=dinosaur

Start retype of a printout ca. 1989 from input of a manuscript
written ca. May 1988.                      
Retyped 8 Feb '04; interjections will be set off in
{squiggly_braces}

Best viewed under EinsteinWriter 
Einstein Layout: Staggered block-indents as follows:
LM as follows:  .l1=FL; .l2=+5 chars; .l3=+10 chars, .l4=+15
chars, .l5=+20 chars, .l6=+25chars
LL=60 chars I think, but that's not important
Layouts are removed in T.EXE and I think ETRANS.EXE convertes to
*.txt; so I flag them with #l(Layout number), eg #l1 or #L1, etc.

Despite a most provocative title, this is a serious essay; and I
think not unduly disrespectful of orthodox and ultra-orthodox
Judaism.  I did of course, and do, approach it from a non-orthodox
standpoint, quite an eclectic standpoint; I try to retain rather
than repudiate whatever I may have somewhat learned in practice of
other paths (the sort of hippy-Indian way at New Buffalo; and my
association with the SO); but also the
secular/intellectual/socially-conscious ambience in which I was
raised:  Anglophilic in style, Jewish in social conscience.  The
typical liberalism of the '60's from those whose parents had some
association with the so-called 'radicalism' [ in fact a deeply,
almost romantically pro-American social conseratism with [what in
retrospect now appears to have been ] an unduly romantic notion of
socialism, extended [ in ignorance of the corruption and excesses
of Stalinism ] to totalitarian socialism.]
That was of course compatible with whole-hearted participation in
the World War II War effort [ the CP-USA then being, of course, in
a United Front position, a very conservative movement, in style
even more than in positions I think; in which posture it tends to
remain.  Of course the opportunists of the McCarthy era might have
made something quite horrendous of what at the time seemed in
trivial duality of affiliation.  [ I'm speaking here with
deliberate obscurity; which I rarely do on purpose. ]


----------------------------------------------------------------
                                
PART I:  TO KILL THE DINOSAUR
Toward a de-legitimization of orhtodoxy as normative Judaism*

1.0  It is necesary to show that 'orthodoxy' is nor normative for
the religion of Judaism.
And that 'ultra-orthodoxy' is not the quinteessence of orthodoxy.

#l2
1.01:  The purpose is to un-block the livng stream of Jewish
religious insight, to let the 'message' of Judaism assume 
its proper 'form in our time'.
#l3
{N.B.:  This is a play on PVK's title of his book on
HIK:  'The Message in our Time'.  PVK subsequently
remarked (so Aziz told me at the time) that the book
contained, [as I recall Aziz telling me] many
inaccuracies, and that for that reason he would not wish
to republish it.  It was a beautifully produced book,
but in the Preface PVK said , with his typical
politeness, that the publisher had made him cut it down
from one about 4 times the length.  It is that original
manuscript/typescript or whatever that I would hope to
see published.  sa Feb '04}

That is always the project of religion; verily, of any
intellectual project.

As Whitehead said, in 'Process and Reality', and no doubt as
Rav Kook said better, there is always a dialectic tension (or
as Buckminister Fuller would put it:  an optimal harmony of
the pull to conserve, and the push to break free and
innovate.
#l3

{Cf. PVK:  [apr., quoted from memory:  ÷'The push of the
future is stronger than the push of the past.'

[Keyboard note:  ÷ =: 'approximately equal to' (a
squiggly equals sign; used in technical typing; I don't
now know the ASCII value.  Accessed in EinsteinWriter
with Alt+G and then the Spanish cedilla (keyboard top
row, lst key to the left; 
#l2

l.02:  Innovation for the sake of expediency is irrrelevant
to this project.
Reform Jusaim in America appears as anachornistic as the
Rocketttes.
#l3
"We have met th enemey, and they are us" (Walt Kelly).
The rigiditg of orthodoxy is the overwhelmingly greatest
casuse of alienation from Judaism.
#l4

