I hold from Torah values very highly, but not from the religious people that claim to be following these values. The "world" of the religious I do not think reflects Torah values very well.
For example there is a lot of effort to make secular Jews religious, but no loyalty to these same Jews. That is an attempt is made to show great friendship ["love bombing"] in order to acquire their friendship, but no real friendship really exists. It is important not to pretend friendship where none exists. Especially this is so since the point of pretending to be friends is to take people from their real family and friends whom they can depend on an replace them with false friends on whom they can not depend.
This is not a minor problem, but permeates the entire religious world. It is the elephant in the room that everyone tries so hard to ignore.
It is hard to know how to deal with this problem--especially since I do believe very strongly in Torah values the Oral and Written Law.
It is hard to know why the word that apparently claims to be following the holy Torah suffers from this kind of moral blind spot.
And to me this seems like a major failing-not some minor flaw.
What I personally conclude years ago is the religious world in fact has nothing to do with Torah and it does not reflect Torah values at all but rather reflects rituals that are exaggerated and not from Torah.
The only places that I saw were more or less adhering to Torah values were Lithuanian kinds of Yeshiva s with the surrounding communities--that is yeshivas built and run on the principles of the Gra and Rav Shach.
For example there is a lot of effort to make secular Jews religious, but no loyalty to these same Jews. That is an attempt is made to show great friendship ["love bombing"] in order to acquire their friendship, but no real friendship really exists. It is important not to pretend friendship where none exists. Especially this is so since the point of pretending to be friends is to take people from their real family and friends whom they can depend on an replace them with false friends on whom they can not depend.
This is not a minor problem, but permeates the entire religious world. It is the elephant in the room that everyone tries so hard to ignore.
It is hard to know how to deal with this problem--especially since I do believe very strongly in Torah values the Oral and Written Law.
It is hard to know why the word that apparently claims to be following the holy Torah suffers from this kind of moral blind spot.
And to me this seems like a major failing-not some minor flaw.
What I personally conclude years ago is the religious world in fact has nothing to do with Torah and it does not reflect Torah values at all but rather reflects rituals that are exaggerated and not from Torah.
The only places that I saw were more or less adhering to Torah values were Lithuanian kinds of Yeshiva s with the surrounding communities--that is yeshivas built and run on the principles of the Gra and Rav Shach.
