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Has the Jewish Observer Lost Its Teeth?
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IndyMom




 
 
    
 

Post Sat, Dec 20 2008, 1:01 pm
bnm wrote:
I deal with the Agudah sometimes through my work, they sometimes get on my nerves with all their precautions about not stepping on peoples toes and not getting involved in community politics.


A little off topic but I was once at an agudah convention and was sitting in a dark corner of the lobby nursing my baby with my husbands jacket over us. I was chatting with my husband and a family friend (female) who used to board at his parents house years ago. One of the speakers from the convention came over to me and quietly suggested I move to the bathroom because I was being untznius. It was one of those confrontations that I waited for since the beginning of nursing that I had been all prepared to fight for, but when the time came, I froze. My awesome husband started in about how disgusting it is to nurse in the smelly bathroom, and would she want to eat in a bathroom? and it may even have halachic problems, and I was perfectly tznius doing what I was doing. I was so proud of him. OK, an aside, I know. Just posted on a nursing thread and then I saw the aguda on this so... Smile
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freidasima




 
 
    
 

Post Sat, Dec 20 2008, 3:12 pm
Fox, unfortunately the answer is simple. The writers have changed, the clientelle has changed. I've been reading the JO for ages, going back to the 70s. The aguda world has also changed. At the same time, I've been reading the Yiddish "equivalent" or so it proposed to be in the 70s-80s, "Dos Yiddishe Vort". That, too has changed. But that used to be an almost one-man newspaper, that of Joseph Freidenson. The JO was different. And again, in the 80s its clientelle was different.

Look at the Agudah then and look at it today. R. Moshe Sherer used to joke that he was at one point the only person on the dais who didn't have a beard. Of course they didn't shy away from really controversial topics, why? Because the agudah in those days wasn't afraid of really controversial topics! Today, forget it.

Also, the level of education that the writers had, and the readers had, was much higher in many cases than today. Many of the readers were of european background and even the americans were in so many cases college graduates, professionals and very very frum. The two weren't mutually exclusive. But something happened in the Jewish world and we all know what it was...and so...the JO is boring.
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Fox




 
 
    
 

Post Sat, Dec 20 2008, 7:46 pm
freidasima wrote:
Fox, unfortunately the answer is simple. The writers have changed, the clientelle has changed. I've been reading the JO for ages, going back to the 70s. The aguda world has also changed. At the same time, I've been reading the Yiddish "equivalent" or so it proposed to be in the 70s-80s, "Dos Yiddishe Vort". That, too has changed. But that used to be an almost one-man newspaper, that of Joseph Freidenson. The JO was different. And again, in the 80s its clientelle was different.

Look at the Agudah then and look at it today. R. Moshe Sherer used to joke that he was at one point the only person on the dais who didn't have a beard. Of course they didn't shy away from really controversial topics, why? Because the agudah in those days wasn't afraid of really controversial topics! Today, forget it.

Also, the level of education that the writers had, and the readers had, was much higher in many cases than today. Many of the readers were of european background and even the americans were in so many cases college graduates, professionals and very very frum. The two weren't mutually exclusive. But something happened in the Jewish world and we all know what it was...and so...the JO is boring.


I think you're right; I'd been trying to put my finger on it for a long time. One thing I began to notice over a decade ago is that writers and readers seem to have lost the ability to recognize daas Torah as well as benefit from that which is instructive in some way, but does not represent daas Torah.

For me, the beginning of the end of the JO came a over a decade ago with the publication of a review about a book written by the traditional-but-not-very-observant mother of a baalas t'shuva (Black Becomes a Rainbow). The memoir, which I read, was okay; it's strongest point, IMHO, was that it enabled a frum audience to appreciate the perspective of a parent when a child becomes "more religious". While I wouldn't consider it a must-read, the book did a good job of showing how practices that we take for granted -- such as keeping cholov Yisroel -- can seem like a declaration of war to a less scrupulously observant parent. In a generation in which many, many of us are more observant of certain halachas or stringencies than our parents, it's not a bad thing to keep in mind.

The JO's reviewer, however, gave the book a tepid review, with his complete analysis resting on the statement that " . . . it provides a good lesson for baalei t'shuva on how not to act." Apparently, the reviewer had been absent during 9th grade literature (as well as 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade) when the concept of perspective was discussed. Rather than discussing that the book author's complaints or descriptions of her daughter's behavior might be colored by her perspective, he simply swallowed her descriptions whole and blamed the whole affair on the daughter's bad middos!

Black Becomes a Rainbow was the perfect example of a book that -- while not representing mussar or daas Torah -- had an important point for a frum audience about sensitivity to the complex feelings of others as we pursue greater spiritual objectives. But the JO reviewer seemed unable to recognize the subtle value of such a thing; if it required the least amount of discernment or discrimination, well, forget about it!

It's a shame, though, because it reduces every written word to the lowest common denominator.
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