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If someone wants to go off the derekh, there are a lot easier and cheaper ways to do so than to go to Harvard.
If you think going to a fancy university makes you special or better or more superior to someone learning in yeshiva or working as a schlepper in a frum business – you are already way off the derekh only you don’t realize it yet.
In response to: “do law schools really let you reschedule classes and where do these people live if they arent married and is there a frum community at all these schools. (Obviosly NYU and Columbia) “
There is probably a frum community at every major university in America. In general, the lines become blurred between “modern” and “hareidi”. It won’t kill you daven at a minyan with people who disagree with you about Israeli politics (which is the major difference between the two camps). If you go away from home, you will probably want to rent an apartment near the frum community, rather than live on campus. Commuting has its own issues. Anyone who thinks college is for partying will have dropped out long before graduate school. If someone wants to go off the derekh, there are a lot easier and cheaper ways to do do than to go to Harvard. If you are going to school and living with your parents or spouse, the extent of Jewish life on campus is laregly irrelevant since as is the case with most commuters, you remain a part of your home community. If you go to a place with a small community, you’ll find that the smaller the community the friendlier they are and the less importance is attached to modern/hareidi issues. In all fairness, there are virtually no universities worth going to in cities that lack a kosher shul and a mikva.
Rescheduling exams is protected by law and custom. For classes you sometimes can get a record, or can borrow notes – few teachers take attendance, and in many ways the only importance of class at that level is to know the teacher’s opinions on the subject matter. Missing a few classes is hardly an issue. There are many minoritity groups in universities, and American universities have a strong tradition (going back over 50 years) of being accommodating to all minorities. Even when elite universities had Jewish quotas (meaning before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, though most school had already abolished them before they became illegal), rescheduling exams for religious holidays wasn’t a serious problem (as opposed to getting admitted).
Of course there are. All you need is a briliant LSAT and a sterling academic record and an amazing application.
Unless you are planning a career other than as a practising lawyer, or unless you plan to work in your father’s law firm – law school is extremely hard work and is a high pressure environment since the grading is competitive, and grade point (especially during the first year) is what leads to jobs. The economic pressue is intense since law schools can cost as much as a house, and there’s no certainty there ‘s a pot of gold at the end.
As with all students in non-Jewish colleges, the fall can be a nuisance. Elite law schools rarely if ever have classes on weekends or evenings, and tend not to have classes on Friday. Rescheduling or making up something from a yuntuf is a lot easier than dealing with a client who wants you to bail him out on Shabbos.
Why should either party compromise. The Republicans (probably correctly) feel that Obamacare will seriously undermine the economy and undermine individual’s autonomy over their health care. The Democrats believe that Obamacare will significant improve the lives of most Americans and is a key to the future welfare of the country. Only a hypocrite would do something that believe will cripple the nation in return for a short term political gain.
And it shows the strength of our separation of powers, withs its checks and balances. This is how the system should work. If you prefer something smoother – try North Korea. No shutdowns there.
bklynmom: Any yeshiva that is accredited can give a degree that will meet the requirements of having a college degree. An unaccredited (as a college) yeshiva that is state licensed to give degrees can give one that will be accepted only in that state. For many jobs and graduate programs, any college degree is the requirement. If a job has specific requirements (e.g. the formal premed requirements, or for some jobs, 30 hours of a given subject, etc.), that’s a matter of a transcript. For some jobs, a degree in “talmud” (or for that matter, art history, or chess, or motion picture history) is enough – for other jobs they ask for something more specific. There are no legal requirements that a B.S. or B.A. cover any subject – 100% in Talmud is fine under American law.
CLEP and AP are accepted by all but the most elite schools, and sometimes by the elites. They cover all the basic freshman subjects. You study for the test, and take the test. Online courses from accredited universities (typically public ones) that are offered for credit (often with a proctored exam) are accepted widely and meet any requirements. Indeed, one can get a fully accepted bachelor’s from several major universities from online only programs.
However a “program” such as Ner’s isn’t really a “joint program” since the “participating” schools don’t recognize it as such. You are taking college credits from one college (Ner, which is an accredited college) and transfering them.
Distance education from a government sponsored university (e.g. Empire State College, University of Maryland University College, Western Governors, etc.). If you want something medical, you’ll need a bricks and mortar school.
