Always_Ask_Questions

Common, I am all for respecting minhagim, but just because something is very popular does not make it into a legit minhag. If the generation many of us remember would not dress up as T’Ch unless they are sure of their learning and behavior, it is worthy to emulate them despite social pressure.

Your position seems to call for dressing like Reform when visiting (although visiting is forbidden per se, so my question is purely theoretical).

on the substance of your argument: > trying to force them out of the Bais Medrash and into a secularizing immoral army

This was discussed already – if younwant to protect learners, you should double down on
(1) sending those in the community who are not in yeshiva to the Army
(2) introducing a transparent verification system about who is actually learning
(3) working with other religious Jews on strengthening religious units in the Army

you can easily learn this from mussar that tells you to verify that your positions are not caused by your interests. One example, Alter from Slobodka decided not to visit certain dignitary visiting town. To make sure, he is doing it for the right reasons and not out of convenience, he walked to the hotel, stopped there, reviewed his decision, and walked back home. If Alter was not sure about his own motivations, others could try that also.

To support DaMoshe more generally, I heard in the name of R Zelig Epstein – he was asked how Mir Yeshiva was able to leave Vilno despite daas Torah – R Ozer’s psak to the contrary. His response – that was not an issue as it was before daas Torah (implicit as you write – for Litvakim ).

PS As we are told to go to shoftim of our times and not to previous times, similarly, “modern” is relative to the science of the time, not of future times.

you can start with this equation:
Bina = Chabad – Chochma – Daas.

Many girls should not be marrying that early, they can use this time to acquire a profession or do some chesed… but some say that seminary is the most important item on the shidduch resume: some think that lack of it means lack of observance, others simply use type of the seminary to understand the derech and wouldn’t look further without this indicator.

She doesn’t need to logout and keep us worrying about her and her family. I’d rather hear what her rebbe and council have to say. Maybe she can help others with this information.

as you perfectly know, there are Talmidei Chachamim with different opinions on the subject. So, you either happened to be born in a shul with a certain opinion or you chose to follow a certain gadol.

I have no problem with different shitos, and I was just highlighting that the kol koreh was not described clearly in the article, when saying ” have issued a call for Klal Yisroel in the Diaspora to unite with our brethren in Eretz Yisroel” . Some people may think that this is in support of whole brethren in EY, while in fact it is in support of brethren who refuse to go to Tzahal. So, I just wanted to make sure readers understand the context and join or not accordingly.

I don’t think you would like people to join a kol koreh without understand what it stands for, do you?

eshis, you seem to be coming with the same question annually. It strongly suggest that your methods, following your mother’s methods, may be bordering on abuse. Please find the nicest Rabbi in your community and consult him. I do not understand why you didn’t seek advice earlier.

> come from an “Orthodox Shul”

Pre WW2, some American Jews considered European Torahs to be inferior quality. Why was that? Because Europeans would sell good Torahs locally and send worse ones to the Americans … Not sure what the status is now, but I would not be surprised that quality (including of checking) would be lower for customers who are not as good in understanding the quality.

first, lockdown policies were mostly run by states – as they should be.
2nd – your views on lockdowns and similar measures are purely emotional, as overall deaths in USA, where lockdowns were not severe, were higher than in high-income countries with stricter policies.
3rd – public positions of T and others were in some part political – to account for all the emotional responses we all had.

The main role for the feds turned out to be vaccine development and delivery, with T succeeded spectacularly, and then B having mixed record delivering and updating vaccines to new variants. T could not run on this success, of course, because a sizeable portion of his voters are against vaccines …

Please read carefully and join according to your view – this kol is a mixed message, both asking Hashem to protect Yidden in EY and also asking him to exempt the community from taking part in that defense.

ok, sounds like all here fulfilled the mitzva of helping goyim to establish justice by voting (and said shehyanu for the first vote), now no need to get yourself into a pretzel trying to guess what T will do. He does not know it, CNN does not know it, and thus Xi and Putin do not know it.
You can daven tefila that Hashem gives wisdom to the rules with extra intensity.

Neville, you seem to be separating two trends:
1) chassidim directly changing ashkenazi mesora based on sefardi, etc
ok, so we all agree on these
2) differences between central/southern european minhagim with Litvishe.
maybe. why these became the issue? it is either increased contact (Austro-Hungarian empire?) or, maybe more likely, chassidic influence in previously litvishe areas bringing those minhagim in.

pure > Hopefully it would be the same reversed, as we are Jews, driven by the Torah Hakdosha, not just empty politics…

You can look at CR posts in 2020 and 2012 and maybe even 1976 and see what was said then.

it is a legit question. There is a halakha that a man should not marry during chol hamoed, as not to mix two simchos, but is allowed to re-marry a wife he had previously divorced.

