Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I know what chelm is understood to be in the stories, jokes, etc.., it did not occur to me that you would say something of such deep, sad laitzonus, to say that people who are tzniusdig are fools, like the supposed fools of chelm.
the alter of kelm was one of the gedolei hador, and you just totally insulted him. shame on you!!
Of course, baselss hatred because someone happens to be sefadi is something that is decried for generations by the gedolim – the chazon ish and the steipler both have letters saying chalilla vechas to reject a boy because he is sefardi..please do not interpret the above to mean that treating a group of klal yisroel bad is ok – it is terrible, sinas chinom, and it is without an excuse.
as a matter of fact, the chazon ish had many reasons for allowing the speaking of ivrit (all the modernishe will say ‘whats the shailoh??’), but chief among them was that if we all speak yiddish, we will lose the sefardim, who at that time had no infrastructure.
it is true though that what may be perceived as racism, might amount to simply not admitting a child from a family with sub-par religious standards, who just happens to be sefardi..every case needs to be individually examined.
sinas chinom applies equaly to all jews; there is no specific prohibition on generalizing them – on the contrary, ive heard many stories about gedolim referring to the differences between the poilish, galitziana, litvish people; their maalos and chisronos…that is not sinas chinom, and if it’s racist, well, let it be; the torah say nowhere that one should not be racist.
People here seem to be afraid of racism as if it’s kefirah. Anything that smacks even a bit; if it can somehow be understood to be the american anathema of ‘racism’, it is wrong, evil, etc..
Judaism is racist. just look at the maharal’s sefer gevuros hashem, the netziv in emek davar about the 70 umos; chazal often talk about traits of nationalities – yishmaelim are perverse, eisav ae killers; they’re talking about intrinsic characteristics. avrohom unabashedly told eliezer that since he was from canaan, he was arur(cursed); today he would be called a racist.
However, if we(frum people) say something the least bit ‘extreme’, that we are worried about setting precedents for laxity in faith, practice, or anything else to do with yiddishkeit…we are fanatics. People here are angered by those who practice higher levels of tznius, and much more angry at those that enforce them.
Where are your priorities?
“Let’s apply what I call the “Black people test” and see how it comes out. Replace whatever group you are talking about with Blacks and see if you could be accused of racism.”
“Wouldn’t separate minyanim be racist?”
We’re avoiding something that is considered terrible by goyishe standards like the plague – tell me, do you avoid ever coming close to the boundaries of what constitutes kefirah? when you make jokes about kolel men being supported, or make fun of their bitachon, are you not at the very least close to laitzanus? When you walk in the street, and perhaps do a double-take when seeing an untznius woman, do you avoid that like the plague?
I am so grateful to hashem for having been spared these diseases. I am racist in the torah’s way, and proud of it.
edited
zahava – and what is wrong if it would be? Is that to say that you believe them to be fanatics? For the record, Chelm was a chasidishe town, I am referring to Kelm.
Mod – I misread ‘lawyer’s statements about driving vs dancing; at first it sounded like she was saying that dancing can be done without touching; after I read it again now I see that was not the case.
The reason my posts seem ‘absolute’, is because I am referring to laws that are as absolute as the orbit of the planets, and as the rising of the sun. I do not consider clear, open chazals to be open for twisting and turning to conform to a licentious, ‘orthodox’ culture which is repulsed by tznius.
In Kelm, not a chasidishe town by any means, women and men walked on separate sides of the street. Once, a choson and kalah were caught walking together, and the Alter shried ‘s’brent a fire in kelm!’.
We’re not holding there; halevai we should keep basic halacha – but we aspire to such lofty heights, and whatever we can hold on to to the precous mesorah of yiddishe tznius, we must.
the kind of remarks frequently found on this website, comparing beautiful tznius to the taliban, etc.., are simply anti-religious.
This is egregious; almost all of what we follow in halacha daily, is derabonon – the spirit of shabbos, entirely is because of derabonon’s – without their takanos, it would be perfectly fine to go to work to make money, (provided you dont write) go shopping, listen to music on a mp3 player – everything you an imagine would be fine and dandy.
