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AAQ – the “Septuagint” on nach is not chazal; it is used by Christians. The targum shviim was only on chumash.
If they called military defense “bitachon hatzvaah” or something, then I would not have objected to that extent. They used the singular word that jews had used for millenia exclusively referring to trusting hashem to refer to their new god, the army(more on that on a different thread).
Neither the rambam nor any other remotely religious jew ever considered agados chazal as legends. There is a machlokes if we interpret “some” as mesholim. A moshol is not a legend. A legend is a folk story, an untrue tale like abe Lincoln and the cherry tree. A moshol is a trueism, a parable meant to teach a lesson. However the term agada is not translatable as legendary; it is from magid, hagada, which means relating or retelling a story. In doing so, the zionists were trying to marginalize chazal.
Kibutz galiyos… if they wanted a word for immigration, they could call it just the misrad haklitah, which is an actual office of absorption and immigration. But to use a term that always referred to bias hamoshiach exclusively is to undermine that belief and say that, like hertzl sr”y said, our redemption is through zionism and statehood r”l.
Ben yehudah and his ill repeatedly wrote of their intentions and kept no secret of it – go look at their writings, instead of imbibing mother’s milk of zionist legend (agada!) without actual research.
Avi – I teach sefardi kids. They live in a sefardi neighborhood. Most of them think, myopically (but they’re kids… that’s normal) that almost the whole world is sefardi, and not just sefardi, but their type of sefardi. Many look down on ashkenazim and have epithets for them as well. I often meet them years later to see them in hats and jackets, “talking in learning” like everyone else. People grow up and see the world; it would do you well to put down the Uzi for a day or two , leave the settlement or moshav and see the rest of the Torah world.
A few examples of how ben yehudah sr”y used modern Hebrew to secularize judaism – bitachon means trusting hashem, yet in israel it means military security. Kibutz galiyos always meant the end of galus, now it is used for immigration; keren kayemes, the term in the mishnah for the rewards of olam haba, became used for the Jewish national fund. Chashmal, a type of angel, was used to become the word for electricity by yehudah leib gordon sr”y…it would be like calling medication “refael”, it’s like saying that we used to believe in angels, now we have science. Agada in torah means a true story, in hebrew nowadays it means a legend…
I can give tons more examples if necessary
My heavens the myopia! French jewry is a fraction of the hundreds and thousands of chasidim who speak yiddish as their first language. Add that to yerushalmis and Americans who give shiur in yiddish(like my own rebbeim) and you have at least half if not more of the Torah world speaking yiddish.
Aside from tzena urena and a few others, there isn’t much yiddish literature of value. And those have all been translated.
AAQ – rosh yeshivos wear kapotes and hamburg hats…you can usually tell right away
Plenty of elements of the yeshiva world have constituency who wear other dark colors besides dark navy/black. If someone goes to a yeshiva which a segment of the bochurim wear blue, gray, or other colors….that was never the issue under discussion here. I also don’t think you would want your sons to dress differently than everyone else; you’d probably suggest changing yeshivos to find a place where they fit in rather than be contrary to what the entire Yeshiva is doing.
I take issue with the insinuation that the reason why a rosh yeshiva did not reprimand you or your boys was because you were paying tuition. If you respect this rosh yeshiva as an authentic daas torah to the point where you entrust your boys to him to guide them and teach them Torah, then you should not think of him as anything less than what the Torah demands of chachamim – sonei batzah, etc…people who are unbiased and not motivated by money.
If you think that all the rosh yeshivos are impacted by money and that money will make you invulnerable… it’s sad that there are rosh yeshivos who are like that, but it is an affront to Torah to say that most or chas veshalom all are such.
Maybe the reason he didn’t mention it is because they were good bochurim who learned well and were bnei torah?
My rebbe Rav Belsky held of dressing “yeshivish”, but would not mention it to a bochur in yeshiva who was not doing so. There is a time and place, and with many people it is a matter of picking battles.
AAQ – I spoke Hebrew when I lived in eretz yisroel. The majority of charedim also do. I never said not to; what I said was that there is
nothing good about hebrew and that a statement that we should drop Yiddish in favor of a language made by and for heretics for the purpose of eradicating Torah r”l is a horrible corruption. I was also responding to the assertion that somehow modern Hebrew is lashon kodesh. I also was explaining the advantages of speaking yiddish and its pure character.Yiddish is far from useless. It is the language that torah was passed down with for a thousand years. It is similar to how the gemara says not to take Aramaic lightly, even though it is a non Jewish language.
When I learn, there are gemara ideas that i can’t explain in English or lashon kodesh; try saying “rashi firs ois” in Hebrew or English, or “bavorn” – there are terms that are part of the fabric of learning that are exclusive to yiddish. I’m sure ladino and other judaic languages had the same.
Your personal feelings are completely clouding your judgement. What would you tell someone who hates Hebrew because their parents verbally abused them in Hebrew? You’d say to suck it up and see the supposed objective truth…..
