A phenomena I've notice in some of these articles, and in some of the comments posted on your blog, is not only to some Haredim subscribe to a worldview based on "Daas Torah" which absolves them of answering a question for themselves, but they have gone one step further and attribute their own opinion to a Gadol of a former generation, thus transferring their own opinion into "Daas Torah".
For example, they will say something like "If Rabbi so-and-so was alive today, I am sure that he would agree with me about xyz, and therefore my opinion is now 'Daas Torah' and no one has the right to criticize it."
Yesterday one of the commentators on this blog responded to a comment that I made by imagining a conversation between me and Rav Kamenetsky, and surprisingly Rav Kamenetsky in this imaginary conversation agreed with the commentator, and disagreed with me.
Instead of saying "I think you are wrong because of xyz", it is easier to say "I am sure that Daas Torah would say that you are wrong because of xyz, and therefore you cannot respond because I just evoked that magic of Daas Torah".
I like the use of the word incoherent rather than irrational.
It is striking to me that the present day great scholars to whom Rav Ginzburg assigns astonishing wisdom have so far not produced a coherent, comprehensive, insightful, and scholarly argument explaining their position.
Isn't this what one would expect from a serious scholar in any other discipline?
Do scholars of other disciplines argue their positions solely from authority and forbid anyone else from expecting from them coherent argumentation?
"But more than fifty years and two generations have since passed. What was destroyed in the Holocaust has been rebuilt a hundred times over. There are vastly more people in full-time learning than at any point in recent history. And charedim are a rapidly growing huge sector of the population. And the military requirements of the country are growing. And so presumably, it’s now time to rescind the temporary measure of mass kollel?"
Maybe, maybe not. 50 years ago the Israeli army was a rag-tag bunch. And they faced military threats from numerous countries which were many times stronger than they were.
I think the people who are best suited to apply the chazon ish to our circumstances are people who actually follow in his footsteps. That would be people from bnei brak a whole lot more than people from Ranana.
Now, I understand that you currently identify with a group which rejects that approach. Which is your prerogative. But if you're going to cite to R Zevin as evidence, https://www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/rav-zevin-is-this-daas-torah you should stop pretending that you have any handle on what the chazon ish would say. (To be clear, I have enormous respect for R Zevin. But he represents an approach which was obviously rejected by the chazon ish and brisker rav. That doesn't make him wrong. But *you* ought to be honest and just say that you oppose the chazon ish's approach. Your issue isn't really with mishpacha magazine or R Ginzberg.)
Charedim learn so much Torah, and yet they are uncapable of deciding any Torah issue for themselves. They must blindly accept what the Gdolei Hador decide, whether it makes sense or not. The Gdolei Hador themselves can't decide anything either! Due to Yeridas HaDoros, there is no way to cancel the Chazon Ish's temporary decision, even though the circumstances are clearly not relevant anymore.
As I have written to Rav Natan recently I found his comments to be worthy.. However, in view of his approach, I think the term 'rationalist Judaism' does not give justice to his approach and wrongly concedes too much to misguided forms of Haredi outlooks - and therefore it would be important to rename this approach as essentially normative Jewish thought. I haven't a suggestion al regel ahas, but I feel the existing name is inappropriate.
It's just amazing. I provide endless analyses, whereas your polemicists just have slogans. And as for fairness and mutual responsibility, you can't even think of a Torah source!
I served in miluim this year for 107 days. I lost several close friends and my wife became seriously ill.
Before recent events, I naively believed that chareidim would slowly understand that they must serve and work and that trends were in the right direction. I came across your blog quite by accident but found it interesting, I naively imagined that the comments from chareidim to your posts were reflective of extremists only.
Following their abhorrent response to events, point blank refusing to share the burden of service, and my own attempt to better understand their society (for want of a better word) by reading what they think in their words, I understand that words are useless. They have a deep inferiority complex and hatred for the outside world and no attempt at reason will help. At the same time, their society is both deceptively strong, but incredibly brittle, held together by billions of dollars in direct and indirect funding and enforced ignorance.
When this war finishes, we will topple our anti-Zionist government and replace it with parties committed to the state of Israel.
Change will come by force or not at all. There will be no useless dialogue with hateful man-children.
We will cut off all their funding.
We will do everything possible that their children are no longer held in enforced ignorance.
We will pass laws obligating all to serve or lose any and all benefits. Hopefully, those who don't serve can be denied the right to vote as well.
