akuperma

Someone with a BTL (Bachelor of Talmudic Law, the yeshiva “degree”), or for that matter a conventional B.A. in Jewish studies, or for that matter any degree in the humanities (other than history) or sciences — will be at a disadvantage when they get to law school.

While it is NOT required for admission, it is very helpful to have a basic knowledge of history (particularly American and to a lesser extent British) and social sciences are very useful, writing and communication skills are critical. If a student is good enough to get into Harvard or Columbia, or even to Brooklyn Law School or SUNY-Buffalo or University of Baltimore, or even good enough to pass the first year and read law – the student probably has the ability to sit down and read up on the subjects they are weak and work on the skills they need.

Even if someone with a weird background is looked down upon on the first day, very quickly what will matter is whether they can hold their own with the rest of the class and the profession.

A salary of $150K means high success. It means you are in the top 10% of all Americans.

If you want to work in the frum community, economic opportunties are lower (but you avoid the hassles of working for the goyim).

If you don’t have a career you aspire to, and only aspire to have a high salary, you should stay in yeshiva until you are mature enough to go to the outside world.

Talmud: IT’s a function of state law, not school policy. New York allows it. It is possible but rare and you need to have a practising lawyer willing to supervise. A serious drawback is that even if you manage to pass the bar exam, it will be much harder to get permission to ever work in a different state.

If someone is trying to use a BTL to get into law school, and needs to assume they will look at the transcript even if they normally don’t, it would be good to have some credits for writing courses, basic American history, and basic social sciences. These can always be picked up from an accredited online university (such as University of Maryland’s University College or Western Governors University). A bit of experience working in a law office might help. Grades from a yeshiva don’t count for anything.

I’ld really suggest aiming lower and going for a less than elite school that offers liberal academic scholarships and lower tuition (particularly one’s home state university). The non-elite schools rarely lead to a “Big law” job, but most frum kids really aren’t on track for that “bullseye” to begin with, and the non-elite schools are just as good for the “build up your practice” in the less rarified world of neighborhood law – and you don’t want all those debts.

If the internet is limited to reading text, it’s no different than a book. But most internet use for small children is similar to watching television or videos, and it discourages the kids from learning how to sit down with a book. If you compare the writing and popular reading from 100 years ago (when video was introduced) to today, it’s clear that most westerners have seriously lost a lot of language skills. Since frum Jews watch much less television and video than goyim, our kids tend to have better reading skills.

Even for something small like, say, “Curious George”, offering the kid a video rather than a book is like offering a kid candy instead of vegetables – the calories may be the same but one is a lot healthier than the other, and when he gets used to sweets, he won’t want the veggies.

“worth going to” can be very complicated.

One factor is cost. If you can stay at home, or with in-laws, that is a huge difference. Brooklyn Law School, plus the cost of an apartment, is probably more expensive than Columbia. Part-time law school programs are only at the lower quality ones. There are low cost public law schools, especially if you qualify for the in-state rate. The lower quality ones are often very liberal with financial aid, especially if you have a high LSAT (the trick is you’ll need good grades to keep a scholarship for all three years).

So, is a degree from a cheap law school (where only the top 10th of the class gets a respectable job fresh out the door) but with no debt better or worse than an elite law school (where half get good jobs straight out of law school) but with $200K in debt (for tuition and living costs while in school)?

Another factor is what sort of law one wants to practice. Being a prominent attorney in a frum neighborhood doesn’t require a degree from an elite law school (in any event, you start with minimal income and have to build a practice through competence and hard work). Working for “Big law” (well paid corporate law firms, in a thoroughly un-Jewish, and some would say un-Human, environment) expects one to be near the top of the class in an elite school.

And then there are people who neither know nor care about practising law, but think its a meal ticket. They are probably close to being a “shoteh” and should be encouraged to do something else.

The fact that you do 612 out of 613 mitsvos, or even 1 out of 613, does not exempt you from the rest. The you fail to do one mitsva is not a heter for skipping any of the others. In our tradition, you are rewarded for what you do, and punished for those you don’t. This is unlike some of our neighbors who hold that there is a weighing and you are either “saved” or “dammed”.

For example, even if you are actively engaged in murder, theft, adultery and violating Shabbos – you are still required to honor your parents (or for that matter, sending away a mommy-bird before grabbing the baby – traditionally considered the easiest mitzva in the Torah).

twisted: CORN (or as others call it, Maize, or American corn) – is an American food, and it is universally considered kitniyos by anyone who holds by kitniyos.

Absolutely NO ONE holds that quinoa is hametz.

