In response to my last post: My grandfather is not religious, and in fact, dislikes very much that we are. He doesn't 'agree' with religioun, and thinks my mother shouldn't have raised us this way. But it is a side point. I don't try to argue with him on it.
He was trying to convince me to go to college, because in his opinion, if you don't, you are undeduacted, and basically worthless. But he knew since we are all religious, he might not be able to convince us. So of course he was happy to hear that I started in college this year, and that I want to get a degree in psychology. This is what he told me:
"You are to be commended if your desire is to be a professional psychologist since it is of my opinion that most religious Jews need consoling because their religious training often conflicts with the secular world and they react, sometimes to the detriment of themselves as well as their families. And that is where a psychologist can assist them and do family consoling."
He thinks I should become a psychologist so I can help religious people with conflict, seemingly meaning, if they go otd, I can help them and their family work things out.
I think I just confused myself. But sadly, my grandfather has a point. We don't have control. You can't tell a person what to do, even if you disagree with his decision. You can't prevent someone from going off the derech, no matter how much it may hurt you to see it.
So maybe dealing with the situation after is happens is the only real option? After the fact: do something about it. Ignoring the problem is never a good thing. Believe me. My grandfather tells us often enough what he thinks of us, and he didn't come to my sister's wedding because he doesn't like being around religious people. Don't try to step on eggshells, because that's not what is needed. But don't be hateful either.
Find a middle path. Somewhere that you can both walk on together. I think some of these people who go otd have more hate in them then the religious people have against their actions. But that doesn't mean you should hate them back, or shun them, or spite them, or pity them.
Just be cool. Love them like they are your brother. And stay away from topics of religion.
Well, from personal experience, I can definitely agree with the last line.
ReplyDeleteDamage control? I think it depends more on the individual household's midot than on any other factor. Two neighbors, who went to school together all their lives: One has emotional damage, the other does not. One is cynical, the other is a happy, sincere person. Why? Because one's parents went by "do as I say, not as I do", and criticized everything about the community while continuing to insist on doing things the way the community wanted. The other's parents pointed out everything good about the community, dealt calmly with the bad, and put their money where their mouth was. Their motto was "do as I do, and say as I say". And you see the difference.
Kitzur- not every religious person has emotional damage. It depends on the sincerity and the openness of the home they grew up in.
I didn't mean emotional damage, I meant about the situation in general. If being religious is the norm, and going otd is not a good thing, then after it already happens, you gotta do 'damage control' meaning, deal with it as best as you can.
ReplyDeleteyour education-valuing grandfather apparently can't spell "counsel."
ReplyDeleteReally? I thought he really meant to say 'consoling' like, making them feel better. Ya in his defense, it could mean that too, in context.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be hard to do counseling with a subject one is more emotional than objective towards.
ReplyDeleteBS"D
ReplyDeleteSadly, sometimes one has to do what Avraham Avinu did and "lech lecha meartzecha mebeit avicha" once and for all. Yes, there are times when we have to tell non-religious relatives that it is we who do not want them at our simchas and interfering with our lives.
Otherwise, they and all around them get the idea that maybe we are just not sure about our way of life and just might believe that our ancestral Terachs, those who serve the avoida zoro of empty secularism, are chas vesholom right.
On the other hand, there is little wrong with obtaining an education for parnosso, particularly in the helping and healing professions where we need Torah professionals. Just remember that what you are learning is only so you can better serve Hashem, and basically ignore any kefira that you are taught - regurgitate it on exams if you have to but read it very cynically, always keeping in mind that in the end it is nonsense that just proves how right we are.
And if you ever get discouraged, just take a walk anywhere outside a frum neighborhood and see how "anu ameilim vehem ameilim". If nothing else, you can see that "we must have something right" when you see people, be it Wall Street brokers or Utica Avenue drug dealers, living only for their physical desires and forgetting that they have a purpose in this world past the next fix (of money or power or sex or illusory success or drugs or whatever).
And then you get that niggling doubt that maybe they are right, and you are wrong after all.
ReplyDeleteI'm not the baal teshuva. I was born frum. Who's to say my parents didn't have it all wrong when they switched over? (I'm playing devil's advocate here, but still.)
BS"D
ReplyDeleteThey know how empty their lives are because deep down every Yid knows he should be frum. The old generation did not leave for any real reason, only because of social and economic pressures when they arrived in the US. Much like today's OTD's, they then found excuses and movements to cover and justify themselves. They invented an ugly post-immigrant culture that retained the worst of the ghetto and shtetl and threw out chas vesholom Torah and mitzvos. That is the Jewish world which is rightfully mocked by the Philip Roths and Woody Allens and Mordechai Richlers out there; they mock it whereas those of us who came back to Yiddishkeit soared above it. And there are those who ran from it by intermarrying and putting an end to their Jewish identity altogether because they thought that Judaism was nothing but this bagels and lox and guilt sandwich served by their parents and grandparents.
