העורך Editor

Some (him?) say they have a “family tradition” to follow the Taz’s rulings (including in all his disputes with the Shach?).

Oh, yeah?

For one, how about O.C. 448:4 where he says unless you “sell” the room containing the Chametz, then hand the Goy the key you violate “בל יראה ובל ימצא”?

… ופשוט הוא שהחמץ יהיה מונח במקום שהעכו”ם יכול לכנוס שם מעצמו כדמשמע לישנא דגמרא דעכו”ם עייל לדנפשיה וכ”ש שלא יסגירנו במסגרת וישראל יחזיק המפתח בידו או יניח חותמו עליו וגם צריך שימכור לו בפירוש אותו החדר עם החמץ שבו דאם לא כן הרי הוא בבתיכם. וכל שאינו עושה בדרך שזכרנו ה”ז עובר בבל יראה ובבל ימצא וחמצו לאחר הפסח אסור בהנאה.

Do they?

What do you think?

I assume some readers come across articles they strongly oppose, aggregated or not, yet don’t bother contacting the site editor. I further imagine this is due to the fact comments are disabled sitewide. So you wonder: who else will read my rebuttal, anyway?

Well, we actually have published such critical (and less so!) letters in the past (sometimes appending a rejoinder)!

Here are some examples:

Sorry. This won’t be about cars, and it’s only idolatry in a metaphorical sense. Clickbait. I mean Jews serving Jewry instead of the Jewish God, as reflected in quotes such as these:

“I am a committed Jew. I belong to an Orthodox synagogue, send my children to Jewish school and yearn to instill in them the same devotion to the Jewish people that my parents instilled in me.”

Prof. Peter Beinart, New York Times. March 18, 2012, p. A21 (emphasis added)

Note his devotional target!

Yeshayahu Leibowitz explained the whole point of religion being for mankind to serve, not be served. Many unfaithful Jews would agree with the above-quoted sentiment. Some ostensibly “religious” Jews would put the Jewish people before Hashem, too. They might say this nationalism is intended as Avodas Hashem, or even synonymous with it (not that Jews are a “nation” like all others, Heaven forfend!), but so what? This rejection of the true goal is still not legitimate.

Rambam Hilchos Avoda Zara 1:1:

בימי אנוש טעו בני האדם טעות גדול ונבערה עצת חכמי אותו הדור ואנוש עצמו מן הטועים היה וזו היתה טעותם, אמרו הואיל והאלהים ברא כוכבים אלו וגלגלים להנהיג את העולם ונתנם במרום וחלק להם כבוד והם שמשים המשמשים לפניו ראויין הם לשבחם ולפארם ולחלוק להם כבוד וזהו רצון האל ברוך הוא לגדל ולכבד מי שגדלו וכבדו כמו שהמלך רוצה לכבד העומדים לפניו וזהו כבודו של מלך. כיון שעלה דבר זה על לבם התחילו לבנות לכוכבים היכלות ולהקריב להן קרבנות ולשבחם ולפארם בדברים ולהשתחוות למולם כדי להשיג רצון הבורא בדעתם הרעה וזה היה עיקר עבודת כוכבים וכך היו אומרים עובדיה היודעים עיקרה, לא שהן אומרים שאין שם אלוה אלא כוכב זה…

But even this Kavanah is a pretense. My proof is the fact even Jews scholarly enough to know the truth about various Halachos steadfastly refuse to reconsider wrongful and criminal halachic customs and rulings. Others continually come up with new ways to subvert Mitzvos with ingenious workarounds (which don’t actually “work“). It’s not even positive nationalism since it’s usually about serving their tiny communities.

“For the true Deity of the Jews is not [God], but the Jewish people itself.”

– Miguel de Unamuno

For some, yes indeed.

Q: What do you call a book describing a country’s politicians, and their individual politics, wars and ‘welfare’?

A: A Bestiary (but it must have pictures!).

… There seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. Oversimplified as this may seem, we shall find the idea more easily acceptable if we consider that bigness, or oversize, is really much more than just a social problem. It appears to be the one and only problem permeating all creation. Wherever something is wrong, something is too big.

If the stars in the sky or the atoms of uranium disintegrate in spontaneous explosion, it is not because their substance has lost its balance. It is because matter has attempted to expand beyond the impassable barriers set to every accumulation. Their mass has become too big. If the human body becomes diseased, it is, as in cancer, because a cell, or a group of cells, has begun to outgrow its allotted narrow limits.

And if the body of a people becomes diseased with the fever of aggression, brutality, collectivism, or massive idiocy, it is not because it has fallen victim to bad leadership or mental derangement. It is because human beings, so charming as individuals or in small aggregations, have been welded into overconcentrated social units, such as mobs, unions, cartels, or great powers. That is why they begin to slide into uncontrollable catastrophe.

― Leopold Kohr

This theory’s reach is “too big”.