Monday, February 9, 2009

Interesting Discussion on the Inner Unity Behind Great Jewish Disputes


For an interesting back-and-forth discussion between R' Micha Berger & R' Micha Golshevsky regarding the inner unity behind the major machlokes'n in history, see the comment thread at A Simple Jew's Post, The Essence of Emunah.

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5 comments:

micha said...

I don't think my point was that deep. All I said was that clearly (from the heat of the battle between them) neither the Litvaks nor the Chassidim saw themselves as teaching different aspects of the same derekh. Therefore, the derekh proposed in Bilvavi is something new.

We may find ways in which both sides of a machloqes can fit as different aspects of one picture. But that's our new thought, not the ba'alei pelugtah.

That doesn't make it wrong, or even inferior. A new generation of people with a new attitude could very well better respond to a new derekh. And since our current communities are more mixed and have a greater flow back-and-forth of ideas, a synthesis is quite likely the right way to go.

REED's derekh was also something new, but it wasn't a synthesis. In fact, one could say it was a derekh of not having a particular derekh. He felt that we were so deprived, we need to seek qedushah whereever it could be found without making cheshbonos about this approach or that.

-micha

DixieYid (يهودي جنوبي) said...

R' Berger,

Who is REED?

You are right that many (though not all) Baalei Machlokes did not see their views as compatible with their bar plugta. However, Rav Shwartz was certainly aware of this as well.

Perhaps he would explain this understand as you have. Or perhaps he would explain it differently. I haven't yet asked him this question directly. Perhaps I will try to do that. I will get back to you when/if I have an answer.

micha said...

Sorry. Rav EE Dessler. Since I was summarizing my position in the discussion you pointed to, I took the shortcut of assuming R' Dessler's identity could be guessed from that context. (After all, it's obvious from this side, where I'm the one who knows what I mean...) I was referring to the point I pinned with a quote of R' YG Bechhofer's loose translation from Michtav meiEliyahu.

-micha

Anonymous said...

do people really disagree with the Degel that Everything that any livlihood one makes comes about only because Hashem wills it? Rabbi Berger seemed to say that.

micha berger said...

Anonymous:

The discussion here is in a slightly different area. I'll reply to your identical comment on "A Simple Jew".

-micha