Now, they see new generations coming back, and they know they should as well but can't.
AURGH!!! The generalizations are killing me. Shagetz, not ALL OTDers had the same experience. Please stop lumping everyone together.
ReplyDeleteBS"D
ReplyDeletePlease read the OTD thread to see what I really wrote about those who leave and the difference between sincere intellectuals versus the online whiners (and pool hall losers).
This comment is about Jewish history in the US, which happens to have been my field of study in an Ivy League university. It also seems to be a history that I share with Altie as apparently we are both descended from turn of the century immigrants who rejected Judaism.
The Jews who left Judaism behind upon arrival in the US (or the first American generation that rejected Judaism) left for economic and social reasons. Only later did they find movements that justified their bad decision. Some found socialism as did their counterparts in Russia at the time, but most just gravitated to an empty post-immigrant bagels, lox and guilt Jewish culture which, I am sorry to say, is worthy of the mockery which it received at the hands of the Woody Allens, Philip Roths and Mordechai Richlers (actually Richler is more like a whining online OTD'er) that it produced with its confusion and emptiness.
The secular American Jewish culture is Chelm - throwing away the baby of Torah and Mitzvos and keeping much of the worst of the ghetto and shtetl. And the reason they kept any vestige of Judaism is only a credit to the Yiddishe neshoma that can never reject its identity as much as a Jew may try to mask who he is.
The world of our secular grandparents (and in my case parents) is a sad shell, neither American nor Jewish and we who returned need to realize what we risk being pulled back into by our misguided ancestors.
You make it sound so harsh.
ReplyDeleteMy grandparents aren't religious. My great-grandparents weren't religious. Probably my great-great weren't either. The point is, the fact that they weren't religious doesn't directly affect me. What DOES affect me is the fact that my parents turned it all around and became religious. And if I throw it all away, or 'see the light' or whatever, I'll be slapping them in the face.
Should I be able to make my own choices, and not feel guilted into keeping it just because my parents worked so hard for it? Of course. Religion has to be of your own free will.
But I don't feel qualified to say that being religious is 'right' and not religious is 'wrong'. That is a very fine line either way.
BS"D
ReplyDeleteOh-oh.
You are treading a dangerous line. If you do not feel qualified to say that Yiddishkeit is right, then you need to internalize it more. Otherwise, you are seeing it as just one more choice in a world full of choices, and one that you are making because it is what your parents decided for you.
Even if you honestly decided it was wrong, and quietly left (not like the OTD online crowd) you would be making a real(ly wrong) choice.
Of course the only correct choice for a Yid is Yiddishkeit, but to make sure you make that right choice and really live it, you need to understand that it is the right choice and why it is the right choice.
If you have questions, there are those who can answer at least some of them at least partially. Maybe not perfectly, but far better than the throw away the baby and keep the bathwater crowd can.
Only Moshiach will ever be able to answer every single question.
'you would be making a real(ly wrong) choice.' Yes of course, you are of the opinion that there is right and wrong, just like black and white. Strictly.
ReplyDeleteMy father says: you can't do that because the Torah says.
Lovely. So I'll sin, and then burn in hell for it.
Regardless, my religious beliefs is not up for discussion.
BS"D
ReplyDeleteOPINION that there is right and wrong like black and white?
No, that is a FACT!
Still, my approach is much different than your father's (which is appropriate up to a certain age but then needs to be explained with WHY we are here and WHY we keep the Torah). And "burn in Hell" is not part of my approach or my belief system at all really - for me Gehennom is a good subject for Purim torah as actually we do not understand it the way the notzrim understand and fear hell. (Try as you may, it is very hard to end up with more than 11 months in Gehennom unless you are a rosho gomur which is as hard a madreiga to descend to as tzaddik gomur is hard to ascend to).
Well then, I can hardly argue with fact, can I.
ReplyDeleteShagetz: Check out http://shouldistayfrum.blogspot.com/2009/09/traif.html
ReplyDeleteIt's a perfect illustration of what you're saying. This fry guy eats treif and gives into his ta'ava, and then makes up silly philosophical reasons why it's OK.
BS"D
ReplyDeleteSilly philosophical reasons?
What I want to know is who let him daven Neilah and where!
The Admou"r meCreedmoor would pay a billion forged food stamps and a trillion fake EBT cards for a chazzan who eats corned beef with melted cheese - but indeed he would want his chazzan to make sure the corned beef is Badatz Eda haMachridis and the cheese is Cholov Yishmoel!
