"I do not identify with mod-O. In fact, there is not a movement around today I would feel comfortable identifying with.
Sociologically, my neighborhood has little mod-O presence. Actually, around 1/3 of the rabbis are from YU, but it's a sea of black hats, black suits, and white shirts even in their neck of the woods. My own LOR is a Lakewood product (and my father's chavrusah). In terms of my attire, I don't dress yeshivish or mod-O outside the workplace; I dress East European (long jacket, etc...)
But even in my YU days, I was in R' Dovid Lifshitz'a shiur. The Suvalker Rav didn't know Lithuania? I had a rebbe who learned in Grodno under a former Telzher Rosh Yeshiva, so my connection to that world is more direct than you're simply writing off with the words "YU".
For that matter, going further back, my elementary school hired rabbeim from Williamsburg, and the taitch for "Bereishis" was given as "In unfang".
So kindly refrain from reducing people to stereotypes, and then attacking their ability to comment based on your own assumptions.
You also seem to think that today's "chareidi type yeshivos" more authentically reproduce Telz or Volozhin than does RIETS. That's a fantasy. Not that Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan does either. (BTW, under the Alter, Kelm had a yeshiva qetana with limudei chol WITHOUT gov't coersion!) And while Volozhin, Kelm and Slabodka didn't have classes in limudei chol beyond what the Czar forced into Volozhin, it was expected of the talmidim in their spare time. See R' EE Dessler's recollection of his father giving him Uncle Tom's Cabin to read. But I'm not going to pretend they were YU -- just that they aren't today's Lakewood, either.
True Lithanian Judaism is gone, r"l. If it weren't I would probably have a spiritual home.
Bikhlal the line between chassidus and Litvishkeit largely fell since we left Eastern Europe. In R' Aharon Kotler's day only the rabbeim wore black, only the rabbeim were allowed to have beards, and talmidim were encouraged to argue back during a shiur -- even R' Aharon's. Today's yeshivish student is expected to wear a uniform (as per chassidus) and view his Rosh Yeshiva as a chassid does his rebbe. The masses don't even know enough hashkafah to know the machloqes between the Besh"t and the Gra about tzimtzum -- transcendence vs immanence, or about sheleimus vs deveiqus.
Yes, the typical O Jew today spends so little time thinking about the fundamentals he doesn't realize he holds conflicting beliefs about whether G-d is in Shamayim or everywhere, and about man's mission in life. Not the conflict -- it's resolvable. But not to even know there is a problem to resolve? So of course he ends up judging based on lifestyle. Chassidim, particularly after the uniforming and daas Torah, have a more similar lifestyle to the yeshivish than MO does. So, they think it's more similar in philosophy as well."
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