{N.B.:  I surely had in mind my father's
experience:  his mother was strictly observant, as
far as I know -- she kept a kosher home -- and his
father, although apparently not strictly observant,
deferred to his wife.
My father was raised with the whole bundle:  Sunday
School, Hebrew school, violin lessons, working
after school in his father's business (woolen
goods, as I recall; 
#l5
my father retained excellent taste in
clothing, and would take me out to get clothes
and shoes; he once, at the Harvard Coop,
helped me get an excellent wool woven sports'
jacket, quite like a Harris tweed (and maybe
it was); I was about 12 at the time.  And of
course in those days, the 1940's, one was
always measued for shoes by width as well as
length.}
#l6

{{ One thing I am trying to do in
whatever I write or type is to re-write
piecemiel my Autobiography, presently
lost. }}
#l4

(Whatever I can say is only an academic footnote to
R. Zalman Schachters' teaching; not to imply that
he'd endorse this.  Hower, I have tucked into this
essay academic conclusions, disguised as flip
remarks, some of which it took me years to
develop.)
#l5

{The main essay I had in mind was one I wrote
for a philosophy class, I think by Mrs. Iyer,
at UCSB ca. '68, 'Quodlibet est, est unum,
verum, bonum.'  I don't now have a copy of
that.  It boiled down to a sort of Kantian
'transcendental deduction' of the necessary
existence of Deity -- so one could term it a
'transcendental ontologic proof'.  It boiled
down to:  we cannot but imagine the existence
of the Infinite, therefore it is meaningless
to say that it does not exist (by the
verifiability criterion of meaning:  that
something is meaningful if and only if
'criteria' (in Wittgenstein's sense of the
term) could be imagined for predicating its
applicabillty and non-applicability.)

A secondary essay, also presently not
available, was 'On Community', originally
written at New Buffalo, ca. 1971.  New Buffalo
was, in its own hippy-Indian way, profoundly
religious; that essay was my rather coloful
rationale for it.}

#l2
1.1:  In both cases, the 'surface grammar' (Witggenstein)
implies that it is:  that orthodoxy is by self-definitino,
the set of correct opinions; and that ultra-orthodoxy is the
distillate of whatever orthodoxy is.  Obviously silly; yet
that's what circumscribes the politics of Isreaeli state
religion.

#l3
'Ortho-doxa-y' is a contradiction in terms.

ortho-doxy = (Greek) ortho, correct + doxa, opinion.
In Plato's refinement of this terminolgoy, doxa, opinon
(belief) { as it is rendered in what in the USA if not
England is termed Anglo-American [academic] philosohy }
sands in contradistinctino of to nous, (usually
translated 'knowlege'), and in Platonic
epistemology/ontology, 'doxa' is relative, and 'nous' is
absolute.)

#l4
{Cf. PVK:  Discussing the limitation and
fallibility of personal belief, and as introduction
to his teaching of practices intended to help one
see things from the perspective of one's opponents,
he remarked, in a tone of incredulity, 'People kill
each other for beliefs.' This is Zenith 1999 or
maybe a year or so before. }

{OK,now I'll hop-skotch over to =purav*.* ,
continuing my "Why I am a Reformie" rap, tho that's
written it not merely an ironic but an ostensibly
facetious mode.  A mystic disguised as a con-man --
that dude in Spain who wrote the Zohar in davka
Aramaic, ostensibly as a Commentary on the
Chumash.}

He said, If I'm right, let this tree jump over the
road.  The tree jumped over the road.  They said,
What does a tree know from halacha.
They said, the Tora (ie, halacha) is not in Heaven,
it's on earth.
I go with the Sadduces:  Insofar as it's not in
Heaven, it's not obligatory.
That is a criterion of a non-orthodox position.
Maybe the only criterion; I ain't thought that far
yet.

It's where I stand, on the fringe -- the 'cutting
edge' maybe, and/or maybe not -- of the communithy. 
I don't say I'm right and they're wrong; if
everyone "did what was right in his own eyes" the
community would fall apart.  But in Israel, given a
stable community, a few of us are free to stand on
the fringe.  It ain't fair, but neither is love and
taxes.  Taxes anyhow.


