The whole situation there is very unclear, especially after Rabbi Shlomo Miller's quasi-retraction. Maybe the Telshers among you can help clarify the situation.
117 comments:
Anonymous
said...
In a nutshell, they've got a tartei d'sasrei situation. In the one corner, there is a psak that R Zalman has the right to run the yeshiva.
In the other corner, there is an agreement he signed that he would jointly make decisions with the other members of the hanhala.
Can a Beis-Din resolve that?? Because without resolution of that essential conflict, the yeshiva can't run. Period.
Which leads to the question: How would Shlomo Hamelech have paskened had both zonos agreed to have the baby cut in half?
Ok, here is avery basic question: Pretend for a moment this a sugya and you know that RAS did not respond to a din Torah regarding his own yeshiva when he particpated in the illegal removal of RSC as the mashgiach of the CB yeshiva. Rav Moshe Feinstein zt"l and the Agudas Harabonim called him to a din Torah and he, with RAF, refused to appear. This was further affirmed by a series of subsequent Batei Din, none of which agreed with RAS's position. Hence he is labeled a lo tzayis ledin (not by my imagination).
Now, out of the blue, klal Yisroel is informed that RAS actually got to sit on a Bais Din judging a machlokes in another yershiva (is it because he is an expert at being a ba'al machlokes?) and sits with no less than Rav Dovid Feinstein who knws that his father was livid at CB for not responding to the RSC hazmonas, and indeed Rav Moshe paskens that RSC still UNTO THIS DAY has his rights to being called the legitimate mashgiach of CB until the matter of his severance pay, the clock is still ticking, is settled once and for all (in the interim one mashgiach at CB Rav Shmon Groner zt"l has passed away after 25 years on the thankless job he hated and never wanted, and which is now filled by RAS's son Mordechai who also gets it because dad says it must be so). In addition Rav Moshe gives a unique semicha to RSC to strengthen his hand as long as he lives.
So please, someone, anyone, help us out here, how can RAS be on a bais din, any bais din, when he is disqualified from appearing in any other din Torah until he settles the HUGE din Torah in his own back yard that hangs like a sword of Damocles over CB and how can RAS "judge" as a "dayan" a situation of positions and shtelles somewhere else when he has not completed the job of sorting out how and what to do over the facts that CB itself unjustly denied a shttelle (by other batei din standards) to its own mashgiach and then refuses to go to a din Torah to settle over 30 years since RSC is not mochel anything and why should he be?
Is this good chinuch?
Is this making up the rules of the game to suit yourself?
Is this going beyond the pale as RAS starts to show that he sticks his nose into business he should not be in, as he did with the recent Isaac Hersh case (also a machlokes with other rabbonim that led to a public statement from Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky openly implying rejection of RAS's support for Micahel Hersh), the disgraceful redifa of the sheitel macher store, the falshe hachroza against Lipa concocted by Avrohom Schor that RAS supported in spite of its lies, and other such fuax pas?
Please, someone, anyone, help us out here, this is all so very confusing, if not an outright TRAGEDY!
A neighbor of mine stopped by for a Shabbos at Telshe in Cleveland a few months ago and said that the Bais Medrash has maybe about 30 bochurim and its mostly empty and quite scary to see, but that there is a high school that has more talmidim. The hope of Telshe is that based on their high schoolers staying on (high hopes it would seem given the attraction of Lakewood and EY) they can maybe rebuild.
For the record, while Rav Shtein is the senior Rosh Yeshiva he is the only one who is not from the original founding entrenched Telshe families so that they have been the ones fighting over and below him while he carries no weight over there with bottom-line decisions. This is what I have been told.
Rav Shtein must a tzadik yesod olam, old talmidim love him immensely and I know one, for living through all of this, something like Choni Hamagil bizmanainu.
There Fighting over 30 students Wow that is sad. Just like this weeks Parsha(Mir Daf Leben Mit Der PArsha) The question is Who is Korach And Who is Moshe?
Whasa matter now, has "vus nisht" scampered off with his head hanging in shame now? He is such a big fat typical farshtunkenne CB ba'al ga'ava you can smell it with every sneering word he utters, or is it now the application of the CB version of the Mafia's "omerta" code of silence that in both CB and the Cosa Nostra is really a code to silence people and legitimate questions.
I am beginning to understand what Yirmiyahu Hanovi and Zecharia Hanovi went through when they spoke up against corruption and abuse of power in their midst and then got rubbed out by their own Yiddishe brethren, that is the Torah example of literally killing off the messenger because they hated the message!
MY CONCERNS:
Anyhow, I would like to state that on my last visit to CB for a fmaily simcha (I became a zaidah for the first time and that is something no CBer can deny me -- because you see I have been matzliach B'H with all my kids and in spite of much tza'ar gidul bonim and with the help of my ezer kenegdo and with my vast experience in kiruv rechokim, I never would dream of sending even a cat in my back yard to Tranquility Bay) I saw the same old, same old, and that Michael Hersh, the very one who "sent off" his own kid to Tranquility Bay, Jamaica, still sits in his regular seat right behind RAS up front in the CB bais medrash.
I know that people may think what I have to say next is strange b ecause it is, but I honestly think that Michael Hersh has hijacked CB in some way by taking control of its weakened pilot RAS.
My theory goes something like this: The oilam in CB is in essence in a state of confirmed deep hypnosis bound to RAS as the grandmaster, everyone is stunned into obedience there, it is truly a 1984 scenario. But due to aging and the serious illness of his own ezer kenegdo, RAS is now clearly not at his full powers ane eveen senses, but the oilem has no clue and would never speak up even if someone figured it out, so things go on with "business as usual" to everyone's peril.
To give an example to illustrate this, its something like these old billionares who get seduced by a young mistress and then they go on to disinherit their legitimate progeny out of their new found "love" for the guile mistress, which they assume is genuine but the mistress is fooling them all the way to the bank and noone can utter a peeps.
Or in another scenario, think of a jumbo plane full of passengers in mid flight who assume that all is well with the captain and that they are on a safe trajectory, but in actual fact a sly hijacker has broken into the flight control room and seeing the captain is a little tired and out of it, makes the captain sleepier (there are ways, like by sleeping gas) and then takes over the plane. The passengers are deluded into thinking that the captain is taking them to safe harbor, when in fact it's all over and the "captain" is none other than an intruder who will now proceed to crash the plane with all on board, chas vesholom.
This is what has happned to CB in the last few years and that is why I am so scared for it and for my family connected to it and why I now stick my neck out and speak up in public (the real CBers who have been following this discussion on Tzig's blog have already figured out who I am, and who I am is really not the point, even though they try to smear me with stuff that just backfires on them that shows how low they will stoop and not talk tachlis).
The point is that I am alarmed for CB and I hereby appeal to the leadership of CB to FORCE RAS TO RESIGN! DO NOT BE AFRAID OF HIM. EVEN IF YOU MUST ACCEPT HIS SON MORDECHAI AS THE NEW acting ROSH! THE SOONER THAT IS DONE THE SAFER EVERYONE IN CB WILL BE in order to avert more tragedies!
That people like Michael Hersh can hold sway over RAS, and that RAS will actually "protect" him in the face of all opposition, to keep a Jewish child a prisoner on a Devil's Island, is totally insane and proves beyond a shadow of any doubt that the once captain has been hijacked because he is weak now and that corrective action must be taken NOW before more harm is done and more victims, like the example of the evicted sheitel machers on falshe frumkeit charges, for the way Lipa was "banned" for wanting to be freilich, and the straw that broke my and most of Klal Yisroel who saw it happen camel's back for PUBLICLY supporting Michel Hersh and refusing to see that what had been done to his son Isaac based just on what Michael Hersh had fed into the ears of RAS and that RAS fell for it hook line and sinker, is totally alarming and incomprehensible.
CB must do a din vechshbon (and this will be tough since they have not settled the RSC din Torah which shomayim surely demands) as soon as it can or else Michael Hersh, and a few like him, will lead the now clearly ailing and tottering RAS into doom and disaster, rachmona litzlan!
I'm confused. Let's go with the whole CB Tragedy theory. What could RAS or his manipulator(s) possibly do to someone who disassociates himself with CB that would be considered "unsafe" or a "tragedy"? I have become disheartened with Yeshivas and Shuls in my lifetime and I just left. Maybe I've vocalized my frustrations, but what is the worst that someone can do to you? I guess I can see them badmouthing you re:shiduchim and such. Maybe trying to affect your Parnassa? But "rubbing you out"? Unsafe? Crashing the plane? Perhaps I'm not understanding the amount of power you ascribe to RAS. What gives?
CBT, Earlier you wrote "so pray tell why was young Rabbi Yitzchok Sorotskin exiled to Lakewood in the middle of all this?" I see from this that you are not all-knowing. Rav Yitzchok fled to Lakewood long before the din torah. He could not stand dealing with RZG. That's exactly why there were no Sorotzkins involved in the din torah.
CBT, The shetel thing was nothing. I Jew opens a store with large posters of women's heads across the street from a charedi yeshiva and the Rosh Yeshiva pressures him to get rid of the posters. So what? If it happened in Williamsburg, would it be even mention-worthy? A complete non-issue.
RE RSC, The Feinsteins and every other Rosh Yeshiva in the US, incuding Rav Tendler from YU, have been dancing leibidig with Rav Aharon at chasunas for years. They have been participating with him in the Agudah. Things cannot be as simple as you make them out to be. Go ask Rav Dovid Feinstein why he is noheg that way and report back to us.
R' Michoel Hersh is a good man. He had serious family challenges and perhaps made a bad decision. And Rav Aharon perhaps assumed he was still the same person he had been before the challenges and relied on his judgement about his own child.
I get the impression that Rav Aharon stepped on your toe once 40 years ago and you're still bent out of shpape over it.
"Rav Yitzchok fled to Lakewood long before the din torah. He could not stand dealing with RZG."
Get your real facts in order that wasn't exactly his problems
Interesting-ever wonder where was the ""big"" protest from all the telzers when R' Yitzchok left where was the machoaah for Kovod HaTorah then no one seemed to try to stop him from going!
"Get your real facts in order that wasn't exactly his problems". I believe my facts are in order. Do you care to elaborate if you think that you know the facts or are you just going to leave us in suspense.
Maybe I'm a little slow, but I don't understand what the big deal is about Rav Miller's second letter. He is just writing that he is not getting involved in ins and outs of the din torah but he is just asking people to support the yeshiva. I do not see how this is the slightest retraction of his earlier letter.
Rav Yitzchok says a shiur in the Mesivta of Lakewood but he still goes with the title of RY of Telshe yeshiva.
vee ess kristelt zikh azoi yeedeltst zikh
Thats like calling them the New YORK Jets and Giants though they both play in Jersey or the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
OTOH I suppose if Rebbe's can go by ancient Eastern Communities that have been Judenrein since the krieg why not Rosh Yeshiva's? At least the Pittsburgher, Cleavlander, Bostoner and Mosholu rebbes took on american names.
question for Rav Yitzchok; Do you mean Telshe Cleavland or Lithuania???
He was Rosh Yeshiva of Telshe Cleveland. Some Bochur partisans of the other side broke into his home one Friday night to scare him. That was the last of many straws. He decided not to fight and he moved to Lakewood. But I don't think he ever formally resigned.
It continues to amaze that when a chassidus has a fight, it splits and both halves end up competing with each other and the yeshivas grow and get better (e.g. Bobov, Satmar, etc.)
When litvishe yeshivos have a fight, they fight and fight until there is nothing left (e.g. Bais Medrash Elyon). Same thing happening now in Telz. How sad.
When a Chassidus fights, one side can move out, buy a new building and in essence start over. For some reasons, including but not limited to the fact that R Chaim Stein and the other rebbeim no longer have the koach to start over, that can't be done. So they fight over the same piece of pie. One moneyman from Cleveland has told me that they are waiting for the place to just shut down entirely so that they can start to build it anew from scratch.
In BME a man (initials HW) decided to create problems there for personal profit. Rav Gedalia Schorr ZT"L built up that yeshiva with his own blood sweat and tears, even taking out personal loans to keep it alive. One of the three buildings (built with a personal loan of RGS) was sold to Viznitz. Anyone familiar with YTV will notice the similarities.
Basically HW convinced RDG and RSS that they are entitled to more kavod.
(To Tzig, I tried posting an answer to this before but it did not come through, this is my second attempt -- it's not the same words -- and because I type slow, it takes me more time, but I need to respond. If you have the first post, then post that, otherwise post this one. Thanks.)
To anonymous of Monday, June 23, 2008 6:32:00 AM:
"I'm confused."
Yes indeed this stuff can be very confusing.
"Let's go with the whole CB Tragedy theory. What could RAS or his manipulator(s) possibly do to someone who disassociates himself with CB that would be considered "unsafe" or a "tragedy"?"
It's not a case of "someone who disassociates himself with CB" but it's when disagreements arise in CB and how they are treated. In the case of RSC the most notorioous case of disagreement within CB, the entire institution has aligned itself against one man even though that man has had the support of essentially every other major Gadol and top batei din on his side for 30 years non-stop. Then fast forward 30 years later and when RAS is confronted by the same mass of rabbis and gedolim against him to free an imprisoned 16 year old boy, Isaac Hesrh, with whose father, Michael Hersh, RAS is bound hand and foot, then RAS will not budge and it took massive political and communal action and finally an actual daring rescue mission befitting a James Bond thriller to rescue the child from Jamaica. Can you imagine something like this happening in a nice friendly yeshiva some other place? Most people cannot.
"I have become disheartened with Yeshivas and Shuls in my lifetime and I just left."
It is easy to leave but as in my case the close personal and family ties do not allow me that so I must voice my opposition and alarm by other means, like it or not. I do not want my family mebers ruled by an old crumbling monarch who is increasinbgly out of touch with the real world.
"Maybe I've vocalized my frustrations, but what is the worst that someone can do to you?"
It all depends who you are dealing with and the reach of their powers and spheres of influence.
"I guess I can see them badmouthing you re:shiduchim and such."
This is nothing because few people in the Torah world think that CB is a place of saints. Plenty people look at them like Yiddishe cultists and as being unfriendly, except when they want something from you, especially a big donation.
"Maybe trying to affect your Parnassa?"
Yes, this they could do, especially with some of them having big business connections, but this is America thank G-d and there are lots of things one can get do to overcome the Cbers and their wiles and ways.
"But "rubbing you out"? Unsafe? Crashing the plane?"
These are all analogies and metaphors, as you should know from English usage. What is called in Hebrew "Masholim" that are used to get a point across. The Dubner Maggid was most famous for using them to good effect and noone took his words literally because they understood he was using analogies to make a point.
"Perhaps I'm not understanding the amount of power you ascribe to RAS."
You sure don't get it, but many people who know him fairly well do.
"What gives?"
It's a long story.
-----
To michoel of Monday, June 23, 2008 10:01:00 AM
"The shetel thing was nothing."
It was NOT "nothing" it was a case based on the reports of some CB yungeleit gave RAS who then decided to write a letter against this store that in effect destroyed their repatation. Did they deserve such harsh treatment? Were they selling contraband? Is this the way to treat other frum Jews? It is also hypocrisy because CB has ladies dressed far worse coming to it's own annual dinners sitting in front of the dais in mixed seating with all the CB rabbonim looking at them and they say nothing, so why be selectively frum?
"I Jew opens a store with large posters of women's heads across the street from a charedi yeshiva and the Rosh Yeshiva pressures him to get rid of the posters."
No, the Rosh Yeshiva wrote an ugly letter against him and the store was NOT "across the street" from the yeshiva. I checked it out, the store was way off to the corner of Ave M and was definitely NOT facing the yeshiva. So now that you think that ladies heads are no good will you also insist that all the ladies who work in the CB office, or any stores and places CBers go to that has ladies working there, should cover their heads with paper bags or wear chadors? this is what is called th Talibanization of Yiddishkeit and it will not sell in Flatbush.
"So what? If it happened in Williamsburg, would it be even mention-worthy? A complete non-issue."
This is exactly the poiunt that people in Flatbush do not wish to live by Williamsbug standards. In Williamsburg ladies wear shpitzels not sheitels. CB and Flatbush do not want to live like Satmar Chasidim in Williamsburg. And that is the problem that some people in CB have, a fantasy that they are somehow "like Satmar" and that they therefore need to impose a Satmar way of life on their people and surroundings when it is just not so. And if you hold by Williamsburg standards why not ask why RAS does not follow the rulings of the Williamsburg Satmar Bais Din that called him to dinei Torah three times? Or is this, as usual, picking and choosing what you like.
"RE RSC, The Feinsteins and every other Rosh Yeshiva in the US, incuding Rav Tendler from YU, have been dancing leibidig with Rav Aharon at chasunas for years."
Ok, so you prove nothing. You are mixing apples with oranges here. You also unwittingly prove that while other NORMAL people are willing to live and let live with those they disagree with, on the other hand CBers will not live and let live with one of their own most notable alumni RSC who they are rodef to the ends of the earth and will support a talmid when he has his son kidanpped and sent off to "Tranquility Bay" which is anything but "tranquil" and he then lies about it, and it takes a major investigation and two legal cases and a rescue team to get the child out. Is that "normal"? That is why I say, it is Michael Hersh who is insane, while some other posters like to pin the blame on me who is calling a spade a spade! I am fulfilling the ancient injunction of Jewish society when faced by horrors anywhere: Yidden shreit gevalt!
"They have been participating with him in the Agudah."
The Agudah is no bed of roses and it's not the Sanhedrin either. Oh, and those Satmar Williamsburgers of yours think that the Aguda stinks, so your "examples" and "proofs" just don't add up at all.
"Things cannot be as simple as you make them out to be."
Where and when did I say that anything on the subject of CB is "simple" -- while that is what you may think it is not what I have said or thought.
"Go ask Rav Dovid Feinstein why he is noheg that way and report back to us."
Sure, and maybe I will ask him to dance with me as well.
"R' Michoel Hersh is a good man."
That is a matter of opinion. Self-praise is no recommendation. Oh and go ask his sons Sol and Isaac what they think of him, as well as the rabbis and people who have been helping them overcome their trauma at being the kids of Michael Hersh. Such blind chutzpa.
"He had serious family challenges"
No, he had serious personal problems and then projected it onto his family and covering it all up with frumkeit and running to RAS with nonsense stories that had nothing to do with what was really going on and the looming disaster that then broke loose on the stage of the world for all to see (nothing to do with me and definitely a major catastrophe as well as a huge certifiable chilul H-shem) and which scared the living hell out of me and many other normal people (of course RAS thinks it's "normal", so what does that say about *his* present state of mind?)
"and perhaps made a bad decision."
Very funny!
"And Rav Aharon perhaps assumed he was still the same person he had been before the challenges and relied on his judgement about his own child."
