akuperma

This is still science fiction. At some point the questions will be: 1) is “meat” grown by cells considered “meat” at all; 2) does it need to come from an animal that was slaughtered and kashered? Its very similar to the issues involving Rennet (an enzyme derived from an animal that is used to produce some cheeses). Many people that rennet, derived from an animal, does not render cheese non-kosher, while some even hold that the rennet can even come from a non-kashered animal, and other prefer rennet derived from non-fleishig sources.

The shidduch crisis is the normal result of people (not just boys) responding to worsened economic conditions by delaying marriage in order to have parnassah to support a family. It is happening worldwide, among all people and cultures. A rational response to loss of income is to delay marriage. Ways to reduce the crisis:

1) Encourage children to be happy living with less, and to have lower expectations, so they won’t object to idea of having a one-room starter apartment, and move up to a single bedroom when the baby gets too big to share a room with the parents.

2. Encourage women to follow news of finance and economics better, and to focus on the bad news. Then they’ll worry that their husbands can’t support them, and will also want to put off marriage.

The current job market is that unless you have respectable grades in a leading law school (Columbia, NYU, Georgetown, or better), or really outstanding grades elsewhere – your chance of getting a job out of law school is poor. You’ll end up either taking a non-law job to support yourself, or being in a “build up the practice mode” meaning nominal pay or no pay. If you ran up large debts in getting the degrees, you may have a serious problem. Large firms are laying off partners and associates

If your goal is to be a neighborhood lawyer, and you are sufficently entreprenurial to build up a practice, the grades don’t matter (but learned skills do), and having gone to a fancy law school doesn’t matter much. But you’ll hardly be affluent until and unless you build up your practice.

jewishfeminist02:

A medical resident, albeit with the 24/7 work schedules (except in the few states that have banned it), get a middle class salary even as a resident, and is guaranteed professional employment unless he horribly screws up.

Most law school graduate have serious troubles finding professional work. While the job market is good for the top of the class at the leading (NYU, Columbia, etc.) law schools, but the bulk of the class at the bulk of the law school, there is no “pot of gold” at the end and for many, if not most, the choice is between taking non-legal employment or starting at the bottom (perhaps unpaid) and building up a practice. The well paid associates at “Big law” are quite rare and getting rarer due to the economy.

If someone wants to be a lawyer, realizing the pay can be very mediocre, but its the thought of job you want – its a good career choice. But if they think its a way to become rich, they are making a horrific mistake.

jewishfeminist02 who said “In the long term, lawyers have a better financial outlook than doctors. 8 years of education (and therefore loans) versus 3 years makes a big dent in a doctor’s salary.”

1. Virtually all MDs become doctors, whereas only some JDs become lawyers. Most doctors serve a fairly well paid apprenticeship (“residency”) with horrific hours, even if they are required to get sleep in states (and then only due to lawyers suing for malpractice). Most JDs entering the practice of law have to scramble for a job, and only a handful get well paid “associate” positions.

2. Virtually all doctors are employed as doctors, even if they were at the bottom of the class in a not famous medical school. Many JDs have trouble finding a job that requires a law degree, and the bottom of the class from a good law school, and anyone from other than the dozen or so elite law schools, will often find himself as entering a “solo practice” whether they like it or not.

3. There are inexpensive law schools, and they tend to be easy to get into (and there is the option of “reading law” in many states). The inexpensive medical schools are very hard to get into. It is sometimes possible to get a free medical degree by agreeing to work for certain employers (not just the military) after graduation.

4. If someone wants to be a lawyer, or a doctor, they should try. If they enter a profession they dislike since they think it is a meal ticket, they will probably fail miserably, and still owe on the student loans.

It is hard imagine the primitive cuisine our ancestors endured before the introduction of SOY.

to Jewishishfeminist02 who wrote “You’re describing older singles who have roommates/suitemates. Nothing wrong with that, but I’ve never heard of an arrangement in which they share assets.”

Its quite common for long term roommates (housemates, whatever) to end uphaving joint accounts, shared assets, often buying a house or car together. When the relationship ends (voluntarily or through death), it can create great complications (and of course, great opportunties for parnassah for lawyers).

And it has nothing to do with gender or sex.

The people and politicians of New York City are doing a great hesed for the rest of the country by providing political race, and candidates, that are so entertaining. Really, if Hollywood dreamed up, even for soap opera, people like Weiner and Spitzer, the show would flop for being too unbelievable. This is even better than Baltimore having a mayor whose defense when charged with theft was to say that she thought it was actually a bribe. Frankly, people like Obama, and Romney and Bush, and Hillary, and Rand – are dull — all they want to talk about politics (now Bill Clinton, there was an amusing politician to follow).

Since a bike is a more complex mechanism than a stroller, it is likely to break and on Shabbos it would involve doing a melacha. All complex mechanical things are banned on Shabbos.