This shows a complete ignorance about what torah is – torah is only torah because of mesorah; chazal say this in many places “kara, shana, velo shimash, is an am haaretz’, people can know a lot of information(like our two women posters who seem to have read a lot of talmudic literature online, if you can call it that), but without a mesorah from the chachamim, all is an empty shell.
Shabbos is shabbos as we know it solely because of rabbinic rules; the same is true for tznius. If we were to consider these things to be derabonon(the same reb moshe who you quoted as allowing men and women to be on subways, also says that it’s a laav of lo sikravu to even have a girlfriend without touching, etc.., in an uncharacteristically strong teshuvah, where he uses expressions like ‘let me make myself abundantly clear’, etc..)
the profound difference, understood to a person who learns, as opposed to studies and reads facts, is that being on a subway engenders no real connection. incidental touching is a ‘misasek’, now, of course if you can avoid it, mah toiv uma naim; reb moshe does not say you should go out of your way to touch women on the bus by chooisng bedavka a crowded car.
I brought in the above (little known in the online velt) laws, to show how one can only appreciate certain extra-legal attitudes, which manifest into actions; tznius is something that anyone who is not immersed in torah today has a hard time grasping – we live in a society which prides itself on not being tznius at all – it takes a person who is untainted by such an environment, or at least one who makes a concerted effort to guard himself when he can, to understand these things.
Think, can you expect someone who exposes himself to such things, or was raised with(and did not grow out of) attitudes of permissiveness of all sorts of disgusting things(this is why i mentioned dancing, touching), to grasp the fine subtleties of tznius? it’s preposterous.
For the record, dancing, the mishnah berurah says, is ‘pashut’ that it’s assur, even though it didn’t say anywhere specifically – to a malaach like the chofetz chaim, tznius is a reality to which one can ‘feel’, not academic studies like those of women who are completely unaware of what it means to properly disect a sugya in gemara…the gemara they(sinfully) teach in their schools only makes them think they can understand it, when in reality, if you’d ask them a kasha on a tosfos, a diyuk in a rashi, or to analyze a reb akiva aiger, they wouldn’t have a clue what you are talking about.
The fact that someone here can question the prohibition of dancing with women proves my point; someone who is so far removed from the torah’s basic outlook cannot possibly begin to understand its subtleties.
just to answer the other ignorant remarks made in the other forum about doing chesed with goyim, reform, etc.., (I don’t have time or patience to post to two boards), I can bring the mareh mekmomos for the things ive quoted, but i simply did not want to invest the energy and time when there is only a slight chance that someone will take me seriously, or question their previously held, goyishe-influced opinions.
edited
Mized dancing is not a chumra. Neither is socializing(although I am heistant to say them together, because some uneducated people here will reason that since they consider it so normal to shmooze, they will also think it’s ok to dance or touch them).
This is Modern Orthodoxy’s lack of education at its finest – the difference between MO and everyone else is not the past, but the present.
Being ‘machmir’ means that there is room to be ‘lenient’. There is no compromising on shulchan aruch.
Did you know that according to many rishonim, a man must give up his life rather than socialize with a woman? This seems to be an open gemara about a man who was deathly sick, and the doctors said he would die if he does not socialize with a woman – the chachamim said better he should die. Reb moshe does not understand the gemara to apply to general cases, but only this case – in any case, many rishonim hold that way, and that’s whatthe steipler writes in karyana deigrasa – that might be a ‘chumra’, because it is a machlokes.
Miami – that is not a contradiction; I’d appreciate it if you’d show a bit more seriousness about the issue. Tznius as a centerpiece of yiddishkeit is not up for discussion, and it is not dependent on what one era of uneducated and misguided Jews fell into.
It was very common for people to daven neitz on shabbos, and then go to work – does this mean that shabbos is not a core part of yiddishkeit?
Come on.
Women have no mitzvah to learn torah. They are supposed to know what is relevant to them, but this is like a hecsher mitzvah(beis halevi), as opposed to a man, who his entire essence is torah.
The Gra says that for a woman, tznius is the essence of who she is, and is her way of serving hashem, on par with a man’s torah.
