Yeshiva World News is a love hate relationship, I know many of you may think I hate them – but I don’t, I understand they are catering to a more charedi and less scandal intensive audience than Vos Iz Neias. I also know that I can take a look at the coffee room when I am bored and actually laugh out loud.
Sometimes you read something that is so unbelievable that you realize the shidduch crisis is no problem compared to things like the following thread going on in the yeshiva world news coffee room.
Is it better to daven alone with a hat, or without a hat but with a minayn?
When people ask questions like these you start to understand why I dislike large frum communities. You also begin to see why we need sites like Frum Satire to poke fun at such ridiculousness that permeates the frum Jewish community.
Such questions lead me to believe that frummies are simply in it to out do each other and not in it for the God aspect. I couldn’t believe this either, it was as if my worst nightmare was coming true – chumras have become law and law is not necessarily followed because people are too stupid to see that external objects are not part of the law.
Happens to be that I personally think jokesters like me log into yeshiva world news coffee rooms and post ridiculous questions just to see how stupid people are and to make people look like idiots.
Some comments taken from the thread with my responses in bold
good question
ive been confronted by this more than once
i didnt ask a shaila (should have)
i davened with a minyan without the hat but was very uncomfortable.
Sounds like he’s scared his daughters wont get shidduchim
Today I saw a boy in shul who was out of school because his shoes tore. He was afraid of showing up at his mesivta in crocs because he thought either he would get thrown out, or people would make fun of him. He was forced to miss an entire day of learning.
I love these sob stories they show up in every thread
Pretty sad commentary on the attitudes of certain segments of the population.
My thoughts exactly
I saw in a sefer that a kollel in my neighborhood asked R’ Chaim Kanievsky this Shaila and he said that it seems to him better with a hat beyichidus. But I saw in a different sefer(I think Ishei Yisroel) b’shem R’ Sheinberg that with a minyan is better.
2 Jews 3 opinions
Yanky is absolutely correct. It should be self-intuitive to every Jew that he should always wear a hat and jacket by davening and bentching (barring extenuating circumstances.)
And if you don’t wear a hat you are not frum
BS”D
Yes, just wear a 2nd yarmulke or even a napkin under your yarmulke better than missing a minyan because you have no hat. And if the minyan doesn’t accept that chas vesholom and does not count you (as opposed to not letting you have the amud but if you need the amud just about anyone would lend you their hat in a normal Chassidish or yeshivish minyan) then why would you want to daven in the Sdoimer Shtibl anyway?
All I have to say is SLOL – silently laughing out loud
tentwenty30, re: mekor for needing hats, etc.
Hilchos Tefiloh, siman 91, (megulah)
sk 4, mb 12
the mishne berureh is in s’u orach chaim 91 seuf katen 12
S’O Orach Chaim Hilchos Tefiloh, siman 91, sk 12 (megulah) [sk 4, mb 12 ?]
Mishnah Berurah 8:4, citing the Ba”ch, requires two head coverings. (Shulchan Aruch O”Ch 282:2)
Now is someone going to verify that?
48 years ago today the new President took off his hat and it was downhill for the hat business.
Minhag HaMakom (community dress standards) plays a big role in issues like this.
If the Rabbi and community leaders dress one way, following them is probably safest.
Classic yeshivish mussar
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{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
This is what you get when people make the toful ikar and the ikar toful.People dont think for themselves or they don’t think at all.And I am a lubavitcher(with a hat in perfect shape and I wear ties and have a beard no yechi colored shirts, and i dont like smirnoff or herring- so what does that make me?)
“…If thats the case, couldn’t you just add a second kippah?”….
I just had a dirty reason about why one shouldn’t put on a second anything.
vos iz naes is so much better
Wow! I thought I was the only one who checked out The Coffee Room for kicks to get me through the afternoon work slump. Nice post!
I get asked that same question at least once a week, I don’t wear a hat except for Shabbos, don’t usually wear a jacket either.
Never mind all the guy in jackets skipping ahead of the minyan everyday, that part of the shuchan aruch was only meant for people that have nothing better to do than wait for the Chazzan, like the unemployed, retired and other bored people. The minyan can find other unemployed losers to make up the 10th when you walk out in middle of chazaras hashatz to beat rush hour.
The previous siman discusses related issues, apparently if you’re in a hurry, you aren’t obligated to shower, put on clean clothes and go to the bathroom, because getting to work 5 minutes early will make you a lot richer. Never mind the fact that between the B.O and farting, others won’t be able to daven near you, this is always a case of Beshas hadchak. As long as the hat, jacket and gartle are on, you are a good Jew, even when answering text messages during amidah, maybe God decided to go modern and answer your prayers by email.
As we used to say in elementary, “if you believe this lie is true, as the blind man he read it too”.
Reading YWN makes me ashamed to be a Jew.
1) Agree with Veebee.
2) I don’t understand this jacket business. On our local Jewish site I once saw a “lost & found” post that went almost exactly like this:
“Lost: navy blue jacket. It’s stained and torn and I don’t really like it, but I need it for davening.”
The comments section: absurdity at it’s best!
