{"id":24063,"date":"2010-09-26T08:21:31","date_gmt":"2010-09-26T16:21:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=24063"},"modified":"2010-09-26T08:42:50","modified_gmt":"2010-09-26T16:42:50","slug":"making-god-look-bad-to-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=24063","title":{"rendered":"Making God Look Bad To The World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his fifth lecture on <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yosef_Eliyahu_Henkin\">Rabbi Joseph Elijah Henkin<\/a> (the leading <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Posek\">posek<\/a> in America during the 1940s and 1950s) for <A HREF=\"http:\/\/torahinmotion.org\">Torah in Motion<\/a>, Rabbi Marc B. Shapiro says:<\/p>\n<p>Rav Henkin says Jews must be careful about how they speak about non-Jews. Non-Jews today are not <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bishul_Yisrael\">akum (idol worshipers)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We shouldn&#8217;t talk about how non-Jews earn the death penalty for violating the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Seven_Laws_of_Noah\">Noahide laws<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>People who don&#8217;t understand Jewish law shouldn&#8217;t write about it and do a terrible <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chillul_Hashem\">chillul HaShem<\/a> as they do on such websites as <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.theyeshivaworld.com\/\">Yeshiva World News<\/a> and <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.vosizneias.com\/\">Vosizneias<\/a>. Take a look at these websites. Look at some of the comments. The ignorance. A little knowledge is dangerous, especially on the internet. What people write is unbelievable. It makes Judaism look bad not just to non-Jews but to non-Orthodox Jews. It makes them think that if this is what traditional Judaism is, I don&#8217;t want any part of it.<\/p>\n<p>I used to be friends with <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.davidkelseymedia.com\/about.php\">David Kelsey<\/a>. <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.jewcy.com\/user\/dk\">He&#8217;s a blogger now. All he does is attack Orthodoxy<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>You have many others. It&#8217;s not Orthodoxy that they are turned off of. They were turned off by a crazy fanatical <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Haredi_Judaism\">Haredi<\/a> type of Orthodoxy and now they are very anti-Orthodox. If they had a different approach, there&#8217;s no reason to believe they wouldn&#8217;t be in the fold. For some of them, when they first learn about science, they are turned off.<\/p>\n<p>Almost 100% of the anti-religious [Orthodox] types you see online, <A HREF=\"http:\/\/failedmessiah.com\">Failed Messiah<\/a> who was Chabad, all these people who have an axe to grind against Orthodoxy, they don&#8217;t come out of the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Modern_Orthodox_Judaism\">Modern Orthodox world<\/a>. They come out of the extreme <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Haredi_Judaism\">Haredi<\/a> world. Because they were so extreme on one side, they go extreme on the other side.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re arguments are all the same. That Judaism was never humane. It was never filled with love. It was all about hatred of non-Jews, hatred of the Modern Orthodoxy, hatred of the other. It was always negative. It was always filled with destruction. <\/p>\n<p>My impression is that most rebels are from the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hasidic_Judaism\">Hasidic groups<\/a>. <A HREF=\"http:\/\/palinkapictures.com\/\">Pearl Gluck<\/a> made a <A HREF=\"http:\/\/palinkapictures.com\/divan_about.html\">movie about them<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Some of them now have tattoos. They are in biker t-shirts. But you listen to them talk, and they sound like they did when they had <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Payot\">payos<\/a>. Because they grew up speaking Yiddish, they&#8217;ll never sound like an ordinary American. They&#8217;re not like the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lithuanian_Jews\">Litvishers<\/a>. If a 20-year old Litvisher guy wants to leave, he&#8217;ll at least have some secular education. He&#8217;ll have a high school degree. <\/p>\n<p>These are people who&#8217;ll never make something of themselves. They have no secular education. Many don&#8217;t leave Hasidic Judaism precisely because of that. In the community, they&#8217;re given manual labor jobs and that&#8217;s accepted. In the wider world, they have no possibilities.<\/p>\n<p>Haredi learning in Israel is not an elite movement. How can you have a society where you tell every man they have to do the same thing?<\/p>\n<p>When a Satmar guy drops out, he goes off the deep end. When a traditional Litvisher guy leaves the Haredi world, they end up in places like Teaneck or West Orange. They become more modern. They don&#8217;t reject everything. <\/p>\n<p>Rav Henkin didn&#8217;t have students. He had baal habatim (congregants and followers).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his fifth lecture on Rabbi Joseph Elijah Henkin (the leading posek in America during the 1940s and 1950s) for Torah in Motion, Rabbi Marc B. Shapiro says: Rav Henkin says Jews must be careful about how they speak about &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=24063\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,577,69],"tags":[32350,10063,29808,23843,1085,7423,23844,3809,8890,3219],"class_list":["post-24063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-hasidim","category-marc-b-shapiro","tag-david-kelsey","tag-haredi-world","tag-marc-b-shapiro","tag-noahide-laws","tag-orthodox-jews","tag-orthodox-world","tag-pearl-gluck","tag-rabbi-joseph","tag-torah-in-motion","tag-traditional-judaism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}