Within a decade, Charedi society will change radically. Their official parties and old demented leaders will continue to rail against change but the best antidote to their ingrained fear and hatred will be 1) removal of poverty when they are no longer dependent on their cult leaders for money and begin to be affluent by their own industrious nature 2) contact with regular Israelis in the army and workplace, breaking down barriers of hatred 3) removal of ignorance of science and history, allowing them to think from their own perspective and not one of enforced ignorance
The biggest mistake will be to engage in any attempt at compromise. We've had 70 years to try that. It hasn't worked. Israelis are beginning to understand that it takes two sides to compromise and when one side is totally unwilling to change, the other side has to adopt the same attitude.
"Rabbi Ginzberg fumes against these voices in the charedi world that call for change. He does not provide any reasons as to why they are actually wrong. Instead, he rages against them for having the chutzpah to disagree with the Daas Torah of the Gedolim."
1) 'Fumes' and 'rages' is your own projection.
2) You are correct that he doesn't offer any reasons. He says so himself: "However, my focus here is not on this nearly century-old source of division and discord in our small country that is being battered from every corner of the earth; nor will I explore the politics or halachic background of the issue.
I am limiting my discussion to the painful phenomenon of people who have always identified themselves with the Torah tzibbur — in varying capacities — who have decided to force their way into this debate and voice their “daas Torah.”"
Step 1) RAG writes about X. He himself notes that he isn't writing about Y. Step 2) You point out that he didn't debunk Y. Step 3) You open the comments section to all manner of people to weigh in on just how bankrupt the chareidi world is. Step 4) Charedi trolls show up and hit back. Step 5) You write some woe-is-me post complaining about nasty the trolls are and ask whether they should be banned.
There is a fine balance between emuna and yediah, trust and intimate knowledge, and until one learns the skill of the trade, he actually *is* better of trusting those who know better. People beginning the most menial jobs understand the importance of learning the skills before becoming an expert, but when it comes to live itself, everyone is a born chochom. They learn gemara for three years and already know enough to argue on the greatest Jewish minds.
The reason why those who learn for so many more years actually trust the gedolim more is because they understand what a gadol knows and they appreciate their own limitations. Those who already know everything have no concept of what they're missing.
That being said, I wholly agree that the concept of daas Torah had been hijacked and grossly misused.
The concept of "Daas Torah" is the new Avodah Zara of today. Worship it all costs. That's the message du-jour.
As Mishpacha keeps printing this drivel, they are digging the entire Charedi camp into a hole that they will never dig themselves out. Ultimately Emes/truth and the godly gift of Eretz Yisrael will prevail.
Your arguments are solid but they negate the gedolim so you're wrong. End of story... You cannot have an argument when that's the approach of most charedim. Given that this is a fact, the only solution is to provide incentives to people who serve and stop giving incentives to people who do not contribute to the greater society (govt should stop paying for daycare for non working men, should stop providing reductions on arnona, should stop paying out to schooling systems who are detrimental to the growth of our country). This however will not happen as both the right, and center (Gantz and co.) will never do that. Bottom line, I think the bigger criminals are the politicians. They know the score but aren't doing anything about it. Charedim are bigeder tinok shenishba.
Nathan, you’ve made the error of applying logic and rational debate to those who are fearful and emotional. They claim they have sharpened their minds learning. In reality they have developed an echo chamber as insulated and full of incoherent rage as any online featuring the alt-right or far left, trying to shape a world they sing like to their misguided beliefs
Chazal taught an actual Halacha that sons must teach their sons and trade and that one should not be supported by the community. Medieval rabbis, as an "emergency measure", felt they had the ability to reassess that actual law. But now we're going to say contemporary rabbis don't have the ability to reassess what was always just an "emergency measure" proposed by the Chazon Ish??
I read this article on the first days and found it very disturbing but also illogical. The author essentially concludes that the Chazon Ish's opinion can never be changed until basically mashiach comes because nobody will ever be as great as him. The elevation of any human being to that level of infallibility to me seems utterly un-Jewish. Worse, each subsequent "leader" gets themselves out of making a decision by falling back on "well if the previous 'leader' said he wasn't capable of doing it, then who am I?'" Faux modesty that in reality is just an evasion of responsibility. I put "leader" in quotes because don't call yourself a leader if you don't take decisions. At least the Chazon Ish stood up for what he believed and made the call.
Also, I would have thought that the "ultimate kefirah" would be denying Torah m'Sinai.
