, in a sense, as all competitive games are, but there's very little room to deviate from expectation because it's so short and so small.
War, on the other hand, where there are 30-300 people per side, and all sorts of degrees on a various spectra of skill, preparedness, stealth, weapon grade and supply, tactical advantage, environmental contributions, etc is obviously so much more complex than tic-tac-toe and so, yes, in a sense it's a game where all of your training matters and all of your preparedness matters, but things can be very unexpected. If you're playing a fair game of tic-tac-toe, there is literally no way to surprise someone who has prepared, but that's not at all the case in actual battle. And so the laws of averages apply -- you'll win some and you lose some. Even the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s didn't win every game, and they had what was perhaps considered the best team ever constructed -- Jordan, Pippen and Rodman.
So it may not be clear to you how silly your comment here is, but it ought to be clear to everyone else. When you're at war, there's very little you can do to guarantee total wins and zero losses, in terms of individual casualties or skirmishes won or lost. Sometimes, things just go sideways, as they say. And the same is the case for chemotherapy treatments for cancer and proton blockers for treating GERD -- on the average, these things are very, very, very successful. As are guns and muscle when you are protecting a POTUS or a famous celebrity or a bank vault.
I am not sure how numerate you are, but I can tell you have no idea how statistics work. You clearly think that by using the magic word "averages", you are making some sort of argument. You seem to be under the impression that we can measure averages with regards to armies and guns the same way as rolling dice or selecting from a deck of cards. Lol.
I'm admittedly not as numerate as I am literate, but I don't actually understand your comment here.
I don't think averages are magic, nor do I think dropping the word "averages" means I can then pretend to be more informed. Just like medical prognosis is exceedingly accurate in the aggregate but not necessarily accurate for the individual, tactical advantage is very helpful in the aggregate but not necessarily helpful for the individual.
Nothing is 100% and everything is on a spectrum. So while having a more prepared military is a tremendous advantage, even the best army can lose a battle and even the best basketball team can lose a game. If they're only playing one game, that game may be the one they lose and it doesn't mean they're a bad team. So, too, to point to two times when armed defenders were unable to successfully protect against attack is a silly argument against the premise that guns are helpful for protecting against attackers.
So the problem with saying things like "more guns, on average = more safety", besides for being incorrect (did you even bother trying to find empirical evidence for this before making that comment?), is that it ignores all the countless other factors that goes into making a country, or a territory, or a city safe. For the Torah making people safe, we have the word of God in Tanach and Talmud, as well as the historical occurrences in Tanach, demonstrating that keeping the Torah increases Jewish safety overall. But unlike you, I never pretended to have a numerical demonstration.
I was going to say something else, but Mecharker already beat me to it.
Torah protects. Mitzvos protect. Tefillah protects. Hashem protects. Without the Torah, Mitzvos, and prayer of the chareidim, the IDF would have been destroyed many times since 1948. Baruch Hashem, that He created the IDF to protect the good Shomrei Torah Jews of Eretz Yisrael (including those who are not yet Shomrei Torah, but will be, or will have Shomrei Torah children). But as the wise man said, just because you need a guard dog doesn't mean you have to become the guard dog!
Maybe there were some Mizrachim who learned Torah properly. In which case, their Torah protected as well. But if their "Torah" was like "Duran Duran", or like Benny Brown's essay on lashon hara, or like most of the academic "Torah" you are fond of quoting...well then, lets just say the Pope's prayers did a better job.
No, it is a mitzvah to avoid the IDF. Osniel and Yehoshua did not serve in a secular army. Sorry.
The פושעי ישראל who are compared to the חלבונה are the chareidim, not the Bible critic, mishkav zachar supporting secularists. They are the מי רגלים שאין מכניסים לעזרה.
Nasty but true. When you enthusiastically participate in this blog, you lose the right to complain about nastiness.
Yes, but not in a secular army. It is a mitzvah to avoid the secular army. I am not making that up, it is clear in the Torah in countless places that avoiding bad spiritual influences is a mitzvah. Did you subscribe to Irrationalist Modoxism yet? Maybe in the future we will do a post listing some of them.
>>>it is clear in the Torah in countless places that avoiding bad spiritual influences is a mitzvah>>>
I'm wondering which one of the 613 commandments is this, and in who's count? Is it subsumed in another broader commandment? Or was Rabbi Simlai, perhaps, speaking loosely when he made this off-the-cuff statement?
>>>It is a mitzvah to avoid the secular army.>>>
If it's a mitzvah to avoid bad spiritual influences, then how can you justify reading and posting on this blog? And if your response is that the ends justify the means -- that maybe you'll have a sufficiently positive effect by being here, and so you're like the cop speeding after the criminal who is speeding -- then how can you not agree that maybe the benefits of joining a secular army can outweigh the negatives in the same fashion?
Because it doesn't outweigh it. On the other hand, if the chareidim who joined the army started, er, using their guns to force the secular to keep the Torah, I might change my mind.
Natan, there are dozens of places throughout Chazal that are unequivocally clear that Torah and Mitzvos protects. In fact, not only is it in Chazal, but it's a recurring theme throughout Nach as well. When the Jews performed Mitzvos as they were supposed to, things went well for them. And when they slipped, we all know what happened. Only someone who doesn't really give a d@mn about the Torah and thinks that it was written by humans anyway or that Chazal didn't have a mesorah or Divine inspiration would attempt to wave away all the evidence.
And if you are looking for an explanation for the calamities despite people learning Torah, Chazal say that when the Jews sin and invoke Hashem's wrath, even if there are a minority who are doing His will, it is not necessarily sufficient as protection. So, in reality, the Chilonim and many of your DL are the cause of uptick in terror attacks (that is not to say that it's not possible that the Charedim themselves may be guilty as well - no one is perfect, and when Hashem sends a message, we are supposed to look inwards and not blame others. But the lion's share of sin definitely belongs to the secular and those entirely indifferent to Torah and Mitzvos)
It's beautiful that the army fights on behalf of the State, but based on reports of the sheer immorality coming out of there, it's possible that it is doing more harm than good.
See here where I wrote about this very topic a few days ago:
"there are dozens of places throughout Chazal that are unequivocally clear that Torah and Mitzvos protects." Yes, and I have analyzed them all in various posts, and shown that they do not at all mean what Rav Zilberstein and others take them to mean.
" it's a recurring theme throughout Nach as well. When the Jews performed Mitzvos as they were supposed to, things went well for them." Right. These mitzvos included fighting in the army. Show me where in Nach it says that they learned Torah instead.
No, I saw you bring a Me'iri on the Gemara in Makkos in one post that purportedly explains that Gemara that the Torah does not protect on a metaphysical level. But the Me'iri is one person, and that is not the conventional pshat, and there are many, many other Gemaros and Ma'amarei Chazal that will need an explanation. So you will be swimming upstream on that one.
If you read my post, I explicitly said that there IS a need for an army. That's what they had in the times of Tanach as well. But that army was not too effective when the Jews were not performing Hashem's will. And it certainly doesn't make sense to dissolve the protection that the army has from the Torah by inducting all the Yeshiva students!
Ok Slifkin what about Rashi on Avos 3:7 that says that if somebody is learning the Satan does not have permission to harm him...…Or the gemara about King David learning to protect himself from death?
See also Chagiga 12b, Bava Basra 79b.Bava Basra 7a
(BTW I own a Glock and a Kel-tec, practice MMA and workout and 'rationally" can protect myself better then you can. if you really believe what your saying I expect you to purchase a weapon and train.)
