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Dear Ujm,
The Rosh Yeshivos of the most prestigious Yeshivos believe in secular studies. The ones that are around for decades, actually started off with English and Diplomas. It didn’t work so they switched. And the parent body is not in agreement with Rav Aharon. If they were, they would be having their boys learning a full second seder at twelve years old.
Dear Always,
Getting a typical job and making enough money to be self sufficient, are at odds with each other in today’s day. But let’s keep this country’s disfunction, separate from Lakewood.
“Better a ruined zman than a ruined bachur.”
I could get behind that. But here a we multiple bachurim that got ruined, so it’s a non starter.
“Not buying it.”
They weren’t interested in dealing with these boys. They saw them as in the way of what the yeshiva was trying to do.
PS I wasn’t retreating. I was thinking about the fallout to the yeshiva scene in general. As we got more specific (I don’t know why you think a specific story would prove or disprove a movement.) I focused more on this one yeshiva. My statement still stands. Instead of just saying don’t get caught up in today’s nisayon (phone addiction), tell them what they can achieve instead (growth in Torah).
Learn the melachos of shabbos is the correct answer to the hypothetical question.
The answer to this thread can be found at http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/driving-a-tesla-on-shabbos
Anything specific?
“It is avodah zara to say that Hashem has any body, or that any body reaches him. This is 13 ikkarim. A rebbe or any other tzadik is not god. He doesn’t have god in him, as Hashem cannot be contained, divided, be here and not there, etc..”
I agree with “a rebbe or any other tzadik is not god”. I can’t be sure that this a unanimous opinion. But as long as it is not associated with any form of actual worship, it is most definitely not avodah zara.
Dear Ujm,
In his time he did. Now what?
Dear Yserbius,
“we can split …… Klal Yisrael”
Well yes we could do that. But why would anyone want to?
Rabbi?!? These are questions for public forums only!
Now why wouldn’t you just tell them that quote from the other thread? It is from a non-Jewish philosopher after all!
Dear Yserbius,
“communities that essentially tell children that if they can’t learn for ten hours a day”
A community that expects the kids to learn ten hour a day?!? Tell me where and I’ll be looking for a wife today. Lakewood is far removed from such a description.
Um, do you mean Yeshiva Beis Binyomin of Stamford?
Your assuming that it was an ideological choice. My guess is that is has to do with feasibility. Education can’t be willed upon the students. And (barring plentiful funds) it has to be worth the investment.
Dear Always,
Again and………. again. Lakewood has plenty of frum blue collar workers. They mostly learn on the job. So it would not be useful at all.
Dear Dofi,
I don’t know that I disagree with you and the chorus. People are not being truthful with the facts. The reason for my harping on that is still to come.
Dear Good,
It doesn’t matter what was in his mind. He could have killed you and I just as easily.
Torah u’Mada is in the mind.
Torah im derech eretz is in reality.
It is equally compatible and incompatible.
It’s up to you.
My apologies to Rav Schwab.
Dear Thefake,
Absolutely false. Circular reasoning. It’s the old ‘Moshe Rabbeinu was still Moshe Rabbeinu even though didn’t have (insert any innovation of the last 3K+ years)’ rhetorical point. Emancipation is not anti-religion. Unless you insist that religion did not come from God. And to prove it, at that point Mendelssohn was totally observant and Maimon was almost completely unobservant. And a drunk.
Well, it took the Rabbi twenty nine years to come to a conclusion. Just imagine how long it would take Avira to agree with him!
Dear Avira,
No one? How would you know what his supporters were saying? We weren’t there. And they all (mostly) died along with him. So we don’t know how they would have reacted to his death. There are better analogies to today. I would love to see how you would twist yourself to answer for all the Accepted Rabbonim that went along with messianic movements. But more than that, I would love to know why your so troubled by it. Let Chabad be Chabad. You don’t care anyway.
Dear Dofi,
The yeshiva exists just to promote The Torah and Limud Hatorah. Nothing else. The larger system? Is legally mandated so start there. But let us forget about schools for a moment. It could be very troubling to kids when there is a debate and the adults in the room do not show an appreciation for the truth.
When I first came back to town, I got a lot off IYHBY. I kept track and gladly returned them all by a levaya.
Dear Sam,
Then they will be back when they are fleishig.
I hope there is a purpose to reporting this horrible chapter. A smartphone on a yid is not a kasha. A yid wasting his time is the kasha. If you see a serious learning yeshiva bachur with a smartphone, there is no kasha at all. But yet, ………….
Dear Avram,
Hands of and nuanced is not the same thing. I stopped fighting the crusaders when a Rebbe told me that this was his first time going along with a broad movement after fifteen years in various yeshivos. He wanted to do it slowly case by case, but he had to many people willing to run him out of town for it.