A phenomena I've notice in some of these articles, and in some of the comments posted on your blog, is not only to some Haredim subscribe to a worldview based on "Daas Torah" which absolves them of answering a question for themselves, but they have gone one step further and attribute their own opinion to a Gadol of a former generation, thus transferring their own opinion into "Daas Torah".
For example, they will say something like "If Rabbi so-and-so was alive today, I am sure that he would agree with me about xyz, and therefore my opinion is now 'Daas Torah' and no one has the right to criticize it."
Yesterday one of the commentators on this blog responded to a comment that I made by imagining a conversation between me and Rav Kamenetsky, and surprisingly Rav Kamenetsky in this imaginary conversation agreed with the commentator, and disagreed with me.
Instead of saying "I think you are wrong because of xyz", it is easier to say "I am sure that Daas Torah would say that you are wrong because of xyz, and therefore you cannot respond because I just evoked that magic of Daas Torah".
we live in very interesting times
I like the use of the word incoherent rather than irrational.
It is striking to me that the present day great scholars to whom Rav Ginzburg assigns astonishing wisdom have so far not produced a coherent, comprehensive, insightful, and scholarly argument explaining their position.
Isn't this what one would expect from a serious scholar in any other discipline?
Do scholars of other disciplines argue their positions solely from authority and forbid anyone else from expecting from them coherent argumentation?
"But more than fifty years and two generations have since passed. What was destroyed in the Holocaust has been rebuilt a hundred times over. There are vastly more people in full-time learning than at any point in recent history. And charedim are a rapidly growing huge sector of the population. And the military requirements of the country are growing. And so presumably, it’s now time to rescind the temporary measure of mass kollel?"
Maybe, maybe not. 50 years ago the Israeli army was a rag-tag bunch. And they faced military threats from numerous countries which were many times stronger than they were.
I think the people who are best suited to apply the chazon ish to our circumstances are people who actually follow in his footsteps. That would be people from bnei brak a whole lot more than people from Ranana.
Now, I understand that you currently identify with a group which rejects that approach. Which is your prerogative. But if you're going to cite to R Zevin as evidence, https://www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/rav-zevin-is-this-daas-torah you should stop pretending that you have any handle on what the chazon ish would say. (To be clear, I have enormous respect for R Zevin. But he represents an approach which was obviously rejected by the chazon ish and brisker rav. That doesn't make him wrong. But *you* ought to be honest and just say that you oppose the chazon ish's approach. Your issue isn't really with mishpacha magazine or R Ginzberg.)
Charedim learn so much Torah, and yet they are uncapable of deciding any Torah issue for themselves. They must blindly accept what the Gdolei Hador decide, whether it makes sense or not. The Gdolei Hador themselves can't decide anything either! Due to Yeridas HaDoros, there is no way to cancel the Chazon Ish's temporary decision, even though the circumstances are clearly not relevant anymore.
As I have written to Rav Natan recently I found his comments to be worthy.. However, in view of his approach, I think the term 'rationalist Judaism' does not give justice to his approach and wrongly concedes too much to misguided forms of Haredi outlooks - and therefore it would be important to rename this approach as essentially normative Jewish thought. I haven't a suggestion al regel ahas, but I feel the existing name is inappropriate.
It's just amazing. I provide endless analyses, whereas your polemicists just have slogans. And as for fairness and mutual responsibility, you can't even think of a Torah source!
You're wasting your time.
I served in miluim this year for 107 days. I lost several close friends and my wife became seriously ill.
Before recent events, I naively believed that chareidim would slowly understand that they must serve and work and that trends were in the right direction. I came across your blog quite by accident but found it interesting, I naively imagined that the comments from chareidim to your posts were reflective of extremists only.
Following their abhorrent response to events, point blank refusing to share the burden of service, and my own attempt to better understand their society (for want of a better word) by reading what they think in their words, I understand that words are useless. They have a deep inferiority complex and hatred for the outside world and no attempt at reason will help. At the same time, their society is both deceptively strong, but incredibly brittle, held together by billions of dollars in direct and indirect funding and enforced ignorance.
When this war finishes, we will topple our anti-Zionist government and replace it with parties committed to the state of Israel.
Change will come by force or not at all. There will be no useless dialogue with hateful man-children.
We will cut off all their funding.
We will do everything possible that their children are no longer held in enforced ignorance.
We will pass laws obligating all to serve or lose any and all benefits. Hopefully, those who don't serve can be denied the right to vote as well.
