No problem

Gmar chasimah tovah and a wonderful new year to you and everyone on this blog!

And I never suspected you of it! All I said was that what you consider INAPPROPRIATE others might consider appropriate.

“but was rather speaking of those who use “daas Torah” as an excuse not to think for themselves, and to criticize those who merely express an opinion(it’s happened to me more than once)!”.

Baruch, I sympathize with your plight. Nay, I empathize with you. My analogy was not intended as a comment on the merits of debating such issues between friends (in person or even on blogs), but rather whether some of the comments in this thread are indicative of a particular mindset.

I actually have more important things to do on Erev Rosh Hashanah than blog, but I wanted to clear the air before the Yom Hadin. Baruch, if I (inadvertently) slighted you, I ask you for “mechilah”. And I ask the same of all my Cross-Currents friends. We may have our differences of opinion, but I esteem all of you personally. If in the course of the give and take of the debates on this blog I have not treated you with the respect you deserve, or my comments have caused you distress in some way (though I don’t rate myself so highly as to think my words could have such an effect), please forgive me.

“60% or more of all web postings and comments contain urban or suburban legends untainted by facts”

I do not believe and do not accept that Rav Soloveitchik permitted men to hear women singing on the stage.

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“It was also pointed out that some 60-80% of youth who “drop out” from Yiddishkeit began their descent at these concerts”

I don’t believe that, either.

You could say that 60% of all dropouts began their descent with unhappiness at school, or began their descent with the internet, or began their descent with unsuitable friends, or began their descent with working mothers who left them unsupervised too long, or began their descent with junk food, and all or none of these things might be true, might be contributing factors, or might be irrelevant.

Baruch Hashem, I think independently, and I was gratified to be “mechavein” to Rabbi Teitelbaum’s ideas, especially after associates of mine criticized me for expressing those very same ideas. Again, merely expressing an opinion, or rigorously weighing the strengths and weaknesses of a course of action has nothing to do with deciding issues for the tzibbur(community), although some, unfortunately, do not appear to realize this distinction.

The possibility that the above conception of daas Torah may, as I wrote, “be damaging the image of the Right of the Torah World…”, was suggested to me by someone in the Yeshivah World whose thoughts I(and others) value. For an example of this, see my comment #21, versus Aron’s # 24 to Rabbi Adlerstein’s essay, linked below.

Whether true or not, I wonder where Ahron get his idea from, and how such a perception can be changed. While I can understand the motives and considerations involved, the fact that there is opposition to publishing Rabbi Teitelbaum’s essay in full and allowing a respectful pro and con discussion of it, itself, may illustrate that Aron’s perception is at least partially grounded in reality. On that note, I am gratified that Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz has published the essay in full(linked below). I hope that, as Rabbi Adlerstein wrote, people will indeed see it as a moodel of “how to criticize without leaving your yiras shomayim (reverence for Heaven) at the door”.

Kesivah vachasimah tovah to all!

http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2006/12/12/daas-torah-the-core-values

http://www.rabbihorowitz.com/PYes/ArticleDetails.cfm?Book_ID=893&ThisGroup_ID=236&Type=Article&SID=2

Comment by Chaim Wolfson — September 11, 2007 @ 6:27 pm

I beg to differ. I saw unadulterated ahavas yisroel growing up in Alabama. My Uncle Joe showed by example that he considered every Jew his relative and he would give his last penny for Israel. He did not distinugish one Jew from another. Today I do not see Uncle Joe’s Yiddishkeit in a lot of frum places. It exists,but I also see enclavism that considers only “people like us” as part of Klal Yisroel.There is a lot of holiere than thou behavior that does not show the warmth (varemkeit) and emunah peshuta that I saw. His legacy of a chassidic upbringing in the Ukraine stayed with him for 75 years after he came as a lad to a foreign land. Today, the book has replaced the people, it is a religion of rules, not a deeply felt folk loyalty to our tribe. I wish we could all have Uncle Joe’s relationship with Hashem , rather than worrying about the minutae of chumros designed to pasul every one else. Frummr is not better.
On that note, I will use the phrase our ancestors used”have a gut gebenched year”. I will hashem deal with writing in the Book.

Dr. Hall, are you referring to the singing of women in the audience or the performers on stage?

“Regarding “Jewish” music, there are many shuls that held concerts tonight before the first selichot service. (I attended a pre-selichot shiur instead.) It is clear that concerts of Jewish music have been acceptable for quite some time in almost all, it not absolutely all, observant Jewish communities.”

I assume that the pre-selichos concerts to which you refer were “chazanus” concerts. That’s a far cry from concerts that “instead of being an evening of inspiration… have been more like one of “idol worship” [yes, like ‘rock idols’], screaming, and the like” with performers that act like “Jewish rock or rap singers and the music [imitates] todays street hip-hop culture as some performers unfortunately do.” And I venture to say you were more inspired by your shiur than the concert goers were by the “chazanus”.

“The burden is on those who wish to change the halachic acceptability of such to justify the change from what is clearly an established minhag.”

Leaving the issue of concerts aside, not everything that was done in our grandparents’ generation was halachically acceptable, and is not practiced today. Many years ago, for example, card games were a very common fundraising event in many Orthodox shuls. America is very different from pre-War Europe. There, Yiddishkeit was unfortunately on the way down; here in America it is b”H headed in the opposite direction. We owe much to our grandparents’ steadfastness in the face of almost overwhelming pressure to abandon yiddishkeit, and we can learn alot from them. But circumstances today are much more conducive to observance of the finer points of halachah than they were in the past. We may not be better than our grandparents, but we are “frummer”.

