AviraDeArah

Avi, of what consequence is it that there are communities that do not speak yiddish? Are you implying that sefardim are for some reason, an authority on authenticity?

Yiddish is a rich spoken language with Torah sewn into its fabric. Modern hebrew is the polar opposite; it is lashon kodesh with kefira and foreign garbage sewn into its essence. Its originators were bent on destroying Torah forever and replacing it, rachmana litzlan, with a secular jewish identity.

Speaking a “creole”, as you call it, is based on rishonim and achronim who write that lashon kodesh is too holy to be used as a spoken language. There is a reason why Jews in Bavel spoke a Judaicized Aramaic, sefardim made ladino, Jews living in arab countries spoke a Jewish Arabic, ashkenazim made yiddish, down to our own time, when a newcomer would recognize hardly an intelligible sentence spoken by a yeshiva bochur.

Modern Hebrew was an evil that was left alone, under the chazon ish who famously said that it is a battle that we already have lost.

There is a reason baalei teshuva are drawn to the warmth and passion of yiddish speaking jewry. A shiur is just not the same in English, or hebrew for that matter, but hebrew shiurim are generally more of a “yeshivish” Hebrew. An argument can be made to corrupt ivrit and make a yiddish out of it; as I’ve seen in certain places, that is already the norm.

IYK – maybe melacha on shabbos means moving furniture….

We have a mesorah for pshat. Rashi first and foremost – I’d suggest learning the actual pasuk with the meforshim before possibly entering the category of megaleh ponim batorah shelo kahalacha.

Oy… potching being taken to be the “center of education” is like saying that sour candies are the staple of a child’s diet

My point was that the Rov held it was ok to potch – I made no claim as to what he holds about frequency, circumstances, degree, or anything else.

It should go without saying that potching is very rare for any semi-competent parent, and is the “center of education” only in horrifyingly abusive homes.

It’s a kulah because it’s a shailoh of hefsek between netilas yadayim and hamotzi. Those who allow is hold that since the kiddush is le’tzorech the seudah, it’s not a hefsek.

A common discussion among bnei yeshiva is the absent minded ilui versus the punctual “shteiging” bochur. Some people get so engrossed in learning that they will not keep sedorim at the right times. Others are extremely focused on the format of what they are supposed to be learning and when they’re supposed to do it. The pitfalls of the former are that one’s Torah can become disorganized and confused, with pieces here and there all scattered about. The dangers of the latter are that the formatting and organizing can sometimes become not the tools to the end but the main thing itself; endlessly preoccupied with organization can take away one’s focus.

Ultimately, like any issue of specific avodas hashem, introspection and a good moreh derech are key to figuring out how to grow.

Aside from some rabbonim who believe/believed that corporeal punishment is not effective in our society, due to the increasingly irreverent and disrespectful nature of children who grow up in the Western world, are we to refer to chosech shivto sonei b’no as child abuse? Did Rav Wolbe and Rav Pam (the only prominent rabbonim I’m aware of who said to completely cease all patching) refer to it as such? Did they say that if you see a parent or a rebbe hitting a kid the yiddishe way, meaning not in anger, and not severely – which halacha mandates or at the very least allows – you should report them to the authorities as a child abuser?

They did not. They lived Torah. They didn’t take their attitudes and values from Western culture.

My rebbe Rav Belsky zt’l was a strong proponent of maintaining yekkishe minhagim; we had several bochurim in yeshiva who came from Washington heights or whose parents did, though still a small minority in the yeshiva.

At the same time, he held not to make a “yekkishe kiddush”(washing before kiddush) if one was not yekkish, as some people do for convenience.

I actually have zero years of coffee room experience under my belt; late night talks in a dormitory…. that’s another story. Of that I have plenty.

Re, eating meat from chabad shochtim – Rav Belsky zt”l told me years ago that the OU checks out every lubavitcher shochet for the very real percentage of “boreinu-niks”, people who say yechi but add in boreinu, rachmana litzlan. I hope this is still the case 5 years after his petirah.

I am not versed in chabad seforim aside from tanya, but I have read the sicha regarding “atzmus elokuso, vos ehr hut areingeshtelt in a guf”. I’m knowledgeable enough in chassidishe seforim to know what atzmus elokus means, and I’m knowledgeable enough in yiddish to know what the latter part spells out – we’re not talking implication, this is straight out saying that one may pray to a tzadik because he is thereby praying to god. Was he referring to a pantheistic idea that everything has god in it so when you pray to, say a stone, you are praying to the godliness in the stone? That is something ovdei avoda zara believe; it’s also the better alternative to the plain corporealism-oriented meaning of the words, a christian man-god ideology.

Whether the rebbe was overcome with some sort of ruach ra’ah or condition that made that come out of him, or other forms of limud zchus…. again, I am not here nor do I care to inspect the rebbe’s own character or level, or anything else.

This is among the very few things that make one a practitioner of a different religion altogether.

