anon for this

NY Mom, I didn’t realize that either until I was in high school, but it’s definitely true. Jesse is indeed Yishai though. I also didn’t know that the name Jemima is from nach.

There’s a well-known Israeli biblical scholar named Avashalom Kor.

Perhaps the boy’s name Shilah is a derivative of Shaila (Yehudah’s third son, so not unfortunate as Onan) or Shiloh.

Ben Levi, my point is that the hospital was refusing to treat my father, who was on private insurance. They were also trying to take him off the ventilator in the guise of “apnea testing”, and probably would have succeeded in doing so if not for the fact that one of his visitors was a physician who knew what was going on. Whether this was legal or not I cannot say; all I know is that this is what happened.

haifagirl, end-of-life care is an issue for those on private insurance too. When my father was in the ICU, the hospital staff kept trying to take him off the ventilator for “apnea testing” and then “forgetting” to put him back on. My siblings and I took turns staying by his bed to keep this from recurring.

Also, most private insurance companies have lifetime limits, generally of about $1 million. They will not cover any expenses incurred beyond this amount.

Regarding Medicaid, the physicians I’ve spoken too say that there’s a significant difference in coverage between Medicaid plans managed by private HMOs and those managed by Medicaid itself. Generally the latter type offers better coverage.

I do agree with you about the VA. People I know who’ve worked at VA hospitals tell me that the treatment there is not very good. Really our veterans deserve better than that.

smartcookie, it’s possible that your child is not chewing his food properly (also called “pocketing” food) because the muscles in his mouth aren’t strong enough. Low oral muscle tone can also cause speech difficulties. Speech therapy targeting the appropriate muscles can help with both problems.

If your child also has speech difficulties, google the words “early intervention” with the name of your state to find out about how to get your child evaluated. Often the evaluation can be done for free at your home.

HSS, when I was in seminary most of my needs were provided for, and I had fewer responsibilities than at home. I did wash my own laundry & keep my room neat, but I did this at home also. The seminary provided three meals daily, so I did not have to cook my own meals; at home I helped prepare food for shabbos & cleaned up also, besides helping younger siblings with their homework. My parents provided an allowance that was more than adequate for bus fare, school supplies, and other expenses. No one had cell phones then, but my parents called me a couple of times each month & I wrote to them two or three times a week.

After attending seminary in E’Y I lived in my parents’ home while attending a local university. Even though I was living at home, I was in some ways more independent than I was while in seminary. I chose my major, planned which courses to take, bought my textbooks, and of course was responsible for my own coursework. My parents provided room & board, while I applied for scholarships and worked to cover tuition, fees, and books. At the beginning of each fall term, I’d arrange with my professors and TAs to make up tests, quizzes, and labs missed due to the Yomim Noraim.

mybat, you may be better off if you share less information with her. When my children were very young, I used to call my mother-in-law after their check-ups to let her know how much they weighed & how they were doing. Once I called her after my son’s check-up & she asked me if I had allowed him to receive the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine. When I told her that he did receive it, she told me it would probably make him autistic, since she knew someone whose child stopped talking shortly after receiving it.

Most of my children started talking late, and my mother-in-law knew I was concerned about that, so I did not find that comment helpful. But I did learn to stop discussing my children’s health & development with her.

haifagirl, live donor liver transplants (actually part of the liver) are relatively new, and are only done at certain medical centers. These constitute about one-third of liver transplants in the US. Most recipients are children.

ronsnr, the motivation for posting that video about the cheerleader with dystonia is to “prove” to people the danger of the swine flu vaccine. As my post above explains, though, her dystonia was psychogenic in nature, and as such, not attributable to any vaccine.

I consider the Wall Street Journal a reliable source of news, and it generally does not have the same issues of inappropriate content as the NY Post does. National and international news stories are covered objectively and in-depth. Coverage of celebrity and sports “news” is almost non-existent, but that’s fine with me.

Oomis, the segula of a pregnant woman going to the mikvah is one that is new to me. When I was pregnant, I would give to the tzedaka Efrat-CRIB, which provides financial support to pregnant women in eretz yisroel, in hope that this zchus would help me have a healthy pregnancy, delivery, and child. I do not have any specific halachic basis for this though, other than the well-known chazal “tzedaka tatzil mimaves”.

Good point tzippi. Because the nasal vaccines contain live, albeit weakened, virus, they are contraindicated for anyone with a compromised immune system.

Oomis’s point that pregnant women need to be vigilant about what medicines/ vaccines they take is a good one. Many pregnant women have safely taken the seasonal flu vaccine safely, so there is no reason for a pregnant woman to be more concerned than anyone else about taking the vaccine. And since the H1N1 vaccine is not materially different, except for the strains included, it is also safe for pregnant women.

