All right.
I don’t know this rabbi, but I sent it to someone I know so he could explain to me what was special about this rabbi, and in parentheses I copied what he sent.

Forgive me for saying this here, but I understand him very well. Your lack of understanding of him (and the excitement of fools that comes from it) stems purely from shallowness. The human species is, for the most part, nothing but falsehood. You can’t rely on human beings, and as a rule they’re not worth much. The world is divided in two: the East, which is barbaric, and the West, which is hypocritical. The West is moral only because it is satiated. The moment hunger comes, all the enlightenment of the West and its “morality” will disappear, like that cat that was trained to be a waiter and the moment it saw a mouse it forgot everything, dropped the tray, and ran after the mouse.

I have already seen in my own life that there is really no such thing as genuine, stable morality without fear of God. And I’m saying that from direct observation, not as some message a supervisor in some yeshiva preached to me. And there is no true fear of God in the world. And with all due respect, in matters of morality Rabbi Steinman is a bit more of a role model than Rabbi Michi (and certainly than the other empty commenters), who does not serve as any example of moral greatness.

Immanuel,
without diminishing the greatness of Rabbi Steinman of blessed memory, there is still something to be said for someone who dares to stand directly before the scientific and modern world without living a lie and without deceiving, as is customary in the Haredi world. This outburst presented by the questioner is ungrateful, arrogant, and pathetic. That rabbi benefited from the enormous investment of millions—and nowadays billions—of people working together to make our world better, more comfortable, healthier, more nourishing, more protected, and safer. Clean water and sewage systems make sure he can have 13 healthy, whole children and not 2–3 as in previous generations. Refrigerated food trucks bring him healthy, nourishing food from around the world. He buys clothes cheaply instead of his wife making him one set of clothes for the whole season. If he gets sick, he will be treated. If Arabs try to attack him, they will kill them. He receives state stipends and all sorts of benefits. Instead of paying for teachers for his children, others pay for him. And because of the unity of the scientific and capitalist world—which is so complex it is hard even to explain just how complex it is—billions of people all over the world are partners in these processes. Even the sewage systems under the streets were created and maintained with the help of component manufacturers from dozens of countries. And the same is almost true of everything in the world. Only cruel ingratitude could speak this way about so many people. He is sure he is revealing his wisdom, but in practice he reveals only his folly and stupidity. And when that is the case, I wonder how the situation could ever arise in which people will say of us, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” For now, it seems they will say of us: a foolish and stupid nation.

With God’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, “and you shall be My treasured possession from among all peoples,” 5782

In certain respects, the condition of humanity has improved from what it was in biblical and Talmudic times, since idolatry in its full form has diminished greatly. But even within the monotheistic religions there are hundreds of millions who practice idolatry in association, and among the others there rules cruel, bloodthirsty fanaticism; and most of them—Christians and Muslims alike—deny the Jewish source of their religion, and many of them are hostile to it.

And in any case, despite the decrease of idolatry in humanity, there has been a drastic rise in atheist heresy, a drastic rise in permissive sexual licentiousness, and a materialistic worldview that sees the human being as an animal ruled in deterministic fashion by its urges. And there is the alarming spread of postmodernist conceptions that deny the very concept of truth and see all sacred values as nothing more than social constructs.

In this situation, the pessimistic outlook expressed in the words under discussion here is quite understandable—an outlook that sees all the comfort and material progress of the modern Western world as something whose gain is outweighed by its loss, because it has brought about a severe collapse of values.

The frustration with a reality in which most of humanity is at a level of “average and below” as opposed to the “elevated few,” perfected in character and outlook, is discussed in the Talmud (Berakhot 6b) on the verse: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole man.” How can one say that those few who are complete in fear of God and observance of His commandments are “the whole man”? They answered in three ways: “Rabbi Elazar said: ‘The whole world was created only for this one.’ Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said: ‘This one is equivalent to the whole of mankind.’ Rabbi Shimon ben Azzai says: ‘The whole world was created only to accompany this one.’”

And Rabbi Kook explains (in Ein Ayah):
‘Rabbi Elazar holds that the righteous person, the morally perfected human being, is the purpose of all existence… and without this they have no purpose. Rabbi Abba bar Kahana holds, in accordance with Maimonides, that one should not say in existence, “this is the purpose of that,” but certainly one may assess value and say that there are beings more precious than the rest; therefore he explains: “This one is equivalent to the whole world.”

