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As for why there is no similar party for boys among the goyim, YWN “censorship” (good taste) rules preclude a discussion . Among Jews, where entering manhood involves reaching new levels of Torah and Mitsvos, we make a party when boys turn 13.
it isn’t clear how much control the president has over stocks. If one uses the Dow Jones to grade presidents, then it appears that Obama was probably the greatest president ever. Factors to consider are the value of the dollar ( a weak dollar makes companies with large non-US deals look bigger), and low interest rates (controlled by the Fed, and indicative of a weak economy).
Not to mention undermining social security and hurting people with term life insurance.
RebYidd: Be happy Hebrew has only two. Most Germanic languages, including Yiddish, have three. Some languages have more. English is actually one of few languages with very little gender (we still have it for third person pronouns, but not for common nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.. Being “spoiled” by English’s simplicity means that grammatical gender is a problem for Anglophones.
Most languages have genders. It isn’t a strict correlation with “male” and “female”, but its an easy way to remember them. English lost most of its genders during the middle ages. Many Germanic languages have three genders. Some have more (i.e. more than three classes for words, and related grammatical forms).
While some secular (and I suspect, monolingual) feminists get crazy over this, its just a set of rules. Like computer programming. It isn’t worth philosophizing over.
In the 19th century, boys were recruited in their early teens, and sometimes younger. That is still the case in many countries (even if the United Nations set a minimum age for combat as 18).
Even in the US, the minimum driving age varies considerably. In rural areas, it is often much younger than 18, especially for driving farm vehicles. Insurance companies, based on driving records, charge tremendous amounts extra for younger drivers suggesting some evidence based reasons for a higher driving age.
Many countries have no drinking age. One should remember that the US is one of the few non-Muslim countries to ever make serious effort to ban alcoholic beverages. Given the stereotype of intoxicated college (and yeshiva) students, there appears to be justification for society’s concerns.
Of course, Bnei Torah generally have better things to do than play soldiers, never drink in excess except maybe on Purim (and not all that much then), and only need to drive to get to yeshiva or shopping — so this thread should be irrelevant to YWN readers.
The only solution would, to a modern Orthodox such as Kushner, be an example of the cure being worse than the disease. Once the Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael is dominated by hareidim (ignoring that this would collapse the economy, which is based on the seculars), peace would be obtainable. Hareidim (think Satmar, or Yolish Krauss, not those who are hareidi only in terms of lifestyle but are part and parcel of the zionist movement especially in terms of schnorring from them) are content to be left alone and feel no need to rule over the goyim. If hareidim come to control Eretz Yisrael, they can agree to being an autonomous minority in an Arab Islamic state. The war began when the Arabs realized that the zionists were taking over the Yishuv from the haredim, and wanted political control – which will always be unacceptable to Arab Muslims. Give up the desire to rule over other peoples, and the war is very endable. A totally hareidi community is non-threatening to the Arabs and can live in peace with the goyim, albeit as second class citizens – though to the modern Orthodox having to become hareidi and give up the perqs of a modern lifestyle is a worse case scenario.
Armies, especially if they couldn’t conscript people, often relied on strong drink to get enllistments (the recruiter paid for some drinks at the pub, and you woke up in the morning to find out you had enlisted). So far, the US relies on patriotism and perhaps economic self-interest to recruit soldiers.
If the US ends up with a Democratic president with a solid Democratic majority in the Congress, we can expect similar problems here. The best hope is that Trump gets to replace several liberals on the Supreme Court, and that is an “iffy” proposition.
1. Move to an area where you see people leaving stuff on their porch or lawn, and where as you go to shul in the morning you can see women walking or jogging. The preceeding are true of all the frum neighborhoods in Baltimore.
2. Avoid anyone doing illegal drugs. They tend to attract criminals.
3. Check the crime statistics (usually available online) and compare your neighborhood with others. Ignore dire warnings from anyone who might benefit from promoting fear of crime.
