These days everybody seems to be a Tzaddik, at least on the outside. Every second Yungerman in BP wears long white socks on Shabbos and YT, with a "Rezhvoolke" to boot. When you look at the holy figure on a cold winter's day, with his hands in his sleeves, he looks like a regular Tzaddik. Far be it from me to intrude on another guy's holy intentions, but wholesale Tzidkoos like this seems a bit of a stretch. The Rebbe, upon accepting the leadership of Chabad, was asked to wear a Shtreimel he answered that a Shtreimel was a Malbush for Rebbes only, and he wasn't one.
As far as a Malbush saving you from Aveyres, I think modern technology has just about debunked that myth.
how was it debunked?
ReplyDeletelet me explain.
ReplyDeletelong ago, before the advent of video stores and internet, making public appearances at houses of ill repute was risky business. Nowadays one needn't appear anywhere he needs to be ashamed of, he can stay at home and read and see anything from heresy to you-know-what.
Farshteyst?
You may then ask how come every fresh BT, who still has the leftover taste of tarfus in his mouth and only last week had his ponytail clipped off, is encouraged to put on a black hat and if married kapoteh etc?
ReplyDeleteIt means nothing - after all.
And why did the rebbe changefrom a grey hat to a black one?
And why do we not find a single Chabadnik these days wearing a grey hat?
Incidentally, I have heard from a number of our 'true' chassidim that they are mekaneh the Hungarian and Polish chassidim for their option to wear true chassidishe malbushim. UNlike us who basically wear the stuff of the misnagdim - which itself waas previously malbushei goyim.
MoshiachNow
ReplyDeletethere is Yiddish and then there's "Tzaddikish". Yiddishe Malbushim are fine, but once you decide that פאר דיר פאסט נאר רבי'שע מלבושים that's where the bluff starts, and where it never ends. Today every fifth guy at a wedding you go to wears a Bekitshe in the weekdays because his elter zeide was a Hungarian Rov. Please.
The rebbe was not given his father in laws streimel by his mother in law, because she disagreed with him being rebbe, so in protest he put on a hat.
ReplyDeleteYou know they say, "The clothes make the man." Zol es take azoi zein.
ReplyDeleteHT,
ReplyDeleteThis is the lest of the frum world's problems... but the point is valid - not on its own merits though:
The clothes are ok, it's the attitude that the wearer often has that is problematic.
I have seen a number of the "banim shel kedoshim" flaunt their yichus as instant Tzaddikim by birth, and they really think they are a tefech hecher, but when they start quiting chassidus/kaballistic ideas it becomes clear that they have less understanding of Toras Hachasidus than my 13 year old son.
Sad really... (before the attacks begin, i do relaize that not all of them are this way)
Ridiculous. He had been wearing the hat. When the shvigger didn't release the shtreimel, he stuck with the hat. No "protest".
ReplyDeleteAs pnimius-dik as Chabad (or any yeshiva) wants to be, it is all but impossible for such a conformity of lifestyle and belief as a Chareidi group has, not manifest itself eventually in a confomity of fashion. Every society has experienced this phenomenon.
Moshiach now, wake up, what you call true Chassidishe malbushim come from goyim too,go to the museum in Petersburg,Russia,see the hat that Peter the great wore there, very much like a streimel.
ReplyDeleteThe son of the zaddik Rav Aron Roth -Rav Abraham Chaim Roth of Bnai Brak writes in the introduction to his editino of Shomre Emunim his taitch of Kesheyafutzu mayonsecho Chutza - when all the mayanoth of chassiduth will be Chizoniuth, forgive me but that day is basically here.Levush has become of overriding import. What about pnimiuth??
ReplyDelete