It's not the freethinker position, which is:  the
mitzvot are not obligatory.  But it's close. 
Because the mitzvot in Heaven must be universal,
and so must be free of any particular ritual.
So what we have are not mitzvot per se, but the
Forms of mitzvot.  Which cannot be particularized.
But expression of the Forms must be particularized: 
as it says in Esther, "each man in his own house".
So ritual too may be obligatory, for one who stands
within that path.  If I am Jewish, I put on a
tallit before entering the House of Prayer, if I am
Catholic, I genuflect; if I am Muslim, I remove my
shoes, if I am Buddhist, I bow; if I am Indian, I
take a sweat bath.  What's obligatory is that there
be a pause before entering; some ackowlegement and
demarcation that one is passing from secular to
sacred.           
And so we can learn from each other's rituals, and
incorporate parts of them.  We wash our hands; the
Muslims wash also their feet and nose.



#l2
In modern empiricist epistemology 
#l3
{N.B. 'empiricist epistemology' is my term for what
Wittgenstein stands counterposed to }, 
#l2

which may be seen as the methodology of a secular
reductionism, 'opinion' is taken as equivalent to 'belief',
and so as an exercise in academic epistemology one can derve
e.g. the formula
     'X knows A' = 'X believes A' & 'A is true'

#l4
{This is a standard bit of sophmore theory of
knowlege; I don't know why I dusted it off and
stuck it in here.}


#l3
(One might say that beliefs and statements in the
category of doxa are (respectively) apprehended from and
predicated of the phenomenal world (the world of maya)
and that intuitions and statements (or following
Wittgenstein in Tractatus, show-ings, indications) in
nous, of the noumenal world.

But since on the empiricst view one never has conclusive
creitera for knowlege, under empiricist epistemology

#l1
--------------------------------------------------------
END PRINTOUT P1, and about time
-------------------------------------------------------
[START PRINTOUT P2]

knowlege-claims must be said to be meaningless by the
verifiablilty criterion of meaningfulness.

#l4
(Since knowlege-claims obviously AIN'T meaningless,
and if we take the verifiabilbity principle of
meaningfulness as reasonable, empiricist
epistemology is thus shown to be unreasonable. 
While not precisely a reduction ad absurdum, this
discredits empiricist epistemology. 

As Kant showed in response to Hume, empiricist
epistemology relegates knowlege to the "sphere of
'noumena'".  But as Cavelll showed in lectures {UC
Berkeley, '62}, you go off-track with Kant if you
take noumena as existents rather than as a logical
construct within academic epistemology -- noumena
are the re-creation of an anachromism in the Museum
of the History of Silly Ideas.

(Ie, Kant falls neatly into place if you approach
him from a Wittgensteinian perspective; but from a
Hume-ian perspective Kant is a brick wall.

Ashenbrenner, in Berkeley, approached Kant from a
Humian perspetive with such conscientious
persistence that you could read Kant's philosophy
in reverse from teh lumps on his head.)

But since perception (more accuratley, non-mystic
perception, which, if we follow the empiricists AND
Wittgenstein's crituqe of empiricism, in
disallowing mysticism

#l5
(and W.'s failure to challenge that disavowal
is the critique, limitation, boundary of W.'s
critique of empiricist epistemology.  That
falling from the transcendent brilliance of
his youth, expressed in the Tractatus
(how the positivists missed its coherence;
only maybe Spinoza had such lean brilliance)

#l6
(like the Ideal lof Bauhaus architecture
at its best, slender skycscrappers of
glass and steel in the sun, making
Platonic ants of the humans)   
#l5
-- the Tractatus, more than Spinoza's Ethiics
which it of course resembles in superficial
form, is a gem -- 

("I should have been a star" said W. (quoted
in Malcolm's biography(?))

