AAQ – “This is again picturing the other side as the extreme”
Please read carefully: To make a ‘binary choice’ between a GOYISH VELT that increasingly brooks no compromise on THEIR ‘hashkafah’, and some sort of real Torah hashkafah. Stretching that term as wide as possible still can’t accommodate LGBTQXYZ_who_knows_what_next+++, and not accommodating the flavor-of-the-month will get you ‘cancelled’ professionally and academically.
I.e. – When I said ‘Goyish Velt’ I meant literal ‘Goyim’, not ח״ו any Jew of any sort. And yes, the ‘goyish velt’ REALLY IS extreme. If you are aware of what is going on today on college campuses etc. it is EXTREME. My only point (which I spelled out multiple times already) was that in the eyes of today’s Progressive Post-Modern 400 gender Goyish velt, even YU are ultra-right-wing extremists, no less than me (and probably you, for that matter…) IMHO, this is going in a direction that will eventually leave the more serious MO “Chareidi by default”. Sort of ‘we didn’t leave Modernity, Modernity left us’…
Just nudge your community to accept modernity to the extent R Twersky did.
Rav Twersky himself, in his books, pointed out that in his day college campuses were very different than what they have become today (he wrote that about 30 years ago…) In his day, the main challenge was from Kefirah, and he avoided that by going to a Catholic college IIRC… Nowadays (again, writing in the mid 90s…) the biggest issue on campus is פריצות, which is a more difficult challenge for most people. It’s true that since he wrote that new options have opened geared specifically for observant Jews, but those who insist on only the most prestigious degree from a regular university cannot hang their hat on Rav Twersky… He also never self-identified as ‘Modern’ in terms of מדע לשמה… He knew and used whatever he needed to do his job and help people, even if that was a lot, and that’s it… Everything else about his lifestyle, family, חינוך of his own children, etc. was 100% heimish.
and respect others that do – and let’s talk then.
I mentioned previously my respect for Reb Yoshe Ber z”l and some of his talmidim… I am aware of his hashkafah, and I don’t see that as an automatic סתירה to respect. I do wonder what his take would be on Post-Modernism and where it’s going today, as well as this idea of mine about MO eventually facing a crossroads that will force them to define who they really are. He probably would write something with a title like “Halachic Man and the Rupture of Modernity in a Post-Modern World”…
Never forget – everyone here has at least 613 things that we all can agree on… And we will all celebrate that in a week and a half from now…