AviraDeArah

Raw, the only maamar i need to know is that he thought that a rebbe is the essence of god wrapped in a body. It doesn’t matter to me what other ideas or teachings he had, or how much Torah knowledge he had.

Da….oh where to begin, where do i start…

Separate seating is not a chumra. Rav moshe says any public affair requires a mechitzah mikar hadin, and is doubtful if a wedding is private or public..

Separation of genders was the norm throughout chazal, rishonim, achronim..only in later years did people deviate from it, because of modernity and lack of tznius in general.

Regardless, in Litvishe towns like kelm they had separate sides of the street…the fact that americanized jews didn’t do it doesn’t make a normative standard a chumra.

I will grant that rav moshe calls cholov yisroel in America a chumra, but keeping a normative halacha which had a heter given to it is not a “yeshivish” thing, it’s simply not relying on a heter, Especially when 99% of rav moshes talmidim – excluding notably his sons – held that rav moshe was only giving the heter bedieved, ahen cholov yisroel was hard to come by. Following those poskim – and those who argued with the heter to begin with – can’t be called a yeshivish chumra. It’s rav moshes chidush that it’s mutar.

Tznius – yes, and asheichem yisroel. The chasam sofrr writes that when the surrounding society is lax in an inyan, we are supposed to go to the other extreme to combat it. But most yeshivish people don’t keep all of those chumros…but the poskim are clear, for example, about the 4 inch rule, as well as things rhat are mikar hadin, like slits. Would you rather have chumros in a mitzvah that defines klal yisroel and adds kedushah (ain chiba lifnei hamakom yoser min hatznius..) or would you rather have a culture which teaches girls that it’s a “personal choice” and that they aren’t to be judged if they choose to dress against halacha?

Also, long skirts down to the toes are forbidden in bais yakovs; i don’t know where you get your info from, but it’s probably the coffee room in MO world where only satmar is anti Zionist and yeshiva people are “cavemen”

Neville, while rav roth might have lived contemporaneously with tav moshe, one can hardly compare the two. There just isn’t a comparison.

Learning dibros moshe is like learning the maarachos of rav akiva eiger… Rav moshe was similar to the Gaon in that he did not belong in his generation, and was sent here to hold back yeridas hadoros. I say this not only as a talmid of his talmidim, but as someone who learned his seforim on shas while learning sugyos.

So no, i do not think it was appropriate for those poskim to authorize a communal norm change which went against him and the majority of poskim, including many chasidishe poskim as well.

Neville, it wasn’t just the litvishe poskim, it was most chasidishe poskim and rebbes of the time as well.

Yabia – many rishonim hold that “eflach” and “efarnes” only applies to land owned by the husband. That’s because we find no other such chiyuv which goes beyond glima d’al kaspai, giving what you have, and requiring you to be mascir yourself for wages.

Love how people drop words and phrases out of context.

Nach is the word of Hashem. That’s yahadus.

Da, maybe im wrong about teaneck – i remember when a beis medrash opened up about 14 years ago, run by lakewood rabbanim…it wasn’t there to change the community necessarily, just another “garden state parkway” yeshiva. But i had friends who went there and told me about the state of yiddishkeit in the environs.

I looked up some schools…it appears that until 8th grade, most schools are mixed, which goes way beyond what rav moshe allowed – these kids are past puberty and are going to be very different than kids who are raised bekedushah.

One school, yavneh, teaches “varsity cheerleading” to 3rd graders and puts on a performance of alice in wonderland, as per their website. Tell me, is this a Torah chinuch?

Cat, not eating before davening is an asmachta, one level below deoraysoh; the gemara says it’s based on lo sochlu al hadam, do not eat blood, which chazal darshen “do not eat before you pray for your blood”

The rambam makes zero mention of kavanah as a heter to eat before davening. The shulchan aruch harav introduces it, and of course his opinion is valid, but he does not say you could have a whole meal and eat whatever you want. Many chasidim are meikil on this to an extent, where they’ll have a small piece of cake or something…not more than a kebayah.

Chabad considering this a “minhag” is just ignorance, further proof thereof. But I’m sure you can rattle off at least a hundred sichos about elevated concepts that have basically nothing to do with your daily avodah.

