Always_Ask_Questions

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.

CtLawyer: thanks for claridying

re:old strange shuls. There is a shul in CT that, out of good intentions, has the word “shalom” printed on the pavement. I was confused as this is one of the Hashem’s names, and walked around just in case. The regulars, of course, have no problems with that.

The fastest route for Trunmp is to become President in 2023 is by running for Congress in 22.
Given that base shows up in midterms, his participation will ensure flipping the house and possibly a couple of Senate seats. He can then become the Speaker – 3rd in line to Presidency and impeach first Harris on insurrection and immediately after that Biden on corruption or 25th amendment. He can argue the case in the Senate as the impeachment manager. Bernie & K will be already mad at the centrist Biden by that time, so they’ll flip for the price of a couple of cabinet posts.

common >> this was done after consultation with a leading posek

First, thanks for the wonderful bank story. As the story clearly says – the lady asked for one kaddish for her husband, and one kaddish for someone else. It is obviously more zechuyot to say more.

I then consulted R Salanter. He let someone else be shaliach tzibur on his mother’s yohrtzeit and explained – my mother deserves that I do this mitzva (hesed to the other person) be done on this day. So, this establishes that hesed is not less a good thing for neshomah than extra davening.

As to permissibility of reducing davening – our minyan already skips upfront, and there are multiple teshuvot what canbe reduced that I can summarize as “you can skip, but make sure it still feels like davening”. This is definitely a case here.

On a simple level, shtika k’mode. Rabbi and gabbi heard me and did not correct. And they are quite capable of!

I think the question is a valid one during the pandemic. Even if this is a relatively little time, but it is extra time. Whether you are in an unsafe minyan inside, or at a safer minyan outside where people are exposed to elements. I am also often an only one saying kaddish, I just skip the earlier ones, and then say one at the end at a relatively high speed. I hope others utilize various other means of minimizing tircha …

CtLawyer, am I reading you correctly – you got first vaccine and went to shul the next day?
Even lawyers get emotional? You are not having any immunity until next shabbos.

Not a scientific observation, but a common sense one, that might later be confirmed by an experiment: those, especially elderly, who had no side effects should be more careful as possibly their immune system is not responding well. Especially w/ Moderna, as they seem to have used a higher dose in Phase 3 to make sure they pass the criteria. A later antigen test would be another data point, although researchers warn of low reliability. Again, these ideas are not (yet, unfortunately) tested.

>> Until this issue is resolved

How would this issue be resolved? I thought it is already resolved – someone admitted that they were covering deaths to avoid federal prosecutors. I am not aware of a “Trump exemption” in federal policies.

SZ: not sure where your point about “upper class”
My point is that one of the reasons Us “middle class” is less is because the “upper class” is larger. That is not a bad thing, except for commies.

As to “culture”, OUSD numbers show that US had a (decreasing) lead on educated population over Europe from 1920s. What you define as “culture” was remarked upon by Tocqueville: Americans tend towards practical skills that are useful when going to frontier (whether physical or virtual) rather than poetry and philosophy popular among European aristocrats. So, you may be unfair discounting applied intellectuals as just “materialism”. They are the ones who connect the world though railroads, radio, electricity, special forces, internet.

>> I read Biden’s Executive Order

It start nicely, defining equity as ” consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such treatment,”. Who can be against “impartial treatment”?!

next – “agencies shall consult with members of communities that have been historically underrepresented in the Federal Government”. So, here is the test for equal outcome, rather than equal opportunity.

next – Many Federal datasets are not disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, income, veteran status, or other key demographic variables. we will all be marked up by reporting, I presume, our races, ethnicity, sexual preferences …

What does Gemora say about equity? What comes to my mind is how do we monitor several farmers along a river to ensure “equity”. The answer is that we do not – we let the first farmer along the river to possibly use more water “le derech shalom”. Maybe there is more discussion there…But at minimum this identifies potential danger of pursuing equity – inevitable fights for more or less equity (hope this word is still allowed!).

As Exhibit A, currently any policy streamlining vaccination is attacked as potentially inequitable. Statnews (sic!) counts percentage of vaccinated in rich and poor, black and white counties, not even bothering to weight by population age. Ein ledavar sof.

I previously compared Trump w/ Yiftach – we need this type sometimes, but there are downsides, and downfalls .. Possibly same midos that made him popular, alsl let to his downside. Still, in terms of rhetoric, he was not much different from others, such as Al Gore. The only difference is that there are more people listening to him. Notice that, not counting those who went to fight in DC, there were a lot of pretty ordinary people – business owners, nurses, veterans.

on a related note – school ran by Rabban Gamliel had 2 tracks – Torah and Greek. Which one had more students and why?

Just read about R Twerski’s mother going to talk to his teacher after he was included into a holiday play .. the teacher, I guess, realized and started apologizing, but Rebetzin did not see any problems “if after all education at home, he will be affected by a play, then _we_ have a problem”

I agree that this changes with times .. From a dvar Torah, some Hasidishe Rav in Poland would not let his daughter out of his house. Didn’t want her to socialize with kids on his, hasidische shul, forget about public schools… This is pre-corona 1920s ….

