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Yaap – mesorah is important; changing it bothers people who are concerned for doing ratzon Hashem, and not with fleeting inspiration at the expense thereof.
Same hashkofa, yes, but rav schorr is more outspoken on his own, and rav wachsman usually speaks out only on things that the gedolei hador have spoken about.
This is what I’ve observed; i could be wrong
Lost, who says square is a European Hebrew nationalist?
Syag,i think the catch all phrase you’re referring to is ” the personalities didn’t match”
Not feeling anything is a different story. It begins with the assumption that they’re supposed to feel something, which ia an error and has prevented many successful shidduchim.
I also have no idea what talking to a woman I don’t know about a shidduch has to do with mixing genders. It’s not a social conversation.
Perhaps assuming I’m single also grants a measure of ability in your mind to dismiss my observations on the nature and behavior of women?
square, to be fair, lots of events aren’t mentioned in seforim until they are made into days; satmar celebrates the day that the rebbe escaped the camps, 20 sivan is observed due to Tach vetat, and many other such examples.
The problem is that chabad makes too much out of it, as if it were something that is in chazal.
I don’t bother giving a shmuze to them; it doesn’t work. Instead I give other forms of advice; i tell the boy to do something surprising, and i feed him jokes, etc…, sometimes it works.
syag, you don’t know much about me and my activities; i don’t understand why you are certain that I’m going off of 3rd hand accounts.
As it happens to be, I work with single men, and on occasion, I work with the other side of a shidduch as well. Though I don’t do it very often, I’ve heard the same story over, and over again; he’s a great boy, has great middos, learns well, but “i didn’t feel anything”
Reb Shlomo, when do you think hishtadlus ends? Should a boy have to speak romantically? Should he have to compliment the girl on her appearance? Should he have to go to movies, if the woman he thinks is his bashert insists on going to one for a date?
Hishtadlus cannot infringe on any other Jewish values, tznius being the obvious one. If something is a breach of tznius then it leaves the category of histadlus, and enters kochi ve’otzem yadi.
yserb, ya”t kislev has significance for two reasons; outside chabad, it’s known as the mizritcher maggid’s yahrtzeit, and the day that the baal hatanya was released from jail. Chabad started saying its the “rosh hashannah for chasidus” at some point.
aaq – im talking facts on the ground. take a look at the kind of young people who are working/going to college and not yeshiva under 25. they’re people you would agree are not very religious, by and large. this has nothing to do with MO vs yeshivos – im talking about the products of both in this issue.
syag, there are marriage horror stories in every community; I asked for evidence, because the facts are that divorce is less common, so an equally weighted fact would be necessary to counter the logical conclusion to be drawn from that fact, namely that chasidim are more successful than others in this area.
As for my grouping of ideas as “common sense” – you’re free to disagree. As for where I get my information from regarding women, it’s not assumptions, but I’m not a researcher either – ive been involved with enough people enough times to see patterns, and yes, our girls are more infleunced by non jewish culture than boys who sit and learn the whole day – are there boys who sit and learn who are influenced? sure, and there are many, many girls who have strong hashkofos, but the phenomenon is real.
in addition, what do you think happens after a 19 year old leaves seminary and goes straight to college and work? the same thing that happens to a boy who does that after going for a year to israel after high school, and unless the girl or boy does something to fortify themselves, the influence is extremely difficult to avoid.
I also know many a “top bochur” who remain single well into their late 20s and 30s. One boy I know, who’s phenomenal at learning, and has sterling middos, has an issue because he wants someone who fits his unique hashkofa, despite this not being a very important factor in raising a family or running a house.
syag, something tells me you wouldn’t have a problem with my statement that bochurim need to work on their middos. Obviously not everyone does, but I think it’s common knowledge that bad middos are a major hindrance in finding a shidduch, especially with boys who present themselves as being “my way or the highway.”
It’s also common knowledge that women break off shidduchim more often than men. The reasons for this are many, but the influence of romance and fantasy-thinking has a lot to do with it.
Women also have a picture in their mind from the time they’re young children of what their wedding and their husband will be like; you’ll see girls pretending to be kallos a lot, and that often stays with them.
Boys don’t think much about marriage until they’re almost ready to start dating, and their list of requirements are a lot shorter.
I don’t know what about this is lashon hora or motzish”ra
shimon – quite the opposite, i love eretz yisroel, much more than the european hebrew nationalists who are fine with it being contaminated by sinfulness and tumah. I believe it should be pure and reserved for those who are fit to use it for its intended purpose, to be the gateway between heaven and earth, to be a conduit for shefa to come to the world through our mitzvos and torah learning.
lakewhut – you would need some evidence to prove that lower divorce rates among chasidim are due to divorce being taboo or that women feel powerless; it’s just a way to avoid the conclusion that you don’t like. Until such time, we should regard their methods as being effective and successful.
