2. They assume there is a difference between the regular tradition and the tradition of the Oral Torah.
3. True, you’re writing in the internet age and you want the Chief Rabbinate abolished, but don’t you think you crossed the line a bit?

If I thought I had crossed the line, I wouldn’t have crossed it. This has nothing whatsoever to do with my position that the Rabbinate should be abolished. It’s an expression directed at him, not at the Rabbinate.

That’s not a good argument. Maybe you crossed it because of weakness of will.
Best regards

What about him makes you so angry? All in all, the man is a Jewish Torah scholar, and he even wrote Yalkut Yosef. Why the contempt? What got you so worked up?

I’ll stop here.

But here people think 🙂

I strongly protest the disgrace of a Torah scholar, one of the greats of Israel.
“And be careful with their glowing embers lest you be burned, for their bite is the bite of a fox, their sting the sting of a scorpion, their hiss the hiss of a fiery serpent, and all their words are like coals of fire.”

You’re complaining that Rabbi Michi’s expression crossed the line because it was about a Torah scholar, but obviously Rabbi Michi does not regard him as a scholar, since he called him an idiot, so your argument is meaningless.
Please grow up and stop whining about nonsense.

With God’s help, 1 Kislev 5781

Indeed, one who disgraced Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef over the ‘sin’ of his protesting the holding of a ‘dialogue’ with Reform Jews did not cross the line. He simply has no lines at all..

In contrast, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed deserves praise, for he remained silent and fulfilled, “It is good to hear the rebuke of a wise man.” How much more so the rebuke of wise men, among them Rabbi Dov Lior, Rabbi Yehoshua Shilat, and Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, and others….

Best regards, Shatz Lewinger

“One who breaks boundaries will bring in and draw near the perplexed”
= an acronym for logic.
In your opinion, boundaries keep people from going out, but in fact they keep people from coming in.
Rabbi Michi is busy bringing in those who are outside, while you are busy pushing everyone outside, and you are doing an excellent job, Mr. Shatz, through a fanatical fundamentalist thought-police that prevents logical people from staying in or entering.
The end of this diasporic strategy is known in advance—to fail miserably.
Your only hope is postmodernism, which might embrace your approach with open arms just as it embraces radical Islam and the like.

For M.A. –

You defined postmodernism nicely: to destroy boundaries so that everyone will feel “inside” 🙂

The question is, if you’re already “inside,” why are you so upset? Maybe deep down you still feel that “this isn’t it”?

Best regards, Shimshale Foucault

Distinguish between destroying definitions and breaking down fences.
Destroying definitions is problematic. It uses semantic games to create confusion, and that causes people to retreat into their faith and accept beliefs solely on the basis of how they sound, without logic and without a real understanding of what the words mean.
For example, postmodernists would be happy to destroy the definition of man and woman and of sex and gender, and thereby they confuse everyone with their progressive agenda, and in fact try to force people into a certain definition by changing it, and this often creates overlapping and inconsistent areas.
By contrast, breaking down fences aims to destroy unnecessary barriers in order to make it easier for people to come and go, and to communicate with the world (the area itself does not grow when fences are broken down; it only becomes easier to enter it, move around inside and outside it, discuss, and search for the truth).
I am not claiming that Rabbi Michael Abraham is Orthodox, or that the Reform are part of the Jewish religion, or anything of that sort that touches on definitions. I am claiming: do not prevent him from expressing his opinion (“I strongly protest the disgrace of a Torah scholar, one of the greats of Israel” = shut your mouth [in elevated language]), and do not harm communication between the different parts of the population because of one kind of wall of thought and speech or another.

I’ve long since stopped being inside; I climbed over the fence of the ghetto, and I want the barriers to be broken down so it will be easier for people inside and outside to hear one another’s views, instead of living in a terrarium of fundamentalist thought-terror.

With God’s help, 2 Kislev 5781

It is worth noting that the Reform communities in France are a negligible percentage of French Jewry. We are talking about 13 communities numbering a few thousand people (as mentioned in Wikipedia, under “Reform Judaism”), out of more than 450,000 Jews in France!

It is therefore understandable why Rabbi Horvilleur saw value in holding a panel with a leading rabbi in Religious Zionism whose books are widespread and studied in many synagogues, schools, and yeshivas. In this way, the leader of a negligible group receives equal standing opposite a well-known Orthodox rabbi, and her “stock” shoots upward.

In places where the Reform community is strong, its leaders do not need outreach or “dialogue” with any Orthodox factor. On the contrary, they attack—as their representatives in Israel constantly file complaints against Orthodox rabbis morning and evening. But the tiny Reform community of France can certainly benefit from receiving some attention from an important rabbi in Religious Zionism.

The shock of Rabbi Yosef and Rabbi Amar and other rabbis who know the condition of French Jewry well, and understand for what purpose the meeting was organized, is therefore very understandable: to raise the standing of the withered Reform community by having its leader meet on a “panel” with an important rabbi.

Love of the Jewish people and bringing hearts closer are beautiful and important traits, but it is no less necessary to be careful not to contribute out of naivete to enhancing the importance and prestige of a marginal Reform group.

Best regards, Shatz