Yael Malka

Question

I wasn't planning on ever looking at your website again (let alone writing to you), especially since I said that you didn't have to reply if you weren't going to change anything, and you neither changed anything nor replied to me (directly at least). However, someone noticed that there were a whole list of e-mails posted that came from my e-mail account and notified me of that fact. Needless to say I was extremely shocked to hear of these developments for a number of reasons. First of all, on the front page of the q+a section you write, "If you have any questions that you do not want posted on this site, you can e-mail me at...". You can't disagree with me that I followed these instructions. Secondly, I even wrote in my first e-mail that, "I decided not to write this in the open forum". From both these points I concluded that A. you are a liar and B. you don't care about the personal requests of people with whom you correspond. Before I begin to respond to the e-mails written about me I just wanted to clarify a few things. #1. I am not upset for my sake that these e-mails were posted. On the contrary, posting them helps prove my point even better. But as I wrote in that first e-mail, I didn't see a to'eles for the general public to have anything to do with our discussion. #2. I don't enjoy criticizing you. I was trying to calmly work out my issues with you. I am writing another e-mail directly to you, and it will again be up to your discretion (it obviously has nothing to do with my opinion) to decide if you would like to post this one. Just as a preface to the e-mail, if the other e-mails were post worthy then this one is way more valuable than the rest. I think the best place to start is to inform you (or the rest of the audience if this ever hits the postboard) that Yael Malka is my wife, and I was the one who wrote those emails. I think this is important because it seems that some people were perturbed over the fact that some chuzpadic lady could speak to a rav that way. The truth is that it's a chuzpadic guy speaking to a rav that way. Now, I know it will be very easy to just switch everything from the feminine to the masculine and just change the wording of your reply from 1/12/04 to, "He knows better than everyone? Who is he?! What makes him such a talmid chacham?!" These are all valid questions so I would to answer them all in their proper order. #1. I never claimed I know better than everyone. I never even claimed I know better than you. What I did claim, which was correct, was that you were posting and encouraging loshon hora (I'll prove why that is true later on). #2. You're right! You have no idea who I am and do not have to listen to what I say, but I wasn't saying something that was my own personal opinion. I was quoting the Chofetz Chaim, and he's a pretty big guy. #3. No one ever said that I'm a talmid chacham, but like I said before, I was quoting the Chofetz Chaim and he's a pretty big talmid chacham. I wonder if these were rhetorical questions or not. You don't know who I am, yet you seem to just dismiss everything based on you not knowing me, or your lack of knowledge of what makes me a talmid chacham. What kind of logic is that? I have a good suggestion, from now on just stick to what you know and don't ask based on what you don't know. I would like to point out that throughout my argument I will make direct quotes from previous e-mails as well as clearly write out my citations from any sefer I may quote. I felt that it was important to explicitly write this because you have a tendency of just quoting where something may be found in any particular sefer without explaining the quote itself. The problem is that you quote incorrectly, thus convincing any reader who does not actually look up these sources that you have a point, which is really not true (don't worry, I'll prove that too). In a reply on 12/26/03,