Are we too welcomimg

Aposhitehyid; gazan is a term they use to denote geza’ah, stock; it is exclusive to chabad, and you won’t hear it in the kiruv circles. It’s a status for shiduchim, that even a chabad chossid whose grandparents were chabad, but they originally were skver, belz or whatever, then they will not do a shidduch with someone whose ancestors were originally Russian lubavitchers. This is silly because original chabad chasidim were not always chabad, since beforehand they were Litvish, but it’s more than silly, it’s supremacist and elitist, but much moreso than the norm of lifestyle/rebbishe/rosh yeshivishe families. Those are categories that are made to ensure that the couple get along, or for the kovod of Torah or rebbishe bloodlines. Here it’s simple geography that determines ones worthiness. In chabad, a rosh yeshiva whose grandparents were belz cannot marry an am haaretz whose grandparents were chabad.

Besides that, it runs totally against what they preach in the open about accepting every jew. I totally understand not marrying into families with pgam in their yichus, bnei nidah, gerim, and other things that actually have mekoros in the seforim – happens to be that gedolei yisroel have downplayed these concerns for quite some time, with rav moshe writing to disregard ben nidah as an issue if the boy is a ben Torah with good middos.

What chabad are saying is that the secular jew with the ponytail is no different than one of us, and we’ll get him to become frum, but he IS different regarding who he can marry. He is lower class. He is confined to BTs, no matter how much he’s shteiged. In contrast, a BT in the yeshiva world who has shed his former life and embraced learning fully with no remnant of his past will not be shut out. I know BTs of that caliber who married very choshuve families, because we have a meritocracy to a large degree.

Legitimate criticism doesn’t always come from having bad experiences. The only bad experiences I’ve had have been hearing avodah zara from them and having their missionaries descend on my neighborhood and yeshiva over the years.

Common, you’re right about chasidim, but here it’s running a lot deeper. By chasidim, it’s more because the BT has no family, and for chasidim checking into the family is like 80% of the shiduch. Here it’s a caste system which lumps all the nachis-dargas together while claiming everyone’s the same – satmar has no problem saying that a BT has a chisaron, and sometimes they’re right!

Hmmm. So Rabbi Yekusiel Farkash, originally from Satmar, made beautiful shidduch for his children. One of them married the daughter of one of the original shluchim…
I guess your theory isn’t totally watertight.

Avira, you seem to be most upset by hypocrisy: Chabad invites people in but does not marry, while other Chasidim do not invite and do not marry. I think both approaches have merits – we have people with very particular minhagim, lifestyles, and values. Outsiders might not feel the same affinity, even if they accept it externally. It takes someone of R Twersky’s stature to advise a non-gebrocht SIL and Talmid of a Rosh Yeshiva to go to the seder of his FIL and eat gebrocht there. (to be precise advise is to the wife/daughter). Most poshute Yidden will be in a pretzel about this (pardon the hametzdik expression). Even more so with Chabad families who are driven both by teachings and practical activities of their group for several generations.

common > I am talking about kids who grew up from but the parents are BTs

I noticed too. How many generations BTs need to undergo before they will be accepted into your esteemed community – same as mitzrim or more? How about people coming from gerim like R akiva, Ben bag bag and Itzhak Avinu?

CS, sad. Better than Moabites, at least. I suggest we apply the same principle to those unobservant people who flaunted covid regulations.

I think there is a difference between a unique non-observant individual who decided to join a chasidishe shtibl and gets special attention and needs to be fully “taken care of” and Chabad approach that brought multitudes to Yiddishkeit, some forming a large sub-community within Chabad or joined general Jewish observant community. None of these 2 groups need to marry an old-time Lubavicher to fulfil themselves (no they are ready to).

Nothing too interesting. But that’s getting too personal already, so we’ll leave it at that.

Novelty, you always take the conversation back to your personal history. I asked you when you became a baal teshuva. Perhaps I missed your answer somewhere, but I do not think you responded to me on that. Not do you have to. But you should know that if you became a baal teshuva 10+ years ago then your personal by history is not relevent to the topic being discussed here about making baal teshuvas nowadays.

