"fake yeshivish."

i think it was robert k merton who did some neat stuff in the sociology of science by studying networks of citations. i also recall seing a study about reading habits of liberal and conservative Americans, which found that the networks of books read rarely overlap (not too many republicans read Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, for example, and not too many people who read that astute piece of social commentary read the conservative analogs...). i couldn't find that study but this analysis of blogging networks is similar - especially look at the pretty picture on page 3 ; )
all that by way of introduction...

being back in manhattan, and once again among the west side and YU type people whose myopia prevents them from seeing off this smelly island, i have had numerous occasions to laugh, or get indignant, at the designation, often with a derrogatory undertone, of some YU community or other where peope happen to wear dark suits as "yeshivish." I always reply, smugly, "those people are fake yeshivish. i lived in brooklyn." but what do i mean by that besides "your xenohobic identity politics are annoying"?

basically, and this is not a super interesting point, i think "Modern" vs. "yeshivish" circles could be mapped very much like the liberal and conservative map cited above, based on two basic sets of factors:

1- the authorities generally cited or studied (eg: the "fake yeshivish" still quote a lot of the Rav, whom they often even call that, and very little of Rav Pam, Rav Belsky, etc. they read the jewish press or the jewish week and the Times, not hamodia or the yated. the real yeshivish often fill their bookcases with random compilations of achronish torah, the fake yeshivish generally don't. )

2- the sociological/cultural background or awareness of the members (even if they "frummed out," anyone who went to dayschol still knows a lot about secular movies and books that your average touro student doesn't. particularly on the books end ;) fake yeshivish are more likely, too, i would guess, to associate socially with people who would clearly not be defined as yeshivish -eg, their kippah-sruga sporting brother in teanech - than they are to visit boro park on a regular basis. and they probably still know a lot more about YU than Lakewood.)

caveat: the children of the fake yeshivish may go to real yeshivish schools and become real yeshivish themselves, or they may themelves go to fake yeshivish schools and continue to corrupt "Modern" communities with their black hats and strange sense of fealty to halachah.

anyway, perhaps an aspiring sociologist of orthodoxy could make more out of this...

ps - as this sudden spate of blogging may suggest, i am officially on vacation. for real. carefree (aka plan-free, but whatever...) smile for me!

propaganda

from my vegan roomate*:

two cartoons.

their take on chewie is atrocious, but otherwise they're fun.

*in unrelated news, I NEED AN APARTMENT!

what's a bas yisroel to do?

I started reading(one of) Rav Lichtenstein's recent book(s) over the weekend. This is probably one of those books I will never finish, so I'm just going to write down my thoughts so far and hope someone can set me straight... also, i don't have it in front of me, so the citations will b fuzzy.

1- in ch. 1 he talked about the "natural order," the one that we have some sort of generic obligation to uphold since creation under "leovdah uleshomrah." at least once Rav Lichtenstein refers to its "social" aspects as well - but there are no examples! so what is the "natural" social order?

2- the whole calculus of learning vs. worldly professions, making money, etc, has two basic soures for why one should seek to maximize "direct" spiritual activities, especially Torah, despite the values of "binyan yishuvo shel olam."

(a) the world stands on Torah, avodah, and gemilut hasadim. So one should seek to be involved in these directly as much as possible. Rav Lichtenstein does suggest, however, that many professions may fall under the category of gemilut hasadim because of their effect in "repairing the world" (on a side note, i found it interesting that here he seems to have carefully avoided the contemporary non-orthodox fad of harping on tikkun olam as a central, independent value, instead subsuming it under chessed.)

(b) the obligation to study torah yomam va-laylah - basically, as much a possible ("kefi kocho," acc. to Ramban or some such rishon, i think).

all together, acc. to Rav L, this means that one should choose a profession that allows time for avodah and torah study - one should seek to be a "ben torah."

but what about those of us for whom only (a) applies?

should we also seek to be bnot torah as some sort of middat chassidut, or should we davka focus on binyan yishuvo shel olam as gemilut chasadim because men are discouraged from doing so? or are we totally unadressed here, and really our role in sustaining the world is the gemilut chasadim of the home?

i realize that rav Aharon is a rosh yeshiva for boys, and he's talking to them, but, if you will permit me a moment of melodrama, who's talking to women of similar intellctual/social persuasions* even half as seriously?!?

