AviraDeArah

Many achronim write about a woman who wants to make a shaitel out of her own hair – i believe this is very relevant, because it speaks to the material used, not the method of attachment and the appearance thereof after the shaitel is made. Using realistic looking material has a basis, but making it such that the woman herself appears to be shaitel-less, seems to involve several issues: maaris ayin, and the inability to distinguish one’s self as a married woman, and I’m sure there’s more. Also of note is Avi’s mentioning of rav moshe’s psak regarding divorcing a woman who does not cover her hair. When I learned the sugya in kesuvos I hit on a chidush based on rashi and other rishonim that we don’t find that one must divorce his wife for other iniquities; only in regard to tznius issues that are in the public eye. The reason is, I believe, because the way a wife behaves in public is a reflection on the husband, since it is assumed that had he wanted to, he could have forced her to dress differently. Since most women did not cover their hair in Europe (and america for many years) it had bo reflection on the husband, so there was no need to divorce her.

That being said, I think if a woman appears to not be wearing a shaitel, it would be in that category even if she technically is covering her hair.

Gadol, i don’t think ujm was making the case for moral equivalency of that particular issue, as tznius is more severe for women than men, yet you’re agreeing to his argument that had the gender of the complaint been reversed, it would not bother you – that’s a bias and a clear indication that you agree that one gender can criticize another as long as that gender is female.

Gadol; because not sleeping in a sukkah was one of the many red flags in neo-chabad that the gedolim perceived early on

Melbourne; i referred to them as such because it is a chutzpah nora and an insult for one group to send troops of bochurim and “mashpiim” to litvishe and chasidishe yeshivos to try and convert hapless talmidim and make them leave their mesorah.

I never called the police, we simply threatened to if they did not leave, because a Yeshiva is a place for talmidim and anyone who wants to learn Torah. It is not a street corner where you get up on a soapbox and preach. If you don’t have permission from hanhalah to give a shiur or even just be there, you are allowed to remove them by any means necessary just as you would an intruder in your house

Let’s reiterate – no one’s quoted a single source documenting people who live in eretz yisroel who are orthodox, who did not sleep in a sukkah; not one, because it is unheard-of. Now then, we can return to addressing a lubavitcher. edited

“Yes, it is. See for example Sefer Hasichos 5699, sicha for 1st night of sukkos. See also Likkutei Sichos vol. 29 p. 211. this statement was documented by the Rebbe Rayatz and the Rebbe in their respective sefarim”

I asked if the miteler rebbe himself said this, and i had in mind the rashab, not 4 rebbes later. I’ll take the rayatz’s word for it and accept that the last rebbe didn’t invent the mitelers reasoning ex nihilo. Notice how i asked it in the form of a question, because i am not an expert on chabad seforim at all, and I wanted to know if this had any source. Still, a first hand source would be more pursuasive then something 100 years later. None of this has any bearing on my statements that the miteler had a viable heter and only then would apply kabalistic reasoning, but would never allow people to not sleep in a sukkah in eretz yisroel.

Aside from those two quotes from the last rebbe and his predecessor, you have produced no evidence of a warm relationship between rav hutner, rav moshe, and the lubavitcher rebbe, nor have you produced any evidence of rav chaim volozhiner being close to chabad rebbes – you simply say that you don’t have the patience, or that it is well known and not worthy of addressing. I quoted a very clear proof that rav chaim was not informed of the talmidei habesht’s shitos as seen in shaar 4; you simply brushed it aside by saying that historians (chaim dolfin?) say otherwise…

My comments aren’t evil; they’re just not palatable because in chabad world, you’re used to the imperative to make a “kiddush chabad”(yes that is a term used on chabad message boards, puk chazi). Insulting chabad is tantamount to insulting judaism in your mind, and attacking the rebbe is tantamount to attacking chas veshalom Hashem yisbarach. I personally know people who say that they are still frum because the rebbe wants them to be, even though they don’t care anymore what Hashem wants because of the hardship they’ve endured. No one can judge someone who went through difficulties in life, but we can indict a communal mindset which teaches that one must keep mitzvos because this is what the rebbe wants. I’ve seen in children’s periodicals that they asked a bunch of school aged boys why we do kiruv, and several responded “because the rebbe says do”. I can go on and on about the problems in chabad, but you’ve only thus far answered some technicalities, which i will address, yet the pathology i wrote of you ignored. Perhaps because you’re unable to say openly that the rebbe is not divine and that he does not know your thoughts and does not hear your prayers. You may also not say openly that chabad does not believe itself to be the Ultimate Truth and the only truly authentic Judaism. To say so would be to betray your beliefs, unsavory as they may be to outsiders. The lubavitcher rebbe himself told rav yoel.kahn (i believe it was him) to remove the atzmus elokus line from subsequent printings of likutei sichos. He didn’t deny its “truth” pnly he was afraid (rightfully so) that outsiders would see it as idolatrous. And they did. The chazon ish said so when word came out of atzmus elokus statements ( as heard from rav shlomo brevda)

