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Dear Ujm,
Being a guy, my if is directed at myself getting involved in which women are the ones hanging out. Of course, this if would never be applied to you. At your righteous level, certain parts of halacha can not be compromised for even a theoretical instant. But to me, there is always a ‘why should I care’ aspect to these issues.
Dear Avram,
Good point! I omitted the stay at home mother who is just fine without having to be all over the town. My point is that many frum women in the office, are stay at home moms at heart, with very little social life. Sitting in a secluded cubicle, in front of a computer for six hours, is not a breach in kol kevudah.
Dear Ujm,
Fair point. But your also playing with the goal line. Your conflating putting an opponent in prison with pandering to the base.
PS I don’t think either of these are playing a role in Mr. Bragg’s mind. It’s more like he thinks this is his
job. Not that we agree with him.Just for the record: The daughters of both Rav Aaron Kotler and Rav Yitzchok Hutner had advanced college degrees.
This is a bit backwards. If your worried about women going out, kol kevuda, et cetera, than the typical job in an established (frum, or hiring from the frum community) firm is the more modest lifestyle. Sitting in an office and by a computer, is less up and about than the stay-at-home-wife, who has an outing with the kids on Sunday, meets friends for lunch on Monday, local shopping on Tuesday, mall shopping on Wednesday, and Shabbos shopping on Thursday. The young frum working woman, does a good amount of shopping online. And store shopping is done in quick spurts. Almost all the married woman leisurely shopping around town, don’t work.
The Bais Yaakov graduate’s future spirituality hinges on her personal commitment. Most kollel wives are also wondering where their frumkeit went when they pass thirty. It’s not because of the office. It’s because they do nothing to maintain their education and upbringing. And after so many years, it starts to wear off. Many mothers reengage with their frumkeit through their kids. But it not enough they are adults now and need an adult ruchnios.
Why would anybody not work?
Dear Ujm,
Trump has faced federal charges in every decade (Six!) since he started his bankruptcy enterprise.
I agree that much thought was put into the asifa. I’m not talking against the leaders of the movement per se. Though maybe they could be more open to feedback.
Not even so young adults. Not the most mature group of guys. But people today think that something is defective with a serious learning guy having a smartphone. Why? A serious learner is obviously not a phone addict.
Dear Yserbius,
1) What?!? I know someone who went to Mesivta of Lakewood and is a grandfather. Explain that one as if the truth matters.
2) Already twenty years ago, Lakewood’s most established mesivta’s did not have any English. With the explosion of new mesivtas, there are all kind of options for general studies. Including computer training. And, there are several yeshivos with a gym on campus.
3) Also twenty years ago, there were some who had the opinion that well behaved teens who are not in yeshiva should not reside in Lakewood. Nobody thinks that anymore.
4) Lakewood has many, many options for frum kids today.
Nothing I say contradicts your posts, because all a lie needs is another lie. But your perspective of Lakewood is completely contradicted by the truth.
Dear Yserbius,
I was never anointed with the right to say who is relevant or not. But either way, it sheds light on Chabad. And it continues to every single group. It’s an instinct to ascribe divinity to anything we can’t fully ascertain. Without controlling it, it leads to strange mental dogmas.
Chabad, Meron, and Umann, are not controlled much. But the same thinking goes on in Bnei Brak, Lakewood, and Yerushalayim. It stays beneath the surface, because these are more restrained places. People are more hesitant to be seen as not normal, than to assume that the abnormal is natural. But in agitated moments it becomes recognizable, that large parts of every group struggles with the separation between sainted humans and the divine.
Who is to say that they are heretics?
Dear Thefake,
I don’t see the merit of debating all these points. If you want to see The Enlightenment as one road toward materialist atheism, that is your opinion. It’s not mine. And it’s not an easy argument to make. But one thing is certain. It was not the perspective of Karl Marx. And it had no bearing on his view of history.
Dear Ujm,
So maybe this enmity is not political. They just hate him besides for politics. It would explain why someone would want to deface Trump Tower.
Dear Menachem,
So why were there all these accusations and lawsuits against Trump when his affiliation was Republican than Independent, then Democratic, then Republican, than No Party, and then bag to Republican?
I have no problem with a serial law and contract breaker (Who is also addicted to grifting.), being dragged through the courts for years on end. Former President Donald Trump agrees with me on this. The only irritation for him, is that he enjoys not having to pay his bills. And he hates losing. But alas, he was born a loser.
Dear Ujm,
How is Trump the political enemy of Bragg? Trump can’t become the DA. He doesn’t have a license to practice law?
Yes. The references might say something like, “great guy, but he never lets go. If your daughter marries him one day, she is married to him until the day he dies.”
