Of Monkeys and Men – More Pearls from Maran Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef (Column 133)

So he doesn’t really interact intellectually with people at large, that’s all.
Experience shows that racist perceptions (not necessarily negative ones) arise naturally in childhood among someone who grows up in a homogeneous population, and if he never leaves the narrow confines of that population there is no reason for him to shed those perceptions.
I wasn’t alarmed. And he is still a Torah scholar.

Scientifically speaking he is certainly right, and that is true of all of us as well.

The cynical contempt at the beginning toward his father, Rabbi Ovadia, was a bit jarring—he was undoubtedly an important Torah scholar.

A possible interpretation of Rabbi Yosef’s words—as you suggested—is that he is speaking about the world close to him and not about the U.S., where a white child born to black parents would be seen as an exception relative to society. A black child born to black parents is not a biological exception. A black child born to white parents is unusual in both respects, and therefore one recites the blessing. This has nothing to do with evolutionary degeneration.

It seems to me that he meant to state a general principle: if unusual, ape-like child is born to parents, one should recite “Blessed… Who varies His creatures.” A black child born to white parents is a particular case of that general principle, and a white child born to black parents also falls under that same principle. The common denominator in all these cases is that the Holy One, blessed be He, changed the fetus from the ordinary nature in which it was supposed to be born, and for that one recites: “Blessed… Who varies His creatures.”

Beyond that, even if there were here a comparison between a black person and an ape (which, as noted, I really don’t think there was), it would not be a comparison on the intellectual plane (that a black person’s intellectual abilities resemble those of an ape), but rather on the external plane (that a black person’s appearance resembles that of an ape, at least more than a white child’s appearance does). And even if it was an inappropriate comparison, it does not seem right to judge a person’s character on the basis of one isolated remark.

Rabbi Yosef took a blessing that was apparently instituted מתוך some sort of racist conception (you yourself admit that your interpretation is forced) and gave it an okimta that gives it a non-racist meaning. And you accuse him of racism? I can’t understand your claim.

Beyond that, I must note that in my personal taste (perhaps a conservative one), there is no place to say of any person—certainly not of a rabbi, and certainly not of a halakhic decisor on whom a large public relies—that he resembles an ape in his abilities. There are red lines one does not cross.

I haven’t heard it, but he is not known as a great sage. He rose to prominence thanks to his father, even though he himself apparently cannot understand a line of Gemara. There is no brilliance in mocking him. The problem is with those who appointed him, and others like him (Metzger).

I’m sorry that instead of writing a reasoned and orderly essay as is your custom, you wrote a screed full of gutter language (such as “next to the flatulence of this fellow”). I hope you will apologize in the future for the wording, just as you recently apologized for the remark about legumes (“Let me begin by saying that those words of mine were written several years ago, and they too were written in a stormy moment, hence the sharpness of the wording. I did indeed overdo the sharpness, and I regret it”).

Now to my claims:
1. The ‘comparison’ between an ape and a black person was not in an essential sense, as Oren wrote here. The idea is that the blessing is said only when there is a change between the parents and the child, and he illustrated that principle in two ways. You are usually the one who performs such analytical distinctions—what happened this time?

2. The idea that the blessing is said only when the black person was born to white parents is not his excuse (“Yitzhak Yosef’s brilliant solution,” “a deranged okimta in the Gemara”), but is written in earlier sources. Didn’t you find them? Here, from a site you often refer people to: http://ph.yhb.org.il/plus/10-15-14/

3. I very much agree that his mind is not at all mixed with people generally, and that there are things one does not say in public, especially if you are Chief Rabbi. But one has to take into account that this person never left the four cubits of halakha, and therefore he speaks in yeshiva language. He does not know manners or political correctness. The one who appointed him is the one who should answer for it.

3. I did not understand why you determined that he is a ‘fool.’ You have dealt extensively in the past with defining intelligence. Do you mean here that his knowledge is limited and that he knows no fields besides Torah and halakha? In those fields at least his breadth is great and impressive. Do you mean that he does not analyze halakha properly and merely quotes and recites? If you want to accuse, you have to explain and justify it.

4. In general, someone reading this article by itself really does not understand what all the outrage is about, and why one unfortunate statement receives such torrents of scorn. It is clear that your claim today is one out of a long list of claims, but these are not mentioned in the article. Someone reading it gets the impression that it was written by someone who hates Judaism and Torah, or by someone whose language is shallow and aggressive.

If the Gemara is the one that made the comparison, does that mean that for an actual ape and elephant one also recites “Who varies His creatures” only when they were born to humans? And another question – does one recite the blessing for an actual ape and elephant born to black people, or only when they were born to whites? And what about a mixed couple, Heaven forbid? And what about an ape, son of an elephant (as the song says, “It’s the yellow bear, son of the elephant, brother of the ape”)?

Rabbi Michi, I am astonished by your words here and appalled by your style.
Rabbi Yitzhak spoke in his popular style about the blessing “Who varies His creatures.” He emphasized that the black person in question was an unusual black person, born to white parents. In a quarter-sentence, embedded in the flow of his speech, he said “they got an ape,” again in his folksy style and with a little smile. He was speaking about the blessing “Who varies His creatures,” about unusual creatures, and in the course of referring to the unusualness of the black person under discussion, he humorously used an expression that conveys that unusualness. There is nothing in this against black people. It is just a humorous pointer to the creature discussed in the sugya (a black child born to whites, not a black person or black people in the ordinary sense), with an attempt to point to its unusualness.
I do not doubt your sincerity, and therefore I think that if you watch the clip again you will see that it is likely, or at least possible, that this is what he meant.
The statement that this is what is written in the Gemara could be an unsuccessful attempt to escape the embarrassment of the unfortunate and unclear expression, an attempt that may involve falsehood in order to prevent a desecration of God’s name stemming from a misunderstanding of the rabbi’s intent; or it may be pointing to the general trend in the Gemara, which speaks of unusual creatures including a black person and an ape, so that somehow the public can make sense of how the words were said even if they do not grasp the psychological explanation of how the expression emerged.
Your style here is degrading on an unusual level. To refer to a man of broad Torah knowledge, whose works have helped many among the people of Israel observe halakha, in such ugly terms—as excrement dropped in the public domain—is a bad and ugly act. I do not understand how you sank to this level. You poured all your fury at Shas here upon a Torah scholar, in a way that in my humble opinion distorts his intention, blackens his face, and adds to the desecration of God’s name that came out of this whole affair. Not only because of the interpretation you give Rabbi Yosef’s words and character, but especially because of your repellent style toward another Torah scholar.

Hi Gil,
Your one assumption is itself racist, primitive, and infantile. Think a little before you write.

Have a pleasant day

Very sad that Rabbi Michi has sunk to such language.

In light of the comments here, it turns out this is not as ‘well known’ as I said, even among the visitors to this site, so perhaps it is worth expanding and exposing his disgrace in public.

“Hidarder” and not “hitdarder.”

I really did not like his manner of speaking; it undoubtedly caused a great desecration of God’s name. But with all due respect, Michi, your style is very far from substantive. The style reveals that you have tremendous hatred and revulsion toward him. Maybe be a little honest and tell us the background to your hatred. I’m not buying the line that it’s only for substantive reasons.

Right—Hitler, too, had perceptions that came naturally. He simply thought Jews had horns and baked matzah with the blood of Christian children. There is no reason to demand that he free himself from those natural and self-evident perceptions. So what exactly is the problem?!

I am not judging him on the basis of this one statement. It expresses many stupid things I’ve heard from him and in his name. As I said, I would be glad to hear what Yitzhak Yosef would say about someone who said a Moroccan resembles an ape (he too is dark compared to an Ashkenazi).

That blessing was not instituted out of a racist conception but in your fevered brain. And even if it were, I recommend that anyone with a head on his shoulders look around and see whether that is indeed the case, and not apply it literally in every situation. That is exactly what I wrote in my note about freedom and subjugation in interpretation.
I never said or wrote that my suggestion is forced. On the contrary, it is self-evident in the face of his nonsense. When reading me, it is worth equipping yourself with the ability to recognize ironic writing.
To tell the truth, I greatly toned down the expressions I would have used about him had I let my tongue run free. He earned that fair and square. And besides, about these boundaries one does not cross—I suggest you direct that to him.

I had a business dispute with him over land in New Zealand.

It will be interesting to see Rabbi Michi’s analysis of the above article once his mind settles on it; I’m sure he will have something to say about it. Waiting for part two.

At the moment I have no time to begin researching all the nonsense I’ve heard from him. The fact that many follow him – for that do I weep.

Are you sure you’re not related to the Yosef family? It gives the impression that you share the same genes.