Shaygitz, I thought I got rid of you till after yom tov.
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you who: a shliach who isn't as black-and-white minded as you.
ReplyDeleteBS"D
ReplyDeleteYou mean a shaliach who has no regard for halacha (or perhaps was duped by a sociopath or hired a loser family member out of pity)?
Don't get started on losers. If you have nothing nice to say about people, don't say it.
ReplyDeleteBS"D
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the new Chabad. Good thing I did not have much to eat yet today or I'd be breching all over my keyboard.
Bye bye to this silly blog of yours and your New Age anything goes chevra. If this is what is left of Chabad, I hope any future kids I have find a new Chassidus and bring me along. Fortunately, the real Chabad is out there doing real shlichus, not New Age hiring of treyf guzzlers as chazzonim who are machshil es harabim.
FEH! This I would expect from followers of Zalman Schachter Shalomi, not of the Rebbe.
I heard you started a blog to discuss problems in chabad, and how to fix them. Good luck with that. You can't fix problems.
ReplyDeleteI don't care if you don't read my blog. I don't care if you don't like my opinion.
But I DO care if you insult another Jew, frum or not frum, 'treyf guzzlers' or otherwise.
As my mother always says, 'you can't hurt another Jew. They are a Jew and you must love them.'
Whether or not they can daven by the amud I will nit discuss, because I am not qualified to say. But to call them losers- that's not right bichlal. And if that's the kind of person that you are- then I don't need you to comment on my 'silly blog of mine.'
BS"D
ReplyDeleteWhen someone is machshil es harabim (deceiving a congregation in this case) I have every right to denounce him. Loser is very polite language for both the chazzan and the shaliach who hired him.
Love? Yes - but sometimes there is tough love. Like when I forcibly removed a dangerous addict from my shul, because my friends and their children (and the shul valuables)were more important than his well being. Then, after neutralizing the danger to ourselves, someone called to see if he could be put in rehab. He was once frum, and no, we did not give him maftir for Shabbos, we gave him a moment to get out or risk arrest at best and my tossing him down the stairs at worst.
Chabad is not love everyone 60's and 70's shtus. It is RULES that come from SINAI. Black and white that becomes a rainbow, not an Obama or Jesse Jackson rainbow for everyone who does what they want and excluding people who follow the rules as they should be.
I can't fix problems? We shall see. And what was discussed above is exactly the kind of problem I intend to fix, even if it means making the new pick and choose crowd find another spiritual home.
Your blog (and e's) are being added to my filter as soon as I can get hold of my filter admin. Hatzlacha.
I'd love to know what the Rebbe has to say about your take on 'losers'. Tough love? That's not love at all.
ReplyDeleteDo what you want. My blog is nothing like the OTD blogs out there, and I see no reason to put it on a filter. I'll bet you've never read my posts until you could find one where you could let off steam.
When you solve world problems, let me know. Until then, read it, don't read it, that's fine with me.
BS"D
ReplyDeleteThe Rebbe had very strict standards for his shluchim and discipline was very strictly enforced.
The word he would have for the shaliach involved would have been a call from Rav Hodakov AH with the simple message: "You are fired"! We do not let the inmates run the asylum, or at least we are not supposed to. Sadly after 3T everything is a free for all and you have half baked shluchim producing half baked mekurovim.
I read your blog at the beginning, lost track of it when you changed URL, came back and was dismayed at what I saw to put it mildly. I remember you from another forum and you were one of the good ones out there.
But the Rebbe would not have written them off as 'loser'.
ReplyDeleteA goy can't touch non mevushal wine, but if they are in the process of becioming a Jew, we simply put it in a paper bag, and make sure they don't handle it. We don't call them 'goy' and write them off.
Frum teens. Another lifetime ago.
I'd like to think that I'm still one of the good ones out there.
BS"D
ReplyDeleteLoser is a very polite word in this case. The shaliach would have been written off with a word far sharper than loser. There were times when the Rebbe delivered rebuke, often in situations like this, and while his language was not c2009, if translated it would make loser look very tame. Before 3T someone of that level would never have thought to ask to daven at the omud at any Chabad House. A full beard was only the smallest requirement for chazzanus. Personally if I fall asleep during the day and don't go to mikve again or at least take a shower with the right volume of water (21 litres) I don't take the amud unless absolutely necessary, that is how serious an obligation even a simple mincha is.
LOLOLOL Frumteens????? Look on Creedmoor and see what I think of Frumteens which is how the black and white approach without Chassidus can go wrong.
Where I come from we serve only mevushal. There are questions as to whether a non Shomer Shabbos Jew can handle non mevushal and it is best not served outside of immediate family or known friends.
I think you are way too harsh. And no one made you Rebbe.
