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For those who haven't heard, R' Aaron Feldman Shlit"a, Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Yisroel in Baltimore, MD has written an article concerning the controversy over the books of Rabbi Slifkin. The article can be found here.

Having a little bit of time to study this letter and having a chance to read the grossly unfair responses to it on some other blogs, it's about time to set the record straight.

First of all, this letter above all was a VERY POSITIVE THING. In my opinion, part of the reason why the controversy has become so big is that there was a lack of clear communication on the part of the gedolim. Most of what we had seen up until this point was vague. This is characteristic of gedolim historically, who generally write things very b'kitzur. Likely, they did not expect Rabbi Slifkin to respond in the way he did. However, now that the his site and the blogs have made this such a huge deal and speculation about their views has abounded, they felt the need to be more clear. I expect and hope that this will be the first of many such articles as I believe there are many yirei shomayim who are just unsure as to what to believe and how to evaluate the validity of these sorts of ideas.

From reading the blogs it would seem to anyone that this is a battle between the Slifkin camp who believe in a synthesis between Torah and science and the gedolim camp who believe we must shut our eyes to scientific evidence and blindly subscribe to a completely literal reading of the chumash. Rabbi Feldman has now DEBUNKED THAT MISCONCEPTION. He mentioned three views on the issue which he deemed valid (Tiferes Yisrael, Bal Haleshem, and R' Schwab), none of which were along the lines of "Hashem made an old-looking world". I have it on good authority that R' Elyashiv endorsed all three of these as valid approaches (there is a letter to that effect I am trying to procure).

R' Feldman has specific problems with the approach Rabbi Slifkin uses based on Rabbi Kaplan (6 days in machshavah) as well as with Rabbi Slifkin's reading of Rav Dessler. Now we must state that

• Rabbi Kaplan is a very smart, erliche yid but no authority. He bases himself on his own understanding of Kabbalistic works as well as a Tosefos in R"H, but there is no mesorah for this view.
• Interpreting R' Dessler can sometimes be a dicey matter. If I had to choose whose learning of a sefer to go with, it would probably be that of the greater talmid chochom or the one closest to the author. Contrary to what some have said, the greatest talmid of R' Dessler alive today is not R' Carmell, but rather R' Shapiro. I highly doubt he would learn R' Dessler in this way.

Now the above does not make R' Slifkin's answer incorrect. It just makes it poor scholarship. He is saying svaros without good raayos. If someone wants to write a book espousing highly unconventional approaces to hashkafah, it needs to be resting on very solid ground. It is the opinion of the gedolei yisroel that this does not. And who better to make such a judgement?

Now let's be honest. How many people out there were really tied specifically to R' Slifkin's ideas? Very few I'm sure. Everyone was upset about the possibility of banning any approach which was not completely literal. This turns out not to be a problem. I would like to determine if R' Shapiro and R' Shternbuch would agree with R' Feldman on this. Even if they would not, R' Elyashiv would, and that I think should be sufficient. So, with a few paragraphs, R' Feldman has taken this issue from a huge crisis and turned it into a much smaller issue, limited to one specific set of ideas which few people knew about anyway.

Of course, we must ask, do we ban books on account of poor scholarship? Perhaps we do. If the idea being espoused is one which could have a deep impact on people's hashkafah, then the leaders of K'lal Yisroel would not want it being read unless it were true. In addition, and while not stated in the article, any yarei shomayim who read these books has had an uneasy feeling at points about how cavalier he is with Chazal and how quickly he seems to accept certain scientific beliefs. I believe that it was the opinion of the gedolim that, while not kefirah, the books a) espouse unconventional ideas without sufficient proofs b) are written with too glib an attitude, and c) may be detrimental to the emunah of those newcomers to Judaism who are most in need of a firm foundation. i.e. the first thing you tell a prospective baal t'shuvah is not "hey, the Sages may have believed in Unicorns." That is not to say that we cannot seriously deal with these questions, but that we start with the basics and later deal with the kashyos.

The last point above can certainly be argued. Many things about this ban can be argued. But the main idea is that a Rabbi came out with some specific ideas which the greatest scholars of today deemed inauthentic...not all that big of a deal.

I still have some open questions. The end of the article seems to argue for the existence of a concept of psak hashkafah beyond simply what we need to determine if someone is a kofer and therefore pasul aidus. I have several arguments against this, but need to research more and try and get clarification from R' Feldman before I go into it. Also, if the books weren't really kefirah (which seems to be what the article is saying), then why did the letter the gedolim signed say it was? Finally, why wasn't R' Slifkin called in? Couln't this have been done in a better way? Perhaps there is more to the story than we have seen...remember only one side has a web site.

I imagine that these questions and others will be answered as more information comes out. And I believe that the more we get the opportunity to see into the minds of great people, the more we will come to realize that they are not, in fact, ignorant or naive, but rather will be better able to appreciate their greatness.