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lol some people i know get baked on purim…
Guter yid: frum fakers?
ill answer you with a story.
so im sitting at dinner by Our Place and someone says how much better the fries at mcdonalds are than the ones we serve. i told him that mcdonalds isnt kosher. he tells me that they must be kosher because mcdonalds switched from animal fat to vegetable oil in their fryers last year. and besides, he tells me, he sees frum people walking in and buying fries all the time. so i ask him what he means by frum jews and he tells me he sees yeshiva bochurim with white shirts and jackets and everything walking in. i told him that they arent frum.
so hes like, waddaya mean they arent frum, they wear the white shirt, hats, jackets, and everything…im like no, that doesnt make them frum. so he says, what makes someone frum then? and i say…keeping the torah…he just walked away shaking his head.
lol
i once called that learn english number and asked them how someone who doesnt know english is supposed to read a sign like that…they made a very annoyed sound and hung up 😀
buying a venti latte from starbucks
although thats not specific to leap days…
health…your argument is invalid.
1) its a straw man
2) the two arent mutually exclusive
i dont like how zeeskite is going about this topic either, but please try and seem coherent.
“nothing beats home beruchnius and begashmius,”
b’ruchnius…yes
b’gashmius…HAH! not really
yeah i found out about her latest series from Wikipedia…its disgraceful. especially now, because you can call out things you believe are lies in her current book, but you cant even protest against this next one since it will be a work of fiction.
give food…i know that every purim i get sick of all the nish people give me at some point…but i really appreciate it when people give actual food
ahavas_yisroel: i would START smoking if it meant i could get 10K to stop
who cares…why is everyone making this such a huge part of their lives
my point was that everyone was so quick to shrei chai v’kayam about her, but no one stopped to consider the other side. l’maaseh you’re right, that the way she chose to deal with her problems was incredibly selfish and mindless of the people she damaged, but i wanted people focusing on what causes something like this. I’m not blaming anyone, my opinions on what needs change is so way beyond blame, but everything happens for a reason. so while you sit there, condemning her and what she did, i want you to have in mind everything that went into making her as well; thats how we’ll avoid this ever happening again.
i dont believe that she created herself.
“In my eyes, you are Gadol material.”
please dont make me more than i am.
it was issue 30 of Ami, and posted here on yeshivaworld.
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/mental-illnesshang-the-stigma
I can only try: i concede your point, i just wanted people to see mine.
im glad people are beginning to get my point.
ugh…i meant it as a joke…
let me make something very clear. try to understand it.
there is a difference between caring about someone’s physical and emotional wellbeing, and caring about their spiritual wellbeing. the two, while not being quite mutually exclusive, can be separate when the need arises. and i have no problem with that–to me it all falls under v’ahavta l’reacha kamocha.
that kid who i was teaching, the one mentioned above, i felt tremendous simcha when he was accepted into PUBLIC SCHOOL because it addressed his physical and emotional wellbeing. we live in Olam Hazeh, gashmius matters. once that was in order, we were able to start on ruchnius.
it makes me happy knowing that someone who went through what feldman did is able to live a normal life, physically and emotionally. once thats established i can start working on ruchnius. who knows, maybe one day someone will get through to her, but make no mistake, in Olam Hazeh, gashmius DOES MATTER.
another thing that everyone here has to understand, yet apparently has difficulty with, is that there is a difference between loving and understanding someone, and APPROVING OF WHAT THEY DO. i love and understand the people i work with at Our Place, but i strongly disapprove of substance abuse. am i wrong for loving them?
and here i was…hoping that no one would actually want to read a 3000 word forum post 😛
“THERE IS NO COMPARISON!”
i think i just made a very clear case for comparison…the end results may be different, but the beginnings are definitely comparable.
send her a licorice rope and a bucket full of red candies.
more: junk food is cheaper
also…half of that 50% live in boro park 😛
or better, “than how society views our way of life” 😛 i wrote this at like 1 AM
“of leaving Judaism in favor of something, as the secular world would see it, more constricting and restrictive that what society thinks life should be,”
should be less constricting and restrictive than what society sees our way of life as*
This is going to be really long, and I ask the mods to please post it anyway.
