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Avira, Rav Moshe invoked it regarding voting. I believe that he also allowed honoring a non-Jew who helped Jews at a dinner. Chazal say that someone who is not grateful is less than a dog.
Sam, not all of them consider him a god. The Unitarians, for example, think that he was at most a prophet. Some consider him to have been merely a moral exemplar. Most today, other than the clergy, do not really think about these things. They simply are following family traditions. Some only go to church for social or business reasons. In any case, you also have to check out Jews (and those who claim to be Jews). They may be using it for non-tzedaka purposes. BTW, a certain tzedaka sent out an appeal with a photoshopped picture of Rav Kanievsky and an open book. Someone I know looked closely and saw that it was a New Testament.
Rav Eliezer Melamed says that it depends on what are considered honorable clothes in the place. On a kibbutz shorts and work clothes are considered honorable clothes. In other places, this is not so. Rav Soloveichik rebuked rabbanm in Florida for wearing shorts. Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook told talmidim who became rabbanim to dress in a way that would cause the public to respect them. Rambam (Hilchot Deot ch. 5) says that a talmid chacham should wear average clothes (see Shabbat 145b that over-dressing could be a cover-up).
Regarding talmidim, part of the machloket between Slobodka and Novardok involved dress. In the former, the talmidim had to dress up so that they would feel that sin was beneath their honor. In the latter, they dressed poorly in order to break their pride.
The prohibition of freshly laundered clothes does not apply to those that are worn to absorb sweat. Some even apply this to shirts (Piskei Teshuvot 551:17). I once read that ordinary slacks are also not a problem.
Biden certainly cannot issue this kind of executive order. It is also doubtful that a law passed by Congress would pass muster in view of United States v. Alfonso D. Lopez, Jr., 514 U.S. 549 (1995). However, they could possibly bar non-vaccinated people from interstate transport under the Commerce Clause, although there might be a Fourteenth Amendment question. As it stands now, states may fine people who refuse to be vaccinated (Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905)). Of course, that was a different time. Whether or not the Court would uphold it is a question.
Philosopher, the Pfizer vaccine produced amazing results in Israel. Did you read the halachic article I mentioned? As Rav Asher Weiss said, אין ספק מוציא מידי ודאי. If you read Hebrew you can also read להתחסן או לא להתחסן by Rav Dr. Avraham Steinberg, who is the foremost expert on medicine and halacha in Israel, if not in the world, on the Arutz 7 website. You can see some of his exemplary credentials at the end of the article.
If it lowers the spread of COVID it is a good idea unless a child has some specific known issue. Everything in life carries some risk. Google”Halachic Aspects of Vaccination” by Rabbi Dr. Edward Reichman, M.D.
RE, that is why as soon as he passed away they were translated.
The Chief Rabbi is mainly an administrative position although in Israel they are usually members of the Supreme Rabbinic Court. In America, the equivalent would be the President of a rabbinic organization.
Avira,
1. Hashem works through shlichim.
2. “Klitah” is absorption. First the person immigrates then he becomes part of the society. You really should learn English and Hebrew.
3, Everyone thinks that everyone is, or should be, like them. Sometimes it is good. For twenty years a jew could walk alone and unarmed in any Arab area. They knew what they would do if c”v the situation were reversed and assumed that Jews would also. One of the most difficult things for new olim to internalize is that things here are not always done as in their home countries. For instance, I was surprised, albeit pleasantly, to learn that here all ATMs service all the banks. In New York, my Citicard was only good at a Citibank machine.Avira, “bitachon” means security of any kind. “Kibbutz galuyot” means “the ingathering of the exiles”. “Keren kayemet” means that the principal will continue. You are confusing the meaning and the application. Some Hebrewwords changed over time as with every language. Forexample,a gabbai was a collector (from ligvot) and a chazzan was a President of a synagogue. He had to forsee (lachazot) its needs.
