Different Tracks of Modern Orthodoxy

What is Judaism really about, adhering to the Torah or being against liberalism?

“when it hurts, you scream” – rav chaim brisker told that to someone who asked what the point of protesting freikeit was, because they weren’t going to listen anyway.

Some in YU might be personally observant, but they’ve been desensitized to multi generational violations of torah in their community, and they lack the courage to fight for anything except antisemitism on college campuses.

Different Tracks of American Yeshivish Orthodoxy

You have the right elements which look similar to Chareidim in Eretz Yisroel, though there are generally a few more folks who understand that we’re not RASHBI. Then you have the more left side – the shpitzy Lakewood types. You’ll even find those within that camp who dress casual during the week and aren’t in kollel and their wives wear long sheitels, but are too afraid to call out the dangerous anti-everything elements. You won’t find a Lakewood type rabbi as realistic as he may live call out some of the problems that exist within Chareidikeit and try to elevate the normalcy it it’ll make the yungerleit and shadchanim upset. When a young Rav tries to get his shul off the kollel-only train, often times they won’t get a new contract. Now I think the Lakewood working folk have a lot of ehrliche yidden but the gains could be so much more if they weren’t too scared of getting their daughters married.

I’m just curious. Who are any of us to judge these people.

@DaMoshe
I agree with your post. Many in the CR have blinders in and suffer in-town myopia.
At almost 70 years of age, I don’t a black hat or a black suit. As I posted a long time ago: the first time I appeared in court as a young attorney, an esteemed judge took me aside and advised, in this business only the judge wears black. My suits and hats are midnight blue or darkest charcoal.
This does not make me less frum. I don’t feel out of place at a Yeshivish minyan or the annual Agudah Dinner. To be perfectly frank , they don’t care about the color of my suit or the color of my checks.

I recall rabbi shechter exhorting the girlfriend-having crowd to wear techeles a lot more than to stop having girlfriends. Maybe there’s some talk about how Avi weiss went too far, but where’s the outcry over pritzus? Negiah? Unfettered internet and social media access? There’s a reason that such asifos are only in the Yeshiva world, while YU’s “yom iyun” featuring female and male speakers are always about politics or pareve topics like davening better etc

Very important discussion

The MO the merrier. That’s their real appeal.

>> Unfettered internet and social media access? There’s a reason that such asifos are only in the Yeshiva world, while YU’s “yom iyun” featuring female and male speakers are always about politics or pareve topics like davening better etc

I think this discussion is somewhat meaningless, just want to mention that yo can turn this other way around: one groups learns about davening, while another about internet filters.

As to the substance, I am sure there are lots of people who need filters, but also there are more such people in charedi communities, given their lack of knowledge and experience with electronics.
You can see it here with many people bringing good knowledge of tosfos but not able to verify specious claims about current events with a google search.

This is not such a big deal. Same as villages used to have asifos about cars on big highways before going to the markets, while city people drive those highways every day without asifos.

The biggest Rabbonim have filters. Ain Apotropus L’arayos.

Another must-read article is Reactions to Avi Ciment’s “The Modern Orthodox Conundrum” by Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer, Dec. 9, ’22.

Another – well recommended – way to deal with electronics is to have it in the open in public room, whether in yeshiva or home. Maybe I don’t need filters because my kids come by with their issues at any time.

The elements of Modern Orthodoxy that you are troubled by have always existed in Yiddishkeit and are right not Baruch Hashem fading (except in certain circumstances where certain Rabbis who graduated from certain non-YU places call themselves “Modern Orthodox” but are not frum).

Right now I think the responsibility we have is in taking the beam out of our own eyes. There are numerous endemic problems right now in frum trends that many people are afraid to openly address, and those that do are labeled outsiders. And it’s only getting worse.

@UJM
It is only in areas of large frum Jewish population that all these distinction matter so much.
In small town America making sure you have a regular minyan of frum Jews is enough and the right/left Hasidic/misnagid/Israeli divisions cease to function within the shul walls.
This week, the shul where I attend daily minyanim (in the next town), moved minyan to the home of a member sitting shiva. He and his sons Yeshivish Litvak, 4 Israelis, 3 Hasidism and a number of us senior citizens who are EuroTraditional. Each there for the purpose of having the community make sure there was a minyan three times each day.
In the shul, there are a half dozen varieties of siddurim that serve assorted traditions, but whoever is shsliach tzibur davens from the official shul suddur. Harmony ensures survival, we avoid the narishkeit of labeling Jews

Personally, I think that the current trend of denying children an education of anything that isn’t Gemara and Halacha starting from age 12 is a far worse problem than any Modern Orthodox liberalism.

Yserb, so being bilingual without knowing English and having possibly (although most are just fine) a hard time navigating the American system is worse than rampant sinfulness, apikorsus, and the upheaval of all yiddishkeit values?

