Neville ChaimBerlin

“Eating in places like that is Not MO! That’s Frei. But I’m sure you know this.”

Doesn’t change the metzius that people call themselves “Modern Orthodox” and then go ahead and do it.

How greasy did you become? Enough to still want to go on dates with MO girls, but also enough that they all reject you?

Are you 100% sure the reason is really hashkafa?

“For some reason it seems that when some posters here realize that their tayinos on Lubavitche are not really true (for example reason to do mitzvos), they just brush them away and say that there better problems to discuss.”

I’ll respond since this refers to myself and Daas Yochid. I never jumped on board with the “reason to do mitzvos” criticism, and neither did DY, so it’s a complete lie to say we “realized these weren’t true.” We never were making these points in the first place. The points WE were making, like the sleeping in the Sukkah issue, we have never backed down from. And, the people who were actually making the points about schar never backed down from their arguments. I don’t think this was just a case of you mixing up usernames. You think the rest of the world is one big “Protocols of the Elders of Lita” conspiracy against Chabad that all has a shared toolbox of arguments. We all have our own individual concerns based on life experiences, or what we’ve seen said or written. And, some of us might not share the same concerns as one another. Believe it or not, we are all actually individual human beings.

I have a right mind to just say that I take back what I said about nit-picking if that’s how your camp is going to use it.

Teaneck is not more expensive than Brooklyn.

Someone else (I believe Froggy) made a thread years ago with a similar topic, and it was closed immediately. I would imagine the same is going to happen to this one.

Also, who told you new people shouldn’t make threads?

MrSarah: You failed the first time to convince people that having hakaras hatov towards soldiers is synonymous with leaving Yeshiva and joining the IDF. What makes you think it’s going to work to restate it?

And, again, you keep stating these cases where the state became less anti-yiddishkeit as though they just happened magically or by an unprecedented sign of rachmanus by the chilonim. How can you possibly believe any of that progress would have been made if the chareidim were complacent with the whims of the Zionists like you would want?

Obviously it affects it. Why would you think it wouldn’t?

Proofs from gedolim = bad.
Proofs from wikipedia = good.

Froggie: They might have lurked for years before making accounts. That’s what I did. It was weird to start conversing and even arguing with people I had viewed as characters of entertainment for years.

The burden of proof falls on the person making the chiddush. You know that every major posek does not hold of a chiyuv to join the IDF and actively discourages it. Why don’t you bring a proof of someone who DOES hold of your milchemes chova idea? As far as I can tell, it’s one individual CR user bringing proofs from tanach versus every mainstream rabbi.

The proof that they don’t hold by your theory is evident in the fact that they discourage joining the IDF. So, instead of asking us to find places where they specifically address your weird, new defense for drafting Chareidim, why don’t you supply one actual person who agrees with you.

Your scrambling to preserve your intellectual honesty by claiming we would theoretically have a chiyuv to join the American army proves the weakness of your stance. How much more could I get you do admit in your quest for consistency? Would we have a chiyuv to serve in the Czar’s army if Russia needed defense? Would we have a chiyuv to serve in Mussolini’s army if he needed soldiers? You have completely invented this idea that Jews are halchically bound to join the army of whatever country they happen to be residing in. It’s just not true, and nobody before you has ever claimed it is.

“Neville, Marx was less than a secular Jew. He was baptized as a child and became a rabid antisemite (see Karl Marx on the Jewish Question).”

You’re 100% right, but he still gets mentioned as a “self-loathing Jew” a lot. I’m not sure he was ever halachically Jewish. I’m not sure if you understood my point if you thought we disagreed (it’s hard to understand the tone of writing sometimes). I’m glad you brought up conservative examples. My point was that, even though you can find examples of influential, leftist Jews, there’s no benefit to bringing it up as a Jewish attack on Christian values unless you’re an anti-semite.

On a side note, I did not know Ayn Rand was Jewish. I don’t know that I would call her “right-wing.” The tendency of associating libertarianism with conservatism is pretty new, and not a trend I particularly appreciate as a traditional, social-conservative.

Manitou: It’s common knowledge how every major posek has approached the issue of Zionism. I don’t know how anyone with access to google could be unaware of this, so I have to assume you’re playing ignorant for rhetorical purposes. The most comprehensive teshuvah you’re going to find is probably the Satmar Rov’s. But, that doesn’t actually matter to you, does it? The thing is, when people take the Satmar approach of bringing proofs down from the gemara, their stance gets labelled as religious fanaticism with no logical points against the state. When people take the Litvish, more politically-based approach, you say there’s no halachic reasoning behind the stance. It’s this kind of doublethink thought process that has made me realize how wrong the Zionists must be.

