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I don’t see how social considerations factor in to a discussion of murder – if something is murder, it is unequivocally forbidden, and jf it’s not, what’s wrong? This is why the 90s line of “safe, legal and rare” fell into women celebrating the murder of their children on tiktok dance videos, because it’s mima nafshach…if it’s not murder, then do it all you want! And if it is murder, then the only justification would be in situations where murder is acceptable.
Rav shach once had a talmid who was from a chasidishe background, but had gravitated to the litvishe world. He was having a hard time in shidduchim, because he was too chasidish for the litvish and too litvishe for the chasidim. He asked the rosh yeshiva if he could put on a short jacket, to make the transition more noticeable and try to get rehdt to litvishe families. Rav Shach told him that a short jacket is not a chisaron, but there is a naalah to wearing a long one, as this is what jews wore for generations and it is more tznius. To change in any way that is lowering a madrega for Shidduchim, says rav shach, is not hishtadlus.
Reb E, halacha considers abortion murder for yidden. There is talk if there’s a difference before 40 days(the time chazal say the neshoma enters the body), and for goyim it would be at any age. But even for goyim, an uber has to be called an uber, which is somewhat subjective and therefore conception is a good place to stop. Goyim often use the line of “it’s not a baby, it looks like a fish”, and they say that the burden of proof of what’s considered alive falls on us who wish to forbid. That argument is not only evil, vut very unintelligent – they’re saying you can kill as long as it’s not proven if something is alive, instead of not killing as long as you cannot prove that it’s not alive. It’s like if someone tells you that there’s a sleeping person aside 10 dead bodies, but you have no idea who’s alive and who’s dead. Abortion logic would be you can stab any of them because “who says this one is alive?”. No. You need to prove that the subject is NOT alive to allow anything.
That’s if you’re not interested, if you are, then do the same thing on a phone call – it’s not usually a good idea to give an answer on a date itself, because it’s putting her on the spot… Even if there’s a lot of chemistry and you have a strong feeling that she is interested… Mature daters take time to assess after a date. A date is purposeful and time should be spent appropriately. Even if she likes you, she may want to think overnight if there are any issues that are immediate deal breakers for her(or you!)
Ujm, there were and are people who are shomrei Torah who for whatever reason have made Shidduchim themselves. Many met in Brooklyn college in the 80s. That doesn’t mean it’s the standard of tznius in the Yeshiva world, or that bnei Torah would do it, but if one observes a woman who he is interested in marrying, it’s not assur to approach her, as long as it’s clear that he’s intended on marriage and nothing else. There needs to be a clear distinction between what’s assur gamur, what’s the proper decorum for a yid, and what is the standard of bnei torah. There’s a difference.
As to the OP, i doubt it’s her first time going out, so all you have to do is make a phone call saying what shadchonim usually say… You had a great time but you don’t feel the shiduch is for you, hatzlocha rabba and have a wonderful day. It doesn’t have to be with any details(that can be more hurtful). I don’t suggest texting. While she might not pry for more info on a phone call, on text people say things they normally wouldn’t say, and the confidence and assertiveness that one can employ on a phone call is missing in a text. I also don’t feel it’s tznius to text women in general.
Akuperma; there’s a reason why frei people are more drawn to chanukah than other yomim tovim. Chanukah is a time when the kedushah goes to the lowest levels. It’s seen in the halacha that you’re supposed to light the menorah less than 10 tefachim off the ground, while the gemara says the the shechina never goes that low, because on chanuka the ha’aros go down to the lowest depths. It’s also the reason why chanukah is in the darkest time of winter, in a month that’s assigned to eisav, and it’s the only yom tov which is in the latter half of a month(which has bad mazel). Chanukah lifts up a person with isarusa deli’ayla, a divine boon that happens automatically with the zman; all one must do is let himself tap into it. That’s the famous bnei yisaschar on dreidel; on chanuka, we spin from the top down, representing isasrusa deli’ayla, but on Purim we spin a grager from the bottom, signifying isarusa delitata, awakening from the bottom up…when we have to motivate ourselves more to access the ha’aros of the day
There are only so many words that can be formed fully in one minute. Many people never learn how to pronounce and read words when they’re in elementary school, and while they might read English on a college level, their Hebrew skills are at the point where they have to sit and sound out every vowel and consonant.
