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Sechel, what rabbonim outside of chabad believed that the Lubavitcher rebbe was anything close to being close to being chezkas moshiach? He did nothing mentioned in the list there, sxcept being hogeh batorah…in which case, rav shach was just as bechezkas as the Lubavitcher rebbe; actually, moreso, because he brought about more learning, spent more time being hogeh, and….his name was Menachem too!
What do you think pilpul shel hevel means? It refers to stam connecting things.
No yeshiva guys do that; our pilpul is about figuring out pshat and svara in rhe and rishonim. Most chabad yeshivos do this too; im referring to what you find in rav Akiva eiger, ketzos, shmaatsa, reb chaim, rav baruch ber, rav elchanan, etc…those are not pilpul shel hevel cv”s
Sechel, that’s not how psak works.
Jews in America are not beholden to poskim elsewhere; American poskim allowed it because rav moshe allowed it. It became accepted as the minhag haolam, and that is perfectly fine when someone who is accepted as the gadol hador issues a psak and is not challenged by many other gedolim in his country.
Most American jews accepted rav moshe as their rebbe in general, and there are very few psakim from rav moshe that aren’t followed, such as music, yerushos, and Shabbos timers (that’s about the extent of the list)
Ujm, a small percentage of the talmidim are chasidish; rav shraga feivel wanted the yeshiva to remain with a “tropeleh chasidus,” in the sense that the nusach is sfard…a few minhagim here and there, but more importantly, some of the roshei yeshiva were chasidish, most notably rav gedaliah schorr, rav nesanel quinn, and rav rivkin, who was not as known outside yeshiva – but almost all of the other roshei Yeshiva were completely litvishe. I don’t know of anyone who classifies the Yeshiva as chasidishe to the extent where that would have any influence on the bochurim not shaving; the few who were drawn to, say, rav moshe wolfson, did not shave for that reason, but most of the others(myself included) refrained from doing so for reasons unrelated to chadidus or kabalah.
Neville, trimmers are much less controversial, because the blades aren’t sharp, and they’re designed to leave a drop of hair, because the top guide row is a little bit above the bottom, moving cutters.
As it happens to be, i once bought a very cheap trimmer with the top and bottom being on equal level, and rav belsky told me it was assur to use when i showed it to him
As for “acting,” tell me who you think are easier to mold and influence; bochurim or working people with little anchor besides shul, who will easily drop you and rabbi shop until they find someone with a beard who says what they want to hear?
Neville, it’s important to understand that without daf yomi, many people wouldn’t learn at all. Roshei yeshiva aren’t going to blast something which is flawed but gets people to learn, because it’s not as if they’re going to drop it and leatn sugyos biyun slowly, covering maybe an amud a week due to their work schedules.
Also, a large amount of baalei batim simply lack the ability to learn sugyos biyun. Many can and do, as kolel yungeleit transition to the working world.
Nom, it’s true that rav belsky held that the shavers the litvishe world uses were perfectly kosher, but many of his talmidim, including me, were strict, and he held that using trimmers instead was a good chumra to practice. He said that even lift and cut should be ok, because he said it’s a marketing gimmick, but that he cannot in good conscience allow something which claims to do what it says it does, so he said that the mechanism must be removed.
He also held it was a significant inyan for even bochurim to have beards(of any length; this wasn’t a kabalah issue, but rather part of how the chofetz chaim describes as the tzurah of a yid), and indeed having a beard is more common in his Yeshiva than elsewhere.
Re, shavers; no one said it was simple or universally accepted. I’d wager the majority of poskim collectively forbid them, but rav moshes psak prevailed in america among yireim veshlaimim… today’s generation, however, moved away from it to a very large extent, especially with the availability of trimmers like the Peanut which are basically universally accepted as kosher(besides the poskim who forbid due to kabalah reasons) and offer results which rival electric shavers.
Neville, while the baalabatish litvishe world(like agudah) believes what you say about shas, the yeshivos do not. My Rosh Yeshiva knocks superficial learning of daf yomi all the time; this is how most roshei yeshiva speak when talking to non-baalei batim. It’s not mdd’s opinion or even a minority; you will not find any roshei yeshiva who advocate for superficial learning, unless the alternative is not learning at all, lack of motivation etc..
Sechel, you can be honest; is that the only teshuva from rav moshe that you know of, because it contains words sent to the Lubavitcher rebbe? I won’t judge you for it, it’s not your fault, it’s nust your background which leads to such things. Like the anti kollel people who basically know one line of rambam.