Some women seem to simply adopt the male model of ben torah and try to do it as girls. that's not nec. bad, but i think there has to be something else, too...

*not that i'm claiming a pervasive intellectual or emotional affinity with The Gush, but I think someone speaking to that audience would have more to say to the specific situation f someone like me than, say, Rebbetzin Heller.

a monster named moishe

i remember one of my grown-up neighbors passionately denouncing In the Night Kitchen - i didn't know why, but my mom told me it had something to do with her not liking the fact that Mickey is partially naked in one of the scenes. I wonder what my neighbor would have said about some of Sendak's otehr books. Anyway...

today i saw the maurice sendak exhibit at the Jewish Museum.

i liked it a lot. it was much heavier than i expected.
at times, the commentaries seemed a bit too psychoanalytical about sendak's "anxieties" and whatnot, but by the end of the exhibit you get the real sense that he uses children's (and other, somewhat) literature to work through his own, err, "issues." (who would have thought In the Night Kitchen had holocaust references?) anyway, Sendak's preoccupation with global suffering combines with an intense persnalization of suffering via the holocaust experience of his family (though not him or his parents) to leave one seriously traumatized fellow. is it good to spend your entire life trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible evils of the world by drawing to mozart? or is it a little to much? in either case, if you live in new york i recommend going to see the show.
the best parts: comparing early and late version of the same scenes ; the room in the middle with a rug and copies of the books for story time (i recommend going back to the reading room after you have learned about the stories in depth in the rest of the exhibit) ; the brundibar room is intense.
the worst part: each room features a recording of some peformance of a sendak work - from a ballet of Where the Wild things Are to a cartoon about Rosie. They all add to the exhibit, but the Rosie clip is rather short and, while cute, hardly something you want to listen to 10 times over as you look at the rest of the stuff in the same gallery.

but go - it's good.

lost and found

i am a bit of the former these days, though i think i am learning to fix it for myself. however, the reason for this post is that the much-discussed lost check has been found. rather, i discovered what happened to it. it is very embarassing and it may take me a few days of getting over said embarassment before i explain the story.
i can smile, though, b/c it all worked out ok...

PS:
CONTEST: write your own version of the story. if you get it right, i will bake you cookies ;)

תלמוד בבלי מסכת פסחים דף ל עמוד א

תלמוד בבלי מסכת פסחים דף ל עמוד א
אמר רב קדירות בפסח ישברו
ואמאי לשהינהו אחר הפסח וליעבד בהו שלא במינן גזירה דילמא אתו למיעבד בהו במינו
ושמואל אמר לא ישברו אבל משהי להו לאחר זמנו ועביד בהו בין במינו בין שלא במינו
ואזדא שמואל לטעמיה דאמר שמואל להנהו דמזבני כנדי אשוו זביני אכנדיכי ואי לא דרשינא
לכו כרבי שמעון ולידרוש להו דהא שמואל כרבי שמעון סבירא ליה אתריה דרב
הוה

a loose translation:

Rav said: (chametzdik) pots on passover should be broken (ie,
destroyed).
-Why [destroy them]? People should leave them until after passover and
use them not with their own type [of food] *
-It is a prohibition (gezerah) [for the reason that] perhaps they will come
to use them with their own type.
And Shmuel said, they should not be broken.
-but one can leave [their pot] until after its time and use it, whether with
its type or not with its type.

