Chassidim try not to look directly into the mirror. only on the window when its dark out side or... or... or by mistake on the mirror but for sure not for gazint because we are not into health of our body's we only need healthy kugel but not healthy bodies just joking
keep on trucking

Kigel makes you healthy :o? Why didn't anyone tell me that before?!

On the mar'os, yes, it is a halocha and yes you are chassidish on top of that. I understand and admire that. But now:

If you are chassidish enough not to look in a mirror, then are you chassidish enough not to look at naked shiksas?

If that does work for you, then how did you need to come here in the first place? Muz men zugenn that  if it has not worked for you....just like for me....then the question for ehrlicher people like us is: 'why not?'.

It may be time to look in the mirror. Not the glass one with the thin bit of silver covering it, but the mirror inside that really matters.

I guess that is why you are here in the first place, just like all of us. Nu. Nice to be on the same bus with you, chaver!

Love,

Dov

The one who looked there, is in fact a failure, but since his name is Shteighecher he has not looked for 83 days. Maybe that's why we need nicknames.

dov wrote on 04 Aug 2011 18:37:



Can someone please explain this question?

Achal shum v'reicho nodef, yachzor v'yocheil shum??


Is Dov suggesting that since his being chasidish didn't stop him from being imperfect, it is all worthless?


Dov: Did you eat/sleep/breath before Recovery? Did it stop you from looking at ? If so, did you go to SA & stop wasting your time on eating/sleeping/breathing?

this is regarding the "failure" subject
Confidence wrote on 23 Mar 2010 05:24:

thank you very much it really meant a lot to me

Thank you ZS. That was powerfull.

Zem, I like that and it really talks to me. i need to memorize it.

Gevura!

thank U zemiros it's talking to me too
i really appreciate it.

ווער עס קען אידיש ביטע שרייב דיך איין אין די אידישע פוארום

If you are chassidish enough not to look in a mirror, then are you chassidish enough not to look at naked shiksas?

dov i love this question

here goes

( hold on to your geshtektzemfleeeeegin)

what does it mean to be chassidish/

what does it mean to be born  chassidish?

what is chassidsh? is it a dress code? a particular taste in greasy food? is it a nusach hatfilla?


is it having a rebbe ?

is it lerning toiras haball shem?

is it not playing organized sports?



as being chassidsh is a way of life

it is in it's ultimate form

i said again in it's ultimate form

a derch to rech perfection in serving hashem on an elevated plane

NOT on a seperated plane
aderabbeh on a plane that takes the seemingly mundane

and elevates every part of the seemingly simple till it reches pure avodas hashem



noew this is a tuff call

and it is a lifes work

therefore

therefore

chassidus

and especially in america

has become extermely institutionilized

no i didnt say commercialized

i said it became institutionalized and systemized

meaning it is a system from cradle to grave

yes it is somewhat spoonfed
for better or worse

( i am not one to debate the merits or demerits of the system)

chassidus in america
depends heavily on education

where a boy or girl goes into a "syetm"

and systems usually work


one of the hallmarks of chassidus is it's search for kedush

living elevated

now of course

it is impossible

to teach young childeren the dangers of the "gass" without exposing them

therefore in most (not all) chassidusen they choose to train childeren that the outside world is

is trayf and not thier issue

whn a child id taught for example

not to look in the mirror he is being rocketed to an extermely high plane

but the hope is that we have covered our base

some times the bases were nver covered

or sometimes the individual naturally is curious to seek out what is being hidden from him albeit for his own good

and at the epoint where he or she has discovered the poisen

boom a he wants it

b he is too ashamed to talk about it

that doesn't mean the syten soesn't work

it means it didnt work for him




i can talk for 3 days starigfht on this topic

bardichev wrote on 04 Aug 2011 21:31:

Regarding Yosef haTzaddik and his problem with my garlic-breath, you should know better than suspect me of idiocy.

Ok, maybe not.....(my wife may takeh be suspicious).

But seriously, have you read what Reb b wrote yet? I would never suggest doing yet more things wrong, for the sake of 'not being a hypocrite'. But what I am saying is this:

Admit we are hypocrites. Admit that we act like we really mean it and even think we really mean it - then we go and do things that prove we don't really mean it.

AND WE DO REALLY MEAN IT! WE ARE GOOD!

