Hello,
I am that very Nir Stern being discussed here (:
I wanted to object very strongly to the definition of me as Reform and to the definition that I “went off the derekh.”
I have no connection in any way whatsoever to Reform Judaism, and I have written at length in several places what, in my opinion, the problem is with the Reform approach and why I reject it. I believe in the Written Torah and the Oral Torah and in their transmission by the sages, in a way completely faithful to the path of my teachers: the Hazon Ish, Rabbi Chaim Brisker, the Chafetz Chaim, Rabbi Yerucham HaLevi Leibovitz of Mir, Rabbi Shach, and the Steipler. Just as I merited to serve their important students who knew them and to learn from them, and Rabbi Shach and the Steipler I merited to know personally, and I have remained their faithful student, self-effacing and attached to them.

I believe absolutely in the Written Torah and the Oral Torah and in their transmission at Mount Sinai to Moses, and in the reliability of the transmitters of the tradition, the sages of the generations who transmitted it as it was received. I observe Jewish law meticulously and with self-sacrifice in the way of the Hazon Ish and the Rabbi of Brisk. The only thing that separates me from a fully strict Haredi is only my choice of clothing style. That is a personal matter and has only social significance; it has nothing whatsoever to do with Torah and faith. Indeed, socially speaking I decided that the character of today’s Haredi society does not suit me, and I chose to be independent and solitary in that respect. There is no precise definition of the term “went off the derekh,” but in its common usage it seems to me that it does not fit me.

Apparently you did not read what I write, because if you had read it you would have seen clearly that this is so. Of course a person does not need to read what is not to his taste, but in such a case it would be more correct to say that the material did not interest me and I do not know this person’s discourse and dealings, rather than to state things that have no basis whatsoever, decisively, as though they were obviously so. From my perspective, that is slander.

As for relying on me in matters of Jewish law — Heaven forbid. Every newborn chick writes endless thoughts on the internet, so why in the world should anyone rely on that for Jewish law? I always go to great length to bring the sources and explain how I understood them, in order to share my thoughts with the reader and lay the matter before him; and if my opinion interests him he can read it, but the decision he makes himself or with the counsel of his rabbis whom he trusts. The post mentioned was for a close student who asked, and he chose (under his sole responsibility) to rely on me, so perhaps the writing style there has the sound of making determinations; but in countless places I repeat and emphasize that one should by no means “rely” on me, and that everything is only like a study-partner discussing Torah learning, not like a rabbi issuing rulings.

All the best

Sorry for the length; I had more to say on the matter, and it is important to me.

In what I wrote in the mentioned post on the question whether using a condom involves the prohibition of wasting seed, I brought the ruling of the author of the Achiezer on this matter and worked hard to understand his words and substantiate them. The Achiezer was the leading halakhic decisor in Lithuania in the generation before World War II and is a very central figure in the Lithuanian world. What is Reform about that?
.
A few years ago I wrote a long and comprehensive halakhic analysis that tried to prove there is no prohibition of wasting seed for unmarried young men. After it was published I received a letter saying I should fear the judgment of Gehenna, because I was causing the public to sin and permitting them something that is the gravest prohibition in the Torah.
In the analysis I wrote, I showed, in my humble opinion clearly, that almost all the medieval authorities explicitly permit this, and it is explicitly written in the book Ezer Mekudash, which is one of the most important commentaries and decisive for Jewish law, and so too this is implied precisely in Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh, and I dealt, in my humble opinion well, with all the objections raised against this and all the questions I myself saw from the Talmud and the halakhic decisors.
To that writer I replied that if this were forbidden by the Torah, then of course I should fear the judgment of Gehenna, but if it is permitted then why should I fear? After all, I did not permit the forbidden nor cause anyone to sin. On the contrary, I restored the crown to its former glory and set the Torah back on its true foundation.

He replied to me that it is well known that wasting seed is forbidden for unmarried men, and no pilpul can permit it.

I asked him: why is it “well known”? On what basis? If it is written in all the halakhic decisors that it is permitted, then how can it be that to you it is known that it is forbidden? Study the topic, clarify the words of the medieval authorities and the halakhic decisors on the topic, send me your learned line of reasoning, and if it convinces me I will admit that I erred and retract and publish that I erred and repent for causing the public to sin. But if you only say that you know it is forbidden and bring no support at all from Torah and Jewish law, while after study it came out to me that the Torah says it is permitted, why should I accept your words? As far as I am concerned, until they show me that I erred in clarifying the halakhic sources, the Holy One, blessed be He, who gave the Torah wrote in it that this is permitted, and you on your own authority claim that it is forbidden; in a dispute between you and the Holy One, blessed be He, which side do you think I should prefer?

