And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end (Ecclesiastes 12:12) A pdf version of this essay can be downloaded here [*] Years in brackets refer to an individual’s or book author’s year of birth Thought experiment for the day: Anyone born 1945 would be pushing towards 80 and mostly past their prime. So name any Charedi sefer written by someone born post war that has or is likely to enter the canon, be it haloche, lomdus, al hatorah or mussar. Single one will do for now — IfYouTickleUs (@ifyoutickleus) July 27, 2022 A tweet in the summer which gained some traction asked for a book by an author born from 1945 onwards that has entered the Torah and rabbinic canon or is heading in that direction. I didn't exactly phrase it this way and some quibbled about 'canonisation'. The word does indeed have a precise meaning though in its popular use it has no narrow definition. Canonisation, or ‘entering the canon’ is generally understood to...
This comment was left by someone calling himself 'We are victims too'
I was thinking of writing for a long time, and tonight after reading the many comments, I have decided to take the plunge and I hope people will be kind and read my post in the way it was intended.
I am referring to the many attacks against the "evil", "selfish", "foolish", "irresponsible" "baalei machloikes" leftover DC mispalelim.
Please understand, we the leftover DC mispalelim are victims ourselves. We now KNOW and realise the sad truth, but we cannot leave because we were imprisoned by R' Padva. You need to remember, when R' Padva promised the B'Din there were mainly just lots of rumours but no clear public guidance from rabbonim, so some of us had no motivation or courage to jump ship and leave. Many of us had the subconscious thought of "lets wait another week". The moment R'Padva said that he was getting a BDin, we were locked into an emotional catch 22 situation. If we leave now, we know we will bear the burden of being the ones who actually brought our rov down. This is a massive burden that none of us are big enough to take.
We silently wish that there would already be a clear cut psak that our rov is guilty and we can be free to move on. It is thanks to R' Padva and the other Stamford Hill rabbonim that we may be imprisoned, and the most terrifying thing is that this may be indefinite.
I will be honest with you. 4 weeks ago I still felt that I could at least take some ruchniyos from our rov, but unfortunately this has also died away and I am finding it harder and harder to see my rov just acting as if nothing happened, and feel sick when he preaches keddushah.
Do you think it is easy for me to walk home Shabbos from shul and get those smirky git shabbes's from the ones that still greet me? Do you think I enjoy having to work out whether the cold git shabbes you gave me last week was intentional, or perhaps you were just preoccupied. Do you think I enjoy checking this blog everyday to see if there is a new letter showing me up as a fool who is blindly staying faithful to someone who all the chosheveh local rabbonim believe did terrible things?
My plea to you fellow GG'ners, please see our plight and understand us. Please give us time, we need it. Yes, we were weak to stay, but that is why you need to give us space - because we are the weak ones who didn't take the opportunity to leave when it was fashionable.
I have great love for my fellow GG'ners and wish and hope for the day when this nightmare will finally be over and we can all get back to doing what we really are here to do with total unity.