The following is a refutation of the criticism of Rav Shach. I have edited some of the angry language to make it more acceptable. I personally agree with most of what is expressed here.
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Yonah L has left a new comment on your post "
Chabad - Rav Schach & Lubavitcher Rebbe":
Shlomie's post serves as an excellent example of the kinds of [misinformation] Chabad has perpetrated in its attack against Rav Schach. Failing to mention that Rav Schach's views were also the views of many other major rabbonim and also having utter disregard for facts.
I will illustrate a few of the misrepresentations he made. Incidentally, some one else claimed that R' Nochum Partzovits (this was heard from"reliable sources") claimed that he was fond of the Rebbe's depth(!). There is no end to the errors.
>>Unfortunately, the post and some of the articles linked therin contain some rather absurd fallacies. It is, however, important to remember that Rav Shach represented a very extreme view that was not shared by most gedolim, and that was often simply wrong.
Rav Schach's views were in fact shared by almost everyone of significance. And your opinion as to whether it was wrong is meaningless. It was their opinion.
>>It is easy to call anybody we disagree with 'apikorus', but that doesn't make it so.
And yet the Rebbe called people who did not agree with him messengers of the Samach Mem, and accused them of wearing possult tefilin.
>>Here is an article from awhile ago, making some very valid points:
These are not valid points.
>>There has been a lot of talk about gedolim and especially about Rav Shach. Before people make any judgements I think it is important to know something about the man and his teachings. If what I say appears harsh, let me assure the readers that I have said the same things to many rabbis and they have agreed with me. Since the views I will be expressing are also those of numerous others it would be best for the moderator not to censor it. I realize that others are afraid to speak out so I will say what everyone else is thinking. Needless to say, the Lubavitchers have spoken out and been a great deal harsher than I will be but that is for good reason. Rav Shach has branded the rebbe a heretic.
[...]
>>>>Furthermore, he has branded the entire movement as heretical.
Those who believe the Rebbe is God are heretics.
>>Most people respond harshly when they have been called heretics, Especially since the other gedolim seem to have no great problem with Habad.
Like whom? The Brisker Rav, Rav Hutner, Rav Ruderman, R' Yaakov and Rav Shach obviously had a problem with him. So did Rav Yaakov Weinberg and Rav Ahron Soleveitchik. Even today, Rav Ahron Feldman, Rav Zev Leff, and even more modern orthodox Rabbis like Norman Lamm and David Berger have a problem with Chabad and its Rebbe. The list is actually significantly longer. So, exactly what do you mean by "the other gedolim" who don't have a problem with Chabad?
>>They don't support everything Habad does but you don't have other gedolim using the inflammatory rhetoric of R. Shach.
Inflammatory rhetoric was the problem? I thought the problem was how they viewed Chabad. Its not that they don't support what Chabad has done--they think its "repugnant," "misse", and not in accord with the mesorah. This is not inflammatory language, perhaps, but they certainly condemn their behavior.
>>In fact he is very inconsistent
In your ignorant mind, that is.
>>He mocks the Lubavithcher rebbe's Rambam learning program saying that people knew about the Rambabm before Lubavitch came around and that no one should follow Habad's program and it is forbidden to innovate
This is not the real reason. Please read the Michtav.
>>and yet he praises Daf Yomi.
Not quite, either.
>>Well, people knew about learning Talmud before R. Meir Shapiro. The difference is that when Rav Shach likes something, when it comes from his circles, then it is ok. However if an innovation, no matter how good, comes from another circle then he viciosly attacks it.
This is not true at all. You have not read your sources and you have made a false and ignorant conclusion. Pathetic.
>>In general, everything that comes out of his mouth is criticism.
I don't know what you mean by this. Have you learned by him? Have you talked with him for many years? How do you know this? Perhaps you meant his writings? Well, you have demonstrated so far that you have not actually read them. Otherwise, aside from having a strange agenda and no problems with misrepresenting the facts, you are doing fine.
>>He does not believe in building but in destroying.
