Musing: Skin in the Game

My new issue of Reform Judaism magazine just arrived.  Its cover story is “Jews and Tattoos.”  And it asserts that “Jewish tradition is surprisingly nuanced on the practice” of tattooing

That contention, and the arguments in the article to support it, well demonstrate the Reform movement’s attitude toward Torah (“Only one law,” after all, it explains, “in the Book of Leviticus, prohibits a tattoo.”  As if more than one law prohibits murder.)

The article, seemingly seriously, offers “positive examples of tattooing” in the Bible.  Things like Hashem’s placing a “mark” on Kayin (Beraishis 4:15) and His command (Yeshayahu 44:5) that “one shall call himself by the name of Yaakov; and another shall write with his hand to Hashem” (presumably understanding “with his hand” as “on his hand,” and by cutting the skin and applying ink).

It is sad, just so sad.

From The Mouths Of Secularists

“…To this very day, if you ask for my religion, I say ‘Orthodox Hebrew’ – in the sense that the church [sic] I’m not attending is that one.  If I were to go to a church, that’s the one I would go to.   That’s the one I failed.  It doesn’t mean I’m something else…”

Those are the words of the famous physicist and Nobel laureate I. I. Rabi (1898-1988), quoted in the book “Rabi, Scientist and Citizen.”  He was born into an observant family in Galicia, and was still a baby when his parents immigrated to the United States.

Although he eventually lost his connection to Jewish observance, he confided toward the end of his life that “Sometimes I feel I shouldn’t have dropped it so completely”; and, as his earlier words above testify, he rejected the idea that Judaism could ever be anything other than what it always has been, or that he – or any Jew – could ever be anything other than an Orthodox Jew – whether or not he chose to live like one.

A similar sentiment was voiced several years ago by then-Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, the man elected last week to be Israel’s 10th president.

In a 2006 Knesset speech, Mr. Rivlin, who has been described as secular, said that he “has no doubt… that the status of Judaism according to Halacha is what has kept us going for 3,800 years” and that “besides it there is nothing.”  During that same address, he explained that if non-halachic conversion standards were to be adopted by Israel, the state would be abandoning a “religious definition” of Jewishness for a mere “civic” one with no inherent meaning.

And back in 1989, after visiting two Reform temples, he was blunter still, calling the liberal Jewish movement “a completely new religion without any connection to Judaism.”

Mr. Rivlin was assailed by adherents of non-Orthodox Jewish movements on both those occasions, and his present ascendancy to the Israeli presidency has understandably caused them renewed heartburn.

“He may be open-minded on a variety of issues,” Uri Regev, a Reform rabbi who now heads the “religious pluralism” organization Hiddush, sniffed about the president-elect, “but his mind was made up” about Judaism’s definition.  He is “the same old anti-liberal, close-minded traditionalist Israeli.”

Former Reform leader Eric Yoffie echoed that judgment before Mr. Rivlin’s election, pointedly warning that he expects “candidates for president to act in an appropriate and respectful manner to all elements of the Jewish world.”

And the current head of the Reform movement, Rick Jacobs, recently penned an open letter in Haaretz to Mr. Rivlin, in which he reminded the Israeli president-elect of the “stunning insensitivity” he had displayed toward the “dominant religiosity of North American Jewry” (a risible description if ever there were one) and expressed his hope that “you’re ready to update your harsh and rather unenlightened views of our dynamic, serious and inspiring expression of Judaism” (ditto).

Whether Mr. Rivlin, who by all accounts is a pleasant fellow, will see a need to assuage the umbrage-takers remains to be seen.  He may succumb to the pressures, although one hopes that he will not sacrifice principle for pacification.

The fact that the new president’s old statements have been dredged up and placed in the spotlight, however, is a healthy development.  For it informs the “dominant religiosity of North American Jewry” – in other words, the vast population of the Jewishly ignorant – that disinterested, objective observers readily perceive that there is only one Judaism, the original one.

The conniptions over Mr. Rivlin’s comments also call attention to the fact that, while various Jewish groups were “evolving” new theologies and practices, and abandoning the mesorah, the community of Jews who remained faithful to the Jewish religious tradition didn’t peter out, as so many had expected (and so many had hoped), but rather thrived, and continues to thrive, b”H, mightily.

