I found the original video [*], the one that sparked Rabbi Amichai Toporovitch’s response we posted recently.
Find it on TorahAnytime.com here, titled “Shelach Lecha – All you wanted to know about tchelet”…
Rabbi Aharon Pessin, clearly extremely stupid at Torah, especially as far as his chosen topic is concerned (I examined some of his other works, leaving aside the majority — mere mechanical compilations), contributes zero original anti-Techeiles falsehoods and foolishness; it’s all recycled and post-refutation (or post-contextualization). He ducks all the relatively sophisticated objections and more nuanced name-dropping than ‘Rabbi Elyashiv blah blah’, he who admits in print he never investigated the facts, and davka goes for sheer nonsense (no bearing on machlokes Rashi and Tosafos about dyeing, for instance) and discoverable lies (here’s one easy example). Worse, he manages to make other people’s prior lies more mendacious and their stupidities even stupider!
And yes, the Letz, after saying (minute 17:20) he doesn’t understand why people call the Techeiles question “political” [what this dullard doesn’t understand could fill the world’s libraries, and it indeed does], and reduces the matter to “Emunas Chachamim” (?!) then predictably reveals his mind (at approx. minute 22-24): this mindset leads Techeiles-wearers to ascend Har Habayis. R’ A. Pessin beats out Rabbi Shraga Kallus for first place as ultracrepidarian Anti-Techeiles trickster by a wide margin. Thank you very much.
Originally, I thought he was being sneaky in the video-within-a-video (minute 10:09-11:15) by:
- Not informing Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky zatzal of the context,
- Changing the emphasis of Rabbi Kanievsky’s quote when repeating it to him, as though Rabbi Kanievsky were making a general statement to the nation,
- Suppressing Rabbi A. Toporovitch’s identity, someone Rabbi Kanievsky knew personally,
- Not showing us the note he handed the rabbi in the video, and
- Not demanding clarification at all.
But on second thought, and having studied the man himself, I think Rabbi Pessin is too dim to even realize details might matter (in any area of life).
By the way, Rabbi Shalom Cohen [perhaps deceived by his handlers] did the same when carefully asking Rabbi Aaron Leib Steinman zatzal about Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak’s political party, “Koach Lehashpia” whose campaign Rabbi Steinman encouraged, rigging it in such a way as to elicit slander, by moving the goalposts to make it about who one should vote for and painting Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak as a liar.
Again, watch Rabbi A. Pessin’s class here if you can suffer fools, and tell me if I exaggerated one iota. It has to be experienced in person.
Nothing is wrong with being born stupid. Hashem yisborach made us all with different roles; we are all ignorant only on different subjects; Yiras Shamayim and good judgment are near-synonyms; and next to Hashem all humans are unfathomably ridiculous.
But when a naturally stupid person:
- Consciously denies his limitations (even accounting for the Dunning-Kruger effect),
- Neglects sharpening his brain with Torah for a long career (his beard is all white),
- Cares nothing for uncovering the truth (clearly a capable if shallow researcher, no way he copy-pasted the anti-lit but couldn’t access its rebuttals),
- Attacks Torah scholars whose sicha kala is beyond him [with constant צהבו פניך שהשבת את זקן] for what he is guilty of himself,
- Phones-it-in on a daily mitzva he knows worse than nothing about
- With the explicit intention “to depopularize it” (minute 36:50),
- And travels all the way to Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky to video him
- So as to accuse others of lying (without bothering to talk to them first),
- Due to selective “Da’as Torah” clericalism itself left unexamined?
(Nor does Rabbi Pessin mention first consulting his rabbi, Rabbi Asher Weiss shlita, about this — Rabbi Weiss explicitly contradicts his epigone’s invented issur on wearing techeiles, hear the one-minute recording here)
That is evil by free choice.
[*] Note: There is a longer version here I didn’t check [titled: “Tetzave & Purim – Do You Need Techeles in Your Tzitzis? Moshe’s Disappearance, Remembering Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l, Atonement Through Destruction, “Double Dipping,” Riddles & More”], from which I think this focused one was extracted.