LerntminTayrah

Neville, your protest is noted for the record. Nevertheless, Rabbi Bender, Artscroll, and my own experiences say otherwise.

As a reminder, these protests of “of course chassidim are makpid on zman krias shma, there’s a befeirush sign up in shul!” aren’t a kashye on me. They are a kashye on Rabbi Bender and Artscroll that published this as a davar matzui. Feel free to call up Darchei and Artscroll and ask them. Again, pok chazu. Ask the chassidim who daven at these 10 am or 11 am shacharisses if they were makpid on zman krias shma, and report back your findings.

Rav Yaakov Bender put out a book a few years back called “Chinuch with Chessed”. One question he deals with is how to tell your kid to be makpid on zman krias shma when his chassidish zeidy doesn’t care about zman krias Shma. He explains how you should stress its halachic importance but say zeidy has a mesora or something like that. But clearly it’s a real issue and common enough to address in a book, not something that I made up.

Neville, when a chassidish minyan starts at 9:40 on a shabbos, ask around how many of the congregants actually said krias shema. Tell me what you find. Nefesh Hachayim made this point as well. Rav Shwab famously said about the Satmar Rebbe that he would have accepted him as his rebbe if not for the zman krias shma thing which the Satmar Rebbe ignored.

Pronunciations- litvish said Ay rhymes with pay. In Brisk they still speak of “tayreh”. Anyone who had a litvish rebbe knows it’s Teyreh not Toyrah. But those days are gone.
Chassidim say oy. American yeshivas apparently adopted “klal yiddish” which meant saying oy but pronouncing everything else litvish style. so it’s oyb azoy instead of ayb azay.

As the Yemenites, who have meticulously preserved pronunciation mesorah, say “O” instead of “oy”, or “ay” “O” is clearly the preferred pronunciation. “Oy”, which yeshivish people act as if it’s a chumra over the modern “O”, is actually a kula since “O” is more correct.

But at this point, saying “oy” is a mistake is pointless. That ship has sailed as well.

To be more precise, the main yeshiva in America was Torah Vodaas, which was half-chassidish. America’s strong chassidish influence meant that it became yeshivisah to say “oy” instead of “ay” (Toyre instead of “Tayreh”) and black and white became the norm. Decrying this now is as silly as the “Zionism is evil” crowd decrying Zionism 70 years after losing that battle.

I once saw a statement from Rav Hutner zt”l on this. He was a slick Slabodka dresser and dressed chassidish after the war. He said that
1. It actually started with Rav Yisroel Salanter, who felt that the bochurim were looked down upon by baalei battim and needed to look like they weren’t nebs
2. He changed because he wanted to show the world what a Jew looked like after churban Europe which wiped out most of the Jews.

Also, like Berel Wein said, the Mussar Movement lost. So white shirts black pants it is.

To be clear, most people aren’t wearing that to make a statement. They wear what everyone else wears. The uniform of a Ben Torah today is white shirts black pants.

Like any language, you need to both listen to it and read it to learn. As was mentioned above, there are many dialects of Yiddish, from the fake yivo yiddish (shik mir a blitz breev” instead of “shik mir a email” to modern yiddish. You need to start from the bottom up. Once you got the basics you can worry about nuance. So by all means, first learn proper yiddish, then you can tzu leyg (add on) modern yiddish.
Sheva Zucker has 2 books on college yiddish. Eichler’s sometimes has a book called der yiddish lehrer, a good beginner’s book. Lily Kahn has a book called Colloquial yiddish.
Then, you need to listen to spoken yiddish. Even if you get nothing, it’s helpful. It trains your brain in Yiddish phenomes, the same way you learned as a baby. So listen to Rabbi Avraham Karp’s daf yomi, or shiurim from kol halshon or torah anytime in yiddish.
Once you got some basics, a great way to expand your vocabulary, if not so yeshivish, is the back2 basics sichas, which are translated sichas of the Lubavitcher Rebbe with hard words and loose translation every other page. Google it and you can find a page with 10 free ones. Otherwise they sell books. Not for everyone of course but great tool.