Rashi explains the reason why it’s assur to return the lost object of a goy(gasp!!! all the modernishe will flip out!) unless there is a chilul or kidush hashem, is that it shows that you do not value the mitzvah of doing chesed with jews, with whom there is a mitzvah.
By us, chesed is a mitzvah like tefilin.
For them, it’s just being a nice person, and they will jump to do chesed with goyim, toeva-people, and anyone else – even animals.
A messianic Jew who keeps some mitzvos should also keep them; that does not mean he s practicing Judaism at all – even though as stated above, he believed in much more of judaism than a reform jew does.
Whatever they say on their website does not change the fact that they do not believe in the divinity of the torah as a binding, completely divine document. This ‘affirmation’ means nothing if they believe it has changed(which they do) that it is not historically accurate, or that it maybe changed to fit society – divine laws are immutable and cannot be changed.
They used to say the only thing that mattered was that yo believe in one g-d; they got rid of every aspect of halacha, then about 10 years ago, they announced that in order to be jewish, they need to do some jewish things, so they started telling people to do(not as an obligation) things like davening, bentching – a reform siddur has a lot of ‘meditations’, but almost no tefilos.
I think everyone knows what reform used to be, and what they are now, confused and tinokos shenishbu as they might be, does not at all represent judaism. They used to be anti-zionist and say that germany is the new yerushalayim; now they say israel is their core – these people change more than donald trump, but what remains is their lack of emunah in hashem as understood by judaism, or in the torah.
One of the ikarim is also that the torah cannot be changed, and that moshe rabbeinu’s nevuah was the most direct – they simply believe the torah to be ‘inspired’ by g-d, which can just as easily be said about the constitution(they say this too) or any other thing they like. How is torah central, if they do not keep any of the laws, or if they say you can pick which ones you like?
The reform idea of ‘keeping holidays’, might mean eating some matzah on pesach, fasting for half a day on yom kipur while exiting often to check their email…the only advantage is that they might maintain some sort of identity in doing these things
although…reform even encourage intermarriage!!! so whats the point of doing these mitzvos at all? They’re not done at all according to halacha(i.e., matzah – do you think they will eat a kazayis in kdei achilas pras? this is not just a brisker chumra, this is crucial to the mitzvah, if it is not done, the mitzah has not been acomplished)
please, this forum should not be a place for the justification of a heretical movement that has abandoned judaism since its inception. we all know the fight that people like rav hirsch had against the reform – he said to have a complete secession from them in every way shape and form; he often would emphasize the distinction and the need to understand that Judaism is not a combination of different ‘movements’.
‘Judaism’, defined in halacha, can be said to consist of the accepted 13 ikkarim of the rambam. The gemara says that one who denies one word of the torah, is the same as if he denied the entire torah – the torah is one, single unit. While in practice, every mitzvah is independent, the acceptance of the torah is not. These are very clear halachos in the rambam in hilchos yesodei torah – people should learn them before defining Judaism.
What the reform believe in has absolutely no bearing on Judaism. They do not believe in a g-d who commanded us to do anything(besides maybe secular social justice). Whatever they are doing, therefore, is not a ‘mitzvah’, or commandment at all, but rather a gesture of their spiritual fancies. Meaning, if a goy puts on a pair of tefilin because he likes the way they look or make him feel, that is the same reward a reform jew gets for doing it because it’s ‘spiritual’ or whatever. A mitzvah means there is a commander.
A jew who subscribes to reform Judaism believes in fewer core beliefs of Judaism than CHRISTIANS.
Christians believe in the Bible as being 100% true, without one word being untrue. They believe that G-d created and runs the world. They believe that he rewards and punishes people who do bad. They believe in the coming of(the wrong) messiah.
Lutheran Christianity’s ideas of Jesus just being a prophet, are not even forbidden for non-jews to believe. Non-jews though, are commanded to believe in the Bible(rambam, ben noach must do mitzvos because they were commanded by G-d to the Jews and them, and not because he decides that they are the will of G-d alone).
