akuperma

The cliche’s meaning would be lost on most Orthodox Jews since we rarely go to opera. An equivalent tha tmight be more familiar (since it can be traced to a former manager and players for both New York ball teams) is “it ain’t over till it’s over”.

Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with running YWN and have no “inside” knowledge of its finances.

The reputable new sites such as the New York Times (if you want politically correct news) or the Wall Street Journal (if you want objective news with conservative opinions on the side), all charge money for any sort of online access. YWN appears to be on a tight budget. If it did a better job, it might not be profitable, and unprofitable news sources tend to disappear. And that doesn’t even address the problem of a hot link to news sources, many of whose articles may be considered offensive by many users of YWN.

If in ten years, Israel has signed a peace treaty with the Palestinians, then Obama will be considered a genius.

If by September 1939 the British and French military has been built up such that the European War that began over the German invasion of Poland ended in a quick Allied victory, Chamberlain would be fondly remembered for his Czech gambit that defeated Hitler.

By agreeing that Iran will get nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future, Obama is assuming that the next US president will see the peaceful end of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which will render Iran’s agreesive program moot.

mimzee (who asked why he doesn’t have a chance):

1. Being #2 in the polls is less important than the fact he is apparently is no one’s #2 choice. His position on immigration (and his personal life) alienates the religious right. His views on economics alienate the Tea Party. His nativism alienates most non-WASPs (if you look who is running, they are mainly non-WASP). Based on his positions, it doesn’t like he’ll pick up many votes as candidate drop out – and their really isn’t anyone like him running – so the 20% he now has is the best he’ll ever have.

2. He’s basically an actor. The last actor to run was Ronald Reagan who learned how to “act” like a serious candidate – Trump hasn’t done that, yet. You win don’t win elections in an American style system by insulting people since unlike Israel with its proportional system, to win an American election you to get the support from the majority of the votes, not just a loyal base.

1. Define upstate. Rockland and Orange County (which most people in upstate consider to be downstate since they are in commuting distance of New York City). Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, etc. They are all different markets.

2. What level hinuch do you want? Do you need a suitable school or do you plan to home school?

3. Unlike Brooklyn, one must have a car upstate, and if both adults are working, you probably need two cars. This somewhat off sets the cheaper housing. However kosher food can cost substantially more and some items might be hard to find.

How could there be halav yisrael in Gan Eden? Adam ha-Rishon and Chava weren’t Jews , so the only milk they had was halav stam. No one had halav Yisrael before Sinai.

1. If you daven in a small shul, it is unlikely there will be more than two people with the same yertzeit (unless the parent was killed in a mass casulty incident, though except for 9-11 there really haven’t been any since World War II). The bigger the shul, the more likely there are multiple people with yerzeits. Presumably you are a “regular” in the shul. If you are able/expected to make kiddush the Shabbos before, and to bring food on the day of the yertziet, that smooths things over.

2. There is no halacha you have to daven all tefilos in their entirely on a yertzeit. Sharing is customary. Obviously this is a problem if you follow the western European “yekke” minhag that only one person says kaddish at a time — due to many mass casulty incidents in the past, most Asheknazim adopted the minhag of everyone with a hi’yuv say kaddish together.

3. If you regularly learn, why would learning on the yerzeit be a problem. If you don’t regularly learn Torah, that is a much bigger problem.

In terms of administration of justice, equality is a core value

In terms of socio-economic policy, Torah tends towards serious affirmative action (which by definition meets treating people unequally, e.g. give more to the poor than the rich).

In dealing with good and evil, Torah tilts very strong for the good and against the evil

They began to become common during the end of the middle ages (or the early modern period depending on whom you ask). The region is that as populations started to grow, you needed double names to be distinct, especially since people seem to have a preference for a very limited number of names (in the gemara period, people used far more names).. According to one of the early bibliographies of sefarim, published in Amsterdam in the late 18th century, Ashkenazi custom was to call a person by the second name, and Sefardi custom was to call someone by the first, but these are generalizations.

Given that surnames (family names) are now used, and pioneered by the Jews in Eretz Yisrael, many people are using a wider variety of personal names, it will be interesting if the use of having multiple forenames (personal names) will continue.

If you read the classic “How the other half lives” – it appears that 100 years ago there were a group of non-Jewish (primarily Irish) women who sole parnassah was working as domestics on Saturday to fill in for the Jewish domestics who didn’t work Shabbos, but worked the other six days. But that was over a century ago.

But wages and opportunities went up, and most Jews (and Irish) in America went into lines of work that pay much better. At the same time the minimum wage priced most domestics out of a job, and people switched to using tech rather than hiring domestics.

