Another Look at Fundamentalism: Is Afghanistan Here? (Column 409)

Is the only possible solution not to bring God back into the arena?
I’m serious.
If we have to confront fundamentalism, which comes in the name of God, then there is no choice but to bring Him back into the arena.
Not their petty conception of God, but rather a clear, “mature” conception (I think you expressed something similar in the second volume), of the God of the former and the latter, the God of the spirits of all flesh.

Do I know how to do that? Maybe not completely.
But seriously, it seems that this is the only solution that can really help.

I don’t quite understand your conception of the “traditional” Jew.
He does know his Master, but that is not at all a recipe for rebelling against Him. (Whereas the atheist truly does not know his Master and even scorns Him.)
For example, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef discusses in Responsa Yabia Omer, vol. 1, Yoreh De’ah, sec. 11, the law of libation wine and contact with a secular Jew in our times. He relies on Responsa Binyan Tziyon, no. 23, which distinguishes between one who desecrates Shabbat “out of appetite” (“traditional”) and one who does so “to provoke” (atheist), and makes a psychological argument: the “traditional” person desecrates Shabbat because of the evil inclination, and his difficulty is that he keeps kosher, makes kiddush on Shabbat, prays in synagogue, etc., but finds it hard not to drive to the pool or smoke cigarettes on Shabbat.
Whereas the atheist/secular person does it to provoke! He knows it is Shabbat, and precisely therefore he turns up the music in his car when he passes a synagogue on Shabbat, etc. And Rabbi Yosef Kapach’s words are well known: “They [= the secular] know that there is Judaism, and that there are religious Jews, and there is Torah, but it suits them in their folly, or they act provocatively, and they are not in the category of a child taken captive” (Responsa HaRivad, p. 73).
And let us also not forget that there are hardly any “traditional” Jews today in the classic sense.
Precisely because of that “authenticity” (in my view, fake) that the Shas party projected over the years through various means, chiefly through its outreach organizations (Hidabroot, etc.), most “traditional” Jews today lie somewhere on the spectrum between Haredi and religious.
Divide it like this (based on my family’s experience):
1. Grandfather and grandmother “strict in observance of the commandments” (in North African Judaism there was no concept of “Haredim”).
2. Parents: traditional-religious.
3. Children: either Haredi or secular. (Perhaps one child remains religious along the continuum.)
There is almost no continuation of the traditionalists. There are attempts to preserve it, but in my opinion it does not survive more than one or two generations.

A horror beyond words. This whole world is full of madness and stupidity, and we live in calm tranquility thanks to determined bayonets standing in the breach (by “bayonets” I mean an army backed by technology and industry). To live in the twenty-first century in a Western country is to win the lottery of historical humanity.
But if I were just an individual from some Afghan tribal collection, I too would probably choose surrender rather than getting dragged into an eternal guerrilla war. I’d lower my head, submit to oppression, save up money, and try to flee when a good enough opportunity arose. The risks are simply too great. All the more so that “the West” made the reasonable decision (even if not the moral one). [I confess my sins. At one stage before the army, the interviewer raised the issue of going into a combat unit, and I told him plain and simple that in combat you can die, and that goes against my principles (thou shalt not die). That is, of course, a completely outrageous argument, and I’m certainly not claiming it’s justified, but that’s how it is for me. I’m willing to be useful in other channels.]
In Israel too, if the primitive forces grow stronger and the economy is mortally damaged (personal freedom concerns me less), then in my view it would be more reasonable to get out than to invest a significant part of one’s life in the struggle. You only live once. I am astonished to realize that in practice I live pleasantly thanks to brave people whose willingness I cannot identify with. A rather troubling matter that I usually manage to repress successfully.

Two remarks:
1. There is a difference between a traditional-conservative person and a fundamentalist. The traditional-conservative person lives his life as his forefathers lived over the last hundreds or thousands of years, without awareness of alternatives, or without relating to them as something relevant to his life. The fundamentalist is aware of alternatives and has even experienced them, and then decided to reject them and return to an imagined ideal past, which he tries to reconstruct by means of texts and myths – because the original conservative tradition has been lost. Today’s Ashkenazi Haredim are fundamentalists. The old world went up in smoke through the chimneys of Auschwitz. And so they have the fanatical rigidity characteristic of fundamentalists, without the adaptation to normal human life (“proper conduct precedes Torah”) that comes out of authentic religious life.
2. Genuine traditionalism survived among Sephardim, despite vigorous attempts to destroy it (Shasniks who graduated from Ponevezh and other troubles). Orthodox Judaism (including the “Mizrahi” version) has been preserved since the Holocaust among 15–20% of Jews, without major changes. This percentage will grow only if the rest of the Jews decline, assimilate, and disappear. Traditionalism is perhaps the main anchor of salvation available to the Jewish people. See Meir Buzaglo’s book A Language for the Faithful, and the book Kol HaTor, edited by Ofir Toubul.

Hello,

Another thought experiment – most of the people today believe in the opinion/theory/belief that there is a terrible plague raging, and the only way to end it is through vaccines.

On the other hand, there is a minority (over a million people) who do not accept this belief and refuse to be vaccinated.

Without getting into the substance of the matter (I have not given up on hearing an admission of error, but this is not the place…) – does the rabbi not think this is a possible scenario in which the majority will support coercive measures against the minority?

After all, already now there is one person known as the Prime Minister who compared them to murderers,
and media people are echoing him (celebs, in the vernacular) and saying this explicitly,
and a doctor who works in a hospital has now joined them and declared that they should not expect compassion from her.

Are supporters of coercion / sanctions / perhaps even beyond that not absolute fundamentalists with regard to the vaccine-based conception of reality?

And I wonder whether the rabbi still opposes coercion, or whether there has been some progress since our last correspondence…

Thanks in advance.

I definitely join the question, especially now that there are already people admitting there is no difference between the unvaccinated and the vaccinated regarding transmission.
And see:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/cdc-study-shows-74percent-of-people-infected-in-massachusetts-covid-outbreak-were-fully-vaccinated.html

Not every belief or opinion you dislike is fundamentalism. “Fundamentalism” is a well-defined sociological concept. Among certain populations this word has become a generic curse-word, but there is no place for that sort of usage in a sane discussion. Please make sure to take the pills the doctor prescribed, and perhaps you should get a vaccine too (not against corona – something else…)

You are referring to a certain type of traditionalist and a certain type of atheist. You are mistaken even about them (and I explained this in my comment, so everything you wrote here was already answered there), but that is not the subject here.

I understand that, and I even agree that you are not to blame. But you still bore responsibility.

I’m not going into this here again. Nothing has changed and everything has already been answered. This is nonsense.

Not relevant.

Alex, embedded in your words is a common claim: that I can argue categorically “it is forbidden to coerce,” but if there is something in which I do coerce, then I am supposedly meant to understand that the other person will coerce in some other matter. As though once we have agreed that there are situations in which coercion is permitted, we have given up the principled debate (is coercion permitted or forbidden) and moved to a subjective debate about what, in my opinion, justifies coercion. This is a common theme in many discussions: if the dispute is only about degrees and the like, then whoever disagrees with me is a hypocrite; but if the dispute is about the pure poles, then that’s his right, that’s his position, etc. I think this is fundamentally a mistaken theme. There is no greater justification for a general claim of “coercion is forbidden” than for a local claim of “coercion regarding X is forbidden.” And there is not the slightest contradiction in saying that coercion regarding X is permitted (because it is important and right) while coercion regarding Y is forbidden (because it is relatively marginal, or mistaken and harmful).

