The claim from the Manalim is that they have the mesorah, that the Chassidim and the Modern Orthodox deviated from it. The Sephardim have their own mesorah which is inferior and not for us. That's the attitude.
But is it so? Any Yekke knows that the Yeshivish siddurim have all kinds of deviations from the original Ashkenaz siddurim. Birchos HaTorah is in the wrong place. Korbonos have been added. Even Hodu is a later addition. All the kabbalistic stuff is not part of the Ashkenazi mesorah for tefillah, eg Baruch Shemei.
Beyond that, there's Brisker learning derech that dominates the frum world. This was invented by R' Chaim Brisker. It's what they do all day long. But it's an innovation. It's not traditional. It's the Brisker learning derech, not the Babylonian one, not the First Temple Period one. There are people alive today who saw R' Chaim Brisker. It wasn't that long ago.
Then there's the parts of the Gemara that they skip, like aggadatos, non-yeshivish mesechtas, teachings like teach your son a trade, age 18 to the chupah, learn from the good of the goyim (and don't imitate the bad). What goes on in the yeshivah world isn't the mesorah.
Not teaching halacha isn't the mesorah.
Then there's all the halacha that has been learned from books, rather than mimetically as it was done for millennia. The Mishneh Brurah dominates halacha, but the series is a century old. It's new.
The very word yeshivish is a giveaway. Jews in the shtetl didn't build their lives around yeshivas. They built them around the community, the shul, and the family. The kehilla had a rav. If there was a yeshivah somewhere in that part of the country, the Rosh Yeshivah had nothing to do with the community. He didn't dominate. He ran his yeshiva of 100 students. Being yeshivish is itself an innovation and not the mesorah. The very word they use to describe themselves is an innovation.
Lots more to say here. You could write books about this. The yeshivish derech is no closer to the mesorah than any other derech.
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