Mesora

To HaKatan

Because then he’ll just get his answer, but here he’ll start a fight, as is the case with almost all of the threads.

Hakatan you might be stretching what the Torah requires. Zionism is a belief system that has nothing to do with Torah. Lol

micro,

Proper hashkafa is also a Torah requirement, not just a theoretically nice thing. Of course, staying far away from anti-Zionist idolatry – as opposed to promoting it with nebulous stories from 90 years ago – is pretty basic Torah, but that’s besides the point.

Of course you don’t care since you always lift up the hem of your skirt and run to worship your made-up ant-Zionist goddess and her one anti-Semitic commandment. You simply can’t control yourself because you’re a nasty Nazi Kapo!

Very interesting question. I have been thinking about this as well. Recently a young Shaliah Tzibur in my shul changed a few things from the nusah I am used to hearing my whole life. His father claims this was our original mesorah and it changed due to influence of other kehilot. I still think he shouldn’t change from what we’ve been doing do 50 years.

Just looking at all the different kehilot and their minhagim it’s clear that the mesorah of certain things develops and changes over time. From observation it seems that it’s all dependent on acceptance by the tzibur. Sometimes changes are made and they spread without anyone noticing and suddenly people are doing something new and that is the new mesorah. Sometimes there’s a change that’s met with pushback. It’s an organic process based on each individual tzibur or group of tziburim depending on the dynamic.

Two people from the same community can make the same change and one of them will be met with pushback by his brother for going against the mesorah and one will not be noticed. If it spreads it spreads, until it gets to a point where it’s too widespread to stop.

Obviously if there is a Rav involved who has control over the situation that can change things. But often it’s not that type of thing and it spreads faster than the Rav can control.

This is from a Rabbi/Historian I follow.
Below is from a lecture. It’s more on a historical & intellectual level but he does make a good point about “Mesorah”
“It struck me that this is what’s going on with R’ Elchonon Wasserman of all people being interested in the Critique of Pure Reason and having read Immanuel Kant.
If you know when he was living, if you know the issues that were going at that time actually it’s a very frum kind of thing. He’s looking for the secular unanswerable set of arguments to destroy any kind of Maskilik reinterpretation and reconstruction of Judaism.
They’re literally deconstructing maimonidian metaphysics in places like the dormitory of the Telz yeshiva. Not for the purpose of deconstructing Judaism but the exact opposite, for displacing
metaphysics as the basics of Judaism with what i would call in one word “Mesorah”

user> Just looking at all the different kehilot and their minhagim it’s clear that the mesorah of certain things develops and changes over time.

the way mesorahs developed changed over time. It used to be that a place had a mesorah. A Tanna was creating a mesorah in his place. When people started moving around and exchanging information and coming up/get influenced by new ideas, things changed. Book printing and shulchan oruch made things way more uniform. I understand the goal of Mishna Berurah was to create more common halocha for lita-connected Yidden.

In our times, when we have multiple kehilot mixing on the same block things are much more flexible than they were before. You like seuda moschiach – you go to a chassidishe shul even if you were munching on gebrokhts the whole week.

With flexibility, there is pressure to conform. Some in the direction of general society, like equally divided shul instead of classical balcony where women got good view on prospective shidduchim (how many have neck problem because of the new design!?), others – take up every minhag to be seen as “frum” as all shuls around… Those who follow kulos of both B Shammai and b Hillel or chumros of both – you know how they are called …

@op
Here is a direct quote from you:
“Circling back to my question, I suppose I am asking more of a “yenta” question”

Chaim87: JT originally lost an election to become the Rav of Satmar. After the previous Rav (R’ Eliezer David Greenwald) passed away, he tried again. A small committee elected him to become the new Rav. Many who lived there opposed this, so they decided to hold an election by the entire congregation.
He won a close election, but there were many allegations that the committee leaders had fixed the election. Another election was held, and this time, he won in a landslide. Again, there were many allegations of cheating, through various means, and dinei Torah were filed by both sides, as well as suits in secular court.
His supporters established their own shul, and broke off from the rest of the community. The main shul was scared of losing members, so they decided to negotiate with JT’s supporters.
Eventually, an agreement was reached where he was appointed as the Rav of the town, but he said he wouldn’t accept it until he had the full support of the community. So for the next 3.5 years, the town had no official Rabbi. After the 3.5 years, he took up the position.

@Chaim87

The Rebbe had many chassidim, mostly inherited from his father and grandfather. He had a yeshiva wherever he was a Rav. The current Satmar chassidus is built on the foundation of those chassidim and talmidim who survived.

Again, The Rema is Halacha. Mesorah predates the Rema. Ashkenazi Mesora was recorded before the Rema. Maharil and Rav Aizik Tirnau are the fathers of Ashkenazi Mesora.

I didn’t read through all the arguments in this article but I think the way Mesorah works is that minhagim are passed down from father to son unless a “Gadol” or community whom one associates himself with has a different minhag. All mesoras are rooted in halacha, and one must be keeping a mesorah. There’s no clear line in what one can adapt, rather it’s gray area that requires daas torah.

asher> minhagim are passed down from father to son unless a “Gadol” or community whom one associates himself with has a different minhag.

you can have your own minhag different from the community, you just need to conform to the community minhag in public.

Minhag is essentially a neder, and changing a minhag is equivalent to hatarat nedorim. It is possible when needed. The most danger to minhagim is that they all get destroyed by uniform approaches when people start following what is popular or what their yeshiva is teaching.

Kuvult> How could all these converts to Chasidism change so many minhagim?
Because it wasn’t long after the Kehillas existed & you switched based on where you live.
So coming from that culture joining a Chasidic sect & adopting their Mesorah was really not as difficult or stressful as we would view it today.

I am not sure I understand your argument. Putting aside the possibly valid reasons for people interested in chasidism and not happy with the existing communities – this change drastically affected communities, shul attendance, tax collection (most communities had meat & candle tax and suddenly a large part of the town shifted to their own shochet …). It was not “easy as moving to another town”.