-- that decline into what was, obviously iin
retrospect from Malcolm's biography
(honest Boswell that the fool was) a lifetime
melancolia

(from a fastidious to an indiffernt
dresser; "though I am incapable of giving
affection, I have a great need for it"
(ibid) -- etc. etc.
-- which Malcolm, that stody {stody:  a
stodgy toady, I presume} saw only as
eccentrity

[END PRINTOUT PAGE 2]

{I've come to the position that
Wittgenstein's PI and related later
Nachlass , as he said himself, ain't
-- well, it may be a 'Copernican
Revolution', but a Copernican
revolution is merely a shifting of
the axis point, or as PVK would put
it, of one's focus -- merely another
way of looking at things; it's not
that this is discovered to be right
and all that is discovered to have
been wrong.  Both may have their
uses)
(And W. said, in his Preface to PI,
that he feared he had merely
introduced a new jargon.  And Cavell
once said: What passes for a
'Wittgensteinian' position nowadays
(60's; by now everyone seems to
ignore the poor old dude) is merely
making oneself invulnerable to
Wittgensteinian criticism.  A sort
of academic intellectual
correctness, as shallow as realworld
'political correctness.'  I mean, if
Woody Allen is into it, it must be
high-grade shlock; Woody Allen
diligently avoids the realworld,
taking refuge in a whimsical irony
that veils the curish snarl of a
cynic.

So Wittgenstein, ironically for his
sensibility -- I mean, posing an
Englishman -- or a working-class
Englishman, if they count in England
--  is your basic beef-and-potatoes
at the High table philosopher --
really an apologist for Moore, who
had barely a brain in his head but
got a good salary as a Hereditary
Don --

like, Wittgenstein is ok in the
middle-range, but fails in both the
micro (ie, "the agenbite of inwit"
(James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake,
quoted by Jack Kerouac if memory
serves), the sort of Hamlet-like
introspection that fueled Hume-ian
philosophy), and in the macro level
(mysticism, which some mistake
introspection for -- PVK often has
made this point)

[END RE-INPUT WITH {ADDED COMMENTARY} OF PRINTOUT PAGE 2]

--------------------------------------------------------------
[START INPUT OF PRINTOUT PAGE 3] 
#l2

[COPIED FROM PAGE 2]
-- that decline into what was, obviously iin retrospect from
Malcolm's biography
(honest Boswell that the fool was) a lifetime melancolia

[RETYPED FROM PAGE 3]:

#l5
to never again rise above empiricism, himself
the fly in his own fly bottle -- 
[this is a standard quote from PI:  "what is
the purpose of philosophy -- to show the fly
the way out of the fly bottle"]

which melacolia he furnished, wtill with the
impeccable taste (von Wright's momoir?) of his
youth, with all the trappings of empiricist
epistemology, which he detailed with a
meticulousness wasted on is followers

(as W. observes in his introduction fo PI,
much  of what he says in PI is a
making_explicit of the suppressed,
between_the_lines steps in the empiricist
chain of thought -- it is only in PI that one
sees how many steps the empiricists omitted
from what modern academic philosophy mistook
for self-evident derivations {or better:
observations} 

but since perception is necesarily of
phenomena, noumena are not, logically
speaking, entities in an existent realm. The
noumenal is not a realm of existence that "we
poor mortals" (PVK) can't apprehend; it's
merely an epistemologist's model of what
knowlege AIN'T; an oblique of way of saying
that our percerption are ncessarily
pre_conceptualized by what Kant called
"categories of perception" and W. called
"grammar:
{ this is all how I heard Cavell in '62}
#l3
Hence the notion of ortho-doxa, correct opinion, rests
within empiricist epistemology, and can be shown on
Wittgensteinian grounds to be meaningless.

{Note (sa, Aug '04):  But one might better say:
it's merely a societal convention -- an agreement
that, to preserve the community, one must agree on
common practices, even though in many cases those
practices would fall far short of the Ideal.}
So much for orthodoxy.
#l3
  Except that the problem is that Wittgesteinian
analysis ain't adequate to (mystic) religious knowlege.)