We have traditionally support leaders who are friendly to us. This seems to go back very far, noting how hazal speaks favorably of some Romans who were friendly to us, even though we know from other sources that their private lives were hardly indicative of meeting the requirements for Bnei Noach. Whether our historicans consider a leader to be “good” or “bad” is based on whether they were “good for the Jews” or “bad for the Jews” — not on their basis of their private lives, or even how well they did their jobs in areas that didn’t particularly affect us.

MDG: To support your argument, you would need to favor banning adults who are incapable of childbearing from marrying (which would ban second marriage for many divorced and widowed). You would also have to find a way to reciminalize adultery/seduction which used to be crimes (albeit not very serious ones). However once marriage was redefined such that many childless people are allowed to marry, and that there are no criminal, or even civil, sanctions for lack of fidelity in marriage – the door was opened to gay marriage. In other words, the barn door was opened 50 to 100 years ago, if not more, and its too late worry about the queer horses having escaped.

zahavasdad: The constitution didn’t address racial intermarriage and up to that point in American law, it was governed by the religious law of the parties, and under canon law, there was no problem with interracial marriage. Some states passed statutes banning interracial marriage, but its hard to say what the people in the constitutional convention felt. Many felt it was not appropriate for the government to dabble in marriage law. It does seem many felt that slavery should be abolished, and indeed, most Americans at the time, based on the language of the Declaration of Independence or “Sommerset’s case” (in 1772 holding slavery incompatible with the English common law) believed that slavery was already illegal or that the states were required to unwind slavery in an orderly way.

1. If you are willing to allow normal marriages where the couple doesn’t intend to have children, or is incapable of having children, you lose one of the principal secular arguments against gay marriage. While there have been cultures where child-free marriages were banned (which would probably mean the woman has to get pregnant before the wedding), no modern western culture treats it that way (halacha certainly doesn’t). Once you have redefined marriage as an expression of “couplehood” rather than an economic framework for raising children, the secular objection to “gay marriage” disappears.

2. Same-sex couples do sometimes raise children, and indeed, some children are raised by other than their natural parents for a variety of reasons. One probably should allow parental rights to such couples (whether or not the couple is “involved” with each other). At present, only marriage does that.

3. Based on halacha, the objection to “gay marriage” is really an objection to male homosexuality, which is a religious based objection. Marriage is just a legal and economic framework. There really isn’t a secular reason to prefer one form of perversion (e.g. non-marital sexual intimacy) over another.

If you think the goyim were a bunch of chaste tsadikim until recently, you are quite mistaken. It’s not like this is the first time they gone “off the derekh” (for a Ben Noach) – they’ve been off for a long time. Even when they had moral laws, they tended to ignore them.

Our laws prohibit us from dealing with their courts, and the recent developments might help be creating broader support for allowing people to sign pre-maritial contracts (a kesubah is, BTW, a pre-maritial contact) agreeing to binding arbitration. Now, a considerable part of the country will be annoyed with the government’s domestic relations laws, and will be seeking alternatives.

We might be happier moving away from our hopelessly lost secular cousins. The growth of Yiddishkeit in “red” states is to be encouraged.

Joseph:

The concern of OU, and many others, is that the Gay Rights groups will move to ban religious groups that don’t accept the doctrine of gay marriage, i.e. no tax exemption for shuls and yeshivos, not recognizing frum marriages, and perhaps banning members of those religions from public life and professional licenses. It is there position that opposition to homosexuality is similar to racism, and needs to be surpressed. You will note how in the Episcopal Church, the left wing groups are seizing churches from the congregations that built them. They are actively supporting persecution of anyone who doesn’t agree with them.

The OU is trying to make a point without being too provocative. In part since we are used to being a persecuted minority, there is no “hiddush”, but for Christians with no experience in being persecuted for their faith, this is a radically new environment they are facing.

CT Lawyer who wrote ‘Jews, Women, Blacks and non-property owners were not allowed the vote in the past. Goyische prayer was forced upon Jewish children in public schools. The Court has interpreted the Constitution to right these injustices.”

Not true. Pertaining to voting rights. The Supreme Court never objected to limiting the right to vote. Jews were given the right to vote by statute. The same for non-property owners. Blacks were given the vote by constitutional amendment (though some states had allowed at least some Blacks to vote previously – by statute).

P.S. Given the unspoken fact in allowing same sex marriage was the rejection of the common law definiton derived from canon law, that probably will lead to banning the prohibtion on marrying cousins (which is largely ignored and easy to evade since many states don’t have such a rule) and the legalization of polygamy (also to those asking about cousin marriages – what does “inbreeding” have to do with anyting since two males can’t produce a child, if equal protection would require treating hetereosexual couples the same – the “have mina” of the decision is that marriage no longer has anything to do with having children).