What a generalization. There are so many yeshivos and institutions, so many seforim and talmidim, so many shuls and battei medrashim, which attribute their success and methods to him. The only one being destructive here is you.
>>All of his volumes of letters are attacks against everything from Lubavitch, to religious Zionism, to Hesder yeshivot, to Rav Goreh (who has no yirat shamayim according to Shach), to R. Steinsaltz (another heretic).
You did not know who Rav Goren is? This is obviously a made up essay from an otherwise knowledgable scholar. There is no way he could have made such a mistake. But I would add that Rav Yoel, Rav Reuven Grozovksy, Rav Baruch Ber, Rav Chaim Brisker, Rav Elchonon Wasserman, the Chofetz Chaim and many others had far stronger views against Religious Zionists. Rav Goren's shiur in YU was STRONGLY argued with by the Rav himself. And his extremely bizarre and controversial rulings have been assaulted by everyone as being shallow. The fact that he made such concessions in halacha would lead anyone to think he had little yiras shomayim. None of the gedolei yisroel in Amercia--at least the Charedim--held of him at all. He loved Chacham Ovadia, though. As for Rav Steinzaltz, R' Moshe and the Tzitz Eliezer also places his books on cherem. So, again, Rav Shach was hardly ever alone on any of these issues. You can only be willfully ignorant about this. Anyone who did ANY research on these issues would know better.
>>When the rest of he Jewish world was celebrating the Entebbe raid and R. Moshe said it was an open miracle Shach gave a talk saying that what the Government did was forbidden.
[...]
>>This is exactly what the Satmar rebbe said! He gave his famous talk last year viciously attacking the kibbutzim. Why? We all know that they don't keep kosher there but why attack them.
This is just a strange argument. Then you admit Rav Shach was not alone on this position, either. . . In your opinion, it is muttar to attack Rav Shach but not muttar to attack people who know better but refuse to keep halacha--people who are kofrim biikkar?
>>Is this the way to bring people together and bring them to Yiddishkeit?
Is that what this article is aiming to do?
>>Is this love?
I ask the same question back to you. I personally think that it is love to instruct followers the difference between right and wrong. YOu obviously need a lesson on this important distinction.
>>Lubavitch knows how to be mekarev, they do it through love.
This is completely untrue. Chabad has refused to do kiruv work to those who won't be Chabad. And they are turning people into mindness messiah worshipping ignoramouses. Aish does Kiruv. So does Ohr Someach. Their people did not turn out that way. Chabad does it because they think it will make their Rebbe the moshiach. That is not love of kiruv; it is the product of indoctrination.
>>Shack simply attacks.
[...] And what is this generalization? Do you not know how the Rebbe attacked the Chazon Ish for not learning Tanya? He had no idea whether he did not or not. And yet, a young man who spent 15 years aimlessly in Europe on community funds had the nerve to unilatterally attack an undisputed gadol hador of an earlier generation!! What do you call that?
>>And then he attacked President Herzog for no reason. Herzog did more for religious Jewry than any president and he is a fine man but Shach viciously attacks him just like he attacks the kibbutzniks who have laid down their lives so that he could live in peace.
This makes no sense. Explain exactly how kibbutzniks laid down their lives so that Rav Shach could live in peace? Do you have any legitamite yiras shomayim at all?
>>And he expects the secularists to keep subsidizing the yeshivot at the massive rate they have been?
The Rebbe lived off community funds for 15 years doing nothing in Europe. Ask his people how he can do that.
>>Rav Shach has no value in his life other than that of learning Torah. People can't feel good about anything other than learning Torah.
This is actually a legitimate Torah approach--one the Rebbe attempted to replicate.
>>There is no value to the State of Israel other than that it enables us to learn Torah and its destruction would be no great tragedy if Torah continued to be learnt.
This is the view of pretty much every gadol in the Charedi world before him.
>> He opposed the annexation of East Jerusalem and Golan because it will get the goyim mad. He doesn't recognize the concept that Jews should see something positive in annexing our capital-- East Jerusalem.
