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CTLAWYER:
In Eretz Yisrael, it would be a serious shailoh being a judge or an officer of the courts IF YOU HOLD THAT THE MEDINAH REQUIRED TO BE JEWISH which is what many people hold. It would be similar to be a lawyer or judge in Communist Russia or Nazi Germany. Can you serve as an official of an evil regime?
Law school can be quite cheap, especially at many of the non-elite law schools which liberally give merit scholarships If you don’t plan to go into “big law”, there really isn’t any need to go to fancy law school. A degree from Brooklyn or Buffalo is just as useful as one from Columbia IF YOU PLAN TO HANG OUT A SHINGLE.
A “lawyer” would never be a shailoh. All a lawyer is, be definition, is someone with expertise in how a legal system (or systems) work who gives people advice on dealing with the legal system. Given that one often deals with legal systems, that is a useful skill. If you are inclinced to help evil people do more evil, it is a great opportunity to make money by going off the derekh. However knowing about the legal systems we deal with is not an issue. A “judge”, especially in Medinat Yisrael, would be a serious shailoh, especially if one holds the medinah to have any halachic status since if you hold that Medinat Yisrael is a Jewish state (as opposed to a goyish state with many Jews living there), there is a problem since its legal system is totally not based on Jewish law and on most matters works contrary to halacha. One should also remember that have a just legal system is one of the mitsvos of the Bnei Noach.
If you think going to a law school is a meal ticket to great riches you should stay in yeshiva until you become cleverer and more mature. Even under ideal conditions, a degree from a top law school (in New York City, that would be NYU and Columbia) didn’t guarantee you anything. Remember that the better law schools are much more expensive that the rest. Also if one plans to do something other than “big law” (such as hang out a shingle in a frum community, helping your neighbors with their legal issues) going to a name law school isn’t worth the extra cost. If you want to be a lawyer, go to law school. If you want to get rich, review the halachic definition of who is rich (its in Pirke Avos).
Caveats.
There has never been polygamy in a country with a technologically advanced economy. The closest was Utah in the 19th century, at for a while Utah led the world in terms of women entering professions and having career. It would be an interesting experiment.
If the “shiduch” crisis is caused by a shortage of frum men (which suggest frum men go off the derekh more than women, or that most Baalei Tseuvah are female – and I doubt that either is true), polygamy would solve the problem. But the problem probably has to do with the economy causing men to be slow to want to start families they can’t support.
Polygamy would not be common, absent a shortage of men, since few men could support multiple housewives. The exceptions would be the superrich (of which there aren’t many), or if something such as a war kills off most men (very rare, especially for Jews).
Any change in law would allow multiple wives and multiple husbands, meaning the government definition of a family would be wildly different than our own. This would be interesting as well.
ENOUGH WITH THE JOKES. The Supreme Court rules on same-sex marriage in the near future, and if they support it that suggests the ban on polygamy will also fail. The “professoriate” (law school professors) are already writing books on the subject. It is quite possible that in the near future the law in the United States will allow polygamy, so we need to think how this impacts on us.
The status of the Herem of Rabeinu Gershom is debateable, even among Ashkenazim – so if the western countries legalize polygamy (as is increasingly a possibility due to the rejection of the traditional canon law rule that marriage involves one man and one woman – they already rejected the part about marriage lasting until death) it will reopen the discussion. Many have argued the Herem can’t permanently change halacha, is only applicabhle to Europe, and doesn’t apply to countries where polygamy is lawful by secular law.
Halacha requires that the first wife consents. That would eliminate most abuse.
Financially few men could afford to support two wives, however in the modern economy wives are often self-supporting, and the “sister wife” (a Mormon term) could provide reliable child care allowing the other wife to fully engage in a career.
In response to “Since the Zionist have opened up Eretz Yisroel to all Jews” but they closed it to hareidim. Under the British and the Turks Jews were exempt from conscription (except for one year, when the Turkish Empire was collapsing and they tried to draft Jews and Arabs, neither of whom were at all cooperative). While the zionists have exempted most hareidim under the pretense they were learning full time (a legal fiction in many cases, but one that avoided a confrontation), that is now ending.
Define “insane”?
Is the deductible very high, which usually results in premiums being artificially low? You pay less for the policy, and the policy is covering less.
Is the deductible insanely low, which usuaully results in premiums being artificially high? You pay lots up front for the policy, and the policy covers more.
But it really has nothing to do with insanity, unless your question is about mental health exclusions.
Frum Jews don’t have an “accredited” anything. We don’t hold that way.
