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If the person who posted the question is becoming a Baal Tsuvah – there is no issue. No one will challenge that he is Jewish, and even if the did it would be very easy to have a conversion (since conversion of someone who is already frum and discovers they might not be Jewish is extremely uncomplicated).
If the case came before Beis Din in a situation where the woman has a child from the non-Jewish second husband, and that child wanted to become a Baal Tsuvah – most Betei Din (in practice) would be super-critical in looking at the validity of the first marriage and the validity of the conversion in order to avoid ruling that the hypothetical child of the second marriage is a mamzer. Excluding politicized Betei Din in Eretz Yisrael, our courts and rabbanim have always displayed great intelligence and “thinking like a lawyer” to resolve such problems (based on actual cases in printed shailohs and tsuvahs, not based on theoretical treatises).
If the woman had a valid conversion, followed by a valid halachic marriage to a Jew, and subsequently bore a child to a non-Jewish male without have received a “get”, that child would arugably be a “mamzer”. In practice, if the putative mamzer (or his/her descendant)then became a Baal Tseuvah, a Beis Din would look at the validity of the mother’s initial marriage, and the validity of the conversion – since Beitei Din “bend over backwards” to avoid deciding that someone is a mamzer.
Those who said that the status of the non-Jewish father is irrelevant were addressing a situation where the mother is an unmarried Jews whereas in the “question” here she is said to be a woman married according to halacha.
There is overwhelming evidence that the safest and best way to lose weight involves eating less and exercising more.
1. The Rishonim obviously thought they themselves were Achronim. Rashi and Rambam thought they were utterly contemporary, modern authors .
2. There is no strict rule. As with all historical classifications, it is subjective.
3. A border of around 1500 seems logical. Before you had a big kehillah and Spain, and afterwards Sefardim were those who had left Spain. Among the Christians, this was the end of the medieval period and the start of the modern period (rise of nation states, Preotestants, etc.). Among the Muslims this was the period where the Turks (rather than the Arabs) rules the Middle East. It was the period in which printing became widespread – and that was a major technological change that affected us more than most, since most goyim were illiterate.
4. Over time such definitions would likely change. If you wait long enough, we’ll probably be considered Rishonim. Playing with the dates that periods began and ended in history is something historians love to do, especially with sufficently strong beverages to encourage discussion (meaning it is about convenience, not substance). I would argue that the period of the 1940s is a major “watershed” in Jewish history, and everything before 1940 is the “past”, and post 1950 is the “present” – and maybe in a few centuries people will see it that way.
KovodHabriyos: Kippas only became popular recently. Before that people tended to wear hats more. One should note that until recently, goyim (particularly scholars) would wear a skullcap. In a pre-modern environment when many goyim wore skullcaps, and most goyim wore hats – the kippah didn’t stand out.
If the conversion was valid, it is always valid. All the children of the woman (subsequent to the conversion) are Jewish. The children of the non-Jewish second husband are Jewish but are also probably mamzerim.
It’s a matter of fashion, not halacha. As with all fashions, there is a tremendous sociological and sometimes political issue. However there is no halachic significance – regardless of style or fabric – they all meet the requirements for men to cover their heads.
It’s a clever legal strategy. For political reasons, none of the frum schools will let him in (or rather, will let his kids in). So he is making legal mischief for them. It seems that the American style of using litigation as “warfare by other means” is spreading to Europe.
It isn’t clear why he doesn’t want to send his children to the Satmar schools (perhaps he has higher academic standards), or why he doesn’t home school. However this suggests the law suits are a deliberate nuisance against the non-zionist and pro-zionists, and is probably retaliation for their (arguably justifiable, and certainly predictable) harassment of him.
I’m surprised the schools didn’t try to have him summoned by the Satmar Beis Din, which he would have trouble ignoring. Of course, that would also be politically incorrect, especially for the zionist schools he’s been suing.
Of course you need to return. Even goyim don’t hold by theft. Can you find one gadol who when asked such a question ever approved of shoplifting. And that’s without getting into the question of creating a Kiddush ha-Shem be Rabim.
In most western countries, middle-class men typically do not marry until they are able to support a family, whereas women married when they were able to start raising a family, leading to a substantial age gap, since men traditionally had to complete things such as apprenticeships, college, building a career, fighting wars – before they go married.
Of course, disreputable teenagers always were, well, you know (we can’t discuss it here) -and they were disreputable with people their own age.
Increasing, women have been delaying marriage in order to enter careers, leading to many women being upset once they hear their “biological clock ticking.”