By contrast, American Jewry outside the Orthodox world is in deep demographic crisis.  The intermarriage and assimilation that concerned us greatly decades ago have only intensified and accelerated.  Long gone are the days when a person presenting himself as a Jew can be presumed to be halachically Jewish.

And yet, there are still countless actual Jews out there, Jews who lack the benefit of an observant upbringing or a Jewish education, and are under the delusion that Judaism is a smorgasbord of offerings.  They are, moreover, relentlessly bombarded with articles in the “mainstream” “Jewish” media that, in effect, warn them not to dare sample the Orthodox tray, that it will make them sick.

What can we do to help those cherished if distant fellow Jews?  Ultimately, be who we are supposed to be.  Many who have gotten their impressions of Orthodox Jews from actually seeing true Orthodox life and behavior (rather than from the media malshinim) have in fact returned to their spiritual roots.

But a first step is the promotion of a truism, one that was voiced by a nuclear physicist and an Israeli president.

 © Hamodia 2014 

A (For Now) Final Post On Jewish Authority

Several recent postings below have concerned the concept of authority in the observant Jewish world, and the inappropriateness of second-guessing or disparaging decisions of Torah leaders.  A pertinent Mishneh that I didn’t cite – for the simple, unfortunate reason that I hadn’t remembered it – was part of the page of Talmud studied by Daf Yomi participants shortly thereafter.  It is in Rosh Hashana, 25a.  And it may well be the single most important statement about the topic.

The Mishneh tells of how Rabban Gamliel accepted two witnesses’ claimed sighting of the new moon (which affects all of the Jewish world’s calendar and holidays) that seemed to fly in the face of all logic, since the new moon was not evident the next night.  Rabbi Dosa ben Hyrcanus      pointed out the seeming impossibility of the witnesses being correct,  and Rabbi Yehoshua, a student of Rabban Gamliel, felt compelled to concur.

Rabbam Gamliel, however, reprimanded his student for that fact and insisted that Rabbi Yehosua appear before him with his staff and coin-purse on the day that, according to Rabbi Dosa and all reason, should have been Yom Kippur.   R’ Yehoshua was pained by that demand, and sought the advice of others.

The first advisor, Rabbi Akiva, pointed out that the right to declare a new Jewish month is specifically entrusted to the most authoritative human court – in this case, Rabban Gamliel’s, and that the calendar follows its declaration, even if it is issued in error.  Thus, it made no difference whether or not Rabban Gamliel’s decision was reasonable.  It was binding, and so R’ Yehoshua could, and should, appear as requested on the day that logic – but not the court – designated to be Yom Kippur.

The second advisor – the very Rabbi Dosa who who had originally assailed the logic of Rabban Gamliel’s decision – also advised accepting the decision, but did not invoke the specialness of the law of establishing the new month.  His reason was more fundamental.

“If we come to second-guess the court of Rabban Gamliel,” he explained, “we will necessarily come to second-guess every court from the time of Moshe until now.”  Rabbi Dosa went on to provide Scriptual support for the truth that authoritive courts have inherent authority, and may not be challenged.”

In the end, Rabbi Yehoshua took the advice and appeared before Rabban Gamliel, who welcomed him warmly and called him “my teacher and my student – my teacher in wisdom and my student in his submission to my words.”

While the issue at the center of that account is a limited one (although with repercussions, as above, for all of the Jewish world), I believe that the narrative represents the template for the proper Jewish attitude in every Jewish age.  There will be times when Jewish leadership – the most widely accepted authorities of the times – may seem wrong, may even be wrong by all reason and logic.  But that is not our (we non-authorities’) business.  Our charge is to accept their guidance, period.  Simply because of who they are, and what Judaism requires of us.

Back in the 1960’s, there was a popular bumper sticker that read, simply, “Question Authority.”  That may a worthy credo for the wider world (especially considering the quality, all too often. of its authorities).

But it is the precise opposite of the true Jewish attitude toward our own religious leaders.

Of Peoples… and People

Commuting to and from Manhattan daily on the Staten Island Ferry brings me into the vicinity of many a tourist. The boat sometimes resembles a United Nations General Assembly debate, without the translators.

When I hear German or a Slavic language spoken, I can’t help but recall the wry words of the late New York City mayor Ed Koch as he led the Ukrainian Day parade one year. He told the parade’s grand marshal: “You know, if this were the old country this wouldn’t be a parade, it would be a pogrom. I wouldn’t be walking down Fifth Avenue; I would be running… and you would be running after me.”

