What is yeshivish?
I am consistently wondering what on earth yeshivish means. Does it mean you attend yeshiva, if so one who went to Ramaz which has a prom may even be considered yeshivish. What about those who learn full time, are they yeshivish? But what if they learn full time at YCT, surely that cannot be considered yeshivish. Then you have people who do not learn at all, but they have peyos behind their ears and eat at chap-a-nosh and say words like shayich and shtuch, that’s yeshivish??? Then I have friends who learn full time, their wives get some secretarial degree from the internet (kosher net of course) but they don’t consider themselves yeshivish? What’s the deal- I cannot figure it out.
Unlike the word Heimishe with which I really had to ask- Yeshivish is one of those words I know something about. For most its just a matter of opinion and I will state mine as well.
On frumster they have this question for all of categories: What does Yeshivish Balck Hat/Modern mean to you? They have two types of Yeshivish, one for those that read the Jewish Press and wear 4 piece yarmulkes and the other for the greasy peyos types that say “come have a mezoynos” instead of a piece of cake. I propose we break it down a little farther- because God forbid we call yeshivish people yeshivish when they are really just modern orthodox people who wear black hats.
I myself cant really claim any detailed knowledge of this yeshivish business, for I went to a chofetz chaim yeshiva (which apparently isn’t even in the system anymore) and according to the real yeshiva world chofetz chaim yeshivas are not yeshviish by any means and the only people who think they are yeshivish, are modern orthodox folks.
To me yeshivish has always meant, you are devoting your life to learning or chinuch within the yeshiva system. Lately, the yeshivish crowd has begun to do something which they lambasted chabad for years, and that is kiruv. Yeshivish people are being sent by various agencies mostly Aish or Wolfson to go and make Heathers and Johns into Chayalas and Yankels.But if you go into kiruv and leave your beis medrish, can you really be called yeshivish. Some folks refer to these people as laid back yeshivish, but God forbid we call them modern.
Some people look at anyone with a black hat and a non-artscroll shas set as yeshivish and that is simply not the case. I know plenty of people who would not refer to themselves as yeshivish, even though their sons and daughters are living it up yeshivish style – which basically means they take home $1000 month from kollel and only see their wives for 15 minutes a day. To be yeshivish a girl must support her husband, real yeshivish girls get what they call a certificate, usually medical billing or administrative assistance type of stuff.
To me, if you actually went to college you are relegated to modern, that’s how I see it at least and you are free to argue. You could essentially get your BTL and then go to law school, but already you have entered a world of gashmius, unless you go to Touro, Touro College is the cure all, in fact Touro can improve your shidduch status immensely because going to Stern, or God forbid Queens or Brooklyn just means you are damaged goods. One girl told me that she went to Kingsborough because Brooklyn had other Jews which posed a threat, but having just minorities put everyone out of the question.
I do have some questions about what it means to be yeshivish:
Must you have peyos behind your ears?
Must you wear your yarmulke on the middle of your head so it peaks out of your hat?
Do you have to use terms like Grada, Mailos, Mimayla and Chesronos on a regular basis?
Must you only have a Hebrew name on your birth certificate?
Must your wife wear stockings all the time?
Could Baalei Teshuva ever achieve status of being yeshivish?
Is there such a thing as a yeshivish lubavitcher? Since Chassidim and yeshivish are sometimes indistinguishable?
Must you have a lot of dandruff?
Can someone chofetz chaim ever be considered yeshivish?
Do you have to be rude to be yeshivish?
Do yeshivish guys ever have firm handshakes?
Can you have a nice car and still be considered yeshivish?
When people refer to people as Litvishe, why don’t they just say yeshivish, because what if your from Hungary?
Do yeshivish women wear red?
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Is there any truth to this kabalistic urban legend?
What do women do behind the mechitza?
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{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
I was all prepared to write a response to this, then I got to the questions at the end and I started laughing too hard to remember my train of thought, so there goes my intellegent response haha
You definitely have to be rude.
Everything on your list is neccessary but not suffecient. using words like Grada, Mailos, Mimayla and Chesronos on a regular basis is def suffecient enough to be yeshivish
OTD I thought so
Lubavitchers refer to them all as litvish, no matter what their true provenance is.
