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Mishlei 6:30 – 35:

לא יבוזו לגנב כי יגנוב למלא נפשו כי ירעב. ונמצא ישלם שבעתים את כל הון ביתו יתן. נאף אשה חסר לב משחית נפשו הוא יעשנה. נגע וקלון ימצא וחרפתו לא תמחה. כי קנאה חמת גבר ולא יחמול ביום נקם. לא ישא פני כל כפר ולא יאבה כי תרבה שחד.

They will not despise a thief if he steals to sate his appetite, for he is hungry. And if he is found, he will pay sevenfold; he must give all he owns. One who commits adultery with a woman is devoid of sense; one who would destroy his soul-he will do it. He will find wounds and disgrace, and his reproach shall not be erased for jealousy shall arouse the husband’s wrath, and he will not have pity on the day of vengeance. He will not have regard for any ransom, neither will he consent though you give him many bribes.

In other words, even though thieving to eat is understandable, so the shame is less, the punishment is still severe. But the punishment for adultery is far worse, and the shame ineradicable. (At least that’s how it used to be.)

This Parsha serves also as a parable for Bein Adam Lamakom; it is one thing to be a thief, another entirely to be a traitor.

Not to exclude seemingly settled adults, but at the very least lost teenagers should avoid heresy. If they have a good secular psychologist, he should be telling them the same. If you aren’t מן היישוב, aren’t careful about other people’s property, are single (or worse, have a קדשה), wake at noon, and use drugs with or without a prescription, maybe you should reserve judgment on the secrets of the universe. Keep a notebook, so you don’t forget your insights, and leave it at that.

If you can’t keep Torah and Mitzvos at the moment to some degree, you can take comfort in the fact that many people have gone through such an “Onness” stage (with or without quotes). Those who heal such youth focus on turning them, firstly, into human beings (including via Torah study, see Emuna Ubitachon Chazon Ish 4:12), and rightly so. (For an alternative approach, see this.)

This isn’t merely about which sins are worse, but a form of “אל תרשע הרבה”.

We just wrote:

Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum is known to have said visiting Kivrei Tzaddikim is only for people on a high level(…), in “Al Hage’ulah” p. 166 (#108). Only those who can “connect” with the deceased should go… It’s like outspoken atheists who deliberately try to remove all living hope, especially from the terminally ill, the depressed, and the downtrodden, and replace it with “courage” these people simply cannot find within themselves.

In response, one of our wonderful readers sent us screenshots of the Arizal who apparently says the same thing (I’m telling you, I knew I should have mentioned it!):

It’s an explicit Arizal, so why am I blaming the Satmar Rebbe?!

But, no.

First of all, the Arizal, as usual, is referring to people on a high spiritual level who don’t wish to lose their “aura”. Rabbi Steinman, for example, was very careful about not entering cemeteries, or at least not the Dalet Amos, even for his wife, if I remember correctly, and there are others who did\do the same. This doesn’t apply to everyone, though, as the Satmar Rebbe was doing.

Besides, one can also pray from afar. Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky shlita once said, if one can see the Kever from a distance, one has all the benefits of praying at the Kever, but without the Tum’ah.

Anyone can quote the Arizal as though it is meant for everyone (my apologies to our Arizal guy!), but it isn’t right. Imagine someone going to his sole Torah lesson of the day, after finishing work at the factory: An evening Tanach Shiur, the only one לבו חפץ. Would you tell them the relevant Arizal and have them learn nothing?!

I am busy with my upcoming, free (about 20-page short) Ebook on surviving an encounter with an atheist*, so my thoughts are a bit more in that direction, even though this is isn’t our usual subject matter.

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I just came across the following Wikipedia article titled “Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit” summarizing Richard Dawkins’ counter-argument to the Design Argument.

(If this doesn’t interest you, skip this.)

Here’s Wikipedia’s summary:

The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is a counter-argument to modern versions of the argument from design for the existence of God. It was introduced by Richard Dawkins in chapter 4 of his 2006 book The God Delusion, “Why there almost certainly is no God”.

The argument is a play on the notion of a “tornado sweeping through a junkyard to assemble a Boeing 747” employed to decry abiogenesis and evolution as vastly unlikely and better explained by the existence of a creator god. According to Dawkins, this logic is self-defeating as the theist must now account for the god’s existence and explain whether or how the god was created. In his view, if the existence of highly complex life on Earth is the equivalent of the implausible junkyard Boeing 747, the existence of a highly complex god is the “ultimate Boeing 747” that truly does require the seemingly impossible to explain its existence.

I didn’t read Dawkins’ book and don’t want to go into whether knowledge is an intrinsic “quality” of God, the anthropic principle, etc., but rather to point out that whether his counterargument follows or not is irrelevant, because, firstly, I don’t think there is any “proof” of God’s existence, secondly, because the Argument from Design is no good anyway, and thirdly, God is not a scientific explanation of anything (Yeshayahu Leibowitz).

Postulating a prime mover that is capable of indulging in intelligent design is, in Dawkins’s opinion, “a total abdication of the responsibility to find an explanation”…

But could an explanation be eventually found, even theoretically? If we speak, not of abiogenesis or evolution or the like, but of all everything; the “universe”, then since nothing can be said of the universe itself, the nihilistic quest is vain and misconceived.

Parenthetically, I assume the reason most all “Theist” debaters ignore this point is because they are actually Cursedian idolaters, not believers in one, transcendent God.

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