The Rav may have thought he was doing "right" by switching to English in his shiurim at YU and elsewhere. In fact,I find his thickly accented English impenetrable . He would have done better sticking to his native Yiddish and ironically, he would have had a potential MP3 audience of thousands of chssidishe "learners" who would be able to hear his shiurim and share his wisdom.
Tzig. Not so fast . the gentleman who triggered the rav's switch to English lets called him Ish Chamudoth was a MO student from the UWS who graduated lets call it Harvard and came to YU for 1 year as a Woodrow Wilson fellow.He knew no Yiddish and the rav really wanted to impress this highly intellegent young man. So he switched to English. And it remained so. Ish Chamudoth traveled a path leading to him becoming a "light Charedi" and a BEn Torah. In the 2000 period his bechor left to study in Brisk in Jslm knowing no Yiddish. He needed to study Yiddish to understand the "reyd" in Brisk. So we have a 360 degree circle. Interesting. Elu velu English is impt but so is Yiddish if one wants to be taken seriously in the Tora an Charedi world. Anyone who knew the Rav knew he was highly impressed by American high culture, places such as Harvard and Princeton beckoned to him. He lectured there on public policy and philosophy but never did the same ... at YU. His son attended Harvard not YU. His son in law was a professor at harvard and got a chair there not without an assist from the rav and his friends.The Rav even went so far as to lectre in S. Josephs Seminary in Brookline a college for RC priests ! I guess thye may have impressed him too. later on when he was sick his book On Repentance was published in English by the Paulist Press. I have no idea why ? You read the Rav's Drashoth and you see that he was less than enthusiastic about the "project" of rebuilding east Euroepan Judaism in the USA. Indeed he transmitted the lernen , but very litle else in the world of Yahadus to his thousands of talmidim. Like other gedolim of his type (Rabbi Weinberg of berlin, Rav Hutner, Rav Kook, he was a very complex personality with a foot in the modern world and another in the world of heavy duty Torah study.
Schneur As u see in Holzer books, he never held a idea for too long, he was too intelligent not to see the other side too. He could give a powerful lecture for the RCA, and after that poke fun from it.
Hirshel,-Truthfully,is this "English"intelligible? It took me a minute to determine if it was English or...Yaponezish.The rav spoke a beautiful Yiddish.The geniuses in his shiur who mastered particle physics could have learnt yiddish as well...but the Yiddish smelt of herring and tzibbeleh and cheap mashkeh and these were the sixties and an MO was going to work for NASA and go to the moon...and you know the rest of the story...
Anon "confused tortured soul" you can say any deragotry word from your terminology, on Rav Soloviechig, but confused he was not. His clarity is crystal clear. You never read his works, have you ever read 1 shiur in Zecher Aba Moree? his uncle the Griz, had no capacity to deliver a shiur like this.
I remember by the time the Rav stopped saying his regular shiur, there were even Chassiidc men in attendance. I doubt he was tortured. The Rayaatz "hot gehalten a velt fun ihm" and the Rayaatz was not a man of confusion. He was a man of action and determination. Some day we will be aoche to a objective biography of the rav. Zecher zaddik Livrocha
'Zecher zaddik Livrocha' - gut gezugt! I assume that's a jab at the Jewish Observer that only gave him a "Zichrono Livracha'.
Anonymous 'As u see in Holzer books, he never held a idea for too long, he was too intelligent not to see the other side too' - For all his greatness, he strikes me as being inconsistent in his opinions.
I think Klainer is correct. The Rav in his rapid fire Yiddish was far more impressive and geshmak to listen to than in his plodding English. Yiddish was of course his first language and his Yiddish was quite easy. No doubt that any young man with the capacity to follow the Rav's shiur could pick up his Yiddish.
Listen, you are way to nice to get many blog hits.Let me explain:We"ll use the Tzig for an example,k? What he does is write about his very shallow musings, usually about his (read Lubavitchs')favorite nemeses, Vaboylniker,Lakewood,Aguda,Artscroll,Snags.He touches the right buttons and gets heated responses, which he mines and posts ("original content")and gets all the Lubavitcher minions to "help" him "defend" the faith.It helps that many Lubavitchers are on "shlichus" in the boondocks and hotzenplotz and have lots of time on their hands and have a feeling that they are doing a shlichus defendind the faith.Likewise, many boys are quite bored of endless repetition of Chasidic texts and would rather do "shlichus" in cyberspace.You are on the other hand, always understanding, always trying to understand where people are coming from, you don't get people angry and they don't feel a call to arms.. In a nutshell..... So if you really want to get many hits via the Tzig method:Tie half or three quarters of your brain behind your back, write something really dumb and irritating, when you get a good response mine it and start having a hissy fit about how terrible Snags are.Repeat often enough
An Ailmisher "For all his greatness, he strikes me as being inconsistent in his opinions." You are correct he was inconsistent, he did not take himself seious as the leader of any movement. He was a gevaldiger Rosh Yeshivah and philosopher.
...don't forget , he called for an ivvestigation of israely responsebility when 1 group of arabs massacred another group of arabs in levonon 30 years ago...causing much anti-semitism etc...
21 comments:
it says the user does not have the bandwith
that sounds more like an issue that you personally have with your ISP or whatever. i had no issues opening the page and listening to the shiurim
הירשל, איך האב אויך דעם פראבלעם פון יוזער ווייניג סענדוויטשעס.....
The Rav may have thought he was doing
"right" by switching to English in his shiurim at YU and elsewhere. In fact,I find his thickly accented English impenetrable . He would have done better sticking to his native Yiddish and ironically, he would have had a potential MP3 audience of thousands of chssidishe "learners" who would be able to hear his shiurim and share his wisdom.
klainer
I think you're being very short-sighted here
beside for the fact that שומעי לקחו were American-born and English-speaking.
