{"id":71356,"date":"2015-07-21T07:53:27","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T15:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=71356"},"modified":"2015-07-21T07:53:27","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T15:53:27","slug":"orthodox-judaisms-tortured-relationship-with-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=71356","title":{"rendered":"Orthodox Judaism\u2019s Tortured Relationship with Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frum Satire<\/a>: Look, we\u2019re not children anymore, let\u2019s not pretend that Orthodoxy\u2019s mesorah which goes back to Moshe Rabbainu is any less crooked than the Tail of the Dragon and let\u2019s not pretend it doesn\u2019t have a proportionately equal number of annual casualties. Those casualties usually come, like those at the Tail, from those who love it most, who take it seriously and who therefore throw their lives into it.<\/p>\n

One needn\u2019t go further back in history than the past fifteen years when The Making of a Godol was banned because it told stories about the previous generation of gedolim that were true but which would have either unmade their godol status or it would have shown sincere young bochurim that they can read Anna Karenina during their lunch break between first and second seder and then grow up to be like R\u2019 Yaakov Kamenetzky. Likewise Natan Slifkin\u2019s books were banned, not because anyone could dispute what he wrote but precisely because they couldn\u2019t dispute him, which should be obvious; obviously you don\u2019t need to ban a book you can dismiss.<\/p>\n

So the Orthodox Created the Past in Their Image
\nBut what about books we can\u2019t dismiss or ban? What\u2019s to be done about those?<\/p>\n

Look, we\u2019re not children anymore, we don\u2019t have to pretend that the Inquisition invented censorship and book banning. Luckily we live in the 21st century in a free country where a brilliant professor of Judaic studies has the liberty to research historical acts of Jewish censorship going all the way back to Chazal editing the Torah! Marc B. Shapiro expertly lays out the history of Rashi\u2019s explanation of this Talmudic censorship of the chumash (Bereishis 18:22) and ArtScroll\u2019s censorship of this Rashi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frum Satire: Look, we\u2019re not children anymore, let\u2019s not pretend that Orthodoxy\u2019s mesorah which goes back to Moshe Rabbainu is any less crooked than the Tail of the Dragon and let\u2019s not pretend it doesn\u2019t have a proportionately equal number … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orthodoxy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t