Another View of Rabbi Feldman's Ban of Efraim Palvanov!

 

DIN: I’ve listened to some of Palvanov’s podcasts, and I’m quite certain Rav Feldman hasn’t listened to a single one. That didn’t stop him from issuing his sweeping statement, of course.

The truth is, I regularly listen to podcasts and video clips from Charedi Gedolim, and I can say firsthand: their statements are often far more outrageous than anything Palvanov has ever said. In fact, some of Rav Feldman’s remarks about the State of Israel border on apikorsis and certainly qualify as loshon hara.

Now, I’m not saying I agree with Nochum Weiss, who chose to leave his community. But by sharing what he wrote, I’m opening up a conversation. Judaism, after all, is built on questions. The entire Talmud is a tapestry of contradictions, debates, and challenges — every other line is a question.

So why should we shy away from asking ours?

by Nochum Weiss

The house is quiet. I’m about to go to bed. I watch Aharon Feldman warn the public about Efraim Palvanov. Everyone asleep. Dishwasher humming. The kind of hour when doctrines loosen and truth sits down beside you. The Rav spoke with confidence. Absolute confidence. The kind that comes from a world where the internal logic is so complete, there’s no need to look beyond it. "Palvanov denies Torah sheb’al peh. Undermines Mesorah. Misreads Rambam. Treats halacha like a buffet." His presentations are “in color,” which somehow makes them suspect. I wait for an actual argument:  why the archaeology is wrong, why textual history is irrelevant, how halacha is both human-shaped and also fixed at Sinai. Nothing. Just certainty. Thick, immovable certainty. Something in me tightens - the same tightening I feel in shul when a baal koreh slips on a vowel, and the room jolts like the universe tore at the seam. He’s Not Talking to Palvanov He’s talking to anyone who might look at the past without the filters. Anyone who quietly wondered why Egyptian artifacts look uncomfortably familiar. Or why Rambam contradicts the Gemara. Or why halacha reads less like a straight Sinai-to-today transmission and more like a centuries-long group project where half the contributors never met each other. Anyone who opened a sefer in the back of shul and felt the floor tilt: the transmission of the Bible isn’t clean. The scrolls we lift aren’t the ones our ancestors held. The whole thing is human all the way down. Anyone who learned to perform belief flawlessly while privately knowing they don’t believe it. The Wall His video isn’t about sources. It’s about guarding the wall. The wall that protects a world where questioning Torah sheb’al peh is unthinkable. Where archaeology is “meaningless” by definition if it contradicts Mesorah. Where historical texts don’t get to speak for themselves because listening to them might loosen the story that holds everything together. His premise rests on a simple axiom: We already know the truth. Anything that doesn’t align with it is dangerous. If I still lived inside that world, I’d probably agree. Because the way you live inside that world is by accepting one foundational premise as fact, as a law of nature: God gave us the Torah on Sinai, and everything in the Torah is absolutely true. That’s not a conclusion you arrive at through evidence. That’s the prior. You don’t argue someone out of a prior. You can’t. Because every argument you make gets processed through that same lens. Archaeological evidence? Filtered. Textual history? Filtered. Contradictions in the Gemara? Filtered. The prior isn’t the conclusion. It’s the operating system. And once you’re running on that operating system, Rav Feldman’s video makes perfect sense. Of course Palvanov is dangerous. Of course his sources are worthless. Of course looking at Egyptian artifacts is a distraction. Not because the Rav examined the evidence and found it lacking - but because the evidence was never going to matter in the first place. The prior already told you the answer. But I don’t live inside that world anymore. I live in a world where the question “Why did he choose the Rambam?” is less interesting than the fear embedded inside it: If you look too closely, the seams show. And once you see the seams, you can’t unsee them. So Rav Feldman says: don’t listen. Don’t watch. Don’t let the questions in. He’s not afraid of Efraim Palvanov. He’s afraid of oxygen. What He Doesn’t Understand People like us aren’t trying to break halacha. We’re not trying to destroy Mesorah or convince anyone of anything. We’re trying to live honestly in a world that only speaks certainty. Trying to understand the system that formed us after we stepped outside it. There’s no category for that. So if he wants a line in the sand, fine. But name it accurately: Not Torah vs heresy. Not Mesorah vs ignorance. Certainty vs curiosity. Closed worlds vs open ones. Some of us grew up believing the world was a stage and Torah sheb’al peh was the director. Then one day we saw the lights. The sets. The microphones. The ropes holding everything in place. The illusion didn’t become less beautiful. It just became visible. And once you’ve seen the ropes, you can’t pretend they’re mountains. *** This is the thing. The thing that’s been driving me insane. The part that makes me want to tear my hair out because there are barely words for it. The blindness. Not the kind where you can’t see - the kind where you refuse to. Where the prior does all the work. Where certainty becomes the blindfold and calls itself clarity. This video clip is blindness, fully embodied. Here it is. Look at it. See it for what it is. You can’t hide from it now. You can’t pretend it’s something noble or protective or traditional. It’s a man telling you not to look. And calling that wisdom.