What about a volunteered admission of guilt?

My reply: Not what I consider real rabbis. And they do exist. And many of the national religious communities are not so divisive as the shtetl-obsessed haredi ones. Why the author feels so comfortable in Meah Shearim is puzzling as I have been there and felt like it was another planet, and I am a Torah observant Jew.

Chaim you also wrote to check up on Benyamin of Tudela and what he was doing in Europe. Well I am aware that he was an esteemed explorer and historian of the period and introduced Europe to cultures of Asia and Middle east, he preceded Marco Polo and Ibn Batutta by quite some time with his work. Aside from that I don’t know how it relates to the point you were trying to make about rabbis. You stated this very cryptically as if we all know this information. Please elaborate on Benyamin de Tudela’s work and what this proves and what point you are trying to make from it. Thanks.

“I particularly love this passage:
“he Bible offers no indication that God wants Jews to live monastic lives. We’re repeatedly commanded to settle the land, work it, and fight.” ”

But Ray, that means you have been touched by the Bible itself, not by Obadiah or any newfangled philosophy. He is simply conveying what the Torah tells us. And this is also upheld in many of the medieval rabbinical writings as well, that we are not supposed to be monks. It’s a very simple point.

Maccabees were pretty divisive, no?

Maccabees were uniting their own group against other groups, in the same manner that brown Israeli leaders unite their own against white Israelis.
If someone wishes to see the whole bunch of different faction living in Israel as a single group, then that group’s leader should be better than the Maccabees.
Truthfully, such a leader can never appear, since the one true defining trait of Jews is their complete inability to cooperate with other Jews, when the smallest of controversies appears.
But it’s always amusing to see how they keep believing god will solve it for them. I’m sure he is just as amused by that pattern of thought.

A leader does not divide, a divider should not lead – and you can quote me on that.