Epidimiologists have noted that pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to H1N1, and are infected at greater rates than the general population. In addition, pregnant women are more likely than others to become very sick or die from the H1N1 virus.

haifagirl, thanks for the correction. Wikipedia had it correct also, I just read it wrong.

arc, so the H1N1 vaccine is about as different from the regular flu vaccine as the seasonal flu vaccine from one year is different from the seasonal flu vaccine of the previous year. And the safety & efficacy of the seasonal flu vaccine has been well-established, based on years of research. So there is no reason to think the H1N1 vaccine is not safe.

PY, are you saying that this idea is meant more as a mental exercise (for singles or others) than as an actual tool for creating matches? If so, then I see it very differently.

I’ve heard of that gemara, but I’m not sure whether it means that a woman would marry anyone at all–even someone who is violent or abusive–just so that she can be married, or just that she would marry someone who is not her ideal. If the former, in my opinion the gemara is describing what it true for some women, but this would not necessarily be a good environment in which to grow healthy families and children.

telegrok, thanks for sharing that story. You might say that it’s an argument for A600KiloBear’s modification of PY’s idea–a goral for shidduch dates, not shidduchim. Such a goral could even include a requirement that the matched couple only be allowed to date each other for a period of time.

However, in your story your future husband was already interested in meeting you, even if you were not interested in meeting him. In this goral, neither party would even know the other’s identity before meeting.

haifagirl, I see that I’ve offended you, and that wasn’t my intention. Please forgive me. To clarify what I was saying, I know that my acquaintances, older singles in their late twenties to early thirties, would definitely not be interested in a polygamous marriage or forced marriage to someone to whom they’ve been matched via lottery. Obviously I can’t speak for you, and I wouldn’t think I can. I only meant to say that in order to make a polygamous marriage work, both the husband and “sister wives” must agree to the arrangement. Ideally, the polygamous family should also live in a community of other polygamous families. And based on my conversations with older singles of my acquaintance (including relatives), there are not enough women to make this plan work.

The goral proposed by PY would also require a critical mass of people willing to participate, and again I don’t think the interest exists.

aussie, when I was at BJJ some of the students were from more chassidish families, thought they definitely did not constitute the majority.

haifagirl, if you don’t feel like cooking dinner, there’s always frozen dinners or takeout.

Unless you meant that in a metaphorical sense.

A600KiloBear, foreign medical grads working in US hospitals have H1B or J1 visas, so they’re not concerned about ICE.

MM, I never said that Americans are good “barometers” of moral behavior; I was simply responding to your post. When I wrote that polygamy is unpopular in America, and it is therefore unlikely that it will be legalized, you wrote, “anon, I disagree with you that there is currently in the general population much animosity towards it.” So I pointed out that, in fact, the overwhelming majority of Americans believe polygamy is, indeed, morally wrong. Those interested in legalizing polygamy will have to overcome this hurdle.

By way of comparison, 57% of Americans are against same-gender marriage, and about half of Americans believe same-gender relations are morally wrong.

MM, as ronsnr pointed out, there is a long history of anomosity in the US towards polygamy. This history makes it very unlikely that US laws against polygamy will be changed in our lifetimes.

As I stated in my previous post, authorities can indeed prosecute for bigamy if a man has a common-law marriage relationship with two different women, even if he is not married to both. Generally authorities won’t prosecute unless there are other issues such as underage marriage or welfare fraud, but laws exist allowing them to do so.

MM, but only one of those endeavors involves breaking US law. Please note that if a man is married to one woman, he may be guilty of bigamy if he lives with another woman, even if he does not marry the second woman. Also, the charge of bigamy may apply even if his first marriage is a common-law marriage only.

MM, I know that this is unusual–so are many stories of courage. I’m sure that when this woman was in her twenties, some people speculated that she was not yet engaged/ married because she was too picky, not really interested in marrying, etc. As it turned out, though, when she was in her early twenties her future husband had not yet reached the age of consent.

Of the women I know who married in their late twenties/ early thirties, most married men within a year of their own ages–some older, some younger.

rebetzin, your description of BJJ is consistent with my own experience there.

If the divorce rate is lower in the chassidishe community than in the litvishe community, than it might be because they date for a shorter amount of time, or it might be because of other differences between the chassidishe & litvishe communities (maybe it’s because the spouses are closer in age). In order to know that dating for longer leads to more divorces, one would have to compare two groups who are otherwise similar, one dating longer & one dating shorter, to see which group has a higher divorce rate.