A response to Yosef Potter the fundamentalist (or fascist??) and to the rabbi

Yosef – do you have a substantive response? Why can’t the devout believers in the medical establishment be defined as fundamentalists in every sense? You have foundational assumptions that may not be questioned, and anyone who does question them is sentenced to curses and ostracism (or to idiotic suggestions like yours)… Here’s a recommendation for you – get a mirror, open some history books about the 1940s, and try to think…

Rabbi – what does “I’m not going into this here again” mean? I’m also not interested in arguing about corona, I’m only asking two questions:

1. Are devout believers in the medical establishment not a de facto fundamentalist group?
2. In the past the rabbi opposed coercion or sanctions – has there been a change in position?

Thanks.

Actually, I am responding mainly to point 2 of the article (I am aware that this is not the article’s topic).

Your main objection is to the “traditional” Jew as he is perceived in Israeli society (mainly of Middle Eastern and North African origin).
If you mean the “Israeli traditionalist” in the style of Amichai Chikli and the like, then you are indeed right. But as I understand it, they see Judaism as a cultural identity, not as a religiously binding one. In principle, the approach of halakhic authorities among the sages of the Eastern and North African communities, such as Rabbi Ovadia Yosef or Rabbi Yosef Messas and so on, to secularization among Eastern Jews was different from that in Europe. (This too is not precise, because there were Sephardic sages who were very strict toward secularization, such as the Kaf HaChayim Sofer, the Ben Ish Chai of Baghdad, the Baba Sali, etc.) Their main conception was one of “the right hand draws near” or “the lesser evil approach,” as scholars of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s thought such as Lau and Avishai Ben Haim call it, etc. In several of his rulings, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef takes account of the weakness of the generation, or the inclination of many among the traditionalists. So he created a relatively lenient halakhic method in order to ease things for those who heeded him. Of course, in the long run this approach succeeded. And many of the traditionalists returned to meticulous observance of the commandments within just one generation. (The mistake, perhaps, was the attempt to create a Sephardic model imitating the Lithuanian one.)

As an argument, saying that in combat you can die is really pathetic.
If, for example, you are willing to drive or even ride in a vehicle that is not at least a bus or a train, then you are really insulting your own intelligence.
Not to justify what you yourself wrote, “an outrageous argument,” and also to lose what comes along with combat service.
The benefit versus the risk is incomparably greater, with great certainty.
Besides, to live in the State of Israel of the last 20 years really is to win the lottery.
It’s a shame people consume media/news from what calls itself journalism and thereby bring darkness upon themselves.

Sorry, but I forgot another popular curse-word among the rabies camp – “fascist.” Again, a word with a clear sociological-historical meaning that has turned into the equivalent of the infantile “yuck.”
My response was very substantive: there are medications that might help you, and it is not advisable to be dismissive, because the consequences are severe, as we can see.

An interesting analysis of “traditionalism.” Still, it is not clear to me which “traditionalism” Rabbi Michael Abraham is attacking here; in my humble opinion this is a “straw man.”

What is the similarity to driving? I have no problem being in combat units in training, but I won’t go into Jenin even if they ask me to. At that point the risk becomes very tangible, and then I’m incapable of taking it for the sake of other people who are willing to be admired heroes (and weirdos) even without me. If the alternative is to go into Jenin or emigrate to Canada, my choice is clear.

I agree with and identify with what was written except for…
We did not flee Lebanon out of fear of Muslim fundamentalism but out of fear of the organization “Four Mothers,” who, with the support of the left and the media, succeeded in defeating (it is not clear that he did not surrender willingly) the pitiful Ehud Barak.
Lebanon did exact a heavy price for years, but דווקא in the last two years the IDF knew how to respond correctly and effectively against Hezbollah.
Few noticed that this was a world precedent. Nothing less.
A guerrilla war in which it was the guerrillas who kept bleeding and bleeding, not the regular army.
Major General Amiram Levin deserved a prize for what he wrought there as commander of the Northern Command.

Our worst enemies are the ones within.

If I remember correctly, Barak claims in his autobiography that he presented his position of withdrawing from Lebanon to his commanders while he was still in the army.

https://matronita.wordpress.com/2003/01/12/%D7%9B%D7%A2%D7%A6%D7%9D-%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9C%D7%98%D7%95%D7%94%D7%A8-%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A8-%D7%A2%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%93%D7%A0%D7%99/

“Like the very essence of the heavens for purity” – an apocalyptic story, or not, that I wrote many years ago, and was reminded of because of this column. It was first published in HaTzofeh almost twenty years ago.

1. No, they are not. They assume that what the medical establishment says is probably correct. As long as they are willing to consider other positions, there is no fundamentalism here. And even if they do consider them and still do not accept your position, they still are not fundamentalists.
2. I still oppose coercion and support sanctions (such as not allowing entry to places, etc.), as I wrote in the past as well.
I do not think we need to bring the discussion of corona and conspiracies into every column and every thread, lest we become fundamentalists, God forbid.

I see no point in discussing semantics (the meaning of the term “traditional”). My claim is that someone who knows his Master and does not observe is worse than someone who does not know. That is all.

It would be worthwhile to study at Har Hamor about the true inner will, and it will turn out that the question is void from the outset.

Hello and blessings to the rabbi,
In light of what the rabbi says and his fears regarding the vision of a Torah state, which God forbid would not actually be implemented in accordance with God’s will, but rather in a way that would be a glory to the people of Israel in the eyes of God and man, then what is, in the rabbi’s view, the king’s highway by which all those Haredim / Hardalim and their spiritual shepherds might become wise enough to direct themselves to the correct interpretation in prayers such as “Restore our judges as at first” and the like?

Thank you for the response and for the words.

With many blessings,
Shimon Itiel Yerushalmi

In Iran too, before the Islamic Revolution, people thought the regime would be moderate and that there would be democracy or a relatively comfortable form of government. In the end, within months, whole groups within the population were persecuted, including Islamists who did not align with the theology of Ali Khamenei and the Council of Ayatollahs.
In Islam too, people like to quote leaders such as al-Qaradawi to show that there is a moderate Islam, but they forget the problematic sayings of those same religious scholars.

I assume that here too, if a halakhic state is established, we will go in the same direction. It is very easy, when power is in your hands, to become fundamentalist and believe that now there is no excuse not to observe the commandments, that the hand of Israel should be forceful, and even to develop messianic ideas.
In Europe too, after the Protestant Reformation, religious leaders arose who established reigns of terror more extreme than the Catholics. For example, in Münster, where people were executed for every little thing, even for anger or quarrelling. Their claim was that their leader was like a prophet, and therefore there was no excuse not to be a good Christian.

There is no fundamentalism in science. In the end, if the studies show the opposite, then even the most conservative establishment is compelled to accept the new findings.
They can make things difficult for the new findings, look for problems in the research, propose reasons why the research does not refute the old theory, but in the end, if the studies have refuted the old theory, everyone will go along with them.

In religion, by contrast, it is impossible to determine who is really right. You can’t do an experiment to see whether a second vessel cooks, or whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well or only from the Father.

I cannot detail them here, because they are lengthy. Almost everything I write is connected to this.

With God’s help, 10 Elul 5780

Violence and cruelty are not the monopoly of religion. The Afghan game of “buzkashi,” in which horsemen toss a “ball” that is a live sheep from one to another, was common among them long before the appearance of Islam. Peoples and tribes whose culture is full of cruelty may bring their cruel nature and dress it up in religion.

That is what the savage tribes of Europe did, having grown up on the Roman heritage of the “entertainments” of crucifixions and gladiators, and on the cruel heritage of the barbarian tribes (as described in the Grimm brothers’ tales). With that same cruelty they imposed the “religion of love and kindness,” which took the Jews’ ways of kindness to an extreme, and in practice transformed the “entertainments” of crucifixions and gladiators into pogroms and stakes and all kinds of other horrors.

Western culture (or: ma’aravit 🙂) has advanced greatly, but it still has a tendency toward tolerance of terrorist regimes, so long as they do not disturb the West. And not only tolerance, but a “latent fondness” for violence. The Western person does not “merit” to watch crucifixions in his town squares and gladiators in his circuses, but he does enjoy the spectacles of horror broadcast to him 24/7 on all the media channels that feed their viewers ideas for carrying out acts of violence and atrocity. Consumption of Western media together with Eastern zealotry nicely sustains the Taliban, ISIS, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and the like.

