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ujm,
That post has so much concentrated Joseph in it that I think you can probably retire with full pension.
“The mitzvah to mock apikorsum”
That ability unfortunately left the CR with popa_bar_abba. Nobody could do it better. Alas he ate too many lethal beans.
Yserbius123,
“From my perspective, it was abundantly clear that one side was acting like childish buffoons and the other side was just trying to live their life.”
I never took you for an anti-masker…
🦆
ujm,
“Infallibility is a straw man and red herring. No one claims it.”
Agreed. Once when I was in middle school, I found a mistake in the answer key that was in the back of my math textbook. I pointed it out to the teacher, who praised me for finding it. That experience was actually detrimental to my learning, because other times came up when my answer differed from the back of the book, and I would argue the correctness of my answer and be wrong. Because while the textbook was obviously not infallible, it made far fewer mistakes than I did. It’s the same thing with the Avos, or the Tannaim, or gedolim. They’re not infallible; they made or make mistakes. But their level is so much greater than mine, that it is exceedingly more likely that I am mistaken or do not understand than it is that they are.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“Indeed, My good-hearted kid just left a nice review and soon got an email suggesting a payment for a longer one with a video or something. This is a smarter semi-ganav.”
Why is it theft? Your daughter liked the product so much that she just promoted it for free. So what is the issue if the company pays her to promote the product in more detail? They’re not asking her to lie or deceive anyone. The only potential problem I can see is if her relationship/sponsorship with the company is not disclosed. I’m not sure if that would be a problem or not.
“Our halachik analysis so far is that this is akin to bribing a judge to issue a correct verdict – still osur.”
Your daughter already issued her verdict, didn’t she? They just want to pay her to say it again with more pizzazz.
“Or maybe it is simply a payment for the labor to express exactly same opinion in a better video form?”
Yes, that’s how I’m seeing it.
“Then mutar. Or maybe mutar aval asur so that the child is not getting used to sheker? please advise.”
What sheker is there, unless your daughter feels compelled by the payment to exaggerate her feelings for the product? This seems very different from fake reviews to me – presumably generated by people who didn’t buy the product, sockpuppetry, people who are offered benefits for writing a good review regardless of their feelings for the product, or bots/AI?
Always_Ask_Questions,
“Let’s move to today’s observant community. I would argue that in many places number of people who seriously stumble in Kashrus & Shabbos is way less than those in geneiva and sheker. “
And I would argue against that. First, those who “seriously stumble” in kashrus and Shabbos are generally called OTD and not frum, so the reason you see “way less” is because you do not count them. And second, I don’t buy the “whitewashed tomb” garbage stereotypes of Jews as kvetching endlessly over every spot on the esrog and wearing big tefillin while praying loudly then going home and lying cheating and stealing. Is 2000 years of antisemitism not enough?
Why daven maariv twice?
Always_Ask_Questions,
“nobodu would ask whether someone us frum when you see him eating Mcdonalds burger, but somehow money aveiros are not that clear cut”
Nobody can really know what is in another’s heart, but we typically call someone who is specifically shomer Shabbos and Y”T, kashrus, and taharas hamishpacha “frum”, because in most cases a fear of Hashem and belief in His Torah are the only reasons for adhering to such a disciplined way of life. It’s not a perfect demarcation obviously.
Also, nobody is above mistakes and falls, so being frum does not mean a person is free of sin. Someone who lies or steals habitually, however, demonstrates that he has no real trust in Hashem as a provider, and no respect for His Torah.
Gadolhadorah,
“But of course some of regulars will paskin that its “OK” if…”
Motzi shem ra is also a grievous sin.
aposhiteyid,
“Is it still gonev daas if its common knowledge that many reviews are fake?”
Yes – there would be no point in fake reviews if nobody was fooled by them. And as people catch on to the more rudimentary ones, they become more elaborate and advanced.
Theft being common does not make theft justified – the dor of the mabul was destroyed for that reason.
Yabia Omer,
Can you tell us what siman in the S”A is specifically violated by not having a mechitza in shul? I think the opposition to WoW is indeed coming from taking things into perspective.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“If you are not earning anything, and someone else pays for your learning, ask him if he is willing to pay for your oil change.”
