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CLOSE-MINDED AND PROUD OF IT
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mali




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Sep 06 2006, 2:57 pm
The mention of Mordechai and Esther on another thread got me thinking. Throughout our history, starting from Noach, through the Avos and Imahos, and down through all the generations until ours, the Jewish heroes were, what many women on this forum would call, "close-minded".

Avraham was called "Ivri", which derives from the word "Eiver"-side, because the whole world stood on one side, and he stood on the other.

Same with Moshe Rabbeinu, who was always so stringent and "fanatic", as many people in his generation thought.

Much later, came the Maccabbees, a handful of Jewish radicals, who didn't agree with the Greek culture of going to theaters and learning secular subjects, foreign languages and gymnastics.

Mordechai followed. One strange Jew who didn't let the rest of them be part of the club. He didn't even think it was important to be politically correct, and to join the party just for the sake of not being different.

These are just a few examples. All these people were really open-minded. Open to seeing the future, and the terrible results the negative actions would bring upon our nation. The fact that some self-hating-Jews tried bashing them, doesn't change the ultimate truth.


Last edited by mali on Wed, Sep 06 2006, 3:06 pm; edited 3 times in total
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red sea




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Sep 06 2006, 3:03 pm
whatever public opinion is is really closed minded and people who dare to think different are more open minded and that is a great way to prove it
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mimsy7420




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Sep 06 2006, 3:25 pm
History was not made by people sitting around in their chairs with their mouths closed tight.
It's the big-mouthed ones who got things moving!
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shalhevet




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Sep 06 2006, 3:28 pm
Thumbs Up , mali.
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Ruchel




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Sep 06 2006, 3:50 pm
I agree mali.

I would say understanding is not bad, but understand so much that you approve of it, NO.
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Chani




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Sep 06 2006, 4:39 pm
I agree with your assessment, Red Sea.
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healthymama




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 07 2006, 12:05 am
Keep in mind that "close minded" is a very different term than "independent thinker".

Avraham, Moshe, all these people were great figures in our history because they understood people, understood individual differences and understood how to reach everyone on their level. Closeminded people generally understand only themselves and their way of doing things, so I am not sure I agree with your assessment.
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mali




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 07 2006, 12:50 am
In our distorted world, people are confusing "understanding" with "agreeing". And for some reason, they can "understand" everyone, besides for those who non-compromisingly cling to the Jewish faith/law.

And if you want Moshe Rabbeinu as an example, after the sin of the golden calf, he didn't "understand" anyone. He said "Mi La'Hashem Eilay", and then killed all the sinners. I don't see any "understanding" on his part.

Avraham Avinu was ready to slaughter his son for the sake of G-d. I wonder what today's media would have to say about it.
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sarahd




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 07 2006, 3:51 am
I don't see the stira (contradiction) between what healthymama says and being able to fulfill Hashem's desire. Avraham being ready to sacrifice Yitzchak just proves that he was an independent thinker, not needing to kowtow to society's expectations. It says nothing about his ability to understand people's differences. You can understand people and still do the right thing.

I agree with healthymama's definition of close-minded and I don't believe that Avraham, Moshe, Mordechai et al fit that definition.
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mali




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 07 2006, 7:36 am
A Jew isn't an independent thinker. A Jew thinks and acts only according to Hashem and the Torah. Avraham didn't think independently about Akeidas Yitzchok. He blindly followed Hashem's commandment.

I wonder where we would be today if all our leaders down the line would be "independent thinkers".
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Motek




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 07 2006, 1:00 pm
mali wrote:
Avraham didn't think independently about Akeidas Yitzchok. He blindly followed Hashem's commandment.


You're right about Avrohom and Akeidas Yitzchok yet Avrohom was definitely an independent thinker, as you yourself wrote:

Quote:
Avraham was called "Ivri", which derives from the word "Eiver"-side, because the whole world stood on one side, and he stood on the other.


He rejected the idol worship of his time and came to the idea of One G-d on his own which he then promoted to the world.

I'll add to your list of independent thinkers/doers:

Yosef who lived on his own in captivity and remained loyal to Hashem.

Yocheved and Miriam (Shifra and Puah) who disobeyed Pharaoh's orders.

Nachshon who jumped into the sea.

Yehoshua and Kalev who went against the majority of 10 spies (gedolim!).

Korach was an independent thinker and boy, did that get him into trouble!

