We’re talking about a person who in his videos (which are not exactly overflowing with intelligence) speaks in a crude, beastly way and even fills his videos with curses. With normal people who think differently, you can and probably even should meet, but with people who behave like animals there is no reason at all to talk.

He is considered the Raavad of the atheist community in the Holy Land. And he got that title because he is the most successful and witty one. (Just for proportion: beneath him you have the Gaavad Rachel Elior and the mashbak Yigal Ben-Nun).

Shlomo, if you knew the damage he causes, you wouldn’t write that. He is a kind of appetizer, and therefore he is precisely the one it is worth starting with.

I would check his motives. I don’t think he is interested in listening to the views of religious people. In my opinion he wants to use Rabbi Michi to bash religion. I spoke with him in the past; he is not the type of person who comes to have a conversation, but to do atheist proselytizing.

I know very well what he causes, but any dialogue with him is pointless, if only because from talking with someone who uses demagoguery instead of arguments, nothing can come of it. Other than making a video in which he runs idiot jokes about the Rabbi, not much will come of it, and it certainly won’t help strengthen the teenagers who watch him.

As for the views of Rachel Elior and Yigal Ben-Nun — please know that on the relevant topics that could have to do with leaving religion, all their views are considered a joke in academia.

Gershon Bar-Kokhba made mincemeat of Elior in his article in Tarbiz, and in the end she herself admitted it (yes, really!). Yigal Ben-Nun too has been ridiculed in quite a few articles by academics who dealt with his nonsense.

For example, we are talking about an ignorant man who claims there is no mention of circumcision in the books of the Prophets, and from that he brings proof that it is a late custom (a claim with ridiculous logic, but never mind) — yet this ignoramus doesn’t know that throughout that literature the word “uncircumcised” is mentioned as a term of disparagement. But when you’re an ignoramus, paper absorbs everything. He is a clown, not a scholar.

There are worthy atheists in this country, but not these three clowns. If these are their intellectual cultural heroes, then our situation has never been better.

Shai, relative to the situation today, seemingly things could only get better.
As the Rabbi, may he live long, said here: https://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/333778
“And to one who begins, they say: finish” — and it would be a formative moment the likes of which has not happened until today.
(not even with Professor Leibowitz and the priest). Maybe the closest thing to it, and even that not really, was with Dawkins and Rabbi Sacks.

Honorable Nachmanides, hello.

I’ve been looking for you for a long time.

I see you’re still fired up from the Barcelona disputation! (Which proves that the Christians cheated when they accused you of losing.)?

Nachmanides, (…?)
I don’t think people of his type leave religion because of investigation, but because of psychological tendencies. He himself once said that the reason he abandoned religion was “because God didn’t heal my mother from an illness” (come on…)

I’m pretty sure his motives for a meeting with Rabbi Michi are to support his views that the Torah is pathetic, and to bring as supporting evidence that even a Torah scholar thinks so (without making the necessary distinctions).

Shai,
You are making a maybe-claim, and I am making a certain one. And the Skeptical Arse is not the final hammer blow; rather, he is like the bath of Amalek. Forbidden mockery.

Shai,
You are making a maybe-claim, and I am making a certain one. From acquaintance. What caused his departure is not relevant, just as what caused Onen was ego, yet that does not mean he did not have successes, God forbid.
This clown is like the bath of Amalek, and forbidden mockery.

If you think the Rabbi will not win the debate, or that the clown will deal with matters in which the Rabbi has no share, that is another argument.
With the blessing of the medieval authorities,
“And every tongue that rises against you in judgment, you shall condemn.”

Shai,
You are making a maybe-claim, and I am making a certain one. From acquaintance. What caused his departure is not relevant, just as what caused Onen was ego, yet that does not mean he did not have successes, God forbid.
This clown is like the bath of Amalek, and forbidden mockery.

If you think the Rabbi will not win the debate, or that the clown will deal with matters in which the Rabbi has no share, that is another argument.
With the blessing of the medieval authorities,
“And every tongue that rises against you in judgment, you shall condemn.”

I once tried to discuss things with Mr. Skeptical Arse… but he wasn’t interested, which made me understand that he isn’t looking for truth… maybe things have changed in light of what was said in the video here

Wait, Rabbi, so what’s the practical conclusion? To write to him on YouTube that you’re willing, and then see how he continues? Because as we hold, it takes two to tango.

By all means. Anyone who wants to meet with me is welcome.

Rabbi, just be careful that he doesn’t come with a hidden camera, and then edit the video and make you into a laughingstock on his site, as is his custom.

Indeed, one should think about at least one more safeguard.
So they don’t pull on us the punch from the 16th century.