Novelty, the point is that you can’t refer to your becoming a BT over 15 years ago, which is not that long ago, but still there’s a huge difference from then to what is the reality today.

Let’s be real for a minute; does anyone here know anyone who has the slightest inclination towards Christianity? Even a hint of curiosity? We grow up knowing what they’ve done to us, I don’t think any frum or even any historically educated chiloni would tolerate it.

What I’m more concerned with, if we’re going to talk about the infiltration of foreign religions, is the proliferation of energy healing practitioners who peddle their wares to desperate frum families beset with woe and pain. There are even rabbis who back them… yidden who would cover their ears if they heard kiekergaard quoted have no problem with eastern bonafide avodah zara – it’s mind boggling and very scary. One prominent figure in Lakewood, a posek for a large constituency said to his talmidim that they can ask “the kochos” for help in healing, because it’s derech refuah and they don’t mean to daven to it. When my rebbe rav belsky heard this his exact word was “crackpot”

I agree with both Avira and Novelty – eastern stuff is quote mainstream, while some marginal Jews may be affected by the local religion. I once encountered a professional contact who was interested in proselytizing. I replied nicely. He then went to another person who is not shomer shabbos and was told away in a less polite way. He was eventually also shun by his co-religionists because he was not fully frum in business matters also.

A story from a MO Rav – a teenager BT asked him regarding Indian dolls that his mother was keeping at home as a momento. They contacted a frum professor on the topic, who looked at picture and marked up which ones are avodah zara mamash. The guy first moved them inside the house to see if mom would notice. She did not, so they brought these to a workshop and had a real smash at it. Some rebbe brought his class to learn halakha l’maase.

Avram was worried – he came up with the whole story of idols fighting each other. A smart kid.

Also, Terach would obviously notice the loss, as he was in business selling them. This mom just had it stored. I think this was handled perfectly.

Philosopher; not to be paranoid, but we really don’t know how long ago these infiltrations happened – it could be there have been agents doing these things for decades, preying on the kind of people you described. I still don’t think it’s even a miut she’aino matzui – kids going off happens all the time r”l, but aside from your story, I’ve never heard of any becoming christian

Let’s be honest: FFB’s are mostly just living their lifestyles because they happened to be born into and they continue that lifestyle because it’s convenient, comfortable and there’s too much outside pressure to change. BT’s actually made a conscious life-changing decision to join a lifestyle they were unfamiliar with, and is full of crackpot idiots who think BT’s are “lower-class”, simply because they felt it is the right thing to do. They are living with purpose. It’s probably a good thing most FFB’s don’t marry BT’s; The BT’s are too good for them.

FYI: I’m FFB, my spouse is a BT.

Common….i really don’t want to name names, but by and large, BTs are very sensitive to such things, moreso than people who might be closer to frumkeit in action, but never had to undergo an overhaul of hashkofa and emunah. The average BT knows the 13 ikkarim and can rattle off kuzari, rav hirsch, chovos halevavos and more off their fingertips – they had to learn more hashkofa to cleanse themselves of their past. The only people I’ve heard defend such practices have been “unzerer”, usually non-MO too. There is unfortunately a member of the moetzes who actively encourage energy healing – it pains me every time I think about it

Nobody’s listening to BTs that have long hair and are oisvarfs; it seems you have an axe to grind about BTs in general, that they’re the ones responsible for bringing outside influences into the klal. If anyone’s been successful in that regard, it’s been both the “frum” colleges and the age of accessibility of information via the internet, especially the bloggers of the early 2000s. Avi Weiss and his ilk were all FFBs, if you can call them such, as were the orthodox feminists…to a lesser extent, the cultural icons who have had negative influences such as Lipa are likewise almost all FFB.

Sigh. Seems like Joseph is still just as insecure as he always was. How very disappointing.

AAQ – how would Hashem have referred to rivka as mrs yitzchok before she was married?

Why the Torah sometimes refers to women as eshes so-and-so, and other times by their name is up for discussion… I’d imagine there are times that their significance is defined by their relationship with their husband, as in the case of eshes potifar, where the whole problem was that she was married, and ohn ben peles’ wife, who is noted for saving her husband