It’s really a gimmick to boost attendance at minyanim in the Baltimore-Washington area. The politicians disagree with each (as is their right, and perhaps their duty), and by failing to pass a budget, most federal agencies have to shut down when their appropriations expire at midnight on Oct. 1. Most of the federal civil service gets off from work (probably without getting paid), and that means more time for shul. It’s all beshert.
For your entire life. First as a talmid, then perhaps a teacher. Perhaps as a Baal ha-Bayis. A Beis Midrash is to a frum yid what the local pub is to a goy – a focal point of one’s life.
Do you really plan to give up being frum at some point if that is what you need for parnassah? Since that seems to be what you are asking, you should spend more time learning since you haven’t realized that a Baal ha-Bayis can be frum.
jwashing: I couldn’t find any reference in Towson, UMBC or JHU to a joint program with Ner – but that was several years ago. I believe the “joint” program means that a Ner students gets a (NOT entirely worthless) degree from Ner while filling out the secular studies (and professional requirements) elsewhere, or that students can transfer Ner credits (which are potentially transferable since Ner is an accredited college) to get a degree elsewhere. Unlike the typical “joint” programs, student pay full tuitions to both schools.
I suspect a distance education degree from the University of Maryland might be more practical, depending on their policy towards “yeshiva” credits.
Ner really shouldn’t call it a “joint” program unless the colleges see it that way, which apparently they don’t.
I suggest checking the websites of the schools mentioned (JHU, Towson and UMBC) to see if they are discussing “joint” programs, as opposed to a student at Ner earning credits that can be transferred subject to the those schools’ transfer policy.
Depending on what you need a degree for, there are many other options to get college credits (including CLEP and AP courses, and distance education programs such as University of Marland’s University College). A program focused on adult distance students might be much happier about accept “yeshiva” credits then a school that has very high acadmeic standards
zahavasdad: At what point prior to the holocaust was Vilna not in Poland? It didn’t switch until World War II, at which time being behind Soviet lines was much better for Jews than being behind German lines (which was the situation prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union).
Hashgacha Pratis: one need to include the implication that whatever worked out wasn’t due to your efforts
Dan Lekaf Zechus: That’s not a definition, but an example
Kiddush Hashem: 1) again, that’s an example, not a definition; 2) do you have empirical evidence but the existence of non-rowdy boys (well, perhaps if there is something wrong with them, Ha-Shem designed boys to be rowdy)
charliehall: You must be one of those modern scientific types who gets hung up with all the “Timey-Whiney” (as a popular television series calls it) stuff. No problem for us fanatics who aren’t into strictly linear temporal mechanics.
P.S. Of course, knowing seventy languages would have been easier depending on how you define “language”, and I was hoping for someone to insist there were speakers of Yiddish and English during Bayis Sheini.
1. Do you know your hat size? If yes there are plenty of places that sell “frum” hats on the internet.
2. Is it a style you have previously owned (e.g. a black fedora with a specific type of rim), or is this something new – if the latter, it might be better to wait until you visit a city with hat stores.
FriendInFlatbush:
No big deal. He probably grew up speaking Yiddish and learning in Lashon Kodesh (meaning a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic). That means he was already, by bar mitzvah, bilingual in both a Semitic (Lashon Kodesh) and an Aryan/Indo-European language (Yiddish). That makes it fairly easy to pick up languages. Also the local dialect was a slavic language, so picking up a new slavic language would be a “piece of cake”. Picking up a more distantly related Aryan language, such as Iranian or Greek might have taken a bit longer, and a language from an unrelated family (Chinese, Mohawk, etc.) would have been harder. There are tremendous economies of scale in learning languages. The reasons Americans are so dumb at language has to do with laziness and arrogance since we are spoiled by the fact that English is the de facto “lingua franca” among the goyim – in the 18th century educated Americans typically knew several languages, and throughout history frum Jews have always been excellent in learning languages.
1. They didn’t know English or Yiddish.
2. Unless you are an American, it’s easy to learn languages.
3. They probably only knew those of people in the immediate region. I doubt they had any reason to chat with an American Indian or an Australian Aboriginee.
4. The Rosetta stone only had Egyptian and Greek, and wasn’t intended as a teaching device (it as a bilingual text in a region that was bilingual).
A great many Americans feel the government is overbearing and constantly meddling in matters that they shouldn’t be involved in. There is a certain logic to the theory that if you own property, its your right to do what you want with it. Therefore many people (particularly private citizens, not corporations) ignore the “nanny state” building permit laws. It is hardly limited to Jews, and the fact the frum Jews are becoming more like mainstream Americans in many ways is an interesting development.
