Judaism Is Antiestablishmentarian!

Mr. Litvak reintroduces the forgotten lesson of Chazal, Avoda Zara 19a to study those Torah areas that make you happy:

אמר רב, אין אדם לומד תורה אלא ממקום שלבו חפץ, שנאמר כי אם בתורת ה’ חפצו.

Rashi idem:

ממקום שלבו חפץ, לא ישנה לו רבו אלא מסכת שהוא מבקש הימנו, שאם ישנה לו מסכת אחרת אין מתקיימת, לפי שלבו על תאותו.

Litvishe Yid wonders why was this “forgotten”.

Easy to explain: it “can” rarely, even occasionally, or frequently, as he says, “conflict with institutional frameworks” a teeny tiny bit, if you can believe that. Being human, rabbis tend not to act in direct opposition to their own self-interest, and Yeshivos are not thoroughly disinterested “Lishmah” affairs (men are motivated by honor, including the Kosher sort, cf. Emunah Ubitachon Chazon Ish 4:14). So this is one of those, eh, lesser-quoted Gemaros.

To conclude: Yeshivos are a wonderful thing, truly; if you can keep them around honestly. But if holding your Yeshiva afloat requires wrongly putting the group ahead of the individual, the whole enterprise loses its Jewish value.

The same is true for other crooked worldly means, like impure funding, or deceiving your students into misreading (teaching Briskian baloney instead of honesty and logic).

To repeat the title once again: Judaism is anti-establishmentarian. (Even disestablishmentarian where necessary.)

re: Apologizing for Amah Ha’ivriyah

After publishing “Apologizing for Amah Ha’ivriyah“, I realized it wasn’t clear enough.

Um, how do I say this? That happens more often than you think.

Please don’t interrupt.

“They hope you don’t notice how weak their points are” (in defending slavery) is not my own attack on Hilchos Avadim!

All I’m saying is the true weltanschauung of Torah rejects even such Enlightenment principles as universal suffrage and human rights, no matter how often these appear to match. The Jewish axiom is G-d, and we cannot have a useful dialogue with other, different views except in “rejection” and “clarification”.

What’s Weltish-thing? How does the verse suffer from age? And…