You seem to bring up full-time learners quite frequently, no matter the context of the thread. What’s with that? Did you go to a community kollel shiur once and they beat you up and stole your lunch money? Are you supporting a son-in-law in kollel and feeling resentful? Or is this more just feeling like a biting donkey?
coffee addict,
“I’m not liking this thread it smells of division right before Rosh Hashanah”
Interestingly, the OP opened the floor for people to bring “taanos” against MO and has since not responded. So yes, I agree with you.
ubiquitin,
“The Rabbi was right.”
The rabbi used a form of relative privation fallacy to dismiss or avoid commenting about the issue. How does taking a position on a bill impact or have anything to do with our ability to learn about honesty in business?
“And definitely being into business honesty is more important than being into other’s people’s Torvalds marriage”
And now you do it too. Hey! I can do it too! The Chumash exhorts us about Shabbos more than it does about kidnapping, so dealing with Shabbos violators is more important than dealing with kidnappers … ?! Also, let’s leave the Linux kernel out of this.
“It’s confusing thst you think “MO people are very into business honesty” is a bad thing”
This is a valid point, though I suspect AviraDeArah’s sentiments are more against the use of business ethics to dismiss other issues than the relative importance of business ethics themselves.
Shimon Nodel,
“I explicitly said he should learn to love her or else leave her (for her sake) because staying would only bring her misery”
Your actual words were “or else consider finding a different wife he can love”, which is a different statement entirely. If a man cannot fulfill his obligations to his wife due to a personal deficiency, he must work on that deficiency. Simply ditching one woman for another will fix nothing. He’ll just carry the same flaws into the new marriage.
This was my point in asking the original question: I think we all agree that marriage is holy, and everything should be done to protect, uphold, and strengthen it, and it should not be just cast away. Same with learning Torah. If learning is boring or challenging, move mountains to make it better, don’t just ditch it. The yetzer hara goes after our most holy endeavors – it makes us focus on ourselves rather than our spouses in our marriages, and brings boredom, distraction, and frustration to our learning. Where the yetzer hara fights us hardest is where we have the best opportunity to do something meaningful, and that is where we have to stand our ground.
AviraDeArah,
“we’re not so far apart in our understanding of the rambam, since you admit that he comes to love through the actions delineated in that halacha and that the goal is to have a loving marriage”
I don’t think it was an admission – that’s how Judaism works in many cases. We can build and/or maintain our inner reality through our actions and behaviors.
“we only differ on my stance that I don’t think there is an actual obligation to feel that ahavah, and you think that there is.”
So what would you say to a husband who is just not “feeling it”? That he’s ok to just continue doing what he’s doing, or is it a deficiency that he should address?
AviraDeArah,
“According to that we still have the problem of why the rambam omits ahavah by a woman.”
Why is that a problem? We’re talking about a man’s emotional and behavioral obligations to his wife; what difference does the wife’s obligations to her husband make?
It’s too bad that commonsaychel took it upon himself to pull this into a new thread, because we lost the give and take that brought us here in the other thread, and the OP abandoned the thread anyway.
A quick and flippant recap:
1. huju claimed that the frum lifestyle was financially unsustainable so we’d have to give some of it up.
2. Shimon Nodel tangented off of that to claim that people who are bored with learning shouldn’t learn full time.
3. I asked him rhetorically what a man should do if he’s bored with his marriage.
4. Shimon Nodel surprised me by responding that a man who cannot love his wife should chuck her and get a new one.
5. You said in response that a man should stay with her even if the marriage is loveless, because where in the Torah does it say we must have a loving marriage? That’s Western values.
6. Shimon Nodel went off on you about how it’s a mitzvah to love your wife. You asked for a source, he provided a Rambam.
7. You kvetched out how the Rambam probably really didn’t mean love in the way we think of love and that he actually meant buying her stuff.
8. Commonsaychel redirected us here.So on one side Shimon Nodel holds that love is halachically essential for marriage, and seems to also hold that love is not something we can actively inculcate within ourselves, so that one should leave a loveless marriage. You seem to hold that, despite Shimon’s Rambam, loving his wife is not something the Torah demands of a man, and thus one should not leave a loveless marriage.
