Many a yeshivish rabbi will tell you that the gentiles (goyim) are entirely traife and have nothing good to offer. A more enlightened yeshivish rabbi will tell you that the gentiles (goyim) may have some knowledge but you put yourself at risk trying to access it because you will bring in the rest of their 'schumutz.' The result is the same, isolation.
This is classic projection because they are describing interaction with them. A yeshiva guy may have something to offer but unfortunately it is just as dangerous to access as is accessing knowledge from gentiles as he portrays it.
Actually, it's more dangerous because a gentile will respect your personal choices. Jews have a poor track record in this area. We tend to alter the identities of other people. I remember when I was a kid how the Jewish radicals (females mostly) insisted on my becoming a leftist. To them, no other life choices were acceptable. If you weren't a liberal, you didn't exist.
At the same time, and even more so as I got older and went off to college, I met some Jewish American princesses who insisted on acquisition of affluence as the only acceptable life choice. If weren't rich, you didn't exist.
The communists, mostly Jewish, did this to Russians, literally putting them out of existence (murdering them) for practicing Russian Orthodoxy. They also murdered Jews for practicing Judaism.
The Hollywood anti-Christians did this to American Christians, poisoning their view of their religion and severing their national identities (Irish, Polish) which helped shape their religious practice. This left them with the vague and useless identity of white person, which they were conditioned to despise. They became self-hating whites, to borrow a phrase. Projection again?
Then these white people reformed their identities around shallow secularities on which profiteers could profit - homosexual, feminist, theater lover, TV watcher with favorite shows, drug user, sports fanatic., et. al.
Yeshivah people know only one destination, the yeshiva. They always try to keep you in the yeshiva. No other place is valid. I was an unmarried thirty year old baal teshuvah who had no way of earning a living but they tried to keep me in yeshiva. Rabbi after rabbi did this, without thinking. It was as if they were all operating from a playbook - keep them in yeshiva no matter what. And it had to be a so-called Litvish yeshiva. Modern, Chabad, Breslov, or other Chassidic group was not acceptable.
Meanwhile the first commandment of the Torah is to have children and the Talmud says to buy a field before you get married. But these rabbis insisted on keeping me in yeshiva to study the very Talmud whose teachings they ignored.
The yeshiva must be in New York. In their ignorance and snobbery, they view the rest of the country as not really yeshivish. And New York means Monsey, Lakewood, or Brooklyn where homes go for $1 million a piece.
But you need a parnassah. The Torah says so. It advises a parnassah that is clean and easy. The Duties of the Heart says it should be one that suits your nature, which goes along with it being easy. The yeshivish rabbi will thwart any plans you have to pursue such a parnassah because he insists that you stay in yeshiva and study morning, noon, and night. What do you study? You study the Talmud whose teachings he ignores. And you do a superficial reading of the Chumash where you read daily how God punishes everyone. This helps keep you in line.
But the main thing that keeps you in line is 'having a rav,' which is their #1 principle. Not believing in God is acceptable to them, but not having a rav is not. To not have a rav is brazen. To not have a rav is folly. I have been asked many times, do you have a rav? Who is your rav?
So who is this rav? He is just somebody that insists that you stay in yeshiva.
In the end, you wind up with no wife, no parnassah, and no happiness. Incredibly, they mock you for being unhappy.
But they have a parnassah, it's called Gemara study. And it's one they enjoy. They need people in the building to attract donations. That's where you come in. You are now the theater goer or Sex in the City fan who made a producer rich. You are now the Mets fan who made a team owner rich. You enabled the rabbi to own a million dollar house and run a yeshiva in Monsey. He crushed your identity and monetized it.
Every relationship, if you can call it that, that I had with a yeshiva guy was detrimental to me. Every one of them killed off my plans. Every one robbed me of my identity. They are ferocious. And they pretend they do it out of ahavas Yisroel, but it's wham bam thank you maam, as soon as they are done with you.
So I'll take a page out of his book. Take his warning to stay clear of the goyim and apply it to him and all the other yeshiva guys. Even 10 seconds is dangerous. They will grab you with their big suction cups and you won't even know what happened to you.
It's the same with Zionist rabbis who push you to move to Israel which satisfies their ideological needs but ruins you. They kill off your American or British identity and reshape with that of being an Israeli. That was never a pretty thing to be, but these days it's grotesque.
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