In all fairness, women seem to be emotionally ready for parenting a lot soon than men.
I suspect the norm in the frum community will gradually be for men to marry in their late 20s or early 30s, and women to marry in their mid 20s. Remember that unless they are “1%” types, women as well as men need time to finish college and have a career so they can support a family in a middle class manner (including paying tuition).
Isn’t the best answer to not use a telephone (which, after all, can connect with anyone in the world, no matter how much you would rather not talk to them), and rely on sending letters (or even better, walking over a talking to people). People got around reasonably well for years without using electronic communications. It can be said with certainty, that neither the Vilna Gaon nor the Baal Shem Tov ever used a telephone or any other device capable of being connected to the internet.
P.S. Frankly, if you’ve done such a bad job of parenting that you can’t trust your kid to talk to anyone without your supervision, you probably have totally blown it as a parent.
If you have the grades and scores to go to NYU or Columbia, they are better schools than Touro. If you can get into a public university (e.g.CUNY or SUNY for a New Yorkers), the in-state tuition is much cheaper. Some people lack the grades to get into a public university, and they’ll find Touro is an option. Some people find a co-ed non-Jewish environment to be too intimidating if not hostile, and Touro is an answer.
Touro is a broad range of schools. Some are better than others. It is typically more friendly to frum Yidden than any American university (excluding parts of Yeshiva University, and not considering online-only schools). It is more expensive than public universities (CUNY, Maryland, Rutgers, etc.), but usually cheaper than the high quality private schools (such as Columbia, John Hopkins, etc.). Touro is NOT famous for high academic standards (which is good if your transcript is not known for high academic standards, but that means the degree is less prestigious than one from a school with a better reputation for academics).
Perhaps they should throw rocks – big ones, ones that can cause real damage. The Arabs tend to prefer things that go “boom” – which is what the zionists used when they wanted to protest (note – they didn’t throw diapers at the King David Hotel).
Perhaps it might be better to have totally orderly, peaceful civil disobedience. Such were used by African Americans in the United States and worked out well (albeit the vast majority of states had already banned racial discrimination and regarded the southerns as jerks for their racial policies). Also the American legal system
was open to civil rights suits, whereas the Israeli legal system is controlled by a self-perpetuating system that reflects the viciously anti-religious elites who dominated Israel in the 1950s.
Given that in that part of the world, protests tend to involve a lot more than tossing diapers, we shouldn’t complain. The real issue is that the rulers of Eretz Yisrael want to surpress Torah Judaism no less than the “Hellenists” did, but that the Hareidim don’t want to rely on a miracle and take up armed resistance (you can find a full halachic discussion of why not in the original Satmarer’s seferim).
hershi: That refers only to the Income tax (what you file the 1040 form for, with joint returns, graduate rates, deductions). They also raised the “Payroll tax” from 4.2% to 6.2%, which is on all earned income up to roughly $105,000, per person (double that limit if both spouses earn the maximum or better). While only about the top 10% will be affected by the increase in the income tax, 75% pay payroll tax (the rest are unemployed or living off savings or welfare or charity), so for 2/3 of the country what matters is the increase in the payroll tax.
You probably should seek assistance from a lawyer (or at least a social worker) who does this for a living.
What is considered “modest” varies by culture. In some cultures we frequently encounter, a woman who leaves her face uncovered is considered to be serious undressed. In mainstream secular American culture, certain parts of the body are required to be covered, even though in other cultures (and even in American culture in certain circumstances, such as at a beach) they are uncovered. There are often amusing (or tragic, or at least pathetic) stories of American tourists visiting other countries who believe they are acting normally and are mistaken for prostitutes based on that countries’ culture. What is considered acceptable varies considerably between cultures – what is hard for a BT to accept at first is that frum culture is NOT part of western culture – we are cultural aliens here.
In our culture (meaning traditional Jewish culture), the hair of a married woman, and the singing of woman, are considered to be immodest. In American culture, even erotic singing is allowed (though women are expected to wear a ring to warn others that she is not available). If you have trouble explaining this to someone, ask the person who has trouble how they would explain why American women are expected to wear shirts in public if they were talking to someone from a culture where women can be considered to be modestly dressed without wearing a shirt. There are such cultures, and they think that Americans are weird for being so strict about wearing shirts in public.
anon1m0us: Actually, they cancelled the raise for Congress, and will probably cancel raises for the civil service (which is a leading employer of Orthodox Jews). The spending parts of the “fiscal cliff” were postponed for a few weeks, so they are still “up in the air”.
