n0mesorah

Mods, this post is the second to the long post.

Well,within twenty years after the above was published, an eruv was put up in Flatbush and people were saying that it was with Rav Moshe’s agreement. Rav Moshe had given his agreement to Kew Garden Hills on their eruv. A quick look at a map of the area would show none of the issues that Rav Moshe discussed. Also Rav Moshe put out a letter with four clear conditions.
1. All the Local Rabbonim agreed. (This has happened almost nowhere else.)
2. Excluded the highway.
3. It is difficult for it to become ruined.
4. there is a designated person to check it every Friday.
The letter ends of that it is not comparable to why there is no eruv in the city.

Somehow, there seemed to be an honest question of what Rav Moshe really held. Rabbonim came talk to him, and he was surprised that they weren’t familiar with his printed teshuva. Sounds familiar?

Dear 5783,

“however if he meant hashem ממש the way some Lubavitchers explain and when they pray they have in mind hashem the way hes מלובש in mm”s than that’s מינות and ע״ז.”

And such thinking can be found in all segments of society. What is the issue? It is inconsistent to use the Rambam’s high bar for true belief, but reject the Rambam’s assessment that not everybody will get there.

Dear Avira,

You overshot the target here. The TV isn’t the problem. The content is. No comparison to using a phone on Shabbos.

Dear Qwerty,

I agree with you on not hating Jews. I advocate that the same applies to Chabad.

The Yeshivshe Velt is not 100% TV free. Which is weird. Some choshuve houses never got rid of their TV. Anyways the battle is over. TV is no longer a mass casualty issue. Those that have TV either know how to manage, or have bigger problems to solve first.

Dear Yida,

As well as a list of boys. That doesn’t make an excess.

Hi, CS!!

Nice to catch you peeking in on us!

Dear Qwerty,

I was pointing to your explanation of judges as partners in creation. Nothing to do with Chabad on that.

The ideas of rationalism that you posted, equate to weak scholarship and nothing else. It is not in any philosophical tradition. And is the opposite of chazal that believed intense scholarship to be the only worthwhile tradition of intellectual studies. You did nothing to explain how a judge can be a partner in creation. All you did was bring one source that creation is ongoing.

Rational belief systems take years to develop. I have been debating theology with big minds since before my bar mitzvah. I still don’t think my belief system is rational. Your system seems to be to only focus on the rational and deny everything else. Denial is the opposite of belief. So I don’t see your thinking as rational at all. It is irrational to reject whatever you don’t understand.

It would only be polytheism if we would deify judges on the basis of that statement. If you know what it means to really ‘deify a god’, than you would know Chabad does not do that with their Rebbe. At least not yet. And I maintain that it is not our problem until they cross that line. It is a Chabad issue, and the secret is that every group has this or a comparable issue.

Don’t point out to me messianics/heretics/crazies that can be found in every group.

I gave three options to continue this conversation. You didn’t pick a lane. What is wrong with the sicha that is the cause of this whole thread.

1) The Rebbe had an agenda.
2) Taditional chassidus.
3) Classical kabbalah.

There is no shame of not having enough background to really understand this controversy. The only ones who think it is about the basics are the ines who claim that everyone has to be Chabad. (And the anti Chabad crowd that thinks they can keep up with a Chabad Bochur in these teachings.)

Dear Qwerty,

You said you watch TV. But nobody assumed that that is where you got your opinions from. You keep assuming that you know how people who you never met are thinking.

” Chazal tell us that a judge who judges properly is a partner with Hashem in creation. Since you’re such a Maamin in these statements then you must believe that all honest judges throughout history worked in tandem 5783(or ~15 billion years ago remember I’m MO) with G-d. That would really be polytheism. How do I, a Torah Jew, understand this Chazal? We say in the davening that each day Hashem recreates the world and so an honest judge is a partner with Hashem because he acts according to Hashem’s wishes. This is a rational approach which does not tamper with the fundamental beliefs of Yiddishkeit.”

This is not rational thinking, and it insults MO. The same as the other poster that doesn’t know that all pills had to have been ground. MO is about knowing more than just Torah. Not knowing less. I think a lot of posters use the MO label as a ‘no questions allowed’ shield.

One of the amazing things about being human, is that we can consciously perceive God. That goes beyond our instinctive sense of the God-force. Justice in the Torah (Beginning of tomorrow’s parsha.) is about being aware of all the factors et. It requires extreme awareness to every detail. And bringing it all to a just conclusion. Which is the same process as bringing the world into existence. Since Hashem get’s no benefit out of the physical existence of things, Hashem’s purpose in creation must be purposeful outside of the physical itself. Justice is such a purpose. Proscribing mishpat as per The Torah is achieving the very same purpose Hashem set out to do.