I heard from rav moshe wolfson once that chabad doesn’t grow payos because of a concern of mixing the hair from the beard with the payos for a kabalah reason, and this is a reason why some litvishe put it behind their ears(of course there’s the historical reason that it was due to anti semitism, but both can be true)
Tuna, do you have a source for those reasons re streimelich? I’ll admit that i was restating what i had heard from chabad people years ago without a textual source
Shimon, that was really insensitive and also baseless…where do you see that her parents are breathing down his neck?
Of course, someone has to turn a sensible discussion into a rant about misogyny dressed up as halacha…women were often referred to as “eshes” “mrs” so and so, but I’m really not interested in discussing that topic again. The OP wrote from the heart and deserves an answer not based on personal politics. Feminism is a danger to frumkeit for anyone who’s not open orthodox; the movement for women to bedavka not take their husband’s name was started by feminists. There can be circumstances where it’s practical not to adopt the husbands name legally, and i know many people who didn’t due to it being too complicated, but socially they are known as mrs whatever-husbands-last-name-is.
The Gaon writes that when there is a pervasive yatzer hora for a particular inyan, we’re supposed to go to extreme lengths to distance ourselves from it. What normally is innocent (like this case) becomes something we avoid when it smacks of goyishe hashkofos.
Again, my heart goes out to the OP; i understand where she’s coming from and I wish we lived in a sane world where such things wouldn’t be making a political statement.
Philosopher; yeah that was a miscommunication. I’m referring to how some gedolim, like rav chatzkel, cut their payos according to the shiur in halacha, but did not grow them larger than the rest of their hair. It is possible that the litvishe payos were shorter than the chassidishe ones, but they all used to be noticeable
These are real, valid concerns, and i hear where you’re coming from. The daughters of tzelofchod felt the same way when they said that they didn’t want to lose their father’s ancestral right upon marriage. Last names might be from goyim, but the idea of maintaining the dignity and remembrance of “bais abba” is most certainly not. And since we all use last names, it’s natural to associate them with your father’s house and your family in general.
I wish I could say that these concerns justify keeping your last name. If we lived in a world without feminism and the encroaching influences of the outside world that threaten us from within and without on a daily basis, then by all means! There are some countries where this is the norm, especially most south american and latin countries. But in our country, keeping the last bame or even hyphenating it is a statement that one communicates as a follower of feminist attitudes. Feminism objected to taking the man’s name because they felt it diminished their individualism and that it implied that husband and wife were not equal partners. The first part….yes, in many places in America, women would look at themselves as just extensions of their husbands. In the south, women would (and still) refer to themselves by saying “hi, my name is Mrs adam smith”. This was bot the Torah’s viewpoint. However neither is it Torah to believe that men and women are equal partners in a marriage. Feminism, as I’m sure you’re aware, is very anti Torah, anti family, and anti social.
So to distance our community – which is on the brink of influence from feminism – from alien attacks on our beliefs, it is the necessary choice to forego the last name. Let your family’s remembrance be in the ehrliche children you raise and your own personal avodas Hashem. Kein yehu ratzon
It’s a chov gamur on any entertainer to make sure that such things don’t happen. We know that there are people who would behave this way anyway, but if it happens under our watch, we are held accountable for facilitating it
Chabad used to wear some sort of streimel; the last lubavitcher rebbe dropped it because it made kiruv difficult.
Philosopher, I’m sorry but that’s not historically accurate. Before the government banned payos, litvishe yidden mostly had payos – st the time, there was a machlokes between the divrei chaim and the litvishe poskim. The Divrei chaim held that payos were yehereg velo yaavor as per arkasana demasani, shoelaces, which we are moser nefesh for during a shaas hashmad…the litvishe held differently, except for the netziv who was indeed moser nefesh, as you can see from his pictures. Subsequently it became popular to either not have payos, or put them behind one’s ears
I know plenty of taimani yidden who still have “simanim” even though they’re not chasidish at all
Complying with government rules is hardly a heter for chilul shabbos; there would have to be a pikuach nefesh issue vis a vis other Jews.
