Always_Ask_Questions

> Like putting a giant evil statue next to an image of the Luchois at a state capital

Rosh Hashona yesterday says it is OK to put a statue of a king near a shul – as nobody will suspect the community of AZ, but don’t try it at home!

Froggie, please appreciate that Reb E went to yeshiva when Jack Kennedy was still alive. Learn as well.

Avira > one of the most esteemed experts in chasidus

I think one problem with Chabad is insularity of their education: many do not appreciate Torah coming from other sources. This may be side effect of preparing bochrim for action early. Someone who is going to build a Chabad House in Iowa may not have time or focus to learn deeper. But this has to come with appreciation what the movement achieved. If you sit and learn all meforshim, while disparaging all other movements, you may not be on a greater maalah. There are a lot of sources saying that mesiras nefesh and involvement in community matters is worthy even if that decreases your limud (starting with Mordechai’s downgrade).

I found bringing up Vilna Gaon (as little as I know or understand him) works perfectly in increasing their awareness of the world :).

RebE > They don’t teach critical race theory in Virginia

Without getting involved into how politicians do rhetoric, there is a bigger point here: schools are not accountable, they exist on public money, they are mostly run by left-leaning boards and teachers, and they raise next generations of teachers, so things go downhill. Someone who run away from Hungarian commies should appreciate this bigger point – even if you may find some nekudos unpalatable and against your political leanings.

> Cherem

good question – can you have more than one FB (MV) “friend” at a time? FB is actually reported in increasing marital problems – people, lo aleinu, connect “virtually” to their former zevugim and things go down hill from there when virtual reality creeps into the real one.

common, based on this discussion, I am moving closer to your position on masks. So far, all baalei chesed were worrying that hospitals will be overwhelmed by amei haaretz and level of care will suffer.

I say now we should take all of them in the same room so that they go through 1st and 2nd infections faster, keeping hospitals at, say, 90% capacity instead of dragging this balagan over months.

Yes, this is my new mandate: everybody has one month to either get a vaccine or participate in a trial getting infected in a controlled environment – say, spending 5 minutes in a room with aerosoled covid. This “controlled natural infection” ™ might be quicker and safer than uncontrolled where someone could be in the same room with infected for hours.

We have just read of a successful marriage between a BT and a FFB – Rivka and Yitzhak (note that the Torah mentions her name, not just Eshes Yirtzhak, but I digress). Both have something to contribute: his davening is apparently more successful, but she seems to be a better judge of childrens’ character.

Anyway, I hope nobody is in the habit of has vesholom saying “I am not a BT”. Everyone should be, as I already quoted The Gerer Rebbe.

> these folks are illegal and basically don’t deserve the $20 an hour requested

you can’t have it both ways. Either you believe in dina d’malchusa and not hire illegals or you don’t, and then pay fair wages according to halakha. What next – threaten them with ICE and make them work for a $1?

fwiw, back when Russian Jews were coming in droves to US, I observed some “frum” families were hiring old Jewish ladies for $2/hour. I know that these families were not rich and the ladies had no other sources of income, other than government subsidies, but still …

>> he was openly against Chassidim who did.”
> Any proof for that statement?

a secondary, but contemporaneous, proof – when Lubavitcher Rebbe was already sick, this was the peak moshichism (as many abandoned it after he passed away, not to be like another religion). A local mature Chabad-affiliated Rav said publicly (in front of ~100 people) that he called the secretariat and asked if he can somehow be of use during these difficult times. They responded – please say publicly that this meshugas is not coming from us. And so he did.

It may be a post with hebrew text got lost again. See Bava Basra 88 several statements by R Levi answering this question exactly: having bad weights (bad accounting!) is worse than arayos, and cheating people is worse than cheating Hashem.

Syag > that doesn’t give you a free pass to “pasken like mommy”,

I full reserve my right to enforce my halakhic authority, I just rarely have to.

Halakha is that you believe one kosher witness in isurei, or as one Rav said – if we don’t take women as witnesses, I can’t eat in my home – and this is literally what we are discussing. I am obviously not saying that the lady of the house issues her own psak, but she follows what she learned in her school, and kids bringing humros from school needed to understand that they should follow family minhagim and not whatever a random teacher learned in her seminary. An obvious sign that the kids concerns were not l’shem shamayim was that they proposed humros rather than implementing them in the kitchen. This is no insecurity any more, btw, kids already learned that lesson by now.

FWIW, I heard that Bugsy Siegel would bravely show up at funerals of his colleagues at the risk of being caught, but not enter the cemetery ass a kohen. People make different heshbonos.

ujm, a good question. Maybe because the skirt case involves understandable pull by current society. If she is a BT or MO school grad, then this is the environment fault to begin with and we need to give credit for whatever she is doing right. If she is a lapsed charedi, then it is also fault of the environment that did not nurture her. On the other hand, while geneva is of course present in the society, but it is not considered “normal” and is even prosecuted. So, the person got to have a strong internal drive to follow it.

Also, the ganav pretends to be a “frum” person, while the short-skirted one is obviously not hiding much. Isn’t it why hazer is considered most reprehensible despite having 50% of simanim – pretending to be kosher?

That is as far as my self-psycho-analysis takes me. Any other explanations? Now, please someone explain the other side.

Shlucha, I agree that women took over halakhic issues at home (at least in mine). My only involvement is to convince girls that in a machlokes between BY and Mom, we pasken like Mom.

