Reply To: Mahar"at Avi Weiss

PBA: You love doing mitzvos where you get to be purposefully rude and mean to other human beings

Quite to the contrary, I am actually personal friends with many of these apikorsim. I respect them on a personal level, and have close relationships with them.

They are also apikorsim. But that is ok, I am also close friends with Moslems and Christians and all sorts of people I strongly disagree with. I am able to be friends with people I disagree with and whose opinions I criticize. (On that note, I would love to meet rebdoniel.)

I don’t think I am being mean on a personal level. I am pointing out the wrongness of their opinions because it is important that people know. I don’t characterize them either–everything I say about them they agree with except my conclusions based on it. It happens to be my character that I like making fun of things like this, and I get a good kick out of it also.

Now if I was to attribute to them things they don’t agree with–like you do–that would be mean.