I’m genuinely offended at the suggestion that a torah language that my ancestors used is useless.
Also, the fact that i can be targeted despite having no affiliation with the state or Zionism is precisely the problem – they have succeeded in making the massive chilul hashem that suggests that a bunch of ochlei nevala and mechalelei shabbos are our representatives.
“They were complicated” – no, they were rotzchim poshim and apikorsim. They railed against Torah jewry while fooling the naive religious zionists into thinking that they were allies at times.
There is no room in klal yisroel for mechalelei shabbos. They have the halacha of a non jew, whether or not they are tonokos shenishbu. Most of the early leaders definitely were not tinokos shenishbu. Halacha defined who has the status of a Jew, and one who is not oseh maaseh amcha is NOT part of us. Judaism is a religion, not a race or nation, as rav saadia gaon writes, the Jewish nation is only such because of its Torah! Our leaders must be at the very least part of the nation and without Torah they are not.
The fact that yiddish was weaponized to negate the Judaism of non yiddish speakers is completely irrelevant, since once again, the language was built on torah, for the sake of torah jewry. You keep attacking the way it was used by bad people to do bad things. Yiddishists used yiddish the same way Zionists use hebrew – they wanted to make a Jewish language devoid of Torah.
Ben Yehudah wrote openly, along with all the “safrut” writers that their goal was to recreate a Jewish culture apart from religion. Zionism sought to create a new jew based on social constructs and the same nationalism that gave rise to Nazism.
“Doesn’t deserve an answer” – read “the empty wagon” for wagon loads of quotes from the progenitors of modern Hebrew. Their goal was to undermine torah.
Rabbi kook calling Yiddish a jargon (which is not really pejorative) ranks pretty low on the list of aberrations and issues that he had. The fact that he associated with murderers like ben gurion or other reshoim like ben yehuda was one of the bigger problems, precisely for the reason that it gives authenticity to such enemies of hashem.
The other reasons for picking a distinct mode of dress, aside from the dignified appearance of black and white, are several:
Separation from goyim – while according to most opinions, one does not violate the letter of the law of bechukosayhem lo saylaychu as long as they are noticeably jewish (yarmulkah, tzitzis) it is still encouraged by the poskim as a way to keep ourselves aware of our separation from goyim. That applies even moreso when going to work; the last thing a jewish man wants is to end up feeling like one of the crowd in an office full of inappropriate relationships, language etc.
Protection: very often, the desire to not make a chilul hashem will prevent a man from doing something he ought not do, because he is noticeably jewish, a representative of hashem.
Status; the rambam says that talmidei chachamim and their students are noticeable in their dress. They look different from the general populace.
Clearly self expression in the form of dress is not a factor in the halachik and hashkafic discussions of gedolei yisroel throughout generations. Largely because for men, it is non existent.
I don’t see any response to my post; just a reiteration of the need to express one’s self and being stifled.
Men, even in the non Jewish world, do not express themselves with their clothing, by and large. Women do. That can be seen by the vast differences in scope between clothing that is marketed to men vs clothing that is marketed to women.
Therefore, if a man feels stifled by the clothing issue, i am saying that it is disingenuous. It can be proven by his lack of self expression in areas that truly matter and are reflections of the soul.
I am a writer. I express myself mainly through poems, songs and short stories. I never even once thought about expressing myself through which glasses I buy: I get whatever catches my eye (no pun intended) which isn’t too out of the norm, and most importantly what I can afford and what looks well made.
In my encounters with yeshiva guys who are upset over the dress code, I have yet to meet one who engages in meaningful self expression. Expression of thought, feeling, inner depth. Music, art, writing… show me one such bochur who understands self expression and feels stiffled by having to wear black and white…. I’m open minded, perhaps such people exist, but by and large it is part of a greater spiritual defect – it comes with wanting to be involved in goyishe culture; movies, music, etc, and often far worse.
Your understanding of the example given of professionals and elite men needs to be addressed. Just because some degenerate,CEOs nowadays walk around with hippie hair and in states of disarray does not change our understanding of true dignity. A princess is supposed to be a moshol, a comparison for us to appreciate tznius. Does that mean that if a princess walks around in shorts that now our understanding of tznius must change? You’re confusing a “sign” for a “cause” to use lomdishe parlance. The fact that we cannot look to social elites as examples of dignity does not mean we change our understanding of dignity.
It seems that you’ve been taught a rather simplistic explanation of chitzonius meorer etc…that the successful people are a cause, or something, rather than a “siman be’alma” a sign, a benchmark that reminds us of the thing itself.
It is very easy to contrast the concepts of “black and white” with cor, and go ,”wow! This seems so much more positive and vibrant”
That is a superficial thought pattern – to go down to the level of such comparisons, what would you make of classical musicians who almost exclusively wear black and white? Are they too, dreary, without color in their lives?.
