Letter to the Editor [Responding to Zvi Weiss]
December 21, 2011
To the Editor:
I agree with Rabbi Weiss that these are important issues and
in no way do I feel that they should be ignored or trivialized. I will address
his three critiques in the order in which they were raised.
Yes, homosexuality is clearly a religiously charged issue.
Yet, that does not mean that simply being a religious figure—or even a
leading rosh yeshiva—entitles one to broadcast his or her views
publicly as an authority on homosexuality. It should be patently obvious that
the said figure needs to be acutely familiar with the issue at hand to comment,
and it is immensely frustrating when rabbis speak out as authorities on issues
in which they lack the necessary background to do so. (In my opinion, this
occurs most frequently when rabbis decide to play the character of the
political pundit, but that is a topic for another discussion.)
Weiss asks why I did not seek out the position of rabbis –
well, it turns out my rosh yeshiva at the time was in
attendance of the gay panel, which itself was moderated by the mashgiach of
Yeshiva. I have little doubt that both of these figures had immeasurably more
experience in dealing with homosexuals than the roshei yeshiva who
decided it was their role to defend the purity of our institution by engaging
in polemical denunciations of the event. But to be perfectly frank, though I
sincerely do appreciate and value their guidance, even if they were not to
support the gay panel, it would not have changed my mind. In that sense, I do
not feel nearly as confined to blindly follow the dictates of my rabbis based
on a radical notion of Da’as Torah as does Rabbi Weiss. He
concludes his thought by accusing me of having an “agenda” and of not being
interested in “the Torah viewpoint.” Perhaps nothing in Rabbi Weiss’s letters
reflects his myopia than the supercilious presumption that there is such a
thing as “the” Torah viewpoint on any given matter.
In regard to the question about support of the Israeli
government, though Rabbi Weiss puts the word in quotes, I never suggested that
we “automatically” support the policies of every Israeli government. As anyone
who knows me (or has seen my Facebook wall) is well aware, such a claim is
laughable – to say the least, I have absolutely no problem with criticizing
policies of the Israeli government. If he feels that not following the Orthodox
interpretation of halakha is a justification for such
criticism, it is certainly his prerogative to do so. I was upset not because
Weiss questioned the decisions of a particular government, but that he
questioned his support for the enterprise of a Jewish state, suggesting that it
certain circumstances it behooved us to “reconsider exactly how we relate to a
Jewish state” as a whole. Moreover, of course there is a time for criticism,
and the second government of Yitzhak Rabin may well have been one of those
times. There is a clear difference, however, between disagreeing with the
wisdom of the Oslo Accords and with demonizing the character of Yitzhak Rabin.
Let us also leave no doubt about something else: the Shin Bet was not
responsible for the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. Rabbi Weiss is only embarrassing
himself by writing that “the conduct of the Shin Bet appears extremely
disturbing when one reviews the evidence.” This is nothing more than the Israel
version of “the CIA was behind the JFK assassination” and it is not a claim to
be taken with any amount of seriousness.
Weiss concludes his letter by vying to win the contest over
who is more intolerant toward whom, but it is not a competition in which I will
play along. I will say one line about anti-Haredi sentiment, though. Perhaps if
more than 40% of Haredi high schools taught math and English; perhaps if more
than 400 of the 14,000 18-year-old Haredi males enlisted in the IDF; perhaps if
more than 35% of Haredi men were employed; then, maybe, anti-Haredi feelings
would drop significantly. I suppose we would have see serious internal reforms
in Haredi society for us to know for sure.
Yitzhak Bronstein
YC ’12
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