Just curious. How does TA celebrate R' Yisrael Neuman?
Incidentally, I have not yet seen the new bio of R' Milikowsky but I wonder how it will be received by TA if it includes biographical details about all of his children.
andy - good point about r' milikowsky. i suspect that it's not just his kids; i wonder if the apples really fell far.
re: r' neuman, check out, for example:
http://
www.talmudicalacademy.org...TA_news_web.pdf
pages 3 and 7
I was in NY for shabbos and I read the article. It was fascinating and conversation-provoking -- me and my friends had a good talk about communal boundary lines and about the phenomenon of 'living on the outside' but 'looking from the inside'. I thought that the question of human trajectory post-education was really interesting, especially considering the group of friends I read the article and discussed it with -- we are all folks who live lives that are focused on Jewishness, even though our Jewish schools are probably not very proud of us for various reasons (homosexuality, interdating, defecting to non-orthodox forms of Judaism, etc.)
Then I went to Boston for shabbos and oh-boy was everyone there talking about the article!
Then I came home to DC and my shul's rabbi was complaining about the article and its author. 
So thanks for a non-controversy-centric, interesting post on a facet of that article!
Being British, most of the institutions and people mentioned in this debate were completely unknown to me a couple of weeks ago, so it's interesting to read something that attempts to look draw more general conclusions from the argument.
I always wondered why the establishment of the formal system of Jewish education as described in the Talmud seems to have been second-best after parent-child education failed. It never occurred to me that such attention to each child as an individual, rather than the values of the school, would be considered an educational ideal - make of that what you will.
Incidentally, have you read George Orwell's essay 'Such, Such were the Joys' on his schooldays? It's a painfully frank account of the way schools try to destroy the individuality of nonconformist elements, even if such nonconformity is outside of the child's control. They even demonise a boy who 'goes off the derech' and gets expelled. It doesn't say if he later became an acclaimed law professor.
Who's your brother in law? I wonder if I went to yeshivah with him. I was in NIRC the same time as Meir Neuberger, if that gives you a timeframe.
my b-i-l is several years younger.
I agree; FelledMan is making a mountain out of a marketing decision. It's not that the school is sitting shiva for him, it's just that his intermarriage doesn't encourage donors to give more money. Making about himself (and since the article we've found out it wasn't even about him) is a clear sign of excessive narcissism.
Regarding banquets, honorees are typically chosen for even more jejune reasons than you describe. The focus is on finding someone who will bring in money (if you've ever been "honored" you know that your first job is to provide the institution doing the honoring with a list of people they can call and solicit). Some institutions are willing to overlook idealogical differences if the alumnus has connections to big money.
i suspect that it's not just his kids; i wonder if the apples really fell far.
Oy.
moishe - nothing to get upset about. one kid is a professor of jewish history. another started a major women's torah study institution.
Actually, Chaim is a professor of Talmud. My mother told me , however, that she got the book at the TA banquet and it mentions how proud R' Milikowsky was of his daughter (the Talmudist.)
moishe - nothing to get upset about. one kid is a professor of jewish history. another started a major women's torah study institution.
I wasn't upset. I was trying to produce some sort of sarcastic comment about hitkatnut hadorot because my sister just got engaged to Rabbi Milikovsky's grandson (see mostly simchas, but not under Potemkin), and I couldn't come up with anything remotely creative. The 'oy' was self-directed.
- Moishe Potemkin, using his gracious host's computer.
s/b "only".
moishe - i think you meant 'onlysimchas', but i know why you made that mistake.
wonder why you made that mistake Moishe..thanks for the free advertising!!
I'm making ghost comments!
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