Gebrochts? Most observant Jews, askhenazim and sefaradim from all sort of different communities, eat gebrocht. Chassidim don’t, and those people must not eat: it is not a chumra but it’s their minhag, which is a halachic obligation to follow, not an optional stringency. Funny no one ever commented to me about gebrocht, which I eat and buy: at most someone pointed out to me among the products on the shelves which ones are gebrocht. Even funnier that someone bothered you about it while shopping, thus suggesting that you met some ignorant and possibly newly religious individual. I wonder why you did not take the opportunity to explain to him that many minhagim allow gebrocht (including yours, I assume) and that the reason he must not eat himself, which no doubt the rabbi had made clear to him, has nothing to do with chometz – the Talmud is very clear, matza and water do not create chometz, period – but still if that is his family’s minhag, or his rabbi’s, he is obligated in following it.
Given that ignorance brings punishment upon the world, I would have appreciated you had picked a correct example for a chumra. Being careful about yoshon in chutz laaretz is a chumra. Avoiding gebrochts on Pesach is a chumra only if I were to do it (actually, it would ordinarily be forbidden for those of us who have a minhag of eating some special gebrocht dish), but for chassidim it is not a chumra – it is the halacha. Anyway. You say you don’t have a problem about other people’s chumrot, even when they are true chumrot and not halacha (kol isha is a chumra too? I could continue with army service and national service “features”, but those examples are not fit for this website). So why are charedim such a huge problem for refusing to mix? I don’t have a problem with you, I don’t have a problem with the reforms, I just stay away, is that so disturbing to you?
DaMoshe since when do we compel people to do volunteer service? is it volunteer, or compulsory? What is forced civilian conscription for, or is it yet another idea to force assimilation, and at the same time to keep remarking that charedim don’t risk their life and are thus second-class?
TGH that’s brilliant, yeshivot should lock up Torah students, so the govt won’t have to pay for building and maintaining new jails and extra personnel, ’cause you know, these are young men who need to be locked up for their criminal behaviour, instead some zionist-religious school students (see article on today’s YWN) and the weed-enjoying squatters and the rock-throwing minorities deserve a medal and public funding to continue with their lifestyle at the taxpayers’ expense. I am going to teach my children how to play cards, because it looks like the new generation will need to pretend playing cards while in fact they are studying.