Search Results for: mussar

The JEWISH Lesson from the Cessation of Government Transportation on Weekends

So, public transportation will now no longer operate on weekends, stopping Thursday eve and beginning again on Sunday morning (read details here).

Forget the nonobservant public transportation on Shabbos.

If we are to learn anything about ultimate causes, Mussar (in the original sense) must always be about us, not them. Let us rethink the actions of nominally observant Jews who travel so close to Shabbos, both before and after, directly causing the non-observant Jewish drivers to desecrate Shabbos, or at least, not accept it properly.

If anything, religious Jews should have long ago campaigned to decriminalize private transportation altogether (and correspondingly cease government-subsidized transport), so this governmental Chillul Shabbos is our fault, too.

On our puny imputations of Divine Providence, read this.

(Thanks to a dear reader who helped in preparing this article!)

Download ‘Making of a Godol’

UPDATE: The hyperlink was since removed by Google (allegedly by the family).

If you want a discounted hard-copy of the “improved” edition, see this.

Here are some other articles on the book’s controversy, or quoting from it (in descending order of importance):

And More…

Ba’al Hatanya ADMITS: Non-Chassidic Jews Will Never Accept a ‘Chassidic’ Messiah!

Quoting Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Toras Menachem –  תורת מנחם ד נ”ג שנת תשי”ב  חלק ראשון שיחת מוצאי יום א’ דחוה”מ):

 כ”ק מו”ח אדמו”ר סיפר* שכאשר רבינו הזקן יצא מהמאסר, היתה סיבה שבגללה הגיע לביתו של יהודי שלא הי’ מחוג החסידים (“א עולם’שער איד”), ולאחרי אריכות הדברים הוכרח רבינו הזקן להבטיח לו שיבקר שלשה מהעולם’שע גדולים, וכשביקר אצל א’ מהם, שאל אותו גדול את רבינו הזקן: מי יהי’ משיח – חסיד או עולם’שער? והשיב רבינו הזקן: משיח יהי’ עולם’שער. ושאל: מדוע? והשיב רבינו הזקן, שאם משיח יהי’ חסיד, יתכן שהעולם’שע לא ירצו לצאת עמו מהגלות; אבל אם משיח יהי’ עולם’שער, יסכימו גם החסידים – להיותם קבלת-עול’ניקעס – לצאת עמו מהגלות מתוך קבלת-עול (“זאל זיין א עולם’שער, אבי ארויסגיין פון גלות”).

* ראה “רשימות” (יומן) תש”ב זמנים שונים.

Thanks to Mr. Litvak for the reference!

As I understand this, Chassidim will take anything, accustomed as they are to accepting any leadership, no matter how base. Non-Chassidic Jews, on the other hand, try to follow the truth…

The Terrible Toll of Lubavitch-Novhardok Antinomianism Behind the Iron Curtain

Virtually all rabbis escaped the Soviets, including via Chillul Shabbos, and warned their followers to do the same. The halacha here is commonsensical: Escape physical and religious dangers!

Everyone, that is, but two groups: Lubavitch and Novhardok.

Lubavitch using, perhaps, “Lechat’chila Ariber” rhetoric and the like; Novhardok using their “fearlessness” policy, מלכותא בלא תגא, and falling for their own newfangled educational ideas.

What do these two have in common? Lubavitch and Novhardok are both widely understood to be the radical manifestations of their original molds; Chassidus and Mussar, respectively *. Madness is bipartisan.

What about simple halacha? Nu! Feh!

And what were the results? Did imprudence win out? No! We can observe widespread deaths and suffering in the gulag, vast intermarriage, and assimilation. Not to mention the simple “מכניס עצמו לאונס במזיד” of an inability to keep most mitzvos…

Lubavitch is still extremely proud of their misguided lone-wolf war, which cost them so heavily, while Novhardok isn’t really around to record their comment…

This is even worse than Mishlei 22:3: ערום ראה רעה ונסתר ופתיים עברו ונענשו because they pretended this was the will of Hashem, Himself. Perhaps this applies better: אולת אדם תסלף דרכו ועל השם יזעף לבו. And all for lofty, “spiritual” reasons, referred to in the immediately preceding verse: גם בלא דעת נפש לא טוב ואץ ברגלים חוטא!

Gemara Bava Kama 61a:

מאי לא אבה דוד לשתותם דלא אמרינהו משמייהו אמר כך מקובלני מבית דינו של שמואל הרמתי כל המוסר עצמו למות על דברי תורה אין אומרים דבר הלכה משמו ויסך אותם לה’ בשלמא למ”ד הני תרתי משום דעבד לשם שמים אלא למ”ד טמון באש מאי ויסך אותם לה’ דאמרינהו משמא דגמרא.

We have written in the past of Chassidic and Mussarite antinomianism. See here regarding Novhardok, especially.

There is a similar phenomenon today of ignoring halacha for the sake of phony “Kiruv”, of which there is much to say.

*Breslov isn’t Chassidus at all, in my humble opinion, which is why it was opposed more often by modern Chassidim than by pre-Chassidic, paleo (“Litvish”) Jews.

The Debt We Owe Our Intellectual Enemies

We owe our bitterest intellectual foes some gratitude for drawing existing problems into sharper relief.

Take Brisk, for example. The “formalism“, the rejection of the mind, the contempt for halachic analysis, disregard for realia, and status quo biases, all existed earlier to some degree. But Brisk (and others, too) made it all of a piece, so the problem is now easier to attack, and easier to counter with its diametric opposite.

Mussar and Chassidus both helped crystalize the “unconstrained vision” of humanity and its concomitant antinomianism. Which birthed Leibowitz and the Chazon Ish, lehavdil.

Rabbi Yisrael Rosen of Machon Tzomet enabled Morenu Rabbi Yitzchak Brand’s oeuvre against worthless legal fictions as a foil.

And so on.

Here is Murray Rothbard saying the same in the economic realm:

It is the fashionable belief that an idea is wrong in proportion to its “extremism” and right in proportion as it is a chaotic muddle of contradictory doctrines. To the professional middle-of-the-roader, a species that is always found in abundance, the demagogue invariably comes as a nasty shock. For it is one of the most admirable qualities of the demagogue that he forces men to think, some for the first time in their lives. Out of the muddle of current ideas, both fashionable and unfashionable, he extracts some and pushes them to their logical conclusions, i.e. “to extremes.” He thereby forces people either to reject their loosely held views as unsound, or to find them sound and to pursue them to their logical consequences. Far from being an irrational force, then, the silliest of demagogues is a great servant of Reason, even when he is mostly in the wrong.

A typical example is the inflationist demagogue: the “monetary crank.” The vast majority of respectable economists have always scoffed at the crank without realizing that they are not really able to answer his arguments. For what the crank has done is to take the inflationism that lies at the core of fashionable economics and push it to its logical conclusion. He asks; “If it is good to have an inflation of money of 10 percent per year, why isn’t at still better to double the money supply every year?” Only a few economists have realized that in order to answer the crank reasonably instead of by ridicule, it is necessary to purge fashionable economics of its inflationist foundations.

Demagogues probably first fell into disrepute in the 19th century, when most of them were socialists. But their conservative opposition, as is typical of conservatives in every age, never came to grips with the logic of the demagogues’ position. Instead, they contented themselves with attacking the emotionalism and extremism of the upstarts. Their logic unassailed, the socialist demagogues triumphed, as argument always will conquer pure prejudice in the long run. For it seemed as if the socialists had reason on their side.

See the rest of it here.

Well, there.

Now I paid my due respect, my intellectual enemies should do the right thing, and all stop saying the wrong thing, already!

די כבר!