If someone were to say that a Moroccan physically resembles an ape, that would indeed provoke strong reactions. But in our case, one needs to understand the comparison to an ape as part of the context of the lesson. The lesson took a passage from the Talmud that mentioned the ape as a representative example of unusual creatures, and therefore Rabbi Yosef used the Talmud’s representative example. By the way, it reminds me of the passage from Bava Batra 58a:
“All compared to Sarah are like an ape compared to a man; Sarah compared to Eve is like an ape compared to a man; Eve compared to Adam is like an ape compared to a man; Adam compared to the Divine Presence is like an ape compared to a man.”

So I’ll give an amusing example from the written sources – Ein Yitzhak (first edition), vol. 1, p. 460, klal 39, and Ma‘arekhet HaShulchan, section 5, siman 313 (pp. 460–461). In Ein Yitzhak he thought for some reason that Mordechai was the grandfather of the Raavyah, and it becomes clear there that he has no ability whatsoever in reading comprehension, and also no even basic knowledge of the history of the Rishonim (which did not stop him from writing “Principles of the Rishonim”). In Ma‘arekhet HaShulchan they informed him of the matter, and then instead of simply understanding what is written he gets himself even more tangled up and reveals all the more that he simply does not understand anything he reads. For anyone who likes the genre of ‘rabbis’ embarrassing themselves without being aware of it, highly recommended.

Oren,
it’s only strange that he used specifically an ape and not an elephant. Surely he is not aware of the connotations of an ape (say, if he saw David Bitan portrayed as an ape he would not understand the point, of course, nor black-directed monkey chants in stadiums).

This is unbelievable, what is going on here! Oren gives a simple explanation of Rabbi Yosef’s words (an explanation that was clear to me from the start, and I didn’t understand what the needless fuss was about) that makes this whole combative column unnecessary—and what does the author of the column say? I didn’t judge him by this statement but by others. If this statement can be explained in a way that leaves no criticism of it (apart from a general criticism of the entire Haredi world—that Rabbi Yitzhak is no less integrated into the world than most rabbis there and no more racist than most of them), then a harsh column was written here without any explanation. If the claim concerns previous statements, then those should be raised—perhaps we will see that just as this statement can be explained, so too previous ones? There is no doubt that Rabbi Yitzhak has a sharp tongue and poor public tact, and it is likely that he is not especially talented, but this column goes beyond the bounds of good taste and for no justified reason.

A clear and lucid response. Fairness requires either an apology from the writer or an explanation of other things that aroused his anger, so that we too can judge them as we can judge the mistaken claims in this column.

As long as he is not calling to kill them or claiming they are essentially inferior like animals, that’s fine by me.
“They got a son like an ape” does not sound to me like a sentence of that sort (the topic is unusual appearance, and there is no need to wrench it out of context).

A nice and substantive response. Rabbi Michi ought to retract.

The man said to the ape:
You are ugly, sly,
What a hunchback!
A strange creature!

When I see you, I laugh
And laugh—you cannot imagine how much!
The ape replied: I’m not surprised!
I look so much like you—that’s why!

(Trilussa)

That is really not the simple explanation. Oren is right that he did not compare intellectual abilities, because he did not compare in a specific way, but he did make a general comparison of contempt that clearly expresses a view according to which the black person is inferior. The best that can be made of him is that, in his opinion, a black person is ugly like an ape, and that is indeed a view one can criticize (it’s not a view but a matter of personal taste), but there is still plenty of room for criticism of the stupidity of saying such a thing in public. To say that other rabbis would act similarly too (and I’m really not sure there are many such) does not exempt him from responsibility.

All right, I do not see much point in responding to each person separately. I will write here several clarifications that relate to the comments in general:

1. Clearly he did not intend a full comparison between a black person and an ape (nobody thought he did). Still, the comparison he made is utterly bizarre, at least from two perspectives:
A. A comparison is being made here, even if not a full one. What would he say about a comparison between a Moroccan and an ape? Would he accept your explanations as an excuse? The intention would be only that he resembles it more than an Ashkenazi resembles it. The subtext of that comparison is severe. He would not make such a comparison regarding other populations, nor would he accept such comparisons regarding a group of which he is a part. Therefore I do not accept the excuses raised here. And even if they were correct, there is a deeply problematic conception in the subtext.
B. Even without subtext, against the background of the sensitivities of the contemporary world, this statement indicates a dangerous disconnect. The man lives in La-La Land.
2. The man is a racist. Even if this is his world and he simply lives in a disconnected bubble, he is still a racist. At most these are arguments about punishment (he is a racist without fault, or with diminished fault). A person who closes himself off and closes others off should not then defend himself by saying that he is closed off and unaware of the world around him. Robbers like him created this situation.
3. Relative to the audience he is speaking to, there is ugly incitement here that plays on sympathetic strings and fans them. Cf. Beitar Jerusalem and La Familia.
4. The man is a liar and a desecrator of God’s name, since he attributes to the Talmud what is not written there. Why, when they asked him, did he not explain what all of you explained here in short order? It is so simple, and after all that is exactly what he meant, no?! Does he himself not know what he meant?
6. Quite apart from racism, I also spoke of foolishness. For that there is no need to go to other sources from all his writings. The halakhic considerations he presented in the lesson are foolish enough. And it does not matter at all whether this distinction has a source in Halakhot Ketanot. I don’t understand what that source adds (I myself wrote that it may have a source for it, and I didn’t bother looking).
I do not know why I need to explain this at all, so I will do so briefly here:
A. He should have presented it as one possibility among several, and not present such a far-fetched view as decisive halakha beyond dispute. B. His proof for this bizarre thesis is completely absurd. Because in the U.S. one sees many black people and that would require us to bless every minute, therefore clearly one does not bless on seeing a black person?! Did Hazal live in the U.S.? Is this a consideration in interpreting Hazal, or is he intending to innovate a halakha that applies only in the U.S.?
C. For if he intends to rule halakha only regarding the U.S. and not to interpret Hazal’s intent (what authority does he have for that?), is it not much more reasonable to rule exactly according to Hazal’s intent, with no need at all for hallucinations of the sort he presented, and determine that if there are many black people one should not bless at all (since the issue is exceptionality and not something essential)? Alternatively, one could bless once every thirty days, and we’ve solved the problem. So what exactly is the proof that it refers to a black child born to two white parents?
By the way, I assume that Mahar”i Hagiz interpreted it this way because he thought a black person was not at all exceptional (after all, he came from Morocco, and there it is entirely common), and he assumed that with Hazal too this was the case (as he says there: “For the earlier ones we are distressed”). Today we know such assumptions are anachronistic.
6. A disconnected creature, foolish and racist of this sort, who fought for a position for which he is plainly unfit and activated all kinds of intrigues to obtain it, aided by a corrupt political mechanism—he cannot divert my accusations to the one who appointed him. The blame is on him as well. If he lived in his bubble within his own four cubits and chattered there with his admirers and amused himself with analogies – I would say, good health to him. My claims were not against some private individual who has strange conceptions one way or another, but against a rabbi who influences a broad public and is supposed to represent Judaism before many people (also in the wider world), and from that position incites his listeners to benighted and racist notions that fall on fertile ground among many. Anyone who thinks he can hold the office of Chief Rabbi while speaking like the last of the racist fools in the marketplace should not tell me it is not his fault.
7. If this were a single case and without background, perhaps I would have kept quiet or mocked lightly. But against the background of the conduct of the Chief Rabbinate in general, and against the background of the halakhic conceptions it promotes (today under his leadership), and against the background of the Shas movement that pushed him into office and controls the rabbinate in all its branches in particular, and against the background of other statements of his in the past, I wrote and did not refrain from writing these words.
The claim that I am hanging everything on all his statements without bringing them is a complete misunderstanding. First, these statements are stupid enough to justify giving him a drubbing on their basis alone. No other statement is needed for that. Second, there is a background to these statements, as above. But as noted, I am not judging him on the basis of the background but on the basis of his statement here. The background could at most have saved him and presented these statements as a local slip.
An example: Moses our teacher—“He turned this way and that and saw that there was no man” (Exodus 2:12), and Rashi says he saw that no convert was destined to come from him. But because no descendant of his would convert, should that be a reason to kill him? Clearly he was liable to death because he killed the Hebrew, only if a convert had been destined to come from him that would have saved him. Where there are no saving considerations, the original verdict is carried out. Moses did not kill him because no convert was destined to descend from him.
The same applies here. If this had been a one-time lapse and without background, there would have been room to judge him favorably and not judge him on the basis of one statement. A clean background could have saved him. In the absence of background, there is nothing to save him, and therefore I judge him on this statement. The background is not the basis of judgment, but at most could have been a mitigating factor, and therefore there is no need at all to discuss other statements of his here. When I begin conducting research into the teachings of Yitzhak Yosef, I’ll commit myself to an institution by myself. I hope I won’t need help from anyone else.