When you say that Torah protects, is that an assertion of faith in something with no empirical demonstration, or an assertion of an empirical reality? You say that there is "evidence" but you haven't brought any (and the stories in Tanach are about the *general level of mitzva observance*, not about a specific mitzvah providing a specific level of protection). Meanwhile, here's some evidence otherwise:
So you say "well that's because OTHER people are sinning." In other words, practically speaking, Torah does not provide any protection that makes a difference in any visible way (unlike guns). And theologically, there are various rabbinic authorities who explain all your Talmudic sources differently. So the actual evidence to believe that Torah protects is zero empirical evidence in favor, plenty of empirical evidence against, and disputed theological arguments.
(Incidentally, I personally do believe that mitzvot protect, as per the Meiri's understanding, and possibly even beyond that, but not in the sense that R. Zilberstein takes it; and also, I don't believe that learning Torah that comes at the expense of shirking national responsibilities is a mitzvah.)
"The stories in Tanach are about the *general level of mitzva observance*, not about a specific mitzvah providing a specific level of protection"
According to the reason that Talmud Torah is "K'neged Kulam" because it leads to mitzvah observance and you would lose a large amount of mitzvah observance without it, then Talmud Torah is protective because it leads to mitzvah observance - which you apparently admit offers protection. But I would add that there is another important aspect of Talmud Torah: especially when learned with the proper intentions, it connects one with G-d, and G-d's Will. His Will becomes your will, and you develop pious attitudes and outlooks in life. This I believe warrants its own unique brand of protection, in addition to general mitzvah observance. That said, I don't think this means that one should just learn Torah when they are in immediate danger. But at the same time, it is also incorrect to say that Torah doesn't protect, or even that it doesn't provide its own unique protection.
To make an empirical observation, we would need to cease ALL Torah study and observe how Israel fares. However, I believe that Israel, like a sheep surrounded by 70 vicious wolves, would have been devoured decades ago if Torah study had ceased. Israel has faced fatal threats over the past 75 years and has survived, experiencing countless miracles throughout its existence. This is not a secret, and I can guarantee that it is not in the merit of the Niddah bo'elators in Tel Aviv, the army, or RBS.
And even without this obvious truth, I think I would be allowed to make an assertion of faith, being that we are both (presumably) observant Jews. Not sure why you are insinuating otherwise.
Yes, there are stories of attackers attacking Botei Medrash or Shuls. But this can either be explained that at that specific moment the victim/victims were not learning, as the Gemara describes with the malach hamaves and Dovid Hamelech, or there was an extraordinary heavenly wrath, as the Gemara in Bava Kama discusses.
I think the Torah definitely does provide protection in an obviously measurable way, and again, the only way to prove so would be to stop all Torah study. But unfortunately, being that the moral state of most of our brethren is the way it is, it will not be full-proof.
Even if "theologically, there are various rabbinic authorities who explain all your Talmudic sources differently" (I'd appreciate if you can provide a source to all these "rabbinic authorities" instead of magical hand waving, because some of these sources are pretty darn hard to explain away), that does not take away from the fact that simple explanation as well as the conventional understanding is that Torah in fact does protect on a metaphysical level. As another commenter pointed out in this thread, it's all fine and dandy if you want to bring the rationalist view to the table, but at the same time you must be cognizant to the fact that this is simply a minority opinion and not the pashtus of Chazal nor the understanding of most of the Rishonim and Achronim. And you have to respect that and cannot expect everyone to accept your minority, reinterpretive view.
(Incidentally, I personally also don't agree with R' Zilberstein, but I'll take the gemara that says that Torah students are exempt from the draft because they serve as a protection over you. Especially when said draft is run by anti-Torah secularist commanders with a bad track of keeping things "kosher").
Do you think Chazal were ignorant of an obvious reality (there was no shortage of Torah-learning Jews who were killed before you came along with your Wikipedia link)? Or do you think Chazal were aware of it but were dismissive of Jewish life and lied to promote Torah learning (and somehow got away with it until you exposed them)?
These are the only two possibilities according to the way you present the source with David. So which is it? Going to leave this critical question hanging in the air and hide like you often do, or will you give a direct answer?
Are you saying the Gemara is wrong? Are you saying there were no known cases of people dying while learning before then and Chazal just made it up? Or that there were such cases and Chazal lied?
Chazal stated that David's learning was interrupted and that's why he was able to die. Are you assuming the people who were killed in these attacks were learning at the very moment they were killed and their learning was not interrupted?
Exactly. So there is always a way to explain why the protection didn't happen. In other words, there is no way to show that it ever does happen. And there is no basis to insist that it happens.
There is no way to show a lot of things. There is no way to show that keeping the Torah brings rain in the proper time (there probably is, but you would claim otherwise). So do you deny Kriyas Shema also? Do you deny Techiyas Hameisim? Olam Haba?
If you're going to be a kofer, go all the way and be direct.
Its great to see Slifkin getting on so well with the Kofrim. Its funny that he hasn't yet asked the question as to why so many of them agree with him. Theres definitely 'evidence' for that ay?
We do see eye to eye that your Torah doesn't protect anyone. It only brings bad-intentioned machlokes and leitzanus. Kofrim like you shouldn't study Torah.
No, you're completely distorting the source. There are numerous sources stating clearly that Torah learning brings protection. Studying Torah also does not guarantee that no one will ever be harmed. You're making a straw man argument, and you don't have the guts to come right out and say you are a kofer about what Chazal said.
>>>Only someone who doesn't really give a d@mn about the Torah and thinks that it was written by humans anyway or that Chazal didn't have a mesorah or Divine inspiration would attempt to wave away all the evidence.>>>
You seem to explain that someone who accepts your evidence is someone who gives a damn about the Torah, and perhaps we can infer from this that someone who does not accept your evidence is someone who doesn't give a damn. But it appears that you are putting the cart before the horse.
Evidence ought to be evaluated and decisions made based on the evidence, not the other way around. This is almost, by definition, what it means to think: evaluate evidence and then permit that evidence to way you one way or another.
You seem to assert this backwards, though, which, to me, is precisely why you can't be involved in any meaningful way in a rational discussion. If you're not going to agree with the premises, then how could you possibly agree with the conclusions?
A lot of synagogues in New York City have armed security guards, even though New York City is a very safe city compared to most other cities in the US (and in fact safer the almost the entire Western Hemisphere outside of Canada). When there is evidence for a threat, they are typically joined by New York City Police Department officers. Once we had only nine guys for a minyan, and it turned out that the NYPD officer was Jewish, so he made the minyan for us!
I didn't say it was impossible that Rav Zilberstein said something like that, only due to RNS lack of objectivity due to his persecution he could very well have exaggerated.
I don't think you're being fair, RNS. This was a kollel guy who only wanted to carry a gun for personal protection and the authorities told him he has to commit 45 hours of patrol. That's a major commitment, and while it's outside of official kollel hours, it still would cut into his non-kollel learning time. (Who has 45 extra hours a month anyway?!)
Remember, the real histadlus he planned would have been just carrying the gun for the few hours he's going to shul. (And whatever training he would need.) Had the gov't not made such demands on him, he may have received a different psak from RYZ. What if the gov't insisted this fellow take a six month full time course in gun safety, self defense, surveillance and community protection? Would you not agree that such hishtadlut would be excessive for what is a remote danger?
