mentalblog.com comments:
This old fool Reb Zalman has a following? Sheesh, lots of dumbos and lost sheep out there!
I am floored. I never imagined that THIS could be the great maskil and guru, R' Zalman. He's breathtakingly unimpressive.
By the way, he's a total asshole for that "That's a nice midrash" comment. How willfully insipid and audacious! Is that what midrash is? I know that's what all the guitar playing Reform ladies think it is. And if you, R' Zalman, are the source of this, then I spray diarrhea in your old face.
Tony, watch your language please. It is a human nature to play to your audience. Reb Zalman's audience is intellectually and emotionally infantile and Jewishly ignorant. You start to mirror this over time, it is not his fault.
I liked the previous two clips. This one is so vapid that it drained me. It had all the nauseating emptiness of a CAJE conference. (I appreciated the rachmanus he showed the chickens.)
I think that Reb Zalman's life is well defined in the middle of the clip when he makes a SIMPLE jewish joke: "Melamed Oyfoys, veshochet Tinokos", and not even his Talmid Muvhak get the pun. Forget about the crowd, they think he just mentioned an obscure Kabalistic concept.
So he is a giant in Chassidus, and the only people who are willing to hang out around him and give him attention are a bunch of left wing ameyratzim. And what is his shlichus? to make them feel good about themselves... just like the chicken... If he would stayed in Lubavitch he would been the first Manis Friedman...
On one hand I feel bad for him... on the other hand, he was zoche to make a few yidden giggle, and that's good enough.
a lifetime spent on making chickens feel good.
and that pathetic bu bum choir..
Pathetic. That was the word i was looking for. Thanks TA.
The fact that the crowd knew to chime in with the "bu-bum"s indicates that this little performance is a signature piece of his. And that makes it even MORE pathetic.
As for my language, TA, when he made that "That's a nice midrash" comment, that induced a reaction in me that far surpasses hearing even the most foul and outrageous filth-words strung together. All I can do to respond honsetly is to let some curse words fly. What he said was brazen, willful stupidity.
these people are by far worse then the carlebachians and that says a lot.
The central problem with ZS was and remains his failure to protect the centrality of kiyum hamitzvos al pi halacha. While it is understood that it sometimes requires the allowance for a wide berth for the individual or group during the struggle for growth and understanding, lacking the orientation and adherence to the framework of halacha will result in something pathetic or worse.
By the way, the biggest joke of all is that this is precisely what this guy is - a melamed eifeis and sheichet tineikeis.
funny...
This piece is typical of borscht-belt entertainment. "Discussions" like this are often presented in the context of Jewish Center activities and senior citizen programs. To seriously attack it from correct theological or other like grounds would be misplaced and humorless.
DP makes a valid observation. Certainly SZ and his spawn have made clowns and caricatures of themselves and provide ample targets for ridicule. However, when one engages in ad hominem it provides the opportunity for others to focus on the tone and ignore the content of the criticism. True some will see the pathetic fool for what he is but he and his eifos will remain largely unaffected. Among those who are sincere, (among the broader audience) some will shy away from the sheichet tinokos but others, maybe the majority, will be repulsed by the tone and fail to consider the substance within the form, i.e., rudeness, sarcasm, insults etc. But what the heck, as I have always readily admitted, I love a mud fight. So sling away!
This is not a mud fight. This is lining up to kick a dead horse, done with self-righteous determination. One cannot to deny that at least the in hindsight SZ's life's work came to amount to feel-good pandering and nostalgic kitsch. Yet I question if it ever inflicted any real harm to anything, aside from perhaps providing a religious cover to the Democratic party platform a few elections ago. He never mounted a serious theological, intellectual or spiritual challenge to existing Orthodox institutions (God sees they needed one) that could undermine them; and his "followers", if you could call them that, were not the kind of spiritual seekers that could have been drawn into anything more authentic or rigorous in any case.
At the same time, you have to give him credit for having recognized the real plight of American (and all other present-day) Jewry. It is that religious and other institutions have absolutely nothing to offer to them; spiritually and demographically secular Jewry is melting away like a block of ice on a hot day. Kiruv organizations reach only the very few who find themselves at the crossroads of their lives and are otherwise amenable to crude and silly manipulations plied by kiruv hacks.
At least SZ tried to draw them in with something he thought was more relevant and spiritually attractive to them than the spiritless dogma (along with endless embarassments and scandals) emanating from Orthodox institutional pillars. He is not alone in having failed at this formidable task; Jewish and world histories are replete with attempted efforts at spiritual renewal.
SZ proved to be woefully inadequate to that task. What is more, he often took the easy way out and resorted to pandering that made him darling to pushers of political agendas. Ordinary people, for their part, were attracted primarily by voguishness and chintz. With his ersatz Yiddishkeit moribund even before his own demise, it is now obvious that he had neither a lasting message nor followers worthy of that name.
Yet he stepped up to the plate where others, respected and recognized figures, did nothing or worse. This alone makes him more deserving of our compassion rather than unmitigated scorn.
These guys named [Shneur] Zalman Schechter [Shalomi] are a great trial for Lubavitch. The other Shneur Zalman Schechter was better known as Solomon Schechter, who founded the Conservative Movement in America.
He came from a Chabad family in Rumania.
Schechter was not a founder of the CM of A. He was recruited by the founders of JTS to lend it gravitas. I wonder what he and Heschel would comment on the current state of affairs in the CM of A. Heschel's daughter has already marginalized his opinion him as she is aware that he would disapprove and be sorely pained.
As an outsider to Lubavitch who has spent time in various Chabad venues and synagogues I find it strange that you mock Zalman for the exact same things that you guys are 'guilty' of-Watering and dumbing down Judaism .Jakey,Friedman........
Same mindless drivel and crud.
Reminds me of an addage from the Baal Shem tov 'kol hanegoim odom roeh CHUTZ,minigei atsmo' (a play on words of a mishna)
Truman: No, he was the founder of the Conservative Movement. Until he took over the JTSA, it was the Orthodox seminary in America (until 1902). Among other things, he opened the Seminary up to more "modern" scholarship, while opposed to the Documentary Hypothesis.
Schechter set up the United Synagogue, intending it to parallel the English model. However, it became the congregational organization for nascent Conservative synagogues, as opposed to the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations in America (the O-U), which had started in 1896.
Take a gander at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Con...rvative_Judaism Be sure to follow th link to the article on Solomon Schechter. His essay on chassidism is revealing.
Reb Zalman is brilliant.
He left frum life after a bitter divorce with his first wife. He then married a giyores. Problem, he’s a cohen.
I think his mistake is he sacrificed longevity for intensity.
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