Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
The creation of the United States. Without it, the Third Reich would still control all of Europe, and probably the Middle East.
He won because he got more votes. That happened since Trump ran an amazingly inept campaign that caused many Republicans to avoid voting for president (that’s why the Republicans did well, while Trump lost). And Trump actively suppressed the Republican vote be discouraging use of postal ballots.
Why does Ha-Shem make politicians stupid? That’s like asking why Ha-Shem makes fools foolish, or villians evil?
There’s a sucker born every minute, and many of them are: 1) working for the government which “buys” the tests and/or requires people to buy them; 2) in deathly fear of COVID since they confuse it with smallpox or plague
If the fire pan is too hot, feel free to jump into the fire.
If you accept as a fact, as our enemies assert, that Jews have no claims to Eretz Yisrael, that the Jews today have no relationship to the Jews referred to in the Bible and/or that Taanach is merely a collection of myths with no basis in reality – then their assertions are rationale (and that the Jewish people have no right to live anywhere, which does explain why the continued existence of unassimilated Jews is an offense against political correctness and a challenge to the WOKE political advocates).
Bigots tend never to let facts and logic get away from what they want to believe. While on can argue with bigots, as demonstrated by the successful manner in which the Americans won their argues with the Nazis.
Circular firing squad. Trump lost (or won, whichever is irrelevant) by a minuscule margin. To win in 2024 he needs more votes, not fewer. The Republicans should be working on fence building and reconciliation, rather than passing a resolution designed to encourage people who would otherwise vote Republican to instead support Joe Biden (or worse) in 2024.
Still. Many troops from other countries are also getting ready to rumble, though no one, and that includes Russia and Ukraine, have started a full scale mobilization of reserves.
Remember this is like a chess game, which only gets to be a problem if someone tips over the board. Think of August 1914 or September 1939 for what board tipping over looks like.
It has been happening since Theodore Roosevelt was president (stopped a little for Harding and Coolidge, but that’s it). This is one thing both parties are equally guilty of. There has also been a major shift of power away from state and local governments and to the Federal government. It has probably been very destabilizing, and to a certain extent explains the current radical polarization. I suspect if you brought some politicians from the 19th century to visit, they would being saying “I told you so”.
A president who rules by decree reduces the utility of any politics other than the election of the president. Switching power to the Federal government means that which group of states has control allows them to go after policies that are absurd to the rest of the country. It means if the Feds oppose gas-powered cars, people in areas where electric cars aren’t practical are angry. Most of the “culture war” issues become “hot” since by definition a federal solution is being imposed on all states whereas in the past states had more options.
The truth is the most Americans regard the word “race” (in reference to a group of humans) as referring exclusively to skin color. By this definition the Nazis were not racist (they had no problem with recruiting dark skinned Aryans for India who were anxious to fight the Brits). In the WOKE world, it is a point of faith the skin color is what matters, and aspects such as culture, ethnicity, community, ancestry, or language are irrelevant except to the extent they correlate with skin color. And to the WOKE, facts are automatically ignored when they clash with their dogmas of political correctness.
And like many WOKE personalities, she got confused when having to deal with facts that contradict political correctness.
Ethnicity and religion have always been factors in judicial nominees, along with politics. However Biden is the first president, ever, to announce that gender and race are the ONLY factors he’ll consider. All the other presidents claimed that all their nominations were based on the the qualifications of the person nominated (and what a surprise, it turns out to be the candidate supported by the person I owe a favor to, wink wink). This suggest that Biden is perhaps a bit mentally challenged, or (to be dan le-kaf zechus) he has decided that in his old age, he can afford to be honest about such matters.
arguably, Cholent is a type of Hamim
The anti-zionist hareidim (who don’t depend on government funding) can engage in open resistance, and possibly do great damage to Israel’s image abroad (for example, having frum Jews complaining to international human rights groups, or requesting asylum as refugees from anti-Jewish persecution).
The more “establishment” hareidim (who happen to have been accepting money from the zionists, and would have real problems without that funding) have a real problem. They have been supporting the medinah for over a generation. It will be a real loss of face to for them to start resisting the zionists.
If this isn’t reversed, the big winners will be Neturei Karta, the Eidos Hareidos (Badats) and Satmar, since they will have been vindicated in their anti-zionism. If the zionists attempt to conscript members of groups that have always opposed the medinah, they will be liable to be violating international human rights norms on conscientious objection (which would not be the case of those hareidim who have been supported by the government).
either will do.