Artscroll is the leading publisher of English materials.
Few of the Rishonim (on gemara) have been translated.
Any translations should be taken with a grain of salt.
Did your family speak Yiddish in the past? Are you ashamed of being an Ashkenazi? Are yuou preferring the Israeli Hebrew “Shabat Shalom” (with its not quite Sefardi accent), rather than the Yiddish “Gut Shabbos” because it reflect your political views.
On a related question, if you are from Boston, do you make an effort to drop a medial “r” or not to drop it. If you are from Brooklyn, do you speak “Brooklynese” or do you make an effort to sound like you were taught proper WASP pronounciation? If you are a Brit, do you make an effort to speak “RP”. IF you think this paragraph is ridiculous, so is the question on whether to prefer a “Sabbath greeting” in Israeli Hebrew or Yiddish.
sam2 who said ” Real veal (and at a meal this fancy it will be real veal) is made from specially-fattened calf that have only ever been fed Tarfus, which is Assur to eat according to the Rama.”
The is not what “veal” is defined as in the United States. You can check any of the standard dictionaries, not to meantion the meat section in your local kosher market. Real veal means meat of a young member of the cattle family (often the males produced by dairy cattle – their sisters are used for milk production and then low grade beef).
Whatever you are referring to, there may not be an English word for. In American practice, the calves that are being turned into veal are fed milk and or grain, There is almost nothing a cow can digest that is treff unless you are using the banned animal feeds made from rendering other animals and are very rare now since they cause a fatal brain disease in humans – cows stomachs are not designed to digest meat.
to SAm 2 “That’s not what veal is. And according to the Rama there is no way for veal to be Kosher.”
Veal, in American English, refers to the meat of young cattle. What Rama are you referring to (please quote in the original – I’m fairly sure he didn’t know English). The only reason you rarely see veal in kosher stores is that it is more expensive. I don’t think anyone has a shailoh about its kashrus, but a lot of greens think it is mean to kill a young calf (but we hold that slaughter of animals is mutar, so there isn’t an issue).
Of course Shabbos is easy. Look at all the stuff you don’t have to do all day. No driving around, no need to check the internet to make sure the world hasn’t ended or your retirement accounts hasn’t tanked. No worry what messes Obama and the Israelis have gotten themselves into this time. No cooking. No cleaning. No bosses. It’s like you’ve slipped into a parallel universe and left all your troubles behind.
With timers and dubious “gramma”-hetered contraptions you can manage to make yourself miserable, but why bother. Do you really feel a need to turn on lights and watch television shows. Who wants a heter to be miserable? You have six days a week to suffer, and you want more?
I don’t think anyone holds that bison are a problem. They are a type of cattle, and they cross breed (on their own apparently, if given a chance) with domestic cattle. Also in Europe there were bison and on occasion people ate them (though catching them would be a problem). Finding kosher bison in the US isn’t a problem as several commercial outfits produce them for the kosher market with good hecksherim.
1. There are rich kosher Jews in America. That they consider this “elegant” rather than “normal” suggests haven’t quite made it but are “wannabees”.
2. Why is veal a problem? It’s just a young cow/bull. A cooked “calf” becomes “veal”.
3. This is part of some fancy fund raising event?
zahavasdad: Not only are most Americans of mixed ancestry, and the focus in the US has always been on skin color rather than ethnicity, but most of the anti-Jewishness expressed in the US comes from persons of Jewish descent (who for the most part are militant secularists who hate all religious peoples). The handful of nativists aren’t taken seriously, probably since most Americans are non-WASP and most who are “WASP” have fairly diverse ancestors.
So if we are eventually forced to move, it won’t be Nazi style racial anti-semitism, but probably communist/socialist style secularism that will also be directed against others religious communities.
Rats have always had an excellent reputation for intelligence. That’s why they are frequently used as lab animals. Humans dislike them since they steal food, sometimes bite people and spread disease (from a rat’s perspective, they are havesting food, driving off predators, and have no reason to worry about human’s public healthy and hygiene).
“If the exams are to further your education for parnossa, then it is a mitzva “
Correct, but don’t think that exams have anything to do with learning anything (secular or Torah). It’s a game. Some cultures values exam skills. The Chinese were infamous for it (you took a test to qualify as nobility). America today is amazingly exam centered. If you want to do well in those societies, you learn to take tests.
But getting an education whether for parnassah or for Torah has nothing to do with exams.