I think it's reasonable for each shul to have one such person. And if you want to argue that the danger is far too unlikely, then that's the answer, not that learning Torah protects more than the gun.
I have no disagreement with you there- that every shul should have security. I was only refering to the psak to this specific person. One could infer that if the histadlut required was far less that 45 hours a month, than RYZ may have decided differently.
I've heard that RYZ is a rather down-to-earth posek, despite his charedi credentials. Has he ever paskened in favor of histadlut?
Hahaha, I think this one is a slifkin quote for the ages. 'Not that learning Torah protects more than a gun'. With Hashkofas like these you understand why mizrachniks can end up running round burning down arab villages. They literally make it up as they go along.
Bec really the malach hameves had a gun which overpowered the Torah and classic chareidy censorship covered it up. Also Chazal can’t possibly be right because science doesn’t believe the malach hameves exists after all no one who’s seen him has lived to tell the tale, very suspicious. According to Rav Avrohom ben haRambam Chazal only knew the science of the day, ergo we can now dismiss this inconvenience.
In the case of דוד המלך, we see that it was an infinitesimal distraction that gave the מלאך המות "power" over him. No one is free from such distractions in learning, and it's hard to believe that just a little distraction would have the practical effect of negating the "Torah protects" principle. As such, that אגדה has little bearing here.
Correct. But Dovid's Torah study didn't protect him from an infinitesimal distraction, did it? And all of us all prone to such distractions, aren't we? As such, the story while revealing the importance of Torah study, does not negate the value of hishtadlut.
You know what's funny? In the intro to Natan's book he talks about his ideal of defining the differences between "rationalist" (sic) worldview and the regular jewish one, so that we can all recognize where each other are coming from, and respect each other better.
Then he puts up posts like this.
But if he gets ripped apart for the sheer ignorance, data mining, and superficiality of its analysis, he'll put up another self righteous pathetic snivel about how all the "sharks" are attacking him, but he's a martyr and will brave it out.
Quite the chameleon, our zoologist is.
The post doesn't preclude a discussion. Adrabah, let's hear your opinion.
Ha ha. This post is SOO funny. Only an am ha'oretz d'oiraysa can be completely oblivious to the overwhelming amount of ma'amarei Chazal that teach about the protective nature of limud hatorah. I guess that's what's nice about having a modox readership. You can basically get away with murder and your readership will be none the wiser. Keep it up, Natan. Thanks for giving me another good reason to add to the list for why we need Kollel.
>>>Only an am ha'oretz d'oiraysa can be completely oblivious to the overwhelming amount of ma'amarei Chazal that teach about the protective nature of limud hatorah.>>>
There are assertions made in the Talmud that objectively appear to refer to the universe as it is, and yet we know that they are off the mark. Let's take Slifkin's mud-mouse example. Was that a metaphor or an allegory? I can't say, because I'm not familiar enough with that piece of Talmud, but it seems that such a comment would have been intended to be taken literally. As a scholar of R"H, I am much more familiar with certain comments made about how the flood waters of the great flood originated. The Talmud, along with help from Rashi, explains how various stars of various constellations were removed to permit a sort of celestial faucet to form, through which the flood waters originated.
I wonder about these flood water comments. Did anyone ever take them literally? By what mechanism would water from outer space come to planet Earth? How are stars removed form a constellation? When one understands that constellations don't actually even exist, and are mere optical illusions, how should we understand this piece of Talmud? (A constellation is a 2D rendering of various bright stars might appear to form the corners and edges of a creatively devised connect-the-dot drawing of a man or a goat or a swan. But upon further investigation, it's clear that the stars have no objective relationship. In fact, in the 3rd poorly appreciated dimension [i.e. depth] from the the earthling's perspective, the stars we think are close to one another in the drawing may be way farther from one another then stars considered to be in the next constellation, or even 3 constellations away. And if we were in another location of the universe (or perhaps even as close as somewhere very far away in our own solar system) it would be clear that the constellations change completely, then isn't it obvious that the constellations are mere constructs of our minds and do not actually exist as entities, and certainly not entities that rule over us or affect us in any manner? So what was the Talmud talking about? Well, it seems that it was just parroting what everyone else at the time was saying, and what still goes on on the second to last page of People Magazine -- just plain silliness and ignorance of how the universe works, thinking that these things matter or are real when clearly they deserve no greater attention that any other patterns we see. It's just that the ancients could perceive the patterns in the nighttime sky, and so they talked about that, rather than the microscopic patterns in, say, myelin sheaths or the cuboidal epithelium in the glandular ducts. Cuboidal epithelium is quite rare in the body (vs squamous and columnar) and I'm sure we could make up lots of stories as to why the three dimensions were made equivalent and what lesson it purportedly teaches us.
But the ancients didn't know that this was silly -- they really thought that astrology was real. Consider that for a moment -- not just as a discussion point or a cliched throwaway comment, but really consider what it means that the ancients paid so much attention and wasted so much time looking at the stars and making up stories, but spent no time at all on the variations in tortoiseshell patterns or the chromosome count of various grains. Patterns are everywhere, but you can't talk about them unless you know they exist. Which is why the ancients had so much poetic literature based on lions and bears and deer and griffon vultures, and the Native Americans had their myths about the walrus and the raven and the eagle. But interestingly enough, there are no widespread myths about the aye-aye and the potto. Why not? Because Madagascar and central Africa are so isolated that stories were either never told or made no sense. How come people ask why there are no dinosaurs mentioned in the Torah, but no one asks why there are no penguins mentioned in the Torah? How come someone accused Slifkin in these comments of being a chameleon, but not of being a cuttlefish? Cuttlefish are much better and much faster at changing their colors than chameleons. It's because these thoughts and ideas are old and long ago, people didn't know about cuttlefish physiology or pottos -- I wonder if anyone reading this even knows what a loris is, let alone the specific loris known as a potto.
And so it's SOO funny to me that people accuse others of being ignorant when they themselves are ignorant. When Chazal discussed the protective nature of Torah, isn't it obvious that they were merely saying things without real substance? The same way the Talmud claims that God can't reverse his own oath, and so when he decrees rain for a nation that sours in their obedience, he must make the rain fall at inopportune times in inopportune locations is the same way that rabbis talk about Torah being protective. These are comments of legendary nationalism (in the sense that the nation values Torah) and legendary pep-talking (in the same way that Yankee fans shout "Yankees rule!" when it's so clear that they can't actually rule, since there's no actual entity of "the Yankees" and the makeup of the team changes completely every decade and they don't win every year and it's just rah-rah sisboomba emotional talk, rather than a reflection of reality) -- of course the people who value Torah are going to say it's supremely awesome and tell stories about how learning Torah can cause birds flying overhead to turn into ash mid-air.
>>>I guess that's what's nice about having a modox readership. You can basically get away with murder and your readership will be none the wiser.>>>
But you're right about this. I think Outfoxed said it best above (or below) when he called out the rationalistic approach. I wonder how to reconcile subjecting the Torah to a little bit of rationalism.
What is 'a scholar of R"H'?
מסכת ראש השנה
Have you encountered those who link it to to the Alvarez comet? Still maybe a problem with the dating.
Indeed. I'm not a rationalist. I'm a supernaturalist.
bravo
Every time a soldier holding a gun gets killed it’s proof that guns do not protect. RNS logic 101.