AAQ, i heard from rav belsky that the issue of eating from a big lerusah doesn’t apply to shabbos, because aderaba, we want to show enthusiasm for eating seudas shabbos…kidush isn’t any different. Actually, it’s probably a hiddur, the same way it’s a a hiddur to swallow an entire kazayis of matzah in one gulp
Nationalism is against open pesukim “hayom hazeh nihiyaysi li le’am” , today you are for me a nation… on the day of matan torah in the desert, not in eretz yisroel. Rav saadia gaon writes explicitly 5hat klal yisroel is a nation only because of its torah. It’s difficult to overlook such things and say it’s debatable, when the proponent of zionism were all influenced by secular studies and philosophers, including rabbi kook. There is chochma by goyim, but not torah, and the definition of our nation is a torah issue, to be understood by torah sources only.
I really don’t know how a “reader” can see that the rishonim didn’t have a mesorah, because I’m not a reader; i am a lomeid, and that means approaching the rishonim not as a book but as a piece of torah that is part of the continuum of Torah. You’re suggesting that i “can’t put my finger on it” simply because you cannot put a finger on what i was talking about.
I’ll be clearer – there is a mesorah in how to understand both the language of chazal, the words of the rishonim, and how to properly use Talmudic logic to understand both. This is why steinsaltz, who had no formal education, is so off base with his pshatim (see rav aharon Feldman’s critique for examples). What would make sense to “echad min hashuk” isn’t always a good sevara or shmaataa aliba dihilchasa.
The mechanics behind a gemara, which we call lomdus, is entirely mesorah driven. It’s hinted to in some rishonim, including notably the tosfos ri”d, called in yeshivos “reb chaim of the rishonim”, but mostly was not comitted to print. Rav Boruch ber (cited in rav hadomeh lemalaach) said that when writing chidushim, one should not write “too much”, not the entire shtikel, because we’re not writing artscroll type books. There’s a mesorah for the difference between a rashi writing “begemara mefaresh” and “mefaresh begemara”, as quoted in the shem hagedolim from the chid”a (could have been a different sefardi sefer, I don’t remember the name very clearly, just that it was sefardi)
Chidushim are rooted in that passed down tradition; they’re not a free for all. If someone wishes to open a gemara and pasken halacha without rishonim and achronim, he is rightly deemed a baal gaavah and is held responsible for allowing that which is assur. For example, the academic mentality would not see anything wrong with annuling yom tov sheni, chumra derebe zeira, or other issues that one can dismiss with simplistic kashos. Yet one who does these things is in violation of halacha, because we have a mesorah that we do not deviate from.
Bombarding with questions doesn’t dismantle an argument, but it is a debate technique used to make the other side less appealing, since it raises more questions than it answers; it’s not a real conversation point though, and it’s also evasive, like putting up flares in the hopes of confusing an attacker.
It doesn’t mean that every perush of a given gemara was passed down, much like the discussions in the gemara weren’t passed down, but rather the product of torah reasoning that is based on the amoraim’s rebbeim. The methodology of seeing a good sevara from a bad one is part of this mesorah. You’ll notice that rishonim often say pshatim that are initially hard to understand, and could be dismissed by superficial kashas… only for someone like the chasam sofer or reb akiva eiger to come and completely overturn the sugya and show how the rishon was the best pshat.
I wonder if you’ve ever learned in an iyun driven litvishe yeshiva, or if your experience was in a certain element in YU, an academic setting, a chasidishe yeshiva from which you weren’t intellectually satisfied, or a halacha kollel… it’s easy to hide behind the veneer of achievement in having completed many mesechtos, perhaps even shas (i admit i have not made a siyum hashas), and feeling that one has a complete grasp of gemara…enough to dismiss elementary teachings that one receives in a middle school setting. People who relish discussing “themes” in rishonim are usually at a loss for prime examples if asked; rishonim are way bigger than us and we should endeavor to understand what we can of their words without fooling ourselves into thinking that we can understand overarching “up teitches” the way one would with Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare.
If it’s choshuv enough for a bracha achrona, then a cup that holds it should be considered a kos too by the same logic
Shimon, that’s not what the maharsham is talking about. Rov hakos/machzik reviis is an issue that’s relevant to hilchos pesach. I tzaychuntzu’d the maharsham; check it out
Some chasidim hold to do this bedavka, while others held that it eas because shnapps was more readily available than wine, but it was a bedieved
the maharsham indeed defends the minhag in chelek 1, 175. He aays this is based on shitas ha’taz, that you make a bracha achrona on a shot glass of yayin saraf (schnapps) even though it’s less than a revi”is, because it’s considered choshuv. So too by kidush, where chamar medina is acceptable, a shot glass of this sort of chamar medina is considered choshuv.