Whatever, now you are making up theories that are just empty words.
"I get the impression that Rav Aharon stepped on your toe once 40 years ago and you're still bent out of shpape over it."
Sorry bud, 40 years ago I was much too young for RAS to get his claws into me and my toes are fine.
CBT, There is too much silliness in your post to address but I will make an effort anyway.
"And if you hold by Williamsburg standards ... Or is this, as usual, picking and choosing what you like. " Silly non-point. The sheitel store is in a place that is passed by a large percentage of CB bochurim and kollel guys daily. It is not b'tzniyus according the CB, or any other Brookly Yeshiva standards. There was nothing ugly about Rav Aharon's letter. It was respectful and his follow up letter was also respectful.
You bring a raya from Rav Dovid that others are willing to be tolerant so why arent CBs. But your entire arichus was based on the assumption that Rav Aharon is doing an avlah g'dolah by not going to a din Torah. So does Rav Dovid hold like you or not? And if not, why not? You, who took upon yourself the mitzvah raba of blabbing lashon hara about a major rosh yeshiva, need to answer that quesiton.
Michoel Hersh is a good man. I don't know all the pratim and neither do you.
I will tell you why I have no sympathy for this RSC case:
In my opinion, this whole practice that people have a right to a position because of chazaka, and that owners and baalim have no power after a while is terrible. It's worse than what the unions try to do.
To counter those who claim "this is the Torah way", I would suggest that every mossad should put a clause in every contract with a rebbe or maggid shiur or meshulach or janitor that states that the job doesn't entitle them to any chazaka for them or their children or sons in law or grandsons. I'm sure a clause like that would hold.
It makes sense that the Rosh Yeshiva and/or Menahel, if they have Baalus of a Yeshiva, should be entitled to dismiss an employee, mashgiach, rebbe or other. Especially a place like CB, which RYH organized in an autocratic way like a rebbestive. Can you imagine how absurd it would be to suggest that a Rebbe couldn't fire one of his gabboyim?!
This shtus is one of the reasons why Telz is being torn apart slowly. Every rabbi there is chazaka-entrenched, so they all stick around to poke each other in the eye. If ZG is so awful, let him just run the place into the ground, but more quickly.
It makes some sense that the owner of a place can inherit from a previous owner. Even if it contravenes some dina d'malchusa of being a public non-profit. But everyone else? Daloy inherited and permanent shtellers!
This shtus is one of the reasons why Telz is being torn apart slowly. Every rabbi there is chazaka-entrenched, so they all stick around to poke each other in the eye. If ZG is so awful, let him just run the place into the ground, but more quickly.
Interesting for those that know!! ZG was the only one over the past yeasr to take the most active achrayus in the place fundraising etc. the personal sinah and kinah of all the others is what ultimitely is bringing them all down! for the same reason all those there really couldn't have cared less about r' yitzchok's departure as they all believed it would help get them to the helm easier. for what point is there to send money to a place that self destructed itself! all those that got pay checks because of ZG's non selfish hard work should at least tell him thank you the bais din seemed to have seen through all that!!!!!!! forget the the yerusha part, it's what was fairly earned-all the big mouths now cant even stand up to the plate and raise their own necessary funds! what arrogance sinah and above anything else pure unfiltered kinaah! what a shame
why dont you post the letter that RAS is tziyis dinah next to the letter that he write Telz to listen to him???
one basic misconception you all have- RAS never went to a din torah to begin with PERIOD your argument is if he had a right not to show-on that he felt he wasn't the nitva but RYH was! that's clearly still debatable Telshe "went" to a din torah they just weren't happy with the psak that's as different as night and day!!!
" the personal sinah and kinah of all the others is what ultimitely is bringing them all down!" Who exactly are you talking about? I don't think Rav Chaim Stein is suspected by anyone of sinah or kinah. Rav Shlome Eisenberger would love nothing more than to retire. Rav Dovid Barkin Z"L was one of the tzadikei hodor. I don't know R' Dovid Goldberg that well but I don't think he fits the sinah/kinah type either.
I don't think Rav Chaim Stein is suspected by anyone of sinah or kinah. Rav Shlome Eisenberger would love nothing more than to retire. Rav Dovid Barkin Z"L was one of the tzadikei hodor. I don't know R' Dovid Goldberg that well but I don't think he fits the sinah/kinah type either.
BOY then whose fighting if all their middos are in order!!!!
Chaim Berlin Tragedy, You remind me of one of the big baaley machlokes of the dor, recently departed, who was very busy, 'fighting other peoples wars'.The case in point was the Kotler 'heter meah rabonim'.When all parties involved(kotler/feinstein/brisk) had reached some kind of closure and gotten fed up with the 'war' this mecharcher riv who had zero familial ties but an obsessive hate for Lakewood was still continuing the 'war'
Well, what has that got to do with you? See, you claim that R'A Schechter was mesarev ledin by R'Moshe Feinstein etc, blah,blah BUT R'Dovid Feinstein is on good terms with R'Schecter and working together on various communal issues!B'kitser,the one who should most care has reached some kind of closure, EVEN,if the whole story with the seruv is true (something I'm not quite sure about, but don't know since I was not around). In this issue you are quite close to the Lubavitch mindset who don't believe in let bygones be bygones, who never reach closure even two hundred years after the main characters in the plot have met their Maker, we still see cries of 'Avigdor the moiser' and this is such a part of the curriculum that guys like the Tzig and a host of bloggers with similar backrounds who have joined Lubavitch in the last couple of years are well schooled in a 200 year old fight!
My advice to you,if you want to take it:Look at R'Carlebach and see what happens when you don't get ahead with life!Why handicap yourself with an old story for the rest of your life??
Btw, I have nothing to do with Chaim Berlin, never learned there and do not know the players you mention personally.
for all those that think they know everything let me tell you that R' Dovid Barkin zt"l was very close with RZG and a day did not go by that they did not talk. (they were only able to fight and throw rabbim out after he was nifter) R Dovid zt"l was very close and backed up everything that RZG did. (and for all you know it alls R' Dovid grew up in the same house as RZG!!! he was a talmid muvuk of R' Mordechai Gifter zt"l)
"There is too much silliness in your post to address but I will make an effort anyway."
Silliness hey, such as?
" 'And if you hold by Williamsburg standards ... Or is this, as usual, picking and choosing what you like. ' Silly non-point. The sheitel store is in a place that is passed by a large percentage of CB bochurim and kollel guys daily. It is not b'tzniyus according the CB, or any other Brookly Yeshiva standards. There was nothing ugly about Rav Aharon's letter. It was respectful and his follow up letter was also respectful."
Hmm, ok, let anyone judge if this letter is "respectful" by clicking on the letter at http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/article.php?p=14005 and read it carefully. The langugae is brutal and RAS goes out on a limb to tar and feather them. And I have tried to point out that just two blocks down from CB yeshiva on the same Coney Island Avenue, almost next door to the "SubSational" grill that many CB boys and people go to to grab a late night sandwich there is also an all night cabaret men's lounge with DANCING GIRLS above a garage and they both craftily share the same name of "Beverly Hills Collision" (double entendre obviously intended) that even claims to be "Shomer Shabbos" and about which a major meeting was held in Rav Feivel Cohen's shull a few months back, but RAS and CB have never written PUBLIC letters for mass mailing against that more lethal immoral threat. Double standards again and picking on little guys instead of going out to fight real wars against real mamzerim who are not frum Jews. But bullies always pick soft targets. As for your claim that "The sheitel store is in a place that is passed by a large percentage of CB bochurim and kollel guys daily" that is just plain dumb because it is not, because you could say that about EVERY single block in a radius of half a mile of CB yeshiva and women are allowed to walk freely there. This is America don't forget and not Meah Shearim! Maybe Rabbi Teichman should shut down BYA because it is a block around CB and many CB bochurim and yungeliet pass by it daily, or what about all the goyishe and non-frum women who pass by CB with not much on as the weather warms up, should CB maybe hire "tznius patrols" like in Bnai Brak and hound those women to stay 800 yards away from the CB campus, like what CB tries to do under RAS on Purim by hiring literal goyishe bouncers to keep out the more modern kids who are rowdy but are looking for an exciting Purim experience and instead RAS and RAF hire cops to give them the new CB version of a "taste of Purim". How far does such craziness go because in Boro park and Bnai Brak they throw bricks through the windows of stores that are not tznius enough and maybe they should also be firebombed as sometimes happens? If Satmers were to do this kind of stuff we could understand because they are rough people and they don't know another way, but for genteel people like CBers living in open Flatbush to act like that, via letters from RAS that do the same job as "firebombing" and destroying the sheitel place (just read the words on the letter on the link I gave you and tell me if the lnaguge is fine) it is frightening and coming from a man like RAS who in most of his life stayed out of petty trouble like this, shows that he is losing it slowly but surely and that what he did is a chisaron over-all and not the great ma'aleh that you think it is. And were it an isolated incident this past year it could be excused but that there were other troubling incidents shows us that RAS has changed even though people around him are having a hard time getting their minds around that. Just face it, people get old, even gedolim, and they start getting crankier and if they are heads of institutions it can be scary for those beneath who are afraid to challenge them (who wants to fight a *normal* gadol, noone really) and who cover it all up with falshe frumkeit and attcks on critics by calling them debasing names that achives nothing and just shows how bad things are presently festering at CB under RAS.
"You bring a raya from Rav Dovid that others are willing to be tolerant so why arent CBs. But your entire arichus was based on the assumption that Rav Aharon is doing an avlah g'dolah by not going to a din Torah. So does Rav Dovid hold like you or not? And if not, why not? You, who took upon yourself the mitzvah raba of blabbing lashon hara about a major rosh yeshiva, need to answer that quesiton."
Rav Dovid Feinstein has never said or written anywhere at any time that he differs with what his father paskened.Frakert, he always defends his fathers pesakim. Indeed, RAS used Rav Dovid to prove that the pesak about eruvin in NYC still hold, but he RAS chooses to ignore that Rav Moshe's pesak about RSC needing his recompense until CB settles with him also still holds. Rav Dovid so happens to be a very friendly and humble person (which CBers are not) and some may assume that he is somehow agreeing with RAS when he has never said the opposite, and in fact all reprts say that he has told RAF and others that his father was furious at RYH and RAS for not coming to the Din Torah. But then again you said I am being "silly" for saying that the best "proof" you can bring is that Rav Dovid Feinstein "dances" with RAS as if dancing with someone or anyone means anything in this case. Even a major Rosh Yeshiva can get weak, get sick and lose his faculties. Would it be loshen hora to say that Rav Elya Svei is very ill and can longer make decisions? or that Rav Yitzchok Feigelstok got ill and could not make decisions like he used to? it's just in now totalitarian CB the RAS-worship syndrome is so strong that unfortunately people, like you, it seems, cannot even accept that RAS is on his way down JUST JUDGING BY HIS DECISIONS and I have stated them clearly and you wish to run away from them and why do I have to say things again.
"Michoel Hersh is a good man."
That's because you must either be him or be here to defend him, well he deserves his day in court which is more than he allowed either of his sons, Sol and Isaac.
"I don't know all the pratim and neither do you."
There was more than enough published, but whatever the "pratim" are can you tell us what RAS's or Michael Hersh's "heter" was to do what he did by sending Isaac off to "ttranquility Bay" and covering it up and and then to fight all the other gedolim in America to keep him there and stop the rescue and was it worth it split the Olam HaTorah down the middle and drag the name of CB through the mud for that (I didn't do it) and as a serious alumnus and concerned parent of people still in CB I shudder to think that such "decisions" can be made and then that everyone in CB must click their heels and say "yes sir" because that is the way of a dictatorship and not of a Torah community when it is a clear outrage and a despicable abomination!
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Gavriel of Tuesday, June 24, 2008 5:27:00 PM:
"You remind me of one of the big baaley machlokes of the dor, recently departed, who was very busy, 'fighting other peoples wars'."
While some of the points may seem that way TO YOU you are hwover under a clear misunderstaning. Just look at the most recent actions of RAS involving the way he was involved in the boycot of the sheitel store in Flatbush, and I was one of thousands of people who got that letter and I was personally horrified and alarmed that RAS was actually doing this, thatthen RAS signed on to the ban of the Lipa concert something that many people I know personally as friends and fellow-mispalelim had a huge chisaron kis and that it was a public matter in NYC, and the final makeh bepatish the horrific kidnapping, imprisonment and rescue of Isaac Hersh, and that without any shadow of a doubt (Ipersonally confirmed it from multiple sources, not just from reading about it) RAS was involved in all the stages, in spite of what his apologists and spinmeisters want to concoct now, and that it was a direct threat and danger signal to me as a parent and an alumnus of CB as well as a memeber of the Flatbush community, and I have concluded, based on my close observation and knowldege of RAS that these are all out of character, in the sense that he has been able to keep his bullying ways private (yes, many of us old CBers are certifiable masochists, why else did we all take that abuse from RAS for decades on end?) within the walls of CB and that was somehow manageabale (except for people like RSC) but that these new PUBLIC EXPRESSIONS OF BULLYING were an outrage and an ABOMINATION, a clear chilul H-shem, and I will repeat myself, the Isaac Hersh saga is the "pilegesh begiva" defining episode that must lead all concerned with this to declare enough is enough and speak out. But because the standard Charedi media will never say it, we will say it on Blogs such as this and wherever we can.
"The case in point was the Kotler 'heter meah rabonim'.When all parties involved(kotler/feinstein/brisk) had reached some kind of closure and gotten fed up with the 'war' this mecharcher riv who had zero familial ties but an obsessive hate for Lakewood was still continuing the 'war'"
Oh, so you think the Lakewood heter meah rabbonim was fine? Let us not go down that avenue and open up yet new BUT TRUE subjects of dispute and shmutz. I am sticking to what concerns MY LIFE directly. And I repeat, I am not stam an "observer" who is doing this for fun. If you haven't grasped that yet then you have missed what has been going on here lately.
"Well, what has that got to do with you? See, you claim that R'A Schechter was mesarev ledin by R'Moshe Feinstein etc, blah,blah"
It's not "blah, blah" by any sane measure. I am having the courtesy to respond to you without resort to "blah blahing" you so don't "blah blah" me, ok? It just shows you maybe don't have a heart or enough emotional depth and passion, you are maybe eating potao chips as you watch and type this? but that is one of my big problems with most newly-minted CBers and RAS drones and clones and cyborgs that they just DO NOT have a Yiddishe heart. So why should I talk to someone as callous and uncaring and as blase as you? Go watch CNN or the sports channel or something.
"BUT R'Dovid Feinstein is on good terms with R'Schecter"
Ok, so what? When did I say he was not. What kind of logic is that? Many guards become best friends with prisoners on death row so what does that prove that the guards and the prisoners are "equal"? You are as bad as Michoel who is bringing the "dancing proofs". You both need to beef up your logic and seriousness. Maybe take a college course in logic to help you.
"and working together on various communal issues!"
Like what? Blocking the Internet from frum Jews while CB sends out weekly Emails to all its alumni and when fundraising dinners come up CB gets even more active and send a multiple spam Emails to come and give them...what else...gelt!
"B'kitser,the one who should most care has reached some kind of closure,"
No he has not if you mean RSC, and that means you have not been following the discussions on this blog and others and all the many documents certifying RSC's side of the case. So I am not sure what you are trying to get by us here?
"EVEN,if the whole story with the seruv is true (something I'm not quite sure about, but don't know since I was not around)."
It's true, and it was even proven true relatively recently years later in the Veretzky case that CB could not take them on in a Bais Din and all the complaints against RAS are filed with every single notable Bais Din in the Torah world and the documents have all been published online, starting with this blog. You have obviously not been doing your homework so far.
"In this issue you are quite close to the Lubavitch mindset"
Really now, so now Lubavitch is bad and you are good.
"who don't believe in let bygones be bygones, who never reach closure even two hundred years after the main characters in the plot have met their Maker, we still see cries of 'Avigdor the moiser' and this is such a part of the curriculum that guys like the Tzig and a host of bloggers with similar backrounds who have joined Lubavitch in the last couple of years are well schooled in a 200 year old fight!"
Now you are being infantile. Is CB better that they are fighting RSC for over 30 years? No doubt they will do so for another 30 since they are such akshonim even if it harms them. But your point is puerile because every family, and community and group has it's own collective memory that is important to them and one cannot say that what has hurt others should just be forgotten when it is obviously important to them.
"My advice to you,if you want to take it:Look at R'Carlebach and see what happens when you don't get ahead with life!"
I see him every couple of years and hey guess what he has done a lot with his time and he has done what no other CBer has ever done and never will, he has written a magnificent set of seforom called Maskil Lishlomo of his own stupendous chidushim in the same type of Torah taught by RYH. Halevai any rov should be able to become such a noted and famous mechaber. Long after CB has closed its doors, people in the Torah world will be reading, learning from and marveling at RSC's Maskil Lishlomo, as well as of course RYH's Pachad Yitchok.
"Why handicap yourself with an old story for the rest of your life??"
It's not just an "old story" and you just show that you look at things shallowly when you say such things, and I have done very well with my life thank you very much.
"Btw, I have nothing to do with Chaim Berlin,"
I can see that because there is no venom or "bren" in your words, just nice vertlach here and there, not the CB way at all.
"never learned there"
If all one really does is stick to the learning over there then all will go well for you, but CB has always attracted nonconformists as all the top people originally were themselves starting from RYH from Poland, Slabodka, Rav Kook's teachings, and some college in pre-Holocaust Germany, and RAS who comes from an all-American very modern Young Israel background and has managed to transform himself into some sort of "Litvishe Satmar Rosh Yeshiva" in America and has driving lots of people nuts in the process.
"and do not know the players you mention personally."
That is very obvious too. Hatzlocha and best wishes to you.
"Is CB better that they are fighting RSC for over 30 years?"
CBT you keep reiterating this claim, what has CB done to RSC in the past 20 years? What has CB done to RSC in the past 28 years (other than ignore him, and his hazmonos)?
After Rav Reuven Grozovsky Z”l was niftar, Rav Gedalia Schorr Zt”l became R”Y. Under his leadership the yeshiva multiplied. He took out numerous personal loans to build more space; including a building on Elyon Rd. from here on I’ll use initials. HW, (I’m not sure what his function was) created strife between the R”Y and two other talmidei chachamim RDU and RSS (who until then were bitter enemies and joined forces), for his own personal gain. The result being, that a makom kadosh got shut down following a brutal din torah. To pay off a debt that the R”Y personally guaranteed, the new building was sold to Viznitz. Anyone familiar with Tora Vodas will find the inside of that building familiar, and the fire alarm boxes still say Mesivta Talmudical Seminary on them. This is in a nutshell. Anyone with more information?