BTW, one erev Shabbat Ben-Yehuda wentto ask Rav Kook about the menaings of some words in the Gemara. Rav Kook told him that it was time forhim to do teshuv and he said “Maybe”. The next day he died. Dying on erev Shabbat is considered a good sign because the neshama first goes to Gan Eden (Ketubot 103b. According to the Arizal (Shaar ha-Gilgulim, Preface 23) it is spared chibbut hakever because Shabbat cleanses it. It should be even more so if one dies on Shabbat itself.
As for Yiddish words entering English and Hebrew, both languages also absorb words from other languages. Examples are “bodega” in English and “balagan” (Russian for a circus that stays in one place) in Hebrew.
Ujm, how do you define “spoken”? If someone knows a few words here and there does he speak a language? I don’t know where you get your statistic for the first language but there are approximately 15.2 million Jews in the world (I saw 14.8 million and 15.8 million on different sites and took the average). That means that 100K is a whopping 2/3%. Even if we accept the high estimate of 1 million we get less than 7% – and many of those are very elderly people from the former Soviet Union.
Avira, are you kidding? What about all the yeshivot where English and Hebrew are the languages of instruction?
Avram,
1. More Torah learning is conducted in English and Hebrew. There is probably even more in French than in Yiddish. In any case, one can learn German, which is an important world language, along with Hebrew, and understand most of Yiddish. The only value I can see in learning Yiddish is if one wants to read Yiddish literature in the original.
2. Actually, it’s a German word, Knödel. It found its way into both English and Hebrew.Avira, you are becoming sillier and sillier. First, you make a completely unsubstantiated statement that Modern Hebrew was “created” to destroy Torah. In fact, it makes learning Tanach, Mishna, and most of the Gemara much easier as there is minimal difference between Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew. Now you talk about people who were abused in Hebrew. Nu, what about people who were abused in Yiddish?
Yiddish, BTW, has no pure character. It is mainly High German mixed in with Hebrew and local languages (thus, Hungarian Yiddish is not the same as Polish or Russian Yiddish). Those who are trying to revive it (and Ladino), are mainly non-Jews who have an academic interest in it (similarly, my college, CCNY, offered two semesters in Anglo-Saxon). The rest are secular Jews who are looking for some cultural identification with their pasts. I actually like songs like Mein Shtetele Belz and Cuando El Rey Nimrod, but I never felt a need to understand the words to enjoy a song. Sometimes, it’s better that way as a song might have a nice melody and nice-sounding words but an immodest theme. I just think that it is silly to describe ourselves with a word used by our enemies as a pejorative. I also very much resent a maggid shiur who insists on using it even though he knows that I don’t understand. He is basically pushing me out. I did, in fact, have one maggid shiur who asked me if I understand Yiddish. When I said that I do not he replied that Rambam did not speak Yiddish.
Rightwqriter, actually this “wave” is very mild because of the vaccinations. The number of serious cases is stable at a mere 23-26. The positive test rate is less than 1%. Yesterday, the number of total cases dipped to 295 after being over 300 for a couple of days. No one has died in nine days. The mask mandate is only indoors (and there have been no reports of fines being handed out so either everyone is complying or the police are not rushing to enforce it) and there is no talk of a lockdown. COVID mutations will probably continue to be around but they will be no worse, and maybe not as bad, as flu viruses. The more people are vaccinated the less severe COVID will be.
Avram, why speak a useless, moribund language? One might as well learn German (BTW, your German grandfather would probably disown you if he heard you say he spoke Yiddish – Agnon wrote a cute story about that), which is an important world language. As for kneidlach, I only eat them on Pesach.
Avira, whether you like it or not the state represents you. If c’v you will be assaulted it will be as a Zionist. True, there have been bad leaders (although they too have been complex), but they are not the state, Louis XIV notwithstanding.
The statement that Modern Hebrew was created to undermine Torah does not deserve an answer. In fact, for all his faults Ben-Yehuda went to Rav Kook (who, after he made aliya, did not like being addressed in Yiddish, which he called Jargon) with questions about words found in the Talmud.