And I’m reminded, too, of the sentiment of my dear father, may he be well, who spent the war years first fleeing the Nazis and then in a Soviet Siberian labor camp. When I asked him many years ago how he feels when he meets a German non-Jew, he told me that any German “has to prove himself” to be free of the Jew-hatred that came to define his people. My father’s “default” view of a German (or, for that matter, Pole or Ukrainian or Romanian…) is “guilty,” or at least “suspect.”

And yet, he continued, if a German clearly disavows his elder countrymen’s embrace of evil, then he deserves to be seen and treated as just another human being. I imagine others might not be so willing to accept even the apparent good will of someone from the land and stock of those who unleashed the murder of millions of Jews (including my father’s parents and many of his siblings and other relatives). But that is how my father approaches things. And how I do, too.

All of which I shared with two German filmmakers a year or two ago. They had requested an interview, to be used in a documentary for broadcast in Germany that would focus on how Jews regard Germans today. I consented, if only because I had no reason to say no.

When the visitors, young people who clearly disavowed anti-Semitism, arrived at Agudath Israel of America’s offices and turned on their camera, I explained that there were Jews, of both my father’s generation and mine, who would always see Germans as evil; but others who would choose to judge an individual, in the end, no matter his genealogical or national baggage, as an individual.

What became of my comments, or the program, I can’t say. I don’t know anyone in Germany who saw the broadcast.

The interview comes to mind because of a recent Agence France-Presse report about Rainer Hoess, the grandson of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess, yimach shemo, who estimated that he was responsible for the deaths of two and a half million people, including at least a million Jews. He was found guilty of war crimes by Polish authorities and hanged near Auschwitz’s crematorium in 1947.

As a 12-year-old growing up in post-war Germany, Rainer was puzzled by negative feelings toward him that he sensed in his school gardener, a Holocaust survivor. A teacher revealed the truth about his infamous forebear.

Now 48, Rainer Hoess seeks to deal with that awful discovery by devoting his life to fighting the rise of neo-Nazi movements across Europe. At first sought out by such hate groups to join them as a “high profile” member, he turned the tables and condemned them unequivocally.

“Every time I have the chance to work against them,” he says, “I will do that.” And he has devoted the past four years to educating schoolchildren about the dangers of right-wing extremism, sadly on the rise in Europe. Last year alone, he addressed students in more than 70 schools in Germany, and has visited Israel.

There’s food for thought here, because it seems inevitable that people will generalize about groups, be they ethnic, national or even professional, whether the justification is conceived as based on genetics, environment or culture.

But our generalizations, however justified they may seem to us, should not figure in our judgments of the individual who has just introduced himself. That fellow might end up adding fodder to our assumption. But he might do just the opposite, and should be given the chance.

After all, there are generalizations, too, that others make about us Jews qua Jews, sadly; and about us Orthodox Jews as Orthodox Jews, sadder still. And, whether those generalizations are based on isolated, unrepresentative facts or pure fantasy, we want others to regard us not in their shadow, but in the revealing light of who we are. And we should give others the same courtesy.

© Hamodia 2014

Letter in Wall St. Journal

Don’t Confuse What Kosher Means

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is entitled to swear off meat if he chooses, but not to pass off his reasons for doing so as having anything to do with Orthodox Judaism.

June 5, 2014 12:20 p.m. ET
Shmuly Yanklowitz (“Why This Rabbi Is Swearing Off Kosher Meat,” Houses of Worship, May 30) is entitled to swear off meat if he chooses, but not to pass off his reasons for doing so as having anything to do with Orthodox Judaism.Jewish religious law prohibits the infliction of avoidable pain on animals, and the vast majority of kosher slaughterhouses, overseen and inspected by both governmental agencies and rabbinic supervisors, are entirely sensitive to that law and its implications.

“Kosher,” however, has nothing to do with health or “ethics.” There are Jewish ethical laws and Jewish ritual laws. Kashrut is entirely in the latter category. And it is simply not “Orthodox” to contend otherwise.

Rabbi Avi Shafran

Agudath Israel of America

New York

Dangerous and Defective Products

It isn’t every year that news reports about Agudath Israel of America’s annual dinner make the pages of media like the Forward or The New York Times.  This, however, was one such year.