This is what is written in Guide for the Perplexed I:2 about the sin of the Tree of Knowledge: man fell from the level of judging things by truth and falsehood, and instead judges them by the accepted conventions — that is, the test for truth becomes not what has been verified by the intellect that contemplates reality, but what everyone says. Why does everyone say so if it does not arise from rational contemplation of truth and falsehood? Who was the first to invent it, and everyone accepted his words and follows him like a blind flock? In truth there is something deep here: there is a reality of a spirit of folly that circulates in the world as a communal spirit (as explained nicely in the book Yad HaMelekh on Laws of Kings chapter 1, this matter of the general spirit of the public), and it rests on people and causes many of them at one and the same time to believe some falsehood, and from that there grows the claim that everyone says this is the truth.

In the response here too I see such a process. The commenter simply “knows” that using a condom is forbidden because of wasting seed. If one shows him that through study faithful to the tradition of our rabbis, one clearly sees that the Torah says there is no prohibition in this, and that this is explicitly and clearly stated in the words of the greatest halakhic decisors, such as the Rosh, the Maharshal, and the Achiezer, he sees this as Reform Judaism — because he himself, without having studied the topic deeply at all, knows with certainty that it is forbidden, and whoever permits the forbidden is Reform.

If the permissive ruling emerges after a learned clarification that this is the plain meaning of the topic, then according to that clarification the Giver of the Torah at Mount Sinai said that it is permitted. If the writer had studied and shown in a learned way that I erred in understanding the topic, I would willingly retract; but as long as he has not refuted my words, I remain with what I saw written in the Torah. And after all there is a dispute here: the Holy One, blessed be He, said it is permitted, and that commenter “knows” it is forbidden. On what basis does he “know”? Just like that — he simply knows. It turns out there is a dispute between the Holy One, blessed be He, and that commenter. To escape that complicated situation, he claims that I am Reform and that I am distorting the Torah against Jewish law, and thus he is not disagreeing with the Holy One, blessed be He. Again, if he had studied and reached a learned conclusion different from mine, he would be allowed to say so, and perhaps I would even accept his words and retract, because I am not Reform and for me whatever emerges from clarification of the topic is binding. But if he claims this without any study or basis at all, then the fact that I follow the opinion of the Holy One, blessed be He, and not his opinion is not Reform in my eyes. On the contrary, to claim without any basis that the Torah says such-and-such, after it explicitly says the opposite, only because it suits one’s way of life socially or culturally — that is Reform.

Hello,
I really did not express any opinion on the substance of the matter, if only because I did not read what was written. So it seems to me that there was a misunderstanding of my words.
As I wrote, I do not know you (we once met briefly on Zoom, which is why I wrote “almost”). My words referred to the description given in the question. What I wrote was that if this is a Reform Jew, one should not rely on his ruling, but it is certainly proper to examine his arguments and suggestions on their merits and decide independently. In my opinion that is entirely correct.
If the description given of you is not correct, then of course my words are not relevant to your case.
In any event, of course I had no intention of hurting you, nor of agreeing with the description (and, as stated, also not of disputing your actual claims, which I did not read). But regarding a person for whom that is the description, my answer does indeed accurately represent my position.

To Rabbi Michael Abraham,
Certainly, as you say. I was referring only to the words of the commenter dhiv who asked the question. And regardless of whether the description is correct, I completely agree that one should not rely on me, and I always emphasize that; I do not see that as any diminishment of value.

Nir, did you write the articles on Tzarikh Iyyun? Under the name Nir Stern?

As for Tzarikh Iyyun, yes, I did write there, but I only remember one article, on the subject of sexual abuse.

As for all the length I wrote here, I want to apologize. I run into things like this in many places, and almost always I have no possibility of saying my side, and usually I discover it a long time after it was written — and presumably there are more such places I never saw. I took advantage of this important platform, which has many readers, to try to bring my side of the matter to the attention of people interested in it; it’s not that I specifically unloaded on this particular response.
(Recently I saw some amusing things about this. Someone wrote a few years ago a list of people who know their Master and intend to rebel against Him, and on the list were Elisha ben Avuyah, Abner of Burgos, Shabbetai Tzvi, and little me. That may be the greatest compliment I ever received, to be counted alongside such giants. Elsewhere they wrote about me, “the former great rabbi.” My wife always says: once you were a genius, but now you’re just another fool.) People feel confident that because they belong to the right circle (haters, zealots, Gur faction A, Gur faction B, and so on), wear the right clothes with the right crease, and are heimish and vote for the right party and use the right phone, they are guaranteed a share in the World to Come without any doubt and there is none greater than they on all the earth; and if someone tries to examine this, they become very frightened.

