cantoresq

Is the issue the jeans, or that he may had acquired clothes without your knowledge beforehand? The former is a horse long beaten to death on this forum. The later is an itneresting topic.

cherrybim- that’s how I understand it, at least in terms of the “frumkeit” issue. there might be other reasons, i.e. chazaka or “Ein mesalkin. . .” to favor you hypothetical outvoted chazzan.

Just-a-guy I look forward to reading reports of the event here, in the Yated and in the Jewish Week.

Sorry cherrybim, but a shliach tzibbur is not an automaton. The text of the siddur speaks to us and a proper chazzan must convey that message to the congregation. You acnkowledge that a shliach tzibbur is the representative of the congregation. He therefore has the obligation to passionately advocate for his client. After all, the Judge might be impressed not only by the words of the advocate but by the passion with which he makes his arguments. Moreover, such passion may stir the heart of the “client” to improve him/herself. Klal Yisrael is deserving of the best representation; no?

There are many grounds upon which Pinchik, or people like him, could be disqualified as a cantor. I can’t say those points are wrong or illegitimate. All I offer in response is the heter of “merutze l’kehal” which most poskim say overrides all other considerations. But I truly believe that Pinchik davened with real kavanah, his irrelgiosity notwithstanding. It’s akin to p’sak of the Gemara in Kiddushin in the case of a man, known to be a inveterate sinner proposes to a woman ont he condition that he is a tzaddik. They are betrothed says the Gemara, “shema hirher t’shuva belibo.”

As to the original proposal, didn’t a certain Saducee women try to do something similar in the course of her dialogue with R. Yochanan ben Zakkai?

I loce all of Glantz’s chazzanut. But I can’t say I understand every peice . Glantz wrote some of the most complex and avant garde chazzanut ever.

When speaking in Yiddish, it is customary to use the more formal German “ehr” rather than the colloquial “du.” In Hebrew it would be “kvodo” as opposed to “atah.” English has no such parallel.

davy, I was referring to styles, not geography.

BTW, MM I don’t recall the Bible saying anyting about Devorah heneviah, or Mirriam Haneviah being hausfrau’n who simply supported their husband and children’s limud Torah. Same for Ruth. But it’s clearly known that they were considered righteous and holy women. What gives?

I don’t understand why people assume that artistic presentation of davening done by a trained cantor and davening with kavanah are mutually exclusive. There were chazzanim like Ephraim Shlepak or Baruch Schorr, David Moshe Moshe Steinberg and others who were well known talmidei chachamim, who learned nine or ten hours a day; men of great piety. The chazzan in the Vilna Shtot Schul was required to learn a minimum of five hours every day, in order to insure that he was a pious Jew. Moshe Koussevitsky had a daily regimine of talmud Torah. Even among later day cantors who suffered lapses in their observances, there were hints of spiritual greatness. Pinchik, who upon escaping the Soviet regime, established himself as a chazzan even though he was well known as a Russian folk singer. He did so to honor his grandfather’s memory, who was a chassidic cantor, and out of a desire to reconnect with his heritage. Granted he lived a Bohemian life and was never able to shake off the bad habits he picked up in the Red Army. But his chazzanut, one filled with nostalgic yearning for his heritage and imbued with Jewish pathos, stirred his soul and those of his congregants. Ganchoff, who was raised with no Jewish education beyond an afternoon Talmud Torah, chose to be a cantor rather than a secular musician because as a Jew he felt called to it. How many of us choose our careers for no other reason than a desire to give expression to our Yiddishkeit? The Conservative movement today would be even worse then it is, would have destroyed far more Jewish souls, were it not for a core group of chazzanim who with a combination of charisma and piety and wisdom resisted the reformist tendancies of the rabbis. The stories are legion of Conservative rabbis bitterly complaning about the orthodoxy of their chazzanim and wondering why the congregations back those backward thinking Europeans over the American rabbis. I’ve heard countless tributes to those cantors from people who credit them with saving their yiddishkeit (generally they go along the story line of I sang in Cantor X’s choir as a child and watching him daven, the care he put into preparing services and the love he had for each of us who helped him make the davening more meaningful inspired me to be a better Jew.). I’ve never heard such tributes about Conservative rabbis. (and before you ask what those cantrs were doing in Conservative congregations, there were no jobs anywhere else for them. Orthodox refused to give them pulpits, by and large, having no interest in them) I don’t know why it is but when it comes to the cantorate, people are so quick to dismiss it and deride its practitioners and adherants and never consider that it was value, tremendous value. But you are the ones who lose out. You lose out like anyone who never experienced a truly beautiful thing. You can live your whole life and never appreciate the deprivation, but it is there.