I come from a journalism background. Even if you can avoid devorim asurim, the cynicism is inevitable. Negative stories are popular – “if it bleeds it leads” is the common expression
Ben, there is a lot of material in the mishnah that definitely predated rebbe. What rebbe did was:
Get together all of the chachamim in his generation and collect each one’s mesorah(see bartenuras hakdoma)
Took the words that had been recited and memorized and edit them together; cutting and pasting essentially.
Paskened according to one shitah and made that shitah a stam mishnah or “chachamim omrim” (see mesechta beitzah 2b)
Ordered them by topic and sub topic (seder and mesechta, perakim etc)
Decide which material should be excluded from the core and left to braysos
Fix up any mishnayos that may have had errorsThere’s a machlokes if rebbe wrote down the mishnayos physically or just did the above and make it the standard for klal yisroel going forward
On aizehu mekoman, i saw one of the meforshim say that it’s an “old” mishnah because there’s no machlokes….ayn shom
I should also have clarified that my archetype MO teenager description included some things that i personally, thankfully, did not engage in, but it’s what I saw all around me.
I also would add that there is a lot in between the two categories you mentioned. There are also many members of the non-MO community who don’t care much about yiddishkeit and are going through the motions. But it’s the ones who do care but have heretical hashkofos and sinful behaviors (rhat they try to justify) that are worse. If someone just says “I’m not so religious”, that’s a shame, but it isn’t a threat to Judaism itself.
There definitely are some people who are in the MO world who are just shy of ner yisroel/out of town torah institutions. That’s true in eretz yisroel too, where aside from nationalism, there are bnei Torah who wear kipos serugos who are just as committed (and probably moreso) as i am.
I believe the disinterested people are not nearly as much of a threat as the haskalah influenced ideologues. Rabbis who learn alt but are attempting to undermine torah and perpetuate the sinful standards of the mostly ignorant masses of MO. Rabbis who believe in secular education as an ends to itself, feminism, LGBT rights, bible criticism, evolution, gender theory, and tons of other issues. They might learn day and night, and that’s why they are much more of a threat to Judaism.
DBS, that was an exact quote from rabbi shechter’s teshuva during the oslo accords.
*Since Eretz Yisroel is vital to Jewish existence as a nation-state, conquest by a foreign power is considered a lethal blow to the conquered nation. Therefore, just as a doctor may amputate a patient’s limb in order to save the patient’s life, where the life of an entire nation is in danger it is permissible to sacrifice the lives of the few for the purpose of sparing the nation at large”
This is straight European Nationalism. Not Judaism. In judaism, the Torah is the lifeblood of the people, not a secular state built by holocaust collaborating murderers.
Also, if Hashem had placed me in a conservative community, I don’t think(or rather, i hope) you’d say that it’s some sort of insult to hashgocha if i changed, because they are not following the Torah; even those among them who claim to keep the mitzvos.
MO has the same issues as conservative, though to a lesser extent. They believe in compromise, in not stressing certain mitzvos that are societally unpalatable, in justifying horrific violations of halacha (in a similar way to solomom shechter’s “catholic judaism” concept) and being inclusive of more and more depravity.
I should share wkth with you one of my watershed moments. I was captain and founder of my school’s debate team. We competed in a league of MO schools; some mixed, some gender separate (mine was the latter). Things were fine until the last debate of the season. My English principal, (an old school MO person who was close with rabbi yoshe ber and his family) and i looked at each other in disbelief when we saw the email that contained the topic that we were to debate; polyamory. Yes, an umbrella organization approved by scores of MO schools was going to have a debate in a yeshuva auditorium between Jewish students as to the status of marriages….i dont want to finish that sentence. It also said that we weren’t supposed to debate it from a religious perspective.
My principal and i wrote a scatching letter to the board and summarily resigned from the league, even though we were in the top tier. This was MO standard education in 2007; it’s only gone way downhill from there. The only reason why my principal was enraged at the topic was because she was from the old generation who copied the goyishe generation of the 60s(not hippies) and 70s, when America had basic decency and awareness of gender biology. MO copied goyim then, and they’re copying goyim now…just now we can see the results and how far one can go.
