akuperma

Upper class Israel is a first world country. The rest of Israel (the Hareidim and the peripheral areas) are doing very well for a third world country. Israel has a very sharp class divisions, and will probably self-destruct over that if it doesn’t address the matter which would be hard to do as the secular upper class isn’t about to share the wealth.

1. There was a major change in the American economy just under ten years ago, and many “boys” are reasonably postponing marriage until they are better established financially. Similar behaviors have been observed in the past. Many women probably have similar concerns.

2. Due to changes in medical care over the last century, it isn’t such a big deal. When a woman finds out she is pregnant today, she can assume that she will be marrying off her offspring in 20-30 years. In the past, the liklihood of both her and the child being alive in 30 years was not very good. Indeed, the chances that both the mother and child would be alive a year after conception was troubling (many mothers,and most babies, didn’t make it). The bottom line, relevant to our discussion, is that people who delay marriage until their late 20s or early 30s can still end up producing a “house full of children”. There is no reason to panic.

3. If one looks at the cost of raising a child, even paying tuition, and compares it to the life time income of the child, it is clear that having children is a good investment. It would be tragic if people give up having children since they think it would cost too much. There are some cultures and countries (as a country, Japan is a good example, as a sub-culture, secular Jews are an example) in which people prefer to maximize their enjoyment of life by not having children so they have more money to spend on themselves – which in the long term is disasterous since you end up with a community of old people with no next generation and no future.

Depending on one’s commute, it may make more sense to to briefly put on tefillin at the earliest time, say Shma, and then daven without being rushed on the train (works better on a long commuter or intercity train than on a crowded subway) ESPECIALLY IF THE ALTERNATIVE is to quickly daven before rushing out the door. It’s only a minhag, at best, to wear tefillin while davening but it is a halacha to daven with kavanah.

How much is attributable to “anti-vaxxers” and how much is attributable to limited access to adequate primary health care?

Given that Williamsburg’s Jews tend to follow their rebbe, are any rabbanim telling them to avoid vaccines? If not, that would suggest ideology isn’t a factor.

It depends on one’s economic situations? Are you in a country with a generous safety net or not? If you die, what benefits will you get and from whom, and how will it affect expenses. In the United States, survivors’ benefits from the government can be very liberal in some cases, or non-existent in others. In the US, renters may need life insurance more than home owners since often a mortgage includes (i.e. mandates) a term insurance to pay off the loan. Major employers usually offer liberal death benefits, but not a self-employed businessman or a family in hinukh. If you are poor to begin with, your family will still be poor without you, and may actually be better off since they will gain benefits – in which case spending money for life insurance that might better be spent on food and shelter and hinukh is a questionable deal. The higher one’s standard of living, the more you many need insurance (are you a family that assumes each wedding will cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, or are you content with getting married in the shul basement at minimal cost – the wedding in each case is halachicly the same, but the socio-economic differences are great).

If Israel manages to survive and over time evolves into a Jewish state, this period will be remember as the beginnings of a Jewish state. This isn’t impossible since once the hilonim realize they are dying out they might agree to be a tolerated minority in a frum state – and once you have the medinah run by people interested in prioritizing Torah and Mitsvos rather than seeking fulfillment by ruling over others, peace will become possible.

More likely it will collapse, given the overwhelming long term prospects of the Islamic countries becoming more developed and military competent, and given the tensions between the secular ruling caste and the the growing hareidi population – in which case it will be remembered along with Shabati Zvi, and will be something we don’t talk about.

It is unlikely that the Israeli ruling class will give up power, suggesting they will try to coerce the hareidim to leave or perhaps will try to change the political system to minimize hareidi influence (e.g. limit voting to veterans of the army, etc.). If push comes to shove, remember who has the guns and who controls the economy. If the typical Palestinian was secular the zionists could ally with them, but most secular Palestinians are already Israeli citizens and vote for zionist parties, and what’s left would never ally with the zionists.

The demographics suggest that Israel’s future is fairly grim unless the secular zionists can reconcile themselves to living in a Jewish state, and unless the hareidim can “get their act together” and get prepared to take over and run a 21st century state.

and what if the hedge fund you are working for is doing something crooked, or part of the agreement is to rip off other investors (and while big investors are probably ripping your off if they can, even hedge funds end up selling to small investors who may not be able to realize they are being defrauded)

There are plenty of people in prison who used to work on Wall Street, and all of them had lots of lawyers helping them

I solved this problem decades ago. I found a job that requires a law degree but doesn’t involve practising law, and lived happily ever after. I explain to people that I went law school, passed the bar, and then did tsuvah. No clients to rip off, no clients in need assistance in ripping off other people, no letting criminals go free, no locking up innocent people – and I haven’t missed a meal except for taanisim.