Rav moshe’s shaving heter was intentionally oral; he had reasons for not wanting to write about it. That doesn’t mean he didn’t explain it; he did, and the reasons were very convincing. Some yeshivishe guys don’t use electric shavers, rather they use haircut machines or trimmers, which don’t have sharp blades and leave a tiny bit behind. That’s what more than half of my friends did in my bochurishe days.
Mishnah chagigah 2:1
מה לפנים ומה לאחור does NOT mean one should not think about olam haba! See rashi and bartenura there; it means either what’s past the world to the west(lifnim meaning east) or before/after the creation of the world, what was before bereshis and what will be באחרית הימים , but in ways that do not bring one to yiras shomayim, just academic contemplation.
It doesn’t say “woe to…” It says it’s better for such people not to have been born, since they are likely to fall into apikorsus.
Conservative Judaism invented the idea that judaism is about this world. They minimize olam haba, and you probably heard this from one of them or someone who grew up conservative.
Torah Judaism is very clear on what we’re here for – mishnaj avos 4:16, this world is merely a corridor to olam haba. We will experience the perfection we aquire in this world through Torah and mitzvos in olam haba; it is what we were created for – Hashem created the world to give us olam haba, through the torah. See mesilas yeshorim perek 1 for a more elabore description, where he says that no one logical can think that we were created for this world, as it has so much suffering…why would a merciful God create us mainly to suffer and then there’s this vague unknown thing callee olam haba that we don’t really know much about…..
No. We know just what olam haba is; it is the closeness to Hashem that we merit, tzadikim yoshvim, the righteous sit and enjoy the splendor of Hashem’s schechina, the more righteous, the more reward.
Ujm, he said it on Shabbos, and it was never recorded; you can ask anyone from the hanhalah there. You can also ask stam talmidim of his; the story is very yaduah in both circles, but i don’t think it’s written up anywhere due to obvious reasons
Gadol, you don’t think the adventures of reb zusha and reb meilich are entertaining?
Why not entertain kids with stories of tzadikim? They teach jewish lessons and inspire kids to be holy, treat others the way Hashem wants them to, and to be wowed by mofsim instead of fantasies that they’ll outgrow…this is why i can’t stand when some heimishe people teach their kids about the tooth fairy, and call it the tooth malaach. It sets kids up to question real malachim when they get older and realize it was nonsense.
Qwert, sounds like he had an axe to grind. Even if that version of history is true (which it isn’t; the chazon ish sent talmidim to tel aviv and kibutzim in the 40s), saying that gedolim copied the Lubavitcher rebbe is like saying that the satmar rov was first against kolelim because it was not the mesorah and then copied rav aharon…he didn’t “copy” him, he understood that what rav aharon was doing was necessary.
So if the litvishe recognized after the Lubavitcher rebbe that it was necessary, that’s not something to criticize, nor does it mean that the Lubavitcher rebbe was superior to them; sometimes innovation doesn’t have to be top-down.
But the way kiruv is done outside chabad is far more effective. It isn’t about tefilin and sefiros or getting one mitzvah here and there, and then pushing chasidus when there’s some level of interest in yiddishkeit.
It’s about bringing them back to yiddishkeit! Shabbos, kashrus, yomim tovim, learning, everything! And that’s why people who do kiruv with the blatt gemara in eretz yisroel, like arachim, etc…have more lasting success than the guitar chevra or others. the others might draw larger crowds and will jump to say that every Mitzvah is important and you can’t judge success by long lasting results….to this, the answer is that you most definitely can judge success by long term results and still acknowledge the smaller success as not worthless.
It’s like the stock market. Chabad says that one person’s good investment is huge, while the rest of the world looks at at the portfolio.
For every step a chabad kiruv client takes, do you not think that yhey progressively take steps back? How much treif do they eat after one kosher meal? The chofetz chaim said there’s merit in limiting how much treif someone eats, even a little bit – so yes, it’s something, but is something comparable to a kiruv movement which results in everything?
So i don’t believe the litvishe “copied” chabad; chabad inflates little successes while the litvishe build entire families.
Neville, i was being generous. I am not saying it’s their success in kiruv, but rather the lack thereof which allows for people not fully frum to be integrated into the community.
Other groups have BTs and gerim, but they shtel tzu, they join the community, embrace it entirely, and give up their former lives. MO gerim and BTs have the same issues as chabad.
I was not knocking, chas veshalom, baaleo teshuva or gerim; they make up some of the finest parts of klal yisroel.