Besides this “fondness” for violence and cruelty, the media culture of the West is characterized by two problematic factors: (a) superficial thinking; (b) “autonomy,” which equates the minor with the major.

The consumer of Western media is not accustomed to complex thinking. Read an article by a “right-winger” and you will understand that the leftist is a monster, a traitor alienated from the people of Israel and its land. Read an article by a “left-winger” and you will understand that the right-winger is a primitive nationalist fascist. The same one-sided approach will be found in journalistic writing by rival factions of every kind and type.

And when this extreme polemic is accompanied by “autonomy,” in which anyone who knows how to quote a few quotations from the sources thinks of himself as a worthy disputant of the sages of the generations, then one person will pull out quotations from the sources to permit what his heart desires, and another will pull out quotations from the sources to justify acts of zealotry that the sages of the generations rejected. The first will retroactively annul marriages right and left, in a place where all the Rishonim did not merit to reach, and the second will permit right and left the implementation of “they are lowered and not raised,” and what are the Chazon Ish, Rav Kook, and the rest of the great sages of Israel in his eyes, they who called to bring the errant near by ways of pleasantness?

In short:
The remedy for violence and cruelty with religious justifications is:
(a) cultivating good traits, love, and kindness. (b) cultivating complexity in judging others. Understanding even that with which one disagrees. (c) accepting the authority of the great sages of the generations, that things on which the majority of sages agreed are binding, and not every “man doing what is right in his own eyes.” These three develop in a person the insight that “gently, gently – two hundred zuz are worth it.”

With blessings, Elyaim Fishel Warkaheimer

Paragraph 3, line 3
… does not “merit” to witness crucifixions…

There, line 4
… that feed their viewers ideas…

1. In my opinion (based at least on all the devotees of the establishment that I know) – most of them are not even willing to hear other opinions, let alone
consider them. In my opinion, the rabbi too is not really willing to consider…
2. Too bad.

The corona discussions are indeed annoying (they concern real life, what can you do) – on the other hand, it brings ratings… surely more than learned pilpulim about Pascal, etc.

I’ve exhausted this for now…

I read it. Honestly, I was almost moved.

That is, I would really have been moved if I were in charge of the “received in the editorial office” section of Der Stürmer. But fortunately, I’m not.
So I was just disgusted.

Yaniv, you are boring and superfluous.

Strange,
I looked for the word “Nazi,” and for the word “Holocaust,” and did not find them.
Does the rabbi deny the Holocaust?

With pleasure, our rabbi.
Ah, and you can write under your own name, it’s all good.

With God’s help, 10 Elul 5780

To Alex – greetings,

Fundamentalism in the religious sense is actually a critical approach toward the “religious establishment,” and an aspiration to reach conclusions directly from that religion’s primary “holy scriptures.” For example, Karaism strove for direct reading of the Written Torah without the mediation of the “Oral Torah.”

In requiring loyalty to the primary sources and requiring a person to read those sources personally, there is a positive side, but there is also a great risk.

There is a great danger of a state of “brotherly war” among the believers in those “holy scriptures,” when each sees his own reading as the only truth, and consequently all the others are mistaken, misleading, and distorting the “true religion.”

And no less grave is the danger of excessive self-confidence in understanding the sacred sources, excessive confidence that leads to errors and distortions through only partial knowledge of the sources. For example, someone who reads “an eye for an eye” will understand that there is no escaping literal eye-gouging, but one who continues and reads, regarding the law of “an ox that killed a person”: “the owner of the ox shall be put to death, and if a ransom is imposed on him, he shall give…” then the sacred source itself allows redemption of bodily punishment by ransom.

The “establishment” against which the fundamentalist challenges is a group of experts whose guiding light was loyalty to the sacred source, a loyalty combined with thorough and profound knowledge of the source, so that an uncompromising fundamentalist may turn out to be rebelling against the very source he sanctifies and sinning against the true understanding of the sources.

So a fundamentalist loyal to the sources ought to treat the “establishment” experts of his religion with a large measure of respect, and be very cautious before casually rejecting the “establishment’s” conclusions. It is fitting that disestablishmentarianism be tempered with a generous measure of anti-disestablishmentarianism 🙂

^**

So too, in my humble opinion, should the approach be toward the “medical establishment.” A generous measure of criticality toward the establishment is important, for such criticality may pave the way for medical experts who will find better methods of treatment and prevention.

But on the other hand, “not everyone who wishes to assume the name may assume it.” If everyone who has read a few studies on Google draws far-reaching conclusions, great dangers may result. There has to be a determination by a highly qualified professional, and in the case of “corona,” the tendency of the professionals is not to make light of this danger.

If we do not want lockdowns, whose economic, social, and psychological effects are severe, it is advisable to protect ourselves (masks and distancing) and to be vaccinated (of course, according to the guidance of a personal physician who knows the medical condition of the questioner).

With blessings, Elyaim Fishel Warkaheimer

Incidentally, there is a kind of religious fundamentalism that leads to tolerance. For example, a Christian who adopts the policy of leaving the governance of the state in the hands of its authorities and offering the other cheek to those who insult him; or a Muslim who opposes the use of firearms on the grounds that Muhammad and his companions did not use these “modern” means. There was such a sect… Alas, more often than not there is a tendency to take the sources only partially, and not necessarily for the better.

Paragraph 5, line 1
The “establishment” against which the fundamentalist challenges, …

There, line 2
… a loyalty combined with thorough and profound knowledge…

From the example we mentioned of religious fundamentalism, Karaism – we can learn the effective way that rabbinic Judaism employed against this threat, parallel in essence to “vaccination.”

In vaccination, the vaccinated person is exposed to the virus in an intentional but weakened and controlled form. So too did the sages of Israel act when fundamentalist movements arose that sought to detach the sacred scriptures from the traditions of the sages.

Thus the Sages acted against the spiritual forefathers of Karaism, the Sadducees and the like, who tried to undermine the tradition by means of Scripture. Against these challengers, the Sages developed and taught the public the methodology of “the hermeneutical rules by which the Torah is expounded,” and study of the verses according to those rules served as a shield against simplistic reading.

In the days of the Geonim and the Rishonim, Karaism arose again, and here the Rishonim – Rav Saadia Gaon and Rashi, Ibn Ezra and Rashbam and Ramban – invested in study of the “plain meaning of Scripture,” whether by bringing the plain sense close to the tradition or by seeing the plain sense and the homiletic sense as two complementary faces of the one divine truth, “God has spoken once; twice have I heard this.”

In a later period, engagement in the plain meaning of Scripture helped in dealing with the Haskalah, which likewise tried to anchor its tent-pegs in Scripture against the Talmudic tradition, and then went on to attack Scripture itself critically.

Here too the great sages of Israel stood up – the Vilna Gaon and the Netziv, the author of HaKetav VeHaKabbalah and the Malbim, Rabbi David Tzvi Hoffmann and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Nehama Leibowitz and the authors of Da’at Mikra – and restored the crown of Bible study, thereby vaccinating their students and giving them tools to cope with the arguments of the Maskilim and the critics.

We do not flee from the sources and the questions they raise; on the contrary, we initiate students’ confrontation with those very questions, while revealing a broad range of answers, old and new. Exposure to the questions, together with the understanding that there are answers as well, is what vaccinates the learner and leads him not to panic over every difficulty to which he will be exposed in the future.

With blessings, A.P.R.