As with all languages, vowels frequently shift between dialects, and some Yiddish dialects said “oo” (as in “boo” or “moo”) and some said “oh” (as in “go” or “so”).
Having dumb and incompetent enemies is definitely a bracha min ha-Shamayim.
Ukraine has a Jewish president. At this point it would be hard to argue that either Russia or Ukraine is more, or less, anti-semitic. Suggesting that foreign policy is based on something that happened in the Cossack rebellion 350 years is ridiculous. From a Jewish perspective, we should be strongly be encouraging a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
From an American perspective, if the US (which guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in return for their giving up nuclear weapons, a promise made under Clinton, and dishonored under Obama) tolerates Russian conquest of Ukraine,they will be inviting Russian attempts to take over other countries in Eastern Europe. As was shown in the 1930s, appeasing bullies just encourages them.
Given that the US under Biden is cutting back its military resources, the US will have less and less influence, which will be bad for Jews since over the century, it has been the Americans who have been critical in defeating anti-Jewish forces (the Nazis, the Communists, and now the more radical Muslims). A situation in which the United States is militarily weak, and no longer committed to support freedom abroad, will be “bad for the Jews”.
Biden is worse than Trump. By this, I am not praising Biden. Note that I am basically a neo-con on national security, a tea-partier on economic policy and a libertarian on civil liberties.
1. Trump’s isolationism. Surrendering in Afghanistan was his idea, and Biden was more than happy to follow through. What made America great was its willingness to defend freedom and democracy abroad. An interesting comment was that the Mexican War was the last time the United States fought overseas for its own economic interests. Like it or not, the non-cons are right. The Democrats “big lie” is that the United States has never fought for the freedom of others, and the best thing the US can do is not to meddle in the affairs of other. If we has a president who wanted to make America great again, we would never have stabbed Afghanistan in the back, and wouldn’t be stabbing Ukraine in the back (and in the long run, such policies failed, since tolerating tyranny encourages more tyranny and the longer we wait, the bigger the mess will be).
2. Trump supports “big government” and has always been fiscally irresponsible. Biden’s worse. At this point the Democrats appear to be intoxicated, and the Republican inebriated.
3. The United States needs immigration. The “boomers” (frum Yidden, and their children, excepted) failed miserably at producing children. Either we shrink our economy (i.e. get poorer) to match our labor force, or we need to import labor. We should not be chasing away Hispanic (meaning primarily indigenous Americans with a touch of Spanish ancestry) immigrants who are intending to be hard working and law abiding Americans. We need them. The supply chain disruptions are due to a shrinking workforce.
The Chinese persecution of both the Uyghurs and other Chinese minorities (particularly the Tibetian) is widely discussed, and along with public outrage over China’s opposition to democracy in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, are major reasons why the US appears to be drifting towards hostilities with China.
This is a good time for business that rely on Chinese imports to find new sources, and for investors to move their investments out of China before they end waiting for compensation from the alien property custodian.
The Senate has done the job they were intended to do. To block stupid and unconstitutional and anti-democratic (small “d”) legislation. Unless unlimited postal voting were combined with voter ID (e.g. you have to mail the ballot in a post office and have your ID verified), the Biden proposal would for all purposed prevent fair elections in the future. The Republicans have save American democracy.
How about staying home and spending more time on Torah and Mitsvos. For most of our history, Yidden got along quite fine without going away on vacations.
1. Does adequate mean adequate to pass the GED, which opens up applying for jobs (among the goyim) which require a high school diploma, or does adequate mean being able to apply to elite universities which de facto means completing multiple AP exams along with excellent scores on the SAT (while some schools aren’t asking for the SAT, that is to enable them to reject “deplorables”, which probably includes religious fanatics who dress funny, with high SATs in favor of those deemed worthy by WOKE standards). If you mean adequate to hold down a job within the frum community, the answer is that the yeshivos do that very well.
2. How do you take into account the possibility of a student (presumably with parental support) studying on their own (or using online resources) to take the GED, CLEP or AP exams on their own?
3. Do you realize that if you were attempting to match the level of studies in a good yeshiva as well as the level of attainment in a good secular school, e.g. a prep school or a good public high school, the student would probably need to work in excess of 24/7. This is why when the goyim, when adopting the “modern” school curriculum roughly 150 years ago, gave up their “classical” curriculum (faced with the same choice, most frum Jews try to do both, i.e, provide a traditional Torah education as well as a modern secular education).
