The Beneviste Maneuver
My recent post about Israeli secularists being urged to play Monopoly and watch video in order to make their Yom Kippur fasting more tolerable created some interesting discussion. In connection with that, I just came across the following item, written in 1987 by Meron Beneviste ( who was once deputy mayor of Jerusalem). The quote is taken verbatim from the journal SOCIETY, published by Rutgers University ( Nov./Dec. 2005, 43:1) pp.23-24.
“We would observe Yom Kippur by loading quantities of food onto a raft and swimming out with it to an offshore islet in the Mediterranean, and there we would while away the whole day feasting. It was a flagrant demonstration of our rejection of religious and Diaspora values.”
Question for discussion: which do you think is preferred in the eys of G-d – the Beneviste maneuver, or the Monopoly/video maneuver?
This has nothing to do with your question, but I wonder how eating and swimming on Yom Kippur rejects – or has anything to do with – “Diaspora” values?
The answer the question posed by Rabbi Feldman is:
“It Depends”
The traditioal religious answer is that the one feasting on the island was a true
lehachesnick(one who tries to anger The Almighty) and apikores(heretic) of the worst kind. The one playing monoploy is probably a tinok shenishbo(one with a child like naivete) who may not be blamed for his ignorance.
The blogger’s answer is the that is the latter. The worst thing to happen to one is to be ignored.
Infamy is a far better state than non-recognition. That is why the blogger spends so much
his time on the net. To the blogger, the one who who ignores The Almighty, for whatever reason, is
is doing Him a far worse disservice than the one who mocks Him.