mentalblog.com comments:
If he sanctioned even ONE false conversion or intermarriage, then he is a MURDERER!
You're cold analysis on the topic is revolting. The man F***ed with people's LIVES!
It stands to reason that by your book any form of non-Orthodox ministry is unavoidably equivalent to murder. Most other people, even among the Orthodox, take a more temperate point of view. While in way no condoning the non-halachic character of non-Orthodox institutions, they nevertheless recognize that these institutions are better than nothing at all. For many if not most American Jews, they are the only form of Jewish affiliation possible or availble.
Realistically, do we have anything else to offer them, at least at the present? Are our own institutions suitable for these people, assuming, of course, that they are suitable for us in the first place? Before we find positive answers to these questions, we are hardly in the position to spit from a high moral ground.
PS Please also spare the epithets.
Nothing I enjoy more than the sight of a man hanging from his own petard:
"This piece is typical...To seriously attack it from correct theological or other like grounds would be misplaced and humorless."
Thus spake Darya Petrovna
So fellas, epithetize away.
could we assume then logically, that the murderer is the person or people who originally caused RZ to escape the stiflingly and stale world of Lubavitch?
TA - watch yourself there. Do you realize that what you're saying is identical to the extreme Left's take on criminology?
Oh, and Darya, yes every Reform rabbi is a murderer. The young ones may not be malicious in their intent, but neither is a twelve year old suicide bomber. Please do not answer me because I have no interest in pursuing any kind of discourse with you. What you wrote here belongs in the toilet.
The more appropriate question that is how Chabad can lose such a person? Many like him were lost. This was not only a Chabad loss that was in effect a loss for the Jewish people.
Hey,
We lost Korach, we lost Yoshke, we lost Shabtai Tzvi... All these guys were brilliant and talented, and had strong aspirations to leadership... and at time had a great following from among the jewish people. they just didn't fit in G-d's format. What a shame, but they are the only ones to be blamed not the format.
The Frierdicke Rebbe sent Zalman and Shlomo--both of whom were potential major rabbis-- out into the secular world to try to bring jews to Judaism. The analogy is to a general who sent two promising young officers out on a dangerous mission into enemy territory. Shlomo managed to accomplish more of this mission, but both are in a sense casualties.
Zalman couldn't handle his LSD, Shlomo couldn't handle his women, plain and simple.
It's more complicated than "plain and simple." The fact is that Zalman once had a very fine mind, and real scholarship. He was rooted in pre-war Yiddishkeit. He was a connection to that world for a lot of people who wanted one but couldn't take the strictly Orthodox form and the intensity -- and the rejection of the modern world -- of Chassidic communities.
Maybe you think that Chabad of 60 years ago, or Ger, or Bobov, or Young Israel, or YU had much to say to secularly educated Jews in the 50s and later. I don't. Something had to be done. You can't expect every effort to succeed.
R. Hershel Yolles says that while the first generations of Reform mostly wanted to get away from Judaism, in our times the rank and file in the R, (and R) and C movements are there to get closer to Judaism. Their leadership may be leading them astray, but the impulse is to be part of the Jewish people. I know some of Zalman's followers. Without his approach, flawed as it is, many would have been lost. Some of their kids are more sensible.
Darya is right. Have some rachmonus. It's a tragedy. Grieve, don't be angry.
Is an unrepentant murderer allowed to Duchan?
Tony is finally sounding like the real Tony.
How about a Berl rebuttal for some REAL fun.
all these feel good guys are fags and totally messed up. Shoin tzeit we said it as it is.
Give this guy a joint stick him in woodstock and he won't bother anyone at all.
I knew Zalmen and his people 30+ years ago, and also Shlomo. No one became truly frum through Zalman, but many did through Shlomo. I cannot justify what Shlomo did, but it was leshem shemayim.I cannot praise anything Zalmen did because it is a chillul hashem. (BTW he was mechalal shabbos when I knew him.)
I think Reb Zalman is a great talent and he was indeed rooted in pre war yiddishkeit. He failed because of his own charachter and personality flaws...his marriages and personal issues, his endless need to be hip but most importantly his need to be loved and admired. For all his religious cleverness, I don't know what else to call it, he was a weak man, more of a galitzianer Belzer personality than a guy educated in chabad. And yet behind the guru-I am way beyond Orthodox- gaiveh that he presents, there is a pathos...he knows what has become of him, and I think he feels he has let himself down.
Gosh. What does it have to do with Belzer Galitzianer personality. How in the world did you think of it?
I am not sure of the referent of 'it'. Zalman is not a serious analytic intellectual. He lacks the sitzfleisch to think through a long analytic discourse, chasidic or talmudic. He is bored with Talmud. He is intuitive, a charmer, a schmoozer, a davener, a bit of a "chazan". If I remember correctly he in fact he comes from Belzer family and was a Belzer in Antwerp.
Even assuming everything you say is true, how does it establish a Belze Galitziane personality? Perhaps it is being "intuitive, a charmer, etc."? Even if these were Belze traits, do they imply a "weak" character? I am closely related to the Belze, and let me tell you, they are not necessary charming, intuitive, etc, often far from it. I think you just drew a gratuitous stereotype.
No offense intended... my point is that Galicia being part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was closer to the gemutlichkeit, the relaxed playfulness of Vienna than the rest of Congress Poland that was in a Russian cultural ambience. If you will now say there are no differences between Russian personality/cultural/traits and Jewish Vienna I give up.
