cantoresq

Joseph, the Young Israel of Southfield is hardly an Agudah. The Mogen Avraham schul is now a branch of Agudah. My uncle davened there for many years when there was barely a minyan. I spent many a shabbos and yom tov in that schul. His son, my cousin still davens there.

Southfield. My family was one of the founders of the Young Israel of Southfield.

was thinking about NCSY too. But. My frame of reference re NCSY is well over 20 years old. NCSY was geared to focused, secular or more assimilated kids, from public schools and yes, Jewish schools, maybe Solomon Schechter types.

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I grew up in Suburban Detroit. NCSY was basically a social outlet for kids who attended the local co-ed day school. There were some non-religious kids who came to the events, and one chapter was located in a Chabad schul so there was an aspect of kiruv rechokim, but it was msot definitely a secondary emphasis, as far as I recall.

Again this is a safety issue. More than wanting them frum, I want my kids alive and safe. If I have to tolerate coed socializing to accomplish that, I’ll hold my nose and tolerate it. At the same I’ll make sure to teach my kids appropriate conduct around members of the other gender. I’ll make sure they are supervised, that the lights stay on at all times, that no one wanders off to a secluded area alone. Conversly if it’s the coed situations that presnt risks to my kid’s safety, they won’t go their either. It’s a far more dangerous world than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Parents can no longer assume that a gathering safe simply because it seemingly comports with Halachik strictures. I want my kids safe, healthy, happy and well adjusted and I’m certain G-d will forgive any slight tresspasses I comit along the way to achieving that goal.

Mariner, you’r right, I didn’t address the Novarodek practice (which was renmarkably similar to the Kotzker approach to clothing, vestigially observed by the Karlin-Stolin chassidim)since it’s no longer in practice in contemporary yeshivot. Theses days, there are two extremes in yeshivish dress; boys who look like they just came out a dry cleaner, and boys who look like unmade beds.

I’m someone who is generally on the recieving end of the vitriol here. I take it in stride. When people here deride my religiosity or impugn my piety and belief in response to my POV, it tells me that I’ve seriously challenged their way of thinking and made them momentarily uncomfortable with their entrenched biases. In short, it tells me that I’ve made my point and made it well.

muchcommonsense, it is entirely normal for teenagers to be interested in the opposite sex. Halacha challenges us tro channel that interest into appropriate venues for expressing that interest, but asking a teenager, or any normal person for that matter, to explain/justify their interest in boys/girls is like asking someone to explain why they are interested in food.

jphone

Member

Still all the fluff and not the real point. Why do they feel a need to “hang out” to begin with? They have nothing else to do with their lives but hang out?

Posted 20 minutes ago #

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Two answers: First becuase they are teenagers. Second, adults also like to “hang out”

I had much the same upbringing as SJSinNYC, excpet that I went to modern schools. The boys and girls in my neighborhod socialized together in our homes. Whether it was a Friday night oneg with some learning and then socializing, or Shabbat afternoons doing playing board games and being around togehter, we socialized in our homes under parental supervision. Nothign inapppropriate ever happened. We all grew up and, for the most part, married and have stable families. It wasn’t until high school, when I went to a yeshiva that the sneaking around started. Friends in my class had to be very careful not to be seen in public with their girlfriends, lest they be expelled from school. The solution was to frequent “treif” establishments where no one knew us, and no one cared what we did. A group of kids getting together on a Friday night to learn or hear a talk about Jewish life in Communist Romania (my uncle gave it many times) or meet in the local pizza parlor, devolved into sneaking out to a far off pool hall or night club with some of learning “their” ways. Being cool was no longer being affable and liked in a very benign kosher setting. Rather being cool became knowing how to inhale a cigarette without coughing, being able to hold one’s liquor, and the ultimate prize; doing things with the girls we would have never done in our parent’s living rooms. The net result of all the sneaking around was one teen pregnancy (and this was the 1980’s when such things didn’t happen in white middle class America, at least not in out midwestern suburbs, let alone in the Jewish community) and alot of confused kids. Mayim genuvim yimtaku is an absolute truism; especially as applied to teens. It has to be as much a part of our approach to tzniyut as everything else.

gavra_at_work

Member

Cantor/lawyer:

Mowing the lawn yourself assumes you have the time and ability (it is one of the things I can and enjoy doing myself, B”H). It also takes investment in the proper tools, which many people can not afford.

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If one can’t afford or is unwilling to maintain his home and yard up to community standards, he should not own the home.

This topic was SUPPOSED to be about cleanliness but I think the way this Topic was worded by FrumCouple calls for a discussion of a much deeper and more important topic.

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Only if you want to avoid this important topic.