How in heavens name do you *prove* that learning Torah on a bus doesn’t practically protect it? You are giving science a bad name.
There are proofs in math, but not anywhere else, really. All we do is collect data until the preponderance of this data points in a single direction, and the most plausible rationale that explains the outcomes is the one we go with, until further notice.
The way to demonstrate that Torah learning on a bus doesn't protect it is to review multiple buses in the same danger, some with Torah learning and others without and see if the collected buses in one arm of the experiment fared any better than the ones in the other arm. Ideally, we would run such an experiment prospectively (in the sense that we'd plan everything out beforehand), but retrospective data is not unuseful (in the sense that merely observing what happened without prior planning is also informative).
Proper planning (in other words, prospective experimentation schemes) helps because it permits the data collectors to standardize things as best as possible. We like to equalize as much as possible so that we can focus on the one thing we're looking at -- the dependent variable. It's no good to see if you got periodontal disease and I didn't if everything about the way we operate is permitted to continue. But if we plan things out in a proper fashion beforehand, and match each participant in the test group with another in the control group of the same age, gender, smoking habits, socio-economic level, race, etc until the last little variable we can think of that might matter (so we don't necessarily ascertain that if you have a pet cat, that I need to have a pet cat also), and the only thing we leave free of restraints is that your diabetes is poorly controlled while mine is well controlled, then is there's a difference in the study outcomes and the effect is large enough (in terms of mm or some other measurable difference between control and test members) and broad enough (in terms of effects measured across the entire sample populations), then we might be able to demonstrate that uncontrolled diabetes does correlate with poor periodontal health. Further testing would then need to be carried out to pinpoint interaction, direction of effects, etc. But the point here is that we know how to figure out if things work or not.
If you're suggesting that prayer or Torah learning or wearing red string bracelets or seat belts or having air bags or maintaining sufficient tire tread matters, we take those hypotheses and we test them and we see that the latter 3 have been shown to work, while there is no data for the first 3. This doesn't mean that the first 3 don't matter -- it just means we have no data. And if we can't imagine that there's a mechanism by which the first 3 would work, that could mean that we either are just not creative enough to figure out how these things work (but that they actually could) or that, in fact, they wouldn't matter.
Since these tests obviously take a lot of time and effort and money, the things we study are carefully selected, although you can run your own study. For the next 25 years, flip a coin (that will be our randomizer) to see whether or not you'll say tefilas haderech on any given road trip / drive into work and take careful notes of all incidents. Make sure not to inform anyone else about this, and it's best if you're not directly involved in the responsibility for the success of the trip (so you shouldn't be driving or making sure to keep the driver awake, but you should also not have the ability to distract the driver). Try to be a fly on the wall. And if you travel 50-200 times each year in those 25 years, you will get a good sample size to review after 25 years. I don't know what would constitute a "safe" vs "unsafe" trip -- do you need to avoid death or severe personal injury, or is avoiding a flat tire sufficient? Try to figure that out beforehand to minimize ad hoc fiddling of the data to meet your expectations or desires.
Anyway, it's likely that tefilas haderech will have no effect, but perhaps that mere cynicism and perhaps it will have an overwhelming effect. If you could get 25 friends to do this for a year, you could run this experiment much quicker, but you'll have to standardize things to ensure proper inter-operator uniformity because different people do different things in different ways.
That's how you you practically demonstrate whether Torah learning or prayer or avoiding lashon hara or whatever has an effect, to the limits of your study parameters. It's possible that waking up the morning of the trip and speaking lashon hara about Slifkin or R' Schachter (hmm...I did just call him rabbi...interesting) will override whatever effect lashon hara avoidance during the actual trip, and further investigation will then be necessary.
We may have such a thing - Charedi vs regular busses in Israel. Assuming 1) that most dangerous traffic accidents happen on motorways, 2) the Charedi bus from say Jerusalem to Bnei Brak and non-Charedi bus from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv run the same "dangerous" section of motorway and 3) More people on the Charedi bus "learn" Torah 4) equally skilled bus drivers - we could compare road traffic accident injury or fatality data between the two lines.
Oh yes -- we could definitely compare those two things and a have a very thorough analysis of the independent variables (the things we are trying to keep constant and not actually study) such as length of routes, road conditions, driver skill, etc, and with sufficient numbers (because the power of research comes with great denominators within which to catch sufficiently high numerator incidences) we might be able to test or the efficacy of prayer on a bus.
However, things are complicated by the fact that prayers, being metaphysical, have no known rules. Can I pray for you? Can I pray for you if I don't know you? Can I pray for you without you even knowing it? What if you learn on Tuesday -- does that protect you only for Tuesday, or does that protect you for 3 days? Must you learn on the bus to avoid trouble on the bus? When they say kaddish in shul and someone says "al yisrael v'al r'bannan" does that mean that you're protected even without Torah study? Yes, one may argue that prayer and Torah learning do nothing, but if you're actually going to research this, you need to open your mind and permit all reasonable possibilities. How do we separate out the base rate protection for those who are protected on a regular basis? Maybe all of the crashes and terrorist attacks are what occurs after the protection has been granted and we cannot even measure what unprotected status looks like because there's always someone who prayed for all of Israel?
I have a number of favorite portions of the prayer services; one of them, for example, is "l'olam...modeh al ha'ames" as you could imagine. Another one is in the nefilat apayim section of tachanun, where we recite a portion of the story from 2 Samuel 24. King David is approached by the prophet Gad to offer him 3 options for punishment. We see here collective punishment because of David's sins -- famine and pestilence. How can we then understand prayer and its effect? If I am the mayor or the governor or the rabbi of the shul or some other community leader, do you suffer for my sins like the nation would potentially suffer for David's sins? And then what did David ask for? He pleaded "niplah na b'yad Hashem...u'viyad adam al epolah" -- "please let me fall under the control of God, but not fall under the control of man." In other words, David chose to suffer from a more directly divine punishment, like pestilence (or famine) rather than marauders, because, presumably, when people are given reign over other people, they can act in a way contrary to what God planned. I wonder if the two choices were 7 years famine or marauders, would he still have said the same thing and chosen the famine? But I digress...
The point I am trying to make is that there are so many contradictory comments made about the effects of sin and the effects of prayer and the effects of their interaction that I wonder if any study could be made on the metaphysical. And by that, I mean to say any meaningful data collection and analysis, because the faithful will be able to point to all of this and more to disrupt attempts at base-rate analysis or variables in general. When we're talking about things that are understood, we can group them and label them and identify them. But we don't even know what any of this metaphysical stuff even means, let alone how to count it. What is kavana and how do you have it? Many people know that story of the ignorant little boy who went into the synagogue on YK and blew his flute and the people wanted to punish him but the rabbi proclaimed that the Heavens had been closed on account of the sins of the community but that the pure note from the ignorant little boy who didn't even know how to say aleph-bet was what came to save the day.
For those who do not believe in the metaphysical, these are not problems, because there is no metaphysical. But for those who do, there can be no evidence against their worldview because their world view has not been established via reason. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't get into through reason. All you can do is show them that everything they think they know has been given to them through indoctrination. Some will hear you and others will not. I know, because I specialize in speaking with troubled youth and adults who find me, and these are their stories and their problems.
Well, the test was already done. During Covid. HIGHER death rate in the charedi community.
