Avram in MD

I like ujm’s answer, but given that we were all at Har Sinai, my answer would be in the days of Bayis Rishon during the rule of a righteous king.

Always_Ask_Questions,

“I think Yabia is asking what is the social background here.”

I think if that was what he was asking, he would have written it.

“If a girl is pressured into the arrangement in some way, or if she later changes her mind but is reluctant to speak out – does the husband have sensitivity to notice or the kollel a way to find out.”

It’s interesting to me how those who see women making a different life decision from the one they prefer conclude that those women must be victims of their circumstances, pressured into a horrible life. A husband and the wife are both grown adults, as are the parents/in-laws who may or may not be supporting the couple. They can decide what works for their family, they are more than capable of discussing their changing needs and situations, and it is not our business to peer into their windows and attack the foundations of their homes. I also find it interesting that the CR is not full of angry kollel wives bemoaning their fates. The agita is coming almost exclusively from those not in kollel.

“Also, anyone claiming that wife can be satisfied by illicit funds, whether taken from in-laws, unreported income, or inappropriately obtained SNAP is really adding to the abuse of the lady – she does not have to be forced to be part of such aveiros (if they happen)”

A few questions – who on here other than you is making such a claim? And how is in-law support illicit that you lump it in with these other examples?

n0mesorah,

“Last week’s statement not to enforce gun control by executive order.”

Seems to lack context. Trump had a considerably higher rate of EO issuance than Obama and Bush, but his rate was ~55 per year, and Biden issued 77 EOs during 2021, as well as 80 memorandums. Not to mention the private sector vaccination mandate through OSHA. I don’t see this return to a respect for the Legislative Branch that has been absent for the past few administrations that you see.

“As a long time senator, Biden understands that the Senate is the place for legal reforms, declarations of war, and ratifying treaties.”

An EO would remove the perceived political benefit of obstructionist Republicans, would serve as a lightning rod for conservatives, and would face immediate and likely successful legal challenges. I’m guessing political expediency stayed his hand more than a respect for the separation of powers.

coffee addict,

“Why are people so hung up on them (the same thing can be said about sports)”

I think there’s a few things at play:
1. Non-Orthodox Jews have effectively replaced Judaism with liberal politics as their religion, and they have been loudly proclaiming this message for years. Abortion is a Jewish value! etc. This has prompted a backlash in the Torah community.
2. The NYC government has singled out the Jewish community multiple times over the past few years in a highly tone deaf and humiliating manner. Coupled with the rise in antisemitic attacks and a perceived failure to address the root cause of these attacks, the visibly Jewish community in NYC and surrounding areas feels ignored and hated by the local level Democratic party establishment.
3. Whether you loved or hated the Trump Administration, there was never such engagement with the frum community specifically at the Federal level as we saw during his presidency, and additionally Republican senators such as Ted Cruz have increasingly commented on issues affecting the frum community, which are unique from the non-Orthodox issues. Thus, Orthodox Jews are feeling seen and heard by Federal-level Republicans at the same time they are feeling ignored and marginalized by Democrats at all levels of government.

Yabia Omer,

“Is this the most important issue facing Klal Yisroel in 2022?”

Oh my goodness yes.

n0mesorah,

“It’s not separating from anyone … But, as outsiders”

🤔

n0mesorah,

“Is there any contemporary that you’ve read on the six mitzvos? The classics are to terse, or hard to imagine into our thinking. I want to claim, that I am not saying any chiddush at all in these foundational mitzvos. If we would start from the sources it would never end. So can you pick something for me to be in line with?”

Declaring that you’re not saying a chiddush does not punt the burden of proof onto me. Our disagreement is not with the six mitzvos themselves, but whether one can disregard those six mitzvos and even further disregard any belief in Hashem at all, and still be within the bounds of the Torah.

n0mesorah,

“1. Beliefs are inconsequential at the base level of Judaism.”

You seem to be defining “base level of Judaism” as “functional within an Orthodox community”, and I do not agree that this is so.

TS Baum,

Thanks for your response to my questions.

“You have these people also.
In a perfect world there would be none of these extreme chareidim.”

This is the “they do the same things themselves” argument I mentioned above.

“I’ll tell you straight up – at all costs possible – we don’t want to cause even more machlokes and divide in luabvitch.”

There is a lot of space between silence and excommunication that can be utilized. Also, avoiding machlokes and divide is a noble goal, but is it truthfully the most important aim to be had “at all costs”? What if people started building golden statues of the Lubavitcher Rebbe ZT”L, and bowing down to them and offering them korbonos? That’s a ridiculous example, but as a real world example, what about the disruption the mishichists are causing to Chabad’s ability to disseminate the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s teachings to the Jewish world? Would the Lubavitcher Rebbe have wanted this kind of distraction from his life’s mission?

