Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Missing My Rabbi Menken Lifeline Column

A girl writes: "It looks like rabbi [Yaakov] Menken has not written his Lifeline column since the beginning of the jewish year. wonder what happened? He's still getting paid as the director of torah.org, why is he neglecting one of his duties, to spread the light of Torah to over 50,000 jews every week? I'm going to sign up for Lifeline and see if anything is emailed out every week."
Well, dear girl, I checked Torah.org and it does not appear at all that the good rabbi is neglecting his duties. The site overflows with his articles. Can you not find enough spiritual sustenance from "The Way Of G-d," "Duties of the Heart, Part Two," and "Almost Midnight"?
House of Hock reports on Orthodox rabbis banning books that say the world is millions of years old while the Torah and Chazal (rabbis of the Talmud) purportedly hold it is only about 6000 years old:

As one who speaks English, I testify that a talmid chacham who worries about the honor of the Torah showed me the books written my R. Nosson Slifkin, that the hairs on the head stand on end from what I read in it. I dont know if I was over on the prohibition not to read things that appear to be heresy... He (Slifkin) believes that the world is millions of years old..things like this, that are forbidden to be heard, and cannot be believed. and there are many other things like this. In summary, it is forbidden to bring this books into a house where there is belief in Hashem and His Torah.