Rav avrohom schorr is like that
Another hindrance to shidduchim is the fact that women who work for many years develop a career based persona, which is hard to form into a marriage union
Reb shlomo, with all.due respect, a Ben Torah who grows up on torah alone will not feel comfortable approaching a young woman.
So we should lower a tznius standard? Get men and women to mingle instead of having intermediaries?
See tiferes yisroel on the mishanh in r”h about the women congregating on yom kippur and tu b’av – he says it’s unthinkable that such practices would happen in the mainstream, and that this was for people who were struggling to find a shidduch.
I have a better solution. Bochurim should have better middos and women should stop reading romance novels, and tossing away good shidduchim when they don’t automatically “feel ” sparks flying.
People used to get married without even dating, and it worked just fine. Chasidim still do, and they have far fewer divorces than us litvishe who date. It can’t be all wiped away with “that’s because it’s a taboo” – what’s the proof of that?
For instance, if i met someone with awkward hebrew pronunciation who was unaware of many frum norms i wouldn’t ask which yeshiva he went to
“How much money do you make?
Do you own the house you live-in and the car you drive?
Are you married? Why are you not married?”These are questions one doesn’t hear when meeting someone for the first time. Nobody does that. I have no idea why you groupe these together with innocuous things like where the person comes from.
Asking where a person went to yeshiva depends on the circumstances; if you’re talking for a while, it can be brought up, but usually you can tell if someone never went to a yeshiva at all on their lives (most BTs spend time in some sort of yeshiva) before such a question would come up, so it’s not embarrassing.
Damoshe, when something is yuhara the poskim say it’s yuhara. Usually it’s when it’s something excessive that nobody else around you – bnei torah, not ignorant smartphone heada – does.
Aaq, chazal speak in glowing terms about bikur cholim; where do chazal praise doctors? It’s a chesed like any other, and has a dangerous downside, because tov sheberofim legehinnom.
A frum doctor doesn’t feel like he’s mamash doing the surgery. That’s a kochi veotzem yadi doctor. He’s part of what chazal are referring to above; he is a closet kofer.
Or is it just because the secular world respects doctors so much that makes you think that they’re bigger then people who do mitzvos that are mefurash in chazal?
Da – where is this issur mentioned?.
Excessive chumros are discouraged, al tehi tzadik harbeh, but they’re definitely not forbidden.
Also, wanting to satisfy multiple opinions is not “searching” for chumros.
Shlomo – so we agree that the rishonim aren’t arguing with chazal or dismissing anything they say. Great.
The mesorah of the yeshivos, however, does not follow that rashbam, as can be seen in rav aharon’s sefer, as mentioned above.
I’ll agree that i don’t think it’s a shitah that’s so excluded that one would be an apikores for saying so, but i also understand why yeshivos would want to limit such an approach from becoming mainstream, if it’s not the mesorah.
Many posters here – and many people exposed to the Internet in general – find that a few minor things that they learned in Yeshiva might not be correct, or might not be so simple… So they then turn around and assume that everything they were mekabel from their rebbeim is suspect, and question things that are very basic, all the while thinking that they’re enlightened, because they read some blogs from arrogant people who couldn’t make it through a maaracha of rav akiva eiger or dibros moshe.
The rashba and tons of rishonim, achronim, say that even to aegue with chazals scientific statements would be apikorsus; the aruch hashulchan notes that too – kal vechomer midrashim. Sources for that are in rav moshe meiselman’s Torah chazal and science.
You’re playing around very liberally with something that gedolei rishonim and achronim say can make a person lose their olam haba.
There’s also a famous gemara about a drasha regarding yemos hamoshiach, which a talmid said was not physically possible. The rebbe showed him in the ocean that Hashem was preparing this phenomenon, and said that he (the talmid) only believes what his eyes see, and doesn’t have emunas chachamim – whereupon he was turned into a pile of bones.
That was an aggada teaching. Clearly, the rishonim who “argued” with medrash were simply saying another pshat, and not saying that chazal were wrong.
Mdd – if you think I’m a kanoi….i have some rabbonim to show you who make me look tame.
As for the narrative being presented of the supposed two batei din and their supporters/distributors – simple question; where’s the proof?
Lakewood and many Brooklyn roshei yeshiva supported rav Shmuel aurbach; that is consistently being used as a way of spinning political controversies. Show us the evidence; when i read through the narration, i just skimmed the details and waited for a mention of some source to back up the claims – surprise, surprise…not a single one!
The founder of michlalah is not a “yerushalmi with long payos,” that much i know. He was controversial. I don’t know to what degree.
Aaq, that’s not how a kasha/terutz works in any beis medrash. We take for granted that the avos knew such things; avrohom kept eruv tavshilin, though it was a gezerah from chazal.
