Reply To: opinion about OTD

YYA> ‘drash’, ‘logic’

Look I am sorry for setting you up, this was a direct quote from Hirsh Chumash, Ber 20:1. You can doubl-check in case I shifted some of his points.
Hope you’ll be able to forgive me for that. I am flattered that you assign this to “my logic” and “my digs”. So, we’ve proven that my position here has some grounding in R Hirsh. And I hope this will help you recalibrate your intuition so that you don’t stumble into making fun of talmidei chachomim.

I actually do agree with you that this is not so much peshat, but an occasion for R Hirsh to express his opinion. I was also shocked by his directness expressing this with little connection to the text. I think he also was – I omitted his introduction “Unless we are totally mistaken, we would venture to say that what prompted Avraham and Sarah …”

We can probably understand where he is coming from – from observing German Jewry totally disintegrating based on their previous Jewish educational system that R Hirsh was updating. He experienced this 100 years before Eastern Europeans did. I agree that tools we developed by now, including yeshiva education, better protects than whatever was taught at the time.

As to application to current politics, I am not using this as a call to arms, but simply to illustrate that some exposure (as R hirsh says “time to time”) combined with high quality education (by Avraham Avinu) may improve chances of surviving intact if an exposure in inevitable. If you really need my practical advice form this – don’t wait until your child meets IDF, teach him how to swim (including how to live along non-religious people) before that encounter.