After all the frantic blogging of recent days (and nights), the situation has changed quite dramatically.  For some, the RCH matter has been refreshed; others have been seriously challenged by the Channel 4 programme about charedim not reporting child abuse to the authorities.  But prior to all this blogging people were looking towards purim and pesach.  So the said activity really has caused a major shift in communal thinking.
    But it is not major enough.  Apart from anything else, it is backwards-looking.  We are just blogging back round the same old stories again. 
    Looking ahead, however, fills me with gloom and despair because I get the vibe that nothing (beyond our thinking) is ever going to change.  It won't change because the will is just not there. 
    For all the ranting against rabbonim - and some of the ranting has been sorely lacking in basic derech eretz - at the end of the day no-one wants to alter the status quo.  We are happy to criticise to the hilt, to denigrate, to scorn and to chastise our leaders, but they must remain as our leaders.  (Although why they would want to stay in their posts is beyond me).  When it comes to religious matters, they show us the way. 
    Without them, how would we know when to call a doctor on shabbos?  How would we know how to kosher the plumbing for pesach, or when there is a heter to speak loshon horra?  We wouldn't know when to stop having children or which schools to send our kinderlech to, or who to marry.  Nor would we know how to prepare fruit and veg for our (large) households for a quick and healthy mid-week meal minus invisable creepy-crawlies.  (Surely if Hashem didn't want us to eat them, He would have given us bionic eyes?  Surely blood spots in eggs could have been dealth with less wastefully by making the shells transparant?  Surely it is a sin to waste??)
    And if we have a way of life that leads to all sorts of unhealthy feelings in our developing youth, still we don't question.  Kids just sometimes go off the derech:  we don't push them off it. 
    So whilst it is okay to speak with the utmost lack of respect about these rabbis of ours, the important thing is that they remain our leaders and show us how to live ehrlicheh lives and be good yidden.
    Someone actually commented on a recent post here that it was important "not to throw out the baby with the bath water".  Sometimes we just need to throw out the bath water; and if we cannot do that for fear of throwing out the baby then basically we are just sitting in the same water forever.  If everyone is happy with that, fine.  This is the defining trait of charedi yiddishkeit, sadly.