Hazal already said that a Torah scholar who lacks understanding is worse than a carcass, and they also said that where there is a desecration of God’s name one does not show honor, not even to a rabbi—and certainly not to a mixed multitude. The politeness that everyone is so insistent upon with respect to such outbursts is itself a desecration of God’s name joining the desecration of God’s name wrought by him.

Aharon, more power to you. A healthy and correct response to the article.

I don’t know why you are so degrading toward him. It is really a shame that you are making him into a joke.
You can attack his position and his method in a substantive way and without stripping him of the title “Rabbi.”

I object to the degrading remarks in this article and to the non-substantive discourse that this article leads to.

Regarding 6, I don’t think he carried out intrigues; rather, he is part of other people’s intrigues. I don’t think he is some humble and modest person who had to be pushed into the position, but I don’t think he is a schemer who runs intrigues. More like a marionette of the stronger forces in Shas politics.

What is most amusing in Rabbi Michi’s responses here is that the heavy hand was taken specifically against Rabbi Yosef. And as is well known, and I’m sure Rabbi Michi knows this perfectly well, there are Haredim with far darker racism than Rabbi Yosef’s, yet they do not get columns of this genre. There are also rebbes in that world who are far stupider than he is, and rabbis far more disconnected than he is. Which raises in me doubts that perhaps Rabbi Michi himself is a bit racist toward Mizrahim (after all, he spent a lot of his life in the Haredi sector), and as they said of blessed memory: “One who disqualifies does so by his own defect,” or in psychological terms—projection.

Still, regarding the last paragraph, you are of course right that there is no need here for politeness, but on the other hand one could make do with saying that he is a fool without reaching the regions you reached, which have nothing to do with Yitzhak Yosef’s honor but with your own. Better to leave the writing of nauseating pashkevils to those whose trade it is.

Anyone who really thinks that half a sentence about the blessing “Who varies His creatures” on black people and apes “might influence” someone to do something (usually a sanctimonious claim of people who want to shut others up) is living in La-La Land.

I haven’t laughed like that in a long time, but still, in my opinion it is important to respect every person, not speak vulgarly, and not speak evil speech. I think that’s halakha too.

An upside-down world I see here: a screed of an article and commenters doing the moderating.

If he is indeed as low-level as you describe (and I tend to believe you), then he is actually very suitable to be Chief Rabbi. Rabbi Metzger was excellent, and best of all would be to take Dana International, Goel Ratzon, or Ahmad Tibi. Making this institution look ridiculous gives me great pleasure. It was unnecessary and ridiculous even if the honored rabbi himself, together with Rabbi Blumentzweig, Lichtenstein, Raam HaCohen, and the like had been Chief Rabbis—but then it would have been more complicated to explain.

The source of Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef’s distinction between white and black parents is Rabbi Yaakov Hagiz, She’elot u-Teshuvot Halakhot Ketanot (part 1, siman 240), brought in Kaf HaChayim.

N., I do not know whether you are Ashkenazi or Sephardi, but you can certainly console yourself with the fact that on your short and stupid comment here I could have written things no less sharp.
But I won’t write them, for the same reason I did not write about the various rebbes. And if you do not understand on your own what the difference is (although I already explained it), then truly this is a waste of all our time.

So? I wrote that he may have some source in the halakhic decisors. So what? By the way, that was already brought on the site.

I didn’t notice that they had brought the source. I completely agree with what you wrote: the plain meaning of the Gemara speaks of a place where this is common, as the Chayei Adam wrote regarding a black person and as the Mishnah Berurah wrote regarding an albino. And even more so with what you brought in the name of the decisors, that one should not recite these blessings in a way that harms people. I only came to note a source. In this context, there is a dispute among the Rishonim whether one recites these blessings for non-Jews. The Tur there brought the Raavad’s opinion that one blesses only over someone whose plight causes one pain, analogous to beautiful creatures where there is pleasure for the one blessing; but not over a non-Jew. His father-in-law, the בעל האשכול, disagrees with him in a responsum. It is not brought in the Tur. And the Shulchan Arukh wrote in the name of “some say” that one does not recite the above blessings over non-Jews (and according to the rules of decision of his father, when the Shulchan Arukh writes “some say” in a case where there is no dissenting anonymous view, that is how one should rule, as he wrote in Chazon Ovadia, Hanukkah, p. n). According to this view, it seems that their conception was that someone black from birth, or who suddenly became black as the result of some unclear event (the Mishnah Berurah brings there that one who became black because of heat should not be blessed over at all), is unfortunate—perhaps because in their time this was considered ugly and unusual (“Do not look at me because I am dark, because the sun has scorched me” [Song of Songs 1:6])—and over the suffering that rests on him one should bless. Even according to this conception (not only according to the plain meaning of the Gemara as you explained, that one blesses over deviation), the matter is not necessarily connected to an inferior race, since such a person could also be a Jew (although one could say that according to this view one blesses only over converts—it does not seem so). Of course according to this view the question arises regarding the attitude toward non-Jews. I think the Meiri summed the matter up well, as you brought elsewhere. According to this, today there is no place at all for this blessing, since these people are not considered unfortunate or unusual and there is no difference between them and a white person in any field (academia, politics, etc.), including even the more aesthetic fields (modeling, acting, etc.). We constantly see black actors, models, and presenters. (There are gaps that even stem from racism in certain places, but the difference is certainly not essential—as above regarding Mizrahim among us.) Even so, I would not write in such language toward a Torah scholar like Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, although it pains me too that he is disconnected, at least on this issue, from part of the population.

With blessings.

You are mistaken. This is a straight and perfectly normal world. It simply depends who the subject of the discussion is. If the subject of the discussion were a person worthy of esteem, then the appropriate situation would be a balanced article and screed-like comments. The principle is that usually the commenters are wrong: they go overboard when they shouldn’t and moderate when they shouldn’t. The only question is in which direction the error goes in the case at hand. 🙂

No. That is not the halakha. I explained the matter above.

Y., do you recite the blessing over an ape only if you share in its pain at not having been born human? In the Tur (end of siman 225), the Raavad is brought only in connection with “Blessed is the true Judge” over someone to whom something happened in the middle of life. Then, in his opinion, no one grieves over non-Jews. He too agrees that a black person is not unfortunate and that nowadays one blesses over him.

By the way, speaking of racist comparisons, I recall a case when I heard a satellite lecture by the father of the subject of this post, Rabbi Ovadia. He was speaking about differences in the laws of cooking on Shabbat between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, and he discussed whether a Sephardi may ask his Ashkenazi neighbor to heat something for him in a way forbidden to him according to “Maran.”

Rabbi Ovadia, in his characteristic style, called out loudly and with a suppressed smile: “Yes, of course, what’s the problem? He’ll take his Ashkenazi neighbor and tell him, my dear brother, according to Rabbi Isserles it’s permitted for you, permitted for you, permitted for you. Come help me! He’ll make him into a ‘Shabbat goy’…” And the audience burst out laughing.
Later, as though to correct the impression, he listed things permitted to a Sephardi and forbidden to an Ashkenazi. But there he no longer mentioned the “Shabbat goy”…

By the way, Shimshon Tzvi Lwinger has disappeared from the site here. I judged him favorably that he does not want to write during Chol HaMoed. But Passover is already over.

The only thing in which Rabbi Yitzhak differs from the rest of the Haredi rabbis is awareness of discourse—call it tact or political correctness or whatever. In terms of racism he is certainly no different from a large portion of Haredi rabbis, and in terms of involvement in the world he is certainly more involved than most of them (everyone remembers the video in which Rabbi Kanievsky, who was crowned only this week as leader of the Haredim, asks whether Beit Shemesh isn’t in America), though of course it is limited (many Haredi rabbis are unaware of the changes among African Americans). In the end he said an opinion that exists in halakha, and even if according to the writer that makes no practical difference, in the Haredi world it doesn’t work that way. If there is an early decisor, one may quote him, and they do not censor because it is unpleasant. Incitement is of course irrelevant here; no sane person will go harm a black person because of such a sentence—that is far-fetched and absurd.
In short, his subtext is indeed racist, but no more than that of most Haredim, and therefore fairness requires clarifying that the writer is not attacking Rabbi Yitzhak specifically but rather most of the Haredi public, and that is a completely different criticism! Because attacking a particular person who belongs to a not-particularly-liked group is too easy, but attacking an entire society that has racist characteristics is something else altogether. It is clear to me that if the column had been written against the background of general Haredi racism, he would not have expressed himself in such language, which would not have passed Noni’s newspaper. The sweeping old hostility to Shas and its operatives we will save for another discussion, but Metzger is far less worthy and pushed himself exactly the same way under the patronage of a more refined but no less self-interested party (as stated, the difference between United Torah Judaism and Shas is like the difference between Rabbi Ovadia and Rabbi Yitzhak and their Lithuanian brethren – purely a matter of tact and style, stemming from the culture and mentality of people who grew up in a forceful Middle Eastern mentality and did not internalize the norms of Western culture within which they were forced to live. Lithuanian rabbis can be devastatingly sharp too, but they will do it in the inner circle of their students and not before householders, and that is only a matter of habits, norms, and culture).

