onionsoupmix (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} onionsoupmix) wrote,@ 2009-04-19 14:03:00 |
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Good News, Bad News
So the good news is that The Neshei Newsletter printed a scathing letter to the editor in response to the rant against gentile babysitters. Dr. Levenstein from South Africa basically called the author of the letter a racist and compared the writing to Nazi bigotry.
The bad news is that Dr. Levenstein probably never read the Tanya or other chassidic texts which encourage such bigotry and that the next Newsletter will contain many letters advising him to learn up on the fact that the souls of the nations of the world, however, emanate from the other, unclean kelipot which contain no good whatever, and this is the foundation of chassidus.
On a similar note, during the sedarim, I peeked in the back of the chabad haggadah, which has many brief little divrei torah. One commentary on page 87 reads as follows : the behavior of the child and the environment around him must not be like that of the non-Jewish environment. One must be ble to recognize in the child an absolute Jewish identity and if the child does not sense the principles of "who separates between Israel and the nations" and "You have chosen us from among all the nations," then even when he will have set times for the study of Torah, when he will pray and observe mitzvot and so forth, those mitzvot and that Torah will be bereft of the proper holiness.
Think about that for a minute. Even if you are doing everything right, observing and praying and so on, if you are not aware of your separate, chosen, special status, your prayers and study are of a lower value. There's a very fine line at which national pride becomes bigotry and hatred and this is precisely where the line is. If you cannot fulfill your role as a religious person without the constant awareness of your superior status, you have turned from someone with cultural pride into a bigot. Most Lubavitchers have crossed this line a long time ago. Those who have not are typically college-campus rabbis who know how to keep a good PC face on.
Tzvi Freeman, one of the more PC chabad spokespeople, writes that quite simply, what the tzadik is to the Jew, the Jew is to the non-Jew.
Many people have explained that this is an effective strategy to ward off assimilation.
Sure, believing that goyim are scum will minimize intermarriage. At what cost, though? Do you want your children to avoid intermarriage at the risk of growing up bigoted? Is preserving the Orthodox traditions that important to you that you will risk your child actually growing up to believe in his or her own innate superiority and that everyone who is not Jewish is just a lower life-form? Is it worth it?
So the good news is that The Neshei Newsletter printed a scathing letter to the editor in response to the rant against gentile babysitters. Dr. Levenstein from South Africa basically called the author of the letter a racist and compared the writing to Nazi bigotry.
The bad news is that Dr. Levenstein probably never read the Tanya or other chassidic texts which encourage such bigotry and that the next Newsletter will contain many letters advising him to learn up on the fact that the souls of the nations of the world, however, emanate from the other, unclean kelipot which contain no good whatever, and this is the foundation of chassidus.
On a similar note, during the sedarim, I peeked in the back of the chabad haggadah, which has many brief little divrei torah. One commentary on page 87 reads as follows : the behavior of the child and the environment around him must not be like that of the non-Jewish environment. One must be ble to recognize in the child an absolute Jewish identity and if the child does not sense the principles of "who separates between Israel and the nations" and "You have chosen us from among all the nations," then even when he will have set times for the study of Torah, when he will pray and observe mitzvot and so forth, those mitzvot and that Torah will be bereft of the proper holiness.
Think about that for a minute. Even if you are doing everything right, observing and praying and so on, if you are not aware of your separate, chosen, special status, your prayers and study are of a lower value. There's a very fine line at which national pride becomes bigotry and hatred and this is precisely where the line is. If you cannot fulfill your role as a religious person without the constant awareness of your superior status, you have turned from someone with cultural pride into a bigot. Most Lubavitchers have crossed this line a long time ago. Those who have not are typically college-campus rabbis who know how to keep a good PC face on.
Tzvi Freeman, one of the more PC chabad spokespeople, writes that quite simply, what the tzadik is to the Jew, the Jew is to the non-Jew.
Many people have explained that this is an effective strategy to ward off assimilation.
Sure, believing that goyim are scum will minimize intermarriage. At what cost, though? Do you want your children to avoid intermarriage at the risk of growing up bigoted? Is preserving the Orthodox traditions that important to you that you will risk your child actually growing up to believe in his or her own innate superiority and that everyone who is not Jewish is just a lower life-form? Is it worth it?
