http://wolfishmusings.blogspot.com/2008/02...-agnostics.html

http://www.askmoses.com/article/144,88519/...upervision.html

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This law also has spiritual reasons. Drinking unsupervised milk causes agnosticism. The milk may in fact be 100% from a kosher animal, but if no Jewish person was present to watch the milking, it has the effect of casting doubts in our core beliefs.

We are particularly warned to avoid giving babies and children dairy products from unsupervised milk. Because children's bodies are in the development process, we are careful to give them a healthy and balanced diet since deprivation of even one vitamin can have drastic life long effects. Similarly, children are also in the process of developing their spiritual basis for their whole life. We strive to instill within them an unwavering belief in G-d, and yet the influence of unsupervised milk can undermine this crucial spiritual foundation.

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clarification
Posted by: Cathy on Mar 29, 2006

How exactly does unsupervised milk have that effect on one's faith?

Editor's Comment
The simple truth is -- I don't know. Neither do I know how eating pork has a damaging effect on my soul. The laws of kosher are supra-rational. We accept that G-d, the creator of body and soul, knows the diet which is keeps both running at peak performance.

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i heard that reb dovid feinstien drinks cholov akum in usa

Hmm cholov akum or cholov stam? Because there is -believe it or not- a difference.

Are you telling me that if someone gave Menachem (from tzfas) a cholov stam Haagen Dazs ice cream he'd become agnostic? Get real...

Hmmmmm...it may be worth trying. How about just using a kacha-kacha hechsher, to maybe balance him out a bit?



I do know a woman who kept chassidishe standards of kashrus, until she was talked into going to a dunkin donuts. From there, she started eating mamash treif (treif meat in treif restaurants). She told me that once that first step was taken (going from cholov yisruel to cholov stam) she just didn't see eating treif as that bad.

But- is she agnostic?

Hmmm, good question. I don't know if she's agnostic or just bitter about the turn that her life took. Do you think the damage cholov stam causes one's neshumah is at fault for the rising percentage of broken homes and OTD kids?

You mean USDA supervised milk, don't you? That is not the same as unsupervised milk mentioned in the OP.

The rising percentage of broken homes has to do with people being used with quick fixes and throwing old things away, not to mention people getting married too young, with the wrong people and for the wrong reasons....
OTD people (not just kids) have to do with rabbinical abuse and corruption, dysfunctional families, dysfunctional communities, people being persecuted for being handicapped or gay, and in a few select cases intellectual doubts.

I don't believe that food or drink of any sort can affect the "soul" one way or another.

Laugh all you want but this was a verifiable statement made by (I believe) the previous L Rebbe and reiterated by his Son in Law. I don't believe a source was given for this, but I remember seeing some attempts to dig one up...

And I think agnosticism is a poor translation. I believe the phrase used was "sefikos b'emunah" or something like that, and it most certainly DID include "Chalav Stam". Chalav akum is assur according to everyone.....

The OP says that "unsupervised" milk causes harm to the soul, and then includes USDA supervised milk in the category of "unsupervised" [but permitted]. USDA-supervised milk, too, causes one to become an agnostic.

The fact that the Lubavitcher Rebbe stated it does not make it true (and yes, I am aware the same may be said about the Rambam or any other hacham in Jewish history). I see no reason to believe it based on that, or even based on the L. Rebbe having a source. How many violent disagreements between edoth have their sources in Tanach, Gemara, etc?

Why are you capitalizing "son-in-law"?

It's widely known that the R' YYS zt'l, and his son-in-law {shlit"a, zt'l}, didn't hold of the chalav stam heter so leshitasam it was all chalav akum. 

Fine have it your way....
Kvod Kedushas Adoneinu Moreinu v'Rabbeinu, Melech Hamoshiach, shlita chai v'kayam b'guf gashmi l'olam vaed Hu Yagelanu b'karov.....


I'm not saying that YOU have to believe it, but it was being presented as some old wives tale (like a chick making havdolla makes her grow a beard) and I just wanted to point out that the statement was made by someone who is certainly in the category of "Yesh al mi lismoch"....

