Ye of Little Faith
There are way too many blogs out there covering the same old things, among them my own. But there is one out there that is beginning to disturb me a great deal.
It is one of the many, written by articulate individuals, but one of the few that has a large following.
What disturbs me is that it is written by a very knowledgeable fellow and that its audience is drawn from both the left and the right, sometimes from the fringe of these communities.
This normally would not be of any consequence except that I find the comments to be highly influential and possibly heretical.
The author of the blog asserts that he is left wing modern orthodox and that he is a rationalist with regard too Yahadus.
He claims that there is room for agnostics within orthodoxy and that half, if not most, of the modern orthodox are conservadox orthopraxers with ideology not nearly as important as the practice of Halacha, though that practice is lax.
Further, the belief of the thirteen principles of faith is of little relevance, so long as one believes in G-d.
I beg to differ. Without a doubt, most of the Rationalists within orthodox Jewish philosophy, have always stressed belief as part and parcel of their rationalist thought.
Many have felt that failure to observe most principles of faith borders on heresy.
In days of old, the Jewish people have faced trials and tribulations from within.
Whether it was Korach and the Eirav Rav, the ten tribes, Hellenists, the Maccabees, the Tzidoikkim, the Essenes, the Karaites, Sabbetaianism, the Hasidic movement, the Haskalah, the Reform movement, the Conservative movement, Chabad Messianism or the Kabbalah movement, who all sought change, traditional Jewry still withstood the test of time.
Yet many of these groups posed a danger and that danger sometimes originated in rational skepticism.
Without rationalism, it can be difficult to function, to understand our world.
But without faith, we can easily fall down that slippery slope and take many others along to that calamitous precipice.
---- Something to think about it, in that twilight zone of the blog world.
There are way too many blogs out there covering the same old things, among them my own. But there is one out there that is beginning to disturb me a great deal.
It is one of the many, written by articulate individuals, but one of the few that has a large following.
What disturbs me is that it is written by a very knowledgeable fellow and that its audience is drawn from both the left and the right, sometimes from the fringe of these communities.
This normally would not be of any consequence except that I find the comments to be highly influential and possibly heretical.
The author of the blog asserts that he is left wing modern orthodox and that he is a rationalist with regard too Yahadus.
He claims that there is room for agnostics within orthodoxy and that half, if not most, of the modern orthodox are conservadox orthopraxers with ideology not nearly as important as the practice of Halacha, though that practice is lax.
Further, the belief of the thirteen principles of faith is of little relevance, so long as one believes in G-d.
I beg to differ. Without a doubt, most of the Rationalists within orthodox Jewish philosophy, have always stressed belief as part and parcel of their rationalist thought.
Many have felt that failure to observe most principles of faith borders on heresy.
In days of old, the Jewish people have faced trials and tribulations from within.
Whether it was Korach and the Eirav Rav, the ten tribes, Hellenists, the Maccabees, the Tzidoikkim, the Essenes, the Karaites, Sabbetaianism, the Hasidic movement, the Haskalah, the Reform movement, the Conservative movement, Chabad Messianism or the Kabbalah movement, who all sought change, traditional Jewry still withstood the test of time.
Yet many of these groups posed a danger and that danger sometimes originated in rational skepticism.
Without rationalism, it can be difficult to function, to understand our world.
But without faith, we can easily fall down that slippery slope and take many others along to that calamitous precipice.
---- Something to think about it, in that twilight zone of the blog world.
posted by judah h | 9:54 PM
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