To anonymous of Wednesday, June 25, 2008 2:14:00 PM who asks "what has CB done to RSC in the past 20 years? What has CB done to RSC in the past 28 years (other than ignore him, and his hazmonos)?"
Again this kind of question reveals a lack of emotional awareness and poshuter Yiddishe rachmonus. LIke the Dubner Maggod I will give a moshul: A group of people kick out one of their own on trumped up charges and threaten him, they then (metaphorically of course) bury him in a "living grave" and they then proceed to to "ignore" him for the rest of his "living" and their time on earth, does that mean that they are guiltless of what they did to him or on the other hand that their guilt stretches and increases over all the time that they have chosen to ignore him? Think it over.
Or put in another way, Yosef HaTzadik was thrown into the well by his brothers who then went away and "forgot" about him. In the meantime a band of Yishmaelim hauls him out, takes him down to Mitzrayim and sells him into a life of slavery and bizyones. Are Yosef's brothers only guilty of tossing him down a well one time and being done with him, or do they have a share in all the tzores and yeridas that happen to him later? Think this over too.
Or like Kmatza and Bar Kamtza wher somone was only thrown out of a party once, so does that mean he and those at that party have no guilt in the Churban that unfolded? Consult your local Gemora please or are you only into theoretical Ketzosim and Rashbas that have nothing to do with reality and real life? Think that over too.
You know, if you can't figure this out and must resort to making excuses for the obviously inexscusable then you should check out why you have such a limited emotional capacity to feel for others (remember a Yid has to feel sorry even for animals according to the rules of tza'ar baalei chaim) and why you shamelessly exhibit a blinkered vision at the expense of another Jew who has gone through deep trauma for standing up for his simple righ, personal honor, and his beliefs (something we admire in theory but almost never practice ourselves), or maybe you just don't care. Who knows.
Ya. Look how R' Avigdor Miller's life was ruined when he was let go from CB. He wasn't able to move on and get another job, open another shul, write several seforim, have a major impact on American frum Jewry.
"Look how R' Avigdor Miller's life was ruined when he was let go from CB."
Ok, so you are implying that RSC's life was ruined after he left CB by "comparing" him to Rav Avigdor Miller (RAM) zt"l but you skip the key step of how and why RAM was fired by RYH, which a few people have been wondering about and it is a topic that I do not wish to be dragged into. But one thing is for sure, that CB has had a history, in fact a clear chazaka, of subjecting it's mashgichim to unpleasant lives and horrible endings; RAM was let go against his will after 21 years of sterling service and he chose not to put up a fight with CB and lived peacefully forever after with RYH and RAS as is well known (myabe it's because of his own humble origins he had too much street smarts to fight with "cut-throats"), but a number of issues behind his departure have been suppressed and remain largely "classified" and I for one have no wish to get into that discussion, but it was an uneasy parting of the ways. RSF was mashgiach for a short time in Far Rockaway and there were also issues between him and CB that were resolved relatively quickly and became moot once CB left for Flatbuch and RSC went on to build Shor Yoshuv. Then came RSC for 12 years who RYH implored to take on the job of mashgiach and whom he (RYH) called "my secret weapon" to help the yeshiva and its students and he was a huge success, so much so that the powers that be at CB eventually viewed him as the ultimate threat to their dominance (talk of paranoia, they have plenty of it) and concocted a scenario for his downfall lasting from the summer of 1977 to the summer of 1978 when RAF said that RSC must not come back or their will be a "bloodbath" (they are ever so genteel the CB boys, aren't they?), 30 years ago, and sadly he fell into their well-laid trap during his last year there when they began their open one year brutal campaign to oust him. Unlike RAM, he did not wish to go quietly into the night and there are a number of good reasons for that, because while RAM was not a disciple of RYH in fact in some ways they were "equals" having both attended Slabodka but not together, on the other hand RSC was a German Jewish Holocaust survivor of a great rabbinic dynasty and who became one of RYH's closest talmidim and such people have a huge sense of honor and self-respect, and they are like literal blood relatives (talmidim=bonim) who will simply refuse to be treated like trash and disowned and will fight tooth and nail for their rightful legacy to the fullest extent the law, in this case that Halacha allows for however long it takes. RSC was then followed by Rav Shimon Groner (RSG) zt"l who filled the position for 25 years until his tragic passing a few short years ago. He just doed on the job and I can attest that he also died with abroken heart. I have too much love and respect for him to denigrate him in any way but if some if RAS attack dog posters want to talk of people's emotional issues, RSG would be a key point to elaborate upon and how he was brutalized emotionally by RAS over 25 years, and it had nothing to do with me in any way. In quite a few moving converstaions I had with RSG he told me of his great frustration with the job, from the the first days he took it on, until his last days. But he did it for the will of his Rebbe RYH and for no other reason. He kept his word to RYH until his last breath, something that RAM nor RSF nor RSC could, would or had the intention of doing, ever. RSG was truly a man that one could call Shimon HaTzadik, ztk"l.
So back to this cryptically cynical but queer "comparative studies of mashgichim" of yours you will see that each one was an entirely different universe and that it is absolutely impossible to compare what one did or achieved with what the other was able to do or achieve either during their tenure as mashgiach or afterwards.
"He wasn't able to move on and get another job, open another shul, write several seforim, have a major impact on American frum Jewry."
RSC has been able to move on thank you very much and you mistake his action in Bais Din with inertia which it is not. He has written choshuve seforim, after he was thrown out of CB in mid-1978 he did have jobs lecturing and teaching and was much in demand, but he is now in his mid-80s and lives a quiet, humble yet productive life with all his faculties fully intact, unlike RAS who is evidently crumbling due to all the wear and tear of being in office so long, so asking RSC to go out and get a "job" in his 60s or 70s or 80s is far-fetched. By the way, as part of Rav Moshe Feinstein's pesak (not mine), RSC is still the official CB mashgiach and they owe him a salary for the last 30 year until they can setlle with him in a Bais Din, which they refuse to do. Why is that so hard to accept when many cases can remain open for along time and are not "worn out" just because they happened three decadeds ago. RSC has been a success with his family. He has guided them well. His oldest daughter is married to Rav Mottie Yaffen the Rosh Yeshiva of Navardok who has fairly good yeshiva in Flatbush now. RSC is not RAM because RSC is not interesetd in talking to "America" -- he is far too "yeshivish" for that rooted in the Olam HaTorah, where he is widely respected and admired, even though RAS gets more photos in the Yated and Modiah centerfolds, and he does not preach to audiences outside of his small circle of family, friends and admirers, while he has chosen to write and complete a set of complex seforim in loshen hakodesh called Maskil Lishlomo, while RAM wrote books in preachy almost 1800s English (does anyone outside of Lakewood housewives and bored bochurim read them in any case?) and RSF wrote no books (he was far more interested in building people like the Alter of Slabodka) and worked on mekareving non-religious Jews and building his yeshiva, while RSG was totally devoted to working inside of CB to help those who turned to him for friendship and Torah insights of which he was truly a gaon in chesed and devekus haTorah.
The point of my somewhat lengthier responseis to enlighten you that each CB mashgiach had his own style and each one had his own way to reponded to the adversity that faced them almost automatically once they agreed to take on a thankless job in CB. As RSC once put it to someone "I thought I was hired to be a 'doorman' but I now see that I have become the 'doormat'."
Oh wait...
What? Or you want to be funny or something? This is deadly serious stuff if you haven't noticed by now...
CBT, You really have WAYYYY too much time on your hands.
"The langugae is brutal and RAS goes out on a limb to tar and feather them." No. You are wrong. And again you attempt to make lots of silly points that are long winded nonsense from an angry person. A frum Jew should be held to a higher standard then real mamzerim to borrow your classy lashon. And on the block of the Yeshiva is vastly different from even two blocks away. In ken, ain ladavar sof. They cannot fix all of Flatbush but the quite reasonably wan to keep their arba amos tahor, on principal. And I agree with them %100.
“Firebombing blah blah blah….”
“ALL the other gedolim in America blah blah blah..”
It is you who are loosing it, not Rav Aharon.
My point about dancing is simply that if Rav Dovid held him to be the Mafioso that your hold him to be, he wouldn’t be on such good terms with him. And certainly that is true of Rabbi Tendler who is not m’shubad to co-operate with Rav Aharon in the Agudah etc.
You accuse me of making up theories for Rav Aharon trusting Michoel Hirsh’s judgement regarding his son. Perhaps you once glanced in a sefer Chafetz Chaim before you went bad? Making up theories is exactly what a yid is supposed to do. You are also good at theories but your theories are to be m’chaiv.
CBT, you write these very long posts and it is difficult, yet possible, to pick out what really matters. Here it is:
RAM was let go against his will after 21 years of sterling service and he chose not to put up a fight with CB and lived peacefully forever after with RYH and RAS as is well known (myabe it's because of his own humble origins he had too much street smarts to fight with "cut-throats")... on the other hand RSC was a German Jewish Holocaust survivor of a great rabbinic dynasty and who became one of RYH's closest talmidim and such people have a huge sense of honor and self-respect, and they are like literal blood relatives (talmidim=bonim) who will simply refuse to be treated like trash and disowned and will fight tooth and nail for their rightful legacy to the fullest extent the law, in this case that Halacha allows for however long it takes.
So it boils down to The Alter's "Gadlus HaAdam" vs. RYH's "Gaavah D''kedusha'".
All the other issues you bring up are totally besides the point. I didn't mean RSC should imitate RAM's career in every detail. And I wasn't referring to his family. If RSC is in his 80's now, then he was in his 50's back then. Someone who "refuses to " be fired, after he has been fired, will be in a very bad place. If he is as angry about this today as you are angry on his behalf, he has my sympathies. It seems clear, especially in retrospect, after your lengthy explanation, that RAM's approach of moving on was the healthier one.
The shaitel store is not on the same block as CB. Its window is not visible from any part of the footpath in front of CB. There was no need for any CB person to go anywhere where the pictures were visible. If they were really that concerned that their bochrim would see photos of fully-dressed women, they could have ordered them not to pass by the shop; if they needed to go south from the yeshivah they could stick to the eastern side of the street.
The main issue here is that CB does not own Coney Island Ave, and has no right to dictate to other inhabitants of that street what they will and will not do. If they start asserting a right to interfere with the other people on the street then they should sell their building and move somewhere where they will own all the land around them. Had their neighbours known that they would assert such a right they would never have allowed them to establish a yeshiva there in the first place.
When I saw the letter, as reproduced on Yeshiva World, I recoiled from the rish'us. I don't care how many blatt gemora the author of that letter has learned in his life, I cannot have the least respect for him; to me he is just like those maskilim who used to learn gemora bareheaded, and while smoking on Shabbos. Before I read the letter I had no preconceptions about him at all; my impression was based purely on that letter, so that when the incident with the Hersh boy was published I wasn't surprised to read who was involved, and was not impressed by his supposed gadlus. And one needs to be really secluded from the world not to have known that those camps are hell-holes; anyone that secluded should not be giving people advice about milei de'alma.
did Rav Gedalia Schorr going to BME lead to the fallout between him and R' Yackov?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 7:05:00 PM
That falling out happened when the latter was retiring. He wanted to put someone else in his place at YMTV and banish RGS ZT"L. 10 years earlier, RGS moved from Willi to CH, and caused a slight uproar. There were those who felt it showed a kaltkeit towards the yeshiva to move out of willi. Eizehu chochom haroeh es hanolad. The Yeshiva eventually moved out of willi anyways. There is so much more. Maybe It can be made into a book.
L'chibas hakodesh, I'll add a short story that took place during one of these skirmishes after RGS already lived in CH. Every day, he would ride the city bus to yeshiva. One day, while waiting for the bus; a talmid who rode with him occasionally noticed that he looked fartrached/tzebrochen. He said to him "Rebbi, es vet zein gut". He responded "Es iz shoin gut". HY"D
"Had their neighbours known that they would assert such a right they would never have allowed them to establish a yeshiva there in the first place."
"Their neighbors" Had the Italian goyim known that the property values would go up 1000% they would have begged them to move in. The entire neighborhood, with tens of shuls and thousands of frummeh yidden, owes the yeshiva a huge hakaras hatov.
Please, Milhouse, CBT, tell me exactly what is so troubling about the letter. Do you disagree that large posters of the heads of attractive women is not a possitive thing and not correct al pi Torah?
Rav Aharon did not make the store close. He simply brought it in line with the standards of most bnei Torah. Put out such posters in the public domain is just as much a form of coercion as using financial clout to have them taken down.
"but a number of issues behind his departure have been suppressed and remain largely "classified" and I for one have no wish to get into that discussion"
Michoel, yes, I absolutely dispute the claim that there was anything wrong with the pictures. Please tell me exactly what you think is wrong with photos of women. Then tell me how someone is expected to sell sheitlach without advertising.
There are plenty of businesses that advertise by showing the sheitlach on the heads of manechins (however you spell it). So we disagree about the pictures. I understand like Rav Aharon and you don't. Fine. So go buy in the stores that advertise in accordance with your world view, and refuse to buy in the stores that advertise in accordance with my view.
>>I don't think Rav Chaim Stein is suspected by anyone of sinah or kinah. Rav Shlome Eisenberger would love nothing more than to retire. Rav Dovid Barkin Z"L was one of the tzadikei hodor. I don't know R' Dovid Goldberg that well but I don't think he fits the sinah/kinah type either.
>>BOY then whose fighting if all their middos are in order!!!!
Zalman Gifter. He is the only am ho'oretz there.
Who were the boys who broke into R' Yitzchok's home? What happened to them?
I know that the hanhalla of the yeshiva may not have been to expressive of the fact that R' Yitzchok left (who knows what happened in private? Certainly you don't), but his talmidim in Lakewood are very, very loyal to him. He is regarded as the biggest talmid chochom in Lakewood (he is probably one of the biggest in America) and is asked to speak everywhere. His night kollel is attended by the biggest and brightest lamdonim. They, like many others, would make a moacho. The better question is, who cares about Zalman, the sniveling boor? The idiot, fool, liar, and crook who brought the yeshiva down to its knees?
>>for all those that think they know everything let me tell you that R' Dovid Barkin zt"l was very close with RZG and a day did not go by that they did not talk.
For all those who did not know, R' Yirtzchok was very close to Rav Barkin, too. And they learned together, even when R' Yitzchok left to Lakewood. R' Yitzchok's eidim told this to me.
>>(they were only able to fight and throw rabbim out after he was nifter)
R' Yitzchok left before. And the evil sonei Hashem who broke into R' Yitzchok's house (probably on Zalman's suggestion) zicher did this when Rav Barkin was still well).
>>R Dovid zt"l was very close and backed up everything that RZG did.
This is sheker.
>>(and for all you know it alls R' Dovid grew up in the same house as RZG!!! he was a talmid muvuk of R' Mordechai Gifter zt"l)
RZG, on the other hand, can barely read. So who cares? The point is what is that piece of garbage doing in the yeshiva, aside from destroying it. If he really loved the Yeshiva and cared for Torah, he would leave and let the Yeshiva rebuilt itself. But no one wants him (unlike R' Yitzchok, who was chapped by the olam HaYeshivos when he moved). This is all he has. And he is holding for life.
This is what am horatzim do. He is a lesson to everyone that one cannot be an am horetz if he wants to be a decent human being. FEH.
The issue about Rav Schorr personally horrifies me. Here we have a gadol, who, in my opinion then and now, gave far more enjoyable blatt shiurim and shiurei klali than the other roshei yeshiva, a man who was NOT corrupted by the machlokes (even R' Yaakov said that RGS never said a bad word about him) and yet he went through so much agmas nefesh. Those who instigated the machlokes are likely responsible for early death. But I will tell you one thing, Rav Schorr's shiurim on chumash will forever be more popular than the other R"Y. Emes as to who was a chashuve talmid chochom can never be erased. And his children are far superior to those of anyone who dared to hurt hum. MAy this gaon ha gaonim--a man universally regarded as a wonder by European Roshei Yeshiva one if not two generations his senior--and tzasik be a meilitz yosher for us all.
To anonymous of Thursday, June 26, 2008 1:16:00 PM who accuses that "In other words you have no clue."
I do know, and the there is one that involves the final dispute between RAM and RYH that led to RAM's instantaneous ouster, but I prefer not to talk about it, since unlike some people here I dislike red-herring discussions, and believe it or not I am not interesetd in helter-skelter pot shots at anyone and anything.
RAM was not my personal mashgiach, while RSC and RSG were and I was close to both of them, as I was close to RAS and RYH and RYD as well. I know these people very well. I met RAM a few times and watched him on many occasions. He is also now gone from this world and is no position to harm anyone unlike RAS who as long as he is allowed to remain in positions of power remains a danger to innocent and unsuspecting people and groups whom he has targeted for whatever reasons best known to him as I know from my own experiences and up-close observations for over more than 30 years of blood sweat and tears. I know a good part of RAM's family and they are all tzadikim gemurim, so I have no wish to start up these kind of discussions that will hurt RAM for whom I have too much kavod and respect. RAM was a very principled and outspoken rabbi and he lived through tough times, he and his wife escaped from Europe and the Holocaust by an open miracle, and probably because he had lived through something as traumatic as that, for all his toughness, he would never have resorted to agreeing to sending a 16 year old Jewish boy to a concentration camp-like facility on an island in the Carribean run by black goons and owned by Mormons yet. RAM would probably have joked away to see the silver lining, and RAM's sense of humor rivaled RYH's in its scope and effectiveness (something that RAS sorely lacks) and RAM would surely have found better ways to deal with a youth at risk like Isaac Hersh.
>>for all those that think they know everything let me tell you that R' Dovid Barkin zt"l was very close with RZG and a day did not go by that they did not talk.
For all those who did not know, R' Yirtzchok was very close to Rav Barkin, too. And they learned together, even when R' Yitzchok left to Lakewood. R' Yitzchok's eidim told this to me.
Your facts should be checked 6 years that R' Yitzchok and R' Dovid didn't talk to each other and caused agood deal of harm to the yeshiva his eidem also told you about or the eidem isn't old enough for that information if so all the rest of your facts are blatantly false with much sinah seething!
Herschel, And now a short word from your conscience:
Since these comments are being moderated, the slanderous character assassination that is taking place here apparently has your explicit approval. Are you really interested in being the proud owner and participant of a "Kat Mesaprei Loshon Hora"?
OK boys, now back to our program. You can start slinging again.
>>Your facts should be checked 6 years that R' Yitzchok and R' Dovid didn't talk to each other and caused agood deal of harm to the yeshiva his eidem also told you about or the eidem isn't old enough for that information if so all the rest of your facts are blatantly false with much sinah seething!
