General Information About This Website

I recently received a comment criticizing the subject matter and tone of the most recent post.  I agreed with the writer that what I had posted could be misunderstood and used to vilify Jewish Theology.  But I didn't remove the post.  There were several reasons why I left it up.

I'm a reasonably intelligent, and very well educated in Rabbinic Torah.  I attended Johns Hopkins University, and passed the Bar exam on my first sitting.  I am widely and well read, from weighty tomes to trifles and trash.  This background supports the validity of my judgment of the quality and the craft of written words.  On that basis, I can confidently aver that my style of writing will drive away anyone that is not highly motivated to pursue the subject matter.  Among those it does not drive away, a high percentage will become hopelessly lost in the thickets of marginal and tangential comments.  Those people (sometimes, that person) that will reach the end and have any idea of what I'm talking about do not worry me.  There are pieces that have lain dormant for four years without comment and barely a reader, and then someone writes me about it, like the post that used the Westinghouse Trade Dress test to explain the Ramban by the one-stone altar.

Also, no matter what we do, those that dislike us will dislike us.  I am reminded of the couple touring South America who are jailed and convicted on some absurd trumped up charge, and placed in front of the a firing squad.  The capitan offers the husband a last cigarette, and he knocks it out of the captain's hand and says I spit on your cigarette and I spit on you.  The wife says, "Harry, stop that!  You'll make him mad at us!"

In short, I'm not worried about this website giving fuel to those that dislike us, whether they are our brothers or cousins or not related to us at all.  There are some incendiary things I wouldn't print, but that post was not one of them.