Fringe fighting on 7 Fat Cow
November 13, 2008 Jewish Community, NYC 7 Fat Cow
Ladies and gentlemen, now you don’t have to shlepp to Coney Island to see the side show. Just watch the rumble between two spokesmen of the most respected groups of American Jewry. mohammed, of “Hurry up and do what you promised, Mr. Ahmadinejad,” and Ariel Sokolovsky, of “Rebbe-God” and “My sweet pilegesh” fame, who are going at it. The issue is: the right to post a “how to” suicide note on 7 Fat Cow. (And, of course, they end up fighting about Israel.)
7 Fat Cow is all about social responsibility, and many were sorely disappointed when a writer deleted his post on how to commit suicide effectively on a blog whose community has been no stranger to suicide and overdose, mental illness and despair. It is so wonderful that they look out for each other like this and think it is funny to encourage people to commit suicide. It is comforting as well to know that these guys leave the haredi world with a strong moral code as intact as their foreskins.
Many of these guys are genuinely brilliant, talented, and quite likable. But without a moral code, they are often not trustworthy or responsible people.
7 Fat Cow has consistently been one of the most irresponsible blogs in the Jewish world, and they think this is a big compliment. Because they have no code. They have no morality. This is what haredism does — it preempts any semblance of morality outside of a haredi one.
I could go on and on…but suffice to say, I like these guys, and feel some sense of kinship and fraternity, but I wish these people would find the strength to see value in themselves, and therefore, enable them to see value in others.
Unlike Modern Orthodoxy, which allow for parallel value systems, Haredism is a jealous theology. Nothing, absolutely nothing except haredism, is allowed to have any value. And so when they leave, they leave value itself behind.
These people have all the mirthful laughter of the cacophonous screams of a madhouse.
And yet…at times…they come together and sing the songs of their youth and communities. They are broken, angry nihilists…but still feel compelled at gatherings to sing praise unto God. On some level, in some way…they still harbor hope and belief.
36 comments
>This is what haredism does — it preempts any semblance of morality outside of a haredi one.
I love that!
why did you decide to shine your flashlight down our rathole?
I would post this as a headline “7 Fat Cow has consistently been one of the most irresponsible blogs in the Jewish world, and they think this is a big compliment.” but it feels sort of incestous to make a post about your post on our post. Oh well.
Your analysis is surprisingly off base, even allowing for your anti chareidi bias skewing your perspective.
Who do you think we are responsible to? And it what way was the cow irresponsible?
And it what way was the cow irresponsible?
Promoting suicide is irresponsible.
I thought you were above causing ruckus for hits on your site. This be but the only reason you posted this. Morality from a Bush Republican. Who wudda thunk?
Mohammed reposted it, I think, for reasons concerning freedom of speech, and, after your approval/disapproval/rant, I am want to agree with him.
Morality from a Bush Republican.
de profundis,
That you are unable distinguish between my politics and a “Bush Republican” is revealing as to how risibly rudimental your own political understanding is. It is childlike, that is to say, haredi. You believe that being a Democrat means to be an absolute liberal relativist just as your Lubab community claimed it to be.
You may, at some point, wish to pick up an 8th grader’s American History textbook, and learn a little about the 18th and 19th centuries beyond which Rebbe married which of his second cousins, and who preferred the czar to Napolean. It will broaden your American political comprehension just a wee bit.
Gentleman,
Kindly retract your claws from each others’ necks.
After calling us “consistently” irresponsible, I would have expected more than one example.
In what way is promoting suicide irresponsible? Responsibility to who?
In what way is promoting suicide irresponsible? Responsibility to who?
To Gdo and fellow man, mohammed.
Assisting suicide by providing instructions qualifies as a serious offence in many countries; AFAIK in the US as well.
Mo, stop being cranky, and I’ll promise to wear skirts more often. And get a job; that’ll vent a lot of your energy into something productive.
mohammed, the Torah does not smile upon promoting suicide as a means to alleviate depression. More importantly, the rabbis do not smile upon promoting suicide.
On what basis do you claim I have a responsibility to my “fellow man”, Dk? And why would it preclude encouraging suicide?
Where did you see anything about depression in that post? And I’m still waiting for your second example of irresponsibility.
dk,
I won’t get into the nitty gritty, I have too many immoral acts to perform but I will call you on this, “how risibly rudimental your own political understanding is. It is childlike, that is to say, haredi.”
I, and a few others chulent/cows, have more college credits than you do.
And read more books than you. Reminds me of Nikki Friedman, reviewing The Gift of Asher Lev in the nytimes book review, complaining that the character remains religious, and for all his education and artistic achievements, he has failed, since he is still Charedi. Potok, hardly the Charedi, and, in fact, seen by most Charedim as being an apikores, sees life a bit differently, than the simple-minded maskil dictum that the west and a western education, betters a person in some way.