It is very strange that you called this polytheism and Chabad bothers you. You are giving off a strong vibe of anti theism. Like, any belief beyond what we can explain through a purely human/rational/physical perspective, is untrue/idolatry/silly.

I hate to tell you, that you seem less rational than the median Chabdtzker. There is so much beyond the human perspective, that it would be easier to say that everything In know is a lie and embrace nihilism.

Dear Qwerty,

There isn’t anything to talk my way out of. Nobody is thinking that any human is a god. How to understand the Rebbe’s sichos and similar mystical concepts, is not to be taken in a nutshell. I doubt it can be done online. I have spoken with many Lubavitchers and I don’t think there is a problem with their teachings. If you don’t want to take the time to study them, that is also fine.

Dear Arso,

I am not Lubavitch and not that old. What do you not see? The application remained the same, while time moved onward. Isn’t that the whole tumult?

Dear Ujm,

I don’t know where to find the Litvish World’s excess of girls. I know dozens of boys that never go out.

Dear Yechiel,

This is the problem with educated people who think they are the first ones to be educated.

Pharmaceuticals is still the melacha of tochen. Just because it’s a global industry, it doesn’t affect the reality. It’s like cooking with an electric appliance because the the power source is removed from the individual.

Dear K M,

Mendelssohn was no longer living when Freyschule für Knaben opened.

Dear Mdd,

I don’t see anybody here claiming that ‘a human is god’. If you are not going to try to understand exactly what someone is trying to say, than minus is never a problem to begin with. If you never listen to other people, what is the threat of them saying whatever kefira they want?

Dear Avira,

“Reines was a man full of fantasies if you read his post zionist writings; nor was he considered a gadol batorah by any stretch where his ideas can be reckoned with baaeli mesorah. Not only that, but where does reines say anything about there being other important things besides Torah or that secular studies are chas veshalom equal to it?”

Are you insane? Rav Reines was considered an equal gaon to anybody in Lita! Rav Chaim, the Rogotchover, Rav Meir Simcha, you name it. There were strong disagreements on a number of topics. He was so big that he single handily legitimized the entire Mizrachi Movement. What you read as fantasy, intelligent people read as hope. Rav Reines was as in tune to jewish suffering more than anybody. More than Rav Kook, more than the Bais Halevi.

This baalei mesorah idea hadn’t been invented yet. The yidden of Lita were still in Lita and were aware of all the battles with the non traditionalists and knew where why they disagreed with them. The same for every country besides for the melting pot of the New World. And the New Yishuv in the Old Yishuv. Those that knew the issues knew the nuance and were keenly aware how little difference there was between the two sides of most of the raging debates of the 19th century. There was a lot of mutual respect across the aisles up until our day.

Most of the chareidi world today, traces it’s roots back to the sides that lost on all the issues that were debated. Many debates, both sides lost. So, instead of giving lengthy history + hashkafa classes, they just say we followed our gadol and this is what happened and we must have won because we are still here. There isn’t any authenticity to this whole thing and you would be aware of that if your goal is the truth.

Dear Amirican,

“Who can forget Harav Gifter Zatzal screaming….”

Which yeshiva wouldn’t he condemn today? We have all fallen the way of YU of thirty years ago.

Dear Ujm,

I have bested you on this topic twice already.

These were our conclusions.

1) There is no dividing line between the YV and MO or between MO and CJ.
2) Observance is not dependent on which community the individual is in. The level of communal observance is what declines from right to left.
3) The laity doesn’t reflect the ideas of the thinkers to a major degree.

Dear Avira,

“You’re vastly overstating mendelssohns reach; he had his circle of naskilim, but klal yisroel were not moved by him very much, and in later years his books woild fall into obscurity, preserved mostly by bloggers who are obsessed with deviant jewish figures.

For the record, shadal had a bigger impact on jewry than mendelssohn, and he came earlier. He influenced Italian jewry towards secular things, and had some ideas which were apikorsus, but he was still not as divergent as mendelssohn.”

You never did cover your history.

Shadal was born well after Mendelssohn’s passing. He was a contemporary of Hirsch. They even had a correspondence.

Mendelssohn had the greatest reach of any askan ever in Europe. He had nobles clamoring to meet him. His word carried great weight at a time that the governments were interested in the education of the Jews.