Within a decade, Charedi society will change radically. Their official parties and old demented leaders will continue to rail against change but the best antidote to their ingrained fear and hatred will be 1) removal of poverty when they are no longer dependent on their cult leaders for money and begin to be affluent by their own industrious nature 2) contact with regular Israelis in the army and workplace, breaking down barriers of hatred 3) removal of ignorance of science and history, allowing them to think from their own perspective and not one of enforced ignorance
The biggest mistake will be to engage in any attempt at compromise. We've had 70 years to try that. It hasn't worked. Israelis are beginning to understand that it takes two sides to compromise and when one side is totally unwilling to change, the other side has to adopt the same attitude.
"Rabbi Ginzberg fumes against these voices in the charedi world that call for change. He does not provide any reasons as to why they are actually wrong. Instead, he rages against them for having the chutzpah to disagree with the Daas Torah of the Gedolim."
1) 'Fumes' and 'rages' is your own projection.
2) You are correct that he doesn't offer any reasons. He says so himself: "However, my focus here is not on this nearly century-old source of division and discord in our small country that is being battered from every corner of the earth; nor will I explore the politics or halachic background of the issue.
I am limiting my discussion to the painful phenomenon of people who have always identified themselves with the Torah tzibbur — in varying capacities — who have decided to force their way into this debate and voice their “daas Torah.”"
Step 1) RAG writes about X. He himself notes that he isn't writing about Y. Step 2) You point out that he didn't debunk Y. Step 3) You open the comments section to all manner of people to weigh in on just how bankrupt the chareidi world is. Step 4) Charedi trolls show up and hit back. Step 5) You write some woe-is-me post complaining about nasty the trolls are and ask whether they should be banned.
The article and ensuing comments are so stupid.
There is a fine balance between emuna and yediah, trust and intimate knowledge, and until one learns the skill of the trade, he actually *is* better of trusting those who know better. People beginning the most menial jobs understand the importance of learning the skills before becoming an expert, but when it comes to live itself, everyone is a born chochom. They learn gemara for three years and already know enough to argue on the greatest Jewish minds.
The reason why those who learn for so many more years actually trust the gedolim more is because they understand what a gadol knows and they appreciate their own limitations. Those who already know everything have no concept of what they're missing.
That being said, I wholly agree that the concept of daas Torah had been hijacked and grossly misused.
The concept of "Daas Torah" is the new Avodah Zara of today. Worship it all costs. That's the message du-jour.
As Mishpacha keeps printing this drivel, they are digging the entire Charedi camp into a hole that they will never dig themselves out. Ultimately Emes/truth and the godly gift of Eretz Yisrael will prevail.
Daas Torah is kefirah b'ikar. It elevates Rabbis to the level of gods. The religion of the Haredim has not been Judaism for more than a century.
Your arguments are solid but they negate the gedolim so you're wrong. End of story... You cannot have an argument when that's the approach of most charedim. Given that this is a fact, the only solution is to provide incentives to people who serve and stop giving incentives to people who do not contribute to the greater society (govt should stop paying for daycare for non working men, should stop providing reductions on arnona, should stop paying out to schooling systems who are detrimental to the growth of our country). This however will not happen as both the right, and center (Gantz and co.) will never do that. Bottom line, I think the bigger criminals are the politicians. They know the score but aren't doing anything about it. Charedim are bigeder tinok shenishba.
Nathan, you’ve made the error of applying logic and rational debate to those who are fearful and emotional. They claim they have sharpened their minds learning. In reality they have developed an echo chamber as insulated and full of incoherent rage as any online featuring the alt-right or far left, trying to shape a world they sing like to their misguided beliefs
Chazal taught an actual Halacha that sons must teach their sons and trade and that one should not be supported by the community. Medieval rabbis, as an "emergency measure", felt they had the ability to reassess that actual law. But now we're going to say contemporary rabbis don't have the ability to reassess what was always just an "emergency measure" proposed by the Chazon Ish??
I read this article on the first days and found it very disturbing but also illogical. The author essentially concludes that the Chazon Ish's opinion can never be changed until basically mashiach comes because nobody will ever be as great as him. The elevation of any human being to that level of infallibility to me seems utterly un-Jewish. Worse, each subsequent "leader" gets themselves out of making a decision by falling back on "well if the previous 'leader' said he wasn't capable of doing it, then who am I?'" Faux modesty that in reality is just an evasion of responsibility. I put "leader" in quotes because don't call yourself a leader if you don't take decisions. At least the Chazon Ish stood up for what he believed and made the call.
Also, I would have thought that the "ultimate kefirah" would be denying Torah m'Sinai.
What you see as "Just plain incoherency" is really "Just plain hypocrisy"..