For the most part, one should dress in a way that resembles everyone else unless one is making a statement by dressing differently than everyone else. If you don’t want your clothing to indicate an ideological position, dress in a way that fits in. This applies in general, not just shul.
TO bring down a non-religious example, a man should normally wear pants unless he is a Scot making a political statement by wearing a kilt, or an Arab wearing an ankle length gown in a place wear everyone else dresses “western”. If you are in a shul in which most people wear black fedoras, wearing no hat other than a kippah, or on the other hand wearing a homburg or a streimel, communicates an “agenda”. That’s good if that’s what you intent, but not if your intention is just be normal and not make a statement.
No one discovers a new halacha mi-Sinai in the 21st century.
We have 3000 years of mesoret, and know generally how people have dressed, and we have never worn such a garment – therefore we have a mesoret that it is “new”, and “chodash asur min haTorah.”
The only reason it is prohibited to wear a “burka” is that it is imitating the goyim (similar to a nun’s habit, which is quite modest, but likewise prohibited). In that respect, wearing a burka is similar to have a tree for the holiday that occurs in late December, or engaging in “trick or treating” for the holiday that occurs in late October, or engaging in celebrations (drunken or somber) in honor of a possibly unhistorical someone the Irish honor in March.
It also might bed prohibited as being something “hadash” in light of a general rule on creating something new.
I went to law school in New York. Look at the state statute. Unless a state says specifically that a valid license is a prerequisite for marriage, it isn’t (in New York, a clergyman is subject to a fine, but that’s it).
The license is a revenue measure, but it doesn’t affect the validity of the wedding. The people who think they are “officially” single because they had a wedding without a license could be charged with tax evasion if they minimized taxes by filing separately (though in practice, most frum people gain a tax benefit from marriage).
Like much of the marriage law, getting married without a license is a feature largely ignore since it create more problems than benefits. Another ignored feature is the option of marriage by filing a copy of the marriage contract with the clerk’s office.
One world down, next world coming up. Time to roll with punch. This world’s only a corridor, nothing special. We’ll just be rolling along. See you next gilgul!
1. Whether one is married according to our law, is solely a function of halacha (e.g. kesubah, kiddushin, hupah, etc.).
2. While in many (probably, most) states, including New York, a marriage license is not required (i.e. if you marry without one your halachic ceremony constitutes a valid civil marriage, meaning you need a civil divorce to marry anyone else, and you are committing fraud if you claim to be unmarried), it is very inconvenient not to have a marriage license. The alternative would be to bring in affidavits and other evidence for every transaction that requires proof of marriage. Note that this frequently is an issue only when a spouse dies (i.e. is the woman his widow and mother of his children, or a single mother whose children paternity is unknown who happened to be his live-in “best friend”).
I doubt there is such a minhag. If the bride and groom are both in the same shul or even the same city (which until recently, meant the same thing – multiple shuls in a city is a modern innovation), of course he would be there. Where else would he go? Any such minhag is therefore a recent innovation.
If the wedding is in a distant city, the bride’s family won’t be there on the Shabbos before. That a matter of practicality, not a minhag.
It’s interesting that a frei Jew occasionally does a mitsva, but all the people mentioned above played routinely on Shabbos and Yuntuf. If there were a model, they were for the ultra-assimilationist model of being a little bit frum once a year, and ignoring everything else. Observing Yom Kippur is one of the last mitsvos that Jews do before becoming totally assimilated – the analogy would be that the heart keeps beating after the lungs, kidney, brain, and digestive system have shut down, meaning that what comes next is death. Jews who observe only Yom Kippur are moribund – what comes next is total assimilation and being disappeared from Klal Yisrael.
So when meshiach comes, anyone who turns out to be a goy of Jewish descent who has been living as a Jew will convert. Remember that (as is often discovered in working with Baalei Tsuvah) it is a “piece of cake” to convert if a person who is Shomer Mitsvos does a little genealogical research and discovers they aren’t really Jewish.
Cruz is a nice guy. He was a citizen at birth since his parents were citizens at the time (and the issue has been raised several times before). The constitution says “natural” (as opposed to “naturalized). Elsewhere it uses birth within the United States to indicate a person who can not be denied citizenship (presumably Congress could decide that Americans born abroad are
aliens – but they have not done so).