I think both approaches are wrong. I think the husband is indeed obligated to love his wife, and that he is fully capable of developing those feelings via the behavior the Rambam lays out. You wrote earlier in this thread that the Torah tends to not regulate our feelings because they are sometimes not in our control. But that is also a Western sentiment and the same point Shimon Nodel is making. The Torah tells us how we must feel all the time! We say it twice a day, veahavta es Hashem Elokecha. Even in that same Rambam where he tells the husband he must love his wife, he also tells the husband to not become angry or sad. That’s hard to do! But it is important for a good marriage. As for why he did not explicitly say love by a woman’s obligations? I think because it is possible to love without respecting, and that is detrimental to a wife’s relationship with her husband.
AviraDeArah,
“That being said, the rambam follows this statement of oheva kegufo etc with discussion of how to spend his money. The ahavah he refers to seems to mean giving her things and making her feel loved. He is not referring to an obligation as to how he feels about her.”
The Rambam said two things there, and they are parallel:
- Honor your wife more than yourself – give her things according to your wealth (i.e., even if you cheap out on yourself, don’t cheap out on her)
- Love her like your own self – don’t make her afraid of you and speak nicely to her
So the love being discussed here is not just giving her financial benefits and gifts, but affects how he treats her.
“when discussing the woman’s obligations to her husband, the rambam noteably omits loving him”
He says to respect (be in awe of) him, which, in parallel to how a man should treat his wife, gives instructions on how she should treat her husband.
In short, men should treasure their wives, and wives should admire their husbands. This is the foundation of a healthy marriage.
Shimon Nodel,
“I would strongly suggest he fulfill his obligation to love his wife or else consider finding a different wife he can love.”
That was not the answer I was expecting, but I guess it’s consistent, so there’s that. Do you think commitment, love, and motivation are things that just happen to someone outside of his control, or are they something he can develop within himself and may indeed be obligated to develop?
huju,
I don’t believe I’ve mentioned modern Orthodoxy at all in my replies. I am trying hard to respond directly to what you have written in your OP. What exactly were the types of responses you were anticipating from this thread?
huju,
“The requirements I listed are more directly connected to Torah, Talmud and the mitzvos. The “requirements” you cited […] are the real-world consequences of the observance of the mitzvos.”
I don’t understand the distinction you are making here. The costs of raising children are a real-world “consequence” of the observance of pru urvu. The costs of yeshiva education and the time spent on a bench in kollel instead of in a cubicle at the office are a “consequence” of the observance of limud Torah. How is that categorically different than the consequent costs of kosher food or living near a shul?
“Please read my first sentence after my list of “requirements.” I think it answers your question.”
Your assertion is that the costs of a frum lifestyle as you defined are not sustainable, which others have disputed. My dispute is primarily with your conclusion that due to this non-sustainability it is inevitable that some of these “requirements” will have to be given up. I think that presents a false dilemma, and that there are other potential solutions. I also wanted you to clarify what giving up on these “requirements” looked like to you, because you can’t “save” frumkeit by giving up frumkeit.
Shimon Nodel,
“Not everyone is meant to learn full time in kollel. What if he just isn’t growing in learning and knowledge? What if the cheshek and motivation just isn’t strong?”
Substitute his relationship with his wife for his relationship with his learning in this scenario. What would your advice to him be then?
huju,
“To Avram in MD: You have utterly and completely missed my point”
A few follow-up questions:
Kosher food is expensive, as is making Pesach and Sukkos. And to live a frum lifestyle, being near a shul is a requirement, and most established communities are in areas with high housing costs. Why were these not on your list of requirements? Yes you said “among many other things”, but you selected 6 specific things to discuss. Why those six? And if you’re saying that frum people have to let go of some of those requirements in order to stay “frum” or at least above water, how is my asking which ones and what giving them up looks like missing the point?
Always_Ask_Questions,
“This is not an answer. There is a reason we are learning traditional sources. We learn from Gemora/Rishonim/Aharonim who to resolve modern issues.”
