A talmud of R Tzvi reached out and says that R Tzvi is the gentlest guy you've ever meet and this story doesn't accurately portray them. I want people to know that.
Sorry, this is a pet peeve and I can't help myself. It's talmid, watch means student, not talmud, which means shas. It was in the main post, too, and reading it twice hurts my ears too much to let it alone. Otherwise, good post.
Once you're being picky here, btw, there are small portable clocks that are not watches. I think you need wearable in your definition, which includes a pocket watch, which (not watch) is typically chained to clothing.
Yeah, my swiping leaves all kinds of errors and I don't catch all of them. Hard to believe anyone has a pet peeve about which and watch, though. Maybe against comments that are not reviewed for swipe errors and I know I need to need better about that.
Clarification which I'll try to edit into main article when I can: it doesn't matter that the marriage or kids turned out ok. As an example its still wrong and imo it was wrong then too.
"truly great people would gently request the fork"
Perhaps it is just some kind of failing on my part, but it seems to me that most people -- no greatness required -- would just get up and get a fork. I am baffled that people are actually inspired by stories like these.
And yet these people have been learning musar for years. If this story is accurate, than this hanhaga may have perfected his discipline but it took away from the basic דרך ארץ that any respectable person has! That's the issue I have with mussar. Without the right values, it will never be applied properly.
As you said in disclaimer, there isn't judgment on gedolim as we have no idea what took place. It's just highly irresponsible to print this stories.
I have seen many young bochurim emulate stories in biographies to disastrous effect.
I think what is fascinating is the fear to teach morally ambiguous parts of nach ( david and bas sheba for sn example) in fear of people getting the wrong ideas but publishing stories like this with no fear of negative downstream effects.
It's way more risky when it is modern day events then when it's a story about thousands of years ago.
I was somewhat a victim of Artscroll biographies in my youth. I wouldn't exactly call it a disaster but the effects were not completely positive. I agree with you on the nach bit. But it's a sensitive topic and needs the shikul hadaas of an experienced mechanech. I really don't see the problem though with sharing inspiring stories of gedolim. More caveats should be made about certain hanhagos that are abnormal and should not be aspired to by the average person. I think this first part of this post is a bit of an overreaction, and the second part is pure speculation and daas yochid didn't understand who the main target audience was. IE women over the age of 40 who are looking for something inspiring to read over shabbos (i've seen the book and that's the impression I got).
That first story could have been told by one of my Rebbeim in a negative light, if the protagonist was a moral philosopher.
Once there was a secular moral philosopher whose wife prepared him a meal and served it to him without realizing she forgot the fork. Of course he didn’t mention anything because it went against his beliefs. Afterwards, when she sat down after a long and tiring day she noticed he didn’t have a fork. So she got up and got him a fork.
Here my Rebbe would add that a real Baal Middos would have gotten the fork himself without bothering his wife.
There are different mehalchim in avoda and middos. All of them are valid but depends on the person. Put another way; different strokes for different folks.
It's not about 'who', it's about the context. Was it part of an ascetic life? A royal life of not getting involved in details? An arrogance? When you know the background, the story looks different.
It's the facts. None of these stories take place in a vacuum. If the protagonist was someone who wouldn't eat unless the food was at a certain standard, this story has a different meaning. If the protagonist was a person who was willing to fall asleep over his Gemara from dedication and perseverance, this story has a different meaning.
Raises good points. I would just be מחלק between Ami and Artscroll. Ami is written for adults, and for a mostly more open-minded working Yeshivish crowd, who are not necessarily going to blindly follow problematic things. I can hear an argument that such a crowd is nuanced enough to be exposed to an honest unfiltered interview with rabbonim and what their perspectives are, and in fact they should be able to know if the Gadol says things they find too extreme, so as not to blindly follow him in the future. Artscroll is the real problem, because it is read by kids - many of whom are educated to think that they must always follow Daas Torah - so in such a context, I think there is an achrayos to whitewash aspects of a Gadol that can be misconstrued and cause real damage.
Also the fact the the AMI article quotes the son who was clearly not fully on board with many things his father did--so there is an inherent guardrail built into the interview itself.
If anything, this shows me AMI has the guts NOT to whitewash every hanhogoh and hold it up for role modeling. They should be praised for this interview--not criticized.
I read an interview with Rebetzin Kushelevsky when the baby was born. It started by saying she spent the last few years davening to marry a Rosh Yeshiva. And she had set herself some kind of segula to get married by Tu B'av. (Remember, she set the date, not the Rabbi) Anyone at age 50 davening to marry a Rosh Yeshiva might get themselves into these kinds of situations. Most young people have no intentions of marrying a Rosh Yeshiva.
