Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Anon, even in Yerushalayim, the only place karbanos are allowed is the Bais hamikdash – it’s an open pasuk. Before there was one, ot was shaas heter habamos, a time when bamos, personal mizbechos, were allowed. The circumstances changed and the din of shechitas chutz kicked in, as it was always going to. No change there.
And the seforim, and religious jews, call ksvav ivri by the name it was called by the rishonim. Your use of the term Paleo Hebrew just shows what miasmic internet stuff you’ve read.
Nom – let’s be very clear. Would you consider a convert to conservative judaism a jew if they said that they kept halacha, while driving to shul on shabbos, since it’s too far to walk?
147…. you’re confusing modern orthodoxy with mainstream litvishe jewry. Outside of MO, nobody acknowledges “the day of the bones” or the day when Yerushalayim became defiled with unrepentant enemies of Hashem.
Anyways, women (hopefully) don’t see men davening at home. Most women never see their husband with tefillin on, so I don’t think they care very much. It also has nothing to do with being chasidish, as the minhag ha’gra is not to wear tefilin on chol hamoed either, and that’s the most common minhag in eretz yisroel.
Anon, chazal had the ability to make gezeros. Geonim made takanos. No one took away from halacha, only added on chumros or fences around it. Davening 3x a day was a takanah from the anshei knesses hagedolah – that’s not called a change in halacha.
When the halacha is, for instance, to keep a 2 day YT outside ererz yisroel, and conservative say that nowadays you don’t need to, while the gemara was clearly aware of the fact that there’s no sfaikah d’yoma, is changing halacha.
A man not being able to divorce a wife against her will is the halacha. No one changed that din. What the geonim did was make a takanah on top of that din, saying that you’re not allowed to do so – beis din also has that right, because kol mekadesh, adaatah derabanan mekadesh. Same goes with certain forms of kidushin.
A change in halacha would be if someone said that marriage doesnt require 2 kosher witnesses, which is exactly what conservative did, and which is why rav moshe says we’re not even choshesh for their kidushin, because you need witnesses for kiyuma, not just rayah. Conservative saying that women can be witnesses is also changing halacha. An example of a non-change would be to invalidate witnesses for breaching communal norms, where rabbis would have that authotrity.
Re, k’sav ivri and k’sav ashuris – stop reading things online. the seforim do not call it “paleo hebrew” – you got that from some apikores on the internet or wikipedia.
What those heretics omit is that In the gemara there is a machlokes if k’sav ashuris was there from the beginning, and both ivri and it were used, or if ashuris was only for the aseres hadibros, was then forgotten, and brought back during bayis sheni. Either way, everyone agrees that ashuris was not entirely new and unheardof.
and for your claim about there not being “religious rituals” outside yerushalayim….do you think jews didn’t put on tefillin outside yerushalayim? I have no idea what you’re talking about. Karbanos? They were brought on bamos until the beis hamikdash was built; this is based on pesukim and I have no idea how changing circumstances equals a change in halacha.
Aaq, halacha doesn’t change. Chazal use established rules to secure the torah. That’s not a change; they don’t say that halacha says X but we say Y. Conservative does.
Conservatism doesn’t believe in the torah being the same as what was given to moshe rabbeinu. They also believe halacha can change. That’s something all of them, left and right, agree to. And it makes them heretics.
I know of a few such shidduchim, but in my experience, you’ll have an easier time getting a litvishe family to agree to a chassidishe shidduch than vice versa. Chassidim stress family background and yichus much more than litvishe do – you’ll find many BT’s and formerly modern litvishe who have no problem getting shidduchim if they are mainstreamed for a significant amount of time and aren’t noticeably different than their peers. Not so by chasidim, by and large.
Also, litvishe girls aren’t used to the strictures of chasidishe life, and likely will not be willing to take on their standards of tznius and avoidance of things like secular books – granted many, many yeshivishe girls are already totally separated from goyishe influence, but a good many aren’t, and are still frum enough to fit into the Bais Yaakov community. Litvishe girls also do not speak yiddish. They also would not take kindly to being referred to as “her-tzi” instead of their name, or sitting away from their husband when there are guests at home on Shabbos.
