Thanks, Logician, I appreciate your tame reaction to my outburst. Regarding my priorities, I’ve gotten most of them from my the way my mom raised me, and I consider my mom, as I said, a very righteous, G-d fearing person. So I don’t think they are an influence from the “American” value system. I actually dislike much of the American value system, as I think it encourages laziness and shallowness.
In regard to your middle paragraph, this may sound funny, but I think our disagreement here has a lot to do with our disagreement last week (or was it 2 weeks?) about “good” and “bad”, as I think they share the same foundation. Namely, that we can choose to see things the way they are using our current perspective (which would be seeing something as bad, and in this case, seeing ourselves as right and the other person as wrong), or we can choose to attempt to see things on a larger scale, undisturbed by our own personal perspectives, in which something “bad” may become good, and in this case, understanding that the other person may have another opinion because of his perspective. At least I think the two things are related.. what do you think?
Yes, I see what you mean about Rabbis “battling” out their opinions, and it’s true that many times, one opinion may have prevailed. At the same time, there is a vast amount of things that people still hold differently about, even after many years. And for these things, it is possible that there can be two or more valid approaches, depending on the person.
Thank you for this discussion. And Toi, I am sorry for my outburst, I just hope you can now see where I stand. Chag sameach to both of you and your families.