Reform and Conservative Judaism, as per their mainstream statements, do not believe in the divinity of the Torah at all, nor do they believe in the coming of Moshiach, divine punishment, olam haba, g-d running the world(see harold kushner’s ‘why bad things happen to good people’, a mainstay of Conservatism, to see this) nor do they accept the events of the Torah occurred.
The Ran writes that the entire mitzvah of emunah is to believe that G-d took us out of mitzrayim. Christians believe that, reform do not.
The fact that our feminist(itself a form of heresy and denial of the authority of rabbis{not ‘Rabbits’}) sees some sort of Judaism in reform or conservative, is very revealing of how far from Judaism the movement of ‘orthodox feminism’ is from the Torah.
As in many other areas of tznius, there is a big difference between that which is assur, and that which depends on the sensitivities of people who are steeped in lives that embody tznius, and the concept of separation between genders.
Many people on this forum would approve of outright socialization with women; something that actually is assur – ‘ain shoalin beshalom ishah klal, afilu al yeday baalah’, is the gemara, rambam, tur and shulchan aruch. Many people from the previous generation grew up in houses where their parents met at mixed dances at Young Israel shuls; some of the people here, themselves, were involved with such things.
Under the banner of chesed, a lot of things end up being kashered. I often give hitches in boro park and flatbush(I actually travel along the bus route bedavka to find such people). I’ve been doing this for a very long time, and never have I been approached by a woman to be picked up – men have, on the other hand, put out their thumb when I slow down almost all the time.
The idea of indiscriminately being involved with the opposite gender, and an openness to such interaction, reflects an attitude towards tznius that is often shared by such individuals that refer to married women by their first name, spend time shmoozing with them, and are usually unaware of many other areas of halacha itself. While this is not assur, I do not believe any person raised or accustomed to the standards of tznius imparted to us from our gedolei yisroel would even consider approaching a strange woman.
Also, there is the issue of the woman’s safety(not the safety of being involved with strangers in general). A woman should not approach a car, no matter what – there’s no telling what sort of scum is lurking to harm her, clad in yeshivishe attire or otherwise. Women are simply more easily victimized than men are – although this is something that one of our posters probably does not accept, given her screename. She should take a survey of how many women would want to be in the army, or how many have learned martial arts – despite the feminist movement, a very, very small percentage of woman; almost negligible, consider themselves as physically strong as men.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned this until now.
Yichud isn’t a problem, the same way it’s not a problem when bochurim go out on dates; that’s not the issue here. It’s less of a problem than saying gut shabbos to women(something my relatives who are not so frum do not understand), because here there is a purpose. However, I do not believe that the average frum woman would appreciate it if a man offered her a ride; likewise, none of my friends in kolel that I can think of(including myself) would take a ride from a woman who is alone.
Just for the contrast; a few weeks ago I received a ride when beckoned by my chavrusa’s mother; a lady in her high 60’s – even if her husband was not in the car(which he was), I would not have objected – certain matters of tznius are simply up to a subjective sensitivity, depending on time and place – in our time and place, most of us would not think of it as even a possibility – however, not everyone’s sensitivity is valid. What was proper in the 50’s doesn’t really matter, because basic halacha itself was scarcely kept at that time.
Tznius is not the sort of thing you want to find kulos in – it is the defining characteristic of klal yisroel; so much so that it was that zchus that saved us from atzas bilaam – the zohar says that there was never a threat as real as that of bilaam’s curse; what saved us was ‘ma tovu ohalacha yaakov’, that there was a great separation and privacy between families. If not for pinchos being the kanoi he was, we would not be alive now; the magaifah would have destroyed everybody.
There is a time and place for kanoius; and the torah tells us unmistakably that it is in the area of tznius and kedushah. There is no halacha that one who is involved in stealing from the governmen may be killed; this is a grave sin, but the ‘online’ people seem to think that their kanous should be placed on such people; we see however, that ‘daas torah is hepech daas baalei batim’; the sensitivities of the people in the ‘online’ world are completely out of wack – any action of rabonim to promote tznius is seen as corrupt, extreme, etc.., this is the world we live in, and this website is no exception.