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We have great experience with such tests. They are typically applied selectively to exclude those whom what dislikes. If there were such tests today, you can bet they would be manipulated to exclude Orthodox Jews (many of whom engage in politically incorrect behavior).
Parents decide most things for kids -what school, what clothes (up to a point), what they eat. If you don’t like it, perhaps you want to convert to being a reptile since baby reptiles usually are allowed to fend for themselves without parental involvement (which is probably why most baby reptiles don’t make it to adulthood). Most reptiles can care for themselves at birth – mammals and birds are dependent on their parents (particularly the mother).
In America, they even decide if the kid will be born. If parents don’t care, that’s a problem. I seriously doubt this is an issue in our community, and parents make very deliberate choices as to what school their children will go to.
By “special ed” do you mean children with conditions such as ADA and Down’s Syndrome or deafness or reading difficulties – or do you mean children who will never attain the intellectual abilities of a toddler. No one would argue that an educatable child in “special ed” is anyting but a normal child under halacha – our law is very broad and who is considered “normal” — under halacha one has to be very subnormal to be exempt from mitsvos in any way (and arguably any child so considered probably would not be included in “special education”). While calling someone a “shoteh” (fool) is a common insult, by halacha a “shoteh” is very serverely developmentally disabiled to the point of being largely uneducatable.
I suspect the original question may have been someone using “special education kids”, politely, to refer to someone incapble of every being able to function at more than the level of an infant — since anyone asking whether the normal sort of kids in special ed. (reading and behavior difficulties,mild develomental disabilities, etc.) would exempt them from mitsvos is obviously a “shoteh” (in the “insult” meaning of the work, not the halachic meaning).
“Rules” implies halacha. This is a matter of “social rules”, i.e., etiquette.
A matanah to tsadakah means very little since one can stick a few coins in a pushka.
Joseph: You wrote “The literacy and history test needs only to be a very basic and minimal threshold to pass. “. Correct. And depending on who writes the test, anyone so politically incorrect and stupid and ignorant, as to believe that the world was created by a superhuman diety, or who denies the clear truths of global warming, evolution and eugenics, or who unwisely disregards the absolute truth of Keynesian economics, or who naively believes in American exceptionalism –
“shouldn’t be deciding who carries the nuclear suitcase. “
????? ???? ???? ?????
I didn’t make this up myself. I claim no rights in the above. It has nothing to do with zionist/hareidi or Democrats/Republican.
But if you do read history, and realize that until recently most people lacked some luxuries as central heat in the winter, air conditioning in the summer, refrigeration for food, food not produced locally, vaccines, antibiotics, surgery, cars and trains, electronic communications, and a government that lets Jews be frum and not to have to worry if each day will be your last, etc. – it is very easy to realize you are well off.
Is this a question on the judicial system?
If the parent gives a kid a horrible name (the boy named “Sue” comes to mind), and he changes the name when he is older, he’ll need both names on the “get”. The parents presumably used the name until the kid was old enough to object, and that’s probably a good many years.
Under halacha and American law, no. Any name is kosher. If a Jewish child with a silly name wants to change it, they’ll still need the original name on the “get” if one should be required.
In many countries with legal systems based on Roman law, there are official lists of acceptable names to choose from (e.g. Yaakov is out, but the local equivalent such as James or Jacob, are allowed).
In practice literacy tests were and are (where they are allowed) targetted against undesirabled. To many Americans, especially the secular Jews who have great influence, we frum Jews are especially undesirable.
Better to have the current rule – everyone gets to vote (except convicted criminals and children).
So who writes the literacy test? Should it require the degree of literacy required by a lawyer or a professional scholar of political science (limit franchise only to the best educated)? Should it test for correct attitudes (we wouldn’t want people who are homophobic or racist voting, would we?). Whose view of American history should we test (if you don’t realize that Barack Obama saved America, can you be trusted to vote).