The reason for the attention was the heartfelt and stirring speech delivered by the Novominsker Rebbe, shlit”a, the Rosh Agudas Yisroel, at the gathering.  And the fact that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio chose not to contest the Rebbe’s words.

Rav Perlow spoke to the issue of organized deviations from the Jewish mesorah, a topic that is timely because of the insistence of the latest such movement on calling itself “Open Orthodoxy,” rather than summoning the courage to find an independent adjective for itself, as did the Conservative and Reform movements of the past.

Over the past century or two, the term “Orthodox” in the Jewish world has been synonymous with full affirmation of the mesorah – including most prominently the historicity of Yetzias Mitzrayim; the fact that the Torah, both Written and Oral, was bequeathed to our ancestors at Har Sinai; and that Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yaakov actually existed – concepts that prominent products or leaders of the “Open Orthodoxy” movement are on record as rejecting.

Yet, the “Orthodoxy” in the group’s name has misled various Orthodox congregations across the country to assume that there must be truth in that advertising, and to engage the services of graduates of the “Open” movement as rabbis.  And so, the Rebbe apparently and understandably felt it was important to, in effect, proclaim a strong and principled “caveat emptor,” so that any potential buyers of this particular bill of goods will beware of the fact that the product is dangerously defective.

And so he invoked the sad examples of the other heterodox movements, which, while they seemed once upon a time to offer the promise of Jewish fulfillment and a Jewish future to some undiscriminating Jews, have, the Rebbe lamented, “fallen into an abyss of intermarriage and assimilation” and are on the way to being “relegated to the dustbins of Jewish history.”

A rather unremarkable if unfortunate truism, that.  But, at least to the two newspapers, it seemed to be news (“Orthodox Rabbi Stuns Agudath Gala With ‘Heresy’ Attack on Open Orthodoxy,” gasped the Forward headline) – at least combined with the fact that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio spoke after Rav Perlow’s remarks and chose to not address them.  It couldn’t have been much of a dilemma for him, as an elected official (not to mention one presumably not expert in Jewish theology), to decide whether or not to mix into a religious issue.

The New York Times columnist who wrote about the rabbi and the mayor is Michael Powell.  If his name elicits a sour taste, it’s because it was he who, only last month, wrote an egregiously unfair column about the East Ramapo School District’s “Orthodox-dominated board” that “ensured that the community’s geometric expansion would be accompanied by copious tax dollars for textbooks and school buses.”  Those books and buses, of course, are mandated by law for all New York city schoolchildren – even Orthodox ones.  He has written a number of other columns that touch upon – and not in a positive way – charedi communities, including a long cynical magazine piece about Satmar back in 2006.

What further upset Mr. Powell was Mr. de Blasio’s praise for the Agudah as a movement, and for its executive vice president Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, with whom he has worked for years and who he said “is someone I deeply respect and listen carefully to.”  Bad enough, the writer seemed to be thinking, that the mayor didn’t stand up for the cause of kefira, but did he really have to express admiration for an Agudath Israel leader?

Mr. Powell clearly has an “Orthodox problem.”

That’s unfortunate.  Still, a columnist has the right to be biased, unfair and even offensive.  What even a columnist may not do, though, is offer his readers errors of fact.

Rav Perlow did not, as Mr. Powell reports, offer a “shower of condemnation for Reform and Conservative Jews.” The Rebbe simply reaffirmed Orthodox Judaism’s insistence that heterodox theologies – ideas and beliefs, not people – are incompatible with the Judaism of the ages. Anyone who knows the Rebbe, or any of the manhigei hador, knows that they have only love and concern for all Jews, no matter how misled they may be by their religious leaders.

The reporters missed the real story.  That a clarion call had been sounded to all Jews – charedi and otherwise – who recognize that the Torah is true and that our mesorah is real, to address the deceptive attempts to convince Jews that ersatz “Judaisms” and even “Orthodoxies” are something other than capitulations to the Zeitgeist.

The mayor may have understood that.  Or just, wisely, recognized that he had no expertise to engage the issue of the meaning of Judaism.

Would that Mr. Powell had followed his example.

© 2014 Hamodia

Children’s Programming

“Nahoul” is a giant bee, or, better, a man in a furry bee costume.  He is one of the intended-to-be-lovable characters on “Pioneers of Tomorrow,” a children’s television program produced in Gaza.