Anyway, the oddest part of frum literature is the absolute erasure of love in marriage. (A novel might write a really disgusting argument between a husband and wife, but never a simple 'I love you'.) Since most people love romance, here is finally a romance story that doesn't say 'I love you' No wonder they printed it.
The oddest part of American culture is the belief that words unsaid mean feelings unfelt.
Everything is only measured by how much noise it makes.
The one who makes the most noise about agunos cares about it the most.
Fighting Internet means talking about it. Respect for Bnei Torah means strobe-lit noisy events in stadiums.
Frum literature is filled with the connection between spouses and its special flavor. Without the slogans. But no less there.
And there is zero romance in that story. She saw marriage as a meaningful burden that she wanted, and trusted him to follow the Torah's instructions as to how to treat a spouse. Between those two, she was willing to enter the bond. Most of us wouldn't do that, but there is nothing romantic about what they did.
I think I’m done discussing the story about this couple, even if it is fictional, so no comment on that. But your general point about noise vs. caring is very important and on target, as are your first few examples.
I love reading romance and I can only think of one book that fits the description. I'm seriously asking for a reading list.
(If you want to say there's a non-explicit undercurrent of love in your standard frum novel, so then why does the plot need to be explicit?)
That's exactly why they printed the story. To a frum novel, marriage is meaningful-burden at best, and more typically, a disaster. But this story has marriage, (marriage is almost romance) that doesn't include anything like love, or desire, or teivah. The only reason it's fit to print is because it's romance, without romance.
But it seems that all quality books have a plot, an under-current, a sub-plot, and some general themes. Some things belong in the explicit part of the book, others are better left unsaid.
Human emotion cannot be described with words. A weak writer uses adjectives, a good writer uses verbs, a great writer manages to sneak things in with neither. It is disrespectful to the idea of romantic love to describe it in coarse verbs, adjectives, or other simple descriptions.
I don't know of any frum literature for the last 100 years worth reading. But all of the trash that makes into my house has an undercurrent of love between the couple. For the most explicit try Libby Lazewnik. But it is not ignored at all.
Yep. That's why 99% of the stories are medical dramas or sholom bayis problems. Stories about happily married couples that love each other are pritzus.
If Artscroll printed accurate depictions of Gedolim, these stories would be fine.
It's just that they censor virtually any personality out of them, and are still willing to print stories like this, that it is a problem.
(Btw, your criticism of Reb Eizik and the fork is misplaced. You have a box called 'truly great people' and cannot imagine someone outside of that. It is entirely possible that the family situation in his house was such that this was not the silent treatment at all. But even if it was, if Reb Eizik truly lived his life in which he did not add salt to his soup or do anything to improve his gashmiyus, I don't think this was a time to change his hanhaga. Even if I, and others, wouldn't do it ourselves.)
"I don’t think anyone could write a more damning expose of Chareidi Yeshivish hashkafa and power dynamics than this date, reaction and thought process."
Really? Expose? What have you seen in the dynamics of the Chareidi Yeshivish world that can be remotely linked to the attitude in this awkward and bizarre story?
(To be clear, I am not commenting on the actions of any particular person, as the ink-on-paper of any biography, let alone an Artscroll one, has little to no bearing on ascertaining anything factual, in my mind. Only commenting on the story as written.)
One other minor quibble: "I’ll read Seforimblog for the real facts."
Should that read "I'll read Seforimblog for more sophisticatedly written anecdotes that emphasize the negative side of Jewish leadership, thereby appearing to the naive and bloodthirsty public as more factual"?
lol thanks. Truth is, I’m not generally a fan of public bashing (especially doing so anonymously) but the idea that academically fluent individuals can present and misrepresent whatever they want and appear so obviously correct in the eyes of the masses, is one that bothers me very much, and often (willingly or not) leads to chillul shem shamayim b’farhesya. So in this case, no regrets!
Academics have the ability to fool the public that there is something factual, evidence-based, intellectual, or interesting about their droppings.
As soon as you realize it is a suit and (bow)tie on a profession that requires less brain cells than a crossing guard's, you stop caring about their obvious mistakes, biased claims of impartiality, and simple ignorance.
At least the academics quote sources, and the reader can look them up and decide for themselves.
Unlike chareidland, were written sources are rarely provided, the source for diktats tends to be "I heard from [insert godol here] that the [pesak/minhag/yisorel/whatever] has always been to be [machmir/meikel/muttor/ossur] in that [inyan]. "The minhag yisroel is d'lo k'mishen berurah" type stuff. You can't really continue the coversation when that happens, because it's not falsifiable. Even assuming it is true (and that's a big assumption) no context/background is ever provided, probably the responder doesn't know the context/background. For the people known as the 'people of the book', the amount of verbal anecdotes type things that are used to support all sorts of practices is quite shocking.
