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המשך לקרוא…

מאתר שטייגן, כאן. [האתר נעלם]

In general, I am not in favor of Chofetz Chaim-based lashon hara guidelines (as her propounds in this essay), for several reasons. People over-apply them. They are formulated in a way biased to prevent possible slander, more than concerned for protecting potential victims. They took what had, until this point, been a mostly hashkafic and good-middot matter, and transformed them into halacha. And while some contemporaries disagreed with him, for lashon hara, unlike the rest of his halachic work, we don’t have an Aruch HaShulchan disputant to give contrast to his Mishna Berurah.

• Excerpt from post on Lashon Hara at the ParshaBlog, here.

Hear hear!

The Pischei Teshuva (O.C. 156) notes that while Mussar books are strongly focused on the prohibition of speaking Lashon Harah, there is a worse sin – not speaking up to prevent harm to others!

I think the entire post shows the problem with trying to work out “Judaism” using feelings and Mussar instead of Halacha. This is a far wider topic. Anyway, see the rest of the article.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz said this about the end-results of occupying Arab territories:

The Arabs would be the working people and the Jews the administrators, inspectors, officials, and police—mainly secret police. A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret-police state, with all that this implies for education, free speech and democratic institutions. The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the State of Israel. The administration would suppress Arab insurgency on the one hand and acquire Arab Quislings on the other. There is also good reason to fear that the Israel Defense Forces, which has been until now a people’s army, would, as a result of being transformed into an army of occupation, degenerate, and its commanders, who will have become military governors, resemble their colleagues in other nations.

• From Dov Bear.

It’s hard to disagree with awkward facts. The only question left is how to deal with the current situation.

Should the state annex all the land of Israel and pay all Arabs to leave per Feiglin?

Relinquish Arab areas as has been tried since forever without success?

Or end the state itself, so everyone can pay insurance companies and defense firms for protection (and pay each other to leave)?

Rabbi Yehuda B. Ilan of Forthodoxy is starting a new podcast soon. Sounds good!

Start sending him questions you would like covered.

A certain rabbi invented the “chemical” method of study. Those in the know now refer to it as “chemistry,” but many speak of it as “logic.” This proved to be of great harm to us for it is a foreign spirit from without that they have brought in to the Oral Torah. This is not the Torah delivered to us by Moses from the mouth of the Omnipresent. This method of study has spread among the yeshivah students who still hold a gemara in their hands. In no way does this type of Torah study bring men to purity. From the day this method spread abroad this kind of Torah has had no power to protect its students. . . . It is better to have no rosh yeshivah than to have one who studies with the “chemical” method.

Excerpted from Seforim Blog, here.