Skip to main content

Beruchim Ha'Ba'im

Welcome to the new blog, Dorshei Yichudcha.


The goal of this blog is to provide and, perhaps more importantly, stimulate, honest and thoughtful thinking about Torah, life, and the issues that confront the Torah seeker in today's day and age.


It hopes to stimulate thought and research on a host of topics including a deeper understanding of a diverse range of Torah disciplines, emotional health in the Torah community, faith and emunah in today's world, the overall goals and objectives of Torah and Torah living, and many other issues.


A whole lot of shrill and sometimes hysterical argument can be heard today relating to any number of issues that concern the Torah community. Though there are of course many bright exceptions, one sometimes gets the sense that parties speak more at each other than to one another, failing to acknowledge the partial truth of their respective interlocutors' positions and to develop more nuanced arguments that can account for opposing points. It is this writer's belief that all seekers of Torah truth can benefit from honest and open dialogue that thoughtfully considers other opinions and, without at all precluding a desire and effort to develop a definite opinion, attempts to fulfill the dictum of "learning from every person."


As the name of this blog suggests, ultimately, each of us is engaged in seeking the ultimate Unity and Oneness of the Almighty disguised by what appears to be a hopelessly fragmented and contradictory world. It is a search that demands honesty, humility, creativity, faith and patience; but it is a mission that we can hardly afford to give up on, as it defines our very essence.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Complexity Essays: #1 A Tale of Two Torahs The issue of the relationship between Torah shebichtav, the Written Torah, and Torah shebe'al Peh, the Oral Torah, has for millennia been one the most controversial topics. Well over two thousand years ago, the great divide between the Saducees and the so-called Rabbinic Jews was just exactly the Sadducees' refusal to accept the Oral Tradition. Far from a bygone issue, a contemporary outreach teacher reports that this issue is one the main ones that prevent people from accepting the beliefs of Torah Judaism (R. Mordechai Neugroschal, introduction to his commentary on Maharal's Be'er HaGolah). In simple terms, the difficulty lies in the fact that the Torah seems to be saying one thing while the Oral Tradition, and thus Halacha, has it saying something altogether different. Some people find this disconcerting, and demand proof for the very existence of an oral interpretation. The response has traditionally been to add...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Complexity Series: Introduction

Eleventh-century Saadiah Gaon, in his classic HaEmunot ve'haDei'ot, offers a surprisingly postmodern-sounding interpretation of King David's "Ma Rabu Ma'asecha Hashem." The conventional rendition is "how great are your creations, O God," but Saadiah's version has it, "How complex are your works, O God." Complexity is the hallmark of Creation, whether in the form of the incomprehensible makeup of the elegant universe, the depths of the human psyche, or the realities of interpersonal and political relationships. While we may gravitate toward the simple because of the comfort it affords us, rarely can simplicity give us an accurate picture of reality.  Complexity at its most basic level means simply many parts working in unison. But an often inevitable feature of complexity is that of ostensibly contradictory forces coming together to form something bigger. Thesis, antithesis and synthesis serve as the building blocks of our wor...
Post a Comment
Read more