Possible solutions:
1. The government can hire hunters to kill the deer, and donate the venison to soup kitchens (as is done elsewhere). Allowing amateur hunters to hunt in suburbs would be unwise
2. The frum community can get permission to capture the deer, leading to a kosher venison industry
3. Based on common law, the crown owned the deer and those rights went to the states, so the deer are owned by the state. And, New York is an infamous “nanny state” known for rather ridiculous projects to waste taxpayer money. So the state can round up the deer, force them to listen to road safety lectures. and release them wear yellow safety vests. This idea might appeal to someone such as De Blasio if he manages to get elected governor.
A unicorn is a privately held start-up business worth over a billion. They are quite rare.
The English word “unicorn” refers to a horse with one horn and is often associated with various activities involving non-Jewish mysticism and witchcraft., so Jews should probably stay clear of them. Given the level of natural science in the middle ages, it is possible rabbanim identified them incorrectly with the tachash.
If one mutilates a horned animal, e.g. a goat, one can create a creature with one horn. Halacha prohibits us from doing so.
If commercial custom is that renting over a holiday period gives you more days than a usual rental, why is there a problem, especially as the firm making the rental seems to have closed (though they really should specify the day they wanted the rented moveable returned).
People yelling at each about how to run the government is actually a good thing. If you want a place where everyone acts respectful to the government, try North Korea. If you think its bad now, look at the past (a hundred years ago, most good Jews were open to Jews, as long as they worked Shabbos, changed their names and were baptized – when a frei Jews was appointed to a major office, it was considered very radical – serious Torah education for an American usually involved a trip, often taking weeks, to a yeshiva in Europe – openly anti-Semitic groups were considered to be politically respectable in the US), and stop whining.
In the original accounts, he was usually invisible and worked by stealth. By definition, this would leave no trace, and its existence can be neither proved, not disproved.
The “modern” version of a “frankenstein” type creature who beats up goyim with brute force is reflective of the “haskalah”, and while reflected in the modern superhero genre (largely invented by frei Jews, probably based on non-frum Jews misunderstandings of the “golem”), has no real basis in Jewish tradition, and clearly never exist.
“inquisitive girl”- Kal ve’homer, if they didn’t object to hareidim getting killed and tortured, why would they object to hareidim being beaten or harassed. Also, the reason the Nazis got in trouble was not they they were killing and torturing Yidden in Germany, but they were doing that to a lot of other people and invading all their neighbors.
duvidf: The government benefits limited to those hareidim who support zionism. Many would argue that a hareidi who supports zionism, even if only to get the money, is not really hareidi. The complaints against the government are from the anti-zionist hareidim.
The world didn’t object to the holocaust (unless they had an ulterior motive to do so), so why should they object now?
a person is a monster only to those who oppose him politically
if you agree with his motives, the person is at worst a bit “overenthusiastic”
virtually no one ever does something that they regard as evil
which is why we need to be wary of those whose idea of being evil does NOT include killing people like us
Freud gave much of the intellectual support for the changes in how physical relations are regarded in the secular world (from do the mitsvah of having children, to a type of recreation). While there has always been much perversion among the goyim (and OTD Jews, in all eras), Freud introduced the revolutionary idea that such perversion other than wrongful behavior.
The universe stands based on Torah, Mitsvos and Gemilas Hasadim, and when Jews go OTD and abandon our responsibilities, the universe is placed in jeopardy.
edited
Gadolhatorah: Without subsidies (in the form of price supports, though government purchases of unneeded crops or paying farmers not to grow certain crops), prices would be much lower, meaning marginal (and inefficient) farmers would change occupations, and consumers would pay lower prices. Corporate welfare paid to producers of carbon-based fuels is probably a reason why electric vehicles had problems in the past.
While a strong argument can be made for the government paying money to the poor (the modern equivalent of tsadakah, though the government seems to cherish humiliating the poor and impairing their ability to rise out of poverty), various forms of subsidies are just welfare for the undeserving rich, which hurt the bulk of society. Better for the government to stay out of the economy, and let free markets decide what is most efficient.
If the Democrats stay in power it won’t be optional. If you aren’t rich enough to afford a car, you don’t get to drive (don’t worry, only deplorables will be unable to afford electric cars).
