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IYK,
“I understand your stance fully. I even understand why you are creeped out.”
I didn’t really articulate a stance. You’re calling people out to deal with the crisis of housing prices, and I am asking you what you would like us to do.
“I however, was dealt a bigger blow than just threats. My life was destroyed by those who felt I was going to be successful and took steps in action to destroy my life. They deemed me a threat to myself and others, when those who knew me told me straight out that their experience with me was that I would never hurt anyone.”
That is a horrible experience to go through, and I am truly sorry that you suffered so much.
“My concern is, that the natural language is mirroring. We are not treating others how we wish to be treated, leading to situations like mine, where I face hunger problems for my whole life and it seems like nobody I’ve met in the Jewish community wants to really solve this issue at the root.”
I think there are many people who do wish to help others and would gladly try to help you. In order to get the right help for you though, people need to know what the root issue is. And it’s not really possible for anyone to know what it is unless you can articulate it.
“I feel shunned and shut out by the very community that raised me, yet they choose to repeat these negative actions.”
There are, unfortunately, rotten apples in the barrel. And just as rotten apples hurt the fruit in contact with it, rotten people can cause great harm to those around them. But B”H the Jewish world is large and diverse. Your community is not the only one that exists. And G-d willing you will find one that better suits you.
“I feel like I waste my time trying to make a difference even here, where people see my posts.”
I am reading your posts, as are many others, including many who are not responding. How do you want to make a difference? What do you want the readers of the CR to do? Take this thread for example – how can we help to deal with the housing and food pricing crises? And also know that people here may disagree with some of the things you are saying. That is not a rejection of you. It’s an opportunity to refine your argument, to learn different perspectives, and maybe change some minds.
“If you want to effect change, we need to be the change. I’m just trying to show where things can go if we continue. It’s very creepy, but so many are still sleeping. It’s time to wake up.”
So explain how to be the change! How do we not continue down a dangerous path?
“Change can happen. I believe that whatever the minimum wage is, must be capable of covering needs. If there is a minimum wage, or a regulated minimum income for normal work hours, then calories and square footage of housing needs to also be regulated.”
So contrary to what the antisemites will tell you if you do reach out to them, Jews don’t control these things. Elected officials do. So are you advocating for us to reach out to our elected officials and ask for a higher minimum wage, and better price controls on housing and food? Are there candidates that you support who would work to accomplish this? Also note that changes like this at a societal level tend to be slow to occur. In the absence of a high minimum wage and lower prices, how can we as members of the Jewish community help those who are struggling as you are?
“I’m going to take a break from posting for a while and hope the positive message of what changes can be made sinks in.”
I think we all want the world to change for the better. What specifically do you think we can do in our own small spheres of influence to attain it?
IYK,
“I don’t see why you think greed is okay and won’t backfire. I don’t see why legalized slavery is okay in your eyes either.”
I don’t think Always_Ask_Questions ever said anything like that.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“We all have millions of slaves, literal who pack the food for us, and golems that keep lights and heat on. when you do work, you have computers, internet, Amazon Marketplace all designed to make you ore efficient.”
I agree with some of what you are saying, but the interesting thing is, every time a new technology is developed to improve efficiency – hey! this task used to take an hour, but now with this new technology the task can be done in a minute! We think that our lives will be bettered by it – now we can do our task in one minute and have 59 minutes to learn Torah, but in reality, the goalposts get moved, and now the boss wants 60 tasks done in an hour instead of one. I maintain some legacy software developed in the 1980s and 1990s that represent a career’s worth of work and used to take hours to run. Now it runs in a couple of seconds, and my own building legacy of software is much more extensive. And the technology that is supposed to help us is constantly screaming at us to connect and feed it our personal information to get sold to advertisers. So our productivity and ability to connect is through the roof, but it also has created a generation of very mentally stressed out people.
IYK,
“If it is acceptable practice to pay anyone on the lower class of pay check less than required to pay for food or housing, then these need to be regulated to cut out the greedy guys. We all know Jews are very involved in real estate. Don’t think for a moment that if society collapses due to greed in this area, that we will not see gas chambers again.”
If you want to help effect real change, then you need to articulate some better ideas than to just “cut out” the mysterious “greedy guys.” Because I’m right with you that housing prices are way too high for maintaining a healthy functioning society, and I partly agree about food, though it’s a more complex and I think less severe problem in this country where I see some practical things that can be done. But I have no idea what I can do to help lower housing prices, and frankly the language you are using to describe the problem, coupled with your threats to harm the Jewish community via antisemites in another thread have me creeped out.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“Rav Gans did not lecture the father, he addressed the child directly in a very friendly manner and lead him to make a commitment to interrupt soccer and daven for a couple of minutes.”
