Even though people do not look on Litvak yeshivas as hippe communes they do have something in common. A kind of attempt to escape from the world and to build a private Utopia.
The flaw in the system is that it is not self contained.
There is unquestionably an aspect of utopia in the whole thing. And when it works--it works well.
And when things are going OK, you never have any reason to doubt that this is the "true path."
It is like me and my stomach. I never noticed how my digestive system is working, until something went haywire. Same in the Litvak yeshiva world. There are plenty of good reasons to say that it in fact is about as close to utopia in this world than one can get. One learns and follows objective morality and is able to ignore the awful horrifying secular world.
The reason I am asking about it is for the cases when it does not seem to work--like for me. I am no where near being able to do an analysis on this but it begs to be done.
It is like political theory. When a state seems to be abusing people, the tendency is to attack theories that support the state. When on the other hand chaos and crime reign, one looks for justification of the State.
What I mean is the Litvak yeshiva context was very nice for me for a while, but at some point something seems to have gone off course. And I can have no idea how to account for that.
The flaw in the system is that it is not self contained.
There is unquestionably an aspect of utopia in the whole thing. And when it works--it works well.
And when things are going OK, you never have any reason to doubt that this is the "true path."
It is like me and my stomach. I never noticed how my digestive system is working, until something went haywire. Same in the Litvak yeshiva world. There are plenty of good reasons to say that it in fact is about as close to utopia in this world than one can get. One learns and follows objective morality and is able to ignore the awful horrifying secular world.
The reason I am asking about it is for the cases when it does not seem to work--like for me. I am no where near being able to do an analysis on this but it begs to be done.
It is like political theory. When a state seems to be abusing people, the tendency is to attack theories that support the state. When on the other hand chaos and crime reign, one looks for justification of the State.
What I mean is the Litvak yeshiva context was very nice for me for a while, but at some point something seems to have gone off course. And I can have no idea how to account for that.