In light of what you wrote, what do you propose regarding the Torah’s commandments? Regarding the prohibition of stoning and burning Shabbat desecrators? Should we believe that these things were written in accordance with the punishments accepted in their time? A. If so, you have lost the principle of the Torah’s eternity. B. You have also lost Hazal, since very often they infer from the Torah, “from the fact that x was written and y was not written, we infer z,” whereas you are essentially proposing that although the Torah spoke of stoning, what it really meant was a severe punishment (or the most severe one). If so, the words of Hazal, or more precisely their inferences, have nothing on which to rely, since one cannot rely on the Torah’s precision in its wording.
I would be glad if you would clarify your meaning.

But once again, the “traditional” Jew does know his Master and does observe (or at least tries to). It is like saying that a person who is dieting and keeps proper nutrition and physical activity, but every so often has a lapse and eats a chocolate bar,
doesn’t really intend to lose weight and is merely lying to himself. So I do not understand what figure of the “traditional” Jew you are attacking here. If you claim that all Jews always observed the commandments totally throughout history, that too is not correct. The Haredi model that emerged in the 19th century does not reflect the state of commandment observance among Jews throughout history.
There were Jews who observed more commandments and those who observed fewer. In any case, they did not leave the category of “the people of Israel.”

That is very optimistic..

“Incidentally, this determination is itself a diagnostic criterion: if you see a determined group, then apparently its liberalism is synthetic-positive. Lack of determination stems from analytic-negative liberalism, that is, from a desire for a good life, and that’s all.”
I really disagree. In my experience (not especially rich experience, but it’s what I’ve encountered), it is exactly the opposite. Even though logically it ought to be as you described.

About the “buzkashi” game customary among the Afghans and other peoples of Central Asia, I wrote from memory based on what I had read in childhood (about 50 years ago) in a series of geographical booklets about the countries of the world. I have now seen in Wikipedia’s Buzkashi entry that the “ball” thrown by the players was a dead sheep or goat (and not live, as I wrote), and the Afghan tribes have my apology.

But even in tossing the carcass of a dead animal as a ball there is degradation, and the Taliban deserve praise for banning this disgusting game in their territories as “immoral.” Even though this was a tribal tradition hundreds and perhaps thousands of years old, the moral feeling of the Taliban revolutionaries revolted against such degradation of an animal’s corpse.

With blessings, A.P.R.

What I conjectured further on, that overexposure to Western culture intensifies radicalization, is strengthened by the fact that “Taliban” in Afghan means “students.” The Taliban began as students who revolted against corruption, and that is precisely the point: the primitive villager lives as his forefathers did in a society where class differences arouse no opposition. It is precisely someone immersed in Western culture who rebels against social inequality and follows revolutionaries and “world-fixers.”

Exposure to the ugly sensual side of permissive culture also arouses a psychological revulsion in one accustomed to the modest family life of the East, and because of this revulsion he enlists the methods of terror and repression of the West and turns family values into something monstrous. A dreadful combination of East and West.

With blessings, A.P.R.

Paragraph 2, line 3
… a bad combination of East and West.

What do you propose regarding the punishment of the wayward and rebellious son, and the condemned city? That they were written for nothing? Regarding court-imposed punishments, the Mishnah says that a Sanhedrin that executed one person in seventy years was called destructive, so in fact this was not really implemented. Beyond that, Aharon Shemesh argues that it was never implemented at all. But regarding Jews in our time, this is entirely irrelevant, because from the outset it was not written about such people. So there is no connection here to the Torah’s eternity.
And as for everything else, I didn’t say it, and I do not understand what you want from me.

Hello,
Where can one read Shemesh’s writings?
Incidentally – do you agree with him?

I have not read him in detail. He has an article and a whole book on the punishments of the Torah. Though without reading, at first glance his claims do not sound plausible to me.

1. As the rabbi noted, there are two ways to deal with Torah laws (prosbul) or Hazal that seem irrelevant in our time, both substantively and educationally. One is, as the rabbi proposes, to nullify frontally what seems irrelevant. The second is to find indirect ways around it. I see advantages and disadvantages in each. But the question arises: with respect to a Torah law, is it legitimate to say that it is irrelevant? Does anyone have authority for that? Does the rabbi have a source for such authority? What I know is the Rambam, who says that the Great Court has authority temporarily to suspend a Torah commandment. Do we have a Sanhedrin? Is this frontal nullification not a permanent uprooting of Torah law? By contrast, “indirect circumvention” (in common parlance, “evasion”) is a temporary nullification (though we still lack the criterion of a Sanhedrin)!
2. When decisors take the above route, they do so when reality compels them to express a view regarding practical questions that arise. Here, however, the rabbi not only nullifies this frontally, but also initiates a theoretical question in order to reach the conclusion that these laws are not relevant.
3. Why does the rabbi think the Torah’s laws are not relevant for the Jews of today? And what are the implications of such a statement? Tomorrow every adolescent boy will prefer to belong to those “to whom the Torah’s laws were not addressed”! As if to say: “neither your honey nor your sting.”
With many blessings.

I did not say that the laws are not relevant to Jews today. What I said is that there are things that are not relevant. And that too is because of changed circumstances, not because the Torah is not eternal. You have a mistaken conception of the Torah’s eternity. A great many things have changed, even without me. As long as it is change resulting from changed circumstances, there is no problem with it.
I discussed all this at length in my book Moves Among the Standing, and there is no point in giving lessons on the subject here.

What Rabbi Michi calls analytic-negative liberalism is actually progressivism, and it is fanatical and violent several times over compared with the fundamentalists. This is indeed paradoxical (like many other paradoxes in which they fail), because ostensibly they believe in nothing. But that is a mistake. They are fanatical believers in anti-belief. In the belief that negates every belief whatsoever. They worship the gods of the vacuum and sacred equality.

How did you connect the gods of the vacuum with the gods of equality? Is that part of the many paradoxes in which, in your view, they fail?

Just two gods: the god of the vacuum and the god of equality. Rabbi Michi has written here on the site several times about the sacred vacuum. About equality there is no need to elaborate. Much has also been written in his books about paradoxes. And the father of them all is the liar paradox or the existence of the set of all non-weird sets.

Har Hamor are sliding into the totalitarian approach of forcing a person to be free…

The god of equality (I too, in theory, worship him) is in frontal opposition to the god of the vacuum. And in my opinion the sacred god of equality can be attacked only with pragmatic or egoistic arguments, not with philosophical ones.

And there are also the Pakistanis, who control the Taliban and push them toward their geopolitical aims, chiefly their “national” war against India. Nitzan David Fuchs expands on this here:
https://greatgame.blog/2017/09/01/%d7%94%d7%90%d7%aa%d7%92%d7%a8-%d7%90%d7%a4%d7%92%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%a1%d7%98%d7%9f/

The goal of being conquered by America is the goal of the tiny European state “Grand Fenwick” in the film The Mouse That Roared.

The meaninglessness of forcing commandments on atheists is not the only factor. Freedom of thought is also required. Ostensibly “you shall not go astray” prevents freedom of thought, but the rabbi has long since turned that prohibition into a dead letter.

Why do you say that the fact that Haredi rabbis do not attack the shawl women means that they see them as fulfilling “be not ashamed before scoffers” and everything you wrote?
I think rabbis attack a phenomenon for two reasons: either it is something attractive and there is fear people will flock after it, or it is something they are trying to force on us.
With the shawl women and similar phenomena there is neither of these concerns, and therefore there is no reason to come out against it too strongly.

With God’s help, on the eve of the holy Sabbath, “for the Lord your God loves you,” 5780

To Shmuel – greetings,

Shouting and pashkevils against an improper phenomenon may serve as publicity for that phenomenon. For this reason, Haredim today tend to ignore pride parades, for fear that the very extensive engagement with the phenomenon may put into young people’s minds the thought, “Let’s check what this is and what it’s about,” and they may start taking an interest in it. The forceful voices of protest usually come when the phenomenon becomes common in the public, to the point that it can no longer be ignored.