Still, I don’t think, we got logistics of getting kids educated both Jewishly and in general studies right.[Heard R Meir Twersky quoting R Soloveichik, when organizing Maimonides in Boston – “we are faced with a need to give dual education. It looks impossible, but we need to do that”. ] It is mostly a choice between under-funded school with limited education and mediocre Rebbes, or an over-priced school with lack of proper behavior.

I see a path as elementary Jewish schools that focus on middos, and then switching to online semi-public schools and online colleges (can control/improve quality, affordable, and no effect of regular public schools) with offline Jewish subjects in small groups or formal schools. There are already several yeshivot (LA) and Beis Yaakovs (Denver, last time I checked) that outsourced general studies to state online schools.

If there would be a critical mass of families going this way, so that kids could do Jewish subject together and socialize, this might become a path forward.

I am preparing to watch Reagan’s impeachment next week. remember how he reached out to Russians and called for violence in the [German] Capital?!

“Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall”?? As a direct result of his hateful language, thousands of people [several years later] ILLEGALLY overran and destroyed that wall.

>> the sefardy poskim always viewed a shaitel as a big bedieved and a tichel as lechatchila

I looked at some images of Jews arriving from Iraq and everyone wears a kufiya, men and women.

Off-topic question – what is with Sephardim wearing black hats? Ashkenazim would wear it, ostensibly, not to honor Polish nobles, but simply to preserve the way they were told by someone, yeshiva students were dressing before. Sephartdim seem to be wearing them for the opposite reason of behaving like a community around them, that is for the opposite reason to the community. A paradox appears to be that Sephardim are more justified in wearing black hats …

>> “They” refers to public health officials

Phase 3 trials were pretty transparent. Unless you suspect fraud, lots of numbers were in the reports. At this point, we have millions of people vaccinated in US, UK, Israel, EU. We don’t see all data yet, but I think we can presume if there were frequent complications, this will be known. South Africa, for example, stopped using AstraZenica, when it was shown less effective on their variant ….

press87, other than a presumption that I am a kofer, I was not able to fully follow your text. Could you please add some commas next time? I was able to parse the last sentence, thanks for separating it. I think you are right – people who do not work are often feeling happier. We are discussing in this thread the problems of professional families that work hard, pay high tuition, and are under stress. So, the kids end up seeing distressed parents and not joy of Yiddishkeit… Quitting jobs to get tuition breaks at someone else’s expense is not the Torah answer for many.

As I said, this is a repeat from 1930s. The joke I heard, I think from R Nosson Sherman, about a father who spends little money he earned on after-public-school Rebbe for his son. He asks his son – what he learned.
The son says – Yitziyat Mitzraim … Moshe built a bridge over Yam Suf, then sent helicopters and bombed Egyptians.
Father – really, this is what the Rebbe said?
Son – no, this is my version. If I’d tell you what he said, you would never believe it ….

I did not hear Mr. biden speak, but from the newspaper description, he seems to be feeling like a gadol hador and starts talking accordingly giving short and clear daas, without a need to elaborate:
paraphrasing from memory:
“so, you will not stop sanctions on Iran right now?”
“no”
“but only if they stop developing nuclear weapons”
nodded

We used to have “Articulate” Presidents ….

I hoped someone will explain to me why you are holding for daas Torah, instead you are claiming that it is just same as existed before. I do have to apologize to my teacher, for causing lashon hara thrown at him. I did not follow Ch Haim that one should not praise someone who is not 100% accepted tzadik as someone will contradict. Still, how someone can claim that daas Torah is included in traditional respect of chachamim and send a Holocaust survivor to China at the same time is beyond my understanding. But I digressed.

Maybe we can try to define what Daas Torah stands for … I would appreciate if you look at these references that others refer as suggesting using advice of others but still relying on sechel and mitzvot:
Gra, Mishley 16:4
Ruach Chaim Avos 2:7
Ha’amek Davar, Deut. 29:8
Netziv on Koheles 8:1
Iggeret Hakodesh of Baal HaTanya, Chap. 22.

>> If you want me to go fully bderech teva, then Most businesses do not succeed

This is exactly what I am saying – start a business and then daven.

>> in chinuch and have no heter to leave

Not sure why you are complaining then? Hashem wants you doing chinuch, he’ll take care of your cousins some other way… Ironically, seems like some people in chinuch spend more time thinking about money than people in some professions who spend their free time learning … A friend said that when he asked his son’s Rebbe to do more for the kid, the guy said – how can you expect me to spend some much on the kids when I am thinking how to feed my family and extra work I can do.

>> Hiring them when they are all over

there is lot of business that is done remotely. Sell on internet and let them run customer service. Let them teach/tutor some of your students remotely.