Always_Ask_Questions

Avram, thanks for the Moscow diamond story.
Note the differences between my examples and yours: my were about learning from what a Rav did and often with an explanation. This is straight halakhic reasoning. Of course, it may be possible to argue that the story is not true, or that there are other opinions, or other circumstances. Yours is a story that something happened. ext, you’ll tell me that bat kol confirmed your position?!

The story is interesting, I can’t resist asking kashios: how did Bolshevik coup in Petersburg happen in Moscow, and why did some Bolsheviks went after Jews on that day instead of going after the Provisional government as they were supposed to? Maybe someone paid some diamonds to get out after Bolshevik revolution and needed a story to explain how he escaped.

RebE, thanks for helping with the sources.
An interesting note: I was not hired. If there was a chiyuv, I should have asked him. A good point.

Those who say tircha is not a big deal, maybe forgot the beginning of the thread: this is an outdoor minyan on a cold windy day. Piskei d’Zimra and kadishem before were already skipped. Nobody is sitting, kal vehomer talking. (Those who feel that masks are a threat should feel even stronger).

But I think the main contention here is not a specific halakha as nobody brought a source for opposite, or called up their Rav and asked them. The issue raised is whether we are allowed to deal with issues ourselves or need to ask any time there is a change from daily routine. This is, in truth, a good question highlighting our lives today – pretty routine and predictable (pre-Covid) and ability to constantly communicate. So, as there is helicopter parenting, there is helicopter paskening. If you are in the presence of someone who knows Torah better, you should not pasken. But what if the Rav is just a text away? in truth, phones already made Rav Feinstein available after he was able to get out of USSR, but it may be more a cultural phenomenon now as everyone texts.

You do realize that Jews were able to live kosher lives before texting, though? And life was also not always as routine. And people were used to change their own oil and make their own wool. Your question is then – are we allowed to continue act on our own when we can text the Rav or the parent? This related to Tzimtsum that Hashem, and wise parents practice.

let’s just at look at Peshat: when Moshe was carrying the Tablets – which one was he holding in the right hand, and which one was heavier?

Avram, I was totally not nogea b’davar: I was not in a hurry and not cold. I did not need rationalizing. I would prefer to say all kaddishes. I saw other people being cold. I agree that if I were to have personal inclination to skip, I should have asked the Rav in the minyan. The problem was – the Rav might have been cold, so he was nogea b’davar :). He would have been forced to tell me to say all of them in order to resist his own yetzer harah! In truth, if I were nogeah b’davar, I would not have skipped.

As to Hashem’s will, maybe He wants us to take care of other people despite our desire to say an extra kaddish – rather than ask shailos about it.

In the spirit of joint learning for all of you guys and gals who are commenting, please notice that you seem to put in the worst assumptions about any missing pieces in my story: I had my own interest, I don’t know whether my Rav will correct me or not. Notice what you are doing here: you first dislike the idea that I did not ask a shailoh, then you go and find all proofs, instead of making reasonable assumptions.

GH: as more and more of the previously independent practices are bought out

Now you are complaining. “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” after he sells his office.

I am dismayed that medical office assistants are projected to grow 19% next 2 years (with average job growth being 4%). I thought we just proved that millions of us are capable of making our own vaccine appointments over publix websites!

High costs of healthcare hides such inefficiencies as “only 10% of overall costs”, which may be as much as other countries spend on healthcare in general. Hopefully, recently introduced hospital price transparency combined with population zoomification will put pressure here, unless the “big guy” will reverse the “old guy” reforms

COVID revealed who your real friends are and unmasked those who do not care about others and pretended to be smart and learned.

This is decreasing demand for shaliach manot and freeing funds for matanot la evyonim.

DY >> You are too quick to assume you don’t have one.

this is, of course, a valid concern for all of us. I personally was involved in a couple of competitive intellectual pursuits over years, so I know what I don’t know reasonably well. As an illustration of me knowing my limitations, I realize that I can’t convince common sechel that I am not doing my halachik root canals – nor do I need to.

