Besides, I think that my main Raison d'être, to raise Havdala-Qedusha Consciousness and to do rhetorical battle with the Oifgeklehrteh Blogs has been superseded by Haredi and Proud who does the bloody and blood-curdling work with greater zeal and less ambivalence than I can muster after 6 years in the trenches. Not to mention that he is obviously way more tech savvy than I and that he presents a Blog that is far easier on the eyes.
Just thought that I'd share that .
33 comments:
Some come with Tanks, and others with Horses. But the pen is mightier than both, and there is room enough for both of your approaches in the Jblogosphere.
Keep Trucking!
hardly a ringing endorsement. IOW I am the Polish Cavalry while HAP is a Wehrmacht Panzer Division practicing Blitzkrieg!
Don't stop. I do read most of your posts and I enjoy them, even if I usually disagree with them.
But even after some 5 years of reading your posts, first on DovBear and now here, I don't always understand your primary thesis of "havdalah consciousness". Can you get back to basics and try to explain exactly what you mean? Does it differ from most Charedi thinkin, and if so, how?
Or point me to a past post where it's clearly laid out
As for Haredi & Proud, he's just obnoxious. You're nicer and more readable.
...and, as such, innocuous, ineffective and unheard.
Here is a link to my first (???? at least one of my early)guest post on DovBear that pretty much lays the groundwork for all of Qedusha-Havdala Consciousness:
http://innate-differences.blogspot.com/2009/12/post-that-started-it-all.html
As for how I differ form Kharedi-think...On the issue of Havdala in general I think that while external displays of distinguishing oddness are fine as far as they go I think that the real Havdala is subcutaneous and obtains precisely in those ways and mores that the Light shares in common with the darkness, that Holiness shares in common with the mundane and that Shabbos shares in common with weekdays. To paraphrase the סידורן של שבת the holiness and havdala is not felt in the extra Psukei D'Zimra siad on Shabbos but in saying Ashrei differently on Shabbos than you would on a weekday.
On the issue of Jew non-Jew Havdala much of contemporary Kharedi attitude is based on dehumanizing / sub-humanizing the Non-Jew. I prefer a Havdal;a based on Superhumanizing Jews. It is a subtle difference and, IMO, not a mere smantical one.
As fond as I am of you Philo, SomEHoW and Garnel it is still a חשק draining downer to realize that after so many years hacking away at blogging and as high-quality (forgive me for indulging in my Walter-Mittey-esque Legend-in-my-own-mind ruminations)I still only have a steady readership of three. i could get more people to listen to me pontificate at the water cooler (were i not so shy and retiring in real life)
HAP is a flash in the pan. Once people get tired of his inaccuracies and confrontational nature he'll fade away.
Bray,
There's enough for both of us.
Garnel, you gave me a good chuckle. I"M the one who's "confrontational"??
There are hundreds of bloggers hocking charedim and one little guy comes to defend and Baam! What a confrontational, inaccurate and obnoxious bozo.
As for flash in the pan, you do hope so, don't you? Then the echo chamber can be nice and peaceful and we can all get back knocking charedim with no pushback....
Nu, nu...
I think Charedi and Proud is a welcome addition to the blogs. He is a very clear, strong blogger and he consistently makes effective points. I find his strengths admirable, certainly not obnoxious. You, Reb Bray, are all over the place, bemoaning your lack of popularity, fooling around, diluting your message in many ways.Nevertheless being fully aware of your weaknesses and C&P strengths, your blog has for me many endearing qualities. You do have a good sense of humor, wit, wisdom and critical distance from yourself and your material. You exhibit a human quality in your posts. C&P is more fundamentalist, by which I mean he is both defensive of charedim and aggressive towards those excluded from the charmed circle. He never shows any doubt, any confusion, any subjective straddling, any possibility the other side has a nekuda of emes. It is we are right-they are wrong, take no prisoners all the way.
I have some empathy when you say I know the gedolim banned the internet, but I have a weakness for the bully pulpit and the potential of recognition it affords. Everyone desires some kavod, and unless we are total saints our motives are mixed. It is more difficult to appreciate a blogger who fails to acknowledge the irony that he is a charedi on the internet, aggressively defending the asifa that banned reading his blog.
> What a confrontational, inaccurate and obnoxious bozo.
Never called you obnoxious. Never called you a bozo. As for the other qualities, hey, misery loves company. I'm glad to have a kindred soul out there.
Oh knock it off, BoF! As far as I can tell, you're discussing a shitah, H&P is defending a culture. If you're writing, write; if not, stop. Just quit whining. Oh, and btw, I read and enjoy your blog and comments on other people's.
Also, H&P would've NEVER have written that attack on Oorah (which btw I was cheering on every word).
I want to make one more remark. Why was Lipa Scmeltzer's new video "Hang Up the Phone" released on You Tube? Besides being awful and derivative, I thought he was a chasidish daas torah guy.
I've looked in connection to the Yad Veshem incident at all the charedi newspapers from Israel on my favorites list. None have stopped functioning, all are still showing Rabanbim and Rebbes party times, not one has gone off the internet. I have yet to see one blogger, one paper, one music star change his ways. And on the other side of this disconnect they are not allowing guys with internet connections to be an eid at a wedding or be a shliach tzibur. I read how you are not supposed to even enter such a person's house. I just don't get it.