I’m not saying any of that is bad, it’s just a different mindset, and those differences can ruin a shidduch.
er, the point is that it’s all torah – there’s no torah ve’taaruos, no torah ummada, no torah v’rachmanus – the expression torah im derech eretz is a mishnah, and rav hirsch used it in terms of torah and being active in the world according to the torah, not as if there’s something else of value OR something else which from the outside influences our torah values. He (and even rabbi yoshe ber soloveitchik) write explicitly that torah is a self-contained continuum, not affected by outside values – rather the torah is what guides us in how to approach anything from the outside.
rachmanus is a torah value, and it is expressed when the torah says to express it, and suppressed when the torah says to suppress it. On shabbos, if one sees a goy dying and there’s no issue of “aivah” or someone finding out and refusing to save Jewish lives in the future, there is absolutely no heter to be mechalel shabbos for him. Furthermore, if a person was mechalel shabbos for such a reason, he would be chayav misah!
I’ve told this to some modern jews, and they’ve told me, in their heresy, that they’re willing to be put to death to save a goy. But even in their foolish notion of self-sacrifice, they miss the point; the idea is that they’re flouting the will of Hashem! He and he alone decides who lives and dies, and putting a jew there on shabbos is akin to putting him behind an iron fence – you might want to help, but what can you do? you’re unable to.
I also disagree with the OP’s contention that Orthodox is the best english description – it’s not. A Torah Jew is a simple term. It means a Jew who lives wholly, to the best of his ability, according to the Torah as handed down to us from chazal, rishonim and achronim. Anything else isn’t a Torah Jew, even if they wear fabric on their heads and put strange leather boxes on their arms and heads.
I should add that i never heard a lot of my rebbeim mention Lichtenstein’s name, but those who did, did not call him rabbi.
Er, fantastic question – mussar teaches us to have rachmonus. It’s a good middah, and there’s no reason not to be merachem on goyim when it’s allowed, unless that person is known to be an active enemy of klal yisroel. To speak to your case, charging a goy interest at a lower rate if you can tell that he’s not wealthy would be totally fine. Charging him no interest… I don’t know of an issur; it’s assur to return a lost item, because you’re showing that mitzvos aren’t important to you and that you’ll do them for everyone, as rashi explains. Here, by interest, are you showing that the mitzvah of lending a Jews money isn’t important by doing it for a goy? Great shailoh…
But charging a lower level of interest is definitely fine.
As to where we should get a moral compass; we call it the 5th chelek of shulchan aruch. One achieves moral thinking by immersion ones self in learning, until his thought process is the result thereof – a ben Torah is so called, because he is literally the son of the Torah… It dictates ever move and every thought he makes. The bigger one is in learning, the more of this daas torah he will have. We can get glimpses of this from stories of gedolei yisroel.
As for Lichtenstein, he promoted haskalah and violations of torah, not to mention Hebrew nationalism. My rebbeim never called him or his ilk by the term rabbi. Rabbi hershel shechter, most of my rebbeim called him rabbi, some didn’t, so i do.
Adl – there is an expectancy to understand the 7 mitzvos. The dor hamabul, sdom, etc…were held to task for not coming to them through sechel. That doesn’t mean that every intuition we have is valid and we need to “reexamine” torah as he held, mitzvos which don’t fit into current intuition of ethics and morals.
My point about mechias amalek is that Lichtenstein “grapples” with how a merciful G-d could command violence, because to him it’s unethical. For believing Jews, it’s not a question; Hashem is the one who creates ethics and who dictates what is right and wrong.
You haven’t addressed my main idea, that intuition is subjective, and constantly changes by time and place.
Christians believe that our moral feelings are determinate in and of themselves; they use this as a substitute for a religious legal system.
Lichtenstein may have earned a semicha, but bmakom chilul Hashem ain cholkin kavod larav, and every time you mention him it’s a possibility of causing a chilul Hashem…
Anon, unlike mr Lichtenstein’s intuition -defined judaism, real judaism has laws. And those laws allow the honoring of bad people for the sake of maintaining Torah institutions, as per the osak of rav moshe in igros moshe.
Now if the money itself is not kosher, meaning it was earned in a way that is fraudulent in halacha, then that money is not supposed to be accepted. It’s treifeneh gelt. The beis halevi says that this is why parshas terumah is next to mishpatim, that only kosher money can be used for jewish institutions.