Saying sholom aleichem and talking by a wedding is something i would do with anyone who i know as an acquaintance, or really, anyone who I just met, because what else do yidden talk about? Especially rabbonim. The fact that this is your evidence ( of course, that is hearsay itself) is very telling. Yes rav moshe received r”t tefilin from the lubavitcher rebbe, no he did not ask for it. He did however decide to wear them. Rav Moshe was exceedingly humble; he also used honorifics with just about anyone, and talmidim have told me that he did so because he wanted his psakim to be niskabel in klal yisroel (leshem shomayim of course, and i mean that seriously – he knew who he was and what his position as posek hador meant).

The fact that the lubavitcher rebbe sent people to him with shailos only means that he held of him (shocker), but rav moshe never to my knowledge sent anyone to ask the lubavitcher rebbe a shailoh.

Chaim dolfin is by no means a historian or authority. Would you consider David berger an authority too? Or is it only lubavitchers that are historically accurate?

It should also be addressed that it is common among chabad to believe themselves to be at present and historically much more significant than they were and are in population and influence. Not to say that they were not significant before the war, but they were dwarfed by the enormous numbers of kotzk-school polish chasidim; Aleksander, Ger, and others were far more numerous, as were belz, klosenberg etc and Hungarian chasidim such as munkatch and sihgit. Even in russia, breslov was active, and the largest number were in Chernobyl-school chasidim, Chabad was and is not part of agudas yisroel, which made up the vast overwhelming majority of non-hungarian charedi jewry in all of Europe. Chabad made up perhaps 8% of charedi jewry as a liberal estimate.

They also link every rabbinic family – especially brisk, for some reason, to chabad, though in my experience they often conflate rav chaim with the brisker rov, and assume that rabbi yoshe ber has the same status in the yeshiva world as the former. In my yeshiva, whenever the missionaries would show up on yat kislev to share their “chasidis” with us (we weren’t interested and we’d often show them exactly where the doors were and threaten to call the police for trespassing), they would often talk of the one or two rebbeim who were chabad in the many years of the yeshiva; the whole world revolved around chabad – only their Judaism mattered and only their constituents were full “fulfilled” or “whole” Jews (sound familiar? Jews for J anyone?).

Rav chaim volozhiner was not “close” with chabad, or any other chasidim. He worked together with the baal hatanya briefly on klal matters. His sefer nefesh hachaim shows that he was not exposed to mainstream chasidic thought, due of course to no fault of his own (many achronim were critical of kabalah, because they were not exposed to it in full). Take for instance shaar 4 in the beginning where he says that chasidim think that Torah lishma means to think about Hashem the whole time – I’m sure there were chasidim who spoke like that, but that is not the way the rebbes actually held.

To say they were close is completely false. To say that rav Moshe feinstein and rav hutner were “close” with the lubavitcher rebbe is also false. There is no end to the amount of attempted association that goes on in chabad; they think that literally everyone in the Torah world is just shy of being a chabad chossid – everyone has some relative, talmid, rebbe or neighbor’s son’s mechutin who was chabad.

Gadol – why get married only to have a chiyuv to divorce a wife for breaking hilchos tznius without getting a kesuba? That’s the din…

A marriage built on pritzus isn’t going to last; tznius provides the bedrock foundation for a healthy married life. I agree that discounting eligible women is wrong, but would you consider them eligible if they were not shomer shabbos? What about if they binge watched all day on their phones? Halacha determines these things, not our western-washed minds.

Or is it just a “personal choice”?

Why are we told to “look in the mirror” when it comes to tznius issues which impact us directly, but you don’t mind being the “chilul Hashem” police when it comes to publicly shaming people who are dishonest with the government, or men who supposedly hold their ex wives prisoners (not only the men, but innocent family members who live with them)?