A mesorah doesn’t add to the integrity of torah, it is merely the transmission vehicle; it was meant to be transmitted from rebbe to talmid, father to son, in both content and methodology. Those are things you need a mesorah for; to know a good sevara from a crooked one, to know what the kavanos of chazal, rishonim etc were, it’s not about proving the Torah or adding credibility, it’s about getting the tools necessary to understand something that all along was based on a handed down tradition. When the mishnah was completed, it was cryptic and needed the gemara to explain it; when the gemara was written, it would have been a closed book if not for the rishonim; he rishonim thensleves are very perplexing and are constantly studied over by the achronim and ourselves…someone without a mesorah cannot approach these matters because they simply don’t have the tools.
That doesn’t mean you have to blindly accept the particulars of what you’re taught; rashi argues with his rebbeim quite a lot, and tosfos argues on rashi on almost every daf. But those are in the details; tosfos doesn’t say that rashus entire approach was wrong and that they are inventing a new mahalach in torah ex nihilo.
I know from my own years in yeshiva that had i not had intensive blatt shiurim id never be able to understand rishonim; i could try on my own, but it would have been a colossal failure….the worst part of which would be the fact that i wouldn’t be aware of how much of a failure it is
Maysoh bereshis/merkava also was passed down without being written as per the rambam and other rishonim, for another example.
And just what “great torah sages” are you getting this from? Do they have recorded torahs echoing your sentiment? Or is it “mesorah”? Or is it people who you consider torah sages, but are considered heretics by people like rav shlomo zalman (re, kapach) or the chazon ish (re, liberman), or rav shach and the steipler(re, steinsaltz)?
Yehudis, i agree that there are differing levels of observance in MO; some are just shy of the yeshiva world. But the incubation of institutionalized heresy and devaluation of torah precepts is real and it has results. If MO valued torah as a whole the same as they value secular studies, they wouldn’t spend more time on the latter and be satisfied with a trifle superficial amount of the former. They would communally pursue advancement of Torah learning, but rather, the most important thing is higher education and a career. Of all the MO people in the country, one school, YU is the olace where those who have a drop more interest in learning go. Even there, it’s a minority who are talmidim of rabbi shechter and rabbi willig; most are there mainly for the college.
Can you find a Yeshiva two hundred years ago?
The ramchal and others who talk about what to learn all mention tanach; those who followed the rambam about being meshalesh definitely did so, and those who didn’t probably didn’t have fornal time spent on nach. Not everything which doesn’t come up in a bar ilan search is false
I think it’s also a nice fairy tale to claim that there’s no mesorah and that until the chasam sofer everyone just thought and did whatever they pleased, had no rebbe, no shimush, and accepted any obscure sefer written by anyone who lived in the times of the rishonim. In this fairy tale, no one is an apikores, no one ever thought that hilchos deos was a halachik issue, and of course no one uses agadeta as a source for daas torah. Come to think of it, in the same fairy tale, there was a Jewish army defending its citizens, democracy and total tolerance for LGBT people. There was also no rashu that says that klal yisroel does nothing without its leaders, and all non-kashrus decisions were made by individuals without consulting the archaic and out of date daas torah. They also used to look at the characters of tanach as being no different than you and me, with no particularly special spiritual levels and attributes, and believed that parts of chumash were added later and compiled by some shadow beis din which has no record.
Did i miss anything?
Just because you weren’t given a mesorah doesn’t mean that there isn’t one (or several! Ayin ponim latorah). Maskilim were dismissed by the torah world because they deviated greatly from the mesorah; if you want to think that it’s a free for all… Well, firstly the mishnah says that torah was passed down (moshe kibel etc) and secondly, chazal say anyone who learned but was not meshamesh talmidei chachamim is an am haaretz. The rambam goes through the chain of mesorah. After chazal, everyone learned from a rebbe – no one just opened a sefer and wrote whatever they wanted. Achronim endeavor tp understand rishonim; have you ever learned reb akiva eiger? He constantly writes “lo zachisi lehavin divreihem hakedoshim”
I think the fact that you’re acknowledging liberman, who the chazon ish (a relative no less) referred to as a shanah upiresh, with the other maskilim, shows that we are on very, very different wavelengths. I don’t think i have anything to offer that would interest you, as my studies are from Torah’s own perspective, not academia and a desire to undermine mesorah. Take care.
