{"id":42035,"date":"2012-03-20T18:18:39","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T02:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=42035"},"modified":"2012-03-21T10:33:24","modified_gmt":"2012-03-21T18:33:24","slug":"when-the-steipler-became-a-holy-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=42035","title":{"rendered":"When The Steipler Became A Holy Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his second lecture on <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yaakov_Yisrael_Kanievsky\">the Steipler<\/a> for <A HREF=\"http:\/\/torahinmotion.org\">Torah in Motion<\/a>, professor <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marc_B._Shapiro\">Marc B. Shapiro<\/a> says: After the <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Avrohom_Yeshaya_Karelitz\">Chazon Ish<\/a> died, people turned to the Steipler with their problems.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Steipler begins to assume the role of the tzaddik, the holy man, much like a hasidic rebbe who has clairvoyant powers. The <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Avrohom_Yeshaya_Karelitz\">Chazon Ish<\/a> in his lifetime was never regarded like this. You don&#8217;t have Lithuanian gadolim regarded like this in their lifetimes. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Steipler&#8217;s son (<A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chaim_Kanievsky\">Chaim Kanievsky<\/a>) has assumed that.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;During his lifetime, the Steipler was treated as a holy man, a man with <em>ruach hakodesh<\/em> (the divine spirit). He would give <em>brachas<\/em> (blessings). The Steipler never shied away from this. Presumably his hasidic background came to the fore here. This is what he grew up with.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He did not function as a <em>posek<\/em> (decider of Jewish law). He functioned as a leader.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He said that abortion is forbidden except when there&#8217;s a danger to the mother&#8217;s life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Steipler has negative views of non-Orthodox Jews. He&#8217;s different from American haredim who want to bring such Jews closer to Torah.<\/p>\n<p>The Steipler&#8217;s disagreements with the anti-Zionists, the Satmar, are over tactics, not over ideology. &#8220;We are in exile in the state of Israel.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Steipler said that the Yom Kippur war was brought on by the Labor government to boost its election chances.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Steipler and <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elazar_Shach\">Rav Shach<\/a> all had negative comments about psychologists. They were convinced it was a waste of time. They think that psychologists are all about turning people against religion. It was certainly forbidden to go to a non-religious psychologist.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When it comes to doctors, they don&#8217;t care. He&#8217;s an expert. With psychologists, they&#8217;ll be very careful who they send to, as they should.  As religious Jews, I don&#8217;t think we can go to any psychologist. That&#8217;s dangerous.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his second lecture on the Steipler for Torah in Motion, professor Marc B. Shapiro says: After the Chazon Ish died, people turned to the Steipler with their problems. &#8220;The Steipler begins to assume the role of the tzaddik, the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=42035\">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":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[598,69,18,17382],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-haredi","category-marc-b-shapiro","category-orthodoxy","category-psychology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42035","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=42035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42113,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42035\/revisions\/42113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}