Maybe he isn’t Reform (in the sense of belonging to Reform / Progressive Judaism), but it’s not only that he isn’t Haredi — he is not observant. And he himself admits that (though he calls it “outwardly,” or gives an explanation for why according to the Torah as he interprets it, or according to Aristotle, he has no reason to keep practical commandments or is exempt from them. The Reform also began that way). He claims that he fulfills the Torah’s demands while having found for himself permissions not to observe commandments, has made Aristotle’s doctrine the core of Judaism, and uprooted it from keeping practical commandments. Sometimes while using apologetics to defend his approach. There is a great difference between not belonging to Haredi Judaism and living this way. There are many observant Jews who do not belong to the Haredi sector, but all are faithful to Jewish law and keep it.
If that is what he believes in and what he reached through his study, I have no complaints against him; I even appreciate his honesty and his use of reason, which is lacking in very many observant people. But he should not present it as though he is observant. Similarly, a Christian too can claim he is an observant Jew.

I am not entering his halakhic analysis here at all, because that is not the point, and it is true that there are many problems in Haredi society. If he were observant as he rules for others, he could call himself observant. But he does not observe practical commandments at all.

I am attaching a link where he admits that he does not observe practical commandments. Even if he sometimes calls it by another name. You can define anything however you want, but bottom line, when he says he is observant he means something else.

227 – עוד הסתכלות על הסיבה שנראה כלפי חוץ כאילו אני לא מקיים מצוות למרות שאני מאמין ומקיים לגמרי. על הפחד מהקב"ה. על חרדה בכלל, ושיתוף ברגשות מחיי (ובתגובות על סגולה לזכור את הלימוד).

He claims that psychologically he is under compulsion.

I do not know you, but I have no doubt that if you search carefully, you will find very many laws that you regularly fail in or do not even try to observe.
For example, the laws of an “orphaned amen,” a “cut-off amen,” and a “snatched amen” in all their details — after all, this is among the gravest matters, involving sanctification of God’s name, honor of God, and faith; and there is no difference in this respect between a severe commandment and a light one — “because you listen.” Intention during the first blessing. And there are many laws about how one stands in prayer. Neglect of Torah study. Love of God and fear of God are laws from among the 613 commandments, not pious extras.
Or for example, mundane speech on the Sabbath — that your walking on the Sabbath should not be like your walking on weekdays, and your speech on the Sabbath should not be like your speech on weekdays; to remember the Sabbath every day — all this is not pious conduct but laws proper. And the other obligations of remembrance.
And between man and his fellow: verbal oppression, which has great subtleties; and of course the dust of evil speech. And traits such as anger and arrogance are graver than many laws, and they too are included in the laws, as early authorities wrote. And everything touching on clean honesty in monetary matters. And the commandment “and you shall walk in His ways.” And what the Rema wrote at the beginning of the Shulchan Arukh: “I have set the Lord always before me” (Psalms 16:8) “is a great principle in the Torah and in the virtues of the righteous who walk before God, for a person’s sitting, movements, and dealings when he is alone in his house are not like his sitting, movements, and dealings when he is before a great king… when a person takes to heart that the great King, the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory fills all the earth, stands over him and sees his deeds, as it is said: ‘Can a man hide in secret places and I not see him? says the Lord’ (Jeremiah 23:24), immediately fear and submission in dread of God and shame before Him will come upon him always.” It is easy to prove with certainty that this is law and not mere ethical exhortation. And all the many laws of sanctifying God’s name — such that if a Torah scholar behaves in a way that does not sanctify God’s name, or even has a stain on his garment. And we have not yet reached matters of guarding one’s eyes and the covenant, “and do not stray,” and excessive conversation with a woman, even one’s own wife.
One can list more and more without number, and you yourself already know which of these you observe and which not.
There is an aspect in which it is proper to cover one’s sins, and there is an aspect in which it is proper to confess one’s sins publicly, and this is among the paths of repentance. I studied this topic and came to the conclusion that in my situation the right thing is to reveal my sins. If they are hidden, that does not mean they do not exist.
Does that make you Reform, or deprive you of the right to share your Torah with people?
The quantity of laws a person fails to keep is not what matters. What matters is how much he truly, sincerely, honestly wants to keep everything, and how intensely it pains him every single moment, and how much he struggles with his very last grain of strength. The claim is about lack of effort and lack of caring; one who truly struggles cannot be faulted for what he was unable to accomplish.
You do not know me. I am very ill. For most of my life I have been confined to bed in tremendous constant pain that no medicine helps. And I also went through horrifying and unusual traumas from infancy, and this very much weakened my psychological powers.
The matter of how many laws a person succeeds in observing is measured by how much strength he has. If you have much more strength than I do, and it pains you less and you exert yourself less about it, then you are less observant of Jewish law than I am, even if numerically you manage to keep more laws than I do.
If this is what I testify about myself, that is a personal matter, and you do not know me and have no right to say that I am not telling the truth.
So in that respect, if in your view the fact that a person lacks the strength to fulfill all the sections of Jewish law in all their details makes him Reform, I do not see that you are any less Reform than I am.
.
As for Aristotle: the first four chapters of Laws of the Foundations of the Torah are copied almost word for word from Aristotle or Avicenna. That includes the opening laws where he writes, “The foundation of foundations and pillar of wisdoms is to know that there is a First Being,” etc.; that is copied from Avicenna almost word for word. So Aristotle is a foundation of Torah according to Maimonides, and Maimonides wrote this explicitly in Guide for the Perplexed II at the end of chapter 11, where he wrote that the fact that this seems foreign to some people is because we have lost our wisdom and attached ourselves to the opinions and practices of the wicked among the ignorant nations. And Maimonides wrote in Guide for the Perplexed and also in his commentary on the Mishnah in Chagigah that Ma’aseh Bereishit is Aristotle’s Physics, and Ma’aseh Merkavah is Aristotle’s Metaphysics. There were indeed those who disagreed with Maimonides, but if I follow Maimonides, does that make me Reform? According to your method it comes out that Maimonides himself was Reform.
Your claims are so unfounded that I cannot believe they arise from intellectual, learned, deep, and sincere reflection on this matter. But I will not speculate about what they do arise from. Look at that yourself.
After the fact that in Jewish law there are cases where one should confess one’s sins publicly because of repentance and so on, and I did this despite how difficult it is — to overcome the shame, to be exposed and vulnerable — for you to come attack and humiliate me because you do not reveal your own sins and outwardly appear more observant of Jewish law than I am, that is really inappropriate.

