Last week I wondered why the head of American Jewish University’s rabbinics program publishes photos of himself in jeans and a tye-dye t-shirt. Can you imagine Saul Lieberman doing that?
I also wonder the Ziegler School of Rabbinics is run by a rabbi with no scholarly distinction?
I also wonder why recent rabbi-graduates of Ziegler think it is OK to chew gum in shul?
I was at Temple Beth Am on erev Shuvuot and right next to me in the pews was a new rabbi chewing gum.
Half the crowd was dressed casually, as though they were about to join in a game of softball.
I wonder if they would dress that way if they were about to meet the Queen of England or the President of the United States? What if they were to attend the Oscars? I think not. This means that they accord more respect to these goyisha things than to the study of Torah.
Rabbi Adam Kligfeld of Beth Am suggested there be a pushke attached to every bencher. He seems to think that if affluent people were more generous, there’d be less hunger in the world. This is nonsense. The only hungry people in the Western world are nutters or addicts. People are only hungry in the third world because they have despotic leaders who choose to keep them hungry.
There is no hunger in the world that is the result of rich people who are insufficiently generous.