You want the west? Spread your ass cheeks for Andre Gide, Jean Genet, Allen Ginsberg and a host of others.
One more thing: having been around many secular western educated American Jews I can say this, “there’s not a there there”. Pust. Vist. Yes they are mostly good people, but a snore, and their brains seem to have stopped developing past 12the grade. why do you think it is so damn east to turn them into bt’s? Look what they almost did to you!
mohammed, this post only all about you. And I bet you think this comment was about you. Don’t .you. don’t you.
I, and a few others chulent/cows, have more college credits than you do.
Again, I was talking about you, and I was only talking about your political understanding, not about your mind generally, which though a bit insane, I admit is quite bright.
But in the future, de profundis , don’t speak about “college credits,” as it reveals you have no fucking degree.
I have a degree and a half.
I have a degree and a half. And I never went to High School, and no GED either.
I think Mohammed would do quite well at HARVARD. I’m serious.
de profundis, when you call someone (i.e., me) a “Bush Republican” who is clearly not that, you sound even more asinine than when the far-left folks label me a “fascist” for decrying mass immigration of particular populations I deem a bad bet.
You know why? Because “fascist” in our day age–particularly when leveled by reflexive moniker leftists, doesn’t mean a damn thing, even though it did at one time, so it’s harder to refute, because all they have really said is, “You aren’t as left as I am!”. But calling someone a “Bush Republican” suggests an embracement of specific domestic and foreign policies which everyone here knows I can’t stand, and never could. So it sounds like you simply don’t have a handle on what you are talking about. It would be like me calling you an Agudah Guy on 7 Fat Cow. It just doesn’t make any damn sense, and would sound like I am some Reform dude who doesn’t know the difference between various traditional and haredi religious groups.
DK { 11.13.08 at 11:56 pm }
“mohammed, this post only all about you. And I bet you think this comment was about you. Don’t .you. don’t you.”
Can you translate this into english? or fill in the missing words?
I just don’t see how haredism in general can be linked to the mental corruption and depredations on that web site. It is a hang out joint for several “broken, angry nihilists” and internally tormented people. They boast of those descriptions to each other with pride. But they’re just putting a yiddish accent on a phenomenon that exists other places on the internet as well,
On a communal level can’t the existence of such people be more closely linked to statistical necessity than religious ideology?
“It is a hang out joint for several “broken, angry nihilists” and internally tormented people. They boast of those descriptions to each other with pride.”
that’s an idiotic simplification and misrepresentation.
But of course.
here you go, mohammed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
“that’s an idiotic simplification and misrepresentation.”
True and even truer for David’s post, which smacks, of well, plain old prejudice. You have been to chulent many times and there are quite a few, of what you would call, civilized folk who attend on a regular basis. Two of 7fatcow’s main editors are would be labeled cultured, civilized and morally upstanding.
It is but horrid to lump everybody together. I always laugh to myself to the hypocrisy of secular Jews who consider themselves advanced in some way. They are mostly fucked up people living lives of quiet desperation.
The way you stooped to the populist general you to refer to everybody is unacceptable.
Example: just a few days a go you sent an email trying to help an ex-o looking for people in a certain city. And to where did you tell this guy to turn? Well you sent emails to the chulent/7fatcow crowd, hoping these great civilized folk would help him. You and yours, just like the frummies, would not do shit for him. Not fucking shite.
de profundis, has it occurred to you that when I referred someone to others for help in a city I have no understanding of and a community I have no relation to, that I was actually TRYING to be helpful?
And I am not talking “everyone.” Stop it.
We are all positioned to best help those whose condition we understand. It is for that reason I focus on BTs who take a leap of faith and return to the Haskalah of their forebears. I don’t pretend to be able to relate the same way to FFB haredim, nor do I claim to represent them.
Your lumping of the “simpleminded Maskil” is quite a straw man argument. There is more than one type of secular Jew. Might I remind you, there are still far more of us than there are of you. And it is you and yours who currently seek to join us in a sense to some degree.
When you are rationally criticized for promoting suicide or other anti-social behaviors, you should consider such a rebuke with as open a mind as you do when some long-bearded penguin-English speaking
haredi explains why some hechsher isn’t good enough and it’s good to be machmir.
“there are still far more of us than there are of you.”
- not after three-four generations. Then they assimilate completely. They are no longer Jews. You great grand children will, according to the statistics, not be Jewish. I don’t know if you find something wrong with that.
