Avi Shafran & Jonathan Rosenblum

I have more than once heard people kvetch that Rabbi Avi Shafran's writing is triumphalist in tone. I never understood this complaint; he's the public affairs guy for the Agudah, making haredim and harediism look good is his job. I rather like Shafran's writing. In fact, even while Shafran promotes his own ideology unabashedly, he has asserted repeatedly that others can fairly disagree with the haredi views of the issues. Moreover, even in his role as the public affairs guy, he has managed to make a very important criticism of his own group which I think many consistent critics of haredim have failed to make. That's not to say that Shafran is not dreadfully wrong on the biggest issues in the haredi world, but at least he admits that others have the rights to their perspectives and isn't usually mean in his attacks on The Rest of the Universe.

People who criticize Shafran sometimes tell me that there are better Anglo-haredi writers out there, most prominent among them Jonathan Rosenblum. I don't get this at all. I understand that Rosenblum is well-educated (I should know, I wrote his Wikipedia page), but the man has moved to a different planet. In Jonathan Rosenblum's world, Britain's "National Health will not pay for an arterial stent for anyone over 59, no matter how healthy he or she otherwise is." Planet Rosenblum also has a fascinating history. We learn that "in a 1981 lecture at the American Museum of Natural History, Colin Patterson, the chief paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum, observed that both creationism and Darwinian observation are scientifically vacuous concepts, which are held primarily on the basis of faith." We also learn in the same piece that "Reviewers have not been kind to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins...Critics have found it to be the atheist’s mirror image of Ann Coulter’s Godless: The Church of Liberalism..." The reader who is unfamiliar with the Synagogue Council of America controversy will learn from the hagiography of Moshe Sherer from Rosenblum's corner of the galaxy that the OU and the RCA were in a non-gadol-backed position when they stayed in the interdenominational organization.

Meanwhile, on Planet Pelta, National Health actually does pay for stents -- and all sorts of medical treatments -- for people over 59 and Rosenblum was just repeating a rumor originally spread over the Internet. As for Patterson's opinion of evolution, Rosenblum is (obviously) relying on a (surprisingly old) out-of-context quote from Patterson; Dawkins' book received mixed reviews, while Coulter's was laughed off. With regards to the Synagogue Council of America, both the Rav and R' Eliezer Silver were clear in their instructions to Modern Orthodox leadership figures to stay.

Rabbi Shafran may portray haredi society in a utopian manner and have some really silly ideas. But at least there can be a cogent discussion; we are, after all, in the same galaxy.

[In other news: I haven't really thought of anything particularly cool for the blog description, but I added something temporarily. If you have any ideas, I'd be much obliged. Also, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right side of the page, I put a new Random-Video-of-the-Whenever-I-Feel-Like-It. It's from The Genius of Britain series, available on Youtube.]