Wonder-rabbis...

I wanted to address the issue of the new and active phenomenon of "wonder-rabbis" for a couple of days, mostly after reading the extensive report about R. Yoshiyahu Pinto. The publishing of the feature coincided with the murder of the well-respected Elazar Abuhatzeira by a mentally troubled man unhappy with the counsel he got for his marital problems.

The phenomenon isn't new in the Jewish world and if the latest patterns are manifesting mostly within the Sephardi world, the beginning belongs to the Eastern European shtetls and the hassidims' exotic - sometimes - courts.

In times of economic and spiritual instability, people are driven to find advice and daily orientation from people considered as the owners of a special knowledge and spiritual powers. But the danger of idolatry is high and we need counter-weights and our own reasoning and critical thinking. But we need to he wise enough and modest enough to realize what our limits are and where we should prefer the silence to the facile answers.

JStreet

if you want to figure out by yourself what it is all about, just watch it live and after...think by yourself.

Religion

as a matter of choice or rejection of a social laziness of thinking. It is all about your own choice. To take off.

The answer is: No

Randomly surfing to other blogs the last week, including atheist ones, I've found various levels of philosophical interrogations regarding the proofs you, as an atheist, you'll need, in order to believe in a god. Because I'm always in a hurry, I will not think too much in terms of philosophy. For me, the world around without any religious explanation is so amazingly complex and interesting and offering an infinite challenge for thinking that all this religious explanation is simply outrageous for the intelligence. And I don't waste my time thinking what if a god will make my dog talk, or whatever else "mystery".

When? Where? Whom? What? Why?

When -Always it is the same problem: Where in this world are hidden and scattered the people who don't give up critical thinking - defined basically as: "The cognitive skills of analysis, interpretation, inference, explanation, evaluation and of monitoring and correcting one's own reasoning " (a helpful lecture could be found here - http://www.insightassessment.com/pdf_files/J_Infrml_Ppr%20_2000%20-%20Disp%20&%20Skls.PDF) ? The complex brains are always putting on trial the world around (and, of course, for these people, is not a matter of never-ending permanent meditation if it is or not a God, because it is NOT; they are spending their time trying to understand the world on the base of reason, a by far more challenging and passionate and demanding approach, trust me) and the individuals inhabiting this world. I had many times the experience, through a dialogue, with different kind of people to be qualified in different ways, because a natural curiosity I would never refrain. Of course, it is my problem - of choosing a certain pattern of life - whose else could it be? As it is my choice to start sharing my thoughts to an unknown and undefined audience. Perhaps this kind of blind, but targeted searches, would get some results. The most important thing it's that people who have something to say, to say it loudly, and to do not give up and shut up, whatever the percentage of stupidity, pressure of ignorance or level of corruption of their minds.