Is physical success (which again, most chasidim do have) so much more important to you than eternity in olam haba, or for some, an eternity in gehinnom because of their institutionalized heresy and promotion of sin?

Yseribus: You’re mistaken. We’re talking about that MO OTD rate of those who grew up keeping Shabbos and Kashrus and later, while teenagers and young adults, stopped keeping Shabbos and Kashrus.

Read the articles I referenced above in previous comments.

@ujm I think that the authors of those articles are a little too optimistic about the lifstyles that the OTD generation grew up with. Take a poll of people in their 30s who went to a MO Co-Ed highschool and I would venture to guess you will find few that made any effort to put on teffilin every day, or be careful about mitzvos when they weren’t in school or shul. This is already two or three generations down the line. Of course kids are going off the derech! Their parents were barely on it to begin with!

@AviraDeArah So you think it’s appropriate to (as Chazal tell us) teach your children how to steal? Because all your justifications don’t amount to much against that one thing.

Yes, Acharonim recognized that we are not on the level of our predecessors. We simply cannot gain everything we need to know from the Torah alone. We need to learn about the world around us. Studies of math and science aren’t “secular”, they are part of what we need to know. I’m not saying that you can’t learn Torah without other learning, but that other learning is absolutely an essential aspect of Jewish life. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Tosfos explains a geometry problem in the same way Socrates wrote it out hundreds of years earlier? Could the Agudah have launched their offensive against the New York government and Times without the help of hundreds of frum lawyers and people experienced in writing? Would we have Shabbos ovens had not engineers worked with GE and designed what was needed?

That’s not to say we need to have gender studies classes in Bais Yaakov C”V. I doubt even the most liberal MO schools have gone that far. It means what I said (and you conveniently ignored). Yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs need to teach basic science, language, and social studies. There is a chapter in Rav Hirsch’s Horeb where he outlines a school curriculum. It’s probably not nogeya today (this being 21st century America, not 19th century Germany) but it’s a great insight into what is needed.

Communities who live with this apikorsus idea of a Torah lifestyle means “only Gemara and halacha” absolutely are not “wildly successful in business”. For the most part they are destitute and rely on a combination of tzedaka and government handouts, with many of the more desperate ones resorting to cheating with things like cash-only businesses. There are yechidim that are successful and they (along with educated Torah Jews who are a bit naive from outside the community) keep the whole house of cards from falling. You have your facts as wrong as the NY Times does.

> Where do chazal say that one must or even should know secular studies?

indeed, I perused a bilingual sefer of letters by Chofetz Chaim and he writes in 1920s – on the English side – that one should absolutely avoid sending kids to secular teachers and public schools…

Just as I started packing all the chemistry books in the garbage, I had some seichel to look at the original Hebrew (I don’t think this was translated from Yiddish). So, the Hebrew tzad tells me that I should not send my kids to anti-religious (Zionist? Hofshi) teachers and avoid heretical schools (obviously, there were no Jewish “public” school in 1920 Poland).

Now, I am very confused – which tzad of Chofetz Chaim should I believe?! Should I take the books out of the garbage or leave it there? So, as in the famous Gemora, the books are standing sideways into the garbage – they are not falling out of respect to Chofetz Chaim and do not stand straight out of respect of Chafetz Chaim.

And I would love to meet and look into the eyes of a person who spend so much time translating heilike seforim of Chofetz Chaim about purity of lashon and then creating these garbage problems. I hope I’ll see a soul, maybe a confused soul, but a soul nevertheless.

Dofi, did you hear about the satmar business expo in September? Thousands of businesses were on display. And that was just satmar. They’re not “yechidim”. The satmar rov zy”a held of going into business instead of professions.

I think we should acknowledge that both community have problems and stop making fun of each other – I don’t think Hashem will be happy that one or the other group fails …

for stats: we do not need to be cautious how we interpret that. Some of “MO” schools accept not very religious people to begin with, and also some kids with hashkafa problems first move to more “MO” schools, so they might count as “MO” dropouts.

Avira,

A Satmar business expo doesn’t mean that most chassidim are wildly successful in business any more than an MO expo does. If that were the case, why are so many chassidim on welfare? Why did Satmar admit to defrauding the government and have to repay eight million dollars several months ago? Why are the vast majority of those soliciting tzedaka in shul chassidim?

@lakewhut Everything else aside, you’re making a lot of objective statements bashing other frum Yidden with nothing in the way of evidence to back it up. “Chassidim give more than modern” isn’t a factual statement. It’s an opinion.

And I’m going to have to hotly disagree with you that exherting power and taking on local governments is always a good thing. Plenty of times this power was used for personal gain and often it was used in ways that created a massive chillul Hashem. Besides, in the current big matziv where New York is going after Yeshivos, it’s the Agudah, with their askanim who are knowledgeable and educated in the ways of the world, putting their necks on the line for the Chassidim who are unable to do the same.