Pinchas was an amazing individualist who merited the kehuna as a result.

I'm confused because you say that these great people were actually open-minded but then you say Jews aren't independent thinkers!

We have had different types of great leaders in our history. Some great leaders were not independent thinkers in the sense that they innovated anything but they were great because of their piety, Torah knowledge, ability to lead.

Other leaders were actually independent thinkers/doers, people like R' Yehoshua ben Gamla who instituted the idea of schools, then later Sarah Schenirer who created a revolution.
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mali




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 07 2006, 1:44 pm
All the above mentioned independent thinkers did so to glorify Hashem's name. They didn't let their human logic take over.

Yosef could have had an easier life living like everyone in Egypt.

About Shifra and Puah the Torah writes: (Shmos: 1,17) The midwives, however, feared God; so they did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them, but they enabled the boys to live.

Nachshon ben Aminadav trusted Hashem's word and believed nothing would happen to him.

Yehoshua and Kalev didn't go with "Atzas Hameraglim", which they realized was wrong.

Korach - a classic example of a person who distorted everything he learnt, and interpreted it independently to suit his needs/wishes.

Pinchas - my favorite!!! He was a קנאי - a zealot. Most people would prefer to stay away from such a "fanatic".

As for the more recent independent thinkers - they all acted in accordance with Halacha, and with their Rabbis' consent. True, many people disagreed with them. And that exactly is the point I'm trying to bring out here - that the term "open-minded" isn't used correctly these days. The above-mentioned truly open-minded people acted only according to Torah. They didn't let any modern/tolerant/liberal person or thought get in their way.
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Tefila




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 07 2006, 4:31 pm
Quote:
And for some reason, they can "understand" everyone, besides for those who non-compromisingly cling to the Jewish faith/law.

Only b/c imo they do not wish too.... b/c it' feels threatening to some to have to change ones lifestyle, and to know that all along they have been doing or acting wrong conc such and such. It requires alot to change who needs the added stress....... playing devils advocate here obviously Wink
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Ruchel




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 07 2006, 7:11 pm
mali wrote:
And for some reason, they can "understand" everyone, besides for those who non-compromisingly cling to the Jewish faith/law.

(or any other faith). Yes, it's true.
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Motek




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Sep 07 2006, 8:47 pm
mali wrote:
Nachshon ben Aminadav trusted Hashem's word and believed nothing would happen to him.


I don't think he thought about what might happen. It was Hashem said to go, so he went.

Another example - Chananya, Mishael and Azarya were the only ones left standing when everybody else bowed to the statue Nevuchadnetzar set up. (Yet they were told not to rely on a miracle.)

Quote:
As for the more recent independent thinkers - they all acted in accordance with Halacha, and with their Rabbis' consent.


If only it was so clear-cut. Many times in our history we've had unusual personalities and often they were persecuted, ex. Rambam, the early Chassidim.
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healthymama




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Sep 10 2006, 12:24 am
The rambam is a good example. Mali, the rambam's seforim were burned in public. Would you say that he was close minded as you are proud of being ( per the title of your post ) or would you say those who burned his books were close-minded ?

Again, you are confusing being a non-conformist with being close-minded. Maybe it's a language thing. Maybe "close-minded " to you means close minded to what society thinks, but the best term for that is "non-conformist". Close minded usually means that the person discounts all ways to look at a subject other than his own.

Quote:
In our distorted world, people are confusing "understanding" with "agreeing". And for some reason, they can "understand" everyone, besides for those who non-compromisingly cling to the Jewish faith/law
.

Maybe check on this with Reb Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev and see what he has to say on that topic. He was somehow able to find merit in most people without needing to agree with them.
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mali




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Sep 10 2006, 5:34 am
I'm copying something SaraG brought in a different thread:

Quote:
A Tale of Two Mountains

By Yosef Y. Jacobson

A new teacher was trying to make use of her psychology courses. She started her class by saying, "Everyone who thinks he's stupid, please stand up!"

After a few seconds, little Johnny stood up. The teacher was surprised, but realized this was an opportune moment to help the poor child. "Do you think you're stupid, Johnny?" she asked. "Why do you feel so my dear child"?

"No, ma'am," Johnny replied, "but I hated to see you standing there all by yourself!"

A Visit to the North

During a visit to Israel, I traveled to the twin mountains of Gerizim and Ebal, to stand on the soil my ancestors treaded 3,274 years ago, during a historic moment when they had just entered the Promised Land.