Lol wait, you posted a thread called “Happy Birthday (you know who you are)” on December 25th?

I stand by what I said, and I did not misread the word joker as joke. I know exactly what he said.

His assertion is that pulling down a proof from a gadol is not a legitimate counter-point and is something we only do when we have nothing to say. This is clearly false to anyone with the most remedial exposure to Orthodox Judaism. He’s now claiming that people are putting words in rebbeim’s mouths, which is not what he originally said at all. I’m fine with him making this claim since it’s not doing him any favors given that Haimy linked to an article with his proof.

If you want a world in which we don’t have any authoritative voices and every individual gets to just make up his own drashas from his Bible, I recommend you try a Church. If you actually have so little exposure to Orthodoxy that you truly believe it when you say the gadolim don’t actually have a problem with joining the IDF, then I reiterate that you should not be posting here because you have no idea how anything works.

Avi K: I heard that Moshe Rebbeinu privately said it’s okay to eat pork… Seriously, do you ever listen to yourself? The gedolim are not secret Zionists no matter how much you fantasize about it. Just man up and admit that you live in an alternate, Kahanist sphere that is not sanctioned by the mainstream, Charedi rabbis.

manitou: The reason it makes sense for haimy to say “we” is that this is a forum for the Yeshiva world (in case you didn’t notice). Meaning, any discussion we have here, whether it be Joseph or Avi K posting, accepts the assumption of respect to the authority of Torah and the rebbeim.

If you think the gedolei hador are “jokes,” you do not belong here. Even our most left-wing posters don’t go that far. I know you think in your wacko head that you’re making some kind of legitimate points and that people will pass by and think “yeah, he really showed that charedi guy!” But, you aren’t, and nobody sees it that way. Everyone just thinks you’re a jerk and a loser after that last post, which I imagine is why it was let through despite being horribly offensive to the user-base of this site.

My are so many under the wrong impression that Chabadniks are the only ones who have this minhag? It’s not the first time I’ve seen that mistake on the CR.

Also, why is this the one minhag where every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he has the authority to belittle it?

What I learned on the Yeshiva World CR today:

The Jews are part of a massive, evil conspiracy to destroy America.

Hmm… Seems legit…

Lol

“Do you think so? It could be — i am not sure?
Do we have an off the derech percentage? (The MO Study talked about the issue but didnt really come to a percentage number if i recall correctly).
What is “new” — 1 to 5 years? I am sure there is no real available data on this — but its an interesting question.”

When I said new I meant the people who go straight from college campuses to kiruv yeshivas. They come from treif households, but then effectively keep kosher and Shabbos by default when they’re living in yeshiva. From what I’ve seen, these guys frei out A LOT when they leave the kiruv yeshiva.

Now, you could say they don’t truly count as Baal Teshuvas, but are more like “on their way to BT.” You could say it doesn’t count fully until they prove they can survive in the real world. That would be a logical distinction, but we don’t generally make it. We do tend to call these guys in kiruv yeshivas full BT’s, and I think they’d be offended if we didn’t. I would even go as far as to say that time is not an object. Meaning, a BT could stay in yeshiva for 10 years, and still be just as likely to frei out when he leaves because the 10 years don’t prove anything about his ability to be frum in the real world. By the way, I am only really talking about Litvish kiruv; Chabad might work totally differently.

If the questions is do I think he’s sold out and betrayed his loyal supporters like myself, yes I do.

But, I will probably still vote for him. What else am I going to do? Vote for Elizabeth Warren?

There’s a practical difference between eating and sleeping in that tzar can make sleeping impossible so that you would accomplish nothing by lying in the Sukkah, but the same rain would only render eating uncomfortable.

People have pointed out that you have to eat a kazayis in the sukkah on the first night in rain, but you don’t have to sleep in it. This isn’t a proof that eating is more strict than sleeping. In fact, one could point out that a person only has to eat in the sukkah for achilas keva m’ikkar hadin, while for sleeping he has to do so even for a nap. I’m not making the inference that sleeping is more strict, but I’m am showing that you can make it sound like either one is more strict by pulling halachos out of context like that.