Aharon, in fact in your description of Rabbi Ovadia’s words I do not see any problem. Not at all similar, in several respects.

Daniel, you keep going with misunderstandings, and what is worse is that they are the very same misunderstandings. There is no point in repeating again and again things that have already been explained.

Show some gratitude!
Personally, I was never particularly impressed by Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef. As far as I’m concerned, every time the Yalkut Yosef analyzes a sugya, he arranges his father’s words and concludes with a bit more stringency (and “and may a blessing come upon one who is stringent” appears hundreds of times in his books, and only a little in his father’s). Even so, as someone counted among the group of laymen armed with the Bar-Ilan Responsa Project and critical thinking, there is no doubt that his encyclopedic work has done much to define and magnify Torah.
Most of the time the conclusion of my own learning sessions will be the opposite of Y.Y.’s, but his books are beyond price as sources and as editors of a sugya (especially in the period before sites like VBM and the like). Therefore it is somewhat hard for me to hear insults directed at a man with such a life’s work.
True, he is not especially brilliant, but it seems to me that you greatly exaggerated in saying that most black people in the world have higher IQs than he does. He is smarter than an average Jew I would meet on the street, and an average Jew is smarter than an average black person. (In my racist opinion.)

Neither Rabbi Michi nor Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef has a mind mixed with people generally. If we were to run a ratings test, I’m sorry Rabbi Michi, but his ratings are higher!!! I promise you that if your ratings were high enough, YNET would also extract gems from your site that shock the Tel Aviv bubble, to use the cliché.

The main thing that distinguishes you is the religious value of liberal values (humaneness and critical thinking). Here it is actually hard to grasp him specifically as an extreme marker.
Shmuel Auerbach did far more damage, and probably Rabbi Shach did too, and even the Chazon Ish (the Meiri affair, the drafting of girls for national service). According to your method and phrasing, it seems I should formulate it like this:
Shmuel Auerbach, may his name be blotted out, did far more damage, and probably Rabbi Shach and even the Chazon Ish too—“the name of the wicked shall rot”!

If that last sentence stung a bit – I think perhaps you felt what many of the commenters felt.

(By the way, personally I never understood what people got so excited about with R. Moshe Feinstein – on an intellectual level most of his apologetics are simply one prolonged logical fallacy. Derash Moshe is in general an intellectual disaster.) And still I don’t call him “Moshe the idiot”—after all, my wife is American.)

I would be happy for an explanation of the essential difference between Rabbi Yitzhak and what is customary among Haredim. In your clarifying comment you wrote quite a few points, all of which can be found among other Haredi rabbis too, so it gives the impression that you seized upon easy prey (though that is understandable, and perhaps everyone operates this way; for example, a Hardal-Haredi who attacks the Gush school’s worldview will find it easier to attack Rabbi Sherlo–Beit Hillel–Benny Lau–Rabbi Ofran, etc., than to be honest and say that the roots of that worldview are found in Rabbi Lichtenstein).

Hello Ben Aniyim. I enjoyed your comments, and they prompted me to check again.
1. This is not a question of whether I or you think highly of someone or not. There are different opinions and different ways of learning and thinking, and that is perfectly fine. I am not talking about a different opinion but about folly, disconnect, and warped thinking.
Indeed, his work has certainly contributed, and I assume that even his lectures, despite all my criticism, contribute to his listeners. Credit where credit is due, and if I write a research essay on his contribution and general teachings, I would have to mention that too. Here I dealt with criticism of certain very problematic aspects that deserve every condemnation. That does not mean he deserves no credit for other things. Just like any other person.
2. If I may speak as one personally involved, there is a mistake in the comparison here. First, I am speaking on my own site, whereas he speaks as Chief Rabbi, with his words reported in the general media and considered (mistakenly) representative of Torah and its students. Second, I truly do not hold rabbinic office and indeed refuse every offer on that matter. Among other things, that is because I do not speak in a consensual manner and I express myself in an extreme, sharp, and free way. That is the right of a free person, unlike someone holding rabbinic office. Whoever wants to serve should take the constraints into account. Third, I am very aware of sensitivities and take them into account (and sometimes nevertheless choose to speak sharply); it seems to me that he is not. He is simply disconnected. Fourth, ratings do not determine the matter. What affects ratings are also areas of interest, degree of esteem, and more—not only involvement of mind. Einstein (and I am not intending a comparison) was far less popular than Yitzhak Yosef, and that was still not because he was less intellectually engaged, but because his fields of interest and talent allowed him fewer listeners. Fifth, my criterion is not the shock of the Tel Aviv bubble. As I wrote, I have no problem shocking them (the commissars of political correctness) from time to time. The problem is mainly when the shock is justified. That is to say, when I am shocked and not they.
3. This is another common mistake. I am not talking about liberal values but about values agreed upon by everyone. In your opinion, does a halakhic conservative who is not a liberal fail to recognize the importance of not harming the public and individuals? Is he supposed to be an idiot who does not understand that one should not compare a person to an ape? Is he allowed not to understand the reality in which he lives, that black-skinned people include individuals of extraordinary intellectual and human abilities (worth reading column 54)? The conservatives’ success lies in presenting simple, agreed-upon values as liberal fixation. They add sin upon crime and claim that liberals present their values as binding even though they are against the Torah. Truly “one who disqualifies does so by his own defect.”
4. All the Jews you mentioned did and said things I do not agree with (and some that I do). Some of them at times acted very foolishly, and perhaps even wickedly. Some of them I also criticized. I am not dealing here in rankings, nor in surveying all the wicked and fools of the rabbinic world (though I do not even begin to compare the Chazon Ish and R. Moshe Feinstein with this Y.Y. here, with a thousand thousand distinctions).
5. Regarding R. Moshe Feinstein, I disagree with you utterly. He was truly a genius with straight thinking, and there is not the slightest comparison between him and Y.Y., and likewise as above. By the way, in quite a few cases where I felt he was talking nonsense, on second thought you discover entirely different things. I recommend you speak with his granddaughter’s husband, Rabbi Shabtai Rappaport, and hear wonders from him, both about the man and explanations of difficult points in his words. I do not usually read sermons (among other things because most of them are an intellectual disaster. It’s a problem of the genre), and so Derash Moshe is unfamiliar to me. The fact that he has lower ratings than Y.Y. only brings me back to section 2.

This is nonsense. I did not speak of incitement in the criminal sense. I spoke of bad influence and reinforcing people’s prejudices. Indirectly, that too may lead to actions, even if not physical harm and murder (for example discrimination in admissions to institutions, etc.; cf. Mizrahim in Ashkenazi institutions and yeshivot, about which Y.Y. and his friends complain). Sometimes it is proper to be among those who stop mouths. Those who warn against evil speech are also stopping mouths.

What I find especially amusing is that some people here defend Y.Y. against my slander and evil speech by speaking evil speech about the entire Haredi public and making sweeping generalizations about all its rabbinic leadership. If I were maligning the entire Haredi public, would that be better in your eyes? An upside-down world I have seen: they turn black into white.
As for why they do not merit columns, that is also because of the fear that the ink would run out, and because they do not hold a rabbinic office representative of the entire religious public, but only of the flock of fools who chose them. They deserve to eat what they cooked. But why am I to blame that this Y.Y. here is seen as representing my views and the views of the Torah?
By the way, Y.Y., like his father, is not Haredi in the usual sense. Not at all. That is another mistake that keeps recurring here.

Daniel, what won’t one do to make a Jew happy.
1. Y.Y. is not Haredi in most of the relevant senses.
2. Accusing the whole public is, in my view, worse than accusing one fool. Here at least it is focused and reasoned. By the way, I also do not think you are right. There are clear-eyed Haredim.
3. Y.Y. holds rabbinic office and is perceived as representing all of Judaism and Torah. He speaks in my name, which cannot be said of any mere Haredi. Others speak in the name of a group they represent – and whoever cooks the porridge deserves to eat it. But I did not cook the porridge called Y.Y. On the contrary, my words are intended to prevent that cooking so that I should not, God forbid, be accused of partnership in cooking it.
4. I am not dealing here with an erudite essay about the roots of Y.Y.’s outlook and where it comes from. For all I care, it can derive from Moses our teacher. I am dealing with it itself. A rational person bears responsibility for his outlooks, regardless of their sources.
5. This is a new accusation as far as I’m concerned—that I do not criticize Haredi conceptions. I was pleased to hear it.