In a recent episode, Nahoul encourages a boy from Jenin to attack his Jewish neighbors.  “Punch them,” he advises.  “Turn their faces into tomatoes.”

“If his neighbors are Jewish or Zionist,” Rawan, the little girl host of the show adds helpfully, “that goes without saying.”  Nahoul then advises throwing stones at “the Jews.”

A bit later in the program, another little girl shares her hope to become a policewoman, so that she can “shoot the Jews.”

“All of them?” the host asks with a smile.

“Yes,” the other girl replies.

“Good.”

Nahoul is likely to meet the fate of other cuddly animals – like Farfour the Mouse, a rabbit and a bear – that were previously featured on the program only to suddenly disappear, the show’s little viewers being informed that each character had been “martyred” by Israelis.

The airwaves in Gaza are tightly controlled by Hamas, the de facto government, and “Pioneers of Tomorrow” is part of that violent and hateful group’s effort to educate the region’s children about what Hamas considers their civic and religious duties.

They educate and we educate.

It might seem a novel thought, but it’s really an obvious one: The surest way to understand a society lies in the entertainment it offers its young.

American culture qua culture is largely aimless.  If it has ideals, they are high-sounding ones like “freedom” and “individuality” but which generally translate as “do what you will” and “I’m okay, you’re okay.”  Reportedly, much of the programming aimed at American children pays homage to the same.

Children’s fare in the Orthodox Jewish world is also telling.  And although it does not use television as a medium, it’s voluminous.  Whether in the form of books, compact discs, MP3s or cassette tapes, there is an astounding array of memorable musical offerings, characters, stories and performances that convey the ideas and ideals that inform the community, and that reflect its essence.  Jewish children are taught about Jewish history, about love for other Jews and for Eretz Yisroel, about the beauty of Shabbos and the meanings of yomim tovim, and about the performance of mitzvos; about the evils of jealousy and loshon hora and about the importance of Torah-study.

And then we have Hamas.

Shavuos approaches.  My wife and I will miss having our children with us.   (They’re all either married or in yeshiva –yes, the marrieds invited us to join them, but their father is a hopeless homebody.)  But when I go to the beis medrash on Shavuos night, I’ll remember all the Shavuos nights spent learning Torah with the little boys, later young men, whom we were privileged to raise, and all the subtle teaching of both them and their sisters that went on around the Shabbos table, and throughout the weeks and years.

And I will remember one Shavuos in particular, quite a few years back, when I was learning in a nearby shul – packed with others, many of them fathers and sons too – with one of our sons, then a 12-year-old.

We spent most of the night engrossed in Gemara.  We began with the sugya of tzaar ba’alei chayim in Bava Metzia, which he was studying in yeshiva, and then continued with the sugya of Yerushalayim nischalka l’shvotim in Yoma, which he and I were learning regularly together.

Dovie seemed entirely awake throughout it all, and asked the perceptive questions I had come to expect from him.

The experience was enthralling, as it always was, and while it was a challenge to concentrate (at times even to keep my eyes from closing) during Shacharis, Dovie and I both “made it” and then, hand in hand, walked home, where we promptly crashed.  But before my head touched my pillow (a millisecond or two before I entered REM sleep), I summoned the energy to thank HaKodosh Boruch Hu for sharing His Torah with us.

That silent prayer came back to me like a thunderclap a few days later, when I caught up on some reading I had missed (in the word’s most simple sense) over Yomtov.  Apparently, while Dovie and I were learning Torah, the presses at The Washington Times were printing a story datelined Gaza City.

It began with a description of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Abu Ali, being “lovingly dress[ed] by his mother in a costume of a suicide bomber, complete with small kaffiyeh, a belt of electrical tape and fake explosives made of plywood.”

“I encourage him, and he should do this,” said his mother; and Abu Ali himself apparently agreed. “I hope to be a martyr,” he said.  “I hope when I get to 14 or 15 to explode myself.”

My thoughts flashed back to Shavuos and to my own son, and I thanked Hashem again.

© Hamodia 2014

POSTSCRIPT:  It turns out that we will indeed be away from home for Shavuos, in Israel, for the bris of Dovie’s and his wife Devorah Rivkah’s  firstborn .  May we all know only happy occasions!