4. Avoid countries having or recovering from civil disorders as they usually have messed up law enforcement.
YIVO was never “official”. It was a “wannabee” that few Yiddish speakers took seriously (perhaps due the fact they tried to create a standard dialect of Yiddish based on vowels from one dialect, consonants from another, and grammer from a third). YIVO’s version of Yiddish is useful in some universities, solely for the purpose of teaching people who have no desire to communicate with native speakers. Indeed, YIVO Yiddish is similar to Esperanto. How useful a language academy is can be debated (note the difficulty of the Hebrew and French academies in getting people to refrain from adopting English terms).
Living languages constantly evolve. Note how English has lost its 2nd person singular (thou), its subjunctive (“I be”, “if I were”) not to mention its neuter gender. Living languages absorb words from other languages. Due to extreme traumas (e.g. the holocaust, and the mass migrations of the last 150 years), Yiddish has changed radically. Also note that many native speakers of English have trouble with literature produced a few centuries ago (to most Americans, Jane Austen and the Declaration of Independence seem quaint, and Shakespeare is almost incomprehensible). There is no such think as a “pure” language, and the only unchanging languages are dead ones.
I believe that almost all non-Ashkenazim living under Islamic rule would have been able to have multiple wives. During the colonial era, the British and French generally allowed local marriage laws to stay in force. So for most non-Ashkenazim the first restrictions on polygamy would have been when they moved to Eretz Yisrael.
Joseph: As I said the issue is subject to debate. Through the mid-20th century, most Ashkenazim lived in countries whose laws prohibitted polygamy, and with criminal penalties for extramarital relationships (e.g. between a husband and a second wife). If western countries legalize polygamy (in part due to Muslim complains that anti-polygamy laws are discriminatory, in part since their religious basis is meaningless to a secular society, and in part since “living together while unmarried” is now lawful there is no logic to penalize “living together while married”), I suspect it will reopen the debate. Note that very few men could support multiple wives, put in an industrial society it might work out especially some some wives held jobs while other provided free child care for the ones with the jobs. Another factor would be if there was shidduch crisis caused by male mortality rising rapidly (a military fiasco in Israel could have that effect) or if it developed that males were likely to be OTD than females – but absent such I doubt polygamy would ever be popular.
What the halacha is, is subject to debate. Some people argue that the halachic ban on polygamy should not apply and so far that is not a widely held position. If the United States were to formally recognize polygamous marriages, the halachic debate would become much more “interesting”. At present, America does not consider a second wife (with the first wife still married to the husband) as anything more than the husband’s “girl friend”, with no legal status at all.
Under American law, the first marriage is valid and the second marriage is consider void (i.e. only the first wife can be covered on a joint tax return, and she inherits the spousal share, and only the first wife can own a house as a tenant by the entireties.). However since American law no longer criminalizes consensual intimate relationships, it isn’t clear that criminal bigamy laws would be upheld, complicated by the issue as to whether this is a religious freedom issue.
zahavasdad: Several languages changed alphabets in the 20th century, largely as a way to prevent the population from being able to read traditional literature and limit them to reading the new script used in the books the government wanted them to read. The support for changing from the Hebrew script to Roman script was considered by secular Jews as a way of encouraging Jews to get away from Torah. Russia switched several languages in their territories from Arabic script in order to distance the populations from Islam (Turkey did likewise). For Yiddish and Hebrew, opposition from frum Jews was a major factor, To make such a change work, the government has to be able to use extreme methods to prevent people from using the form script (e.g. gulags, executions, etc.).
“Yiddish for dummies” is also based on Yiddish as it was a century ago, when most Americans who spoke Yiddish were secular (or at least “otd” as we now say). A major change is the American English and Israeli (zionist) Hebrew have replaced German and the Slavic languages as major influences on vocabulary and grammer. Also, modern 21st century Yiddish is a lot “cleaner” (reflecting the usage among hareidim).
