Quotes on Innocence

Your verdict will be “Guilty” or “Not Guilty.” Your job is not to find innocence.
~Russell R Leggett

The innocent and the beautiful
Have no enemy but time;
~William Butler Yeats

Yes, Lord, you are innocence itself: how could you conceive of Nothingness, you who are plenitude? Your gaze is light and transforms all into light: how could you know the half-light in my heart?
~Jean-Paul Sartre

You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, re-creating the world, and you ... feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten.
~Henry David Thoreau

Attack on Freedom: Hell is Other People

The Rabbi came into my room 3 days in a row now. Uninvited. Just got a key from the landlord and marched in. Opened my closet, and looked around. I inquired as to whether he has taken anything of mine. He answered in the negative, but added that he had thrown out something that he found under my bed. I asked what that might have been, and he replied that it is disgraceful to talk about it, that my room lacks the "look" of a yeshiva, that I can't possibly understand a Tosfos if I read secular books, and that I shouldn't allow my corruption to spread to the other guys in the apartment. I responded that my intention was never to influence others or entice them to sin. He said there are guys who wouldn't read these things, but will if I put it under their faces. I tried to explain that the inside of my closet is not, under normal circumstances, under anyone else's face unless they have violated my space. He didn't want to discuss it. Told me to gather all my books and hide them where no one will see them. He did offer to pay for what he took, at least (v'heishiv es hag'zeila asher gazahl).

My best guess is that the book he tossed as objectionable was a collection of plays by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age." Sartre refused to accept the prize for "personal and objective reasons". The collection previously in my possession included No Exit, a scene from hell; The Flies, the story of Orestes and Electra's quest to avenge the death of their father Agamemnon; Dirty Hands, a political drama about an assassination; and The Respectful Prostitute, about a black man framed for a white man's crime.

I imagine it was this last that drew the Rabbi's ire for its uncouth maintenance of the word prostitute in the title. Though the story concerns itself with the universal values of freedom and cruelty, and is far from vulgar, any author who could use this word is assuredly incapable of writing anything but trash. Nachon? Ideas, the spirit of freedom, and the quest for truth just doesn't jive in haredi society. Note, I hate bashing people like this, but I am upset about a personal afront.

My problem is not that he disapproves, or wants to run his yeshiva a certain way. That's ok, but deal with it like a mentsch. Discuss with me what problems you have; we can agree to disagree or maybe compromise. Or maybe I'll have to accede, or maybe you'll convince me, but at least we will understand and maybe even respect each other. And that way I would learn something: it can be an educational experience, instead of a display of bigotry.