With all due respect Dr, the variables in COVID were not the same. For example simple advice to prevent the spread of a known virus was ignored and less care was taken to protect "vulnerable people" - two significant attributable factors to the higher death rate. A similarly densely populated community, with similar disregard for restrictions would be an accurate control set.
Higher sudden unexplained death rate from the englightened people who took the vaccines, especially your community.
Nah, the test was done before Covid. Chareidim live longer. למען ירבו ימיכם וימי בניכם!
https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/live-long-and-prosper-health-in-the-haredi-community/
And shortly after Covid, Hashem sent the vaccine. Israel was one of the first countries to roll it out. Covid was blip on the historical radar. This is the problem with your pseudoscientific "experiments". You only think in the short term, and your eyes which have read too much kefira can't see past your secularist nose. Hashem thinks long term and sees everything. לא מחשבותי מחשבותיכם.
On the topic of Torah protecting, a lot of the disagreement comes from confusing the general and specific. Yes, generally speaking, the more aveiros Jews do, the worse off we'll be. However, the appropriate response to a direct, immediate threat is to take direct immediate real-world action.
(Incidentally, I always found the "What If" books fairly silly. They are more geared towards entertaining your family at the Shabbos table than containing real shailos and teshuvos. R' Zillberstein doesn't write them; they are adapted from a Hebrew source and edited.
The danger from the series however, is that people can get the impression that serious life questions can be easily solved with simplistic, cutesy answers from a medrash, as well as getting a distorted view of what serious psak actually looks like.)
Agree with the point re his seforim. Certainly not serious psak seforim.
The amount of lies and half-truths in one post beggars belief.
I will quote one:
This fatalistic phrase did indeed originate in World War One, though it’s not clear if the Ohr Somayach was the original source.
Now nobody knows when it originated, it has not been traced to earlier than WW1. Does that mean it originated there? Of course not. But why not write something with no backing, when it's Charedim that are the topic?
There are more of these small half-truths, and twists of phrase. Just enough to make you think that he actually knows what he is talking about.
But as has been proven again and again - the only way the Slifkin characters of the world can hold their opinions is through lies. Not just outright bald-faced lies, but the kind of lying that permeates everything they say, with opinion and fact mixed together, misquotes and general dreikoperai.
Iv'e only recently come across this blog. I distinctly remember the scandal that broke out when Slifkin wrote his book and how it was banned by many rabbis, and have I all but forgotten the affair since. I find it fascinating to rediscover Slifkin some 15+ years later in his present form.
The rabbis who banned his book stand vindicated. Slifkin was apparently indeed a wolf in sheep's clothes. Either that, or the ban on his books pushed Slifkin over the edge. (History is replete with authors of poisonous books who went off the deep end when they encountered resistance to their works). Even if so, this means that Slifkin was already on the brink at the time. All this should restore our faith in our rabbis when they take steps that can seem radical to us.
Since I don't plan on visiting this site too frequently I'll drop some quick observations and musings about Slifkin and his blog right here.
The name under which this blog operates is nothing but a veneer. It is a platform dedicated solely to maligning Chareidi Jews, Torah and Chazal, cleverly disguised as "Rational Judaism" . It has nothing remotely to do with that. A cheap gimmick.
Slifkin would like to have us believe that Chareidim are a recent invention of "radicalized" Jews. Hey Slifkin, it's the opposite. Jews always were Charedi. You think the medieval Jews wore Srugis? They were dressed in black and white (of the day) were sequestered in their own culture , usually in squalor, and lived lives completely dedicated to Torah. They did not join the culture around them. It's the "modern" Jews who broke the mold. THEY experimented with things like Haskalah , Zionism (even the religious variety), Modoxism and the rest. And most ended in abysmal failure.
Obviously Nathan Slifkin's only deity is science. He worships it. Science uber alles. He will give twisted interpretations beyond recognition to anything found in Chazal that contradicts science . And if he can't, he will simply discard the Chazal. He won't hesitate to say that Chazal were flat out wrong. This is what we call a kofer ((אפילו אומר על ימין שהוא שמאל ועל שמאל שהוא ימין and don’t bother arguing the point. The only thing I'll give him credit is that he posts comments that disagree and even attack him. He is not averse to a challenge. Granted.
The author's singular obsession with attacking Torah values at every turn borders on the insane. Post after post dripping with hate, snarky cynicism and ridicule show an unhealthy rage beneath the surface. Seek help.
As pointed out by others, the irony is that the author is exactly the type of shnorrer he ridicules, just in a different form. His site and museum are listener/donor funded. Which means he is not producing any profit- making ventures, and is supported by others. It all boils down to a matter of values. We Chareidim value learning Torah and will gladly support it, while he and his supporters believe in the study of fossils and exploring exotic versions of Noah's ark. The Asian one versus the Christian one (do we need all this ? Do we not have Midrashim which are Torah Misinai to tell us about the Ark? SMH)
Deep down I feel sad for Slifkin. The before and after. The cute yeshiva guy from 20 years ago with a great future ahead of him, to the embittered scientist with a sneer on his face and a srugi. In the long run Slifkin will go down in the dustbin of history as a forgotten nobody, while the Torah world continues to live and embody it's great sages such as R' Y.C. Zonnenfeld, The Satmar Rebbe , R' Aharon Kotler , The Brisker Rov The Chazon Ish and so many others.
You really need to learn about the Rishonim of Sefarad.
Not to mention the Jews of Italy and many other counter examples.
The one modification I would mention to your otherwise great comment is that it's not "in the long run"; he has already long since gone down in the dustbin of history. The truly sad and pathetic thing about Dr. Slifkin is that he has devoted 18 years and counting of his life to taking revenge on the chareidim by belittling them on his blog, and (like you) virtually no chareidim are aware that he even [still] exists.
What's funny is that he considers the relative lack of critical response to his vitriol (with a few notable exceptions) as some kind of vindication; what he doesn't realize is that almost everybody who has what to respond doesn't know or care that he said anything.
As someone new to this blog you may not realize that all this has been said about Slifkin on numerous occasions, but usually without a substantive response to the actual subject at hand. Do you have one?
Slifkin has dug himself into a deep and dark intellectual pit.
On one hand, he believes (presumably?!) God to exist, the Torah to be God's word, and Jewish people God's nation.
On the other hand, he wants us to be rational about real world problems. Such as whether Torah provides physical security.
However, he can't have it both ways - by the end of this comment you'll understand why;
Back to the issue at hand:
Does the Torah provide physical security?
Obviously not!!!!
(One need not think further than then the thousands of Talmidei Chachamim who were gassed in Auschwitz)
Indeed, not a single person reading this blog has the slightest doubt regarding the following question:
Does the Koran provide physical protection for Muslim people?
Obviously not!!!
However, Slifkin cannot approach real world issues about the Torah/Jewish people with the same level of clarity.
This is because Slifkin thinks that - whereas the Koran is fake and made up, the Torah is God's infallible word.
Rational Judaism is an oxymoron and Natan Slifkin is an intellectual hypocrite.
According to your take on Slifkin, Outfoxed, why do you think he maintains such hypocrisy? Does he not see himself or realize it, or is he very aware and he feels stuck?
I think he is very aware of his hypocrisy. However he is stuck for 2 reasons:
Firstly, his reputation would be destroyed if he admitted that there's no God and the Torah is made up. Furthermore, this admission would vindicate his opponents who knew he was an Apikorus all along.
Secondly , his family, community, donors etc would all leave him thereby destroying his social, financial, communal stability.