Exams and “tracking” (arranging students in classes based on how they do in exams) are something “new” even for the goyim form whom we copied them. They should be considered suspect since they are a “hiddush” and are a “hiddush” that was copied from the goyim. And among the goyim, there is much concern that the focus on exams and the resulting tracking is counterproductive and detracts from education.
147: Nothing in American history suggests that religious persecution and harassment would lead to large scale pogroms or death camps. It might lead to us moving elsewhere, probably to one of the more conservative countries. A fact to consider is that many Christian groups are being subjected to similar persecutions (so perhaps one impact might be a movement, already happening, of frum Jews moving out of New York to “red” states, rather than to a foreign country (particularly since the conservative countries tend to be very poor such as in Africa or persecute frum Jews such as those run by zionists or Muslims). Also remember that most anti-semitism (defined as persecuting orthodox Jews) comes from secular Jews, and secular Jews are very concentrated in the “blue” states – a “holcaust” would have to come from goyim and we get along fairly well with American goyim.
It’s actually not round but more like a slightly misshapen circle.
If you managed to walk on a give line of latitude or longitude you would end up at the same place except for problems such as ocean, mountains and other obstacles.
Everyone has always known the earth was roughly “round”. It isn’t hard to figure out since if it were flat the horizon wouldn’t disappear. The issue in 1492 was the size of the earth (Columbus had it wrong and thought the earth was much smaller, the general scientific consensus was correct as to size, and had the Americas not been there a crew sailing west would have died of thirst and starvation before reaching Asia). No ever thought that anyone believed it was flat (except so not very bright public school teachers, who probably moonlight teaching in day schools).
DaMoshe: In the old days they had all these sorts of rules – in the public schools. It’s not that we have been building up chumros, but that the goyim (and that includes non-frum Jews) have become less tznius than in the past. We haven’t changed, but it is more noticable.
Today, if you see someone wearing a skullcap in public, you assume it is something unusual and probably religious (orthodox Jews, some Muslims, and some Christian clergy – but no one else). In the past in western countries skullcaps were common among all goyim, and back then no one thought that a yarmulke was a distinctly Jewish thing. It isn’t we adopted a chumra to wear a kippah – rather our style of head covering is no longer fashionable among the goyim.
Who came up with the idea of single couples going to a hotel lobby. To the rest of the world it looks incredibly improper.
If the minimum wage is set at or below what would normally be negotiated for an unskilled, untrained workers, it has no impact other than for n individual is not very good at negotiating, in which case the minimum wage helps him/her. If on the other hand, the minimum wage is set at higher than what would be worked out by the law of supply and demand, it helps those individuals who get the jobs, but results in employers cutting back employment (using automation, outsourcing, etc.). For example if the minimum wage is $10/hour, an employer will choose not to hire an employee who is not producing $10 of extra profits every hour – the higher the wage, the harder it is to justify the employee.
The Democrats believe that most employers are making a huge profit on each employee, and therefore the employers will not reduce employment if forced to raise wages. The Republicans tend to feel that the law of supply and demand works so that wages stay in sync with profits, and therefore raising the minimum wage about what would be produced by a free market results in lower employment.
Blame the goyim and the frei Yidden. When the goyim went around with respectable clothes, no one noticed that we were wearing proper clothes as well.
lesschumras: There are no expenses requires for a Bar Mitzvah, nor for a Bas Mitzvah. Almost any shul will give the boy an aliya, and if you do it on Monday or Thursday they never expect a donation. Actually, the aliyah is just a way of showing off that “I am now an adult”. Suppose he did something else like enter into a contract to show he had reached adulthood– not a good idea. You become Bar MItzvah automatically on your birthday – no ceremony required.
Ah, you like to spend lots of money on parties — well that’s a different matter and is totally unrelated to the halachos of Bnei Mitzvah.
The situation is quite common with Baalei Tseuvah, and will increasingly be so in the future since after several generations it will be impossible to determine the validity of the conversion of one’s maternal-side great-great-grandmother.
However if someone has grown up thinking they are Jewish, and is already Shomer Mitsvos, and then discovers a reason to believe they may not be Jewish afterall, geirus is not a big deal (nothing to learn since they’ve learned it already, no concern about observance since they have been observing). The “problems” with conversion deal with the convert having to learn enough to know what they are getting into so they can make a valid choice, and resolving doubts about sincerity — none of which are applicable when someone who is already living a frum life discovers the non-Jewish ancestor that creates the safek.
