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why “gezera” when it might be possible to do something? At the yam suf, Moshe is told not to daven, but to act. Maybe, you don’t need to run away from the meteor, but simply shoot it or send a rocket to confront it and redirect with a magnet – even a small change far away will be enough to save the planet, or maybe just EY … Same as when a person is sick – is it a gezera or a cure is possible? A poshute yid and a Rabbi Dr may come to poosite conclusions …
Maybe, you have a similar cognitive dissonance with the meteor: you clearly need to know physics and engineering to confront the meteor, but this would require you to admit that going to college is useful, and you would rather have the whole world destroyed than admit you were wrong. Understandable.
this is a very self-centered argument whether the Tam behaved appropriately. This episode is a simple proof that such behavior is not appropriate as it may cause moris ayin and a long prison term.
Maybe, just maybe, there is room to permit when there is a camera that will help during prosecution. Even then it is a big bitul Torah for the Tam, the youngele, his ima, dayan and lawyers, most of whom might be Jewish. And the camera may be off.
To sum, staying away from questionable behavior that might cause a problem is an etzah tova. If you don’t want to walk between two nashim tzadkiyos, just get out a sefer and wait until they finish the conversation. At worse, you’ll do an extra siyum.
Why not – what is more important – mitzvos bein adm l’Hashem or l’havero? (or l’ atzmo as some also count). I don’t have enough time to do all of them, please advise should I drop the tefillin or the grandma?
Yes, we sometimes have emergencies when one needs to prioritize – and possibly inward approach was appropriate in pre-WW2 Europe and post-WWs US and Israel. Other approaches, including some non-extreme MO types led to assimilation. But, we can’t continue an emergency for more than 100 years. Many, not all, maybe a minority ( should be a respected minority) is capable of walking and chewing gum, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Just because your kid is not capable of handling college and having a profession, does not mean that you should teach him to hate the doctors and engineers who help you have a comfortable life.
> at which point he didn’t have to walk between women, and he exited alone.
Just browsing here, finally a reason for this bizarre episode. Maybe, this should be called
Tzaddik Shoteh (paraphrasing Gemora about someone not saving a drowning woman as chasid shoteh).Dr. Pepper, of course – Mr. A shows his lack of bitachon & emunah, and relies on himself too much, leading him to a life of geivah, letzonus, and bitul Toirah. He probably comes home for shabbos only 2 hours in advance.
Hashem sends the govmt shlit’a to re-apportion his wealth earned in aveiros to a worthy recipient whose emunah is strong. So, in one shot, Hashem protects the health of a tzadik and provides a rasha with an opportunity to perform a mitzvo of tzedoka.
PS I once overheard someone who tried to look for a middle ground between Mr. A and Mr. B. So, this Mr. AB almost found a job, but unfortunately the anti-semitic employer refused his request to leave every Friday at 2pm (including during summer) – a time this person required for adequate cooking and showering before shabbos koidesh. Hope, now with WFH, Mr. AB found his niche.
emes, you are right to consider issues on their observable merits. Then, there is a hope to figure them out.
for example, fossil fuels made our cities so much cleaner – comparing with the horses that previously occupied and polluted the streets. When you have something even cleaner – and cheaper – everyone will switch to that. “Cheaper” is important – expensive means spending more resources on producing that thing.
And also need to take reality into account – look at Germans who went off their gas and coal, and clean nuclear energy and depended instead on buying cheap Russian gas while growing their “clean” resources – while also enjoying cheap dirty energy that was critical for their manufacturing exports – and not spending enough on defense. I think their behavior is more dangerous to the world than eating from plastic plates.
similar thing may be with some recycling: China used to buy it, now I think it does not, and there is no reasonable way to deal with it. My info may be outdated though.
Thanks all for explaining how to understand gedolim talking about each other. I don’t think this is anything new, we have strong machlokets all over Gemora and history.
a couple of side comments:
Chumros are nedorim, stay away. Note that none of the chumros mentioned are bein adam l’havero or personal middos. If there are any at any part of your head, pls quote them, I am interested.> Now you can switch your kid’s rebbe, but as long as he’s in the class, he needs to have a high impression of the rebbe, as representative of Torah.
