Right on Dilbert! To Dilly's excellent remarks, I'll add this:
There have always been scientific barbarity in our tradition, but, until this week, there was also a tradition within the tradition of addressing those barbarities.
This week, the Haredi Rabbbinate closed that door, and announced that the old tradition was heresy. In essence, they said: You're either with us or against us. The world is 5000 years old, sages can't make mistakes, if you disagree you are a heretic, and let's not discuss all the rishonim and achronim who disagreed.
That’s hard to swallow. That’s impossible to swallow. I won’t swallow it. I am not required by Jewish law to swallow it. So where does that leave me? A heretic, but a heretic, as Slifkin says, “along with great Torah authorities…among the thousands of other such "heretics" in the Torah community.”
I can live with that, but I can't live with the leadership that created this altogether unnecessary situation, this further uneccesary classification between Jews.
