Good Old days?!

 I was taking with a young man who was expressing dissatisfaction with his son's yeshiva because they were not making the proper atmosphere for Elul like they did when he was a yeshiva bachur.

That reminded me of a conversation I had with the first Reb Freifeld  when I drove her to visit someone in the hospital. She was talking about the good old days. So I asked her bluntly, "When were the Old Days truly better? She thought a while and responded "In the time of Shlomo haMelech." 

This nostalgia for the old days is often destructive. When my sons learned Chumash in yeshiva they were taught in Yiddish, Which they didn't understand nor did the rest of their class. When I asked the teachers and the principal, they said that is the way they did it in Europe. Rabbi Freifeld told me that the reason hard gemoras are taught was parents thought that was the way it was taught in Europe. He said in fact Berachos was often the beginning gemora in Europe. Rabbi Dovid Cohen said these people would have to give an accounting for destroying the Torah learning by teaching in Yiddish. Likewise many young men learned to hate Torah learning which was based on an imagined era rather than contemporary needs. This was done because parents wanted the good old days they imagined and would change from any yeshiva that did not accept their dreams. Similarly we have a fantasy of the piety and scholarship of the previous times. Rav Hutner said there is greater hasmada in America than there was in Europe. In addition after WWI when the community structure was destroyed. perhaps the majority of Jews were heretics

Rabbi Freiefeld once lamented the fact that today's heretic are not heretics but simply ignorant He said to be a real heretic you first need to be a real talmid chuchum

Rav  Yosef founded a political movement based on the golden years when Sefardim dominated Ahkenasim.

The MAGA movement is based on the idea of the old days being better. Which days the Depression? WWII the 1950's when we were told we would die in nuclear War and everyone was suspected of being a Communist or the 60's and 70's when the country was torn over the Vietnam War or the social and economic disaster of the end of the 20th Century> I remember the Ph.D's who were driving cabs because there were no jobs available

Interesting there is a gemora lamenting the good old days when miracles were more common because they were so frum. The gemora asks for an example and describes a fanatic who ripped a red cloak from a woman because it was immodest only to discover the woman wasn't Jewish and he was severely fined fined for  embarrassing her

Bottom line is we only have our times and we need to make the best of them