Located in the north of Israel, in the area known today as Samaria (Shomron), towering over the now infamous city of Shechem (Nablus) and the gravesite of Joseph, the two majestic mountains dominate the horizon for the many Jewish settlements located in that area (1).

As I entered into the wellspring flowing on Mt. Gerizim for a spiritual pre-Sabbath cleansing, I closed my eyes, and allowed my imagination to take me back more than three millennia, to the time when the Jewish people, according to Moses’ instructions in this week’s Torah portion, gathered atop these mountains shortly after their entry into the Land in order to rededicate themselves to the ethical values of Torah.

Moses’ Directive

These were Moses’ instructions to the people in the book of Deuteronomy (2):

“When Your G-d brings you to the land, to possess it, you shall deliver the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.”

Later in the Bible(3), Moses is more specific. Six tribes were to ascend Mt. Gerizim, while another six tribes were to ascend Mt. Ebal. The elders of the Levites were to stand in the valley between the two mountains. They would loudly pronounce 12 basic moral commandments of the Torah.

As the Talmud explains (4), turning their faces to Mt. Gerizim, the Levites declared that fulfilling these commandments would bring blessings, to which all of Israel responded Amen. Then, turning their faces to Mt. Ebal, they declared that violating these commandments would cause detriment, to which all of the tribes again responded with an Amen.

In Moses’ words (3):

“The Levites shall speak up and say to every man of Israel in a loud voice… ‘Accursed is the man who will make a graven or molten image, an abomination of G-d… and the entire people shall speak up and say ‘Amen’… Accursed is the man who degrades his father or mother… Accursed is the one who steals the property of his fellow… Accursed is one who causes a blind person to go astray on the road… Accursed is the one who perverts a judgment of a proselyte, orphan or widow… Accursed is the one who has intimate relations with the wife of his father… Accursed is the one who has intimate relations with any animal… Accursed is the one who has intimate relations with his sister… Accursed is the one who has intimate relations with his mother-in-law… Accursed is the one who strikes his fellow stealthily… Accursed is the one who takes a bribe to kill a person of innocent blood…’”

The Implementation

Indeed, Moses’ instructions to the people of Israel were fulfilled meticulously. Here is the report in the book of Joshua (5):

“Then Joshua built an altar to G-d, G-d of Israel, on Mount Ebal, as Moses, the servant of G-d, has commanded the children of Israel (6)… All of Israel and its elders and officers and its judges stood… half of them on the slope of Mt. Gerizim and half of them on the slope of Mt. Ebal, to first bless the people of Israel.”

This was a profoundly dramatic moment in our early history. Entering for the first time into their homeland, the Jewish people, atop these two mountains, defined their mission statement as a people, rededicating themselves to the novel and revolutionary system of biblical ethics still unheard of in that milieu of cannibalism and pagan feasts of child slaughtering. According to the Talmud, it was at that moment that the Jewish people accepted shared duty for each other as a single organism (6*).

Incidentally, it is worth noting that at the northern corner of Mt. Ebal a great archeological find was excavated a number of years ago. After searching the entire area for signs of an early Israelite settlement, a solid stone structure was uncovered on the northern summit of Ebal surrounded by large amounts of animal bones. After the bones were submitted for testing the results showed that 93 percent to 97 percent of the bones came from kosher animals, and specifically animals that were permitted for use on a Jewish altar. The nonreligious archeologist who discovered the sight concluded that he had excavated the altar described above in Joshua 8:30. (Because of safety concerns, the sight today is mostly off limits.)

Another fascinating fact I observed is that although the two mountains are closely situated to each other, and subject to the same rains and climates, Mt. Gerizim is green and fertile, while its neighboring Mt. Ebal is tark white rock and barren. This is easily observable, perhaps a result of Ebal being designated as the mountain of curse (7).

Why Two Mountains?

Yet the obvious question is, why the need for two distinct mountains in order to proclaim the benefits of loyalty to the Torah ethic and the detriments resulting from abandoning the Torah? Why couldn’t the entire ceremony be performed on one mountain?

Even if all of the Jews could not fit on a single mountain, why were blessings directed toward one mountain, while curses directed to another?

The answer seems to be uniquely relevant to our age.

