Then it's my responsibility to post it here and do my part. At first it's Uman ראש השנה. But that helps people on a personal level. Helps them get inscribed in the Book of Life, because Reb Nachman is the best lawyer that money can buy. Then we were told that the 10 kapitlach help anytime, but only for the חטא הידוע. Now we hear that it helps all Jews all the time! And it'll beat the enemies of Israel and the Jewish People into submission. So I too will do my part in spreading the good word here. After all, most of you don't see the light poles in Boro Park, so if not for me you wouldn't know about this project. The only problem is, I see now that this took place yesterday already... Oh, well.
Rabbi Lazer Yudkowski is a Rebbe of a different kind. In shul he פראוועס Rebbistive, mitten gantzen Dzikover/Ropshitzer knack, but in real life he saves Jewish lives. He does it by, you might say, lifting up those who have fallen. In a way that "פאסט נישט" for other people of much smaller stature. Here he tells us what kind of craziness people have in their heads and how he's working to change that mindset. How kids and adults that seem to be OTD (or XO) are suffering greatly every single day of their lives. He is introduced by Avi Fishoff.
The link to the WNYC program about Muslims and their radicalization problem was inspired by this year's convention, which seemed to put some emphasis on our OTD problem. After listening to speeches about Achdus and underpaid Rebbis, we heard lots of talk about OTD, which by the way, is now to be known as XO, for X-Orthodox. This according to Eli Fink. Muslims have the opposite OTD problem. Their youth is being radicalized online, and our youth is going the other way, often quite radically, as well. Especially if you saw yesterday's news...So what we need to do is show our presence online. By our presence I mean normal, frum Jews doing everyday stuff, peeling potatoes for kugel and on Chol haMoed trips, raking leaves and making snow malochim. Stuff normal people do. That'll keep our kids from eating from the forbidden fruit. Seems like this is Agudah's will to be the solution to every problem pertaining to the frum community under the sun. Soon they'll be providing filtered internet and shoes for Pesach. G-d bless them, if they can do it, but it seems like they're stretching themselves way too thin here. Focusing on too many issues depletes manpower and money. Maybe if they focused on getting money for Yeshivos and busing, and little else they would do a better job at it. From the clipping in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle it seems like some things haven't changed. They did the same thing 90+ years at the 1st KG in Vienna. Except that back then there were no solutions, all you could tell them was that the gates of hell awaited them. I imagine they didn't bring Psychologists and mental health professional onto the dais back then, and didn't talk about hugging kids smoking on Shabbos either.... Gotta run...
נראים גם כ"ק אדמו"ר ה"אביר יעקב" מסאדיגורא זצ"ל, אדמו"ר ר' יצחק מבוהוש זצ"ל, אדמו"ר ר' ברוך מסערעט-ויז'ניץ זצ"ל, הסבא כ"ק אדמו"ר ה"אמרי חיים" זצ"ל, ועוד
The call to action - as only our Rebbe could. It's not about saving yourself from a psak on judgement day. It's not about just doing your duty. It's so much more. It may be worth learning Yiddish just to understand this sicha.
You know who you are. I'm truly flattered that you value and request my opinion.
Other reasons may include
1) not inciting the wrath of their many supporters
2) Not wanting to give their more attention than they already are getting
3) I'm no boki in הלכות שררה לנשים
4) I'm just a blogger.
I'm a simple guy with mostly old-fashioned values. Not that I'm terribly afraid of controversy, it's just that they get petty and call you names. Hater, chauvinist, and מי יודע מה. Somehow you become part of this vast conspiracy to keep women down and in the kitchen. Somehow what they want is so simple and so muttar; just like Shabbos clocks and Kosher lamps. No less. The funny thing is that it's mostly men calling for all this change, at least the ones I see. The women go about their business and do what they wanna do. The men go on FB and make a stink. I suppose that wins them points with the ladies? So I should stand here and call out Avi Weiss or the guys at YCT? What for? So that no Orthodox shul takes a YCT or HIR grad as Rabbi? Besides. it's not just about YCT or HIR anymore. The idea has spread to many more similar circles, especially in Israel, and they could care less what a few old men in a boardroom in NY think. It has joined similar movements that have made much headway in recent years, much to every frum Jew's chagrin, and sometimes the only response is to keep silent. That's all I have to say.
You might say I got to know Chaim Aron Rottenberg after the attempt made on his life and his subsequent move out of New Square. It started with a chance encounter out of town and continued after that for some time. Most people that went through his ordeal, and you can see this probably is a lifetime of some pain and discomfort for him, not just a period of recovery after the incident, would have had smoke coming out of their ears when speaking of their attackers. This is not the case when it comes to CAR. He's very calm, cool and collected when speaking of his adversaries, you might even get a smile out of him. But he still carries the pain with him and wants what he sees as justice to be served. So I'm not here to judge anybody. The fact that Rottenberg wants Spitzer to serve out his term is his prerogative. Seven years isn't much for what he attempted to do, in Rottenberg's eyes, that is, and at least he should serve what he sees as a light sentence. We don't know what kind of emotional pain and scars he lives with. Even the physical pain is hard for us to imagine. And we surely don't know how we would react if it c"v happened to us. So when we attack CAR and tell him to let bygones be bygones we're being a bit hard on him, since we don't know what we would do if it was c"v our pain and suffering. You might say that he's trying to get back at the leadership of Skver. OK, I hear that point, but still.
As far as our Skverrer brothers are concerned; That's another story. You all heard what the pundits have to say, so there's no need for me to repeat it here. Unless you missed going to shul all week... It's no secret that they lack in the PR department. Yes, they're happy that their friend was released, but somebody should have realized that these days everything gets out immediately and that they'll seem like accessories to attempted murder all over again. So don't give out free coffee and keep the dancing and the Kiddush to a bare minimum. And even then stop and frisk any guy that joins any celebration; so that no video clips make their way to Lohud and the internets. Because they now have to deal with disgruntled MO and Charedi-light people who once again are upset at Skver, even if they were the recipients of good-ol'fashioned Skverrer hospitality, whether in NS or at a local hospital. This is old news by now, so time to move on.
And don't start with the Lubavitch didan notzach analogies, please.
As you can see from the link posted here, this is a series of documentaries about the children of Jerusalem in the '90s. Yehuda is from what you might call a ChaBaKOOK family with very strong Carlebachian influences. He studies ספר המדות from Reb Nachman page by page and tries to remember it by heart. His father/parents may be Shlomo's mekurev, for all I know. כה נראה לי. אני לא מכיר אותם, אבל מהיפושים ברשת נ"ל שהם חסידי קרליבך. What is clear is that the family marches to their own beat... I doubt they could be told about dress codes and what kind of shoes to wear... Yehuda goes/studies at Cheder Toras Emes Lubavitch in Yerushalayim and is a talmid in Reb Yankel Bloi's class. There the other kids made sure to טשעפע him about his very long peyos. So much so that he cut them short one day and was embarrassed to show his face at home.... But now he's quite comfortable with them and likes to find other kids with similar side locks in the story books that he reads with his younger brother. I'd love to find out what happened to young Yehuda.