“One thing I can tell you is that by causing more sinas chinam and bashing them does not help.”

I disagree that criticism automatically means sinas chinam. Machlokes for the sake of Torah is certainly not. But…

“I don’t either think a YWN CR Forum will help either, I think this was made just to give the coffee room a bit more life.”

I agree with you here.

TS Baum,

“Only by the mishichistim. that’s what you are forgetting. Again, the Rebbe was no way into Yechi, … you can’t say this as “general luabvitch”

My questions – if the mishichists have indeed corrupted Chabad concepts and gone astray, should they be rebuked or encouraged to return (as this thread’s title states)? And if so, who should do this tochacha? Because Chabad itself does not seem to be opposing them with any vigor, and you seem to get upset when non-Chabad Jews do so.

n0mesorah,

“I’m not sure if this is aimed at me or the topic. Either way, I do not understand how this fits with the rest of your post.”

It was “aimed” at you – because your entire argument here effectively is to stop questioning Chabad because they can still be nominal Jews so long as they do the outward mitzvos.

“If you need a theory, there seems to be an elitist bent. With Chabad claiming a higher understanding of God’s world. And the Yeshivish (? is this accurate ?) anti Chabad claiming to know how and why Chabad is out of the Pale.”

I think also it’s the response that is given. When Rav Moshe Feinstein ZT”L made his psak regarding chalav stam/”companies” dairy, he received considerable opposition from some other gedolim. Rav Moshe’s response to the opposition was to point to his psak, where his Torah reasoning was extensively documented – and he asked those who opposed the psak to please bring their own Torah to refute him. No demonizing of any side, CV”S was involved. Interestingly this did not resolve the dispute – there are frum Jews who hold to this day that Rav Moshe’s psak causes Yidden to eat unkosher dairy, but the power of the Torah behind each opinion has brought a measure of peace to klal Yisroel.

By Chabad, and this is my own perception so I hope TS Baum or others can show me differently, they do not respond to opposition with extensive Torah reasoning to demonstrate why they are correct, even to get to the “agree to disagree” point as in chalav stam. They instead declare that the opposition just cannot understand these things, do the same things themselves, and if further pressed will ultimately vilify the detractors as wicked “snags” – even gedolim! I know they do not have a monopoly on the vilifying, but puk chazi who has set up a separate communal infrastructure in almost every respect and does not engage with the rest of frum Yidden.

n0mesorah,

“My position did not change. As long as observance is a given, it is of little consequence to the Torah way of life what theories are prominent in a given group.”

I provided my interpretations of how I understood your initial position (beliefs are irrelevant) and subsequent position (beliefs do matter – they can raise your level). If you hold that your position did not change, than one of my interpretations is incorrect. Which one is it?

My discussion with you is largely a tangent off of this thread, based on what you wrote:

“When a Yid does a mitzvah because he is a comitted Jew, that is the desired outcome of creation. This is even if the Jew has no concept of a creator or any idea of the god-head.”

My major objection to this is that having a concept of a creator and Hashem as our G-d, and rejecting idolatry are themselves mitzvos – so absent these beliefs or in the presence of idolatrous beliefs, one is not fulfilling the desired outcome of creation. I pushed back hard on this, and you then (seemed to) acknowledge that beliefs matter, but more as a “level” thing than a fundamental mitzvah. This did not answer my main objection, but I put that objection aside temporarily to ask a secondary question – if beliefs indeed affect your “level”, then is it legitimate to question or investigate beliefs whose adherents claim are the highest of the high levels? I went on that tangent because this seemed like an inconsistency in your own stance. But unless I’m misunderstanding you, we still disagree on whether a basic belief that there is One G-d Who we cannot perceive or make an image of, Who created and rules the universe, Who took us out of Egypt, and Who commanded us to do the mitzvos, is in itself a mitzvah and necessary to fulfill the other mitzvos.

“I hear the question. But it’s not for me to answer.”

Why is it not for you to answer, unless you have embraced spiritual stagnation?

“Should we tell Chabad that their teachings must be wrong, because outside of Chabad they do not preach the same? Chabad is wrong because nobody else is Chabad?”

Not sure I like how you worded it (particularly the wrong because nobody else is line), but in essence, yes. Kol Yisroel arevim ze bazeh – we are one nation, one people, and we are responsible for one another. So why can’t questions be asked and answers given, without hostility and hatred?

