mw13,
I think it is possible that you are seeing a contradiction where none exists due to a faulty premise that every person or every situation deserves the same response. As we learned at the seder, four different sons, four different responses.
he extols the sensitivity that he saw them express towards others. He goes on at length about how it is thanks to these brothers and sisters of ours that Hashem is oheiv es amo yisroel, loves the Jewish People.
Are you sure that the author’s intent was to heap praise on the irreligious, or rather to praise b’nei Yisroel that even the ones distant from Torah and mitzvos display upstanding middos?
he deals with the subject of the Neturei Kartanics who went to meet with Ahmadinejad.
Here the norm is to denounce and deplore their actions, and to demonize them as “self-hating Jews”, even “traitors to Hashem and His Torah”.
Ahmadinejad materially supports those who kill Jews. He mocks and insults Jews, including our martyrs, in front of the world. NK seemingly did not go there to seek mercy for their bretheren. They embraced him, and expressed support for his “cause” against the state of Israel. They are not simply anti-Zionist, you can be anti-Zionist without supporting the enemies of the Jewish people. NK on the other hand displays the flag of the PLO, an organization with the blood of Jews on its hands. How can we not have a strong reaction to that?
Hypothetically, should our ancestors in Egypt have reacted the same to a Jew who r”l assimilated into Egyptian culture verses a Jew who outwardly maintained the trappings of Judaism, but who declared that the Jews deserved their slavery and patted the Egyptian soldiers on their backs as they drowned Jewish babies in the hopes of currying favor with the Egyptian government?
We do not tell over stories of the good that they do; we do not seem to care.
Do you have any knowledge of good that they do?
You must live on a different planet from me. Seculars open a parking lot on Shabbos in Yerushalayim? Denounced, protested. Conservative movement permits driving on Shabbos? Denounced, protested.
Why do we tend to focus on the 10% of the weekly routine of an otherwise irreligious Jew that is in accordance with the Halacha, and focus on the 10% of the time a NKnic spends doing things that we disagree with?
I disagree with your assertion that we ignore the 90% with regard to an irreligious Jew. I have heard no “pintele yid” stories that do this – they usually end with the irreligious Jew becoming frum. Also, do you really want to go down the path of criticizing a focus on 10% bad when 90% is ok? If someone commits adultry only 10% of the time, should we really praise him for his commitment to put on tefillin every day?