Reply To: Baal Teshuvah Problems

Thank you for your reactions.

The problem is that I cannot seem to find, or decide on, an appropriate rav. It’s difficult to find someone who matches *all* of my own opinions, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable with a rav who does not agree with all of the things I do. It’s a problem I will never be able to solve, I think. I’ll have to find a rav who agrees with ‘most’ of my opinions – with the mutual understanding that my opinion will not change on the things on which we do not agree. (Which, I feel, negates the whole thing of having a rav!) I don’t really want to have a rav with whom I can agree on only 50% of all questions, because that, everyone says, isn’t what Yiddishkeit is supposed to be. You’re supposed to have a rav, and follow the rav no matter what, rely on Daas Torah, because after all, Daas Torah is what kept us together throuhgout the centuries, and will undoubtedly continue to do so. Those who abandon Daas Torah, who abandon the Gedolim, start weird initiatives – such as the Har Nof ‘Sanhedrin’ (the Steinsaltz club), the Na-Nach-Nachmans, the Kahane pople, the extreme Neturei Karta wings…

The whole issue is that, I think, one should have a rav who agrees with *all* of one’s opinions. Not half of them, or most of them.