Rabbi Natan (formerly Nosson) Slifkin

This is going to be a pretty short post as this subject has been discussed on numerous blogs many times. I just wanted to put in my two cents (please forgive the cliche).

My wife and I just purchased two of Rabbi Slifkin's seforim, Mysterious Creatures, which discusses mythological creatures from a Torah standpoint, and his latest, a revamp of a previous sefer, The Challenge of Creation.

Neither my wife nor I really understand how people who are considered Gedolei Yisroel (though by what criteria, I'm not quite sure) can put a person and his materials in cherem when though don't even really know what the material they are banning really discusses, while other roshei yeshiva give hascamas to their students' books that are basically Nazism - discussing the superiority of the Jewish people, saying how all others are sub-human and not worthy to walk the earth - without even reading those books. This was the case of a book a student from Lakewood Yeshiva wrote. His Rosh Yeshiva gave it a hascama, which he did retract when he was actually told what the book said. However, shouldn't that rosh yeshiva, a man considered a gadol b'Yisroel, have read, or at least skimmed the book, before giving it a hascama? And yet as as gadol, according the chareidi/Yeshivish world, he is infallible, as all gedolim are, apparently. So how did he make this mistake?

Answer: Gedolim are indeed fallible, be they modern day rabbis or Chazal, or the Nevi'im, or even Moshe Rabbeinu himself. Yes, Moseh Rabbeinu was fallible and even made mistakes. God told him to speak the rock, and Moshe hit it. I don't care how the meforshim try to dress up his actions to make it seem like he did not goof. He did, and for that goof, Moshe did not get to go into Eretz Yisroel. Period.

And there are so many stories like that in Tanach. Adam Harishon? He goofed. He knew full well what he was being fed. Or how about the story of Yehuda and Tamar. I don't care how the Meforshim like to dress up Yehuda's actions. At the end of the day, he saw a prostitute on the road and decided to sleep with her. And when the time came, he didn't say "I couldn't have possibly made a mistake." He said: "Tsodka Memeni." "She was right and I was wrong." Dovid Hamelech owned up to his mistakes, and he was punished for them. Chizkiyahu Hamelech decided not to have children because he saw in Ruach Hakodesh what Menashe would do. He was punished and continued to be punished until he changed his mind.

The stories go on and on. Nobody is infallible. A man cannot live a lifetime and not sin. These apologetics that exonerate people because we can't imagine them goofing up must stop.

Back to Rabbi Slifkin. He was put into cherem because some people decided to take words and sentences out of context and use them as proof that he was being a heretic. It's disgusting, and the fact that modern day "gedolim" allow themselves to be controlled by their "handlers," their Meshamshiim who restrict access to these "gedolim," who should be accessible to all, is in itself a fallacy they must rectify if there is ever to be a healing in the ever growing rift in Klal Yisroel.