I guess pretty much anyone who is not lubavitch, chassidish or MO has to be yeshivish. It’s hard to remain outside the labeling box these days.
You do have chassidish-yeshivish crossovers and various interesting amalgams.
yeshiv means badly educated
Lubabs call most yeshivish people snags/kollel by default, unless proven otherwise. Kind of interchangeable with Litvish among ingnorant people that don’t realized the the Alter Rebbe was from Lithuania.
Heimish on the other hand is reserved to most chassidic sects that have long peyos and avoid outreach, so Lubavitch and Breslov are excluded and in special categories of their own.
I never heard of yeshivish before frumster, they managed to create new tags / reclassify frum Jews in the 21st century. If the guys that run frumster are chassidim, it was probably their politically correct way of referring to misnagdim.
Now that we’ve cleared this all up, what are chareidim?
Certainly the payos and a black hat are somewhat necessary to be called yeshivish perhaps. As you can imagine there are different levels of yeshivish.
Besides the black pants and white shirt type yeshivish, it can be argued that the more disheveled your appearance the more “yeshivish” you are, seeing as how you are too busy learning to worry about things such as hygiene?
I call myself Yeshivish, even though I am a BT, wear jeans, and don’t learn nearly as much as I know I should. I call myself that because that is the outlook I ascribe to, and even if I don’t fit everybodys defenition of it, who cares? I’m here to do God’s will not theirs.
Phil- there is an excellent book that actually does try and describe what a Charedi actually is, it is called “One Above and Seven Below.” I can’t think of the author right now, but its really good.
DS: The book is authored by Yechezkel Hirshman.
Thank you Ruth, I own the book but was just too lazy to get up and go look.
Yeshivish is defined by one’s subscribing to certain core charedi beliefs and a more than academic interest into serious learning.
Some of my Chabad friends have called me a snag (I hate that term). They have lost contact with me after they became meshichist.
to be yeshivish you also need to know and be able to throw out a derogatory and racist empithet for any and all ethinicities at the drop of a hat. (bonus if you have more than one epithet for a single minority group)
The Law- I prefer the catch-all “goyim”, it’s derogatory, annoying, and condescending, and it works for any ethnic group.
“real yeshivish girls get what they call a certificate, usually medical billing or administrative assistance type of stuff.”
Ummm, NO. They teach or do therapy. Their parents or loans support them while neither one is working. Secretarial work is frowned upon. It doesn’t pay enough to support the family.
Stockings are Chasidic not Yeshivish.
I know of a yeshivish woman who wears red but, she’s a little bit of a rebel.
Chareidim are extra schtark Yeshivish
stockings are HEIMISH.
I only have a Hebrew name on my birth certificate, but I doubt that has anything to do with yeshivish; it’s because of my ba’al teshuvah parents.
“come have a mezoynos”
DEAD ON!
I refer to Mezoynos as such… However, I’m anti-kollel so, I’m just an MO Sctarky.
Excuse me, rabbi bas avraham, people of many cultures have been wearing stockings for centuries. Men, women. Heimish is a little closer to heim, and isn’t sold at Victoria’s Secret, last I checked.
Yeshivish wear socks without stockings, unless they are showing off for gyoress, then you know, they, of go with the enth degree of modesty rules.
I’m not rabbi bas Avraham… knowing if Yeshivish people wear tights or not has nothing to do with being a rabbi. I have mostly Yeshivish friends and have discussed this with them.
Ooh, please please, can we get to “What is Haimish?”???
Can someone post the Yeshivishe Raid song, I think its from Country Yossi or something. It should bring the point home.
Excuse me everyone but everyone’s opinion of what is yeshivish differs.You see my father and my brother’s wear hats and only white shirts and black pants.However My father, and myself have degrees (from a real college as do most of my friends) and my married brothers will get a degree once they leave kollel.My family dresses very well.What does that make us?We are considered yeshivish by most people.It is such a bunch of baloney that if your Father works or has a college degree you can’t be yeshivish-maybe you can’t be “greasey” , but you can definitley be yeshivish!
interestingly, some people consider “yeshivish” derogatory, and some people consider it a compliment (as can be witnessed in the above comments).
this is on either end of the spectrum – some “black hat” types consider yeshivish as a referral to the greasy style and thus derogatory.
