9/12/06

Has the bulb burned out on your Enlightenment?

Over at Gil's, they're still debating if it's okay to read books at YU.
Posted by שלום בערגער Zackary Berger at 12:10 PM

2 comments:

  1. שלום בערגער Zackary Berger12:21 AM

    It continues to surprise me that the newly \"assertive and confident\" right wing of Modern Orthodoxy thinks that its generation is the first to contend with these issues, and that previous scholarly, pious Jews who read and studied these \"problematic\" works were not \"halacha conscious.\" Perhaps I should not be surprised, as the assertiveness of the RW seems often to consist in casting aspersions on the observance of our ancestors. And to you, Dov, א גוט געבענטשט יאר תה שנת ספירת זכויות

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  2. Anonymous9:51 AM

    As far as shoring up religious observance and casting aspersions on previous generations, here's an illustration.

    By way of background, as you probably know, Rabbi Shimon Schwab Zt"l was the Rabbi of KAJ in Washington heights. A talmid of the Mir Yeshiva in Lithuania and the shoel in the well-known teshuvos about Torah Im Derech Eretz from respondents Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman and Rabbi Boruch Ber Lebovitz (unsurprisingly both disapproved of Torah Im Derech Eretz), he nevertheless, personally and professionally advocated Torah Im Derech Eretz.

    In the 1970s he began advocating to chassanim that they learn full time in kollel for a year after the chasuna. His baalei battim approached him outraged. As Deutsche Yidden they protested this breach in their mesora.

    "Why, we never had kollel in Franfurt!!!"

    Rabbi Schwab told them that the first beaches opened for mixed bathing in the South of England in 1901. Men and women had to wear costumes that covered to the ankels and wrist and they had to change in beach houses in separate areas. Look how much has changed in just 70 short years, he said, and you still think we can continue as if we are still in 19th century Franfurt!!!

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