Thursday, October 30, 2008

All in the name of ____________



We often hear about how times have changed - and for the better. How we're so much more educated and secluded from the secular world, and how today's rules make us better and holier people. How things that were acceptable a mere 40 years ago are totally out of the question today, and at the same institutions! How most everything that our parents did, from the way they dressed to what they ate to where they went and studied, was flawed and happened only because they didn't know better, or because it was "OK back then." If you don't believe me, and you have old family albums or yearbooks take a look and get back to me. I understand perfectly when I'm told that even the "frummest ladies did that," and I accept that times HAVE changed, and maybe, just maybe for the better. The only problem I have is when the same logic and understanding is only applied to certain people, not to everybody. That leads me to believe either that LeKatchilla it was never OK, or we never really changed, even if on the outside everything looks better now.

Somebody got it right when he said it was Rav Shlomo Wolbe enjoying the round table discussion here. (I didn't appreciate the "Hamercaz" plug but I let it get through.) I wonder if you told a frum guy that it was a Lubavitcher shliach teaching this class of young girls what he would say, and even what I - the great Lubavitcher partisan - would say. The excuses - after the above-mentioned frum guy is told who this is - would probably go something like this: "It was after the war, they needed to be brought back to Yiddishkeit." I don't necessarily disagree with that "excuse" either, I just ask for your understanding when you that scenario with people you don't have the same respect for.

מים רבים לא יוכלו לכבות את האהבה

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

any idea who the man in the photo is?

Anonymous said...

What the heck is the meaning of that "mayim rabbim" comment?

Hirshel Tzig - הירשל ציג said...

nothing, it just came to mind. The maamar in Torah Or.....

Anonymous said...

It seems it's a pic of Rabbi Wolbe from the girls sem for holocaust survivors in Leedingeh, Sweden or maybe Horav Yakobzon?

Anonymous said...

Rabbi Wolbe

Anonymous said...

The problem with our so-called progress and the frumkeit pendulum swinging radically to the right is that regiems, both chasidish and yeshivish, designed for yechidei segulah, are now being imposed on the hamon ahm with predictably catastrophic and tragi-comic results.

One doesn't make a 6 year old child into an adult by dressing him in a size 44 long suit.

If the child does nothing it will be comical at best. If the child is administered HGH and steriods or palced on a rack to try and get him to better fill out the suit their will be health problems for the rest of his life, first and foremost being the delusional conviction that the suit actually fits him.

Mottel said...

Tzigele why stop with the TO ma'amar? There's the bevusta hemsheich from the maharash (a must learn) and mayam rabbim Lamed ches fun nasi doreinu

Unknown said...

all in the name of what?

Anonymous said...

According to Hamercaz.com:

http://hamercaz.com/hamercaz/site/mfile.php?id=3554

This photo, taken in 1945, shows R' Shlomo Wolbe teaching his students on the grounds of the seminary in Lidingo, Sweden, that he founded for refugee girls at the end of WWII. R' Wolbe was 31 years old at the time. Shortly after, he moved to Israel where he got married and became Mashgiach of Yeshiva Be'er Yaakov.