Saturday, July 02, 2005

Chizuk for Tzemach!

Over the past number of months I have been an avid follower of mentalblog (http://www.mentalblog.com/) written by Tzemach Atlas in Boston. It appears that Tzemach has finally had enough of the crap one gets when putting one's ideas out there in blogger land - not that I blame him. If you haven't visited this blog previously I urge you to check it out.

Tzemach comes across to me as an honest guy who is concerned about the state of the Jewish world today especially in relation to the former Soviet Union and Chabad. I do not always agree with his opinions but definitely respect the way he presents his point of view. He is open to other people's ideas and will discuss them in an honest way. Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who cannot accept that someone has a different opinion to them. These people obviously have low self esteem and insist on abusing anyone who does not agree with them. What bugs me is that some of them use their convoluted view of what Yiddishkeit and/or the Rebbe says to "prove" their point.

One commenter on mentalblog had the following to say which I agree with 100%:
I don't have any answers, unfortunately. Sounds like you have something good to offer in a sea of mediocrity. Turning off comments, I find, hasn't been enough. It's not the comments, as much as the general toxic, dumb, and puerile attitude that seems to prevail on the net and all over the J blogosphere.