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So don’t call me a troll, like any MO. I’m a kochlefel.
That is so inappropriate. Why are we all so against modern orthodoxy. I mean, if we stopped focusing so much on it, this website would not be making such a chillul Hashem to people who do not understand the dynamics of the frum community. If you want to make them like you, then you need to take positive interest in them… Come on, we can do better than this!
Even if I decided I didn’t want to be MO anymore (which I don’t see happening), I DEFINITELY would not want to be like Popa.
i believe we are all MO. Not what MO has become but what modern orthodoxy teaches. Prior to the modern orthodoxy renaissance, the frum velt believed that it is inappropriate for a frum yid to study secular sciences and math and that everything you need in life can be obtained from the study of torah. modern orthodoxy preached that we should study the secular studies in order to be able to live in the modern world and earn money and provide for our families. (there is a branch that believed in studying secular studies lishma but main stream modern orthodoxy preached it only in order to be able to learn a vocation). while many stood against this idea when it was first promulgated, today, everyone agrees that a secular education is vital. only in those chassidhe schools where secular education is not taught and in israel where “core subjects” are not taught, all frum main stream jews gain a secular education through high school and a majority through college of some sort.
in that sense we are all MO.
what has become of “modern orthodoxy” with its ideals of “moderation” and laxity in certain areas of the torah is not what MO was originally touted as being.
i suggest that those who bash MO should read the literature about it and see if they really disagree with the ideals instead of looking at those who label themselves MO and notice how different they are.
” the frum velt believed that it is inappropriate for a frum yid to study secular sciences and math and that everything you need in life can be obtained from the study of torah”
I dispute that statement. Rambam and Sforno attended secular universities. Were they not frum? The Rema didn’t attend university, but he studied history, astronomy, and philosophy on his own and was friendly with the professors at the university in Krakow (which was one of the great secular intellectual centers of the entire world during his lifetime). The Vilna Gaon wrote on mathematics and directed a student to translate Euclid. Were they not frum?
“there is a branch that believed in studying secular studies lishma”
Rav Hirsch explicitly supports this. I don’t have it in front of me but I think the essay on that is in Volume 7 of his Collected Works.
I’m modern ultra-orthodox.
I read Rav Lichtenstien’s article on the future of “Centrist Orthodoxy”, where he defines what he considers the 5 points that distinguish “centrist orthodoxy”. (He means MO.) I considered it a pretty good summation of the issue, and I’d say if you agree with those 5, then you are MO.
PBA: Would you mind please summarizing those points here? I’m curious to see how many (if any) of them I would agree with.
Thanks.
Gavra, I’m curious too, and I hope Popa will oblige.
You can read a few pages of R’ Lichtenstein’s essay if you google “if asked to define centrism.”
From my brief skim of what is readable on Google books, I could only make out #4 — which has to do with greater opportunities for women regarding Torah study and other matters.
Pba. Where can the article be found?
Besalel: I’ve wanted to say this for a long time.
MO is yeshiva university world.
And Touro is the Torah world.
It’s like nevua how the names correspond to the future.
Of course, the truth is that everyone overlaps, and everyone understands the other person’s perspective if they get to know the other person well enough, but it’s useful for social structure purposes to separate.
As for this website, it’s ???? ??????? instead of ???? ???????. It’s the world, not only in one hall.
And that is my rambling post of the day.
Torah, that is mainly true, but in recent years, even YU has slid to the right a little bit. I was in their beis midrash a few months ago, and I saw quite a few black hats and chareidi-looking maggidei shiur. So while you are right for now, it seems like as a whole the frum world is movimg to the right, because of chareidi influence, kids flipping out in their year in Israel, and a lot of other issues.
Most modern orthodox schools have chareidi rebbes and teachers, while the reverse case almost never happens.
Rationalfrummie: And why is chareidi influence so influential? And what about the internet? If you post here on YWN, or even just read the site, and claim to be frum, you have aspects of both MO and of Yeshivish in your Judaism.
Interestingly, as the MO move to the right, there is an influx into more right-wing schools. At least in girls’ schools.
what ever happened to just following the torah?
so sick of all the labels.
None are real anyway.
Chareidi influence is powerful because chareidi teachers often educate MO kids. Chareidim in general also are growing very fast, and the Baal teshuvah movement has exploded in the last 50 years. Minhagim once done by only the pious few are now mainstream Halacha. Cases in point: chalav yisroel, black hats, sheitles, separate seating at events, bugs in lettuce, etc. Overall the trend of frumkeit is heading rightward.