That doesn’t mean things that your intuition says are not kosher are considered stealing. We have a shulchan aruch choshen mishpat for that. And many illegal activities are not at all forbidden in halacha, including insider trading, for one example.
American, bochurim go to rav tzvi after 3 or 4 years in BM – Torah Ohr is after high school or one year of BM.
There’s a lot of injustice in the world.
But Hashem runs the world, and not a single person can be hurt or helped without it being decreed by Him.
In shomayim, it’s olam hepech re’isi – the world is on its head. Those who looked powerful and strong here, are worthless there, and the meek, simply, humble Jews who were abused by goyim and their own brethren will be on top.
“va’anavim yirshu aretz,” tehilim says…the humble will inherit the world. And it’s them who will have “rav shalom” – not the powerful ones.however chazal say to honor ashirim, wealthy people, because when someone has money, there’s a chazakah (with a LOT of exceptions) that he is loved by Hashem.
emunas and coffee – very well put
“not changing one halacha”
“It charges frum Jews with caring about those who are not Jewish, not observant, or differently observant”
This changes many halachos. Would an “ethical Orthodox ” person rescue an idolater from death? That’s against halacha. Would he return a lost item without making a kiddush Hashem or avoiding a chilul Hashem? That’s against halacha too. Would he prioritize doing business with frum jews as the halacha requires?
That’s just a few examples.
The problem here is that something besides Torah is influencing your Orthodoxy. Unlike rav hirsch, who said that everything is subservient to Torah, people like aharon Lichtenstein believe in Christian “natural law” that Hashem put in our heads to know right and wrong. What he won’t admit is that halacha demands that we suppress even our good midos when necessary (mechias amalek) and demands that we bend our minds to fit halacha, not fake into account what we personally “feel” based on “intuition”
“Intuition” varies from person to person, and from place to place. One country’s culture would lead to one feeling of morality, and another will produce a different result.
Not that Lichtenstein has any shred of source for this delusion. Not one. It’s just his “intuition”.
Ask a goy from 200 years ago and he’d say slavery was fine. That was his “intuition”
Funny how people who are into “ethics” and who grimace at racism and treating goyim differently have usually never spent time breaking their middos and attempting to serve Hashem the way HE told us to serve Him.
Instead they run to help goyim and serve themselves.
I agree that if someone is matzliach in an American yeshiva, there’s no need to go to eretz yisroel. I know many bochurim who did just that – they had a bit of a hard time in shidduchim, but only minor hiccups, because in my yeshiva it was more accepted than elsewhere.
Many boys from yeshivish backgrounds still need the extra shot of intensity that brisket yeshivos offer, especially rav tzvi kaplan, for instance. Many others need a Torah Ohr type of atmosphere. There definitely are yeshivos in EY that cater to bochurim who haven’t found their place in American yeshivos.
My rosh yeshiva told me it was a good idea to go to EY after a long conversation. It wasn’t automatic. I had a strong tzad not to go.
No one says it was great all the time, but there were no crusades, inquisitions, tach vetat, monthly expulsions and pogroms, and no Holocaust.
Galus is bitter. It was bitter among arabs, and it was a nightmare among Europeans.
Avi, of all the twisted rationales given of why most gedolim opposed the state… It’s true that rav zonnenfeld wanted to lift the immigration quotas, but that had nothing to do with his wanting there not to be a state. He and the aidah gedolim all cited the shavuos and holding back the freikeit as the reason.
Yaakov de haan was not always frum. We don’t mention the past of a baal teshuva, and yes it seems from his writings that before doing teshuva he was involved in bad stuff – so what? He became not only frum, but ensconced in the upper echelons of the strictest sector of frum jews in the world. He had zero reason to do that if he simply wanted to do more aveiros…. that’s counter intuitive.
Zionists helped publish books of his, written before his teshuvah, which promoted those sins, in hopes that people would not consider him a martyr because of it – it’s a dirty, disgusting thing to not only kill a man but tarnish his name afterwards.
Saying rav yosef chaim was against the state in order to get the mufti to grant more immigration is like saying we oppose intermarriage because we don’t want jewish money to leave the community. It’s slanderous, and downright twisted.