More generally, routine memorization of material will not give you an ability to know what you don’t know. One would hope that Talmud learning should give you some feeling what you can and what you can’t figure out. Maybe ask your own Questions and answers, and then go thru commentaries to see if you made a mistake…

Another story (with the same Rav): he gave a parsha dvar Torah on shabbat first to non-observant students, and then to observant. When he entered the second room, he would stand for a minute without saying a word. I knew that he typically discussed same issue that bothered him in multiple talks during the week. So, I asked him why he was pausing. Was it a trick to force listeners to quiet down? He admitted that the topic was the same, but he explained that he needs to re-work how he talks about it: students from Jewish schools were trained to listen, but he wanted them to first understand the problem and (sic!) start asking questions. So, he had to push them further.

@Daas, He’s saying that people don’t ask enough shailos in Choshen Mishpat.

To go deeper, our focus is not infinite. You will have priorities in what you are thinking/ doing/ learning/ davening about. This may be subconscious. As you just slipped above – “even Orach Chaim”. “Even”? Because it was earlier in your yeshiva curriculum? The way I see it, there is no “kal vehomer” here. Issues relating bein adam lehavero are harder by definition as

(a) there is generally no one answer as issue depends on people involved
(b) as every issue l’havero also have an aspect l’makom, you need to do it right once
(c) mistakes l’havero have to be forgiven by that person, and might be harder than being forgiven by Hashem !

It may be that we, as a community, re-focused on mitzvot l’makom as a natural reaction to Reform, communists, etc to build a protective wall. This is like proverbial burns after jumping into the fire to save someone. Jumping was the right thing to do, but the burns are real and need to be addressed.

Is asking shailos always good? Can shailos be ever bad?

I saw a last year response from r Willig re:yeshiva contracts changing due to Covid – we are now dealing with dinei nefashot, dinei mamonot can wait, just keep money whether they are for now.

Once my Rav was giving a class on business ethics in halakha. He mentioned, inter alia, that Polish responsa had a lot to say about it, but then, I think from 17th century (possibly coinciding with economic decline of Poland as grain became less needed in the West) –
most of responsa became about kashrut of pots and pans and no more business ethics Q&As.

So, we had a short conversation:
Me: So it is _your_ fault?
Rav: No, it is _your_ fault.

Hope you can unpack this.

So, if you were the person hesitant to switch the light on, you would accept Rav’s rebuke, but you would not accept mine? Would you call the Rav to clarify?

same essay address a similar point: “An authority who allows himself to be consulted [when a life is in danger] is reprehensible, and he who consults him (rather than speedily acting to save the life in danger) is a murderer” (Tur, Orah Hayyim 328). Maimonides, that master of conciseness, deviated from his regular manner and treated this issue with great elaborateness… [Rav Soloveitchik, in the original, inserts the previous citation of
Rambam.]
[AAQ: R Yosef Soloveichik was part of that story also – he was that sick kid]

He was using it as an example that the mitzvah of caring for human life overrides everything else.
He also quotes R Chaim Soloveichik who directed a person to add fire on shabbat for the doctor to better see a sick child when the doctor was reluctant to ask for it. The person hesitated, and R Chaim said that the person is both am haaretz and an apikoires …

he leads to this thesis: One who makes light of the mandate of pikuach nefesh is not only making light of one isolated halacha. Rather, he is guilty of distorting and perverting the entire Torah. His flippancy depicts the laws of the Torah not, r”l, as “merciful, kind and just,” but as vengeful and vicious. It goes without saying that such a distortion constitutes a chillul Hashem….mischaracterizing our compliance with social distancing as a mere capitulation to the standards of outside entities had significant practical ramifications. The standards of all outside entities do not value life as absolutely as does the Torah. Tosafos (Yoma 85a) comment, “‘You shall live through them and not die due to them’ [means] that we must under no circumstances allow for the death of a Jewish person.

All these are “first world problems”. How about – do we have a moral reason to vaccinate low-risk groups while there are hundreds of millions of high-risk people all over the world who will not get a vaccine for maybe years?

Should Jews at least make sure to help Jewish communities in 3rd world countries?

Quoting a story from R Meir Twersky:
I heard the following story from my brother, Ha’Gaon Hakadosh Rav Moshe Twersky zt”l hy”d, who, in turn, heard it from Ha’Gaon Rav Gershon Zaks zt”l: There was once an emergency meeting of gedolim to discuss potential responses to a harsh, cruel governmental edict. The discussion continued through the day until it was almost sunset. One of the participants suggested that they should stop to daven Mincha. The Chafetz Chaim zt”l, astonished, lovingly reproached him: “Mincha ligt ihr offen kup?! Mincha is on your mind[8]?!” The importance and sanctity of tefilah (prayer) is indeed inestimable, and yet – in certain circumstances – it is forbidden to pray!
[8] Tur, Orach Chaim 93

Mrs Syag,
thanks for clarifying. I think we have a profound disagreement here – which questions are important and, further, where chumrot are applicable.