“so I presume the Rav knew that the father will get the message and he indeed did. He and I discussed it without the kid.”
Ok, so it seems to be exactly what I speculated. The rav wanted to ensure that the kid davened mincha. The big “lesson” to the father is his interpretation of the psak and your presumption after speaking with him about it. May I ask how the shaila was worded?
Always_Ask_Questions,
“At the same time, next sentence mentions “halakhic thinking”.
And again, “halachic thinking” distorted and not distorted takes place right here in the CR, but has little bearing on actual piskei halacha people get from their rebbeim. I think we’ve reached the wall on this one.
“So that you get a taste of the tension, here is a quote from a notorious letter in 1984”
I could really have done without this taste of machlokes. Do you really think that letter represents anything more than the 1980s version of the CR, but without the benefit of moderation to hopefully keep the most unwise things from being published? That was not written by any rav, nor anyone brave enough to sign an actual name to it.
CatholicVisitor,
“I’m familiar with the early Jewish writings (the Torah?)”
The Torah isn’t Jewish writings, it’s G-d writing and knowledge that were given to the Jews to do and learn.
One thing to add to your conversation with ujm – the conversation to this point has focused on the role of women, but don’t overlook the role of men in the cultural component of decreasing fertility rates. My own experience is a limited sample of course, but I’ve generally observed that it is more common for a wife to want more children and the husband to not than vice versa. And I think that among the secular, men have a harder time with commitment than women.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“there was no negativity. My friend & teacher was definitely right to drag us an hour away to ask this shailah.”
No negativity. Next sentence “drag us an hour away”? Um… yeah.
“He just did not expect that the lesson will be directed to him. I was there and we talked about it, not something that I observed on the street, so I am pretty much sure of what happened,”
I have a hard time believing that a Rosh Yeshiva would “give a lesson” to a father and teacher in front of his son and a talmid. Every rav I’ve interacted with is very careful regarding the father’s honor in front of the children. Maybe your friend made this interpretation independently and confided it to you, but from the answer the RY gave, the issue that he was answering seemed to be the kid davening on the field vs not davening at all. In other words, the RY interpreted the root of the shaila as the father wanting the kid to daven mincha, and thus suggested davening on the field as the kid in his present state would likely balk at leaving his friends to go to shul. That does not mean that a quick Shabbos mincha on the side of a soccer field is an ideal.
Always_Ask_Questions,
Thanks for posting the full letter. Note he writes “many of our Jews”, not poskim, halachic authorities, etc. I do not think he is talking about legitimate poskim and authorities as you contend. But this was the 1950s, and in that time shuls were being ripped apart by factions within the congregations trying to do away with the mechitza, etc. So the stakes were higher than on the CR. Again the fact that laypeople or even conservative and reform Jews can debate about halacha does not mean that the process used by poskim is tainted.
CatholicVisitor,
I’ve fortunately never experienced outright hostility from others seeing my family’s size per se, but when out and about with my children I frequently get comments like “you have your hands full, har har har!”. I think culturally children once perceived as blessings are now perceived as burdens.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“I am glad you are feeling better with the position when stated by R Soloveitchik than by an AAQ.”
I don’t believe your “position” is quite the same as that stated by Rabbi Soloveitchik.
“To clarify – in that letter, he is refusing to make a halakhic decision as he is not told that something practical will come out of it, and he will get into a controversy with other halakhists, not CR.”
Who asked him the shaila? It seems to me that he was refusing to make a broad statement on a mostly hashkafic issue, but if there was a specific and real shaila with actual details he would have answered.And my guess is that he didn’t really fear getting into controversy with other poskim, but being dragged into a culture war waged mostly by laypeople (though certainly citing poskim). As the rav said to me years ago, “what are you trying to do?”
TL;DR, I accidentally created a tempest in a teapot, but I ended up getting more clarity on something AAQ attributed to Rabbi Soloveitchik which initially bothered me quite a bit.
n0mesorah and Always_Ask_Questions,
Rereading the thread after a week, I discovered that I misinterpreted the post that kicked off this side discussion (see: https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/women-entering-the-workforce-and-the-calamitous-declining-fertility-rate-effect#post-1976610). Since there were no quotation marks or other markers, I did not realize that AAQ’s second paragraph was entirely a quote from Rabbi Soloveitchik and not his own words. So I apologize to AAQ for saying he was simultaneously declaring himself to be above the debate while engaging in it anyway, which prompted my tongue-in-cheek apology from the entire Jewish people.