You forget something. There is a constant influx of secular Jews from the frum community. 45 years ago, the Orthodox American population was 10% of the whole. It is today…10% of the whole.
Now…how do you think that happened?
If you want to see what happened, look in the mirror.
You great grand children will, according to the statistics, not be Jewish. I don’t know if you find something wrong with that.
It isn’t everything to me, and it clearly isn’t everything to most secular Jews, or we would be living quite differently, wouldn’t we?
It’s” simple to remember”: Better out than haredi.
Re “morality” of self-inflicted death: one person’s suicide is another’s martyrdom …
Reform and Orthodoxy have each been predicting the other’s demise for two hundred years. Everyone is still here.
“Reform and Orthodoxy have each been predicting the other’s demise for two hundred years. Everyone is still here”
Partly true. Most of the descendants of the early Reform movement are not Jewish.
David,
I don’t know if you saw that 7fatcow has taken to quoting a passage from your post as a blurb on the front page, top right.
Re: responsibility on 7FC. Worse than any dangerous messages that go out was the fallen level of discourse that made messages, irresponsible or otherwise, too shmeared in trollish hostilities and noise to make sense, or be engageable.
But the early editorial decision to foster and permit all kinds of potentially insulting, destructive, or nihilistic ideas in there with the romantic poetry, wistful judeo-nostalgia, and profound observations and public surrenders of dignity in the name of Expression! is still something i’m proud of, even if the secret of how to keep the meaning in the madness without degrading into distracting personal attacks never quite surfaced; our confidence in back talk and disinterested silence, along with the tide of new posts, as tools for transending the wounds bringing us to whatever 7FC is expressing now.
Responsible expression is for the marketplace, not for the laboratory, and it behooves us to recognize a difference. Who goes to 7FC expecting halacha to be poskuned, or a warm loving arm to hold them in this confusing world? Only the mad. Because 7 fat cow is born out of the tension of feeling so hurt/dissapointed/angry/annoyed with Orthodox Judaism while still appreciating something good in the way and the world, and being very openly and divergently certain of the truism that something is awry, but who can isolate what? Whoever can will try, and honesty may be the only sunlight that lets the hearts of the Jews engage The Problem, that we have been lied to by someone in positions of our communal trust about what’s good and what’s bad, and only by talking about it, often in nessesarily open and polemic terms, will we get any ideas and clarities exposed enough to either accept, reject, or edit? 7 Fat Cow is not written for by people in positions of authority or much influence, l’hefech, it’s written by the people who furiously cast aside aspirations of Jewish Power in their respective communities in the hopes of working SOMETHING out– so i’m not so scared for a concious suicide advocasy piece doing more than helping us see what other people think, hope consider or counsel. I still miss the Vanguard Neo-nazis who would post, and still feel as if the ideas on 7FC are so much less the problem than the lack of a good language for engaging them. So far, witty ridicule is the best I’ve seen the cattle come up with.
Carrying the VNN site feed and watching the fallout was definitely one of the most interesting things that happened online in terms of “web 2.0″ stuff. I think where you and I disagree is that when the Cows go too far, you say “boys will be boys,” and never censure in any way. But allowing someone to write something does not mean you can’t criticize someone for writing something, Otherwise, you’re acting just like some fucking hippy parents, and your kid or your artist will just be a spoiled brat.
“the Torah does not smile upon promoting suicide as a means to alleviate depression. More importantly, the rabbis do not smile upon promoting suicide.”
Right. Which is what makes advocating such a thing, or at least indicating that a tradition exists for doing such a thing intentetionally, radical. The subtext of 7fatcow is that we, the biggest and most devoted torah scholars we know, don’t quite trust the Torah that we were given, and are fishing for, if not alternate meanings and conclusions, new or other counsel.
I like Zoroyid’s “martyr” suggestion. Because there is a rich rabbinic tradition of That. Classic biblical examples (if that’s a model for anything) include King Saul throwing himself on the sword to avoid capture, and of course, Masada. Not exactly reacting to depression, but hey: maybe something is different in the world now, that beggars a different reaction–
I hear you and hold by you, DK, better to leave Judaism completely than become forced to be dishonest and wicked (i.e. “charedi” in some usages of the term)… I wonder if a similar principle applies with being alive at all. When I hear Mohammed rage about how Those People should Die/kill themselves/whatever, I hear him talking about the problem of The World, and his sense of futility at trying to encourage anything better out of anyone. Is that irresponsible, or just expressive of an honest sense of futility with a broken world?
YL, I worry that 7 Fat Cow has already created specific harm to its own community, or the larger community, with callousness over the suicide issue. I am not interested in answering for Africa, and Mo’s issues with Africa don’t bother me. And probably don’t bother Africa either.
Leave a Comment