Always_Ask_Questions

DaMoshe,
this generation seem to accept that everything is easy and what is not easy “is too hard” and not worth pursuing. It does not mean that they need to struggle thru complicated arguments that they don’t understand, but it does mean that they need to be presented with intellectual challenges at their level.

somejew,
I am not 100% sure that you are right about Gedolim required to prove everything they write. They typically do, but when application is to something that did not exist during Sh’A times, as it often is, that proof also refers to modern facts and also to often intuitive considerations. But, more generally, we are commanded to listen to judges of our generations. And there are circumstances (some listen in Gemora) where a psak can be given on purpose without a reason, at least temporarily. The weight of such pronouncement would depend on speaker’s reputation. So, if R Moshe says something without fully explaining his reasoning, you would weight the fact that majority of his psak is accepted by the community and take it into consideration.

I am also not sure how this relates to the debate here: most poskim in our times indeed explain their reasoning, whether they are pro- or anti-zionist. For example, R Soloveitchik explains his approach in the following way (my paraphrase): we are claiming that we inherited Hashem’s Torah and have unique insights in how world is run and how Jews and other people should behave. Therefore, we should address issues raised by changes of the society with our Torah knowledge instead of “hiding in the caves” (his expression).

This explanation convinces me. It also, in my mind, leaves space for others to say that their priority is not to engage with the world, but to preserve their Torah. Maybe it does not convince you, it is fine. I would be interested what fault you find in this argument.

Dr Pepper,
I am just pointing out that in the history of the world, nobody solved the problem of having quality brokers.
Policing and code of ethics is a good idea, but, again historically, will lead to just creating barrier to new entrants.

How about a review board where customers can leave reviews of shadchanim behavior – this works on amazon.
Another idea would be for everyone, including those who are looking for themselves or their family to also keep in mind others.

But as I mentioned regarding travel agents – the problem was solved by technology, where now everyone can buy their own ticket.
Similarly, a lot of financial middlemen were eliminated by muutal funds, index funds, robinhoods, etc.
Some sort of automatic information sharing should work in our community.

Rocky, you have good points. On haskala, I am not sure you are right. Despite the efforts of some communities to isolate themselves from the modern world, intellectual stimulation is still available. It is arguably less dangerous – sciences continue to improve. And that is how science generally works by accumulating knowledge and fixing mistakes – except at major civilizational breakdowns, like dark/middle ages when Europe lost all Greek/Roman science.

So, there is less danger from secular philosophies, but (less dangerous) stimulation via engineering, computers, medicine is still available. While someone becoming a doctor can still be a talmid chochom, not like in 19th century – a secularly educated person still needs to be taught Torah at the level of the increased intellectual potential. I can compare – I have gemora classes both with a very traditional rav and with a group of highly educated professionals, and while halakha is undoubtedly clearer in the traditional class, understanding of Gemora’s historical/philosophical/science is better in the second. The Rav of the first class would be able to participate in the 2nd class discussion, but not the students .

SQRT> Jews who are not Sephardic totally ignore Sephardic Rabbis.

in fact, my local Ashkenazi Rav relied on R Ovadia Yosef’s psak (and sent a shaliach to confirm details of the psak in person). OK, he could not find any ashkenazi posek that would address the problem. Part of the reason was that R Ovadia’s psak recognized authority of Israeli rabanut over marriages in Israel … As part of that story, as part of the shlichut, rav sent an obscure quote from a rishon who seems to support R Ovadia’s psak, to which R Ovadia smiled and confirmed that he saw that rishon.

Dr Pepper > How about making Shadchanus into a profession?

Shadchanus is a type of a broker. I don’t think society has great standards for any kind of brokers – RE, finance, etc. In each of these professions, barriers to entry are low, and most of brokers are low on expertise and high on misinformation… I think what works – opening markets, being able to evaluate professionals, and to open up information.

For example, travel agents used to be hoshuve people who could magically find that needed connection. Most people now are fine using automatic brokers. Turns out any normal person could do same magic. Maybe all former travel agents went into shadchanus.

There are online shidduch databases but it seems that most people do not use them. Otherwise, shadchanim horde information and use it to maximize their profit. I listened recently about one forward-looking shadchan – he was bragging how they introduced computer sticky notes and how he is teaching shadchanim that 20th century technology. So, somehow information from eligible singles should flow into a central database that other singles or their shluchim should be able to search.

I meant seminaries/yeshivos

An interesting idea, but to use a word of yester-year, this will be “inequitable” – only rich girls will marry early. Also, punishments rarely work. How about paying (kollel, for example) to yeshiva bochrim who marry older girls? I am hesitant to suggest for them to marry earlier, because most not ready for real life at the age they marry now.

