samet@sfmag.UUCP (A.I.Samet) (04/29/85)
> Dear Yitzhak: > Why are you so quick to insult and call names? ... bp would like to toss grenades at yiddishkeit, religious Jews, venerated scholars, and then feign total innocence - even appeal for sympathy when someone reacts. This is patently dishonest. On April 18, bp posted an article which contained an unprovoked, juvenile, and deliberately offensive attack on orthodoxy and one of its most highly respected rabbis. (This was prior to, and unrelated to, the "eggs" issue.) bp has taken on a hostile, insulting, and asinine tone in the past, and as now, attempted to deny what he did. By trying to ignore and forget his malicious articles he testifies to his guilt and shows that he is not man enough to apologize for his indecency. In the example of "the 4 sons", the hagada teaches us to discern between 4 types of questions, and questioners. One of the 4 sons is the rasha. He is identified by his sarcastic disdain of our religion which he thinly veils via the posture of inquiry, or discourse. His true "quest" is not an answer or discussion, but public mockery. The halacha advocates a strong reaction to such a person rather than gentility. In fact, if someone attacks a Torah sage it is regarded as an attack on the kovod of the Torah itself, and that sage is required to be "vengeful as a snake" in responding. According to the hagada, the response to this rasha is "blunt his teeth". It instructs us to put him down sharply and publicly, as he deserves, and thereby render his fangs harmless. > But then he has an unfortunate habit of waking up, screaming, in > the middle of the night every now and then, reliving the moment when > as a little boy, he watched the Nazis cold-heartedly laugh and > bludgeon his beloved father (my grandfather, a rabbi) in front of > his eyes. bp's grandfather would have had bigger nightmares if he knew that his progeny would attack yiddishkeit and belittle America's most venerated rabbinical authority and then (ab)use his sacred memory in defense. Yitzchok Samet