Hence, the problem with your formulation is twofold. Not even counting the other fold, namely the use of the term “rabbinics” which has no meaning to the vast majority of people and almost no one outside the world of YU-style scholarship. Including me.

One issue I have is that it could be claimed, and is, that every “branch” of Judaism, and pretty much every other religion, is also based on some equivalent of — let me be the first here, and ironically you missed this opportunity — TAGC. There is very little unique about saying one’s religion is based on Kindness, Devotion and Scripture.

You see I have altered the order, because it brings me to the second point. The words “Torah” and “Avodah” are amenable to limitless definitions. Your formulation addresses neither what they might mean or how they are related. And when I suggested before that it reveals less than it obscures, I wasn’t merely being snippy about the dismissive nature of your initial comment. Someone given this definition might only not find it illuminating, but could be downright resentful when they realized the full scope of moral, practical and ritual commitment buried in each of those three loaded words.

Indeed, your suggestion that the essential experience of chesed is Shabbos is hashkofically fascinating, but the novelty of it — to me — also seems to support my point. I would think of Shabbos in terms of Avodah first, and perhaps Torah second, and Chesed — well, the suggestion is compelling, with the idea, I guess, of Shabbos not only constituting Chesed for Shabbos guests but also a Chesed that Hashem did for klal yisroel. But while it’s philosophically fascinating to contemplate this, it seems way off track from the concept of the challenge of “explaining Torah Judaism” and not necessarily all that related to conceptually to TAGC except on a very sophisticated philosophical level.

On the other hand, if you did not mean this at all, but only meant the narrower idea of “how nice it is to experience Shabbos and be the recipient of Chesed,” fine, but, again, the concept as I understood it was not to say, “Instead of defining Torah Judaism in 500 words or less, here’s some gefilte fish,” but to make an attempt to define Torah Judaism in 500 words or less.

More: I would expect you, in particular, considering your cerebral and intellectual approach to things, to do better than throw up your hands and say, “No sense in writing it; if you don’t hear the zemiros and smell the cholent, you’ll never get it.” What happened to our Litvak?!

So even if the conduct is generally above the rest, which I think it is, the negative sticks out like a sore thumb.

The instructions are fine, but we are not following them properly.

The Agaddah and the prayers of Tisha B’av (and other places) gives us some reasons why we don’t follow them properly:

1) Persecution by the nations leading to the need to defend ourselves
2) The fact that we are created as part physical beings
3) Not having the intense experience of Hashem’s presence as we did prior to the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash

Perhaps we can reconcile as follows:

1) If we were living a proper Torah life people would sit up and take notice and want to emulate it. That’s clear from the Gemora and it’s where we need to go with our Judaism. Perhaps we as BTs have more of responsibility in this area.

2) Just because a given person or even group of Observant Jews is not living at this exalted level does not mean that the Torah itself is not capable of raising a person to that level.

So perhaps the lesson is one we need to learn rather than teach. We need to work a lot harder on *our* Judaism and raise ourselves to at least the level that people will consider the possibility that a Torah life style leads to a more exalted person.

With truth serum, DK’s reply might come out like this:

1. He does not accept any religious approach, halachic or otherwise. He is anti-teshuvah in the most basic way.
2. He typically does not want to say that in so many words, so he takes comfort in going after what he perceives as a weak link, namely, right-wing Orthodoxy. Any reported shortcoming of any member or subgroup of that group is made out to be representative of the whole.
3. Now and then, he’ll hold up a Modern Orthodox figure here as a role model, but personally would never follow him, either