Where have all the Yekkes gone?

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  • #1979720
    n0mesorah
    Participant

    Dear Ujm,

    There is Yeshivish vs. Litvish identity. As the yeshiva world sucks in the independent communities, new identities are being formed. We’ll see if any are successful in spawning an independent community. The Yeshivish mentality has no concept of independent communities. (I do not mean anything derogatory. That is their strength. If that is taken away, it may usher in a very troubled era.)

    #1979739
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    What about tne Debretziner, not being oberland, but having oberlandisher minhagim?

    #1979764
    ujm
    Participant

    Reb Eliezer: Debrecin is Chasidish? Didn’t think so.

    Participant: No mocking intended.

    #1979760
    Lemayseh
    Participant

    Oberlander Ashkenaz definitely still exists.

    Vien still is davening Ashkenaz in their main old Boro Park Shul. Same with Nitra (there are other places where Sfard is used).

    There is a Pressburg Oberland type minyan in Eretz Yisroel where tefillin is won on Chol Hamoed.

    Those are just a few examples, there are others too.

    #1979770
    commonsaychel
    Participant

    @Reb E, the only difference in the current Debrictener mihagim and mainsteam chasidus is the yotzros [ they dont bruk, they wear chasidisher livish etc.] the typical chasam sofer with his crack hit short jacket and gartel and small beard is history and I for one think its a shame

    #1979784
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    In Staten Aguda we daven ashkenaz and have a separate chol hamoad tefilin section in the weiber shul as dictared by Reb Moshe ztlz’l. On Purim we say Kerovatz Lapurim.

    #1979802
    commonsaychel
    Participant

    @ Reb E exactly my point, you are relegated to the ladies section and say the payit under your breath, not a sign of a very thriving khilla.
    @ Laymasheh 3/4 of Vien and 3/4 of Nitra davens nusach sefard and the rav wears a stramil in both

    #1979799
    Yserbius123
    Participant

    Minhag HaGra in much of Eretz Yisroel is very Oberlander like. They say piyutim on Yom Tov, full Slichos on RH/YK, and LeDovid Baruch before Ma’ariv on Motzei Shabbos.

    #1979814
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    They don’t say maarovis according minhag HaGra.

    #1979815
    commonsaychel
    Participant

    @yserbius Minhag Chasam Sofer is Oberland, Minhag haGra is Lita

    #1979825
    mesivta bachur
    Participant

    did you hear the one about the yekke who was late

    neither did I

    #1979847
    Ex-CTLawyer
    Participant

    @Mesivta bachur

    The late Yekke….is dead
    No live Yekke worthy of the name is ever late.

    #1979843
    Participant
    Participant

    @ujm
    where’s the quote from

    #1979857
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    When sending invitations, invite the yekkes on time and the chassdiim for an hour earlier.

    #1979875
    n0mesorah
    Participant

    In the current day, all minhagim change at a brisk race. Those communities that put a bigger emphasis on keeping the same ritualistic customs throughout the generations, will appear to be in steeper decline than those communities that value it less.

    #1979957
    commonsaychel
    Participant

    @N0mesorah “Those communities that put a bigger emphasis on keeping the same ritualistic customs throughout the generations, will appear to be in steeper decline than those communities that value it less.”
    Actualy the opposite is true, the communities who emphisize minhagim are the strongest, for example upsherin, chasidisher livish etc. are alive and well, whereas YI and others with no mesorah are slowly fading away

    #1979994
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    This is similar by the chassidim when getting up, making a big noise so the children see it. However, by the yekkes iit s done quitely in order not to wake up everyone. I saw from my father a certain behavior thereby I followed it. I say maarovis for myself and the children don’t see that. No nut throwing on Shemini Atzerees. The litvishe don’t say any yotzros on the four parshiyus.

    #1980042
    n0mesorah
    Participant

    Dear Common,

    No, no, no! That is exactly my point. The chassidim are very quick to make small changes to their dress. This allows it keep race with overall changes. Therefore, more people will fit in the chassidish style of dress than any other. So it looks they are thriving more than other communities.