ReplyDeleteThere is black and white in halacha, yes. But as to emotions, feelings, behavior- many many colors in a rainbow. No black and white there. And if you were a father and had a son who went off, and you 'threw him down the stairs', good luck with him ever speaking to you again, let alone coming back. I would pity you.
I think your outlook is a bit warped.
I thought you were the admin of frumteens, unless I'm wrong. Maybe frumspace?
BS"D
ReplyDeleteIf any child of mine used drugs, a trip down the stairs would be the least he would have to fear from me.
Frumteens is very anti Chabad. The second guess is correct though I sold the site long ago.
Warped? Oh, well, sorry to hear that halacha and standards are warped in your view. What can I do? Maybe you mean time warped in that I refuse to bend to the ways of the New Age Chabad crowd of Mimulo and Matisyahu.
Well, maybe Chabad is not the right derech for you, or maybe, sadly, your generation will reshape it into Jewish Renewal with kapotes and sheitlach and therefore chase the old guard with the old standards out. I am already seeing the latter happen in far too many places.
Why do you seem to find one point in everything I say, and jump on it? General, general, I generalize. I said nothing about drugs, but I would fear for your childs life.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I like Matisyahu. And don't be hating on everyone. What do you think chabad is all about? Don't forget, you did not start this movement, you are one piece of a whole, so don't go around talking like you know what you're talking about, and that you know how to 'fix' everything. You can't fix something that's not broken.
As for me- don't tell me what derech is right for me. That is none of your business. You are not my mashpia, or my Rabbi, and I didn't ask you what you thought.
I have no time for this, I have a life to live. Any more comments can be emailed to me, I'm not having a farbrengin on my blog.
BS"D
ReplyDeleteI have no time to waste with this either.
What I got involved with has very little resemblance to much of today's Chabad. What I see now is a broken shell compared to what once was, especially in Crown Heights aka Clown Depths.
At the end of the day I don't mind moving onward and upward if this is what is left of a once great Chassidus. Things happen on our way to Geula, and reaching new lows is one of those things.
Bye for now and forever. I don't talk to walls.
And I don't talk to insulting people. Good luck, I hope you find what you are looking for.
ReplyDeleteShaygitz I just realized, I am probably being more open minded than you right now. I think it is you that is the wall.
ReplyDeleteAltie: nice moves.
ReplyDeleteSheygetz: I'm flattered that you consider me evil enough to filter.
Shaygetz:
ReplyDeleteI just spoke to unsure unfrum, and he said that he asked a rov before agreeing to daven by the shliach. So you can add the rabbonim to your list of people who are destroying Lubavitch.
Thanks E. Now I feel better. (That was not sarcastic.)
ReplyDeleteHey guys....
ReplyDeleteAltie- You is a pure Neshama! (Even if there is no such thing as a soul... )
E- Classy as usual. Thanks for enlightening the worried people.
Shaygetz- Nebach, therapy is what is needed I feel bad for you.
Now stop blogging, and go yell at your kids so more. This time yell at them for drinking OUTSIDE THE SUKKAH!!!!! Yell as loud as you can: "IT'S AGINAST HALACHA!!!!!!!”
Then, in the name of Halacha, verbally abuse your wife but Daven extra long in 770 on hoishana rabbah followed by a good bull shove with all the other winners there.
(That was very rude but there are many damaging ppl like him and the frum community is not open enough for kids to know that their parents are being abusive, these kids think that they deserve to be verbally abused and they draw inspiration from the self deprivation called Chassidishkait and/or yiddishkait etc – (Yes, all based on my experience so no need to come up with that brilliant thought by yourself :)
Stam- Y’know the frum community doesn’t want men to be men. It seems that they want you to be weak. Nowhere and no one in the frum community is the concept of a man being strong ever spoken about.
Davining – wasn’t easy at all, I was torn about being fry (yes! I am fry= free!) and davening at the amud in ……… near ………. which is right next to the Shliach Rabbi……… …….. Ben ………. (I think his wife is a …….. or …………) All jokes aside I was torn and did not have a fun yom tov.
I did inspire many people though and I did ask a Rov if I am allowed to Daven for the Amud.
Thanks :) I don't think I deserve that compliment, but I'll take it.
ReplyDeleteOf course there is such a thing as a soul, and if I took a guess, I'd say yours is suffering (I'm not a priest, I don't do confessionals.)
Strong as in, physically strong?
Torn you were, but you davened. Good for you.
I am so done with this whole frum, not frum, fray, otd thing. I just wanna be Altie!! Let me live in peace!!
Now I'm gonna go back to blogging about birds and flowers, trees and nature, and occasionally G-d.
Can we all just stop talking about the religious stuff??