This may be true in a free market environment, when you freely choose a yeshiva. But when there is a limited choice of schools and school chooses teachers, I am not sure it is correct. I tried to follow that to the “T”, and it may lead to bad results. In some cases (and ages), it may become healthier to set boundaries. for example, if Avira were a teacher, I would tell kids – listen to your teacher about Rashi and brisker, and bring everything related to Zionism and college back to me so that we could discuss.
The main motivation behind kesuba and a large party is for the hatan to take the wedding seriously and not, h’v, be ready to change his mind and divorce first time kallah burns his porridge. So, _hatan_ spending some serious money on the process is OK. 200 zuz is an bligatory amount, at some point bnei kohanim asked for 400. Whatever the market will bear. But there no reason for kallah to do that.
On the other hand, we mentioned before about cheap medieval weddings. Turns out, in 1930 Mir yeshiva, they also had weddings 2 hours before shabbos, then close relatives having a shabbos dinner, and then whole community coming for sheva brochos (just the brochos, not food).
> [Rav Feinstein] says in America you do not need college to make a Parnassa,
I addressed this before – R Feinstein correctly says in 1950s that one does not need college for median American lifestyle. At the time, I think 10% of _men_ in US went to college. Look up my old post for exact numbers. Currently, 50% and more of both men and women in US go to college, so median lifestyle requires college.
Also note that Rav’s daughter met her shidduch while studying chemistry at Brooklyn college. This is not a contradiction, but a difference between communal and individual advice. Some people could handle college at that time. Similarly, Chofetz Chaim in 1900 advised masses against going to America, but was OK for specific people.
I think I saw this quote in Rambam who did not bring his sources as usual, but I traced it to Zohar.
if there is C corp income that is not reported as personal income, it will be reported as C-corp income, presumably in the same zip code.
I think the argument about maskilim is somewhat outdated. It was relevant to University of Berlin 100 years ago, but I don’t think anyone’s observance is threatened in our days by exposure to python programming or even Calculus, lo aleinu. Medical education is obviously a study of Creation.
Is it different in other circles? Anyone went OTD after he/she learned to code? (I am separating actual chochma from social effects of putting bunch of teenagers on campus)But even in earlier times – if you read Chofetz Chaim, he is warning in multiple essays and letters in 1920s against anti-religious schools who perverse Torah, and to lack of Jewish education, but I don’t see where he says that math and science are bad per se. Maybe I did not see the right letter. Does he
Daughter of JJ Herman order US gov pamphlets to be sent to Mir when she gave birth to a baby. She learned from those about Vitamins A and D and started giving cod liver oil to her baby. While she writes that local yeshivish people were generally laughing at her American minhagim, in this case, other mothers immediately followed and soon whole town smelled fishy. Tells you about both lack of knowledge and also interest and respect in scientific facts.
> when i was a kid, the scientists were saying that in 10 years, coastal cities would be submerged
The scientists I know spoke about different things, and achieved many of them. That includes plastics. btw. I know a little from my father O’H how difficult it is to develop a new type of plastics that fits a particular purpose and can be produced commercially.
Just do some meta-thinking. Imagine you talk to someone whose knowledge of Gemora is based on NYT or some more intellectual magazine. You would not expect him to have a clue, right? So, if you are learning about science from similar sources, do you think you know more?
I had once an experience that I hopefully learnt from. A local rov in a small town decided to write a small article about what I was doing there in a local Jewish publication. We sat down and he asked me a bunch of questions and wrote down the answers. When I read the article, the number of errors was astounding. Whatever was the source of misunderstandings, it taught me to take any published info with a grain of salt.
I need to bring my apology for putting a stumbling block l’fnei as poster here:
I was kinda putoff by the baseless attack above alleging my maggid shiur is drinking coffee during the class and does not know what he is teaching … but then I realized from a post in another thread, that the poster probably presumed that the maggid is “MO” and, given poster’s opinion of “MO”, he sees it as a mitzva to say something bad about that “MO”.
