WolfishMusings,
Please forgive me this rant on your rant…
Do you HONESTLY believe that there is an obscure heter for talking about mundane subjects during davening? Yes or no?
I don’t think you do, otherwise, you would not have titled this thread a rant. Please answer, but I’m guessing you’re not going to bother responding to this post.
Almost everyone here could see the point you were trying to make, and it was a good point, but then you branched off into the absurd.
I have tried to make sense of your polemical style, which follows a pattern of:
1.) I am bothered by [insert a clearly halachically wrong behavior] that is done by people who are makpid on the external Yeshivish customs (e.g., hat and jacket).
2.) I am not makpid on those same external Yeshivish customs.
Left here, it is a fairly strong attack against hypocrisy. Those same people who would never come to davening without a hat and jacket because it would be “wrong” (not adhering to a custom) then talk in shul (an outright aveira). Touchee! But then you invariably continue:
3.) Since those who wear a hat and jacket are superior to me because I don’t wear a hat and jacket, then [insert a clearly halachically wrong behavior] must be somehow correct and I am too unlearned to see how.
OK, a somewhat strange thing to say, but it still fits into your attack on hypocrisy if taken as dripping with sarcasm. Touchee again! However the switch to the “twilight zone” occurs:
4.) Drop points 1 and 2 and argue that you are completely and honestly serious about point 3.
Why do you do this? You as well as the rest of us know what the gedolim say about talking in shul (if you didn’t, which I doubt, an example from the S”A was posted above), so your contention that you honestly believe there is actually a heter for talking in shul collapses like a house of cards. So I am left with the question: why do you want me, a reader, to accept your point 4?
I’m beginning to suspect that you’re hoping someone not paying close enough attention falls into the logical snare you have set, and asks or tells you something along the lines of: if you really believe that these men have some sort of heter for talking in shul, then perhaps you should not be bothered by the talking? That statement is the logical endgame of this absurd line of thinking, but it is fundamentally wrong because the premise is wrong.
Then three months from now, when someone else posts a rant against talking in shul, you can triumphantly trot out: I posted the same thing three months ago, and was told that I was wrong and to stop being bothered by it!
I am sorry that you have had so much trouble at this Yeshivish-style shul. I really, honestly believe that some of the “stuff” you are encountering there is not representative of the entire Yeshivish world. I also don’t feel that the Yeshivish world is “out to get you” despite what you may or may not believe. If it was, you wouldn’t have to lay such elaborate traps to get the condemnation that you seek as proof. On the contrary, you seem well liked in this forum. I enjoy most of your posts, which is why I think I get so bothered by threads like this one.
All the best!