(And this relflects on the level of epistemology W.'s
own existential failure
(and one can't dismiss his perception of his own life as
a failure as quaint modesty; the strategic fall of a
giant of thought may (Finnegan) make_be a monument of
academic phlosophy, but academic thoguht is the dungill
of intellectual culture

(to put it with my customoary tact & delicacy; 
"Me and my friend, we don't profess no social graces."
Or as I say:  There are three Graces, and ain't one of
them named Steve. )

1.3  One mus acknowlege and confront the extent to which
orthodoxy presents and (misrepresents itself as the
dogma of Judaism.
Hersche Grossman, an American Rabbi and fauculty member
of Yehsiva University Los Angeles, offers a delightfully

#l1
[END PRINTOUT PAGE 3]
-----------------------------------------------------------------

[START PRINTOUT PAGE 4]

#l2
simplistic defintion of orthodoxy (Jerusalem Post, 4/12/88,
p4)

"Our own guidelines have always been very clear:

--  The closing of the Talmud is the culmiination of Oral
transmission.  Its rulings ae binding and its authority is
unquestioned.

--  Since that time, all subsequent Halachhic decisions must
find their basis in Talmudic literature.

--  The decisons of today's Halachic authoorities are as
binding upon as the word of G_d at Mt. Sinai.

Obviously, the notion of dogma is not part of Judaism.

#l2
{I am tempted to take what RSC said of Reform and apply it to
ultra-orthodoxy, especially is misogynistic aspect:  "It's
cute and sweet, but it's not Yiddishkeit."  
Eg autobuses woman to enter and be seated from the rear, so
to speak, so that men need not have to avert their gaze from
the rounded form of a grounded femme. ("A tip o' the hat" to
AS). I mean, talk of square; this one's for Saul Steinberg.
#l1

One  might ground this in the postualte that Judaism is inherently
process-ional, constatntly refining one's prehension of (Yis-ra-
el, one who 'wrestles with' the Higher {even Hegel has his
places}), and working TOWARD, rather than presupposng, the nature
or attainment of salvation.

And one might derive THAT from the onto_logic postualate that
Judaism is essentially transcendental, this_world oriented, where
Xianity is essentiallyl next_world oriented.

#l2
(And in fact it was conceived as an apocalyptic religon in an
historic context which made that a reasonable world-view:  in
Israel when Jewish zealots were stting in motion forces that
would provoke Rome to virtually destroy the Jewish people,
culture, and religion.
#l3

(In this sense one may see the teachings of Jesus
politically not as as revolutionary (for which he was
excecuted) but on the contrary as conciliatory; had they
prevailed they might have effected enough social reform
to appease the impoverished among the zealots {eg, Judas
Iscariot, Yehuda Ish Keriya, a Jew from the City (Jlem I
assume; what other city was there; who says, Who cares
if this guy's the 'Messiah', whatever that means here;
that whore's ointment should have been sold to feed the
poor} , and have down-played the role of priesthood to
the point that conflict with Rome was averted.

If one further acknowleges that (as a Zen teacher
observed) his teachings do lead toward a certain type
(one amongst 'many mansions') of Enlgihtenment, then one
could say that he was a 'Messiah' in the sense that his
teachings offered both personal (in a very limited
sense, i.e. very limited by the political realities of a
time of dominant Roman Imperialism) political salvation.

But to take him as THE 'Messiah' in the popular sense of
that term (as many of his contrivances might incline one
to do, notably contriving to enter Jerusalem on a donkey
as foretold by one of the "prophets", as if a prophecy
could be fulfileld by one who contrives to enact its
fullfilmment) --  

{I mean, if this guy really was the Messiah, then
when that chick went to annoint his feet (rather a
Hindu custom, that), he would have said, Cool it
Mama, sell that goo and buy bread for the babies
Lady.}
#l1

[END PRINTOUT PAGE 4]

-------------------------------------------------------------------

[START PRINTOUT PAGE 5]

