NOTE: BETWEEN DECEMBER 2013 AND JANUARY 2019 NEW POSTS OF SERIOUS DIVREI TORAH WERE POSTED ONLY AT Beis Vaad L'Chachamim, beisvaad.blogspot.com AS OF JANUARY 2019 I PLAN TO POST IN BOTH PLACES


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Friday, September 20, 2019

Jewish Things That are Polarizing

By now, I  hope that readers know that my main website is https://beisvaad.blogspot.com/
That being the case, I have the latitude to post here the type of thing I used to post when this blog was anonymous, before I married off all of my children.

So here's the observation from your humble éminence grise.

There are things in Jewish life that are polarizing. By that I mean that people's attitude toward them is not a bell curve, it is an inverted bell curve, a bi-modal distribution that falls to a trough between two peaks.  In English, that means that you either love them or hate them.

I immediately thought of two examples.  The first was inspired by the approaching onset of Slichos.

Chazzanus

P'tcha


I would be happy to hear more suggestions.

More:

A Tisch

A Kumzits

Gefilteh Fish

Arak



Someone suggested Shtreimels, but I think that since more than ninety five percent of Lithuanian Jewry was murdered, and the escapees in South Africa always included Lubavitchers, the Litvaks have basically given up, and even if they're "misnagdim," seeing Chassidishe behavior as a farce is no longer common in the Frum community. Especially considering the Torah gadlus of the Gerrers.

2 comments:

micha berger said...

Gefilte fish (ask a Sepharadi)
Arak
Ahd tyere are many more accross the Ashk-Seph line.

Getting away from cuisione:

Selikhos with a chicken

Chasing away the mother bird when you don't want the aggs or young.

Community eruv details -- which I think is proof of the reality of the satan. After all, why do machliqes over details this particular mitzvah generate such more friction than do other mitzvos? Could it be because the whole point of eruv is achdus?

nachumj said...

I hate to say this ; learning tanach