I don’t want to simply re-link to previous content, but the essay posted recently is worth your time (even though it’s in Hebrew). It may be a bit long, but it addresses the common questions about how to do Teshuvah knowing in advance, based on past experience, we will “fail” to sustain any change. The answer is both intellectually satisfying and practical.
Yom Kippur is coming, ready or not…
ראו סרטון של שתי דקות מהרב אמנון יצחק באתר שופר.
I found a wonderfully brief polemic titled “הקדמה לספר ויואל משה החדש“. The pamphlet points out a tiny bit of the blatant lies and misquotes and factual ignorance and shoddy scholarship throughout the overrated Vayo’el Moshe, and does so in attractive fashion (following the lead of this work).
I would love to upload it here, but there is no contact information. If anyone has more details about the author/s, please use the Contact page to reach me.
P.S.,
There are positives in Vayo’el Moshe, too (as the aforementioned pamphlet agrees). Since Vayo’el Moshe’s author (one author, not many!) was forced at the time to choose between Appeal to Authority, or ‘clericalism’ (which had by then embraced Zionism) and Appeal to Tradition (of which a shallow and recent sampling rejected Zionism), Rabbi Teitelbaum chose the latter. (Since then his position has become the establishment one, with mild practical exceptions, such as voting. Thank God, there are also increasing anti-establishment currents by now.) He was unafraid of calling his numerous Jewish opponents heretics, Rabbis or not, which opens the gates for the intellectual honesty of similar, if lesser, accusations against other authorities. According to Hyehudi.org, anti-clericalism is a large part of the medicine modern Judaism requires so desperately. Also, there’s a tiny bit of anti-authoritarianism in there.
This doesn’t atone for the rest of his book, but it’s a start.
P.S., Here it is!
In ‘Are My Aravos Kosher?’ I wrote:
Jews are customarily stringent in the standards for their Arba Minim. Since there are Rishonim who hold Aravos must be grown by the river to be kosher at all, why aren’t we zealous about this?
…
Here are some quotes I compiled quickly from Rishonim, and later decisors as well to demonstrate:
Rashi Sukkah 33b:
מצוה בזו ומיהו של בעל כשרה
(Rosh in his Tosafos and on the Rif’s Halachos explains Rashi to mean this is Hiddur Mitzvah.)
Tanya (the Rishon):
מצוה מן המובחר בערבי נחל וצריך לחזור אחריהם
Tosafos Sukkah 34a:
צריך ליזהר שלא ליטול ערבה ללולב אלא אם כן גדילה על הנחל
Tur O.C. 647:
והגדילה על ההרים פי’ שלא על המים כשירה ורוב המפרשים פירשו שלכתחלה צריך לחזור אחר הגדילה על המים אלא שבדיעבד יצא אף בגדילה על ההרים וא”א הרא”ש ז”ל כתב דלכתחלה יוצא בשל הרים וכן נראה מדברי הרמב”ם ז”ל שכתב ערבי נחל האמורים בתורה אין כל דבר הגדל על הנחל כשר אלא מין ידוע הנקרא ערבי נחל ורוב מין זה גדל בנחל אפילו גדל במדבר או בהרים כשר
Chayei Adam 150:9:
Some say it is preferable to take riverside Aravos.
Matteh Efraim 647:3:
באפשר יהדר אחר ערבה הגדלה על הנחל דוקא