And when you do get sources, ("mefurash a rabbi akeiva eiger" type responses - we've all had those in Yeshivaland) and you go and look it up, 99% of the time it either doesn't exist, or is talking about something else with some vague resemblence to the topic under discussion.....
Part of the reason for the latter is that Yeshivaland has become a memory game - where everything has to be responded to from memory.....the quicker the better, because that means you 'know how to learn'.....
“I don’t think anyone could write a more damning expose of Chareidi Yeshivish hashkafa and power dynamics than this date, reaction and thought process. I don’t need to elaborate on how unacceptable this is.”
Masterfully said. I just don’t understand why she couldn’t say I need time to think, but I hear. The psychologist in me is very unhappy with her (assuming this is all true) and I would have a few words to say…
The miracle baby story speaks perhaps to the fact that contemporary artscroll judasim ( as opposed to 30 years ago where it was something a little different) for many people is something like reality tv. They people who watch it know it isn’t real real, the people who make it know it isn’t real real, but sometimes the wrong (read more truthful) takes get left in by accident
A talmud of R Tzvi reached out and says that R Tzvi is the gentlest guy you've ever meet and this story doesn't accurately portray them. I want people to know that.
Sorry, this is a pet peeve and I can't help myself. It's talmid, watch means student, not talmud, which means shas. It was in the main post, too, and reading it twice hurts my ears too much to let it alone. Otherwise, good post.
It's also which, which is a relative pronoun used to connect a new clause to the previous fact, not watch, which is a small portable clock.
Once you're being picky here, btw, there are small portable clocks that are not watches. I think you need wearable in your definition, which includes a pocket watch, which (not watch) is typically chained to clothing.
Yeah, my swiping leaves all kinds of errors and I don't catch all of them. Hard to believe anyone has a pet peeve about which and watch, though. Maybe against comments that are not reviewed for swipe errors and I know I need to need better about that.
Write a follow up post.
I'm shocked. Artscroll doesn't portray accurately. Well, blow me over!
Clarification which I'll try to edit into main article when I can: it doesn't matter that the marriage or kids turned out ok. As an example its still wrong and imo it was wrong then too.
"truly great people would gently request the fork"
Perhaps it is just some kind of failing on my part, but it seems to me that most people -- no greatness required -- would just get up and get a fork. I am baffled that people are actually inspired by stories like these.
You probably had to be there. I imagine getting up when you're not supposed to was also frowned on in Kelm.
And yet these people have been learning musar for years. If this story is accurate, than this hanhaga may have perfected his discipline but it took away from the basic דרך ארץ that any respectable person has! That's the issue I have with mussar. Without the right values, it will never be applied properly.
He probably didn't know where they were kept.
As you said in disclaimer, there isn't judgment on gedolim as we have no idea what took place. It's just highly irresponsible to print this stories.
I have seen many young bochurim emulate stories in biographies to disastrous effect.
I think what is fascinating is the fear to teach morally ambiguous parts of nach ( david and bas sheba for sn example) in fear of people getting the wrong ideas but publishing stories like this with no fear of negative downstream effects.
It's way more risky when it is modern day events then when it's a story about thousands of years ago.
I was somewhat a victim of Artscroll biographies in my youth. I wouldn't exactly call it a disaster but the effects were not completely positive. I agree with you on the nach bit. But it's a sensitive topic and needs the shikul hadaas of an experienced mechanech. I really don't see the problem though with sharing inspiring stories of gedolim. More caveats should be made about certain hanhagos that are abnormal and should not be aspired to by the average person. I think this first part of this post is a bit of an overreaction, and the second part is pure speculation and daas yochid didn't understand who the main target audience was. IE women over the age of 40 who are looking for something inspiring to read over shabbos (i've seen the book and that's the impression I got).
I felt that zetz on the table rattle my neshama!
That first story could have been told by one of my Rebbeim in a negative light, if the protagonist was a moral philosopher.
Once there was a secular moral philosopher whose wife prepared him a meal and served it to him without realizing she forgot the fork. Of course he didn’t mention anything because it went against his beliefs. Afterwards, when she sat down after a long and tiring day she noticed he didn’t have a fork. So she got up and got him a fork.
Here my Rebbe would add that a real Baal Middos would have gotten the fork himself without bothering his wife.
There are different mehalchim in avoda and middos. All of them are valid but depends on the person. Put another way; different strokes for different folks.