People, this topic is not about anti-Semitism. It’s about adhereing to commuinal standards of conduct. There is nothing in the torah that forbids us from keepiing our homes and yards clean. There is an issue chamur is propogating a chilul Hashem in any arena however. Hamayvin yavin. Vehaeino mavin, lo yihyeh lo chelek v’nachala b’soich ha suburbia asher Hashem nosein lachem.

gavra_at_work

Member

Cantoresq:

Perhaps people have better things to spend their money on, like tuition? I think even you agree that paying tuition is better than paying some illegal to mow your lawn.

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Gavra:

Here’s a great idea. MOW YOUR LAWN YOURSELF!!! No one is entitled to a gardner and inability to afford one does not pater you from tending to your home and yard. Sheesh!!!

Regarding Wise, I never read anything substantial about him, so my information is tangential. I think he was a product of his times and his enviornment. Wise, a Reform rabbi, functioned in a highly structured world, a very firm class system. Jewish philanthropy and activism in those days in his community was very much “trickle down.” A group of powerful magnates formed a committe, poured money into it and the rest of the world was supposed to gratefully accept the beneficence. It was this attitude and the resentment other Jews felt for the German “Yahudim” and other Jews’ desire to be part of the leadership that led the demise of the greatest attempt to unify the entire New York Jewish community under one broad umbrella in what has come to be known as the “Kehilla Project” spearheaded by Judah Mages, the then rabbi of Temple Emmanu El, and later first Presidence of the Hebrew University.

Stephen wise lived in that enviorment. The model I described above worked during WWI and Jewish leadership saw no reason to depart from what they thought they kinew to be a succesful model. That model, based on the old European system of the “Hoff Jude” or court Jew/Stadlan meant a centralized body speaking (often behind the scenes and very obsquiously) on behalf of the Jewish commnuity. That body was supposed to be the only representative of Jewry in the portals of power. Additionall euqally important to helping Jews was the absolute necesity of not provoking anti-Semitism anywhere. Additionally these people did try to curry personal favor with the people they lobbied. This was not merely about ego or personal gain however. These Jews (Sulzberger, Wise, Rosenmann etc.) genuninely believed they were the sole stewards of Jewish survival. If people liked them personally, Jews stood to benefit. What Wise and company failed to understand was: a) the greater Jewish community would no longer accept such a system b) circumstances were radically different than thirty or forty years before. It was this failure to adapt that led to internecine squabbling to the detriment of Klal Yisrael. On balance, I think these people meant well. Tragically they were so entrenched in a rarified system of Jewish leadership, they failed to see the forest for the trees.

Hope springs eternal. From the ashes the Phoenix rises!!!

Joseph, we have thus argued these issues to a stale mate.

Joseph

Member

cantoresq, War was raging throughout the continent. Jews are always the first scapregoats. Atrocities were clearly being committed against the Jews. But Hungarian Jewry had an inkling about ANNIHILATION and CREMATORIAS?

Why was the Vrba report so shocking?

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I’ve let you mis-charachterize my words for too long. I only referred to the Vrba report as being incredible in the hypothetical sense, as a possible reason for supressing it until its contents could be further verified. Please do not confabulate that comment into more than it is. As to your question, yes I believe the Jews of Hungary knew, should have known, could ahve known, about the annihilation of their brethern. The Nurenberg laws were well known. Dachau and other camps in Germany were no secret. Jews from Poland and Galicia poured into Hungary with stories of gehttos and deportation. In Hungary itself, anti-Jewish laws, like the Numerous Clausus and subsequent Numerous Nulus, the expulsion of Jews from the professions, the ascendancy of the Nyilas Party, the ban on shechitah and the forced enlistment of Jews into the munkaszalgolat brigades all very clearly demonstrated that Hungarian Jewry was in for singular and devastating persecution, all prior to the German invasion.

rabbiofberlin

Member

to cantoresq and ,parenthetically to joseph,

The Holocaust raised gigantic theological questions. I just don’t want to start another long drawn-out debate on this here…the only thing that can explain that catastrophe is “hester ponim” to the N’th degree.

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I’m also not itnerested in discussing theodicy as related to the Holocaust. The theological issue to which I referred has to do with R. Elchanan Wasserman’s reported last words, that he would be a korban through which klal Yisrael would be redeemed. I have difficulty with that concept. Around 2000 years ago another Jew said much the same thing before he was executed. We’ve had nothing but trouble ever since.

Joseph I’ll defer to your better knowledge on this one. As a relative outsider to the day to day goings on in the chareidi world, there is no way for me to know better than you.

Joseph, how easy is it for a ba’al teshuva to be m’shadeich with a well known respected yeshivish family? Why do shadchanim ask a single person is s/he is a ba’al teshuva? How easy is it for a ba’al teshuva to get his child into a well established “premier” cheder or yeshiva k’tana? I wonder if the praise of which you speak is actually reflective of true attitudes.

Jospeh, what can I tell you, I read alot. I recall seeing that definition of the term in some publication. I’d be happy ot hear I’m wrong in this instance and that therte is no denigration of ba’alei teshuva in the yeshivish velt.