Actually he does, but he ruled differently.
>>He also speaks of not provoking the Gentiles, a concept which has no validity when Jews have a state, although he thinks that the State is just as much a galut as N. Y. and London.
It is. Read the news. Did you forget that thousands of people were kicked out of their homes by their own government? WE ARE IN GOLUS. Get it through your head.
>>He says that Jews in Israel should act as if they were dancing before the Polish nobleman. In other words, the fact that Jews now have a state means nothing about how they relate to the world.
This is the view of every religious charedi. This is a criticsm? This only indicts your ignorance!
>>They still must have this inferiority comples. There is something wrong with having pride and holding one's head up.
Yes there is, actually. [...]
>>His views have infected the Haredi community. We all know that
they dodge the draft but it is even worse. They refuse to say a mi
shebarakh for IDF even though the latter protect them from the Arabs.
And Chabad refuses to say a mishaberach, as well. They were also deeply anti zionist--did you ever know this?
>>They refuse to say a prayer for the government which gives them millions of dollars. In the diaspora they alwasy said a prayer for the government but not in Israel.
So now its not a Jewish state? I am sorry, but YOU are inconsistent.
>>In the Diaspora they always acted patriotic and if there was a moment of silence for war dead they wouldn't dream of breaking with the practice.
Its a non Jewish concept. Did you ever learn anything?
>>However in Israel while everyone stands at attention on Yom Hashoah they go about their business.
They do other things lizecher nishmas the kedoshim who were killed. And far more meaningful things than the evil michallei shabbos who have instituted these goyish practices.
>>Do they realize how much of a hillul hashem this is and how it hurts the feelings of others who are remembering loved ones.
Everyone knows that learning lizecher nishmas the kedoshim means more. Except goyim.
>>Of course they know but they don't care. Unlike Lubavitch they enjoy confrontation.
There is no faction in the entire jewish community which does not ENJOY confrontation more than Chabad. They have the most fights. They have the most machlomes. Even according to their own spin story, the greatest messhugennim have taken over 770? How? By hostile force? And what do they fight over, a zatzal? And now you are writing out against the entire charedi community? What do you know about these issues? You obviously know nothing about them, what they practice, what they do and feel.
>>For R. Shach there is only one truth.
Mr. Olver said the same thing about the Rebbe. So, why is this a problem. In the end, there really is only one truth!!!
>> He has no conception of Jewsh history and doesn't realize that there can be disputes in matters of hashkafah,
COMPLETELY untrue. You have never read his works.
>>as long as we all accept Torah and halakhhah.
The problem he has with those who criticizes is that they do not accept Torah and Halacha. See above.
>>Thus when R. Ovadiah decided to join the government he threatened to ban all of the latter's books
No other? Are you sure? Do you know Chabad has banned Rav Shach books? Did you know they banned Rav Kotler's books?
>>No other gadol has ever made such irresponsible statements and acted in such a dictatorial manner.
Rav Shach did not make any irresponsible comments. You never read anything he ever wrote. As was mentioned above, everything he said was in keeping with traditional charedi--frum and ehrlich Jewish--hashkafa and was backed by nearly if not everyone in his camp. The Rebbe on the other hand was a dictator. He demanded the greatest level of respect, called those against him messengers of Satan or wearing non kosher tefillin.
>>Everything I have described so far is written in his books.
You have some nerve. You have never read his books!!! That much is clear from his post.
>>I have not made any of it up
As was demosntrated this whole thing was made up.
>>and if gets you mad hearing what he believes trust me that this is only the tip of the iceberg and there is no way that anyone who reads this line should regard him as an important gadol
He was regarded as a gadol hador by every gadol in his time, save [...] the Rebbe.
>>since everything most of us view as important he mocks (he even says its forbidden to form rabbinic organizations).
The Rebbe mocked many things I hold important--mitzvos, for example, learning, another. But his mocking what is important to me is not what makes him not a gadol. It is what he mocked which renders him possul.