All they decided was on a broad tax increase including and probably most burdensome on anyone who is working for wages (or self-employed), earning less than $105K (per person, double that if both spouses have similar incomes – no discount for families under payroll tax). The “rich” will pay more money, but the middle class have the worst percentage changes to disposable income.
1. Taxes will go up, probably on everyone not just the superrich.
2. Government spending will decline, especially on programs we like.
3. If the deficit isn’t addresses, it could lead eventually to a high inflation. At the current rate of printing almost half the federal budget, hyperinflation similar to German in the 1920s, or Eretz Yisrael 30 years ago, isn’t inconceivable.
Arguably not Avodah Zarah since it was created recently without any claim of religious significance (making it a secular holiday similar to the classic “king’s birthday” or “Independence Day” or “Columbus Day” or “Veterans’ Day/Armistice Day/Remembrance Day”).
1. In America, they aren’t. The fanciest American Jews are Sefardi (cf. Shearith Israel in Manhattan).
2. In Israel, only some Sefardim are discriminated against. The people who rule Israel are secular Europeans who want Israel to be a secular version of a modern west European country (non-ethnic, non-Jewish, with “freedom from religion”). Even Sefardim who aren’t super-frum are still very Jewish, and thus are quite undesirable from a zionist perspective. Some Sefardim who have managed to give up (or appear to give up) all trace of Jewishness can make it into the Israeli elite.
3. Among frum communities, the differences are rapidly shrinking as strict Torah observance “trumps” ethnicity. Various religious practices and accents get mashed up, and many Sefardim end up learning in Ashkenazi yeshivos, and the Sefardi yeshivos have rebuilt themselves on Ashkenazi models. Based on current trends, while the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenzi may stay distinct (for linguistic reasons), strictly frum, Hebrew-phonic Ashkenzai and Sefardim are increasingly becoming indistinguishable except by nusach.
Weird question. Unless you were in occupied Europe during World War II, there haven’t been “tough times” in modern times. Even in 1648 or the Crusades, the “tough times” only lasted a few weeks. Today the world is universally more peaceful, prosperous and healthy than anytime in human history – especially for Yidden, but also for goyim.
If you run into frum Jews born between 1940 and 1945, you have your answer. Even in Mitsrayim people still had children – there’s an agada saying that we were saved in the zechus of the wives who didn’t let tought times bother them.
Read about how Yidden lived 100 years ago, and you’ll feel like a millionaire.
Imagine the kashruth issues when milk was sold by “quality” depending on how much, and with what, it was dilluted?
Imagine having to rely on checking ingredients, and generally not being able to buy any processed foods.
Imagine housing when most families used sheets instead of walls, and people often had to take in boarders.
Don’t even ask what it was like when the standard work week was 54 hours, including a Saturdays, and religious discrimination was considered public policy rather than something you could sue over.
Consider what is what like when on finding out she was pregnant, a woman knew there was only a 50% chance the child would make it to adulthood – and a good chance she wouldn’t live that long, and even survive childbirth.
Then stop whining.
If your scanner is operating illegally, shut up and stop scanning before you get arrested.
If her phone is operating on the wrong frequency (which is the only way you could be legally getting her conversations), tell her since her phone is broken (and she could get in trouble for it).
In almost all cities it is required to have dogs on a leash or fenced in. The city government should enforce this law. Responsible pet owners don’t let dogs go wandering on their own. If a person is in control of the dog, and the dog is allowed to threaten someone, the person is criminally and civilly liable.
Ashkenazim name only for dead people. The “logic” is that the Angel of Death might get confused and get the baby instead of the namesake.
Sefardim has a different custom.
Of course, since we typically give multiple personal names, it would be easy to get around the prohibition – which is just a local minhag.
They already have such restrictions for welfare programs aimed at able-bodied adults. Most of the welfare programs are aimed at people who are disabled, elderly or too young to work – such as Social Security, disability, WIC, food stamps, medicaid. Needless to say, the frum community benefits greatly from welfare spending, and as we tend to be in the “47%” who don’t pay income taxes rather than the “1%” who pay most of the income tax – it is a good deal for our community.
The early bibliographies of sefarim in the 17th century clearly showed that many people had double forenames (personal names, as opposed to surnames or nicknames). Albeit this was limited to authors of sefarim, who by definition are more “hashuv” than the average yid. Interesting, at that time the custom of Ashkenazim was to use the second of the two names as what one usually called the person (“Shmuel David” know to his friends as David). The discussions of writing a “get” (the only time it is really important to get the names right) also so that double personal names are not a new invention.
