Category Archives: ethics

Rabbinic fugitive in Africa

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When the Vilna Gaon excommunicated the Chassidic movement based on its early cultlike tendencies, one wonders whether he imagined 300 Breslaver Chasidim blindly following  their renowned fugitive Rabbi, accused of sex crimes in Israel, from one African country to another, creating one of the greatest Chilulei Hashem of the day.

He certainly was reacting to the specter of thousands of followers of the false Massiach Shabtai Tzvi who followed their leader in his conversion to Islam  and his student Jacob Frank into radical sexual permissiveness.

yet we cannot blame Rabbinic sex crimes temselves on Chasidism- we have had more than enough of these scandals spanning the full spectrum of Orthodoxy from modern Orthodoxy and Religious Zionism to Lithuanian and Chasidic Chareidism-

nor do they have the monopoly anymore on blindly following leaders into insanity……

There is something far from healthy in our own backyard, and we dare not ignore it any longer

Religion and Natural Morality

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It is forbidden for fear of Heaven to push aside one’s natural morality, for then it would no longer be pure fear of Heaven. The sign [by which one can recognize] pure fear of Heaven is when the natural morality which is rooted in man’s honest nature ascends by means of [the fear of Heaven] to higher levels than it would have attained without it.
But if there should be a fear of Heaven, such that without its influence, life would tend to function better, and would actualize things beneficial to the individual and society, whereas with its influence that actualizing power would diminish — such a fear of Heaven is invalid.[1]
Founding Chief Rabbi AI KOOK (Orot Hakodesh, Vol. III, p.27., quoted by Rabbi Yehuda Amital zt’l)