Chashuv! Bumped by a Mod!
Dear Avram,
Let me absorb your take. I”ll comment on it later.
Great analogy! What the Star-K does is beneficial for us because they do all the necessary research and Torah Knowledge. But if somebody would just put out alerts without really knowing what is behind them, we absolutely should ding them for not having the clarity of the Star-K’s approach. This is my opinion. You can disagree with me on this scenario as well as the smartphones.
An actual scenario that bothered me was when a newly smartphone-less fellow came into beis medrash to talk with someone. This someone’s chavrusa got annoyed because he had this chavrusa squeezed into his schedule. The fellow responded, the longer I keep you here the better. Because when you leave beis medrash, you”ll be looking at your smartphone.
For the public’s benefit, all the people in this story were and still are on very friendly terms. What bothers me is that a lot of people think that there is some truth to the retort. I completely disagree. Get your priorities straight. A guy’s time to learn is the most irreplaceable thing he has. If he was in middle of the Amidah I don’t think they would let him be interrupted just to keep him away from his phone.
To me, this is the soft part of the anti-Tech movement. They don’t put enough emphasis on what a Yid could really get out of breaking his phone addiction. You pointed out that these are not exclusive to each other. That could be. But I sense that the dominant focus on ridding the temptation, has clouded the overall purpose. Maybe it’s because I was in Yeshiva at the time, and there was a lot of collective and communal pressure directed at us to not have phones. When it should have been to be fully immersed in Torah.
It still seems like it is presented backwards to Yeshiva Bachurim.
Dear Avira,
Your the judge here on which group is A”Z and which is not. To me, an innocent pronunciation mistake doesn’t redeem what they say their intention is. What is said about Reb Shimon, Meron, and The Zohar, is much more explicit (Seeing and intervening on the molecular level against the decrees of Hashem) than anything about the Heinteger. You could include Uman with Na Nach. Really any group could be included. [Just it’s weird to openly start saying how my rosh yeshiva (who has passed on or still walks among us), knows everything that is decreed on heaven and how it plays out on earth. But in certain hot headed times, we all get close to that trap.]
If you run to kabbalistic intentions, the kabbala is much more accessible (…and possibly better understood.) in Chabad then among the Meron revelers. (I don’t know much about Uman.) If you have a problem with this itself that Chabad made the kabbala hefker, I could agree with you on that. There isn’t anything to do about it. And mixing it up with A”Z just makes the problem more confusing.
Dear Yserbius,
Lakewood has dozens of successful blue collar teens. And hundreds of successful blue collar young fathers. What you are projecting is completely false. This is not a kids at risk issue. Most of Lakewood’s at risk population is not at all involved in anything like this. Also, I don’t know why you think they teach Halacha (or Mishna) in Lakewood Mesivtos. It’s Gemara, Gemara, and Gemara. Three sedarim a day. Some places teach secular subjects for half of second seder.
How any of the above sheds any light on why kids who have been struggling socially since they were ten, would be caught up in a spiral of violence and property damage, is beyond the boundaries of logic. It is just prejudice. Bear in mind, That this is not nearly the first generation of kids to be raised in Lakewood. And it is loosely confined around a part of the communal infrastructure.
Dear Thefake,
1) The Aufklarung didn’t have anything in it’s crosshairs, because it didn’t have any crosshairs. It wasn’t publicly realized until Spinoza’s philosophy was being openly debated. At that point, all the early philosophers were dead. Maybe you mean the age of Goethe and Schiller. But still, Judaism was very much in the background. If you meant Nietzsche, that is already after Marx. Germany was historically anti-Semitic. Is that your point?
2) The Dawn of the Enlightenment, could refer to many different periods. Whatever you are referring to probably had multiple reasons. I’m not being snarky. I’m just not following.
3) The enlighteners attacked every religion that relied on revelation. I don’t get your strawman here. so Leibniz, Mendelssohn, Herder, and so on, were not enlightened?
We could throw around accusations endlessly. Some would forcefully say that anyone that even thinks (You and I?) about Idealism vs. Materialism is attacking Judaism. You’ve totally lost me. Is your point about Marx himself, or his philosophical association? Either way, you have to start from something concrete. Because there are too many dissenting approaches.
Dear Always,
I think Avram was pointing out that Ujm did not post anything like what you are attacking. Why do you feel attacked in the first place?
Dear Thefake,
There isn’t what to criticize. Your giving a position to The Enlightenment that it doesn’t care for. (It’s effect on Judaism.) And then blaming what followed on your cause. The truth is, that pre-enlightenment, assimilation was only possible through conversion to Christianity. From the side of the fence alone, assimilation would have been a major factor. Who is to say that it would have been worse without any Enlightenment?