It started becoming popular a few centuries ago when, Baruch ha-Shem, population started to rise (largely because more babies surived into adulthood, and fewer women died in childbirth). If everyone had only a single name, it would get awfully confusing.
oomis: Miami will get Havana’s weather – no problemo.
But didn’t Al Gore PROMISE that New York was going to start getting Miami’s weather?????
Ask their grandchildren. They’ll have benefit of hindsight.
If people waited until they were “ready” the human race would have gone extinct a long time ago.
Most frum schools have a half day since they hire goyim for the secular subjects, and the goyim get the day off since it is there religious holiday. Schools that don’t hire non-Jewish teachers, can have a full day. Lots of frum people shop on Dec. 25 – the stores are empty since the goyim don’t shop on Dec. 25, and their stores are closed. We pretty much have the world to ourselves since the goyim observe the day with family, not shopping or sight seeing.
tO: MDD: “Where do you suggest the Chareidim get parnosah, for crying out loud?”
1. Employment as teachers and support personnel in Israel’s world famous yeshiovos. Jerusalem and Bnei Brak (and other places) are to yeshivos, what Oxford and Cambridge are to England, or what Cambridge, Mass., Morningside Heights in Manhattan, or Hyde Park in Chicago, etc., are to universities. Would you ask why so many people in Oxford are “unemployed” because they are sitting around in scholarly pursuits.
2. Selling things to, and making goods and services for other Hareidim. Many people whom the Israeli government regards as full time students are gainfully employed, but are evading taxes (and also evading military service), but that’s a different issue (on professional versus conscript armies).
3. Working for goyim (or frei Jews). This is relatively hard in Israel since most good jobs require one to be a veteran of the army – something not a factor in other countries since in almost all countries the military is professional rather than conscripted. If you apply international trade theory to intercommunal economics, the relatively low percentage of frum Jews working for (or selling things to) goyim is the cause of relative poverty.
I believe that the jobs in question involved working for the “zionist” economy. Jobs such as working for international companies in technological areas, rather than jobs within the frum community (such as retailing, teaching, service base industries, manufacture of items retailed only in the frum community, etc.).
Thus what they were protesting was participating in the zionist economy. If one assumes that the current issues are actually a classic version of a “kulturkampf” (culture wars in which one culture will survive and the other will be forced underground or exteriminated), then such protests are reasonable. The issue is not how one will earn a parnassah, but rather whether Israel will be a Jewish state (based on Torah) or a secular state (based on western secular values). By this standard, working for the western secularists is as much a collaborator, as someone who, as an example, willing worked for the Nazis’ economy, was a collaborator.
The the Israeli have created a situation in which a large part of its population sees the “mainstream” as a mortal enemy is a serious problem, which is not addressed, dooms the Yishuv.
Some colleges provide them (meaning the tuition covers them). This is more common with programs that require specialized software that would be too expensive for most students.
Given the cost of a laptop is only a few hundred dollars, at most, especially if all you need is web access and word processing, it isn’t a big deal. There are often computers available for free on campus in the library.
All it would take would be for the Arabs to seriously start talking about peace, and they would gets all sorts of concessions. Then as now, the Arabs have shown little interest, which in part is why many Israelis can make peace offers that they know won’t be accepted. It’s like a chess game that goes on when they should agree to a draw but don’t, and there is no tournament director to tell them to stop.
What about the Great-Grandchildren of someone whose mother had been divorced?
At a certain point there is an hazakah of validity of documents.
For immediate concerns, one should ask one’s personal posek about any possible shailoh’s involving a specific “get”. Indeed, this should be asked of the shadchan before things get so complicated.
Rebdoniel: It is a new “invention” to specify which Beis Din will litigate a matter that hasn’t yet to arise, now knowing the conditions under which it will arise. As it is, the kesubah (together with the body of halacha) creates a duty to go to a “Beis Din” when ending the marriage. The RCA addenda is new (though a few others have tried it, including some non-Orthodox), as part of an effort to make it easier to get the assistance of the American courts to help when one party (usually the husband) doesn’t want to give a “get” (either because he is illegally shaking down the wife’s family for money, or because he doesn’t want a divorce). If the parties were “modern Orthodox” (or whatever) when they married, still are when the divorce, and haven’t moved to a different country – there isn’t a problem — but if one party has changed lifestyle, or has moved, there is a problem and the RCA method won’t help.
