akuperma

The lines in America are less clear, and the further you move from New York, the fuzzier they get it. The smaller the Jewish community, the better different groups get along. America’s education system is more flexible, so someone can never study secular subjects in school and then sit down, study for and pass a test, and go to college – and college can be done online. America’s anti-discrimination laws and tradition of religious tolerance protect Hareidim, whereas the public policy of secular Israelis is to be “free” from religion. America banned conscription generations ago, so there is no need to decide on army service, unlike in Eretz Yisrael where that decision fixes ones place in society.

Home schooling is legal in the United States. A factor in its favor is that to win in court, a state would have to show that the standard used to prevent home schooling was the same as the one under which they close down a public school for underachievement, so in effect, the American “social pass” makes it impossible to meaningfully regulate home school. Local bodies often resent home schoolers since it deprives them of revenue (lost since otherwise the student would go to public school, and bring in lots of money in aid), but a clearly hareidim parent won’t generate a problem.

The costs can be prohibitive. If the parents are college educated (degreed or not), with a strong yeshiva and seminary problem, then fine – but otherise they might end up hiring tutors. If the mother of the house wants to home school, and would otherwise be a housewife, the cost isn’t great, but if she is giving up $100K to stay home with the kids, its likely that schools are cheaper.

As Jews have an ancient tradition of parents learning with their children, home schooling should be easier for us (among goyim, the idea of parents teaching their children is considered weird).

Finland was the only country allied (more of a co-belligerent rather than an ally) with Germany in which Jews served in the military in World War II. While several German allies refused to turn over Jews to the Germans, only Finland refused to persecute Jews (seriously annoying the Germans). This is especially interesting since Finnish Jewry had its origins in Jews exiled there during the Czarist period, so they weren’t even people with deep roots.

Jews have held high office in the past. At least one served as what today would be a “prime minister” in the Arab’s empire (back we got along very well with the Arabs whereas the Christians were a serious pain), a Jew was “regent” of Poland (he was chief tax collector and they needed an acting-king while electing a new one), etc. While a Shomer Shabbos would be unusual in such a high position, it is hardly impossible, albeit quite unlikely. Assuming one holds by Dina Malchusa Dina, a Jewish head of state or head of government would still be nothing more than the “first servant” since under modern political theory the “people” are ultimate authority in the state and the leaders are their employees.

Candidate Trump is still “playing” the character he developed for his TV show. He does the “lines” that seem best for his ratings. Whether he can easily change his script is another matter.

Eating fresh fruits and vegetables has been know since antiquity to promote health.

In the War against Terror, most of those who die fighting our Muslim enemimes are … Muslims. Most of the people killed by Islamic State/al Queda are …. Muslims.

Remember that during World War II, most of the people who died fighting the Nazis were Aryans.

Natural means not assembled from chemicals. Things such as pig blood and ground up insect are natural since they were made from genuine pigs and genuine insects.

Anything with a flavor added is inherently in need of a hecksher to be kosher.

I did not say yeshivos spend twice as much as the goyim’s schools. I said the teach twice as many subjects. The number of subjects is a function of teaching a classical curriculum (Torah) and a modern scientific curriculum. When the goyim switched to a modern curriculum, they abandonned their “classical” curriculum, with the result that most goyim are secular ignoramouses about their own culture (with poor language skills, horrible work discipline, and poor midos). Given that most frum Jews are relatively poor, there is no way we could match the goyim’s financially. Given our educational goals, and lack of financially resources, we are doing quite well.

If that were so, we would see, for example, increasing opposition to gay rights, marriage with non-Jews, or conversion in which the convert is not expected to become Shomer Shabbos. That isn’t happening. What we see is the ruling class is increasingly and militantly secular, which is why we see programs designed to surpress the frum community (banning non-rabbinut kashrus, conscripting yeshiva students, and attempts to close down schools that don’t support zionism). One would also expect, if Israeli is moving towards being more Jewish, that non-kosher food vendors would be going broke or becoming kosher – and that isn’t happening.