Dig deeper; always look beyond the surface. Isn’t that what the nodernishe say to do instead of judging others by the way they dress? Is that only a one way street, where we cannot judge by the way one dresses, but it is also supposed to be deeply expressive? That’s a logical impossibility…
Why would one choose clothing as a way to express his personality…
Even among western men’s clothing variety, there aren’t that many ways one can dress. For women, a discussion about where a woman “bought that” can be had because there are millions of different designs… Effort is put into women’s fashion. Women definitely express themselves by their clothing choices and outfits.
For men it’s basically either a polo shirt, dress shirt, jeans, slacks, cotton pants or a suit… Men don’t have “outfits” and “accessories”. Men also generally hate shopping for clothes, buy whatever is good material, looks good at first glance, and move on.
Men don’t express themselves very much in the way they dress, except when they want to be rebellious, feel that the Torah world “isn’t me”, or want to blend in with goyim.
If a yeshivish guy feels stifled by the dress code… Ask them, do they write? Sing? Dance? Paint? There are many ways to express one’s self, but all too often, the answer to all the aforementioned questions will be a resounding “no”. True expression isn’t something that they’re interested in doing.
It’s just an excuse to want to be more modern.
Neither AAQ or Avi have answered my assertions that Hebrew was created with the intent specifically to undermine Torah, or how there is tumah inherently in the language.
The point about Yiddish reshoim, whih includes more than your list (think shalom aleichem and his vile ilk) but it is irrelevant to my point about the roots and structure of the yiddish spoken by frum jews. That is pure and torah-dig, to use a yiddish expression.
I’m not even going to address the purely secular objections to the “ghetto” diatribe. We all know where that will go. I’m a callow “mah yofis” jew and you are a tough “new hebrew” complete with an Uzi, so we’ll leave it at that.
That being said, once the directive from the majority of the gedolei hador was given not to oppose Hebrew (the chazon ish actually said, to AAQ’s point, that a major reason not to oppose hebrew was that if we did, the masses of mostly uneducated and disenfranchised sefardi immigrants would be lost from Torah and swept up in Zionism)
Hebrew is hardly a “uniting” language when its inception caused a massive schism between those who spoke it, and integrated into its ensuing culture, and those who initially opposed it vociferously.
Lashon kodesh is described in the seforim as the language of the Torah. The ramban explains that many goyim spoke semitic languages; hebrew words are found in Tyre, Moav(its name!) And many surrounding countries. Canaanim undoubtedly spoke it, as it was called “ivri” because it was spoken on the “other” side of the Jordan. The ivri spoken by those canaanim was probably closer to the lashon hatorah than today’s modern hebrew.
The state is only a political “wing” of eretz yisroel to those who accept its legitimacy. I am a Jew and have lived in eretz yisroel. The state has not and will not represent me politically. I am not represented by the murder of unborn babies, autopsies, politicians who proclaim “charedim to the ovens”, warmongering leaders who are out for blood, massive institutional chillul shabbos, an army that is a makom znus, toe’va rights celebrations, the brainwashing of tenss and thousands of ignorami to be secular, the kidnapping of immigrant babies, complicity with nazis in saving the secular (“a cow in Palestine js worth more than all the Jews in europe”), anti semitic canards of big nosed charedim leeching the system…
To name a few. Israel is not jewish, despite whatever bones they throw the naive religious zionists to make them think that they’re lro-judaism. A few laws here and there loosely based on halacha while referring to turkish common law as its true bread and butter, misappropriating money from jews one to another as gezel….i can go on and on, but I’ll refer you to “the empty wagon” by rabbi yaakov shapiro for further evidence of the evils of zionism, its campaign to conflate itselt with judaism, and the consequences of the acceptance of that agency that has befallen us as a people.
Avi, I was referring to the progenitors of the two languages. Yiddish was born from Torah life and has many, many expressions that are based on Torah and chazal. The fact that people came later and abrogated it, and poisoned it with foul things does not affect the yiddish that we have today and that is spoken by frum “yidden”.
Hebrew, by contrast, was designed for the specific purpose of “reviving” judaism to be zionism, a culture with a land, language, etc…it was created from infancy with a disdain of Torah.
As per your quotes from Rav Moshe – Rav moshe himself, did not speak lashon kodesh. Neither did virtually any of the rishonim, achronim, or amoraim!! He calls it a “ma’aleh”, and he says that chasidei elyon did not take upon themselves this maaleh. To think that we are above them is hubris and the height of arrogance.
Also, it’s a moot point because… Again, eretz yisroel does NOT equal the state of Israel, and modern hebrew does NOT equal lashon kodesh. Tell me, when the “people of ill repute” talk to customers in Hebrew, is that better or worse than if they were speaking in Arabic? What about gangsters and robbers? Also, the rambams definition of what makes Hebrew holy does NOT apply to modern Hebrew in the slightest, even if it were purely based on lashon kodesh, which it isn’t.
Avi, of what consequence is it that there are communities that do not speak yiddish? Are you implying that sefardim are for some reason, an authority on authenticity?