Halevi, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained in classifying rishonim….r. Moshe taku is an enigmatic figure who wrote one sefer that we don’t have a complete version of. He’s not quoted in tosfos, or any subsequent halacha sefer as far as i know. In an issue of halacha, we have a beaten path. We (well, nomesorah doesn’t) have a mesorah, handed down from the previous generations in both how to learn and how to believe. Not every statement from every sefer written by every rabbi who ever lived is the same or treated the same. No one’s going to quote a menoras hamaor to argue with something in the Taz or shach. No one’s going to take an obscure sefer and use it to overturn or even reexamine basic rishonim and achronim. The same maskilish ilk like to read r. Moshe taku as being someone who believes that Hashem chas veshalom has a body. We, in the nesorah community, reject this idea and say simply that we don’t understand what he said, and that we have a mesorah that to say such things is forbidden. Likewise, we have a definition of prohibited belief systems outlined in the rambam. One of them is listening to the chachamim who transmit torah from generation to generation,; one who rejects this mesorah, says the rambam, is “machchish magideah”, contradicting the Torah’s teachers. If someone says that a drasha is incorrect, or a halacha lemoshe misnai is false, he has done that.
Also, i never said that the maskilim didn’t know what was inside the seforim. Rather, they fancied themselves as above the seforim and able to engage in, as they called it, higher criticism. They were more interested in the academic, the backstory and history of the sefer, and didn’t really care about internalizing torah as part of themselves, which is a large part of the mitzvah of talmud torah. People who learn the seforim struggle to figure out what the pshat is in the sefer
Halevi, it’s axiomatic that every generation is further from sinai and lower than its successor…yeridas hadoros isn’t really a chidush
I’m sorry, but I don’t see why chazal would have us make a bracha on something just to distinguish it from the menorah in the beis hamikdash…
AAQ, if we judged people’s grandchildren or sons-in-laws, we’d have quite a lot to explain. Rav henkin was very anti Zionist. His grandson is the bnei bonim zionist/feminist. Rav chaim brisker said zionism is avodah zara; his grandson was rabbi yoshe ber; he also said when his son rav moshe was getting married, that “ich hob farliren a zun”, when the noshim paskened a kashrus shailah on their own at his wedding. Rav shach, who called Israeli democracy “cancer”, had a son who was a zionist.
Rav yochanan ben zakai’s nephew was the head of the baryonim.
Rav Moshe didn’t hold of any of the above deviances from Torah; he writes that women being taught gemara shouldn’t have to even be explained as it’s an open gemara. He also didn’t necessarily “choose” his son in law. He also would have been astonished at the opposition to metzitzah bepeh, and other innovations from his family. Gedolim’s personal family issues are not a proof as to what they hold. We can only go by their actual words and by talmidim who are mamshichei darcham. If you want to know what rav moshe held, you would want to ask rav bluth, rav dovid, rav belsky, rav nissan alpert, and other people who were very close to him.
Twisted; i never said one shouldn’t have love for eretz yisroel. We should love all the mitzvos; we should kiss sifrei torah, eretz yisroel, and every other cheftza shel mitzvah. The problem is when you prioritize a certain limud to specifically engender love of one mitzvah over others, particularly when evil doers use that national affection for their nefarious nationalistic efforts.
Ubiq, that’s a very nice vort – i had a different explanation of why beis shammai go by parei hachag (pashtus there’s no kasha because they’re not deriving or even necessarily comparing n”ch to sukkos, they’re answering the taanah of beis hilel that we usually say maalin bakodesh…)
Chazal say that the number of parim decreased because it was being machchish the koach of the Umos haolam(while at the same time giving them chius), and pn chanukah, the shem mishmuel explains that we were machchish the koach of the yavanim…there were no new philosophers after the neis, he says, and we also used the nitzutz of kedushah that was “yaft elokim leyefes”, and used it for a mitzvah that is personified by “mehadrin min hamehadrin”
If I’m understanding you correctly, the idea that one rishon (r. Moshe tako, a rishon who’s never mentioned in halacha as far as i know. His statements were ignored by the rishonim like rav yosef albo, the ritva and tons others who take it for granted that it’s a braisa) And a karaite both claim something makes us believe it, because certainly if two distinct scholars agree on something, there must be some truth to it. Enough for you to use the term forger as a given.
Let’s unpack that. You’re assuming that a karaite scholar has some measure of credibility or weight. Would you say the same if a rishon and a Christian/muslim/buddhist scholar agreed? You’re also assuming that this one rishon can overweigh every other riahon and achron who by omission and by quoting perek shira completely disregard this shita.