It's a tough situation to be in ... but he brought this on himself and intellectual honesty isn't always easy...
While you have a good point, I think it is possible that he believes in some Heavenly force. Limiting God to some disconnected Heavenly force is also kefira, but I don't think it's accurate to say that he thinks that there is NO God. Not that I am being intentionally charitable to him, but I've never seen him imply otherwise, and he does have at least some modicum of respect towards Hashem and Judaism, at least at his understanding of it.
Additionally, being an atheist is also not simple. Science still has a lot of explaining to do on how it's possible. So we have:
1. The fact that he was born and raised as an observant Jew.
2. The fact that he currently lives and raises his family in an observant community.
3. The fact that he currently teaches Torah and makes a living off of it.
4. The fact that he has never insinuated that he doesn't believe in any God, even though he has dropped hints at other heretical beliefs, such as the Documentary Hypothesis.
Due to the above factors, I think it's unlikely that he is an atheist in the conventional definition of the word, but I do think that he views God as an abstract disconnected force, which is nothing short of kefira.
How is refraining from answering challenges also not considered kefira? If the one asking the question read Dawkins and merely asks Dawkins' question, and the one receiving the question did or didn't read Dawkins but has no response, isn't the one asking the question and the one receiving the question the same?
How does merely saying "no, I believe" relieve the one being questioned from having to respond and protect him from being labeled a kofer by virtue of now being aware of the question, which is what you'd suggest is the proper way to handle the one asking a question?
It's the definition of what he is. Reform Judaism, Rationalist Judaism, same stirah.
Ok Slifkin what about Rashi on Avos 3:7 that says that if somebody is learning the Satan does not have permission to harm him...…Or the gemara about King David learning to protect himself from death?
See also Chagiga 12b, Bava Basra 79b.Bava Basra 7a
(BTW I own a Glock and a Kel-tec, practice MMA and workout and 'rationally" can protect myself better then you can. if you really believe what your saying I expect you to purchase a weapon and train.)
I'm not sure what you think that those sources prove, but here are some sources that actually prove that, practically speaking, Torah does NOT protect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Jerusalem_yeshiva_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Jerusalem_synagogue_attack
I fail to see how you answered up the sources I cited.
Rashi explicitly says that Torah protects.
The impression I got from your article (correct me if I am wrong) is that you don't believe that there are any Torah sources that mention torah having a protecting effect.
I cited a few of them (all of them being canon)
This does not mean G-d cant decide to negate the effect and punish us and we should also do our due diligence and be able to defend ourselves with worldly means.
Now it seems like you are not having a sources argument and you don't care about sources.
Bait and switch.
Explain why the above sources are not valid please.
And you have not answered why you are not by Caliber 3 training right now.
Here are some sources that actually prove that, practically speaking, soldiers and guns do NOT protect:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi_al-Haramiya_sniper_attack
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jenin_(2002)
It's possible that you don't see how weak your argument here is, HGL, but for everyone else (in Ben Shapiro style), I'd like to respond to you.
Tic-tac-toe is a simple enough game, with very few moving parts (2 players) and a very restricted playing field (9 spots) and very restrictive rules (each player can only go once before the other player gets to go and there is no bumping another player's move from their spot, etc.) and so we can use it as a model with glaring success. If you understand the game and you apply some rules of thumb, you can turn the game into a very boring endeavor because you can guarantee that you'll never lose. You can guarantee that you'll never get double trapped and you'll guarantee that you'll never be surprised. It's a battle, in a sense, as all competitive games are, but there's very little room to deviate from expectation because it's so short and so small.
War, on the other hand, where there are 30-300 people per side, and all sorts of degrees on a various spectra of skill, preparedness, stealth, weapon grade and supply, tactical advantage, environmental contributions, etc is obviously so much more complex than tic-tac-toe and so, yes, in a sense it's a game where all of your training matters and all of your preparedness matters, but things can be very unexpected. If you're playing a fair game of tic-tac-toe, there is literally no way to surprise someone who has prepared, but that's not at all the case in actual battle. And so the laws of averages apply -- you'll win some and you lose some. Even the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s didn't win every game, and they had what was perhaps considered the best team ever constructed -- Jordan, Pippen and Rodman.
So it may not be clear to you how silly your comment here is, but it ought to be clear to everyone else. When you're at war, there's very little you can do to guarantee total wins and zero losses, in terms of individual casualties or skirmishes won or lost. Sometimes, things just go sideways, as they say. And the same is the case for chemotherapy treatments for cancer and proton blockers for treating GERD -- on the average, these things are very, very, very successful. As are guns and muscle when you are protecting a POTUS or a famous celebrity or a bank vault.
I am not sure how numerate you are, but I can tell you have no idea how statistics work. You clearly think that by using the magic word "averages", you are making some sort of argument. You seem to be under the impression that we can measure averages with regards to armies and guns the same way as rolling dice or selecting from a deck of cards. Lol.
I'm admittedly not as numerate as I am literate, but I don't actually understand your comment here.
I don't think averages are magic, nor do I think dropping the word "averages" means I can then pretend to be more informed. Just like medical prognosis is exceedingly accurate in the aggregate but not necessarily accurate for the individual, tactical advantage is very helpful in the aggregate but not necessarily helpful for the individual.
Nothing is 100% and everything is on a spectrum. So while having a more prepared military is a tremendous advantage, even the best army can lose a battle and even the best basketball team can lose a game. If they're only playing one game, that game may be the one they lose and it doesn't mean they're a bad team. So, too, to point to two times when armed defenders were unable to successfully protect against attack is a silly argument against the premise that guns are helpful for protecting against attackers.
So the problem with saying things like "more guns, on average = more safety", besides for being incorrect (did you even bother trying to find empirical evidence for this before making that comment?), is that it ignores all the countless other factors that goes into making a country, or a territory, or a city safe. For the Torah making people safe, we have the word of God in Tanach and Talmud, as well as the historical occurrences in Tanach, demonstrating that keeping the Torah increases Jewish safety overall. But unlike you, I never pretended to have a numerical demonstration.
Your Torah definitely isn't protecting anyone.
Anyone remember what chaza'l say Chizkiyahu did when Sancheirev was coming?
I was going to say something else, but Mecharker already beat me to it.
Torah protects. Mitzvos protect. Tefillah protects. Hashem protects. Without the Torah, Mitzvos, and prayer of the chareidim, the IDF would have been destroyed many times since 1948. Baruch Hashem, that He created the IDF to protect the good Shomrei Torah Jews of Eretz Yisrael (including those who are not yet Shomrei Torah, but will be, or will have Shomrei Torah children). But as the wise man said, just because you need a guard dog doesn't mean you have to become the guard dog!
How do you know that it was the Torah of the charedim that protected them? Maybe it was the Torah of the Mizrochim?
Maybe there were some Mizrachim who learned Torah properly. In which case, their Torah protected as well. But if their "Torah" was like "Duran Duran", or like Benny Brown's essay on lashon hara, or like most of the academic "Torah" you are fond of quoting...well then, lets just say the Pope's prayers did a better job.
Wait your saying reading Reb Marc Shapiros books dont count as talmud torah?!?
"Maybe there were some Mizrachim who learned Torah properly."
That's a rather nasty comment.
Given the tone of these blog posts re the charedi community I think its actually quite a charitable response.
Mizrachim? Torah? Ha
I actually think it was the mizrachim who go round killing arabs and vanadalising their villages. Forget Torah, thats whats keeping us all safe.
