299) HOW WE CHOOSE WHAT WE OBSERVE:

A Guest Post by Rabbi Boruch Clinton

Introduction

Understanding the particular set of minhagim your community has chosen and how they came to choose it is a worthwhile goal. It’s also useful to try to know why it was just this rather than some other combination that, over time, took hold. In some instances, the narrative will revolve around achieving higher levels of adherence to halacha. Other times, choices are framed as the best options for solving looming problems. But there’s often no narrative at all. Some changes just seem to happen organically without any obvious community sponsor or plan.

Those are all ideas I try to address within my Finding Tradition in the Modern Torah World project. [See https://marbitz.com/home/rabbi-s-r-hirsch/finding-tradition-in-the-modern-torah-world/]

297) WHY BLACK HATS?

Guest post by Rabbi Boruch Clinton:

Why Black Hats?

This essay is part of the Finding Tradition in the Modern Torah World project.

Every now and then I try to understand the thinking behind various policies enforced by modern Torah schools. Here, I’ll discuss some educational and social implications related to the rules governing hats for bar mitzva boys. That's not to say that such policies are objectively harmful or wrong. Rather, that it’s always worth assessing them with fresh eyes.

First of all, so we can start off with a clear baseline, let me present some possible benefits of such policies:

• Wearing yeshivishe hats is part of an important mesorah and it's valuable to get boys into the habit of following such practices.
• Wearing yeshivishe hats promotes an elevated self-image that should lead to better behavior.
• Yeshivishe hats are key elements of a kind of yeshivishe uniform that expresses discipline and loyalty to community standards.
• Wearing yeshivishe hats is in itself a higher halachic standard.

Now I'll explore each of those benefits individually.