[Avodah] [Areivim] Tinok Shenishbah today - opinion of GedoleiHaposkim

[Michael Makovi]

R' Doron Beckerman writes,
> 1) The level of knowledge today suffices to judge them as Mezidim (Radvaz
> (they have been *warned* to return to Torah,not just heard about it)

But today, their level of knowledge is pathetically low! Growing up,
attending Reconstructionist Hebrew school, we never even opened up a
real Humash! We learned out of a textbook based on the Humash! I
remember one time when the teacher said a person cannot learn Kabbalah
until he is verses in Judaism and Torah, and one girl piped up that
since we were all already bar/bat mitzvah, therefore, we were all
versed in Judaism and prepared for Kabbalah! Does this qualify as
knowledgeable??!! I wonder if she even knows what the Talmud IS!

And whatever they DO know, is in the perspective of R/C, which serves
to inoculate them against Orthodoxy. That is, they already believe
they know what Judaism says, say before you even can approach them
with Orthodoxy, you first have to disprove R/C theology. We're talking
some serious philosophical discussions. (Or perhaps a nice Shabbat
table to first butter them up. Be that as it may...)

As for their being warned: this is irrelevant. The klal of azhara is
that the azhara has to be one that has the koah to be listened to. For
example, if you give an azhara without sufficient love or concern, the
sinner will only get angrier and rebuff your azhara; thus the Gemara
says, "No one anymore knows how to give a proper reproof". Similarly,
here, the R/C laity is SO far from observance and Torah, that almost
any azhara has almost no chance of being listened to. That is, ANY
azhara given to R/C is, ipso facto, one that cannot be reasonable
expected to be received by the one being warned.

In days past, the people all knew that Orthodox Judaism was authentic.
They may have been sinners, but they knew what authentic Judaism was.
Sephardim today might be similar. But Western Jews all honestly
believe that Orthodoxy is totally wrong and inauthentic, and that R/C
is the "true" Judaism. Therefore, any azhara from an Orthodox Jew is
almost impossible to hear, similar to an azhara given with hate and
venom and self-righteousness. There can be NO reasonable expectation
of the azhara actually being listened to.

Because of all this, merely meeting Orthodox Jews is woefully
inadequate. No matter how many Orthodox Jews they see, this doesn't
correct their error. Their error
is that they believe Orthodoxy is an invalid or outdated form of
Judaism. The correction to this error is education, and we're talking
REAL deep hinuch. Some philosophical individuals will realize on their
own that Orthodoxy is true (see, for example, Rabbi Lawrence Keleman's
story; in short, he studied the history of R/C and realized they had
no claim to being the inheritor of Judaism, in historical terms), but
this cannot be expected of most.

The RambaN, as quoted by Rabbi Yom Tov Schwarz's Eyes to See (he has a
lengthy chapter on TsN), says that a day could come when Am Yisrael
mistakenly believes that the mitzvot no longer apply. The RambaN held
this could one day happen, and Rabbi Schwarz says it has in fact
happened, in our own days. So one could even be an expert in all of
Gemara and Shulhan Arukh, and still be a TsN. How? If he believes,
wrongly, that the Torah is no longer obligatory! So as far as these
people know, the Orthodox are wrong! You have to first prove to them
that Orthodoxy is correct, and not merely prove that Orthodoxy
*claims* to be correct.

And just knowing that Orthodoxy claims to be correct, is of no
relevance. People also know that there are Christians who claim that
Christianity is binding, and there are Muslims who claim Islam is
binding, and there are rabid atheists (Dawkins, for example) who claim
that atheism is binding. So there very well may be plenty of Orthodox
Jews who claim that the Torah is obligatory. But so what? The Orthodox
Jews can be placed right next to missionizing Mormons and Hare
Krishnas; one more religion that claims to be correct, whipidee do!
The non-observant Jews do not doubt the fact of the existence of the
Orthodox Jews who claim to be correct. Rather, they doubt the very
veracity of the Orthodox claim! To take these individuals out of the
status of TsN, and into the status of meizid, one must PROVE to them
that the Orthodox are actually correct. Until this is proven (which
necessitates, at the very least, that the R/C individuals intently
study the Kuzari and the Nineteen Letters and the like, which I doubt
many non-Orthodox Jews have done), they are still shogeg.

Michael Makovi