 

Retroactive Prophecy Redux

As I expected, my critique of some recent writing of Rabbi Berel Wein has generated many comments and communications.  There were, also as expected, yeas and nays

The nays focused on either or both of two complaints.  Paraphrased loosely: 1) How DARE you criticize an elder statesman of the Orthodox Jewish world?  (And a sub-complaint: How DARE you not refer to Rabbi Wein as a Rosh Yeshiva?)

And 2) But Rabbi Wein is right! Gedolim have erred in the past!  So what bothers you about what Rabbi Wein wrote?

The first thing first.  I have great respect for Rabbi Wein as a person and a scholar, and feel enormous personal hakaras hatov to him for several things, among them his wonderful history tapes, which I used back in the 1980s to create a syllabus for a high school Jewish history course I taught then; and his mentorship of, and Torah-study with, a cherished son-in law of mine, who remains close to, and works with, Rabbi Wein to this day.

I meant no insult, chalilah, by not referring to Rabbi Wein as a Rosh Yeshiva (he led Yeshivas Shaarei Torah in Monsey for 20 years).  He has not, however, served in that position since 1997, and his rightful claims to fame are his great knowledge of Jewish history and his writings.  The Wikipedia entry for Rabbi Wein, in fact and accurately, identifies him as “an American-born Orthodox rabbi, scholar, lecturer, and writer… regarded as an expert on Jewish history…”

As to the reason I felt it was acceptable, even required, to publicly criticize his recent essays, I can only say that there are times that “ein cholkin kavod lirav” – “we do not defer to even great men”  This, I felt and feel, was such a time.

As to the second complaint, the complainers need only read – this time, carefully – what Rabbi Wein wrote, and – just as carefully – what I did.

I did not contest the assertion that the religious leaders of Klal Yisrael can err; in fact the Gemara says so, in many places; to the contrary, I clearly stated the fact.

What I contested was the attitude that any of us can be sure, based only on our own lights, that great men in fact erred in specific cases; and – most egregiously – that those judgments allow us to cavalierly reject the current guidance of our own generation’s religious leadership.

To wit, Rabbi Wein insinuates that the Gedolim of today, who are looked to for guidance by the majority of yeshivos, Bais Yaakovs and Jewish day schools, are limited by  “a mindset that hunkers back to an idyllic Eastern European world of fantasy that is portrayed falsely in fictional stories.”  That jaundiced judgment is used by Rabbi Wein to explain why those Gedolim don’t endorse the celebration of Yom Ha’atzma’ut or the commemoration of the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah (but rather, instead, in other ways and at times like Tisha B’Av).

“The whole attitude of much of the Orthodox world,” he further writes, “is one of denial of the present fact that the state exists, prospers and is the largest supporter of Torah and Jewish traditional religious lifestyle in the world.” No one, though, denies those facts, only that they somehow mean that opposition to the creation of Israel before the Second World War is, as a result, somehow retroactively rendered erroneous.

Rabbi Wein also writes that “One of the great and holy leaders of Orthodox society in Israel stated in 1950 that the state could not last more than fifteen years. Well, it is obvious that in that assessment he was mistaken. But again it is too painful to admit that he was mistaken…”

Perhaps Rabbi Wein is referring to someone else, but if his reference is to the Chazon Ish, it is a tale widely told in some circles that lacks any basis I have been able to find. On the contrary, the contention has been utterly rejected by someone, a talmid of the Chazon Ish who became an academic, who spoke to the Chazon Ish extensively about Israel.  The godol, the talmid writes, expressed his opinion that time would have to tell whether Israel would develop into a positive or negative thing for Klal Yisrael; but the Godol did not, the talmid stresses, ever opine what he felt the future held, much less offer some timeline.

The issue is not whether Gedolim are Nevi’im (they are not) but whether the Gedolim of each generation are, in the end, those to whom the Torah wishes us to turn for guidance, the “einei ha’eidah,” the “eyes of the people.”  Or just some righteous but out-of-touch ivory tower scholars who cannot be relied upon for anything but issues concerning kashrus or Shabbos.

I make no apologies for standing up for the former conviction.  And I would welcome Rabbi Wein proclaiming a similar stance.  But, alas, words he has written have struck me, and many, many others (including both those upset at those words and others who welcomed them with glee) as implying the latter.

I truly wish I hadn’t felt the need to address those words, but I did.