I am replying only to your last short message. The first one contains so many repeated and new mistakes (misdirections?) that the ink would run out and still not finish. Therefore I already said my piece that I see no point in repeating again and again the same things.

How good it is that genes do not determine things, but rather judgment and choices. If the difference were genetic, it would have no significance.

It seems to me one should say hidarder (with a yod instead of a tav). Thus spoke thorn and thistle…

The protest has been duly noted.

A black man not from the land of Cush nor from Abyssinia
who was born to white parents,
and an ape not from the zoo nor from the circus
but a linguistic expression for unusual creatures,
found their way into a lesson by the Rishon LeZion
delivered by satellite.
The critics jumped up: How does he dare speak of a person as an ape
and say racist things?

They said from the rabbi’s office:
His words are a quotation from Tractate Berakhot;
you would have known, had you studied your version.

The man said:
Where were you all those years when they called me “blackie”
while I worked in white cotton fields?

The ape said:
All compared to Sarah are as an ape compared to a man,
both great and small.
Now I shall return to studying Bava Batra,
whether as an ape or as a man or as rabbis.

Rabbi Yosef did indeed err—at least according to Maimonides, a black person is not an ape…

“Those who are outside the city are each and every human being who has no opinion in a system, neither speculative nor received, such as the remote Turks in the north and the remote blacks in the south and all those like them in these regions among us. The status of these is like that of irrational animals, and these are not, in my opinion, on the level of man. They are among the levels of existence below the level of man and above the level of apes, since they have already attained the outline and form of man and a discrimination beyond that of the ape.”

(Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, III:51, translation of Rabbi Yosef Qafih).

I wonder whether Maimonides too deserves all the filth that was poured here on Rabbi Yosef because of the above passage? And no, I am really not one of Rabbi Yosef’s devotees, and I even share the lion’s share of the criticism—except for the sickening gutter language, even by my standards (and I am really not refined in taste or language).

How many times can one be expected to respond to this sort of nonsense again and again and again?
Is it any novelty that in the past people thought in racist ways? Hazal and Maimonides and almost everyone else in those periods. I myself spoke about this in column 103 regarding the period 50 years ago, so what complaint can we have about the 12th century? The question is whether that is the basis of the blessing and whether that emerges from the sugya there. Another question is whether in our time one may say such things. Is it justified when relying on Maimonides? This is an example of infantile thinking, and that is what I was talking about when I discussed subjugation to sources and the absence of independent thought. By the way, in Maimonides’ words there is a lot of truth even today, regarding African tribes whose level of development is indeed between us and the ape. That is a statement with which I have no problem at all. The question is whether it is essentialist and whether it is connected to skin color (which is what determines the blessing), and whether Y.Y.’s foolish inferences hold water because of that. I’m already tired of repeating simple things again and again against stupid arguments.

By the way, everyone here is outraged by the language. But I have not seen any gutter here at all. In my opinion everything is substantive, except that it is written with sarcasm. The man is indeed foolish, racist, desecrates God’s name, and is not intellectually engaged with people generally. What here is untrue? And what is gutter language? This is a dry and precise encyclopedic description of him and his words.
I am really beginning to tire of the stupid discussion taking place here. From readers of my site I nevertheless expect more than what can be expected from that fool.

Maybe send a direct letter to Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and write to him from the groaning of your heart?
I know about myself that the moment I begin thinking bad thoughts about a person, I hate him in my heart, and then I go and rebuke him, as Maimonides writes in Hilkhot De’ot chapter 6 (and nothing in the entire Torah is harder than that…). This post too falls under “You shall not hate your brother in your heart,” even though ostensibly it is public, since you do not go and rebuke Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef directly (and Absalom too hated Amnon but did not go and rebuke him directly, and Maimonides writes that he violated “You shall not hate your brother in your heart”). And you suffer so much from these outbursts of Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef. You work so hard to bring Israel near to Torah, and he, with one unfortunate outburst, destroys years of work. Until finally you come out with this post, and you know it does not bring people closer to Torah, since people love love and brotherhood among Torah scholars, even if one gathers and gleans and the other uproots mountains and grinds them. Meanwhile Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef hides behind his robe and plays as if he neither sees nor hears, though he knows very well how much damage he did, and now he doesn’t know what to do, so he comes out with a humanitarian statement about the refugees in Syria.
Therefore, instead of quarreling with everyone and shouting (and shouting always indicates that you lost the argument), let the rabbi send him a direct letter and fulfill thereby a positive act detached from the prohibition of “You shall not hate your brother in your heart,” and afterward you can hate with a quiet conscience.

Did you truly not sense my sarcasm when I quoted Maimonides? You take pride in your sarcastic abilities.

If Hazal and Maimonides were racist, why is that forbidden to a person today? Why is it forbidden to hold racist views? Is fashionable political correctness the measure? The only relevant question about any theory, and a racist theory in particular, is whether the theory is empirically grounded or not. Of course, the question is also what moral conclusions follow from a racist theory. One person concludes that it permits him to enslave and destroy “inferior” races, and another concludes that belonging to a “chosen” people creates obligations toward other peoples (for example, the German Albert Schweitzer). That does not pertain to racism as such, but to the moral and operative conclusions the racist chooses to derive from it.

Is the basis of the blessing over a black person rooted in racism? Maybe not, but it certainly could be. So what?

My thinking may be infantile—fate. But Kohelet already said (I don’t know whether he was racist or not): “The words of the wise are heard in calm, more than the cry of a ruler among fools.”

As for the “encyclopedic” description of Rabbi Yosef’s personality: what do you think of the “encyclopedic” definition of “Jew” according to Mein Kampf? Admittedly, I read that book many years ago, but as best I recall there is no abuse and no gutter language there at all. Only a dry factual description of the traits of the Jewish race. Is that all right? (By the way, it may be that he erred here and there empirically, so what? It happens. People err.) Does a dry factual description exempt one from the sin of slander?

I am completely done. You do not even understand what sarcasm is. You talk about your words as having been written sarcastically, as though you did not mean to argue for justification by virtue of the fact that Maimonides thought so, and in the same sentence you repeat that very argument again (if Maimonides is allowed, then why not Y.Y.?!). As stated, I fear violating the prohibition against needless destruction of the keyboard. So all the best to you.

Forget what I understand. After all, my thinking is infantile. The more important question is what you understand, and what you prefer to pretend not to understand when it suits you. (From reading some of your books, several columns on this site, and a few of your responses to readers, I long ago concluded that you are a master artist of pseudo-intellectual feigned innocence. That’s not a taunt. I envy this ability of yours.)
And all the best to you too!

It seems to me the text has emergent properties. Even if every word by itself is fine, and one can say that someone is foolish, racist, and desecrates God’s name, when one repeats accusations again and again in a variety of words, directly and with ironic language, and also in passing references (“this fellow”), in the end one gets a feeling of nausea. If many readers got that feeling from the text, then you can only learn from that. You can say that all the readers are stupid compared to the majesty of your genius and do not understand your exalted intentions, but as for the feeling a text arouses, you have no choice but to accept what it arouses as a fact. I imagine you thought there would be angry reactions because of disgracing a Torah scholar, etc., but not that everyone would think there is gutter language here, filth, and so on; and I assume you also wanted to move certain people toward a certain point, but the fact that you got so many critical responses, even from people who think he is a fool like me and like Ben Aniyim, says that you have a problem understanding what the text will arouse. Since you will likely write more such texts in the future, it would seem worthwhile for you to learn from the criticism.
As for explicit gutter language, there is “the flatulence of this fellow,” which joins the “do not make yourselves detestable” at the beginning of the column and definitely hints to the reader that in the coming lines you intend to urinate on Yitzhak Yosef (whose name, because of your decision in the comments to write it like the name of God in old prayer books, Y.Y. :)), if not actually to defecate.
The expression “the Neanderthal zoo” also suits comments on a sports site more than a column by a serious person (by the way, perhaps he compares animals to humans [the question is whether they were regarded as human], exactly what you accuse him of…), especially when it is said about an institution that many of the readers presumably think is a good one. It really is not an expression that encourages substantive discussion of the question of the Chief Rabbinate.