R. Aron Soleveitchik referred to such albums as “tovel v’sheretz b’yado.”

Joseph

Member

cantoresq – Pardon my curiosity, but I’m wondering how a Hungarian Yid as yourself uses the Sefardic havara, as you refer to “Shabbat” above (rather than Shabbos)?

If rabbiofberlin is still eavesdropping, I also wonder where your minhug of writing “MatisJahu” instead of MatisYahu stems from.

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The standard form of transliteration in all English scholarly literature is in Sephardic. That’s why I use it was well. I daven with an Ashkenazic pronounciation, when not in Israel.

Joseph, read the speech made by the Belzer Rebbe’s brother. The relevant portions of it are quoted in Moshe Sokol’s book, Personal Autonomy and Rabbinic Authority. From the text of the speech, given in 1944, it is obvious that the annihilation of European Jewry was common knowledge.

cantoresq – Your logic would dictate that no one other than Eichmann and Kastner can speak of the events in question, since they were the only two in the negotiating room. And since Eichmann is ruled out, you must insist that we take Kastner at his word – since you deny any other parties ability to impugn what was negotiated between him and Eichmann.

And regarding Hecht vs. Porter vs. White, you are the party who constantly resorts to ad hominems to disqualify anyone expressing facts not to your liking.

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Indeed only those who were there for the negotiations knew what actually happened. But there is more to it than just that. The type of conspiracy you and others allege just seems so implausible. How could Eichmann have pulled it off? How could he get it by his superiors in the Reich? How could the Jewish community not have found out what Kasztner was up to, asuming he was doing something so nefarious? My father was in Budapest at various relevant times, and I’ve met others who were there as well. Budapest was a rumor mill of epic proportions. Nothing in the Jewish community was a secret. Everyone knew what was coming. Even in the hinterland, Jews knew that Auschwitz was a train ride away. At my bar mitzvah my father spoke of the last package he recieved from his parents. He was a student in the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest and his parents were in Kisvarda. They sent him a package from the ghetto shortly before they were deported. That package contained a few pairs of socks, some smoked goose liver (my grandmother’s specialty), and all the family photos and vital documents. My grandfather also wrote my father that he knew the family would probably not survive what awaited them in Poland (my grandmother had diabetes, my uncle suffered from some form of muscualr dystrophy and my grandfather was not a robust man. They knew they would not last long in Poland, and in indeed my grandmother and uncle were killed upon arrival in Auschwitz. At best my grandfather lasted a few weeks), and that my father should do everything in his power to avoid falling under the Russians; the Americans would be safer. They knew; everybody knew. A cousin of mine told me how he traveled to Kisvarda from Munkacs, to save his father from deportation with a forged Swedish passport. His father preferred to be deported with his wife, and could not bring himself to abandon her. They knew, everybody knew. Incidentally, my cousing gave the passport to a friend rather than waste it. The friend survived the war as a result. No one needed Kasztner to tell them anything. Hungarian Jews just hoped that war would end before the deportations began. Sadly they miscalculated.

This will be my final post on this subject. I’ve grown weary of it. I perused Perfidy over Shabbat and I read a good deal of Gil White, as well as an attack on his intellectual credibility by Jared Israel on a related subject. At the end of the day, I really can’t definitively conclude if Kasztner ended up a Quisling or a saint. The scholarly community looks favorably upon him, but as someone, in a different discussion of Kasztner said “he just can’t seem to wash clean.” Ben Hecht certainly succeeded in rendering him a traitor to the Jewish people. But at the same time, I wonder if Hecht would have gone to all the effort had Kasztner been Revisionist zionist ala’ Jabotinsky, and not a Labor zionist? There is no doubt that Shmuel Tamir was a better trial lawyer than Haim Cohn. There is no doubt that Kasztner was a terrible witness. His arrogance and conceit along with the psychological damage done to him during the war, coupled with his poor Hebrew made him his own worst enemy. Indeed he also made himself a number of enemies during the way for his conduct during the war. As I said before when you lay down with dogs you wake up with fleas. Anyone who didn’t make it on to the train had good enough reason to hate Kasztner. Since the allies were determined not to bomb the railways leading to the death camps, Vrba would naturally be frustrated and incensed by the lack of a tangible response to this report. That he blamed Kasztner is not surprising since he entrusted Kasztner with a copy of his report. I long ago conceded that Kasztner may had made errors in judgment which become apparent only with the benefit of hindsight. The next time a tyrant stands to annihilte us, those who endeavor to save Jewish lives might learn from the sad experience of Israel Kasztner. But I simply don’t believe that he began his activities intending to sell out Hungarian Jewry simply to save his family. After all, if that is all Kasztner wanted to do, his father in law and other family members in Cluj could have simple walked to Romania and survivied the war there. No I think Kasznter had the best of intentions. They paved his road to Hell.