Your impossibly poor logic aside, his eidim is (1) old enough to have been in Telz when R' Yitzchok was a Rosh Yeshiva there and (2) is, as a rosh kollel, and very honest person, not one to lie and state that his shver learned with Rav Barkin every day. There is nothing blatantly false about the fact that Zalman cannot give a shiur. The only one who would deny this is Zalman himself. Say, wait a minute, are you Zalman?
There is no character assasination here. There may be some impassioned rhetoric concerning the man who brought the oldest institution of Jewish learning in America down and the fact that he is not, shall we say, rosh yeshiva material, but these representations do not amount to distortions of fact.
And what those boys did by breaking into a gadol yisroel's house is beyond anything I can being to understand. Its not just criminal; its evil.
Your impossibly poor logic aside, his eidim is (1) old enough to have been in Telz when R' Yitzchok was a Rosh Yeshiva there and (2) is, as a rosh kollel, and very honest person, not one to lie and state that his shver learned with Rav Barkin every day.
keep believing but ask those that were in the yeshiva in those days they'll have a different story to share with you and oh by the way back the the yeshiva wasn't exactly picking up speed either wonder what drove it all to the ground?
Michoel, saying something is so doesn't make it so. You don't get to make up rules and expect everyone else to follow them. There is nothing wrong with a face shot of a woman by any sane standards, and certainly by the standards of Flatbush. Just because you and the rosho who wrote that letter don't like it doesn't make it wrong; the fault is in you. And no, you have no right to make up some meshugene chumra and expect other people to comply with it. And when you threaten to damage a yid's parnasa for not complying with it, you are doing an avera far worse than what you imagine you're trying to prevent.
And if you think there's something wrong with a photo, what guarantee does anyone have that you won't have the same objection to a mannequin? Or some other objection? Who can keep up with these new Torahs that people invent, chadoshim labkorim? (And you think Lubavitch is a new religion?!)
i dont think anyone broke in to reb yitzchoks house. if i remeber correctly it was gifters house that the guys crashed in to . i am not getting involved here in all the shmutz but just correcting a mistake in the fact
Herschel, And now a short word from your conscience:
Since these comments are being moderated, the slanderous character assassination that is taking place here apparently has your explicit approval. Are you really interested in being the proud owner and participant of a "Kat Mesaprei Loshon Hora"? ------------ Chas vishalom, it's all l'shem mitzva. Don't you know he first mitza of lubbavitch is to knock every gadol, and then by default you elevate the stature of the nasi hador?
Millhouse: You are calling someone very nasty names without knowing the details??
For the record:The shaitel store was on the same block as Chaim Berlin but on the opposite side of the street.The owner was approached before the letter was sent and decided not to heed their words. Most chareidi periodicals (besides some Lubavitch ones)have made a 'geder' of not publishing pictures with women.The store was putting up large pictures of womens faces with shaitels on in the window.Needless to say these were professional models so the results were eye catching.Stores in Boro Park for example would never display this type of advertisement.I don't think that ehrlicheh people in Crown Heights would be happy if someone decided to open such a store opposite 770 either. I'm not on these dargehs, but feel that a community has the right to request that frum businesses abide by certain rules especially if they wanted the yeshivas business.Calling someone a rosho because they see things differently than you is ridiculous, besides the azus ponim
>>keep believing but ask those that were in the yeshiva in those days they'll have a different story to share with you and oh by the way back the the yeshiva wasn't exactly picking up speed either wonder what drove it all to the ground?
Keep believing? Let me ask you something, am I supposed to doubt everything I witness or hear from honest, credible people? Is that called delusional? Of course not. Arguing that someone who is not cut out for learning somehow embodies Telz is delusional. And stating, even implicitly, that R' Yitzchok destroyed Telz is completely and utterly crazy.
>>but ask those that were in the yeshiva in those days they'll have a different story to share with you
So you are stating that what I was told was a lie. Maybe I should not believe you?
>>and oh by the way back the the yeshiva wasn't exactly picking up speed either wonder what drove it all to the ground?
Let me guess, Zalman, it was R' Yitzchok, right? That's character assasination right there--you are slandering an acknowledged gadol hador (not by today's standards but by the zkan roshei yeshiva over 20 years ago. What brazeness.
What shmutz? Do you mean that someone is implying untrue, negative things about a gadol hador? Because everything else on this page, in my opinion, is fine.
>>and oh by the way back the the yeshiva wasn't exactly picking up speed either wonder what drove it all to the ground?
Let me guess, Zalman, it was R' Yitzchok, right? That's character assasination right there--you are slandering an acknowledged gadol hador (not by today's standards but by the zkan roshei yeshiva over 20 years ago. What brazeness.
guess what!!! zalman had nothing to do in the yeshiva to facilitate it's downturn!!! it was all in r' dovid's and R' Yitzchok's capable hands those days-the demise of the kollel had nothing to do with zalman either so a good history fact check would be in order!!!
So, you're insinuating that R' Yitzchok and R' Dovid brought down the Yeshiva? They didn't. We all know that. The Yeshiva, at this point, is destroyed, however, and fault for that is directly attributable to Zali's mismanagement of the yeshiva for the last couple of years. All his machlokes, all his insistence on baalus, all his refusal to work with the hanhala--the actual talmidei chachomim--for the sake of improving the yeshiva--brought the yeshiva down.
So, you're insinuating that R' Yitzchok and R' Dovid brought down the Yeshiva?
NO i'm not, your just going to write history in the most convenient way possible as for you all problems have one answer- Zalman Gifter, prob r yitzchok's massive hatzlocho in lakewood mesivta is also because of zalman gifter! interesting though how there were paychecks steady when ZG was shvitzing for the yeshiva!
That is not true. I would never attribute R' Yitzchok's success to Zali. Furthermore, considering the financial crisis of the yeshiva, it is very odd that you are alleging that Zalli shvitzing brought paychecks to the yeshiva. If he is so good at it, and he was a decent human being and ehrlich ben torah, he would be maskim to be a fund raiser while those who actually know how to learn and understand the Torah would be Roshei Yeshiva. He is not willing to make such a compromise and, because he is such a difficult person, as can be surmised by all the dinnei Torah in which he was the key problem, I judge him harshly. A great yeshiva was brought to its knees by someone who cannot learn. And that is reprehensible.
Furthermore, considering the financial crisis of the yeshiva, it is very odd that you are alleging that Zalli shvitzing brought paychecks to the yeshiva.
FACT IN HAND it did!!!
Never has anyone heard cemands from him to say a shiur and if he would and it was good what would be the problem. It appears that your hatred to him (without one valid fact or reason to back you up except all your hearsay) will never allow you to be makir emes. You can have life membership in the alumni association with its undisputed president at the helm!
Zalman has repeatedly won Din Torah after Din Torah which state that he and not any of the Roshei Yeshiva has the "baalus" over Telz-Wickliffe. Zalman does not want to be Rosh Yeshiva in the R'Aharon Feldman sense. He wants to be Rosh Yeshiva like R'Glustein in Montreal is: What other places call the Menahel or President. That means ultimately being the last word. The rebbeim at Telz are not machshiv him and wish he would just raise the money and leave all Beis Medrash decisions to R'Chaim Stein and them.
Even "Last-word" menahalim defer to the Roshei Yeshiva on their "payroll" that they or their predecessors hired. Ponevezh and Ner Israel are examples of that.
The reason he refuses to give in, besides for middos issues I know nothing about, is that he thinks the only way the Yeshiva can survive is by hiring Brisker-style maggidei-shiur and not using the available talent, raised on Telzer-lomdus, which he thinks has no more audience among today's bochurim.
The rebbeim at Telz are not machshiv him and wish he would just raise the money and leave all Beis Medrash decisions to R'Chaim Stein and them.
in this world "der vos hot the meah hot the deah" and the rabbeim in telz have nothing to show off for themselves theyve been the biggest unproductive payed staff in history to even have a right to think that they should run the plsace-all they managed to do was run it to the ground!!! must be some valid reasons to the batei din that they awarded him the rights to nihul hayeshiva
Brisker style is the only thing that sells today and thats not a zg invention face it riverdale is selling that to!
Telshe in Chicago is an isolated outpost of the Yeshiva world. Really little more than a Mesivta for local boys.Cleavland/Wickliffe is a hollow shell. They are not the shakers and movers in the Yeshivisha velt that they wre from the 50s through the early 80s.The only Telshe that is vital and vibrant today is Riverdale. And other than the maximum security dorm it bears little resemblance to the Telshe of the 60s. Rav A. Ausband is a talmid of Rav Berel Soloveitchik and IIRC most of his Ramim are likewise Brisk-trained. His yeshiva is a perfect model of the evolution (devolution??) I described in my original post.
>>Never has anyone heard cemands from him to say a shiur and if he would and it was good what would be the problem.
Why does he not "cemand" to give a shiur? He claims to be rosh yeshiva. That is what a rosh yeshiva does. He is the only rosh yeshiva of a legit yeshiva in the world who does not give a shiur.
>>It appears that your hatred to him (without one valid fact or reason to back you up except all your hearsay) will never allow you to be makir emes.
What is the emes? What hatred? Is he the gadol hador who deserves the respect of the great talmidei chachomim who comprise the hanhalas hayeshiva? These great talmidei chachomim are wrong and he's right? ITS TELZ, leave the yeshiva to TELZ and those who embody its principles.
>>You can have life membership in the alumni association with its undisputed president at the helm!
I don't understand what this means. I just don't understand why he insists on a deiah when it utlimately ruins the yeshiva. If he wants Brisk, let him get R' Yitzchok back. There is not a single Rosh Yeshiva in America today who knows as much Toras Brisk and who has successfully integrated Toras Brisk into their shiurim. Oh yeah, he can't. Zalman cannot get along with him, either.
There was a Brisker style maggid shiur in Telz just a year or so again--Rav Rodkin from Lakewood--why did he leave?
>>is that he thinks the only way the Yeshiva can survive is by hiring Brisker-style maggidei-shiur and not using the available talent, raised on Telzer-lomdus, which he thinks has no more audience among today's bochurim.
Rav Dovid Goldberg does not have the Telz mehalech, neither did Rav Barkin.
Rav Sorotzkin was obviously not a Telzer, but, rather, one of the biggest Briskers in America.
So, lets get real, Telz v. Brisk is not the issue.
There was a Brisker style maggid shiur in Telz just a year or so again--Rav Rodkin from Lakewood--why did he leave?
GUESS: they all couldn't get along with him either in your small mind it would be zalman that caused it as well!!! but it wasn't! wonder why 25 bochurim left with him? lets put in in your words- These great talmidei chachomim are wrong and he's right? ITS TELZ,
there you go thaat must be it
leave the yeshiva to TELZ and those who embody its principles.
didn't you just say "If he wants Brisk, let him get R' Yitzchok back. There is not a single Rosh Yeshiva in America today who knows as much Toras Brisk and who has successfully integrated Toras Brisk into their shiurim."
I learned by him in Telz and went though the majority of many of his seforim. When I came back from Brisk, I learned by R' Meir Stern. I did not learn by R' Eli Ber. There are several other significant talmidim of R' Berel in America, and I don't know them. So I will put this way: Few if any roshei yeshiva in America know as much Toras Brisk and apply and explain it as methodically, consistently and clearly as he in his shiurim and seforim.
And let's not get into personal insults, for example, stating that I have a small mind, because I believe Zalli brought the yeshiva to its knees. First, it brings down the level of discourse, and, second, its not appropriate when stated by someone who cannot spell.
One of the principles of Telz, the malchus of Lita, was the gadlus of the roshei yeshiva, hanhalla and yungeleit--how they learned, how much they learned, and how much kochois they put into their learning klohr. The bottom line is that Rav Barkin was not a real Telzer in shiur. YBLC"T, Rav Goldberg is not a Telzer. R' Yitzchok is not a Telzer in learning. Zali, on the other hand, is not a talmid chochom of stature. Even in your opinion, for what its worth as you are probably Zali himself, he makes a good fundraiser--that's it. Its a shame that any ballebus who gives money thinks he has a deiah. In this case, too, the fact that he brings in funds means nothing if he loves the yeshiva and wants it to continue. The point is that Zalli's purported interest in preserving the yeshiva by installing brisker roshei yeshiva is obviously disingenuous as there are several non-telz at least quasi briskers there. Second, if he was successful in furndraising for the yeshiva, why is it not doing well?
I assume buchurim left with Rav Rodkin because Rav Rodkin is an amazing talmid chochom. Frankly, I think he is too big to be understood by younger buchurim, but that's just my opinion. I also assume that the environment in the yeshiva is not conducive in learning. I place a significant portion, if not all, the blame for the discord in the yeshiva on Zali, which, it appears, is you. No one else who learned in the yeshiva agrees with you. Your insistence on baschmootzing gedolei yisroel demonstrates that you must be something of a kofer or a so nogeiah (i.e. Zali himself) b'dovor that you lost all sense of reason and yashrus.
One last thing, the z'kan roshei yeshiva called R' Yitzchok Sorotzkin a gadol hador 20 years ago. You may have missed out on how much Rav Gifter zt "l held of that z'kan roshei yeshivos. But if you were a telzer, you would not be writing the way you do--at least impliedly--about that gadol. People who are not talmidei chachomim NEVER had a deiah in the goings on of Telz. EVER.
I dont think Anonomoust of 3:45 was writing about the din, but rather about what makes sense. No one is denying the fact that Zali is techinically yoresh a position, we are merely stating that its ridiculous to have an ordinary guy have a deah in a place like Telz. IF this were MTA, it would make sense--that is what the olam looks like and aspires too. Telz stands for something else entirely. If you are not a gadol b'torah, you dont get to have an opinion in such a place.
If you are not a gadol b'torah, you dont get to have an opinion in such a place
interesting to note: all the hanhala members were gedolei torah abba zelka gewirtz as well- no that had nothing to do with "nihul hayeshiva" so even on your premesis you've got what to think over and by the way Levitansky ain't exactly ranking along with the biiiiig Talmidei chachomim bedoreinu!!
Levitansky does not insist on the final deiah. If he did, he would be laughed away, just like Zali is. The difference here is that Zali is hiding behind a psak din so that he may walk in and give his opinions despite his lack of bona fides. Rav Chaim Stein is there. Who does zali think he is?
The difference here is that Zali is hiding behind a psak din so that he may walk in and give his opinions despite his lack of bona fides. Rav Chaim Stein is there. Who does zali think he is?
Is there anyone that can explain in simple terms to the layman: What did this Beis Din see in R' Zalman Gifter to "award" him what everyone here seems to disagree With what chutzpahdike approach to pasken when R' Chaim Stein shlit"a is there! If so maybe the credentials of this Beis Din should be questioned?
Chas Vasholom to question a beis din. Read and reread Reb Shlomo Miller's letter, that one should not question the beis din. If every Psak we do not like, we ignore, then we have some major problems.
The beis din found that, as a matter of fact, Rav Gifter bequeathed his position to his son. In fact, a son is generally yoresh the position of his father's position even if the son is not in the same league as his father. The beis din ruled accordingly. The problem is not merely that he is not quite his father--if that were the only problem he would continue not giving shiur, which, basically, he could not do anyway. The problem is his personality seems to be too difficult for anyone there to bear--not a gadol hador who already left, not Rav Chaim Stein--the zkan rosh yeshivos of America--not the hanhalla which, to a large extent, is composed of extraordinary talmidei chachomim and ehrliche yidden. He keeps getting into fights. And now the yeshiva is in a financial crisis, not to mention without bachurim. IF Zali were able to get along with the gadol who left and the gedolim who are there and gave up his position for the sake of the yeshiva, remaining a fundraiser--which, they say, is his strength--there may be a chance for the yeshiva to continue. This is what the agreements brokered between Zali and the hanhalla attempted to arrange, and what Rav Miller and other are encouraging. Unfortunately, Zali has a position in the yeshiva, and that is a position he will never surrender, even if it brings the yeshiva down with him. And that is what happened here.
i dont know if any of you remember that they throw out a rebbi a littel over a year 1/2 ago and its since than that there is no bochurim or money in the yeshiva
In regards to Rabbi Z Gifter and finance - if you review the IRS 990s, you will see that he was doing very well until the revolt started. By 2005 or 6, he had increased the yeshiva's assets by a million dollars. Once he was attacked, and things became crazy, the assets started to drop. Note that the new comers gave themselve big salaries, while he just got room and around $12 grand.
117 comments:
In a nutshell, they've got a tartei d'sasrei situation. In the one corner, there is a psak that R Zalman has the right to run the yeshiva.
In the other corner, there is an agreement he signed that he would jointly make decisions with the other members of the hanhala.
Can a Beis-Din resolve that?? Because without resolution of that essential conflict, the yeshiva can't run. Period.
Which leads to the question: How would Shlomo Hamelech have paskened had both zonos agreed to have the baby cut in half?
Ok, here is avery basic question: Pretend for a moment this a sugya and you know that RAS did not respond to a din Torah regarding his own yeshiva when he particpated in the illegal removal of RSC as the mashgiach of the CB yeshiva. Rav Moshe Feinstein zt"l and the Agudas Harabonim called him to a din Torah and he, with RAF, refused to appear. This was further affirmed by a series of subsequent Batei Din, none of which agreed with RAS's position. Hence he is labeled a lo tzayis ledin (not by my imagination).
Now, out of the blue, klal Yisroel is informed that RAS actually got to sit on a Bais Din judging a machlokes in another yershiva (is it because he is an expert at being a ba'al machlokes?) and sits with no less than Rav Dovid Feinstein who knws that his father was livid at CB for not responding to the RSC hazmonas, and indeed Rav Moshe paskens that RSC still UNTO THIS DAY has his rights to being called the legitimate mashgiach of CB until the matter of his severance pay, the clock is still ticking, is settled once and for all (in the interim one mashgiach at CB Rav Shmon Groner zt"l has passed away after 25 years on the thankless job he hated and never wanted, and which is now filled by RAS's son Mordechai who also gets it because dad says it must be so). In addition Rav Moshe gives a unique semicha to RSC to strengthen his hand as long as he lives.
So please, someone, anyone, help us out here, how can RAS be on a bais din, any bais din, when he is disqualified from appearing in any other din Torah until he settles the HUGE din Torah in his own back yard that hangs like a sword of Damocles over CB and how can RAS "judge" as a "dayan" a situation of positions and shtelles somewhere else when he has not completed the job of sorting out how and what to do over the facts that CB itself unjustly denied a shttelle (by other batei din standards) to its own mashgiach and then refuses to go to a din Torah to settle over 30 years since RSC is not mochel anything and why should he be?
Is this good chinuch?
Is this making up the rules of the game to suit yourself?