First of all, I did not attack you for studying Aristotle. Greater and wiser people than I have studied him. Rather, the point is that you make him the essence of Judaism and neglect the practical part of the commandments. Almost everyone would agree (and Rabbi Michi has written this several times too) that Judaism is Jewish law. How a person interprets things is his own matter and everyone follows his own reasoning.
I also did not write anywhere that Maimonides was Reform. Some would say his views were radical, certainly for his time, but Maimonides observed practical commandments. How he interpreted them and their reasons is not relevant here.
In my opinion Aristotle is less relevant for our times, though there is no objection to studying him, and there is no doubt that the Greek philosophers laid the intellectual foundations in all areas of today’s science and philosophy. I too, and others I’ve heard, have thoughts and conceptions that people would call Platonic, but no matter how you turn it, that is at most a side outlook and certainly not halakhic Orthodox Judaism, much as I dislike the term.
Judaism is first and foremost Jewish law. One who observes Jewish law remains inside; one who does not remains outside.
If Spinoza had observed commandments, his doctrine would have been integrated into Judaism. In my view as well there is no objection to studying him either, even if a person observes commandments.
But a person who comes and says that the commandments do not obligate him, or that they are allegorical, or who brings philosophical proofs from Aristotle, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, or from Gnostic or Pythagorean or Orphic or Buddhist positions — he is outside.
You can discuss whether these things are true or not, but what does that have to do with keeping commandments?
From the side of Judaism, one must keep commandments, and there is no source in the Sages, medieval authorities, or later authorities that permits not keeping anything at all.

A person can be under compulsion in certain matters, but to throw everything away and keep nothing at all? Is there not a single commandment you can keep that would not damage your health?
There are things from which one who is ill but not in mortal danger is exempt, there are things set aside in the face of saving a life, there are things from which a person in certain situations is exempt, and Jewish law is full of such cases. But I have never heard of a person exempt from everything. The closest is Rabbi Michi, who argued that for an atheist, his commandments and transgressions are not commandments and transgressions, and even if he wanted to he could not fulfill them, but that is not the situation here.
Also, a person who is exempt because of psychological or medical problems from certain commandments still needs to keep what he can, and on occasions when he feels better perhaps to keep what he is exempt from on days when his condition does not allow him to keep them.
But to throw away all the commandments like that? You wrote on your website that keeping the commandments distances you from yourself. What about “nullify your will before His will”?
And in general, if everyone says he does not connect to the commandments, or that they prevent him from being himself, there will be no Judaism. Everyone will say that this or that prohibition distances him from himself and from his inner self.
And that, in my opinion, is a person’s work.

There is no doubt that no one is perfect and everyone has what to fix and strengthen, but there is a difference between stumbling or failing in certain things and throwing everything away and saying it does not apply to you.
It is not that you stumble here and there; from the outset you give up on everything and do not even try.
How is this different from a traditional Jew who believes but drives on the Sabbath? Would you also call him observant?
Rabbi Michi wrote in several places that his condition is worse than that of an atheist.

I have no problem if you live as you see fit, and if you think and have concluded that the commandments are not applicable to you then do what you think. In that case my words are not relevant anyway. But to say that you are observant is another matter. Do you really think you are observant? Not in order to provoke, but really to understand how that works out.

I am not coming to attack or humiliate, and certainly not to judge, but just as we would not call a secular Jew observant, nor a traditional Jew observant, nor a Muslim observant, we also would not call a person who claims that the commandments do not apply to him observant.

To Yoav,
You wrote:
“Judaism is first and foremost Jewish law. One who observes Jewish law remains inside; one who does not remains outside.
If Spinoza had observed commandments, his doctrine would have been integrated into Judaism.”

