[Avodah] Ehrlachkeit, not Frumkeit

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 06:20:55PM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: I wholeheartedly agree with this, and would love to coin a new slogan
: to help us focus on that idea. Something which can help us to realize that
: our ehrlachkeit is lacking, but without casting aspersions on frumkeit.

So just don't mention it.

As I tell a friend who runs a popular blog (not that he's listened),
he would win more people to his derekh by focusing on what's right with
his derekh rather than spending the majority of his blog on what's wrong
with the faster growing communities...

As RSWolbe points out when he explains the title of "Zeri'ah uVinyan
beChinukh", we live in a generation that responds far better to buiding
up the positive than to pruning away the negative. Chinukh might have
historically revolved around breaking bad habits and trends, but RSW
believes we would get much further with today's children building up
proper habits, reinforcing positive neti'os. (I can't comment, as I
didn't actually raise my children this way.)

I think the same thing is true of the same people once they're no longer
chldren. Reinforce the ehrlachkeit they have, teach them to value it
more, and it will more naturally take the spotlight. Frumkeit doesn't
even need to be mentioned.

Thanks to R' Doron Beckerman's post of last April
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol28/v28n053.shtml#05>, I revisited
RSW's essay on frumkeit. (In fact, that thread was also about chumeros
and how frumkeit relates.) I have 3/4 of a blog post written about
it, and had my plan for the blog post in mind when I brought up the
topic in this thread.

In any case, here is a key segment from the currently existing piece of
the forthcoming blog entry:
    ...
    It is the original derogatory usage which is clearly the starting
    point for Rav Shelmo Wolbe's essay on Frumkeit, in Alei Shur II
    pp 152-155 <http://www.aishdas.org/as/frumkeit.pdf>. R' Wolbe takes
    the informal usage of yore and gives it a robust, specific, technical
    meaning. In his hands, the word "frumkeit" refers to an etiology
    for a specific kind of cul-de-sac on the path of religious growth.

    As you may have noticed following this blog, I am a strong advocate
    for a thoughtful and passionate approach to religious observance. As
    the name says, a fusion of passionate aish with the rigor of das's
    law-based rite forming a new thing, a new word, "AishDas". But in my
    discussion of thoughtful Judaism, I have always presumed the antonym
    of thoughtless Judaism, observance based on habit, on culture. Putting
    on tefillin merely because "that's what is done."

    Rav Wolbe notes a different alternative to thoughtfulness --
    instinct. To Rav Wolbe, frumkeit is an instinctive drive to be close
    to the Creator. It is not even specific to humans; the frumkeit
    instinct is what King David refers to when he writes, "kefirim
    sho'agim lataref, ulvaqeish meiKeil ochlam -- lion cubs roar at
    their prey, and request from G-d their food." (Tehillim 104:21) And,
    "nosein lavheimah lachmahh livnei oreiv asher yiqra'u -- He gives
    the animal its food, before the ravens who cry." (147:9)

    What can go wrong with something that draws us to the Almighty,
    even if it is instinctive? Instincts are inherently about survival,
    self-preservation. As we see in the pesuqim cited in Alei Shur, the
    lion cub and the raven calls out to Hashem to get their food. Rather
    than being motivated by thoughtfulness, frumkeit is the use of
    religion to serve my ends.
    ...

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
micha at aishdas.org        G-d as King of the entire cosmos and all four
http://www.aishdas.org   corners of the world, but sometimes he forgets
Fax: (270) 514-1507      to include himself.     - Rav Yisrael Salanter