Thanks for lightening up the mood of that thread hesh!
well said phil!
Hesh your site is a misnomer, YWN should be frum satire.
Hesh, I post on the coffee room also. What is your username there?
ZXC I don’t trust yeshiva world news, I have heard too many stories of them threatening people who comment that I wont comment – although I should start considering I have nothing to lose.
You know what I just revived an old account and will now be posting under the name frum satire – I just wish I could get my blog name in the profile
Frum Satire, your username on YWN links to your blog.
Aw, your username is no longer linking to your site. I knew that was too good to last but I would have loved to see the reaction when people tried the link. Let us know what threads you’re commenting on. So far your comments were rather tame, or were the moderators just blocking the good ones?
The moderators will block any external website – unless it has a kosher shtemple. Oops, am I allowed to use Yiddish on this site?
Hmmmmm…..
I live in a small frum community so I guess this is what I’m missing by not moving to the big one next door?
tesyaa,
You’d be amazed at what gets blocked there. Here’s an example:
I posted a reply to frumsatire on the coffeeroom jeans thread; in it I wrote the following sentence:
frumsatire, you’re kidding about the “jeans can’t be goyishe if a Jew invented them” line, right? Because “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade” will never be Jewish songs, even though Irving Berlin wrote them.
Well, it was changed to say:
frumsatire, you’re kidding about the “jeans can’t be goyishe if a Jew invented them” line, right? Because ****; **** will never be Jewish songs, even though **** wrote them.
and the following note was added:
Please do not post the names of non-jewish songs. Thank You. Moderator-55
So about 5 hours ago I posted a note apologizing for naming a non-Jewish song. Since other threads have named non-Jewish songs, I figured that they objected to the words “Christmas” and “Easter”. I asked that they write the sentence as: “Because “White xxxx” and “xxxx Parade” will never be Jewish songs, even though they were written by a Jewish composer.” (I decided not to ask them to write his name, just in case there’s also a rule I didn’t know about against writing the name of the German capitol). So far my post has not been acknowledged in any way.
anon,
I think that the stars make your statement even better. Why limit yourself to the 2 songs you mentioned, instead of **** which can mean anything, including all of Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Gene Simmons, David Bowie, etc.
The mods did you a favor.
Wow I am getting replies, I am just on the site for marketing – maybe I should change the name to my real name
Squeak if my latest post gets put up it will create a ruckus
squeak,
Yes, and nearly every American musical as well (with the notable exception of Andrew Lloyd Weber). But I’d rather people know that I mean “White Christmas” instead of “Mrs. Robinson”. Almost everyone on the board thinks I’m an apikorus anyways, & most people treat me accordingly. That’s why I don’t post there very much anymore.
squeak,
Most musicals were written by Jews too. But it’s ridiculous to censor Irving Berlin’s name when all kinds of nastiness goes right through. And leaving out the name of the song & the composer negates the whole point I was trying to make. Also most posters already think I’m some sort of apikorus & respond to me accordingly so I’d rather that the mods not reinforce that by leading people to think I wrote something really obscene (since they’ve let other song names through on the other thread) & not just, say, “Mrs. Robinson”.
Well, it’s up. Were you speaking for me or is just a case of great minds thinking alike?
I just realized that I misrepresented myself as squeak above. Apparently there is a blogger named squeak who lists this forum on his profile. I am not he. Just wanted to clear that up. In the future, I will not identify myself as such here. Sorry. I don’t think I have done this in the past (I think all my comments were anonymous).
anon – it’s really annoying and cruel when they do that. Everyone always assumes the worst when they see an Edit in a post.
I didn’t mean to double post the last time–I thought the first one didn’t go through. People in the CR can be really nasty & prone to personal insults, especially in the name of “frumkeit”. In fact, many of the nastiest and rudest posters are considered to be the “frummest”.
I do like this blog a lot & have been reading it for some time, although I think this is the first time I’ve commented here. If there is already a poster here named “anon for this”, please let me know, so I can avoid confusion.
The truth is that even though it may not be the modern day “minhag” anymore to donn a hat as a respectful gesture, nevertheless, the Jews are supposed to seperate the way we look from the goyim (just as it says about the Jews in Egypt that they merited the redemption since they did not change their clothes, language, e.t.c.). The question that remains is how esactly do we do this in today’s generation. Until we can come up with a better alternative I think it’s important to continue wearing hats at least for davening so that at that holy time we are at least seperated. I also wanted to mention that I don’t understand “modern” orthodoxy. Can someone please enlighten me and show me how the ideology of modernity is different from reform and conservative!!!!!!!!!!!! The common denominator is that they are all seeking to find new ways to deviate from the original ways of things and to be more modern and with the times. If you use your common sense, you will clearly see that “frummies”, even though they do have some ridiculous chumras, at the end of the day they will get the last laugh when it comes to heaven. They are “lemaysa” better and more frum than modern Jews are and I think that you all will agree with me on this. (I’ just waiting to get bombarded by furious posts).
One of the great truths of the world is this:
You’d better learn to laugh at yourself. Otherwise someone else will do it.
Thats right – what do you think my life is about