Maimonides sharply rejects this conception. In Guide for the Perplexed it is explained that man’s ultimate end is attaining knowledge of God. If a person has a headache or there are thieves in his house, he cannot occupy himself with knowledge of God. Therefore the commandments were given to order practical life and society in a healthy way, so that a person can occupy himself with the ultimate end.
This is written in the first law of the Mishneh Torah: “The foundation of foundations and pillar of wisdoms is to know that there is a First Being,” etc. It does not say that the foundation is observance of commandments, but knowledge of God.

And in Duties of the Heart 4:4 it says:
“The Creator, may He be blessed, rewards the outward act done by the limbs with visible reward in this world, and rewards the hidden and concealed act with hidden reward, and that is the reward of the World to Come.”
And in Guide for the Perplexed III:34 he wrote that according to this, the commandments are like a medicine for a headache; and just as with any medicine, for one person it helps and for another it harms. According to this, it comes out that really each person should have the commandments tailored to his own unique condition. And this is the truth, and the Torah was only given in general terms, just as there are things that are generally considered beneficial to health, but for certain individuals are harmful. Like exercise: it is known to be healthy, but someone with a broken leg needs rest. It is just that if so, the whole framework would fall apart, and therefore everyone was obligated to observe in any case.
This is explained from verses and the Sages in countless places, and much in Deuteronomy and the Prophets. Does the Shema, which was accepted as foundational, deal with practical commandments? And Hillel the Elder said to the person who came to convert that love (for the Creator and for man, which are one as Rashi wrote there) is the whole Torah on one foot, and all the rest is its explanation. And love and knowledge are the same thing.
And Maimonides wrote at the end of chapter 4 of Laws of the Foundations of the Torah that Ma’aseh Merkavah, which according to his words is Aristotle’s metaphysics, is a “great matter,” while the discussions of Abaye and Rava are a “small matter.”

Obviously everything that the Creator revealed to His creatures is foundational and binding and vital, and one cannot possibly be lenient in it, certainly not empty it of its plain meaning, and certainly not give it up. The practical commandments are included in this, and after the Creator obligated us and made the covenant of Sinai with us concerning this, it is an absolute obligation, and there is in it divine wisdom and divine holiness. Heaven forbid that I mean to say that anyone may decide for himself whether and what to observe; to do so is complete rebellion and heresy. And in the words of God we have no right to determine what is more essential and important than what. But the Creator Himself wrote in the Torah (for me, Maimonides is Torah) that in His words there is a foundation and there are branches, and the foundation is attaining knowledge of God and love of Him, not practical commandments. And if Spinoza errs in attaining knowledge of God, then by that he is outside Judaism, because that is the essence; and even if he were meticulous in Jewish law like the greatest disciples of the Hazon Ish, it would not help him.
It is also written that one who acts not for its own sake — it would have been preferable had his placenta turned over his face, etc. And the whole permission to act not for its own sake is only because from acting not for its own sake one comes to act for its own sake. Meaning that “not for its own sake” has value not in itself, but only because it brings one to something different from itself. One who performs actions not for their own sake, and does not know why he does them, and says only that this is the will of God and one should not question it and it does not matter whether we understand — Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed III:25–26 attacks that approach very strongly.

Maimonides is worthy to be followed even where others disagree, but in this matter in my humble opinion I have not seen anyone disagree. For Scripture and the Sages are full of this in explicit terms. The view that the essence of Judaism is the practical commandments was innovated by Professor Leibowitz and the like, and has no reliable source whatsoever. And it is a badge of disgrace that we have so lost being a wise and understanding people, and so attached ourselves to the opinions and practices of the wicked among the ignorant nations (as Maimonides wrote in Guide for the Perplexed II:11), that all left to us is practical observance like the act of a mere monkey.
I mean that the commandments are a foundation and an absolute divine obligation only when they are together with all parts of the Torah, whose principal part is attaining knowledge of God — not as an isolated thing on its own. Just as attaining knowledge of God when detached from the commandments also has no place. The Creator revealed a Torah that is like a tree: there is a root and trunk and there are branches. The root is to know that there is a First Being. People read that and immediately move on — fine, I already know that. If they would linger analytically over Maimonides’ wording there, they would see how many questions there are in it and how much study it requires. The view that the main thing is practical commandments turns the tree upside down: it makes the root into a branch and the branch into a root, and shrinks the Torah into strange behavior without wisdom.
It is written that one who goes to perform a commandment and is prevented against his will, Scripture counts it to him as though he had performed it. Of course that is only if he truly wanted with all his soul very much to fulfill it. You claim that it cannot be that I am unable to fulfill even one commandment and do not truly want to. I do not want to repeat things again, but how can you know better than I do what strength I have and what I do not have? That is my personal matter; I will give account for it before my Creator. Man sees the eyes, but the Lord sees the heart. If you see a woman in childbirth asking that a fire be lit for her on the Sabbath, would you argue with her: what, are you really that cold? Won’t a coat be enough for you? If you see a man totally shattered in an accident, trembling like a leaf in an intensive care bed and not keeping any commandment, would you argue with him: but you can make an effort for five minutes to put on tefillin. If you see a person hospitalized in psychiatry suffering an acute psychotic episode and not keeping any Jewish law, would you argue with him that he can nevertheless try to keep one law. If you see a bereaved mother whose soul has shattered and who is weeping bitterly and terribly and at the moment is not keeping any commandment, would you rebuke her because you have never heard of a person exempt from all the commandments? What kind of behavior is that?
Most of my years were spent in exemplary observance of commandments. It is not that I exempt myself in principle. And nothing has changed in my views since then. When I could, I could, and I kept them. My leaving the Haredi framework came from a nervous collapse involving direct mortal danger; I had an irresistible urge pushing toward suicide. When I say that laws can distance me from myself, I mean that my desire to live is very fragile, that for me this immediately leads to clinical depression that can cause suicide and is considered an illness more dangerous than cancer. The Creator’s will is that saving life overrides everything and that “the Merciful One exempts one under compulsion”; “nullify your will before His will” does not apply here. My own will is to keep commandments, and His will is that I preserve my life, and I nullify my will before His will.
I am constantly in great pain and long with all my soul for the tremendous uplifting of the spirit, the light and pleasure like a taste of the World to Come, that I had in tzitzit and tefillin and Kiddush and all the commandments. Nothing gives me pleasure that comes even remotely close to it. I used to tremble from excitement and happiness each time anew. The lack of this darkens my life, and I yearn for it with every fiber of my soul and accept my inability as severe suffering. It is just that commandments require certain psychological strengths that I simply do not have, and it is dangerous for me.