But there is another consideration, especially with phenomena that begin from a positive foundation but become distorted and slide in negative directions: besides protesting the negative, one must also guide and instruct how to strengthen the positive side without sliding into negative directions. This is especially true of the excesses of ba’alei teshuvah, whose revulsion from the ugliness they saw in the secular world leads them to exaggerate in the counterreaction to improper proportions. Here one must also give them patient guidance: how to rise without falling.

One example of such a situation is the various “shawl women” movements. These are mainly female ba’alei teshuvah who came from a secular background, and they try to express their revulsion at the immodesty of their “old world” by an extreme move to the other side. The shawl itself was a custom common in Israel until about a hundred years ago in broad circles. When I see a picture of my late father’s mother or of Rav Kook’s mother, I see a woman whose head and shoulders (not her face!) are wrapped in a cloak, in accordance with Rambam’s words.

The problem begins when the enhancement slides into thoroughly un-enhanced channels: attempts to force this conduct on friends or family members, refraining from medical treatment and from sending girls to school – here a “red light” already goes on, requiring clarification whether this is stringency and beautification or a “departure from normality” into the realms of madness.

In such matters, a mixed tendency appears. On the one hand, there was a sharp proclamation by the Badatz of the Edah Haredit against “women who uprooted Torah authority,” and on the other hand, more moderate voices were heard, such as that of Rabbi Ben-Zion Mutzafi, who distinguished between the foundation of enhanced modesty, which is positive, and all the negative phenomena that stem from exaggeration and non-acceptance of Torah guidance – separating the good core from the negative dross attached to it (see Wikipedia, entry “Shawl women”).

When “open rebuke” is accompanied by “open love,” by criticism that also contains understanding, then it has a great chance of being accepted and becoming effective criticism!

With blessings, Elyaim Fishel Warkaheimer

Rabbi Lior Engelman once wrote that the deterioration of the relationship between the wayward and rebellious son and his parents, which reached such alienation that even the mother lost her love and compassion for her son, begins to be arrested at the moment when the parents are forced to call their hated son, the shame of their lives: “this son of ours.”

They had long ceased seeing one another as family. When the parents are forced to say aloud “this son of ours,” a crack begins to form in the wall of hatred. After they return and acknowledge “this son of ours,” they will not continue onward; rather they will return to the elders of the city, who will make peace between them, “and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers.” The son too, who once again hears his parents say of him, “this son of ours,” will reopen himself to listening to them. The process will not end in “the house of stoning” but in “the house of education” 🙂

The value of equality is an empty value. That is, it is not a value. In a certain sense it is an anti-value. Here is a response I wrote on some site

“The wagon of the left really is an empty wagon. Its values are instrumental values, which are pseudo-values. It is occupied with modeling and templates. It deals with democracy, which is only a system of government. Its god is equality, which is an empty value (for every hierarchy in the world is created by some value, and whoever promotes it more is higher in the hierarchy. That is, the hierarchy exists in order to serve the value). All the other things mentioned here are derivatives of the sacred and blind equality that erases all the other values and aims in the world.”

This is in response to this article: https://www.makorrishon.co.il/opinion/386181/?utm_source=spotim&utm_medium=E-mail&utm_content=replied-your-message&spot_im_redirect_source=email&spot_im_highlight_immediate=true&spot_im_reply_id=sp_KuOZ3qn7_386181_c_1wjWNcme0jQrZfHYy3U0GBwLgPL_r_1wtc8WXP51HppApBrY7NyZgjATP&spot_im_content_id=sp_KuOZ3qn7_386181&spot_im_content_type=conversation&utm_spot=sp_KuOZ3qn7

With God’s help, on the eve of the holy Sabbath, “equal in voice, appearance, and stature,” 5780

To Immanuel – greetings,

Equality has value according to the Torah as well. Thus Hazal say that what happened between Joseph and his brothers was caused by Jacob treating the brothers unequally by preferring Joseph. Rambam also writes (in Hilkhot Gezelah, chapter 11) that “the law of the kingdom is law” is not valid if it is not “equal for every person.” A discriminatory law is not “the law of the kingdom” but robbery.

What is true is that the Torah creates a balance between the value of equality and other values that require distinction. Thus, for example, a man may not discriminate among his wives and transfer the birthright to the younger son of the beloved wife; on the other hand, the Torah does distinguish between the firstborn and his younger brothers.

The preference given to the firstborn grants him not only more rights but also greater responsibility toward his younger brothers. Thus the people of Israel, whom God calls “My firstborn son,” bear a far greater responsibility than the other nations, and they must be “the heart among the organs,” the vanguard force of humanity, destined to be “a light unto the nations.”

With blessings, Ami’oz Yaron Schnitzler

Give an example of something you call action for the value of equality, so that I can try to understand why it seems empty to you.

Part of the left’s failures lies in inequality. They demand that the West show consideration and tolerance toward “primitive peoples,” from whom one should not demand morality and enlightenment, and whose savagery and violence as “the undeveloped” are, according to the left, to be accepted with resignation and tolerance. Where is the sacred “equality”? 🙂

With blessings, Melchizedek of the Valley of Shaveh

Affirmative “correction.”

Very justified.

Equality is not a value. Justice is a value, and it is not just to discriminate when there is no justified reason. As you said, the firstborn inherits a double portion because of the value of responsibility. In fact, every high place in any hierarchy is a commitment to the value that created the hierarchy. And don’t try to stuff this leftist garbage of equality into the Torah. The Torah also does not “balance values.” It commands what it commands, period. The Torah is the values of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the world of emanation. There was a hava amina that one might prefer one brother over the others (who was also the firstborn son of the noble and senior wife), and Hazal taught that Jacob erred in this. Apparently this was not at all something trivial. The equality the left really talks about is equality in outcomes, not only in opportunities (for there really cannot be true equality there, since human beings are indeed born into different environments), which creates enslavement and servitude of the talented and wise to the ignorant and backward (and whiners). This is simply a new kind of fraud. Within the people of Israel one can speak of charity and mutual responsibility, but that has nothing to do with equality. Charity within Israel is an investment in the collective organism, which yields a return (reward from the Holy One, blessed be He – material reward) to the individual who engaged in it. It is simply a wise investment, but only for Jews who possess understanding. They need to be committed to that organism to the same extent and connected to it.

Utter wickedness and absolute stupidity. In fact, the people of this kind of discrimination care only about sociology. Let us take, for example, admission to a physics department. You ought to admit those who will advance physics in the best way. That is, those most suited to physics. No other consideration should be involved. Since physics is prestigious (let us say it advances the world in the best way), the department’s graduates earn prestige, money, and honor (whose real purpose is to promote and encourage people to go into physics). The people of corrupting discrimination do not care about physics at all. For them, physics serves honor and prestige, not vice versa. This is true of every field in the world (every value). The people of affirmative discrimination care only about erasing social hierarchies and about nothing else that advances human society as a whole. That is, human society does not exist for the sake of values (goals); it is the goal of the values. That is, it is the goal. That is, it has no goal. This is emptiness.

Actually, the fact that you did not think of this yourself (it is not such great wisdom, just a natural and simple sense of justice) only shows the rule of this ridiculous religion and the blindness spreading in the world today.

In short, what I am saying is that equality (non-discrimination) is not a value that stands, for example, opposite the value of responsibility, as in the case of Joseph and his brothers, where the Torah is supposed to balance them. Equality is a substrate, a default in the absence of values in the background. Every value that appears will create a hierarchy according to which whoever promotes the value better stands higher in the hierarchy. It is not that it displaces equality. Equality is simply like the void (empty space) – the vacuum, while values are like matter (entities).

What have you added here that I was supposed to have thought of on my own? See Job chapter 26 and infer from it, and set it upon your heart.

In my view, by the nature of things there are people who, in a given society, can realize their potential more than others can – because of everything around them. Most people who reach decent achievements and think that solely by their own strength they acquired this wealth are naive. They did invest a lot, but they enjoyed very good starting conditions and environment. And even that strength of theirs (talent and diligence) is ultimately a free gift they received from nature. In general, if you think it is just that the wiser and more talented should win better lives (not on a deserted island – but within an entire social fabric without which they have nothing), then you disagree with me.