Re: cholent
Yiddish has no words of its own, many words come from Hebrew with a spice of Aramaic, many come from German, some come from French, some come from slavic languages, many come from English.
English also has no words of its own. Many come from German (old Anglo-Saxon), and many come from French (Norman French in paricular). Others come from a variety of languages, including Hebrew and Yiddish.
If “cholent” isn’t a Yiddish word, what is?
You do realize that the zionists who rule Eretz Yisrael reconsidered the matter and decided that the boy was right, and took down the metal detectors.
If one wishes to learn Yiddish as is spoken today, there are some text books that are less than useful since they reflect Yiddish as it was spoken and written before World War II (among post-war changes are the disappearance of secular users, and the increased influences of Hebrew and English along with the reduced influence of German on Yiddish vocabulary and grammar). I suggest combining a textbook, along with children’s books aimed at the frum community (meaning one’s that actual Yiddish speakers buy for their kids).
re: WWII dates. Germany and Poland starting fighting on Sept. 1. Britain and France didn’t declare war for several days. The British dominions took a few more days (except for Ireland which declared neutrality). The United States didn’t declare war until the end of 1941. The Soviet Union entered the war on the side of the Germans in September 1939, and switched sides two years later when Germany attacked them. The Japanese and Chinese had been shooting it out for some time, and Ethiopia had been at war with Italy since 1936. Arguably World War II ended around 1991 when the Allied occupation of Germany finally came to an end.
World War I began in a more organized way, reflecting the stable and structured world of the “proud tower” (as one historian called it) that the war undermined.
To Zahavasdad: In 1914, Tisha B’Av was Aug. 2 (since Aug. 1 was Shabbos). The war began on July 28 with Austria declaring war on Serbia, and by Aug 4 the last of the major powers was involved with Britain declaring war on Germany. It is quite reasonable to say that the war began on Tisha B’Av. It took only a few days for all the countries to declare war, and they then proceeded to have a bloodbath in August, at the end of which they were out of ammunition and the war settled into the war of attrition for which it is infamous.
There are many minhagim within the Torah world, including some frum communities with “brideprice” rather than “dowry.” One factor is probably whether the newlywed couple is going to be supported by one or the other side, how much money is spent for the wedding and by whom, what assets or skills each side brings to the marriage, etc. The lack of economic arrangements do not affect the validity of a marriage.
There are small communities in West Virginia and also in Hagerstown (MD).
No one gets married with the idea of getting divorced. Similarly, no one starts a school program (in university, yeshiva, trade school) with the idea of flunking out. No one starts a business with the idea of going bankrupt. No one starts life off with the intention of failure and misery. Maybe Olam ha-Zeh will work out for you, and maybe it won’t. But its not for us to just give up and not try.
‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’
1. The “Onion” is satire. It is comedy. It is NOT trying to be news. It is trying to be humor. Calling it fake news would be like calling “Star Trek” fake history.
2. There is no indication of any news sources deliberately lying, but more of failing to critically examine rumors and hearsay that while being of dubious reliability tend to support one’s political positions. This reflects of serious decline in journalistic standards over the last century, as journalistgs who once dilligently took a skeptical approach to anything and everything, now see their role as seeking out “facts” that support an ideological position. While the news sections of a few sources (the “Wall Street Journal”, excluding its editorial sections) is one, most include the AP (a favorite of YWN), and most leading newspaper and networks, have become less concerned with accuracy and fact checking than in presenting arguments supporting an ideological position.
Joseph: Do you would prefer to pick a judge who was chosen by a political process that may be highly prejudiced against you. For frum Jews living in a place where the political leadership is ultra-secular (such as New York or Israel), a random jury is vastly preferable.
We get what we pay for. It’s a נס that we get so many qualified and competent teachers in spite of the salaries we give them. We should look at the cup being well over half full, and stop complaining that it is partially empty.
