Always_Ask_Questions

> many of my rebbeim were talmidim of his, and none had a favorable view of

you can’t fully rely on this. It is not the first time when Great Rabbis respected each other more than their students interpret. We have just a handful of machlokes between Shammai and Hillel, and way more between beis Shammai and beis Hillel… As you interpret examples of politeness and closeness between Gedolim as forced, you can also explain sociology that n0 described – each group end up creating educational environment where they focus on their derech and paint the rest in negative light as the simplest way to keep students in line. I feel pretty unbiased saying this: I think, over time, I equally confronted chabad/misnagdim/moderni with what they mischaracterize about the others.

CTL,
could this simply be simply a drift of the titles? When we say “Rabbi” Akiva, this is not necessarily same semicha as your local Rabbi, right? Same, the word “yeshiva” changed with times when everyone in the community goes there. On one hand, this obviously raises general level of the community, on the other – level of the average “yeshiva” now caters to IQ 80 to 120, not the 120-160 as the early ones perhaps did. You can see the same with colleges, that drifted from a philosophical exercise to a remedial high school with some skill training and diversity mixed in, while at the same time raising general knowledge level of the population.

n0, you don’t think that these two people contributed to the communist and nazi plagues?

Amil,
just consider what are/were alternatives for these children. If they were deprived of something to become laborers is one thing, but if they live in some remote Indian/Chinese/Burmese villages and their alternative is starvation, then maybe child labor is a step to a better future?

Do we blame Ben Gurion for this – both positive and negative effets? He allowed special status for the few (remaining, outdated in his voew) yeshivos and this lead to proliferation of Torah and “Torah only” system in EY and, as mentioned above, then transitioned over to US?

There is an idea of kipa/jail for the cases where beis din is sure of the offense but does not have required eidus. I don’t know how prevalent this was. Also, don’t know what it continued into the times when death penalty was abolished. There are also exceptional cases – punishing mosrim/informaers – that endangered whole kahal. One process was for the kahal to appoint one shaliach who then deals with the methods and participants of the execution and hiding the body to isolate the kahal from government retaliation (not always successfully).

Sartre had a Jewish/Egyptian assistant, interacted w/ R Steinsaltz and probably other Jews also

n0, thanks for the questions. My original claim was fairly limited to what is written in responsa. The fact that there are less questions about some subject does not change the halakha, it just reduces amount of new material on the subject and makes that area of halakha less popular and less relevant to the changing times. If you are forced to decide whether it is ok to hide your income from IRS using medieval sources only, it will be a difficult and error-prone process.