By government are you referring to the network of frum institutions that dominate communal life, or the clowns in the city halls and capitol buildings?

lesschmras:

The public schools originally taught a curriculum very similar to the yeshivos (albeit for their culture). The typical high school graduate could read several languages, was familiar with the arts and culture of western civilization, and was familiar with the classical literature of his culture, typically in the original language (Latin, Greek and Hebrew). They were weak on vocation education, but people managed to get vocational training outside of schools. THEN the goyim ditched the “classical” curriculm and traded it in for a “modern” curriculum focused on employment skills with lots of sports and other fun stuff thrown in. Their students grow up totally ignorant of their own heritage, which might in part explain the lower morale and low morality among our neighbors.

In our community, we still insist on learning the classicial Jewish curriculum, and in addition to it(not instead of it) we add on a “modern” vocational curriculum for the benefit of those who want to work with and for the goyim. Most public school students have at most five academic periods a day, and usually only five days a week. Our students typically are learning eight or nine subjects, six days a week (and our summer “camps” often have a half day of academic work, at the minimum). Our education largely works but it costs a fortune.

Very few yeshivos actually charge $24K per student (if the school as 200 students, that would mean have a budget of $4.8 million). Most yeshivos function on a small fraction of that, which is why they tend to have run down facilities and underpaid teachers – but they still are producing children who remain loyal to Torah and Mitsvos.

In addition one needs to remember the following: 1) Iran’s struggle with ISIS/al Queda is a matter of survival for the Iranians – if ISIS wins and establishes itself as the leader of the Muslim world it will be very bad for the Iranians and their fellow Shiites; 2) The Iranians are not kin to the Palestinians and belong to a rival faction of Islam; 3) “100K” missiles may not refer to ICBMs capable of mass destruction but merely to short range rockets that the Soviets developed as a “cheap” version of artillery (no need for a massive artillery piece, but the cost is higher than an artillery shell).

lesschumras: English is a mixture of French and German, relating to several centuries when the upper class spoke a dialect of French while the lower class spoke English (which at the beginning of the time was little more than a dialect of German, but by the end of the period was an entirely different language). BTW, Yiddish is also a “fusion” language with large amounts of German mixed with large amount of Hebrew and Aramaic (and some slavic mixed in to the eastern dialects, and recently a lot of English and zionist Ivrit thrown in for good measure). “Pure” languages like French, and German, and Arabic are far less interesting.

Neturei Karta is a political movement. If you define “hareidi” as meaning non-zionist, you end up with many modern orthodox as being hareidi (consider Avraham Burg). If you define “hareidi” based on dress or halachic humras, then you have many fanatic religious zionists in the West Bank who are hareidi.

One could argue that “hareidi” is anyone that the Modern Orthodox consider to be “too frum”.

Surveys can be very unreliable. The authors of a survey usually are looking for confirmation of their hypothesis, and people answering a survey tend to give the “right answer.”

Consider that based on scientific techniques one would exect that Britain overwhelmingly wants to stay in the EU, Netanyahu and Cameron were both voted out of office in the last election, and Jeb Bush has a lock on the Republican nomination for president.

P.S. Given the strong economic and social incentives to be “off the derekh”, one might want to study why anyone would willingly give up most of their economic prospects and agree to live in a marginalized ghetto just because Ha-Shem told them to 3000+ years ago.

I never heard anyone say that “denim” is prohibited by “hukas goyim” but most frum Jews tend to dress in a reasonably formal clothes, but not too fancy since we don’t want to show off or embarass the poor – and denim is almost by definition a fabric for informal usage. If you work in construction you might wear denim, but not to go to shul. You might wear denim when building a sukkah, but not for sitting in it. But that is a matter of fashion. If one arrives at the point where goyim wear denim when dressed up (e.g. lawyers wear it to court, the president wears it to his inaguration, etc.), it will start being worn by more frum Jews.

Joseph, As long as the husband is paying the wife’s bills (as per the general understanding of the kesubah), and if no Beis Din has been involved, and presumably there is civil divorce – why would anyone expect the husband to give a “get”. He’s still married and obligated to support the family.

Unless your “advocates” are a Beis Din, if the people are not divorced why would they expect him to give a “get”. If the man has abandonned his wife and started civil divorce procedures, the “advocates” go to the Beis Din which order the “get”.

