Soccer Dad

A good outcome

I had felt that there was little point in disputing the ban on Rabbi Slifkin's books. I thought that agitating in the blogosphere served little purpose. My feeling was - and I wish I'd posted this earlier - would have been to get someone who had credibility with the Gedolim issuing the ban and was also conversant in science to intercede on Rabbi Slifkin's behalf.
I think that the ban was the result of trusted confidants of one or two of the Gedolim involved giving his/their view that Rabbi Slifkin's books contained heretical thoughts. The Gedolim trusted their sources reading of the books and issued the ban.
Therefore I figured the way to reverse the ban was to have someone equally as trusted to make the case for Rabbi Slifkin. And according to Bnei Levi, that is exactly what happened.

According to my sources, R' Elyashev has backed down on the ban on R' Nosson Slifkin's books after speaking to R' Aharon Feldman. As reported earlier, R' Aharon Feldman, Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Israel / Baltimore, flew to Israel this past week to defend R' Slifkin's books. Now it seems that he was travelling not only on his own behalf, but rather as an emmissary from the entire American Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah. He gave a message to R' Elyashev that the American Gedolim have examined these books and have found no heresy. R; Elyashev has agreed and is backing down. There is no word on when and how a retraction will be issued.

My candidates would have been Rabbi Doctor Avraham Avraham or Rabbi Emmanuel Feldman, but what's important is that someone took this initiative to reverse the damage. (Incidentally, as far as I could tell from Rabbi Slifkin's website, he still has an Ohr Sameach e-mail address. Rabbi Aharon Feldman used to be Rosh Yeshivah of Ohr Sameach before returning to Baltimore a few years ago.)
via Bloghead, refuah shlaimah.
UPDATE: In retrospect, it looks that this was something that the Yehupitzer Rav was suggesting a few weeks ago.

Posted by SoccerDad at February 6, 2005 11:21 AM