Sam2 and Feif Un: In truth, it is likely the lack of an unadulterated Torah education that causes MO to take the liberties they do. Were they educated in mainstream traditional orthodox yeshivos then they would know better. Again, I am trying to not judge people and am trying to give all the benefit of the doubt.
Speaking of co-ed schools, parents with students in a co-ed school are placing them in a veritable minefield of issurim and even your Rav JBS was against it, and he himself wrote that his Maimonides in Boston was a particular exception. Yet there are plenty of MO co-ed schools. On what valid halachic basis? None, except in very limited circumstances.
While on the subject of Rav JBS, nobody has yet answered why MO ignore their Rav JBS and shun modern society to the greatest possible extent as Rav JBS advised.
So even if there were no innate issurim, being a slave to the decrepit culture around us would still be wrong, even according to Rav JBS. How do you explain the reviews of bars and other places of pritzus (yes, any bar, club, etc) in YU publications?
If you read any issue of the YU Commentator, an official publication, it is quite obvious that they must have a different Shulchan Aruch than traditional orthodoxy does. Going to a Jazz performance at a Harlem apartment? And then writing about how it mentions Yeshu HaNotzri’s birth and everyone sang along? Students writing publibly how they’re upset that your Rashei Yeshiva have too much influence on the school in that the school agreed to put in Internet filters in the dorms? And on and on and on. It is disgusting, to those not de-sensitized (presumably like yourselves) or not part of the MO world.
As I said, I am not interested in listing other people’s “liberties”. I have provided small samples over the last few posts to convey a point and it is clear from those samples that there is an underlying root cause and that is MO.
The point remains that either MO is working with a different set of rules than traditional orthodoxy is or else their Rabbis are simply uniformly ignored, which is difficult to believe. So for non-MO, ask a traditional orthodox Rabbi about Zumba rather than asking an MO Rabbi.
Feif Un:
I believe I could easily explain to you what is halachicly wrong with co-ed schooling, and even your Rav JBS was against it. So why argue with him? But you can look up Rav Moshe’s teshuva and the other responsa on the topic and you will see the multiple issurim in attending a co-ed school. “Touching between the genders” is only one problem. Histaklus, Kalus rosh and other issues are equally severe. Again, MO obviously must have a different Shulchan Aruch if it can go against all those issurim, diOraysa and otherwise, including of their own Rav JBS.
Once again, you fail to distinguish between traditional orthodox and chareidi. I spoke of the former, not the latter which is irrelevant to this discussion.
But while I am no fan of chareidi chumros, if you look up those same teshuvos and you see how separation of the genders is, essentially, the more the better, you will see that the Chareidi chumras have much more basis in halacha in fortifying those borders of separation than MO does in destroying them.
I could also argue that the standards of 50 years ago, even *if* appropriate then, does not automatically make them still appropriate now. Unlike MO which believes that Torah bends for secular culture, traditional orthodoxy does not. But it does believe that secular culture can change, and it has certainly changed for the worse in a big way, and such changes may call for new takanos. So when the culture you proudly celebrate (against your own Rav JBS and Rav SRH who is “rolling over in his grave” from the way you corrupt his teachings), has become so hyper-sexual, that calls for an appropriate measured response that was not needed 50 years ago. Quite possibly, that means separate seating, or whatever else that was not done 50 years ago. It’s not my decision, but the logic is certainly there. You certainly don’t have to worry about aveiros that way, but you sure do if you mix the genders the MO way.