The yeshiva with that group of boys, never understood what they were doing and the bachurim had a big impact on the ruach of the yeshiva. Then one of the staff decided that he is going to force his will on the yeshiva, no matter the price. Coincidentally, it was after he was challenged to have a tech free yeshiva. (PS People who strongly believe in zero phone policies, think this yeshiva did everything wrong.)
My argument is that the learning is more of a measure of any bochur than the phone. While addictions can ruin a bachur, it takes the hanhala to ruin a zman for everyone. The tremendous impact to today, is that made many yeshivos even more deaf to their bachurim. I wasn’t referring to just group. Though most of them wasted a lot of their capabilities.
The phones were banned. The pedestal group were those that signed to not touch a smartphone. there was a group that didn’t need phones, but thought the whole thing was a joke. Others hid their phones. This group was I’m only not having a phone because I can’t. So they bent the rule as much as they could. They were told things like your not coming on time to seder so we are giving your chavrusa away. Unless you sign the paper.
Instead of being occupied with their phone on the yeshiva campus, they went to where they had phones or to other people who had phones. And one bachur had a bad relationship that he was keeping at arm’s length. Some of the hanhala agreed that in theory he should have an exception, but those that wanted a tech free yeshiva wouldn’t hear of it.
Dear Yserbius,
Apologies. Not really. I am mildly annoyed at your assumption of the facts. You don’t know what this specific story is about. [Almost nobody does.] And your not at all correct about the making of Lakewood Mesivtas. [Almost nobody cares.]
Whatever can help struggling kids, is water under the bridge. It is hard to say that this is from the schools without a clear pattern emerging. And the fact that Lakewood is now producing dozen of well behaved, blue collar teens, is enough to not immediately blame the gemara obsession and the like. Your theories can have a lot of truth to them, yet remain inapplicable.
As to “general lack of interest” it is not a seething indication to anything let alone indictment. Apathy is in abundance throughout the American Jewish scene. It varies community to community what they are apathetic about, but all in all the great unifying factor of today’s Judaism is lack of interest. It is remarkable that the post war generation worked tirelessly to build, their grandchildren are to disinterested to maintain.
Dear Zaphod,
Does this get me the job?
Dear Dofi,
For once and for all, Mekor Hatorah and Mesivtas of that type.
Who is pushing the boys to become anything? I would think delinquents are a result of a lack of direction.
General studies is also white collar.
I don’t have any insight into the psyche of Lakewood parents. Most parents do not know what their kids are up to. The good parents are those that accept that and show their children how to approach life issues. And then make themselves available to guide the kids through these challenges.
The blue collar boys do not need the system. They live in the real world. Should the yeshiva system care for the girls too? The seniors?
Dear Dofi,
Are you on Mars, or do you think Lakewood is?
These kids struggles began at around ten. Ten year olds on Earth are generally not aware of life options. They become overloaded just talking about the subject. There are plenty of options in Lakewood. Any kid with eyes sees the blue collar teens all over town. They present themselves well and have some means. Your assertion that these kids would have success at secular studies is ridiculous. There are decent high schools in Lakewood that offer a general education with a full diploma.
Now you are not making any point at all.
Dear Always,
Lakewood’s growth started thirty years ago.
The only high school in those few years that did not have a general curriculum was Mesivta of Lakewood.
Almost all top students went to learn out of town until much more recently. Or they did not remain top students.
Lakewood has many issues to address with the current growth of the masses. Almost none of them will be addressed at all. I don’t see why the larger scale of disinterest in general studies would be more of an issue. Moreover, I suspect that there is more interest in general studies now, than in the previous generation.
Rav Malkiel left Lakewood to learn in Boston at a tender age. The only frum high school (sorry the other one wasn’t) in Lakewood was the Sons of Israel crowd. And most definitely had a general curriculum. The elementary school was coed.
Whatever you were trying to say about elites and Lakewood of old is totally false. Please reflect on this before you post about Lakewood again.
Dear Ben,
Why is this all the same topic? [The Rebbe’s supporters, what is an upstanding ben torah, and long dead messiahs.]
Another hypocritical argument against Chabad.
“So, the cult personae are not responsible for the followers?”
No.
Dear Ujm,
A yeshiva for the formerly at risk.
A yeshiva for work half day/ learn half day.
A yeshiva for college guys.
A yeshiva as a place to house OTD so they don’t go off/on to something worse.
A yeshiva that focuses on drug rehab.Even if you get rid of the internet from your home, there is always other options.
Dear Ujm,
Strangers until they are engaged? So one do I’ll get engaged to a stranger/ What about the girls I know who I have no intention of dating? Are they strangers? Is this pritzus because thank goodness your not my father or rebbi and I asked you these questions? Do you only prey on strangers out of tznius concerns?
