Good morning.
Someone decided to wake up an old thread.
So, for my part, what I didn’t understand in the whole long discussion was the poster (was that you oomis?) who thought keeping Shabbos is in the W”T (I realized the poster meant Written Torah) but being shomer negia is not in the W”T.
What? Yes, Shabbos is in the 10 Commandments. So is the prohibition against arayos. Nowhere in the W”T are the 39 melachos of Shabbos mentioned. So nowhere in the W”T do you find out you can’t grind peppercorns onto your salad or pick out the little bits of scallion you don’t like or pick the herbs in your windowbox or turn on the dishwasher on Shabbos. You have to study Halacha for that through Torah Shebe’al Peh. Likewise for arayos, where the details are in Torah Shebe’al Peh.
It’s unfortunate that some people find the weak Torah observance by the earliest immigrants to America to be normative or even preferred behaviour. Nobody is trying to judge them, the challenges were immense; but longing nostalgically for the bad old days before Rav Ahron Kotler, Rav Moshe, the Satmar Rav, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and many others too numerous to list brought true Torah observance to America, is foolish and misguided.