If yaakov de haan would have remained a mizrachi, and were killed by a kanoi, im sure you would say he was a martyr.
Anyways, about chutz laaretz. Yes, security is needed, but in Israel, the jews need protection *from* the police very often. How many jews are killed in America because they’re jewish? Most years, zero. Some years…the most was during the tree of life shooting.
In israel? Jews are threatened everyday, terrorist attacks happen every year, and rockets are blasted into jewish neighborhoods every week. Israel has to spend more on defense than any other country, because they’re under constant threat of annihilation from its neighbors and Iran.
Jews in America don’t have to worry about any of that. And assimilation? Most American jews are assimilated from 2 generations ago. They came here without building yeshivos, and that’s what happens – in Israel it’s far worse. The culture is so anti frum that Torah jews are hated by a large amount of chilonim…the fact that chilonim are slightly more traditional than their American counterparts means very little. They’re not frum, they’re not maaminim…so they go to a Seder and refrain from eating while on their phones on yom kipur….every mitzvah is big, but come on…
And yes, israel holds back intermarriage…in theory. They also encourage it by allowing immigrants who aren’t jewish and then trying to strong arm the rabbanut to allow them to convert if they don’t eat pig and refrain from eating while on their phone on yom kippur.
Many, many jews internarry without even knowing it, because israel recognizes patrilineal descent. At least in America people who intermarry KNOW what they’re doing.
Zaph, can you be specific about what you and her disagree with?
Daas, that’s only chumash, and it’s bedieved; the rambam says it’s better not to do it, but if she does, she gets schar. For anything else, the rambam doesn’t say that she gets schar at all in the context of limud hatorah, and it’s in fact assur to teach Torah shrle baal peh. Other things, like hashkofa and mussar, are encouraged by the Gaon to be learned.
Bais yaakov and seminary weren’t started to fulfill a mitzvah of talmud Torah: they were started to teach and strengthen yiddishkeit. Some girls aren’t strengthened by studying; some are so turned off by it that they resort to television, movies and goyishe music to relax from the stress of academics in high school… In such cases, they are doing far more harm than good. If instead of academics, they were offered chesed projects, mussar groups, domestic skills like sewing, music, acting, etc… Lots of things can be made to strengthen yiddishkeit for women besides pushing rambans.
Also, even in learning practical halacha, there’s no chiyuv of limud in the sense of vehegisa bo, or veshinantam, to sit with a sefer – if they learn it from watching others or by asking shailos, it’s perfectly fine.
A perfect example of how haskalah has infiltrated the discourse of otherwise frum people.
Academics say that the cherem was because goyim had forbade it. Rabbeinu Gershom makes no mention of that. He says it’s because people can’t do it for the right reasons. It’s detrimental to bnos yisroel.
Needless to say, i don’t believe you’ll find even a handful of girls who would consider being a second wife. Even the chazakah of tav lemaysav tan du, that women would rather be with basically anyone than be alone – is “tan du”!!!! A pair. Three or four is not a pair.
If girls came out of high school with a sound hashkofa and a commitment to being tznius, maintaining gender separation and keeping away from unfiltered technology, we can say that the high school essentially did its job.
The reality, however, is that largely that isn’t the case. The girls as it is are thrown into the jaws of the yatzer hora after seminary, with the expectation of entering college and a workplace, often with standards that make them feel that “seminary is over, now it’s the real world, and in the real world, you can do X and wear Y and it’s totally normal”
If anything, they should make seminary far longer, and get rid of the mystique of having to go to eretz yisroel. It costs a ton, because parents pay far more than tuition and flights; seminar girls always need money for things.
Seminaries should be like part time yeshivos; first 2 years are a full day schedule, with no college. After that, they can have college courses in the seminary, or go to work, but there needs to be a commitment to spending 3 hours a day in a structured torah study framework. And not every girl can handle limud hatorah, so seminaries should offer spiritually inspirational activities and speeches, stories, mussar groups, etc… there’s literally no mitzvah for girls to learn, it’s a tool to get them to be strong in their frumkeit – but if the tool doesn’t work, then scrap it.
