There is a point here that in my opinion the Rabbi did not address.
Everyone agrees that volunteering and giving charity are important, but religious and Haredi people do this much more than secular people.

That is, in realizing the overlap of shared values — religious and Haredi people do more.

At the same time, on value issues where there is disagreement, each person implements the moral principles that seem correct in his own eyes. What fault is it of the religious person that he does not arrive at the moral value that seems correct in the Rabbi’s eyes and in mine as well?

In other words, even if religious people are not outcome-wise more moral than secular people, they make much more effort to be so than their secular counterparts. And that in itself, in my opinion, is very worthy of appreciation.

(And perhaps no less than the bottom line of the results.)

I hope that in your next responses you’ll read what I wrote and address it.

The Rabbi wrote explicitly:

“Does that necessarily cover for the fact that it gives problematic treatment to women, to secular people, to LGBT people, that it does not legitimize governmental corruption, that it acts properly in the Chief Rabbinate and in halakhic rulings, that it does not encourage criminals like Katsav?”

In other words: it realizes moral values in a nice way, but errs in formulating a moral doctrine in other areas (women, LGBT, etc.)

To that I replied: even if it (the religious public) errs, at least it makes much more effort for values (whether the “correct” ones or the “mistaken” ones) beyond that.

The idea I’m trying to clarify in this issue is, in my opinion, very simple.

I’ll add that I never liked the self-righteous style of many people in chats and responsa. But I think the last response was simply not respectful of you.

Even if I’m an idiot and what I said is complete nonsense, in my opinion the Rabbi can write in a more pleasant way. I don’t think I’m the first to say this at all, and in the past week in particular.

To Rabbi Michi — what do you think about the Haredi claim that their women actually want this social arrangement? Like, regarding the fact that they make girls dress as though we were in Europe, that seems a bit wrong to me. But adult women — who is forcing them to be in this situation if not they themselves? Especially since the fact that there is no Haredi (or Hardal) feminist movement at all proves that most women probably don’t care.

To Yehonatan — there is no doubt that Michi’s megalomania and intoxication with intellectual power have driven him out of his mind and caused him to see every opinion different from his own as a stupid opinion.

I don’t think it’s megalomania or intoxication with intellectual power.
I think jabs and laughter in good spirit are nice, and there is definitely room for that. What bothered me is that this style achieves nothing that a polite response would not achieve, except for the potential insult to the addressee. The Rabbi’s conduct is unclear to me, and therefore I am puzzled.

The Rabbi is polite in face-to-face meetings, so he needs to channel his nerves somehow. The site is his way to vent.
Please judge him favorably!

As for the question of how and whether I achieve my goals, I won’t address it. That of course depends on the question of what my goals are. I will address the comments raised here.

Yehonatan, if you had invested a minute of thought you would have seen for yourself that the clarification you gave added nothing at all. I was asked a question and answered it. Now you are adding something else (which was of course completely obvious from the start) — that they try harder. And therefore? What does that say about our discussion? That they are okay in the areas I’m talking about? Why do you think this is relevant to the discussion? Is it not appropriate to point out to you such irrelevant and trolling responses?
What’s more, regarding the original question it should also be noted that this volunteering includes not only the Religious Zionists and modern Haredim but others as well. So it has nothing to do with my discussion of the conservative parts in any way.

My impatience lately stems from the fact that many commenters troll me with questions that are beside the point, as happened here too. And instead of investing one more minute to check the arguments and respond substantively, or to examine their own way after I commented on it, they get offended when one points this out and accuse me of intoxication with power and arrogance. On the contrary, check what I wrote to you here and tell me that I wasn’t right and that my response to you wasn’t substantive or was arrogant.

I invest a great deal of time answering everyone who turns to me here on the site and in general, and therefore it is only reasonable to expect that the questions and the responses that follow them will be substantive. More and more, that is not the case here. People respond from the gut and just waste my time, and on that I comment sarcastically.

I explained twice that the efforts to realize values are worthy of appreciation. Efforts that are somewhat lacking in Haredi society.
Apparently the reasoning I wrote is so bizarre in the Rabbi’s eyes that he won’t even point out what is flawed in it, and so all I have left to say is that the discussion is exhausted.

And one more thing,
even if you respond to a thousand people a day, that does not legitimize impolite behavior. If you don’t have time, don’t respond.
There is no need to behave vulgarly. “Torah with proper conduct” — nonsense. I’m not hurt, but I’m convinced that other people are.

Yehonatan, your assumption that publicly commenting on manners is itself a polite act is worthy of praise. That is even if we ignore the gap between the fact that the questioner is asking for the respondent’s help (and therefore ought to make every effort not to burden the respondent beyond what is necessary), whereas the respondent is answering for free and therefore is entitled to determine the policy by his actions.

