Thursday, January 10, 2008

Only in America

Wisdom from the doyen of Modern Orthodoxy, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik:

[Many religious people today] act like children and experience religion like children. This is why they accept all types of fanaticism and superstition. Sometimes they are even ready to do things that border on the immoral. They lack the experiential component of religion, and simply substitute obscurantism for it....

I come from the ghetto. Yet I have never seen so much naïve and uncritical commitment to people and ideas as I see in America....

All extremism, fanaticism and obscurantism come from a lack of security. A person who is secure cannot be an extremist."