    #1980106
    n0mesorah
    Participant

    Dear Reb Eliezer,

    Additions to the siddur largely depend on the specifics of the beis haknesses. With some exceptions, piyyutim diverged from shul to shul. Therefore, you can not ascertain a communities origin just by what they do and do not say.

    #1980167

    RebE >> This is similar by the chassidim when getting up, making a big noise so the children see it. However, by the yekkes iit s done quitely in order not to wake up everyone.

    interesting …
    Would it, like, depend on whether kids need to get up?! Or have alarm clocks?

    Maybe chasidim are getting up later, so it is time for kids to get up already? And he is afraid that the kids will sleep late if he leaves?

    And yekkes kids get up on their own at the prescribed time?

    #1980230
    rational
    Participant

    In Israel, Minhag HaGra says piyutim only after Chazaras Hashatz.

    #1980255
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    Children see how their fathers behave to follow them as mentioned above, so it has to be seen by them.

    #1980262
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    See SA O’CH 68 about piyutim and whether it is a hefsek. By rrachos of krias shema there is more a consensus by the Tur that it is. See the Bach whwhose view is that it is not.

    #1980466
    rational
    Participant

    I respect all minhagim. However, all piyutim were written expressly to be recited within the specific tefilah. Marrovis, yotzros, zulos, krovetzim and all other similar piyutim. To claim that they are a hefsek makes no sense. It’s like saying the icing is a hefsek in the cake. Or that the cufflinks are a hefsek in the shirt.

    #1980471
    ☕ DaasYochid ☕
    Participant

    To claim that they are a hefsek makes no sense. It’s like saying the icing is a hefsek in the cake. Or that the cufflinks are a hefsek in the shirt.

    I’m sure you realize that there is no din that a cake or shirt can’t have a hefek. So, the comparison doesn’t make sense.

    #1980475
    n0mesorah
    Participant

    I read Rational’s post as reasoning that there is no din of hefsek until we include something that is unintended.

    #1980479
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    DY, he means to say that it beautifies the tefila like cufflings on a shirt or icing on a caks which should not be a hefsek.

    #1980498
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    Whether it is a hefsek, see Shaar Ephraim, 13 and for the understanding of yotzros see Teshuva Meahava (1,1) and Chavas Yair 238.

    #1980572
    ☕ DaasYochid ☕
    Participant

    DY, he means to say that it beautifies the tefila like cufflings on a shirt or icing on a caks which should not be a hefsek.

    Like גימוניות של זהב on a לולב?

    #1980613
    Ex-CTLawyer
    Participant

    @always
    Alarm clocks?????????????????/
    Never saw one in Oma and Opa’s home, or my parents or my home.
    If you have to be up at a certain time you are up.
    Mrs. CTL was amazed early on in our marriage that I have an internal body clock and know the time close to the minute. Early this morning I got up to make a business call to China where it is 13 hours ahead. She asked me what time it was? I said should be hitting 3:00. She looked at a wall clock and said you’re wrong it’s only 2:59………I said better than it being 3:01.

    I understand that my grandchildren’s generation doesn’t wear watches or have alarm clocks, they are using their phones for those functions.

    #1980623
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    The differnce is that ssy it is not a hefsek being part of teflla whereas gold rings is not parr of the lulav.

    #1980675

    Ctlawyer, re:alarm clock. I have it worse : I have only a minute amount of yekke blood, so I can feel the time (Kids once in a while test me asking for the time), but it does not prevent my non-yekke yetzer from being late. I used to wear a clock on public transport and watch how many minutes I am late. I once forgot the watch and realized that the watch was not at all helping me to get there on time. So, now I was able to read…

    I would not wake up to make a 3am clock, I would go to sleep late.

    I presume Swiss Jews at least wear the watches?

    #1980692
    ☕ DaasYochid ☕
    Participant

    The differnce is that ssy it is not a hefsek being part of teflla

    That’s exactly the shaila – is it or is it not part of tefilah.