Yiddish is a rich spoken language with Torah sewn into its fabric. Modern hebrew is the polar opposite; it is lashon kodesh with kefira and foreign garbage sewn into its essence. Its originators were bent on destroying Torah forever and replacing it, rachmana litzlan, with a secular jewish identity.
Speaking a “creole”, as you call it, is based on rishonim and achronim who write that lashon kodesh is too holy to be used as a spoken language. There is a reason why Jews in Bavel spoke a Judaicized Aramaic, sefardim made ladino, Jews living in arab countries spoke a Jewish Arabic, ashkenazim made yiddish, down to our own time, when a newcomer would recognize hardly an intelligible sentence spoken by a yeshiva bochur.
Modern Hebrew was an evil that was left alone, under the chazon ish who famously said that it is a battle that we already have lost.
There is a reason baalei teshuva are drawn to the warmth and passion of yiddish speaking jewry. A shiur is just not the same in English, or hebrew for that matter, but hebrew shiurim are generally more of a “yeshivish” Hebrew. An argument can be made to corrupt ivrit and make a yiddish out of it; as I’ve seen in certain places, that is already the norm.
IYK – I have to admit that I didn’t read your posts about your personal experiences; I apologize for being so forceful in my posts, and I realize I could have hurt your feelings. That was my own negligence, and again I’m very sorry.
IYK – maybe melacha on shabbos means moving furniture….
We have a mesorah for pshat. Rashi first and foremost – I’d suggest learning the actual pasuk with the meforshim before possibly entering the category of megaleh ponim batorah shelo kahalacha.
Before we get uneducated or miseducated posters claim otherwise, it’s nice to see a post that’s not controversial, political or agenda-driven. Asher bachar banu mikol ho’amin. Am segulah. Bn’i bechori yisroel. Yisroel asher b”cha espa’ar. The entire shir hashirim.
The drive for imagined equality makes some Jews uncomfortable with the idea, but like anything else, when you learn something deeply, beneath the surface, you uncover the truth.
Ask yourself, Jews who are enamored with civil rights and who can list more senator names than dafim in gemara – besides the visceral knee jerk response to the idea of exclusivity and superiority, what is it that makes such ideas evil? Is it not the resultant tyranny and oppression that goyim have shown, chiefly to us ourselves, in its wake?
Have Jews, even when given the chance, ever been tyrannical and oppressive? The only ones among us that have oppressed anyone have been the Zionists. They have tried and are pushing with all of their might to oppress Torah. Palestinians are murderous, but one must wonder what their temperament would be if the government had listened to the gedolei yisroel and given back most of the post-67″ land..there definitely were instances where the zionists were brutal to the palestinians; one need not be from the fanatical branches of neturei karta or Peace Now to say this.
This is coming from the “enlightened” Jews who support the civil rights of members of the to’eva community, yet seek to oppress whoever they don’t like.
The peace loving, true Jewish “supremacists” have never and will never oppress anyone.
Oy… potching being taken to be the “center of education” is like saying that sour candies are the staple of a child’s diet
My point was that the Rov held it was ok to potch – I made no claim as to what he holds about frequency, circumstances, degree, or anything else.
It should go without saying that potching is very rare for any semi-competent parent, and is the “center of education” only in horrifyingly abusive homes.
In the biography (muller) of the brisker rov ztvk”l, a story is recorded of a motzi shabbos when rav berel ztvk”l was a child, and did melacha before saying boruch hamavdil – the rov said “you were oiver a derabonon” and gave him a petch
It’s a kulah because it’s a shailoh of hefsek between netilas yadayim and hamotzi. Those who allow is hold that since the kiddush is le’tzorech the seudah, it’s not a hefsek.
Participant; I’ve been a guest in many yeshivishe houses that on occasion will, to save time, make a yekkishe kiddush. It could be that almost no one in your community does that, but I’ve seen it several times. That’s why Rav Belsky spoke about it.
A common discussion among bnei yeshiva is the absent minded ilui versus the punctual “shteiging” bochur. Some people get so engrossed in learning that they will not keep sedorim at the right times. Others are extremely focused on the format of what they are supposed to be learning and when they’re supposed to do it. The pitfalls of the former are that one’s Torah can become disorganized and confused, with pieces here and there all scattered about. The dangers of the latter are that the formatting and organizing can sometimes become not the tools to the end but the main thing itself; endlessly preoccupied with organization can take away one’s focus.
Ultimately, like any issue of specific avodas hashem, introspection and a good moreh derech are key to figuring out how to grow.
I believe that most of the trauma that people present in their adulthood which is attributed to parental or parochial punishment, is when such punishments are meted out in a state of emotional urgency or anger. Halacha dictates that when a parent or rebbe is angry or otherwise emotionally unstable it is strictly forbidden to strike a child.
Aside from some rabbonim who believe/believed that corporeal punishment is not effective in our society, due to the increasingly irreverent and disrespectful nature of children who grow up in the Western world, are we to refer to chosech shivto sonei b’no as child abuse? Did Rav Wolbe and Rav Pam (the only prominent rabbonim I’m aware of who said to completely cease all patching) refer to it as such? Did they say that if you see a parent or a rebbe hitting a kid the yiddishe way, meaning not in anger, and not severely – which halacha mandates or at the very least allows – you should report them to the authorities as a child abuser?