Another consideration – maybe definition of the “community” is part of the problem? Do people prefer t marry within the same chasidut or “yeshiva velt”. How about going out a little bit – looking at girls who did not hit important seminaries, but might be coming from ehrliche observant families?

Bachur,
this is part of the discussion. Shutaf works for democracies and he is not sure as you are whether holding citizenship is enough. I am not sure why.
Say, you and I open a partnership and there is a clause that one can leave the partnership and stop paying his part of the mortgage. Then, if I choose to move to another country but not formally leave the partnership, I would be obligated to pay. Same with marriage – can you leave without a get and let her figure it out that you are not interested any more?

BUT, he also has a 2nd part about power of government that applies to kings and dictators – that we lived under for centuries. Then, the fact of international treaties that US can use to get you or you bank account matter also.

Daas,
there are several points in the lecture:
1) idea that you are a shutaf in the country and this clearly applies to those who actively participate – go back to the country, file taxes when they can get child credit. He is less sure if you left forever or even a citizen who was born in another country. He asked R Schachter and he was not sure, and he says some other anonymous rav thinks that this binds. I personally think that any conscious person who is aware of the laws can make an effort and denounce his citizenship if he really wants to.
2) one reason for dina d’malchuta is that government has a legitimate power over us, not necessarily democratic (see sources below). He quote a case of a Canadian court recognizing extradition request of the US citizen who owned just 8 mln dollars in US taxes. US can also fine bank accounts via international treaties. So, they definitely have that power and you should submit instead of waiting for Musk to uncover your account. By this theory, there seems to be a limit: if you move forever to North Korea outside of US treaties, you don’t have to pay US tax forms
3) in the last 5 minutes, he addresses the accountant problem. He seems to suggest that you at least owe your client an explanation and encouragement to file the forms and pay if anything is due.

here is from PDF attached to that lecture:
Responsa of the Geonim (Asaf) #66 (Less extreme in Ramban and others) ונתויווג לעו’ :בותככ ,לארשי וליפאו ,םנוצרכ וב טולשל םדא ינב ןוממ לע ןטילשה ךכ ,ומלועב תויוכלמה תא ה”בקה ‘םנוצרכ ונתמהבבו םילשומ טילשה רשאכ יכ When G-d gave power to the kings in the world, he gave them control of people’s money, to control them as they will, even those of the Jews, as it says “over our bodies and our beasts as they please.”

10. Rabbi Shimon b. Aderet (Rashba), Nedarim 28a איה ולש ץראהש םכתא שרגא יתוצמ ושעת אל םא והל רמא יצמד םושמ Because he can say “if you don’t follow my commands, I will expel you”, for the land is his.

as we discussed in another thread, look at long-term effects. Are graduates of this school ehrliche menchen who treat others with kavod? Can they apply their learning to figuring out how to properly work and honestly pay taxes? If yes, this is the right derech (for these students).

My explanation why SS is not a Ponzi:
SS is (1) a tax and (2) payments to elderly.

Both are structured in certain way to make it attractive to the voters. For example, SS pays non-poor so that voters do not revolt. Despite that, Congress/President can vote new formulas for SS or eliminate it completely at any time. There is no lockbox, don’t believe Al Gore.

You seem to be confused only because you typically pay this tax when you are young and get returns when you are old. Similarly, you pay medical insurance when you are healthy (and typically young), and get money back when you are sick (and typically old). So Ponzi is in your head and maybe you can blame politicians and newspapers for confusing you.

Your real concern is the “shortfall” – that SS is “losing money”. Something will need to happen due to, B’H, people living longer and, unfortunately, people having less children. It will be up to the voters to decide – increase age, reduce benefits, etc. Like everything else in a democratic country.

HaKatan > The “Religious Zionists” have also hurt the chareidim and other Torah Jews in multiple ways,

I am sure there were arguments going both ways. Would you agree that they are primarily responsible for Israel having government paying for religious education; religious marriages; observing shabbat; having official kashrus; official rabanut? You may consider many of these below your standards, but do you see value that these are provided to several million Jews? Picture yourself Israel that is fully secular, shabbat as work day, secular marriages w/ resulting mamzerim, etc – would you prefer that?

