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