mentalblog.com comments:
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And after Musya/Mushka opened the door, he picked her up, swung her around joyfully and told her he got a 96 on the epistomology test!
DELETED, sorry, this is off topic to this post
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Dear Tzemach,
This post is truly amazing.
Is it possible you actually believe that chabad chassidus in particular and yiddishkeit in general are incapable of generating their own authentic spiritual/philosophical development, but merely reflect whatever milieu surrounds them?
Is it possible that you still believe the communist malarkey about the crass, g-dless, materialistic American culture that you seem to have been fed in the CCCP?
Is it possible that you actually believe there is really something of value, ethically and epistemologically, in the Gauloise-smoke-rings of the St Germain des Pres philosophers who are even now looking for the appropriate jihadist uebermenschen to worship, having previously exhausted themselves collaborating with the Nazis, and adoring the communists?
By the way, I am not the "astute blogger," and that is not my home page. I don't know how it got onto the Halo-scan format, but I can't erase it.
Gandalin, I have no illusions about Foucault’s and his ilk. I am speaking about the values and the values are such that a most successful professor in USA will never be as respected as successful car salesmen (unless the professor managed to turn his tile into business).
PS Try reposting after earasing the home page or erase the Haloscan cookie.
Tzemach,
Thanks for your advice, I will try to find the cookie and erase it.
In the meantime, I understand your point, I think, and it is not without resonance in the American intellectual tradition -- think of "Babbitt," for example.
However, I think that an authentic, autochthonous Jewish spiritual tradition should be able to generate its own philosophical manifestations regardless of the external social world in which its more limited Jewish social world is temporally, and at least in its own terms, temporarily housed.
That is, we should expect an authentic Jewish spiritual movement to own up to its own shortcomings, as well as its triumphs.
"should be" that is, instead we are in the mud:
http://www.mentalblog.com/2005/1...ch-to-
open.html
When were the eras and where were the places other than Har Sinai when philosophical issues really engaged more than a "happy few"?
Have you ever read A.J. Heschel's two-volume meditation on Kotzk? C.Y.C.O. used to have it in stock. The book "A Passion for Truth" might be at least a partial English version, I don't know.
I have this book in English. I didn't know the original in Yiddish was 2 volumes.
Boruch Hashem the scenario of the RASHAG becoming Rebbe didn't pan out.Otherwise most of the contributors to this blog would be intermarried by now with kids that go out for an occasional kike - bashing.
yoshe kalb
Yoshe, re Rashag, I suggest you speak for yourself only. Thanks.
Tzemach,
Evidently the English book is not quite the same as the Yiddish book. I haven't seen the book in English myself, however.
By the way, this may be a little off-topic, but I think you have hit on one reason for the infatuation of the Western intelligentsia with fascism-communism-nationalsozialismus -- you are perhaps correct "that a most successful professor in USA will never be as respected as successful car salesmen" -- whereas under the statist tyrannies of the left, the intelligentsia and literati were given academies, medals, jobs, and apartments! Seemingly a much greater role, a more prominent role in social life.
Gandalin, isn’t the Jewish traditional social structure is in fact a "statist tyranny" based on the French model?
P.S. I remember that is what Meir Kahane used to say.
Tzemach,
Well well well! I'm not sure that I would accept R Meir Kahane o"h as an authority on what the Jewish traditional social structure really was, and I am fairly certain that it wasn't based on a French model, 1,000 years before R Shlomo bar Yitzhak z"tl lived in Troyes!
My impression of the traditional Jewish constitution of the Davidic and Hashmonean monarchies, is that there is supposed to have existed, first of all, a parallel system of royal and religious courts, somewhat diluting, I think, the absolute power of the state, and that the monarch was constrained at least to some degree by the public's knowledge of the laws which he (or she, in a case or two) was required also to follow.
I don't doubt, however, that life was less free in those distant times, and that the economy of the country, in particular, was hindered by an absence of understanding of the free market. I do note, however, that reforms such as the prozbul demonstrate, in my opinion, that some of the basic principles of economics were beginning to be understood in the Jewish state of 2,000 years ago.
Moreover, I think that the instituion of the Sanhedrin did provide for a form on non-utopian reform in a variety of spheres of thought and activity.
Gandalin, I only mentioned Kahane in jest. I meant to refer to a more recent history when Jews in Europe have absorbed the legacy of the French, German, Russian absolutist enlightenments. (Even here in America Jews flirted with communism and remain dominantly left leaning towards the French model.) Chasidic Jews on the other hand remain an absolutist society where utopian ideas coexist with violence and rage (Satmar) or institutionalized, centralized, hierarchical, Kafkaesque, cliquish, human engineering (Lubavitch).
PS And then there is a tapestry of American traditions. Would Mormon tradition be considered an absolutist? And there are "more French" Philadelphia Quakers, "more English" Bostonians, etc. I admit I know almost nothing about this.
Tzemach,
Your perceptions are penetrating, and quite on the mark.