>>To give one final example of this let me refer to Rav Shach's attack on R. Soloveitchik in vol. 4of his letters. As everyone knows, there were always disputes in hashkafah between the Rav and other gedolim. However this never stopped the Lubvavitcher rebbe or R. Moshe or R. Aharon Kotler from being on close personal terms with the Rav and respecting his gadlus.
Hillarious. Read Larger than Life. The Rebbe was not at all close to the Rav. In fact, the Rav visited him once in 40 years--and they lived in the same city!!! If that does not show you enough, read the book. R' Ahron held the Rav was responsible for half the tumah in America. Other than that, sure, they respected his gadlus as a genius lamdan.
>>Obviously R. Moshe and the Lubavticher Rebbe, as well as the Rav, believed that their own approach was correct and the others were wrong.
This is not true. R' Moshe saw the good in every Jew and Jewish path. The Rebbe HATED anyone who was did not learn Tanya. And this we know from what he wrote about the Chazon Ish even when the Rebbe was a relative kid.
>>But they never said that the approach of the other's was forbidden.
The Rebbe held that Chabad is the most superior. He was the greatest ethnocentrist in the world. [...] with the silly notion that Chabad is the center of yiddishkeit and that the Beis Hamikdosh would be build in 770.
>>It was just misguided.
The rebbe, you mean. . .
>> similarly, the Rav never said that everyone had to learn secular studies, that other aproaches were invalid.
But his talmidim did. Read Rav Lichtenstein's essays on this topic.
>>Rather, only that his approach was also legitimate.
Everyone believes this. Except for the Rebbe.
>>Rav Shach has a different approach, one which shows all of his feeling of knowing everything and his belief that he, and only he, knows the truth, the one and only truth.
Mr. Oliver said that the Rebbe saw truth, and this is why he was unequivocal about this. Why is Rav Shach held to a different standsrd?
>>In discussing the Rav's book Hamesh Derashot he doesn't say that we have a different view or that the Rav is wrong. No, what he says is that it is forbidden to listen to what the Rav says. Forbidden. the Rav goes against Daat Torah and the Rav has completely distorted Daas Torah (one wonders whose Daas Torah. Doesn't the Rav have his own Daas Torah?)
No, he does not. Because he and his talmidim to not BELIEVE in daas torah.
>>Since anyone who goes against Daas Torah speaks heresy it is forbidden to listen to what the Rav says!
This was the opinion of many on him. Rav Hutner did not allow his talmidim to go to the Rav's yartzei shiur for relatively smaller reasons.
>>Does he realize who is talking about? This is not some Mizrachi functionary he is mocking (not that this is forgivable either). He is speaking about R. Soloveitchik, whom R. Tendler called the greatest Rosh Yeshivah of our generation, whom the Lubavitcher rebbe stood up for etc. etc.
And you are not writing a hatchet job on just anyone--not that THAT would be forgivable--but against an undispute gadol hador that eeryone from Rav PAler to Rav Mosdhe Shmuel Shapiro, from Rav Shmuiel Barenboum to Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, from Rav Moshe Feinstein to Rav Isser Zalman, from Rav Ahron KOtler to the Brisker Rav--had the GREATEST respect for!!! And that means a lot more than what Rav Tendler, a relative novice in learning, held of the Rav. I would say the Rav was the real deal and that would mean more. Rabbi Tendler wrote, said, and did a lot of crazy things in the past. He is not someone I would bring up. Even in his letter "defending" the Rav, he disorted things--claiming the Rav was the greatest Rosh Yeshiva in his generation--a generation where Rav Chaim SHmuelevitz and Rav Shmuel Rozovsky--separately--had more talmidim both in theiy shiur and more who learned their seforim. The fact the Rebbe stood for him means nothing. No one cares about the Rebbe's empty gestures. He was greatful someone showed him respect after 40 years.
>>May God forgive him for degrading our teacher!
[...]
>>Furthermore, R. Shach continues, it is the Rav's secular studies which are responsible for these distortions. Woe are the ears which hear such nonsense.