Good point, but we all do this all the time.
WHO said or did something matters a lot more than WHAT they did
Yep. Problematic behavior can be recognized, but only if it’s done by the wrong people.
It's not about 'who', it's about the context. Was it part of an ascetic life? A royal life of not getting involved in details? An arrogance? When you know the background, the story looks different.
You're missing my point.. It absolutely matters who says a thing. Their status in your view is part of your priors.
My assertion was that the status priors are weightier than the concept priors, but I'm not open to debate about that part of it
It's not their status.
It's the facts. None of these stories take place in a vacuum. If the protagonist was someone who wouldn't eat unless the food was at a certain standard, this story has a different meaning. If the protagonist was a person who was willing to fall asleep over his Gemara from dedication and perseverance, this story has a different meaning.
It's the truth, not the dry facts.
Raises good points. I would just be מחלק between Ami and Artscroll. Ami is written for adults, and for a mostly more open-minded working Yeshivish crowd, who are not necessarily going to blindly follow problematic things. I can hear an argument that such a crowd is nuanced enough to be exposed to an honest unfiltered interview with rabbonim and what their perspectives are, and in fact they should be able to know if the Gadol says things they find too extreme, so as not to blindly follow him in the future. Artscroll is the real problem, because it is read by kids - many of whom are educated to think that they must always follow Daas Torah - so in such a context, I think there is an achrayos to whitewash aspects of a Gadol that can be misconstrued and cause real damage.
Yes fair point.
Thanks!
Also the fact the the AMI article quotes the son who was clearly not fully on board with many things his father did--so there is an inherent guardrail built into the interview itself.
If anything, this shows me AMI has the guts NOT to whitewash every hanhogoh and hold it up for role modeling. They should be praised for this interview--not criticized.
One thing I can tell you as a chossid; I married thru beshows and at no point did I coerce my wife into marrying me.
Honestly, what do you thing Chassidish beshows look like.
This is a great article, well written and horiffyingly funny.
Agree on that!
BTW there is a lot of misconception about Hasidic marriages. One day we'll try to set it clear.
I read an interview with Rebetzin Kushelevsky when the baby was born. It started by saying she spent the last few years davening to marry a Rosh Yeshiva. And she had set herself some kind of segula to get married by Tu B'av. (Remember, she set the date, not the Rabbi) Anyone at age 50 davening to marry a Rosh Yeshiva might get themselves into these kinds of situations. Most young people have no intentions of marrying a Rosh Yeshiva.
Anyway, the oddest part of frum literature is the absolute erasure of love in marriage. (A novel might write a really disgusting argument between a husband and wife, but never a simple 'I love you'.) Since most people love romance, here is finally a romance story that doesn't say 'I love you' No wonder they printed it.
The oddest part of American culture is the belief that words unsaid mean feelings unfelt.
Everything is only measured by how much noise it makes.
The one who makes the most noise about agunos cares about it the most.
Fighting Internet means talking about it. Respect for Bnei Torah means strobe-lit noisy events in stadiums.
Frum literature is filled with the connection between spouses and its special flavor. Without the slogans. But no less there.
And there is zero romance in that story. She saw marriage as a meaningful burden that she wanted, and trusted him to follow the Torah's instructions as to how to treat a spouse. Between those two, she was willing to enter the bond. Most of us wouldn't do that, but there is nothing romantic about what they did.
I think I’m done discussing the story about this couple, even if it is fictional, so no comment on that. But your general point about noise vs. caring is very important and on target, as are your first few examples.
Which frum novels did you read?
I love reading romance and I can only think of one book that fits the description. I'm seriously asking for a reading list.
(If you want to say there's a non-explicit undercurrent of love in your standard frum novel, so then why does the plot need to be explicit?)
That's exactly why they printed the story. To a frum novel, marriage is meaningful-burden at best, and more typically, a disaster. But this story has marriage, (marriage is almost romance) that doesn't include anything like love, or desire, or teivah. The only reason it's fit to print is because it's romance, without romance.
I am not a literary critic.
But it seems that all quality books have a plot, an under-current, a sub-plot, and some general themes. Some things belong in the explicit part of the book, others are better left unsaid.
Human emotion cannot be described with words. A weak writer uses adjectives, a good writer uses verbs, a great writer manages to sneak things in with neither. It is disrespectful to the idea of romantic love to describe it in coarse verbs, adjectives, or other simple descriptions.
I don't know of any frum literature for the last 100 years worth reading. But all of the trash that makes into my house has an undercurrent of love between the couple. For the most explicit try Libby Lazewnik. But it is not ignored at all.