I still want to know what percentage eventually comes back.
Avram, we are talking about language. Yiddish, along with Germanic names, was used to declare Sepharadim not really Jewish. A few generations ago a relative on my Sephardic side married an Ashkenazi. Her parents sat shiva because being that he did not speak a word of Yiddish and an Italian-sounding name (really it is Arabic from the Moorish period, although there are Italian Jews) they did not believe that he was Jewish. Were they serving Hashem? What constitutes serving Hashem is very complex. If a person does not do the job for which he was put in the world, in that sense he is also not serving Hashem and may just have to come back and try again.
RE, why would goyim be forced to give gittin?
Avram,
Actually, I am half-Ashkenazi and half Sephardi so I do not feel oppressed by either group. However, I do resent maggidei shiurim using Yiddish terms when they know full well that not everyone in the shiur understands. I also think that it is a ghetto mentality to hang on to Yiddish. It’s especially silly and pretentious to use, for example, “fregt” instead of “asks” when giving a shiur that is supposed to be in English. Moreover, Hebrew is our ancestral language and unites us.
I have never encountered a maggid shiur who uses Ladino. My feeling is that Ladino-speakers who went to the Americas transitioned to modern Spanish. In fact, my grandmother never used the word “Ladino”. She always said that she spoke Spanish.Avira,
1. How do you define Lashon haKodesh? As for Rambam’s definition, in fact, improper words some Israelis use are Arabic and English.
2. If many people speak it is is not hubris.
3. What about all the Yiddish-speaking gangsters? They even translated “Cosa nostra” into “Unzer zach”. For that matter, as I posted, Yiddish was the banner of the fiercely anti-religious Bundists. After the Bolsheviks took over Hebrew was banned and “counter-revolutionary” but Yiddish schools, newspapers, and theaters were set up for Jews.
4. The State of Israel is the polity of Eretz Yisrael. When David fled to Gatt he said that he was expelled from Hashem’s inheritance (Shmuel Alef 26:19).RE, If they are acting on behalf of the bet din the gett is kosher Rambam, Hilchot Gerushin 2:20, SA EH 134:20).
CA, I was being sarcastic.
Avira,
1. And Yiddish doesn’t have kefira? The biggest kofrim were the Yiddishist Bundists. It also has improper words.
2. Rav Moshe (Iggerot Moshe Even Haezer 3:35 based on the Sifri (Devarim Piska 46) which is quoted by Rashi on the verse of ledabber bam (Devarim 11:19) says that it is a mitzva to speak in Lashon HaKodesh. In fact, this is one of the merits our ancestors had in Egypt.
3. Who says that baalei teshuvah are drawn to the “warmth” of Yiddish in a shiur? Perhaps they just find it cute and quaint. Like an old family heirloom that one keeps in the closet and dusts off once in a while. Not to mention the fact that it is very annoying and difficult to try to follow a shiur when one does not understand the language. This is why both Rav Soloveichik and Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky changed the language of instruction to English. BTW, in English “Yid” is a pejorative.Huju, Edward Van Buren Regan died almost seven years ago. Thus, he is an old Regan. So was Gerald Augustine Paul Regan, who was Prime Minister of Nova Scotia. There is a new Regan – Seamus O’Regan Jr. – who is Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources. His late father was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador. I guess that that makes them the new and old Regan.
Do Sepharadim and Eidot haMizrach count as “Yidden”. Enough with the creole German. Say it. Am Yisrael.
Ujm, please post the source for your statistic. We can also ask how many OTD kids come back.
CS, your conclusion is nonsensical. Galut means not being in our homeland. Thus, Jews in EY are by definition not in galut. The fact that the Beit haMikdash has not been rebuilt only means that the geula is not complete. It is an unfolding process (Yerushalmi, Berachot 1:1).
CS, if you have a galut mentality then you are indeed in galut wherever you live. However, according to the chesed l’Avraham normal Jews receive an Eretz Yisraeli neshama the first night they sleep here.