Affirmative action is intended: a) so that people who started with harder initial conditions can reach higher, and their peers can aspire higher as well. Here perhaps one sacrifices a little in the result so that masses of people will feel better. b) so that in the long run the entire potential talent pool will be realized. If only tiny percentages of blacks in America manage to attain senior academic positions (whether because they were born into a culturally deficient sector, lived in single-parent families, were blessed with lower average talent, whatever you want), then in the long run this harms the cumulative achievements of the entire society.

If society is the one funding research in physics, then the considerations are not only advancing research in physics, but can certainly be broader as well. And it is by no means self-evident that advancing research in physics specifically (the tiny epsilon they would supposedly gain without affirmative action) is more beneficial to the total of human enjoyments than that affirmative action. Affirmative action in general does not chop off the heads of meteors, but between one upper-middle person and another lower-upper-middle one, it prefers the one who belongs to a group that, because of various social and topographical constraints, has a harder time realizing its potential.

And even if affirmative action is problematic in pure science, where achievements can really be measured, it is entirely necessary in places where there is much more room for discretion. Typically in our imperfect world, women are more aware of aspects that affect women’s lives in society; Arabs will emphasize things that concern Arab society; Haredim involved in decision-making will know how to identify points problematic for Haredi society and give them appropriate weight; etc. Since a senior government official or a judge is not merely a technician but a decision-maker, and his decisions are influenced by his milieu and world, then in order to produce fair results one must incorporate additional forces, even if in terms of sheer ability they are less good.

Equality is not a value…? A very strange assertion. A value is a principle or abstract regularity that human beings set for themselves in order to regulate life in accordance with what seems proper to them. If people think that equality ought to exist (say, between Jews and Arabs) and they are willing to pay a price so that this reality may come about – then it is a value.

Perhaps you meant to say that equality is a value whose importance is exaggerated…???

First of all, I do not care, and no one else ought to care, in relation to physics about anything outside physics. And if the state decides that physics is important and therefore funds it, then it should not care about anything outside physics. Physics (science) or art do not serve social goals; they are goals in themselves (understanding the world, wisdom), and therefore the only consideration is results, not starting point. The goal is the development of physics, not the advancement of the people engaged in it, period. I do not care what starting point someone had or whether it is fair, only who brings more results to physics, and in such a case the mediocre+ will bring more results than the mediocre++, and therefore should come before him, period. (For my part, I would say that no mediocre person brings any results worth investing in, and therefore one should fund only the excellent, period; and with that we have solved the problem.) I do not care what you think about physics and what pleasures it brings you. If you do not know physics, then do not interfere in a field you do not understand. If you want to fund it מתוך recognition of the value of physics, you are welcome, but do not impose conditions in a field you do not understand. Physics is not interested in that and should not be interested.

As for society and environment – indeed a good environment is an important part of a person’s development, even more than his specific talent. And there is advice for this: to change environment. That is, let the Mizrahi person born in the periphery acquire suitable good friends from whom he will learn subconsciously; let him attach himself to the Ashkenazi nerds he looks down on (even if among them he will be like a fox among lions), and then he will indeed develop and achieve real accomplishments and can stop crying about his bad luck in order to advance through manipulations rather than by merit.

And regarding justice – in any case, you are not solving the problem of discrimination. Against the background of all this nonsense about promoting companies, you are in fact discriminating against someone who happened to have the bad luck to be born into the more developed and successful society. You are “correcting” one injustice by means of a greater injustice (by discriminating against someone on the basis of his origin, even though he is more suitable!). So in this too you are both wicked and stupid, as I said.

The same applies to the case of decision-making in public matters. If you think an Arab, a Haredi, and a woman understand their own matters better than white Jewish men, then that is not discrimination because they really are more suitable. I deny the principle even there. The fact that someone is a woman does not mean she understands women’s issues better than men who have observed women and studied how they think (scientists of women). In the same way, a donkey does not understand donkeys better than a zoologist who specializes in donkeys. For the simple reason that although a donkey scientist may be mistaken in his diagnoses about donkey behavior (and a donkey is never “mistaken” about that), the donkey indeed lives itself – but it understands and knows nothing, because it lacks mind and understanding. It is an animal. And one who does not observe and study is also an animal, even if he is the very animal under discussion.

In general, this whole attempt to engineer society is founded on falsehood and emptiness. As I said, equality among human beings is not a value. A value is what advances humanity toward the purpose of its existence, whatever that may be (which ought to be something external to human society, like any purpose whatsoever). Equality advances nothing. It is self-occupation with human society. And it is an attempt to homogenize humanity so that there will be no shades and shades of shades within it. Mere whining of white people who feel bad because they were born into a more developed society (the others do not actually feel that way until they realize this crying can advance them – not real advancement, but fake advancement – a social status that does not genuinely reflect their inner quality). Social classes too are not a goal in themselves, but only to advance the values that originally created the class hierarchies.

You apparently do not understand what a value is. A value is not determined or created. It is something that has objective existence (and if we searched and did not find it, then it is not a value, period). It is discovered, like a planet. It is an abstract external being, outside man, living in an ideal world. One can invent all kinds of imagined goals and want to realize them, but that does not mean they are truly real goals. And I say that the people who think equality is a worthy value (in light of the arguments I gave above – and incidentally, there is no such thing as a “worthy value”; if it is not worthy, then it is not a value, period) are not even mistaken. They do not think at all. They are like animals. I gave a philosophical explanation why equality is not a value. People do not distinguish between justice and equality. To discriminate against someone for an unjustified reason is injustice, not inequality, period. Creating equality by force is also not just and also not a goal, period. Incidentally, this kind of equality also undermines the concept of justice. The whole concept of justice is built on the fact that there are different people and different realities, and each specific case has the justice appropriate to that situation. Equality seeks to erase the substrate of justice (and in fact of every other value).

Very weak arguments.

If you and physics care only about physics, then you and it can set up a research institute for yourselves. When society funds it, one may give up a little bit of physics in favor of additional aims that that society wants to achieve. You are like a painter who demands funding for his private hobby. Any insertion of constraints into the system can be thought of as an ordinary budget cut, and about that I have heard no special complaints. All support for physics is for the sake of human beings – that they may engineer more, know more, feel that they know more, and social contentment should not be the handmaid of physics. Second, by integrating additional populations, it is likely that physics too will benefit in the long term.

For him to choose to connect with the Ashkenazi nerds, he has to feel that many people like him connected and succeeded. A widespread sense of a glass ceiling, even if with relatively exceptional effort it can be broken (and even if at the present moment it stems from the fact that he really is less good), is destructive to society. Why do they rank social mobility all over the world? After all, if one person rises a decile, someone else falls, because people need to feel they have a reasonable chance. That feeling, and the realizations that will follow it, are important social goals – both morally and instrumentally. The specific individual discriminated in favor of is not especially interesting.
Specifically regarding Mizrahim, I do not think affirmative action is needed, because it too has a cost. Regarding women, I don’t know. Regarding Haredim and Arabs – if I momentarily neutralize my own narrow personal interests – it is certainly needed. And one can only appreciate those who work in that direction.

Equality is not a value; it is a psychological means so that people may enjoy themselves, and as noted perhaps it may also lead to better performance.

In any case, affirmative action has a very strong basis even if you have decided to espouse a different opinion. To present it as emptiness is somewhere between amateurishness and charlatanism.

Fine. I’m already fed up. I have written; now you start thinking. No one owes anyone anything. Physics is the lady and social contentment is the maidservant. I want people who value physics to fund it, not empty people promoting social goals (forgive me). Funding physics is a privilege, not an obligation. Usually preoccupation with sociology and “repairing the world” is a sign of lack of talent and emptiness (like many parts of the “humanities”). It is your choice to live in these murky waters, and I no longer have patience for it. Given what you say here, I have no interest in convincing you at all. My words are directed to whoever is reading our discussion.