Is this going beyond the pale as RAS starts to show that he sticks his nose into business he should not be in, as he did with the recent Isaac Hersh case (also a machlokes with other rabbonim that led to a public statement from Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky openly implying rejection of RAS's support for Micahel Hersh), the disgraceful redifa of the sheitel macher store, the falshe hachroza against Lipa concocted by Avrohom Schor that RAS supported in spite of its lies, and other such fuax pas?
Please, someone, anyone, help us out here, this is all so very confusing, if not an outright TRAGEDY!
Does anyone still learn there?
Does anyone still learn there? does that make any difference in order for one to send money!!??
"Does anyone still learn there?"
A neighbor of mine stopped by for a Shabbos at Telshe in Cleveland a few months ago and said that the Bais Medrash has maybe about 30 bochurim and its mostly empty and quite scary to see, but that there is a high school that has more talmidim. The hope of Telshe is that based on their high schoolers staying on (high hopes it would seem given the attraction of Lakewood and EY) they can maybe rebuild.
For the record, while Rav Shtein is the senior Rosh Yeshiva he is the only one who is not from the original founding entrenched Telshe families so that they have been the ones fighting over and below him while he carries no weight over there with bottom-line decisions. This is what I have been told.
Rav Shtein must a tzadik yesod olam, old talmidim love him immensely and I know one, for living through all of this, something like Choni Hamagil bizmanainu.
Who is RAF?
come on you guys gotta be kidding. It is Rabbi Avrohom Fruchthadler.
RAF is Avraham Fruchthandler, the Menahel/President of CB.
Thanks. I am not a CB, nor do I know much about the place, but I am learning quickly.
There Fighting over 30 students Wow that is sad. Just like this weeks Parsha(Mir Daf Leben Mit Der PArsha) The question is Who is Korach And Who is Moshe?
Wait I just figured it out WHO HAS MORE MONEY? than we have our Korach
You csn check your sanity by the door.
Whasa matter now, has "vus nisht" scampered off with his head hanging in shame now? He is such a big fat typical farshtunkenne CB ba'al ga'ava you can smell it with every sneering word he utters, or is it now the application of the CB version of the Mafia's "omerta" code of silence that in both CB and the Cosa Nostra is really a code to silence people and legitimate questions.
I am beginning to understand what Yirmiyahu Hanovi and Zecharia Hanovi went through when they spoke up against corruption and abuse of power in their midst and then got rubbed out by their own Yiddishe brethren, that is the Torah example of literally killing off the messenger because they hated the message!
MY CONCERNS:
Anyhow, I would like to state that on my last visit to CB for a fmaily simcha (I became a zaidah for the first time and that is something no CBer can deny me -- because you see I have been matzliach B'H with all my kids and in spite of much tza'ar gidul bonim and with the help of my ezer kenegdo and with my vast experience in kiruv rechokim, I never would dream of sending even a cat in my back yard to Tranquility Bay) I saw the same old, same old, and that Michael Hersh, the very one who "sent off" his own kid to Tranquility Bay, Jamaica, still sits in his regular seat right behind RAS up front in the CB bais medrash.
I know that people may think what I have to say next is strange b ecause it is, but I honestly think that Michael Hersh has hijacked CB in some way by taking control of its weakened pilot RAS.
My theory goes something like this: The oilam in CB is in essence in a state of confirmed deep hypnosis bound to RAS as the grandmaster, everyone is stunned into obedience there, it is truly a 1984 scenario. But due to aging and the serious illness of his own ezer kenegdo, RAS is now clearly not at his full powers ane eveen senses, but the oilem has no clue and would never speak up even if someone figured it out, so things go on with "business as usual" to everyone's peril.
To give an example to illustrate this, its something like these old billionares who get seduced by a young mistress and then they go on to disinherit their legitimate progeny out of their new found "love" for the guile mistress, which they assume is genuine but the mistress is fooling them all the way to the bank and noone can utter a peeps.
Or in another scenario, think of a jumbo plane full of passengers in mid flight who assume that all is well with the captain and that they are on a safe trajectory, but in actual fact a sly hijacker has broken into the flight control room and seeing the captain is a little tired and out of it, makes the captain sleepier (there are ways, like by sleeping gas) and then takes over the plane. The passengers are deluded into thinking that the captain is taking them to safe harbor, when in fact it's all over and the "captain" is none other than an intruder who will now proceed to crash the plane with all on board, chas vesholom.
This is what has happned to CB in the last few years and that is why I am so scared for it and for my family connected to it and why I now stick my neck out and speak up in public (the real CBers who have been following this discussion on Tzig's blog have already figured out who I am, and who I am is really not the point, even though they try to smear me with stuff that just backfires on them that shows how low they will stoop and not talk tachlis).
The point is that I am alarmed for CB and I hereby appeal to the leadership of CB to FORCE RAS TO RESIGN! DO NOT BE AFRAID OF HIM. EVEN IF YOU MUST ACCEPT HIS SON MORDECHAI AS THE NEW acting ROSH! THE SOONER THAT IS DONE THE SAFER EVERYONE IN CB WILL BE in order to avert more tragedies!
That people like Michael Hersh can hold sway over RAS, and that RAS will actually "protect" him in the face of all opposition, to keep a Jewish child a prisoner on a Devil's Island, is totally insane and proves beyond a shadow of any doubt that the once captain has been hijacked because he is weak now and that corrective action must be taken NOW before more harm is done and more victims, like the example of the evicted sheitel machers on falshe frumkeit charges, for the way Lipa was "banned" for wanting to be freilich, and the straw that broke my and most of Klal Yisroel who saw it happen camel's back for PUBLICLY supporting Michel Hersh and refusing to see that what had been done to his son Isaac based just on what Michael Hersh had fed into the ears of RAS and that RAS fell for it hook line and sinker, is totally alarming and incomprehensible.
CB must do a din vechshbon (and this will be tough since they have not settled the RSC din Torah which shomayim surely demands) as soon as it can or else Michael Hersh, and a few like him, will lead the now clearly ailing and tottering RAS into doom and disaster, rachmona litzlan!
Let us avert more trageddies NOW!
I'm confused. Let's go with the whole CB Tragedy theory. What could RAS or his manipulator(s) possibly do to someone who disassociates himself with CB that would be considered "unsafe" or a "tragedy"? I have become disheartened with Yeshivas and Shuls in my lifetime and I just left. Maybe I've vocalized my frustrations, but what is the worst that someone can do to you? I guess I can see them badmouthing you re:shiduchim and such. Maybe trying to affect your Parnassa? But "rubbing you out"? Unsafe? Crashing the plane? Perhaps I'm not understanding the amount of power you ascribe to RAS. What gives?
CBT,
Earlier you wrote "so pray tell why was young Rabbi Yitzchok Sorotskin exiled to Lakewood in the middle of all this?" I see from this that you are not all-knowing. Rav Yitzchok fled to Lakewood long before the din torah. He could not stand dealing with RZG. That's exactly why there were no Sorotzkins involved in the din torah.
CBT,
The shetel thing was nothing. I Jew opens a store with large posters of women's heads across the street from a charedi yeshiva and the Rosh Yeshiva pressures him to get rid of the posters. So what? If it happened in Williamsburg, would it be even mention-worthy? A complete non-issue.
RE RSC, The Feinsteins and every other Rosh Yeshiva in the US, incuding Rav Tendler from YU, have been dancing leibidig with Rav Aharon at chasunas for years. They have been participating with him in the Agudah. Things cannot be as simple as you make them out to be. Go ask Rav Dovid Feinstein why he is noheg that way and report back to us.
R' Michoel Hersh is a good man. He had serious family challenges and perhaps made a bad decision. And Rav Aharon perhaps assumed he was still the same person he had been before the challenges and relied on his judgement about his own child.
I get the impression that Rav Aharon stepped on your toe once 40 years ago and you're still bent out of shpape over it.
"Rav Yitzchok fled to Lakewood long before the din torah. He could not stand dealing with RZG."
Get your real facts in order that wasn't exactly his problems
See http://start.telsheyeshiva.com/
who is rsc?
come on that site is dumb and outdated!
Your right Reb Yitzchok ran away because he couldnt stand Ziggy at all..... not just dealing with him!!
"Rav Yitzchok fled to Lakewood long before the din torah. He could not stand dealing with RZG."
Get your real facts in order that wasn't exactly his problems
Interesting-ever wonder where was the ""big"" protest from all the telzers when R' Yitzchok left where was the machoaah for Kovod HaTorah then no one seemed to try to stop him from going!
"Get your real facts in order that wasn't exactly his problems". I believe my facts are in order. Do you care to elaborate if you think that you know the facts or are you just going to leave us in suspense.
Maybe I'm a little slow, but I don't understand what the big deal is about Rav Miller's second letter. He is just writing that he is not getting involved in ins and outs of the din torah but he is just asking people to support the yeshiva. I do not see how this is the slightest retraction of his earlier letter.
the fact that none of the others saw it fit to distribute another letter tells me something....
where specifically is R' Y Sorotzkin involved now?
Rav Yitzchok says a shiur in the Mesivta of Lakewood but he still goes with the title of RY of Telshe yeshiva. He also has a night kollel.
ATTENTION "ANONYMOUS 2:23 PM"
When you'll stop spreading lies then I'll allow your nasty comments. Otherwise don't waste the keyboard strokes.
Rav Yitzchok says a shiur in the Mesivta of Lakewood but he still goes with the title of RY of Telshe yeshiva.
vee ess kristelt zikh azoi yeedeltst zikh
Thats like calling them the New YORK Jets and Giants though they both play in Jersey or the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
OTOH I suppose if Rebbe's can go by ancient Eastern Communities that have been Judenrein since the krieg why not Rosh Yeshiva's? At least the Pittsburgher, Cleavlander, Bostoner and Mosholu rebbes took on american names.
question for Rav Yitzchok; Do you mean Telshe Cleavland or Lithuania???
He was Rosh Yeshiva of Telshe Cleveland. Some Bochur partisans of the other side broke into his home one Friday night to scare him. That was the last of many straws. He decided not to fight and he moved to Lakewood. But I don't think he ever formally resigned.
It continues to amaze that when a chassidus has a fight, it splits and both halves end up competing with each other and the yeshivas grow and get better (e.g. Bobov, Satmar, etc.)
When litvishe yeshivos have a fight, they fight and fight until there is nothing left (e.g. Bais Medrash Elyon). Same thing happening now in Telz. How sad.
When a Chassidus fights, one side can move out, buy a new building and in essence start over. For some reasons, including but not limited to the fact that R Chaim Stein and the other rebbeim no longer have the koach to start over, that can't be done. So they fight over the same piece of pie.
One moneyman from Cleveland has told me that they are waiting for the place to just shut down entirely so that they can start to build it anew from scratch.
What happened in Bais Medrash Elyon?
"other rebbeim no longer have the koach to start over, that can't be done. So they fight over the same piece of pie."
really,- all it takes to have a yeshiva is a building etc.!
In BME a man (initials HW) decided to create problems there for personal profit. Rav Gedalia Schorr ZT"L built up that yeshiva with his own blood sweat and tears, even taking out personal loans to keep it alive. One of the three buildings (built with a personal loan of RGS) was sold to Viznitz. Anyone familiar with YTV will notice the similarities.
Basically HW convinced RDG and RSS that they are entitled to more kavod.
(To Tzig, I tried posting an answer to this before but it did not come through, this is my second attempt -- it's not the same words -- and because I type slow, it takes me more time, but I need to respond. If you have the first post, then post that, otherwise post this one. Thanks.)
To anonymous of Monday, June 23, 2008 6:32:00 AM:
"I'm confused."
Yes indeed this stuff can be very confusing.
"Let's go with the whole CB Tragedy theory. What could RAS or his manipulator(s) possibly do to someone who disassociates himself with CB that would be considered "unsafe" or a "tragedy"?"
It's not a case of "someone who disassociates himself with CB" but it's when disagreements arise in CB and how they are treated. In the case of RSC the most notorioous case of disagreement within CB, the entire institution has aligned itself against one man even though that man has had the support of essentially every other major Gadol and top batei din on his side for 30 years non-stop. Then fast forward 30 years later and when RAS is confronted by the same mass of rabbis and gedolim against him to free an imprisoned 16 year old boy, Isaac Hesrh, with whose father, Michael Hersh, RAS is bound hand and foot, then RAS will not budge and it took massive political and communal action and finally an actual daring rescue mission befitting a James Bond thriller to rescue the child from Jamaica. Can you imagine something like this happening in a nice friendly yeshiva some other place? Most people cannot.
"I have become disheartened with Yeshivas and Shuls in my lifetime and I just left."
It is easy to leave but as in my case the close personal and family ties do not allow me that so I must voice my opposition and alarm by other means, like it or not. I do not want my family mebers ruled by an old crumbling monarch who is increasinbgly out of touch with the real world.
"Maybe I've vocalized my frustrations, but what is the worst that someone can do to you?"
It all depends who you are dealing with and the reach of their powers and spheres of influence.
"I guess I can see them badmouthing you re:shiduchim and such."
This is nothing because few people in the Torah world think that CB is a place of saints. Plenty people look at them like Yiddishe cultists and as being unfriendly, except when they want something from you, especially a big donation.
"Maybe trying to affect your Parnassa?"
Yes, this they could do, especially with some of them having big business connections, but this is America thank G-d and there are lots of things one can get do to overcome the Cbers and their wiles and ways.
"But "rubbing you out"? Unsafe? Crashing the plane?"
These are all analogies and metaphors, as you should know from English usage. What is called in Hebrew "Masholim" that are used to get a point across. The Dubner Maggid was most famous for using them to good effect and noone took his words literally because they understood he was using analogies to make a point.
"Perhaps I'm not understanding the amount of power you ascribe to RAS."
You sure don't get it, but many people who know him fairly well do.
"What gives?"
It's a long story.
-----
To michoel of Monday, June 23, 2008 10:01:00 AM
"The shetel thing was nothing."
It was NOT "nothing" it was a case based on the reports of some CB yungeleit gave RAS who then decided to write a letter against this store that in effect destroyed their repatation. Did they deserve such harsh treatment? Were they selling contraband? Is this the way to treat other frum Jews? It is also hypocrisy because CB has ladies dressed far worse coming to it's own annual dinners sitting in front of the dais in mixed seating with all the CB rabbonim looking at them and they say nothing, so why be selectively frum?
"I Jew opens a store with large posters of women's heads across the street from a charedi yeshiva and the Rosh Yeshiva pressures him to get rid of the posters."
No, the Rosh Yeshiva wrote an ugly letter against him and the store was NOT "across the street" from the yeshiva. I checked it out, the store was way off to the corner of Ave M and was definitely NOT facing the yeshiva. So now that you think that ladies heads are no good will you also insist that all the ladies who work in the CB office, or any stores and places CBers go to that has ladies working there, should cover their heads with paper bags or wear chadors? this is what is called th Talibanization of Yiddishkeit and it will not sell in Flatbush.
"So what? If it happened in Williamsburg, would it be even mention-worthy? A complete non-issue."
This is exactly the poiunt that people in Flatbush do not wish to live by Williamsbug standards. In Williamsburg ladies wear shpitzels not sheitels. CB and Flatbush do not want to live like Satmar Chasidim in Williamsburg. And that is the problem that some people in CB have, a fantasy that they are somehow "like Satmar" and that they therefore need to impose a Satmar way of life on their people and surroundings when it is just not so. And if you hold by Williamsburg standards why not ask why RAS does not follow the rulings of the Williamsburg Satmar Bais Din that called him to dinei Torah three times? Or is this, as usual, picking and choosing what you like.
"RE RSC, The Feinsteins and every other Rosh Yeshiva in the US, incuding Rav Tendler from YU, have been dancing leibidig with Rav Aharon at chasunas for years."
Ok, so you prove nothing. You are mixing apples with oranges here. You also unwittingly prove that while other NORMAL people are willing to live and let live with those they disagree with, on the other hand CBers will not live and let live with one of their own most notable alumni RSC who they are rodef to the ends of the earth and will support a talmid when he has his son kidanpped and sent off to "Tranquility Bay" which is anything but "tranquil" and he then lies about it, and it takes a major investigation and two legal cases and a rescue team to get the child out. Is that "normal"? That is why I say, it is Michael Hersh who is insane, while some other posters like to pin the blame on me who is calling a spade a spade! I am fulfilling the ancient injunction of Jewish society when faced by horrors anywhere: Yidden shreit gevalt!
"They have been participating with him in the Agudah."
The Agudah is no bed of roses and it's not the Sanhedrin either. Oh, and those Satmar Williamsburgers of yours think that the Aguda stinks, so your "examples" and "proofs" just don't add up at all.
"Things cannot be as simple as you make them out to be."
Where and when did I say that anything on the subject of CB is "simple" -- while that is what you may think it is not what I have said or thought.
"Go ask Rav Dovid Feinstein why he is noheg that way and report back to us."
Sure, and maybe I will ask him to dance with me as well.
"R' Michoel Hersh is a good man."
That is a matter of opinion. Self-praise is no recommendation. Oh and go ask his sons Sol and Isaac what they think of him, as well as the rabbis and people who have been helping them overcome their trauma at being the kids of Michael Hersh. Such blind chutzpa.
"He had serious family challenges"
No, he had serious personal problems and then projected it onto his family and covering it all up with frumkeit and running to RAS with nonsense stories that had nothing to do with what was really going on and the looming disaster that then broke loose on the stage of the world for all to see (nothing to do with me and definitely a major catastrophe as well as a huge certifiable chilul H-shem) and which scared the living hell out of me and many other normal people (of course RAS thinks it's "normal", so what does that say about *his* present state of mind?)
"and perhaps made a bad decision."
Very funny!
"And Rav Aharon perhaps assumed he was still the same person he had been before the challenges and relied on his judgement about his own child."
Whatever, now you are making up theories that are just empty words.
"I get the impression that Rav Aharon stepped on your toe once 40 years ago and you're still bent out of shpape over it."
Sorry bud, 40 years ago I was much too young for RAS to get his claws into me and my toes are fine.
CBT,
There is too much silliness in your post to address but I will make an effort anyway.
"And if you hold by Williamsburg standards ... Or is this, as usual, picking and choosing what you like. "
Silly non-point. The sheitel store is in a place that is passed by a large percentage of CB bochurim and kollel guys daily. It is not b'tzniyus according the CB, or any other Brookly Yeshiva standards. There was nothing ugly about Rav Aharon's letter. It was respectful and his follow up letter was also respectful.
You bring a raya from Rav Dovid that others are willing to be tolerant so why arent CBs. But your entire arichus was based on the assumption that Rav Aharon is doing an avlah g'dolah by not going to a din Torah. So does Rav Dovid hold like you or not? And if not, why not? You, who took upon yourself the mitzvah raba of blabbing lashon hara about a major rosh yeshiva, need to answer that quesiton.
Michoel Hersh is a good man. I don't know all the pratim and neither do you.
