Q&A: Why delete a question?
Why delete a question?
Question
I mention my sins.
I asked a question-of-a-question type of question about the rabbi who served in the Mossad in Tehran.
H
I'm serious…
Why was the question deleted?
Answer
I’m very surprised to hear that you’re serious. It very clearly looked like lunacy. Phrase the question precisely, without getting into all the ridiculous descriptions you included there. In particular, I’d recommend not asking what someone who holds bizarre positions is supposed to say, from his own perspective. That’s unnecessary casuistry. And finally, even if there is someone who thinks that being a Torah scholar is a disadvantage, there is no reason at all to conclude from that that saying in front of him about so-and-so that he is a Torah scholar is slander. The same applies to any virtue or neutral trait that someone happens to regard as a defect.
Discussion on Answer
Bizarre. I’m sorry, but it really does look like lunacy. What does this have to do with slander? It’s known to countless people, and it’s not even a negative matter at all (if anything, it’s positive). So what is this whole casuistic exercise about? Isn’t the answer obvious? And I already answered it before.
More power to you.
Just as I assumed.
By the way, there was a typo in my name. It’s “I mention my sins,” of course. Not “my sins” in that dry way.
And He is compassionate…
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%94_%D7%90%D7%91%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%A8#%D7%91%D7%99%D7%95%D7%92%D7%A8%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%94
With God’s help, 7 Adar 5781
Rabbi Aviner said in one of his lectures that when he was a student in yeshiva, he was approached with a proposal to go on a “national scientific-security mission.” When he asked his teacher, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook of blessed memory, the Rabbi answered him: I too have for you a “national scientific-security mission”: apply yourself diligently to Torah study.
And for that reason, only after he had “filled his belly with the Talmud and halakhic decisors” and had grown great in Torah study did Rabbi Aviner agree to go on a “national security mission,” as King Solomon said: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”
With blessing, Menashe Fish"l HaLevi Zuchmir
The question is definitely a real question. And I meant it seriously, in keeping with my well-known value system.
Years ago, when I was serving as a rebbe in some yeshiva, there was a staff member in charge of discipline and trips who mocked some well-known rabbi [whom some regard as one of the greatest in the Land] because there were rumors that he had served in the Israeli Mossad [in my eyes that’s great praise; in the eyes of that instructor it’s a reason for mockery and contempt]. When I heard that, I said to him: Is it only rumors? It’s explicit on Wikipedia… He was delighted that he had managed to mock him.
The head of the yeshiva passed by and ruled that Wikipedia is not reliable, and that malicious hands control it. And the proof is that there it says, in the entry on another famous rabbi [of blessed memory], lowly and inferior biographical facts. [And that head of the yeshiva greatly values that late rabbi and assumes those are lies.] Therefore: conclusion: Wikipedia is not reliable in describing facts about rabbis…
On the Sabbath, after prayers, out on the street, I went up to the empty synagogue and saw a new book. [By a richly talented author; every few weeks, a unique Torah book in his own style.] I looked through it, and of course there was also the topic of the day: the laws of corona.
I saw that he asks about reading the Megillah through radio and telephone [presumably Zoom is smoother..] and first brings Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Tzitz Eliezer, and other halakhic decisors who tended to be lenient, and afterward the stricter opinions…
And he caps it off with a story from his teacher [who is the rabbi about whom the discussion began], that when he was a spy on behalf of the Mossad in Tehran [French-born, immigrated to Israel, perhaps held two passports?], he once entered the Great Synagogue in Tehran on the Sabbath [?] and saw that they were praying there using a loudspeaker. He asked them, and they answered that it was a battery-powered loudspeaker, turned on before the Sabbath {or with a Sabbath timer?], and if they didn’t do that they wouldn’t hear. And if they didn’t hear, they wouldn’t come. And if they didn’t come, their Judaism would be lost / sink away. So in any case this was a pressing circumstance…
What matters for our purposes is that that rabbi, in his old age, does not hide from his students his service in the Mossad in Tehran [and does not see anything wrong with it].
After the Sabbath I checked with the author, and he confirmed it to me.
Of course I couldn’t hold myself back, and I sent it to that staff member… See, he really did serve in the Mossad.
Now I’m wondering whether I sinned again with sins of speech.
In my eyes this is great praise. In the eyes of that staff member [and part of his community, people with a kind of logic I don’t really understand], it is a great disgrace…
And here I reinforced the disgrace in his mind [according to his feebleness of mind]. Did I sin with my speech?
And in any case, it’s publicized in a famous book; these are things known to everyone…
Do I need to repent for this?
Or do we not judge what counts as disgrace according to feeble-minded people?
Does the Rabbi know how to answer me?