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
Berachos (20a) Rav Pappa said to Abaye: What is different about the earlier generations, for whom miracles occurred and what is different about us, for whom miracles do not occur? If it is because of Torah study; in the years of Rav Yehuda all of their learning was confined to the order of Nezikin, while we learn all six orders! Moreover, when Rav Yehuda would reach in tractate Okatzin, which discusses the extent to which the stems of various fruits and vegetables are considered an integral part of the produce in terms of becoming ritually impure, the halakha that a woman who pickles a vegetable in a pot, and some say when he would reach the halakha that olives pickled with their leaves are pure, because after pickling, it is no longer possible to lift the fruit by its leaves, they are no longer considered part of the fruit; he would find it difficult to understand. He would say: Those are the disputes between Rav and Shmuel that we see here. And we, in contrast, learn thirteen versions of Okatzin. While, with regard to miracles, after declaring a fast to pray for a drought to end, when Rav Yehuda would remove one of his shoes the rain would immediately fall, whereas we torment ourselves and cry out and no one notices us. Abaye said to Rav Pappa: The previous generations were wholly dedicated to the sanctification of God’s name, while we are not as dedicated to the sanctification of God’s name. Typical of the earlier generations’ commitment, the Gemara relates: Like this incident involving Rav Adda bar Ahava who saw a non-Jewish woman who was wearing a garment made of a forbidden mixture of wool and linen [karbalta] in the marketplace. Since he thought that she was Jewish, he stood and ripped it from her. It was then divulged that she was a non-Jew and he was taken to court due to the shame that he caused her, and they assessed the payment for the shame that he caused her at four hundred zuz. Ultimately, Rav Adda said to her: What is your name? She replied: Matun. In a play on words, he said to her: Matun, her name, plus matun, the Aramaic word for two hundred, is worth four hundred zuz.
Bottom line is we only have our times and we need to make the best of them