As far as i know, the Lubavitcher rebbe encouraged women to learn all sorts of stuff, but stopped at gemara, because it’s against an open halacha in shu”a, that it is unequivocally forbidden to teach women gemara.

Do you learn gemara because the Lubavitcher rebbe said to learn it?

Nom, spoken like a true Lubavitcher. Lots of gedolim said he wasn’t big in learning, including the Brisker rov.

The Lubavitcher rebbe was not a rosh yeshiva who wrote chidushim or gave gemara shiurim from which we can see his level of learning. He gave sichos in chasidishe Torah (supposedly), which is a lot easier. Being able to darshen does not make you a gadol batorah

Is it any wonder that in chabad, they extol their rebbes memory, supposed miracles, and fiery drashos, farbrebgens, his alleged behind the scenes work on behalf of Russian jewry, etc…

Never heard a good pshat in a rashba from him. Maybe he did write such things, but I’ve never heard of it.

I agree that every Jew should identify with Torah Judaism regardless of their level of adherence to halacha; mitzvos are not all or nothing, but emunah is… Having twisted beliefs is a worse violation than many other sins, so in reality, a believing jew who struggles with his yatzer hora, or even if he’s given up on certain mitzvos, is still in a better place than a “farshita’d” person who keeps whatever they believe in and disregards the parts that they don’t accept ideologically.

It’s like two people who come to court for breaking the law. One is contrite and admits his guilt, asking for mercy and help not to reoffend. Another is a revolutionary who incites anarchy and will not admit that they did anything wrong and that the legal system just accommodate them

Who do you think will be punished more severely?

Nom, sources? The chasidei ashkenaz didn’t write about it as far as i know. And in the gaons time, the tzlach lived in germany and also didn’t write about it…

As for kaiser willhelm; again, source?

And the Gaon is coming from a medrash which says that amalek travelled to Germania

Except of course if they accept the 7 mitzvos or become Jewish, bnei bonov shel haman lomdu torah bbnei brak etc

So… What the rishonim say is an “excuse”

We can’t just pick a shitah to pasken from. It’s a chiyuv missah.

I have no idea where these accounts come from; do any rishonim or achronim advocate rebuilding it?

And bar kochva was supported by the gedolim… but he didn’t try to rebuild the beis hamikdash in any event.

125 – the rishonim, who teach us the halacha, say that we do not know where to put the mizbeach. Therefore, for that reason alone, we cannot build the beis hamikdash.

And i have no idea who you’re talking to in yeshiva who has never heard of a yerushalmi or sifri – literally every single guy in my yeshiva after 10th grade knows what that is.

Neville, i wasn’t intending to blast baalebatim per se, rather the idea that the way daf yomi is learned has any connection with knowing “kol hatorah kulah.” It’s a bizayon hatorah to say that people who memorize shakla vetarya know kol hatorah kulah. They don’t.

Now it’s obviously a great thing and mesirus nefesh if a person only has an hour to learn to spend that time learning according to their abilities and energy – actually, that hour of mesirus nefesh is considerably more valuable in shomayim than hours spent leisurely learning superficially by a yeshiva man.

But does that torah mean that he knows Torah b”iyun, where it can be remotely described as kol hatorah kulah?

Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. A good baalabus is not a talmid chacham; they have different roles, and that line must not be crossed. Of course there are working people who are talmidei chachamim, but that’s only if fhey spent years learning before going to work full time.

Anon, who told you that about medrashim? Did you read it online? Because it’s apikorsus. When chazal speak about spiritual matters, we have a mesorah to that effect; they’re not trying to “make a point,” they’re speaking about realities beyond the physical. Check maharal in beer hagolah for frequent mentions of this.

As for why people travel – they do. Ever hear of nomads? There are civilizations that have travelled vast differences. If this is your “kasha” on chazal…i don’t know who you’re convincing with it, if even yourself.

I’ll take the gaons words over that of a person who reads Wikipedia history articles and thinks that they know more than gedolei olam. And the fact that the germans became nazis only proved the Gaon right…what greater proof of that can there be?

