AviraDeArah

The chazon ish, and most other gedolim, held that the dangers of not voting and the resultant chilul Hashem/shmad outweigh the problem of associating with reshoim and the chilul Hashem of doing so.

Aaq, rashi is telling you peshuto shel mikra. His perush is synonymous with the teitch of the pasuk. He was not writing a politically inspired work. Keep your wisenshaft heresy to yourself

Zushy, claiming that the satmar rov didn’t hold that zionism violated the 13 ikkarim is demonstrably false. It’s literally all over the first Chelek of the sefer. It’s his central theme. He uses it to explain why it’s not brought in shu””a or rambam beferush. That has nothing to do with seeing his statement inside or not.

Aaq, there’s nothing wrong at all if they decided to dress like they did in Europe, but that’s not yabias point. He presumably wants them to dress Western and modern, and is only upset about them dressing European.

Mdd, i didn’t set out to bash jews who don’t dress noticeably Jewish, i was trying to show that sefardim dressing European doesn’t mean that they’re losing their mesorah, because the alternatives were either to dress like they did in arab countries or copy the irreligious and less religious Israeli population, who dress like Western goyim. I mentioned that there are ma’alos in the way ashkenazim (and sefardim in their countries) dress, that it’s a constant reminder that they’re Jewish, etc..

Then you said that it’s enough to wear a yarmulke and tzitzis, to which I’m replying that if sfardim would dress the way yabia thinks they should, they often wouldn’t have any reminders of their jewishness at all, because people in the modern world often completely hide their jewishness.

Research isn’t an active pikuach nefesh action… you’re not medakeach es ha’gal. That shailoh was asked by someone whose shabbos is spent reading the new york times.

Begin was the closest thing to a frum PM that Israel ever had. He was very pro-torah, and reached out to the gedolei yisroel. He also kept shabbos and Kashrus. From what I’ve read about him, I think he would have supported sefardim maintaining their religious traditions, why wouldn’t he?

Yabia, you’re focusing in on one rabbi that i mentioned. He wasn’t just meikil, he was capitulating to zionism. Ashkenazim had that too with shlomo goren. Sefardim had it, although he wasn’t as bad, with one of their chief rabbis. Rather than let his opinions fall into the obscurity they’re supposed to, eliezer melamed based his fake conversion standards on him.

Rav ovadia was a far greater figure than him anyway, and he was very meikil in general. Ashkenazim had their meikilim too, like the naharsham, for instance.

Name one p’sak from rav ovadia that was machmir like the ashkenazim – you won’t find it. What you will find, is kulos where he allows sefardim to eat in ashkenazi restaurants who rely on the rema for bishul akum – he bases it on being metztaref the yesh omrim in shu”a that beis yisroel is entirely mutar.

So dressing like secular and modern Israelis is fine, but dressing like the people who they identify with(more religious) is a problem and European influence?

Jeans and t-shirt is Western influence, so why is that ok but European isn’t?

And no, it’s not ehrlich to dress like a hippie or chilled out secular person based on a culture of pleasure seeking. They look indiscernible from goyim, and the style isn’t modest. Are there any ehrlich people who wear jeans and tshirts? I’m sure there are, but they’re lack8ng the ma’alos of constant reminders of their jewish ess, and the modesty that accompanies our choice of dress.

Your problem is that they’re more religious, and i think you’ve all but admitted that.

Yabia, most shas voters do not wear black hats and jackets;m, and the gedolim wear the “glima”. I cannot believe that your accusation of being litvishe boils down to the clothing many members wear and the embrace of kollel life.

The kolel system is not ashkenazi or sefardi. It was done, according to the ran( a sefardi!!) In bavel, but was not the norm in either Europe or the sefardi countries. All sectors of klal yisroel recognized the practical need for kolel on some level, some push it more and some less, but there’s nothing ashkenazic about it.

Would you rather the sefardim wear Arabic clothes like they did before moving to Israel? Or would you rather them dress like Israelis in jeans and t-shirts? Would that make them more sefardi? Why not just dress like the most ehrlich people?

It would be great if sefardim went back to the way they dressed in Iraq, etc… But they didn’t. Before rav ovadia, they didn’t learn much and dressed like modern dati people, so which is better?

Also, most sefardi rabbonim were very against shaitels; that’s one way you can see their external differences.

No wonder you held off on answering; you knew how empty these claims are.

What exactly is not naturally sefardi about anything associated with shas? Sefardim don’t seem to look at it that way, as almost all of them support it. As far as i know, the only prominent sefardi rov who didn’t support shas is rav yaakov hillel.

They build yeshivos which teach sefardi mesorah; i have no idea what you can possibly mean by saying that they’re not sefardi.

Maybe because you think that “natural sefardi” equals an almost illiterate farmer who kisses the hand of the mekubal? Pity if you think that’s all a sefardi person is capable of.

Dov, that davening regimen is in extreme circumstances and definitely not meant to be permanent. You need to be cautious with that. Also, pesukeo dizimra isn’t a “chumra”

Damoshe – bribery is assur when you’re a judge. There’s no prohibition of taking bribes for political favors.

Taxes aren’t obligatory in Israel, as the state is illegitimate, according to rav chaim kanievsky.

Rav Hirsch actually explains kiddushin 29b according to the ran, which explains “ha lan ve’ha lahu” that in bavel you should get married first and then devote yourself to learning Torah, because the women were strong and able to support their husbands in learning. In eretz yisroel they were weaker and unable to, so it was better to devote years to learning first and then get married, when the man will have to support. Not all rishonim understood the gemara that way, but rav hirsch goes with it.

