העורך Editor

“Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people’s weaknesses. Avoid being one of the mob who indulges in such pastimes. Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. It is the easiest thing in the world to slide imperceptibly into vulgarity. But there’s no need for that to happen if you determine not to waste your time and attention on mindless pap.”

― Epictetus, The Art of Living

It’s not the Genetic Fallacy if it’s relevant: The wildly popular, new-fangled notion of “self-esteem” was created by a professedly atheistic psychologist, Nathaniel Branden (co-creator of Randian “Objectivism”). Self-confidence is beautiful. Self Esteem is just another term for human deification.

We have explained the basic idea several times here in the past. Man qua man is of no value. All we have is bare potential – potential to serve our Maker.

Charedim claim: “The Hyphen Is Heresy”.

Mimah Nafshach; if “Dati” includes “Leumi”, why mention it, and if it doesn’t, why add it?! Every third editorial in Charedi outlets repeats that Dati-Leumi (both linguistic phrase and live individuals) commit משתף שם שמים ודבר אחר, etc. (I believe one good point “redeems” an entire book, so check out aptly-named “Dat Hatzionut“, in spite of its many lackings, to understand this better.)

The word “Charedi”, on the other hand, is nothing but a signifier for “Jew“, who has been renamed by a historical quirk (just like “Hebrew” -> “Israelite” -> “Jew”), the claim continues.

Sounds good, sounds really good, but it’s not true. As an insider, this is psychologically not the case. That’s why Netzach/Bnei Torah/Peleg’s slogan is: חרדים כמו פעם. And their opposition is no different.

Charedim are very unfortunately not aiming to copy Moshe Rabbenu, but the Brisker Rav.

Here’s a quote from Moshe Koppel’s Article on Religion and State in Israel we reposted yesterday:

[T]he only organization legally allowed to issue an official kashrut certificate in Israel is the state rabbinate.

In the free-market system of kashrut supervision used, for example, in the United States, a certifying organization depends on its reputation to stay in business; if it is not respected by consumers, food manufacturers will have no incentive to pay for its services and it will go out of business. Different organizations tend to serve different markets, and for each, some level of stringency is a condition of survival. The system has proved to be quite efficient.

Under Israel’s quasi-monopolistic system, by contrast, the standards of supervision are extremely low. Since inspectors are paid directly by the establishments they supervise, they have strong incentives to overlook problems; also, inspections in Israel are extremely infrequent. Under normal market conditions, such poor service would be punished, first by suspicious restaurant patrons and next by the restaurants paying for the supervision; in a state-funded system, kashrut supervision is immune to punishment by clients.

An added disincentive is the fact that the state rabbinate is itself not at liberty to raise standards: on several occasions, the courts have ordered it to provide certification to establishments that did not meet the rabbinate’s own standards. Such, again, was the case in which the Supreme Court enjoined the chief rabbinate to force local religious courts to grant certification against their own best judgment. In a free-market system, it would not have been possible for the courts to have dictated standards to the rabbinate; nor would it have been necessary for them to do so, since the market demand for more lenient supervision would not have been frustrated by a legal monopoly.