I will tell you why I have no sympathy for this RSC case:
In my opinion, this whole practice that people have a right to a position because of chazaka, and that owners and baalim have no power after a while is terrible. It's worse than what the unions try to do.
To counter those who claim "this is the Torah way", I would suggest that every mossad should put a clause in every contract with a rebbe or maggid shiur or meshulach or janitor that states that the job doesn't entitle them to any chazaka for them or their children or sons in law or grandsons. I'm sure a clause like that would hold.
It makes sense that the Rosh Yeshiva and/or Menahel, if they have Baalus of a Yeshiva, should be entitled to dismiss an employee, mashgiach, rebbe or other. Especially a place like CB, which RYH organized in an autocratic way like a rebbestive. Can you imagine how absurd it would be to suggest that a Rebbe couldn't fire one of his gabboyim?!
This shtus is one of the reasons why Telz is being torn apart slowly. Every rabbi there is chazaka-entrenched, so they all stick around to poke each other in the eye. If ZG is so awful, let him just run the place into the ground, but more quickly.
It makes some sense that the owner of a place can inherit from a previous owner. Even if it contravenes some dina d'malchusa of being a public non-profit. But everyone else? Daloy inherited and permanent shtellers!
This shtus is one of the reasons why Telz is being torn apart slowly. Every rabbi there is chazaka-entrenched, so they all stick around to poke each other in the eye. If ZG is so awful, let him just run the place into the ground, but more quickly.
Interesting for those that know!! ZG was the only one over the past yeasr to take the most active achrayus in the place fundraising etc. the personal sinah and kinah of all the others is what ultimitely is bringing them all down! for the same reason all those there really couldn't have cared less about r' yitzchok's departure as they all believed it would help get them to the helm easier. for what point is there to send money to a place that self destructed itself! all those that got pay checks because of ZG's non selfish hard work should at least tell him thank you the bais din seemed to have seen through all that!!!!!!! forget the the yerusha part, it's what was fairly earned-all the big mouths now cant even stand up to the plate and raise their own necessary funds! what arrogance sinah and above anything else pure unfiltered kinaah! what a shame
why dont you post the letter that RAS is tziyis dinah next to the letter that he write Telz to listen to him???
why dont you post the letter that RAS is tziyis dinah next to the letter that he write Telz to listen to him???
one basic misconception you all have- RAS never went to a din torah to begin with PERIOD your argument is if he had a right not to show-on that he felt he wasn't the nitva but RYH was! that's clearly still debatable Telshe "went" to a din torah they just weren't happy with the psak that's as different as night and day!!!
" the personal sinah and kinah of all the others is what ultimitely is bringing them all down!" Who exactly are you talking about? I don't think Rav Chaim Stein is suspected by anyone of sinah or kinah. Rav Shlome Eisenberger would love nothing more than to retire. Rav Dovid Barkin Z"L was one of the tzadikei hodor. I don't know R' Dovid Goldberg that well but I don't think he fits the sinah/kinah type either.
I also don't understand where kinah fits in at all. RZG failed at saying a shiur in the mechina so what would anyone be jealous of?
that's clearly still debatable Telshe "went" to a din torah they just weren't happy with the psak that's as different as night and day!!!
Did you read the documents??? The shtar borirus specificly states that the bais din will not paskin baalus.
Telshe never went to a din on baalus.
But someone that ignores a beis din (a lot more chashuv beis din then RAS) should expect others to listen to him.
maybe their jealous of his good looks?
I don't think Rav Chaim Stein is suspected by anyone of sinah or kinah. Rav Shlome Eisenberger would love nothing more than to retire. Rav Dovid Barkin Z"L was one of the tzadikei hodor. I don't know R' Dovid Goldberg that well but I don't think he fits the sinah/kinah type either.
BOY then whose fighting if all their middos are in order!!!!
Not a Telzer
Look into what happened with the great Sharie Yosher of rabbi Rosenbloom its officially closed with a beautiful building and camp upstate
Chaim Berlin Tragedy,
You remind me of one of the big baaley machlokes of the dor, recently departed, who was very busy, 'fighting other peoples wars'.The case in point was the Kotler 'heter meah rabonim'.When all parties involved(kotler/feinstein/brisk) had reached some kind of closure and gotten fed up with the 'war' this mecharcher riv who had zero familial ties but an obsessive hate for Lakewood was still continuing the 'war'
Well, what has that got to do with you? See, you claim that R'A Schechter was mesarev ledin by R'Moshe Feinstein etc, blah,blah BUT R'Dovid Feinstein is on good terms with R'Schecter and working together on various communal issues!B'kitser,the one who should most care has reached some kind of closure, EVEN,if the whole story with the seruv is true (something I'm not quite sure about, but don't know since I was not around).
In this issue you are quite close to the Lubavitch mindset who don't believe in let bygones be bygones, who never reach closure even two hundred years after the main characters in the plot have met their Maker, we still see cries of
'Avigdor the moiser' and this is such a part of the curriculum that guys like the Tzig and a host of bloggers with similar backrounds who have joined Lubavitch in the last couple of years are well schooled in a 200 year old fight!
My advice to you,if you want to take it:Look at R'Carlebach and see what happens when you don't get ahead with life!Why handicap yourself with an old story for the rest of your life??
Btw, I have nothing to do with Chaim Berlin, never learned there and do not know the players you mention personally.
for all those that think they know everything let me tell you that R' Dovid Barkin zt"l was very close with RZG and a day did not go by that they did not talk. (they were only able to fight and throw rabbim out after he was nifter) R Dovid zt"l was very close and backed up everything that RZG did. (and for all you know it alls R' Dovid grew up in the same house as RZG!!! he was a talmid muvuk of R' Mordechai Gifter zt"l)
PARSHA ZU YOOFEH NIDRESHES: In every situation You have Machlokes
Michoel of Tuesday, June 24, 2008 10:43:00 AM:
"There is too much silliness in your post to address but I will make an effort anyway."
Silliness hey, such as?
" 'And if you hold by Williamsburg standards ... Or is this, as usual, picking and choosing what you like. ' Silly non-point. The sheitel store is in a place that is passed by a large percentage of CB bochurim and kollel guys daily. It is not b'tzniyus according the CB, or any other Brookly Yeshiva standards. There was nothing ugly about Rav Aharon's letter. It was respectful and his follow up letter was also respectful."
Hmm, ok, let anyone judge if this letter is "respectful" by clicking on the letter at http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/article.php?p=14005 and read it carefully. The langugae is brutal and RAS goes out on a limb to tar and feather them. And I have tried to point out that just two blocks down from CB yeshiva on the same Coney Island Avenue, almost next door to the "SubSational" grill that many CB boys and people go to to grab a late night sandwich there is also an all night cabaret men's lounge with DANCING GIRLS above a garage and they both craftily share the same name of "Beverly Hills Collision" (double entendre obviously intended) that even claims to be "Shomer Shabbos" and about which a major meeting was held in Rav Feivel Cohen's shull a few months back, but RAS and CB have never written PUBLIC letters for mass mailing against that more lethal immoral threat. Double standards again and picking on little guys instead of going out to fight real wars against real mamzerim who are not frum Jews. But bullies always pick soft targets. As for your claim that "The sheitel store is in a place that is passed by a large percentage of CB bochurim and kollel guys daily" that is just plain dumb because it is not, because you could say that about EVERY single block in a radius of half a mile of CB yeshiva and women are allowed to walk freely there. This is America don't forget and not Meah Shearim! Maybe Rabbi Teichman should shut down BYA because it is a block around CB and many CB bochurim and yungeliet pass by it daily, or what about all the goyishe and non-frum women who pass by CB with not much on as the weather warms up, should CB maybe hire "tznius patrols" like in Bnai Brak and hound those women to stay 800 yards away from the CB campus, like what CB tries to do under RAS on Purim by hiring literal goyishe bouncers to keep out the more modern kids who are rowdy but are looking for an exciting Purim experience and instead RAS and RAF hire cops to give them the new CB version of a "taste of Purim". How far does such craziness go because in Boro park and Bnai Brak they throw bricks through the windows of stores that are not tznius enough and maybe they should also be firebombed as sometimes happens? If Satmers were to do this kind of stuff we could understand because they are rough people and they don't know another way, but for genteel people like CBers living in open Flatbush to act like that, via letters from RAS that do the same job as "firebombing" and destroying the sheitel place (just read the words on the letter on the link I gave you and tell me if the lnaguge is fine) it is frightening and coming from a man like RAS who in most of his life stayed out of petty trouble like this, shows that he is losing it slowly but surely and that what he did is a chisaron over-all and not the great ma'aleh that you think it is. And were it an isolated incident this past year it could be excused but that there were other troubling incidents shows us that RAS has changed even though people around him are having a hard time getting their minds around that. Just face it, people get old, even gedolim, and they start getting crankier and if they are heads of institutions it can be scary for those beneath who are afraid to challenge them (who wants to fight a *normal* gadol, noone really) and who cover it all up with falshe frumkeit and attcks on critics by calling them debasing names that achives nothing and just shows how bad things are presently festering at CB under RAS.
"You bring a raya from Rav Dovid that others are willing to be tolerant so why arent CBs. But your entire arichus was based on the assumption that Rav Aharon is doing an avlah g'dolah by not going to a din Torah. So does Rav Dovid hold like you or not? And if not, why not? You, who took upon yourself the mitzvah raba of blabbing lashon hara about a major rosh yeshiva, need to answer that quesiton."
Rav Dovid Feinstein has never said or written anywhere at any time that he differs with what his father paskened.Frakert, he always defends his fathers pesakim. Indeed, RAS used Rav Dovid to prove that the pesak about eruvin in NYC still hold, but he RAS chooses to ignore that Rav Moshe's pesak about RSC needing his recompense until CB settles with him also still holds. Rav Dovid so happens to be a very friendly and humble person (which CBers are not) and some may assume that he is somehow agreeing with RAS when he has never said the opposite, and in fact all reprts say that he has told RAF and others that his father was furious at RYH and RAS for not coming to the Din Torah. But then again you said I am being "silly" for saying that the best "proof" you can bring is that Rav Dovid Feinstein "dances" with RAS as if dancing with someone or anyone means anything in this case. Even a major Rosh Yeshiva can get weak, get sick and lose his faculties. Would it be loshen hora to say that Rav Elya Svei is very ill and can longer make decisions? or that Rav Yitzchok Feigelstok got ill and could not make decisions like he used to? it's just in now totalitarian CB the RAS-worship syndrome is so strong that unfortunately people, like you, it seems, cannot even accept that RAS is on his way down JUST JUDGING BY HIS DECISIONS and I have stated them clearly and you wish to run away from them and why do I have to say things again.
"Michoel Hersh is a good man."
That's because you must either be him or be here to defend him, well he deserves his day in court which is more than he allowed either of his sons, Sol and Isaac.
"I don't know all the pratim and neither do you."
There was more than enough published, but whatever the "pratim" are can you tell us what RAS's or Michael Hersh's "heter" was to do what he did by sending Isaac off to "ttranquility Bay" and covering it up and and then to fight all the other gedolim in America to keep him there and stop the rescue and was it worth it split the Olam HaTorah down the middle and drag the name of CB through the mud for that (I didn't do it) and as a serious alumnus and concerned parent of people still in CB I shudder to think that such "decisions" can be made and then that everyone in CB must click their heels and say "yes sir" because that is the way of a dictatorship and not of a Torah community when it is a clear outrage and a despicable abomination!
-----------
Gavriel of Tuesday, June 24, 2008 5:27:00 PM:
"You remind me of one of the big baaley machlokes of the dor, recently departed, who was very busy, 'fighting other peoples wars'."
While some of the points may seem that way TO YOU you are hwover under a clear misunderstaning. Just look at the most recent actions of RAS involving the way he was involved in the boycot of the sheitel store in Flatbush, and I was one of thousands of people who got that letter and I was personally horrified and alarmed that RAS was actually doing this, thatthen RAS signed on to the ban of the Lipa concert something that many people I know personally as friends and fellow-mispalelim had a huge chisaron kis and that it was a public matter in NYC, and the final makeh bepatish the horrific kidnapping, imprisonment and rescue of Isaac Hersh, and that without any shadow of a doubt (Ipersonally confirmed it from multiple sources, not just from reading about it) RAS was involved in all the stages, in spite of what his apologists and spinmeisters want to concoct now, and that it was a direct threat and danger signal to me as a parent and an alumnus of CB as well as a memeber of the Flatbush community, and I have concluded, based on my close observation and knowldege of RAS that these are all out of character, in the sense that he has been able to keep his bullying ways private (yes, many of us old CBers are certifiable masochists, why else did we all take that abuse from RAS for decades on end?) within the walls of CB and that was somehow manageabale (except for people like RSC) but that these new PUBLIC EXPRESSIONS OF BULLYING were an outrage and an ABOMINATION, a clear chilul H-shem, and I will repeat myself, the Isaac Hersh saga is the "pilegesh begiva" defining episode that must lead all concerned with this to declare enough is enough and speak out. But because the standard Charedi media will never say it, we will say it on Blogs such as this and wherever we can.
"The case in point was the Kotler 'heter meah rabonim'.When all parties involved(kotler/feinstein/brisk) had reached some kind of closure and gotten fed up with the 'war' this mecharcher riv who had zero familial ties but an obsessive hate for Lakewood was still continuing the 'war'"
Oh, so you think the Lakewood heter meah rabbonim was fine? Let us not go down that avenue and open up yet new BUT TRUE subjects of dispute and shmutz. I am sticking to what concerns MY LIFE directly. And I repeat, I am not stam an "observer" who is doing this for fun. If you haven't grasped that yet then you have missed what has been going on here lately.
"Well, what has that got to do with you? See, you claim that R'A Schechter was mesarev ledin by R'Moshe Feinstein etc, blah,blah"
It's not "blah, blah" by any sane measure. I am having the courtesy to respond to you without resort to "blah blahing" you so don't "blah blah" me, ok? It just shows you maybe don't have a heart or enough emotional depth and passion, you are maybe eating potao chips as you watch and type this? but that is one of my big problems with most newly-minted CBers and RAS drones and clones and cyborgs that they just DO NOT have a Yiddishe heart. So why should I talk to someone as callous and uncaring and as blase as you? Go watch CNN or the sports channel or something.
"BUT R'Dovid Feinstein is on good terms with R'Schecter"
Ok, so what? When did I say he was not. What kind of logic is that? Many guards become best friends with prisoners on death row so what does that prove that the guards and the prisoners are "equal"? You are as bad as Michoel who is bringing the "dancing proofs". You both need to beef up your logic and seriousness. Maybe take a college course in logic to help you.
"and working together on various communal issues!"
Like what? Blocking the Internet from frum Jews while CB sends out weekly Emails to all its alumni and when fundraising dinners come up CB gets even more active and send a multiple spam Emails to come and give them...what else...gelt!
"B'kitser,the one who should most care has reached some kind of closure,"
No he has not if you mean RSC, and that means you have not been following the discussions on this blog and others and all the many documents certifying RSC's side of the case. So I am not sure what you are trying to get by us here?
"EVEN,if the whole story with the seruv is true (something I'm not quite sure about, but don't know since I was not around)."
It's true, and it was even proven true relatively recently years later in the Veretzky case that CB could not take them on in a Bais Din and all the complaints against RAS are filed with every single notable Bais Din in the Torah world and the documents have all been published online, starting with this blog. You have obviously not been doing your homework so far.
"In this issue you are quite close to the Lubavitch mindset"
Really now, so now Lubavitch is bad and you are good.
"who don't believe in let bygones be bygones, who never reach closure even two hundred years after the main characters in the plot have met their Maker, we still see cries of
'Avigdor the moiser' and this is such a part of the curriculum that guys like the Tzig and a host of bloggers with similar backrounds who have joined Lubavitch in the last couple of years are well schooled in a 200 year old fight!"
Now you are being infantile. Is CB better that they are fighting RSC for over 30 years? No doubt they will do so for another 30 since they are such akshonim even if it harms them. But your point is puerile because every family, and community and group has it's own collective memory that is important to them and one cannot say that what has hurt others should just be forgotten when it is obviously important to them.
"My advice to you,if you want to take it:Look at R'Carlebach and see what happens when you don't get ahead with life!"
I see him every couple of years and hey guess what he has done a lot with his time and he has done what no other CBer has ever done and never will, he has written a magnificent set of seforom called Maskil Lishlomo of his own stupendous chidushim in the same type of Torah taught by RYH. Halevai any rov should be able to become such a noted and famous mechaber. Long after CB has closed its doors, people in the Torah world will be reading, learning from and marveling at RSC's Maskil Lishlomo, as well as of course RYH's Pachad Yitchok.
"Why handicap yourself with an old story for the rest of your life??"
It's not just an "old story" and you just show that you look at things shallowly when you say such things, and I have done very well with my life thank you very much.
"Btw, I have nothing to do with Chaim Berlin,"
I can see that because there is no venom or "bren" in your words, just nice vertlach here and there, not the CB way at all.
"never learned there"
If all one really does is stick to the learning over there then all will go well for you, but CB has always attracted nonconformists as all the top people originally were themselves starting from RYH from Poland, Slabodka, Rav Kook's teachings, and some college in pre-Holocaust Germany, and RAS who comes from an all-American very modern Young Israel background and has managed to transform himself into some sort of "Litvishe Satmar Rosh Yeshiva" in America and has driving lots of people nuts in the process.
"and do not know the players you mention personally."
That is very obvious too. Hatzlocha and best wishes to you.
to:
Anonymous said...
What happened in Bais Medrash Elyon?
Monday, June 23, 2008 4:54:00 PM
I posted a response, Tzig didn't put it in. Chaval al d'avdin umishtakchin.
Avrumik:
I didn't see any response about BME. Send it again, please.
"Is CB better that they are fighting RSC for over 30 years?"
CBT you keep reiterating this claim, what has CB done to RSC in the past 20 years? What has CB done to RSC in the past 28 years (other than ignore him, and his hazmonos)?
RSC on the other hand...
I apologize R’ Hirshel.
After Rav Reuven Grozovsky Z”l was niftar, Rav Gedalia Schorr Zt”l became R”Y. Under his leadership the yeshiva multiplied. He took out numerous personal loans to build more space; including a building on Elyon Rd. from here on I’ll use initials. HW, (I’m not sure what his function was) created strife between the R”Y and two other talmidei chachamim RDU and RSS (who until then were bitter enemies and joined forces), for his own personal gain. The result being, that a makom kadosh got shut down following a brutal din torah. To pay off a debt that the R”Y personally guaranteed, the new building was sold to Viznitz. Anyone familiar with Tora Vodas will find the inside of that building familiar, and the fire alarm boxes still say Mesivta Talmudical Seminary on them. This is in a nutshell. Anyone with more information?