I am usually sensitive not to mislead people into learning something their Rebbe told them not to, so I usually preface the Torah I learned from someone non-charedi by saying who, or what derech, he is. So, here, I unfortunately mislead the poster into thinking that we are talking about an MO person, and so he committed his verbal aveiros against a pure charedi Talmid Chochom…
I am not sure I need to apologize as he is not aware of the insult (Rav, if you are reading this, please accept my apology), and if the poster decides to ask the mehilah – I am not sure I should pass it for the same reason. So, maybe the kaporah is to go to all OOT Dapei Yom and buy them coffee.
Great, people are now alluding to various statistics sources. Now, start making your case quoting those numbers.
> the people are who subscribe to your heresy.
cool down. As I said I am for environment, for good Jewish environment.
And please don’t throw everyone with a pen into the same bin as “scientists”. Same as putting Rabonim and Reform Rabbis in the same “clergy” category.
The klal is that the closer a researcher is to reality and experiment, the more yashar he is. Physicists are rarely know to fake nuclear experiments. Nuclear bomb worked as predicted … Satellites fly, GPS takes you to your destination without you even knowing how it is being done. It is worse when it comes to economics, and worse to obvious political areas.
Avira > that we have the ability to destroy or help it without it being Hashem’s will.
this is nothing new and applies to everything. We go into business and deal with people whose only goal is money, into medicine where everyone feels they are in charge of health. So, you first make sure that your motivation is correct, protect yourself from bad influence, and then try to make them see the better side.
Avira,
I would not defend all things that happen in MO world, and probably many are not defensible, but this is a fault dichotomy “prioritize SAT scores”. Getting a decent SAT score is a normal thing for a kid who speaks/writes English and took a good math course, and then spent a couple of months looking over SAT-specific material. This is not making people OTD or forcing them to miss a masechet. Not saying everyone has to do that, just that in certain circles, this is not a such huge effort.There are mitzvos to teach the kid Torah, profession, and swimming, and you pursue all of them. Profession requires training. There is nothing political here, even if some make it – on both sides.
We read in another thread that charedim do not need no state and no taxes, and in another thread that charedim do not need no education because they are successful businessmen. So, just call your baalei tzedoka and start these worthy infrastructure projects.
Avira > the apikorsus, unadulterated anathema of yiddishkeit that you so nonchalantly throw around,
Maybe I was not clear – I brought these as examples of perversions these ideologies take them, similar to Nazis and Commies – and to Christians before them – who committed their crimes in pursuit of “higher good”. As Russians are now saying to Ukrainians – “we need to kill you to save you”.
We should of course care about the state of the olam haze that Hashem created for us. There are a lot of non-controversial things that we do: do not things away, fruit trees, city layout, not damaging property.
The problem start with philosophies that make hard-to-prove claims that require, somehow, for money to flow from us to them. So, it then becomes entirely possible to pursue these goals at the expense of simple things we are required to do. Say, decrease population or at least have less kids to save the planet; close down nuclear and coal powerplants to increase dependency on Arabs and Russians.
Bottom line, we are for environment – goodm healthy Jewish environment.
So, then women should be doing it too for health reasons.
I see also a health benefit of separating meat and milk. Iron is not recommended to be taken together with milk. This would have huge impact on human strength at the time when the only source of iron was meat.
Avira,
who do I believe – you or my lying eyes? I saw a number of mainstream yeshivish and chasidic (non-chabad) Rabonim sitting at the same table with the Rav, teaching with and under him, showing full respect. Why do you feel a need to insult other people’s teachers, I am not sure.Most magidim shiur that I know are excited when a student asks a question. And so am I when the kids do. You got me with the 30 (well, 90) minutes. It is the first time I got involved into Daf Yomi, as my previous maggid shiur used unprintable jokes about this approach, his question was – what page are we on this month?
what? we have people here discussing a topic and bring opinion of a gadol while not mentioning the other ones who disagree?! unbecoming.
Everyone here seems to think that they can convince the other based on his own wishful thinking.