Rabbi Shimon ben Azzai, according to Rav Kook, offers “an intermediate view… every being also has a purpose in and of itself, but nevertheless there is a higher purpose to which all the lesser purposes are connected, and this is ‘the whole world was created only to accompany this one,’ meaning: ‘harmonious connection’; by virtue of the collective existence of created beings there is an exalted point of purpose. Although the existence of each being, in itself, is good for itself—still, the general interconnectedness was created to accompany this one, in the sense of companionship and relation.”

Perhaps his intention is that according to ben Azzai, the perfected righteous person is the “connecting hyphen,” the one who “draws himself and others with him” toward the “desired purpose” of humanity: connection to its divine source. And “little by little,” in a long-term developmental process, he improves the faith and morality of all humanity—a long process that, even if delayed and even if full of ups and downs, will in the end arrive.

With blessings, Amiyoz Yaron Schnitzler

I have to point out that the general direction of the rabbi’s words as quoted by the questioner is indeed the common education in the mainstream yeshivas of the Haredi world in its various shades; I was told this too, and so were many people I know. And that’s in addition to what they say about secular people and the Religious Zionists, in their own words…

To Y.D.

1. First of all, regarding the lies and deception of the Haredi world in how it presents itself against the wisdom and talent in the modern world, I’m with you. But with regard to Rabbi Steinman, those things are irrelevant. He is not a deceiver. He is a man who lived on higher planes, and he lived for a purpose, and the means along the way to that purpose did not matter to him. All the things you mentioned are goals, and he would have managed in whatever world he had lived in.

2. And beyond that, and more importantly: his words are about standing opposite the morality of the modern world, and that is what I am talking about (not wisdom). This morality is a bluff. The feeling today that the Western world is more moral than in the past comes from the development of wisdom, which also brings the development of moral sense (the ability to distinguish between good and evil). But moral sense (which is similar to aesthetic sense) is not identical with morality—which is the choice of the good at the moment of truth, in the test, and not in times of plenty that come from technological solutions. True morality exists only when there is fear of God. And your own eyes saw the Nazis and their enterprise, who were the most developed nation, and with all that they did what they did (partly because of that very aesthetic sense). And your own eyes will see what will happen in the future when all the good things you listed are wiped out in the next great war because of the human ego. It is only the blindness of this world itself and your blindness (and a total lack of understanding of human nature, and also a bit of lack of self-awareness) that thinks we are heading this way toward a morally better future. And here I remind you, regarding the modern world which indeed developed and grew wiser, that as Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said: “Whatever they did, they did for their own benefit.” And he sees hidden things and knows the hearts of men (which today are not all that hidden), and Rabbi Steinman was indeed a bit like Rashbi in this respect. So there is no ingratitude toward human beings here. Nothing that was done for our benefit was done out of kindness; it was done out of self-interest. And the practical consequence of that will come in the future. You will pay for all these favors the moment those interests change. And they will change. And I’m not sure that then you will still stand behind your words.

And besides, in order to recognize that someone is wise, the one recognizing it also needs a minimum amount of wisdom. And because of the global progressive madness, I cannot say even that about human beings today.

And while I’m continuing: when you talk about “the enormous investment of millions—and nowadays billions—of people working together to make our world better, more comfortable, healthier, more nourishing, more protected, and safer” as some kind of social ideology (and not simply developing the world, period), you are talking about repairing the world. The world-repairers (socially speaking) have brought upon us the greatest destructions, because they are fools. Every day I read online articles bursting with anger and frustration about the progressive leftists in our country, who are destroying the human race. And they are the offspring of your ideology, which, as Shatz already noted here, has losses greater than its gains. There is a difference between being ungrateful to engineers and recognizing undeveloped human nature—that today human beings (with the tiniest of exceptions) are advanced animals. Without repairing the ego and refining the personality, indeed the whole world is murderers and robbers. I see this. It’s not an insult. It’s reality.

Read here, for example (just as an example, because I only read it today), something I read just today about a daily result of the ideology and false religion of the progressive left, which is the ruling religion today in the Western world – https://www.maariv.co.il/journalists/Article-892815

In the realm of morality, Rabbi Michi proved that for him, all it takes to violate basic human rights is for Yonit Levi to broadcast fearmongering and for the Ministry of Health to issue guidelines.

Such evaporative morality contradicts the very concept of morality.