But non-Orthodox tend to hold that the establishment of the medinah cancelled observance of mourning for the destruction of the Beis ha-Mikdash, so why would you expect them to show up on a special day they don’t hold by.
to Gadolhador ah, re: “why is it impossible”
Probably for the same region humanities graduates for universities tend not to go into areas involving mathematics, computers, etc. – it doesn’t interest them. If you don’t like manual work (machinists, construction work, farming) and don’t like math (rules out engineeering and most sciences) and can’t stand the sight of blood (forget about become a shochet, or a doctor). If someone was inclined to be tool and die maker, or an engineer, or a professional “geek” (computer expert), or something medical, they probably would have planned on doing so from the start.
The goyim have the same problem with millions of unemployable humanities majors who skill set, and inclincations, leading them to unemployability. Perhaps the solution is to expose children in elemntary school, to various fields of STEM, mechanical skills, etc, in hopes the kids will develop an interest. We should stop worrying that there is something wrong with “our” schools, since the problem is shared with everyone else’s.
If the secular press (both blue and red versions) is to be believed, all young adults have great problems of insecurity. Indeed, that seems to be an aspect of being a young adult. If someone goes to kollel and then decides they want to change career tracts (i.e. not become a Torah educator or other communal functionary), they need to expect to retrain – but that’s true of almost every young adult who wants to change career, and changing careers is something young adults do frequently. If fact, former kollel students are in some ways better off since someone who goes to a private university in the hope of a career in humanities will be deeply in debt from student loans, and just as employable in the “real world” as a kollel person, and without the option of working for the Jewish community (e.g. compare the prospects of a PhD in Classics to a kollel student leaving kollel).
1. Any accredited bachelor’s degree opens doors, though one usually has to have job skills to walk through.
2. Often (e.g. for federal civil service) a list of classes and acquired job skills is just as good.
3. If one desires to enter a graduate program, universities tend to insist on a bachelors, so the “BTL” is useful as long as you took the right classes for the program (distance education is an option to have the necessary classes, for medical school many schools offer “make up” programs for someone with a non-premed background and a bachelors who wants to go to medical school).
4. There are plenty of blue collar jobs that don’t require a bachelors that few frum Jews have shown interest in (e.g. a tool and dye maker).
“negative money” = debt
If one has a high risk tolerance, debt is probably acceptable in terms of getting parnassah. If you have low risk tolerance, the current “bird in the hand” (parnassah as is), is preferable to two “in the bush” (the higher parnassah one can get through exploitation of the debt.
Whether “rights” are “natural” (meaning, in the bottom line, given by G-d), or are based on law, is a highly philosophical question. If the government passes a law creating a right, it is then a right. Of course, what the government gives, the government can take away, and there is certainly no guarantee that a government administered “right” will prove to be wise and efficient (cf. the constitutional right to postal service).
One should remember that America was the first country in which Jews had civil right (from 1787 with the prohibition of religious tests), and that but for America the Third Reich would be in control of all of Europe including Eretz Yisrael. That the Americans had the zechus to be used by Ha-Shem to save us speaks for itself.
And while the Democrats want to change this, America is and remains the global champion of freedom of religion, where most of the western world favors “freedom from religion.”
The creation of “rights” to things such as health care and adequate food and housing and education date to the Franklin Roosevelt’s “four freedoms” speech (which were setting a platform for American entrance into World War II). Arguably he got if from us, since Jewish communities always assumed that our communal government had a duty to address basic needs of the poor.
One should note that Roosevelt was not known for his skill at economics (he became president at what should have been the end of a recession, and stretched it out into the great depression), and that addressing “freedom of want” is economically challenging.
If we were freaked out by goyim doing things they shouldn’t, we wouldn’t have made it out of Egypt. For modern orthodox, and coservadox, who desire to fit into the goyish world, this is a problem. For Bnei Torah, there is no problem. At the end of the day, we know that we are bound to Ha-Shem, even if this really annoys the goyim, and that is just the way it has to be. It’s inconvenient if they are persecuting us, but we manage just like we always have. Whether the universe will impload is dependent on what we do, not what the goyim do.
