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Marxist > I don’t deny the anti-Semitic aspect to some of Marx’s thought.
TheFakeMaven answered already. I just would like to add that this _early_ work shows where his hate of capitalism came – from hating Jewish influence on the world in the form of our business activities, and his interest in “emancipation” included the desire to stop us being successful business people. I may not convince you, but for others – interesting to see that such a plague on the world started as a narrow hate of Jewish practices and then expanded to all other businesses.
Avram,
agree with your correction on the 1990s. According to the paper, cell phones, before smart phones, fit the pattern, so just ability to communicate, rather than play games, was the main factor. They do seem to mention that 2000s correlation explain only part of the pattern, leaving place for others.CEO payments are not _the_ problem. US companies are large, it is a bog company. Most companies in fully private businesses without government payments choose to pay CEO high salaries so that there is a person in charge who spends 24/7 trying to make the company successful.
It is an empirical question which system is better. As mentioned, do we think that public schools are run better than private/charter/etc? Ask people on medicaid and medicare – are these systems better than private insurances (other than possible subsidies).
jackk > That is seriously misguided and evil.
pleazse, re-read your post. It consists of statements without any arguments. You could do better (by adding arguments or deleting unsupported statements).
a double miracle, agree with a marxist and a krugman. Possibly the same person.
Marxist > but he is arguing for the emancipation of Jews not against it.
It was some decades I opened a Marx sefer, but if I remember correctly, he argues with someone (Rev Bauer?) and he turns the question around and suggest emancipating the world from the Jewish capitalism. The reason I remember this kuntros better than what I had for breakfast yesterday – because it dawned on me tha the origin of this plague is hate of Jews.
> there is a direct correlation between effort and success.
It says in Gemora Megila that this is only true in Torah learning. In parnosa, one needs both an effort and some mazal.
I saw a description of a seemingly legit charity in EY that teaches charedim carpentry skills. Would this derech be useful for those who are not interested in neither gemora nor algebra? Or would this be seen an inferior ways of supporting oneself?
Interesting pilpul, I wish I could find time & energy to go through that.
In my humble opinion, if you need pages and pages to show how your rebbe differs from a world-famous faker, you already lost your readers and doing disservice to your rebbe.Amil, I understand your emotional response. Still, if someone wants to open a factory with child labor in a remote Bangladeshi village and save those kids from starvation, would you object on principle? I hope not and your humanity is above simple labels.
Coffee, would it be the same for a day camp in town? My kids worked there before 14, and (I think) it was legal in my state.
So, the cult personae are not responsible for the followers?
Pirkei Avos mentions differences between students of Avraham and Bilaam, from which you learn that you can see whether the teacher was kosher by the students. And Marx was no tzadik to begin with. He, apparently, came to his hate of business owners via hate of Jews, whom he considered guilty of propagating business values. He argued with some reverend suggesting that instead of emancipating Jews, we should emancipate world from the Jews.
N0 > The Lakewood model is not based on Israel.
I am following on YS suggestion. My knowledge of Lakewood is indeed superficial, based on occasional visits there and talking/observing visitors and refugees from there. When I mentioned my “Lakewood Teacher”, he travelled to where I was, not other way around and it was some time ago.
Still, I wonder whether YS has a point here. It seems to be a difference from early small Lakewood where top students did not have general classes with the recent growth of community, with now masses of people ignoring general curriculum. Are all students now at the level of the 1960s when R Malkiel was learning? maybe they are, tell me.
> Mrs. Seminary girl
not to detract from a good question, but her name is really Ms. Oxymoron.
Rif, please start with Sanhedrin 81 and Rambam Hilchos Rotzeach 4:8.
Please let us know what you learn from there.From simple reading, it looks like the kippah is, yes, for lifelong sentence, but the conditions are such that we are not expecting him to collect social security. Not clear how often this was used, given scant references.
> 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.