Mendelssohn’s primary worry was preservation of the Torah and the primacy of it’s study. He would be sorely disappointed by the low standards of our day. Torah learning fell off in his day, and besides for some localized short lived exceptions, has never been returned to it’s glory.

The teachings in his books have been preserved inall the subsequent sefarim. You can find his teachings on your bookshelf in any sefer written in the last 150 years on the chumash. And all the recent seforim that use for haskafa are repackaging his ideas to a small or large extent.

Shadal was an acedemic and Rosh Yeshiva who just learned and taught. Italy ghad already been secularized for centuries.

Dear Avira,

” it’s the belief that Torah needs something to complement it that is considered apikorsus by gedolei yisroel” (Emphasis is mine. Did you mean those words?)

Only the most yeshivishe Rosh Yeshivos fall into that category of belief. Maybe you have poor reading comprehension on this topic.

Dear Benjamin,

The gemara was not written in aramaic. It was spoken. The proper way to read gemara is as a dialogue. They are talking – not writing.

The same is true for the Targum. It was an ongoing translation of the verses that were being read from inside the Torah. It wasn’t written down until much later.

I don’t care about the issue. Just that your points aren’t true.

If you want to remold the Shelah Hakadosh into a Chaicago Ebonix Rap, I won’t stop you.

Dear Sechel,

What you are calling the litvishe velt is not a cohesive group. There are several major yeshivos and dozens of other leaders. There is almost no uniformity among them. A question could be like what is the go to sefer for Chofetz Chaim or BMG or Torah Vdaas or The Mir. And still, each one of those yeshivos had multiple Rosh Yeshivos with different views and so on. The two yeshivos that do things one way the most, are Telz and Brisk. But even then there are several yesshivos and each one changes different than the others.

To be honest, each Chabad is unique and doesn’t do things in the exact same way.

After an amazing Chabad thread that the YWN Coffee Room has not seen in years, it has reached it’s inevitable conclusion.

The Rebbe made some typical chassidishe statements which are basic reinterpretations of the classic kabbalistic sources.

There are three options now.

1) Claim that the Rebbe had an agenda.
2) Attack traditional chassidus.
3) Rejecl classical kabbalah.

All three can be justified. But you have really know your stuff to attempt the first one. And we would be going against the majority of frum yidden if we attempt the other two.

It seems like the thrust really is in a fourth direction. Some posters are pushing Lubavitchers to say that these statements should be watered down to the point that they aren’t so loaded. That is not an option. Chabad will go extinct before they dilute even one bit of their Chassidishe Torah. A lot of the other major groups lighten or lost their chassidius after the war. The Rebbe made preserving chassidus a major priority in Chabad.

I hope this post is productive.

Dear Qwerty,

I don’t understand your complaint.

There is the mainstream kabbalistic concept.

There is what the Rebbe said.

There is how it was understood on this thread.

I don’t understand. On which one Rav Moshe should have intervened?

He wasn’t going to publicly take a side on a kabbalistic debate.

Even if he knew what the Rebbe said, Rav Moshe wasn’t going to prevent the Rebbe from speaking about these concepts.

Rav Moshe is not alive to comment on this thread. These statements mostly entered the public Lubavitch discourse after Rav Moshe’s passing.

Dear Avira,

Rav Kook was as great as they come. The gedolim of his days considered him on par with the gedolim of a hundred years before. Some try to justify that they are just against his ‘theories’ or ‘policies’. He didn’t have anything like that. Rav Kook doesn’t ever write about how do this or approach that. His whole being was to do what was right in the moment. He exuded Torah even in the most Anti Torah settings. Everything he ever thought about in his life, was nullified to the Torah within him. There is a some sichas chullin in his writings. For those that learn his Torah on everything else, it is not Bittul Torah to read his poems and views of history.

The objections that Rav Kook encountered between the wars, was about how to deal with the issues of the day. The leaders believed Rav Kook was too trusting of the secular Jews to keep their agreements. The Chareidim wanted to hold the line as much as they could and Rav Kook didn’t seem to care for that. In hindsight, the Chareidi leaders never had a chance to hold that line for long.

But to personally attack Rav Kook? To doubt his stature? The Rabbanim of Yerushalayim put ayidden in cherem for that. In the Lita a Rav spoke out against Rav Kook and some of the Gedolim refused to speak with that rav again.

I know all the fables you know and almost all of them are not at all true.