If electric cars were practical, the government wouldn’t be subsidizing them and mandating them. The auto companies would switch of their own free will.
Secular Jews (OTD to use the current terminology, though often they were second or third generation removed) have made much mischief in the world. Secular Jews are largely responsible for nuclear weapons. Karl Marx has to be blamed for the miseries wrought by his combination of socialism and authoritarianism. To we even need to mention Freud. This list gets to be quite long. While we can say it serves the goyim right, since they encouraged Jews to go off the derekh, we are probably better off in joining them in condeming the secular Jews who are both antagonistic to us (the frum community) as well as a nuisance to the rest of humanity. Goyim have every right to join us in denouncing our wayward cousins, so absent anything else, that is not evidence of anti-Semitism. The “test” as to whether those who attack frei Jews are anti-Semitic is their attitude towards Shabbos (do they support fair Sabbath laws), kashrus (do they support kosher slaughter), and education (do they support Jewish schools able to offer Torah instruction without government interference).
But since most of the damage from Covid19 came from dumb politicians, most of whom were elected by those who suffered the most, that would argue that our elected leaders are a plague from shamayim (hmmm, frogs and lice, and then Biden and Trump, and what comes next?).
Trump, Pelosi, Biden, Putin, Xi and Netanyahu are all part of a secret conspiracy of boomers (okay, Pelosi and Biden are slightly pre-boomer) to trash the planet before turning it over to the next generation. A counter conspiracy came up with Covid19 to get rid of the boomers (that explains why Trump was so anxious for a vaccine, probably the most successful accomplishment of his presidency – but it does explain why the elderly leaders of the world were in a panic over Covid19, which for those younger that boomer age was just a bad case of flu), but it came too late.
Hardly uncommon. It is reaching the point where we should assume that any Baal Tseuvah is probably safek goy. Where someone who is frum discovers they aren’t Jewish by halacha (or more likely a safek), conversion is very uncomplicated. Among Ashkenazim, a large number of people have been going off the derekh for the last 200+ years, and given the custom of western Jews to use paternal surnames, only a genealogist can determine the halachic status of a non-frum Jew.
During the period referenced in the gemara, the Christians were a major group in all regions that Jews lived, and had already settled on observing Yom Rishon as their sabbath (lower-case), which would explain why frum Yidden would have been anxious to avoiding the appearance of having a special day on the day that the Christians claimed was a special day.
If a state with a large frum population set up such a voucher system for private schools, we (meaning the frum community) could always set up a separate corporation to provide the “English” education, which could accept aid unless it was tied to conditions we found unacceptable. Heretofore, most private schools have been for the very wealthy, which is why few states subsidize them.
The Supreme Court is likely to hold that if states which to subsidize non-religious private school, they have to have subsidize religious schools (at least those that meet the same secular criteria). This has almost no impact on us since there are very few places where there is political support to subsidize private (also called “prep”) school, and that any standards on teaching secular subjects would be hard to meet for the better frum schools (i.e. the ones that offer high quality Torah education).
charliehall: The Japanese had already fought the Soviets in the 1930, and both sides were considering the possibility of a full scale war. Remember that Japan had conquered most of northeastern China, and once Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, it might have been an easy target. Also, the US was also trying to provoke Japan by aiding China (including using American troops disguised as mercenaries, i.e., the famous “Flying Tigers”) and enacting serious economic sanctions against Japan. Japan could have easily skipped Pearl Harbor, respected Philippines neutrality (still a US protectorate, though a date for full independence had already been set), and concentrated on attacking British and Dutch colonial territories knowing that very few Americans would go to war to protect foreign empires). Both political parties were isolationist, and if the Axis put up with American government provocations, it is unlikely the United States would have entered the war on its own, and it is unlikely in that even that the British Empire and Soviet Union would have prevailed, and the Third Reich would still control most of Europe.
And thus the bottom line, Pearl Harbor needs to be seen as something from Shmayim that saved European Jews (meaning the original poster would not be around to post anything since his parents would have died during the war).
Germany was trying very hard to avoid going to war against the United States. We were sending massive amounts of arms to the British, and our forces were attacking German submarines in international waters, and Germany pretended it wasn’t happening. When Japan attacked the United States, Germany honored its pledge to Japan to go to war against the Americans if they did. I suspect the Germans would have much more content if Japan attacked the Soviet Union, or at least respected American neutrality and left Hawaii and the Philippines alone (focusing on Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and India). American public opinion was very anti-war, and few Americans saw anything worthwhile it going to war in order to rescue the British, French and Dutch Empires. While war between the United States and Germany was probably inevitable, it would have had a different outcome if it took place after the fall of Britain.
