Ben Shapiro and “Conspiracy Rabbis”

I very much enjoyed reading Haimov’s article and I am sure that like many others reading, a few family members immediately sprang to mind who shared the qualities of Trump worshippers. If you happen to be interested in exploring more of idol worship in the modern age, I would like to direct the reader to the monthly “Smashing Idols” column in the BJL. In regard to Haimov’s point about where to turn for wisdom, I would point to the famous saying of our Sages in Pirkei Avot. “If non-Jews have wisdom, believe them. If non-Jews purport to offer wisdom of the Torah, do not believe them” to support his point. That being said, the availability of Rabbinic ordination nowadays leaves Orthodox Jews with an unfortunate reality that we must find a Rabbi to whom we adhere to as we would a Sage of yore. Of course, not all rabbis nowadays are Sages. Many are, as he puts it, “conspiracy rabbis” or otherwise unqualified to make moral judgements. It is to this point that I would be careful regarding shifting people away from voices such as Ben Shapiro’s. Although I have many qualms with much of how Shapiro presents himself and many of the opinions he holds, I recognize that modern rabbis lack a certain exposure to the world of Philosophy and Theology combined with Torah that allow for a sophisticated moral code, or hashkafa. Mesorah in halakha is much more readily available to the modern Jew than Mesorah in Hashkafa. Hashkafa has never taken a definitive stance on more than a handful of topics. Shapiro certainly has had much more exposure to the philosophies of Nietzche, Spinoza, and Dostoyevsky, all vicious critics of Jewish thought, than your average modern rabbi on Torahanytime.com - all this combined with knowledge of millennia long Torah wisdom makes for a much more formidable Jew in the 21st century than what you would find online most of the time. I certainly wish more rabbis were formidable in such areas and in the public eye, but unfortunately they are rare and Jews must explore more sophisticated areas of hashkafa beyond a secluded milieu. Of course, always starting with Tanakh and branching out to broader horizons.

Dovidchai Abramchayev
Teaneck, NJ