Are Our "Kiruv" Priorities Wrong? - 1

This entry in the "Torah in the News" section on our blog, http://www.chabad.info/index.php?url=article_en&id=26794, caught my attention and after taking a look at it, I wanted to further direct our readership to it and also post a comment. This comment on this actual article, though, I will now leave to a part 2 of this post as there was something I also saw at this url that first demands a comment.

"Torah in the News" actually directed one to the chabad.info website but what I found out there was, though, that this article itself actually was from the Jewish Press. My first inclination was actually, as such, that it would be more correct to find the url for the article on that site and post that. I, however, could not find it on the Jewish Press website so I was left with having to use the url from chabad.info site. I had a problem with this now as I noticed that this site is actually a Mashichist one. I was hesitant to direct people to a Mashichist website.

My conclusion, as evidenced by this very post, is that I still concluded that even given the nature of this website, it would still be worthwhile to direct people to this article. There was something, though, that actually drove me to do so --  a statement on this site that truly indicates the very problem with the Mashichists. I did not want to direct people to this url, now, to show them the article. The preamble that chabad.info had before this article needed to be shown to others as a demonstration of the very problem we face with individuals who support this viewpoint. It is not solely that people believe in this that is the problem; it is the motivation that leads people to such a belief that is the greater concern.

In the preamble introducing the article, the following was written:

Although the author of this article is not a Lubavitcher, it is important to remember the Rambam's instruction in his introduction to Shmona Prakim: "Accept the truth from whoever utters it.

The Rambam wrote this in regard to Aristotle; this site now uses this idea to explain why it is okay to 
read an article by another Orthodox rabbi. What does this say, at least, about these Mashichists. In "The Slifkin Affair Revisited", a four part article on our website (in the Commentary Archives Index at http://www.nishma.org/articles/commentary/commentaryindex.html) I discuss the problem of the Mashichists and describe their weakness as one of arrogance -- to simply think that you are right because you are right? To be a Mashichist, a person must simply discount any challenges from others. There cannot be any introspection. Is this not also what this preamble indicates?

Rabbi Ben Hecht