Most translations are little better the gibberish, at least if you are translating Hebrew into English. Hebrew into Aramaic is much better, as well as Yiddish into English. The published translations are usable if you read and can understand the original and read them together (using the translation as a de facto dictionary with words in context). Assume that if you’ve relied on a translation, you get about half the content of the original. If you believe you have learned something and have relied on a translation, you have deceived yourself. A big reason the goyim have weird ideas about Taanach is their “Bible” is a translation.
The problem is that Hebrew is a Semitic language, meaning it has only two tenses, and since it is inflected can get away with a fluid sort of syntax (English has a rigid syntax relying on word order and over a dozen tenses, not to mention moods).
The percentage of orthodox Jews (the only market for sefarim) who speak English is falling steadily since the Hebrew-speaking and Yiddish-speaking components of the Jewish world are better at reproducing.
Translations between Semitic languages, such as those of the Judeo-Arabic classics (e.g. Kuzari), or translations of Aramaic into Hebrew (e.g. restatement of the gemara into Hebrew) are less problematic.
1. Unless you hold there is a prohibition of celebrating a birthday, why not celebrate her 12th. It’s a birthday party.
2. For boys, the ceremony involves doing things a boy at 13 can do which he couldn’t previously, but is limited to things that are not dangerous (having an aliyah and leading a minyan). Most other things one can do as a Bar Mitzvah (sign contracts, get married, be liable for criminal punishments, etc. – are not done for obivious reasons). For girls, the only big change is they can do all the “dangerous” things boys can, but which we don’t want them to. There really isn’t anything as 12 year old girl can do, that we want her to, that she couldn’t before.
1. In the United States, non-government schools are not legally required to use teachers with any specific academic training, degree or certification. Interesting, the leading private schools (the “prep” schools frequently hire teachers based on competence and academic skills while ignoring teaching certification.
2. The more “modern” a school is, the more likely the teachers will have American academic credentials, but that is a matter of preference, not law.
catch yourself: Eighty years ago fedoras has a status similar to baseball caps today. Who know’s someday, baseball caps will be worn only by Jews, and will become formal expensive dress hats. Would anyone 300 years ago imagine that a round fur hat would some day be seen as something “Jewish”? Fashion changes rapidly among the goyim.
The only beged with an halachic status is the tallis (gadol and katan), and perhaps the gartel. Everything else is just a fashion statement – which isn’t today that Yidden, like everyone else, need to pay attention to what fashion statements they make.
They are a style. Halacha is only you have to wear a hat at certain (okay, almost all) times.
The goyim no longer wear fut hats. In America, they ceased being popular about 200 years ago. In Eastern Europe they lasted longer. Some cavalry were still wearing them up until the 20th century (when hats lost popularity among the military since they had to switch to metal helmets).
In America it has become a style among Jews. That gives it a halachic status, more so then when it was a sort of hat everyone wore. Similar things have happened to frock coats (our kapotes) and fedoras.
Like all clothing, they tend to “make a statement”. The only way to avoid making a statement with one’s clothes is to dress like everyone around you, and then you are making a statement that you are like everyone around you.
Avi K (on Jews being left wing in terms of economics)-
We have a “welfare state” mentality – under halacha, the community had a duty to help the poor – the Beis Din could order you to give more tsadakah when needed. Communities heavily taxed individuals to support the poor. This is unlike the goyim who until the 20th century considered welfare to be something that was none of the government’s business. Whether in Israel or America, Jews take naturally to the idea that the poor should be helped, and that explains why we tend to be comfortable with the left-wing position on government welfare, entitlements, etc.
The traditional conservative position was that giving tsadakah deprived the poor of an incentive to work and created dependency – and therefore one shouldn’t give them anything since it would hurt them in the long run. This was part of the “protestant ethic” in western culture but is alien to our culture. Indeed, one can argue that the introduction of public welfare and the many entitlement programs was an example of Jewish influence in America.
1. They aren’t “pro-Islam” but rather they are frequently in a situation of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Radical Islam is opposed to the western civilization, and dislikes Jews and Christians in particular – meaning they are opposed to something the “Left” dislikes.
2. The Muslim worlds is very left-wing in economics (as are orthodox Jews), and for the most part ignore racial and ethnic boundaries.
3. The western left is increasingly isolationist meaning they prefer not to be involved with all those foreign cultures (whom they consider horribly inferior though they don’t say it). Not wanting to fight Muslims doesn’t mean they like them – they want to ignore them. For example, many Brits were very isolationist in the 1930s, and didn’t object to Hitler until he tried to conquer their country.
