Re: On departing SCJM




On 4/3/06 6:43 PM, in article TxhYf.33305$Da7.11964@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
"cindys" <cstein1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Abe Kohen" <abekohen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e0qkc5$aul$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Joel Shurkin" <shurkin@xxxxxxx> wrote



Snip


Dear Joel,

I am very sorry to see you go and hope that you change your mind. While we
had our differences of opinion, I always felt that you were a worthy
adversary. We are all shaped by certain events in life. For me, one event
was the 1956 Hungarian Revolution which left me with a very sour taste for
anything Communist, Socialist or even left wing. The ideas espoused are
abhorrent to me, but the people who espouse them are not. I respect your
right to your opinion, although it evokes in me a visceral reaction as
strong as the revulsion you felt about the Shoah discussion.

Regarding the Shoa discussion, as you know I was raised UO. My rabbis were
almost all Holocaust survivors who became melamdim after the war to
provide
their families with a steady, albeit meager, parnasa. Not one, and I
repeat,
not a single one, ever espoused the nonsense posted here on scjm by some O
posters. Yes, we have our share of extremists on scjm, and we have our
share
of wannabees.



Suppose I take a 20 year old student who never studied algebra, geometry,
and trigonometry, and I teach her Calculus. Sure she'll be able to say
L'Hospital, Cauchy, Reimann, and even mechanically integrate some
functions,
but she won't have the underlying understanding of what algebraic or
geometric interpretation there might be. If anything, nuance will
certainly
be missing. [Professor Rubin will probably disagree.]

So it is with some newcomers to O-land. Yes they learn hard to overcome
their missing knowledge and cultural upbringing, but never having been
exposed to the finer nuances of O observation often become mechanical and
often extremist.


I say this with no malice intended, nor to dissuade anyone from being O.

[Abe sent me this via e-mail and I think it deserves a response. He most
assuredly was not a reason for my unhappiness.

I had hoped to trigger a serious discussion about what this group is about
when I stomped off and apparently have succeeded. Not everyone seems to get
the point but that's life.

I am one of the founders of SCJM and have put in a great deal of time on the
list and as a moderator. I give a damn.]



Dear Joel,

I am very sorry to see you go and hope that you change your mind. While we
had our differences of opinion, I always felt that you were a worthy
adversary. We are all shaped by certain events in life. For me, one event
was the 1956 Hungarian Revolution which left me with a very sour taste for
anything Communist, Socialist or even left wing. The ideas espoused are
abhorrent to me, but the people who espouse them are not. I respect your
right to your opinion, although it evokes in me a visceral reaction as
strong as the revulsion you felt about the Shoah discussion.

Regarding the Shoa discussion, as you know I was raised UO. My rabbis were
almost all Holocaust survivors who became melamdim after the war to provide
their families with a steady, albeit meager, parnasa. Not one, and I repeat,
not a single one, ever espoused the nonsense posted here on scjm by some O
posters. Yes, we have our share of extremists on scjm, and we have our share
of wannabees.



One of the former posters here, who is very knowledgeable about these
things, pointed out to me that some folks here are BTs and come at
Judaism with all the passion of a convert. They take every criticism of
Orthodoxy as an attack on The One True Judaism (trademark), even when none
is intended. They take it as an attempt to invalidate or trivialize their
otherwise admirable life choice, which at least from my end was never true,
and I am profoundly sorry if I gave that impression. Different strokes etc.
He said, however, that we sometimes get an atypical picture of Orthodoxy on
this list. I'll take his word for it.

As to the Shoah, there has been a total reassessment of the concept of group
guilt in the last 60 years from one end of the spectrum to the other because
of the Shoah, it's enormity, it's ineptitude (it missed most of the Jews, it
got a lot of innocents, it got people who were playing by the alleged rules
and missed many who did not, the sole requirement for martyrdom was where
you lived &c)....). The discussion seems to have missed some of the side
streets. The Shoah was simply too big and the nature of it simply doesn't
fit in Jewish history to fall back on the old explanations. The best
halachic discussion I have found for why it could not be group punishment
was a piece by Berel Lang in Judaism magazine a couple of years ago. I think
it's at
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0411/is_1-2_52/ai_112870700 .
There are lots of others.

There are enough Jews, many of them formally Orthodox, who walked away from
Judaism after the Shoah rather than accept the position that the God of the
Hebrews would slay or permit the slaughter of six million innocent people, a
million and a half of them children, and many of them observant, which
shows, if nothing else, that not everyone accepts glib responses: "we always
thought that way so we still think that way." Indeed, if I thought that was
true, I'd follow them. (One of my wife's best friends in California
discovered one day she was Jewish?with a bit of help from me. Her parents,
Holocaust survivors, refused to have anything to do with a God who would let
that happen, pretended they were not Jewish and never told her about her
heritage. That's unfortunate, but clearly they gave the matter more than an
autonomic response. Madeline Albright's family also comes to mind.)