Thos who think that chazzanut is merely a form of entertainment, you are half right. Chazzanut is entertainment much like going to hear a maggid (who incidentally is often paid for his drasha) is entertainment. People laud those who teach and interpret and exhort us with oratory skill, but deride those who do so via the sung word. Why? I won’t deny that many past chazanim were not paragons of Jewish virtue. There were many reasons to explain that phenomenon, and it speaks to the curturl turmoil Judaism suffered over the last century and a half. But many grea chazzanim, the core sotck of them in fact, were deeply devout and learned men, who plied their craft seeking the betterment of klal Yisrael. So what if they provided some much needed and often absent entertainment during davening. Is a sermon really any different? Jews needed it and their spirits were uplifted as a result.

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Jothar, you don’t understand what chazzanut is about. It’s not about trying to sound like Pavarotti. Chazzanut, the artful use of nussach, is about interpretting text, and bringing the text of the tefilla to life. Chazzanut, when done right by a master cantor, is the ultimate intellectually satisfying and spiritually uplifting expression of prayer; like a really great shiur klali, one that has pilpul, Halacha and Agadeta. It’s a crying shame that the genre is moribund. Aside from losing a great tradition, davening will be cheapended as a result.

Let’s start with something mroe basic. What does it mean to be a man? We can add the frum aspect later, but I think the basic definition will cover alot of it.

If one plans to own a gun to protect himself and his family, one better be prepared to use it, and use it effectively, i.e. kill or seriously wound an attacker. Personally I don’t think I have it in me to kill someone unless they are about to kill me or a member of my “inner circle,” a term I decline to define as it might be situational. Even then I’m not sure I could actually kill someone. One really can’t answer that question unless placed in a situation requiring its resolution. Owning a gun, seems to make the occurance of such a situation more likely. Thus I choose not to own one.

As I said before, I can’t pinpoint a single cause for why people divorce. But in my estimation, based on observation, a failure of communication is always part of the breakdown of a marriage. Remember the opposite of love is not hate; it’s ambivalence. Non-communication is emblematic of ambivalence. I’ve also seen that people who have the happiest marriages are those who have excellent communication skills, who are able to convey their thoughts effectively, respectfully and with the precise amount of intensity. If one sees a growing inability to communicate with one’s spouse, it’s a telltale sign something is very wrong in a marriage.

If I had my druthers, I’d abolish door to door collecting altogether. It’s demeaning to the supplicants and creates ample for fraud. charitable giving should be centralized in local agencies which can then investigate applications for assistance and dole out money as needed and appropriate. These agencies would be funded by people’s maaser money. The way to keep infrastructure costs down is to keep the agencies small and inter-networked. Thus they could share certain administrative costs. Additionally small agencies might do a better job of maintaing donor confidence, which has been an issue that has long plagued larger organizations like federations (which incidentally were founded to do away with door to door supplicants for handouts). Something to consider.

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My three personal favorites are Tomchei Shabbos, Chai Lifeline and Kids Kicking Cancer. Occasionally, I’m approached by friends on behalf of people they know who are going through tough times, and based on my firend’s vouching for these people, I give something as well. But I’ve long stopped giving money to any stranger who knocks on my door.

Josh31, advice to newlyweds to have more “together time” is a far cry from what’s been bandied about here. Indeed newly weds must learn to make their joint way in the world together. Doing that requires them to get to know eachother on a level they could never get to before the wedding. But there are those couples, the majority in fact, who also look for and need the reassurance and validation provided by a peer group. Why restrict that?

To specifically address MM last post, it’s ironic that he would mre readilly rely on Eichmann’s testimony about Kasztner. That’s how eager some people are to impugn an innocent man; a hero. They rely on the testimony of Nazis. Talk about doctrinal and ideological. Kasztner did no suppress the Vrba report. He passed it on to the Zionist leadership, which is was Rudolph Vrba asked him to do. There was no need for Kasztner to advertise the report as R. Weismandel was already doing that. As to the selection of passengers on the train, Kasztner did not have the final say. It was done is committee, some of it outside of Budapest. About half the seats were sold to finance the venture. The others were selected in a tortured painstaking process. Was there some nepotism and other corruption? Perhaps there was, but what of it? 1,700 people were saved. How many Jews did the gedolim save?