Always_Ask_Questions,

“Slow down, learn Mishna by heart, listen to a tape, talk to the kids in your car, call your mother, let a couple of people in front of you, drink coffee slowly…”

All great suggestions that can help reclaim commuting time as a productive part of life. I just have one thing to add – my stress behind the wheel is connected to lateness, and if I’m sitting in traffic and getting late for something, no thoughts, tapes, or conversations will alleviate my stress or turn back the clock. So to me, the most important way to cope with traffic is to accept its existence and account for it in my planning. My wife’s rule of thumb for urban driving is to double the time. If the mapping software estimates a drive will take 15 minutes, plan for it lasting 30. A 30 minute drive will actually take an hour, etc. And don’t forget to include extra time for parking and walking to the destination (extra 5 minutes if there’s a parking lot, extra 15 minutes if you have to park on a street, and even more extra time if you’re bringing kids). On many an occasion you’ll “hurry up and wait” as they say in the military, but then you can implement AAQ’s great suggestions with no stress. And if something comes up on the way, like spilling coffee on your shirt, you’ll likely have more time to deal with it without becoming truly late.

n0mesorah,

“Where do chazal mention that it is our obligation to tear apart Judaism by learning up people’s personal devotions?”

Deuteronomy 13 for starters.

Always_Ask_Questions,

“I tried relying on them with kids and it did not really work”

I am not a fan of Google, but if you are already enmeshed in the Google ecosystem, their Family Link feature is really useful. For example, if you have a Chromebook for your child, you can:
1. Create a Google account for your child and enroll it in Family Link. You can then use the Family Link settings to completely lock down the Internet except for sites and apps that you explicitly allow.
2. On the Chromebook, sign on initially with your own account so it is the “admin” account that controls the device settings.
3. In Settings, go to “Manage other people”, turn off guest browsing (very important), and limit sign-ons to only accounts you specify (so they cannot create a new unmanaged Google account and sign in with it). Allow your child’s account to sign in, and any others you want (e.g., sibling accounts, their school accounts if they have).
4. Log in the child account, authorize the sign-in with your password, and s/he has a laptop that is locked down to your specifications.

With these steps taken, I have not discovered a way to “break” the setup (so long as your child does not know your password!), but once Google thinks they are over 13, they can unenroll their account from Family Link. If they do this, you will get an email and can take whatever action you need to.

There are some pitfalls to Family Link – the white/blacklisting only works at the domain level, so you cannot allow/block specific Web pages within a domain (e.g., you cannot allow http://www.theyeshivaworld.com but then block the CR). The Debian Linux container available on newer chromebooks (crostini) cannot be used with Family Link. And it ties you and your child to Google, which harvests all of the personal information you give it for dubious uses. As children get older, they will also start to push on the boundaries set by Family Link, so you’ll have to maintain an ongoing dialog with them.

n0mesorah,

“God fearing key is not so accurate. Fear of God takes a Jo’s of goods work for most of us. I mean continued to keeping the mitzvtos (within the Jewish community).”

I could not decipher what you were trying to say in this sentence, can you rephrase it? Also, if you are correct, than it’s wrong to see in sefarim Jews referred to as “yirei Shamayim” or “baalei nefesh”, etc. Shouldn’t those terms be eschewed in favor of “shomrei mitzvos” only, if that’s the ikar?

“The idea necessary for mitzvos is a mitzaveh -commander. Not boray – creator. You have a big swing there between a mitzvah for it’s own sake and a good luck charm. There is a lot in between.”

People do things for a reason, and if someone has no concept of Hashem, their “committment” comes from somewhere else. Sports fandom was a silly example, but is it less silly at the end of the day than an athiest doing “mitzvos” he thinks are worthless because of communal pressure, or a pushover resentfully doing them just to please grandparents, or from Holocaust guilt, or whatever other reasons that make a “committed Jew”in your mind?

Re: your distinction between Hashem as the Borei Olam and the Ribono Shel Olam – if someone believes that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe, and the Xian man-god commands us to do the mitzvos… so long as he puts on tefillin every day, takes arba minim, and avoids melachos on Shabbos, he’s doing nothing wrong before Hashem in your mind and is even a “committed Jew”?

Also, you have ignored my point that one who does not know or believe in Hashem cannot fulfill any of the mitzvos properly, especially ones that deal directly with how we are supposed to feel and know about Hashem, such as loving Hashem, fearing Hashem, remembering the Exodus, etc.

n0mesorah,

“On yidishkeit. When a Yid does a mitzvah because he is a comitted Jew, that is the desired outcome of creation. This is even if the Jew has no concept of a creator or any idea of the god-head. Just the act itself, is included in ‘boruch asher yakum es divrei hatorah hazos’.”