#l3

-- and to further take him as some sort off
High_priest__like Rebbe, mediator between man and the
Highest
#l4
(as many of his reported teachings claim, notaably
the Rebbe_like use of 'Yoter''d motzi as what
Xianity came to conceptualize, accurately, as a
sort of trans_substantiated 'communion'
#l3
sets the stage for confrontation.
#l4
{And Jesus called himself 'the son of Man'.  So
what does that mean.  In modern Hebrew it's 'ben
Adam' which is a phrase usef to mean 'anybody' or
'a nobody'.  "The lowest of the low" , to borrow R.
Shlomo's phrase.  Humility_plus.  I think of the
'Mudhead's who come to dance at Zuni Shalako
(unless I'm confusing that with Hopi dances.)  'Ben
Adam' is not the quintessence of humanity; it's
more like the servant of humanity.  
#l5
(Caliban maybe; there are few great ideas that
Shakespeare doesn't get wrong.) 
#l3

One must come to terms with the ways and extent to which
galutz Judaism has been colored by Xianity especially in
its Dark Ages.

Most obviously in the misogyny and dress affected by
those who pretend to 'ultra-orthodoxy'.
{Again:  it is useful to see the the ultra-orthodox  as
the least, not the most, Jewish (in terms of religious
expression) of the Jews.}

{And also:  that notion, quoted above, that: 
"--  The decisons of today's Halachic authorities are as
binding upon as the word of G_d at Mt. Sinai."
sounds like, not Judaism -- surely not the free-wheeling
give-and-take of Talmud -- rather, it sounds like Roman
Catholicism.  Only in practice the Catholics are a lot
cooler than halachic Jewish practice.}

#l1

1.4  Although the set of, so to speak, "religious facts" (to
borrow and adapt the notion of 'fact' from Wittgenstein's
Tractatus) is -- necessarily -- complete and consistent, no set of
statements of purported religious revelation is necessarily
entirely accurate, complete, or consistent [ and per Godel, is
necesasrily not both complete and consistent.]

2.0  The implicit assumption and sometimes explicit claim taht
ultra-orthodoxy is the quinteswence of orthodoxy, is most
misleading. 

#l2
{Oy, this is beginning to sound like a Brahms concerto; all
the action is in the variations; the theme is merely a
setting, sort of like a minimal stage set.
#l2

2.1  The surface grammar of 'ultra-orthodoxy' is that it is the
quintessence of orthodoxy.  
#l2
{'Surface grammar' is a term from Wittgenstein's PI.}
#l1

(Thought one might instead say that the rterm 'ultra-orthooxy' is
redudnan on the face of it, and say that the term is an inherently
meaningless jingoism, like '101% American';
#l2
To add to what is already corect is not to become 'more
correct' but merely to decline into the vices of excess (as
Aristotle would say), e.g. obsessive or at leas supersititous
behavior
#l3
(e.g. the use of 'hat v'shalom', and less clarely
'bezrat H'''; insofar as that expresses a superstitous
custom, it was most properly ruled out for military
correspondence by Rabin), or obsessive behavior.)
[END PRINTOUT PAGE 5]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[STASRST PRINTOUT PAGE 6]

PART II:  RE-INVENTING THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION:
Toward an articulation of the principles of non-orthodox Judaism.

I.  Individual religious freedom is the caregory_al [a Kantian
term more usually, colluqially, and mileadingly rendered
'categorical'] obligation of religiosity.

#l2

1.1.:  Hence religious freedom is an inalienable individual
right -- one cannot alienate one's relgious freedom to
another -- nor rebbe, rabbi, guru, rulebook, etc. -- and
still be fully free.

1.2:  Accordingly, non_interpersonal mitzvot cannot be taken
as binding.
#l3
(Nor is it clear what it would mean, apart from an
anthropomorphic context, to say that they are binding.
#l4
(Interpersonal mitzvot may have an ethical
justification, and thus be binding.
#l5
[Note that an intpersonal mitzva may be
1_personal, eg suicide is a 1_person
interpersonal act (with self as subject and
object)
#l2
1.3  and hence there is no necessary hierarchy of religious
authority
#l3
-- while there may be hierarchies of acadeemic
scholarship (Cf. the rabbinic tradition, eg mitnaged)
revelation may come as grace (to invoke a Christian
idea) to anyone.
#l4
(Cf. numerous hasidic parables, but note that these
too are modern_day midrashim, and should not be
taken factually.)
#l2
1.5:  Of course no sect should be given political power in
any sector over anyone but its own {freely-joined} members;
that should be unconstitutional (eg giving the Ministry of
Interior as a political plum to an anti-Zionist sect.)

