הרב אבי גרוסמן Rabbi Avi Grossman
Concerning Prophecy (Rabbi Avi Grossman)
It seems that prophecy did not disappear from Israel suddenly; just like it was an almost-once in a century phenomenon during the times of the Judges (before Samuel), in Second-Temple times the rarity of prophets did not seem to upset the Jewish religious order, and they expected prophets to arise in their own days (see the relevant passages in Ezra-Nehemia and Maccabees). The sages of the Mishna and the Talmud also figured that there were qualified individuals among them, except that apparently God did not see fit to send one of them to rebuke the people. And to be honest, the Jewish people have not really needed any prophets since at least Second-Temple times. A prophet is not supposed to create new halachot or commandments. The prophet is not necessary for deciding the halacha that binds K’lal Yisrael. The prophet’s job is to reprove the people and to remind them of their divine role in the unfolding of history. We already have enough books from the earlier prophets, so what else do we need? Moses himself took a break from being a prophet for 38 years.
To what can this be compared? The presence of the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple and the availability of the Anointing Oil. The former was hidden because the people were thinking heretical thoughts about it (see here) and it was to their benefit that the Holy of Holies in the Second Temple was starkly empty, a demonstration that it was the non-physical Divine Presence that filled the Temple. The Anointing Oil was completely unnecessary from a halachic standpoint. The Temple’s vessels did not need to be anointed and neither did High Priests, and the Davidic line had already been chosen. By Second Temple times, it could only be used as a means of claiming legitimacy for heretical movements (imagine if it had fallen into the hands of the Sadducees or early Christians!) so it was better that it remain hidden. So too, our ancestors had to learn the proper way to relate to the very Temple sacrificial ritual (see Isaiah and Jeremiah) before they could be restored to them.
Therefore, I (in my worthless opinion) see no reason why we should believe or hope for the restoration of the Ark of the Covenant, or the Anointing Oil, or the prophets as active bearers of God’s new word. Certainly, for the first two, I have not seen (I could be wrong) any classic source that claims that both shall one day be present in a New Temple, may it be rebuilt soon, and although it is clear that there will be qualified, divinely inspired individuals, like the Messiah himself, men capable of being prophets, it does not mean that they will bear any prophetic burden. Even the return of Elijah (whatever that may entail) does not require that he bring a new message whatsoever. I also think that using Maimonides’s example of Rabbi Akiva identifying Bar Kochba as the Messiah, we ourselves should not rule out the advent of the Messiah because a prophet has yet to appear.
Do not misunderstand me. I fully believe that we have the potential to be a nation entirely of prophets. But I think R’ Kaplan was perhaps exaggerating when he wrote that 1. the ingathering of the exiles is a condition for restoration of prophecy, because we see that in early Second Temple times prophecy did have a small and temporary resurgence despite the majority of our people remaining in the diaspora, and 2. “our traditions regarding the advent of the Messianic Era is that it will mark the return of prophecy among the Jewish people.” The Hasmoneans did not seem to think so, and neither did some of the sages, and even though it would be most welcome, prophecy could very well return beforehand, or not at all.
(Why would God not send us a prophet for so long? Because when He used to do so, we stopped listening to them. So what would be the point of sending them again? If we need to know how to behave, we have the entire corpus of the earlier books and the recorded Oral Traditions, and the sifrei musar. They are more than sufficient.)
Donald Trump, Lesser Evil
Admire Trump?!
I tell my children that Trump is a thorough rasha, guilty of violating most of the sheva mitzvot, and possessed of terrible middos. But that is easy to discern. What makes Trump different is that even though all of the other politicians/celebrities are just as guilty, they are able to somehow not broadcast everything that crosses their minds, and are therefore able to fool us, and most importantly, when he had power, he did much less than everyone else in a similar position to harm ordinary citizens. I can not fathom why I had friends who celebrated Biden’s election. Was Trump worse than any of these cretins? Is Biden any better? I have never celebrated anyone’s election, and anyone who does shows that he is too biased to, for example, give a decent halachic opinion that touches on current issues.
Avi Grossman Comments on Women in the Workplace
(Although this is not exactly the point of the recent short book to which you linked,)Jordan Peterson talked about how the modern era has brought new challenges to the workplace, specifically for men in the presence of women. Throughout history, most men did not work with women, but that has changed, and we are now just beginning to understand how increased contact between the sexes during the workday has all sorts of unintended consequences. Most sensible people understand how dangerous co-ed high schools are, yet many frum Jews still have not understood why men and women should not share workplaces. From my own limited (and sometimes unfortunate) experiences, I have made the commitment to never work at an institution where I have to deal with women in person, and it has worked for me for the last eight years.
Rabbi Avi Grossman Weighs In on Some Recent Articles
Posted two weeks late, so I added some links…
Reading that article from RYYJ, wherein the author points out that the creation of the State of Israel did not achieve the Zionist goal of a state that could protect the Jewish people, I respond by saying Exactly, because it all comes down to leadership. The state is only as good as its leaders, which is why the prophets always focused on the particular Judge or King who was in power, and he is credited or faulted for whatever the people did as a whole.
About the American Thinker response to Pinker, even if no taxation is a theoretical-halachical ideal (achieved by the greatest Jewish leaders in history like Moses and Samuel who never took anything from anybody), the halacha allows the king to take a 10% tax on (basically) income because most leaders will not live up to the Mosaic standard because they are human.
My experience tells me that if Democracy is the ideal system of governance (or at least of deciding on who governs) the Torah would have prescribed it for us. But it did not, and despite the Kotzker blogger’s recent article asserting that the adoption of p’suqei d’zimra was in response to the fall of the exilarchs, we have, since Davidic times, held up his type of monarchy as at least a romanticized if not fully realized ideal system worth reinstating. (Consider that if on a weekday, one were to not pray for Davidic restoration, he would not fulfill his obligation of daily prayer.)
Rather, despite our best efforts to create fair socio-political systems, we find that most, whether on the level of the nuclear family to superpowers and empires, devolve into some form of dictatorship, one man who consolidates power, with the only difference between say, the Pax Americana presidents and obvious tyrants being that the former eventually left office voluntary and oversaw systems that allowed the people to live and conduct their business relatively freely. Indeed, a society constituted of people who practiced the Torah as an all-encompassing law (without foolish, man-made additions) would approximate a libertarian utopia, but more so, our sages realized that because in the end there is only man, the best we can hope for is that the dictator is benevolent. A David and not a Herod. That opinionated rasha, Christopher Hitchens, who was wont to point out his own monarchy’s faults, aptly observed that “Monarchy is a hereditary disease that can only be cured by fresh outbreaks of itself.”
In his own cynical way, he was saying that when we are left with the type of dictator we can’t stand, the best we can hope for is that the next dictator will be more palatable. That is why the halacha declares that monarchy should solely be granted to kosher Davidians, ones who have the necessary moral character and follow the Torah that teaches them to remain humble, to not run after wealth, physical pleasures, and power, and to limit their work to maintaining (Torah) law and order and national security.
On the practical level, I agree with what you wrote in response to RYYJ
In the end, the only thing that stopped the shelling of Israel’s northern cities was the United Nations. We needed the gentiles again for our safety…)
No, the physical insecurity is rather due to lack of Bitachon in the Master of the World, and cravenly trying to appear Goyishly “moral”, due to anti-Zionism
on a philosophical level.
On a practical level, this means that the prime ministers, etc., should have used their God-granted capabilities to fight back. Which is the ideal and historical Jewish response. To put our trust in the Lord, to pray to Him and fast, and then go out and win the milchemet mitzva.