[Avodah] Consumer Alert: Minhog Scams On The Rise!

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Yitzchok Levine quoted "Treasures of Ashkenaz":

> One of the more difficult challenges we face in keeping the
> holy minhogim of our Ashkenazic ancestors is posed by present
> day unrestricted imports from Eretz Yisroel, of Sepharadic
> minhagim posing as Ashkenazic ones.

This is nothing new. As I see it, it is merely an extension of Chassidic minhagim posing as universal ones. Two items from my personal experience include: (1) When my son was to get married, we asked our rav about wearing the kittel over or under his jacket. We were surprised to hear that in Lita they didn't wear a kittel at all. (2) For our tenth anniversary, my wife bought a beautifil silver atara for my Shabbos tallis. In the days that followed, I was told that the misnagdic minhag is to specifically *not* have such an atara.

I suppose I'm contributing to the phenomenon that "Treasures of Ashkenaz" is objecting to, because my son did wear a kittel, and I'm still wearing my atara. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing or a good thing.

But I *am* fairly certain that there was a point in time when no one wore a kittel, and no one had an atara. There was even a time when no one said any kind of kaddish after Krias Hatorah, and some people lit 8 neros on the first night of Chanukah.

My point is that it is the nature of customs to develop and change over time. In fact, it could be argued that if the nature of a given society changes, then it *needs* to change its minhagim as well.

We have discussed before, on these pages, that the separation of "Minhag Avos" from "Minhag Hamakom" is a very recent one, and it is not clear to me why one should automatically trump the other. We shall see how it turns out, or perhaps our great-grandchildren will see.

> People have to be aware of this serious problem, take a stand,
> and refuse to go along with the adulteration of our holy
> Ashkenazic heritage, which happens when people accept such
> customs.

I can't help but wonder how things might have turned out if such protests had been made when the "holy Ashkenazic heritage" was just beginning.

Akiva Miller

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