More importantly, we can see that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had a great deal to do with “Haschaga pratis” since had the attack not taken place, it is unlikely that any European Jews would have survived. Those who were liberated in 1945, had little chance of being alive in the liberation was postponed by months, let alone years. And unless the US was at war with Germany, the US would not have been in a hurry to aid the Soviet Union, and especially if Japan did attack the Soviets, the outcome for Yidden on the Eastern Front would have been horrific.
And if Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbor, there is a good chance the United States would have stayed neutral in the European War, and war would have ended with much of Europe under Nazi control, meaning there would have been very few holocaust survivors.
If the person was not an experience airline traveler, they may not have understood the implications of having tefilin as part of carry-on luggage, e.g. knowing you can’t hold something (for fear of it flying off and hitting someone during landing and take-off, which are the parts of the flight most prone to problems).
and this is the first time you heard about the goyim being dumb racists?
Mazel Tov is this was since you were so busy learning Torah and doing mitsvos (for the few millennia) that you haven’t noticed what the real world is like
Pilpul aside, the “folk” explanation is that to a man the hardest part of becoming a father is to sponsor a kiddush and/or a Shalom Zachar, as opposed to what a woman has to do to become a mother (and remember that until recently, the chance of a woman surviving childbirth was similar to the chance of a soldier surviving a war). All the proper explanations pertaining to men have more mitsvos would sound better if being male didn’t make for a much easier life.
Gadolhadorah: Yes, but most of those things that make Tel Aviv famous are not things we can discuss in public
Yidden in Tel Aviv? Last time I heard, it is most famous for the sorts of things we can’t discuss on YWN.
It probably won’t have that much of an impact on babies getting killed, since rather than hold that the 14th amendment bans abortion (to protect the rights of unborn citizens), they will hold that it is a matter for the states (under the 10th amendment). Since nothing would stop women in pro-life states from going to pro-abortion states, and since most abortions at very early and are increasingly non-surgical (done with, as has been the case for all abortions until modern times), it won’t have that big an impact. Potentially it could mean that in states like New York, infanticide might be legalized while in many “red” states abortion will be limited to situations where the mother’s life is in danger (meaning a woman in those states will have to come to New York, in the immediate pre-Roe period, travel agencies offered combination abortions/Broadway plays for out of state women seeking New York abortions).
Whether we want the 14th amendment weakened and the 10th amended strengthened is a new issue. If you trust your local government (mayors, governors, etc.) to be friendly, you favor a strong 10th, but if you don’t trust your local leaders, then a strong 14th is good for our community (even if it results in goyim able to killing their own kids).
We probably should define a “Jew” as someone who at the least in Shomer Shabbos and Shomer Kashrus (and just those two sets of mitsvos more or less preclude being part of “normal” American life). If you throw in things such as dressing frum or a man having a beard and pe’os, you will discover that there are almost no Jews in political office outside of low level positions serving districts that have a high percentage of frum Yidden.
It is probably in out interests to let the (increasingly non-Jewish) descendants of Jews identify with the Jewish aspects of their heritage since that precludes the “racial” anti-semitism that led to the holocaust.
That non-frum Jews celebrate Hanukah is amusing, since the holiday celebrates a war in which the frum Jews defeated the secular Jews (there was no racial anti-semitism back then, the Greeks loved assimilated Jews,it was only frum Jews who were persecuted). But we should probably not say that when the secular Jews are listening (why pick fights when you don’t have to).
The idea of a woman changing her name on marriage is clearly a non-Jewish custom. Traditionally a woman would be known as “Pilonis bar [father’s name]” for her entire life. The goyim started to force Yidden to adopt family names a few centuries ago (the better to tax and conscript us), which explains why Jews have been very unattached to their surnames and frequently change them (by way of contrast, many western European goyim have surnames that have been in use for thousands of years, and are critical in researching ancestry). Rabbanim have allowed women to adopt the husband’s surname even though it is a goyish minhag (as are inherited surnames).
While there are no “Jewish” arguments on change of surname, there are practical reasons for the wife to adopt a husband’s name, especially if they expect to have children and if they are going to be on the same health insurance.