Ames,
How can you leave us with such a gaping void? Your warmth, sicerity & honesty are not often seen ’round these parts.
I think that in a weird kind of way, the fact that people (obviously myself included) get so riled up here is BECAUSE we care what each person says. If we didn’t care we woudn’t respond.
Don’t forget Ames, the people who are often considered to be the biggest “kannoim” who “can’t speak nicely about another Jew” are generally the same people who run the largest Bikur Cholim group in the world, clean up the dead bodies of any Jew who was blown to bits whether they wre religious or not & are the first to pull off the 17 to help a fellow Jew (wearing shorts & a tee shirt) change a flat tire.
I recently saw a story in a book written by R’ Mattis Goldberg which I’d like to share with you & everyone else.
A few years back, R Yehoshua Rosenberger, Rav of Satmar in Ramat Bet Shemesh & Dayan on the Bes Din of the Eida Hachareidis in Yerushalayim was in the midst of giving a shiur in his shul. Suddenly a man came in & gave the news that A NIGHTCLUB IN TEL AVIV FULL OF (obviously) CHILONIM had just been blown up by a suicide bomber & a number of people had been killed.
The Rav put his head in his hands & began to weep uncontrollably, sharing in the suffering of his fellow Yidden.
So Ames, I’m not saying we’re all on the level of R’ Rosenberger, but I think that the point is clear.
Ultimately, we are all Yidden & we are all in the same boat together. Hitler didn’t hate the Chassidim more than he hated the Litvaks or the Hungarians.
Although tempers flare occasionally here in the CR & some of the things that some people say REALLY get under the skin of others, nevertheless if G-D forbid it had been one of us in the Chabad House in Mumbai I don’t think any of us would be saying Tehillim with any less emotion.
So when the tone gets a little heated here, altough it might not be ideal, I don’t think you or anybody else should feel personally attacked.
We’d welcome you back any time.
Side point which you mentioned about R’ Miller Ztz”l whom you & I loved so much.
The shmeussen in his son’s Yeshiva which he delivered were only in Yiddish & as I said, in his home he only spoke Yiddish. So yes, you are correct, his FAMOUS shiurim were in English but apparently he felt there was something special about Yiddish.
He wasn’t “holier than thou” his frumkeit wasn’t an “illusion” & he was certainly very “real”.
WE’LL MISS YOU.
Squeak,
You gotta be kidding.