Michi, in my opinion you are not right when you say that Hazal and Maimonides thought in a racist way.
The whole concept of race did not exist before the 19th century (a minimal development of biological thinking was needed in order to conceive that concept).
For when every individual is only a reflection of metaphysical ideas of society and of the human species, the boundaries between the cultural-social and the biological-natural cease to exist (in the end everything is a reflection of various metaphysical ideas… both the nature of society and human nature are interwoven in a way that is hard to understand today). *
When the medieval authorities speak about the influence of “climates,” they are speaking about something far less clear and fixed than race. Climate, after all, can sometimes be changed (as is known, Rabbenu Nissim in his commentary to the Torah wrote that Noah took with him into the ark only a limited number of ancestors of species, and from them all the animals developed after the flood as a result of changes in climates. Evolution, but not Darwinian).**

* There was of course then too a distinction between social influence and nature, but it was not the same distinction as in our day. Nature then also included the nature of society (deep characteristics of society), even if these can change over time.
** Of course, needless to say that therefore one cannot learn from Hazal’s words to attribute such notions today, because we do not think in such terms, and we do think in more biological terms (and that includes even someone who has never studied biology in his life. Human perception as a whole has changed).

With God’s help, 24 Nisan 5778

The whole discussion relies on a quotation from Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef’s words on the Ynet site. Even if we grant that the words were quoted exactly, it is obvious as Oren says, that the comparison to an ape concerns the unusual appearance, and the rabbi himself sensed the problematic nature of the wording, lest people be offended by it, and corrected himself in the course of speaking: “that they got a child like that.”

From the language of the author of Halakhot Ketanot (part 1, siman 240) it clearly emerges that the blackness of the black person is a misfortune. In his words: “It seems that this refers to one who was born black while his father and mother are white, but regarding the children of black people it would seem that one does not bless. For the earlier ones we are distressed, but afterward it is the way of the world that a black person gives birth to a black person.” As a result of this approach, Rabbi Yaakov Hagiz concludes: “and if they are black and gave birth to a white child… one may say, ‘Blessed is the good one.’”

Hazal saw blackness as part of the punishment of the descendants of Ham: “…You prevented me from doing a thing done in darkness; therefore that man shall be ugly and blackened… Rabbi Levi said: It is like one who fixed his image inside the king’s tent; I decree that his face be blackened and his coin invalidated” (Yalkut Shimoni, remez 61; Bereishit Rabbah 36).

Ham, who ran to speak badly of his father—his face was blackened, and blackness was to him a disgrace. When he corrects his ways—his blackness will become praiseworthy, in the sense of “I am black, but beautiful.”

With blessings, Shimshon Tzvi Lwinger

This seems to me a semantic question. There was a conception that there is a difference between the descendants of Ham and those of Shem and Japheth, and it is certainly plausible that many saw black people there as something different, perhaps not only culturally but something essential. Racism in the evaluative sense is not tied specifically to race but to any stereotype.

Y. was unable to comment, so I am bringing his words:

He noted that the Raavad brought in the Tur, where the condition of “one feels pain for him” with regard to the blessing, applies only to “the true Judge” and not to “Who varies His creatures,” just as with an ape. It is true that several later authorities wrote that way in understanding the Tur, but the Beit Yosef and the Hida did not understand the Tur that way. And in the Avudraham it is explicit that according to the Raavad, the blessing “Who varies His creatures” regarding human beings was instituted only for one over whom one feels pain, and not for a non-Jew. His words: “And the Raavad wrote: specifically over one for whom one feels pain, analogous to beautiful creatures from which the observer derives pleasure, but over an idolater one does not bless; and R. Abraham b. Isaac, Av Beit Din, wrote in a responsum that even over an idolater one blesses ‘Who varies His creatures.’” End quote. (Avudraham, Blessing on Seeing, Praise, and Thanksgiving.) And regarding the opinion of the Shulchan Arukh, certainly one cannot make the above distinction between “Who varies His creatures” and “the true Judge,” since in his understanding of the Tur he held that there is no distinction between them, and in the Shulchan Arukh he formulated himself similarly. And regarding the question whether one must feel pain—if so, why does one bless on an ape? In the Bach and Derisha it appears that there is a distinction between the blessing “Who varies His creatures” as instituted for animals, where one blesses over change in creation, and the blessing “Who varies His creatures” as instituted for a person, where one blesses only if one feels pain.

Hello Rabbi, just one point is bothering me: how did you reach the conclusion that he is a fool? I understand that he is racist and not intellectually engaged with other people, but he is certainly not stupid. After all, his books cover the Shulchan Arukh, and not badly.

I know that this is how the Beit Yosef understood it (I didn’t know the Avudraham), but it makes far more sense to say that the Raavad intended only “the true Judge,” which straightforwardly relates to pain (again, am I supposed to share in the elephant’s pain in order to bless “Who varies His creatures” over it? The Beit Yosef himself asks this and does not answer. If he had thought of this possibility, there is no doubt he would have agreed).

Now I saw that Y. answered the question from elephants. But why force the issue needlessly just to stick to a certain interpretation that is not necessary? What I wrote is much more plausible, and accords with the view of the overwhelming majority of later authorities.

A few arguments for leniency in sentencing, from a musical that appeared on Broadway a few years ago (the stronghold of liberalism):

In paragraph 3, line 2:
… inside the king’s tent, the king said: I decree that they be blackened…

Also regarding “I am black, but beautiful,” Hazal understood the meaning as “I am beautiful even though I am black,” as they said: “Can it be that black can be beautiful? To what is the matter comparable? To a king’s daughter who misconducted herself in her father’s house and was rebuked, and she gathered stubble and blackened. Her friends would praise her. What did she say? ‘Do not look at me because I am dark, because the sun has scorched me’ [Song of Songs 1:6]. One who came ugly from his mother’s womb is not like one who was beautiful and became disfigured, for the latter will in the end return to being beautiful. Thus the congregation of Israel said: I am black in my deeds but beautiful in the deeds of my fathers; I am black in myself but beautiful before my Maker… Rabbi Levi bar Hiyya said three things: I am black all the week and beautiful on Shabbat; I am black all the days of the year and beautiful on Yom Kippur; I am black in this world and beautiful in the world to come” (Yalkut Shimoni, Song of Songs, remez 982).

And in our generation, privileged to see the return to Zion of the descendants of Beta Israel from beyond the rivers of Cush, who preserved their Judaism with devotion for thousands of years despite isolation and persecution by the gentiles who “snorted at them” – a new plain meaning has been given to the verse: blackness itself is a sign of pride and grace, a token of devotion and faithfulness unparalleled.

With blessings, Shimshon Tzvi Lwinger (grandfather of Eliyah, Tamar, and Moshe Aytegeb)

Paragraph 1, line 2:
… and the rabbi himself immediately sensed the problematic nature…

Paragraph 2:
From the wording of Rabbi Yaakov Hagiz (Halakhot Ketanot, part 1, siman 240) it clearly emerges that the blackness of the black person is a misfortune. In his words: “It seems that this refers to one who was born black, but regarding the children of black people it would seem that one does not bless. For the earlier ones we are distressed, but afterward it is the way of the world that a black person gives birth to a black person.” In keeping with his view that “Who varies His creatures” is said only over a change for the worse, R. Y. Hagiz concludes that when the change is for the better, “if they are black and gave birth to a white child… one may say: Blessed is the good one.”

And again Y. answered:

What you wrote, that it is more plausible—I agree with you regarding the Gemara, but not regarding the words of the Raavad or the Shulchan Arukh.
The Avudraham in his understanding of the Raavad is not alone; see Halakha Berura there, who brought several Rishonim not currently at my disposal from whom it appears that they understand him that way. He also brought there from Ohel Moed, which I do have before me, who wrote as follows:
“One who sees a lame person, a blind person, an amputee, or one afflicted with boils says ‘Blessed is the true Judge,’ and if they were so from their mothers’ wombs, he says ‘Blessed… Who varies His creatures.’ R. Aharon wrote: it appears that all this refers to a person over whom one feels pain.” It appears clearly that “feels pain” also refers to “Who varies His creatures.” Your distinction is contradicted by the plain wording of most of the Rishonim (brought there) regarding the Raavad, and I am quite sure that if the Beit Yosef had seen the Rishonim brought there, he would not have agreed to the above distinction in the Raavad’s view. Presumably he would have explained that opinion as the Bach and the Derisha do.
Besides, even according to your view (and so too the plain sense of the Gemara), that the blessing concerns change and not pain—if they are very common, one should not bless, as the Mishnah Berurah wrote there. And in our day they are common.
Therefore it is more plausible that nowadays one does not bless over a black person.
And even if there is doubt in all the above (I think there is not),
one should say: in cases of doubt concerning blessings we are lenient. Especially according to Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef’s own method, that one says this even against the Shulchan Arukh (following his father, who relies on the Hida in She’elot u-Teshuvot Chaim Sha’al).
Of course, in a case where someone would be hurt by such a blessing, one need not come to any of the above, as Rabbi Michi wrote.

