In the name of all Klal Yisroel I congratulate the Cardinals of Cross Currents for their succesful persecution of R. Zev Farber. Yesterday, his yeshiva denounced his views, wirting that "his ideas are different from, and in some ways contradictory to, what we teach and ask our students to believe at YCT."
Well done Cross Currents! Now, its time to turn your attention to some bigger fish? Picking on someone who insuffriciently repects the Rambam's eighth principle is easy. They are mostly leftie academics, with no power bases, who fight fairly: They'll come back at you with ideas, not with bans or slanderous denouncments.
But those who disrespect the Rambam's 11th - God rewards and punishes us based on our performance of his commandments and not based on the segulahs we perform or the pidyonim we pay - are different. The segulah sellers are wealthy, powerful, popular. Pick a fight with one of them, and they'll come back at you with everything up to and including the kitchen sink. Six of them appear on the list of Israel's richest rabbis. Their fortunes were accumulated by selling charms, prayers and blessings, by making bogus predictions and by claimimg to have supernatural powers. Not one of them acquired their fortunes through industry or hard work, but by cashing in on the hopes, fears and stupidity of their followers.
Leading a heresy hunt against one of them would require real bravery, and unlike the heresy hunt against R. Farber, shutting down someone like Yaakov Ifargen or Nir Ben-Artzi or the Abuhatzeiras would produce tangible, real world results. The segulah sellers are crooks - predators - who terrify and impoverish believers.
So nu, Cross Currents? We're waiting.
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