They did not. They lived Torah. They didn’t take their attitudes and values from Western culture.
Participant; I don’t see the need for sarcasm – many people avail themselves of this kulah and it’s not discouraged by and large, so it doesn’t go without saying that he was opposed to it – actually he’s the only posek I know of who says this.
Your remark might have been warranted had I said that he was against people adopting the 3 hour minhag, because that would be very obvious that just because he’s encouraging yekkies to keep their minhagim doesn’t mean he is saying that they are acceptable to everyone else.
My rebbe Rav Belsky zt’l was a strong proponent of maintaining yekkishe minhagim; we had several bochurim in yeshiva who came from Washington heights or whose parents did, though still a small minority in the yeshiva.
At the same time, he held not to make a “yekkishe kiddush”(washing before kiddush) if one was not yekkish, as some people do for convenience.
“promotes achdus and pilpul”
So…spouting soundbytes of information and discussing them with pilpulim, without knowing the gemara that they’re based on…is pilpul?
If you want achdus, there is a minhag yisroel to recite tehilim for every day of the month. Bond over that! Discuss the kapitelach tehilim – you don’t need to learn b’iyun to connect with tehilim.
“Another is to know the entire torah”
You will not know the entire torah, or even a drop of it by reading random words and having no idea what they mean.
I actually have zero years of coffee room experience under my belt; late night talks in a dormitory…. that’s another story. Of that I have plenty.
Re, eating meat from chabad shochtim – Rav Belsky zt”l told me years ago that the OU checks out every lubavitcher shochet for the very real percentage of “boreinu-niks”, people who say yechi but add in boreinu, rachmana litzlan. I hope this is still the case 5 years after his petirah.
I am not versed in chabad seforim aside from tanya, but I have read the sicha regarding “atzmus elokuso, vos ehr hut areingeshtelt in a guf”. I’m knowledgeable enough in chassidishe seforim to know what atzmus elokus means, and I’m knowledgeable enough in yiddish to know what the latter part spells out – we’re not talking implication, this is straight out saying that one may pray to a tzadik because he is thereby praying to god. Was he referring to a pantheistic idea that everything has god in it so when you pray to, say a stone, you are praying to the godliness in the stone? That is something ovdei avoda zara believe; it’s also the better alternative to the plain corporealism-oriented meaning of the words, a christian man-god ideology.
Whether the rebbe was overcome with some sort of ruach ra’ah or condition that made that come out of him, or other forms of limud zchus…. again, I am not here nor do I care to inspect the rebbe’s own character or level, or anything else.
This is among the very few things that make one a practitioner of a different religion altogether.
During the international conference of shluchim a few years ago, moshe kotlarsky, head of chinuch in chabad remarked “may the Rebbe look upon our gathering favorably, his presence is here with us now and may he grant our requests”
This is the man who regulates merkaz leinyonei chinuch. He oversees the education of tens and thousands of jewish children.
He believes – with the silent approval lf 50,000 shluchim – that we should earn the lubavitcher rebbe’s favor and that he should accept our requests.
That is indefensible. That is chabad in our time.
Also, I do not know where a sentence that includes rav moshe and rabbi Jonathan sacks begins, but it is not in a rational mind.
Rav moshe never praised the rebbe any more than he praised anyone who he wrote to who had a rabbinic post. Rav belsky zt”l one time told me that he did so in order that his psakim should be niskabel in all parts of klal yisroel.
I’ve made no mention of the lubavitcher rebbe himself.
I’m not a chabad chossid. As such, It does not really concern me if he was in fact a tzadik upon whom avodah zara was foisted, or if he was a maisis umadiach. What matters is that currently, there is a growing, evolving avodah zara ideology in chabad. The evidence to this is quite undeniable(I can supply you with much more, if you’re interested). That ideology was growing while the lubavitcher rebbe was alive(the brisker rov and chazon ish were noteably very wary at the time), but exploded exponentially after he passed away.
Either way, to your point: Gedolei yisroel not only corresponded with the likes of elisha ben avuya, but even learned from him directly! And lest you think that we are not on the level to do that nowadays, Rav Yaakov Emden also had a lengthy back and forth with Moses Mendelssohn sr”y, ending with a letter condemning him for straying from yiddishkeit to the point where he owned a dog (yes, dog ownership was indicative of deep defection from Torah, according to Rav Yaakov)
You left out Rav Hutner from your list of rabbonim – it’s noteable, because if you speak to a chaim berliner, or anyone who was close to him .. the question of Rav Hutner’s correspondence with the lubavitcher rebbe and the former’s opinions on the latter are quite evidence that correspondence has nothing to do with what a gadol holds of someone.