We have counties and zip codes that are majority charedi and some maybe even many-MO, why not compare their incomes, family sizes, welfare rolls, school enrollment, etc. Yes, census may not capture all sources of income, but still it would be a good start.
This is discussed in the end of Nedarim: a guy makes a neder not to get benefit from anyone in the world if he were to marry until he finishes learning the whole mishna. Apparently, marriage in those times required people to work, so he wanted to learn first full time and used neder to strengthen himself. Apparently, he needed chizuk as it was not “a thing”…
Then, turns out, he is not that capable, so he was not able to finish Mishna so far. Apparently, there was no social promotion at the time.
So, now he is sitting and “learning” and not able to get married. Apparently, learning to avoid social obligations was frown upon at the time, so all amoraim rush to trick the guy into marrying and then throw dirt on him, so he now needs a cleaner (apparently, he did not learn cleaning skills also), so he goes to do hatarat nedarim.
PS It is bizarre how values changed over time.
I think we should acknowledge that both community have problems and stop making fun of each other – I don’t think Hashem will be happy that one or the other group fails …
for stats: we do not need to be cautious how we interpret that. Some of “MO” schools accept not very religious people to begin with, and also some kids with hashkafa problems first move to more “MO” schools, so they might count as “MO” dropouts.
Avira > Rav hirsch was extremely controversial in his setting up a school with secular studies. The ENTIRE European jewish world had chadarim that were torah only. They would learn a trade from their father or someone else.
at that time, less than 1% of everyone in the world was studying science. R Hirsh was ahead.
During Satmar Rov times – 10% of men went to college.
That is why, for example, R Moshe reasonably says that one can live comfortable life without it.
There were also lots of options to not be a slave at a factory and be an independent businessmen.In our times > 50% of people go to college. that is not the same “college” as before – IQ of 50% is still not the same as of 1% 100 years ago. Current college student is not able to read Madison – and is not interested.
Small business opportunities are very limited. Your store will compete with walmart and amazon.Current college teaches you currently required skills – nurse, computer programmer – that are equivalent of being a butcher 100 years ago (and some programmers are very good at butchering code). It takes maybe more years to learn to code than to learn to butcher, but productivity is also hire, and thus the pay and comfort of the job. THat’s all to that, it is not about learning heresy or mixing with co-eds.
You can as well say that Rabban Gamliel was against travelling at 60 mph, it was too dangerous to the horses.
where is the psak?
I want to live in a mansion, but it belongs to someone else. Should I ignore that fact? if you don’t want to pay taxes, gezunte heig, just don’t use the roads you did not pay for.
american taxes are a result of collective agreement. You (with previous generations) either came on Mayflower and were part of the agreement, or you came later and explicitly sign up to that system instead what you left behind in Romania. former slaves are the only ones who can complain, everyone else joined the agreement out of free will. We discuss this with the brit with Hashem, how is this different?
american taxes are also part of the system that lead to high prosperity and are also lower than most comparable countries.
Shimon, Israel seemingly like US spends 5% of GDP on defense. Government budget (collected thru taxes) is at most 50% of GDP, so 10% of budget is for defense. This does not include other defense-like costs – police, FBI, maybe protection of cities near the border in Israel, etc.
In addition to defense, there are many other “pareve” things government spends on – roads & bridges, pensions and help to poor, at least basics. I think if you are fundamentally opposed to a country, you should find a way to get out of that country and live somewhere where you feel comfortable paying taxes. This is exactly what Rambam suggests, and if not “go to the desert” as Hazon Ish suggested … I can see, for example, if you are a citizen of Iran, North Korea, or Russia – a part of your taxes will be spent on murdering people, and even 10% might make one uncomfortable. So, it is OK to feel this way towards Israeli government, and it is entirely possible nowadays to move to another country nearby or further away.
This is like you come to a restaurant – and they you don’t like the food or even the kashrus. It is OK to go to another place, but not OK to eat first and then say you are not paying because it was burnt and treif.
Maybe I missed – what is the source of the alleged Rav psak? printed? whispered?
is it reshus to not pay or a mitzva? what is eitza tova if you are caught?
are any other gedolim on the record on that and did they pay taxes themselves?