Chaim > you always need to look at how religious and toradik a sect is after they introduce a controversial idea.

exactly. This is commented on Pirkei Avos – difference between talmidei Avraham and bilaam. Bilaam himself might look respectable, but his students give it away. Same for machlokes l’shem shemayim. I heard a similar notion from R Steinsaltz many years ago: that we may only understand events after some time. Gemora gives reasons for destruction of Beis Hamikdash centuries later. My own: R Yochanan b Zakkai was not sure till the end of his days whether he was right when talking to Vespasian or could have asked for me.

Taking such long view on the groups of interest (in addition to your observations on Conservatives etc)
1) modern O definitely have problems with retention, a lot of less educated move towards less observance, less focus on family
2) charedim have problems with relating to the world. They seem to be losing immunity to real life and have to stay masked and 4ft away from the world
Somehow, we need to find a derech retaining the best from both approaches. It is possible as
3) early response of Jewish communities to reform/assimilation/communism was inadequate. By now, we have some institutions that strengthen those who are observant and even teach those who are not. But, early responses did not work well. We tend to blame those eform/assimilation/communism proponents, but the reaction was not good enough. I am not blaming those generations – they were against totally new events and tried to save what is possible. Improved response started probably w/ R Hirsch (Germans encountered modernity earlier), R Salanter, maybe even Mendelssohn.

So, understanding this dynamics gives us hope that we can do even better (opposite opinion that our position is “always correct” and unchanging leads to pessimism).

Bachur, Ponzi scheme can maintain the illusion of a sustainable business as long as investors continue to contribute new funds, and as long as most of the investors do not demand full repayment or lose faith in the non-existent assets they are purported to own.

The key here is the fraud. Social Security rules are not hidden. It is true that various politicians and media use misleading descriptions that creates the wrong impression and can be seen as Ponzi. It is a feature of free speech in US that it is up to consumer/voter to figure out who is right. It is definitely not how a Jew should talk.

yankel, an interesting idea that Satmar Rebbe might have exaggerated his position in order to keep his chasidim out of trouble. This jibes Chazon Ish description of communities he was creating as “midbar” to hide from the dangerous environment. Surely, Chazon Ish (and Rambam he is quoting) does not consider midbar an ideal society, but just a temporary reprieve from danger. But what do you do if your midbar is physically collocated with the dangerous environment for years and decades? This is something Rambam did not envision. Certainly, you will need to install significant gedorim to protect the community from the danger.

yankel > It is well established fact that in Europe and the ME before the medina ,the Zionists were a substantial force for abandonment of yiddishkeit
Likewise after the medina

I did not study this, but my impressions from reading about that time that it was, at worst, one of several forces, and, at best, the only one of options available to those who did not want to be observant that lead to some Jewish future: Jews were becoming non-religious for various social and cultural reasons – looking for respectful life, attractiveness of general culture, lack of serious Jewish education, etc.

R Soloveichik quotes Rambam on how to evaluate political figures and movements. This approach is applicable to many issues we discuss here. In this case – were it not secular zionism, what would those Yidden do? They would not likely go to a yeshiva, but they would become bundists, cultural Jews, socialists, communists – with worse outcomes for them and their children.

There were specific cases of Zionist-led effects on children, for example when orphans were arriving at the end of WW2 (such as Polish Jews who survived exile in USSR and left it via Iran and polish anders Army) – many were taken to anti-religious kibbutzim even when they were from observant families. But while this was tragic, it was not a general trend.

As to religious zionists, the quote above from R Soloveitchik is from his speech in 1950s as applied to Mizrahi – he considers how much Mafdal was able to achieve in terms of marriage, shabbat, kashrut in Israel despite their small numbers in politics comparing with anti-religious Zionists.

Out of curiosity, those who mentioned Ponzi scheme – is this your own idea, and if not, where did you read this?

It seems that Milton Friedman mentioned this in a 1999 article (once in a NYT headline, that might not be his, and once “opponents call it a ponzi scheme”) – so more like a rhetorical device, and there are several articles in 2024 claiming it again and referring to Milton Friedman. The accusation is relevant so far as it refers to popular misconception that it is a pension plan and Algore’s “lockbox”. As a real thing, it is a program that pays elderly poor and collects a tax. Both payments and tax are structured in a way that middle class gets something, so they are not protesting this as a program for poor people the way medicaid is. I myself is for limited, especially federal, government, as I posted before. Here we are talking simply that a democracy has a way to determine laws and you either agree to the whole system or denounce your citizenship and move to another place. As I also mentioned, ideally there will be very limited federal government, and then you can simply move from Illinois to Indiana to get different social policies. As I think most here would agree, if they think soberly for a minute, that US is generally good to the population, Jews included. R Moshe Feinstein and numerous others hold same opinion. R Feinstein had what to compare with – he lived in Czarist and then Soviet Russia before coming to US.