I am all for confiscation and closing wifi as a last resport, but not as a starting point. I agree with n0 that there are ways. I found them when I did not hear my teens complaining about access limits for a couple of days – which meant that they found – again – a way to go around the filters. If you are in this adversarial situation already, I would suggest first monitor wifi traffic to understand both the problematic things happening and the tools your teen is using before starting closing them. Otherwise, if you don’t see the whole picture and will be always behind. At the end, establishing a healthy routine in using internet and thinking in general works way better. Many teens can brush their teeth regularly, so they can use computers/phones responsibly also.
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.internet is a bunch of wires. there is nothing wrong with communicating with friends, learning about a world, and looking up interesting information. Teens should not do inappropriate things online, same way as they should not do them offline. Some teens may be unreliable and should not have access.
At the same time, some may be unreliable in what they do offline. If you worry about what a teen sees in the computer, you should also worry about what he hears from his friends – and even teachers – offline.
n0, you don’t think that these two people contributed to the communist and nazi plagues?
Avram,
what I understand in this paper that it is not just a notion of correlation by year – but correlation by county, correlating to the number of cell towers there. They also looked at a couple of competing factors and found them lacking. This seems like a reasonable correlation, not yet causation, but enough to take it seriously. I agree that the drug relationship does not seem to have data behind it.
Maybe, it is so clear to them that murders relate to drugs – something that is not obvious for, B’H, outsiders like you and me.I understand that they are focusing on murders and not drug-related arrests, because the latter number is less reliable and more prone to be correlated to some hidden factors (police presence, politics). This makes sense to me.
I personally would suggest a more general explanation – teens are sitting in front of the screen (possibly doing computer crimes or aveiros) rather than with other human beings. We know recommendation to make a potential murderer a shochet. Not sure, whether a conversion of a potential drug dealer into a cyber-criminal is a good deal, maybe it is.
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?Ray, maybe Baruch is something all religious people can relate to? See Bereshis – ” I will bless those who bless you”, at tyhe same time Hussain is a specific reference to a Muslim figure? especially, with a recent notorious dictator using that name.
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?
My understanding that a mitzva for bnei Noach to have a system of justice is broad – they can have juries or kings or communist troikas – as long as the system performs justice. And this will depend on the times and population. Given the (relative) success of modern Democratic systems (comparing with non-modern and non-Democratic), we should support them and improve, where possible, just making sure we do not destroy it with the improvements.
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).
Maybe cheaper matzah:
– during chol hamoed
– in Ukraine, where they struggle to ship out grain. Possibly, the most cost-effective way is to bake matzos and then, at the quoted prices, fly it out on F-16.Sartre had a Jewish/Egyptian assistant, interacted w/ R Steinsaltz and probably other Jews also
I am glad you asked still in Adar!
why do you need labels on seeds for the gerbils? Gerbils might choke on the labels.are you afraid that some goyim or sephardim will substitute kitniyos for pumpkins to save money or test your faith – similar to chalav akum? we do have a long tradition of chalav akum, but do not have such tradition regarding pumpkin akum, at least I don’t.
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.Avram, thanks for clarifications. I do not mean that he had an agenda to prove Creation, I mean that he technically contributed to understanding Maase bereshis, and it was not an easy or short path, I agree. Even scientists who are involved in such research need to be respoected even if they came to wrong conclusions. Same as Resh Lakish almost always “loses the argument to R yohanan, but he is not to be seen as a “loser”.
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.Value of science (that is, understanding the world Hashem created for us) is clearly stated in a midrash that asks – why early humans lived longer? A: they did not benefit from previous writings, so each of them had to make his own astronomical observations to figure out all the planet and stars movements.
This sounds like a back-projection from the era of astronomy, but clearly says that a person did not fulfill his role in the world until he built all those Ptolemy’s circles (or better Copernicus or Einstein models).The arguments against chochmas goyim:
1) We now have Torah, so non-Jews could work out quantum physics on their own, while we are
torn between Abaye and Rava
2) social effect of secular learning leading to university dorms and mixed dancing.These are valid ones, but can be addressed: (1) with the right balance, (2) with right social construct
Major argument for (beyond lifestyle, parnosa): bein Adam l’Havero is a major part of Torah. Healing people may need an MD; finding lost objects – writing phone apps; teaching Torah to busy people – ability to use zoom; unloading enemy’s donkey – using heavy machinery. More generally – organizing healthy and just society requires knowledge of modern society.