With the vivid visualization of two distinct mountains, separated by a valley, one of blessing, the other of curse, the Torah is attempting to convey the message that life can and should be divided into two distinct pathways: one path as a source of blessing and growth; the other as a source of curse and devastation. A very real gulf separates the moral life from the immoral life and it ought never be obfuscated (8.)

With this clear designation of a mountain of blessing vs. a mountain of curse, the Bible is rejecting the now popular notion that the true progressive personality is open to all kinds of people, all kinds of lifestyles, all ideologies, all choices. According to this modern-day ethos, the primary enemy is the person who cannot be tolerant to all forms of behavior, the individual who believes that some deeds are absolutely blessed, while others are absolutely cursed.

The University Crisis

In the introduction to his book "The Closing of the American Mind," the late Chicago University professor Allan Bloom argued that higher education in the U.S. has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students. The great virtue of the day, he wrote, became the unshakable belief that all truth is relative, and that no one idea or moral value is truer than any other. Openness to every culture and tolerance of every idea has become the greatest insight of our time. The notion of absoluteness, naturally, became the great foe of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and culture taught the youth of today that the greatest evils of the past came from people who thought they were absolutely right. Our mission today was not to correct the mistakes and learn what is really right, but rather to abolish the very concept of right and wrong. Everything became right. What right, students continue to ask, do I or anyone else have to say that one way is better than the other?

In Bloom’s own words:

“If I pose the routine questions designed to confuse them and make them think, such as ‘If you had been a British administrator in India, would you have let the natives under your governance burn the widow at the funeral of a man who had died?’ they either remain silent or reply that the British should never have been there in the first place.”

In the Dec. 17, 2001 issue of Newsweek, Yale University student Alison Hornstein wisely observed:

“On the morning of Sept. 11, my entire college campus huddled around television sets, our eyes riveted in horror to the images of the burning, then falling, Twin Towers… But by Sept. 12, as our shock began to fade, so did our sense of being wronged. Students' reactions expressed in the daily newspaper and in class pointed to the differences between our life circumstances and those of the perpetrators, suggesting that these differences had caused the previous day’s events.

“Noticeably absent,” she wrote, “was a general outcry of indignation. These reactions, and similar ones on other campuses, have made it apparent that my generation is uncomfortable assessing, or even asking, whether a moral wrong has taken place. My generation may be culturally sensitive, but we hesitate to make moral judgments.”

This, I believe, is one of the greatest tragedies raging in American campuses across the country. The fact that so many university students cannot recognize some actions as objectively evil, despite differences in cultural standards and values, is not only philosophically problematic, it is practically suicidal. If we cannot define anything as evil, we cannot stand up to it. We then ensure its victory.

If hijacking planes and killing thousands of civilians is not objectively bad, I do not know what can be deemed evil. If blowing up two buses filled with civilian men, women and children, blowing to pieces 16 innocent human beings -- as Hamas did this Tuesday in Israel -– is not absolutely evil, what is?

Three thousand and two hundred years ago, the Torah taught us that some acts constitute blessings; others constitute curses. They ought never to be equated. They ought to be distinguished not only conceptually, but also physically. They could never be associated together in one domain. An absolute, though narrow, gulf separates the two.

Distinguishing good from bad is not an act of arrogance, peasantry or a display of closed-mindedness. It is the only way to purge our beautiful world from militants who slaughter people who do not adhere to their beliefs.

~~~~~~~~~~

Footnotes:
1) See Sifre to to Reah; Soteh 33b; Yerusdhalmi Soteh 7:3 for the differing opinions on the exact location of the mountains.
2) 11:29.
3) Ibid. 27:11-25.
4) Soteh 32a. Quoted in Rashi to Deuteronomy ibid.
5) 8:30.
6) This commandment is in Deuteronomy 27:5-7.
6*) See Talmud Shvous 37b.
7) See Shalah Parshas Reah and Or Hatorah Parshas Reah pp. 678-680 for an explanations of the names of these two mountains and their connection to blessing and curse.
8.) This concept is conveyed, in Kabbalistic and spiritual terminology, in Or Hatorah ibid. and references noted there.

www.algemeiner.com


~~~~~
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ButterflyGarden




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Sep 10 2006, 7:28 am
I have a friend who says that she's open minded, but not so much that her brains fall out.
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chocolate moose




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Sep 10 2006, 8:53 am
lol !
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Lechatchila Ariber




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jun 03 2007, 10:44 pm
I like this thread so I'm reviving it
Smile
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