Coincidence or Not?

Coincidence. I don’t believe in a G-d who would make this big storm to punish all of us for the fact that there is a lawsuit. We don’t even know who is going to win that lawsuit.

There is no such thing as coincidence. The answer is it’s because of many things but that can be a factor too. Hashem takes cares of many issues at same time.

I dont understand “Toeiva marriage”. Do you mean people marrying shellfish eaters? Or maybe marrying people who cheat in business? Or do you mean the “marriage” of unscrupulous business profits and various “communal” organizations?

lol @ wanderingchana ^_^

*incidents not incidence

Ha! Au contraire. The fact that I corrected myself shows that I’m insecure about leaving mistakes so the ones I didn’t notice shouldn’t be pointed out!

😉 but seriously, thanks 🙂

Which way? What did I do?

I don’t know why ‘toeva’ marriages are so bothersome to people or why you extrapolate from a very specific word used by the Torah concerning men that the female counterpart is also called ‘toeva.’ The act under discussion is described by the Torah as toeva and therefor it is so but can anyone explain why we’re bothered by them getting married? They’re doing whatever we call toeva anyway, all this does is give them a certificate for calling themselves a married couple. I’ve heard several arguments against ‘toeva’ marriage but I’m yet to be convinced. I’ve heard it’s about the sanctity of marriage – we don’t respect a civil union anyway, we have our own weddings and would happily leave it at that so as far as I’m concerned, let them ruin the sanctity of the civil dress up weddings. Someone help?

Yeshivishsocrates1

You didn’t do anything wrong. My point is that it is a common error of young intelligent people to write or speak in “hi falutin” language rather than in simple, concise form.

To quote The Elements of Style: “Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by the twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready, and able.”

Health – Fine, so Irene was as a result of Charedi Brooklyners bashing MO and YU then…

Nothing is coincidence but correlation does not equal causation. And I seriously doubt that you are capable of figuring out HKB’H’s reasons for how he runs the world.

And, just to put a word in for plumba, if the Torah equates them (it uses the same word to describe all of them [though plumba is mistaken in claiming that the Torah calls eating ma’acholos asuros a to’eva]) then, whilst we certainly view certain things as being more distasteful than others, in the Torah viewpoint there is no distinction between how much of a to’eva mishkav zochor is as compared to cheating in business. In fact the Gemoro says that one of the first questions we will all be asked l’achar me’oh v’esrim is whether our masoh u’maton was b’tzeddek. Not whether or not we engaged in certain relationships. This does not mean that we are defending these peoples’ actions, believe me, I’m the last to do that, just that your arrogant claim to know what HKB’H told Moshe Rabeinu that no-one is capable of knowing needs to be properly put into perspective.

I don’t know anything about the lawsuit but I do notice these calamities often centering around the tri state area . . .

Don’t throw anything at me, I was being sarcastic

Health – Oh deary, deary me… Look, you claim to because a Hurricane happened after an event this means that one may be a cause for the other. This is a) logically unsound and b) arrogant in the extreme. I do not know whether or not one thing causes the other. The first prosecution here in England for not performing a ceremony for what you call a to’eva couple was nearly two years ago. There has been a spectacular lack of hurricanes or any large scale natural disaster of any kind anywhere near the area concerned. It is presumptuous in the extreme to claim to have any idea of why HKB’H does the things he does when and where he does. I do not think I misinterpreted your post, but you definitely misinterpreted mine. Nowhere do I claim that one aveiro is more or less chomur than the other, simply that the adjective ‘to’eva’ is applied equally to both. ‘To’eva’ is not an indicator of seriousness of an aveiro, but a description of it, it is an aveiro which is (or so Artscroll says) ‘abominable’. Now the Torah calls many things a ‘to’eva’, for various reasons. Plumba was merely asking why this label has been reserved exclusively for those who are over just one of these many when the Torah applies it to others, he was not equating onshin or chumra, just adjectives. And if the HKB’H didn’t think that dishonesty in masoh u’maton was not a to’eva, He would not have used that word when describing it in His Torah. The quote from the Gemoro was simply to highlight that masoh u’maton is not a light matter, it is something HKB’H treats with the utmost seriousness and yet this same to’eva is willfully ignored by hundreds of ‘bnei torah’ because they can ‘mach shtick’. Well I’m sorry, but it’s still a to’eva, however much shtick is used.

Hashem could have struck the lawmakers with lightning, but He didn’t. So let’s not try to figure out schar v’onesh.

I bet R’Yehuda Levin is writing his speech for the press conference right now.

Maybe this is a punishment for Bloomberg’s battle against metzitza b”peh?

jmh – you wrote “It is presumptuous in the extreme to claim to have any idea of why HKB’H does the things he does when and where he does.”

Health was not CLAIMING, but merely asking if CR readers think that there is a POSSIBLE CONNECTION between the two. How many tzaddikim and baalei musser speak of this inyan, that when a natural disaster strikes we should not sit back blindly, but use our brains (like Health) and try to understand why Hashem is doing all this?!

We have no Nevi’im in our dor to tell us what Hashem’s message is, but the least we CAN do is think, ask, and try not to ignore such catastrophic phenomenon.

BaalHabooze – It is making the link in the first place that is presumptuous. It is suggesting a reason for something we cannot know a reason for that is presumptuous. All we need to know is that it has happened and we need to work on ourselves as human beings and as frum Jews. What the ba’alei mussar say is precisely that, that we must work on ourselves, not find some outside cause over which we have no control to blame it on. And what we certainly don’t do is try to figure out da’as H’.