And I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, diatribe after diatribe, condemning anything and everything about the community that I possibly could to whoever would listen. I gave fiery homilies against every institution I could think of, trying to get my vitriol into every publication I could email. My anger consumed me to the point where I started drinking, preferring to drown my emotions in Vodka rather than face them. I cherished those few hours when I could lay numb in my bed, feeling nothing but heady lightness and detachment.
And then, one day, I stopped. I had been attending Ohr Yitzchok, and had an excellent Chavrusa, and it just occurred to me one day that I was wasting my breath; no one likes that guy; no one likes to be preached at; no one likes the fire and brimstone. If I wanted to actually effect change on my community, then I needed to stop talking and start acting. I needed to take charge and lead by example.
By the way, I kind of think she missed the point of her own story. Her story is quite the coming of age story, and a fantastic example of overcoming adversity; she would have been better served, in my opinion, by focusing more on her parents, her attack, her cousin, stuff like that. If I get the chance to interview her is like to focus on that because the stigma and feeling of disconnection was almost secondary to the reasons behind it.
The bit about her having overcome her struggles, living a reasonably normal life, being able to publicly address her problems, and being an author published by Simon and schuster…you may disagree with her struggles and the way she addresses them, but from a secular perspective she’s quite a success. There is what to be said about someone being able to come out of such a childhood in one piece; something cheftza would never understand.
I wish that she were still frum, I wish she still felt a connection, I wish she had the ability to divorce her religion from the confines of community and be frum because she wanted to be frum, not because others had specific expectations.
Big deal: nowhere did I blame anyone. I don’t blame anyone. Circumstance, however, happens and is always a factor in how a person turns out.
By the way, say what you want about her, but she is a success story in terms of life in general. Her past, and yet look at her now. She’s not a drug addict or an alcoholic, she’s now a noted author. Happens to be that she is no longer frum.
We are always ultimately responsible for our actions, and circumstance is almost never an excuse, but its a factor. If you want to understand why something happened, or if you want to know how to avoid it in the future, you need to understand how it came about.
I always tell the people I work with that despite their past they must take charge of their futures.
Someone above said that now that she knows better she should change…give her one good reason.
ratzon: Who said she wanted to remain orthodox? i think Footsteps is terrible, but im not seeing your point.
“Soleik – why that and not this. Knowing her, I wouldn’t consider a stretch of the imagination.”
you do realize that a person can tell a falsehood without lying…if you believe that something false is true then you have no compunction saying it as a truth even though, in reality, it is false.
take what she said about chinuch for example, i think its entirely plausible that to her that WAS the only definition of chinuch, and anything else didnt occur to her because she never saw it. so mitzad her, its possible that nothing she said was a lie, lemaaseh some of it wasnt true. therefore i have no problem believing her when she talks about her problems.
also in general when someone talks about problems like that im not quick to call them a liar. its not easy talking about it.
“That said I will repeat what I’ve said before: This is not a time for us to start accusing each other about what we’re each doing wrong.”
the two arent mutually exclusive.
Guter yid: are you chassidish?
nishtdayngesheft: i almost knew you were gonna say that. my apologies. she doesnt exhibit any signs of bipolar disorder. care to elaborate?
Guter yid: tell yourself whatever makes you happy.
Health: finally someone who understands me
big deal: i sincerely doubt she lied about that.
you didnt read her book. if you did youd have seen the disclaimer before the introduction.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
nishtdayngesheft: you wouldnt know bipolar if it punched you in the face.
“As a side note, you deal with victims of abuse. Would it make sense for a victim of an attempted rape to throw caution to the wind and seriously flirt… (and end in serious problems)? I would think they would try to protect themselves as much as possible and try not to attract unwanted attention. Think Elizabeth Smart.”
actually, as it happens, a common symptom of RTS is promiscuity…counter-intuitive, i know, but true. i dont know if she has RTS per se, but its not uncommon for rape victims to become promiscuous.
lav davka that thats what made her flirt…she may have flirted because she wanted to…im jussayin
thehock: i didnt get the impression that she had HPD and i spoke to her in person.
olook…theres the post. its up there ^ have fun reading it people, its been approved 🙂
NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMSQUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!
can someone please approve my previous post?
“Guter yid: But, if you do have connection to torah as you said, how come you don’t see anything wrong in this filthy book, and you side and fight for this evil writer, how do those 2 things go together??”
