Friday, June 22, 2018

charles krauthammer

25 comments :

  1. Not an exemplary Jew.

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  2. More on this extraordinary individual:

    * His public farewell letter of a couple weeks ago

    You noticed in the last video, no doubt, the wearing of his kippa until college/HS?
    * More on that Jewish background

    * Last, some brief but notable comments from David Brooks: (If this link works right, should begin 9min into the clip.)

    Amazing that it takes an OTD Jew to show the rest of us what thoughtful political engagement looks like. That those presumably immersed in Talmudic study slide so easily in thoughtless rhetoric & fall prey to cheap propaganda is a pretty whopping chillul Hashem.

    I'll miss this fine, true, sharp conservative mind.

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  3. And if he had to choose between being insightful vs. being halakhically exemplary, he'd have rejected your lot every time for his. (And that's assuming you even are.)

    Maybe time to stop opposing these two alternatives? Being master of the obvious anyone can do, and judgment is an awfully tempting yetzer hara.

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  4. He ditched Jewish practice in high school? Most of these MO types who ditch the yarmulka usually wait till college to do so.

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  5. Someone who threw out Torah practice is not entitled to the protections of the laws of L"H.

    Far far better to be a "halakhically exemplary" Jew with emunah peshuta than an "insightful" mechallel Shabbos.

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  6. Who said anything about the lav of L"H? Facile judgment of others is a bad midda. That's an asseh: "helakhta bedrakhav".


    Far far better to be a "halakhically exemplary" Jew with emunah peshuta than an "insightful" mechallel Shabbos.


    And obviously he would disagree on that point, so what's to discuss? But that's really not the point; why not aspire to be both? See Ben Zoma's counsel re chokhma, Avos 4:1

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  7. I really have no idea. I surmised what I could from the same video you saw, and from it clearly I drew far fewer conclusions.

    But, then again, I seem to be less plagued by self-righteous sentiments than are you.

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  8. So what "he would disagree"? A Muslim would disagree with your assertion that Mohammed was a false prophet. Does that make you wrong about that?

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  9. Chofetz Chaim, Shmiras HaLashon, Hilchos Rechilus 9:15:

    "מצוה לפרסם דעתם הכוזבת לעיני הכל ולגנותם, כדי שלא ילמדו ממעשיהם הרעים."

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  10. Makes any discussion pointless. "Al taam vereiach..."

    And see any Chazal on shetiqa. If your words advance discussion in no way, well....

    (Seriously, you couldn't work that out on your own? Try pausing 10 sec before typing.)

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  11. This is how you apply that written halakha?!! Oh, my that's some serious misunderstanding. Aren't you the one who elsewhere I recently advised get a rebbe? Yeah, well, run to one. Given how poorly you seem to digest the written word, further "discussion" here clearly pointless.

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  12. There's no need for you to make an all-out defense of a mechallel Shabbos or to misapply a Chazal to defend the indefensible.

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  13. The funny thing about all this side-fuss is that, as I already pointed out, none of this is the central point under discussion:
    But that's really not the point; why not aspire to be both ["halakhically exemplary" & "insightful", the latter personified by Krauthammer, a"h]? See Ben Zoma's counsel re chokhma, Avos 4:1
    Yet you go and run with some pointless digression presumably having to do with your being 'right' in confidently rendering judgment on someone else's life. Honestly, I find that pretty ridiculous.

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  14. Again, you're misapplying a Chazal. It's like saying "let's learn how to be a strong leader from Stalin while ignoring his bad attributes."

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  15. Oh, you mean the Ben Zoma's mishnah? Well, at least it's clear what you want to assert this time, namely that CK's casting off the yoke of mitzvos at some point in his life (if indeed that's what happened, as I assume it did) makes his Reaganite politics & political commentary as inseparable from religious kefira as Stalin's despotic approach to governance would be from Stalin's character.

    Look, fella, you shouldn't need me to tell you that that's one really difficult sevara to maintain. When Krauthammer would get up on the televised news and, say,

    * opine that, climatological urgency or no, Obama's climate treaty be ludicrously one-sided against the U.S. commercial interests & overly generous to China's;

    * detail all the ways Hilary Clinton botched her own campaign, and basically offer damning proof to such effect;

    * reply to Al Gore's editorial on Republican foreign policy by, on one foot, enumerating in 1-2min the catalogue of Gore foreign policy positions over the past 20yrs and how each & every one has proved, in retrospect, to have been 180-degrees wrong;

    ...well, it's mighty hard to see how any of those or other characteristic Krauthammer moments should have been the least bit affected by complete shemiras mitzvos, or by none at all, or by anything in between. Why should that be at all relevant to any particulars?