NEXT,
Someone defined Heimish as Chasidic but not kiruv happy like Chabad and Breslov. So that would really mean Boro Park, Williamsburg and maybe some of Monsey.
Isn’t it drooling with irony that they are not warm to those who not as themselves and yet, heimish is “warm,” linguistically.
Yo, man, you gotta chill out, and i know you had a real rough childhood and teenage years, but man, stop the hate. Not everyone and everything connected to Orthodox Judaism is bad.
This is not only in response to this comment, its an accumilation of many of your’s on a couple of blogs.
Yeshivish to me always meant narrow mindedness; starting with “My Rosh Yeshiva said …” which in other words means that the Rosh Yeshiva is 1) infallible and 2) knows more than your Rosh Yeshiva.
Hey OTD – Get off my Internet.
Yeah Hey OTD,
Maybe stop telling people what to do.
veebee – if he would listen a bit more to Bob Grant, he might get off his tush, stop whining how everyone has done him wrong and MOVE THE F**** ON with life.
Michal,
I believe heimishe comes from the word “heim” which means home. So, basically it means homestyle.
Is it me, or do these labels (modern, yeshivish, charedi, etc.) sound like music subcultures? Just like you can say a band is “poser metal”, people say Chafetz Chaim is “poser yeshivish”.
frum satire,
The answer to your question about BT’s is that no, they can never be considered yeshivish. In fact, anyone from a modern orthodox backround who flips out (that’s how people in my yeshiva who refer to our fellow flip-outs call them) is labled as a Harry! Maybe you should write an article on what the definition of Harry is!?
is there like, a rule on this site that if your comment contains anything remotely positive about orthodox judaism you get lambasted?
To all those that bash wearing a white shirt and black pants,
I agree that if you’re a working man, that it is not necessary to always donne a white shirt and black pants, except of course for shabbos kodesh which you should anyways be dressing differently and nicer. However, concerning a yeshiva bochur such as myself, what exactly would you gain by not dressing with white shirts (oh yesh, on shabbos you should obviously wear a nicer white shirt with a suite)? Who are you trying to show off to, are you a homo or something!!!??????? It’s best to just dress simple and nicely when you’re in yeshiva, this way you’re also not competing with other guys to look better cause you’re all virtually dressed the same. Additionally, the way you dress DOES affect the way you act!!!! You behave in a more refined manner when wearing a white shirt/ balck pants in yeshiva than if you would wear a skull and crossbones tee-shirt and jeans. Think about it and than get back to me if you have something intelligent to say!!!!!
TO ALL THOSE THAT BASH WEARING A WHITE SHIRT AND BLACK PANTS!!!!!!!!!,
I agree that if you’re a working man, that it is not necessary to always donne a white shirt and black pants, except of course for shabbos kodesh which you should anyways be dressing differently and nicer. However, concerning a yeshiva bochur such as myself, what exactly would you gain by not dressing with white shirts (oh yesh, on shabbos you should obviously wear a nicer white shirt with a suite)? Who are you trying to show off to, are you a homo or something!!!??????? It’s best to just dress simple and nicely when you’re in yeshiva, this way you’re also not competing with other guys to look better cause you’re all virtually dressed the same. Additionally, the way you dress DOES affect the way you act!!!! You behave in a more refined manner when wearing a white shirt/ balck pants in yeshiva than if you would wear a skull and crossbones tee-shirt and jeans. Think about it and than get back to me if you have something intelligent to say!!!!!
I apologise for sending my comment twice!
for all u kollel yungerleit out there, doesnt it stipulate in the kesuba that the husbund has 2 support the wife ?
r u guys changing around the gemara ?
is some shixa taking care of ur 12 kids while the wife is working , and ur batelling 1/2 the day ?
u guys r puting ur families bemakom sacana !
Stop focusing on urself, and try a little bit of bein odom lachaveiro !
Dont blame hashem if ur kids go off the derech !
get a real job, be kove-a itim latorah, learn in the morning, and make sure ur kids grow up to be frum yidden !
chag kasher v’samei-ach !
yeshivish means : I take a shower l’ chavod shabbos !