Those same traditional sources say asei l’cha rav. We are supposed to subordinate our will to Hashem, and unless you are thoroughly steeped in Torah, part of that is to ask shailos and have a rav to guide you. Otherwise you risk using the Torah as a spade, to dig out from it what fits your own beliefs rather than allowing it to guide your beliefs.
“You are welcome to quote specific psak and analyze how it applies to previous ones and to modern conditions, but simply outsource a solution is OK for an Am Haaertz, but if someone is trying to defend a lifestyle of learning Torah, you should do better than that.”
Wow, just wow. In Brachos perek vav, we learn Rabbi Yishmael’s view that we should combine Torah learning and earning parnassa, whereas Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai holds to engross yourself completely in Torah, and in that merit others will take care of your parnassa. But even that work/learning balance of Rabbi Yishmael is nothing like what we have today, unfortunately. As Rava said to his talmidim, go take care of your work during Nissan and Tishrei, so you can learn the rest of the year! If you’re going to come at me with “traditional sources” and what they say about learning Torah, you’d best understand their world. It’s nothing like what we have today. And nobody has to defend a lifestyle of learning Torah, ever. The earlier generations made Torah learning their “keva”, and working their “arai”, and they were successful in both. But the weaker generations (still so much greater than us!) did the opposite and they were not successful in either.
huju,
Not accepting the premise of your point is different from missing it.
huju,
“How do you know that shoes usually stink? Do you sniff shoes? Yours? Or others? (My shoes are fine, but I know nothing about others.)”
Sometimes they’re just left right in the middle of the coffee room floor and you can just… tell 😝
Always_Ask_Questions,
“The question is not only whether something is sustainable [Cuban economy is sustainable], but whether this is a good thing for a Jew to do.”
Good thing there are many rabbis and poskim who are aware of how frum Jews live and who advise Jewish families.
“I am not sure what are the classical sources for using non-Jewish, or Jewish, government funds dedicated to support of poor by people who are able to work, while there are sources condemning it (make your Shabbat k’hol, but do ot rely on tzedokah)”
Do you count the taxes you pay as maaser?
huju,
“1. Families of 4-8 kids.”
Do you have a problem with this?
“2. Marriage of women before age 22.”
What would you recommend? Living together unmarried for years like secular people do and then throwing a lavish meaningless wedding at age 42 and collect a lot of presents?
“3. Limited post-high school education for women, limiting their employment choices to relatively low-paying jobs.”
I’d recommend checking out the real frum world rather than some Netflix slander.
“4. Yeshiva and kollel for young men.”
Beats going to Party State University and changing your major 15 times before graduating with a BA in English Lit and years of student loan debt after getting harassed in the student union by pro-Palestinian students for being dressed Jewishly.
“5. Yeshiva/bais yaacov education for all children.”
What else would you recommend? Public school?
“6. Expectation of financial support from parents of young married couples into the couples’ early 30’s.”
Some do, some don’t. It’s discussed by individual families.
“I don’t think this model is sustainable.”
I suspect that you don’t like this stereotyped “model”, and the complaints about its economic sustainability are a cover for that.
“I expect that, in the future, frum families will, correctly, cut corners on the “requirements” I described and thereby sustain the frum lifestyle.”
I expect that frum families serving Hashem and being all in all intelligent will, with siyata dishemaya, figure out how to sustain their frum lifestyles without cutting corners on what’s important. We’re even seeing evidence of this to some extent with the mass migration to Florida where there is more support for private school education, more affordable housing, lower taxes, etc.
“Many frum families do it now, enabling young men and women to become higher-paying professionals, like physicians, lawyers, accountants, teachers (in public schools)”
You lost me there. Public school teachers are, unfortunately and undeservedly, not high earners like the other professionals you listed. So your strange inclusion of public schools specifically within this list of high earning professions tells me that your agenda is not purely an altruistic concern for the economic well being of your fellow Jews, but rather a desire that they abandon their lifestyle for something more palatable to you. So my question is, what would be more palatable to you?
“If the frum community insists on continuation of the requirements I listed, frum life will be jeopardized. Many frum will go off the derech, others will live with unnecessarily heavy economic burdens. Discuss.”
