A few months a go some frum bloggers were patting themselves on their backs, in a self congratulatory way for a historic meeting a groundbreaking meeting, known as the Monsey summit . Its purpose was to identify problems within the frum orthodox Jewish community spend an experimental, intimate evening of discussion together. Each speaker identified a problem in the community, its negative consequences, and proposed improvements and solutions.
Eleven people were at the meeting five "prominent" members from the orthodox community and five "prominent" members of the formerly Orthodox Jewish community. The Orthodox members were from the non-Modern Orthodox, non-chasidic, non-Lakewood communities. Those who attended were, (in alphabetical order only dont know who the five and five are)
Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, Ms. Avital Chizhik. Rabbi Ron Eisenman. Rabbi Aaron Fink, Eli Fink, Ms. Adina Kadden, Mr. Ushy Katz, Rabbi Avi Shafran, Ms. Frieda Vizel, Ms. Leah Vincent, Anonymous, Rabbi Yakov Hororwitz,was unable to attend simply because of a conflict.
What went on at the meeting is a state secret (here is a report from one of the OTD who attended.) only those who attended are privileged to that. What we do know is that a great chilul hashem has come out of this meeting. Torah misinai, Frum Yidden are now being questioned of their practice and emunah bahashem. The orthodox members who were there, listened to those that are no longer frum, explain the reasons why they left the fold.
Instead of standing up to the criticism of the orthodox frum community, they took what was said and are now writing articles attacking yiddishkeit. These articles, have generated debates which openly question ikrei haemunah. Frum Yidden are now portrayed as orthoprax , Harry the middle of the road blogger has opened the floodgates of koifrim and apikorsim to spew their hate against Torah Misinai R''L. The nation of maaminim bnei maaminim has now become non believers r''l. Another wrote Articles on staying frum that appear to be based on a warped view of the few he met that abandoned yiddishkeit.
Torah is Vibrant today, klal yisrael is strong. There are thousands of children learning, thousands of yidden serving hashem with emunah, doing mitzvos and maasim tovim. Its time to end all this madness, time for the skeptics to move away, time for these rabbis to get offline, to stop tweeting, and facebooking. Let us daven that hashem bring all his children back to him and we can all say in unison hashem echad ushmo echad.
There is only one attendee at that summit who baffled me how he justified his attendance.The rest were more or less expected.
ReplyDeleteReading the accounts of the event from attendees of both sides I would call it an "unconditional surrender" more then a summit
Yanky Horowitz wears a shtreimel but dont you worry he is far from chasidish he wears a leather yarmulka under it and davens at Tendlers shul. after not getting any recognition in his own camp he jumped ship and embraced the Modern Orthodox agenda, publicizing the wrong doing of charedim at every oppurtunity and getting a not and attention from the left.
ReplyDeleteIts not Purim yet stop drinking. Hes one of the good guys. Im surprised that the mods of this blog allowed your comment through.
DeleteEli fink said there were no chasidim there. he obviously doesnot consider yanky Horowitz a chasid despite hes langer rekkel and shtreimel.
DeleteAnd we all know that Eisav wore a leather yarmulka, especially under his Shtreimel!
ReplyDeleteThe only notable attendee of that regrettable meeting was Rabbi Avi Shafran. The rest of that gang are people of little meaning to the Chareidi world. And Rabbi Shafran himself is simply a baal haboss who happens to work for the Agudah. He is supposed to do what the Gedolim tell him but in this case he did his thing attending there on his own initiative without any input from the Gedolim. And he was wrong to attend but it holds little to no meaning for the community.
ReplyDeleteInstead of shooting the messengers, why don't you report on what they've said? Are we all always beyond reproach? Can we not ever look at our community(ies) and seek ways to improve it? How could you possibly interpret constructive criticism as destructive?
ReplyDeleteThe Torah defines the Jews as a nation and the Torah is it's Constitution. That means that all Jews are bound by the Torah, whether they want to be or even if they are not concious of it, but, on the other hand, all Jews are bound together even those who do not accept their Constitution. Thus, it should be a matter of grave concern if Jews abandon Torah observance
ReplyDeleteJudaism is not just another faith-sect like the Amish that one is cut off from if one doesn't accept its belief system. When R. Shimshon Raphae Hirsch proposed his Austritt system which insisted that religiuos Jews cut their links with the non-religious in Germany, the NETZIV of Volozhyn denounced it saying it was a denial of the principle of teshuvah. Thus, to simply cut off connections with non-religious or formerly religous Jews and to pretend they don't exist and to demand that it should be forbidden to openly discuss what brought about their abandonment of Torah observance is going against the very message of the Torah.
