The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes. Here's the thing, that road is paved with lots more than just good intentions. It's paved with words uttered in haste, and no, there won't be any leisure to repent them. It's paved with public posturing and willful loss of seichel and common sense. It's paved with acts that scream "chillul HaShem" from their inception but that are committed anyway. It's paved with blind acceptance of what cannot be justified halachically no matter how some people try. It's paved with hatred and kinah towards our fellow Jews. It's paved with incredible arrogance. It's paved with duplicity of the "do as I say, not as I do" variety. It's paved with religious one-upmanship. It's paved with misinterpretations of how our Holy writings should be understood and applied. It's paved with incredible gaivoh. It's paved with the willful forgetting that we are told "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me," and yet we have elevated some to what can only be described as a god-like status (and some who have self-elevated themselves to this status).
Rachmonah l'tzlan, what have we done to ourselves?! Is this the road that we are supposed to follow? The one that leads to Hell? Have we so lost our seichel that we cannot see the dangers of this path?
I'm too sick hearted to elaborate on the news that has so disturbed my joy in Adar, that has made me wonder if this is not just some impossible nightmare that I'm sleep walking through. You want to know what set me off? Read here http://honestlyfrum.blogspot.com/2010/02/ad-masi.html and here http://wolfishmusings.blogspot.com/2010/02/compuphobia.html
Whatever happened to the idea that once was so central to frum life--"Kedoshim t'hiyu ki Kodesh Ani"?
7 comments:
I'll repeat what I wrote over at HF:
There really needs to be a true cheshbon hanefesh in our communities.
We supposedly have the most learned, educated Jewish population of all time. Seforim are available to any Reuven and Shimon with a few bucks or an Internet connection - far more seforim than our greatest gedolim ever had available.
We have nearly universal yeshiva education, often for more than 15 years - not to mention that many students who sit and study in kollel for many years.
How does all of this knowledge not lead to more moral and ethical people?
There is something seriously wrong
I feel as you do--this is a living nightmare. Every day the news of yet another supposed frum Jew breaking the law or acting immorally or just plain crazy. News of those who have no idea of what the real world is really like or who know but refuse to accept.
Someone once tried to justify all this horrible news by saying that it's not really that more people are breaking the law and acting crazy but that we hear about it faster because of the speedier news transmission, so it seems worse than it is. Someone else who is blaming the messenger, the faster media, and losing track that this is a real chilul haShem that is taking place. These are real lawbreakers. These are real crazies trying to take us with them. And then they use God's name to try and cover up their actions.
This has to be a test of some kind of the resolve of those who do not act in this fashion to see what we will do to stop these people. And right now a whole bunch of people are failing that test.
Thanks for ruining what's left of my work day. Seriously, can anyone out there think of even one good piece of news that has happened in the frum veldt recently.
Heine wrote that where they burn books they will also burn people. I wonder what we can extrapolate from this.
No wonder why the rabbi whacked the computer - he probably reads Yated and saw this article about using Microsoft Word. Posted on Frum Satire, check out the box image the editors found on Google and slapped into the article:
http://www.frumsatire.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/yated2-e1266364443135.jpg
I refused to get worked up over this.People are taking some obscure unheard of Rabbi and acting as if the entire frum community collectively went around smashing other people computers.Even the anti-internet letters written by Rabonim make an exception for those who need it for livelihood purposes.And as accountant in tax season working in a nonjewish firm, I'm not buying the blog party line about frum people being the most corrupt people in the world.
Anonymous 11:48,
Re "I'm not buying the blog party line about frum people being the most corrupt people in the world," you don't get that party line on this blog. For one thing, it's not true. What is, unfortunately, true is that we are getting a lot of play in the press about those frum Jews who are doing things that are wrong. They are out there. And no, we don't always respond to that wrongdoing in a fashion I, and lots of others, could approve of. There's a lot of lifting the carpet and sweeping things under it that goes on.
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