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A recent Jewish Press interview quotes meshumad “Dutch-Israeli Orthodox rabbi, philosopher, and Jewish scholar Nathan Lopes Cardozo” rejecting the mitzvah to wipe out Amalek.

When he bloviates irrelevantly about Avraham arguing whether Sedom should be destroyed, the interviewer raises the obvious counter: “And yet shortly thereafter, God tells Abraham to execute his son Isaac, and gives him kudos for the fact that he tried to comply.”

Here is Cardozo’s response:

I am of the opinion that Abraham, by being prepared to do so, to execute his son, failed the test. I think that the reading of the binding of Isaac should be different from the conventional approach as some Hasidic texts indeed seem to suggest. For an excellent overview read: The Fear, the Trembling and the Fire by my dear friend, Professor Jerome (Yehudah) I. Gellman, published by University Press of America in 1994.

It goes on, of course, Afra lepumei.

This isn’t to say there’s no difference between saying a Chassidic homily on the one hand, and pretending, as does Cardozo, this has any bearing on practical halacha, on the other. Still, the earlier imputed authority was a necessary condition for the later perversion. And this assumes it really was all just homilies, after all, of which I’m not so sure.

I found this through Rabbi Grossman’s powerful rebuttal of some sections.

Our own Rabbi Avi Grossman echoes my own take on the famous “Rupture and Reconstruction” essay by Rabbi Haym Soloveitchik.

Here is an excerpt justifying and explaining the results of the change:

Becoming a text-based halachic society is therefore a critical stage in our recovery as a nation, and the writings of Maimonides and the Vilna Gaon are some the greatest texts for teaching us how to somehow remove the Oral Law from its deep freeze, how to make it live once again so that we once again think as we should, and works such as the Mishna Berura are not sufficient. If the mainstream halachic works would have served as our guide, or if the mimetic ways were to do so, or even a combination of the two, we would never have seen for example, the reinstatement of the daily priestly blessing, or any of the advantages conferred on our people by the establishment of the State of Israel.

The Reconstruction needs to continue, but it also needs to be guided by decision-making principles, principles that lead to decisive courses of action while rejecting others, instead of principles for trying to maintain the status quo and/or satisfying as many opinions as possible. The halachic system, if is to continue to be a unifying force, must avoid false ethnocentricities and the pernicious monolithism that pervades halachic discourse.

Read the rest.

Rabbi Avi Grossman advises we look at the primary sources with our own eyes…

Against speaking, that is. You may study Yiddish.

Nay, you should study Yiddish because it contains heilige (holy) Halacha and Masores. Agreed. Yes, the Shach did speak Yiddish (although many greats preferred Hebrew, as, to the best of my recollection, ignored by Vayo’el Moshe‘s section against Hebrew).

Another plus is, then you can absorb certain Shi’urim at gutte (good) Yeshivos.

Also, I keep davening (praying) minelayers mine through the whole Soloveitchik/Teitelbaum oeuvre (as opposed to just VM/Rabbenu Chaim Halevi), so being able to translate the Yiddish for those specialists would be important.

But don’t employ the ‘shprach fun Yiddish’ (Yiddish language) on purpose (unless it’s the best way available in your situation to stay away from modern, evil culture). Of course, plenty of the interesanteh vocabulary is just Hebrew or English or Arabic or…, as the saying goes of the man who spoke seven languages, all of them in Yiddish.

(And I don’t even wish to repeat the valid point copied here.)

Then why not speak Yiddish?

My strong conviction is: Spoken Yiddish has all the bitter, kvetching lack of Emunah of krechtzing (moaning) Jews for a millennium in Galus, and the “richer” the Yiddish, the more wretched the Yiddishkeit within, generally. The full implications of many of its expressions are wrong as seen by optimistic, Emunah eyes.

The language appears shlepping on its way out, anyway. Yiddish is promoted by the same sorts of nostalgic people who reject all other modern, God-given blessings.

Here’s an ad hominem commercial break:

It’s promoted in an idiotic fashion, too. I know of several Chadarim (day schools) located in Chutz La’aretz who insist on translating Chumash into Yiddish for their students who don’t understand either Hebrew or Yiddish. I try not to think about this dereliction of duty because it makes me ponder what Halacha can be learned from the story with Yo’av in Bava Basra 21a-21b (or worse).

End of the commercial break.

I am loath to try and prove this. My inner voice snipes “you can’t prove it” at every example I think of. Some will agree with this point on Emunah, and others won’t, no matter what I say. So I leave this at “So say I”. Absorb some good books on Emuna, and tell me if it honestly fits into Yiddish. I should think not. Tatteh zisse, Bashefer, Aibeshter, etc. is “Batel Berov”.

Not up to your usual standards, huh…?

I never said this was going to be the definitive, well-argued “case” against Yiddish!

Of course, I mean substituting Hebrew in its stead…