Baruch, my comment was not addressed to any one specific person (least of all you!). I agree there’s a problem, and it’s not going to get solved by itself. My point was that I wonder if everyone believes it’s important to see the system fixed. Do some view the imperfections in the system as an excuse to eschew “daas Torah” entirely? That would be a terrible mistake and a great tragedy. The problem with people “march[ing] to their own drummer and trust[ing] their instinct in an appropriate way” is that the definition of “appropriate” can be very subjective. We all have our self-interests, and these almost invariably affect the way we view things. It’s fine to offer opinions on blogs about the most weighty issues facing the Jewish world, but very few of us have the necessary qualifications to decide such issues in real life. For all the complaints people have about the way it is practiced nowadays, the concept of “daas Torah” and submission to the authority of “gedolim” is what has kept us intact all these thousands of years. Now is not the time to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

“I have never met Rabbi Adlerstein, but as far as Rabbi Tetelbaum I never would have described him that way.” (Comment by Jewish Observer — September 10, 2007 @ 11:18 pm).

JO, but you’d have to agree that Rabbi Teitelbaum hates rats (and he’s very good at smelling them). He’s also blessed with a personality that cares little for what other people think about him.

I, too, wish everyone a “ksiva v’chasima tova”, and best wishes for a year in which “vlamalshinim” need not be said at all.

- I have never met Rabbi Adlerstein, but as far as Rabbi Tetelbaum I never would have described him that way

At least in the past twenty years, it was possible for a frum couple or family to be able sit together at Jewish Music concert or to attend together a non-Jewish Philharmonic concert, assuming that their rabbi indeed accepted such a standard. However, with Rabbi Teitelbaum’s middle path, even if the Israeli pressure will force American concerts to cut out family seating, at least the concerts themselves will be saved.

Chaim,

If you take issue with something I wrote above, please be more specific, and I will either explain my comment better, or concede your point.

In general, I think that although it is true that Elul is not an ideal time to discuss these issues, that’s the way it worked out, based on Rabbi Teitelbaum’s timing of the essay.

I don’t think that there is anyone on this thread who is a “cat”, in the sense of looking to perpetuate machalokes; the reality of Orthodox and Charedi life is that in the past few years, that have been painful issues with no easy solution in sight; as such, it is productive to simply recognize that reality, and also that focus on the issues will generate passionate feelings, which are not negative in of themselves.

At this time of introspection, it would behoove us to ask ourselves: Are we the housewife or are we the cat?

To which I responded: “I surely wouldn’t want you to be MY doctor! Adreraba, if you leave the symptoms untouched while looking for the “root cause”, the patient might die in the interim! And do you really know that the Gedolim are NOT trying to get to the root causes? Perhaps things have gotten so far out of hand that they felt it just had to be stopped! In any cause, who are we to judge them?”

I reviewed the radio question, and think that the question Rabbi Teitelbaum was responding to was a different one than Shlomo’s(comment#2). Rabbi Teitelbaum was responding to a general question(submitted via e-mail) regarding leadership, not about following a particular psak. I quote from the interview:

“You claim that the Gedolim are being mislead by various kannoim but should still be followed anyway. However, can a Rabbi still be considered a gadol or a leader of the community when he bans various activities without consulting independent sources or asking the other party to state their case”

This is a difficult and sensitive question, but Rabbi Teitelbaum answered without hesitating(!), that there indeed different types of gedolim, and the less accessible type of gadol is still a gadol, only “we have to do everything possible to go into them and tell them the true facts, and tell them the other side of the story”.

Shlomo’s question, above, was about following a specific psak, not leadership(”If the statements of the gedolim are based on false premises, why should they be followed?… R’ Teitelbaum is trying to square a circle here ” ). I think that Rabbi Titelbaum gave some type of balance regarding choosing your own poseik versus “even if they say left is right etc.”, but either way, it was a different question than the one on the radio.

By the way, the issue of leadership is one of perception. If people even perceive that some gedolim don’t hear both sides and the concerns of the simple man on the street, whether or not that is true, that needs to be dealt with(the very least is that one recognizes the question, as did Rabbi Teitelbaum), as chilul Hashem is based on perception.

Regarding Bais Yaakov Degrees, Sarah Schmidt indeed wrote in January that ” this committee interviewed dozens of administrators, principals, teachers, parents, students…”; I see there, at least, some type of procedure(even if I personally do not like the idea), rather than a less transparent process, and simple assertions of “60-80% of youth dropping out”.

Who gave the above statistics? What about dissenting professional opinion about why kids drop out of Yiddishkeit? Acting out at concerts are a synmptom; what about internally, building up a person(see Dr. A.H. Fried’s essay at length)? What about improving concerts instead of banning them, as Rabbi Teitelbaum said? Also, I can understand Eretz Yisrael has different needs, but the human needs of people who aren’t cut out to be gedolim are the same everywhere, even if the milieu is different in Israel, so in one sense, if some people benefit from a concert in America, the same would be in Israel.

Someone asked a similar question to Rabbi Teitelbaum on the Zev Brenner show. He responded in a very forthright way, by saying that some gedolim, over history, have choosen to rely on their trusted people, while others have an “open door policy”, and are therefore more accessible. As an example of the latter, when a number of years ago, some wanted to ban concerts, Rabbi Teitelbaum named two gedolim with whom he was able to discuss the issue with(one from a previous generation in America, and one current, yibadeil l’chaim, from Eretz Yisrael).
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R’ Baruch - I don’t see how this answers the question. I assume the answer is that HKB”H allowed this information to get to the gedolim to elicit this psak irrespective of whether the information was accurate or not (a’ la the simplest view of behemtan shel tzaddikim)

KVCT
Joel Rich