In practice, America has 100% literacy. It should be noted, that literacy was never a required to die fighting for America. Literacy isn’t a requirement to pay taxes.
pcoz: MUDs and Telnet are all internet applications. As is voice mail and telephonic communications.
to several people: If you buy a computer and choose not to have a wi-fi card included, and you do not plug anything into the ethernet port, you can not access the internet. At some point someone (perhaps the vendor who sold you the computer) had to take explicit stepts to get internet access.
No need to remove anything. You have to do something to get internet access, even if you have a modem/wi-fi card installed. You have to connect to the internet, or you have no internet access.
You can still run programs, but for example, you won’t be able send documents unless you print them off. You can still find some software which can be loaded from CD or DVD, assuming you have one installed in the computer. YOu probably can get by fine with an older, used, computer and buying very inexpensive second hand software.
And if you aren’t connected to the internet, you won’t have to worry about computer security.
Read about life in the not too distant past. No refrigeration for food, no air conditioning except in winter, no heating except in summer, no anesthethics (if they couldn’t operate after giving you some shots of whiskey and holding you down, they didn’t operate and you probably died), no antibiotics (strep was life threatening), for Jews getting killed in a pogrom was often a problem.
Now whine.
Mashiach Agent:
It isn’t that bad. It’s bad relative to ten years ago, for many if not most people.
Compared to the 1930s and 1940s, or the century or two before that – it is paradise. Our poorest people in many ways live better than our not very distant ancestors (fresh fruit year round, antibiotics, anesthetics for surgery, central heating, air conditioning in the summer, etc.).
The lion was NOT hefker – he was owned. He was property, and not that of the hunter. He had a permit to kill a wild lion, not a privately owned one. Unless he was drunk, he should have noticed the lion was not acting like a wild savage beast but like a tamed domesticted one that was used as a tourist attraction (normal wild lions go to great lengths to avoid humans – which is why the goyim consider it a test of skill to catch one).
If an American had gone to Zimbabwe, or anywhere else for that matter, and shot some person for sport he would have been confronted by much than outrage. In the US, had he show someones pet or livestock for “sport” he would have caused outrage, and would have been sued and perhaps arrested.
because many people are not buying lots of new stuff
which is since many people are underemployed or unemployed (or rather out of the work force so they have less money even though they are not counted in unemployment figures)
with the result that wage and price levels are stagnant, or falling, which is not inherently bad but is disturbing since it hadn’t happened in the US in over 70 years
He goes to a foreign country as a tourist. Breaks the laws. Destroys a local tourist attraction (a tame lion that was used to attract tourists in a country in which tourism is a big industry). Claims it was a “sport” to kill what was basically a pet (as sporting as if he bought a domesticated cow in order to shoot it with his bow and arrow). And apparently he already has a conviction in the United States for doing the same thing.
Be very quiet about it.
If you totally want to avoid undressed women during the summer months in most western countries, spend the entire summer in the mountains (to be really safe, consider camping in a remote area). Avoid needing to shop, Certainly avoid stores, public streets, mass transit, etc.
If you want to hire an undressed goy to work in your house, that is a problem. Of course you can do your own housework, or hire someone with clothes. Air conditioning helps (no one wants to run around in your house in their bikini if its 65 degrees inside). In all fairness, most blue collar workers dress a lot more modestly than beach “swimmers”.
The beaches during the summer are especially problematic since even by the goyim’s standards they run around excessively undressed – which is something many of the goyim also complain about. Avoid going to the beach – which is not a big problem.
They were written to be said, not studied. They are poetic, not scholarly prose. They convey the general idea, and are something to be recited.
1. What happens in Korea doesn’t affect us. It is probably in everyone’s interest to get North Korea put out of business as that will promote regional stabillity (a unified Korea as a balance to China, and no danger of war in that region). The US should follow the South Korea’s lead, as they have the most to lose or gain on the matter.