Braysos are torah shebaal peh. Claiming that one is a forgery is probably under the category of machish magideah as per the rambams list of defining apikorsus. And no, I don’t throw around the term easily.
People who harp on dayos yechidim when it makes them comfortable in biblical or Talmudic criticism, yet shun other shitos as “daas yachid” when it’s something they care about are the personification of intellectual dishonesty. One of my rebbeim used to say that the maskilim, who enjoyed researching the source of texts far more than actually learning them, are “modeh bemiktzas begalui and kofer hakol b’seser”.
The majority are neither ashkenaz nor sefardi? What are they then?
I don’t believe the term “forger” used in association with perek Shira belongs in an Orthodox forum, nor does questioning the authenticity of halachik medrashim. Perhaps you’d find better suited company in the jewish theological seminary. I think the screename “nomesorah” is quite an accurate description.
AAQ, I’m sure if you dig through bible commentary of Christian sources, you’ll find tons of things that are in sync with meforshim. If you change the verbiage and repeat them to rabbis, and they accept them, that really isn’t relevant to the issues that separate Christianity from Judaism lehavdil.
MO rabbis in regards to kashrus, gitin vekidushin, niddah, and other Practical halacha are usually within bounds. In YU the mishnah berurah is the default source for halacha, and I’d trust rabbi hershel shachter’s kashrus procedures.
That doesn’t speak to the rotten core of MO in its institutionalized heresy. Rabbi shechter is fine with the idea that a secular state is the lifeblood of the jewish nation, and worthy of the wanton lose of jewish life, not because he learned it in gemara, but because of European Nationalism dressed up in techeles and a kippah. And he’s the frummest they have to offer. It only goes down hill from there, to rabbis who defend untznius dress, abrogation of halacha by teaching women gemara in a classroom setting, mingling of the genders (see the discredited author of bnei bonim for details on that), to full on feminism, LGBT acceptance, allegorizing of tanach, “revisiting” torah in light of modern ethics, de facto acceptance of secular morals, maskilish “parshanut”, rejection of kabalah, the list goes on…. I quoted several MO leaders in the closed thread at length; you can use it for reference. I’m hardly looking at the lowest rungs of MO – puk chazi! Of course the yeshiva community has its dropouts..chasidim do too, but they are a small minority who themselves identify more with an MO crowd.
I mentioned a doable experiment that can show the divide in another thread – go to a MO shul, and I don’t mean the young israel of midwood. Take a poll among the men, ask them what caused the Holocaust. 80% will say the buildup of racism and intolerance, and that we can prevent it by being more liberal and championing social justice. 20% will say it’s from Hashem and we don’t understand it. Then go to a baalabatishe shul; 90% will say it’s from Hashem and we don’t understand it, and 10% will say it’s due to assimilation and haskalah, etc.. then go to a beis medrash, and there it will be 50/50 between the latter two options.
How exactly can one trash the yeshiva community in terms of torah observance? I’m aware that it can be belittled from a secular perspective, i.e. lack of education, poverty, etc..
My mistake; the ratio is 20%/80%, with 3.5 million sefardim – my apologies
That’s semantics; you’re saying lashon hora on an entire group (actually, sefardim are often stunned to find out how small of a minority they are in the Jewish population… Living in their neighborhood they sometimes think it’s 50/50). There are 13 million jews and only 1.5 are sefardi. Roughly 12%. So… What you’re saying is that 11.5 million jews are neurotic, while sefardim are mentally healthy. Just take out the word ashkenaz, put in jew, t then change sefardi for German, and you’ll see what we’re saying
Not to say there shouldn’t be discussion of those non-bechira issues that we can’t “really” fix (only Hashem decides who has money). Rav yehoshua leib started an orphanage, gedolei yisroel were very active in distributing tzedaka…all very big mitzvos, but they also realized that they are unable to fix the world and that the one thing we can fix is mitzvah observance
Those are communal needs; but most of the “writings* of rabbis are about halacha. Actually, very few seforim discuss the needs of the rabbi’s own community or what he did to solve problems. Your screename-sake rav ovadia wrote thousands of teshuvos about halacha, not political issues or how to fix poverty.
Why am i not surprised that yabia and gadol’s list includes almost exclusively that which is outside the range of bechirah and instead the domain of hashgocha?