Philosopher, there are two main groups the Baladim, who follow Mishneh Torah on everything, and Shamim, who follow the Shulchan Aruch. Within the former group is a subgroup called the Darda’im, who oppose the Zohar and later Kabbala. Some other Yemenites consider them to be apikorsim. Rav Ovadia, however, cleared them of the charge.
Philosopher, according to the Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East of SOAS University of London there is a sizeable minority of Persian speakers in Yemen as well as Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE. I think that this is probably due to the influence of Persian culture on the Ottoman Empire as well as immigration. It could also be that those Yemenite Jews to whom you spoke are actually children of marriages between Persian and Yemenite Jews.
Philosopher,
1. Why can’t a Yemenite speak Persian or any other language? The Yemenites I have known, though, call their language Yemenite. In fact, each Arab country has its own dialect of spoken Arabic. Someone once told me that he had an aunt who was a professor of Arabic. After the Six-Day War, she tried to speak the literary Arabic she knew in the Old City market. Her interlocutor told her that he did not understand English.
2. I would imagine that descendants of Persian Jews in Israel use the Israeli pronunciation as that is how they are used to speaking.
3. Yemenites differentiate between ח and כ as well as ק and כּ. The ת is pronounced like “th” in English. This is probably the original pronunciation as this is how it is transliterated in English (e.g. Ruth). Most likely the Ashkenazim softened it to “s” and the Sephardim hardened it to “t”. BTW, originally the Ashkenazim pronounced צ like a hard “s”, as do some Eidot haMizrach. Two of the Baalei Tosafot are רבי אליעזר ממץ (in French it is pronounced Messe) and השר מקוצי (Coucy). This is obviously the original pronunciation as “stadium” in the Gemara is אצטדיון (the א was added because our ancestors could not pronounce a sheva nach at the beginning of a word). There are also some communities that pronounce ד (without a dagesh) like “the” in “breathe” – which is the only way to elongate it (SA OC 61:6).Philosopher, this goes back at least to the time of Chazal (Megilla 24b). According to the Jewish Virtual Library, this pronunciation is used by Persian communities. Interestingly, Rabbi Hiyya was for Babylonia, which was part of the Persian Empire.
Philosopher, there are different ways to transliterate ח. Some transliterate it as “h”. Some write “Ḥet”. Some even write “x” as that is the pronunciation in the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. See the Wikipedia article “Romanization of Hebrew”.
Participant, that is what the spies said.
Always, it is “BARA”. “Buru” means “they created”. This, of course, is heresy.
CTL, Health Department, sales tax, etc. are also local. BTW, there was a case where a little girl in London was fined and shut down for illegally selling lemonade. I don’t know if that ever happened in the US. I do know that Louisiana has a licensing requirement for flower arrangers, which is now being challenged. Los Angelos County has a licensing requirement for yard sales.
CTL,
1. Did you read the decision? You can see it on Oyez. One basis was food coming from out of state. Another basis was that in general discrimination discourages blacks from travelling to certain places. You are going even further in raping the Constitution. According to your thesis, if a person got a property tax abatement Congress can regulate his yard sale.
2. You are having another senior moment. It was the Ohio National Guard. I looked up Jeffrey Miler. He was cremated and the ashes placed in Ferncliff Cemetery. Getting there by public transportation involves a number of buses plus an eighteen-minute walk. Another possibility is a train plus a taxi.
3. Lindsay coddled criminals and rioters at City College. It was on his watch that what was once “the proletarian Harvard” developed an inferior reputation because of open admissions. Most of those admitted were sorely disillusioned because they could not handle the academic demands. He only won re-election because the anti-Lindsay vote was split (he lost the Republican primary and ran on the Liberal party line. BTW, my father voted for the Democratic candidate and my mother voted for the GOP candidate. The year before my father voted for Nixon and my mother voted for Humphrey. In those days it was no big deal to disagree on politics.