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.
YS> I find that kids in schools who offer optional studies rarely take advantage of them and most just do the bare minimum.
The schools I described do not make these “optional”, they are simply online and clearly separate from the yeshiva curriculum. Also, having an additional tutor that could occasionally help/direct the students will make this model even more effective. Avi Chai foundation had several studies several years ago of online/blended studies like that in Jewish schools and have reports written up about it.
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.
Avram, here is the process:
search google for: teenage crime cell phones decreaseFirst link: popular article
The Collapsing Crime Rates of the ’90s Might Have Been Driven by Cellphones
Did technology disrupt the drug game, too? By Alexis C. Madrigal, Atlanticthat quotes this paper with full text available:
It’s the Phone, Stupid: Mobiles and Murder Lena Edlund and Cecilia Machado
NBER Working Paper No. 25883 May 2019
New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. In 1990, they
accounted for 5.6% of the US population but 20% of homicides, and had homicide rates
exceeding not only the national average but also those of other cities. Ten years later, the
country’s three most populous cities looked like any other city, a remarkable convergence
Our main finding is that annual, county-level mortality data for the contiguous US
covering the four decades 1970-2009 lend support to our hypothesis that expansion of
cellular phone service – as proxied by antenna-structure build-out – lowered homicide
rates.AAQ: see table 3-5 where R2 is 70%+, that is linear regression of crime rates by antenna density explains 80% of variation over counties or metropolitan areas.
then go to scholar google com
search for paper title, it will give 11 papers that cite this one\. Most seem not relevant
but this one is curious:
Mobile Network Outages and Violence Against Women: Evidences from Brazil
7 Sep 2022
Antonio Vinícius Barbosa UFPB
Jorge H. N. Viana Department of Economics – UFPB
Using high-frequency data from Brazil, we show that the disruption caused by the mandatory 9-digit dialing transition for cell phone numbers had unintended consequences, increasing hospitalization among women victims of violence. The pattern we observe is consistent with the argument that mobile phones can provide accessibility for women in risky situations while also changing offenders’ perceptions.Good for them. People who are not built for college-level jons, should learn job skills.
Doing > Can anyone name a major gadol accepted by all of frum yidden who has/had a smartphone?
Yes, most gedolim miss the unmute button when giving a shmooze on zoom. They know that if you are tool good with zoom, you will not be accepted by “all frum yidden”, maybe just by the rov (like Mordechai).
But, even I – totally not a gadol, and not often accepted by anyone, rarely use phones, and almost never before covid. If someone needs to do work or to write or to search Bar Ilan database, there is a computer for that. If you are so deprived that you can not wait until you get to a computer, and need to punch into a phone with one hand while driving, you are surely not a gadol.
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.There are a bunch of schools, not necessarily in L but of similar derech, that introduce online classes to cover general studies. This reduces the cost and allows for clear separation between kodesh vechol.
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.
n0 > But it’s not at all democratic.
Let me try to clarify – it is not a direct democracy, Athens style, where every balabos votes for the gadol hador or moschiach. It is indirect multi-level democracy – balabos hires the local Rav and decides what questions to ask, local rav decides which questions to forward further and to whom, and so on. Your anonymous posek (are you writing about yourself, maybe?) fits here too.
Specifically, if no balabos ever asks a shaila about honest wages or para aduma, then these questions will not propagate into responsa at some higher level.
Mentch1 , right, bd had a mitzvah to do justice, they are not simply applying rules and not caring about the outcome
Not the mishnaic chasidim
First recorded cases of unjustified prosecution: Vashti for rebellion and Haman for assault on the queen 👸
No justice, no megilaSounds like the who doesn’t know dikduk can’t be a chusid.
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.
Ghis whole megilah thing will surely not happen in our time. Who heard about people changing their political views based on what actually happened. We are now more sophisticated and can easily explain why Amans downfall has nothing to do with Mordechai
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 outcomeJack, thanks for the good information. Anyone doesn’t see their yeshiva on that list, please call them and see if they would join.I hope nobody finds such.