Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!matt From: matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt ) Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish Subject: Re: Rosen, "bug off"! Message-ID: <288@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Tue, 30-Jul-85 10:41:55 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.288 Posted: Tue Jul 30 10:41:55 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 31-Jul-85 16:11:34 EDT References: <164@vilya.UUCP> <658@cvl.UUCP> <39@unc.UUCP> Distribution: na Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 102 > Net.religion.jewish is NOT the appropiate place to challange Judaism. > Rich Rosen powerfully defends the general anti-religion point of view. > Since his articles apply to religion in general, and not specifically to > Judaism, they do not belong in this newsgroup. > > Frank Silbermann Rich Rosen's viewpoints belong in this newsgroup. The word "Judaism" can be, and has been, used to mean two things. The first is, what nearly all Jews believed until about two hundred years before my time (BMT). The second is, what most Jews (and especially their leaders) believe today, in Rosenblatt's time (IRT). BMT Judaism is based on the Revelation at Sinai. It continues, and (bs"d) thrives today, as Orthodox Judaism, true to Torah miSinai. But the majority of American Jews practice IRT Judaism. For, every one of the non-Orthodox branches of Judaism has discarded Revelation. The Reformers (2nd century BMT) and the Reconstructionists have done this openly. The Conservative theologians, if not yet their followers, have "buried Revelation quietly, like a thief in the night." If Jews are not to live by the Torah, then what are they to live by? Well, Jews are not stupid, and one thing they have noticed is that the Gentiles are going to hate us and try to persecute us whether we are religious or not, simply because it is a law that Esau hates Jacob. So a philosophy that encourages tolerance of everything and anything that does not harm other people is a good one to preach and live by, for the very practical reason that maybe, maybe, the Gentile will buy it and live by it too. This is the philosophy of liberalism, and so far it has worked in America. (It seemed to do OK in Weimar Germany, too.) And THIS IS WHAT MOST AMERICAN JEWS BELIEVE IN. Whenever there is a conflict between BMT Judaism and liberalism, "they always choose liberalism." The one common thread in the development (Durchfuhrung) of the vast Conservative Movement, both before and after Marshall Sklare's classic analysis was published in my Bar Mitzvah year, has been the discarding of Torah values wherever liberal values conflict with them. And in their eyes, why not? If Revelation is a "myth," if the written and oral Torah are only the work of a group of men (and foreigners, at that -- not even Americans!), then surely a group of men today, with our incomparably better knowledge of the world (it's gotta be better -- it's Scientific!), can modify and discard whatever they see fit, especially if doing so might make Esau like us a little more, or make us feel a little less guilty for all the terrible persecutions that (everyone knows) the Jews, and especially the white straight male American capitalistic imperialistic Jews, have been engaged in for millenia. That's Jewish liberalism, and that's most of American "Judaism" in Rosenblatt's time (IRT). And that's what Rich Rosen has been advocating in his articles. Would that it were not so! Would that all those who equate Judaism with "tikkun olam" would remember that the complete phrase is "tikkun olam b'malchus Sh-ddai"! Would that all Jews returned to Torah-true, Orthodox Judaism, so that BMT and IRT meant the same thing, viz., wholehearted t'shuvah and acceptance of ol malchus Shamayim, before it's too late and they assimilate and intermarry themselves into stam Gentiles. But in today's America, Rich Rosen speaks for the majority of intellectual Jews. It seems there is no hope for anything said in this newsgroup to be m'karev Mr. Rosen -- I doubt that he would heed even a bas kol. But his arguments are the ones that must be refuted if the Orthodox in net.religion.jewish hope to be m'karevim the poor sheep who are following the liberal Jewish mis-leaders on the path to spiritual destruction. We ignore him at our peril, for it is arguments like his that mislead orders of magnitude more young Jews than the blandishments of the missionaries or the Moonies -- they simply drop out of Judaism entirely when they get to college and their professors reveal that the Bible is a "myth," or even earlier when their secondary school curriculum, written by New York secular humanist Jews, ignores or laughs at "outdated superstition," or even earlier than THAT when their "rabbis" tell them (chas v'chalilah) that "you don't have to believe in G-d to be Jewish." What I would like to see is an end to name-calling and insults on the net. Rich Rosen (and others who use bad language) ought to be intelligent enough to realize that such language only detracts from the efficacy of their arguments, in the sense that they put off readers who might otherwise be receptive. There are all sorts of epithets, in Hebrew, Aramaic, Yiddish, and even Greek, that are used to describe people with liberal, skeptical beliefs that run counter to our Torah. The religious have refrained from tarring Mr. Rosen with these epithets, no matter how exasperated they have become with his stubbornness in clinging to his liberal position. I would request that Mr. Rosen similarly refrain from name-calling and insult, no matter how exasperated he may become with the stubbornness of the religious in holding positions that to him seem outrageous. Otherwise, Keep at it, Mr. Rosen! -- Matt Rosenblatt "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide in the strife of Truth and Falsehood for the good or evil side. . . . Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside till the multitude make virtue of the faith they once denied." -- Lowell