I join the words of the commenter “Man” — as someone who has also taken buckets of abuse from the Rabbi, there is something here that needs to be noticed: everyone here gets lessons and columns of a rare level for free, on a variety of subjects and with great depth — and he has opened for many people different avenues of thought.
In addition, there is accessible and quick responsa for every question, including attacks on the Rabbi from every direction, some of which from his perspective are nonsense, and therefore it is natural for an intellectual of such a level to be short-tempered — and intoxication with power is also very common among people on a much lower level, whereas in his case it is minor. And not always.

I write this as a Haredi, who does not agree with the Rabbi that one may disagree with medieval authorities (Rishonim), certainly not with the sages of the Talmud, and does not agree that God has left the land, and who thinks emotion is very important, and more — and certainly in his opinion I lack understanding and thought and haven’t read all the columns… in my humble opinion, no — and nevertheless I have grown wiser from the Rabbi, and he is a wise man and a Torah scholar who, if he wore a frock coat and Hamburg hat, and rounded off his views a bit, would be among the greatest heads of yeshivot, and we would vote according to his word…
Bottom line: one must give honor to sages, and someone who is very uncomfortable doesn’t have to ask,

Yehonatan, do you really not understand what I’m telling you, or are you pretending? The Torah study of the Haredim is also worthy of appreciation. So what? The discussion wasn’t about that.
The original claim was: how do my words about desecration of God’s name and the problematic nature of Religious Zionist conduct (even though I was speaking about Haredim and Religious Zionists together) fit with their being first and foremost among the volunteers in the nation. So I ignored the irrelevant question, and answered him that this is indeed worthy of appreciation, but it does not cover for shortcomings in other areas. My remarks concerned those other areas (corruption, outrageous laws, support for Haredi conduct, attitudes toward women and LGBT people, and more).
And then you write to me that they are better than others in volunteering in those areas (which are shared by everyone), as if you hadn’t read the discussion so far and as if there were some exciting new insight here, when all you are doing is repeating the original claim (which itself was stupid). And I wonder, and keep wondering, what connection your words have to the subject of the discussion, and I wonder even more how it is possible that a person of reasonable logic does not understand this even after I’ve explained it several times. This doesn’t require a full day of study.
Indeed they (both the Haredim and the Religious Zionists) are better in the fields of volunteering. After all, I agreed to that from the outset (although even there one could quibble), so what did you come to add?! Does that mean they don’t support corruption? Or that they treat women or LGBT people nicely? Or that they run the Chief Rabbinate well? Or that the patronage laws they pass are proper?
You can of course claim that all these areas are actually very much to your liking, but in any case that does not have even the slightest connection to the claim about volunteering. Your clarification does not add a shred of information or an argument relevant to our discussion. But that really doesn’t stop you from insisting again and again that it does, without explaining, and to top it off also accusing me of arrogance and other noble qualities. So in your view it isn’t reasonable to explode after a series of such stupid trolling? The feeling is that I’m talking to a wall, but the wall expects me to relate to it as though it were at least Einstein.
Truly bizarre. Instead of standing aside and being embarrassed by your nonsense, you get offended and scold me. An upside-down world have I seen.

A response to Michi’s first comment —

Michi argued that the high moral level displayed by Hardalim and Religious Zionists does not necessarily indicate a high moral level, and that they belittle other people.

Substantively:

I claim that there is nothing especially wrong with the attitude of Hardalim and Religious Zionists toward women and toward secular people. All in all, things work out quite okay in the reality on the ground (it’s not only that they serve in reserve duty together). Isolated incidents can be found anywhere.

As for LGBT people — I know of no especially bad attitude beyond isolated incidents.
For example, I would give up the word “perverts,” which the leading sage Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, may he live and be well, uses. Maybe there are a few more very isolated things, but that is negligible.

As for governmental corruption — on the contrary, when did you hear of criminal proceedings being opened against someone from Religious Zionism or against a rabbi from Religious Zionism?
Maybe there are some, but not too many. Certainly fewer than among the secular people themselves. The burden of proof is on you here.
As for doing things that are kosher but stink, like being ministers in all kinds of invented ministries — here I agree that this is something that needs improvement. But still, it is legal.
And in any case, apparently that didn’t stop you from going to the election and voting for a candidate who also used invented ministries for his party (the one you voted for).

Regarding the letter for Katsav —
That was more than a decade ago. And it involved only some of the rabbis of the Kav camp, who are a very small part of all the rabbis of the Religious Zionist public. In any case, even for them I agree that it was a mistake (though nowadays one can also see that according to the system, cases are stitched up against people whose sin is not especially great). And in any case, even the letter for Katsav is something very isolated, and the fact is that you had to go back more than a decade to find something . . . . That only proves how right I am.

Bottom line, what is written on the site is, in my opinion, unnecessary and divisive, and worst of all — simply not true when tested against the facts, as I show in a simple way.