@Always_Ask_Questions I would absolutely cheer on any program that is set up to teach skills to frum youth. However, I fear that such programs would be considered only for kids at risk instead of being normalized as they should. This has happened in goyishe public schools in the last few decades where they phased out shop class since it was seen as a place for dumb brutes. Now less academically inclined students are left with few options when it comes to what they can be successful at in school with and often act out.

@Avram-In-MD I’m simply saying that different communities with different hashkafos often have different reasons for some kids becoming at risk. In the communities that essentially tell children that if they can’t learn for 10 hours a day and do nothing else for most of their lives that they are failures, kids who can’t do that often act out.

@n0mesorah I don’t know what you mean. Thirty years ago, there were a tiny handful of non-Chassidish American Mesivtas that had a Gemara-only approach. Now (especially in Lakewood) it’s the norm. It started somewhere and I surmise that it started with one, two, or three places in Lakewood and then spread.

@MosheFromMidwood I was actually referring to Rebbetzin Chana Weinberg, who was a massive force in Torah, especially with her work in mental health, Shalom Bayis, and abused women. Rav Yaakov Weinberg ZT”L was the Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Yisroel for many years and was zoche to be married to her.

Perhaps we can be a little more specific considering it’s such a common name.

@n0mesorah Please stop with the condescending tones, it doesn’t get anywhere. Kids at risk happen in every community, and yes, many of them start as young as ten. However, when a ten year old starts to experience these issues, the problem is more often than not addressed and arrested. However, in some communities, a ten year old with a problem has a very limited set of schools they can attend. And most of those are remedial schools, where the talmidim as seen as “problem children”. If a community normalizes schools with less intense curriculums in middle school and high school, along with pushing encouraging skills such as art and music, perhaps these children will not feel like such failures and start acting out.

If you say that if the failure for Lakewood Mesivtas to follow the derech ha’Yosher is because there is a “general lack of interest”, then that is a seething indictment of the klal.

@n0mesorah It goes like this. Some 20 years ago, one or two very chashuva talmidei chachamim opened up mesivtos that followed the same learning model as the Cheder and Yeshivos Ketanos in Eretz Yisroel. They became very popular, mostly due to the Lakewood population boom in the 00s. Then, when other Mesivtas opened up, they didn’t want to start a non-Gemara based curriculum because they would immediately be seen as the B-listers where the Lo Yitzlochs go. It got the snowball rolling to the point where only very established Chashuveh places still teach math and science, because new schools know that they won’t get the top guys if they teach something other than Gemara and Halacha. So many parents who don’t follow this ridiculous mehalech, are stuck with only a small number of Yeshivos in town and way too many kids applying.

Lakewood needs to normalize teaching math, history, language, and science. And then maybe these violent teens won’t feel the need to betray their families.

Weinberger’s is one of the most contested Yeshivos to get into in Lakewood. Many other Yeshivos of a similar size struggle to fill 9th grade classes. Don’t tell me there’s no market for Yeshivos that teach things other than Gemara and Halacha.

I hope these boys find the help that they so desperately need and I hope this is a wakeup call to the growing problem of teens at risk.

The Rishonim and Acharonim are full of examples where gedolim learned from goyim. From Greek philosophers, to Persian mathematicians, to 17th century medicine, we find all of these in our seforim and no one ever felt the need to explain nor apologize.

@n0mesorah That’s incorrect. There are several high schools in Lakewood that predate the “nothing but Gemara” nonsense and they are some of the only places (other than the Cheder, Slomowitz’s and one or two others) that have to turn down more bachurim than they accept.

It’s not that there isn’t a market for it, it’s just that the type of person who is starting a high school in Lakewood has a lot of pressure to “keep up with the Cohenses” in order to attract the Top Guys. And with the current trends, that means cutting out most of the important subjects teens need to learn. It has the added advantage of making the school much cheaper and simpler to run, since the staff numbers are easily 1/4 of what they should be.

Einstein spoke at length about his beliefs and I think at one time called himself Spinozan. He was very openly in denial of Hashem’s mastery over the world (his famous comment on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle that “[Hashem] doesn’t play dice with the universe” non-with standing).

Polygraphs are pretty inaccurate. They are mostly a psychological test that relies more on intimidation than actual science.

I would like to go with Nikki Haley’s suggestion that presidential candidates should take a tough psychological test before they run. I don’t think Biden would have passed it.

Wasabi that you buy in the store or find in your sushi tray is generally just powdered horseradish with green food coloring.

Can you write a rant about pointless sophistry on the Internet and how it is Bad For The Jews?

The Machlokes (disagreement) between the Vilna Gaon and Rav Meir in Baba Kama concerns whether a watchman who steals corn from the field he is watching must pay back the value of the corn or the value of the flour that can be made from the corn. The Vilna Gaon holds that he must pay back the value of the corn, while Rav Meir holds that he must pay back the value of the flour.

@CTLAWYER I wish I can find a better citation, but sifrei halacha state that men and women cannot swim together, regardless of how they’re dressed.

