“I am not sure why YWN allowed your comment to be posted as it is clearly against Torah values.”
I was not aware that YWN censored postings for content (aside from those that would clearly be inappropriate on a family site.) I have noticed that posts here are generally edited or deleted a) for clarity- spelling etc or b) for tone- personal attacks are not tolerated. However, I wrote a very long post in response to the replies I got to the last one that was published, and it has not appeared here. This upsets me, as I insulted nobody in the post. Since when is there a serious problem with pluralism, which was the main idea of the post?
Now for the rest- I will (again) defend my position as best I can, assuming the moderators see fit to allow me to do so.
“Atheism, the Reform, and Conservatives are incompatible with Judaism and the Torah.”
I have already addressed this issue in other threads and I am not going to repeat myself here. Anyway, 000646 said it better than I could have.
ICOT, I appreciate your sentiments and you have made me look at the issue in a different way. However, after some thought, I stand by my conclusion. I have had some really positive interaction with the Conservative community in Baltimore, and I noticed that a good deal of those who drive on Shabbos drive only to shul, not to the mall or grocery store, and furthermore, those who do drive to shul drive there because they do not live walking distance. I can think of at least two families who used to drive to shul and have since bought houses closer to shul so that they wouldn’t have to drive anymore. Granted, not all of them are like this, but many are. (This is part of why I get so upset when people make blanket statements like “all Conservative people are wrong and deserve Gehennom.”) As I have stated, I am not in the same position as these people are- some of them are also of the type to take that deal to strike the match on Shabbos so that they could use the wealth to do more mitzvot. It’s the same logic as driving to shul, that one aveirah will enable them to do a hundred mitzvot. Again, I don’t agree with it, but I respect it just as much as I respect those who are to the right of me. There seems to be this concept in the frum community that everybody to the left of X (say a typical frum Jew) is sinning terribly and preventing Moshiach from coming, while everybody to X’s right has just decided to take on more chumras. Maybe they’re unnecessary chumras, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with them. (Alternatively, everybody to X’s right is a tzaddik and X strives to be more like them! But never do I see such harsh condemnations expressed with regard to the extreme right as they are with regard to the extreme left.)
Mrs. Beautiful, your point about atmosphere works with regard to a camp, but not with regard to an entire city or even a neighborhood (like Boro Park, which you cited as an example.) Clearly, one can find out the dress code of a camp beforehand and decide not to send children there if they are not prepared to abide by it. But in terms of the city in which one lives, are you actually suggesting that people move out if they do not like the unspoken “dress code” by which most of the residents seem to abide?
On Tuesday night, I went to visit a friend of mine who grew up in a much more right wing home than I did. She is in seminary in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. I got off the bus and walked down the street to get to her apartment, realizing as I passed others that I was the only woman around wearing pants. This made me a little uncomfortable for a moment, and then I shrugged and kept walking. So what if I am more liberal than the majority of the women who live there? Should I have worn a long skirt just to “fit in”? It’s not as if I even live there, I was just passing through, and anyway, if I had done that, I would have felt as if I was hiding who I am and masquerading as someone I’m not. I should never be forced to abide by anyone’s standards other than my own. Anyway, they were comfortably loose-fitting pants which I wore with a long-sleeved shirt. It’s not as if I paraded in the street with a bathing suit on!
“I didn’t realize that I mentioned in my post that I look down on people who have different opinions.”
So you don’t feel that a statement like “your hashkafos are SKEWED” (notice the capital letters you put in to emphasize the enormity of my supposed error) consitutes you looking down on me for having a different opinion from you?
For everybody who’s trying to bring in Chukas HaGoyim, think about where black hats came from first.
Moderator, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and writing this post, and I respectfully ask you to close this thread if you’re not going to publish it. I deserve the opportunity to defend myself against those who are challenging me, and if you’re not going to give me that opportunity, then at least prevent them from issuing further challenges which I will be similarly unable to answer.
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NOTE FROM YW-MODERATOR: please have patience, when extremely long posts are presented on a newsday as busy as today, it may take longer to see it appear in the thread.