Hyehudi.org

(Of ideas and behavior, not blood in the streets!)

Mass teshuvah is nothing if not a revolution.

Rambam Teshuvah 7:5:

כל הנביאים כולן צוו על התשובה ואין ישראל נגאלין אלא בתשובה וכבר הבטיחה תורה שסוף ישראל לעשות תשובה בסוף גלותן ומיד הן נגאלין שנאמר והיה כי יבאו עליך כל הדברים וגו’ ושבת עד ה’ אלהיך ושב ה’ אלהיך וגו’.

Just the other day a friend told me of someone he once knew. The man lives in another city, dresses differently, and traveled a seemingly different path than me in some ways. And it wouldn’t be so simple to contact him. I don’t think he has internet access, either. But he, too, is studying and observing the Torah without blinders, and the results don’t match with modern, mainstream faux-Judaism.

I don’t agree exactly with everything I heard quoted in his name (“There are only two mitzvos Jews still observe as they were given: Lulav and Milah”), but it comes from the same place in the heart.

A handful of truth-seeking individuals is not yet a threat to the establishment, but it’s a start. And it’s genuine “grassroots”; nothing and nobody arranged and organized and led people to the same family of ideas but Divine Providence and independent thinking.

All revolutions start from the fringes; scientific (read Thomas Kuhn), political (read history), and ideological (same, deeply).

(And if you look carefully, even the middle is shifting in many ways, but that part is harder to demonstrate.)

May Hashem lead us all back to Him and the Torah!

Find them all here.

ויקרא כ”ה ל”ה – ל”ח:

וכי ימוך אחיך ומטה ידו עמך והחזקת בו גר ותושב וחי עמך. אל תקח מאתו נשך ותרבית ויראת מאלהיך וחי אחיך עמך. את כספך לא תתן לו בנשך ובמרבית לא תתן אכלך. אני ה’ אלהיכם אשר הוצאתי אתכם מארץ מצרים לתת לכם את ארץ כנען להיות לכם לאלהים.

רש”י שם ל”ח:

אשר הוצאתי וגו’, והבחנתי בין בכור לשאינו בכור אף אני יודע ונפרע מן המלוה מעות לישראל ברבית ואומר של נכרי הם. (בבא מציעא ס”א)

ד”א, אשר הוצאתי אתכם מארץ מצרים על מנת שתקבלו עליכם מצותי ואפילו הן כבדות עליכם. (תורת כהנים כ”ה ע”ז)

יש קשר בין שני הפירושים…

The high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is found in combination with the human will. Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.

• R. W. Emerson

Yes, it’s more complicated, and, no, this isn’t to comment on the transcendental idealism school in art criticism.

Answer: “Pattur” (exempt). This means the individual in question is legally insane (so to speak), and is therefore exempt from all mitzvos! (The word is conducive to expressing annoyance because the consonants sound like spitting).

By the way, there is a similar Teshuvah in the Tashbetz (I think), where he ridicules an ignoramus who attempts to explain the ruling of the Geonim to burn a third of the fields of a libeler, labeling him “Pattur”, as well. In subsequent teshuvos, the object himself is told of this (yes, Rechilus), assumes this means he is a woman (exempt from time-bound mitzvos) and is highly insulted, and the rabbi tries to explain he meant all he wrote in a favorable sense…

Hilarious.

I hope to find it in a few days, and update the exact source.