    It's almost as if you want to see freierkeit (i.e., being OTD) render all subsequent words & actions as those of an active meisis, beckoning others to follow suit. If so, that would dilute the notion of meisis into absurdity.

    And I think you've set yourself an awfully hard time reckoning with that famous Rambam enunciated in the haqdama to 8a Peraqim defending his use of atheist & non-Jewish sources, which reads to the effect that we are meqabel the emes from wherever we find it. According to your sevara that would be not just misguided but indeed impossible (kiviyakhol).

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  16. I have absolutely no problem with Krauthammer's political commentary and positions, whether I agree with them (as I do with very most of his positions) or disagree with them. He may be an excellent political commentator who largely takes the correct political positions.

    But don't throw in anything about his Jewishness. Treat him as if he were Buckley or Will and I'd have nothing to say. But this blog is dedicated to, in its own words, "Issues of Jewish Identity". It doesn't specialize in plain vanilla general American political issues. Krauthammer was given a thread because of his being a Jew. Therefore that brought up this discussion of his very bad performance as a Jew.

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  17. No, it's you who's lost track.

    I claimed, in so many words, that he showed the world what clear thinking and honest debate look like-- no small thing, that, especially by Jewish standards, and further asserted that (applying a mishna in Avos), the "wise" person will learn from him (yes, as a kind of exemplar, even) despite his lapsed observance, yes.

    You wanted then to throw in, among other darts, that such a mission is as vain as a moral person trying to sift some useful knowledge from Stalin's governance, which I just now pointed out is plainly ridiculous. And I tossed off a few examples of Krauthammer moments not for anyone to agree with them but to make it eminently witness-able how very little any one of them could fall prey to your sweeping criticism. Sure, it sounds like a fine indictment to say with a wave of the hand, but when you're faced with particulars, begins to sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it? That ol' Talmudic "plugin," b"H!

    It's not merely that your thinking goes so clearly awry; it's that once it has, you fail to recognize it as such, and quietly convince yourself that you made sense all along. So, you're caught in a kind of cycle of intellectual murk. According to the sefer Even Shleima, which brings us much of the Gra's private Torah to his talmidim, such a person's Torah, so long as those klippos remain with him, will end up doing him little good and may even, chiddush niflaoh, bring him further harm.

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  18. Krauthammer is a rasha, like anyone who, as you mildly and sweetly washed away the crime, "lapsed observance". Your continued gross misapplication of a Chazal notwithstanding. To use him as an exemplary fellow due to his "honest debating", someone who became a mechallel Shabbos, makes a complete farce out of the Torah and Judaism.

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  19. So there it is. Dig deeply enough, and everything really comes down to matters of Mussar, b"H! Someone chose a path you can't approve of (understandably), and as a result you simply can't stand to have anything kind said about that person, no matter how warranted. And that refusal then goes on to dictate your perceptions.

    Indeed, the negiya bedavar is so intense that you are even ready to manufacture rebuttals where not only are they not in evidence, but have already been struck down.
    In this case: That a Chazal has been repeatedly misapplied, when in fact you've failed to find any clear evidence that it means what you so badly want it to mean and when that assertion has been rather illustratively refuted with an almost laborious "plug-in".

    ...Well, not exactly no evidence. There's the "evidence" of your emotional certainty. What a fine basis that is....

    Can only repeat what I've already advised: Run to learn beregel from someone truly exemplary, a rebbe who's an adam gadol. Is the only likely formula for growth to be found. Else you're destined to die confined in the prism of your own emotional blindspots. What's worse, you'll never have the satisfaction of following an argument clearly & without self-imposed distortion.

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  20. The thoughts I've related here come directly from two gedolim, who are not only widely recognized across the spectrum of Torah Judaism, but who you don't reach even the dust in their feet. I don't express merely my own opinions on this matter but rather those of Gedolei Yisroel.

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  21. More self-deception. Echoing words of gedolim is not growing under the hashpaa of a rebbe. Not even close.

    If that worked, then the Tzadduqim, who clung constantly to the words of God Himself, mediated through the greatest ish gadol ever, would have become the most developed, shaleim Jews. But, of course, no matter how great the source, words are only ever filtered through one's own emotionally motivated intellectual self-distortions. You won't be faring any better than they, and your inability to follow arguments through bodes poorly in this regard.

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  22. One of them is my direct rebbi and hashpaa. The other is my rebbi's rebbi.

    Hard for you to conceive, I know.

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  23. Most truly, yes. Geberally speaking, one who's developing fruitfully under a rebbe begins to exemplify the ability to speak to point, address other perspectives, & ably reply directly to basic qushiyos. By contrast, one who is not remains happily reiterating their own perspective.

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  24. Let me guess: Does one of them have the initials AM?

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