Jews don’t hold by American law in such matters – so it doesn’t affect us. By halacha, our law, one is no more allowed to marry a person of the same gender than is one allowed to marry a non-Jews (BTW, Anglo-American law has allowed Jews to marry goyim since the late 1700s).

By decriminalizing various of forms of non-marital intimacy, the goyim did a lot more violence to the concept of marriage than in allowing people who by definition are incapable of bearing children to marry. And those changes occured in the early 20th century, or earlier.

The only danger is that as marriage is increasingly defined a a couple, rather than a couple with children including a usually dependent spouse, the many laws that benefits families will no longer be justifiable (e.g. the tax break for families with one spouse earning much less than the other, which also works as a penalty for spouses with equal incomes).

No one ever thought that yarmulkes were particularly Jewish until the goyim stopped wearing them. Same goes for fedoras (which are coming back in style among goyim, so maybe the frum crowd will have to switch to some other type of hat, e.g. homburgs). Remember that the fedora is originally a work hat, popular among cowboys, American military in the 19th century, etc., though we made it into a formal dress hat (among the goyim it was always what you wore when not fully dressed up).

1, They lost.

2. The ONLY issue in the war was slavery. They offered to stay in the union if the constitution was amended to protect slavery. When facing certain defeat they were offered the opportunity to surrender, reenter the union (with everything forgiven) if only they would agree to abolish slavery – the turned down the offer. States rights wasn’t an issue (in fact it was the northern states who were screaming “states rights” which they were using to declare any Black found in their territory to be free in accordance with the state law that all persons are free – a law based on English common law). Also, most southerners favored the union and more southerners wore blue rather than grey (though admitedly the pro-sucession did have a majority of soutern whites – if they had one man one vote they would have been no civil war).

3. Just as we object to the Nazi flag, as do almost all patriotic Americans, the objections by African Americans, and a a great many patriotic Americans of other ethnic groups, to the former rebel banner is quite justified.

zahavasdad: There were enough Jews that whether to give Jews full rights was a hot political issue. If the Jacksonians did not prevail, meaning that franchise was restricted to Christians, and Jews continued to be banned from holding office, it is unlikely there would have been massive immigration to the United States.

Also, with the democratization (small “d’) of the Jacksonian, the extension of franchise would have not taken place. Consider that if only rich people could vote, would have extending the franchise to blacks, women, etc., have been such a priority. The movement towards universal suffrage would have stopped.

Jackson’s theft of Indian lands was disgraceful (and wildly popular with the voters). Grant was okay (the one anti-semitic incident may not have been his fault), but he tolerated amazing corruption (e.g. cornering markets), and while he tried to protect Blacks and Indians he was totally incompetent. What Jack Lew picked on Hamilton is beyond me.

On the other hand, discussion the virtues of Hamilton, Jackson and Grant in terms of who should be on American currency – that’s interesting (Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Franklin seem to be less controversial)

1. Hamilton was also an elitest who felt that typical citizen couldn’t be trusted with full political rights, and government was best left in the hands of the educated upper class.

2. Jackson was a great advocate of allowing all men (as then defined, excluding most non-whites) to particpiate in government. The Jacksonian era was the era that led to Jews gaining full civil rights and allowing the “common man” (again, limited to whites) to have full political rights. Had the Jacksonian movement failed, its unlikely the US would have gone on to granting full civil rights to non-whites. Instead you would have ended up with an upper-class led oligarchy rather than a democracy.

3. Whether a centralized banking system controlled by a Wall Street elite is a good idea (Hamilton thought so, so does the current elite in America), or a bad idea (as Jackson believed, as do all the people who think the “Great recession” was caused by evil bankers), is still a hot topic.

4. Grant on the $50 is also debateable, as we was notoriously incompetent (if well intended).

Re: Involuntary homeschooling

I suggest determining who is the posek (or poskim) of the people running the school. One can make an argument that by halacha the Jewish child is entitled to a Jewish education, and that one can ask a Beis Din to order the school (which in practice means appealing to the gedolim who serve as the poskim of the principle/board/etc.).

coffee addict: If the last Lubavitcher Rebbe was a zionist, why did he live in Brooklyn? Why did he struggle to build up Jewish communities in golus? Why did he not encourage his talmidim to serve in the army (the most he did was tell those in Eretz Yisrael who weren’t learning full time to allow themselves to be conscripted – a zionist would have told the ones in golus and in yeshivos to volunteer)?