Hence it is a categorial obligation of religiosity to
de_LEGIT_imize [Latin] soi_disant [French] ortho_dox[a]_y
[Greek] as normative (Judaism), but not of course to supplant
it with a competing sect
#l3
(nor oligarch of sects, eg a 'religious pluralism' where
reform, conservative and orthdox carve up the cake,
perhaps cutting in secular Zionism)

     Well childishneess never cease?
2:  "Gesher tzar meod":  one can err on either side:  foolish or
expedient innovation as much as obsessive repressive/legalistic
formalism.

Thus the contemporary disputes between relatively progressive and
relatively traditional schools of Judaism (though we have neither
authentic tradition nor truly creatively evolutionary prgress) are
dialectical, in the interest of a higher synthesis, "for the sake
of heaven."
2.1:  Religious innovation is mere art_ifice, fac_ial
Though the motivation of Reform and Cosnervative is
correct, what I have seen of their practice, in the USA
and amongst the English oriented members in Israel -- *
-- the Sabras may produce something far moore authentic -
is not that helpful.
#l1
* [END PAGE 6 OF PRINTOUT]
-------------------------------------------------------------------

[PAGE 7 OF PRINTOUT]

#l2
One msut take the orthodox and ultra-orthodox critics of
"progressive" Judaism seriously.

3.  Religious statments hsould be taken as windows, not walls.

#l2
A certian spicing of irreverence in one's makeup is essential
to the religous quest; one trust mot those hwo, working hard
and selflessly, move competently and comfortably through the
forms, and maintain enough true humility to use humor as a
defense against thepitfalls of piety.).

#l3

Thus a tzaddik may remain hidden not out of humility but
merely practical arrogance; to accept an exalted self0-
mage is to freeze on'es growth.  Since hoi polloi
started exalting the personna of Ye Humble Monk, the
trusly humble aspirant has found it sometimes necessary
to assume the personna of a clow; thatmove underlies
many of the stories of hasidism.

#l1

4.  It will not do to presuppose that the historic progression of
commentaries are a sort of convertign infinite series aspproaching
truth as teh limit.  this is the orthodox viewpoint, and it's neat
and tidy, but rlase.

#l3

" ... the use of the term 'autnetic' to judge doctrinal
difference which are essentially philosophical ... '
        (Shubert Spero, Jlem Post Monday Aug 24, 1987)
(Except that contemporary differences within Judaism are
not matters of doctrine [as, eg, the dispute over wht er
or not the dead resurrect in [typescript 'the', but most
likely, 'their'] bodies, nor philosophical [as in the
history of Thomism]; but more nearly an expression of
didfferent dispositonal preferences of lifestyle. 
Neo_fundamentalism is the cannabis [text: 'pot'], if not
opiate, of the masses; Reform is the Perrier of the
yuppies.  cosnervative is for overweight persons of
moderate IQ, and shirtsleeve Isreali modern orthodoxy is
for go-getter's.)

#l2
4.1  With the canonizastino of oral Torah, written + oral =
new written Torah (Tora in the sense of
Shas=Chumash+Mishna+Gmora) and ultra-orthodoxy becomees the
new Sadd8cik movement, with modern orthodoxy  assumign the
Pharasitic positon (viz., further onctemporary
inteerpreteation is necessary and justified.)  MOrevoer,
ultra-orthodoxy does assume priestly characteristics (rebbe
akin to a local high pries, inclined toward a theocatic
oligarchy) with modern orthodoxy retaining the rabbinic
(democratic, intellectual.)

4.2   More to the pirnt, though, is that modern orthodoxy is
commited to active 'co-craewtion' in a Zionist context (ie
rebuilding Israel as avoda), while ultra-orthodoxy retains
the passive apocalypse_is_imminent posture of a DOG ATE TEH
MANUSCRIPT most clearly seen in different conception of
redemption and Messiah (idnvidual event in whcih the redeemed
are passive, passive atomistic event vs. active histoirc
process=societal event in which indiviudals are essential co-
creators.)
[END PRINTOUT PAGE 7]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[START PRINTOUT PAGE ]

Though these distinctions may be characterized philsoophically,
the motivation behind them is not philosophic.
 