All these stories about a glass ceiling and a reasonable chance – it is all whining. Whoever wants to succeed does everything in his power and does not look right or left making calculations of worthwhileness. Whoever wishes to learn wisdom goes to the wise and learns wisdom even if he is the only one there, and does not make calculations about what honor it will bring. Honor is only motivation, not the goal. The fact that all over the world they rank social mobility is because most of the world consists of empty and hollow people preoccupied with themselves and advancing humanity in no way whatever. Just like animals.

This, by the way, is the emptiness I am talking about. You do not understand that every value, by virtue of being a value (a goal), is the lady, whereas what you call “social contentment” is the maidservant. I used the example of physics, and the value I spoke of was understanding the natural reality in which we live (wisdom). You did not even notice that. Someone who thinks the goal of the human species is “social contentment” is an empty person, a person living without a goal – that is, someone who thinks that the goal of human existence is human existence itself, which of course is an empty goal. Or alternatively, he thinks there is no meaning and no goal to existence, and that is emptiness incarnate. That is the meaning of the word “emptiness” in this context: lack of content, lack of meaning and purpose (value).

So your argument boils down to this: you want to advance physics for its own sake, and the empty people want to advance social utility?

I want to advance values (goals) for their own sake (if not for their own sake, then they are not goals but means) – and the highest value, the purpose of existence, whatever it may be, and not social contentment. Yes. Social contentment is only an indicator that what we are doing is working (I believe in reward and punishment), but not a goal, rather a means. And whoever lives and acts for the sake of social contentment is an empty person. Indeed so.

And you still wonder why the progressives do not hold your oh-so-logical opinion.

Besides, I will again stress that in my opinion it is quite plausible that affirmative action, even in physics, will improve physics in the long term as well. But that is a factual dispute and a separate matter.

I do not care what opinion the progressives hold, because in order to hold an opinion one needs understanding, and they are devoid of understanding…..

Poor arguments and excessive confidence.

Why should your “poor arguments” matter to you? In your world there are no arguments at all. There are only narratives. On the contrary, my “excessive” confidence is precisely needed in a progressive world in which all opinions (and lack of opinions) are equal. There people only shout, and whoever shouts louder wins.

Accordingly, all your responses are the same empty and hollow progressive language: “weak arguments,” “amateurishness,” “charlatanism,” “poor arguments,” “this is not how you will persuade progressives,” “excessive confidence.” Only the feeble-minded are impressed by this sort of talk. I have reasoned all my points up to now and answered everything you addressed. And since you have nothing to answer, you have tried and are trying to manufacture (“engineer”) reality (and consciousness – mainly your own consciousness), in the progressive way, by means of empty language (which does not point to reality, hoping it will create reality): alleging “poor arguments” does not replace counterarguments. I am blunt here in the comments because with your kind one has to use your own tools in order to shut your mouths (which say nothing anyway). I give reasons here and answer you in detail only for the sake of the other readers here.

A nice summary.

I have now seen column 103; see there. I accept the main point of that column, and it does not detract from what I said.

Please pass this on to Rabbi Lior Engelman: well, well.

The Sanhedrin does not execute, but it does confine to the cell.

Immanuel,
Your (Platonist) claim that true values are only those that have objective ontological status may perhaps be correct. But how is that relevant to our issue?? Why does equality not have such a status? Do you have a demarcation line between real values and pseudo-values?

Your also correct claim about the precedence of justice over equality is likewise not relevant. At most you can say that unjust equality is a “bad” value. Does that mean it ceases to be a value? In my opinion no, but even if you are right, what have you achieved? At most you have “identified” a certain case in which it is indeed a pseudo-value. There are still situations in which even in your eyes equality is justified, and therefore it is an authentic value.

Correction: should read: Does that mean it ceases to be a value

The reason equality is not a value stems from two reasons:

1. A strong intuition that this is so. What is good about it? In what way and how does it advance the world?

2. From the fact that the being of equality as a value entails a paradox. As I have been saying here all along, values create social hierarchies. Whoever advances the value more gains a higher place in the hierarchy to the extent that he advanced the value (its realization in the world). As in sports, whoever plays better gains a higher position in the league, etc. (in principle). He advances that game. (In sports no one dares talk about affirmative action.) What would happen in the case of equality? If it is a value, then it too will create such a hierarchy, in which whoever acts to realize equality in the world will, paradoxically, gain a higher position and social status than one who does not, and that is of course a paradox because the goal of equality is that there should be no more social hierarchies. (In fact, the warriors of equality also work to erase hierarchies from every field of human activity, not only hierarchies among people. All genres of music and art are equal. All sciences have the same status, etc.) Historically, this of course created the ridiculous reality in communist Russia, of which it was said that there “all are equal, but some are more equal.” It is of course clear as the sun that the entire goal of leftist warriors of equality is to advance their social status by promoting this empty value (whose realization is the only one in the world that requires no physical, mental, or intellectual effort, except the effort to shout loudly). They are simply lacking in self-awareness. Both wicked and stupid.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of warriors of justice and would-be world-fixers of all kinds (not necessarily equality warriors) are not really acting for justice and the repair of the world, but for the improvement of their social status (and they are not aware of it) by means of fighting for justice, etc. Only there there is no paradox, and the results do have significance. In a certain sense, someone who brings more justice into the world really does deserve a higher social status (like King Solomon). Ostensibly I should not care about intentions in such cases but only about results, but even in the case of justice there is a problem with that, because one who acts only for his own social advancement (consciously or not consciously) is not righteous, and therefore cannot educate others toward justice or fight the wicked as a representative of justice. Besides, he is a hidden wicked person, and this will become evident later in any case (when he gets tired of it and reaches the top of the hierarchy, and then seeks other things to fill the void of his meaningless existence; he will begin chasing lusts, etc.).

See the response I wrote to the commenter Doron just now, immediately below our thread. I think it is now clearer why equality is not a value, and therefore why affirmative action is the father of fathers of injustice on the face of the earth.

Incidentally, it is exactly because values create hierarchies that the warriors of equality also fight to erase hierarchies between fields of human activity for precisely that reason. Heaven forbid that classical music be considered greater than pop music, and both of those greater than Mizrahi music? Who appointed you to decide, etc.? Despite the clear intuition that classical music is the most developed music there is. But then it would follow that those who engage in it would receive more esteem and honor than those who engage in the other musics. And so on: mathematics and physics are not worth more than literature and history. A friend who studied history once told me personally that he does not think mathematics is worth more than history, which is the “scientific” field lowest in the hierarchy that exists – the field requiring the least intellectual talent. In the next stage they will say that sciences are equal to television game shows and everything is equal and there is no difference at all, and you can continue on the wings of imagination from there.

A. I said that equality is not a value, but rather increasing social contentment.

B. You said that affirmative action is an “empty” value, and I explained its rationale, and in this case I personally also think there are definitely cases where it is desirable. So even if you have a dispute (though in my opinion your case is not successful), it is an ordinary dispute over different prioritization of legitimate goals. And overall, in the worst case it is equivalent to a budget cut, as noted.

C. In practice, given my current situation and the situation of those dear to me, I prefer that there be no affirmative action at all. I like the current playing field very much as it is. Nor do I support parties that put the advancement of others on their banner; rather I place high priority on what advances me and what I want, just as I use my money to advance my own interests and not those of the miserable in Eritrea, in the United States, or here in Israel. But with that, I acknowledge that the progressives, may their name and memory be blotted out, make a very solid argument, and those who also have an interest in such affirmative action act with full justice in seeking to realize it. Incidentally, even in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I think the Palestinians have a strong case, and even so I do not really weigh it when I choose my position in the conflict – because things that are even more important to me are at stake. I separate what I think is objectively right to do (here my personal interests are not different from the personal interests of every individual in the world) from what I am willing to do in practice (here my personal interests carry double and redoubled weight compared to the personal interests of all the other individuals in the world).