Either we “look in the mirror” and don’t oppose anyone who violates the Torah, or we understand that despite our imperfections we do have a responsibility to give tochacha when applicable and at the very least arm ourselves with whatever tools we can against any and all breeches of Torah.

The Torah isn’t yours to defend when you please and turn away when it’s a mitzvah that you don’t particularly care about.

Yserbius; would you refer to aliyah leregel in such a pejorative as well? Chazal discuss both davening by kevarim and pilgrimage to one’s rebbe; I am not anywhere near breslov, but I find that offensive.

As far as i remember, the rebbe mentions that most tzadikim can handle whatever the ohr makif bina is, and most people aren’t masig it at all, and that the miteler was unique in that he was masig it, but couldn’t handle sleeping in the sukkah with it.

To say that the chasidim are all farbunden with (one of) the chabad rebbes so that whatever heter he supposedly have would apply to them is halachikally laughable… I’m aware of such explanation when discussion davening late, or copying other established chasidish practices. Yet chasidish poskim go to great lengths to try and substantiate these practices as halachikally valid, not using kabalah to dismiss halacha. One of the best defenses is that a rebbe and his chasidim will spend a lot of time lreparing for davening, be it learning, mikvah, etc, and that’s considered as if they started davening on time.

Yet if he (the miteler) had no halachik, torah laav bashomayim hi heter, he would have been moser nefesh and done what he had to do, of this i am sure. Moshe rabbeinu brought the Torah to Earth, and no longer could it be niskayam according to the specific avodah and middos of a given tzadik as before; yaakov avinu married two sisters, because he understood the ratzon Hashem in that specific situation was such that he was permitted to and even obligated to do so.

After matan torah no such vehicle exists; ain lonu shiur rak hatorah hazos; hanistaros lashem elokeinu vehaniglos lonu…our job is to fulfill dvar Hashem zu halacha.

It seems to have been ignored, but I’ll reiterate; the miteler rebbe and tons of other gedolim did not sleep in a sukkah in Europe because it was cold. Very cold. Mitztayer patur min hasukah-type cold. The last rebbe was bothered by why he did not sleep in the sukkah yet was very makpid on achila and shtiah. He gave a non-halachik answer, which he then applied to cases such as eretz yisroel, of which no one ever before or after has posited. Poof! We delete a mitzvah deoraysoh.

The fact that rav chaim volozhiner and others didn’t speak about what he did is misleading on two fronts. One, why would we assume that rav chaim had to address every single concern he had with chasidim? He expressed his opposition on the major issues very clearly in nefesh hachaim. The fact that he didn’t mention something is as much of a proof that he agrees to it as one who sees a rov walking in the street and passes by a hot dog stand; he doesn’t scream out “treif!” so we can assume he holds it’s kosher.

On the 2nd front, as i keep saying….he had a normal, by the books heter tbat virtually everyone used – He. Was. Cold.

Every single community in EY slept in a sukkah ka’halacha.

Philosopher; while fauci will not want to admit funding gain of function research in China, that’s due mainly to optics. I think there are legitimate purposes for such research, such as how to respond to such mutations should they arise in viruses that are common, such as rhinovirus, flu, etc… experimenting on coronaviruses(which are common viruses) to see what would work in treating such mutated strains is perfectly legitimate.

Of course, negligence in containment of such dangerous materials is intolerable, and i think it’s in this point that fauci knows he is at least partially responsible; the atheist chinese have little regard for human life and in true marxist fashion value the state above all. No American should have trusted china to do such things.

I think the other issues you raise are not very compelling; people predict things all the time and often they are right – bill gates guessed something would happen and it did – there have beeb pandemics for millenia and guessing that it will be bad due to widespread travel is not a very big stretch. I’m sure there are tons of things bill gates predicted which didn’t come true.

Re, faucis wife – nepotism and getting tapped for jobs due to protektzia might not be savory, but it’s politics as usual…. I don’t see a red flag vis a vis covid in that at all

I teach a class of elementary school boys, and I was reminded of this thread today when one of my talmidim said that his father told him that there’s a piece of God inside him. “Like a tiny little piece, like 1 out of 10 million gazillion bajilian”, were his words. I don’t know if the father told him that interpretation, or he understood it that way on his own. Either way, the kids could tell that the rebbe suddenly got serious; I explained to them very carefully that Hashem is indivisible, totally One without any way of quantifing him, even if we say he’s a bazillion gazilion times bigger than what we can imagine – if it’s putting Him into numbers, it’s not Oneness.