The issue is whether it should be treated as kitniyos (i.e. similar to corn and rice) since it might be mistaken from a prohibited grain, since one can use it to bake bread. The alternative is to treat like potatoes or turnips, which can be made into a flour, but are permissable according to everyone. There are plenty of opinions on the matter, and there is clearly no consensus among rabbanim. While quinoa has been around for a long time, it has only become common in the United States recently, so there hasn’t been time to decide if it is a new type of corn, or a new type of potato. Anyone who says the Daas Torah has decided the matter should say “My Rav holds…. “.

But I’m willing to bet that any of their kids dessed up to look like Haman were wearing a kipah serugah, or perhaps a mask that looks like Lapid.

The cross is a big problem, especially when you realize that when real soldiers wore them it likely meant they were part of a Crusade, which were uniformly anti-Jewish (remember, back then we were allied with the Muslims). The normal insignia would be other than a cross – usually the colors of one’s overlord in the feudal system.

Generically, whether a medieval solider was good or bad depended on whether he was on your side or not (as is true today). Jews of course could not legally “bear arms” at the time, though this was probably ignored in practice as long as we were subtle about it.

If one wanted to be a “reinactor” (rather than for Purim) and be a friendly medieval European knight, it would be easy to adopt the uniform of someone who was protecting Jews (as was the case – we were the leading source of tax revenue so the people in charge had an interest in protecting us – if they hadn’t we wouldn’t have remained in that region). Alternatively, one could dress up as someone who was usually friendly (a Muslim soldier) or whom we never met on a regular basis (a Japanese Samurai – they were very colorful looking, and unlike their European equivalents tended to be literate).

Do you really believe the Chofetz Chaim thought he was a celebrity worthy of being photographed? For most of his life, photography was fairly expensive, and it was a sign of your importance that you posed for a photographer (remember he lived in the period where war pictures were frequently of corpses since no one else would sit long for the slow film of the day – exposures were often more than a minute).

If they wanted us to work, why did they invent the internet????

If they wanted kollel students to join the “over the table” workforce, they would abolish conscription so they could take jobs in the mainstream economy without serving in the army. They would also enact laws against religious discrimination similar to the United States – Israel is one giant “hostile workplace environment” from an American legal perspective.

If they needed more hareidi soldiers, they would take seriously the enforcement of the laws requiring uniform observance of halacha in the army – which has been the law in Israel since the 1950s. As it is, the law if observed only if there are hareidim with lots of protectksia making vocal complaints.

“Mammele” who said “Williamsburg fanatics out to convert the world.” — NO, they wish to be left alone. They don’t insist that that men wear long pants or that women conceal the “cleavage” – they only don’t want to look at it. The only hasidic group that is out to “convert” anybody is Chabad and maybe Breslov (the ones with the dead rebbes).

It is the world that is offended by the Hasidim’s continued existence. According to all secular social science theory, they should have long since seen the light and entered modern society – and the secular world is highly annoyed by the fact they saw the law and decided that secular society was disgusting. The issue is not about a merchant asking customer to conform to social norms of what constitute proper dress (which in fact, is quite lawful and anything but radical, quite common in all sub-cultures even if the standards vary,and but for secular bigotry is non-controversial since the immodest customer can take their business elsewhere).

Which probably explains, in both Israel and America, why secular Jews are pursing a “Jihad” against the hareidi communities. The issue is secular bigotry and intolerance, not hasidim being properly dressed.

But could not a Vulcan be pretending to have a sense of humor, addressing the matter with very serious logic, since in CR no one would know he is a Vulcan. And if he can fake his humor, why not his gender. He could even be a Klingon in disguise.

And all the more so if the person behind the screen name is actually an unusually clever poodle.

And of course, I’ld discuss gender but of course we don’t discuss such things in mixed-up company.

The civil rights acts covers, at most, race (ethnicity), religion (requiring reasonable accomodation at no more the de minimis expense), gender and handicap. The common law might require admitting customers who are behaiving in an orderly manner, but wouldn’t allow much in terms of damages.

The initial posting didn’t refer to anything, but it would be very hard to challenge a store over a dress code unless you could argue that it violated one’s religion or that it interfered with one’s handicap. IF the issue was employment rather than shopping, it might be a little bit different, for example, there have been lawsuits (not winning ones) objecting the dress codes. Stores routinely have dress codes.

I checked google and found complaints, none of which referred to lawsuits, and one has someone at Yeshiva University’s law school (which is part of the non-frum part of YU) complaining about the inability to sue over a dress code, and an article in a less than reputable New York newspaper showing some non-Jewish women dressed in a manner that almost anyone would consider more than appropriate for a “lady of the night” than a customer in conservative family-oriented store.