It would be a bad pun to say that “nobody died” because I said 1 kaddish instead of 3. I obviously showed chesed to freezing people. The Rav did not correct me. so, how bad it could be.

You just can’t say the same about people not wearing masks, especially in the communities where so many older people died. “no shortage” of doctors is a strange reference. This illustrates that you are willing to approach this question in a much lighter way than question of liturgy. (Overwhelming majority of doctors tell people to wear masks. Re: rabbis, I quoted a psak above that one should not ask such Rabbis shailos, so it is a catch-22 here).

>> how likely it is for someone who has been vaccinated to be contagious

again, preliminary results show that you are right. But opposite thinking goes as following: vaccine may prevent serious illness more than viral load. Then, vaccinated person will be walking around feeling healthy but possibly infect others, especially those with whom they are in prolonged contact, such as family. Just like children …

Even if the load reduction is confirmed, the question is – by how much. Would it be enough not to reduce other measures. And the main protection, of course – despite the threads online – is not the masks, but deciding where not to go.

MadeAliyah, my point is that we have different political parties claiming opposite things.

It just can’t be that closings are a left-wing thing in US and a right-wing thing in Israel.

It just can’t be that Trump’s pro-active approach to vaccine did not matter – and EU’s by-the-book approach failed because they were tardy.

The simplest explanation is that politicians use situation to attack their opponents. Usual thing in a democracy, but an unseemly one during a public emergency.And we do not need to join that.

>> in part to water down the rapidly growing Chareidi vote

such ahavat israel .. Or maybe to be sure that all Jews will come given how many mixed families were among them?

Raboisem, savlanut. Israel is producing the answers to all these questions. We should know clearly in 1-2 months.

There are preliminary studies saying that vaccinated people have lower load and thus decrease probability of infecting others.

The world seemingly went mad. Maybe it is a long asymptomatic COVID or a separate virus that Chinese or Russians sent at the same time. For some reason, when the country/world needs to come together, everyone is reducing public health problems to political arguments.

It is easy to see that most of them are wrong, as they all contradict each other. In US, wearing masks and closing businesses is considered liberal. In Israel, right-wing government tries to close and their lefty ‘partners” – to close. In US, some blame “lack of federal distribution” and say getting vaccine was easy. In Europe – many blame rigid centralized system for being behind US in getting vaccines. In Israel, being the highest vaccinated country in the world seemingly leads to yet another election…

I believe most new economic immigrants tend to vote for a party that provides more benefits.
Exception are political immigrants and refugees with prior experience of socialism: Cubans, Russians, East Europeans. Including Jews from those countries. Not sure where Chinese stand on this. Later on, some move to more conservative positions, but many stay behind (Reform Jews).
Eventually, it evens out, as most all voters are descendants of immigrants and the country is split 50-50 (in electoral results)

Syag >> covid run through more than 95% some of our shuls as well.

You sound weirdly proud of your aveiros. could you verify the 95% number?
Check how many people are in the hospital from your wider community – significantly less than before?
Note that making conclusions from a very small circle of neighbors may be misleading, you need to look at larger population. Virus comes and goes in clusters. So, there might be a time period
with no cases, and then suddenly a cluster.

If the real number is 50% (this is Russia and Mexico level) and not 95%, then transmission will be reduced significantly, but not fully.

For a comparison, there was a recent conference organized by a world-known technology “futurist”, who gave PCR tests to those who wanted to attend in person. Despite that, there was a cluster of cases among attendees. Futurist apologized but seemingly is still believed to predict the future …

>> That’s not a choice you get to make without a rav

I quoted already multiple opinions about being careful. And also opinions about one kaddish being sufficient. Maybe you can verbalize what exactly makes you so uncomfortable.

>> even though Vashti HaMalka was very pretty that Esther HaMalka was even prettier

That’s what he (the King) said …

We need to learn something from Vashti! Otherwise, it is not clear why she is in the Megillah, other than explaining why the King became single.

Everyone is talking about dangers. This is legit. Still, Hashem created all this devices that you could use … buy him a Chrombook, bolt it in the living room, and use it to learn divrei Torah and math.