Thursday, December 24, 2009

some thoughts on the article on R' Shachter

Thoughts on the Mishpacha magazine article about R' Shachter (linked to it for those like myself who do not subscribe):

1) I am surprised that certain blog writers did not start saying hallel when they saw the article (maybe they did?), as their joy seems boundless over the notion of someone like R' Shachter being accepted by the right (assuming that Mishpacha magazine is a barometer for what is passable in the chareidi world). Is there such a sense of insecurity about modern orthodoxy that the stamp of approval by those in the "other" camp means so much?

2) OK, so you made it into the RW world, but what at what price? I recall a YU Rosh Yeshiva once say that he never saw the Rav open a secular book. Rav Shachter is quoted as saying that he never heard the Rav mention philosophy in shiur execpt once. I was never in the Rav's shiur (he was no longer saying shiur way before my time at YU), but judging his legacy from the fruit it has borne certainly leads me to think that his impact is greater than only the chiddushei Torah he left behind. What of the Talmud shiur at Stern? Religious Zionism? And that just scratches the surface. Is it worth forgetting about all that for the sake of acceptance?

3) And who are those applauding the article so happy to be accepted by? By other shallow people who would otherwise reject the Rav if they had a more complete picture of his legacy? Lo heim v’lo scharam. I reject as equally silly those who view (as expressed in comments to some of my posts) the opinions of R’ Elyashiv and other “chareidi” gedolim as irrelevant to their MO world and those who view the Rav as treif or call him JB because he does not fit into their expectations. Why should those of us who respect the Rav as a gaon (which it is possible to do even if you disagree with his stance on each and every issue) care whether some segment of the community closes themselves off to his voice? It’s their loss, not ours. I guess it matters to you if you are concerned with the politics of the community as a whole and feel that you need to raise your voice and demand acceptance by the public, but I that is largely a wasted effort and the energy can better be spent doing other things. Of course, I have no pulpit and no public position, no children to marry off at the present time, or any other similar concerns, so I am free to care less what other people think, but I'm in no rush to change : )

4) In general, my family does not read Mishpacha and I try to keep other Jewish newspapers away except as needed for certain ads (for the sake of shopping or my wife's business). Why? Because if I read the NY Times and get upset at its bias, its shallowness, its politics, I just dismiss it as the nuts at the Times. But if I read a Jewish publication and see the same politics, shallowness, bias, and other nonsense, it's the nuts in my backyard, and I feel the pain of being part of a community that celebrates this low level of discourse and builds readership by providing more and more of the same. Why should I invite this stuff into my home to just get angry or depressed? For example, a few weeks ago a newspaper that I thought was a little better had an article which described certain chassidism as "hooligans". Whatever the point being made was, couldn't it have been made without using that word? It's not hilchos lashon hara that should be the only concern, but also the idea of saying "lo tahor" instead of "tamei", the tone of writing. I try to toss that paper in the garbage if I see it in the house. And I haven't even gotten started on the topic of the crass materialism which is marketed to the "frum" consumer. Maybe the article on R' Shachter is nice, but I would not subscribe to a publication on the basis of one article any more than I would buy a TV for my home because PBS sometimes has a nice program on. Maybe I'm just a fanatic, but that's how I see it.

11 comments:

  1. Worse than calling Chasidim hooligans would be referring to hooligans in the presence of an Irishman, which I once did, and he made it clear that he didn't appreciate it at all.

    Oddly, though, my mother often refers to rowdy troublemakers as Chuligans, with the stress on the third syllable- chu-li-GANZ.

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  3. I just looked up the etymology of hooligans, and I was fascinated to learn how the word got into my mother's lexicon-- which will also explain why the article chose that particular locution!
    http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hooligan

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  4. For once I am with you 100% :-)

    the link is broken so I have not read the article but did hear about it.

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  5. chaim b.11:40 AM

    Sorry, the link was working yesterday. Maybe they took down the article.

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  6. Maryland11:46 AM

    Its nice piece. Well written but far from a clear picture of the Rav. I dont know why they did it

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  7. Article on Rav Schachter in Mishapacha is some kind of milestone, indicating RW acceptance?

    Hah!

    It was about expanding their market, pure and simple.

    Nothing wrong with that.

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  9. Here's the link, it's not broken, just a PDF file:

    http://www.vosizneias.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/R-schachter.pdf

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  10. Tal Benschar3:29 PM

    Most of your post is along the lines of "Who cares what others think." Since that is generally my own personal attitude about such things, I can hardly criticize you.

    One part deserves a response.

    Rav Shachter is quoted as saying that he never heard the Rav mention philosophy in shiur execpt once. I was never in the Rav's shiur (he was no longer saying shiur way before my time at YU), but judging his legacy from the fruit it has borne certainly leads me to think that his impact is greater than only the chiddushei Torah he left behind. What of the Talmud shiur at Stern? Religious Zionism? And that just scratches the surface. Is it worth forgetting about all that for the sake of acceptance?

    You may not have meant it as such, but your post impliedly criticizes R. Shachter as distorting the Rav's legacy. But his observation -- that in the shiur, the Rav rarely, if ever, mentioned secular knowledge -- is one I have heard from many people and is, as far as I can tell, valid.

    While the Rav was certain a multi-facted individual who had far-reaching opions about such issues as secular knowledge and Zionism, at his core he was a traditional Lithuanian Rosh Yeshiva -- at least when it came to learning. The fact that his shiur (which after all was what he spent most of his time on) barely mentioned secular knowledge and might have been given in any right-wing yeshiva is certainly indicative of what he thought the place of secular knowledge is when it comes to Talmud Torah.

    This has many important ramifications when it comes to, for example, the place of "academic studies" in learning and psak halakha.

    That this makes the Rav a figure that can be respected as a gaon in learning by the right-wing world (even if they reject his shittos in other areas) is only a by-product of this fact.

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  11. I'm glad you made that point. I had someone over at my house this Shabbos that was fuming at the article, because it implied that the Rav never cited philosophers, while he does so fifteen at a time in several of his books.

    I explained to my guest that the point of the article was that the Rav comprised several fully formed individuals, and his Rosh Yeshiva personna, entirely separate from the other things he was, was the equal of any other great rosh yeshiva of the time, right wing, left wing, or whatever.

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