Local Rav Speaks on GG Affair

A certain neighborhood Rav spoke this morning on the Gourmet Glatt affair. One comment he made that gave me pause was that it's a "kitrig" (a prosecutor) on the community that so many people were questioning their Rabbis. And he went on to give a source of that (mis)information to be the fact that there were so many comments on blogs criticizing the Vaad, and saying all sorts of terrible things about their Rabbanim. This misconception is something I have actually tried to correct here numerous times before, and I will take this opportunity to do so again. The vast, vast majority of commenters here were completely supportive of the Vaad. As a matter of fact, the anti-Vaad commenters all came from a small handful of IP addresses, leading me to believe that most comments were from a very select group. In contrast, just about every person I have encountered (save two), both in real life and in the blogworld, has expressed to me support and trust in the Vaad's actions.

So it's a bit sad to me that this Rav is willing to be Choshed his entire community based on some anonymous comments on my blog he obviously read himself or was told about. Especially after his community has shown him and the other members of the Vaad such unwavering support in the face of this very difficult situation. As a matter of fact, somewhat contradictorily, he did note that the way it all worked out was a Kiddush Hashem, probably referring to the fact that the main reason it all worked had much to do with the community overwhelmingly following the directives of their Rabbanim by not shopping in GG. Unfortunately, he focused far more on the few anonymous complainers than he did on the overwhelming supportive actions of the community as a whole. I am disappointed with the Rav's choice not to take this opportunity to positively reinforce his congregation by praising their show of support. Any expert will tell you that people respond far better to positive reinforcement than negative. I wish that our Rabbinic leadership would internalize this point.

I see this fixation on negative reinforcement in Orthodoxy in the way my daughter's school emphasizes Tzniut, I see it in the way my son's Yeshiva exhorts he and his peers to shun television and internet. I see it in the way my children's administrators threaten punishment for bad behavior instead of implementing a better system of positive reinforcement and reward in advance of the bad behavior surfacing. And I am well aware that this type of Mussar is an important tool for a Rav to use with his followers. But in this instance, when there is so much positive behavior that the Rav can praise in his congregants, one has to wonder why he seized the opportunity to criticize - particularly in a case such as this, when the bad behavior wasn't even there, but made of just so much smoke and mirrors.