[Avodah] TIDE and Austritt

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 11:29am EDT, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: I've heard some pretty far-fetched explanations of what caused the Shoah,  
: but this is a new one on me. Whenever anyone even hints that such
: and such a sin was the "reason" for the Holocaust...

Which RRW didn't. He said that the outcome of the HOlocaust was as
foretold in the gemara.

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 12:13pm EDT, T613K at aol.com added:
: As for your "no target bezman hazeh" I am having trouble even grasping what  
: you mean to say, but I suspect that you have been influenced by RRW's many 
: posts decrying austritt and defining austritt as the shunning of some
: O rabbis by other O rabbis. However, R' Gershon Seif addressed
: this question absolutely correctly when he wrote, >>I think Hirsch's
: insistence  on separating his Kehilla from the WR etc. wasn't the Austritt
: he was really  trying to make happen. That was a bitter and unfortunate
: result of "stuff that  happened."...

I was quite clear, that my opinion is biased by my greatgrandfather's
experience in Frankfurt, and RRW was a johnny-come-lately WRT my
opinion. Which, as already noted by RSS, is probably biased way beyond
objectivity by stories from my grandfather a"h (which in turn had all
the objectivity of childhood memories).

RGS, IMHO, captured it more in another part of his post -- Austritt was
not about who to exclude, but in well defining what it was the kehillah
stood for. One can't be a contributing community to the greater society
unless one preserves the community's meaning.

And so, it was anyone who didn't have a clear line between them and
reforming Judaism was a danger, because Austritt was about preserving
the line. By our discussing who was on the other side of the line,
we're viewing it differently than I think RSRH would have.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Despair is the worst of ailments. No worries
micha at aishdas.org        are justified except: "Why am I so worried?"
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
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