Nonsense? This is the view of just about every gadol preceding Rav Shach's generation. You may not like it or have another view, which is something you would claim to respect. But Rav Shach's views are nonsense? HYPOCRITE.
>>What chutzpah, to say that secular studies distorted the Rav's Torah!
But this is another view. . . does this not mean that you are. . .not respecting . . .another person's views? That is terribly inconsistent.
>>Rav Shach goes on for a few pages without any respect for the fact that the Rav was a gadol and he is entitled to have different hashkafah
But you just did that!!!
>>also throwing in some irrelevancies about how Hesder yeshivot have destroyed
any notion of striving for greatness in Torah learning.
Mark his words: there will never be a gadol produced by a hesder yeshiva.
>>(He also hates hesder because their students actually get a job. For R. Shach, and Israeli Haredim, as oposed to American haradim, there is something negative about actually working for a living. There is no concept of a Baal ha-Bayit. That is why he put Leo Levi's book Shaare Talmud Torah in Herem, since it advocates a Torah im Derekh Eretz [i. e.earning a living] approach).
This is irrelevant commentary.
>>Shach is also confused how come the rabbis in the U.S. did not protest The Rav's opinions and furthermore that they contributed to the book Kevod ha-Rav .
Its Rav Shach to you. And plenty did not. Most did not, in fact.
>>This is a great hillul hashem since by giving the Rav a book in his honor and praising him the yeshivah students will see this and think that is ok to follow in the Rav's path, God forbid, and will absorb his views which are completely "pasul".
And yet Chabadniks like you can lie about a gadol because you want to emphasize that his views about the rebbe are pasul. And that's ok?
>>I could go on but I think everyone gets the point. When it comes to gedolim we should consult R. Eliashiv, R. Shlomo Zalman, the chief Rabbis, R. Ovadia etc. We should not even take Rav Shach's opinion into consideration. By adopting such a hateful tone and being so opposed to everything we consider decent he is not really different than the Satmar rebbe, who was, as R. Aharon Soloveitchik told me, a great scholar who made a terrible blunder. So too with Rav Shach. He has slandered great gedolim and for his sake we should hope that it was all done le-shem shamayim. When I asked R. Aharon why we don't put him in Herem in accordance with the pesak of the Rambam re. anyone who slanders a gadol all he could say was that we no longer use the Herem. One thing must be said for Lubavitch, even thought R.Shach says they are heretics and that their rebbe is one of the greatest sinners alive, and going straight to gehinnom, they have not lost their cool. I don't think there will be any rejoicing in Crown Heights when he passes away. They realize that this whole affair is very sad. Unfortunately, however, when the rebbe passes away there will be rejoicing in Ponovezh because one is supposed to rejoice at the death of a heretic. What have we come to!
First, since Rav Eliashiv did not pasken the way you wanted him to about Slifkin and others, I am sure you would retract that, too. this is because you don't know what it means to have respect for talmidei chachomim. You only care about them doing what YOU want them to do. No one in Ponoves danced when he died. In fact, Rav Shach davened for him to get better because he was only against his false views, nothing more. But shlomie, Tzig, Albert and others in the blog world have stooped so low in fighting Rav Shachs views that you have shown no respect for yourself. The entire Chabad was giddy with laughter when Rav Shach passed away. They hate him, hate anyone like him, and they hate anyone who is not like them. That is Chabad. That is what you defend.
>>P. S. As I already pointed out, everything I have said in this letter has met with the approval of rabbis, none of whom are in the Lubavitch camp.
This is obviously untrue as no one would endorse lying about Rav Shach.
Very appropriate that I came across this blog on tisha BAv. The question I have for you is when you will face Hashem will Hashem say you helped Moshiach come sooner or you were part of the Tishah BAv problem of sinas chinom etc. and delayed the Geula. In your heart I hope you have an honest answer and you will close down this hateful site before it is too late to fix the damage you are doing.
I agree with the comment that this is adding to sinas chinom and machlokos. I urge the blogger of "Daas Torah" to realize that this blog is against "Daas Torah".