And [this opinion of] Shmuel follows his [previously established] position,
as Shmuel said to those who sell pots, 'keep your prices even (rather than
inflating the price after pesach becasue everyone needs to buy new pots), and if
not, I will expound to you like Rabbi Shimon (who allows old pots, so no one
will need to buy new pots).'
-And let him expound to them! - for behold, Shmuel agrees with Rabbi
Shimon!
-It was Rav's place. (So Shmuel did not want to go against Rav's
ruling as long as the financial loss invovled was not egregious)

*Rashi explains that Rav agrees that chametz is nullified in non-minan situations if there is only a tiny ammount/mashehu of chametz, but Rav believes that mashehu is enough to prohibit a mixture of the same type, so that case still remains forbidden.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1 - i imagine others have had something to say about this. if you know who/what they are, please let me know.

2 -
first, how did Shmuel decide that the regular price of pots was a "fair" financial price to pay for following the local authority, but the inflated price of pots posed too much of a burden and thus would warrant overriding that ruling? Or, was the point more rhetorical and from the perspective of the sellers - they should be "fair" or else suffer consequences?

also, in general, what are the implications re: market prices, etc. is the attempt to regulate prices an acknowledgement that in a system of religious obligation consumer choice is itself limited in freedom or rationality?

How can you tell whether a Litvak is an introvert or an extrovert? *

While you're talking to him, see whether he's looking at his own feet or at yours.

* This should not be construed as approval on my part of such ethno-partisan jokes in general, but I heard this from a Litvak, and I am more or less a Litvak myself, so I'm making an exception... ;)

feedback!

i just looked at that last post. it's the kind of long post i often only half-read, if that, on other people's blogs. i am sorry, and will try to do better, but not if y'all* keep not saying anything, so that i feel like i'm just talking to myself...

*sitemeter says you exist, despte your silence...

history, etc.

i remember some time back in boston RAbbi JJ Schachter's article on "facing the truths of history" (schacter Facing the Truths of History Torah u-Madda Journal 8 (1998-1999): 200-276.) and accompanying shiurim being a big deal, and truly inspiring the modern (in the technical sense) faithful in a new bout of idignation against the "black hatters," as they like to say. anyway, it always struck me that the attidude rabbi schachter criticizes is hardly atraditional, and if anything more in keeping with the general approach of our ancestors to history than, say, doing a phd at harvard.

[sidepoint: this brings up a lot of interesting points about the covert adoption of enlightenment/humanistic values over "torah values," not necessarily in a bad way but i think more than they like to belive," in the scholarly ranks of the MO. perhaps the best illustration of what i'm refering to I ever heard was prof gafni's insistence that historical studies must be ok because "chotamo shel haKBH emet." i mean, can't disagree there, but since when is "emet" in the torah sense determined by academic scholarship? Anwyay, I'm not for pretending there is no such thing as "reality" (including history), bu i just think the project of a lot of traditional orthodox scholars often comes off as bizzare.]

so why did i write about this now? (especially since i'm sure so much has been written before...) well, i was recently learning a gemara (hullin 11b) that tries to ascertain the biblical justification for relying on "rov," specifically of a not-strictly-quantifiable sort (my best shot at translating ruba de-leta kamman). it is suggested that the fact that the Torah allows us to eat slaughtered meat, and doesn't require us to wonder about whether the shechitah happened at the place of a pre-existing defect which would render the animal unkosher, bu can no longer be inspected becasue it has been cut trough, indicates that we rely on the "rov" of animals that do not have such defects. *
the gemara then wonders, what about R. Meir, who is "choshesh le-miuta" (worries about improbable but possible scenarios, more or less) and decides that he must not have eaten meat (ever).

this is in the context of a lot of improbable ukimtas (limitations on cases), many of which would seem to run counter to historical intuition. (eg, that no one was ever punished for hitting a parent unless all possibility of non-paternity was stictly ruled out). still, the sugestion that rabbi meir didn't eat meat seems stranger than comparably improbable suggestions about how things proceeded in biblical times, much like the suggestion that certain rabbis did not read uncle tom's cabin seems stranger to many people (like my father, and rabbi schachter) than the suggestion that sarah imenu never sinned.