AAQ> “This is something that will be paid back with reasonable assurance.”
Neville > No, THIS is silly. If you only got back exactly what you paid in, it wouldn’t be enough for anyone to live on rendering SS useles

SS does not have to be a ponzi scheme – one generation pays, another receives. Payout can be compatible (on average) with what the other generation paid in. Ponzi scheme presumes that payouts in early phases are way above normal and can be only paid by sucking more suckers in. The main problem SS might be low on funds right now is that, B’H people live longer and thus receive SS for longer time than previous generation. This is not true any more, unfortunately, lately with several years same or even lower life expectancy. The next problem is that people are not having enough children.

I hope you do it very carefully. I tried going on a sidewalk when roads are bad but my minivan gets stuck at turns.

Gemora allows walking on the private property along the road during the mud season and even looks down
at a person who jumps over potholes for being “holier than thou”

JR87, thanx for the idea!

Chaim on Biden, I generally agree. I don’t think Biden was naive – his only experience is politics and he understands what is happening politically. He was (1) politics first – it is reported that he was always sympathetic to Israel, but would do what he had to do to placate various factions he depended on. Other politicians do that too, but he seems to be very good at that. (2) he, and his team, were limited by their presumptions and lack of leadership experience. They never tried to actively manage problems and conflicts, always following administrative rules, always afraid of something happening that will blame them. Basically, he/they were way over their heads.

somejew > There are a ton of sefraim pro zionsim some written by previous anti zionsts” – If any of these were written by undisputed Gedolai Torah, please let us know.

I brought before the example: R Soloveitchik and did not see your answer. There are many who disagreed with his positions, but I believe everyone accepts him as a gadol bTorah. To clarify what his position is: despite his enthusiasm for early Yishuv and later Medinah, he was very disparaging about various statements by non-religious zionists and also generally supportive, but often criticizing religious zionists. For example, when RCA (rabbinical organization) sent out some Mafdal materials related to celebrating yom haatzmaut, he is absolutely against it – saying that only Rabbis should decide on what and how is celebrated, and sending materials on behalf of a political party creates an impression that the party can establish religious rites.

YS, for some reasons, counties around DC are among the richest in the country … I am guessing you live in the area, so you might be partial to the good living your neighbors are having … A funny story: I was taking an uber from a DC airport to a meeting with the government. The driver looked like a smart guy and his car was a Tesla .. wow, I thought, being an uber driver in dc really pays. We were talking about low traffic in DC post-covid and I mentioned that this is because all gov workers are WFH under no supervision. He gave me a look: “be careful, you might be talking to one”. I kind of concluded, without solid proof, that this gov worker was double-billing by driving uber during office hours. No wonder he cold afford a tesla,

but more importantly – not only the gov people are often not efficient (this is business 101 from lack of competition and accountability), they are actually making decisions that affect all of us. I am not saying that Musk always knows better. I am just saying that he is making decisions in place of those people who were not good at making decisions. And they were doing them for decades. So, Americans collectively decided to see if things can be done in a different way.

And there are multiple recourses:
there will be elections in less than 2 years;
your state can pick up the services Musk is going to cancel;
you can take Musk’s offer of 8 months free salary – and hope to get it back after Musk is gone.
you can move to Israel or Canada or UK or Mexico;
Musk himself suggested a feedback loop: rescind all regulations and then see which ones were really needed
some Trump observers think that he is highly sensitive to feedback and that he quickly came to agreement with Mexico/Canada based on 2% market drop.

at the end, your concern is about how much power we want to give to an executive so that he achieves something and how much freedom we’ll lose
See Shmuel’s gripes when he anoints a melech
See Roman republic that had all-powerful dictators with one year non-renewable term

Neville > The derech goes back to Slobodka

I was thinking recently about Slabodka having respectful clothing for their poor students to bolster their self esteem and how it relates to current situation, where (in my humble opinion) the dress often leads to underserved gaavah. There are two changes between Slabodka and now:

1) those students were mostly genuinely poor and the clothes hopefully took their self esteem from low to average. now sometimes clothes look more exclusive than others in the community and students are not necessarily poor

2) Slabodka was heavy on mussar. There are lots of stories about Alter miSlabodka on how he checked his own character, such as: when he did not want to go greet a certain visitor, he walked to the hotel, and then thought a little, and went back home. He wanted to make sure that he is not justifying his decision by simple laziness or desire to save time. A lot of people now who dress Slabodka-way are engaging in self-serving behaviors, finding the derech that just happens to be comfortable for themselves in totally non-Slabodka way.