@AviraDeArah We’ve discussed this ad nauseum. There is a certain population of Jews who consider themselves “Orthodox” that don’t really openly follow the Torah. This has always been the case. This will continue to be the case ad biyas goel b’mheira v’yamaynu. If I would have to guess, a huge percentage of them are Sephardi, since non-frum Sephardim didn’t have a history with Reform and Conservative, so most of them just stuck with “parking the car around the corner on Shabbat” style Judaism. It is a problem that people don’t follow Torah and mitzvos. But that isn’t a Modern Orthodox problem, that’s just a problem problem. MO just happens to appeal to these people more than most other groups. You statistical facts are important, but not really anything of note. Fakhert, it shows that the number of people who consider themselves Orthodox yet don’t try to follow Torah and Mitzvos is shrinking and they have no support nor leadership that encourages their behavior.

Because, like I’ve said, at the end of the day we need to first take the beam out of our own eyes and accept that the current Yeshivish trends are a much greater danger to us than non-frum Jews.

It’s very impressive, but it lies a lot. For some background, I work in artificial intelligence (you can be bochen me later). It’s main function is a text generator. It will produce text, that’s all. Other than some manual safeguards to prevent people from getting it to say bigoted things or instructions on illegal activity, it literally cannot tell the difference between the truth and something that sounds true. It will answer any shayloh you give it. But generally only the things that have reams of text already answering them. If you ask a specific question and request mekoros, it will probably produce a long essay with some made up sources that only makes sense in a cursory manner.

@lakewhut And you know this from your vast experience davening in many MO shuls across the country?

@coffee-addict Everything depends on the shul. Some MO shuls are very serious, some the oilom barely davens. Some Yeshivish shuls are dead quiet, some you can’t hear the Chazzan. Some Chassidishe shuls are full with the kol teffilah, some don’t even have a minyan of people who aren’t busy with coffee or kugel.

@lakewhut While I appreciate you starting this discussion, I’m going to say something, Yid to Yid, that I hope comes from a place of ahava. Kindly stop discussing things you know nothing about.

@AviraDeArah I seem to recall a while back that MO teens would constantly talk about negiah like frum people talked about Lashon Horah. Meaning, that the well-intentioned kids knew it was something they were supposed to do and be careful about, even if it was all around them and they themselvesfaltered from time to time. My understanding was that this was due to a campaign by MO Rabbonim, which is why the phrase “Shomer Negiah” is very common and not, I dunno, “Shomer K’Layim”.

I agree. Many MO communities have accepted goyishe values over Torah values. However, as I’ve stated numerous times before and as you yourself admit, those communities are dying. They don’t have leadership that supports such values, and most of the oilom in that boat are either making Aliyah, becoming frummer, or just heading towards full non-observance.

Again, the current trends in Yeshivish communities to one-up each other on how k/frum we can be by throwing away important parts of our lives and education, is an acute danger to our Klal.

@Avira,

Teaching girls and women gemara is like a galaxy away from negiah in the sense that negiah is an actual direct aveira. I know of plenty of MO Rabbis who encourage (or at least don’t discourage) women learning Gemara. However, I never heard of any discouraging negiah or saying that filters aren’t necessary. I seem to recall that “Shomer Negiah” is a huge campaign in MO circles with Rabbis and teachers encouraging their students to keep it.

Lemme as you something: What would you rather? A small patch of thick mold in your house that’s the remnants of a much larger infestation that’s currently shrinking, or a large patch of near-invisible mold that doesn’t look as bad but is rapidly growing?

Anti-Semites gotta anti-Semite

Also can we please stop talking about whatever this Rav Belsky ZT”L situation is? I am unfamiliar with it and I really really don’t want to know any more.

@ujm The people who you affectionately call “LWMO” made up the vast majority of Jews who consider themselves “Orthodox” for decades. They are now the minority. Most of their Rabbonim are very against their ways of life (Baruch Hashem we no longer have many Rabbis who are forced to either accept davening without a mechitza or lose their only parnoso) and most of their children grow up and either drop the pretense of being Orthodox, move to Eretz Yisroel, or become much more frum.

So I don’t see the existence of “LWMO” as an issue that needs to be addressed, since it seems to be resolving itself without outside “help” (which never seemed to work). However, I do see there being a rising danger in the issues I mentioned in the frum “RWY” communities.

@aviradearah I don’t think you called MO “worthless”, but I just looked back at some of your comments and you said “MO contribute nothing”, claiming that they give their money to art museums instead of tzedaka. So I would have to vehemently disagree with you on literally every thing you said:

1. Modern Orthodox people give tons to tzedaka
2. Modern Orthodox people do not give a lot of museums
3. Modern Orthodox people contribute plenty
4. You absolutely called them “worthless”

@ujm Please address my actual point about the educational tracts that are rapidly becoming the norm and stop trying to derail this into a conversation about college.

@AviraDeArah Your raya is from those Chassidim who live in cloistered communities and forbid any education they consider “outside”. We’ve well established on multiple occasions in this thread that they are not successful. Specifically, they rely very heavily on outside communities (tzedaka, legal council, political clout, etc.) to keep them going.

Like I said previously, MO communities promoting problematic anti-Yiddisheh things have been around forever and are dying out, which is why they aren’t as much of a problem as the growing trend of “Holy Am Ha’aratzus” in our own places.

I believe that Vizhnitz Monsey has a takanah to only give cubic zirconium engagement rings and synthetic fur streimels, so that parents shouldn’t bankrupt themselves on trivialities.