I explained. “Fool” in this context means someone with crooked thinking. The fact that his books are comprehensive and that he has knowledge does not mean he is not a fool in that sense. Beyond that, being detached from the world is also a kind of stupidity (including in halakha). I do not know the details of his books, so it is quite possible, and even likely, that there are sensible things in them too (and certainly things that are not foolish). But when you say of someone who said something that he is stupid, that does not mean you will find nothing intelligent in him.

With God’s help, 25 Nisan 5778

The situation of a person over whom one recites “Who varies His creatures” is rather embarrassing. The ruling of R. Y. Hagiz (author of Halakhot Ketanot) that one does not bless “Who varies His creatures” over a black person unless he was born to white parents—an evidently impossible situation (except perhaps in a rare mutation) – removes in practical terms any possibility of reciting “Who varies His creatures” over someone with black skin, and spares the object of the blessing very great embarrassment.

It may be that in the Gemara the distinction of R. Mordechai David Auerbach between where they are common and where they are not common sits better – but I certainly would not want one of my grandchildren, whose appearance testifies to their origin from the holy community of Beta Israel, to merit the dubious experience of having someone recite “Who varies His creatures” over them. Therefore I am very glad that Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef took into account, because of doubt concerning blessings, the opinion of R. Y. Hagiz and closed the door to this embarrassing possibility.

The use of the halakhic formalism of “in cases of doubt concerning blessings we are lenient” here leads to a ruling that possesses social sensitivity, and these things are very characteristic of the halakhic approach of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef of blessed memory.

With blessings, Shimshon Tzvi Lwinger

Nothing is better for ratings than a yellow column every now and then.

A “welcome back” blessing to Israel’s defender (Sh.Tz.L.). 🙂

I’m not sure you intended to attribute my words to a desire for ratings, but if so, I protest. That is outright evil speech, and go out and see that it is not so (in the series on poetry, or on freedom and liberty, which are proven ratings suicides). I judge you favorably and assume you were only noting the fact that it helps ratings, not that such was my original intention.

Indeed. I noted a fact (you too only noted facts about Rabbi Y.Y.).
And as for evil speech – there is no greater evil speech than that said in someone’s presence.

I don’t know if this is supposed to prevent future posts, but I really must note that as someone who greatly appreciated your personality and your books, this ranting in the article and the comments very, very badly damages the standing you acquired for yourself over the years as an educated and intelligent person.
This is gutter language in the plainest sense, entirely unrelated to the subject of the post. And all the more so when the subject of the post is a person with many merits, and not Hanin Zoabi. What did you leave for Zoabi?
It is simply hard to believe such words came from your keyboard.
“And what is gutter language? This is a dry and precise encyclopedic description of him and his words.”
You are a very clever person, and I am sure you do not believe this sentence. You repeatedly mentioned flatulence, and such ranting is shocking and astounding when it comes from you.

I saw that in the comments the commenter “Ben Aniyim” wrote about Rabbi Moshe Feinstein’s collection of sermons, Derash Moshe, that it is an intellectual catastrophe, and you wrote back that you do not know the book. Well, once I sent you on WhatsApp a sermon from the book because I wanted to hear your opinion about it—a sermon in which Rabbi Moshe praised the U.S. for separating religion and state, and so on—and I remember we corresponded about it a bit after you read it. If you scroll through WhatsApp in our conversations, you’ll see the photographed sermon.

And in general, after looking through the sermons in Derash Moshe, unlike Ben Aniyim I actually found interesting and important things there—certainly not “an intellectual disaster” and not merely folksy homiletics.

One of the interesting and astonishing things I read there was a sharp criticism, in a broad hint, against communism, delivered in a sermon in a synagogue in the Soviet Union! These were words said in a Shabbat Shuvah sermon in the year 5688 / 1927, in his community in Luban in the Soviet Union under Stalin! True, this was before Stalin’s total descent into madness from the 1930s onward, and still… [that same year the Rayatz of Chabad was interrogated by the NKVD and was almost executed by the regime for less than that, and of course he was not the only one…] I read it in astonishment: where did he get the courage to say such things publicly in a synagogue sermon [he was one of the last to survive as a community rabbi in the Soviet Union] without fear of informers who could have caused him certain exile to Siberia?! His courage amazed me completely. I have a photo of the passage on my phone; if it interests you and you want it, I can send it to you on WhatsApp.

P.S.

Regarding the reactions to the column, I hope you’ll forgive me for the remark, but it seems to me that you should take to heart what almost all the commenters wrote – personally I often enjoy the sharp and sarcastic writing style you sometimes use, but in this case I felt, like the commenters, that you should have moderated the style a great deal.

The feeling while reading was of a splattering of anger and ranting that very much resembled comment-thread writing. This was not the sharp and blunt writing in which you sometimes write, which as I said I personally even find charming, and which is sometimes called for. This was a style that seemed uncharacteristic of you, showing boiling blood rather than a considered article [however angry] – even if Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef’s honor is not important in your eyes, then at least for the sake of your own honor you should have written in a different style. By way of comparison, and forgive me, when Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak calls Rabbi Machpud “Machmud” and Rabbi Avraham Yosef “Avrahimi Papushado,” it really does not honor him, quite the opposite—and unfortunately your last column seemed to be approaching that style.

Again, I say this as someone who is usually not upset by the sharp style and even smiles at it.

I hope you forgive me for the remark. I write these words from a place of affection and sympathy, in the spirit of “good advice teaches us.”

Hello A.,
First of all, I welcome any substantive remark. So there is no need to apologize. On the contrary, I expect to hear from people what they think of me and in general.
As for your point, as I wrote to one of the commenters, in my view the style was not blunt. There was a harsh put-down there, but by no means gutter language in any sense I recognize. There were no insults or curses and no non-substantive reference. I wrote wholly substantive criticism, but it was said with sarcasm and sharp language. It seems to me that some of the feelings among the commenters were aroused because we are speaking of a rabbi, and in their opinion it is improper to say such things about a rabbi, especially given the merits mentioned (and indeed he has them). In my opinion, precisely because of his status it was important to shatter the aura of politeness. The fact is that one hears no criticism whatsoever from the rabbinic establishment in all its shades about these disgraceful statements (including those of his father). My response was a reaction.
I see the reactions and understand that in people’s eyes this was perceived (in my opinion mistakenly) as too sharp and too degrading, and therefore there may indeed be room to draw conclusions regarding how things are perceived by the reading public. In itself and on the merits, I truly do not see a problem in it.

Am I so mistaken that I do not deserve a response?

I have taken note of your recommendation and of your claim that publishing these things here does not suffice to remove them from the prohibition of “you shall not hate.”
If you are expecting a response (I did not think so), I will say this:
1. This letter seems unnecessary to me. Quite a few people have already protested to him, and I saw no apology or retraction on his part. Why should my letter achieve anything different? By the way, I am not protesting a particular act or statement but the infrastructure within which these things were done and said. This is a basic worldview that will not change because of one letter or another.
2. I also do not agree that publishing my words here is somehow not considered public. A strange logic. By the way, you are assuming Maimonides’ interpretation of the prohibition “you shall not hate,” and this is not the place.
3. Beyond that, by the same logic one could say this about every transgressor: before fulfilling “Those who hate You, O Lord, I shall hate,” send him a letter. We have never heard such a recommendation.
4. And beyond that, the protest is not private against him but for the public benefit (because of the desecration of God’s name, as I explained).

Thank you very much.
1. Perhaps I am naïve, and still it is good for me to remain naïve rather than cynical (“The innocence of the upright guides them, but the perversity of the treacherous destroys them”). By the way, even practically speaking, sometimes it is preferable for a public figure to be naïve in order to show the public that he did his best and the other side spoiled it, and not find himself, as the rabbi finds himself, accused of disgracing a Torah scholar (as in the story of the rosh yeshiva who told a student that people were gossiping that he does not put on tefillin; the student jumped up and said it wasn’t true. The rosh yeshiva slapped him and said: it’s bad enough that people are gossiping about you, and you want it to be true?).
2. I myself was not sure about this, and therefore I wrote “something like hatred in the heart” and tried to support it from the story of Absalom, though there too it is unclear (Ralbag writes as I do, but Metzudot does not).
3. It seems to me that the category of “Those who hate You, O Lord, I shall hate” is a bit too heavy. The mistakes he makes may justify protest and lack of honor, but not hatred.
4. For some reason I did not feel that way, and it seems that most of the commenters did not feel that way either.

In terms of ratings, I think the series on poetry and on freedom and liberty are not ratings suicides.