To anonymous of Wednesday, June 25, 2008 2:14:00 PM who asks "what has CB done to RSC in the past 20 years? What has CB done to RSC in the past 28 years (other than ignore him, and his hazmonos)?"
Again this kind of question reveals a lack of emotional awareness and poshuter Yiddishe rachmonus. LIke the Dubner Maggod I will give a moshul: A group of people kick out one of their own on trumped up charges and threaten him, they then (metaphorically of course) bury him in a "living grave" and they then proceed to to "ignore" him for the rest of his "living" and their time on earth, does that mean that they are guiltless of what they did to him or on the other hand that their guilt stretches and increases over all the time that they have chosen to ignore him? Think it over.
Or put in another way, Yosef HaTzadik was thrown into the well by his brothers who then went away and "forgot" about him. In the meantime a band of Yishmaelim hauls him out, takes him down to Mitzrayim and sells him into a life of slavery and bizyones. Are Yosef's brothers only guilty of tossing him down a well one time and being done with him, or do they have a share in all the tzores and yeridas that happen to him later? Think this over too.
Or like Kmatza and Bar Kamtza wher somone was only thrown out of a party once, so does that mean he and those at that party have no guilt in the Churban that unfolded? Consult your local Gemora please or are you only into theoretical Ketzosim and Rashbas that have nothing to do with reality and real life? Think that over too.
You know, if you can't figure this out and must resort to making excuses for the obviously inexscusable then you should check out why you have such a limited emotional capacity to feel for others (remember a Yid has to feel sorry even for animals according to the rules of tza'ar baalei chaim) and why you shamelessly exhibit a blinkered vision at the expense of another Jew who has gone through deep trauma for standing up for his simple righ, personal honor, and his beliefs (something we admire in theory but almost never practice ourselves), or maybe you just don't care. Who knows.
Ya. Look how R' Avigdor Miller's life was ruined when he was let go from CB. He wasn't able to move on and get another job, open another shul, write several seforim, have a major impact on American frum Jewry.
Oh wait...
did Rav Gedalia Schorr going to BME lead to the fallout between him and R' Yackov?
Not a Telzer said:
"Look how R' Avigdor Miller's life was ruined when he was let go from CB."
Ok, so you are implying that RSC's life was ruined after he left CB by "comparing" him to Rav Avigdor Miller (RAM) zt"l but you skip the key step of how and why RAM was fired by RYH, which a few people have been wondering about and it is a topic that I do not wish to be dragged into. But one thing is for sure, that CB has had a history, in fact a clear chazaka, of subjecting it's mashgichim to unpleasant lives and horrible endings; RAM was let go against his will after 21 years of sterling service and he chose not to put up a fight with CB and lived peacefully forever after with RYH and RAS as is well known (myabe it's because of his own humble origins he had too much street smarts to fight with "cut-throats"), but a number of issues behind his departure have been suppressed and remain largely "classified" and I for one have no wish to get into that discussion, but it was an uneasy parting of the ways. RSF was mashgiach for a short time in Far Rockaway and there were also issues between him and CB that were resolved relatively quickly and became moot once CB left for Flatbuch and RSC went on to build Shor Yoshuv. Then came RSC for 12 years who RYH implored to take on the job of mashgiach and whom he (RYH) called "my secret weapon" to help the yeshiva and its students and he was a huge success, so much so that the powers that be at CB eventually viewed him as the ultimate threat to their dominance (talk of paranoia, they have plenty of it) and concocted a scenario for his downfall lasting from the summer of 1977 to the summer of 1978 when RAF said that RSC must not come back or their will be a "bloodbath" (they are ever so genteel the CB boys, aren't they?), 30 years ago, and sadly he fell into their well-laid trap during his last year there when they began their open one year brutal campaign to oust him. Unlike RAM, he did not wish to go quietly into the night and there are a number of good reasons for that, because while RAM was not a disciple of RYH in fact in some ways they were "equals" having both attended Slabodka but not together, on the other hand RSC was a German Jewish Holocaust survivor of a great rabbinic dynasty and who became one of RYH's closest talmidim and such people have a huge sense of honor and self-respect, and they are like literal blood relatives (talmidim=bonim) who will simply refuse to be treated like trash and disowned and will fight tooth and nail for their rightful legacy to the fullest extent the law, in this case that Halacha allows for however long it takes. RSC was then followed by Rav Shimon Groner (RSG) zt"l who filled the position for 25 years until his tragic passing a few short years ago. He just doed on the job and I can attest that he also died with abroken heart. I have too much love and respect for him to denigrate him in any way but if some if RAS attack dog posters want to talk of people's emotional issues, RSG would be a key point to elaborate upon and how he was brutalized emotionally by RAS over 25 years, and it had nothing to do with me in any way. In quite a few moving converstaions I had with RSG he told me of his great frustration with the job, from the the first days he took it on, until his last days. But he did it for the will of his Rebbe RYH and for no other reason. He kept his word to RYH until his last breath, something that RAM nor RSF nor RSC could, would or had the intention of doing, ever. RSG was truly a man that one could call Shimon HaTzadik, ztk"l.
So back to this cryptically cynical but queer "comparative studies of mashgichim" of yours you will see that each one was an entirely different universe and that it is absolutely impossible to compare what one did or achieved with what the other was able to do or achieve either during their tenure as mashgiach or afterwards.
"He wasn't able to move on and get another job, open another shul, write several seforim, have a major impact on American frum Jewry."
RSC has been able to move on thank you very much and you mistake his action in Bais Din with inertia which it is not. He has written choshuve seforim, after he was thrown out of CB in mid-1978 he did have jobs lecturing and teaching and was much in demand, but he is now in his mid-80s and lives a quiet, humble yet productive life with all his faculties fully intact, unlike RAS who is evidently crumbling due to all the wear and tear of being in office so long, so asking RSC to go out and get a "job" in his 60s or 70s or 80s is far-fetched. By the way, as part of Rav Moshe Feinstein's pesak (not mine), RSC is still the official CB mashgiach and they owe him a salary for the last 30 year until they can setlle with him in a Bais Din, which they refuse to do. Why is that so hard to accept when many cases can remain open for along time and are not "worn out" just because they happened three decadeds ago. RSC has been a success with his family. He has guided them well. His oldest daughter is married to Rav Mottie Yaffen the Rosh Yeshiva of Navardok who has fairly good yeshiva in Flatbush now. RSC is not RAM because RSC is not interesetd in talking to "America" -- he is far too "yeshivish" for that rooted in the Olam HaTorah, where he is widely respected and admired, even though RAS gets more photos in the Yated and Modiah centerfolds, and he does not preach to audiences outside of his small circle of family, friends and admirers, while he has chosen to write and complete a set of complex seforim in loshen hakodesh called Maskil Lishlomo, while RAM wrote books in preachy almost 1800s English (does anyone outside of Lakewood housewives and bored bochurim read them in any case?) and RSF wrote no books (he was far more interested in building people like the Alter of Slabodka) and worked on mekareving non-religious Jews and building his yeshiva, while RSG was totally devoted to working inside of CB to help those who turned to him for friendship and Torah insights of which he was truly a gaon in chesed and devekus haTorah.
The point of my somewhat lengthier responseis to enlighten you that each CB mashgiach had his own style and each one had his own way to reponded to the adversity that faced them almost automatically once they agreed to take on a thankless job in CB. As RSC once put it to someone "I thought I was hired to be a 'doorman' but I now see that I have become the 'doormat'."
Oh wait...
What? Or you want to be funny or something? This is deadly serious stuff if you haven't noticed by now...
You need to categorize better You going back and forth between CB and YTV one at a Time Please
CBT,
You really have WAYYYY too much time on your hands.
"The langugae is brutal and RAS goes out on a limb to tar and feather them."
No. You are wrong. And again you attempt to make lots of silly points that are long winded nonsense from an angry person.
A frum Jew should be held to a higher standard then real mamzerim to borrow your classy lashon. And on the block of the Yeshiva is vastly different from even two blocks away. In ken, ain ladavar sof. They cannot fix all of Flatbush but the quite reasonably wan to keep their arba amos tahor, on principal. And I agree with them %100.
“Firebombing blah blah blah….”
“ALL the other gedolim in America blah blah blah..”
It is you who are loosing it, not Rav Aharon.
My point about dancing is simply that if Rav Dovid held him to be the Mafioso that your hold him to be, he wouldn’t be on such good terms with him. And certainly that is true of Rabbi Tendler who is not m’shubad to co-operate with Rav Aharon in the Agudah etc.
You accuse me of making up theories for Rav Aharon trusting Michoel Hirsh’s judgement regarding his son. Perhaps you once glanced in a sefer Chafetz Chaim before you went bad? Making up theories is exactly what a yid is supposed to do. You are also good at theories but your theories are to be m’chaiv.
CBT, you write these very long posts and it is difficult, yet possible, to pick out what really matters. Here it is:
RAM was let go against his will after 21 years of sterling service and he chose not to put up a fight with CB and lived peacefully forever after with RYH and RAS as is well known (myabe it's because of his own humble origins he had too much street smarts to fight with "cut-throats")... on the other hand RSC was a German Jewish Holocaust survivor of a great rabbinic dynasty and who became one of RYH's closest talmidim and such people have a huge sense of honor and self-respect, and they are like literal blood relatives (talmidim=bonim) who will simply refuse to be treated like trash and disowned and will fight tooth and nail for their rightful legacy to the fullest extent the law, in this case that Halacha allows for however long it takes.
So it boils down to The Alter's "Gadlus HaAdam" vs. RYH's "Gaavah D''kedusha'".
All the other issues you bring up are totally besides the point. I didn't mean RSC should imitate RAM's career in every detail. And I wasn't referring to his family. If RSC is in his 80's now, then he was in his 50's back then. Someone who "refuses to " be fired, after he has been fired, will be in a very bad place. If he is as angry about this today as you are angry on his behalf, he has my sympathies. It seems clear, especially in retrospect, after your lengthy explanation, that RAM's approach of moving on was the healthier one.
The shaitel store is not on the same block as CB. Its window is not visible from any part of the footpath in front of CB. There was no need for any CB person to go anywhere where the pictures were visible. If they were really that concerned that their bochrim would see photos of fully-dressed women, they could have ordered them not to pass by the shop; if they needed to go south from the yeshivah they could stick to the eastern side of the street.
The main issue here is that CB does not own Coney Island Ave, and has no right to dictate to other inhabitants of that street what they will and will not do. If they start asserting a right to interfere with the other people on the street then they should sell their building and move somewhere where they will own all the land around them. Had their neighbours known that they would assert such a right they would never have allowed them to establish a yeshiva there in the first place.
When I saw the letter, as reproduced on Yeshiva World, I recoiled from the rish'us. I don't care how many blatt gemora the author of that letter has learned in his life, I cannot have the least respect for him; to me he is just like those maskilim who used to learn gemora bareheaded, and while smoking on Shabbos. Before I read the letter I had no preconceptions about him at all; my impression was based purely on that letter, so that when the incident with the Hersh boy was published I wasn't surprised to read who was involved, and was not impressed by his supposed gadlus. And one needs to be really secluded from the world not to have known that those camps are hell-holes; anyone that secluded should not be giving people advice about milei de'alma.
To:
Anonymous said...
did Rav Gedalia Schorr going to BME lead to the fallout between him and R' Yackov?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 7:05:00 PM
That falling out happened when the latter was retiring. He wanted to put someone else in his place at YMTV and banish RGS ZT"L.
10 years earlier, RGS moved from Willi to CH, and caused a slight uproar. There were those who felt it showed a kaltkeit towards the yeshiva to move out of willi. Eizehu chochom haroeh es hanolad. The Yeshiva eventually moved out of willi anyways. There is so much more. Maybe It can be made into a book.
L'chibas hakodesh, I'll add a short story that took place during one of these skirmishes after RGS already lived in CH. Every day, he would ride the city bus to yeshiva. One day, while waiting for the bus; a talmid who rode with him occasionally noticed that he looked fartrached/tzebrochen. He said to him "Rebbi, es vet zein gut". He responded "Es iz shoin gut". HY"D
avrumik:
are you implying that RGS was killed that you put HYD after his name???
"Had their neighbours known that they would assert such a right they would never have allowed them to establish a yeshiva there in the first place."
"Their neighbors"
Had the Italian goyim known that the property values would go up 1000% they would have begged them to move in. The entire neighborhood, with tens of shuls and thousands of frummeh yidden, owes the yeshiva a huge hakaras hatov.
Please, Milhouse, CBT, tell me exactly what is so troubling about the letter. Do you disagree that large posters of the heads of attractive women is not a possitive thing and not correct al pi Torah?
Rav Aharon did not make the store close. He simply brought it in line with the standards of most bnei Torah. Put out such posters in the public domain is just as much a form of coercion as using financial clout to have them taken down.
"but a number of issues behind his departure have been suppressed and remain largely "classified" and I for one have no wish to get into that discussion"
In other words you have no clue.
CBT,
BTW, I am not Michoel Hersh.
Michoel, yes, I absolutely dispute the claim that there was anything wrong with the pictures. Please tell me exactly what you think is wrong with photos of women. Then tell me how someone is expected to sell sheitlach without advertising.
There are plenty of businesses that advertise by showing the sheitlach on the heads of manechins (however you spell it). So we disagree about the pictures. I understand like Rav Aharon and you don't. Fine. So go buy in the stores that advertise in accordance with your world view, and refuse to buy in the stores that advertise in accordance with my view.
>>I don't think Rav Chaim Stein is suspected by anyone of sinah or kinah. Rav Shlome Eisenberger would love nothing more than to retire. Rav Dovid Barkin Z"L was one of the tzadikei hodor. I don't know R' Dovid Goldberg that well but I don't think he fits the sinah/kinah type either.
>>BOY then whose fighting if all their middos are in order!!!!
Zalman Gifter. He is the only am ho'oretz there.
Who were the boys who broke into R' Yitzchok's home? What happened to them?
I know that the hanhalla of the yeshiva may not have been to expressive of the fact that R' Yitzchok left (who knows what happened in private? Certainly you don't), but his talmidim in Lakewood are very, very loyal to him. He is regarded as the biggest talmid chochom in Lakewood (he is probably one of the biggest in America) and is asked to speak everywhere. His night kollel is attended by the biggest and brightest lamdonim. They, like many others, would make a moacho. The better question is, who cares about Zalman, the sniveling boor? The idiot, fool, liar, and crook who brought the yeshiva down to its knees?
>>for all those that think they know everything let me tell you that R' Dovid Barkin zt"l was very close with RZG and a day did not go by that they did not talk.
For all those who did not know, R' Yirtzchok was very close to Rav Barkin, too. And they learned together, even when R' Yitzchok left to Lakewood. R' Yitzchok's eidim told this to me.
>>(they were only able to fight and throw rabbim out after he was nifter)
R' Yitzchok left before. And the evil sonei Hashem who broke into R' Yitzchok's house (probably on Zalman's suggestion) zicher did this when Rav Barkin was still well).
>>R Dovid zt"l was very close and backed up everything that RZG did.
This is sheker.
>>(and for all you know it alls R' Dovid grew up in the same house as RZG!!! he was a talmid muvuk of R' Mordechai Gifter zt"l)
RZG, on the other hand, can barely read. So who cares? The point is what is that piece of garbage doing in the yeshiva, aside from destroying it. If he really loved the Yeshiva and cared for Torah, he would leave and let the Yeshiva rebuilt itself. But no one wants him (unlike R' Yitzchok, who was chapped by the olam HaYeshivos when he moved). This is all he has. And he is holding for life.
This is what am horatzim do. He is a lesson to everyone that one cannot be an am horetz if he wants to be a decent human being. FEH.
The issue about Rav Schorr personally horrifies me. Here we have a gadol, who, in my opinion then and now, gave far more enjoyable blatt shiurim and shiurei klali than the other roshei yeshiva, a man who was NOT corrupted by the machlokes (even R' Yaakov said that RGS never said a bad word about him) and yet he went through so much agmas nefesh. Those who instigated the machlokes are likely responsible for early death. But I will tell you one thing, Rav Schorr's shiurim on chumash will forever be more popular than the other R"Y. Emes as to who was a chashuve talmid chochom can never be erased. And his children are far superior to those of anyone who dared to hurt hum. MAy this gaon ha gaonim--a man universally regarded as a wonder by European Roshei Yeshiva one if not two generations his senior--and tzasik be a meilitz yosher for us all.
To anonymous of Thursday, June 26, 2008 1:16:00 PM who accuses that "In other words you have no clue."
I do know, and the there is one that involves the final dispute between RAM and RYH that led to RAM's instantaneous ouster, but I prefer not to talk about it, since unlike some people here I dislike red-herring discussions, and believe it or not I am not interesetd in helter-skelter pot shots at anyone and anything.
RAM was not my personal mashgiach, while RSC and RSG were and I was close to both of them, as I was close to RAS and RYH and RYD as well. I know these people very well. I met RAM a few times and watched him on many occasions. He is also now gone from this world and is no position to harm anyone unlike RAS who as long as he is allowed to remain in positions of power remains a danger to innocent and unsuspecting people and groups whom he has targeted for whatever reasons best known to him as I know from my own experiences and up-close observations for over more than 30 years of blood sweat and tears. I know a good part of RAM's family and they are all tzadikim gemurim, so I have no wish to start up these kind of discussions that will hurt RAM for whom I have too much kavod and respect. RAM was a very principled and outspoken rabbi and he lived through tough times, he and his wife escaped from Europe and the Holocaust by an open miracle, and probably because he had lived through something as traumatic as that, for all his toughness, he would never have resorted to agreeing to sending a 16 year old Jewish boy to a concentration camp-like facility on an island in the Carribean run by black goons and owned by Mormons yet. RAM would probably have joked away to see the silver lining, and RAM's sense of humor rivaled RYH's in its scope and effectiveness (something that RAS sorely lacks) and RAM would surely have found better ways to deal with a youth at risk like Isaac Hersh.
To Michoel of Thursday, June 26, 2008 1:41:00 PM who says "BTW, I am not Michoel Hersh."
I say, BTW from the way you write and talk, while you are not an outright RAS attack dog, you have yet a lot to learn.
>>for all those that think they know everything let me tell you that R' Dovid Barkin zt"l was very close with RZG and a day did not go by that they did not talk.
For all those who did not know, R' Yirtzchok was very close to Rav Barkin, too. And they learned together, even when R' Yitzchok left to Lakewood. R' Yitzchok's eidim told this to me.
Your facts should be checked 6 years that R' Yitzchok and R' Dovid didn't talk to each other and caused agood deal of harm to the yeshiva his eidem also told you about or the eidem isn't old enough for that information if so all the rest of your facts are blatantly false with much sinah seething!