> Where do chazal say that one must or even should know secular studies?
indeed, I perused a bilingual sefer of letters by Chofetz Chaim and he writes in 1920s – on the English side – that one should absolutely avoid sending kids to secular teachers and public schools…
Just as I started packing all the chemistry books in the garbage, I had some seichel to look at the original Hebrew (I don’t think this was translated from Yiddish). So, the Hebrew tzad tells me that I should not send my kids to anti-religious (Zionist? Hofshi) teachers and avoid heretical schools (obviously, there were no Jewish “public” school in 1920 Poland).
Now, I am very confused – which tzad of Chofetz Chaim should I believe?! Should I take the books out of the garbage or leave it there? So, as in the famous Gemora, the books are standing sideways into the garbage – they are not falling out of respect to Chofetz Chaim and do not stand straight out of respect of Chafetz Chaim.
And I would love to meet and look into the eyes of a person who spend so much time translating heilike seforim of Chofetz Chaim about purity of lashon and then creating these garbage problems. I hope I’ll see a soul, maybe a confused soul, but a soul nevertheless.
Ehrliche Sephardi Rabonim (ok,ok) I know do not refer to names of Sephardi politicians like that, from which I deduce, they are not holding them in high esteem.
My understanding of the situation is that the new Knesset changed the law to allow Deri to sit in Knesset, but Supreme Court invalidated that rule. Supposedly, without having solid bias for doing that.
We know 2 successful democratic systems around us – US with constitution, and UK with Parliament as Sovereign. While Jewish ideal polity seem to include strong courts, this presumes Torah-based courts, with Torah creating a standard similar to Constitution in US. As Israeli courts do not have such structure, they seem to rely on their personal (possibly biased) feeling of justice, in effect having a small unelected group having unlimited powers. This does not look like a good idea to me.
lakewhut > The MO aren’t balancing education and Torah as R Hirsch and Soloveitchik had in mind.
Possibly, I am not so familiar with various streams in MO. But, as YS suggests, rather than bashing each other, maybe we should ask ourselves – how do we balance these right.
some heimishe terrorists would be deterred by seeing guns and move on to softer targets. Not that helps the society in general.
CTlawyer, those of us who live in large cities get more criminal cases than civil, unfortunately.
And I did get dismissed usually from civil cases as they are long, and I always have something lined up – yom tov, work trip, vacation. I even suggested to the judge that it is only a minor inconvenience – tickets are non-refundable, but the wife and kids are fully capable of travelling on their own. Did not tell that the tickets were on Spirit and was looking for ward to a quiet fortnight vacation in a jury box, but the judge promptly sent me back to the pool, unfortunately.
> i am familiar with a yeshiva bochir called for jury duty recently who said he was a racist
I presume the jusge phoned p the Rosh Yeshiva and the bochur was dismissed both from jury and yeshiva for not knowing why Hashem created one Man from whom all others came.
Lil froggie, it is great that you represented Jewish people proudly, but a yid with a degree would also have a place there and maybe able relate the Gemora he was learning (probably on his phone) to the points of law, maybe opening some new vistas to those lawyers, etc. For example, discuss the difference between Roman caveat emptor and Jewish personal responsibility to not harm others.
Another – well recommended – way to deal with electronics is to have it in the open in public room, whether in yeshiva or home. Maybe I don’t need filters because my kids come by with their issues at any time.
it is also extremely easy to get valuable items from stores for free. I choose not to disclose the methods here, connect with me direct. 6 days a week, not on shabbos koidesh.
This Ploni b’ Shapiro article starts well quoting Rambam and R Hirsh, descending into political issues that he favors, not about the communal issues. Second reference seems to be in topic, thanks.
But, anyway – same as failures in charedi community – social failures in MO communities do not take away from Rambam and R Hirsh views. Confronting mdernity is a challenge and, so far (after just 200 years) nobody got a perfect solution. So, YU having some inappropriate club does not excuse a charedi person not passing his SATs (and other way around). It is always easier to point problems in others.