Continuation of the response,
After thinking it over, I decided not to refrain from adding:
In my youth I made a serious suicide attempt, and had a person not happened to pass by in a deserted place where it was not at all likely anyone would pass, and call for help, I would not be alive now. I am not just talking abstractly about danger.
Many have written about me that this is a crazy person, mentally ill, and therefore one should pay no attention to his words.

The Sages’ definition of a shoteh — someone without understanding — does not at all overlap with the definition of mental illness. Convincing arguments have been written that from the letters of Rabbi Nachman one sees that he had a clinical mental illness. That interests me no more than whether he had diabetes. From his writings one sees with certainty that he was not a shoteh without understanding according to the definitions of the Sages. I am not comparing, only arguing that things need to be judged according to their content and not according to the label “crazy” that people stick on a person in one word; and someone who does not know or understand psychiatric medicine cannot diagnose or know what he is talking about.

Sorry, just one more remark that seems important to me.
There are very many laws that are counted among the 613 commandments (all 613 commandments together are the definition of “Jewish law”) that I do in fact keep because I can. At least I can try to make the effort. All the duties of the heart that are full-fledged laws from among the 613 commandments, such as love and fear, etc. Torah study, extreme caution against neglect of Torah study, which also belongs to duties of the limbs. And all the commandments between man and his fellow, which are much more than the rule of “what is hateful to you,” and more too than “love your fellow as yourself”; rather, there are very many commandments among the 613, with many practical halakhic details. For example, people think the prohibition of evil speech is some kind of pious matter and that in five minutes you can know what is permitted and what is forbidden, until the Chafetz Chaim came and showed that it is a whole learned Shulchan Arukh with many sections. There are many similar matters, and I engage in them and observe them and do not see myself as exempt, because for that I do have the capacity. For example, if there is an elderly person or a disabled person on the sidewalk walking more slowly than I do, I do not overtake him, so that he should not feel disheartened. That is an explicit Torah-level practical law, no less than kashrut or keeping the Sabbath — one that not many know and not many keep. I study and am careful to keep this in practice too, and all matters of this kind, which are very many. And I do this not out of mere human feeling but as one commanded and acting by force of its being a commandment in the Torah that binds me. I also work very hard on keeping the laws of evil speech and think before every word I utter.
Also in monetary law I am very careful, including in things people do not know or do, or think are pious extras when in truth they are Torah commandments from among the 613. Or for example, Rabbenu Yonah says that every time one causes a person to do something he does not himself want to do, one violates the Torah prohibition of “do not rule over him with crushing labor.” For example, if my child is embarrassed to show his drawing to an aunt who came to visit, and I say to him, “Don’t be shy, show it to her,” I violate that Torah prohibition. And many more things like this. Psychological capacities are not well understood, and I have no explanation why there are commandments that I do as one commanded, by force of Jewish law, and that does become possible for me in terms of my abilities. I do not know you, but just as an example, maybe you do overtake an elderly person on the sidewalk because you do not have the patience to walk at his pace. It comes out that in that respect I observe Jewish law more than you do. So shall we start counting what I keep that you do not, and what you keep that I do not, and based on that decide which of us is more Reform than the other? In principle I am saying that it is simply not true to say that I keep no law at all. The thought that I keep no law comes from the narrowing that has occurred in the concept of Jewish law, and that is the destruction of Torah. They say that if the Rema had written “the custom is not to steal,” then actually it would stop being the case that in almost every charity fund there are thefts and embezzlements. And I would add that if there were a story of righteous men that Elijah the Prophet appeared to the author of Bnei Yissaschar and told him not to steal, or that they used to tell stories about the Rabbi of Brisk that he did not steal, that too would help more than a plain verse in the Ten Commandments and a law from among the 613 that is read on the Sabbath with cantillation and nobody pays attention to. In Mishnah Berurah, section 156, it is written that the Shulchan Arukh does not contain the whole of Jewish law in its completeness. After all, the laws of evil speech are not in the Shulchan Arukh, nor the laws of love and fear and the like. And these are halakhic sections because they are counted among the 613, while the Shulchan Arukh does not deal with such things. This narrowing of the concept of Jewish law disconnects the observer of Jewish law from the Giver of the law at Mount Sinai, and that is a great destruction. And without this narrowing, it is simply not true to say that I exempt myself from all the commandments, nor that you accept upon yourself all the commandments (I do not mean you personally, since I do not know you; it is a general statement about most people who hold the opinion you expressed).