Aaq, nobody has a mesorah to follow your favorite 2 sentences from the rambam. They just don’t. Yekkies who believe in working also opened kollelim, like dayan grunfeld. You’re not convincing anyone and it’s just sad at this point. We follow poskim who came way after the rambam, there’s a chain of command. The poskim don’t go with it. Whatever emotional reasons you have for ignoring that is just not useful to anyone else and would result in less Torah, less nachas ruach to Hashem, less yiddishkeit, and more darkness in the world at a time when we need the light of torah more than ever to fight the nisyonos of our generation.

Ujm, what do you think of the hagdara that i proposed?

Yungerman, women who keep 72 are usually frum enough to know that they’re supposed to follow their husband’s minhagim, but i agree to you in theory.

Depends; if someone has the attitude of not wanting to be bothered by mitzvos, then yes, they are less religious. It also depends on the issue; being maikil on talmud Torah, tznius, or other fundamentals, is usually indicative of a larger problem.

If you view your life as something you do for yourself, when you go to work, eat, have leisure time, and find yourself troubled by pesky halachos that get in the way of “your life” then you’re not very religious. A religious person views their life as avodas Hashem. As long as that’s your view, being meikil on various individual shailos doesn’t mean much.

And of course, you’re supposed to have a rov whose psakim you follow, so if you’re doing that, you’re definitely not “less religious”

This is the first time someone has though I’m a woman lol

User, rav boruch ber DID dance with a sefer of torah sheball peh on simchas torah – gra”ch al harambam. He felt that it was the shpitz torah she baal peh. He would dance with both the sefer Torah and his rebbes sefer at the same time.

Also, how is gemara any less the word of God than chumash? That’s very not Orthodox. If anything, a line gemara represents God’s will in the revealed sense, because it’s more accessible and clearer than what Hashem hid inside the pesukim of tanach.

My point about the seforim we learn isn’t that they’re to the exclusion of tanach. Let me clarify – if a person reads tanach, he will not grasp even one basic notion of yiddishkeit the way he’s meant to. He might come away thinking all sorts of apikorsus too, like naaseh Odom, yad Hashem, etc…

What you DO get from learning the seforim, is yiddishkeit. They quote pesukim and chazal all the time, but they’re explaining what those pesukim and maamarim mean, as opposed to the blind study of it alone.

Even with rashi, you’d need to be quite a talmid chochom to erect a Torah worldview from tanach itself; you gain much more yiras shomayim and daas Torah from sifrei mussar and hashkofa.

It’s not belittling tanach chas veshalom, it’s belittling our lowly place in the way we relate to it.

Phil, sorry, that’s just not true. Torah is adus, a testament to what transpired. Torah sheb”p is in torah shebichs”v, as the gaon would learn from a sefer torah and see the entire torah sheba”p, but in the level that we learn it, there’s not one facet of yiddishkeit that you’re going to understand just by knowing tanach. And that’s why missionaries and frei people do just fine in tanach contests while they know nothin of judaism

Most of us have a mesorah of innovation. A mesorah which is specifically to be mechadesh, within the mesorah-given rules and thought process.

yabia – having learned the immeasurable depth of reb akiva aiger and the gaon’s torah, when i compare it with sefardi seforim, i don’t see anything similar, i just don’t. Im sure the gedolim like the ben ish chai, chida, etc…were just as big, but by and large, every other sefer ive seen has been drush or psak halacha, or teshuvos.

i can measure the stature by the content of the seforim. for example, the words of the rishonim aren’t at face value very complex; we believe in their greatness by mesorah and by what achronim told us about them – but we dont need any mesorah to see the greatness of rav akiva aiger and the like; just reading their words shows you the indescribable greatness of torah that they had. that includes the dibros moshe, chazon ish, reb chaim, and many others. sefardim don’t have seforim like that that i’ve seen – maybe there are, but im not aware.

re data about sefardim being not very into learning after the war – syians in NY didn’t build yeshivos. they built a mixed day school and fancy ornate shuls. most of them didn’t end up keeping all the mitzvos; many intermarried with fake converts(hence the “edict”) and those that did keep more and learn more, eventually, after rav ovadia set the tone, built up communities like ateret torah, which are on par with the ashkenaz yeshiva world.

before rav ovadia, a certain gadol told me that the image of a sefardi in america was “eineh vos ken mohl nisht gelernt”

but the ones who were behind ateret learned in ashkenaz places. to this day most sefardi rabbonim in america learned in the ashkenaz torah bastions like BMG, chaim berlin, and especially mir yeshiva in brooklyn.

in eretz yisroel, that wasn’t the case; sefardi yeshivos had talmidei chachamim, so much so that when a certain gadol visited porat yosef in the 30’s he said that the bachurim were no different than in mir or kletzk.

There’s a big difference between an activity which is exercise, and thus healthy for the body, versus games which are fun but not productive

Marx, when you’re walking on a path, you’re not sitting in the spot where the women are washing bekevius. An extreme display of pritzus, such as mixed dancing, is something that’s also far worse than  women washing clothes

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Menachem, i disagree. Being moser nefesh for one’s country in itself isn’t heroic or praiseworthy. If a black man sacrifices for klal yisroel because he thinks he’s Jewish(like kanye west, black hebrews), is he sacrificing for the real klal yisroel, or just to his fake contrived fairy tale?

Same with a totally frei jew – they have absolutely no idea what a Jew is; to them it’s no different than an italian, or spanish person championing spanish and italian causes.