R. Rakeffet tackles the Malochim and Torah VoDaas

Rabbi Rakeffet: Throw Them Out!

Laced with the good Rabbi's inevitable mistakes, but nice to listen to, even if not completely accurate.

Sunday Morning Links

BOCHURIM STRIKE IN RADIN

They look at us like some never-before-seen tribe in the Amazon

$1800 gets you 2 double beds and boring speeches in Woodcliff Lake, NJ

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik elected to the position of "Chairman of the National Executive" of the Agudath Israel of America (1940)



Listen from 17 minutes and so for like 2 minutes. Such foolishness. Rabbi Brog has an audience listening to his speeches? He doesn't really get his message across. I mean no disrespect, but it's poshut hard to listen to! Is he R' Avigdor Miller's grandson? Was this RAM's general view on Chassidus as well?

סיום ספר תניא קדישא מעל גלי הראדיא - מוצש"ק תזו"מ תשמ"ב ע"י הרב יוסף הלוי וויינבערג ע"ה

מיט א קורצע אריינפיר פון דעם אלעמען באקאנטער מר. באסענקא

 

הפצת המעיינות 50 יאר צוריק!

Received via e-mail: "Today I bought these 2 records outside of 770. There is a guy that sells old seforim and shaimos sometimes and he had a bunch of old records. I was looking for these for along time. I have digitized them and I want you to put them up l'zchus harabim. It says on the record that he made 3 records. If anyone has the third he should please send the recording, as we only have the first two. Put up the pictures of the records as well. This was hafotzas hamayonos 50 years ago!!! Listen to chassidus in your own home. The person these came from probably was not a Lubavitcher, judging from the rest of his collection." - [This is a young Reb Yossel Weinberg ע"ה. A real treat!]



Tape 1 side 2
Tape 2 side 1
Tape 2 side 2


 

Is Gil Student gefallen ofen kupp?

Otherwise why would he post a thing like this?!

But the truth is I can relate. After some 7.5 years of grinding out this stuff on a near-daily basis you sometimes get desperate. Speaking about Chabad, especially when juxtaposed with words like "heresy," gets people to read and talk about you. So he really meant no harm.

Chakira tells him as much:

"What an offputting title to a post. I realize you end up in the right place. But the idea that you or the people you quote are remotely qualified to render judgments on two of the greatest contributors to Jewish theology in modern times is so laughable and farfetched as to border on the offensive. Even someone whose spent years reading Kabbalistic texts and understands the implications of the Kabbalistic terms at play might be flummoxed and confused by this debate. It really relies to a great extent on arcane of how you read Lurianic and Zoharic texts which are not explicit on this point. Also on how you parse a few disputes in 13th cent. Kabbalah which are not at all clear. I really don’t think more than half a dozen or so people in the world are qualified to weigh in on this question from either traditional or academic perspectives. Certainly not to render definitive judgments. This is like headlining a post “Was Descartes Wrong?” or “Socrates, what a moron!” without really understanding the entire oeuvre and reading copious amounts of secondary material. It's provocative to juxtapose a picture of the Alter Rebbe with some trash talk. What it isn’t is productive."

בד"ה - הגאון האדיר ר' דובער (בערל) שווארצמאן ז"ל

Yeshiva World Calls him the "father of Rav Yaakov Eliezer Shlita, who is the eldest grandson of Hagoan Rav Aaron Kotler ZATZAL, and is presently the Rosh Yeshiva of Lakewood East in Yerushalayim..." Berel Shvartzman was from Nevel. Yes, that Nevel. I was told that he was boki in Tanya and Likutei Torah. His mother was HaYitzchaki, a cousin to the famed Reb Zalman Moshe of Nevel. His family left the USSR during the 30s and Berel learned in Eitz Chaim, IIRC. [ I'm told now that he was a Chevroner.] Once during a visit by RAK to Israel he gave a shiur in his shver's (RebIsserZalmanMeltzer) Yeshiva Chevroner Yeshivah and Berel was not impressed by the shiur... And told him so... So RAK took him to America and married him off to his daughter. That marriage ended rather unfavorably, but his kids did manage to get pedigree that was more to their liking than a Neveler balagoleh... כאטש אז יעדער חסיד וואלט אנדערש געזאגט.  The frum webistes seem to not want to recognize that he had a wife and life after the divorce, and several children too... Reb Berel was married to a sister of Rav Uri Chountal's of Yerres, France, wife, who passed away a month ago.