but to your larger, interesting, point. I found an interesting paper
THE DEMOCRATIC EVOLUTION OF HALAKHAH:
A Political Science Perspective by David Raab from Touro College
here are some quotes – but read the original, it has a lot of thoughts and sources,
you asked about R Soloveichik
.. dispute over whether there is a positive commandment to appoint a king. R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik said in the name of his father that even if there is such a commandment, the commandment is dependent on the vox populi. The people must make its voice heard, as was the case in the time of Samuel, and only when a demand emanates from the people does the commandment apply
…
The individual—particularly if not affiliated with a particular
community, but even if so—may designate any decisor of his choosing.
He is required to select a rabbi with whom he can “meaningfully
identify” with a “principled and consistent attachment,” someone who
speaks to one’s own inner sanctum, to serve as an ongoing decisor.73 One
is not permitted to hopscotch from one decisor to the next to find the
most preferred specific ruling.74 Nor is one permitted to ignore one’s
decisor’s ruling, once asked for and received. However, the binding to a
decisor need not be permanent: a person may switch decisors The elasticity in selecting one’s rabbi is at the core of halakhic
democracy. For, those endowed with halakhic rule-crafting authority—
the rabbis—are selected or appointed, directly or indirectly, by the
people. While control over halakhic decision-making is vested in the
rabbis, they may be replaced relatively freely if desired.
over the
course of his lifetime if he no longer wishes to adhere to the philosophy
or rulings of his current one.75 Similarly, an individual may seek the
guidance of a different “specialist” decisor in areas where he feels that
his chosen decisor has less proficiency than needed in the matter at
hand.
As R. Judah Patriarch (Rebbi) was dying, he instructed his son, R. Gamliel, to appoint
Hami b. R. Haninah as head of the yeshiva. The Talmud asks, “And why
did Rebbi himself not appoint him?” R. Drosa responds: because the
people of Sepphoris protested. JT Ta’anit 4:2 20b.
The rishon Rivash (R. Yitzhak b. Sheshet, 1326-1408, Spain) ruled that a person may not request authority over a community from the king without the concurrence of the community
aharon Rema agrees, and both add that whoever does so “causes pain
to the public and will end up having to answer for it.”91 The Sephardic
aharon R. Eliyahu Mizrahi (d. 1525, Turkey) writes that the authority
given “to each Court in each generation…is due only to the fact that the
great court of each generation, all the people of that generation rely on
[that court’s] opinions.”
First-century tanna R. Eleazar b. Tzaddok ruled that any gezeirah
enacted by a court but not accepted by the majority of the people is no
gezeirah.JT Avodah Zarah 2:8, 16a (2:9, 41d); JT Shabbat 1:4 10b.
R. Meir decreed that kuthim (now often referred to as the Samaritans) were considered
complete idolaters and were thus to be shunned, but the people did not
accept his ruling.BT Hullin 6a.
Klei Hemdah (R. Meir Dan Plotzky, 1866-1928, Poland),
Ha’azinu, pp. 336-338 regarding the conflict between obedience to rabbinic law versus
the people’s ability to flout specific rulings.

Amil, to be put in historical context: your grandparents presumably immigrated to USA, understanding it was a better alternative. Same as many children in poor countries now benefit from factories employing them, preferring those jobs to starvation in villages. This is not to excuse horrible cases, but to see things in perspective.

Jack K > It boggles my mind that Republicans want to make voting as restricted and regulated as they can, but child safety gets thrown in the garbage because of inconvenience.

yes, they are mature enough to clean tables, but not mature enough to make political decisions.
There are pros and cons to universal franchise: pro – everyone’s interests are counted; cons – decisions are mediocre. Given current ability to manipulate opinions, cons grow and grow. So, maybe we need a two-tier system: people who pass IQ, SAT and political knowledge test will be allowed to vote. The rest could find someone in the previous group and delegate him with the vote.

YS > If they are not necessarily in Lakewood then they aren’t in Lakewood and irrelevant to our discussion

True. Just to contribute view from OOT: one yeshiva general studies teacher in a town I was visiting replied to my (gentle) needling: our parents understand value of general studies, we are not lakewood here. So, this is how things are seen out there.

Professional advice is – put a large screen computer in a living room with the screen visible to multiple people and let kids use that. If it is a laptop, bolt it.

Good for them. People who are not built for college-level jons, should learn job skills.

Einstein’s philosophy might have been of Spinoza’s style in terms of his focus on laws of nature rather than Hashem’s participation in every day life. Most people (here) understand what is bad about it, but I think it is less understood that the opposite – focusing on miracles and special moments, while denying the logic – and laws – of the world that Hashem created – is equally bad – and is way more widespread in our communities.

At the same time, Einstein’s physics is a significant part of theory that allows for Creation. According to previous, Newtonian and earlier Greek, physics, the world existed eternally in the same form. There is a Gemora about a dispute between Jewish and Greek scholars whether the world was Created, and Jews admitted that they lost science argument but stayed at their position due to strength of the Mesorah we have. So, Einstein and other 20th century scientists helped us to finally
win the argument.

People often equate isolated events with widespread. As a visitor, the only widespread violence I saw in Lakewood was by parents who were either driving while on cellphone or walking their kids into the path of my car. Not to excuse that, but I did not feel threatened by teenagers contrary to some other place in US.