Also among the rabbonim you omitted was Rav Pam. Rav Pam originally said that we should stay out of the machlokes and that Rav Shach was talking only to bnei eretz yisroel. In his later years, when the personality cult became more apparent, Rav Pam retracted.
Again, I have no personal opinion of the lubavitcher rebbe, nor am I interested in forming one. He could have been a baal nissim and tzadik yesod olam, but that has nothing to do with my concerns.
It will not permit me to eat the meat and drink the wine of suspected idol worshippers, no matter how holy their rebbe may have been.
The arizal was very holy too, but if you say his words without understanding what you’re saying, it’s basically meaningless, but better than wasting time (of course we always have to mention that)
What does that have to do with the kovod of the rishonim? If anything, my statements that we must learn rambam as a part of the infinite continuum of the Torah and not just read it like a book is an actual honor to the rambam.
Learning superficially, in many cases, is a form of chutzpah – it makes Torah out to be simple, robbing it of the divine wisdom that is gained from learning Torah be’iyun.
Shtark – chessed is such a powerful thing that even when confronted with accusations of avodah zara, one leaps into the fray to defend, or in most cases, deflect any and all criticism. We in the Torah camp should take a lesson and perhaps do more chessed… maybe then the masses of ignorami will stop hating us. Or not…har sinai is called such because sinah, hatred descended upon us right after we received the Torah. It would seem that whoever is beloved by the world is not representative of Har Sinai.
Interesting how attacks on the character of the kolel community, satmar, and other torah groups are seemingly justified or tolerated, while any issues taken with the undermining of Torah that is common (but not universal) among chabad, religious zionists, and liberal groups is deemed “sinat chinam”. One can say that charedim are “leeches”, and borrow terms from nazis, but if one criticizes spiritual deficiency… the one thing that halachicly mandates hatred….only then are Torah jews accused of sinas chinam.
I find that almost as hypocritical as claiming yishuv eretz yisroel to be a defining characteristic of judaism, castigsting all opponents of a secular state as being “meraglim”, only to go and sell the land that they “die for” to the highest bidder every shmitah. It was the so called “meraglim” in komemius and kibutz chofetz chaim who were moser nefesh for eretz yisroel in the true sense. גיבורי כח עושה דברו
Before anyone accuses me of trolling, triggering or what have you, I believe these are connected deeply. There is a distinction between Torah jews and those of us who are stragglers, along for the ride, perhaps the spiritual heirs of erev rav, who attempt to inject foreign refuse into the veins of klal yisroel.
Reb Eliezer; I agree that for kodshim taharos and zeraim it makes some sense, but there’s still the issue of conflating mishnayos with da’eos yechidim; absent of a mesorah I’m wary of the pitfalls but I definitely would hear where someone’s coming from should they want to do it.
Enness; teshuvaso be’tzida – you admit yourself that shnayim mikra is a halacha. Even if we don’t understand something that chazal instituted, we’d be bound to adhere to it. But for us to invent our own systems which we further do not understand? That doesn’t sound reasonable – we’d say די לך בחידושו.
However that’s only under your premise that there is a comparison. However I don’t see anything in common. Klal yisroel’s mesorah is that Rashi is synonymous with pshat in chumash, to the point that his perush is the first and foremost explanation; everything else comes afterwards. That is the case in the every cheder of virtually every community in the world. The rambam by contrast, is not one and the same with psak or pshat in gemara; he is one of the main 4 or 5 shitos that one must learn in order to see a rudimentary scope of a sugya, along with rashi, tosfos, the rif, and the rosh. Like I said previously, shulchan aruch treated them with basically the same importance. .
Also, i addressed above the idea of not wasting time vs learning rambam. Reading sefer raziel hamalach is also better than wasting time, but when we go up to shomayim, they will demand a din vecheshnon on bitul torah be’kamus and b”eichus. Instituting something simply because people are mevatel torah and mevatel zman is…. I’m not really sure how to describe that. But it doesn’t make sense, that’s for sure.
Also, my concern, again, with rambam yomi is not that it’s bekius as opposed to iyun. Gemara can be learned in both of those ways and there is a time and a place for both. Some things are not designed for that duality. You cannot learn ketzos hachoshen or birkas shmuel in a bekiyus format.
The rambam has two practical functions in our learning, which end up being three. One is as a halacha sefer, from which it would be forbidden to pasken straight out of. The other is a perush on gemara; when we learn a gemara, the rambam is one of the shitos that we delve into, in order to understand the gemara. On this end, we also have to put in the work to understand his shitos, which are often contradictes by himself or other gemaros when taken at face value. I believe – and this is my opinion that I’m not fully convinced of – that learning random psak, such as the 40 hairs shiur for payos, without the sugya or without proper havanah, is not a kiyum of talmud torah. It’s a soundbyte of information without any context, pshat or anything. The rambam is not pesukim which one (according to most opinions) gets a mitzvah for even if he doesn’t understand it (this is true for shnayim mikra too). Even gemara, most hold you are not mekayam the mitzvah of talmud torah if you have no idea what you are saying. I don’t think rambam is any different in that regard.