According to you, yaakov knew that there is a zchus of living on eretz yisroel, but didn’t know that it was promised to him and not eisav with the brochos? It was said to him by yitzchak clearly.
But that’s besides the point; we don’t need the drasha of ki B’yitzchok to know that the brochos, which yaakov had and which eisav lost, guaranteed him eretz yisroel, to the exclusion of his brother.
What does that have to do with misas ha’emes? That he can see a zchus which is….not a zchus, because it has nothing to do with the mitzvah of yishuv EY?
Regarding hours…most secular jews work on shabbos.
Also, do you know how many charedim want to work but can’t find jobs because the culture is biased and discriminates?
Chaimish – rav gamliel Rabinowitz is known as a true mekubal and is accepted by the litvishe and chasidishe community.
I wasn’t bashing rabbi Twerski; i was saying that a parsha book written by a psychiatrist, who knew how to learn but was – in his own words – not a daas torah, is not some kind of authoritative source. That has nothing to do with rabbonim like rav avigdor miller.
I was talking more about AAQs recollection of the quote than rabbi Twerski.
I also said that eisav had lost his yerushah when yaakov got the brochos; you haven’t addressed that. He had nothing to do with eretz yisroel. He was eliminated from it.
The only tzad i can see is that according to some shitos, eisav had the din of a yisroel mumar, which would make him have a shaychus to yishuv EY, but it’s hard to say that when there’s a drasha of ki B’yitzchok velo kol yitzchak…
Yishuv EY according to many is to drive out the goyim – of which include bnei eisav!Likewise, in the hebrew national community, is there a great awareness of אין בן דוד בא עד שתכלה ממשלת הדל מישראל?
Or rav saadia saying that klal yisroel is only a nation because of the Torah? (And not European land and language worship)?
My old MO friends were shocked and appaled that such things were said by “some rabbis”
It’s also not four, but two – the medrash quoted in Meam loez, and something you think you saw from a psychiatrist quoting someone who said something about the Gra.
I didn’t address the quote from rabbi (Abraham Twersky?) Because you yourself said that you didn’t know where it was. So, we’ll discuss it lekishi’tikshach.
Aaq, it’s not a particularly famous medrash. And if you think we don’t know the talking points of European Hebrew nationalists, we definitely do. Everyone knows the “domeh lemi sheain lo eloka” and such things.
I’m not stretching it; the second pshat i gave is a stretch, but the first one fits in the words just fine. He doesn’t say that eisav was nekayam yishuv haaretz. And with good reason; eisav was already excluded from inheriting eretz yisroel when yaakov got the brochos.
I’m not saying any big chiddushim. To say that eisav was mekayam a mitzvah of yishuv EY would be the same as saying that efron hachiti was as well.
Not to mention the fact that yishuv EY is meant to be done in order to be mekayam mitzvos hatluyos baaretz.
If you wish for me to accept your understanding of the medrash, you need to answer those 2 kashos. Which you haven’t. You’ve just accused me of ignorance because I’m from an anti-Zionist perspective.
Happens to be that as noted often, i did not grow up abti zionist, and heard tons of European Hebrew nationalism growing up.
Nomesorah; you really don’t see rhe difference between one who is seeking kulos and one who is seeking chumros? Intention is key here. The intention of someone who wants to be machmir is usually because he’s worried about doing the right thing. When someone wants to be meikil excessively, they are wanting to go after theit taavos or just be porek ohl.
I don’t think people should call themselves “rabbi” if they have no rabbinic related role or if they’re not a person sitting and learning all the time. The title has become so diluted that in yeshivos, it’s a mockery. The Harrys who are in college want another certificate to hang in their study next to their degrees, so goes the narrative.
It’s just a few simanim of shulchan aruch and nosei keilim. It’s really not that big of a deal , but the hamon am laps up the title.
Rocky, there’s an inherent contradiction in your posts. First you say that soldiers’ actions are bigger because they’re metzuveh, then you say that they’re doing it out of the goodness of their heart.
Which is it?
Metzuveh is bigger because he has to fight a YH. The YH is an inclination to go against Hashem, not a military commander. So what YH do the secular soldiers – who don’t believe in a YH to begin with – have that they’re fighting in order to be in the army?
Personal struggles aren’t always automatically the YH. If someone is struggling against something preventing them from being a good soldier and they overcome it – good for them. Is that avodas Hashem when the person doesn’t even believe, or has a casual idea of Him? Absolutely not
Or is it just “soldiers good, better than torah learners no matter what” that’s making you shift and slide between ideas as they suit you?
Not entirely related, but i think i know where you’re coming from.