In sum, I think your completely wrong.
Dear Avram,
I think that saying, I got rid of my smartphone is only half of a success story. I got rid of my phone and am smore available for my family, I got rid of my phone and am learning more, I got rid of my phone and my davening improved, is something I can get behind.
But the populism of the movement is just emphasizing getting rid of the smartphone.
Dear Syag,
Are you even keeping tabs on us?
Dear Yserbius,
Your not making a coherent argument. And anyways, what difference is it if two hour of second seder are converted to secular subjects? It’s the same result.
These kids did not make it to high school. They are about fifteen. They started falling behind at eleven. It is impossible to know what you are clearly projecting. Not to say that it matters. You haven’t given me any reason to take you seriously on this.
Professor Way, Rabbi Greenspan, Reverend Sharpton, and some kind of human that still goes by Stein, all post to the Coffee Room. I thought that was obvious.
A parallel question is where the assimilation rate would be without any Enlightenment alongside the Industrial Revolution.
Dear Yserbius,
Your making stuff up. If there were competent, affordable teachers it would happen. As it is, there are enough options that have some English program. It’s weird that your so confident about what Lakewood thinks, when you are openly inferring their ideology from what you decided is going on.
(That made me laugh. I’m not Lubavitch at all!)
I got 4 + 3 + 1 = 8. You got ten. See my first paragraph.
“The kids will never learn it.” Says you.
Now let’s get back to what the OP was talking about. (Most of) these kids have not spent even one day in Mesivta. They are younger then you think. Their troubles go back to around fifth grade. One would not automatically assume that they know long division.
And there is the mispronunciation of התנא האלוהי. Go ask around what it means.
Dear Avira,
So why aren’t there dozens of posts from you about the kefira of the tooth fairy?
PS Since these are all specific thought processes, how could we ascertain them from seforim? Whatever we think when we opened the sefer, we will assume the author is ‘proving’ our belief. You know this is true, because this whole thread is one example after another of one poster doing just that.
Ask the Meron fanatics what it means to them. It’s shocking. The same is true for Umman and other kevarim.
Dear Avira,
When was there a huge machlokes about machnesei rachamim? It has been debated in seforim. A big difference.
Dear Avira,
Nothing in Chabad is worse than what goes on in Meron. This is obvious to anybody who does their research.
So when you ask the tooth fairy to give you extra cash for your tooth, you are an apikores?
Hypocrisy is not a factor in identity politics. Why is this so hard for everyone to grasp?
Dear Yserbius,
The answer is that the RY do not reject general studies. It just didn’t really work. This is a fact. You insist that it must be an ideology. That’s a lie. UJM agrees with you. He has an extensive resume. RY of a Lakewood Mesivta is not yet one of them.
A standard seder hayom is at most four hours first seder, three hours second seder, and over at least an hour night seder. That’s eight. Maybe you are including time for davening.
There are many competent teachers in Lakewood. But most of them would rather be teaching gemara. And teaching secular studies in a Mesivta is only a part time job. Remember that women teachers is not an option.
I don’t know why the people who know their sciences would forget them, or move out of town. Additionally, why would the more knowledgeable type stop coming? At one point there was a theory that there wouldn’t be enough frum pediatricians in Lakewood. It didn’t play out. Lakewood is much more attractive to people with degrees that are serious about their kid’s Jewish Education. And with all the expansion, there is a neighborhood for every type.
And now to answer your question. I assumed you were talking about math, science and, social. Nobody who wants to be taken seriously would suggest that these kids are violent because they do not know enough math or science. Suggesting mushrooms as the root problem would come across as being less clueless.
Dear Thefake,
In other words, The Enlightenment did not need religious validation for their goals. Being superfluous is not the same as eradicating. It’s the same as claiming that online sites and chatrooms have no need for religion. And therefore TYW is TCR is against Judaism.
The point you are supposed to be explaining why an emancipated Jew, is not as Jewish as a traditional Jew. Go ahead and join the two hundred year old competition of who can describe Mendelssohn’s lack of faith. You probably can’t bumble your answer less than most.
Dear Yserbius,
Go look what goes on in Meron every year.
And I wasn’t referencing The Zohar.
Go look how most of RWO approaches the Zohar.
These two examples clearly illustrate that modern day Jews, still do not separate commemorating the dead from worship.
More accurate would be, the path that avoids total failure.
Dear Avram,
I was being sincere. You are a very good online poster.
So I think we agree that letting go of the smartphone is not by itself a success. It is on the path to success.
Dear Yserbius,
Point blank question: If the learn ten hours a day approach is an ideological one, why do the RY of the ten hour (as you insist.) a day Mesivta make known his preference to English?