Edited.

Someone is trying to sue a store over having a stated “dress code” for customers? Are they arguing that being immodestly dressed is a requirement of a certain religious group?

Unless the store is funded by the government, the case will lose. If they sue in Federal court, the plaintiff will have to prove at least some theoretical basis for thinking the suit might be valid or the lawyer will get fined.

The “penalty” for a store turning away customers is loss of the customers’ patronage.

Perhaps some group is trying to “shake down” a store owner?

If the goal is to preserve Israel as a zionist state, it is critical for the zionists to solve the pending demographic cliff. At current birthrates, and given that “baalei tseuvah” are more common than “off the derekh”, by the end of the 21st century, Israel will have a hareidi majority. Well before that, the hareidim in Israel will become a critical player since they have the option of allying with non-hareidi religious, as well as with the Arabs (an option for no other party in Israel).

The zionists have correctly determined they need to put a stop to the hareidi growth problem. Based on past experience, if you take a hareidi teenager and force him to spend three years eating food that is borderline kosher (which is the situation unless you are in a special religious unit), keeping Shabbos according to some very creative interpretations of halacha, etc., a certain percentage will go off the derekh. If you look at other countries, such as the American Jewish community after the Revolution, the Civil War, and the world wars – there is certainly a reason for the zionists to hope that mass conscription into regular army units will enable a preservation of the zionist majority.

Lapid thinks many ex-hareidim will, like his family, become hiloni. Bennett believes they will end up as “religious zionists”. The army thinks this is a recipe for disaster and will try to isolate hareidi soldiers in special units – noting that unlike the siutations in America above, if the leading Bnei Torah are drafted they will influence the other soldiers, hareidi and dati, leading to widespread disobedience of orders in the army and undermining the army. An added complication is some hareidi who hold that Medinat Yisrael exists contrary to Torah (meaning the Israelis are the “Rodef”, and therefore have no right to kill the Arabs) will refuse to serve in the army, and force the Israelis to arrest them (triggering possible international sanctions) or in effect allow anyone to refuse military service for reasons of “religion and conscience” (giving Israel a volunteer army, similar to most other countries in the 21st century).

It will be “Interesting” – as in the famous curse, “may you live in interesting times.”

Israel is very liberal in recognizing “de facto” marriages (and unlike western legal systems, Jewish law gives children of unmarried parents full rights in terms of inheritance, support, etc.). It is wishful thinking that this promotes national unity. If the government mandated “religious” ceremonies are valid (that’s a point of debate), it increases the liklihood of mamzerim. It is important psychologically to the Religious Zionists who want a facade of Israel being a “Jewish” state, but is less to the hareidi who see through that “facade.”

I assume he only became hard of hearing later in life. Is he visually impaired as well? I doubt he would mind if someone told him he was too loud, or was unaware it was Shmoneh Esray.

Remember, that unless you die first, most people end up with limited hearing and/or vision.

GEICO (which is one of the major insurance companies) doesn’t penalize you if the kid is away from home (e.g. in Israel). Indeed, one trick we learned was to have the kids get their licenses just before going to Israel. During the first year they would be listed on the insurance but only as a student away at school. When they came home, they would have a year of accident-free driving on their driving.

Of course, unless you live in a rural area, one might ask why a child nears a drivers license in the first place. It’s something of a luxury.

You have one “beshert” and that’s the one you got married to.

Health: When offered a choice between leaving Spain or taking up Avodah Zarah, left. They gave up all their property and undertook long sea voyages to places where Jews were allowed to live (in ships that would be quite uncomfortable by modern standards).

Those who remained became the “marranos.” They made a decision to publicly accept Christianity so they could keep their property. Many of them were persecuted anyways, but remember, especially if talking about the early 16th century, they were ones who decided to stay when they had a choice.

If Columbus were really a Jew, he would have been working for anyone except Spain. At that time, skilled sea captains were in demand in many countries. He chose to stay in Spain. If he was a “marrano”, he would have married a Jew. The underground Jews were very fussy about that (which is why they get annoyed when their yichus is question after 500 years of underground marriages).

And given his willingness to engage in kidnapping people to sell as slavery and ethnic cleansing, we really wouldn’t want to claim him.

Think of all the things that could happen in the near future: global warming, ice age, civil war in Israel, Israeli wars with goyim, everything that Republican trolls say about Obama come true, the stock market crashes, hypeinflation, Meshiach comes and announces that he wants to talk to all the tsadikim and your phone doesn’t ring, etc.

And remember the goyish expression: That to say “may you live in interesting times” is actually a curse

So enjoy being bored.