But this is not due to men being outside of home, after all, other than shabbos shul, the husband is hopefully either available on the phone or is at home. It is more due to the expanded women’s education – as they need to ask husbands less, husbands gladly switched to learning esoteric subjects that do not lead to any daily responsibilities.

Anyone tried making kids clean and do other chores?! That could raise a next generation of self-cleaning Jews.

I felt embarrassed learning in Rosh Hashanah that apparently r Akiva was aware of a machlokes between b Shammai and b Hillel but wasn’t sure who said what. Are we better now because we can look it up? Probably yes .. are we more capable than him, no

Health, vaxed person did his minimal hishtadlus and thus deserves support. I am not contradicting your position on the drugs. I have my doubts based on cursory review of literature, but if you are dealing with am koshe oref, your approach is probably reasonable. If they will not do anything else, give them things that might help even if unproven in tests. I also saw am announcement of a cheap drug finally proven in who tests. Also the new Merck drug is cheap to produce, we will just be paying extra for their r&d, but it will be affordable in poor countries.

Do your customers have to pay out of pocket or they are covered by insurance/government? I presume you will now recommend the Merck tablet also

common, life of most of us, whether frum, frei, or bnei Noach, is better than 99.99% of humanity that lived before us. We are just exhausting ourselves trying to conform to new standards. If we were to keep houses clean by medieval standards, we would do with a monthly vacuum and a washing machine shared by a neighborhood. You could afford it by working a day a week without any government subsidies.

Health > So the answer is don’t force people to Vaxx.

Well, a inhumane libertarian answer would be to let them deal with this on their own, including the cost of whatever medicines they require. Maybe insurance will cost more for unvaxxed – this is free market and is happening, but too slow for a pandemic.

Even buying the benefits of the miracle drugs you advocate, let’s say they are 75% effective (this is way over what tests show). Then 25% of them would require expensive medical treatment. Let them pay it. Sometimes money impresses people more than lives (drashos on b’hol meodeha and “your money or your life – I am thinking, I am thinking”). So, maybe if one person gets billed for full cost of oxygen, etc, maybe your whole shtetl will wake up? maybe just start a rumor about it

Adding, without contradicting previous answers:
Halakha needs to be responsive to different societies and environment and this is the role of Oral Torah v. things that are eternal and are written down. Part of our avodah is for each generation ti struggle with issues of the time – whether entering EY, or galus Bavel, Romans, pogroms, freedom of religion, Covid … We clearly both gained and lost by writing Oral Torah down. We gain ability to better argue across generations and benefit from their knowledge. But we lost some by having it necessary to process every decision thru all amoraim, rishonim, and ahoronim. This probably leaves Talmidei Chachamim less sharp as they don’t need to solve issues from the first principles the way Tannaim did. (and that is why we have too many claiming the title)

CTL > an attempt to keep expenditures down and local property taxes down.

We should be able to find a healthy compromise – with gov maintaining some legit standards and parents getting what their kids need without becoming dhimmis (in terms of double taxation for education). Experience you quoted sound healthy – you attended quality public school and yeshiva. I think this approach would not fit a lot of Jewish community our days in terms of mixing with a wrong crowd, though. Vouchers combined with testing should work – provide funds to any educational institution where children can pass tests on reading, righting, rithmetics and civics. If Lakewood board is control by frum public, could they do something like that rather than just cutting the funds? The latter means that you’ll be surrounded by uneducated population creating crime and other problems.
I found online public schools a good, if not perfect, tool – reasonable education, not much unneeded socialization. This will fit, estimated, 5-10% of population, but also not nothing.

Current peak in Covid deaths in Us is going for last 2 months and is as high as last March and just half off December peak. Besides low vaccination, I think the other reason is that last year all papers were blaming Covid on Trump with daily front page pictures and articles. This lead population to be more cautions. Now, the storyline is that this is in Republican states (not fully true as also CA, OH, WI…) and not a national problem, and we are on the way to fighting global warming.

common > Life is hard in the USA as well

Moshe Feinstein said that this attitude (or parent, recent immigrants) that made American Jews leave Yiddishkeit in droves. A more positive attitude works in this generation (sometimes even too much for my taste). Note, that in general Americans are more religious than Europeans, despite (?) longer period of religious freedom. As everyone has options, religious leaders are forced to cater to the market. In our market, some of these market variations, such as Reform, turned out to be unpalatable and unpopular in a long term, but within O- I think we are doing better than a 100 years ago.

Did anyone say already that meta bivrit means she died? Not sure whether this is a parsha reference or a fitting hesped for sefer panim that started as a collection of Harvard coeds.

Thinking as an engineer, the drug progress will probably be incremental. There are moments of breakthroughs – inventing electricity, new vaccine, but in other cases progress is incremental. People usually underestimate that: say, electric vehicles come up with new things evry 5 years improving by 10%, while old fashioned cars do not have new inventions but continue improving with small things by 2% every year. Same progress overall.

same, there were no “miracle drugs” so far, as with most viruses. Maybe especially because COVID attacks multiple systems, etc. So, look for incremental improvements in combining multiple drugs, some expensive, some cheap (there are 2 approved, and several controversial, plus vitamins), and ways oxygen and steroids are used, and mortality will probably continue slowly going down from a combination of those.