Understood (even though I think a lot of what people believe today tomarse el pelo).

mamash!
ditto. QFT

I'm still trying to become sig-worthy. In time, I suppose, lol.

If he actually had said this then he was a poshut idiot.
But I don't think he actually said that.
Just another bubbe maaseh trotted out when convenient.

The is a real concept in the Gemara, תנא דבי רבי ישמעאל עבירה מטמטמת לבו של אדם, but the OP is just discussing askmoses shenanigans, one might as well ask drunks or people abusing prescription drugs for philosophical insights.

There was once a chocoholic, insomniac dyslexic who after eating an entire box of Hershey's kisses spent all night awake wondering if there is a dog.

Just when you least expect it, just what you least expect.

I think this story proves more that its about keeping with YOUR standards than by blanket statements such as "chalav stam causes agnotisticm." Any percieved decrease in observance without any reprocussions (i.e. lightening doesn't strike you, your mother doesn't hold a faux funeral) can make people doubt the essence of these laws. I have found, and I'm welcome to be proven wrong, that many FFB people are raised "following" Judaism before having some moment of "choosing" Judaism. For some people, going against their values and breaking Shabbos or eating something they perceive as treif can be the very thing that helps them to understand their connection to Judaism.


I highly disagree with this statement on principal because I see eating kosher (as someone who did not grow up eating remotely kosher) as a connection to the Jewish culture and people from today until Moses. That connection alone is good for the soul.


You've been in my sig for years!

You better believe it. Witness the difference. Fig. 1: Sole made from treif leather. Fig. 2: Glatt 
Kosher sole.

The RMF descendant I know drinks chalav stam and is of the very strong opinion that that is the right thing to do.

That speaks to a different issue altogether, that people don't realize that people who act differently than they and hold by a different psak are still not only Jewish, but Orthodox, and they see abandoning certain psakim, or even chumrot or minhagim, as akin to abandoning Judaism altogether. In their eyes, if they don't hold by their particular psakim and minhagim, they might as well not keep halachah at all.

Muchas gracias, querida ahoti!



You do have a valid point, although I see the OP as speaking of something with a more direct cause/effect chain of events, as opposed to something which stems from secondary or tertiary effects. I do believe that any sort of repetitive behaviour conditions the mind and imprints patterns on the psyche. This is why we say that one mitsvah leads to another and one abera leads to another. In this way, sinning does cause harm as it causes one to be separated from one's people.



I know, and I appreciate it I just had the burning need to attempt to top Schiffschul's quote. Trying to out-frum the Finkelsteins and all, lol!

Does this mean that if he were offered CY milk or CS milk, he'd davka choose the CS? (I won't bring up ice cream and chocolate because apparently there's no contest.)

Um, what? Granted, I'm tired, but I have no idea what you were trying to say. Can you please clarify?



You're bringing up two separate issues, mel : that people don't recognize the validity of others' brand of yiddishkeit, and that many OTD'ers got that way by the thinking "in for a penny, in for a pound". This woman (whose story I told over as a tangent, btw, not to address the OP) falls into category two (and again, throwing in a certain bitterness for her own lot - discontent typically drives people to break from their norms) but not category one. It's a matter of her own standards, and a "ehhh, screw it" attitude that makes all the other bricks fall so quickly after the first. As another tangent, I've noticed that many people who are in fairly frummy households tend to experience a dip in their observance once they become regulars on the internet - particularly if they are using instant messengers or frequenting chat rooms. It seems once you've been introduced to the big, wide world, you must now experience that which frumkeit and societal norms has denied you. After those first steps, it's not long until you're just a frum shell, keeping up appearances and raising children within a religious system you no longer subscribe to yourself. But that's neither here nor there.

Then perhaps that speaks to the abject failure of the frum educational system where any exposure to the outside world causes the flimsy house of cards to come crumbling down.

I don't know what they would do in that case. I do know that they regularly eat CS.