It’s definitely assur to pray in a conservative temple, or to enter there during prayer times; rav moshe writes this in a teshuva, or several teshuvos.
As for entering for other reasons not during prayer times, there are differing opinions, but it’s a big bedieved. i know of a day camp connected with a very established yeshiva which uses the pool at a conservative temple; they couldn’t find anywhere else to go.
Avi, de haan was sent by rav yosef chaim zonnenfeld. Was rav zonnenfeld attempting to “stop the geulah?”
Who exactly was redeemed? Was it the million sefardim who nostly fell prey to secularism and assimilation, while speaking hebrew? Was it the Yemenites whose payos were chopped off and shipped to wealthy ashkenazim? Was it the jewish women who were almost drafted and brought to an army that is the world’s most immodest and znus-promoting?
Jews are a lot more redeemed, if anything, in America, where the government does nothing to impinge on our rights to practice yiddishkeit, we don’t live in constant fear of deadly terror attacks, surrounded by hostile neighbors(minor antisemitic incidents notwithstanding)
Jews are statistically the least safe in Israel, and their rights to practice yiddishkeit are the most tenuous there, totally dependent on which parties are in power at any given time. The only other places which make Jewish life hard are European countries that ban shechitah, but there are ways around it, such as importing.
Yaakov de haan was originally a mizrachi, so it’s no surprise that avi will accuse him, a martyr, killed while on a mission from the gadol hador, as selfishly motivated.
He defected from mizrachi after seeing the sham of its ideology and the many flaws of its leadership.
Afterwards, to cover up their murder, zionists planted slanderous claims about his personal life. There’s no way that the aidah charedis would have accepted him as a member if he was involved in the things they accuse him of, which the zionists claim he didn’t hide. Rav zonnenfeld would have appreciated his help, but wouldn’t have accepted him the way he did if such things were remotely true.
Rav Moshe not only “disagreed” with personally observant jews who took jobs in conservative temples, but once spoke about how they’re destroying yiddishkeit, and asked “farvoos? Farvoos?’ and yelled “fahr gelt!”
Conservative temples paid a ton of money; it was very difficult to make a living as a pulpit rabbi in those days.
Rabbi Avraham talansky, who was in torah vodaas in the times of rav shlomo heiman, told me that he knew a lot of talmidim who became conservative rabbis, and that none of them were anything special in learning.
Nom, do you believe that mechitzos are required by halacha? Do you believe it’s allowed in halacha to have a microphone on shabbos? Do you believe it’s ok to call women up for aliyos?
Conservative temples did all of these things from early on.
Maybe the “great rabbanim” are all from the “beis medrash lerabanim” aka JTS?
It’s great that the Arabs hate it when jews to to har habayis; it protects them from violating halacha. Does it matter that there may have been jews who went? There’s no evidence that gedolei yisroel ever did.
Yo – let them argue with their own rebbe; rabbi kook and his son, along with ALL of yhe chief rabbis, even the uneducated ones, forbade entering bar habayis.
A kol koreh (easily available online) shows the zionist rabbis, like chief rabbi unterman, along with gedolei yisroel such as rav shlomo zalman, rav elyashiv(recognized at the time even though he was pretty young) and hundreds others who signed on to it explicitly forbidding entry, and saying that there’s a safek isur kares.
The only official government rabbi who privately (but not publicly) gave a “heter” was shlomo goren, a man so dangerous that rav moshe – the only time in his life – threw him out of his house during the mamzerim controversy.
Goren showed a willingness, much to the joy of the secular, to bend halacha to fit the medina, zionism, and their supposed needs. his being matir a mamzer gave the zionists the false idea that “where there’s a rabbinic will, there’s a rabbinic way.”
And even he only told people privately.
Pretty sure it’s compelled speech under the 1st amendment
Ubiq – my answers are coming; hopefully tomorrow
Efshar, reading tanach without meforshim will make you think that war is great, people were killed everyday, 80% of klal yisroel served avodah zara everyday, “king solomon” served idols in his advanced age, “king david” got a man killed to steal his wife after having relations with her, life is pointless, the jews didn’t know what sukkos was in the times of ezra…
Want a list of how twisted your head can be from “reading” translations?