Also, Avi, martin luther king jr is not a posek; if Avi weiss takes his ques from him philosophically, that’s his decision, but it would not allow him to break American law in his protests according to the opinions that a jew must follow American/civil law aside from money. Actually, breaking the law in protest of the government might be assur according to everyone, because it is a rebellion against the malchus, which aside from the possibility of prompting the perpetuation of the disloyal jew canard, is a great chutzpah and kafias tov since we benefit so much from America.

Moshe – i understand what you’re saying, but the term as used by fashion-people refers to choser-tznius things

In addition, most European communities did not sleep in a sukkah due to the cold – that’s a fact that the rema and other achronim make very clear. So while the rationale might change, we do have an outstanding precedent of yidden in chutz laaretz almost universally not sleeping in their sukkos. Once that stated rationale is minimized(depending on the year…there have been many years that i have not slept in a sukkah because i was cold), kt is a lot easier to justify continuing the practice of almost every European immigrant, including many esteemed rabbonim and rebbes who did not sleep in a sukkah in America. I’d hardly call that an abrogation; it’s very, very similar to the bach’s heter for chodosh. His rationale no longer applies, and it is very easy to be machmir on yoshon, but we are not mocheh on those who maintain the established – albeit hard to defend – minhag of being meikil.

The other concerns are the issue of safety; it might be a sakanah for people to sleep in vulnerable sukkos inbetween houses; while we never hear of break ins or chas veshalom worse, I understand people who are choshesh that they might be in danger in such a circumstance. That would not permit people who have backyard, terrace sukkos, or the like.

“der velt freigt farvos nisht; m’darf fregen farvos yah” – brisker rov

There were/are gedolei yisroel who were careful to keep every law, even things like Jay walking

Almost unfailingly, every time tznius is discussed there are some people who mindlessly resort to the refrain of “just don’t look!”. Disregarding all tenets of lifnei iver, and responsibility that women have not be walking stumbling blocks for men, this sentiment is the battle cry of the miseducated and the excuse for wholesale abrogation of halacha. When personal feelings enter halachik conversations, the results are a hysterical cacophony of comfortable preconceived notions mixed with a stubborn rejection of rationality and evidence.

But of course the aruch hashulchan starts out his piece by saying “by our great sins most women do not cocer their hair”, indeed it was part of the haskalah driven sinfulness that was enveloping pre war yiddishkeit in Europe

Avi, while not mentioned by rav moshe, the rationale seems to apply and is something of a kal vechomer; pas palter has an extremely solid foundation of heter, with communities being meikil for literally thousands of years, yet we’re taught to take on this chumra for the aseres yemei teshuva….one would think that if someone is meikil on a similar derabonon food shailoh (without the historical precedent of the former) it would follow to be machmir during the aseres yemei teshuva, wanting to show Hashem that we want to improve and grow.

As good of an idea as it sounds, have any gedolei poskim advocated for it?

Reb Eliezer; the mirsas he says makes it an anan sahadi – i left out the “why”

Despite their disagreements, the satmar rov said that rav moshe was “mara de’asra” of America – his psak isn’t just one of many; it has defining characteristics; rav moshe’s influence was almost universal

Ujm – klal yisroel accepted on themselves to keep glatt in America (many in Europe did not), as part of strengthening kashrus…cholov stam by contrast was accepted in most yeshiva communities, with the exception of giving it in yeshivos as per the psak of rav moshe. The chazon ish is said to have been maskim to the heter as well. Eating non-glatt would be a total pritzas geder, whereas cholov yisroel was not universally accepted. In out of town communities, the majority of yerei’im veshlaymim dl not keep cholov yisroel (this is changing in places with larger communities, such as baltimore)….the comparison is off in my opinion.

Having known many fine lower east side kolel families, talmidim of rav dovid zt”l who eat cholov stam, I can’t judge people who are maikil, though if someone is maikil in cholov stam, he should be following a rov like rav dovid (they are in the minority) who do not hold that it is an important chumra in every aspect, and not shop around for convenient opinions. I personally am makpid on cholov yisroel, as my rebbeim held to be.

“I think this is more a generational issues vs a hashkafa issue”

I think this is very clear; then he turned around and said he’d ask vis rabbi if he should wear a yarmulkah