EJ
I've explained my continuing to blog on my About Me page:http://harediandproud.wordpress.com/about/
Re: Shmeltzer. No, he's not quite the Daas Torah follower you make him out to be. I'm not attacking him at all, but he goes his own way on many things.
As for charedi sites, most are owned by businessmen who are ignoring what;s been said. Some are owned by chilonim (see bechadrei charedim). Regardless, NONE are owned by yeshivas or the chasidus themselves.
Just because someone dresses in the Levush does not a Chasid make him.
The Chareidim in fact were the ones who banned Lipa's Big Event concert.
Although I can't necessarily blame them when the put up a billboard of Lipa and a toilet bowl.
Haredi and Proud…I have now read your mission statement on your blog, and it is clear you are aware of the issues in being an exception to the prohibition on the internet. The details of your justification are basically none of my business and I won’t comment on the particulars of your situation. I accept that you are engaging in this work leshem shamayim. To amplify on what I said earlier, I welcome your presence, agree with you that those who have anti-charedi and in particular anti chasidish biases dominate the internet, and that there is a need to present both sides of these issues. My feeling is that Jewish life works best when each stripe is allowed to develop its full potential, without being made to feel inferior. The larger issue of how the charedi community can dance on both weddings, both condemning and using the internet, remains unresolved in my mind.
I think the biggest thing detracting from your blog are posts like this one. Just blog. Your actual posts are usually a good read and entertaining and enlightening. This is just drek and takes away from your better work.
There is a series of books called Zricha b'pas kedem (or something like that) which detail the travels of Mir to Kobe and beyond. There is a set pictures showing Polish calvary vs german armour with the same line you used.
Midwest
ברוך שכוונתי have never seen the book so i am innocent of plagiarism.
Oh knock it off, BoF! As far as I can tell, you're discussing a shitah, H&P is defending a culture.
The shitta of Havdala-Qedusha consciousness informs the culture of Kharedi Fundamentalism.
For the record, I am a pretty steady reader, and I do very much enjoy your style of writing (and usually the content as well!). I think you are underrating yourself, or perhaps just fishing for sympathy, or both.
Heilege Kurkevan,
Welcome back. Come visit me sometime!
As for Bray, maybe now that HAP has picked up the gauntlet, we can both retire.
Kidding aside, I love your blog. Keep up the good work. My blog was created to see if a LH free blog can exist in the JBlogosphere. Judging from my recent Asifa post, I would say that the experiment has proved positive, beyond my wildest dreams.
I view your blog as proof positive that a Khareidi can write like Poe and spar with the best of them.
Keep the chin up and the keyboard busy.
Shut up and keep blogging.
HAP is a pompous bore.
BoF, seriously?
You, in championing the shita, are open to emmes, are searching for emmes, and purveying what you believe to be emmes. H&P, in defending the culture, is not; he is defending the culture. Khareidism uber alles. In fact, I don't believe that he would be able to admit when the culture diverges from the shitta.
Now, I agree with his premise that the Kharedi world is unfairly and hypocritically attacked, usually by people who are not a part of the community. However, in the defense of Kharedism, he is not looking for dialogue or to provoke deep thought about conceptual matters; just to defend the culture and to expose the holes in the attacks, of which there are many. His arena is not yours; his accomplishments or successes in that arena should be of little significance to the blogger that you are.
SoMeHoW - I do read and enjoy every one of your entries as well (thru RSS), but time constraints leave me little time to comment.
"I view your blog as proof positive that a Khareidi can write like Poe and spar with the best of them."
Seems like SoMeHoW is the one who writes like Poe.
that so??? see my latest comments there. Not half bad myself.
Although TBF spoofing and re-tooling the Raven (at least in my case with the help of rhyme-zone)can hardly be called "writing like Poe".
Poe was a drunk and a Genius (are there any other kinds)WADR I suspect that Somehow and I are neither
Besides, I think that my main Raison d'être, to raise Havdala-Qedusha Consciousness and to do rhetorical battle with the Oifgeklehrteh Blogs has been superseded by Haredi and Proud who does the bloody and blood-curdling work with greater zeal and less ambivalence than I can muster after 6 years in the trenches. Not to mention that he is obviously way more tech savvy than I and that he presents a Blog that is far easier on the eyes.
He's gone. We need you back.
Really? Think that I should return to this assessment:
Gedolei Yisroel consider bloggers to be cranks and haters and as such should be treated the way such people are treated in normal, civilized, human society: marginalized by being ignored.
I'm not sure whether or not I am a crank and a hater although who am I to disagree with the Gedolim? But the J-Blogosphere has definitely marginalized and ignored me .
Nothing has happened since last week to increase my kheshek while much has happened to curtail my discretionary re: waste-able time.
Why didn't H&P post this smarmy insult when he began his blog? Compare this sort of really bad form with the exit of the eidel and erudite charedi "Not Brisk", a blogger who I sorely miss.
EJ,
I also miss Not Brisk. Glad to see you are still participating
Midwest
EJ
while he did not post this insult at the very beginning he did have an entire post about it
here: http://harediandproud.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/why-bloggers-attack-follow-the-numbers/
back on May 30th and another one in which he basically characterized bloggers as he did in his farewell post. I even recall commenting that I was guilty as charged but i can't locate that post and thread now.
I wish "Not Brisk" would have left his archives open. he always had such tchikaveh posts and topics. But IIRC he said it was his attempt at Teshuva and getting the feathers back into the pillow.
Moshe Emes V'Soraso Emes!
That's korakh with two "k"s ...impostor
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