For more on this, read Rav Chaim Solovetchik’s essay on chareidim and the “slide to the right”. It’s called ‘rupture and reconstruction’ and is free online- it’s mamesh a sociological masterpiece. He contrasts mimetic vs. by the book practice, and uses shiurim for kiddush and matzah as his important examples. Personally, if I had to pinpoint a why and wherefore of it all, I’d say it was a reaction to the horror of the holocaust, and the struggle to reestablish life exactly as it was before the war, even if it wasn’t actually done that way in Europe. Strictness and machmir interpretations were adopted to make communities insular and protect them from the outside world, which was a dangerous place to survivors. That’s all I’ve got for you.
And yes, that’s true. A lot of girls I know from MO families are in all-girls bais yaakov type places, rather than mixed.
As any serious student of art knows, “Modern” ended in the 70’s. We are now all postmodern Orthodox Jews, though my own Orthodoxy still tends to show some dadaist tendencies.
read norman lamms definition of modern orthodoaxy as brought down in artscrolls biography on R Hirssch ztl to gain a better perspective of the idealogical differences between the two shittos. they have no shaychis. besides the fact theyre both not satmar.
What does artscroll know about modern orthodoxy? Just like I wouldn’t read about chareidi ideology from an MO source, I wouldn’t get info from artscroll about rav Lamm or MO beliefs. For the real deal, read rav lamm’s work Torah U’Maddah. I don’t agree with all of it, but parts are very compelling.
rationalfrummie: Don’t you think it’s interesting that in the heyday of the BT movement, everyone became chareidi?
“what ever happened to just following the torah?”
Good question. That’s what I try to do!
If getting an education, believing people should pay their taxes and not scam the government, following dina le malchuta l’ dina, believing that infectious disease control measures should inform the observance of a very dear mitzvah, for the sake of pikuach nefesh, believing that all Israelis should contribute to society, etc. make me MO, than I stand accused.
“Cases in point: chalav yisroel, black hats, sheitles, separate seating at events, bugs in lettuce”
Cholov Yisroel is a din. You want kulas? There are kulas – many of which had to be followed because ein gozrim; there were not options out of cholov stam. Rav Moshe himself mentions Toronto which has it’s own mehadrin milk production and says in such a case, unless it’s significantly more expensive, one should be buying cholov Yisroel. It is significantly more expensive, so many are somech on that kula (among others). To claim it is a minhag or chumra testifies that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Seperate seating at events “became an issue” once big events were popular. In a chasuna in Europe, a little more than both families attended a wedding – not the 200-500 person weddings that we have today. So mixed seating tended not to be an issue HALACHICALLY, because there would not be fraternizing. Today, there is – hence there is a problem. Not minhag – you can argue chumra (I think it’s pashut that it’s not – but I’m nobody).
Bugs in lettuce. I don’t even know where you’re going with this. More knowledge which points to something being a problem means you must check it. Even if generations before did not, if you have something that is halachically muchzak b’tolayim – it MUST BE CHECKED. Not chumra, not minhag.
Sheitels and black hats… I don’t even know where you’re going with these.
You don’t know where I’m going because you don’t like seeing the truth that frumkeit today is very different than it used to be. Regarding cholov yisroel, in Lakewood in the early days they had cholov stam, breakstone products! Now that would never happen. After the war, the chazon Ish came along and said that the shiurim Jews had been using for hundreds of years weren’t good enough.
If you look at pictures of Roshei yeshivah and their wives from decades ago, news flash: many didn’t wear sheitles. Black hats and uniformity can be the make or break in a shidduch. People have only been looking at lettuce with microscopes in the last few years.
Checking for bugs used to be a chumra, now its mainstream. Ditto for sheitles, mixed seating, and cholov yisroel.” From what my parents tell me, in the 70s and 80s many more weddings were mixed- now that’s a big no-no.
The very texture of religious life has changed after the war, perhaps for the reasons I offered to Torah613. Rav Chaim explains that its a switch from mimetic tradition to didactic. Look those terms up if you need to, but its a powerful argument.
Torah613:
I do find that pretty interesting- a lot of people became BT’s after the six day war. People were proud to be jewish and started wearing kippot in public- something very rare beforehand.