The issue is important to many Israelis who hold a very useful right to an American passport having been born in Israel to American citizens. They are currently natural citizens, and to not have to be naturalized in order to become citizens.
If you are on the subway headed “inbound”, then the answer is obviously “yes.”
Fencing is a honorable sport (modest clothing, no physical contact, masks, etc.).
Why one would do anything in Buffalo is beyond me. The place has seen better days. Even Albany and Cleveland have better prospects.
children spouse adulthood home companion
Artscroll is a “for profit” corporation that sells what its customers which to buy. That’s how things work in capitalism. If they tried to sell something their customers weren’t interested in buying, they would go broke. It should be noted that Jewish bookstores, both in Brooklyn and throughout North America, stock large amounts of materials but multiple vendors, and if a vendor does not correctly gage the feelings of the market, there are others ready and anxious to take their place. Unpopular ideas are “censored” since they don’t sell books – they are unpopular — that’s true of the publishing industry regardless of religion or ethnicity.
Until relatively recently, one usually bought the chicken LIVE and brought your chicken to the shochet, and then brought it to the person who checked it, and then took it home and butchered it. Frum girls learned how to do this, as it was typically part of being a housewife. This was normal back in the early 20th century.
Today, virtually no one knows what to do with a dead animal until its been properly butchered, salted and packaged. That is the complication with live kapores since few people can have their chicken killed and then redeem (or gift it), and expect it to be served shortly.
It’s a style. Styles vary, constantly. You can probably guess the year from a picture based on the styles, even of frum people in yeshivos. While there are some halacha (dress up for Shabbos, follow what your Rosh Yeshiva says at his yeshiva, don’t embarass your spouse, etc.) – it’s fashion. If it really turns you, study anthropology and write a thesis on frum fashion.
Threaten to repeat what he/she just said to his/her kids. Be wary your parents won’t have similar message for you.
If Ha-Shem wanted teenages to act like adults, he would have programmed their brains accordingly. There are some species where the brain is fully developed at birth (generally, these are the less intelligent species). Accept that teenagers usually act like teenagers.
The Talmud is an encyclopedia compilation of sources. If you want something nice and organized consider the Shulhan Arukh or the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah.
1. Different people have different takes on matters. While neither is lying, YWN and Haarets appear to be discussing different worlds.
One wouldn’t expect Nach to match the other side’s account of a war.
2. The hilonim “higher critical” were saying that everything in Taanach was myth, and that finding any document discussing Sancherivis seight was as likely as finding a first person letter from one of the Greek or Roman “gods”. Archeology can’t prove details (especially since we wrote on perishable substances, not clay tablets), but it does show that Nach happened and wasn’t the figment of some modern frum rabbi’s imagination – which is what they were claiming until Archeology proved otherwise.
It is likely the comment is either out of context or refers to a specific situation not a general rule. As various forms of exercise goes, weight lifting does not require immodest dress, does not inherently involve pritsos, and is a lot safer than many sports (and few sports offer equivalent strength training) – and for the most part can be done in the privacy of one’s home. Of course is the person asking the question is in a situation where he plans to go to a co-ed gym where people wear few clothes, it would clearly be explicable why his rebbe told him not to go.
Does your rebbi always take a car even for short distances? Does he prefer a diet rich in fat and sugars, while avoid fiber, fruits, vegetables, etc.? Perhaps he stays in a wheel chair to avoid having to use his body for anything?
It’s cool. Digging up stuff our ancestors played with. Sometimes it helps understand things, but never really something important (e.g., when the Avos were acting in a way that reflected Mesopotamian law, but we would have expected it since our tradition was that in those aspects of law weren’t usings Jewish law since it was pre-Sinai). It’s also fun when archeologists dig up stuff that contradicts the hiloni’s “higher critical” theories and they have to come up with a revised edition of their theories (remember that the “critical” refers to literary criticism rather than research into ancient history, which is why it is so amusingly wrong – they make it up as they go along for obvious ulterior motive).
All filters are inherently problematic since the filters’ AI can’t tell whether the words in question are respectable or not. For example, if you target the word “naked” you block out halachic discussions about what one wears in a mikva, married women’s hair, and how much clothes you need to wear when davening.
The best solution is to remember that Ha-Shem is monitoring at all times (not to mention your boss, the NSA, perhaps the Mossad, and that any clever teenager can hack your computer to see what you’ve been looking at).
