You know, stamping your feet and saying “Nuh-uh” is not an argument. Watch the video again and see what R. Feldman says about R. Friedman. He calls him a “bor birshus harabbim,” a “fool,” and an “am haaretz” – but ***not*** a “kofer.” Seems that you just looked at the title of the video and didn’t bother watching it. Well, I did, and if you listen to the whole thing – it’s less than four minutes; surely you can spare that amount of time – you’ll see that the words “he is a heretic/kofer/whatever” ***do not*** appear in R. Feldman’s actual speech. So, for you to repeat, after this was pointed out to you, that “R. Feldman called him a Kofer” and to accuse me of “twisting what Rabbi Feldman said” is a flat-out lie, of the kind that you claim to be so against!
As is your claim that I said that “Rabbi Feldman was obligated to call” R. Friedman, when I ***specifically stated*** that “I’m not about to tell a world-class talmid chacham what he’s obligated to do.” I said that ***you*** are obligated to call before hurling accusations. Are you unable to tell the difference between R. Feldman and yourself? Is your ego that overweening that you think you reach anywhere to R. Feldman’s ankles?!
I also notice that you don’t actually have anything to say about the substance of the sources that I brought, just to claim that they’re “cherry-picked” and to repeat your smears. You know, the honest thing to do in such a debate would be to address those sources and explain why they’re not relevant to the topic at hand, such as “because Rabbi X explained to me that source Y actually means Z,” not “because I say so.”
And as for “a doctoral thesis,” here’s the part of my post that answered the question about whether I “agree” with what R. Feldman said:
“I’ll first point out that it’s a sickness to demand that one “agree” with a gadol b’Yisroel who says this or that, as though the validity of their opinion depends on whether I “agree” with it. It’s time you learned the gaping difference between sports or politics or whatever, and Torah, where our lodestone is emunas chachamim and anivus and shiflus before those who have molded their thought processes according to Torah.”
I’m sorry if that, a grand total of 72 words, is too much of a “doctoral thesis” for you to understand.
(As for the TV – very well, R. Fishelis said there’s no problem. It would be good, and ?? ??? ???? ?? ????, to understand his Torah thought process in reaching that conclusion. ???? ??? ?????? ??? ????, and of course there is also the possibility that you heard only what you wanted to hear.)
So now we’re at a crossroads. You can try to address my points rationally (since you claim that your Torah is rational). You can show where R. Feldman called R. Friedman a kofer, or where I said that R. Feldman was obligated to call R. Friedman before saying that, etc. etc., and when you can’t find those, then you can do the honest thing and retract those accusations. Or, though I hope not, you might persist in being like a character, “The Day-Old Goat,” described by R. Feldman himself in his book The Juggler and the King, pp. 54-55:
“Having nothing positive to offer, the only direction he can move in is a negative one. Realizing that he has not succeeded in earning on his own merits the glory for which he so desperately lusts, he thinks that at least he will get it by default, through eliminating all other candidates for glory. He therefore sets out to destroy the reputation of everyone around him. He imagines that when he has besmirched everyone else’s reputation sufficiently, then the people’s inexplicable blindness will at last be lifted, and, the field now being clear, they will be able to recognize his splendid qualities. That this will not work is obvious at first glance; but then, nothing is obvious to someone so intoxicated with dreams of glory.
“Rabba expresses this final effort by imaging the Torah scholar as the River Jordan and the day-old goat’s attempt to denigrate others as fouling that river and damming its flow. The goat hopes that by creating a foul odor around the talmid chacham he will prevent his Torah teachings from influencing the community. But of course, a river is not easily dammed for very long, and eventually the foul-smelling blockage is dissolved and carried away, and the pure water flows forth again.”
(Bear in mind, too, that unlike on VIN, your posts and mine here will be up for a long time to come, so that everyone can judge for themselves what is the “foul odor” and what is the “pure water.”)