Define “committed Jew”. You may have an unusual personal definition of this, but the vast majority of the frum world would say the term is synonymous with “G-d fearing Jew”, and the attention to the details of mitzvos flows forth from this fear and love of G-d.

If one has no concept of his Creator, how would he fulfill Anochi Hashem Elokecha asher hotzeitzicha meieretz Mitzrayim? Or Veahavta es Hashem Elokecha? Or es Hashem Elokecha tira? Keriyas Shema? Tefillah? The seder? Brachos? Sukkah and tefillin, for which specific reasons are given?

You are divorcing the mitzvos from their very essence and purpose, which is to serve Hashem (including the mind and heart!), and while bedieved one fulfills a mitzvah even if he didn’t have specific kavannah for it according to some opinions, like showing up to shacharis half asleep and waking up to figure out which yom it was to say “hayom yom chamishi”, that is only because he has a concept that what he did was a mitzvah (i.e., that there is a Creator, G-d, King of the Universe who commanded him to do such). Without that knowledge and belief, how can what he did be considered a mitzvah at all, or even more, the desired outcome of creation?? If a guy blows a shofar on Rosh Hashana because he thinks it’s a good luck charm to help the Mets make the playoffs, did he fulfill the mitzvah of shofar?

Kuvult,

“You bought into the lie that anyone that’s not Frum lives an empty life full of sin. Do you think a Secular boy is interested in discussing gender instead of sports or dinosaurs or playing cops and robbers (or as your kids play “Talmidei Chachomim and Apikorsim”)?”

Lol, you castigate avira for crudely stereotyping of secular Jews and non-Jews, but then turn around and crudely stereotype frum Jews.

Kuvult,

“I’m not sure where the argument even is. In my OP I said … I learned the correct Derech is to place people into different groups based on certain criteria.”

The argument is because we sensed your sarcasm loud and clear. And you didn’t say certain criteria, you said petty little factors.

“The bigger question is why do you all at some level feel uncomfortable with it that you feel the need to justify or defend it?”

Reduction fallacy. There may be more reasons people are responding than discomfort.

n0mesorah,

“Hashkafah is how we integrate the dichotomy between our Torah lives and everything else that surrounds us. Those who surround themselves with only Torah have no need for hashkafah.

This is an extremely narrow redefinition of hashkafah.

Kuvult,

A few of my thoughts.

1. The parents today who you are having a problem with are your classmates and peers who now have their own children. Assuming you’re right that there was some sort of massive genrational shift in behavior, is it possible that your peers may have had different opinions and experiences than you did growing up?

2. What you describe as your childhood is still very much the way things are in smaller OOT communities, where there simply isn’t sufficient infrastructure to provide services tailored to each family’s derech. Maybe an OOT locale or lifestyle would be right for you and your family?

3. You seem very bothered by the perceived rejection and separation, but you also seem unaware of how bitter and hateful some of your statements directed towards the “others” in your community is coming across. Several people have tried to explain the concerns at play with respect to intrusion of an exponentially increasingly toxic secular culture into their home life, but you consistently revert to an insistence that it’s all about “petty little things” like hats and kippas. Do you hold up your end of the bargain, being very friendly to Jews who wear black hats and think the internet is evil, smiling at them, greeting them, and respecting their differences (such as not eating Triangle-K) even if it means their kid is not going to eat lunch at your house?

4. I agree with you that it is vital for parents to instill the family derech into their kids, but unfortunately even in the frum world a kid’s (especially teens) peers tend to have an outsized influence on his/her physical, emotional, and spiritual well being. If your child’s friends all have smartphones with unfiltered internet access and your child does not, and their conversations all revolve around the latest and greatest movie that your child has not seen, and most of their socializing happens on some app that your child does not have, your child may absolutely love his/her derech intellectually, and yet still feel miserable and conflicted emotionally, and feel drawn towards the technology and media that you feel is harmful with a mixture of curiosity, guilt, and resentment towards both their friends and their parents.

Always_Ask_Questions,

“Imagine, melech Shlomo is coming to your house and you proudly serve him a bishul yisroel tuna sandwich. He might just turn around and decamp to the nearby house that serves a halav stam cake”

Fish and bread are more prominent meal foods than cake. If you invite me to your house for lunch and serve me a tuna sandwich, great. If you serve me cake, I’d still be grateful of course but I’d think our definitions of what constitutes lunch are different.