At the same time, life became increasingly easier for chareidim in America and their population exploded. Kosher food became more available, they created their own communal centers in New York, and Americans were more tolerant.
There were several reasons why it became easier in the 60’s.
the #1 reason beyond all was the 5 day work week, without this becoming the norm most people would not be religious. This did occur in the 30’s but because of the depression and WW II its effects were not immediately seen.
Most Charedim will not credit the civil rights movement, but that was the second most important reason. Before the civil righs movement one could not easily state your rights. You could not declare you wanted Kosher food or not to work on Holidays nor could you state your inention to be differnet. When African Americans declared their civil rights others (including jews) were also able to declare their rights as well
That’s a very perceptive comment ZD. I’m a little more skeptical about the civil rights claim, but the 5 day work definitely helped Jews stay frum, and encouraged them to be shomer Shabbos- a mitzvah that fell to the wayside in early American Jewish life.
We should strive to have a Jewish community that parallels our status pre-haskala, when those forces messed a lot of things up.
Pre-Haskala things were not as good as you think
Shabbatai Zvi and Jacob Frank caused more damage to the community than you think
As did the burnings of the Talmud all throughout Europe by Christians, and the debates Jews were forced to have, the issue of moreh nevuchim, the Spanish Inquisition, getting kicked out of Spain, France, England, and Portugal, etc.. Jewish history has never been pretty or peaceful- you can’t just rewrite history and blame tzaros on the haskalah
Pre-haskala, there was not a drive to make everything more stringent with time. So to that extent, I agree with Bizbody. Where is it written that halachic interpretations should become more machmir with time, or that restrictive minhagim should multiply with time? It has only happened in reaction to haskala.
ZD, as well as the civil rights movement, multiculturalism, which made it OK to stress one’s cultural differences, and the shift toward greater interest in traditional religions in the 80s, both probably contributed to the rise of charedim in the US (the MO benefited too).
Let’s strive to live like the Jewish community in the days of Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai.
Rationalfrummie, I think checking for bugs has always been the halacha. What is new is detailed regulations about each vegetable — soak for 15 minutes in warm soapy water, etc — and bans on certain vegetables unless they’re frozen or hydroponic or whatever. As mentioned recently on Torah Musings, even today some halachic authorities (such as R’ Shlomo Amar) will say that the requirement is simply “wash produce and check for bugs” — not to do it in some specific manner.
Here’s an interesting quote from one of Rav Moshe’s last teshuvos:
[such food]
yytz- thank you for the quote from one of R’Moshe’s teshuvos !
To put things into their right perspective:everyone is entitled to practice whatever chumros one wants-including not eating some foods. it is when you want to have the whole tsibbur undertake this that it becxomes a problem. Whether it is strawberries, cauliflower, lettuce or other foods, we can only go according the minhagim that have prevailed for hudnreds of years. Anything else is a chumro that should be left to individuals.
Chumras are great and should be individually encouraged. The problem is when they deep into mainstream Halacha, and those that don’t follow them are criticized (see hats, sheitles, etc.)
Duuuude: so they why are so many pictures of gedolei yisroels’ rebitzens without sheitles? I just saw a picture last week of chacham Yosef’s wife and him from the 1950s. She had no covering.
Are they really being oiver on a din?
Btw you totally misrepresented rav Broyde’s article- he says its about Daas yehudis, not Daas Moshe. It’s based on culture, not a “din” as you have it.
There certainly is an attempt to whitewash history. Romantisize over the past and what was done.
The pictures of the wives with hair uncovered are real, the pictures of the gedolim without bears are also real .
And life was not better in the Ghettos, Not everyone was religious and jews have been going OTD since the Judges
“I could care less for your semantical differences between daas whatever and daas whatever”
Halachah does.
There is a well known photograph of Rav Schneur Kotler without a beard
I didnt say he never had a beard, Only that there was a time when he did no
rationalfrummoe- the book quotes him. they dont write a thing on there own in that piece. its cited. another point- theres a teshuvos chasam sofer where he says he never ate any veggies aside from those required by judaism ie marror throughout the year due to bugs. stop picking and choosing.
My guess would be that most if not all gedolim had no beards for the first twelve years of their life. Thats when they were gedolim ketanim.
The picture of Rav Sheneur Kotler was when he was in his 20’s or 30’s
You can see it on wikipedia
Someone once posted her a picture of alot of Gedolim without beards
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