In the last Parsha, Moshe gives his famous kal ve’homer: if Jews did not listen to me, then Pharaoh will also not and goes quiet – apparently realizing how weak this praise of Jews is, just better than Pharaoh. R Avigdor Miller expands on that saying it is not enough to be just better than others …
I once was “excused” by a career criminal himself. State and his lawyer questioned me and were satisfied with my answers, I left towards the jury box, but then was called back. The criminal himself looked at me and then advised his lawyer to dismiss me. Don’t know whether he did not trust Jews in general or disagreed with my CR posts.
lakewhut > Everyone does.
Please be aware that google search is personalized. Thus, it continues searching for thing similar to what you looked at before… I am curious, even envious, what you are finding out there. Usually, whatever I search for, I get either Jewish sites or academic papers or news… (I do have google safe filter on). Worst I saw was a reform sermon … I guess I would need to search for something inappropriate explicitly to see it. Thus, most people who use computers habitually for work, do not “stumble” into things. I am sure there are people who do search for something. But it is not much different from getting inappropriate magazines from a friend in the good old days.
Also, if someone is rich, then Hashem obviously thinks he is worth such a hard challenge, so even if he is not fully up to it, he deserves some respect and owe, especially from people whom Hashem does not want to trust with more than $100 at a time. You surely have no idea what their taavos are and how you will behave there. And if he is a self-made person, then he was in your place …
For example, many rich people have hard time finding friends and partners, as everyone is there “for the money”. Some of my “filthy rich” friends really enjoy a conversation with a friend from the time they were poor. I feel the same with hoshuve people from the Jewish community – there is a difference between those with whom I was learning when I had nothing, and those who are inviting a person from whom they can potentially benefit. I can’t even imagine how sad is the life of people who were born into rich families – do they even have real friends?!
about our role in a jury. This is a hard one. Someone more educated can preach here about “jury nullification” when jury uses their own judgment inappropriately. At the same time, I don’t think a Jew can make himself into a “part of the system”, “just doing my job”, disregarding “tzedek tzedek tirdof”.
So, I took the middle ground – I tried my best arguments to influence others, and then did not stand in the way. If I were to insist on hung jury, what is a chance that someone else will be as stubborn as I was in the next jury, so it would just prolong the show.
PS After the verdict, the judge told us that he was actually measured to have alcohol in his blood, but the law did not allow to give that information to the jury. So, that removed a couple of sfeikos from my argument.
dangerous drinking: indeed. If it were a case of clearly drunk driver and a dangerous event, I would probably be on a stricter side. In this case, the evidence was that he was stopped soon after leaving a bar (a bracelet on), stopped on an empty street, and then not able to walk a plank and recite alphabet backwards, I think. Not clear that he was a danger to anyone except himself and the utility pole. And maybe he did not even know English alphabet… sfek sfeika of 4th degree.
Again, I was surprised both by strictness of the jury in a generally liberal precinct and my own attitude. Maybe the prison system was in the back of my mind. The person will be risking his life and getting onto a path of crime, and abandoning his family … If he were to become an eved for 7 years, it would be an easier decision.
Several good questions here .. is it according to the Torah?
My understanding is that we do not require non-Jewish system to adhere to specific norms, such as what would a beis din decide for a non-Jew. As long it is trying to do justice. Jury system, as democracy, are obviously not the best decision sharpest mind can come up with, but it has the value to protect citizens from abuse by the powerful people. Interestingly, even in Nazi Germany, juries were acquitting some of the people who were caught listening to “enemy radios” and such.
With many social issues, chachomim proposed a solution and then judged it by results, and changed the system further as needed. So, here, we can judge the system by results – and they are reasonably good currently, I think, in terms of deciding guilt. One can argue with the prison system that does not seem to have any value beyond isolating the criminals. But overall, as long as the system tries to punish guilty and protect innocent, we should participate.
As to citizen ethics and morals, both jury and elections hinge on them. So, it makes educational system and media relevant to us. If population will get into communist or Nazi ideology, it will affect us directly.