It was the silence of some of the other Orthodox who know better that really
disturbed me.

The fault of the moderators was not that they let the messages about the
Shoah through. The fault was the nastiness of many messages, on many
subjects, the long flame wars well after the messages lost any relevant
content, the unnecessary jibes and cuts. My daughter at Schechter is taught
Derech eretz. Apparently not everyone has had her advantage. And not all of
us follow it when we should. They (we) the moderators, got bullied by too
many angry and unhappy people on the list.

I will come back regularly eventually. I am content mostly to watch for a
while. I did not like my responses to some of the earlier messages and need
to calm down myself and pay more attention to derek eretz myself. Too bad
there isn't a text. Or is there.....

J



Suppose I take a 20 year old student who never studied algebra, geometry,
and trigonometry, and I teach her Calculus. Sure she'll be able to say
L'Hospital, Cauchy, Reimann, and even mechanically integrate some functions,
but she won't have the underlying understanding of what algebraic or
geometric interpretation there might be. If anything, nuance will certainly
be missing. [Professor Rubin will probably disagree.]

So it is with some newcomers to O-land. Yes they learn hard to overcome
their missing knowledge and cultural upbringing, but never having been
exposed to the finer nuances of O observation often become mechanical and
often extremist.

I say this with no malice intended, nor to dissuade anyone from being O.
Like you Joel, I harbor a respect for those who make a life choice to be O,
while insisting on my my own right to live my life as my heart and soul
dictate. No one here is in a position to validate or invalidate your
Jewishness. You and I were both at Mount Sinai where God spoke to us in many
voices, (kolot), and while we all said "naaseh v'nishma," we all heard a
different kol (voice).

With respect to the third point, I strongly disagree with your assessment.
There was no silence on my part. The only time I am silent is if I am too
busy, disinterested in a topic, or silenced by the moderators. I had 17
posts rejected in March alone. Many were responses to Andy or about Andy.
Some were responses to an ad-hominem thread about me, which I was not
allowed to respond to. How did that thread get approved??? I am grateful to
those who stood up for me in that thread.

So while I do hope you come back, expect strong opinions from me, and expect
vehement disagreement on moderation policy.

[e-mailed and posted on 4-2-06]

Best regards,

Abe




Joel N. Shurkin
Baltimore, Maryland
On the web at: www.shurkin.us
Blogs: http://cabbageskings.blogspot.com
http://yussel.blogspot.com

---
"Ignorantia non est argumentum."
Baruch Spinoza



-----------
If you are referring to me, I am neither an extremist nor a wannabe. In
fact, most people find me rather liberal in many ways. I am on a completely
different wavelength than the majority of the UOs in my community. I
certainly have virtually nothing in common with any of the other women and
have zero desire to emulate any of them. But what I posted here regarding
collective judgment, emphasis on olam habah, etc seems to me to be the very
essence of what defines O. I have found this to be the general consensus in
my community, which is far to the left of places like Lakewood by anybody's
standards. I do not believe that I am part of a maverick community in this
regard, as the previous rabbi frequently cited similar opinions of other
gedolei hador, and I have seen similar views expressed in the talmud and
other books.

The view that we are punished for wrongdoing and rewarded for mitzvos and
judged collectively and that sometimes tzaddikim die because of the sins of
others is a traditional view in Judaism. If your rabbis didn't hold by it,
they didn't, and I'm sure there are many other rabbis who don't hold by it
either, but nevertheless, it is a view held by many traditional Jews, not
just a handful of *extremists and wannabes* not just *newcomers to O-land*
and not just people who learn hard to *overcome their missing knowledge and
cultural upbringing, but never having been exposed to the finer nuances of O
observation.* I suppose it's always easier to simply hit below the belt than
to address the topic itself. And the irony of the whole thing is that as far
as I can tell, I never expressed my personal opinion on the subject at all.
Best regards,
---Cindy S.




Like you Joel, I harbor a respect for those who make a life choice to be
O,
while insisting on my my own right to live my life as my heart and soul
dictate. No one here is in a position to validate or invalidate your
Jewishness. You and I were both at Mount Sinai where God spoke to us in
many
voices, (kolot), and while we all said "naaseh v'nishma," we all heard a
different kol (voice).

With respect to the third point, I strongly disagree with your assessment.
There was no silence on my part. The only time I am silent is if I am too
busy, disinterested in a topic, or silenced by the moderators. I had 17
posts rejected in March alone. Many were responses to Andy or about Andy.
Some were responses to an ad-hominem thread about me, which I was not
allowed to respond to. How did that thread get approved??? I am grateful
to
those who stood up for me in that thread.

So while I do hope you come back, expect strong opinions from me, and
expect
vehement disagreement on moderation policy.

[e-mailed and posted on 4-2-06]

Best regards,

Abe


.