"Mitzvos protect."
Serving in the IDF is a מצוה. After all, גדולי הדור such as , יהושע and עתניאל served in the IDF.
"Without the Torah, Mitzvos, and prayer of the chareidim"
What about the Torah, Mitzvos, and prayer of everybody else?
כל תענית שאין בה מפושעי ישראל אינה תענית
No, it is a mitzvah to avoid the IDF. Osniel and Yehoshua did not serve in a secular army. Sorry.
The פושעי ישראל who are compared to the חלבונה are the chareidim, not the Bible critic, mishkav zachar supporting secularists. They are the מי רגלים שאין מכניסים לעזרה.
Nasty but true. When you enthusiastically participate in this blog, you lose the right to complain about nastiness.
"No, it is a mitzvah to avoid the IDF."
You're making things up.
" Osniel and Yehoshua did not serve in a secular army."
But they did serve, didn't they?
Yes, but not in a secular army. It is a mitzvah to avoid the secular army. I am not making that up, it is clear in the Torah in countless places that avoiding bad spiritual influences is a mitzvah. Did you subscribe to Irrationalist Modoxism yet? Maybe in the future we will do a post listing some of them.
>>>it is clear in the Torah in countless places that avoiding bad spiritual influences is a mitzvah>>>
I'm wondering which one of the 613 commandments is this, and in who's count? Is it subsumed in another broader commandment? Or was Rabbi Simlai, perhaps, speaking loosely when he made this off-the-cuff statement?
>>>It is a mitzvah to avoid the secular army.>>>
If it's a mitzvah to avoid bad spiritual influences, then how can you justify reading and posting on this blog? And if your response is that the ends justify the means -- that maybe you'll have a sufficiently positive effect by being here, and so you're like the cop speeding after the criminal who is speeding -- then how can you not agree that maybe the benefits of joining a secular army can outweigh the negatives in the same fashion?
Because it doesn't outweigh it. On the other hand, if the chareidim who joined the army started, er, using their guns to force the secular to keep the Torah, I might change my mind.
On the topic of the way Yehoshua conducted the army, עתה באתי…
Natan, there are dozens of places throughout Chazal that are unequivocally clear that Torah and Mitzvos protects. In fact, not only is it in Chazal, but it's a recurring theme throughout Nach as well. When the Jews performed Mitzvos as they were supposed to, things went well for them. And when they slipped, we all know what happened. Only someone who doesn't really give a d@mn about the Torah and thinks that it was written by humans anyway or that Chazal didn't have a mesorah or Divine inspiration would attempt to wave away all the evidence.
And if you are looking for an explanation for the calamities despite people learning Torah, Chazal say that when the Jews sin and invoke Hashem's wrath, even if there are a minority who are doing His will, it is not necessarily sufficient as protection. So, in reality, the Chilonim and many of your DL are the cause of uptick in terror attacks (that is not to say that it's not possible that the Charedim themselves may be guilty as well - no one is perfect, and when Hashem sends a message, we are supposed to look inwards and not blame others. But the lion's share of sin definitely belongs to the secular and those entirely indifferent to Torah and Mitzvos)
It's beautiful that the army fights on behalf of the State, but based on reports of the sheer immorality coming out of there, it's possible that it is doing more harm than good.
See here where I wrote about this very topic a few days ago:
https://irrationalistmodoxism.substack.com/p/natan-and-the-purim-story
"there are dozens of places throughout Chazal that are unequivocally clear that Torah and Mitzvos protects." Yes, and I have analyzed them all in various posts, and shown that they do not at all mean what Rav Zilberstein and others take them to mean.
" it's a recurring theme throughout Nach as well. When the Jews performed Mitzvos as they were supposed to, things went well for them." Right. These mitzvos included fighting in the army. Show me where in Nach it says that they learned Torah instead.
No, I saw you bring a Me'iri on the Gemara in Makkos in one post that purportedly explains that Gemara that the Torah does not protect on a metaphysical level. But the Me'iri is one person, and that is not the conventional pshat, and there are many, many other Gemaros and Ma'amarei Chazal that will need an explanation. So you will be swimming upstream on that one.
If you read my post, I explicitly said that there IS a need for an army. That's what they had in the times of Tanach as well. But that army was not too effective when the Jews were not performing Hashem's will. And it certainly doesn't make sense to dissolve the protection that the army has from the Torah by inducting all the Yeshiva students!
Ok Slifkin what about Rashi on Avos 3:7 that says that if somebody is learning the Satan does not have permission to harm him...…Or the gemara about King David learning to protect himself from death?
See also Chagiga 12b, Bava Basra 79b.Bava Basra 7a
(BTW I own a Glock and a Kel-tec, practice MMA and workout and 'rationally" can protect myself better then you can. if you really believe what your saying I expect you to purchase a weapon and train.)
When you say that Torah protects, is that an assertion of faith in something with no empirical demonstration, or an assertion of an empirical reality? You say that there is "evidence" but you haven't brought any (and the stories in Tanach are about the *general level of mitzva observance*, not about a specific mitzvah providing a specific level of protection). Meanwhile, here's some evidence otherwise:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Jerusalem_yeshiva_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Jerusalem_synagogue_attack
So you say "well that's because OTHER people are sinning." In other words, practically speaking, Torah does not provide any protection that makes a difference in any visible way (unlike guns). And theologically, there are various rabbinic authorities who explain all your Talmudic sources differently. So the actual evidence to believe that Torah protects is zero empirical evidence in favor, plenty of empirical evidence against, and disputed theological arguments.
(Incidentally, I personally do believe that mitzvot protect, as per the Meiri's understanding, and possibly even beyond that, but not in the sense that R. Zilberstein takes it; and also, I don't believe that learning Torah that comes at the expense of shirking national responsibilities is a mitzvah.)
"The stories in Tanach are about the *general level of mitzva observance*, not about a specific mitzvah providing a specific level of protection"
According to the reason that Talmud Torah is "K'neged Kulam" because it leads to mitzvah observance and you would lose a large amount of mitzvah observance without it, then Talmud Torah is protective because it leads to mitzvah observance - which you apparently admit offers protection. But I would add that there is another important aspect of Talmud Torah: especially when learned with the proper intentions, it connects one with G-d, and G-d's Will. His Will becomes your will, and you develop pious attitudes and outlooks in life. This I believe warrants its own unique brand of protection, in addition to general mitzvah observance. That said, I don't think this means that one should just learn Torah when they are in immediate danger. But at the same time, it is also incorrect to say that Torah doesn't protect, or even that it doesn't provide its own unique protection.
To make an empirical observation, we would need to cease ALL Torah study and observe how Israel fares. However, I believe that Israel, like a sheep surrounded by 70 vicious wolves, would have been devoured decades ago if Torah study had ceased. Israel has faced fatal threats over the past 75 years and has survived, experiencing countless miracles throughout its existence. This is not a secret, and I can guarantee that it is not in the merit of the Niddah bo'elators in Tel Aviv, the army, or RBS.
And even without this obvious truth, I think I would be allowed to make an assertion of faith, being that we are both (presumably) observant Jews. Not sure why you are insinuating otherwise.
Yes, there are stories of attackers attacking Botei Medrash or Shuls. But this can either be explained that at that specific moment the victim/victims were not learning, as the Gemara describes with the malach hamaves and Dovid Hamelech, or there was an extraordinary heavenly wrath, as the Gemara in Bava Kama discusses.