Meirs; I don’t think anyone outside the inner circle can tell how dar reaching the ideology of a rebbe being divine has affected chabad.
I can point to several frightening examples of prominent figures in chabad which give a picture, like Shlomo Cunin, who on video said proudly that after mumbai “the whole world will know that it’s the rebbe who runs the world!” in the presence of many chabad rabbis – not one person protested. He said that the rebbe has some sort of dominion over the world. That might be a type of avodah zara which is a belief that Hashem gave over shlita to a certain malach or kochav independently, or it might be worse; it might be embracing atzmus elokus ideology in all its man-god depravity. That video can be found by googling “shlomo cunin chabad rebbe runs world” as the first result on Google.
Anecdotal encounters with chabad individuals include them trying to justify praying to their rebbe, who apparently can hear them from shomayim, granting him a certain omnipotence that is supposed to be Hashem’s. They have felt safe walking in the dead of night because they are carrying a picture of the rebbe. They believe he was a bonafide navi – I would be remiss not to mention the gravity of claiming to be a navi when one is not in fact… I would not want my rebbe accused of such grave sins.
Quick reading of chabad children’s literature is also frightening. I’ve seen the idea of doing a mitzvah because the rebbe said to do it. This was not in an overtly messianic publication. Go on a chabad forum and you will find many mentions of a “kiddush chabad” instead of a kiddush hashem.
It is for these reasons and more that many…many choshuve rabbonim will not eat chabad meat or drink their wine, including my rebbe, who was one of the leading poskim in America. I’m not sure if I should post his name.
Chabad has many poskim and rabbonim. I hope these ideologies have not reached everywhere, but nothing is certain. What is certain is the hadracha of the gedolei yisroel who distanced themselves.
It is my hope and prayer that the great chabad legacy be revived and that all false philosophies be forgotten.
So, if I understand you correctly that we need to only learn halakhic conclusions without thinking how the authors came up to that, Maharal above seem to support the idea that learning how to think is also Torah”
I never said to learn conclusions; I said that learning psak that we don’t follow without the background of the sugya is not a good idea, and lefi aniyus daati, might not be a kiyum of limud hatorah. We spend years figuring out how the chachamim came to their conclusions; proper sevara, logic, that’s the foundation of yeshiva learning – I don’t see how anything I said contradicts that. I also don’t see anything in your post about the distinction between methodology and intention in the definition of torah lishma.
The oft-quoted rambam about not needing anything besides rambam is being abused in a similar fashion as to how the reform use the story in the gemara about how hillel told the ger “that which you don’t like, don’t do to your fellow”. The reform ignore all of shas and all other statements from hilel hazaken, and say that hilel is advocating humanism and that only bein odom lechavero matters. So too with this rambam, because if you look at the rambam in hilchos Talmud torah – meaning his halachik rulings regarding how one must learn, he makes zero mention of learning mishnah torah or any other sefer written by himself.
What the rambam meant is up for discussion; it could be he was referring to other meforshim such as the rif or ri migash, since they weren’t as comprehensive.
“As to calling “rationality” as “haskala”, I asked a deep Chabad scholar about some Rambam shita and Muslim philosophy and responded “Rambam was not afraid of admitting truth from any source”.”
Interesting how one of the greatest chabad gedolim in history, and one of the biggest gaonim period, wrote that every word in the moreh nevuchim is based on chazal. That was the Rogatchover gaon.
Chabad is, unfortunately, beset with enough issues of late that such a contention is not high on the list of עקירת הדת that we see becoming commonplace. Here is not the forum for such a conversation at lengthy, but actually, the atzmus elokus ideology is less monotheistic than Islam.
I never mentioned a problem with daf yomi. My gripe here is with learning “rambam yomi”. I said that if one learns daf yomi style, they are not ready to learn rambam as a perush on that gemara, the same way they aren’t ready to learn any rishonim as a perush. I also don’t see s need for baseless ad hominem attacks, so rather than say you’re reactionary and projecting your own lack of self worth, I’ll just say that I wish you all all the hatzlocha in the world in learning
That being said, let us not be tricked by the yatzer hora of “abi az mer lernt”, that as long as you learn something it’s perfectly fine. Try going to a university and saying “well, I’m studying one page of economics and one of sociology a day without much effort, so…give me a diploma!
The ramchal says that המאור שבה מחזירו למוטב only applies when one learns Torah with at least the same vigor that he would exert in secular studies. Torah is not a joke and cannot be hefker, with everyone doing as they please while simply saying “abi az mer lernt”
Every word of Torah is dvar hashem, and the very act of trying to learn means everything to Hashem; some people find it hard to learn be’iyun or are unable to because of their workload – no one’s saying that they shouldn’t learn, chas veshalom!
Happens to be that halacha pesukah is that if one only has a short amount of time, learning practical halacha takes precedence over gemara, including daf yomi but there are people who need that motivation and would not learn otherwise. There’s a time and a place for “abi az mer lernt”, but it does not change the emes or the ratzon hashem as expressed in דבר ה זו הלכה.
