Inaccurate things we learned as kids

These are true things.

You’re teachers were correct and you are wrong.

Shlishi – “These are true things.”

Is that so?

The Head of Shechita in Cape Town has a letter from R’ Elyashiv saying that you may shecht giraffe, and he has done so over Pesach a few years ago.

“When we open the door on seder night we are opening it up for Eliyahu hanavi”

Although there are sources that Eliyahu Hanavi comes to every Seder (sources only within the last few hundred years, not earlier), he certainly does not drink from the Kos shel Eliyahu Hanavi, and we open the door to symbolize ‘Leil Shimurim’ and ‘Cherus’ of not barricading yuorselves away in fear of Goyim. Nothing to do with Eliyahu Hanavi.

“You are not allowed to touch muktzah items on shabbos.”

The issur muktzah is to move, not to touch.

“If a woman drinks from the wine of havdalah she will grow a beard.”

I’m not going to bother – find a source for that or a story that happened to somebody you know. Complete trash.#

“You are not permitted to say lashon harah about yourself.”

There is a big controversy about this – the story mentioned above clearly indicates that it is wrong. But as they say – i am Mochel me, so why not (:-), not seriously. If it is assur, being mochel yourself won’t help)

“If you walk over someone they will cease growing unless you walk back over them”

i cannot say this is untrue, because i don’t know. But for you to say ‘They are true’, Mr Shlishi, can you find me a source for that?

You won’t be able to survive in the real world unless you learn how to write in cursive.

@RabbiRabin was never quite sure where they got the stuff about the giraffes but at least it gives kashrus speakers an easy opening line which they always seem to take.

Some others

If you look at the hands of the kohanim while they are duchening you will go blind.

The Kosel is the last remaining wall of the Beis Hamikdash.

I didn’t necessarily mean everything listed in the OP is correct. (I also wonder if his teachers really told him *all* those things.) But he threw in true things on his list. For example, Rav Chaim Kanievsky shlit”a writes in his Seforim to not step over a child. And spare us the drivel about the last few hundred years. If the Achronim tell us something (i.e. Eliyahu Hanavi at the Seder, women shouldn’t drink havdala wine [nothing to do with growing a beard though], etc.), they didn’t invent it. It comes from our Mesorah all the way back. Even if the earliest Sefer YOU found is “only within the last few hundred years”.

And even if another Achron disagrees with a certain concept, a teacher can teach something as a fact based on another valid source (i.e. an Achron) cites it as factual.

That the moon has no gravity. And that’s exactly what I was told before the moonlanding, and children’s videos etc. are still saying it 40 years after the moonlandings. I’ve never been able to understand why teachers and children’s videos can’t say the moon has less gravity than earth. They might not understand a fraction like 1/6, but any child can understand “more” or “less,” as any child will prove when calling our attention to that they got “more” or “less” of something than their siblings.

Also, my daughter was told that people in Australia are upside down. The truth is that it was a shaila put to HaRov Tzvi Pesach Frank as to how the lulav should be held during Succos when in the Southern Hemisphere.

I was told that anyone who goes to college is a sheigitz by my 6th grade Rebbe. I went home that night and told both my parents what my Rebbe said about them (I didn’t know about Roshei Yeshivos such as R’ Hutner back then who had gone to college).

When I was 19, the Rosh Yeshiva of the yeshiva I was in at the time told me that if I left the yeshiva and went to college, I was throwing my life away, and there was no way to stay frum in college.

It turns out he was partially right on that one. While in school, he actually contacted me to encourage me to leave, saying I was only harming myself. I decided that if I was doomed anyway, I might as well enjoy myself on the way. Only later (while still in college!) did I decide that despite everything I was taught, he was probably wrong. That was when I became frum again.

Those are a few examples of things I was taught that were wrong.

we don’t eat giraffes since they’re very expensive… 🙂

When I was in ninth grade, I was a bit heavier than the average kid.

One day in class, I mentioned that I skipped dessert by the Shabbos meal since it was fattening and I truly didn’t need it.

My rebbi at the time spent the next ten minutes of class time berating me publicly for “dieting on Shabbos” and not having any respect for the concept of oneg on Shabbos. One does not diet on Shabbos, he told us firmly.