In urban area, it is halachically allowed but very dangerous since if you bump into a car, the person on the bike loses. In places with no motor vehicles, there is no such problem.

sam2 who wrote “Akuperma: It’s a dead dispute. The world holds like R’ Moshe. “

Many of the Religious Zionists, in Israel, in fact hold that marriages involving non-Orthodox Jews are valid, which is why they are so insistent that the Israeli government closely regulate marriage and divorce (a “frummer” approach is to follow R. Moshe and say that only frum Jews can possibly have the intent to be married “kdas Moshe v’Yisrael” and therefore there is no danger of the Am Ha-Artsim being safek mamzerim). Note that many new Baalos tsuevahos who were either married or “in relationships” before becoming frum do try to get a “get” to be certain, though since we are several generations into the “sexual revolution” the damage is done (if you have a “makel” attitude as to getting married).

jewishfeminist02: If they don’t file a joint return, they are required to file as a married couple filing seperately (which is usually expensive). If they file as unmarried (separate returns), they are violating the tax code and could be prosecuted if in doing so they pay lower taxes (as would be likely if they both have substantial incomes).

To those who writing about: “people getting Jewishly married and NOT GETTING legally married”

Be advised that in most American states, having a marriage ceremony is sufficient to be married under the laws of the state. While some states require a license for the marriage to be recognized, most states do not (the license is a revenue measure, and the clergy performing the marriage may have to pay a fine – but the marriage is valid under state law).

If someone has a kesubah and kiddushing and huppah (and arguably merely bi’ah, at least in states that allow common law marriage) – they are married meaning they are required to file joint tax returns, are liable for each other’s debts, and the father has no way out of supporting the family, etc. – and they can be prosecuted for bigamy if they have a “get” without a civil divorce, which means a subsequent marriage will be void under state law.

RE: cherrybin who wrote “The legal benefits of legitimately married individuals are protected by extending to these perverts the benefits of married couples as well.”

Not so clear. The leading benefits of marriage all pertain to traditional families (husband, wife, and kids – often with one spouse supporting the family and the other, usually the wife, specializing in child care). Benefits include automatic recognition of the wife’s husband as the father of the children, inheritance laws designed to protect the family unit and especially the dependent wife. If most “married” people (sexual orientation is irrelevant) are part of families that will never have children produced by the joint efforts of the parents, the logic behind most of the protections we value will be meaningless.

If a product is made by a Jewish company, almost solely for the frum market, they have no economies of scale. Specialty items always cost more than items that are mass produced.

But it isn’t hard in most cities to find a place that sells coffee and either has a hecksher, or at least down’t all do treff – so who needs a restaurant that sells treff food as well as coffee. Not to mention it isn’t all that hard to make zero-shailoh coffee yourself, at a much lower cost.

Americans have no royal family. That’s why Obama can get away with same insulting and obnoxious things, and people (many on this site) can say insulting and obnoxious things back at him.

The British monarchy, at least as it exists today (and sort of exists in the commonwealth “realms”) is apolitical. It would be nice if there were someone in Washington who was apolitical (who could be the “adult in the room” when the politicians gather). Even if you ignore the biological connections to the British (almost everyone in Britian other than a recent immigrant is related to the royal family if you go back to its origins a millenia ago), it’s nice to have a family that are public-spirited celebrities that serve the country and the people, but aren’t tools of partisan bickering.

Not to mention babies are inherently good, which is why Ha-Shem makes so many of them.

It’s amusing. They don’t seem to understand that in traditional Hebrew, ??? is the courtesy title for an adult (married) women, equivalent to “Mrs.” in English, “Madame” in French, or “Frau” in German.

As long as they stick to keeping Shabbos, Kashruth, Taharas ha-Mishpacha and semblance of modesty – they can be amusing frum Jews with nutty ideas rather than be seen as mortal enemies out to destroy Torah (as is the case with Conservatives, Reform, secular Zionists, and perhaps the more extreme movements in the Dati Leumi camp such as those who want to close down Israeli yeshivos under the pretext of conscription).

A big chunk of Canadians don’t want to join a country that is intolerant of non-English speakers.

A big chunk of Canadians prefer the monarchy (which is why they founded the country to begin with – English Canada started with the refugees from the USA in the 18th century).

Candians prefer socialized medicine. They don’t favor a muscular foreign policy.

Why would the US want a country where the “conservatives” are similar to Democrats, and the Liberals are way to the left of Obama.

Most grocery stores no longer use price tags. They are required to post prices on the shelf. Since all items are barcoded, the systems for checking out assume bar code scans rather than manually inputting of price data at the cash register. Its more reliable to rely on bar codes than a semi-literate clerk.

There was once a time where the store clerks were supposed to remember the prices of all items. It used to be you could ask to see the cow that produced the milk. It used to be you bought chickens live, and took them to be slaughter, and then cleaned them yourself. The world changes.