I heard that he would say that he was Tinok Shenishbeh...

Skverrer Folklore - Oops, maybe it wasn't so...

Column "בלשון חסידים" the 4th paragraph, is the focus of our post today. I've heard this "story" ever since I was a young lad in cheder - that the Skverrer Tzaddikim had the Tanya bound from both sides, since it was "too holy" to learn, but "too holy" not to have in the bookshelf. I'm not sure what I supposed to do with that piece of info, but that was the story. Now it seems like the Skverrer Chassidim made the "fatal mistake" (as the reader who sent this to me called it) of actually printing this for all to see. I suppose it makes them look bad for being so "closed-minded?" That they're so afraid of the Tanya that they need to control their urges and bind it all around.


But it seems like the legend is not for all to see and enjoy. Once word got out some people started getting hot around the collar, it seems. The הכחשה in the column "קוראים כותבים" is of an interesting variety. Not that they didn't bind the sefer haTanya from both sides, it's just that Reb Yankev Yosef never showed it to them, since he had no such חפצים from his zeide Reb Itzikel Skverrer... Then again; maybe it was his own sefer haTanya that he showed them, not his zeides, so we may have not saved ourselves by publishing the "clarification" after all, because Skver still comes out looking bad for binding a sefer that they disagree with.

A *star* we can all look up to!

Mark me down as one person who's not a fan of "A Jewish Star," the infamous competition that makes every kid and adult think he can sing - which is terrible in and of itself, until three guys in oversized chairs, two of which have no shaychus to neginah, tell them how awful they sound. I think the fact that this is what Lubavitchers and a "non-affiliated, unofficial" website which at the same time is pretty official as far as anybody is concerned, is doing and promoting is a disgrace. The idea that this is what's put on a pedestal for our kids is nothing short of an outrage. Call me intolerant and old-fashioned, see if I care. (and a party pooper too, if you so please.) I would not be surprised if they do a girl's version next year and tell those that have a problem with it "not to watch it..." This year Tzivos Hashem started a similar idea, where children submit videos and the video is then displayed on a certain unofficial Chabad website. I'm not sure what the winner gets, if there is a winner at all. "the power of the Jewish Child, they call it. Most kids submit videos of them singing some "Yeshiva Boys Choir" song that's been beaten to death, but what we have here is refreshingly different, and different in a good way, not the artsy way. I was skeptical about this TH competition, it seemed like more of the same, but what we just saw may be the redeeming factor, if only until the next kid does the standard YBC yelp.

Having said that - despite the fact that AJS is currently in full swing - I will stand up and cheer for Yisrolik Wilhelm - who happens to be my cousin - and tell all of you to do the same. Yisrolik bucked the trend in many ways here. For one, he didn't do the standard YBC tune, there's a lot to be said for that. Just for that he deserves our thanks. But then there's what he DID do, memorize, learn. In the old days it was expected for every bachur to memorize the first 12 perokim of Tanya Ba'al Peh, including the Shaar Blatt and the Hakdomoh, before his Bar Mitzveh. I'm not saying every kid actually did it, but it was expected. Nowadays we're happy if he knows the ma'amar. If he does a pshetel/pilpul in addition to that we're overjoyed. If he leins his parsha as well we're giddy with joy. Imagine the nachas that parents shep if their son learns the 12 perokim ba'al peh! Such is the nachas that Yisrolik's parents have. and we applaud the fact that he went and publicized it because he will influence others that are shayich to it to work hard and do it as well. If this competition was created only for Yisrolik to show the world (this is the world wide web, after all) that it CAN be done, and that the words of Tanya CAN be metaher the avir no matter where we go, DAYENU!

א גרויסן דיינק, ישראל'יק, זאלסט אויפוואקסן און זיין א חסיד, ירא שמים און א למדן