A better solution to the matter might be for the community to adopt a policy by which the wife stipulates which Beis Din she wants (since she is the one who can’t remarry with a “get” and whose children will be mamzer if she does), and perhaps offers to pay the legal fees of the party whose spouse if refusing to go to Beis Din.
Most parents (as opposed to non-parents), of all races, religions and cultures, will smile and note that children all seem to have been created from the same mold (or if they are secular, evolved from the same monkey). Children are like that. They always have been. They always will be. It isn’t really something to be worried about. It would be nice if children were perfect minature adults, but if Ha-Shem want things to be like that, he would have have created ??? as a reptile, since reptiles when hatched from the egg are fully formed and fully programmed with all the midos they will ever need. That fact that children need to grow up, even if it is a bit messy, appears to be by design, and who are we the question the Designer.
There are many problems with any organization’s attempts to invent a new halacha. Perhaps a better agreement might be to agree that in event of divorce, the wife picks the Beis Din, since she is the one with problems if there is no “get”.
In some countries there is an generally recognized Beis Din, sometimes with official status, but there are usually multiple subgroups and if one of the factors in the divorce is religion, that is likely to be a problem. One doesn’t know in advance what country one will be living in ten or twenty years in the future, or what that country’s policies will be. In the USA, policies have varied between total respect for a Beis Din in settling matters of divorce between Jews, to making it a crime to go to a Beis Din for a “get” unless you already had a divorce from the government.
Of course the solution would be for people getting divorced to act rationally and not trying to rip off each other, but that verges on relying on a ??.
If you check the Library of Congress catalogs (catalog.loc.gov), and look under “authorities” you’ll find records for most of his works and “name authority” records explaining his use of various pseduonyms for this English, Hebrew and Yiddish works.
There is a summary at the Amazon website (the summary is free, they will gladly sell you the book). It might be harder to find the Hebrew original in the USA.
Cliff notes or Spark notes only exist for “classics” that have been adopted as required reading in a large number of schools, not new popular literature. If the book is widely read in a generation of so, you’ll find published summaries. The only secondary sources for current popular novels are book reviews.
If you combine the title, the author’s names (he uses a pseudonym), and the words “book review” you’ll find reviews about the book.
Sports are like that. The Jets will probably trade or otherwise get rid of him. He probably would be better off in a market that has a higher percentage of religious people (note that except for frum Jews, New York is perhaps the most anti-religious place in America).
It’s a new product. The “house brands” only just started. I would expect it to be out as Halav Yisrael very soon.
What we call “semicha” is just a courtesy. Real “semicha” hasn’t existed for almost 2000 years.
Assuming a Ger is already literate in Hebrew when he convert, it should probably take a few years in a Baal Tsuvah yeshiva to get up to the level of the typical FFB 18 years old coming out of a yeshiva high school.
A “22” is primarily for shooting small animals or target shooting. It isn’t the sort of weapon you would use to shoot people. For example, it’s the largest rifle allowed in Boy Scout camps. Do you really understand rifles?
Giving a gun to someone who is untrained is suicidal. Shooting a gun, especially at a moving target who is shooting at you, is not
a game. Are you confusing reality with a video game? Remember that in the real world, there is no reset button to give you additional lives.
Note that our rabbanim have for many centuries have insisted on learning Torah rather than focusing on vocational skills (note that shooting terrorists qualifies as a vocational skill). If we need armed guards (and at this point, no American Jewish school has ever been attacked), we have a variety of methods to address the matter. Note that the mass shooting attacks against schools in the US have all come from people with some connection to the school, suggesting that we need to defend against someone who is going radically off derekh.
Decide what you want to do for a living, or like doing in general. What do you do with your spare time. What do you do in free time? Then find a job that matches your interests.
If the answer is learning, so be it. Do you dread “Bein ha-Zmanim”? Is not learning the hardest part of Tisha B’Av? Does the partying on Purim bore you? Are you sad when they announce a kiddush in shul since it cuts into learning time. Then you should plan on kollel, and becoming a teacher of limudei kodesh.
Otherwise, decide what you like? Anyone who enters a career just because they think its a good source of income will be miserable at first, and feel like an idiot years later when the good idea from thirty years ago isn’t so good as the economy changes.
Note the many anti-Satmar comments above. And this is among orthodox Jews. What does this tell you about the jury pool? Why wasn’t the case moved to a more neutral location?
Doesn’t this immediately suggest a breach of the basic rules of due process and fair trials? And that’s without entering is discussion of lack of corraborating evidence or possible denial of the defense to present evidence that would contradict the state’s case.