Regarding Rav Acha, I’ll try to get back to you with a proper response later; I’m a bit busy now
What I will answer for now is your question about the JO – it was a high-quality publication, which many rabbonim wrote for, but it’s not as if every single action done by every agudah askan or group is sanctioned directly by its moetzes. It could be the question never dawned on them to ask. At the time, I don’t think most frum people were at the point where shmiras aynayim was so important to them that pictures of women in publications was an issue.
I believe Torah judaism has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few decades. Awareness, learning, values, be’kamus and be’aichus is far more than it was years ago. Of course it’s nothing compared to the giants of torah in pre-war europe, but compared to what American Jewry was since its inception….the battle went from keeping Jews frum and not intermarrying, to the challenges of a totally committed, knowledgeable Jew.
The divide between the sincerely frum and the rest is far greater than it used to be. Most frum jews had a TV when the JO was at its peak; they were seeing women, and untznius women, everyday. Not to mention the mixed kiddushin, etc..
Ubiq – great question; the meforshim discuss it at length.
The simple answer is that there’s a difference between situations which lead to issur in and of themselves (i.e. yichud, or in our case, shmiras aynayim) and activities which are mitzvos (mesamayach choson vekalah)
A deeper answer is found in likutei moharan, which discusses the different types of yatzer horas of different types of tzadikim
Gadol, happens to be that when i worked in an office for a short time, it was gender separate! Many frum businesses do this.
Nom – glad we can occasionally have a level headed discussion; sorry if i upped the temperature unnecessarily.
Re, kedushah meaning separation; see Rashi on “ayeh hakadesha asher ba’ayin”, rav hirsch in chorev discusses the definition of kedushah this way too; i can find mekoros if necessary.
The gemara about abayah is sukkah 52b; rava is not there, i made a mistake.
As for what I’m trying to say – I’ll clarify. Of course it’s not a good idea to look for nisyonos or to get one’s self to notice things unnecessarily. The baalei mussar say that if you’re walking on the street and constantly thinking about the nisyonos of shmiras aynayim, you’re likely to fail – being masiach daas from it is very important.
But I’m not saying not to be masiach daas. I’m referring to a cavalier attitude many have which is that they can look anywhere and not violate halacha, because they’re mature enough to control themselves. To that, i brought gemaros that no one can say that they can control themselves, and therefore they must keep themselves away from nisyonos as much as possible. When actually confronted with the yatzer hora, the game plan is like you said, to ignore it.
When I said that we’re supposed to be repulsed by bad sights, it’s something that happens by itself when you’re distant from them. When i spent the entire summer in camp, and hadn’t been around goyim for so long, it hit me much harder when i came back to the city – that’s a level of sensitivity and kedushah. That doesn’t mean i drove myself crazy and tried to notice everything; it’s a madrega that happens memaylah.
As for news site ads; i don’t see them, i have a pop up blocker and my filter cuts out most of them on the page.
Nom, you seem very casual about admitting conservative and other “branches” of disbelieving jews into the valid Torah camp.
There are more orthodox vs. conservative synagogues now than there were 20, 30 years ago – the fact that most Jews aren’t Orthodox seems to mean to you that there should be some validity in non-orthodox jewish movements.
For the record, you believe that there is a type of legitimacy in conservatism, even though they do not believe in the ikkarim and constantly change halacha?
Perhaps you’re a hybrid of saul lieberman and neo chabad wrapped in one package. If anything, it’s outliers who still ponder the words of shmuel david luzzato, shlomo Yehudah rappaport, Abraham heschel, etc…who are the tiny, insignificant minority, falling into obscurity amid the towering tidal waves of normative Torah spreading throughout the world.
Ujm, the mainstream frum newspapers do have rabbonim who are consulted. The problem is that no daas torah can control and invest time to read every word printed in every issue.
Some are better than others, in how much they ask daas torah. Some are following illegitimate rabbis who are political hacks. Hamayvin yovin.
Nom, it’s open gemaros. When abaya and rava saw the talmudic equivalent of two modern orthodox children, a boy and a girl, walking together, one of the amoraim said to the other that if we would have been in that situation, we would have ran to be nichshal.
Rav amram chasida’s story shows the same concept.
Kedushah means separation; the more you’re separate from something, the more stark the contrast is and the more powerful the yatzer hora is.