And this is hardly a hiddush. In fact, its very old news.
lesschumrahs: At the time of the constitution, no divorce was also the position of the Protestants. In England (and the American colonies), the only way to get a divorce was: 1) be Jews, since they had “personal law” and Jews were governed by Jewish law; 2) an act of parliament, which was usually only available to the royal family. After they secularized domestic relations ( in the late 18th and early 19th centuries), divorce still required an act of the legislature. However at the point of reception of English law in the USA, there was no divorce. The route to Lawrence v. Texas began when they allowed anyone to get divorced, and started decriminalizing extramarital relationships. So reversing Lawrence really means uprooting 200+ years of legal development (and very few Americans want a return to the law as it was in 1789 when the constitution took effect).
Yeshivas and public high schools are both incredibly diverse, so any overall comparison would be impossible. One can compare individual schools, but as a group it is meaningless.
The poster meant to say “as a deduction from income” rather than as “income.”
Most but not all social services agencies take the view that before you ask for a handout, you should give up luxuries such as non-public education. Whether ownership of a car or a house is taken into account is similar.
We should also remember that to the extent the government recognizes Torah education, it will also want to regulate and often in ways we find highly objectionable (remember the government, especially in “blue” states, regards opposition to certain behaviors we can’t talk about on YWN as being “hate crimes” against those who engage in such behaviors). We really should not be anxious to be “helped” by the government. Torah Judaism wants autonomy, not a seat at the table.
The climate has included variability throughout history. The period of Bayis Sheini (the “classical” period in European history) and the time of the Rishonim (the “high middle ages”) were warm, they were followed by cool periods (the goyim’s “Dark ages” and “Early modern periods”). While they didn’t have thermometers there are records of what crops grew where and when rivers froze. The climate scaremongers base their calculations on the end of the early modern period and therefore see rapid temperature increase. If they based it on the the high middle ages, they wouldn’t be upset.
One should also note, that in the past, the warm periods were generally times of greater prosperity and population growth (and note that a leading source of carbon emissions are people and animals exhaling). Cool periods usually resulted in a falling population and famines.
1. Lawrence v. Texas, was one of many cases (and statutes) over the last 200+ years by which the Americans legalized virtually all types of גלוי עריות. There is overwhelming public support for this and it is unlikely to be changed. Even if the courts were to allow such laws, there would never be public support among the goyim to criminalize consensual behavior. We Yidden are used to the goyim acting in way we don’t approve.
2. Given the above, which began in the early 18th century (when they rejected the common law definition of marriage as involving one man, one woman, to the exclusion of all others, lasting for life with no possibility of divorce), it is inevitable that the Americans would redefine marriage based on the idea of two people who marry for love as opposed to be people forming an economic partnership to raise children. As we follow halacha, this really has no impact on us (anymore than a statute regulating how much cheese goes into a cheeseburger).
3. Roe v Wade, on abortion is different, since even goyim object to murder, and the scientific evidence of the last 40 + years reject that upon which Roe v Wade was based. Back then, it was believed by scientists that the baby was just a mass of insentient tissue until shortly before birth, and modern science has shown otherwise. In America there is not overwhelming support for “abortion on demand”, but there isn’t enough support for a constitutional amendment to change the law.
I would blame the invention of motorized transport and many labor saving devices (washing machines, vacuum cleaners, electric blenders/mixers). In the 1700’s, one always walked to work. Only the “1%” would have carriages (and they were often fat – in fact, in that period being fat was a sign of affluence and being overweight was considered “good” when looking for shiduch, for both genders and in all cultures).
