העורך Editor

re: The Satmar Rebbe’s Omission

We wrote this about the Satmar Rebbe:

…

And this strengthens my case that Rabbi Yoel erred in his opus by not attacking the positive commandment of rebuilding the Holy Temple. If you want to destroy Judaism, undermining the Jewish tongue, Jewish sovereignty, and the Jewish land are a good start, yet insufficient. He should have realized: the next frontier will be the Jewish Temple, and he will have had no credit in trying to prevent it. But of course, Rabbi Yoel was anything but prescient.

I would like to add that in his ‘Divrei Yoel’ Rabbi Tetelbaum even takes the position that the Holy Temple will first be built by man before it “comes down from heaven”.

Brisker Chakiras Present a False Dichotomy

The Chazon Ish had many , many criticisms of Brisk. Here is one on the “Chakira” (also known as “Two Dinim”):

Why not three or four?

There’s a spectrum or continuum of possible “Dinim”. If the method was any sort of search for truth, two options would not suffice. But of course it’s all about shooting the breeze, sorry, I meant “increasing love and enjoyment for Torah”.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz on ‘Jewish Values’

My own summary:

  • Judaism consists only of keeping Halacha. All other Jewish source-texts comprise either commentary of Halacha or encouragement to keep Halacha.
  • Sociology is meaningless from a Jewish religious perspective.
  • No other Jewish “worldview” or “value system” or “commitment” exists.