in response to bego (ill prob take him for president, especially when you consider the competition).
ill confess i dont know much about the gentile society in those days. by the way aside from a couple of well known figures in terms of mistresses etc. u didnt really document much...how do you know prostitution was rampant????
in terms of the Jewish society-is there a soul out there that disagrees that we were much more segregated in those days?? yeah there was an enlightenment period and this Napoleon character, but other than that we were pretty despised ''ghetto-ish jews. (im not talking about the assimilation period leading up to world war 2 in certain areas)
dunno maybe volozhin, and slonim, telz and belz,
were loaded with brothels!
speaking to my grandma about the alta heim gave me a VERY different picture.
nah shes not such a history buff.
but she has an advantage too.
she was there!
as for a ''story-line'' in the torah, the maysah with er and onan is something that we learn from but these are individuals far greater than our comprehension entails. they had cheshbonos and i dont think that we can compare them to us. so in that sense its kinda as relevant as the ''storyline'' of the hitting on the gid hanashe by yaakov avinu.
def. the torah wants to point out this sin (possibly due to the severity?)
its def not mentioned in the torah that this was common!

מצרים...

2 points for mitzrayim. 
pretty special case also dont ya think? 
anything more recent that we can relate to and was assumed in the opening post?

Oh I thought there was an argument about whether civilizations and societies were immoral (there were many)...

not to my understanding.
i thought this was primarily concerning us. 
(the jews). (i also had a chat confirming this with trouble.)
if trouble seems to agree with you either hes confused about his opening post, im confused...p.s. if anyone has a refutation to what it was like in der heim please speak up.

Threads evolve gotta up with the times ...

not that anyone cares but i think that ive taken a bit of a sharp tone on this thread. i dont think thats necessary. sorry.
ditto for the above p.s. though

Higher: bubby, did you masturbate as a child?
Bubby: vas redtz du? We never took maaser from anything. Gedenkt mein kind, oranges and tomato's weren't imported from Palestine then.
Higher: no bubby, I meant to ask if you had bad thoughts ever?
Bubby: nein, we never thought shlecht about our neighbors. Don't forget, we all practically lived on top of each other.
Higher: yes bubby, that's what I'm asking. With that closeness, did that ever lead to unclean....
Bubby: mein teire sheifile (knip on the cheeks), once a week we went down to the river to bathe.
Higher (exasperated): bubby, did you ever put your fingers... (stammering somewhat), like beforehand.... I mean, not when you were actually.....?
Bubby: of course! How else would we know the temperature of the water!

Trouble wrote on 23 Oct 2019 15:22:

This made me laugh out loud at work! 

Sorry about my spelling misrtakes, they are actually delibareate to hide my status as an English literature major. 

In terms of being president, no thanks!! 

The heim - an imaginary concept made up to make jews nowadays feel guilty. See rabbi avidgor miller (though I cant remember the book - recently released).

Please don't think that just because a town had a yeshiva it was immune from these things. volozhin was a hot bed of solicialism and haskolo.

This thread was about us, but trouble made a valid point - we cant blame outsiders, the world has always been crum. We need to sort ourselves out.  

bego wrote on 23 Oct 2019 15:29:

the trouble post was leitzanus (i think he wud agree but not sure) i dont think it needs a response.
suffice is to say that i spoke to her at length and confirmed everything i had thought about the ''made up concept of the heim to make us feel guilty'' (thats assumption number wtvr in terms of the big ones on this thread.) rav avigdor millers book is called ''a divine madness'' and is mostly focusing on a small time period before ww 2 when things went haywire. (it wasnt in all areas btw. (i wasnt bringing volozhin as a prime example either way i was just trying to make a point in terms of before that ''haywire tekufah) i addressed this in the previous post. the character and the ghetto like society mostly kept all bad influences out. as did the fact that people were very busy surviving for the most part. (i think rav avigdor miller zt''l actually makes this point himself! but i need to research to bring chapter and verse.) (though that wasnt in all areas some places were not so poor). 
of course we all gotta look at ourselves. but to say that the internet isnt playing a big fat role and that everything was the same by jews then...
well it is a free country...
and based on the president nowadays, u can def. say whatever you want!

Actually, trouble's last post was not leitzanus at all. His initial post remains intact.

A simple point: tefillas zakkah proves that masturbation was rampant throughout our history. The tefillah said immediately at the onset of y"k mentions several times that we are confessing to the sin of masturbation (not the sin of looking at internet without filters). No bubby can tell us otherwise. Zakkah was not written for the six oisvorfs. It was written for klal yisroel as a whole, and especially the frum world. No, it wasn't (solely) written with our generation in mind.

Now, just because it was rampant, does not mean the sin is not a severe one. And just because it was around then, it doesn't mean you shouldn't get a filter.

higher wrote on 23 Oct 2019 15:37:

In terms of making stuff up, we all do it. We all have our knowledge we have accumulated over the years and that is coloured by our own realities. I try not to, but I'm sure I'm guilty. Especially on this website, were we are all (nice big assumption there) trying to hide out true identities. So if I said I am a socioliogy graduate from Harvard, that would give me speaking rights, but I cant say that (I'm not by the way). Anyway, kach mekublani from my history books and my rebbeim.

Back to the sugya. Of course internet has made it worse, but that doesn't mean (as trouble says) it wasn't a major issue in the past.

the point is simple.
yes its mentioned a few times in the onset of zakkah.
could be because...
1.everyone was nichshol at some point (aside from yaakov avinu and maybe some select exceptions.) some more some less. AND the...
2.aveirah is extremely chumur and has tremendous ramifications (spiritual) (so it was written for ALL of klal yisroel. it was relevant to all of klal yisroel and...wait for it...)
it wasnt rampant! at least theres zero proof.
which brings us to our next point!
3. there is no PROOF that it was rampant.
(as an aside and this related to the zakkah debate, rabbeinu yonah is clear that teshuva is a life long process (aside from the basic teshuva)
4. the character and society of an earlier generation can be asserted by those that lived through it as opposed to those that think they know what went on. (although this is a side point and dont get distarcted from it)
5. aside from saying empty statements, can anyone deny that hook up sites and what not makes it easier to do znus? does anyone have a LOGIC (key word) that the internet doesnt make things worse?

“there is no PROOF that it was rampant”

In 100 years from now they will say there’s no proof it existed in 2019 - GYE website was a hoax with some unemployed bored guys nothing else to do with their lives a day after the chag...

Markz wrote on 23 Oct 2019 16:14:

excuse me, not appreciated.
if you have what to add to the discussion i would like to hear.