With God’s help, first day for asking for abundant rain, 5783

To the candle of his lamp — greetings,

From your words I get the impression that your spirit is terrified specifically by commandments between man and God, but by commandments between man and his fellow — you do not have terrors and nightmares.

It occurred to me — completely non-professionally — that perhaps you would not suffer nightmares if you observed some commandments or practices not for the sake of the commandment, but in order to bring satisfaction to your family, who presumably feel very uncomfortable with your conduct. Perhaps commandments observed for the sake of your family would not have prosecution from the terrifying spirit, since they are “between man and his fellow.”

With blessings for a complete recovery,
Chanokh Henech Feinshmaker-Polti

The rationale behind my suggestion is that there are people for whom halakhic exactitude brings psychological pressure, all the more so for someone aware of all the sides of all the doubts in every act, who may come to “atomic pressure.” It is possible, then, that observing the commandment lightly, as a practice that brings satisfaction to your surroundings and not as an obligatory divine demand, could ease the psychological pressure while performing them. And of course my advice is only the raising of a possible direction for thought and for consultation with a qualified professional.

By the way, following this thread, it has only now become clear to me that the Nir Stern in question is the owner of the blog “Explained Talmud and Articles,” which I read about a decade ago (and I always wondered who he was). Maybe one cannot rely on him for Jewish law, but at least in his past he was a Torah scholar. (And if “Torah scholar” is only a term for wisdom and does not include fear of Heaven, then he is still that today. And perhaps even today he does fear Heaven, as he says, and therefore even today he is a Torah scholar, to whom the laws pertaining to a Torah scholar apply.)

I know someone else who may be similar to him, who used to be very strict about keeping Torah and commandments and who had (and still has) a deep religious consciousness, and who today does not observe — not because of heresy or laziness, but because of psychological problems. (And he says about himself that he is not exempt because of the law of a shoteh, but because observance of commandments does not apply to him in his psychological state. He does not know, but apparently this is an exemption due to compulsion.) I have no doubt that he is indeed exempt. Because if he is right, then he is exempt as he says; and if he is mistaken, then certainly he has a problem in his grasp of reality and is a shoteh. Because he really is a God-fearing person and sincerely believes he is exempt. It should be noted that he was diagnosed as having schizophrenia (and indeed I saw him in a psychotic episode of delusional thoughts), but he is not aware of this and claims he has no delusional thoughts (he does not really know what schizophrenia is and what delusional thoughts are)). In his case too, the problem is mainly with commandments between man and God.

I came out of hospitalization with a discharge letter saying I have no clinical psychiatric diagnosis whatsoever. I am among the few who can prove scientifically and unequivocally that he is normal and has written certification of it (:
For example, a woman who has been raped, or a woman whose only son died, or a soldier who went through a hard battle, can be psychologically damaged in an extreme way, and sometimes need hospitalization, but as far as psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia are concerned they are completely healthy. They are reacting in a normal way to a very problematic situation. Just as someone run over in an accident is not sick in the same sense as a person with diabetes. So indeed I am damaged, perhaps really more than average, but in terms of basic mental health I am completely healthy, with reality-testing, coherence, etc. This is not only my opinion; I can show medical certificates for it.

This is a subtle subject, and regarding the individual person only the Knower of secrets can testify about him. But as a general approach, at the level of what is proper, certainly a person must exert himself with all his strength to keep commandments in every situation. Factually, from my acquaintance with many mentally ill people diagnosed with schizophrenia, there is not even one of them who managed to keep the commandments as he could before becoming ill. Cognitive abilities decline, and along with them motivation and attention.

