The gemarah writes that Shlomo Hamelach plated golden trees brought forth fruits of
gold in the appropriate season. R' Y. Emden writes (i saw it in the new gemarahs with the collection of chidushim printed in the back) that this phenomenon can also be found in the Hungerian region of Tokaj. He heard from people who saw it that the grapes in this region sometimes grew with gold nuggets inside and that some grapes grew with a thin gold layer on the outside.

Interesting but difficult to believe.

PM from Moshi:

(Torn, I don't mean you specifically)

Its kinda ironic that the h.folks would quicker give credence to neo-chasidic writers than to what R' Y. Emden wrote!

/rant

That's not the conclusion one is forced to draw.

Its not, however, it was a good place for me to vent my frustration with regards to this issue.

Careful, or TRA will yell at you for bringing agendas from other threads.

nu!

(again i dont mean torn, i mean it collectively)
but tell me please, why is it that someone can say "its hard to believe" what R' Y. Emden wrote and when a news outlet reports something he accepts it as fact?

Because growing gold is miraculous. It doesn't happen in nature. So a report that it happens in nature is not believable. Not that it can't happen, but it would have to be miraculous. There's no evidence and it staggers logic.
On the other hand, you're right that just because something is in the news doesn't mean it's true. But here's a report of something that's possible and therefore believable. If there were a book that said, "Great Chassidic Rabbi X cavorted with hookers" I don't think there would be an issue - everyone would recognize that as false. But for a great chassidic rabbi to have a mental illness to some degree? That sounds credible. It might not be true, but at least it's credible and possible and not outside the realm of possibility. Lots of people have mental illness to some degree, including great and incredible and creative personalities. We all struggle with things, and great people are sometimes able to channel their challenges. It's not a negative reflection on someone to struggle with challenges. And it's possible for tzaddikim to have mental health issues and it's possible for people with mental health issues to be great tzadikim. It doesn't mean his torah isn't great, it just means that such a person has challenges he needs to deal with. So he's human. That's believable. Unless you don't accept that tzaddikim are human, but then you've got all sorts of other problems to deal with, which may be internally consistent within chassidic thought, but which are open to objective challenge.

what you wrote would be fine, but that was not what the h.folk wrote up until yesterday. they were taking the words of the "biographers" as written and not questioning them!

I don't know what h.folk were thinking, but I don't think they were saying it's necessarily factually true with certainty, but that it's possible, whereas the h.folk on the other side of the issue were doing the same thing, just the opposite, and saying that it's not possible at all just because it's not possible and must be false, and that's when we got into the discussion that if it's a chassidic story, it must by definition be true and it's forbidden to question, and anyone who does lacks understanding of chassidut as an outsider, or something like that.

But I don't think saying "it's not possible by definition", taking chassidic lore as necessarily true, is much better than "it's true because someone said it" . Either way, either they or them, are being narrow, and either way neither is questioning.

myaccountname, do you believe that "the grapes in this region sometimes grew with gold nuggets inside and that some grapes grew with a thin gold layer on the outside" as literally true?
(By the way, a quick internet seach reveals information about the yellow grapes of Tokaj).

(and the mold- I thought that was the coolest part)

I don't know, R' Emden doesn't write that he saw it himself, just that he heard from others who've seen it. it could be that those who saw it had no clue what they saw and if R' Emden would have seen it he would come to a different conclusion. I believe that such a phenom is possible, it happened in the mikdash, and since R' Emden accepted the witnesses and decided to write about it I believe it could happen anywhere else (it would still be a miracle)

So "Interesting but difficult to believe" in the absence of a miracle, isn't that far from your own thoughts, then?