I think you know little about frum families, I think you are creating a false dilemma between these so-called “requirements” and disaster, and I think your personal distaste for these perceived requirements is limiting your ability to see other potential solutions. Discuss.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“I started looking at this and I need to talk to your mother: you are browsing either Fbook or RT or something like that, despite having filters on Internet!”
Nah, there was a story right here on YWN titled “Mystery in Israel: This is why the 4th wave hasn’t spread in the Chareidi sector”. There was another story about it in the Times of Israel and is fairly easy to Google. And after reading these I checked some of the near real-time data available online in Israel, and it was reasonably consistent with these articles. Good try on the ad hominem fallacy though.
“US research early 2021: reinfections are 15x less than those who were not, that is close to what Pfizer showed in control trials (20x). Caveat – this is for the same variant.”
Caveat number 2: This study was done in early 2021 when the arms were practically still in band-aids. That gives us no information on how long the vaccine induced immunity lasts, which is the shaila now confronting Israel.
“research shows that vaccine produces antibodies that attack more areas of virus than after natural infection, so should be more effective for new variants (Ref 1)
– light cases of COVID provide virus only to the respiratory tract, while vaccine to the muscle, so it may develop a weaker response.”
“Should” and “may” are words of forecast, and forecasts can be verified. It’s still quite early in the game, and I did not write in definitive terms and provided my own caveats, but the recent data from Israel does raise some questions about how long the vaccine induced immunity lasts. But dear me, I keep forgetting that only some people are allowed to “always ask questions” and only certain questions are considered ok to ask.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“A reference, please?”
I’m not sure if there is published research yet – it’s coming from the Israeli data where recovered Covid cases account for something like 9 percent of the population, but only around 1 percent of new Covid cases in the latest outbreak, whereas the percentage of fully vaccinated cases is close to the percentage of the population that is vaccinated. Of course there are other possible explanations for this – maybe the latest outbreak is happening in different communities than the ones highly impacted by Covid previously such as the Chareidi neighborhoods, but I do not know why that would be so. Chareidim are certainly out and about, and travel, etc.
“All papers I saw indicate much higher levels of antibodies after vaccine than disease.”
Is there a connection between high antibody counts initially and long lasting immunity? I’m not sure about that.
Reb Eliezer,
“The CDC is ruling that people who had COVID should still get vaccinared as the antibodies are not that effective against the delta variant.”
Actually the opposite is becoming increasingly apparent – that immunity garnered from a Covid infection is more effective and longer lasting against the Delta variant than vaccine garnered immunity. It certainly doesn’t mean we should all run out and catch Covid, but why do none of these US-based mandates allow for T cell or antibody tests to demonstrate immunity?
ubiquitin,
“I’m sorry I still don’t get it. The Government is encouraging and paying for the vaccines (yes with tax payer money obviously) what are they gaining? Are they getting kickbacks from the pharmaceutical company. Is that the plan? So De Blasio is being paid by the pharmaceutical company to mandate their vaccine? “
Thanks for the benevolent condescension, and you’re welcome for the chuckles. Kickbacks imply secret, illegal backroom deals that I would have no real knowledge of so I would have to be speculating or making things up in order to piece together my supposed worldview. Unfortunately, there are a plethora of legal, fully out-in-the-open examples of the revolving door and gravy train between drug companies and government. Here are a few.
The largest drug companies contributed to the vast majority of the sitting congressional members’ campaigns in the last election, totaling over $11 million in contributions. In the last 20 years, drug companies spent hundreds of millions on state-level campaigns, hundreds of millions on Federal level campaigns, and billions on lobbying.
In 2015, Congress provided just $331.6 million of the $1.1 billion budget for the FDA prescription drug oversight, while the drug companies they’re supposed to regulate contributed $796,1 million. Fine, they’re just user fees, but every 5 years the FDA is legally required to negotiate the oversight and approval policies with the industry in order to keep collecting these user fees that are now the majority of the oversight budget. That’s quite the stick industry can bring to that table. Drug companies are really good at getting people addicted to things.
For individual government employees, the pharmaceutical companies they help regulate can provide cushy landing spots when they decide to leave government, such as former CDC director Julie Gerberding landing the role of president of Merck’s vaccine division.