This is a very interesting discussion in its own right, similar to the issue of criminal law regarding a person organically impaired, who in Israeli criminal law would be considered only entitled to mitigation in sentencing, but still considered to have committed the offense and to receive punishment (strange, but true), as opposed to a psychotic person who is considered exempt.

A book came out on the subject called My Soul in My Question.
(Though it was written by someone with a knitted kippah, about whom the Hazon Ish said that they do not believe in the 13 principles of faith — according to what is written in Nir Stern’s column — so maybe one cannot read the book.)

Hello Nir, I’ll respond to you, but along the way this is also a kind of lesson for the public on a matter I know up close. It seems that generally you suffer from strong obsessiveness, and when it is expressed in Torah study and intellectual inquiry — as you testify, that you are extremely exacting about neglect of Torah study and Torah study itself — it stands against you by draining your strength, and Torah weakens a person’s strength, and your toil in Torah is also evident. You are left without psychological strength for the other commandments, which in any case are very hard for you because they are done with extremity and perhaps compulsiveness. And perhaps you fall under the category of someone psychologically compelled, because if you continue you will completely lose your mind and God forbid reach dark places… and you feel obliged to stop and not observe, and this is the reality you are locked into and have no way out of. My advice on the matter is this: stop teaching immediately! And let your head unwind! Be a simple householder for some period — in the sense of observing commandments simply, without deep thought at all — and invest your strength in the commandments that are hard for you to keep right now, and be observant. Maybe it would be appropriate to advise that you only set fixed times for Torah study, an hour or something, and that’s it, and the rest of the time keep commandments and do not engage in analysis the rest of the day, not even in divinity, only a simple basis. Dress up as a simple Jew — not an extreme Lithuanian zealot and not a secular investigator; there is a middle, things in between… be Sephardi.. :).. so that you have strength for the other commandments. But in your condition maybe you should even stop study entirely for a period, and in pressing circumstances see section 246 in Yoreh De’ah on how to get by… I saw something similar in the letters of the Hazon Ish, that he wrote to someone not to study for two weeks, and so too I saw, if I remember correctly, about the Rabbi of Brisk that a doctor ordered him not to study for three years. It is worth trying, and do not be afraid; after all, as things stand now you are already neglecting certain commandments, so nothing terrible will happen if you test whether by limiting Torah study in pressing circumstances you can keep the other commandments. And even according to the Vilna Gaon, who held one must study at every free moment when possible — apparently you probably cannot. (This also explains the other commandments between man and his fellow, which depend on character traits, and according to your nature do not involve psychological difficulty; that is why they are easy for you to keep even with extreme exactitude… We have never seen a compulsive person come to help someone who fell, pick him up, and then drop him again because he did not intend properly… and the like.) That is how it seems to me in the matter, and somewhat like what the Vilna Gaon wrote to explain “minimizing conversation,” through which Torah is acquired — meaning to have a little mundane conversation, because otherwise a person’s mind will become deranged. Good luck, and I would be glad for a response in your usual manner in this important discussion, both on the law and on the case, also for the public benefit… but do not delve into it too much..! :).. with love, Emanuel..

Emanuel, how are you giving a diagnosis or psychoanalysis to a person you do not know? The definition of “obsessiveness,” at least according to the accepted psychiatric classification, is very far from what you have in front of you. In general, it is very hard to understand a person’s psychological structure without deep familiarity with him.

Emanuel, in my opinion you’d be better off not giving him two-cent advice for frumkeit. His accounting is directly with God. Either God will accept his claims or He won’t. We are not a party to the matter.

Shai, I did not give a diagnosis; I also emphasized from the start that this was also for the public’s learning, only what it seems to me, and I also emphasized that he should respond regarding both the law and the case, and to give some direction to a Jew in distress. Y.D., I did not understand what “frumkeit” means, but all of our accounting is before God; still, it is permitted to help a Jew in distress, especially since he seems interested in that, as he publicizes his pain in public..

In my opinion, the more wounded a person is, the better a therapist he can be — provided he has awareness of his own injury, which requires enormous work with therapists and with himself. Injury can prevent a person from being aware because it hurts him, and then he is also problematic in relationships with others, but it can also open his heart and mind and make him more understanding than others, if he is brave and does not recoil from looking at reality as it is. If one learns not to be ashamed of such things, it can add a great deal.
The best therapist I ever met is a woman who from childhood went through horrifying things that cannot even be said, and this caused her to have 22 different personalities in her psyche that operate without coordination and sometimes do not know about each other.
As a conclusion from this, I invite whoever is reading here:
https://jewishpsychotherapy6.wordpress.com

To Y.D., my dear friend,
Thank you for your support, here and in general.
But thank you too, Emanuel. Every opinion and thought can be fruitful as food for thought and for another look and another angle of view. Thank you for the thought and care you invested. In the end, the responsibility for any advice is only on the one receiving it, whether to accept it or not, according to his own judgment alone, so there is no reason to be afraid of hearing advice.