Barukh ha-Shem we live at a time when people feel they need to spend thousands of dollars on weddings and tens of thousands to establish a household. Seventy years ago (1945 to be exact, BTW, happy V-E day) most frum Jews would be happy to be able to manage with an improvised hupah and enough rolls to be able to make a shevah brachos and a roof over their heads.
People have been schmoozing in shul for centuries if not millenia. We know this from all the halachic literature complaining about the problem. So we should all shut up, be self-righteous (we aren’t the ones doing it), and live with it.
Francorachel3: There is no halachic or legal requirement that parents must by the newlyweds an apartment, or anything for the matter. If they have no money, the parents must make a gift of money to pay for the ring (or whatever) since the halacha is that the hasan has to own the ring in order to give it to the kallah.
People who think they are too fancy to be poor will eventually come to their senses. They should do tseuvah and return to the traditional derekh of the Bnei Torah, who focused on midos and building families – not showing off material wealth.
Is the complaint about getting married (as opposed to being single or “living in sin” as the goyim say), or about making a wedding.
Being married is probably cheaper than living separately, and if everyone waited until they were fully able to get married humanity would probably have become extinct a long time ago (which is probably why we are designed to have a biological urge to get married at an age when most people are unlikely to be financially secure). It’s always been this way. Among many goyim they put off getting married until they are ready, and then are too old to start a family.
A wedding isn’t all that expensive. There is no halacha about needing a fancy hall, fancy meal, photographer or band. A kesubah is inexpensive. By most opinions, if the wedding ring is too expensive it might be a shailoh (since expensive would involve easy to fake gems). You should have ten adult males present but that’s a humrah. The seudah requires rolls to wash on.
Is there a heter for ??? ?? to be thieves? If not, why would the question arise.
What if a rav tells you something is kosher, but you with your greater knowledge of subject know it is treff. Consider something such as beer and spirits with most rabbanim hold by ingredient kashruth, meaning someone with greater knowledge of the industry may be aware something is not kosher.
While it would be hard to come up with a scenario of a holocaust-like destruction of American Jews (death camps, etc.). It is easy to come up with a situation in which Orthodox Jews are persecuted to an extent that would force emmigration (bans on Bris Milah and Kashrus, ban on “homophobic” schools, no tax exemptions for religious institutions that don’t endorse the gay and feminist agendas, etc.). But that wouldn’t be “racial” (in fact, secular Jews would be the leading advocates of such laws), and would affect many other religious minorities (some of whom are only now finding out they are minorities).
GingerKale: The Zionists claim that HASHEM had no role in their conquest of Eretz Yisrael. And it was them who were do the conquering. Note how they honor their army, not HASHEM, on their independence day.
And while the community in Eretz Yisrael was seriously damaged by the Romans (a.k.a. Byzantines, who were the same thing) and the Crusaders (“Franks” a.k.a. European Christians), it was immediately rebuilt (and under Islamic rule, BTW).
Joseph: Does that make them anti–[whatever}
Well yes.
Bnei Torah worry about frumekit and midos, not politics, income, ethnicity, physical appearance. In other words, the things that matter according to halacha and Jewish tradition (which from our perspective, are the same).
An Am ha-Aretz might worry about other things, a Ben Torah doesn’t.
gavra-at-work: If Israel goes to war against the United States (declared or otherwise, enough if the US is support sanctions similar to those used against North Korea today or South Africa 30 years ago), it would probably lead to an awkward situation for most American Jews, but still wouldn’t lead to a holcaust. It might lead to most zionists being forced to move to Israel, but that’s all. Under American law as now understood, one couldn’t round up Muslim citizens (though aliens of a hostile country can be interned and deported). The only acts of genocide in American history (the “middle passage” and the Indian removals) were both illegal at the time, and did not involve systematic mass murder, and wouldn’t of happened with better communications.
If Israel and the United States ever find themselves at war, it would perhaps lead to expulsion and forced migration, not death camps.
If the parents are frum, talk to their rabbi. Almost by definition, a frum family is more concerned about the frumkeit of a prospective son-in-law than any other factor. Halacha says you can disregard them (i.e. “elope” most probably), but their rabbi might persuade them to be cooperative.
If her family isn’t frum, ignore them and elope (they will be angrier about her becoming frum than what the grandchildren look like).
“Folk stories” have a life of their own, sometimes existing over many centuries. The names get filled in as relevant to each telling. They aren’t historic documents. I suspect on further research you’ll find versions of the story going very far back.