Federal civil service is by applying, having OPM rate your resume, and getting called for an interview. Filling out the application is important since that is where one can explain that you really meet the requirements (e.g. explaining why your years in kollel are at least the equivalent of a B.A. in humanities, to meet a stated requirement). Lower level jobs may involve testing, but professional jobs don’t. OPM gives a list of top candidates, and you get interviewed. The person making the decision has to explain the choice to his or her boss in writing. — Patronage jobs involve knowing people in the right places and often paying off people; these jobs often involve Senate confirmation. I believe only one person with a yarmulke has ever gone that high. — While federal jobs are all over, the highest concentration is in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area (which includes some neighborhoods with affordable housing). The OPM website handles the whole country.
One should note that the “dress” fedora came into existence when Americans stopped wearing fedoras as part of regular male clothing. That would have been in the 1960s. Before that, fedoras were an un-dress hat, or as we call it a weekday hat. Americans are apparently starting to wear hats again, and one wonders if the growth of small non-fancy fedoras will impact on out choice of hats (perhaps shifting more to hamburg or even back to top hats???).
A dress hat among Orthodox Jews would tend to “big” since we don’t use cars on Shabbos, and the argument against a big hat is its inconvenience in cars or other motorized transit.
Whether a government job pays better than the private sector depends on the nature of the job, and how what looks at fringe benefits. In general, professionals are paid less than the private sector, but often have better benefits and working conditions (excellent medical care, secure retirement benefits, often a ban on unpaid overtime). Shabbos is much less likely to be a problem working for the government than working for a large employer in the private sector (as one as one avoids jobs that inherently require work on Saturday such as police, medical, etc.). In most government service, there is great job security even one is incompetent. Discrimination is not a problem, at least in civil service (patronage jobs are more like private sector).
For non-professional jobs, the government tends to overpay. Thus the government rarely has problems recruiting clerks and janitors, but often has a problem recruiting professionals.
Note that there is never an “upside” financially in government unless you are a crook. When you hear of someone who get rich while working for the government, assume they either had a side business or were corrupt. That’s especially true of those with political jobs (appointed as patronage, rather than merit selected).
In Catholic schools the non-secular portion of the curriculum is minimal. If Jewish schools limited their curriculum to one or two periods a day, the costs would fall radically. The reason our schools are expensive is we are trying keep the traditional Torah curriculum , while also teaching a full “modern”secular curriculum. When the goyim switched to a “modern” curriculum (with lots of math, social studies and science) they totally gave up on their classical curriculum. – and today few goyim know anything about their own cultural heritage beyond what they picking from watching TV shows.
The law of supply and demand works regardless of what anyone attempts. Given that there is no shortage of candidates for jobs, it seems the wage is at a correct level. By comparison to college teachers, there is a tremendous oversupply of qualified applicants (sometimes hundreds of applicants for a single position), suggesting that their wages are too high. At present the supply and demand for teachers of Torah studies seems to be roughly at an equilibrium suggest the wages are neither too high nor too low.
One should note that teachers in Jewish schools get many benefits that make the low salaries more tolerable, such as being free from the discrimination anyone frum encounters working in the well-paid outside world. For most Torah teachers, switching to a better paying career would mean giving up much Yiddishkeit.
1. Most rabbeim are not interested in other lines of work, which is why they except low pay.
2. If the pay was too low, there would be a shortage of persons looking for jobs as rebbeim.
3. If rabbeim were better paid, tuition would rise, forcing more families to either home school or to send their children to public schools (the former might work if the community embraced it, the latter was tried in the 20th century and resulted in mass assimilation, i.e. very few Jewish kids who went to public schools remained frum).The person who objects to sitting next to the woman should offer to move (presumably to a middle seat, or switch to a less crowded flight). He should have arranged his seat previously (and a frum travel agent would know to book an entire two in order to avoid a problem). El Al, unlike, for example, Southwest, lets you book an actual seat in advance. In the US as well, the hareidi would be considered an out of line passenger and would probably be offered refund, especially if there was someone waiting to take the seat.