Nom, there is a system for dealing with schisms which aren’t in regard to practical mitzvos (even though they always spill over…. Female rabbits(not a typo) always want to violate halacha)

That system is called hilchos deos, the chelek in halacha that some people pretend doesn’t exist. Violation of heresy is as big of a Boston violation of halacha as they come, and is grounds for schism.

Actually, it is grounds for separation more than other sins, as Chazal say “”shaani minus, d’mashchi(heresy is different, in that it draws people in)

Apikorsim who keep mitzvos are excluded from klal yisroel. They lose their olam haba, no matter what mitzvos they keep. They, including feminists, wage ideological war on chazal and everything holy. I do not envy their fate

Mdd, no problem – See “Yiddish, a holy language” by rav dovid cohen

Yisro6, veoraysoh vekudaga brich hu chad hu – we are one with Hashem and the Torah when we are together. This excludes those who hate the Torah or don’t believe in it, or sin proudly.

Mentsch, it’s true that some gedolim have held off on criticizing some gvirim because they think that they’ll become stingy with the poor. That doesn’t translate into a live and let live idea; it’s a strategic, targeted reason for not giving criticism that is warranted. Because it’s not torahdig to indulge in gashmius, whether you could afford it or not.

Da, that was wrenched out of context, and I’m surprised that you cherry picked that one line..i haven’t seen you do that before. I’ve seen you quote out of context when you’re getting information from others, but here you’re plainly ignoring the sentences above what you quoted. He is antizionist and wrote that it was wrong to make a state and that it’s not a Jewish idea – would it have hurt you to quote the entire paragraph?

And he’s not saying that after the fact, that the state is a good thing, or that it has anything whatsoever to do with what religious zionism teaches

He’s saying the majority view(that is, everyone except Hungarian yidden and Yerushalmis) that once the state is made, it’s a Mitzvah to make it as religious friendly as possible, and yes, the millions of jews there would be in danger if the state were suddenly dismantled… He’s just saying the consensus of gedolei yisroel from almost every stream. But the fact that he discusses dismantling it should inform you of what he thinks ideally should happen, absent the dangers it would pose.

People win because Hashem determined that they should.

Halevi, also, there still is merit in discussing why zionism is wrong – because it has left its mark on even very frum people. Many frum jews identify with Israel on some level, and not just in the sense of defending the millions of jews who live there – that’s perfectly fine. But we’d feel the same if those jews lived in france or Italy; it’s nothing special to a Torah jew, the zionist narrative of being a “free people in our land” or having a “jewish” state which is anything but, situated on hallowed soil, creating laws that contravene halacha and speaking a bastardized corruption of the joly language…

That should bother a jew. He shouldn’t be able to identify positively with that or the tamei culture of the state; yet many of us feel a kinship over Israel. It represents us, somehow, even though it’s not torah observant.

So how can something not torah observant be Jewish, if jews are a nation – as rav saadya says – only because of the Torah? The answer is that zionism got in our heads and told us that there’s more to being a jew and the jewish nation than the Torah. There’s “something else” that makes one Jewish r”l.

That’s ths avodah zara of nationalism, and it has infiltrated our world. And talking about zionism helps to dispel this notion.

Read the letters rav elya ber vachtfogel wrote to the author of “the empty wagon” – most of what I wrote is straight from there.

Halevi…where does the steipler say that? He refers to religious zionism as a “deah kozeves” in kiryana d’igrasa, and expressed anti zionism elsewhere. His son, rav chaim, wrote that the state is not a legitimate country and people are therefore exempt from following its laws or paying taxes if they can get away with it.

I think you’re mixing up “it’s ok bedieved” with “let’s work with it bedieved”, because indeed the majority opinion was that it was a mitzvah or at least allowed to cooperate with the government and even join it for the toeles hatzibur and to minimize the damage that the zionists can do (moreso the latter). On that issue, it was basically the Hungarian gedolim and the Eidah which held not to, and everyone else held you could/should.

Anon, then you should say what you mean – that’s a valid point, but Neville didn’t deride it in and of itself, he was mainly saying that in halacha, it doesn’t make sense to treat the british monarchy as a malchus l’inyan koruv lemalchus, etc…a sentiment that is very hard to argue against. If not for my rebbeim praising rav jakobovitz, I wouldn’t defend the whole thing either. I trust my rebbeim as chains in the mesorah.