The Bergen County Beis Medrash also has quite a few of the Rav's shiurim: http://bcbm.org/
Tzig. Not so fast . the gentleman who triggered the rav's switch to English lets called him Ish Chamudoth was a MO student from the UWS who graduated lets call it Harvard and came to YU for 1 year as a Woodrow Wilson fellow.He knew no Yiddish and the rav really wanted to impress this highly intellegent young man. So he switched to English. And it remained so.
Ish Chamudoth traveled a path leading to him becoming a "light Charedi" and a BEn Torah. In the 2000 period his bechor left to study in Brisk in Jslm knowing no Yiddish. He needed to study Yiddish to understand the "reyd" in Brisk. So we have a 360 degree circle. Interesting.
Elu velu English is impt but so is Yiddish if one wants to be taken seriously in the Tora an Charedi world.
Anyone who knew the Rav knew he was highly impressed by American high culture, places such as Harvard and Princeton beckoned to him. He lectured there on public policy and philosophy but never did the same ... at YU. His son attended Harvard not YU. His son in law was a professor at harvard and got a chair there not without an assist from the rav and his friends.The Rav even went so far as to lectre in S. Josephs Seminary in Brookline a college for RC priests !
I guess thye may have impressed him too. later on when he was sick his book On Repentance was published in English by the Paulist Press. I have no idea why ?
You read the Rav's Drashoth and you see that he was less than enthusiastic about the "project" of rebuilding east Euroepan Judaism in the USA. Indeed he transmitted the lernen , but very litle else in the world of Yahadus to his thousands of talmidim.
Like other gedolim of his type (Rabbi Weinberg of berlin, Rav Hutner, Rav Kook, he was a very complex personality with a foot in the modern world and another in the world of heavy duty Torah study.
Schneur
As u see in Holzer books, he never held a idea for too long, he was too intelligent not to see the other side too.
He could give a powerful lecture for the RCA, and after that poke fun from it.
confused tortured soul
Hirshel,-Truthfully,is this "English"intelligible? It took me a minute to determine if it was English or...Yaponezish.The rav spoke a beautiful Yiddish.The geniuses in his shiur who mastered particle physics could have learnt yiddish as well...but the Yiddish smelt of herring and tzibbeleh and cheap mashkeh and these were the sixties and an MO was going to work for NASA and go to the moon...and you know the rest of the story...
Anon
"confused tortured soul"
you can say any deragotry word from your terminology, on Rav Soloviechig, but confused he was not.
His clarity is crystal clear. You never read his works, have you ever read 1 shiur in Zecher Aba Moree? his uncle the Griz, had no capacity to deliver a shiur like this.
Like his uncle.
I remember by the time the Rav stopped saying his regular shiur, there were even Chassiidc men in attendance.
I doubt he was tortured. The Rayaatz "hot gehalten a velt fun ihm" and the Rayaatz was not a man of confusion. He was a man of action and determination.
Some day we will be aoche to a objective biography of the rav.
Zecher zaddik Livrocha
schneur,
'Zecher zaddik Livrocha' - gut gezugt! I assume that's a jab at the Jewish Observer that only gave him a "Zichrono Livracha'.
Anonymous 'As u see in Holzer books, he never held a idea for too long, he was too intelligent not to see the other side too' - For all his greatness, he strikes me as being inconsistent in his opinions.
Misnagdim (apparently) write an English book based on a Chassidishe sefer, and call it a Mussar sefer!
This deserves a post for sure!
http://www.vosizneias.com/98279/2012/01/05/new-york-new-english-book-captures-invaluable-lesson-from-popular-mussar-sefer-nesivos-shalom
I think Klainer is correct.
The Rav in his rapid fire Yiddish was far more impressive and geshmak to listen to than in his plodding English. Yiddish was of course his first language and his Yiddish was quite easy.
No doubt that any young man with the capacity to follow the Rav's shiur could pick up his Yiddish.
A lecture by his son in law
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/767218/Rabbi_Dr._Aharon_Lichtenstein/Hashkafa_-_Going_into_Chinuch
Listen, you are way to nice to get many blog hits.Let me explain:We"ll use the Tzig for an example,k? What he does is write about his very shallow musings, usually about his (read Lubavitchs')favorite nemeses, Vaboylniker,Lakewood,Aguda,Artscroll,Snags.He touches the right buttons and gets heated responses, which he mines and posts ("original content")and gets all the Lubavitcher minions to "help" him "defend" the faith.It helps that many Lubavitchers are on "shlichus" in the boondocks and hotzenplotz and have lots of time on their hands and have a feeling that they are doing a shlichus defendind the faith.Likewise, many boys are quite bored of endless repetition of Chasidic texts and would rather do "shlichus" in cyberspace.You are on the other hand, always understanding, always trying to understand where people are coming from, you don't get people angry and they don't feel a call to arms..
In a nutshell.....
So if you really want to get many hits via the Tzig method:Tie half or three quarters of your brain behind your back, write something really dumb and irritating, when you get a good response mine it and start having a hissy fit about how terrible Snags are.Repeat often enough
An Ailmisher
"For all his greatness, he strikes me as being inconsistent in his opinions."
You are correct he was inconsistent, he did not take himself seious as the leader of any movement.
He was a gevaldiger Rosh Yeshivah and philosopher.
Anon
"It helps that many Lubavitchers are on "shlichus""
good theory but not factual
...don't forget , he called for an ivvestigation of israely responsebility when 1 group of arabs massacred another group of arabs in levonon 30 years ago...causing much anti-semitism etc...
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