Mezonos Maven, you are entitled to an opinion. You are entitled to be doctrinal and ideological. You can even misconstrue facts to make them fit your tunnel visioned understanding of history. But you cannot espouse a point of view that makes no sense at all. The chareidi view on Kasztner is that he was Eichmann’s patsy, pooh pooing all the Jews of greater Hungary, lulling them into a false sense of security, in exchange for a train of mostly zionists. To believe that thesis one has to believe that Kasztner was successful in doing Eichmann’s bidding; else why would Eichmann have allowed the train at all. And there is the internal contradiction. If in fact, as you fallaciously allege, Kasztner and the “Zionists” had in fact convinced the Jews of Hungary that they were not in danger, why did the 1700 or so people even want to get on the train? More specifically, if R. Yoel Teitelbaum believed that his chassidim would, at worst, be resettled in the east as he claimed after the war, why was he unwilling to join them and be their rebbe there? Why did he get on that train? Was Poland not good enough for him?

The fact is that everyone knew what was going to happen. In Budapest, Nagyvarod, even in a tank town like Kisvarda, the Jews knew what was happening. My grandfather wrote my father a letter from the Kisvarda ghetto telling him of impending deportations. The neologue seminary in Budapest was converted into an umschlagplatz. There were refugees from Poland telling of the concentration camps. R. Michoel Weissmandel was “shraying chai vekayam.” For G-d’s sake even Miklos Horthy publicly protested the extermination of the Jews. Even before the German invasion, the Nyilas were rounding up jews and outright killing them on the banks of the Danube, or in the Munkaszalgollat. People knew. But there was no place to run. That’s why people did everything they could to get on the train, or to get get a Wallenberg schutzpasse. That’s why the Satmer Rav accepted a seat on Kasztner’s train; to save his life. And he was absolutely correct in doing so. That’s why the Chorin family quickly took a deal and sold their multi million dollar holdings for a pittance and ran to Spain. That’s why Pinchas Freudiger, the Rosh Hkahal of Budapest’s Orthodox kehilla fled to Romania when a sympathetic csender tipped him off and his brother had been arrested; to save his life and those of his family. (contrast Freudiger with Samu Stern, the president of the Neologue community who also knew what was going to happen and stayed with his people even though he could have fled. Talk about a chilul Hashem) People knew.

Kasztner did nothing wrong. He saved lives, 1700 of them on the train and protected 15,000 more slave laborers in Vienna. To do it, he had to “lie down with dogs” and risk getting fleas. In return he was portrayed as a quisling for political reasons and was ultimately murdered. Shmuel Tamir and Malkiel Grunwald literally had Kasztner blood on their hands. But Kasztner saved the Satmer Rav, who came to America and did all he did to strengthen American yiddishkeit. Rudolph Kasztner has a chelek in every pasuk, in every mishne learned by Tinokot shel beit rabban, as does the Satmer Rav. In return for enabling the ascendancy of American Orthodoxy, a perfidous ungrateful chareidi community vilifies him. Shame on you and all those like you. And I defy you to please answer my question. WHY DID R YOILISH BOARD THAT TRAIN?

Indeed Kasztner testified on behalf of Kurt Bacher. I don’t know why he did it. Maybe he sufered from Helsinki Syndrome or PTSD. Maybe Kaszter, for all he accomplished, was a deeply flawed character. But that testimony does not negate what Kasztner accomplished. He saved the Satmer Rav who went on to build American Orthodoxy in the most profound of ways. Kaszter put the Satmer Rav on his train and kept his pregnant wife in Budapest. Kasztner went back to Budapest, when he could have stayed in Switzerland. He stood by his bretheren when gedolim fled. And you dare impugn him?

Min Hametzar is not a first han account. R. Weismandel was not in Budapest at the time. Gizi Fleischman, his assistant, however had far kinds words to say about Kasztner. She dealt with him one to one.

Socks should match one’s pants.

Anyone want to organize a Yeshiva World group to go see Killing Kasztner?

Jothar, since wearing white exclusively also has sociological implication, might a member of the “colored wearing shirts community” who opts wear white shirts exclusively also be guilty of “rebellion?”

Are there gradations? For those who look askance at colored shirts, do certain colors connote greater or lesser depravity (i.e. blue is more “moral” than lavendar, which is better than pink etc.), or are all colors equally suspect? Are patterns like stripes or checks (my preference is for checkered drench cuffed shirts) better or worse than solid colors? Which patterns are better from a frum point of view? What about contrasting white collars and cuffs? Are certain collars more Jewishly acceptable (i.e. the straight collar is preferance to spread collar etc.). Is there a “frummer fabric?” Is silk acceptable? How about linen shirts? Wool? While poly/cotton blends are less expensive and may even wear longer than all cotton, might they not symbolically violate the spirit of the issur kilayim? Is a no iron shirt better since it frees up time for learning? Sartorial frumkeit is so daunting!!!