Ujm, i mentioned this in passing but it needs to be explained in detail; chabad does not have the safeguards that other chasidusen have.
First, all chasidishe groups have kollelim. Most learn for a year after marriage and a good 20% learn for several years before going to work…could be it’s much more, but that’s the impression i get and can see from the sheer amount of kollelim. That sets the tone for a community, and the satmar rov saw that from rav aharon. He wasn’t ashamed to learn from others.
Another important safeguard is that they keep outsiders out. They protect their people; they spend the whole day with other yidden, speak Yiddish, and don’t read anything goyishe. Lubavitch is much more open to outside media(once they leave the yeshivos), their gerim and baalei teshuva bring their pasts with them to a degree, because they bring them into their community and mosdos very early and in large numbers. משא”כ litvishe and other groups, which value more the safety of the community and keep out the bad influences.
When baalei teshuva aren’t ready to dress tznius fully, but go around crown heights that way and identify fully with chabad, send their kids to chabad, etc…do you think that doesn’t affect native chabad women? If she could do it…. there’s a tremendous yatzer hora and seeing others sin makes it more possible for them to follow suit.
There were minhagim to not have beards, especially among bochurim; this was the case in Italy, as I’ve heard from Rav Belsky.
Most gedolim were unhappy with litvishe bochurim shaving in Europe, but once it became widespread, the majority had no issue with it going forward, with some even prohibiting bochurim from having beards due to gaavah, as their peers didn’t.
The tznius issue isn’t about anger, it’s about dismantling chabad supremacism. Chabad aren’t better than other groups, and have their share of communal problems.
I think it’s obvious that when you mix a large amount of baalei teshuva and gerim in s community, and stop everyone from learning full time at age 21, you’re going to automatically have kedushah problems. They’re lacking the safeguards of other chasidishe groups who send most to work at 19(however some do stay in kolel, and chabad has yet to see the importance this has in maintaining a community)
edited!
The difference is that the US gives tons of money to Israel, much much more than the other countries mentioned, exponentially more.
If the US thinks – mistakenly or not – that israel is losing its democracy, it’s of national interest to the US.
Many are wondering why the US provides unconditional aid to Israel; while it’s true that Israel provides the US with a large amount of intelligence, perhaps worth the amount of money it’s given or even exceeding it, it’s hard to dismiss the US as “budding in” or telling Biden to “keep his nose out of other people’s business,” since the US is heavily invested in Israel.
That being said, Biden surrounded himself with people who just accept the left’s narrative about judicial reform; Americans also don’t understand the situation there, as there’s no constitution etc…
Just as a disclaimer, im not against the judicial reform; the moetzes supports it, so that’s enough for me
Da, interesting that we both quoted rav yaakov; it appears we can agree on some things.
Sechel, a concerned father asked for advice; he’s not Lubavitch, and he actually holds of the Lubavitcher rebbe. I gave him advice on how to keep his son in the spectrum of what he considers acceptable according to his mesorah.
No ones criticizing the Lubavitcher rebbe now; you’re being awfully defensive
Re, kavanah; this is precisely why briskers daven fast, in order to not be masiach daas. In ger they have a similar approach, but vriskers take a very long time for krias shema, משא”כ ger.
Re, shavers; the yeshivos follow rav moshe feinstein. He was the preeminent posek in America, and Americans are not beholden to every other gadol’s psak.
If you want a serious answer, I’ll be happy to provide, but it seems that you’re asking from animosity. Still, I’ll be dan lekaf zchus, but either way the questions are valid regardless of your intention, and people might be interested to know about the issues you raise.
Re, chazaras hashatz; rav yaakov kaminetzky said that chazaras hashatz was instituted in a beis hakneses, where amei haaretz would daven together with chaverim. But in a beis medrash, no amei haaretz would daven, so there was never a full takanah of chaz”hash…still we do hoicher kedushah to be yotzei. That, together with the cheshbon of bitul Torah was bis justification for the minhag – in his Yeshiva, however, we did not make hoicher kedushah.
Re, hilchos talmud torah; there were different shitos in the rishonim and achronim in general about derech halimud, and what the yeshivos do is more about results than about ideology. It works for our generation, and that’s the main thing.
Why is a standard, run of the mill corrupt politician banned in a home? Is clinton(mr or mrs), biden, etc…any less corrupt? Why do we busy ourselves with the character of goyim? They have no Torah, they’re in positions of power, so they are almost certain to be corrupted…our job is to vote for whoever will legislate as close to the Torah/our interests. Unless a goy is mekabel the 7 mitzvos, why do we think they’re “good”? Is there a “good” person without torah values? Why does this need to be explained to frum people?
