I am thinking about my yidishkeit, I am thinking about my hashkafa, I am thinking about my minhagim, my chumras, and my leniencies.
A ger falls in a very different place than BT's when it comes to picking minhagim, maybe I am wrong, but usually BT's end up picking the minhagim and following the derech of the families/friends/rabbeim who were mekarev them.
And yes, there are exceptions to the rule...
However, gerim, get to pick and choose, one reason is simply that the ger's parents have no established minhag, do we know if Avraham Aveinu and Sarah Imeinu stood or sat for kiddish on shabbos day? How about sleeping in the sukkah?
Once I get married I"Y"H I don't have to worry about it...but wait a second, don't I want to get married to someone who has my same hashkafa? So actually, the decision is mine...to some extent...
I am happy with my seminary B"H it is the nicest thing that happened to me since my journey started, but in my seminary we are not thought minhagim, it is a regular seminary, girls come from different backgrounds, they all went to yeshiva high schools growing up, and most of them have already established minhagim, we learn halacha lemaaseh, we learn a couple of seforim, we learn hashkafa and mussar.
My learning includes a daily Tanya, and various mp3 shiurim, a weekly JNET
chavrusa...and college and some necessary sleep.
Maybe I worry about minhagim because, as part of my curiosity about yidishkeit, I learned with
chassidim?:
I must say, that I do admire and secretly envy Chassidim. I learned/lived for about a year in Crown Heights, there wasn't a question about how are things done, there aren't halachik debates about gebrochts on pesach or not, the question is not even asked, because, simply, there are no gebrochts on Pesach, period. Nothing to do with chumras, or with what your last frum parent did, you are a chossid, therefore no gebrochts.
I am just trying to be a simple Bas Yisroel, I want to serve HaShem better, I want to work on my middos, I want to refine my character, and I want Moshiach to come, now.
I want to be as careful about the level of filtration of the water I drink as I am with hearing/saying lashon hara, I want to be careful with hechsherim as much as I want to be with the chevra I associate myself with...
There, my thoughts, still in the making...
Sunday, February 3, 2008
my Thoughts...in the making
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7 comments:
From your posts and your comments on another blog that I frequent, I think you clearly do want to live and believe Chassidus - but you probably don't want to live in a community where everyone necessarily has similar views, or where there is any possibility that someone will look in your cholent pot and umm..criticize you for throwing cucumbers in there (figuratively, not literally - but do you really use cucumbers or do you mean zucchini :) :) :))!
Plenty of places like that around as Chassidim spread out further and further - you will certainly find your specific community just as you found your place as a part of am Yisroel. Hatzlacha!
lol...shkoyach and thanks for understanding EXACTLY what i meant...
Nope,it is cucumber (although I did call zucchini cucumber previously)
My landlord sends me a couple everytime she makes supper and I end up with a load in the fridge!
* a couple of cucumbers
Judaism is not a chullent . . . In the past a ger would join the community that (s)he lived in, taking on all of their minhagim -the thought of picking and choosing never came up, as there was nothing to choose from, what you saw is what you got.
Today we live in somewhat of a cultural melting pot, people with customs from other sides of the world live next door to each other, and with each custom so beautiful, it is tempting to try to take them all. Be warned, a Jack of all trades is a master of none! By trying to pick and choose, then the underlying power beneath that set group of customs is lost, what is more they can even be almost contradictory.
The solution is to make a Rov, and speak it over with him.
(Being a Lubavitcher, I'm not impartial to . . .)
Mottel;
YS used chulent, you used melting pot... I am glad you realise you are not impartial to...
Contradictory? I don't know about that, of course in matters of halacha on cannot pick and choose even in the smallest details,but where is the contradiction in picking minhagim?
As I side note, of course I have a rov I speak to these matters, and whenever I decide to take upon myslf ANYTHING I discuss it with him first...
I'm not doubting you're commitment to Halacha, ch"v.
However, minhagim are customs -things handed down from generation to generation, and part of a cohesive whole -a tapestry if you will. I will not venture to say that one is better then the other, they are all holly, but will say that when we mix, we take away from their strength. Our beauty is in our differences. Would one say that all Sefardim should take on Ashkenazi dress, minhagim etc. Obviously not, for then they would no longer be sefardim.
This is clearer, and true.
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