B. Affirmative action has no rationale whatsoever. In section A you said it is not a value, meaning it is not a goal. But in section B you suddenly said it is a legitimate goal, meaning it is a value after all (a value is a goal). But we already agreed it is not a value, so it is not a goal at all. There is nothing to budget. Besides, it is also not legitimate because it does not create equality but unjustified discrimination. It solves no problem and only worsens it. It does not even create real equality (it does not make people smarter or more successful; it only gives them imagined status), and it also produces injustice. Both stupidity and wickedness.

Correction: “But we already agreed that it is not a value, and therefore it is not a goal at all……”

Social contentment is a value; equality (perhaps) promotes it. On the other hand, you claim that it harms human knowledge (and some additional people against whom the discrimination works). This is a value dispute par excellence (about proportions), and there is no doubt that you too want to increase social contentment [although I am not interested in increasing the amount of physical knowledge stored in a few individual homo sapiens brains except as a tool for increasing the amount of enjoyment (from the knowledge and from its applications) of countless additional homo sapiens. But that is not critical to our dispute here, and I assume that too is an important value].
You further claimed that equality also will not advance social contentment. That is a factual dispute, not a value dispute. On that too we disagree, but it is not relevant now to argue directly about this assumption, which the people of affirmative action assume (and are right, in my opinion, as I said).

1. The fact that you testify to a private intuition of yours according to which the concept of equality supposedly does not denote a value contributes nothing to the discussion. There are millions of others whose intuition differs from yours.
2. The second section seems to me completely confused. First, I have the feeling that you are fighting some demon of “equality” (a socialist sort) and completely missing the principled discussion.
Let me ask you a simple question: do you think equality in line (in a supermarket, for example), meaning preventing a situation in which certain people, say taller ones, get priority – is not a value? This is a simple, non-demonic example…, to illustrate for you that equality is a value, and even a desirable value (probably in your eyes too). There is no paradox here and no nonsense: state A is one in which taller people have privileges, and state B is one in which they do not, all in the name of the value of equality.

You did not read everything I wrote here with Tirgitz. Please do so. Everything I discussed here was about affirmative action, and that is the equality they talk about everywhere in the media and in academia. Equality in the sense of absence of irrelevant discrimination is not something positive, but simply a violation of the value of justice, that is all. The confusion between them is intentional, and it is a weapon in the hands of the progressives with whom this whole discussion began.

A strong intuition is simply objective seeing. I do indeed expect other people to see what I see if they direct their gaze to it. And if not, then either I am crazy or they are blind; but the usual situation is really that people do not see because they do not observe (they are not wise; they are fools and simpletons and devoid of understanding, and my opinion counts more than their lack of understanding. There is no room here for democracy or tolerance. There is error – mine or theirs. They need to observe carefully within their consciousness in light of my words, think, and then form an opinion, rather than puff their lack of opinion like cigarette smoke.

If you did not notice, this whole discussion began with what Rabbi Michi called “analytic-negative liberalism,” which stems from postmodernism and which really is not liberalism but progressivism. So I mentioned the god of equality that they worship, and that is of course socialist-communist equality (to tell the truth it is far worse than that), and then I said that equality is not a value because socialist equality is an anti-value and an empty value. Equality in the sense of absence of irrelevant discrimination is simply another name for absence of justice, so it is not equality but justice. In fact, if you think about it, every form of justice in the world acts against irrelevant discrimination (that is, against someone who thinks he is special, and therefore gets something that does not come to him because of his supposed specialness, which is not real. This generates all the injustice in the world – murder, theft, adultery, rape, fraud, bribery, robbery, theft, oppression). This is not mere semantics, because the progressives, under the shelter of justice, are trying to smuggle in to us under the threshold of consciousness their socialist god (more precisely, postmodernist). This is exactly the failure into which you fell.

I read just fine. Read your own formulations and you will see that in a large part of them you speak about “equality” in general.
As for the substance, from your latest remarks it apparently emerges that you do not object to defining equality as a value (so long as we are not talking about affirmative action, to which in principle I too object).
As for your remarks about intuition: well, I have a feeling that you are much less stupid than the things you are putting out here (though probably much less wise than you regard yourself as).

Beyond that, I cannot help you with the demons within you (I have plenty of my own).

Carry a blessing.

I already explained to you why social contentment is not a value. A value or goal is something external to man or society, which they serve, exist for, and act on behalf of. Anything that is for the welfare of man or society (even his intellectual welfare, his love of wisdom), that is, for the sake of man himself, is not a value, because he is the servant, not the master or the goal. This is a basic intuition: that purpose, meaning, and value are something external to man, greater than him, which he serves. The welfare that comes to man from this is an indicator that what he is acting for really is a value (cosmic reward and punishment), but not the goal itself. That is why I said it is empty. A person who works for his material and existential welfare, and not because he thinks his work is important because it advances the world toward its goal, is an empty person, and he is like an animal. And he indeed exists in order to serve the non-empty people, just as animals are meant to serve man (in his service of the purpose for which he exists, was intended, and was created). Understanding nature is a kind of value. It does not exist in the individual brain of scientists but in their general collective consciousness and perception. It is part of the overall purpose of existence, which I do not know what it is, but I know it exists and I act for it.

To call social contentment a value is like saying that a person exists in order to work. And what does he work for? In order to exist (to have food). And what does he exist for? Again in order to work. And so on in an endless circle of torments of meaninglessness. Just as my secular left-wing grandmother used to reproach me for my religiosity and my learning in yeshiva: we worked and fought, etc., and you idle away in yeshiva. And I would ask her: what did you work and fight for? And she would answer: in order to live. And I would ask: and what for to live? etc..

So I will tell you that all those billions of homo sapiens, all that interests them being their own welfare, are indeed, according to their biological classification, apes (not wise men). As far as I am concerned, they are meant to serve the few homo sapiens who do care about something external to themselves. That is, those who can truly be called human beings. Apes are meant to serve human beings, and in any case are not equal to human beings. So people who are like apes are not equal to those human beings.

Of course, the example I gave was from physics, but it extends to all fields of human activity, and first and foremost Torah study and prophecy. Also sports, art, science, settlement of the Land of Israel, and also inhabiting the world and preserving its ecology, etc. These are of course not the final goals of existence (they are intermediate values), but they serve it (the highest value). The fact that welfare results from actions for the realization of values is only a signpost that we are acting for real goals (true values) and not imaginary goals (pseudo-values). But welfare is not a value.

I think we’ve exhausted this.

I do indeed object to the use of the word equality in any context. Only the word justice. And even that in limited dosage. This is a semantic matter that has a substantive effect on consciousness (semantics in this case is “something”) regarding socialist equality. In all previous generations they fought for justice, and no one spoke of equality, and everyone who spoke of it in the past turned out to be a liar and a fraud (Thomas Jefferson, for example). Therefore when someone speaks of it, I have antibodies to it that identify a fraud (who in fact wants to advance socially by means of his struggle for equality). This is also true regarding justice, though to a much lesser degree. One can speak of justice when necessary.

Immanuel, you are engaging in deception. Be careful lest a policeman come…
It is true that the concept of equality has undergone inflation, even monstrous inflation, in the modern era. It does not follow from this that it did not exist in the ancient world.
Get your head a little organized: justice does indeed precede equality, but it does not follow from this that equality is not a value (I am not even pretending to claim that it is a value I find worthy, only that it is a value. Period).

I gave you a simple example so as not to awaken your demons (equality in line). If someone is given priority in line without a justified reason, then it is not only that this is “injustice.” The correct description would be: this is injustice because it violates the value of equality. Which means equality is a value….