[Avodah] Consumer Alert: Minhog Scams On The Rise! Mislabeled, Cheap Middle Eastern Imports Flooding In, Threatening To Overwhelm Natives!

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 03:18:40PM -0400, Prof. Levine wrote:
> Question:  In EY the Torah was read in a 3 or 3 and half year cycle.  If 
> you want to follow the original EY way,  then why are you following the 
> Babylonian yearly cycle?   The answer is because when they went back to 
> EY they took with them their Golus minhagim.

As RET already noted, most academics who study the history of halakhah
(including the O ones) feel that Ashk has a richer mix of people who
left EY among some Bavliim, as opposed to Seph whose roots are more
exclusively Bavli.

RRW posted numerous examples to buttress this, numerous times. Cases
where Ashk minhag diverges from shas in ways that follow the Y-mi or
the midreshei halakhah.

So, if you want to follow the *original* Ashk minhag, do what your
ancestors and Teimanim did and lein in a Shavuos to 3rd Shavuos 3
year cycle!

Minhagim changed before, and they ought to change again.

We live in a rare time, when immigrant communities are still merging to
form new ones. We are in a situation not seen since the days when Ashk
and Seph first got started. And we won't be around to see how things
turn out -- it takes generations. We pray the process will be derailed
by the effects of having a Sanhedrin.

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 04:08:22PM -0400, Prof. Levine wrote:
> Because I do not think that the recent changes are a plus for Yahadus.  I
> am not pleased with where I see things going vis a vis Yiddishkeit today,
> and, from other things that you have written, I do not think that you are
> either.

I agree to this point, but not because the change in itself is
bad. Rather, it's because of the mechanism of change. We live in an
era that has a shortage of erev Shabbos Jews, where there is too much
focus on frumkeit rather than ehrlachkeit and yesodei haTorah. And so
our new minhagim are coming from places of textualism and (in the more
aggregious cases) out-frumming the Cohens.

I would be happier if we looked around at our new locations, lifestyles,
and the zeitgeist, and thought about which practices would actually aid
our work at acheiving qedushah, sheleimus and deveiqus, and adopted those.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You will never "find" time for anything.
micha at aishdas.org        If you want time, you must make it.
http://www.aishdas.org                     - Charles Buxton
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