I have decided to pull the Requiem for Some Heavyweights post. I now regret writing it. After reading some of the comments I have come to the conclusion that more harm than good has resulted. And as some have pointed out, the families I wrote about may be unduly burdened by a post like this which was the furthest thing from my intention.
If that happened, I want to express my profound apologies. The purpose of that post was to generate some thinking about some of the issues plaguing the Torah world and to examine whether our lifestyles or our approaches to God and His Torah are in some way responsible.
I did not intend to besmirch the two individuals. They can certainly be looked at in their own way as OTD and with much sympathy. And as I wrote in the post one sin does not characterize the totality of an individual’s accomplishments on earth, whether he is a President of the United States or a Charedi Philanthropist living in Bnei Brak. We all have our own demons to overcome, but prominence will sometimes makes those demons public.
I am surprised how many people do not remember the first story in that post. I still have the issue of the magazine that published it. And since this story is so similar to the one saturating both secular and Jewish the media I thought is was a fair comparison. I did not think using those stories as a basis for discussion was such a bad idea. But it was wrong. And, as I said I regret it.
I’ll try and do better next time.
