This is egregious; almost all of what we follow in halacha daily, is derabonon – the spirit of shabbos, entirely is because of derabonon’s – without their takanos, it would be perfectly fine to go to work to make money, (provided you dont write) go shopping, listen to music on a mp3 player – everything you an imagine would be fine and dandy.
This shows a complete ignorance about what torah is – torah is only torah because of mesorah; chazal say this in many places “kara, shana, velo shimash, is an am haaretz’, people can know a lot of information(like our two women posters who seem to have read a lot of talmudic literature online, if you can call it that), but without a mesorah from the chachamim, all is an empty shell.
Shabbos is shabbos as we know it solely because of rabbinic rules; the same is true for tznius. If we were to consider these things to be derabonon(the same reb moshe who you quoted as allowing men and women to be on subways, also says that it’s a laav of lo sikravu to even have a girlfriend without touching, etc.., in an uncharacteristically strong teshuvah, where he uses expressions like ‘let me make myself abundantly clear’, etc..)
the profound difference, understood to a person who learns, as opposed to studies and reads facts, is that being on a subway engenders no real connection. incidental touching is a ‘misasek’, now, of course if you can avoid it, mah toiv uma naim; reb moshe does not say you should go out of your way to touch women on the bus by chooisng bedavka a crowded car.
I brought in the above (little known in the online velt) laws, to show how one can only appreciate certain extra-legal attitudes, which manifest into actions; tznius is something that anyone who is not immersed in torah today has a hard time grasping – we live in a society which prides itself on not being tznius at all – it takes a person who is untainted by such an environment, or at least one who makes a concerted effort to guard himself when he can, to understand these things.
Think, can you expect someone who exposes himself to such things, or was raised with(and did not grow out of) attitudes of permissiveness of all sorts of disgusting things(this is why i mentioned dancing, touching), to grasp the fine subtleties of tznius? it’s preposterous.
For the record, dancing, the mishnah berurah says, is ‘pashut’ that it’s assur, even though it didn’t say anywhere specifically – to a malaach like the chofetz chaim, tznius is a reality to which one can ‘feel’, not academic studies like those of women who are completely unaware of what it means to properly disect a sugya in gemara…the gemara they(sinfully) teach in their schools only makes them think they can understand it, when in reality, if you’d ask them a kasha on a tosfos, a diyuk in a rashi, or to analyze a reb akiva aiger, they wouldn’t have a clue what you are talking about.
The fact that someone here can question the prohibition of dancing with women proves my point; someone who is so far removed from the torah’s basic outlook cannot possibly begin to understand its subtleties.
just to answer the other ignorant remarks made in the other forum about doing chesed with goyim, reform, etc.., (I don’t have time or patience to post to two boards), I can bring the mareh mekmomos for the things ive quoted, but i simply did not want to invest the energy and time when there is only a slight chance that someone will take me seriously, or question their previously held, goyishe-influced opinions.
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