When someone simply doesn’t notice pritzus, it’s not due to some gevurah or self control…. it’s the opposite, he is as a thin tree, swayed as soon as the wind of ta’avah passes over him, enslaved to his yatzer so much that he mistakes his chains for freedom.
The chofetz chaim’s granddaughter retold how once when the holy chofetz chaim was in a meeting with rabbonim, she was pacing back and forth in the adjancent room. The chofetz chaim rebuked her, a child of around 10 years old, saying “do you think we are malaachim?”
If something repulsive doesn’t repulse you… it’s not something to be proud of. Truly ehrlich jews avoid being in places or situations which require them to have nisyonos in shmiras aynayim.
It is the rasha who says that he can go down a road with pritzus and just not look – that’s exactly the term the gemara uses, according to the rashbam, to describe such an arrogant individual.
Drop the academic books and open a mussar sefer. And learn it for mussar, not for intellectual stimulation. Stop looking with what you think are neutral eyes into a world that you understand so superficially.
the ramchal was an exception, and was accepted shortly after his petirah. The Gaon greatly magnified his standing, as well.
Most other leaders of the torah world, from the nosei keilim, to rav akiva eiger, chasam sofer, gaon, etc…were directly connected to those above and below them.
You “ban” your wife from talking to another woman because you disagree with her husband?
I pity your wife.
The holier one is, the more sensitive he is to all matters of kedushah and shmiras aynayim.
When i was becoming a torah jew, i asked me rebbe if women suddenly dressed more pritzusdig. He said no, they didn’t change – it’s you who became more sensitive to it.
When you’re rolling around in dirt, you only notice it when you get clean.
also, what opinions of mine don’t hold up to “vigorous torah study”?
you often resort to ad hominem(like now), secular arguments or dismissing the sources in rishonim and achronim that you don’t like in favor of unearthed, forged, or otherwise disregarded sources that maskilim dug up to upheave mesorah. I wouldn’t call that “vigorous”
also, the claim that an ideology can’t be right because it invalidates a large amount of people isn’t a very strong logical argument; maybe a lot of people are wrong? weren’t most people wrong during the churban?
the only issue with saying that everyones wrong is that if that would be the case, the omission of protest from gedolim would imply that they are right, and this is how the defense of minhagim – even to the point of dochek – is justified.
But we dont defend minhagim from amei haaretz, because no such gedolim were around not to protest. there’s no reason to defend not covering a married woman’s hair, because the gedolim at the time protested. there’s similarly no reason to justify television watching, because that too was protested.
making kiddush on schnapps is justified, because gedolim did and saw it, and most were ok with it.
so if the gedolim protested against what the majority of klal yisroel were doing, it would only mean that we should listen to them, not from me as its mouthpiece, but from them.
of course, you probably don’t care much about what gedolei yisroel say, and will counter that the rabbi doctors and maskilim were “gedolim” too, and who am I to say who is authentic and who isn’t
to that I would say, that going back to…say, shulchan aruch’s time, there were few controversial figures. the ones who I say are valid were validated by the ones who followed that time period. the maskilim were derided by the same ones who were validated by those previous generations.
no – you meant 5% of Jewish people; that doesn’t mean much, because 90% of Jews aren’t observant.
So yes, I regard about half of the orthodox world as authentic and the other half as having serious, systemic ideological and observance flaws.
So in your world, 10 percent of Jewish people have authentic Judaism, and 5 percent have it according to me.
So?
how many yungeleit have fathers who rubbed stains with saliva off of their jackets on shabbos?
Quite a high number.
Achshar Dara.
takah, do you really think unfiltered internet use, with the sheol tachtis being at the flick of a finger, is the same as with a filter? seriously? do you know a rov who would say that the internet is so bad that it makes literally no difference? filters transform the internet from a spiritual contaminant to a largely psychological one, with spiritual side effects, such as bitul torah.
as to the OP – there’s a reason most rabbonim are not very happy with YWN and similar sites.
I’m not sure what’s sadder, acknowledging an avodah zara day, or not knowing that kol nidrei requires a beis din of 3?
Anyone remember the lubavitcher guy who hung around 13th avenue and had a gematria for basically anything?