Back in the day when I was in high school there was always talk of who was a faker and a poser. Folks who donned their penguin outfits, yet didn’t adhere strictly to the law. Basically those who wore the black hats but still hooked up with girls and smoked on shabbos. These days a new faker has arisen- it is not as bad as say the frummy poser- but it is becoming more of a nuisance as classifications go, making it harder to judge people solely based on external qualities. This phenomena threatens the very social fabric that the whole frum community is based on- if we cannot judge other Jews based on external qualities, what will happen to the social caste system that has been based upon dividing black hat wearers and knit yarmulke folks?
In recent years there has been a new way of classifying oneself, this is the YU to the right category. It is basically someone who is in a YU smicha program who dresses and acts yeshivish- but in all reality they are infiltrating a cult that has been around for a long time and chooses to remain insular and we must fight against these so called “YU to the right” people who walk the walk and talk the talk- but you can still tell from a mile away if they attended MTA for high school or went to Chaim Berlin- its just this vibe these YU yeshiva guys give off.
It might just have to do with the way they talk to girls. Instead of the classic yeshiva guy way of asking them their last names and seeing if they know the girls brothers or cousins, they tend to look them in the eye and have a coherent conversation- clearly not a classic yeshiva guy. They also tend to look at women as people rather then either sex objects or a means to producing many binei torah.
The classic yeshiva guy uses terms like taka, nisroynos, shayich, shaychis, nishka freilich, vus titzich, dafka and plenty more in a flowy way. They have been using these terms their whole lives and they flow freely by the truckload from their mouths. The YU smicha guy just doesn’t use them correctly, or they overuse them to prove their frumminess, all they do is warn the greasy yeshiva guy that there is an imposter in their presence. It warns the Lakewood Bochur immediately that while they slaved away at daf yomi in their summers at Camp Toras Chaim Tashbar- this imposter was soaking up the sun at machach in camp Moshava or working as an intern in some accounting office. And while this imposter was playing for the MTA floor hockey team on Sundays- the real yeshiva guy was slaving over three cups of coffee and a pack of cigarettes at morning seder.
If you take it one step further you can always find out instantly by eating at someones house if they have always been black hat or it is just a recent fascination that came along after a year spent at OJ or a few rehab years at Neveh. A casual look around the house will reveal if the kid actually had a hat at his bar mitzvah like a real yeshiva guy or if his bar mitzvah picture has him smiling in his knit yarmulke wearing a talis like a scarf.
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