2.Islamic State is a serious threat to Israel in the short run, and the US in the long run. However opposing them means allying with the other enemies of Islamic State, including and especially Iran. If the goal is long term American and Israeli survival, and alliance of Israel, the Iranians, the Turks and the Sunni Arabs is in our interest – but the US doesn’t understand the region and the Israelis prefer to go it alone against all comers (unwise, but it does reflect their zionist background).
3. From a Jewish perspective, we have no “horse” in the race. Ukraine is just as friendly/hostile to us as the Russians. The US however needs to opposed Russian expansionism and to protect pro-western countries in Eastern Europe (which are still effectively Judenrein, though the locals seem to have realized they miss us).
I suspect that many politicians monitor list serves such as this one, and probably the American and Israeli intelligence and criminal investigation services. Some marketing companies might do so as well.
Especially in America, we have become an affluent community, and there are a lot of merchants trying to sell us goods and service, and who value our patronage enough to make a serious effort to advertise their products to us. It is a sign of prosperity.
In the good old days, we weren’t a market worth competing for.
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”.
In democracies, protests help as well.
It is hard to know what to pray for (Iran to have a devastating earthquake that destroys its nuclear facilities, Iran to get into a hot war with the Americans so the US destroys it, Iran to be so scared of Islamic State that they (along with the Arab states) decide to make peace with Israel so they can concentrate on Islamic State, etc.).
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.
What’s wrong with cats? Would you rather have rodents? You really side with the rats and mice over the cats?
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.
Remember that in America, you need over 50% of the votes to win – and America doesn’t consists of 50% nativist conservatives supporting corporate welfare. To win Trump, or anyone, of either party, has to appeal to his entire base and the independents and try to get some support from the other party — and insulting people doesn’t help.
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.
While he has alienated a great many people since announcing he was running, he shouldn’t be totally ignored since:
1. He is the only one appealing to the “red meat” (secular right) Republicans (even though he has alienated the Tea Party and the Religious Right and the Country Clubbers)
2. He is in many ways more of a media celebrity who personna is a tough bully, but as a good actor, he may adjust to a new role, in this case, acting like a politiican. For example, without contradicting himself, he could come out for liberal immigration of law abiding Hispanics as long as they stay out of jail and don’t become a public charge. It depends who writes his lines. Good actors are very adaptable, and he is the only candidate with professional acting experience.
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.
“Why is it so hard to find employment these days?”
1. People with job credentials that are in demand would disagree with you. In those areas, employers complain how hard it is to find qualified workers.
2. At the bottom of market place (for those with minimal job skills), the minimum wage and required employee benefits price many people out of the market (in other words, if you can’t produce $10/hour of extra profit for the company, they save money by not hiring you).
3.Everyone has trouble getting a “first” job unless they have solid training and credentials (okay, everyone whose family doesn’t own a company). Working part time, or as a sub, or as an unpaid intern, etc., are ways of starting off a resume and convincing empolyers you are capable of being an employee.
4. Why don’t you mention what sort of job you are looking for, where, and what your credentials are? The fact you mentioned that you were relying on connections suggest you may have a problem.
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.
They raised the pay for nursing, and suggenly it attract more males.
They increase the job flexibility for many professions, and it attracts more females.
Companies that seek out women for coding jobs do so since they feel that’s an area where they can find employees. If a male feels he has been discriminated against, he can file a complaint. Given that most people in the industry are male, it might be hard for such a complaint to be taken seriously. As computer and engineering jobs are largely male, a company needing to find employees looks for new reservoirs of potential talent on the assumption that any males interested in the job have already applied.
There are some jobs that are inherently female, such as “wet nurses” (largley obsolete since most mothers will bottle feed if they can’t nurse a baby). Most of the rest are determined by economic factors and social factors. Even among goyim, many women greatly value job flexibility in order to also work as mothers (among frum workers, everyone values flexibility in order to keep Shabbos without getting fired).
Note that within the Jewish community, the outside rules don’t apply. There is a big demand for male nurses since many frum men don’t like strange women touching their bodies. Similarly, there a demand for female doctors by many frum women who don’t want men touching them. Also note that teaching is considered a respected, honored, and sought out profession by frum men, where among the goyim it is regarded as what you do for a living if you lack the skills for anything more productive.