HaLeiVi and Lebidik: Note that in America, all slaves were free persons who kidnapped. None were criminals, persons sold for debt, persons who sold themselves as slaves, or persons sold by their families. All were seized. A major aspect of the crisis that precipitated the civil war was that courts were starting to argue that American slaves had not been lawfully enslaved and therefore could not be held as slaves.

Arguably its a mistranslation since most “slavery” in Taanach refered to long term labor contracts, lacking many critical aspects of what in English is referred to as slavery (owners weren’t allowed to kill slaves, prohibition of sex with slaves, etc.).

American style “slavery” has no word in Hebrew since the concept is unknown. In truth, the barbarity of American slavery has few equivalents to anything in our experience (the holocaust came close, but that’s it), which probably explains why there is no word for it in Hebrew.

Roman slavery was a little bit closer to American slavery, but still was radically different (freed slaves had rights, and their children were full fledged citizens, and by the end of the Imperial period, Roman slaves could go to court if they were mistreated). In truth, American slavery was probably among the most savage in human history, and not surprisingly, it was abolished after a short time (it began in the 17th century, and lasted only until the middle of the 19th, and was always abolished by most of the USA by the early 19th).

Penguins live in places besides Antartica, such as South America and Africa. Marsupials also live in the Americas. So the premise of your question is misplaced.

Animals migrate and also evolve constantly. Darwin’s theory was largely based on observing how common animals, horses and cattle, had evolved during the previous 1000 years (this becomes an issue in kashruth, since some people are nervous about eating beef since the presumptions for slaughtering cattle developed when domestic cattle were only slightly larger than sheep, but they evolved into something bigger during the last 2000 years – in this case with clever farmers rather than Ha-Shem directing the evolution).

Note that I’m not discussing the concept of what is “time” which involves issue of kaballah we can’t discuss publicly. Also I want to point out that the idea of “random” mutation driving evolution is the only thing that is really apikorisdik in the theory of evolution. Animals evolving, migrating, and the rules of “survival of the fitest” are in ways questionable from a halachic perspecttive. The shailoh isn’t whether, or how fast, a Raptorsaurus evolve into a chicken – but only if that occured “randomly” or under Ha-Shem’s direction.

In all fairness, most frum Jews can’t afford foie gras, regardless of its halachic status. Bnei Torah eat a lot more bread and cheese than tortured goose.

We are confusing several distinct issues.

One involves conscription of those who hold that the war is not allowed by halacha (neither milchemes rashus nor milchemes mitzvah) meaning that Israeli soldiers are required to refuse to kill goyim or destroy their property (i.e. we are the rodef, they are the nirdaf). If you hold that way, which is what anti-zionist hareidim hold, it is irrelevant whether you are in yeshiva, you must refuse to serve in the army. In the past, this group, perhaps a tenth of hareidim, but perhaps more, were exempted under the theory they were learning. Given Israel’s non-recognition of conscientious objection, they now have a serious problem (probably solved by allowing Jews with halachic objections to military service to be exempt, similar to how Arabs Muslims are treated). Non-zionist hareidim will probably prefer prison, if drafted will be very bad soldiers, and will complain to international human rights groups if drafted.

There is another issue of funding yeshivos (hareidim don’t want government funding, zionists think it is proof that Israel is a Jewish state), compounded with the fact most hareidi males are banned from working (“on the books”) since they haven’t served in the army. Almost no one in Israel supports a continuation of this policy, and from an economic perspective, it is hightly dumb.

Then there is the position of many pro-zionist “hareidim” who support having other people bash Arabs heads, but want to learn gemara themselves. These are probably hypocrites. In America we call them “chicken hawks” – pro-war, but not wanting to serve.

Lastly there is the problem of the IDF encouraging, tolerating and sometimes activitly persecuting hareidim who do serve. Regulations and policies to prevent this are ignored. At best there in segregated units (similar to the American Buffalo soldiers, or the British native regiments). The only solution for this is to tell officers that if they can’t keep all their soldiers happy and working together amicably, meaning hareidi soldiers shouldn’t feel they have to give up on mitsvos to serve – they’ll be replaced by officers who can (note that when someone scheduled female singers for a ceremony, the officer was praised widely rather than told to find a different line of work).

These are all separate issues.

There are lots of secular textbooks and courses, but the dialect they teach didn’t make it past the mid-20th century, and contemporary Yiddish is as different from “YIVO” Yiddish, and modern English is from Shakespeare. Pre-war “literary” Yiddish was much more influence by German, and also a lot less “clean” than the dialect spoken by Bnei Torah.

Assuming you already know Hebrew and English, but not German, I’ld suggest hanging outsomewhere where children speak Yiddish on the street. You can build some vocabulary from secular books, or from translating a newspaper or children’s books.