To use an American example, the folk story of George Washington and the cherry tree is clearly impossible, yet it is a valid folk story on the importance of honesty. That it is historically impossible doesn’t detract from it.
The caption should have been in the singular. There are many yeshivos today (Baruch ha-Shem) with many styles of learning.
A ordinary thing that is a problem according to halacha and kabbalah:
Raising an army and conquering Eretz Yisrael from the goyim. You would think its a normal thing to do since it is our homeland and we were there first (ignoring the DNA evidence suggesting the Palestinians are largely descended from Jews – something they vehemently deny). Yet it is prohibited.
Since you dealing with “alternative history” you need to define a “point of departure”.
The most common scenario involves the United States losing World War II (the war presumably ends with the East Coast under German occupation, and the West Coast under Japanese occupation). While the US was planning how to resist a German invasion (e.g. plans for falling back from the coast, disucssing the possibility of seizing Canada if after a British surrender they also surrendered, etc.), that really wasn’t so likely. Once the United States cut a deal with the Brits that if the British Isles fell, the Royal Navy would not be turned over to the Germans, this wasn’t a big threat. However if one comes up with a way the Germans win (probably starting with a British surrender, with the Royal Navy being surrendered intact to the Kriegsmarine), and assuming the Germans managed to pull it off, it is reasonable to ask what Americans would have done. I suspect that Americans would have been a lot tougher to occupy than Europeans, given a stronger tradition of local government, a militia tradition, extreme xenophobia, and a strong tradition of private gun ownership. The fact that racism in America was always directed towards Blacks more than Jews makes it further unlikely.
The other possibility is to come up with a scenario for an anti-semitic government to be elected in the United States. The truth is that isn’t likely unless you point of departure is incredibly early (perhaps going back to George Washington’s decision to establish a non-sectarian Continental Army, which led diredctly to a federal government that separated Church and state (remember the official church in New England was banned in most of the rest of the country). However once religious diversity became ingrained in American culture, oppressing any religious group became unlikely (at least, unless the group itself became hihgly political, such as the Mormons in the 19th century). The fact is that onoly anti-semitic politicians were always seens as jerks and marginalized, and in addition, bigots in America were more focused on Blacks and Catholics than Jews.
Thus a holcaust aimed at Jews in America would really be quite unlikely.
1. The Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area is one city. People commute both ways. In many ways, Baltimore is the “Brooklyn” of the Metroplitan Area (somewhat depresses, less expensive, more ethnic, more working class).
2. The riot was no where’s near the frum community. The major impact was a curfew forcing stores to close early, and minor disruptions for commuters using the trains (those driving to DC were unaffected). There was no sign of anti-semitic mobs, and the police kept rioters out of non-black residential areas. New Yorks complaining about Baltimore don’t know what they are talking about it.
3. Most cities run by Democrats are going down the tubes, which is to say most cities. The state governments may be more of a factor since they enact anti-business legislation (which cuts off the opportunities for urban blacks to become middle class through the private sector). One should note that over the last generation there has been a steady migration of urban blacks back to the “red” southern states where there are greater economic opportunities for those looking for more than welfare or a government job. The frum community really should reconsider being concentrated in the blue states.
The frum community in Baltimore is pleasantly ghettoized, and separated from the rest of the city by a very wide avenue (Northern Parkway), several very large institutions (Sinai Hospital and Pimlico Racecourse) which are non-residential (okay, a lot of horses live in Pimlico, but there have been no report of criminality among them), and the Jones Falls (a small river and expressway).
The only serious impact of the current riot on the frum community is a city wide curfew, which I doubt will be strictly enforced in our area, though it is forcing stores to close (to let employees go home early) and interferes with late minyanim. When one looks at a crime map with little dots for reports of crimes- our neighborhood sticks out as the area with few dots.
The anti-crime community groups are usually so desperate for news that they report toys being stolen off of people’s lawns as major crimes. The fact that one can walk through the community and see toys left on the lawn speaks for itself.
But if you are really paranoid, take reassurance in the fact that one of the largest National Guard armories is in the neighborhood, along with the State Police headquarters.
Frankly I’ld worry about New York City more. You have a lot of anti-semitic leaders with real clout such as Al Sharpton. Until recently you had a mayor who made cracking down on Bris Milah as his leading health care priority. To a large extent, secular Jews control much of New York politics, and we are always “in their sights”. Several areas with large frum populations in New York have serious crime problems – which are likely to increase given your current mayor. Leaving New York City might be a good idea – and you’ll really like it in Baltimore where its quiet and safe.