Dear Always,
They did. Through personality cults and populist movements. Don’t use the philosophy to criminalize the philosopher and exonerate the criminal.
I know. Nine years since the thread started.
I’m not going to post them. But there are at least six different methods that can be done by almost any teen for under a hundred dollars. And two of them are free.
Dear Kalt,
“value our religion less”
The yeshiva velt has lost the value of it’s own religion. The stay in yeshiva and learn value has decreased dramatically especially within the yeshiva itself. A middle aged MO father, who remembers the sincerity of the yeshiva in his day, scoffs at the yeshiva bachur who can’t find the beis medrash for most of bein hazmanim.
Dear Ujm,
It depends what you call a yeshiva. And where you count the at risk boy that went from no secular studies to secular studies to the street.
Dear Yserbius,
Your dreaming. I don’t think you have any real access to Lakewood. So your excused for believing these old housewife tales. Neither of those two yeshivos were successful. One barely existed. The Other managed to fill a class, but the rabbeim revolted against the method and intensity. It was taken over and remade into an in-between approach. Mesivta has not been a problem for those boys because of a reason. But the fact is that Lakewood Mesivta did not have english before (Did it ever?) these two schools opened. And the top high schools in town dropped their programs around the turn of the century. The Roshei Yeshiva are open about it. It just failed due to lack of interest. The less intense high schools do offer secular studies and diplomas.
PS The boys system doesn’t really fight over top guys. The tension is over filling up. A low enrollment could bankrupt a yeshiva within a year.
Dear Always,
The Lakewood model is not based on Israel.
That’s an extreme armchair hypothesis.
Dear Gadol,
Warning: this is a hypothetical question. It is not based on any rumor or fact.
What if I tell you that some of these boys are good learners and should be learning a whole day, but feel like it reflects badly on themselves to be a learning boy? Or what if they could be top of their class but don’t want to live off of someone else’s dime?
Dear Daas (and a lot of other posters who to busy blaming whatever they don’t like),
And what I think is the main point. These kids started on this trajectory when they were younger. Project all the arguments to the age of a ten year old. But if anyone wanted to help, they would work on solving how to deal with now. Even saying we (fellow CR posters) have to be extra nice to them, would be more to the point. Even though it seems utterly futile and irrelevant.
Dear Dofi,
You may have a point, but it’s an irrelevant one. The teens we are discussing did not on the whole make it to high school. They had secular studies in elementary school. And it is more likely they struggled with math and science than with limudei kodesh. They may have struggled to keep with their peers in non academic activities as well.
Dear Avira,
Go tell a satmar preteen that their Rav Yoelish was a loner on his views of the Medinah. Go tell a Lakewood kid, about those that know shas and poskim cold and are college educated. Go tell the YU-bound high schooler, that there are yungeliet in BMG that get mentions in scientific papers. Go tell the IDF that some of the most fanatical chareidim on earth observe the yartzeit of every fallen soldier from the last fifty years. You get the point. (Maybe that’s to optimistic.) People who grow up in a boxed in community don’t have a clue how unique their opinions are.
I concede that there is a specific point to make about Chabad on this matter. But your being too blunt. If you want to speak the truth on this crucial matter, you need to be much more precise.
And one more thing. I’m not making an argument against sheltering anybody from opposing opinions. It is a very necessary thing. That isn’t a reason for us to be embarrassed about this fact of communal life.
Dear Avram,
First of all, I wasn’t in that yeshiva.
1) Some people in chinuch dropped their own nuanced hands off approach when it came to yeshiva bachurim and their phones. The fall out -even today- is tremendous. The yeshiva staff did not see anything from the angle of the student body. They were continually at war with some talmidim.
2) The boys that were not committing to permanently giving up their phone, had no one to talk to. Half the yeshiva was put on a pedestal for not having a phone even though it wasn’t a sacrifice. And the reaction to this group was that if you were interested being better off, you would join them. So the yeshiva wrote them off as not intersted and overlooked them for everything.
3) Bachurim had to get rid of their phones within a week. They had to figure out if they should cancel or not. They had to put all their info somewhere else. Some had to figure out new travel arrangements. It disrupted a lot of the routine. And it encouraged face to face encounters that were not desirable.
Philosophy doesn’t impact the street. Even philosophers like Marx and Nietzsche didn’t impact public opinion with their theories.
Dear Avira,
No parent can keep their teen off the internet. Maybe it could be done as a community. but I’m skeptical.
The OP posts again almost nine years later, and it isn’t notable?
I know major mainstream gedolim that had smartphones even when they themselves were involved in the anti technology movement. Almost nobody ever saw their phones. And the content of these phones are much different than your average smartphone, including my own.
My point in the whole argument is, that it comes across that wasting your life without a smartphone is okay. But even if your learning all day, once you have a smartphone you’re doomed.