During the international conference of shluchim a few years ago, moshe kotlarsky, head of chinuch in chabad remarked “may the Rebbe look upon our gathering favorably, his presence is here with us now and may he grant our requests”

This is the man who regulates merkaz leinyonei chinuch. He oversees the education of tens and thousands of jewish children.

He believes – with the silent approval lf 50,000 shluchim – that we should earn the lubavitcher rebbe’s favor and that he should accept our requests.

That is indefensible. That is chabad in our time.

I’ve made no mention of the lubavitcher rebbe himself.

I’m not a chabad chossid. As such, It does not really concern me if he was in fact a tzadik upon whom avodah zara was foisted, or if he was a maisis umadiach. What matters is that currently, there is a growing, evolving avodah zara ideology in chabad. The evidence to this is quite undeniable(I can supply you with much more, if you’re interested). That ideology was growing while the lubavitcher rebbe was alive(the brisker rov and chazon ish were noteably very wary at the time), but exploded exponentially after he passed away.

Either way, to your point: Gedolei yisroel not only corresponded with the likes of elisha ben avuya, but even learned from him directly! And lest you think that we are not on the level to do that nowadays, Rav Yaakov Emden also had a lengthy back and forth with Moses Mendelssohn sr”y, ending with a letter condemning him for straying from yiddishkeit to the point where he owned a dog (yes, dog ownership was indicative of deep defection from Torah, according to Rav Yaakov)

You left out Rav Hutner from your list of rabbonim – it’s noteable, because if you speak to a chaim berliner, or anyone who was close to him .. the question of Rav Hutner’s correspondence with the lubavitcher rebbe and the former’s opinions on the latter are quite evidence that correspondence has nothing to do with what a gadol holds of someone.

Also among the rabbonim you omitted was Rav Pam. Rav Pam originally said that we should stay out of the machlokes and that Rav Shach was talking only to bnei eretz yisroel. In his later years, when the personality cult became more apparent, Rav Pam retracted.

Again, I have no personal opinion of the lubavitcher rebbe, nor am I interested in forming one. He could have been a baal nissim and tzadik yesod olam, but that has nothing to do with my concerns.

It will not permit me to eat the meat and drink the wine of suspected idol worshippers, no matter how holy their rebbe may have been.

Shtark – chessed is such a powerful thing that even when confronted with accusations of avodah zara, one leaps into the fray to defend, or in most cases, deflect any and all criticism. We in the Torah camp should take a lesson and perhaps do more chessed… maybe then the masses of ignorami will stop hating us. Or not…har sinai is called such because sinah, hatred descended upon us right after we received the Torah. It would seem that whoever is beloved by the world is not representative of Har Sinai.

Interesting how attacks on the character of the kolel community, satmar, and other torah groups are seemingly justified or tolerated, while any issues taken with the undermining of Torah that is common (but not universal) among chabad, religious zionists, and liberal groups is deemed “sinat chinam”. One can say that charedim are “leeches”, and borrow terms from nazis, but if one criticizes spiritual deficiency… the one thing that halachicly mandates hatred….only then are Torah jews accused of sinas chinam.

I find that almost as hypocritical as claiming yishuv eretz yisroel to be a defining characteristic of judaism, castigsting all opponents of a secular state as being “meraglim”, only to go and sell the land that they “die for” to the highest bidder every shmitah. It was the so called “meraglim” in komemius and kibutz chofetz chaim who were moser nefesh for eretz yisroel in the true sense. גיבורי כח עושה דברו

Before anyone accuses me of trolling, triggering or what have you, I believe these are connected deeply. There is a distinction between Torah jews and those of us who are stragglers, along for the ride, perhaps the spiritual heirs of erev rav, who attempt to inject foreign refuse into the veins of klal yisroel.

Meirs; I don’t think anyone outside the inner circle can tell how dar reaching the ideology of a rebbe being divine has affected chabad.

I can point to several frightening examples of prominent figures in chabad which give a picture, like Shlomo Cunin, who on video said proudly that after mumbai “the whole world will know that it’s the rebbe who runs the world!” in the presence of many chabad rabbis – not one person protested. He said that the rebbe has some sort of dominion over the world. That might be a type of avodah zara which is a belief that Hashem gave over shlita to a certain malach or kochav independently, or it might be worse; it might be embracing atzmus elokus ideology in all its man-god depravity. That video can be found by googling “shlomo cunin chabad rebbe runs world” as the first result on Google.

Anecdotal encounters with chabad individuals include them trying to justify praying to their rebbe, who apparently can hear them from shomayim, granting him a certain omnipotence that is supposed to be Hashem’s. They have felt safe walking in the dead of night because they are carrying a picture of the rebbe. They believe he was a bonafide navi – I would be remiss not to mention the gravity of claiming to be a navi when one is not in fact… I would not want my rebbe accused of such grave sins.