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.
But what if you are using Hexadecimal?
(actually, all of your examples would stay unchanged, but if you change the basic assumptions, what constitutes equality and inequality changes).
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
If a product comes out in versions with and without a hecksher, one should be wary of buying the ones without a hecksher. The cost of assuring a production is kosher is fixed, so if the whole output is kosher, why don’t they say so. If only some are kosher, we should assume they did a special “kosher run” and changed something (e.g. using a kosher red dye rather than carmine made from crushed insects).
If cough drops are a food, their halachic status is different than if they are a medicine. For example, one rabbinate says the “Hall’s” is kosher only for sick people – suggesting it meets the standard for a medicine, but not for a food. At least in the northeastern United States, there are plenty of similar products available with a reputable hecksher – so why buy something without a hecksher and risk eating mamash bugs?
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 were better read in history, both the the Jews and the goyim, you would realize that in the world is a lot less amoral, less wicked, less perverse, than it ever was before. Not to mention that the standards of living even of the poorest are well above what they were in the past. You should stop worrying yourself into a frenzy. Be happy. Do Mitsvos.
P.S. You seem to believe that learning Torah is done by Yidden because HaShem ordered to, even though we hate it. We like learning.It’s fun. Why do you think people look for heterim to learn during the times it is prohibited, or debate whether one can learn in shul during davening. Try it some time.
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.
Trump may feel there is a big audience of nativists he can appeal to but within the Republican party, there are a lot more religious conservatives (who find his remarks offensive and look at “wetbacks” and see socially conservative, hard working, pious family oriented people), not to mention a lot of “Wall Street” (“country club”) Republicans who love Hispanic immigration in the hope it will lower wages. The “red meat” faction is nativist, racist and is ignoring the “tea party” issues of public finance and the role of the government
A big chunk of 21st century Republicanism are those who see the Republicans as the party of giving people the opportunity to advance themselves, as opposed to the Democrat’s who want to be the party that gives you a good welfare state and takes care of you regardless of whether you want to be taken care – and immigrants including illegal ones are in the “land of opportunity” rather than the “welfare state” side of things.
Trump has lots of money, but isn’t likely to get many votes. Though he does make the other candidates look better.
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.
You do understand the main campus is in downtown Brooklyn?
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.
Avi K:
1. Under the law at the time of the Revolution, the Canon law of the Church of England applied to all Christians (even if they were Catholics). Under the law of the time, divorce was an option only by act of parliament, and for all purposes, only if you happened to be the king. The common law definition of marriage was that marriage lasted until death. That was also the Protestant definition. Divorce came later.
2. Remember that “Common law marriage” meant you had a formal ceremony announcing you were married, with witnesses – it was allowed to address a shortage of priests since under Canon law a marriage had to be officiated by a priest (in England it was banned primarily to punish the Catholics by making their children into bastards who couldn’t inherit from the parents).
The legalization of divorce, and the decriminalization of non-marital intimacy was really the radical change that largely guaranteed the future problems we now observe. Allowing men and women to do whatever they feel like, without legal consequences,brings up the question of why have any such rules.
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.
simcha613: When the constitution was written, the government didn’t allow anyone to marry – it was still governed by religious law (Jews by halacha, Christians by the Canon law of the established church – meaning Jews could divorce easily and Christians were married for life). They were just then taking the canon law of the Church of England and requiring everyone to marry according to that one law. At that time, it was a crime to have “relations” outside of marriage (thus the phrase “making it legal” as a way of saying one is getting married), and when they changed that law, they seriously undermined marriage law. Subsequent to the constitution being adopted, they also made it possible to divorce easily and gave the children of unmarried parents rights (in 1789, such a child was considered an orphan with neither a mother nor a father).
I strongly disapprove of legalizing gay marriage, but you run into a lot of problems by asking what was intended in 1789.