Yet we still went and did the schmutzy stuff, and many of us still do it, and many of us will do it again. And for many of us, it is even guaranteed that we will do it again, b'emunas omen.

Apparently it is our 'minhag'.

That's not good, it's not chassidish, but it's the way it is for many tayereh yidden here.

So what I am saying is to be as good as we can in every way, but at least admit we are hypocrites if we are acting out. And even if we are sober for a long time because of our enlightened self-interest, to freely admit that chassidus is not why we are sober. I feel that people who get sober in AA or SA and then wrap themselves in the talis and imply to others that they are sober because they are 'really frum now' are veiter big liars, and will fall.

In other words, saying "I don't do xy&z because I am chassidish" is just not the whole truth. The truth is that we do what we want that is chassidish, and when we want non-chassidish things badly enough, we do them, too. In other words, we are not yet really comfortable or successful living the chassidish way, but are trying. We do not have any idea how to make it, but we will learn be"H.

Do you think that our hypocrisy is a bad thing to believe and admit to ourselves? Too much honesty with ourselves is treif? 

The definition of the real word Chassidish is a חסיד המתחסד עם קונו a person who really does things above and beyond his responsibility's. he is ready to give away from himself what he is truly not obligated to. and that kind of person is sometimes in danger because when the yetzer tells him to do something that doesent sound like a strgiht mitzvah or at least not in the time of doing a diffrent mitzvah, the yetzer can come in a form of laying it out to the person as if its a real good thing to do becouse this is even extra special. thats what dovid hamelech was asking hashem שמרה נפשי כי חסיד אני i cant tell the yetzer lets look in shulchan oruch if its a mitzvah or aveirah because he can come and tell me that its לפנים משורת הדין and a chassid does lifnim meshuras hadin. so dovid asked for a special shmirah from above because of the fact that he is a chassid.

Perhaps why the Chassidus took the name "Chassid" because the baal shem tov and his talmidim were very into kiruv and helping others above and beyond their responsibility's, and they where also putting a lot of gedorim and base lines for the pshutei haom not to fall in to the trap right away, and the tzadikkim them selves were trying to reach to the highest Madreigoh according to their abbilitys and strengths and even stretching their strengths to the most they were able to in order to serve hashem and his precious children klal yisroel that may be the reason why the chassidim are called chassidim.
in our day and age their is a whole new meaning to chassidus. it really depens in which crowd you will go, every crowd has a different view on chassidus today. for sure that a lot of chassidus are aimilar in some areas but every one has a diffrent prespective on chassidus.
the real chassidim in our days are the baalei tshuva who choose to come back and really search chassidus and really follow chassidus. and 20-30 precent of every chassidus in the world approximately are realy the kind of people that deserve the name chassidim.
(even if the AA or SA was a cause for him to become a chassid he can still be a true chassid it is totaly not contradicting)

now whats with the other part of the chassidishe group. some of them are just called chassidish because of their culture, uniform, style of life, style of education, style of learning, style of certain actions and behaviors, style of minhaggim, etc. and they are nice good people like normal fine individuals they benefit from being together with the special people who are really trying to be on the level of חסיד המתחסד עם קונו. but they are natural people.

than their are a part of chassidim who struggle very very much with all the nisyonos that we are aware of. a chassid that struggles is in bigger danger from one side because he feels that i come from a place and i belong to place that really contradict my thoughts and behaviors and this gives him a much bigger amount of stres which triggers to fall in dipper into the pit. from the other side because most chassidim are very much into hiding the world and running away from the world and trying to stay like in the old towns "in der alter heim" which has a lot of benefits and some of the opposite, when someone is at risk there is a lot bigger risk for him because he discovers a new world in front of his eyes and he is in a bigger trap out of curiosity and inspired to the bad by the discovery he found.
also because chassidim are very much separated man from women so it is much harder to have a work relationship with woman etc.

brothers brothers now listen to me this question of how can you look at..... if you are not looking in a mirror is a question that is very often asked by the victim himself and he asks his chaver his mashpia his rebbe with what am i a chossid if i do or think or act so and so and so...

the very common answer that mashpeeim give for this frequently asked question is as follows:
i will giva a moshol:

A person in his house in LA, he is leaving on his way to Australia, he has a very long trip several stops in between several connecting flights, cities, airports, etc. he will get there after a long journey. if he is asked on his way out of his house with his suitcases: oh where are you traveling to? will his answer be detailing all his stops? defiantly not! he will answer in one word i am going to Australia.
the same here if this man is really working and trying to become better and goes to GYE, AA, SA, he is on his way to full term success he is one day going to be the ultimate real chusid because of all his traning of his derech hachassidus together with all the destinations and stops and connecting work he will overcome all of his struggels and become a real real חסיד המתחסד עם קונו.

another thought about this we find in the torah that certain names were given על שם העתיד. so even wuth out heading yet to the right direction we know that at the end of the game he will return and will come to GYE or AA OR SA and he will beazras hashem grow out of this second person who is coming with him where he goes. than he will return to the real high quality life that he was thought in his younger age with his chassidishe education. so we can call him a chusid "al shem haosid"   

so either because he his on his way there, or because we borrow his future name, he well deserves to be called with the name chosid.     
   
please dont stop any minhag of yours because your struggling in this area stick to man you really wana be and one day you will get there.

most of what i said about chassidim here has a certain truth by the real yeshivish community's as well.   

but i did not discuss chassidus chabad because it is a totally different world.  then any of the others and my note will not fit in to their culture. i love them too. but i did not go in to there style of life here.

i love you all have a great wonderfull shabbos with a varemkeit mit a chassidisha bran A GIT SHABBOS my brothers.   
      .     

Wow, thanks for the description and the insights about chassidus and chassidim, chazak chazak.

[In the rest of this post, I am not referring to you at all, chazak, so do not get me wrong please. But I will PM you my question.]

At it's shoresh, what I was really getting at was the famous (and oft-repeated) interaction between Rabbi Twerski and a sweet frum yunger mahn. The fellow told him that he has compunctions about using a goyishe book (AA) to get better. He felt it was beneath him and suspected it was questionable halachickly. (We have heard this before on GYE, if you want a load of that, look at a thread called "We all want to be good".)

Rav Twerski answered him with a tmihah mikayemes: "And when you were looking at the porn, where were the compunctions? Where was halocha?"

Now to those who are stuck on "Hey, why didn't Rav T just answer his concerns and explain to him why it is not beneath him and why it is halachickally permissible?!", I have something I consider very important to share:

Until we learn how to be honest with ourselves, we will twist Hashem's Torah and there really is no hope for us to be what Hashem wants. We may be eating kosher, keeping Shabbos, etc...but we will not have a relationship with Him and His people, because we will remain subject to unmanageable, crazy lives because of our powerlessness over our addiction.

Admitting our lying, hypocrisy, and how we use anything - even halocha - to hide behind rather than be honest with ourselves, is a far greater priority than stopping doing any aveiros.

And that is not even recovery yet. It is just the intro to the first step. But admitting this, gets us over that well-known shame of showing up at a real (live) meeting with real other people there. Because it is really just more lying. It is just our fear and shame making up halachik and other excuses in our minds to protect us from facing the truth about ourselves.

Religion in general, and chassidus is included, are often obstacles to this admission, because we use them to remain forever entangled in excuses for why we cannot really get the help we really need (it's be a chillul Hashem for me to go to a meeting; it's asur to go into a building attached to a church; it's assur to be misvadeh aveiros ben odom laMokom b'rabim; the program is christian; how can I learn 'teshuvah' from goyim, etc....all plain lies).

We so often are convinced 'we are here working on big things', and this simple basic 12 step derech eretz stuff is poshut beneath us. It's really sad to see a sweet chassidishe yid who comes to a meeting and spends his entire time advising others and spewing complaints and trying to adjust the philosophy of the program as he sees it....and he cannot even get sober. he eventually stops coming to meetings with various complaints about why the steps are crazy, or the guys are losers, or whatever.

Maybe he is right. Maybe he needs some other derech to recover - and there are surely many! But his chances are very poor indeed if he is lying to himself, for whatever reason.

Such a person needs to be helped to look in a 'mirror', and it is yehoreig v'al ya'avor for him to not to. Not halachically or technically - but in simple reality: he is killing himself! He will be helped, eventually. "Ader a nisayon, ader a bizayon," as Rebbe Nachman zy"a used to say - either humility saves us, or humiliation does.