Ehrlich – it’s not so bad if your son thinks that chabad is the best way to serve Hashem. The trouble is that neo chabad believes that it is the ONLY true way of serving Hashem.
But serving Hashem isn’t even what’s prioritized; it’s all about doing the Lubavitcher rebbes will, spreading his vision, and doing it FOR him, as you can see throughout this thread and others.
Chabad in the 80s was still rational. While rabbi yoel kahn was among the most reasonable of neo chabad figures, i think you should get him interested in Rav Moshe Wolfson, a prominent Mashgiach who has transitioned many litvishe boys into chasidus, and built an entire community around this – emunas yisroel. He held of the Lubavitcher rebbe, and was close with him – but he was also close with satmar; he has a balanced mahalach.
I know people who he directed towards chabad chasidus, but kept them away from the crazies. Learning in his beis medrash, which has people of all ages at all times of the day, is a good idea, i think.
Abba, nobody serious about hashkofa has ever doubted the existence of golems; there have been people who questioned or denied specifically the maharals golem, because of historical kashas, not hashkafic ones.
But most gedolim say like what’s been quoted here; he could have made it, so who cares if he did or not? And we also shouldn’t expend effort to minimize things like this… The motivation could be maskilish
American, I’ve never encountered that before…a Lubavitcher insulting the ramchal; I have to admit that the most likely reason was that he never heard of the ramchal and assumed that he must be a litvishe gadol, in which case he’s…. Which is still obviously unacceptable.
We all know about the Tanya’s definition of a tzadik. Stop pretending that the whole world is in darkness and only one small sect knows the truth. How do you know the musagim of the litvishe yeshivos? Have you ever spent 5 minutes in a conversation with a gadol outside of crown heights? It’s offensive not just because it’s false, but because it’s myopic and egotistic.
But I’m glad someone says the quiet part out loud; chabad has a problem with supremacism. Many in that group believe themselves intrinsically better because they are Lubavitch, despite the whole “all jews are equal and why are you better than a frei etc….” Refrain. We see it’s fake from the gazaanim shiduchim world, and we see it’s fake from it’s adherents who are loose lipped and let these nuggets of wisdom fall out.
Satmar thinks that they’re right. They really, really think they’re right and the rest of the world is mostly wrong about zionism. But that didn’t stop the satmar rov from telling chasidim to daven at the kever of the litvishe rav yaakov yosef, or his great appreciation litvishe gedolim as tzadikim and talmidei chachamim. The name rav chaim kanievsky carries enormous weight in satmar, as does the chofetz Chaim, the Gaon, the ketzos, and many other litvishe gedolim. They think that their shitah is the only valid one in zionism, but they do not discount others as being valid gedolim if they may not have felt exactly the same way(but they will not accept as a gadol, someone like rabbi kook, etc…, And in this they are far from alone). Satmar doesn’t think that you need to be satmar to be a tzadik.
There’s a big difference.
Yankel, it’s in the compilation of his igros. I can’t find it at the moment
Sechel, are you implying that only chabad understands the greatness of Hashem and how big a tzadik can be?
Have you ever seen a gadol who’s not chabad daven? Try it out. What you’re saying is incredibly offensive and myopic.
No one has a problem with tzadikim living forever in olam haba or after techias hamaysim. The issue is that there are people saying that a mortal should live forever in the simple sense, just living like you and me without ever dying.
If you want to know how litvishe understand gadlus Hashem, have you ever learned nefesh hachaim? Daas torah? Rav dessler? Sichos mussar? Or are you talking from complete self imposed ignorance?
Halevi, the tosfos yom tov writes a lot about the maharal, who was his main rebbe, yet makes no mention of it.
Aaq, the chofetz chaim made that remark after removing the dibuk from the girl.
Da, i should clarify: my point about malachim learning from people is that it was said regarding yemos hamoshiach, which implies that until that point, that wouldn’t have been the case. And harayah, a malaach taught the mechaber..also, initially the malachim did have the Torah, and thought it too lofty to be given to people, so it seems that they understood it just fine…as for laav bashomayim, that refers to how we pasken, so yes, malachim cannot pasken for us, nor can nissim, etc…
But the fact that malachim will come to us during yemos hamoshiach and not previously, together with the fact that they initially understood Torah, implies that the level of Torah knowledge in that time will be greater than before.
