Post at DovBear!

So, DovBear honored yesterday with allowing me to guest post on his blog about glatt, a subject I touched on recently as well.

There was a very interesting mixed response. Some people were all for the change. Some were completely against and just tried looking for contradictions in what I said. Others just bashed. No one offered a solution. Too bad. Well, the good fight must go on.

Later, I visited this blog by XGH. The comments, especially nearer the bottom, are quite interesting. One person decided, because he saw a rebbi of his once do it, the word Hashem should be written without vowels and with dashes: H-sh-m. Never mind that Hashem literally means "The Name," and is used in order to not use God's name. He then said this:

"If people like me stick to the mesorah so tenaciosly, if we emulate our Rebbes in every trivial thing, how is it possible for the meosorah to be "hijacked"? I do everything that my Rebbe did exactly as he did it, he did what his Rebbe did, and so on, all the way back to Sinai. I don't consider myself a frummie, but look at how I keep my Rebbe's seemingly trivial minhag. He did the same thing."

It's this sort of automaton mentality I've been railing against. Let the rebbi do the thinking. This guy wasn't listening to or reading his own words! Things being done a certain way does not mean they HAVE to be done that way. So many people have just stopped thinking for themselves and depend on others to do the thinking for them. This leads to the state of the Orthodox world as it is today.

I welcome suggestions for change.

Good Shabbos.