You are absolutely right that most American Jews remain enthralled by the failed socio-economico-political statisms of the European left. (They were inoculated from nationalsozialismus only because of its extreme anti-Semitism.) I appreciate your perceptions of the Chassidische welt, but I am too ignorant to comment further on it, and I look forward to more of your observations here.
As far as the tapestry of American tradtions is concerned -- for an extremely insightful analysis of the different American regional traditions, I can not too highly recommend "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fisher (1985).
He shows that the British peopling of what became the United States proceeded in four very distinct waves of immigration, and that each wave came from a very distinctive British sub-culture, bringing with it very distinct folk traditions in law, religion, food, behavior, etc.
Thus, the first wave (1620-1645) consisted of Puritans from East Anglia. The next, high church cavaliers from Wessex and Sussex who emigrated to the Virginia tidewater (including Maryland) after Cromwell took power (1650-1700),
The Quakers (joined by German pietists who shared much of their worship style) came from the northern Midlands and settled in the Delaware valley.
The last wave consisted of much poorer emigrants from the surroundings of the Irish Sea in the border counties, the Scottish lowlands, and Northern Ireland. These "Scots-Irish" settled in the mountains.
The differences between these different groups, in speech, in philosophy, and religion, were already pronounced before they came to America, and their differences remain.
Further immigrants tend to adopt the style and mores of the Enligh sub-culture into which they move. Thus Fisher, who teaches at Brandeis, notes that Jewish students in his classes tend to reflect the predominant subculture in the region where their ancestors settled.
One example: marriage. For the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a marriage was a civil contract and was NOT celebrated in a Church. The betrothal was announced in Church, but the wedding was purely civil affair, conducted at home, and solemnized by civil rather than religious officials. For the cavaliers of tidewater Virginia on the other hand, a marriage was a sacrament, to be celebrated with nuptials in a formal, consecrating Church service.
It is thus no wonder, is it, that Massachusetts should formalize homosexual marriages, and that Virginia should find such a move entirely scandalous.
And where that leaves California?
A History of the Mexican-American People:
http://www.jsri.msu.edu/museum/p...t/
chapter7.html
True, many of the more devout missionaries were oblivious to politics. They worked hard to convert the Indians, whom they considered childlike and innocent, and strove to protect them from exploitation by the conquerors. Although it was often a futile effort, the crown applauded the achievement of the missionaries. The kings of Spain, however, considered the salvation of souls to be of secondary importance. They directed a Church designed, first and foremost, to control Indian populations and turn the Indians of the Americas into loyal, taxpaying subjects of the crown. This provided the rationale behind the mission settlements of colonial America.
The mission became the primary medium for settling the northern frontiers-the so-called "borderlands"-of New Spain. The crown reasoned that if the hostile Indians of the far north were converted to Christianity-"civilized," in other words-they would stop attacking mines and haciendas (chapter 5). Furthermore, conversion would increase the size of the labor force available to the colony. This, in turn, would attract colonists to unsettled areas. Of course, Spain expected to benefit economically from all of this-from the additional taxes she could collect; from the discovery of new mines; from the profits of commercial agriculture. And the crown greedily encouraged the northward advance of the missionaries. Franciscans and Jesuits spearheaded the movement.
The rest of the account is far too long to quote and makes for fascinating reading. At any rate it is clear that religion was second to much more worldly, rather self-centered considerations - long before the United States controlled the West Coast.
And I absolutely shudder to imagine any sort of Judaism, moreover Lubavitch, being based in any way, shape or form on any kind of French culure, value system or anything else - past, present, and probably future.
Don’t worry 770 bochur, as long as it is mapped by the Russian minds LOL
http://www.mentalblog.com/2005/0...-mapped-
by.html
i was watching the beginning of this banquet. I was going to puke, it reminded me again of why I hate the official Chabad:
http://www.chabad.org/multimedia...mail&
aid=221818
This book that you are supporting, " The Unchosen", is promoting a rebelion against religious groups in general and Hassidic groups in particular.
I would ask that you remove it from your site.
Thank you,
db
Lubavitch based in France?It probably would look like what I remember from my days in Brunois.A die - hard group of Chassidim,whose life centers around prolonged davening,deep study of chassidus,xenophobia concerning everyone and everything not connected with Lubavitch and smallminded family feuds dating back to the days in Nevel or Poltava.
Re; The Rashag becoming rebbe and intermarriage.
Sir. Exactly how did the gentleman who became rebbe halt intermarriage in America ? I guess its only about 70% now . Do'nt let self serving PR by shluchim deceive you about the level of assimilation in the US.
By the way I have heard more than 1 middle aged shliach describe intermarriage as just being "over" 1 mitzvo amongst 613 !!!???
Next are the Stoliner, Boyaner or Gerer people intermarried ? That's what Lubavitch would have been like.I love Chasidim who try to be chassidic and hip using expressions like kike bashing - azachen vay aza sort Chassidishe yugent .
Finally I never saw the need to attack the Rashag so bitterly like those comments. Criticize him for toher things but intermarriage ?
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