Mentch1 , right, bd had a mitzvah to do justice, they are not simply applying rules and not caring about the outcome

First recorded cases of unjustified prosecution: Vashti for rebellion and Haman for assault on the queen 👸
No justice, no megila

Einstein is different from your neighborhood freethinker as he was delving into mysteries of the universe. It doesn’t mean of course that we should follow his advice on mussar, but he was definitely a serious person. As to my alleged attitude towards rabbis, I more often than not have issues with your interpretation than with original sources.

Ps Einstein also behaved well towards other Yidden during difficult times, as far as I know.

Kaltlitvak, seems we indeed speak past each other
That usually means that we have different underlying assumptions. Let’s try to figure it out. Maybe we put different meaning into the word yeshiva. I am thinking more of litvishe yeshiva in Lita, where Rabonim are on record to feel responsible for what their students do. You seem to use some looser definition. As you say that some criteria would exclude majority of yeshiva, and this seems pretty normal to me as one would surely support a system of education that one finds better. You seem to be thinking about some Jewish universal educational system where each of them is entitled to universal support but responsible for their best efforts but not for the outcome

On which arm does a lefty liberal does not put tefillin on?

> In my own experience with “reading something”, conflating correlation with causation is a pretty common practice, particularly in polemical pieces and news articles,

I would not quote a news article to an esteemed chevra here as a possibility. So, we agree here. I meant that I saw a research paper and scanned it for conclusions, without reading carefully how research was conducted.

Note that google et al personalize your search results based on your history (middah k’neged middah, or they are letting you go where you choose to)… for some reason, I can’t find all these nasty things people here are saying are out there on Internets – what I search for, I got scientific papers as results. (or you can search scholar google com or books google com to begin with)

just get into the car before shabbos and it will stop at pre-defined time. Or make it work like shabbos elevator – stop at certain times for you to get in and then continue on the same path whether you get in or not.

n0 > Someone who is capable of answering shailos may do so even if nobody listens to him. Like, חליצה על ידי שליח. This nistar is a quick thinker who knows certain complex sugyos in his sleep. Certain conflicting topics are ran by him by some very big name poskim.

You are contradicting yourself: “if nobody listens” , and then “by some very big name poskim.”

I presume most people here can’t parse most of the equations written by Albert Einstein. What makes you think you understand his neshoma?

He was very focused on understanding how the World was created, believing that there is an underlying unity of the world. Not just rejecting statistical view of the world as in “does not play dice”, but trying to uncover how multiple physical theories can be unified. This is solid scientific interpretation of Hashem’s creation of the world and he spent most of his later years pushing in this direction. He was probably Spinozian in the sense that he looed for universal laws only, not Hashem’s continuing role in the world, but I think Spinoza had more serious Jewish background that he consciously rejected.

kaltlitvak> standards of frumkeit that mo adheres to is signifigintly less than that of the more yeshivish community.

Thanks for explaining yourself. Now I see where you are coming from. I don;t frankly understand this desire to measure standards and how do you define communities. There are standards that Torah and halakha defines, and after you pass that threshold, there are a lot of options and trade-offs. “Increasing standards”, often referred as chumros, is not an obviously good thing. The one with more nedorim is not necessarily the winner. Hanging around a yeshiva town without a job is not necessarily better than working as a doctor and learning at night. Being meikel in work environment is not worse than being meikel in taking welfare funds from non-Jews, or even Jews. I may be throwing back similarly inflammatory and stereotypical positions – not in order to rehash them, but just to show that this is not how you relate to people.

Anecdotally: I was telling an anecdote to a “yeshivish” hevrusa about an event that once happened with me when someone interested in Jews observed me for some time at the Army training polygon far from any Jewish presence. So, my hevrusah reacted – oh, you are wearing a kippah when in such places!? Not that there would be something wrong with not wearing it, but I first thought that this is his assumptions about me and Jews in work environment in general, but then I thought maybe this is how he thinks he would have behaved (based on the stories he was raised on), and he stays within 4 amos to save himself from the danger.

random > Score-as-much-as-you-can games that end only when a
loss condition is reached go back at least as far as Tetris

Right, but that game never ended, no loss condition …