RABBIS WITH OR WITHOUT QUOTES

Background: On April 17th. around two dozen Rabbis were arrested at the United Nations for a deliberate act of civil disobedience, which was to protest and draw attention to the unacceptable and dangerous political direction of Iran.
[Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has called for Israel's destruction, denied that the Holocaust ever happened, used extremist and racist rhetoric, and encouraged acts of terrorism. Iranian state policies consistently contravene both the charter and the spirit of the UN - not that that is in any way unusual. Still.]


Read this post for more about the protest:
http://boroparkpyro.blogspot.com/2007/04/mass-rabbinic-arrest.html

The news was overshadowed by the Virginia Tech nutter, but nevertheless it has been mentioned in the media, and on the blogs.

Some of the blogs cater to an ultra Hhareidi clientele. Such as Yeshiva World News.
Normally I can read Yeshiva World news with perfect equanimity.



NOT...

THIS...

TIME!!!



The YWN term used to describe the rabbis who were arrested was "rabbis". Between quotes. Because to the frock-coat crowd, if it ain't ultra-orthodox, it ain't a rabbi. As many angry YWN commentators said repeatedly. With vitriol.

I cannot say that I agree with them.

[And I assert my right to disagree with them, not only about this but about any issue. Their version of Judaism should be as subject to critical examination and debate as any other Torah-based ideology. That they claim to be the only and ultimate arbiters of Judaisms and have the presumption to find other Judaisms wanting, is neither here nor there. Like any claim of infallibility, it should be challenged and put to the test. Repeatedly.]



The term rabbi is an acknowledgement and should be seen partly as a courtesy title. It is NOT a battlefield ranking among savage combatants.

The banner of Torah scholarship is not a spiked club for bashing heads.

I never thought it possible that there could be so much foaming at the mouth over what is as abstruse a bunch of differences as the machlokes between the scholars of Northern France and the scholars from Sefarad over the suitability of the Rambam’s writings as reading material.


You already know my opinion of the East Bay Womyn’s Empowermynt Wicca Minyan and similar odd experiments, so it will probably not surprise you then that I tend to think of rabbis from the reconstructionist, or New Age, or even the far too acclimatized strains of Reform as being not fully rabbinic. Not all rabbis are rabbis.
On the other hand, you may have also noted that I think of some of the utterly shtrenge rabbonim as being quite a bit too much. Starkers, even. Not so much rabbis as Talmudic bonk jobs.
Still, there’s an awful lot of very meaty rabbi-ism in Conservative, Modern O and Ultra-Orthodox. Rather a worthwhile spectrum. Much good scholarship and Torah there too. One may justifiably call scholars who have met certain criteria by the term rabbi – even, exceptionally, some of the Reform.
If that is the title that estimable people know them by, it is also respectful to refer to them with that term. It is the proper appellation for a completed scholar. Both chezkas kashrus AND common courtesy apply.


Some of the commentators on Yeshiva World News, however, are nuts. And are by no means examples of good scholarship and Torah, let alone derech eretz. They do, however, have a talent for loshon horo. I consequently have to wonder how many “rabbis” are among their ranks, and how rabbinic those rebbeim really are.


The term sinas chinam was used in some comments. It was more than justified.