[Avodah] How the Torah portrays our great men

[Daniel Eidensohn]

R' Yitzchok Levine wrote:
> In light of this, I have to wonder why some think that all "negatives" 
> about our predecessors should be suppressed. What I am talking about 
> is the tendency of some to go so far as to deny that certain things 
> took place in the past if they do not jive with our present view of 
> what the religious world should look like.  As I have quipped more 
> than once, "There are Holocaust deniers and there are Orthodox deniers."
>
This is rather a gross oversimplication of a complex issue. We can not 
generalize from this Ramban for three reasons 1) He was criticized by 
the Maharal for saying such a thing because Maharal asserts we can only 
ascribe error when Chazal tell us there is error. 2) The Ramban's view 
is in fact alluded to in the Zohar as R' Chavell discusses on this 
verse. 3) Hirsch is not making such a generalization but is simply 
saying that Chazal tell us that the Avos erred in certain matters and 
thus weren't infallible.

Thus  we can say that there is absolutely no evidence to support the 
assertion that the Ramban is teaching us that **we** have the right to 
ascribe error to the Avos or anyone else without a source in Chazal. 
Furthermore the citation from Hirsch also at most says - that Chazal 
tells us that the Avos erred - but he doesn't say that we can ascribe 
errors without support from Chazal.

Thus it is problematic to read "there are Orthodox deniers" into the 
words of either the Ramban or Hirsch - neither would have agreed with you.

Daniel Eidensohn

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