Drug companies frequently run their own clinical trials for new drugs. That includes the major Covid 19 vaccines. With billions of dollars and their job security on the line (Pfizer has already made billions on their vaccine), how motivated are the researchers employed by the drug companies to actually find problems? It’s really easy to find no signal in a complex and messy dataset.
Why on earth would they even need kickbacks?
ubiquitin,
“I’m curious what is the matter now. WHY does the government want you to get a vaccine? Do you believe there is a tracker? Is it to get people sick? Why would they do that? kill people? again why?
Just control/power for its own sake? With no deeper goal? to what end? What is their ultimate purpose. I don’t get it, help me wake up”Widespread conflicts of interest among private pharmaceutical companies and the governmental health apparatus and media companies lead to policies and politics favoring the solutions and rhetoric that most benefit those companies’ profits. Vaccines are both extremely profitable and low risk due to laws limiting liability. And associating vaccine and health policy hesitancy solely with Trump and his supporters eliminated the traditional left wing source of skepticism to authority with astonishing effectiveness.
ujm,
“And only put on special clothing for davening and Shabbos. “
But if someone comes to davening in jeans, T-shirt, and baseball cap, there is a high probability that the person does not self-identify as chareidi. So yes I agree with you that clothing is a secondary point and is not integral to what’s most important about being chareidi – as the expression goes, the clothes don’t make the man. But the clothes do tell us what the man wants us to think about him upon our first impression.
rightwriter,
I have a relative who gave some of my kids $2 bills as a gift, and I brought them to a CVS to pick out toys to buy with the gift money. The cashier refused to accept the bills, saying “that’s not real money”, so I ended up paying for the toys using my card. Those bills are still floating around the house somewhere.
As for the dollar coins, I think the two main uses for them are for machines that have to give large amounts of change such as ticket machines for commuter rail, and gambling.
ujm,
“Being Chareidi has close to zero to do with externals such as dress, speech or mannerism. It’s all to do with how to implement practice of halacha and hashkafa.”
Yet there are certain externals such as dress and mannerisms that are defined as “chareidi.” Just as there are externals such as dress and mannerisms that are defined as MO/religious Zionist, like when I get an emphasized “ShabBAT ShaLOM” back in response to my “gut Shabbos” to someone wearing a srugi. People want to identify as part of a group, and that’s ok.
Yabia Omer,
“I guarantee that a massive percentage of the families of people in Lakewood, for example, were not Charedi a couple of generation ago. Maybe not even MO….”
The development of the American Jewish world is not really a representative example. Until the early/mid 1900s, there was not much Torah learning available in the US (many European gedolim were opposed to immigration to America), so many immigrant families became less knowledgeable and more assimilated rather quickly.
Yabia Omer,
“Going Lechumra in everything is not a maala. It been actually be a spit in the face of one’s ancestors who were not noheg like that. Or it may actually be asur. Sometimes one should not be machmir. “
Given that Benephraim made that up, you don’t have to get all offended by it.
Gadolhadorah,
“If you believe the snake oil salesmen … and still leave enough money to go out and buy a a hand-raised, free range chicken for Kaparos and a $500 Calabrian esrog for Succos. Hamayvin yavin. “
An explanation for those who don’t understand you might be good here, because it looks like you are mocking those who do hiddur mitzvah, and I hope I’m interpreting wrong.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“but if you concur that there were better educational options that were not applied in consideration for staff, a better solution would have been to let teachers collect unemployment for a couple of months till summer and then later possibly join a quality online program with your staff.”
I do not concur. In my original response and follow-ups I made several interrelated points in response to your idea to rapidly deploy online schooling. Instead of responding directly to them you have applied a false dilemma to one of them and want to make the conversation about nothing but that.
How will a school deploy online learning to a student body that largely lacks internet connected devices or even an internet connection at home? And libraries and other places with public WiFi are closed.
Online learning is independently driven, but children still require considerable oversight to help manage and organize their tasks. You can’t just throw them in front of a Chromebook in September and say, “see you in June!” Who will perform this oversight? If teachers, they will need training (assuming they are still employed). If parents, what if they need to work?
What if schools were able to reopen much more quickly than they did, and resources have been spent to stand up online programs?