But that doesn’t mean we’re going to be bigger than the previous generations; im guessing we’ll be given that madrega as a matanah, or schar for our efforts in learning….but that’s just a theory.
Ujm’s point, i think, isn’t that rav shach was alone, but rather that userb’s theory of him being a spokesperson is off – i agree with ujm on that. Rav shach wasn’t the spokesperson for gedolei yisroel; gedolei yisroel listened to his opinions because he was the biggest of his generation.
So the other gedolim agreed with him on chabad, for the most part, because they deferred to him; yserb has the chain of command backwards.
If the government requires drivers to have insurance, then they need to reign in the predatory policies providers use. There’s no reason why someone should pay 600 a month, unless they have a DUI or multiple serious accidents. Alternatively, if the government is forcing you to have it, they should provide some sort of safety net insurance, perhaps with monitoring devices, similar to Medicaid.
Da, very well said.
I would add though that chazal say that the malachim will ask yidden to explain Torah to them; it gets complicated how to understand things like rebbe Akiva’s drashos on tagin, or Moshe rabbeinu seemingly not being able to understand shiur from an amorah(or tanna, i forgot). Most say that it’s not information that moshe didn’t know, but rather the manifestation of it, the way it’s explained was different in those doros,and likewise there will be a different bechinah when moshiach comes.
Yankel, the baal hatanya wrote in one of his later igros to allow chasidim to come for help in parnosa because they pushed for it very much.
Just to clarify, there’s we don’t say bershus halevi. Leviim also have no kadima in aliyos if there is no cohen present.
Da, I’ve never heard of any yeshiva bochur saying bershus baalas habayis.
Ujm, i personally think that the gedolei yisroel even in our time could, but one might wonder why we haven’t had golems for hundreds of years… They say about the Gaon that he was going to make one when he was young, but in shomayim they didn’t let him.
Could be for the same reason that the chofetz Chaim said regarding not having dibukim anymore until moshiach comes… He or another gadol said that there will be a time that people will be so overcome with materialism that they’ll beg to see something supernatural such as a dibuk.
And that’s our time. And not only are we deprived of spirituality and the existence of the non physical, but some of us turn around and say that the world was always this way! Minimizing miracles and supernatural phenomenon as much as possible, allegorizing everything in chazal and even trying to do so in chumash,to make the world as far away from godliness as possible…. It’s very sad.
Dan, you’re referring to the law of conservation of matter, not energy.
And rav saadya gaon said it centuries before scientists did.
I’m guessing there’s parts of the briah that they used, or some sort of dark matter, or any number of things that I’m not educated in enough to talk about.
Yeshiva, we don’t find women being called names that reflect physical attributes, because it’s not tznius
והיו עיניך רואות את מוראיך
Forget golems, we have amoraim making calves out of nothing! The gemara says two of the amoraim would make calves for their dhabbos meals using sefer yetzirah.
Is everything a mashal because you can’t find a scientific explanation of it? When the rambam dismisses magic and demons, he doesn’t say that they’re not true because they’re not scientifically provable; he says they’re just narrishkeit.
Whereas he accepts the existence of angels, and nowhere does he object to the created calves or golems described in chazal. Nor does he reject the Salamandria or other wonderous animals with seemingly supernatural powers.
Dan, there were dozens of documented golim made by geonim, rishonim, and achronim. The only one that has had questions raised on it was the maharals, because his talmidim don’t mention it. Poskim debate if a golem counts for a minyan.
It’s a very real thing.
Allegorizing chazal without a mesorah or rishonim who say so is possible apikorsus. There are many scientific things which are incredible but understood to those who study them, so it is wise to not form opinions on things (kabalah…) Withoit knowing about them, wisking them away with flippant kashos with preconceived notions about what makes something living.
Having such dreams and being even mildly bothered by them shows that you have true yiras shomayim.
Avram, i read he was maskilish too, but i didn’t want to write it because it’s all from secular sources…people claim that many figures were maskilim, or close to them, which are mistakes.
So because i don’t accept their accounts as a given, i chose not to passel a yid who I know nothing about, who for all i know could have been a very good jew. But to call him a leader of Litvishe jewry, as chabad did on their office website, is ludicrous.
Chabad .org calls nota notkin a leader of misnagdim….he wasn’t a rov according to articles online about him; definitely wasn’t a gadol or rov of a community… it seems chabad has their own vision of history.
Notkin, from what I’ve read, helped in getting the baal hatanya released