    #1980795
    Ex-CTLawyer
    Participant

    @always
    I go to sleep between 11 and 12, I am up no later than 4 every day and have been most of my adult life. The early morning hours are quite productive time for me with few interruptions.
    I spend at least three mornings a week on calls to China that last 2-3 hours. This involves a business venture separate from my law practice.
    I always wear a watch, I’d feel naked without it, but don’t need it to know the time. My watches are all Swiss and will pass to my children or grandchildren at sometime in the future. My eldest grandson wears a watch that belonged to my maternal grandfather and is about 100 years old. The young man is named for his great-grandfather and it was appropriate for him to receive the watch when he was married.
    As for Swiss Jews, the current youngsters might be selling Swiss watches, not wearing them, but I haven’t been in Switzerland in about 7 years, so I don’t really know.

    #1980816
    commonsaychel
    Participant

    @CTLawyer, I am 100 % galitzanyah my internal body clock causes me to have great joy when I see Petcha in the deli or the coin counter in the bank

    #1980860
    Ex-CTLawyer
    Participant

    @Commonsaychel
    My Litvak Zaidy used to ask: Tell me are you Jewish or Galitzianer?
    My Oma would put him in his place, by calling Zaidy a ‘peasant from the east’

    This pecking order is such nonsense

    #1980970

    > ‘peasant from the east’

    with due respect to your Oma, Jews in the Pale were rarely allowed to be farmers. Maybe she combined hidden references to “am haaertz” and east, as Babylonian are looked down by Israelis in Gemora

    #1981042
    Ex-CTLawyer
    Participant

    @always
    I believe Oma used the term to refer to those from tiny villages as opposed to the city folk in Germany.
    Our paternal family records going back to 1752 until they came to America about 1872 show the family raising and dealing in horses and having orchards and using the fruit to make distilled spirits. Sounds like a step above dirt farmers, but still agricultural life.

    #1981256

    CTL, do you know what was thinking in your family when they moved to America?
    The stereotype is that Goldena Medina was attractive to those who were escaping poverty and to non-religious who were not afraid of assimilation.

    #1981372
    Ex-CTLawyer
    Participant

    @always
    Why did my family move to America?
    I would have to break down 4 branches as I grew up hearing the stories from older generations.

    My Mother’s father’s grandfather was a cigar maker in southern Germany (Hoc Deutsch) running his own factory. He was made a large offer by an American manufacturer to come to Upstate NY in 1868 and run their cigar factory. They moved the entire family with 2nd class passage, bought them a house in the upstate city and paid him a large salary and 10% ownership in the factory. My grandfather moved to NYC to get a medical degree and stayed.
    My Mother’s Mother’s grandparents arrived in NYC from Frankfurt in 1869. The head of the family had been an attorney in Germany handling financial matters and he was brought over by a group of the ‘Our Crowd’ bankers (of the Goldman, Sachs ilk) to handle legal and financial issues concerning transactions and bond issues sold in Germany and Middle Europe. My grandmother was born in 1900 in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, where German was the neighborhood language.

    My Litvak Paternal Grandmother’s family started arriving in 1872, some traveling via England with a stay there of months or years. They were clothing or dry goods merchants and sought economic opportunities not available in the pale. Over a period of 10 years, the Great-great-grandparents, 9 children, 9 spouses and about 30 children arrived in Manhattan. By 1886 they were in Brooklyn and small towns throughout the northeast running the general or dry goods store. My Paternal grandmother was born 1896 in a small New England town where her uncle’s family ran the local department store until the 1960s. Her father, having only daughters moved them to Brooklyn about 1915 to find husbands, leaving the store to his brothers and nephews.
    My Litvak Paternal father’s family was last to arrive in 1878. Some cousins had moved to Chicago about 10 years earlier and left horse raising for the leather clothing and accessories business (because of the great meat processing business in Chicago, lots of cheap hides were available with great train transportation to ship finished goods). They brought my great Grandparents and their children to NY to set up a clothing manufacturing business, to add cloth items to the family line. My grandfather, was the youngest child and born in Manhattan about 1894. they had been making a fair living in the Pale, but did not like the chances of the sons being forced into the Czar’s army. The cousins in Chicago arranged the US immigration visas and passage by ship from Bremerhaven.