Ujm, sometimes the opposite is true. Secular law prohibits a professional to speak out because of professional confidence (an example would be an attorney) but Halacha requires him to do so.
Today, liberal Republicans are called RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). I, BTW, would write the former NYC Mayor’s name L—-y. In my family his name was mud. He destroyed NYC.
CTL,
1. YWN is not general social media.
2. They could be designated limited public forums. See “Restricting Speech in the Limited Public Forum” put out by the UMKC law school.
3. You are correct that some FB groups are local but so are some restaurants. Yet they are subject to federal anti-discrimination laws if even one morsel came from out-of-state (Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294 (1964)). In any case, the public forum would be FB not the group.Are you kidding? It is an explicit halacha that it is permitted to report someone who is endangering the community even if it is only economically (CM 388,12 with Rema). See also seif 3 regarding someone who is compelled by the authorities to do so. Rav Moshe even permits being a tax auditor and turning over Jewish cheats as that is the person’s job (IM CM 92).
For a fuller discussion see “Gray Matter IV, Beit Din, The Mesirah Dilemma – Sefaria” online.
Correction: WMDs
CTL,
1. You are correct if you mean that the government cannot make it only a public forum for liberals. However, it makes no sense to say that if they create a public forum they cannot create it because of the First Amendment.
2. What does paying have to do with it? Are you saying that they cannot prohibit the sending of WMOs as gifts? BTW, what about applying anti-discrimination legislation to purely local businesses like so out-of-the-way diner?CTL, why would it be a violation of the First Amendment and not a regulation of interstate commerce? If Facebook may not erase someone’s post Zuckerberg’s speech is not be affected. Beside’s Facebook is a public corporation so it is not included in the Hobby Lobby precedent. He can even post a disclaimer.
The Congressional Research Service has an online article entitled “UPDATE: Sidewalks, Streets, and Tweets: Is Twitter a Public Forum?” On page 2 it states “The government can designate new public forums by making “an affirmative choice” to create a space
that is open for public expression. The Supreme Court has recognized that the Internet in general, and social media in particular, has become a critical forum for the expression of protected speech. And the federal courts of appeals have held that the government can create public forums on the Internet.” See the PUTNAM PIT, INC.; Geoffrey Davidian, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF COOKEVILLE, TENNESSEE; Jim Shipley, Defendants-Appellees
No. 98-6438 (Sixth Circuit).As for your polling place story, it sounds like a case in the Gemara (I can’t find exactly where right now) where someone who hadn’t come to a certain bet midrash in thirteen years suddenly showed up to clear up a subject of debate. Maybe you should put it in one of those hashgacha peratit books.
CTL,
1. That is exactly my point. They set the limits of discourse. If they do not want an opinion or argument to become known they simply erase it. Sometimes they even cancel people forever. I think that your use of the term “could not” is incorrect. Congress can pass a law declaring social media to be public forums. It just has not. Why would that be a greater threat to democracy than the “equal time” rule? I do think that that there might be strong grounds for an antitrust action when they act in concert, as they did with Parler.
2. A person’s picture certainly changes. Is there a requirement for a picture to have been taken within a certain number of years?
Apps/ATMs or check-cashing services that do not require ID. The former requires a bank account and presumably, an ID was presented to open it. The latter charge hefty fees which presumably reflect losses from bad checks. Banks and most check-cashing services do require some ID.
In Israel, one must present one’s government-issued ID card (teudat zehut) before voting.
Participant, that is correct. They can block and deplatform whomever they want.
The biggest threat to democracy is Big Tech. As it stands now they are not subject to the First Amendment (Prager University vs. GOOGLE LLC, FKA Google, Inc.;
YOUTUBE, LLC, decided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals) so they can censor people as they wish. They have already done this to various GOP figures including former President Trump as well as to Yair Netanyahu. They have also interfered in other countries, among them Australia.RE, so? After the primaries, the losers almost always support the party’s choice. Trump, in fact, gave conservatives just about everything on their wish list.