Now if it’s allowed let me fill you in. The real issue is, where would you find competent teachers? This is so obvious, I don’t know how you or UJM convinced yourselves that this a matter of choice as opposed to circumstance.
I give up on trying to correct you about Lakewood. The place you describe does not exist.
The disaster you spell out is meh to me. There is enough secular knowledge in Lakewood. If anyone listens to them or not, is not because of their high school education.
Lakewood has many basic differences than Israel. No comparison.
Next point blank question: Do you think even one of these teens turned to violence because he was denied from doing a detailed analysis of the spores on amanita mushrooms?
If anything it’s about not being denied the knowledge of a first hand experience of mushrooms.
Dear Avram,
I am really impressed by your ability to organize your (Mine as well.) thoughts. But what are we disagreeing about? My point was to the posters before that see a removal from technology as a defining achievement. It’s not. And to think so is complacency. I think you admit that smart phones are not inherently evil like AZ and GA.
Dear Yeshiva,
It most definitely was Rav Aharon’s preference not to have any secular subjects taught at any age to either gender. Yet, he was involved in the opening of schools with secular studies at every stage of his klal work.
Dear Coffee,
Because they have their own communal network. That is used by all segments of Jews. Except for those that have their own dead leaders.
Dear Mdd,
Get a better computer program. I have wondered why most azharos in NaCH, are not on inyanei yirah. Then I found that there is much discussion on the matter.
Dear Yserbius,
“There is no non-Chabad frum Rav”
Meron and the Zohar for starters.
Unfortunately, your in the minority here.
Emancipation led to assimilation because before the Reformation, any Jews or Christians that socialized were risking their lives. The only way for a Jew to assimilate, was to Convert. In non religious countries assimilation is higher. And in non religious, non enlightened countries, assimilation is the highest. It’s like of course I’m a Jew, but why can’t I intermarry?
In sum, without gradual enlightenment, assimilation would be a wholesale movement. Just the force of the coming future alone is enough to cause a large amount of assimilation into it(the future). The Enlightenment was like an out of control release valve. You could point that it was a release of centuries of pressure. Or you can argue that it was out of control for decades.
Enjoy the debate.
Dear Yserbius,
I could get behind you ideology, but your post is terribly flawed. It makes it sound like you don’t really believe it, you just hate Lakewood. I know you don’t think that. Because I also know that you don’t really know Lakewood.
There are a bunch of Mesivtas that are only gemara. (Why do you keep mentioning Halacha?) But ten hours a day, is a lot. Most Mesivtas schedule around eight or nine hours a day. (Whether only limudei kodesh. Or plus limudei chol.) Maybe the top Mesvtas have ten hours of seder. I guess this is what you call nitpicking.
The RY that give advice to all the startup high schools, is openly pro english. He says he tried and couldn’t get it done. He still recommends it. and one of his own sons even got his own diploma on the side. This may be negligible to you, but from within Lakewood it is a known refutation to the argument UJM is trying to make.
Lakewood is not an ideologically driven place. Maybe long ago. I don’t know. Now it is invested in the pursuit of happiness like everyone else.
Whatever the reasons of the likes of UJM may be, it is not anti Torah in this argument. His Tznius and Morals may be anti Torah. But his educational outlook is not.
I don’t think the worry is batala. It is a lack of trust. If I teach my kid algebra, he will hack the computer and get on the internet. If I teach him history, he will be a maskil. If I teach him science, well, everybody knows that every scientist is a kofer. The funny thing is that most of these adults learned some secular studies when they were younger.
I don’t know what disaster it would lead to, other than have a dumb conspiracy driven community that can’t learn Torah because they can’t think straight. But that is not something askanim would care about. So please clarify.
Dear Yserbius,
To my knowledge, the only High School in Rav Schneur’s day had English. (Unless Mesivta of Lakewood was around forty years ago. I think not.) To be polite, let’s just say that he did not send there. We can’t infer an approval for English from that. Moreover, I would expect him to be against it. He was born and learned in Europe. Though almost all of his talmidim supported English. The current Rosh Yeshivos of BMG, are American. I think two had secular studies and two did not.
Dear Ujm,
You are incorrect. Most of Rav Aharon’s talmidim (This only means those that were Rosh Yeshivos.) advocated for English programs. Some avoided it. But it seems like they were on the fence about it. I am only certain about one talmid, (Including non RY.) that was open in his opposition to English. Maybe there were a few others. But the concesus coming out of Lakewood always was that your yeshiva and it’s bachurim would be more matzliach with a full high school curriculum. But in Lakewood itself, the opposite became true.