all i'd like to suggest is that people take the same attitude toward contemporary "revisionism" as they do toward past revisionism. (while many like to allegorize ahistorical rabbinic statements, no one would denounce them the way they denounce their contemporary analogs, for example. so either they are devices with non-historical meaning or they are the undoing of our alleged proud tradition of rationalism, but not one sometimes and one other times...)

part of me suspects that there is some reluctance to implement such consistency because of a deep-seated disdain for the yeshivish masses that makes it necessary to marginalize them (sometimes i catch myself sharing this when it comes to the more extreme versions of the suppression of female intelect, autonomy, etc, in some communities), and davka not see them as within the spirit of the tradition. but yeah, we should try and get over that.


*the technical details are not crucial to my point here, but sorry if i've made them unnecesaily complicated...

this happened a half-block from my current apartment, but I missed all the hubub, having left an hour before...

a call for shaleshuddestorah

appropriate for the seventieth birthday of a relative. ideas?

walks in the park

my aggadeta teacher told us all, when we were being particularly intransigent in not coming up with the interpretations and questions he wanted.

"you have no imagination - you learn to much talmud! you have to go every day 2 hours to the park."

since then he's been following up with me to make sure I fulfill my obligation.

"You have to go the the park the way you learn. if you learn be-iyyun, you have to go to the aprk also be-iyyun."

the story of money

th treasury dept. publishes a little "comic book" about money with the same title as this post that's suposed to engage children while educating them or whatever, but i bring it up only to continue my saga of before...

new information:
1- the check was cashed without any edorsement by the payee. (not a forged endorsement, just nothing on the back at all.)
2- as such, the affidavit thingamabob has to be signed, with a notary and all, by the payee (who happens to live in florida) aserting that she never received the money before an investigation can commence, allegedly.

this all seems rather strange because i'm pretty sure that among all the fancy numbers on the back of the check are codes which someone in the know can fairly easily decipher to see where the money went. now, i supose there could be some consipiracy between me and the landlady to both get the money, but the insistence on the affidavit-before-investigation sequence is annoying, to say the least...

so now the question is whether i can make them investigate simultaneously with getting her signature.

cleverly enough, these things are all handled through a "claims center" whose staff cannot be acessed directly at any regular banks, they say.

my experience with the board of ed would lead me to believe that what one has to do in such a situation is do everything they tell me to do perfectly, and then compain if they don't keep up their part.

oren believes that what one has to do is go in to the bank for four hours and bother people and their managers until they give you what you want, because 'their job is to wait for you to leave."
i mentioned this take on things to my chavrusa (after seder, of course!) and she said "is the person who gave you that advice israeli?"

help me!

the story:
i wrote a check to my landlady for july's rent and somehow misplaed it, i thought in my room. already being voerdue, i just wrote out another check rather than look for hte first, and gave it to her. next time iwent to the bank, my balance seemed too low, so i checked and saw that both chekcs had been cashed. my landlady sweras not by her, so by whom?
i called the bank right away and the south-asian tele-help person was totally useless. well, wahtever, he "filed an investigation" or some such. i called again today and they read me the letter that has allegedly been sent to my home, with a copy of said check, requiring me to file an affidavit and some notarized form and then they'll see what they can do.
since the bank seemed wholly uninterested in what actually happened to the money, as well as since they're probably not really interested in helping me not lose money if its at their expense, i called the police.
the police will file a report of theft if i come in to the precint with a copy of the check, but it's entirely uncelar what that will do, besides maybe make it easier for me to yell at the bank.
so yeah, advice or assistance, especially from the legally inclined or otherwise argumentative, is welcome...

the obvious caveats: yes, i am a disroganized idiot but no, that doesn't mean someone can steal from me. I also do not have time for this right now...

i'm not sure how to react to the fact that i am currently in probably the only beit midrash in the world where Artscroill's The Rishonim lives right next to Our Bodies Our Selves.