The school/camp gives a hecksher to itself, based on whomever they say they follow in matters of halacha. If the school/camp is not associated with someone well known, or is run by people not consider all that frum, they will need to pay for hecksher.

Consider, does the OU or Star-K need a hecksher for their own activities?

1. The Babli covers more interesting stuff, and covers it more thoroughly. This is largely a function of the fact that the Yerusalami’s development was interrupted whereas the Babli’s continued longer (goyim can be a nuisance at times, can’t they).

2. Since the Babli is more respected and more widely studied, it was printed more often. There isn’t even a universal structure to a Yerusalami page, whereas the Babli has had a set “Tsuras ha-Daf” for 500 years.

“Potato bread” includes wheat flour (check the ingredients). “Corn bread” traditionally did not include wheat, and no one has managed to produce a bread usually coco or coffee beans.

Chocolate (similar to corn and potatoes) are American in origin, and while coffee is African in origin, it didn’t become widespread in Europe until the period of the achronim.

Quinoa is American in origin and didn’t become common on North America until recently, and reasonable aruge whether to treat it like corn or like potatoes (though if one looks, there are online bread recipes for it).

If you held that you eat only foods with a mesorah going back to ancient times, none of the American foods would be allowed, and neither would coffee or sugar, which entered our cuisine post-biblically.

Natural cocoa is largely inedible and is virtually unobtainable retail. If someone is claim their product is “natural” they are lying. Cocoa beans are largely inedible unless you doing something unnatural to them.

Furthermore, there is nothing special about Netherlands when it comes to cocoa (there might have been 400 years ago, but not today). The leading cocoa producers are in West Africa (even though the product is indigenous to Central America), and it is processed globally.

I suggest buy whatever chocolate products in your home country have a good hecksher, and ignore puff talk about “natural” or “Dutch” or “Swiss”.

1. There aren’t any movies. The “cool” is in Tanach is largely in the agados, and even if we don’t talk about kaballah when the goyim are interesting, we also don’t teach them about the Torah she baal peh.

2. Jews do not use the term “Old Testament”, so I question the background of the person who started this thread.

3. Most movies goyim make of the ancient world tend to dress the ancient people like modern secular liberals. While the ancient Egyptians were underdressed (at least in summer), most ancient people were quite modest. Running around underdressed is largely a modern invention (at least of the peoples we “associated” with in the Middle East and the Mediterranean region. Apparently being civilized usually involves clothing (which makes one wonder about our secular cousins).

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Many people have “offshore” accounts, including anyone who spends time in both Eretz Yisrael and Golus, since a bank account in one is an offshore account in another. For Americans, this requires filing one simple tax form per year.

The term “offshore” means “not in your home country”, and isn’t a big deal UNLESS you are doing in secretly (usually to avoid taxes, sometimes to avoid the local equivalent of the “Shin Bet”, the “FBI” or the KGB)

Siberia

Joseph:

1. While frum Jews rarely sue each other in a non-Jewish court, it does happen when a third party is involved (e.g. the insurance company in a state with “fault” insurance, or in bankruptcy when a third party assumes a claim);

2. The American rules of evidence are very narrow, whereas in halacha the Beis Din can use any information at their disposal (we don’t have “exclusionary rules” as even when a type of evidence is not formally allowed the court can still consider it). On a jury, you are legally free to consider facts that are excluded – a good example is most jurors know that when a defendant “please the fifth” it is because he is guilty of something he doesn’t want the jury to know about, and all the “curative” instructions from the judge don’t help.

3. If frum Jews avoid serving on juries, you can count on people we don’t like taking our places. It similar to voting – you can argue against it, but the bottom line is that’s its in our interest to serve as jurors.

Jurors have a right to ignore the law and acquit a person. If a teacher doesn’t know that, it suggests serious incompetence of your school district in recruiting teachers. The law used to be different (jurors would be arrested for not convicting someone), but it was changed well before American independence. While judges and lawyers often want jurors who will follow the judges instructions, it is well known that they can ignore the judge as a matter of law. If a jury wrongfully convicts, the judge can ignore the jury and acquit, but not the other way around.