I think we tend to overstate the role mental health plays in avodas Hashem, to the point where there are people who think that every time a person fights anxiety or eating disorders, that they’re automatically a tzadik. It’s no different than taking care of your physical body; if you’re doing it for Hashem, it’s a mitzvah, if you’re doing it for something else, then it’s just taking care of your needs…
You can also call a rabbi doctor, as the satmar rov said that they are “rofeh cholim umatir assurim*
rocky, do you know why gadol hametzuveh is actually bigger? you should look into it before posting bogus info linking it to frei soldiers.
Rashi says that a metzuveh is bigger because he has a yatzer hora not to do the mitzvah.
Frei soldiers live their entire lives, as do all secular people, completely enslaved to their YH.
catch, the abarbanel is in yeshuos meshicho, when he deals with the ramban’s vikuach extensively.
re, rav hirsch, etc…, they do not say, chas me’lehazkir, that a word of chazal is not torah misinai. Kol ma shetalmid vasik asid….was said at har sinai. What rav hirsch writes is that strictly speaking there is no obligation to LISTEN to chazal in agadata, but that we would be foolish not to.
That dovetails the discussion among rishonim and achronim about what the authority of chazal actually is. Is it a din, or is it the understanding that we are nowhere near on the level to argue with them? There’s a famous beis yosef on it, who says that klal yisroel were mekabel the gemara. Rav Hirsch holds that it’s a din by halacha and not by agadata. That has nothing to do with saying other pshatim.
When achronim on chumash say pshatim that dont fit with every single chazal(there are a myriad shitos in midrashim, and you cant match them all, or even most of them) they are not, chas veshalom, treating chazal as recommendations, and not torah misinai, they are saying torah lehagdil torah vela’adira.
See the first bartenura on Avos, where he says that avos begins with moshe kibel…, to show that EVEN ethical aphorisms and teachings are not something that chazal said on their own, without a mesorah, but rather EVERYTHING was mesorah.
“kofer bedrashos” includes someone who denies techias hamaysim; according to the way you’re understanding this issue, if one argues with the drasha of Az Yashir Moshe, he is entitled to, since it’s not a halachik issue.
This is part of what makes rav hirsch’s explanation difficult; but we don’t change the “pashtus”, pardon the pun, of kol ma shetalmid vasik etc…, based on something rav hirsch said – happens to be that not everything in the collected writings is even from him; there were letters not in his handwriting which his relatives decided were written by him. Truth is that anything outside his published seforim(19 letters, chorev, etc..) I would take with a grain of salt.
Catch, you never find achronim arguing with a medrash; you just don’t. That ended with the early rishonim, and they weren’t arguing fully anyway, as explained above.
Of course we’re bound to what chazal say; the achronim say other pshatim, based on the principles of chazal, because ayin panim letorah, and there’s no limitation on how much you can say in pesukim; that’s not arguing at all.
The ramban’s statement is understood by the consensus of achronim, including the abarbanel, as you wrote in your footnote.
On second thought…it could be that it’s not the zchus of living in eretz yisroel, but rather that yaakov had the status of a yid in galus, because he wasn’t in eretz yisroel. It doesn’t fit into the words wonderfully, but it is possible.
I saw the meam loez, he makes a pretty big distinction between the two. He says that yaakov was afraid because “eisav was living in eretz yisroel and yaakov was living in chutz laaretz”, whereas by kibuv av he writes “eisav was mekayam kibuv av beshlaimus”
He’s careful to not say that eisav was melayam yishuv eretz yisroel, probably for the above 2 reasons i gave. Some sort of zchus, however, there is.
It’s dishonest to pick kulos and avoid a rov’s chumros; following minority opinions all the time, for every question, shows a complete lack of yiras shomayim, and a desire to do simply as one pleases, without regard to what the ratzon Hashem is.
Nomesorah – sure, which is why i said I don’t understand it. My first reaction is that i know some singles who develop social anxiety in their late 20s and 30s, avoid gatherings, and find making relationships difficult. This is anecdotal.
1 – i know plenty of singles who are never alone for shabbos/YT. I’ve heard of it as an issue, but there are people who invite guests…i don’t really understand it.
In Yeshiva we had some old singles, who either worked half of the day or were in Yeshiva full time. They were far from alone.
A single man can join a learning program or get himself involved in community activities. Isolation isn’t really an issue that needs to be a hardship in the frum community.
I don’t know how many family people feel “appreciated” either – as a teacher, i feel extremely unappreciated, or rather i would if i let others’ opinions determine my self esteem
Damoshe – I’ve heard that rav tuvia held that way, too, but he obviously didn’t want it publicized! So don’t publicize it.
It wasn’t just rav moshe; almost every posek in NY assered it.
Funny how some people rely on rav moshe for cholov stam, where he was basically a yochid, but ignore him when it comes to eruvin, in which he was part of the majority.
Of all the things on here that can be called kefirah… Saying that Jews are safer outside Israel tops your list?