Tosfos explain: only “isha hadasha” is a real simcha …

So, a President re-elect will not have same celebration as the new one …

Also, note that Pres Putin was able to interpret “not more than two presidency” into “no more than two consecutive terms”.
So, why would not T-appointed supreme court interpret constitution the same way and let T run again?

I’d rather be in this thread than in the one about presidential candidates.

Beautiful.

Gadol > How many hundreds of years does it take to officially “have a real Mesorah” ?

A good question. 3 generations? We have examples when innovations were introduced openly – writing down Torah she b’alpe, beis knesses after beis hamikdash, and it has to be acknowledged as such.

Reminds of a story of a teenager in Ashdod who left his kibutznik father and stayed in a yeshiva. When the father accused the Rav that he encourages the son not to follow customs of his father, the Rav responded: the son is changing the ways of the father, same way the father changed the way of the grandfather – so he is following his father’s custom.

> Lakewood yeshiva is modeled after yeshivos from 200 years ago.

You are falling for a marketing plot. Just because they are also called “yeshivos”, does not mean that hashkofos are the same, forget about the hats. I posted how students in Mir looked above.

Neville > What I don’t understand is the outright opposition to doing our own thing–the insistence that we MUST base ourselves off the goyim in some capacity. Where does that come from?

that’s a good question and an answer may depend on circumstances. When we are under pressure, we surely to resist in all matters. Dressing in togas while Roman army is occupying EY was probably frowned upon. When we are in a benevolent society, as multiple teshuvot talk in regards to voting, we are still concerned about assimilation, but we also have more opportunities to engage constructively with the world. As R Soloveichik is writing: if we hold that we are representatives of Hashem’s truth in the World – should we hiding in caves from the world, or should we try to engage with it. My clarification: when you learn about Tannaim interacting with Romans, you are not emulating them – they dealt with current (for them) events, and we learn it as history. We emulate them when we deal with current events.

as I mentioned, this is because of a biased correction. If they would have simply missed some groups, then all polls would be off by 2% but there would be variation between polls and for same poll over time. As some analysts noticed, the polls stayed suspiciously synchronized and stable over time.

What can we learn from this? Sometimes, we can apply good thinking but be burdened by unjustified assumptions that bias us towards certain opinion that we hold historically, or because we were raised in a certain hashkofa, or because it is comfortable … We need to always analyze our intellectual biases. It is often hard to do on your own. A lot of analysis in Bavli is about that type of discussion. And, hopefully, discussions here, when done in a right way, help us to see issues from different perspectives.

There might be over-estimation of Ds, BUT the data is corrected after that – and this year they are correcting using more factors than before. This is in theory more accurate, but can introduce a bias as the correction is based on some assumptions about voting population. Ok, you might reasonably assume that ratio of D and R voters will be same as last time (will it?), but when you also include age, area, income, etc – your assumptions essentially guide your polling correction.

Neville> I’ve not seen convincing evidence that this means we model ourselves after the goyim,

We have photos of both sephardim and ashkenazim from 100+ years ago. Most of them dress like locals. I don’t know what the “modern” position is, but my personal is that we need to use not “average” goyishe dress, but top 1 to 10% – those who are eligible to see the King. Obviously, Polish peasants did not wear charedi dress, poritzim did. Of course, there were Jews who dressed like peasants, but it is not the standard for us.

> great Papa Bar Abba once remarked in one of these CR discussions, all of religion is one big “no true Scotsman” shmooze

Who am I to argue with the rishonim … I am not even an aharon … We just to define who the SCotsman are. I am defining them as Talmidei Chachamim who have a grasp of Torah, you seem to define them as those who follow exactly same derech. As, say, R Moshe, R Soloveichik, Lubaviche Rebbe were respectful of each other, I would include all of them – and those how any of them respected – into the circle.

>> “as we developed more sophisticated ways to deal with modernity.”
> Which is what? Surrendering to secularism and liberal academia?

I think every reasonable response that we have now is more effective than what was there 200 years ago – whether it is lakewood yeshiva, bays yaakov, or chabad houses, or Ohr Sameach, or modern day schools. Note that there is no tension right now between science and Torah as ideology. In certain times, there was. Many rabonim objected to Mendelhson translation as it led to Jews learning hochdeutsche and that to mixed dancing. Anyone is objecting to Artscroll nowadays? I personally try teaching children that Torah is by Jews but yesh chochma b’goyim, and it is not a problem to learn chochma. And then train them to separate chochma from liberal and secular stuff by discussing every issue and defining what the Torah outlook on that issue is.

Neville > , but this traditionally was not true.

college prices go up way higher than inflation, and private higher than public, so do the math (if you took it).
My experience is with ASU and U of FL, their prices are lower than comparable private in midwest and northeast. It may be different in other places.
Also, online now is highly competitive – as the competitor is just a click away.