1. Set a good example.
2. Look at anyone who appears in public inappropriately (e.g. too short a skirt, too low a neckline, too expensive a suit, too flashy a necktie, too expensive a car) as being weird.
3. Consider how a law firm looks at someone who shows up for work in sneakers, shorts and a flashy “vacation” shirt — or how a geek-oriented hi-tech firm deals with someone who insists on wearing a suit and tie. Most of the human race has strict and intricate dress codes – without have to write them down.
If they are Yidden, they are certainly not strangers. If why shouldn’t people try to “set you up” assuming you are single, frum and have no serious defects (such as antlers, tail, or antenas). If you don’t like the attention, get married, and then you won’t have the problem.
If you are studying Jewish law or Jewish history, it is impossible to do so without familiarity with Talmud. An analogy would be like studying American law without looking at cases and statutes, or studying American history without reading any historical documents. As it is, everyone holds it is permissable to study Pirke Avos, which is clearly one portion of the Talmud, most of whose halachas are relevant to botgh women and to understanding Jewish views on the world.
The only issue is “studying for fun”, without regard to it being useful. That’s what men do, and most consider it a mitzvah to do so (and in any event, its what we like to do). Pilpul on questions that will never arise in the real world is a “boy thing.”
Urban areas generally restrict activities incompatible with being a residential area, such as slaughtering animals. If you want to be free of zoning restrictions, move to a rural area.
Leave skunks alone and you won’t have a problem.
Jews needing to adopt used to benefit from a baby gemach run by the goyim. Women (non-Jewish ones, usually not of the higher classes) who didn’t want their babies left them in a designated field, and people (Jews included) could go to the field and pick one. They usually went by which ones were crying the loudest. Then the goyim got a bit more civilized and now they can only kill babies during the nine months prior to birth.
“A family with more than 6 kids with only a father in kollel and maybe a mother making a little extra cannot expect to send their kids to yeshiva, pay bills and dues, donate to tzedakah, and afford good quality food and healthcare.” — No but they can expect to earn enough to eat but maybe they’ll have to skip the junk food, nosh and eating out. They’ll be able to afford adequate health care, at a level that the Hafetz Haim would have considerable unbelievable – but not a fancy doctor with the latest experimental medicine. No one expects kollel families to play an important role in terms of financing community institutions (but many provide very useful warm bodies to actually get things done). Most frum organizations adjust fees based on ability to pay (one might aruge that if it doesn’t it isn’t really frum).
So do you mean they’ll live like families that afford a large detached single family home in Brooklyn, a second home in the country, full tuition (and all the protectsia that goes with it) at the fanciest most modern Jewish schools, a really fancy doctor who doesn’t let cost bother him in practising in medicine, etc. — of course they won’t. And if someone’s goal in life is a high level of material goods, they will do something else for a living (and if the past is an indication, they will give up a lot in terms of Yiddishkeit to do so). Jews who consider gashmius to be a principle goal rarely stay frum all that long – remember the mere act of keeping Shabbos, wearing a kippah, eating only kosher and living in an unfashionable neighborhood (i.e. one with too many frummies) means giving up perhaps 2/3 of your parnassah.
Learning is work. It pays horribly, and you end up after a few years as a teacher, which is even more work and pays horribly.
If someone wants to live in great poverty in order to learn, that’s there business. If they expect to have a middle class standard of living, that’s being ridiculous. However the working conditions of learning full time, or teaching (and in Hebrew, “learn” and “teach” are just different binyanim of the same verb), are very good (no Shabbos hassles, no calendar hassle, no problem with treff lunches or seriously rude and immoral coworkers, etc.), which is probably why many people prefer poverty in a frum “job” (learning or teaching) to the riches of working for the goyim.
You need a lawyer.
The original posting in this thread referred to some hareidim dancing in a memorial fountain. YNET (a leading hiloni, meaning anti-frum) site now questions that these were really hareidim, noting that the people undressed in public which is very rare for hareidim.
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In American, if women are situated so men are staring at them (sometimes referred to as a “meat market” approach to dating) it is considered harassment of the women. Note that the objection is to separate seating, not to who sits where. In fact many cultures have separate seating options in public transportation – its considered a way to protect women.
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Remember that we are descended from someone who was a radical extremist, accused of heresey and high treason by his countryman, considered a betrayer of the family’s cult, thrown into a fire and finally exiled to a remote no-mans land. You may not like it, but extremism in defense of doing the right thing is a family trait going back 4000 years.