5.  NOTES ON THE GRAMMAR OF REVELATION

5.1  Revelation is intuitive perception.
#l2

5.1a  It is contingently private access to a universal domain
[Heraliitus:  "Though the logos is one, each man acts as if
he has his own private stash:'
#l3
 
5.1a1  Revelation is of necesasry turth.  
A secondary revelation is of its expresison, in word and
practice, to the conditions of one's time.  (Cf. PVK's
book on HIK: "The Message in our Time")
#l4

[The orthodox view of revelation rests on the
anthropomorphic fallacy (one variety of Whitehead's
'Fallacy of Misplaced Concretion')

[As if a supernatural hand emerged from the clouds
and handed a set of stone tablets -- 
#l5
or memos 
#l6
(see how quickly the bathetic fallacy
#l7
['bathetic' -- from pathos to
bathos]
#l6
becomes obvious.

(Cf. Wittgnestin, "my aim is to move from
disguised nonsenset to patent nonsense",
PI ______)
#l4

to a man on a mountain-top
#l5

[and again King Kong ascends our Tower of
Abel, poor misdirected ape in consumerland,
looking for sigms on the horizon of a second
coming, as if the original was passe]
#l6

{from my Imitation of Carmina Burana: 
"rex sedet in vertice -- caveat ruinum" /
"Let King Kong noblesse the throng /
Lotsa Luck, Big Daddy " }
#l2

5.2  Revelation, like any other faculty of
perception_apprehension, is a more or elss fallible capacity
of any human being, (as-it-is-said, "would that all of the
LORD's people would be prophets" (Bamidar, if I recall) and
like all forms of perception is necessrily mediated and
obscured through successive coceputalization, expression, and
repetitive dissemination.

5.2a Hence the "canon of prophecy" is not closed
#l3
[eg with Moses, as that popular imitation of a
cathechism "Yigdad" (even the tune it's usually set to
hereabouts is childish) suggests) , 
nor with the Prophet Mohammed (Peace be to him), though
that's an essential article of fatih in Islam]
#l2
nor the bodies of secondary revelation
#l3 
[Midrash, or the various levels of lesser fleas
#l4

as it is said, 
"The big old felas have little fleas 
upon the backt to bite 'em / 
The little flease have littler fleas, 
and so ad infinitum":)
#l2

5.2b  Hence ond need not presuppose single authorship, much
less infallibilty or consistency, for the set of propostions
of Torah

5.2c  Hence the proper appraoch to the study of the
statements of one's religion -- eg, in Judaism, Torah,
Haftorah, Talmud, halakot -- is, so to speak, to work
"backwards" toward a personal re-apprehnsion of the
underlying revelation  

(As in all philosohy, one must treat the stastements as
windowes, not walls.

More generally, a certain spicing of irreverence in ones's

[END PRINTOUT PAGE 8]
--------------------------------------------------------------
---

makeup is essentiall to the religous quest (don't forget old
Sancho Pancha, oh Noble Knight); one trsts most those who,
working hard and selflessly, move competently and comfortably
through the forms, and maintain enough true humility to use
humor as a defense against the pitfalls of piety.

----------------

[NOTE:

The orthodos Zionists lost nerve and heedlessly abdicated
relious leaderhiop of Israel to the conglomoerate of non- and
anti- ultra-orothodox, which has practiccally exhausted its
credit in faction-fighting powers plays over intrinsically
trivial issues.

{N.B.:  I think this was a fair remark at the time I wrote
it, ca. 1988, but has not had much applicability since.}

****  
=============================================================
SHANTI                      CHANTILLY               SHIKSABOB
------------------------------------------------------------
sa
Written 1988;
Retyped with {additional comments}
sa, Mevo Modi'n, Rosh Hodesh Av, 30 Av (17 Aug '04) 
============================================================