    None of the stories told spoke of leaving Europe because of anti-Semitism, and the Litvak side left before the 1880s pogroms hit their village (which is now in Belarus).

    To the best of my knowledge all the assorted extended family in these 4 branches had made it to the USA or England before WWI. My paternal Grandfather was a corporal in the US Army in WWI.

    #1981582
    commonsaychel
    Participant

    My grandparents all came here to excape anti semitism in Poland, Fathers parents came post WWII after surviving the holocaust, Mothers Mothers parents came in the 1920s after surviving a progrom, Mother Fathers family came in the 1930s after Poland banned shechita

    #1981942
    rational
    Participant

    “DY, he means to say that it beautifies the tefila like cufflings on a shirt or icing on a cake which should not be a hefsek.”

    Reb Leizer, well put, that is exactly what I meant.

    Furthermore, there are piyutim in the davening that are so integral to a specific tefillah that few even realize that they are piyutim. Ha’me’ir la’aretz is a piyut that contains the acrostic aleph-bet. The paragraphs preceding the birchot kriat shma (l’kel baruch, ahavah raba, etc…) are all piyutim. The fact that they are very early piyutim as opposed to later piyutim written after chatimat hatalmud doesn’t change their character. Mimkomcha in kedusha of Shabbat is a piyut, as are all the intermediate phrases of the kedusha of both shacharit and musaf on Shabbat (mimkomo, hu elokeinu, adir adireinu, etc…) . No one would dare say these piyutim are a hefsek.

    Furthermore, the fear of hefsek seems to have been totally forgotten on tefilot yamim no’ra’im. The examples are so many and so well known they don’t require itemizing.

    I find the hefsek argument to have too many indefensible holes, without even mentioning that piyutim are steeped in both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic mesorot. Kol ha’meshaneh yado al hatachtona.

    #1982151
    pekak
    Participant

    @commonsaychel

    Don’t confuse birchos krias shema with piyutim. Nishmas and the extended first of the birchos krias shema are most likely piyutim.

    #1982616

    Obviously, difference between yekkes and chasidim reflet the differences between host namtions. Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, writes about a difference between German Lagers and Russian command that he also exzperienced. When Germans say “tomorrow”, it means at 9am tomorrow, there will be signs everywhere about what exactly is going to happen. When Russians say “tomorrow” it means – in the near future, possibly.

    #1984593
    AviraDeArah
    Participant

    My rebbe Rav Belsky zt’l was a strong proponent of maintaining yekkishe minhagim; we had several bochurim in yeshiva who came from Washington heights or whose parents did, though still a small minority in the yeshiva.

    At the same time, he held not to make a “yekkishe kiddush”(washing before kiddush) if one was not yekkish, as some people do for convenience.

    #1984630

    Acura, yes I find it a sign of great integrity when a Rav guides the student according to student’s path, not Rav’s, whether in learning style or minhagim. Goes back to Elisha bAbuya riding a horse and telling R Meir to turn back because of tehum shabbat, and Hillel quoting Shammai’s position first

    #1984631

    So we easily recognize idiosyncrasies of yekkes, Russians, Galicians, including how they reflect surrounding societies, sometimes for good, sometimes not … but can we look at ourselves and recognize what looks normal to us, but is not – for american and israeli Jews especially?

    #1984632
    Participant
    Participant

    wow am I really to understand that although he wanted yekke’s to preserve their minhagim he still discouraged non-yekkes from adopting their kulos??!!

    #1984713
    AviraDeArah
    Participant

    Participant; I don’t see the need for sarcasm – many people avail themselves of this kulah and it’s not discouraged by and large, so it doesn’t go without saying that he was opposed to it – actually he’s the only posek I know of who says this.

    Your remark might have been warranted had I said that he was against people adopting the 3 hour minhag, because that would be very obvious that just because he’s encouraging yekkies to keep their minhagim doesn’t mean he is saying that they are acceptable to everyone else.

    #1984736
    Reb Eliezer
    Participant

    Hilel wanted to arrive to tthe ruth, so they heard the arguing view first before deciding in order not stumble into tunnel vision.

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