You obviously haven’t read the rest of the thread because if you had, you would have seen the answer to both questions.
I am, and have been, modeh that the book is disgusting and wrong. But it also begs the question: Why did she write it? So, many people in this thread were quick to call her a money grubber, spreading her “lies” for a quick buck, but that’s not what I saw when I read her book. Incidentally, she does say that she saw her story as a way out, a way to acquire the means necessary to “escape” from her marriage and her chassidishe life, but upon reading the book, that’s not what jumps out as the primary motivator.
How to even begin describing what I felt and what I thought while reading that book…
I see a person whose mother walked out on her. I see a little girl ashamed of her mentally deficient father and the stares, tsks, and “oy, what a rachmanus”s they got walking down the street together. I see a budding teenager raised by grandparents who couldn’t possibly understand her; her grandfather the unreachable, unattainable archetype. I see a young girl almost being raped by her older cousin. I see her crying in her bedroom, crumbling under the brunt of that terrible secret. I see her tossing and turning in bed as demons invade her dream.
I see a kid wondering why her cousin is being locked in a room rather than receiving treatment for schizophrenia. I see a young woman thrust into a marriage before she was ready. Someone who had her marital issues trotted out before the rest of her family like so much dirty laundry.
Now ask yourself this: After all that, who wouldn’t feel disenfranchised? Who wouldn’t be resentful toward her community? I’m sure she knew better when she wrote her book, but we all do aveiros and we all know better. Think back to the last time YOU sinned, ask yourself if you knew better? Did you know better the last time you told lashon hara? Why did you say it then, because it was a juicy story? Her excuse is better than yours.
What I just said doesn’t justify her book, it explains it. Her book, not through what it does say but rather through what it doesn’t, reveals many serious flaws that we have in our communities. UNorthodox is, perhaps, an improper method of presentation, but I believe there is what to be learned from it.
when you pitch a book before its written the publisher advances you money against future sales
by the way when i said it was one of the best books i had ever read i meant as far as craft goes…not content. it was one of the most well written memoirs i have ever read.
the bedroom stuff shocked me…that should have been kept private especially since she said that she felt violated when her husband told his sister about what had happened.
a mamin: i am reading that blog. as to why you should read the book if you claim to be calling her out on lies…how can you know that shes lying if you dont know what shes saying?
“What about the LIE that Chassidic children are never taken to doctors???”
theres another one. thank you. that one actually really annoyed me when i read it.
“he SAID everyone graduates there with a fourth grade reading level”
there was some truth to what she said about secular education in chassidish schools, that the administration doesnt take it seriously and neither do the kids or their parents.
by the way…im not attacking any of you, i have no idea why youre all attacking me.
In the interest of fairness, ill address the two alleged lies that people posted here in this thread.
1) The purpose of relations is for procreation: debatable.
2) Chinuch doesnt necessarily mean what she described as being the absolute definition of what chinuch is: that IS a lie, however she may not have known better. either way it IS questionable, thank you for pointing it out.
3) The age of the boy who was killed/committed suicide: does the age really matter? the story is what matters and we’ve established that the story is false. i would call that a terrible lack of due diligence on both her and simon and schuster’s parts.
any more?
Guter yid: i noted what you said, i appreciate you pointing it out, but what i dont appreciate is your calling my love for the torah and judaism into question. you dont know me, and you are in no way qualified to pass judgement on me. your accusations are disgusting and it calls into question your character. please try and work on yourself.
i want a list because im interested in every aspect of this whole mess, and contrary to what you believe, i actually do care about both sides. its you who doesnt, and i understand that. you assume that being overzealous will protect you from anything like this ever happening to your friends and family, and its one point of view, but i disagree. this can happen to anyone and the more i know about the better equipped i am to deal with it. if she lied i want to know. if you can cite lies please do. if you cant, please keep quiet. i dont need your lectures, much less your vitriol.
also, why because i love a jew who i feel unfortunately had a terrible life, and hope one day realizes that judaism is so much more than what she experienced, must i hate frum jews? how is that a logical conclusion? shes not a meshumad, by the way. on the subject of lies and exaggerations…she is NOT A MESHUMAD. get your FACTS straight, buddy.
and yes, i have read the book.