It seems to me that many, or at least some, of the subscribers here (and perhaps I am among them), enjoy being counted within an exclusive and elitist group, and receiving regularly the “posts for thinking people.”

Therefore, long and tiring posts do not diminish the site’s value, but only add to its prestige. Even when the reader cannot keep his head through the end of the series, he still enjoys being part of this thing.

Perhaps this feeling is two-sided, as I sensed from the rabbi’s response here in the thread: “I am really beginning to tire of the stupid discussion taking place here. From readers of my site I nevertheless expect more than what can be expected from that fool (i.e., Y.Y.).”

A yellow column adds to ratings to a certain extent, because everyone is capable of and able to comment. But in the long run, yellow columns lower ratings, because they diminish the site’s prestige.

I also think (like the rabbi) that the rabbi’s style here is not gutter language. However, the things to which the commenters referred (the way the rabbi described the things coming out of Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef’s mouth) are language commonly used by journalists and publicists of the left. And I recommend that the rabbi at least avoid this specific expression, because they are accustomed to using it for anyone whose arguments they are unable to address substantively. For them, only the aesthetics of arguments matter (one must not say what one thinks even if one does think it). I don’t think the rabbi would want to be counted among their company.

By the way, on the matter of racism alone, I do not think Rabbi Yitzhak is racist because of what he said, ugly as it may be. Racism can find expression only in actual discrimination on the basis of origin or race, without regard to the individual standing before you.
Do secular Jews (generally speaking) not look at Haredim (again, generally speaking) in a similar way? As though they only yesterday came down from the trees? And do Haredim not look at everyone else as though they were animals (“to save from the lion and from the bear”)? I argue that in this sense all human beings are racists. And the less developed cultures are even more racist in their attitude toward cultures even less developed than they are, relative to the racism of the cultures above them toward them. And Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef is an example of this. There is no Ashkenazi who in the depths of his heart does not think this way about Sephardi-Mizrahi culture. They just don’t say it aloud. But sometime the Ashkenazi emerges (when his anger is raised. And I am sure the Sephardim are even cruder in this regard toward Yemenites and Ethiopians. And I can imagine that Ethiopians are also racist toward blacks from central Africa who were formerly cannibals. And they too would be the biggest racists if they had anyone toward whom to be racist). There’s nothing to do: once a person develops to a certain level, he will recoil from the level beneath it. One who becomes used to classical music will see every other kind of music as inferior music, and rightly so. That is an indicator that his ear has become refined. Likewise, one raised on Western music (of which classical music is a part) will regard Eastern music as inferior. There is a hierarchy in music. As in food. Someone refined in taste will recoil from street food—it will be too greasy for him. Someone accustomed to healthy eating will find processed food disgusting. One who is used to lomdus will no longer be able to learn with Sephardim. One who has become used to scientific thought will not be able to tolerate outreach rabbis or Haredi or Hardal (non-)thinking in general. There are hierarchies in all fields of knowledge and culture, and an indication that a person has moved from one level to another is that he recoils from the levels beneath him. It is a kind of mechanism (evolutionary and divine) that guarantees human development itself.

Therefore it seems to me that one cannot say that it is forbidden for a person to think he is better than his fellows. And by extension, one group may think of another group that it is less good. Perhaps he is wrong. But there is no moral aspect here. (Perhaps except for pride before God.) In any case, this is what happens in practice. All the people I know think this way about one another if they have some advantage over the other (even if they don’t know it. Most of them really don’t know it). It’s just not nice to say. So people pretend. True humility is only before the Holy One, blessed be He. Forgive the religious language, but a person who feels the presence of God will not pride himself over his fellow, because it would be like a dwarf four feet tall taking pride over his dwarf friend who is four inches shorter while before them stands a giant six miles tall. If the dwarf were to feel the presence of the giant, those four inches would seem null to him, and anyone making a big deal of them would seem ridiculous. That is the only solution to this whole story of racism.

That said, I also agree with the rabbi that a significant part of the rabbinic establishment falls under the category of “a Torah scholar who has no understanding.” The desecration of God’s name is not connected to the Chief Rabbinate (which I actually think is an important institution). It is connected to the people themselves. Rabbi Yosef is not a special case. Even if an evil person stands at the head of the state, the state too will be evil. But still one need not dismantle the state (though I know that is not the reason why the rabbi opposes the Chief Rabbinate).

I suggest to all the commenters to see how Haredi rabbis speak about anyone who is not of their opinion (certainly Religious Zionists, but also Haredim from different groups), so I do not see why one must preserve Rabbi Yosef’s honor when he himself is not committed to such treatment. The rabbi perhaps is not aware of this, because he did not receive the main part of his Torah education in religious institutions but in Haredi ones. But the religious public still has a naïve reverence toward rabbis. That education is basically good. It’s just that people lack a critical sense.

Although I am not going to don the robe of the Academy of the Hebrew Language regarding the meaning of words in modern Hebrew, I will only note that in the Book of Proverbs (and in biblical Hebrew) there are two types that are hard to distinguish between: the evil and the kesil. My basic assumption is that they are not the same thing. The theory is that kesil is what we call stupid (though even that is not clear—what exactly does that word point to? It is not lack of talent), and the word comes from kesalim, the loins, which (in an animal) are apparently covered with much fat; and the kesil is one whose heart is covered with fat (“their hearts are gross as fat” [Psalms 119:70]). One whose heart is closed off. What in crude language is called (a word I don’t believe I’m writing) a dumbass. One who doesn’t get it. More precisely, doesn’t want to get it because it clashes with the reality as he knows it (“A wise man in his own eyes is more hopeless than seven men who can answer sensibly” [Proverbs 26:16]).

By contrast, evil comes from the word ul, meaning belly (and apparently from that came the word ulam, hall, which stands at the front of the Temple). One of the early commentators explained that evil means “primary,” that is, apparently “primitive,” and that is how Da’at Mikra explains it. I do not know what conception of primitiveness existed in biblical times, but it seems to me that this is what we call “reacting from the gut.” It also seems from several places in Proverbs that evilut is the emotionalism and ranting that accompany the arguments of the kesil and the evil.

And if indeed there is a connection between the two explanations, then the evil is primary because the belly goes at the front of the person (goes first), like the hall at the front of the Temple. And the reaction from the gut is because he reacts according to how things appear at a first and superficial glance, without critical examination. He reacts immediately. From the gut.

With God’s help, 26 Nisan 5778

Of course this is much ado about nothing. Rabbi Y.Y. (and one must still investigate whether we should be concerned for the innocent simple masses who may think, God forbid, that this refers to God Himself) is neither a fool nor a racist. Rather, he indeed does not mingle with people generally (of the type of R. Mordechai David Auerbach), but with creatures of another sort (who sincerely believe that if Maimonides thought black people inferior to the rest of mankind, then that is indeed how one should think of them). And indeed he does not understand enough about the proper mode of public expression (as distinct from his Ashkenazi colleague, for whom expression is an art). But of course the ugly attack here against him does not stem from this or that mistaken statement, nor even from his mode of thought, mistaken in the writer’s eyes (and in the eyes of many, presumably), but from the bubbling anger and hatred of the honored writer toward the people of Shas and their sages in every place. That is presumably the sole reason for the above assault, which merely found itself a pretext (a mistaken one, this time) to latch onto. And as Hazal said: once one comes to anger, one comes to error—to pin on Rabbi Y.Y. strange accusations of racism and other such things, while using very low gutter language. But there is no need for concern here—immediately after the stomachache bubbling with rage and hatred passes, the flatulence too will end, and the honored writer will no doubt return to writing in the plain course of events on various other topics, in which, astonishingly, he is capable also of saying sensible things, or at least of expressing himself in a language and style not borrowed from the Neanderthal zoo…

To Eilon – hello,

Your suggestion that the biblical Hebrew word evil comes from a language of “first” is supported by Aramaic, where avla means “beginning,” and by Arabic, where awwal means “first.” Of the fool it is said in Proverbs: “Wisdom and instruction fools despise.” For the fool, as you suggested, what arises in his initial thought is enough, and he scorns the wise person who sees things in a more complex fashion. One may also say that the fool is called thus because his way is to be “a commoner leaping to the head.” One who crudely belittles sages and great Torah scholars,

May it be God’s will that our portion be with those who “dust themselves in the dust of the feet of the sages,” as interpreted by Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin: those who struggle, raise difficulties, and debate even with those greater than themselves, but with humility and respect. And perhaps “wisdom” (chokhmah) is a notarikon for “wait—how much?” (chakeh kamah), for the way of the wise is to wait before reaching a firm conclusion, and to examine a matter again and again.

With blessings, Shimshon Tzvi Lwinger.