Mind you, I was not even on a formal diet. All I did was skip a piece of cake that I recognized wouldn’t help my weight. But that didn’t matter — for this terrible action, I was subject to public humiliation in front of the entire class.

Needless to say, my rebbi was dead wrong. There is nothing wrong with skipping a piece of cake on Shabbos.

The Wolf

That Eretz Yisroel has a higher elevation than Mt. Everest because EY is higher than all other lands.

That no one since Moshe Rabbeinu can live to 120 years.

That all non-Jews *know* that our religion is the correct one, except that they are too stubborn/proud/obstinate to admit it. They would rather purposely follow a religion they know to be false.

The Wolf

When we open the door on seder night we are opening it up for Eliyahu hanavi

I actually know of a chashuva family that has someone dress up as a “ghost” (Eliyahu Hanavi) right before Shfoch Chamascha

You are not permitted to say lashon harah about yourself.

(I know the story of the Chofetz Chaim)

I actually heard that the story was made up

“Needless to say, my rebbi was dead wrong. There is nothing wrong with skipping a piece of cake on Shabbos.”

If I baked it, yes there is! :p

This brings to mind the other urban legend I was told. “You CANNOT gain weight from anything you eat for oneg Shabbos.” Yeah, sure… I guess my scale didn’t go to that shiur.

ye iv’ve heard a lot of these… i also heard when i was younger that you have to put two foods with different berachot in the mishloach manot when really you just have to pput two different types of food

@commonsense both rashi and mitzudas tziyon translate its as pondakita mocheres minei mazon or mocherez mazon.

although I think the gemara is keneged the metzudos becuase the gemara explains lo kom ruach be’ish since krias yam suf means no-one frequented that establishment

shlishi: I didn’t mean to say that it has no mekor – the earliest mekor as far as i can remember is R’ Ahron from Belz. In the Hagodos it says to say ‘BORUCH HABA’ when you open the door. A good YEKKE like me doesn’t say such things (Seriously, it is not our minhag to say it.)

RabbiRAbin – R’ Chaim KAnievsky wrote a sefer about the things which causes one to forget his torah, which are bought all over in Halocho. It probably comes in there.

There is no question eliyahu hanavi comes to the Seder (that was never up for discussion) —:> Where is your mekor???

Commonsense – although the Gemoro clearly says isho zonah means something other than food-distributer. I heard from one of my Rebbes to reconcile the two translations: that in the olden days, a zonah would have an inn, using it to cover up for any alternative definitions.

We don’t wear techeiles because we don’t know the exact animal. Some say it’s from a fish.

–> The Brisker Rov said that we don’t know the exact animal, and if we think we do it is no reason to wear it: No mesorah means no Mesorah. And nobody does things without Mesorah…

theywnreader: I dare you to buy a pomegranite and count the seeds.

moskidoodle: I did count one when I was about 10 years old. Don’t go off the derech over this, even though it’s our “mesorah” since kindergarten that it’s exactly 613 . I’ve shocked quite a few people over this and they are b”h still frum.

I did count the seeds of a pomegranate. There were about 500.

Must be nishtaneh hateva.

Pomegranates from different places have different numbers of seeds. But some goy did a count over a large variety and large amount of pomegranates and the average was 613! If you see there if you count the 1000 seed pomegranates you can throw the average off balance but its still very interesting that when he stopped counting that was the number. Said he would but hasn’t updated since that count. Don’t know if that’s what was meant by the elusive makor. Search “613 seeds” fifth entry.

Our teachers always told us the part of the ????? ????? was that every building they built in Pisom and Ramses fell because it was quicksand. Another example of ignorance…

Ima2many: I saw the study, and it is flawed. He gets his 613 number on a weighted average of his sample size. However, almost 73% of his pomegranates were from the US! You need to represent the actual distribution of pomegranates in the sample size in order to get a real estimate.

As for a source, I’ve heard the Malbim says a pomegranate has 613 seeds.

My teachers after lunch would tell us that we could only be happy if we went to university and made lots of money. they were pretty dumb.

BaalHabooze:

Did it ever cross your mind, that perhaps the teacher had said it was a medrash but your grade 3 daughter confused it with Mashul?

?? ??? ???? is not voluntary – its a ????