I think the Torah definitely does provide protection in an obviously measurable way, and again, the only way to prove so would be to stop all Torah study. But unfortunately, being that the moral state of most of our brethren is the way it is, it will not be full-proof.
Even if "theologically, there are various rabbinic authorities who explain all your Talmudic sources differently" (I'd appreciate if you can provide a source to all these "rabbinic authorities" instead of magical hand waving, because some of these sources are pretty darn hard to explain away), that does not take away from the fact that simple explanation as well as the conventional understanding is that Torah in fact does protect on a metaphysical level. As another commenter pointed out in this thread, it's all fine and dandy if you want to bring the rationalist view to the table, but at the same time you must be cognizant to the fact that this is simply a minority opinion and not the pashtus of Chazal nor the understanding of most of the Rishonim and Achronim. And you have to respect that and cannot expect everyone to accept your minority, reinterpretive view.
(Incidentally, I personally also don't agree with R' Zilberstein, but I'll take the gemara that says that Torah students are exempt from the draft because they serve as a protection over you. Especially when said draft is run by anti-Torah secularist commanders with a bad track of keeping things "kosher").
So you're saying that because there were deadly attacks in Jerusalem that proves the Torah doesn't offer any protection? That's your argument?
Some rabbi. LOL.
No, it disproves the blanket statement that when someone is learning, Satan does not have permission to harm him.
You might also want to try to explain why Zilberstein mandated the covid vaccines and not more Torah learning to protect them. Not very consistent.
Do you think Chazal were ignorant of an obvious reality (there was no shortage of Torah-learning Jews who were killed before you came along with your Wikipedia link)? Or do you think Chazal were aware of it but were dismissive of Jewish life and lied to promote Torah learning (and somehow got away with it until you exposed them)?
These are the only two possibilities according to the way you present the source with David. So which is it? Going to leave this critical question hanging in the air and hide like you often do, or will you give a direct answer?
Are you saying the Gemara is wrong? Are you saying there were no known cases of people dying while learning before then and Chazal just made it up? Or that there were such cases and Chazal lied?
Chazal stated that David's learning was interrupted and that's why he was able to die. Are you assuming the people who were killed in these attacks were learning at the very moment they were killed and their learning was not interrupted?
Exactly. So there is always a way to explain why the protection didn't happen. In other words, there is no way to show that it ever does happen. And there is no basis to insist that it happens.
There is no way to show a lot of things. There is no way to show that keeping the Torah brings rain in the proper time (there probably is, but you would claim otherwise). So do you deny Kriyas Shema also? Do you deny Techiyas Hameisim? Olam Haba?
If you're going to be a kofer, go all the way and be direct.
Its great to see Slifkin getting on so well with the Kofrim. Its funny that he hasn't yet asked the question as to why so many of them agree with him. Theres definitely 'evidence' for that ay?
We do see eye to eye that your Torah doesn't protect anyone. It only brings bad-intentioned machlokes and leitzanus. Kofrim like you shouldn't study Torah.
No, you're completely distorting the source. There are numerous sources stating clearly that Torah learning brings protection. Studying Torah also does not guarantee that no one will ever be harmed. You're making a straw man argument, and you don't have the guts to come right out and say you are a kofer about what Chazal said.
>>>Only someone who doesn't really give a d@mn about the Torah and thinks that it was written by humans anyway or that Chazal didn't have a mesorah or Divine inspiration would attempt to wave away all the evidence.>>>
You seem to explain that someone who accepts your evidence is someone who gives a damn about the Torah, and perhaps we can infer from this that someone who does not accept your evidence is someone who doesn't give a damn. But it appears that you are putting the cart before the horse.
Evidence ought to be evaluated and decisions made based on the evidence, not the other way around. This is almost, by definition, what it means to think: evaluate evidence and then permit that evidence to way you one way or another.
You seem to assert this backwards, though, which, to me, is precisely why you can't be involved in any meaningful way in a rational discussion. If you're not going to agree with the premises, then how could you possibly agree with the conclusions?
A lot of synagogues in New York City have armed security guards, even though New York City is a very safe city compared to most other cities in the US (and in fact safer the almost the entire Western Hemisphere outside of Canada). When there is evidence for a threat, they are typically joined by New York City Police Department officers. Once we had only nine guys for a minyan, and it turned out that the NYPD officer was Jewish, so he made the minyan for us!
Hashem is our protector
I didn't say it was impossible that Rav Zilberstein said something like that, only due to RNS lack of objectivity due to his persecution he could very well have exaggerated.
I don't think you're being fair, RNS. This was a kollel guy who only wanted to carry a gun for personal protection and the authorities told him he has to commit 45 hours of patrol. That's a major commitment, and while it's outside of official kollel hours, it still would cut into his non-kollel learning time. (Who has 45 extra hours a month anyway?!)
Remember, the real histadlus he planned would have been just carrying the gun for the few hours he's going to shul. (And whatever training he would need.) Had the gov't not made such demands on him, he may have received a different psak from RYZ. What if the gov't insisted this fellow take a six month full time course in gun safety, self defense, surveillance and community protection? Would you not agree that such hishtadlut would be excessive for what is a remote danger?
I think it's reasonable for each shul to have one such person. And if you want to argue that the danger is far too unlikely, then that's the answer, not that learning Torah protects more than the gun.
I have no disagreement with you there- that every shul should have security. I was only refering to the psak to this specific person. One could infer that if the histadlut required was far less that 45 hours a month, than RYZ may have decided differently.
I've heard that RYZ is a rather down-to-earth posek, despite his charedi credentials. Has he ever paskened in favor of histadlut?
Hahaha, I think this one is a slifkin quote for the ages. 'Not that learning Torah protects more than a gun'. With Hashkofas like these you understand why mizrachniks can end up running round burning down arab villages. They literally make it up as they go along.
Being only a “bochur” you seem lacking in knowledge and experience…come back here in a decade or two when you can comment responsibly…
I am just pointing out that I actually cited sources and you are refusing to answer them...........
Didn't the malach hamaves have a tough time taking dovids life because he was learning torah?
Bec really the malach hameves had a gun which overpowered the Torah and classic chareidy censorship covered it up. Also Chazal can’t possibly be right because science doesn’t believe the malach hameves exists after all no one who’s seen him has lived to tell the tale, very suspicious. According to Rav Avrohom ben haRambam Chazal only knew the science of the day, ergo we can now dismiss this inconvenience.
Saved you the trouble RNS, you’re very welcome!
In the case of דוד המלך, we see that it was an infinitesimal distraction that gave the מלאך המות "power" over him. No one is free from such distractions in learning, and it's hard to believe that just a little distraction would have the practical effect of negating the "Torah protects" principle. As such, that אגדה has little bearing here.
Erm, the point of the story is that even when Dovids 'time had come' the malach hamaves still wasnt able to effect him because of his Torah.
Correct. But Dovid's Torah study didn't protect him from an infinitesimal distraction, did it? And all of us all prone to such distractions, aren't we? As such, the story while revealing the importance of Torah study, does not negate the value of hishtadlut.
Such a waste of time. Spending 45 hours a month protecting his fellow Jews….why, no “Rabbi” would ever sanction that!!!
Absent everything else, “addressable” bullets would be cool as heck!
I wouldn’t put it past our Israeli brothers to invent such a thing…