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Lamrot Hakol (Despite Everything)

Musings and kvetchings and Torah thoughts from an unconventional Orthodox Jew.

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"I blog, therefore I am". Clearly not true, or I wouldn't exist except every now and then.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Why "Lamrot HaKol"?

Okay, so the obvious question is, why did I call this blog Lamrot HaKol?

I guess there are a few things. One is that I'm frum. You'd think that I'd have more than enough reasons to run screaming from frumkeit, and you'd be right. But I don't. It's not that I'm a masochist; I'm really not. It's simply that I remain convinced that the Torah is true. And the fact that frum society may treat me like their bitch doesn't change that fact.

I honestly wish, sometimes, that I'd run into something that would totally convince me that the Torah is a crock. But I've felt that way long enough that I'm not really expecting it to happen.

I'd also love to find out that I'm not really Jewish. That my great-great-grandmother wasn't really Jewish, and that I'm free of what we call the yoke of heaven. That would be amazing.

But it's not going to happen.

So I'm stuck. My sense of identity and the source of my self-esteem is based on my holding to my convictions. It's a matter of honor, I suppose.

History shows, of course, that people who have that kind of stubbornness rarely meet a happy end. Anatole France said, wisely, that "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it remains a foolish thing." What he didn't mention is that fifty million fools can hurt you. A lot.

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