I don’t see what is bitter or negative about such statements.
According to the laws of mandated reporting, if a person works in a day hab program for special needs adults, and discourages them from engaging in inappropriate relationships or the like, one who observes this must report the employee, as this is illegal infringement on liberty. The same would apply to voicing opinions about to’eva relationships.
I’ve worked in such settings and have seen the documents one must sign.
To say that one must always report whatever a mandated reporter is charged with telling sounds to me like whichever rabbonim concluded such were/are misinformed.
Meirs; tosfos asks kushyos in the form of contradictions on literally every daf of gemara; it’s not a chisaron, it’s the foundation of the search for true understanding of all aspects of torah shebaal peh, including the words of the holy rishonim. A “quick” look at the meforshim is no different than spending 10 minutes on an amud and “quickly” learning up a complicated tosfos. It just doesn’t work.
Is the ohr somayach or rav chaim al horambam a “quick” read?
And yes, the cases in which the rambam contradicts either himself or shas are copious; that’s because he’s not a book to be read, but rather part of the continuum of torah itself.
There’s a famous vort from rav shach about why there are hava aminas in gemara. קודשא בריך הוא איסתכל באורייתא וברא עלמא “hashem looked into the Torah and created the world”, since in the world, hashem was בורא עולמות ומחריבן, he created and destroyed worlds before our own was made, that corresponds to hava amina and maskana. I was mosif on this vort that that’s why there are contradictions; the same way in this world, we see din and chessed, good things and “bad”, but we know that all of it is from hashem and that it’s no contradiction, so too in torah, there are contradictions everywhere, but it’s all really harmonious if we put in the effort to understand it
Torah lishma is your intention, not your methodology. Shmaitsa aliba dehilchasa is the mesorah; you’re conflating methodology with intention.
Alwaysaskquestions – if you want to have a serious conversation, leave out haskalah-driven analysis of rishonim. There’s no practical difference between the Rosh, baalei tosfos, the Rif and the Rambam. Shulchan aruch gave them practically equal consideration, as should we.
Imagine the magen avrohom sitting and thinking… let’s pasken like the rambam because his views sometimes have a analogs with in vogue rationalism! Brilliant idea!
Also, you will only learn his reasoning if you are in the sugya under discussion. If you learn his chidush, for example, that you need only have 40 hairs on payos harosh without the relevant gemaros, all you have is a sound byte of random information, but alas, you have “learned” his “rational methodology”, or according to the first poster, you have somehow learned torah lishma.
Torah lishma means you want to learn torah, and know it “al buryo” leshem shomayim, because hashem gave us a mitzvah to both learn and know torah. As a chabad chossid you should be familiar with the baal hatanyas shitah of the mitzvah of yedias hatorah, which he says is bigger than aisek hatorah. But that’s only if you know the dinim, as he explains openly. Knowing random words from the rambam without gemara-context or psak is arguably not aisek, nor yedias hatorah in such circumstances.
Can anyone explain to me the rationale of learning “rambam yomi”?
As a halacha sefer, we often do not pasken like the rambam; sometimes he is, in fact, a da’as yochid. You won’t know thar nor will you have an inkling of the depth of his Torah, which can only be seen if you are “in the sugya” and see how he learns pshat; that’s what we do in yeshivos. You also won’t actually have pshat in the rambam himself because of how often he contradicts himself, but since you’re reading it like a book you won’t have the achronim who resolve these contradictory statements.As a perush on sugyos… it’s not in order of shas.
Does this not give a false sense of accomplishment that you somehow have a tefisa on kol hatorah kulah because you’ve learned one rishon’s shitah of dinim without at the very least knowing remotely how to pasken?I can hear abln argument for going through kodshim and taharos with just the rambam, but even then, why not learn aruch hashulchan ha’asid, written by someone who a large part of klal yisroel actually paskens like?
This is a modified version of the argument I saw advanced on the old frumteens forum back when I was a kid.
Can anyone explain to me the rationale of learning “rambam yomi”?
As a halacha sefer, we often do not pasken like the rambam; sometimes he is, in fact, a da’as yochid. You won’t know thar nor will you have an inkling of the depth of his Torah, which can only be seen if you are “in the sugya” and see how he learns pshat; that’s what we do in yeshivos. You also won’t actually have pshat in the rambam himself because of how often he contradicts himself, but since you’re reading it like a book you won’t have the achronim who resolve these contradictory statements.As a perush on sugyos… it’s not in order of shas.
Does this not give a false sense of accomplishment that you somehow have a tefisa on kol hatorah kulah because you’ve learned one rishon’s shitah of dinim without at the very least knowing remotely how to pasken?I can hear abln argument for going through kodshim and taharos with just the rambam, but even then, why not learn aruch hashulchan ha’asid, written by someone who a large part of klal yisroel actually paskens like?
This is a modified version of the argument I saw advanced on the old frumteens forum back when I was a kid