Thursday, May 26, 2005

The Uniter

It takes a big man to unite most facets of Jews, and not many others can do it.

For $2.90 you can watch live video from Meron.

You can do the Chai Rotel thing online, too.

Join a Parade.

Eat Colored Eggs.

Oh!, and don't forget to learn a shtikkel Zohar!

In case you're wondering, I mean RaSHBI.



12 comments:

  1. One thing I never understood about the lag B'Omer Parades: The Rebbe wanted all kids to take part, even frummer non Lubavitcher ones. But how can we ask others to take part in our inyonim if we refuse to take part in theirs?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The question should be: "why should we attend their functions when they refer to us as Apikorsim at worst and Meshugoyim at best"?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Again, I'm not asking wether they should come to us or visa versa. It's our attitude of consternation when they boycott us, yet we could care less about waht's important to them, like chillul k'vorim etc.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh please, don't confuse the two. We're talking about functions or events organized by other groups, not general campaigns in Israel. The Rebbe had a specific reason for not endorsing Demonstrations, even those organized by Chabad today.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Here is where we tread very dangerous ground. The inevitable argument that would ensue would be reminiscent of - "Who came first, the chicken or the egg?" - or in this case, who started "namecalling" first.

    After all, don't we spend our entire lives at farbrengens denigrating all misnagdim and non-chabadniks, in general? It has reached a point where many lubavitchers are more comfortable in the company of not-yet-religious Jews than in the company of fellow orthodoxers!

    Don't get me wrong.. I would be first to admit that I'm guilty of that myself. But what has brought on this great divide among Jews? Did we alienate ourselves from them, or did they ostracize us?

    The above question is no longer relevant, however; we merely have to do whatever we can to right that wrong. Perhaps RaSHbY is just the man for the job! Yechi RaSHbY!

    ReplyDelete
  6. or maybe the uniter is A.G. the one who is responsible for the Lag Beomer poster that you posted on your site.

    ReplyDelete
  7. actually when i started reading the post i thought thats who it was refering to

    ReplyDelete
  8. Avrelem wrote: "Oh please, don't confuse the two. We're talking about functions or events organized by other groups, not general campaigns in Israel."

    OK Lets talk about the siyum HaRambam. For some reason, we shlep out all kinds of notables (and wanna-be-notables) from different kreizen to come and participate and encourage their people to do the same. At the same time, we don't exactly take part on their Daf Yomi, and some of us even discourage our people for attending the DY siyum or even learning DY (!!).

    All I’m asking for is some consistency or otherwise an explanation as to why we don't need to be consistant.

    ReplyDelete
  9. DovBer,
    I hear you.
    There is a difference though, Lubavitch makes claims that nobody else does.
    We - the Rebbeim really - put Chabad on a pedestal far above all others.
    When we are the "only true path," it is their job to follow and our job to lead. We try to mashpia on goyim too, but its not a two way street - we aren't being mekabel from them
    an anecdote:
    (There are many like it, so I'll write about the one I witnessed)
    A Lubavitcher was speaking with a Gerer Chosid. The Gerer took issue with Lubavitchers that consider their Rebbe to be Moshiach. This is what happened:

    Lubavitcher: "Do you think your Rebbe is Moshiach?"
    Gerer: "No Way!"
    Lubavitcher: "Is Gerer Chassidus the highest path to serve Hashem?"
    Gerer: "No - To each their own"
    Lubavitcher: "Is there any intrinsic mayla to the Gerer derech over any other type of frum derech?"
    Gerer: "No."
    Lunavitcher: "So if you don't believe in your own movement, why should I? I DO believe in my derech, maybe if you learn with me you will see it that way too."
    Gerer: Nah, I'm not interested.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Colored eggs.
    My late mother ws born near Vilna before WW 2 and probably never saw a Chasid until the DP camps in 1945.
    Yet both my brother and I heard her tell us of the minhog of colring eggs and playing with them on Lag baOmer.
    So one need not travel to Yemen to find this minhog.

    ReplyDelete
  11. About the poster shown here: The program was a smashing success, which, I guess, prove that most people can overlook the fact that although most Lubavitchers would not attend a program arranged by, say, Bobov, and they did attend en masse.

    ReplyDelete
  12. The coloured egg thing seems to be very limited. I don't think it's a Lubav thing; most Ls I've mentioned it to have never heard of it. I know of three families from Dockshitz who do have this custom, and kurenitzer's mother was from Vilne, so could it be a geographical thing? Perhaps something like sweet v salty gefilte fish?

    ReplyDelete

Please think before you write!
Thanks for taking the time to comment
ביטע טראכטן פאר'ן קאמענטירן, און שרייבן בכבוד'דיג, ווי עס פאסט פאר אידן יראי השם

ביטע נוצן עפעס א צונאמען כדי דער שמועס זאל קענען אנגיין אויף א נארמאלן שטייגער

Please, no anonymous comments!!