RE: “There isnt exactly anything as “proper yiddish” anymore”

1. Most languages do not have official institutes, and the one’s that do are usually ignored. For example, the French and Israeli language academies keep trying to invent local words to use rather than words based on English, and fail miserably. YIVO was set up by a bunch of secular fanatics to try to invent a standard Yiddish (taking vowels from one dialect and consonants from others) – they never were taken seriously be actual Yiddish speakers.

2. By “proper” in a language you mean spekaing the language the way someone spoke 300 years ago? Do speakers of proper English still use the 2nd person familiar (Thou) or the subjunctive (as in “I be”)? Dead language have “proper” rules, living languages evolve because people keep inventing new words without ever bothering to talk to professors or official language commissions.

3. Yiddish never developed a standard in part since Jews never used it for serious books (though some ultra-seculars tried in the pre-WWII era). Yiddish is/was for fun stuff, the popular press, children’s books and as an aid for those lacking the intellectual skills to read Hebrew. Serious literature was alwayws Yiddish speakers was written in Hebrew, a langauge all children learned and the language used for official documents by Jews (such as court records). To cite an example, the famous sefer by the Satmar Rebbe telling people to use Yiddish, is written in Hebrew.

So was ancient Israel a monarchy? None of the leading kings, the ones we name our kids after, was the eldest son of a previous king?

It seems very clear that David appointed the next king – rather than hereditary sucession.

A good argument can be made is that Trump is a traditional Democrats in the mold of people such as John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt, whereas the Democrats have moved radically to the left and are now support positions that in the past would have been considered off-the wall radical. If we had proportional representation, we could accomodate more parties but we have a “winner takes all” system. Note that in periods where the Republicans were dominated by conservatives, Trump was a Democrat.

His nativism and his pungnacious campaign style really don’t reflect his ideological background or his substance. In terms of issues, he’s either a conservative Democrat or a liberal Republican.

Define monarchy. Does it mean a strictly hereditary system, or perhaps one in which the leader is chosen from within a narrowly defined group. For example, the Brits has a strictly hereditary system meaning, other systems are more flexible (e.g. the Saudi monarchy, the Catholic Church, and the way the frum community chooses its leaders with gedolim emerging from a narrow somewhat hereditary class of persons).

The opposite of a monarchy is a republic. Republics, and Monarchies, can be based on democratic or non-democratic principles. Many Republics are dictatorships, and many monarchies are friendly and democratic.

From a Torah perspective what matters is what they do. We have had friends (and enemies) who were presidents, and others who were kings. Similarly we have had democratic friends (and enemies), as well as un-democratic ones.

It depends on your goal. What do you want to accomplish with gun control. For example, the largest shooting incident in America (involving civilians being shot, and not part of a war) would not have been possible without gun control (several hundred recently disarmed civilians murdered at “Wounded Knee” just over a century ago – if they had guns the casulties would probably have been less). If your goal is to reduce crime and protect citizens, gun control serves no purpose since the bad guys will ignore it. However if your goal is to get rid of pesky minorities, that will be greatly facilitated with an effective gun control program.

Out of town Jews appear better off materially than New York City Jews since the cost of housing is radically cheaper. In Baltimore, probably the second largest kehillah on the east coast, a one family house, detached, with a yard, near the largest frum shuls, can be found for under $150K. The joke is a Boro Parker asks a Baltimore realtor about houses for sale in the frum community, hears the prices, and says “I’ll take two.” This is not a “frum” issue but reflects the overall housing market since New York is infamously expensive (due to high population, limited land not to mention laws that discourage building new housing). But it isn’t an issue of New Yorkers or “out of towners” being more into gashmius.

1. It is unclear that OTD become Reform or Conservative, rather than simply non-religious assimilated Jews who children are not distinguished from goyim.

2. If a potential Baal Tseuvah can’t trace his/her ancestry back to when the family was frum (still possible for 20th century immigrants, a lot trickier from those whose families came before the Civil War), they are “safek” goyim. This may be a good thing since given the breakdown in “morality” during the second half of the 20th century, as well as divorce becoming common, they are also probably “safek mamzerim” as well, so it may be a good thing to start regarding potential baalei tseuvah as being “safek goy, safek mamzer” as that status (as became clear with the mass migration of Ethiopian Jews) is easy to resolve.