"Relaxed playfulness" of Vienna, if it ever applied to poorer Jews, was a world apart from the dire poverty of Galicia that certainly did not lend itself to playfulness. Except for a somewhat differently inflected Yiddish and dress-code, you will not notice any appreciable attitudinal or tempermental distinctions between the Congressional Ger or Belz, for example. But Congress Poilen was not, of course, really Russian in the sense of Lubavich. There, on the other hand, among a small core of chassidim, you could find Bolshevik fortitude, discipline, unbending stubbornness,narrow dogmatism and other traits more commonly associated with revolutionaries (these are not necessarily negatives - I say it before true believers jump on my throat). Except for some people and groups on the fringes, Jews are quite similar to one another; overbroad stereotyping sounds very uninformed.
Hello,
I have heard of this Rabbi in the past as associated with that Jewish Renewal Movement, but I dont know much about his core beliefs.
Has he passed on and thats why this article and discussion???
What was so out of step with his practice of Judaism that leads some to view him in negatives.
Thanks You
Truman this is a pedantry alert, but anyway: people don't hang from their own petard, they are hoisted into the air when it blows up.
Reb Zalman is alive and well, what leads some to view him in negative way over here is, that his practice and belief system contradicts traditional Orthodox judaism and as we know most people think that anything that contradicts their belief system is evil.
Yoel B,
Thank you very much for the correction.
Recluse...The issues involved in Rabbi Zalman Schacter's theology and practises go way, way beyond his being non-Orthodox. There is a full and excellent discussion of his theology in a three part essay by Shaul Magid in Tikun magazine, I believe last year.
Not every non -orthodox rabbi would have the grandiosity to ordain maybe 100 'rabbis' who have no more than the most minimal advanced education in traditional texts and practises.
The issue here is not whether he is evil but whether he and his followers are serious, substantive and beneficial over the long term to the Jewish people.
i have no doubt in my mind that reb Zalman is serious, substantive and beneficial.
Reb Z did make some BTs that he sent to Lubav, e.g. Azriel Wasserman ob"m, teacher in Ocean Parkway.
Same with Shlomo, who sent Frankel of London to Lubav.
As Chadakov allegedly said obout Z, that he's a recuiting "shpion" who doesn't even know that he's a shpion (the most secretive).
Why don't you post the clip of Reb Z at dollars in 1991(?). If the Rebbe could recognize him, even ask for his blessing, so can we.
Note: We can interpret the Rebbe's request for him to bless as a kohen, since, perhaps, being a kohen is mitzad hatuldah, not because of his own "qualities" which the Rebbe w/could not validate.
Then again, maybe just a nosi can reach so "low," even to a mesis umadiach.
Just playing soton's advocate here.
There was a time ('70s) that Reb Z & Shlomo would come to farbrengens & hide in the back, embaressed to show their faces to the Rebbe. Reb Z coming to dollars was coming a long way for him.
Much more to be said..., e.g. the Rebbe's response to Reb Z when he wrote in for a brocho since he's going on a "nsiyoh," vd"l... For another time.
R’ Zalman is a post-holocaust rabbi who sought to heal Jews.
My issue with him is his conversions. Non-traditional conversions has lead to a very strong divide amongst Jews. You can no longer assume a person who identifies themselves as Jewish is Jewish.
R’ Zalman, although well intended, contributed to this terrible divide. His approach to healing Jews post-holocaust is akin to a sixties drug. Drugs don’t heal, but they feel great. The same is true to his method of post-holocaust healing.
Zoro,
please post details about the rebbes answer before his trip to the tibetian
Zuravitzer, the "nesiyah" to which Zoro refers was another sort of "trip" - as in "tripping balls" on acid.
I've heard that Zalman specifically holds YLG to blame for refusing to relay his requests for such blessings.
lol... nu so what WAS the answer....
this is what i heard from maharil b'atzmoy:
once in the sixties, the phone rings in mazkirus. i answer it & it is zalmen on the line. he asks me to ask the rebbe for a brocho for a "nsiyoh toyvoh" since he is going on a trip. so i ask him: zalmen, avu forstu? & he answers that where he is going he does not know -- all he knows is that he is going on a trip. when i asked him mai hai, what do you mean that you don't know where you are travelling, he explained that there is this new kind of chemical drug called LCD or LSD -- i don't know exactly what he called it -- & that when you take it you... so i answered him: zalem, du bist gut meshugeh in kop, i can't (i think maharil may have said, i won't) ask the rebbe for a brocho for this -- all i can do is ask the rebbe for a brocho oif refueh shleymo far dayn kop, az szol dir nisht shatn in kop, in gezunt. vkach haveh.
ad kan shoma'ati.
to note that in ralph metzner's 1968 book "The Ecstatic Adventure" pp. 96-123 there is an article by Reb Z about his LSD experience with Timothy Leary. This is actually a revised version of his talk to the American Association of Rabbis (or something or other) conference of 1966(?), around the time of his infamous Commentary piece. in "The Ecstatic Adventure" he both recounts the experience & compares & contrasts it with the besht's aliyas haneshomoh. to be fair, Reb Z downplays the acid trip as a mere temporary experience, but not having a kiyum, whereas the besht's aliyoh was transformative for the future after the trip. (ayin shom.)
in the essay, titled "The Conscious Ascent of the Soul," he recounts how a few weeks before he was at a gathering of his master (i.e. farbrengen with the rebbe). during the singing the rebbe asked for him & told him to say lchayim two times, one for the meditation and one for the retreat." in all he made 4 lchayims.
i just found the chapter with this essay online at:
http://www.psychedelic-library.o.../
ecstatic10.htm
also, i heard from hatomim charlie (chazkl) roth that he & zalman were at tim leary's house in Mass., & that they tripped, & that they sat underneath the big tree in his backyard & sang the alter rebbe's nigun together. this seems to have been a different occasion than the experience described in this essay.
hope this satisfies your inquiries.
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