Some states (New York) have a ridiculous “voir dire” with heavy involvement by the lawyers, as opposed to others (Maryland) where the lawyers don’t get to ask any questions of prospective jurors. That could be changed easily by statute, but its up to each state.

1. There is no question that stealing from the government should be a crime, and that the government (“malchus”) can criminalize such behavior. In a democratic country, one’s fellow citizens are also much annoyed when one steals from the government since that means you are stealing from your fellow taxpayers, who in a democracy, elect the government.

2. Many financial crimes involve disrupting markets, such as through cartels, insider trading, spreading misinformation, etc. These involve getting rich at the expense of others.

3. Whether prison is a useful penalty is questionable, but that’s a different issue.

4. It usually seems that being politically connected to those in charge helps one get away with all sorts of outrageous stuff – no hiddush in this matter.

rabbiofberlin: If Trump is such a nativist, why did he marry two foreign women, and why did he not disown his daughter for converting to Judaism – unless his nativism is an part of the act. Trump claims to be against foreign trade, yet he’s an international businessman whose global businesses depend on free trade. Most politicians will “say” what their listeners want hear, and most politicians tend to be highly narcissistic (honestly, humility in a politican would be a severe handciap). We can tell from his record, in areas where his past actions match his rhetoric, that Trump is for big government, not worries about debts, and has no problem with government confiscating people’s property – positions that would make him into a liberal Republican or a Democrat (think Rockefeller or Nixon – not Goldwater or Reagan). While we can be certain of Hillary’s mediocrity, we can’t be certain what we would be getting with Trump, which may or may not be good.

mdd: Wars are declared for, and paid for, by Congress. The same goes for walls.

Trump is a media personality based on the character he developed for his shul. What he’ll be like when he decides to “get real” is anyone’s guess, but its unlikely that its as bad as the loudmouth bully he played on TV.

Clinton will be eight more years of Obama, though perhaps the first two with a Democratic Congress (cf 2009-2010 and all the mischief that was done, also assume several radical left-wing Supreme Court justices, which will seriously threaten our community.

Trump is unknown. He’s basically a a Nixon or Eisenhower type Republican, but with made for TV clown behaviors. His anti-immigraiton and anti-trade policies could cripple the US, but Hillary won’t be all that different. He might back down from those policies, and especially form his anti-Muslim and anti-Hispanic policies, since Trump’s nativism seems to be a media stunt. His actual policies probably will be normal for a moderate Republican, and he might throw some bones to the conservatives.

Sanders would be devastatingly bad. (think “Yevsektzia”).

Most American Jews born in the mid-20th century, while clearly “off the derekh” (usually already one or two generations removed from Yiddishkeit) were likely to be Jews according to halacha. While intermarriage among non-frum Jews was high in that period, it was still well below 50%. At present, several generations late, given the high rate of intermarriage among non-Orthodox Jews, it isn’t especially likely today that someone with a Jewish name born into an other than Shomer Shabbos family is actually Jewish (remember that having a Jewish father means it likely the mother wasn’t Jewish), so in the future one won’t be assuming that a politican (born in the 21st century) with a Jewish name is actually Jewish (unless the person is Shomer Shabbos).

Sour grapes from Mitt. Romeny and Trump are both “new money” (their grandparents were poor, their parents got rich, and they built on that). Both are preppies and ivies. Yet Romney’s background weighed him down (his “47% problem), and Trump is able to flout it, be obnoxious, and be the “man of the people” and with a little script rewriting get elected. Mitt shouldn’t whine.

Accepting that the field consists solely of Trump, Rubio and Cruz, Rubio has the best change of uniting the party and winning the general election (avoiding a Sanders or Clinton presidency). Winning an election means holding on to Republicans and winning independent and Democratic voters, and Rubio is in the best position to do that. Rubio started out as a “Tea Party favorite” defeating the establishment Republicans in Florida, though hard core nativists will oppose anyone who isn’t a pure blood WASP with roots in the 17th century.

The caveat is that Trump can back down on many of his positions that help in the primaries but not in the general election (e.g. nativism, which as it is sounds weirding coming from someone whose ancestors came through Ellis Island and who is married to an immigrant). While Trump’s views on most issues clearly qualify him as a “RINO” (a.k.a. a Rockefeller or Eisenhower type Republican), conservatives will see him as the lesser of two evils when running against. Trump is running on “anger” rather than platform, so he can adjust his platform to have broader appeal, but unless he does so he is very unlikely to win the election – meaning we could get a vehemently anti-religious socialists as president.