I’m not saying schools made the best or correct decisions at every step, or that online schooling solutions wouldn’t have helped, but I do not think you have magic answers, even on the Monday morning after the game.
“I gave him a very clear picture what needs to be done, it was pretty simple, he bought into that, and had to back up due to people who care about their money more than what the kids learn.”
Did he tell you that directly, or are you assuming that?
Always_Ask_Questions,
“this is where we get lost same way as public school unions – are schools for teachers or for kids. If kids were in dire situation, everything should have been done to help them.”
Nobody knew how long the lockdowns would last, because the goalposts kept moving back. Gutting a school’s experienced staff when the students might have been returning to in-person classes fairly soon might not have been a good idea – the repercussions to learning would have been longer lasting than what many thought was going to be a few weeks to months of remote learning. And what about everything else I wrote?
“This is halakha – we allow unlimited competition between teachers, contrary to other businesses where livelihood of store owners is a valid consideration.”
The halacha is dependent on a large number of variables, and the psak for one school or community may be very different than the psak for another.
Yes, but only as polka dots on a green dress.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“I wanted to hear Talmidei Chachamim opinion about the pandemic, as advertised. I was not looking specifically for hizuk on internet issues.”
Was the entire shiur about the Internet? And what was the exact context regarding the Internet and Covid?
“If they would have been slightly creative, they could have.”
Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, and it’s a lot easier to say what should be done than to try and do something.
“There are a lot of online resources available. Schools could have outsourced to the experts, for example.”
Such things cost money, and to outsource would likely mean letting some staff go, and on-the-fly retraining of the remaining staff to work with the online programs. And all the students would need access to computers and the Internet, which is not the case in many communities. Also, nobody knew how long the lockdowns would last; the goalposts kept getting moved on us, and what many thought was a temporary situation dragged on and on.
“one of the schools was, Baruch Hashem, not interested in one of my kids because he, inter alia, attended online school for half a year, which the principal persisted calling “home schooling” despite all the info I gave him.”
Why would a school not accept a child because he was homeschooled for half a year? That makes no sense.
Syag Lchochma,
“not only are those claims heresay, but they actually aren’t happening. I thought the mention of not hearing it first hand in the actual communities was because it isn’t happening there.”
Yes, such as characterizing the “big” internet asifa a number of years ago as “the rabbis banning the Internet”, which it was not. But sometimes it’s not fabricating, but rather a matter of ayin ra, like taking the content of a shiur, or something a rav says, and running it through a negativity filter. Or becoming well versed in all of the machlokes of the bnei Yisroel. We shouldn’t be looking at our tents with Bilaam’s eyes. When I was new to a particular community, a new friend I made said something disparaging about a big rav in the community – that his drashos were fire and brimstone and he didn’t care to hear them. As much as I try to not accept lashon hara, this statement did unfortunately affect my opinion of the rav, until I got a chance to actually listen to a bunch of his drashos and ask him a shaila. Lo and behold, he never brought up gehennom or called us horrible sinners or anything like that. He spoke passionately about how important Torah learning and mitzvos were, and exhorted us to do more, without sugarcoating things. And he answered my shaila with warmth and a twinkle of humor.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“I heard this talk myself firsthand online, I am ashamed to say. “
What drew you to tune into that particular talk?
“Many zoom classes were not good.”
Even if all the technical details were pulled off well, spending much of the day on Zoom is not optimal. I work remotely and more than an hour spent in virtual meetings in a work day becomes a tircha. Hence, as you said below, real online schools do not make Zoom classes the ikar. But the brick and mortar schools did not have the ability or resources to convert instantaneously into online schools.
Gadolhadorah,
“I don’t recall seeing any of the rabbonim coming to the Asefas riding a donkey on the NJ turnpike nor do I recall their objecting to using a sound amplification system rather than yelling at the tops of their voices about the evils of the internet etc”
This is the same fallacy that Always_Ask_Questions expressed above. Do you think the objections to the Internet are because it uses electricity, or routers, servers, and Linux? No, it’s the content that’s available via the Internet. If someone published books with some good stories mixed in with highly objectionable material, and rabbis exhorted families to not bring those books into their homes, would you say that rabbis objected to reading?