Anyway, I've been strongly influenced by the American culture of saying everything that comes to mind.
Compare Nachman Seltzer to Sholem Asch.
Or Menucha Levin to Douglas Adams
Yep. That's why 99% of the stories are medical dramas or sholom bayis problems. Stories about happily married couples that love each other are pritzus.
I somewhat agree with you.
If Artscroll printed accurate depictions of Gedolim, these stories would be fine.
It's just that they censor virtually any personality out of them, and are still willing to print stories like this, that it is a problem.
(Btw, your criticism of Reb Eizik and the fork is misplaced. You have a box called 'truly great people' and cannot imagine someone outside of that. It is entirely possible that the family situation in his house was such that this was not the silent treatment at all. But even if it was, if Reb Eizik truly lived his life in which he did not add salt to his soup or do anything to improve his gashmiyus, I don't think this was a time to change his hanhaga. Even if I, and others, wouldn't do it ourselves.)
Yes.
"I don’t think anyone could write a more damning expose of Chareidi Yeshivish hashkafa and power dynamics than this date, reaction and thought process."
Really? Expose? What have you seen in the dynamics of the Chareidi Yeshivish world that can be remotely linked to the attitude in this awkward and bizarre story?
(To be clear, I am not commenting on the actions of any particular person, as the ink-on-paper of any biography, let alone an Artscroll one, has little to no bearing on ascertaining anything factual, in my mind. Only commenting on the story as written.)
Yikes. This sounds like how cult leaders wed/bed their followers
Otoh, maybe he was just taking his Chumash-Rashi seriously: רש"י בראשית כ"ט:כ"א
מלאו ימיי – הריני בן שמנים וארבע, ואימתי אעמיד שנים עשר שבטים. וזהו שאמר: ואבואה אליה – והלא קל שבקלים אינו אומר כן, אלא להוליד תולדות אמר.
One other minor quibble: "I’ll read Seforimblog for the real facts."
Should that read "I'll read Seforimblog for more sophisticatedly written anecdotes that emphasize the negative side of Jewish leadership, thereby appearing to the naive and bloodthirsty public as more factual"?
Oooooh! Devastating coup de grace!
(Is there a devastating smackdown emoji?)
🧨🧨🧨💥💥💥
lol thanks. Truth is, I’m not generally a fan of public bashing (especially doing so anonymously) but the idea that academically fluent individuals can present and misrepresent whatever they want and appear so obviously correct in the eyes of the masses, is one that bothers me very much, and often (willingly or not) leads to chillul shem shamayim b’farhesya. So in this case, no regrets!
Academics have the ability to fool the public that there is something factual, evidence-based, intellectual, or interesting about their droppings.
As soon as you realize it is a suit and (bow)tie on a profession that requires less brain cells than a crossing guard's, you stop caring about their obvious mistakes, biased claims of impartiality, and simple ignorance.
At least the academics quote sources, and the reader can look them up and decide for themselves.
Unlike chareidland, were written sources are rarely provided, the source for diktats tends to be "I heard from [insert godol here] that the [pesak/minhag/yisorel/whatever] has always been to be [machmir/meikel/muttor/ossur] in that [inyan]. "The minhag yisroel is d'lo k'mishen berurah" type stuff. You can't really continue the coversation when that happens, because it's not falsifiable. Even assuming it is true (and that's a big assumption) no context/background is ever provided, probably the responder doesn't know the context/background. For the people known as the 'people of the book', the amount of verbal anecdotes type things that are used to support all sorts of practices is quite shocking.
And when you do get sources, ("mefurash a rabbi akeiva eiger" type responses - we've all had those in Yeshivaland) and you go and look it up, 99% of the time it either doesn't exist, or is talking about something else with some vague resemblence to the topic under discussion.....
Part of the reason for the latter is that Yeshivaland has become a memory game - where everything has to be responded to from memory.....the quicker the better, because that means you 'know how to learn'.....
Couldn’t have said it better, and definitely not more colorfully.
“I don’t think anyone could write a more damning expose of Chareidi Yeshivish hashkafa and power dynamics than this date, reaction and thought process. I don’t need to elaborate on how unacceptable this is.”
Masterfully said. I just don’t understand why she couldn’t say I need time to think, but I hear. The psychologist in me is very unhappy with her (assuming this is all true) and I would have a few words to say…
The miracle baby story speaks perhaps to the fact that contemporary artscroll judasim ( as opposed to 30 years ago where it was something a little different) for many people is something like reality tv. They people who watch it know it isn’t real real, the people who make it know it isn’t real real, but sometimes the wrong (read more truthful) takes get left in by accident
Thanks for the shoutout!