When Reverence Becomes Pseudo-Idolatry: The Phenomenon of Gadol Worship, with Rav Yitzchak Shurin (213)
Release Date: 07/22/2024
Hope, Gratitude, and Faith in a Time of Anxiety, Pain, and Despair, with Dr. Erica Brown (228)
Orthodox Conundrum
Every time I speak with Dr. Erica Brown, I come away enriched by her deep thinking and religious and emotional sensitivity. And this conversation, which delves into psychological and theological questions surrounding anxiety, hope, gratitude, and faith, may be our most memorable discussion yet. The Thanksgiving holiday takes place later this week in the United States; three days later, Erica’s newest book, Morning has Broken: Faith After October 7th, will be released. Those two events, along with the continued fighting in Gaza and Lebanon and on other fronts, were the impetus for what I...
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"Just Because It Didn't Happen, Doesn't Mean It Isn't True": Analyzing and Appreciating Aggadah with Gila Fine (227)
Orthodox Conundrum
There was a time not long ago when aggadah - which, broadly speaking, refers to the non-legal passages in the Talmud - was largely ignored; students studying in yeshiva would run through these texts quickly, if at all, using almost all of their mental energy and time thinking through the halachic, or legal passages of the Gemara. While that was likely a successful methodology for most Talmud students in the past, we have witnessed in the 20th and 21st centuries a renewed emphasis on aggadah; and given the fact that Talmud study is far more widespread today than it was in the past, along...
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Chareidi Political Influence in Jewish Life, and Why It Truly Matters: A Conversation with Rabbi David Stav (226)
Orthodox Conundrum
Over the past two weeks, there has been increasing conversation in Israel among the Religious Zionist community about the continued refusal of many ultra-Orthodox Jews to consider enlisting in the Israeli army. Many of us have been discussing this issue for months or years; but it came to a head in the past couple of weeks largely because of the attempt by the Chareidi political parties in the Knesset to enshrine this exemption through legislation. The most recent attempt was the so-called Daycare Bill, which, if passed, would mean that the status of the father would not be taken into account...
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Why Orthodox Jews Should Vote for Trump... Why Orthodox Jews Should Vote for Harris: Two Rabbis Make Their Best Pitch (225)
Orthodox Conundrum
With the United States presidential election only hours away, I wanted to offer a supporter of each major presidential candidate the opportunity to explain why Jews in general, and Orthodox Jews in particular, would be better off supporting either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris for president. To that end, I invited two politically involved Orthodox rabbis, Rabbi Pesach Wolicki and Rabbi Benjamin Kelsen, to explain why you should give your vote to their candidate. This is not a debate; I spoke to both of my guests separately, and tried to give each of them a fair chance to make the best...
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The Biggest Desecration of God's Name (224)
Orthodox Conundrum
Today I’m talking about something that I’ve spoken about before, repeatedly, both on this podcast and on my Substack, : the problem of a large number of Chareidi, or ultra-Orthodox Jews, who receive army exemptions, usually (though not always) because they’re learning in yeshivot. Why am I talking about this again? Haven't we dealt with this issue too many times already? No. There's more to say, and there's good reason to say it. I think that this issue represents, in a real way, the test - the Akeidat Yitzchak - of our time... and some people are simply failing this test. This is the...
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Biblical Criticism, Academic Bible Study, and Orthodox Judaism with Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman (CLASSIC EPISODE)
Orthodox Conundrum
As we complete our seventh season of the Orthodox Conundrum, we're pleased to present a classic episode from three years ago, in which Professor Joshua Berman of Bar Ilan University discusses academic Bible study, Biblical criticism, and Orthodox Judaism. It was a very interesting episode, which raised crucial questions that Orthodox Jews need to confront, as well as suggestions of how we should do so effectively. Because we soon complete the annual cycle of Torah readings and begin again in less than two weeks with parashat Bereshit, this is an excellent opportunity to revisit this crucial...
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The Day That Never Ended... And What We Can Learn From It, with Rav Chayim Soloveichik (223)
Orthodox Conundrum
"Today marks one year since one of the worst days of all of our lives, October 7th. I actually was unsure of how to record an appropriate episode; what, exactly, could I add to the conversation? What is there to say that hasn’t yet been said? And how can I relate it to the season in which we find ourselves, right in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?" Fortunately, Scott was joined by the outstanding rav of his shul in Ramat Beit Shemesh, Rav Chayim Soloveichik, who provided insights and guidance as to how to think about this first anniversary of October 7th - even though, he acknowledges,...
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Gavriel Bloom z"l: A Hero in a Land of Heroes (222)
Orthodox Conundrum
Later this week we will celebrate Rosh Hashanah, also known as the Day of Remembrance, Yom HaZikaron. According to Chazal, Hashem (so to speak) remembers us on this day for the good… and we, too, should look at those people who set sterling examples for us over the past year, and try to learn from their deeply meaningful lives. One of those people whose life was exemplary was Gavriel Bloom, zichrono livracha. Gavriel was killed on January 8th during a mission in central Gaza. He was the second of David and Jennifer Bloom’s six children. David wrote up a series of...
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Reorganizing the Letters of Reality: A Mystical and Chassidic Approach to Prayer, with Rabbi Dovid'l Weinberg (221)
Orthodox Conundrum
One of the beautiful aspects of Torah Judaism is its insistence on eilu v’eilu divrei Elokim chayim - that two different and even potentially contradictory approaches can both represent the words of the living God. Opening our minds to differing ways of seeing Torah - that, in the words of many ancient texts, there are seventy facets to the Torah, and accordingly endless ways of explaining its ideas - is not merely a theological truth, but also a mandate. By accepting that, in the words of Rav Soloveitchik, “The white light of divinity is always refracted through reality’s ‘dome...
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How Does Prayer Work? A Rationalist Approach to Tefilah, or What Larry David Got Wrong (220)
Orthodox Conundrum
We stand in the middle of the month of Elul, and are moving quickly towards Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur - days largely spent in the synagogue in prayer. Throughout those days as well as the rest of the Ten Days of Repentance, we ask that God grant us a year of life, goodness, and peace. While we have so much to be thankful for, we may be forgiven for looking at the past year - and the prayers we offered last Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur - and wondering if our prayers failed. We may even wonder what the point of the entire exercise was. Put starkly: does prayer work - and if it does, what does...
info_outlineFor the past two thousand years, Torah observant Jews have acknowledged that our greatest scholars deserve respect, and have an extraordinarily deep and broad understanding of the vast sea of the Torah sheba’al peh, the Oral Law. In recent times, however, proper respect for talmidei chachamim has often morphed into a pseudo-idolatry of gedolim, where they are seen not just as great experts in Torah, but also as oracles who are, for all intents and purposes, close to infallible.
There’s no question that most people who ascribe to this kind of “gadol worship” would deny that these scholars are infallible, or that the term gadol worship is appropriate, or that their attitudes towards gedolim are new. But to many of us, it seems apparent that this is an historical anomaly, and a huge change from the way that things used to be - and the consequences are potentially dire.
Rav Yitzchak Shurin had a very close relationship with a gadol of the last century - his revered grandfather, Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky zt"l. Rav Shurin has had strong personal relationships with other gedolei Torah as well, and has also witnessed how things have changed over the past half century. There are few people more well-equipped to discuss the phenomenon of over-the-top reverence of gedolim than Rav Shurin, and Scott was honored that he agreed to share his perspectives on today’s podcast.
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