By the way, you probably aren’t being mevatel anything by not eating in the sukkah on the first night in rain either. It’s a machlokes rishonim, and I believe the mechaber doesn’t even mention it (I would have to look again to be sure). If it were for sure a mitzvah d’oraysa, we would say a brachah.

“I haven’t found evidence to bear out what you are saying, while finding evidence that even when an individual’s level of observance is lessening, he still identifies as observant.”
Unless a poll asked, “do you use the word frum to describe yourself,” it really doesn’t have any relevance. Frum does not directly translate at “observant.” I think it means “burdened” technically. I’m not saying people like SarahLevine are not observant. It carries a certain connotation by virtue of the fact that it’s yiddish. Case and point, I bet Avi K could never use it to describe himself as much of his CR career has consisted of criticizing Yiddish and Ashkenazi pronunciation.

Like I said to Avi earlier, the point about not having labels for subsets might sound nice to a lot of people, but it carries no water logically speaking. There is a camp that will enlist in the IDF, and there’s a camp that won’t. The differences between the MO and Charedim today are not a fine line like people might like. It’s usually more than obvious. So, it’s only natural that there would be words to identify this difference.

I’m not sure what you were going for in the last paragraph. You seem to imply that I called others something derogatory or that I’m concerned with how to label others, which is dishonest. I did not call the MO anything other than MO. It was how I chose to label myself that caused your reaction. We all draw the point somewhere. Even the Conservative Jew who drives to shul on Shabbos thinks he’s being religious, but we know he’s not. There were accepted norms on where to draw that line for a long time, and the MO came in to upset and change those norms in the name of progress and survival in the modern era. That was their agenda, and it’s their right to believe in it, but I do not agree with it nor have I ever pretended to. And, I’m not going to change the way I talk to mesh with an agenda with which I don’t agree.

For the OP: I think you might be hung up on the assumption that your kid will have to become fluent in conversational Hebrew, which is not true. Many frum people in America can easily learn a sefer written in Hebrew, but could not carry a conversation with an Israeli (myself included). It’s not because there are massive differences between modern Hebrew and the Hebrew used in sforim. It’s more because visual comprehension of a language can be easier than audible.

That being said, there ARE massive differences between Biblical Hebrew and Hebrew used in later sforim. I think most would agree that Biblical Hebrew is significantly harder. As the result of your kid’s age and this program you’re discussing, Biblical Hebrew seems to be the main focus right now, but that’s not because it’s the logical, language-comprehension starting point. He might continue to struggle with memorizing pesukim and their meanings for a long time, but that doesn’t mean you should worry that he’ll struggle to understand written Hebrew for the rest of his life.

“If the rabbeim (and chassidim) wore makpid ad kedei chach, to not even drink a little sip of water outside the sukkah even if it raining, and even on shmini atzeres, why wouldn’t they be makpid on sleeping in the sukkah?”

I’m confused, are you switching to our side on the sleeping in the Sukkah issue now? I’ve read your question several times, and it seems like you’re making exactly our point. By the way, non-Chabad Chassidim don’t eat in the Sukkah on Shmini Atzeres. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, just “fact-checking.”

“When it’s raining outside to you eat and sleep in the sukkah or you go inside? I don’t know, but guessing that you go inside and rely on the retroactive hetter, even though the Rama says we should be machmir.”

The Rema says the exact opposite of what your claiming he does in siman 639. I’m not sure if you’re lying on purpose or by accident. The only thing he says that you could even somewhat twist into claiming he agrees with you is with regards to the first night of Sukkos where you have to eat a kazayis even in the rain without a lesheiv b’sukkah. Even that’s just a hachraah minhag as there are rishonim who hold you would be patur on the first night as well, so for someone to go inside even on the first night would not be mevatel a mitzvah, unlike the case of not sleeping in the sukkah when you would be perfectly able.

It’s a straight Mishnah not to eat in the Sukkah in the rain (I assume you didn’t know this since you called it a retroactive heter). I have no clue what Chabad’s heter is to argue on the Mishnah here.

Username: You can’t start bringing proofs down from poskim who talk about the cold when that’s never been your argument. Nobody is disputing that heter. What people are disputing is your habit of speaking of a heter as though it’s a chumrah to imply that those keeping the mitzvah are doing a bad thing.

I don’t know where this persecution fantasy you guys have is coming from. Nobody has said we would be OK with non-Lubavitchers having this custom. I would be just as critical of any other group for having this shittah. Chabad happens to be the ones still doing it and talking about it.