Quick reading of chabad children’s literature is also frightening. I’ve seen the idea of doing a mitzvah because the rebbe said to do it. This was not in an overtly messianic publication. Go on a chabad forum and you will find many mentions of a “kiddush chabad” instead of a kiddush hashem.

It is for these reasons and more that many…many choshuve rabbonim will not eat chabad meat or drink their wine, including my rebbe, who was one of the leading poskim in America. I’m not sure if I should post his name.

Chabad has many poskim and rabbonim. I hope these ideologies have not reached everywhere, but nothing is certain. What is certain is the hadracha of the gedolei yisroel who distanced themselves.

It is my hope and prayer that the great chabad legacy be revived and that all false philosophies be forgotten.

I never mentioned a problem with daf yomi. My gripe here is with learning “rambam yomi”. I said that if one learns daf yomi style, they are not ready to learn rambam as a perush on that gemara, the same way they aren’t ready to learn any rishonim as a perush. I also don’t see s need for baseless ad hominem attacks, so rather than say you’re reactionary and projecting your own lack of self worth, I’ll just say that I wish you all all the hatzlocha in the world in learning

That being said, let us not be tricked by the yatzer hora of “abi az mer lernt”, that as long as you learn something it’s perfectly fine. Try going to a university and saying “well, I’m studying one page of economics and one of sociology a day without much effort, so…give me a diploma!

The ramchal says that המאור שבה מחזירו למוטב only applies when one learns Torah with at least the same vigor that he would exert in secular studies. Torah is not a joke and cannot be hefker, with everyone doing as they please while simply saying “abi az mer lernt”

Every word of Torah is dvar hashem, and the very act of trying to learn means everything to Hashem; some people find it hard to learn be’iyun or are unable to because of their workload – no one’s saying that they shouldn’t learn, chas veshalom!

Happens to be that halacha pesukah is that if one only has a short amount of time, learning practical halacha takes precedence over gemara, including daf yomi but there are people who need that motivation and would not learn otherwise. There’s a time and a place for “abi az mer lernt”, but it does not change the emes or the ratzon hashem as expressed in דבר ה זו הלכה.

I don’t see what is bitter or negative about such statements.

Meirs; tosfos asks kushyos in the form of contradictions on literally every daf of gemara; it’s not a chisaron, it’s the foundation of the search for true understanding of all aspects of torah shebaal peh, including the words of the holy rishonim. A “quick” look at the meforshim is no different than spending 10 minutes on an amud and “quickly” learning up a complicated tosfos. It just doesn’t work.

Is the ohr somayach or rav chaim al horambam a “quick” read?

And yes, the cases in which the rambam contradicts either himself or shas are copious; that’s because he’s not a book to be read, but rather part of the continuum of torah itself.

There’s a famous vort from rav shach about why there are hava aminas in gemara. קודשא בריך הוא איסתכל באורייתא וברא עלמא “hashem looked into the Torah and created the world”, since in the world, hashem was בורא עולמות ומחריבן, he created and destroyed worlds before our own was made, that corresponds to hava amina and maskana. I was mosif on this vort that that’s why there are contradictions; the same way in this world, we see din and chessed, good things and “bad”, but we know that all of it is from hashem and that it’s no contradiction, so too in torah, there are contradictions everywhere, but it’s all really harmonious if we put in the effort to understand it

Also, you will only learn his reasoning if you are in the sugya under discussion. If you learn his chidush, for example, that you need only have 40 hairs on payos harosh without the relevant gemaros, all you have is a sound byte of random information, but alas, you have “learned” his “rational methodology”, or according to the first poster, you have somehow learned torah lishma.

Torah lishma means you want to learn torah, and know it “al buryo” leshem shomayim, because hashem gave us a mitzvah to both learn and know torah. As a chabad chossid you should be familiar with the baal hatanyas shitah of the mitzvah of yedias hatorah, which he says is bigger than aisek hatorah. But that’s only if you know the dinim, as he explains openly. Knowing random words from the rambam without gemara-context or psak is arguably not aisek, nor yedias hatorah in such circumstances.

Can anyone explain to me the rationale of learning “rambam yomi”?
As a halacha sefer, we often do not pasken like the rambam; sometimes he is, in fact, a da’as yochid. You won’t know thar nor will you have an inkling of the depth of his Torah, which can only be seen if you are “in the sugya” and see how he learns pshat; that’s what we do in yeshivos. You also won’t actually have pshat in the rambam himself because of how often he contradicts himself, but since you’re reading it like a book you won’t have the achronim who resolve these contradictory statements.

As a perush on sugyos… it’s not in order of shas.
Does this not give a false sense of accomplishment that you somehow have a tefisa on kol hatorah kulah because you’ve learned one rishon’s shitah of dinim without at the very least knowing remotely how to pasken?

I can hear abln argument for going through kodshim and taharos with just the rambam, but even then, why not learn aruch hashulchan ha’asid, written by someone who a large part of klal yisroel actually paskens like?

This is a modified version of the argument I saw advanced on the old frumteens forum back when I was a kid