Whoa! In our Torah way, yahrzeits are marked by things like having an אזכרה, הספד, fasting, learning, davening at the amud, saying kaddish, giving a shiur. Not festive meals.
This shows us the problems from when Litvish mix too much with Chasidim, daven in their prayer houses, get too friendly with them, and fail to maintain proper separation and boundaries. They sometimes, רחמנא ליצלן (may Hashem save us from such), start adopting Hasidic practices at odds with their מסורה, their tradition. And once such a trend starts, it might ח"ו, G-d forbid, proceed even further.
While a related matter was written about here more than a decade ago, the importance of this issue, and these problematic variant practices, warrant another post.
Just because a Chasidic prayer house might be a bit closer to you, offer more to eat, have more PR, and more mass-produced services at their "minyan factory", does not mean that it is an appropriate place for us. החכם עיניו בראשו. We should favor principle over convenience.
In the zechus of choosing with care where we daven and learn, may we be זוכה to a גוט געבענטשט יאהר, כתיבה וחתימה טובה.
A big problem is that many people (like myself) come from families who came to the US before WWI. The mesorah was not kept up and we don't really know what the mesorah is. So when people come back to Yiddishkeit (or to an ORthodox version of it) they don't know what to do.
ReplyDeleteYes, that is surely a valid point. Also, that world wars and other conflicts, along with various migrations, among other things, took their tolls as well.
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