The statement that there are thousands of observant yidden today was also true 3 centuries ago, but then came a mass abandonment of Torah observance in which the large majority of Jews, including many with solid Torah educations simply gave it up because it was no longer relevant to them. Who is to say that it couldn't happen again? I spoke with a prominent Torah educator who has extensive experience in dealing the religious youth from all sectors and he finds the level of "emunah" to be alarmingly low, even among yeshiva and seminary educated young Jews. When he asks them "why do you keep the mitzvot" or "how would you explain to a non-observant Jew why it should be important to him to come to Torah observance, many, if not most of these born-religous Jews simply draw a blank. This is a recipe for potential trouble in the near future, especially considering the moral , ethical and economic stagnation the US and Europe are facing. Putting one's head in the sand will not help.
Continue to criticize those who question and investigate, and you'll lose more and more..
ReplyDeleteYou're attacking and name calling, not explaining. Your ostrich attitude may push more and more away.
Head in the sand. Only those with no answers fear questions.
ReplyDeleteleather yarmulke_____________ you're not even embarrassed to mention such a silly narishkeit. in public.
ReplyDeleteyou dont get it! reference to the leather yarmulke means hashkafos not the physical head covering.
DeleteIMO one of the most negative aspects of these meetings is that it elevates the stature of these OTD people, most of whom are small time embittered people who distort the facts or worse in their zeal to attack the frum community. Setting them up as counterparts to supposed Orthodox leaders is a huge mistake.
ReplyDeleteThe main thing that comes out of it is that it gives an even bigger platform for these OTD people to write about the event and their assessment of their OJ "counterparts".
And it's not just the frum community that they harm. Leah Vincent, for example, has written some pretty harsh things about her family, much of which is untrue and/or distorted, and has caused actual harm to some fine people. The pen has more power than the sword. If LV had stabbed a bunch of people, would Avi Shafran be holding summit meetings with her to discuss her point of view and how we could learn from it? It's the same here.
There's no need to hold any sort of meetings with these people. These people are not at all shy about making their viewpoints known, in every venue they can, and anyone who wants to know it can find out pretty easily. Besides for which there are always ongoing contacts between various frum people and people who are in one stage or another of going OTD.
I'm not against contact with them. But a summit meeting, portrayed as leading members of each group meeting with give and take on both sides? Absolute 100% disaster. Nothing positive from that at all.
To 10:27.
ReplyDeleteOh, I got it from the get go. You, however, didn't get my point, which was exactly to contradict your silly point about hashkafa.
Look at his articles his tweets the people he quotes. Hes a MO dressed in chasidic garb. ask anyone in the know from the yeshiva world they will tell you the truth about yanky horowitz.
DeleteI know someone who wears a shtreimel along with a tie and fancy cufflinks. And his hashkofo is_______________________________??
DeleteNo, thank you, I'm not going to rechilas-hop as per your suggestion and ask about anybody. Evidently, rechilas -hopping is not as bad as a leather yarmulke hashkofa. Got it.
DeleteThey're not small embittered people, they're a lot more numerically than the frum and the more you stick your head in the sand, the more frum you'll lose.
ReplyDeleteWith your expertise on yarmulke hashkofos, please detail for us the hashkofos of these yarmulkas,
ReplyDeletea) leather
b) suede
c)Chasidic velvet
d)silk
e) srugah
f) different colors
Tis website does an extremely poor job of explaining its positions. It probably does more harm than good for the cause by just dismissing so many issues. Silence is often more productive than insufficient responses. The idea behind this site is a good one but its inadequacy is pretty easily aparent. The point is not just to remind like-minded thinkers that there is one blogger who thinks like them. It is to present cogent, coherent messages of value.
ReplyDeleteNo positions have to be explained what has to be pointed out is the truth of those that spew their anti charedi propaganda in the disguise of present coherent messages of value. They are the ones doing harm.
Delete