Herschel,
And now a short word from your conscience:
Since these comments are being moderated, the slanderous character assassination that is taking place here apparently has your explicit approval. Are you really interested in being the proud owner and participant of a "Kat Mesaprei Loshon Hora"?
OK boys, now back to our program. You can start slinging again.
>>Your facts should be checked 6 years that R' Yitzchok and R' Dovid didn't talk to each other and caused agood deal of harm to the yeshiva his eidem also told you about or the eidem isn't old enough for that information if so all the rest of your facts are blatantly false with much sinah seething!
Your impossibly poor logic aside, his eidim is (1) old enough to have been in Telz when R' Yitzchok was a Rosh Yeshiva there and (2) is, as a rosh kollel, and very honest person, not one to lie and state that his shver learned with Rav Barkin every day. There is nothing blatantly false about the fact that Zalman cannot give a shiur. The only one who would deny this is Zalman himself. Say, wait a minute, are you Zalman?
There is no character assasination here. There may be some impassioned rhetoric concerning the man who brought the oldest institution of Jewish learning in America down and the fact that he is not, shall we say, rosh yeshiva material, but these representations do not amount to distortions of fact.
And what those boys did by breaking into a gadol yisroel's house is beyond anything I can being to understand. Its not just criminal; its evil.
Your impossibly poor logic aside, his eidim is (1) old enough to have been in Telz when R' Yitzchok was a Rosh Yeshiva there and (2) is, as a rosh kollel, and very honest person, not one to lie and state that his shver learned with Rav Barkin every day.
keep believing but ask those that were in the yeshiva in those days they'll have a different story to share with you and oh by the way back the the yeshiva wasn't exactly picking up speed either wonder what drove it all to the ground?
Michoel, saying something is so doesn't make it so. You don't get to make up rules and expect everyone else to follow them. There is nothing wrong with a face shot of a woman by any sane standards, and certainly by the standards of Flatbush. Just because you and the rosho who wrote that letter don't like it doesn't make it wrong; the fault is in you. And no, you have no right to make up some meshugene chumra and expect other people to comply with it. And when you threaten to damage a yid's parnasa for not complying with it, you are doing an avera far worse than what you imagine you're trying to prevent.
And if you think there's something wrong with a photo, what guarantee does anyone have that you won't have the same objection to a mannequin? Or some other objection? Who can keep up with these new Torahs that people invent, chadoshim labkorim? (And you think Lubavitch is a new religion?!)
i dont think anyone broke in to reb yitzchoks house. if i remeber correctly it was gifters house that the guys crashed in to . i am not getting involved here in all the shmutz but just correcting a mistake in the fact
Herschel,
And now a short word from your conscience:
Since these comments are being moderated, the slanderous character assassination that is taking place here apparently has your explicit approval. Are you really interested in being the proud owner and participant of a "Kat Mesaprei Loshon Hora"?
------------
Chas vishalom, it's all l'shem mitzva. Don't you know he first mitza of lubbavitch is to knock every gadol, and then by default you elevate the stature of the nasi hador?
Millhouse:
You are calling someone very nasty names without knowing the details??
For the record:The shaitel store was on the same block as Chaim Berlin but on the opposite side of the street.The owner was approached before the letter was sent and decided not to heed their words.
Most chareidi periodicals (besides some Lubavitch ones)have made a 'geder' of not publishing pictures with women.The store was putting up large pictures of womens faces with shaitels on in the window.Needless to say these were professional models so the results were eye catching.Stores in Boro Park for example would never display this type of advertisement.I don't think that ehrlicheh people in Crown Heights would be happy if someone decided to open such a store opposite 770 either.
I'm not on these dargehs, but feel that a community has the right to request that frum businesses abide by certain rules especially if they wanted the yeshivas business.Calling someone a rosho because they see things differently than you is ridiculous, besides the azus ponim
>>keep believing but ask those that were in the yeshiva in those days they'll have a different story to share with you and oh by the way back the the yeshiva wasn't exactly picking up speed either wonder what drove it all to the ground?
No need to, it was, obviously, Zalman.
"and the rosho who wrote that letter"
I cannot continue this conversation.
>>keep believing
Keep believing? Let me ask you something, am I supposed to doubt everything I witness or hear from honest, credible people? Is that called delusional? Of course not. Arguing that someone who is not cut out for learning somehow embodies Telz is delusional. And stating, even implicitly, that R' Yitzchok destroyed Telz is completely and utterly crazy.
>>but ask those that were in the yeshiva in those days they'll have a different story to share with you
So you are stating that what I was told was a lie. Maybe I should not believe you?
>>and oh by the way back the the yeshiva wasn't exactly picking up speed either wonder what drove it all to the ground?
Let me guess, Zalman, it was R' Yitzchok, right? That's character assasination right there--you are slandering an acknowledged gadol hador (not by today's standards but by the zkan roshei yeshiva over 20 years ago. What brazeness.
What shmutz? Do you mean that someone is implying untrue, negative things about a gadol hador? Because everything else on this page, in my opinion, is fine.
>>and oh by the way back the the yeshiva wasn't exactly picking up speed either wonder what drove it all to the ground?
Let me guess, Zalman, it was R' Yitzchok, right? That's character assasination right there--you are slandering an acknowledged gadol hador (not by today's standards but by the zkan roshei yeshiva over 20 years ago. What brazeness.
guess what!!! zalman had nothing to do in the yeshiva to facilitate it's downturn!!! it was all in r' dovid's and R' Yitzchok's capable hands those days-the demise of the kollel had nothing to do with zalman either so a good history fact check would be in order!!!
So, you're insinuating that R' Yitzchok and R' Dovid brought down the Yeshiva? They didn't. We all know that. The Yeshiva, at this point, is destroyed, however, and fault for that is directly attributable to Zali's mismanagement of the yeshiva for the last couple of years. All his machlokes, all his insistence on baalus, all his refusal to work with the hanhala--the actual talmidei chachomim--for the sake of improving the yeshiva--brought the yeshiva down.
So, you're insinuating that R' Yitzchok and R' Dovid brought down the Yeshiva?
NO i'm not, your just going to write history in the most convenient way possible as for you all problems have one answer- Zalman Gifter, prob r yitzchok's massive hatzlocho in lakewood mesivta is also because of zalman gifter! interesting though how there were paychecks steady when ZG was shvitzing for the yeshiva!
for all those that want to know how not to listen to a beis din
Link: https://download.yousendit.com/F48D227A26500BC1
from "Moetzes for Dummies"
That is not true. I would never attribute R' Yitzchok's success to Zali. Furthermore, considering the financial crisis of the yeshiva, it is very odd that you are alleging that Zalli shvitzing brought paychecks to the yeshiva. If he is so good at it, and he was a decent human being and ehrlich ben torah, he would be maskim to be a fund raiser while those who actually know how to learn and understand the Torah would be Roshei Yeshiva. He is not willing to make such a compromise and, because he is such a difficult person, as can be surmised by all the dinnei Torah in which he was the key problem, I judge him harshly. A great yeshiva was brought to its knees by someone who cannot learn. And that is reprehensible.
Furthermore, considering the financial crisis of the yeshiva, it is very odd that you are alleging that Zalli shvitzing brought paychecks to the yeshiva.
FACT IN HAND it did!!!
Never has anyone heard cemands from him to say a shiur and if he would and it was good what would be the problem. It appears that your hatred to him (without one valid fact or reason to back you up except all your hearsay) will never allow you to be makir emes. You can have life membership in the alumni association with its undisputed president at the helm!
This is the issue.
Zalman has repeatedly won Din Torah after Din Torah which state that he and not any of the Roshei Yeshiva has the "baalus" over Telz-Wickliffe. Zalman does not want to be Rosh Yeshiva in the R'Aharon Feldman sense. He wants to be Rosh Yeshiva like R'Glustein in Montreal is: What other places call the Menahel or President. That means ultimately being the last word. The rebbeim at Telz are not machshiv him and wish he would just raise the money and leave all Beis Medrash decisions to R'Chaim Stein and them.
Even "Last-word" menahalim defer to the Roshei Yeshiva on their "payroll" that they or their predecessors hired. Ponevezh and Ner Israel are examples of that.
The reason he refuses to give in, besides for middos issues I know nothing about, is that he thinks the only way the Yeshiva can survive is by hiring Brisker-style maggidei-shiur and not using the available talent, raised on Telzer-lomdus, which he thinks has no more audience among today's bochurim.
The rebbeim at Telz are not machshiv him and wish he would just raise the money and leave all Beis Medrash decisions to R'Chaim Stein and them.
in this world "der vos hot the meah hot the deah" and the rabbeim in telz have nothing to show off for themselves theyve been the biggest unproductive payed staff in history to even have a right to think that they should run the plsace-all they managed to do was run it to the ground!!! must be some valid reasons to the batei din that they awarded him the rights to nihul hayeshiva
Brisker style is the only thing that sells today and thats not a zg invention face it riverdale is selling that to!
Riverdale is "selling" Brisk too? Did Reb Avremel Ausband learn in Brisk ever?
of course he did guess what-thats where his boys end up as well!!
Link: https://download.yousendit.com/F48D227A26500BC1
anyone listened to such nonsense!!!
if so then Telz is bankrupt. Case closed.
Whats' the big shock??
A little over a year ago I guest posted this:
http://theantitzemach.blogspot.com/2007/06/3-tammuz-was-end-of-line.html
ayin shum v'timtza nachas.
Riverdale is "selling" Brisk too? Did Reb Avremel Ausband learn in Brisk ever?
your question your answer!!!
A little over a year ago I guest posted this:
http://theantitzemach.blogspot.com/2007/06/3-tammuz-was-end-of-line.html
"I do not think Telshe is stricly Brisk either.
Telshe in Chicago is an isolated outpost of the Yeshiva world. Really little more than a Mesivta for local boys.Cleavland/Wickliffe is a hollow shell. They are not the shakers and movers in the Yeshivisha velt that they wre from the 50s through the early 80s.The only Telshe that is vital and vibrant today is Riverdale. And other than the maximum security dorm it bears little resemblance to the Telshe of the 60s. Rav A. Ausband is a talmid of Rav Berel Soloveitchik and IIRC most of his Ramim are likewise Brisk-trained. His yeshiva is a perfect model of the evolution (devolution??) I described in my original post.
>>FACT IN HAND it did!!!
So why is the Yeshiva facing bankruptcy?
>>Never has anyone heard cemands from him to say a shiur and if he would and it was good what would be the problem.
Why does he not "cemand" to give a shiur? He claims to be rosh yeshiva. That is what a rosh yeshiva does. He is the only rosh yeshiva of a legit yeshiva in the world who does not give a shiur.
>>It appears that your hatred to him (without one valid fact or reason to back you up except all your hearsay) will never allow you to be makir emes.
What is the emes? What hatred? Is he the gadol hador who deserves the respect of the great talmidei chachomim who comprise the hanhalas hayeshiva? These great talmidei chachomim are wrong and he's right? ITS TELZ, leave the yeshiva to TELZ and those who embody its principles.
>>You can have life membership in the alumni association with its undisputed president at the helm!
I don't understand what this means. I just don't understand why he insists on a deiah when it utlimately ruins the yeshiva. If he wants Brisk, let him get R' Yitzchok back. There is not a single Rosh Yeshiva in America today who knows as much Toras Brisk and who has successfully integrated Toras Brisk into their shiurim. Oh yeah, he can't. Zalman cannot get along with him, either.
There was a Brisker style maggid shiur in Telz just a year or so again--Rav Rodkin from Lakewood--why did he leave?
YOU described????
Which post would that be????
I wrote the linked-to post.
>>is that he thinks the only way the Yeshiva can survive is by hiring Brisker-style maggidei-shiur and not using the available talent, raised on Telzer-lomdus, which he thinks has no more audience among today's bochurim.
Rav Dovid Goldberg does not have the Telz mehalech, neither did Rav Barkin.
Rav Sorotzkin was obviously not a Telzer, but, rather, one of the biggest Briskers in America.
So, lets get real, Telz v. Brisk is not the issue.
There was a Brisker style maggid shiur in Telz just a year or so again--Rav Rodkin from Lakewood--why did he leave?
GUESS: they all couldn't get along with him either in your small mind it would be zalman that caused it as well!!! but it wasn't! wonder why 25 bochurim left with him? lets put in in your words-
These great talmidei chachomim are wrong and he's right? ITS TELZ,
there you go thaat must be it
leave the yeshiva to TELZ and those who embody its principles.
didn't you just say "If he wants Brisk, let him get R' Yitzchok back. There is not a single Rosh Yeshiva in America today who knows as much Toras Brisk and who has successfully integrated Toras Brisk into their shiurim."
There is not a single Rosh Yeshiva in America today who knows as much Toras Brisk and who has successfully integrated Toras Brisk into their shiurim
You learned by him (and have complete knowledge of all other brisker talmidim magidei shiurim)to make such a brave statement?
I learned by him in Telz and went though the majority of many of his seforim. When I came back from Brisk, I learned by R' Meir Stern. I did not learn by R' Eli Ber. There are several other significant talmidim of R' Berel in America, and I don't know them. So I will put this way: Few if any roshei yeshiva in America know as much Toras Brisk and apply and explain it as methodically, consistently and clearly as he in his shiurim and seforim.
And let's not get into personal insults, for example, stating that I have a small mind, because I believe Zalli brought the yeshiva to its knees. First, it brings down the level of discourse, and, second, its not appropriate when stated by someone who cannot spell.
One of the principles of Telz, the malchus of Lita, was the gadlus of the roshei yeshiva, hanhalla and yungeleit--how they learned, how much they learned, and how much kochois they put into their learning klohr. The bottom line is that Rav Barkin was not a real Telzer in shiur. YBLC"T, Rav Goldberg is not a Telzer. R' Yitzchok is not a Telzer in learning. Zali, on the other hand, is not a talmid chochom of stature. Even in your opinion, for what its worth as you are probably Zali himself, he makes a good fundraiser--that's it. Its a shame that any ballebus who gives money thinks he has a deiah. In this case, too, the fact that he brings in funds means nothing if he loves the yeshiva and wants it to continue. The point is that Zalli's purported interest in preserving the yeshiva by installing brisker roshei yeshiva is obviously disingenuous as there are several non-telz at least quasi briskers there. Second, if he was successful in furndraising for the yeshiva, why is it not doing well?
I assume buchurim left with Rav Rodkin because Rav Rodkin is an amazing talmid chochom. Frankly, I think he is too big to be understood by younger buchurim, but that's just my opinion. I also assume that the environment in the yeshiva is not conducive in learning. I place a significant portion, if not all, the blame for the discord in the yeshiva on Zali, which, it appears, is you. No one else who learned in the yeshiva agrees with you. Your insistence on baschmootzing gedolei yisroel demonstrates that you must be something of a kofer or a so nogeiah (i.e. Zali himself) b'dovor that you lost all sense of reason and yashrus.
One last thing, the z'kan roshei yeshiva called R' Yitzchok Sorotzkin a gadol hador 20 years ago. You may have missed out on how much Rav Gifter zt
"l held of that z'kan roshei yeshivos. But if you were a telzer, you would not be writing the way you do--at least impliedly--about that gadol. People who are not talmidei chachomim NEVER had a deiah in the goings on of Telz. EVER.
could be his brother or his son. Maybe even one or two crackpot followers that he has!
Its very unlikely anyone else would be supportive of ZG.
amonomous of 3:45 said...
Its very unlikely anyone else would be supportive of ZG.
Rabbi Dovid Feinstein Shlit"a
Rabbi Aron Schechter Shlit"a
Rabbi Yisroel Grumer Shlit"a
I dont think Anonomoust of 3:45 was writing about the din, but rather about what makes sense. No one is denying the fact that Zali is techinically yoresh a position, we are merely stating that its ridiculous to have an ordinary guy have a deah in a place like Telz. IF this were MTA, it would make sense--that is what the olam looks like and aspires too. Telz stands for something else entirely. If you are not a gadol b'torah, you dont get to have an opinion in such a place.
If you are not a gadol b'torah, you dont get to have an opinion in such a place
interesting to note: all the hanhala members were gedolei torah abba zelka gewirtz as well- no that had nothing to do with "nihul hayeshiva" so even on your premesis you've got what to think over and by the way Levitansky ain't exactly ranking along with the biiiiig Talmidei chachomim bedoreinu!!
Levitansky does not insist on the final deiah. If he did, he would be laughed away, just like Zali is. The difference here is that Zali is hiding behind a psak din so that he may walk in and give his opinions despite his lack of bona fides. Rav Chaim Stein is there. Who does zali think he is?
The difference here is that Zali is hiding behind a psak din so that he may walk in and give his opinions despite his lack of bona fides. Rav Chaim Stein is there. Who does zali think he is?
Is there anyone that can explain in simple terms to the layman:
What did this Beis Din see in R' Zalman Gifter to "award" him what everyone here seems to disagree With what chutzpahdike approach to pasken when R' Chaim Stein shlit"a is there! If so maybe the credentials of this Beis Din should be questioned?
Chas Vasholom to question a beis din. Read and reread Reb Shlomo Miller's letter, that one should not question the beis din. If every Psak we do not like, we ignore, then we have some major problems.
The beis din found that, as a matter of fact, Rav Gifter bequeathed his position to his son. In fact, a son is generally yoresh the position of his father's position even if the son is not in the same league as his father. The beis din ruled accordingly. The problem is not merely that he is not quite his father--if that were the only problem he would continue not giving shiur, which, basically, he could not do anyway. The problem is his personality seems to be too difficult for anyone there to bear--not a gadol hador who already left, not Rav Chaim Stein--the zkan rosh yeshivos of America--not the hanhalla which, to a large extent, is composed of extraordinary talmidei chachomim and ehrliche yidden. He keeps getting into fights. And now the yeshiva is in a financial crisis, not to mention without bachurim. IF Zali were able to get along with the gadol who left and the gedolim who are there and gave up his position for the sake of the yeshiva, remaining a fundraiser--which, they say, is his strength--there may be a chance for the yeshiva to continue. This is what the agreements brokered between Zali and the hanhalla attempted to arrange, and what Rav Miller and other are encouraging. Unfortunately, Zali has a position in the yeshiva, and that is a position he will never surrender, even if it brings the yeshiva down with him. And that is what happened here.
i dont know if any of you remember that they throw out a rebbi a littel over a year 1/2 ago and its since than that there is no bochurim or money in the yeshiva
In regards to Rabbi Z Gifter and finance - if you review the IRS 990s, you will see that he was doing very well until the revolt started. By 2005 or 6, he had increased the yeshiva's assets by a million dollars.
Once he was attacked, and things became crazy, the assets started to drop.
Note that the new comers gave themselve big salaries, while he just got room and around $12 grand.
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