Gadolhadorah,
“The OP was about some Asifah….”
And the OP is included in my question.
“The last big gathering was not a “gevalt gathering” but that incredible Met Life Stadium daf yomi siyum back on New Years Day 2020 just before the Covid shutdowns.”
Right, but in “CR” parlance, asifa specifically means a gevalt gathering.
“Before that there were several well publicized and reported “internet asifahs”.”
I recall one that was well publicized. And the derision towards the event and the misrepresentation of it by those who did not go nor hold by the rabbeim in attendance seemed to spill far more ink. I’m just wondering why that is.
“P.S. For those who felt “conference calls” were a good substitute for in-person learning or zoom virtual calls, your entitle to your opinion.”
Why on earth would you put Zoom classes into the same category as in-person? Do you think the Zoom classes held by schools were an adequate substitute for their in-person classes? I think education was devastated last year.
“A properly filtered computer appears to have worked for many frum families and schools without resulting in tens of thousand of kids going OTD or a big spike in divorces”
Did you conduct a poll? B”H I’ve not heard of an increase in divorces, but struggles with kids’ education and computer use? Absolutely.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“this is was said by a couple of Rabonim on the phone. I also do not hear the same from the Rabbis in the community”
I am not denying that such a thing was said by anyone, but when these controversial topics are brought up on the CR, it’s never, “so I was in shul and my rav said…” or “in a shiur, the RY at my yeshiva said…” I doubt Gadolhadorah’s rabbi is screaming gevalt about the Internet, and I’m guessing your rabbi isn’t blaming Covid on people using the Internet for work. It’s always hearsay, or someone who had to go out of his/her way to find it and share it here. I am just wondering what the drive is to become highly learned in all sorts of machlokes or controversy that doesn’t really have a personal impact.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“Is attitude towards internet is really a community “value”.”
Absolutely.
“Internet is a protocol.”
That’s an etymological fallacy. You know well that when people refer to “the Internet” they are talking about the content that’s available via the Internet, not the details of how content is delivered.
“It can lead to dangerous places, sure. You can argue who and when and how should or not using it. but a “value”.”
That’s exactly what’s being argued, and to care about the potential dangers is indeed to have a value, so why the tempest in a teapot?
“So, someone who wanted to learn during pandemic, would have to limit himself to conference calls.”
If he wasn’t willing to open a connection in his home to the Internet, which as you pointed out can lead to dangerous places, then sure.
“What if he wants to look up a sefer that he does not have at home. Should he have a conference call with Ramban?”
How did we get such great gedolim before the Internet, when they surely did not have every sefer in existence at home? How did people who did not use the Internet before Covid solve this problem before Covid? They went to the beis medrash and got the sefer off the shelf. Same thing during Covid.
Gadolhadorah,
“most yidden will not want to permanently relocate to Yenevelt or some small town in West Virginia.”
Based on lots of conversations I’ve had, I actually think that many families do have an interest in moving to communities in a more suburban or country setting, but it’s hard to be a pioneer and not have the Jewish infrastructure in place. As it is said, build it and they will come.
“Higher demand on a fixed amount of land means higher density. Likewise, the pressure to deal with “affordable housing” means that builders will request and receive higher building heights in exchange for including more low and medium income housing in their new developments.”
I don’t think high rises always correspond to affordable housing. In South Florida, the high rises are set up along a corridor that’s 70 miles long and 1 block wide, and are among the more expensive places to live. Then the older neighborhoods between the Intracoastal and I-95 tend to be single family homes but poorer, and the newer developments west of I-95 become more expensive with larger houses. NMB is largely located in that middle category.
“GH > screaming gevalt about the internet
I felt very uneasy listening such a speech at early COVID that ascribed COVID to too much internet.”
Something I find interesting: I live in a frum community, I interact with frum Jews, I daven in shul, etc. And I come to this site and read what some people say about the frum community, and it just don’t match up. Nobody I know is careening from asifa to asifa looking for the next thing to scream gevalt about, or claiming nevius about Covid in a shiur. I rarely even hear about these things except from the people who are decrying them. What’s up with that? Do people go hunting for these kind of things to have their own things to scream gevalt about? Why?