Considering that some of these people are BTs, I would point more towards the repressing nature of popularized frumkeit.

I was talking before about the fact that going against what your level of Judaism is, is the thing that can cause you to pull away totally. I.E. it has nothing to do with chalav yisroel or chalav stam, it has to do with her making a personal choice to defy her teachings and "indulge" in the other sinful thing. It's even MORE complicated with a BT, but I won't go into that.

Ok. So he argues with RMF. That's all.

(IMHO, he's wrong for doing so.)

So we should just go around following decendants of gedolim to find out what behaviors they follow? Unless this person is a posek in his own right then I don't see what relevance this has.

I have to say that I am a little surprised by the general reaction. I thought it was a given that treif affects the soul in some spiritual way. If you think that non-CY milk is treif then the conclusion is obvious.

But true non-CY IS treif. It's just that RMF holds USDA supervised milk satisfies the CY requirement. I think it's all semantics here.

By the way RMF *himself* preferred stam USDA supervised milk in his fridge. This according to my Rebbe who heard it directly from one of RMF chavrusas who looked in the fridge himself and saw Cholev Yisrael milk only and asked RMF about it. And he responded "What could I do? They won't let me put any other milk in my fridge."

Not only treif, but certain kosher foods as well. Something doesn't have to be treif to have a negative spiritual impact.

Is there a difference between having a stricter standard and calling something "treif?"
Is "treif" non-CY milk the equivalent of eating a slice of ham?

I mean for people who don't hold that USDA milk is "CY." They believe it is treif and treif foods affect the soul. Therefore, milk which is not certified CY by a kashrus organization is treif and affects one's soul.



I don't know. I think to someone who holds of CY then the answer is yes.


Like what? Nitrates?

Chopped liver, actually. Mele"ch stands for mo'ach, leiv, and kaveid = brain, heart, and liver.

And olives make you forget...

Ham is d'roysa, chalav akum is a d'rabbanan...

Doing aveiros harms the soul perhaps, but this particular position says that it causes agnosticism and doubt, without any explanation of how and why. Now, shaya_getzl will no doubt say that there's a deep reason behind it all and that I'm too much of an am haaretz to understand it, but it seems to me that if something like this is going to be said on a site like AskMoses, a bit of an explanation should be in order.

This is a pretty disgusting thing to say.

Someone asked if Rav Dovid Feinstein eats chalav stam. I answered with one of their descendants.


Someone asked if Rav Dovid Feinstein eats chalav stam. I answered with one of their descendants.

Somewhat true.


Pure libel.

This is way off topic but the two situations you mention are viewed completely differently. The former [following a different psak] is often viewed as OK for the person who was brought up that way and is following his or her posek, but not OK for someone who was brought up differently. The second is the one that's generally seen as bad.

No, Ham is an issur D'Oariasa, Chalav Akum is a gezeria D'Rabannan.
But it IS absolutely "treif" for those that don't hold by the sevora of RMF and therefore the Rabbinic Gezira is still in place.

Here it is not a matter of "standards" or levels of Kashrus. RMF held al pi sevora that the USDA regulation is enough to frighten the goyim enough not to mix in treif milk with the kosher variety. This cannot really be proved or argued against halachically because it is based entirely on that sevora, AND the sevora that since Jewish Supervision is only necessary to discourage the goyim from mixing in treif milk, an alternative source of that fear is sufficient to satisfy the Gezira. All one really needs to do to counter this argument is say "Who says either of these premises are valid?"

So either you hold of RMF's heter or you don't. And if you don't, non CY milk is treif...

Is derabonon not a deoraysa ?



Did anyone ever actually examine what the current situation is with fines and strictness and likelihood of inspection ?

Yes, but it's different...

I'm sure someone, somewhere did.

I think people would rather rely on others' words when it comes to reasons to be meikil. It's a lot more comfortable than the idea of potentially finding out you don't agree with the reasoning behind the heter, and subsequently choosing between convenient hypocrisy and inconvenient intellectual honesty.