That said, I do take issue with AAQ’s categorizing Rabbi Soloveitchik as directing that quote towards the halachic “process”. It was clearly directed at things like the CR. And I think I am still making a distinction that n0mesorah is not between the halachic “process” (e.g., what we see in the Igros Moshe and other poskim), and the debates about halacha that we see here on the CR and on the street or in other similar places. I wouldn’t even categorize this particular thread as a debate about halacha, much less a part of the halachic process, as if poskim are weighing various issues on a complicated shaila and coming here for guidance.
n0mesorah,
When you say “halachic debate”, do you mean a discussion/debate of halacha on the CR or similar forums, or do you mean discussions with or among poskim, or responsa? Always_Ask_Questions appears to mean the latter, given his “kal v’chomer” response to me. And he wasn’t talking about uncertainties due to a lack of a complete understanding of the circumstances. His interpretation of the quote from Rabbi JB Soloveitchik suggests that he views the entire halachic process of arriving at a psak as tainted by politics, and thus unreliable. Since at least the 1950s. If that were so, how can we rely on things like the Igros Moshe or modern poskim?
Stepping back I don’t even see how halacha comes into play here, because ujm/Joseph’s OP was not halachic in nature, just a general bemoaning of cultural decline and that he thinks women aren’t doing what he wants them to do.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“Of course, but people choose what to ask based on what they think is important.”
And people learn what’s important in Yeshivos and through living a Jewish life.
“There is a lot of stuff declared in this group that seem to deserve a shaila –”
Like whether to skip kaddishes normally said during davening?
“taking a lot of free food, taking welfare, not learning profession, not wearing masks, going to mass events. In many many cases, it is not clear whether the person asked a shaila, and sometimes I inquire what was the answer and almost never get a straight answer.”
So here’s the thing – many of those types of shailos are very personal, and the psak very much depends on the circumstances of the one asking. To demand someone say what psak they received may be asking too personal a question. When I was newly frum, I once tried to ask a shaila in a very general, theoretical way, and the rav eventually asked me a bit sharply, “what are you wanting to do?” Because the generality was a waste of time and introduced too much uncertainty into the shaila.
“you can still ask a shaila to convince someone else (say, me).”
Nah, that seems silly to me.
“As a friend of mine dragged his son (and me) to a posek in Mattesdorf with a loaded “question”: when his son is playing soccer and the father is going to mincha – should he continue playing or go with his father? it was supposed to be a great less in kibuf av – until the Rav suggested to the kid to break from the game for several minutes and daven mincha right there.”
I think you have misjudged that situation and ascribe much more negativity to it than there was. Perhaps this is due to unfamiliarity with Orthodox Jewish life. Kibud av v’eim is an extremely important mitzvah, and issues of kibud av most certainly deserve a shaila. And it’s not for the father’s kavod, but for the child’s benefit that it is so important. But I don’t think that was even the thrust of your friend’s shaila. Davening is a crucial part of chinuch, and based on the Rav’s response, the issue was that the child was not davening mincha at all, not the kibud av aspect. For a child who has had the chinuch to daven to stop davening is actually a big deal, and I think the father acted very appropriately by bringing the son to a big Rav for guidance, and working out a compromise.
n0mesorah,
If you really think that way, can you explain why you relate to Orthodox Judaism at all?
“And this thread is full of the silliness that AAQ mentioned.”
So what? Better to skip a silly thread than to insult all of the participants, declare yourself above the fray, and then wade into it anyway.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“2 kal vehomers – so this was the feeling decades before CR and in between poskim ….”
To go from a quote from Rabbi Soloveitchik without context to “this was the feeling” is quite the leap. I don’t buy it. And it has no relevance to your declaration to be above the fray in a conversation that isn’t even one of halacha.
“that said, ew discussed here before – poskim respond to our shailos, so street discussion determine what shows up in halakha and also what does not show up.”
No, not really. What shows up in Leshem Shomayim halachic discussions are the people who care about doing the right thing by Hashem and who come across a situation where they don’t know what the right thing is – and so they ask a shaila. Yes changing cultural or political circumstances may cause new and different shailos to come up, but that just allows more light of the Torah to be revealed. And I don’t believe such has departed from this world, Heaven forbid.
Yserbius123,
“You need to look at population growth rates. And I believe that the population growth rate is growing.”
I believe you are mistaken. The global population is growing, but the rate of growth has been slowing since the 1960s peak, and is projected to continue tapering off through the rest of the century. Thus the population increase has more of a linear trajectory now than an exponential one.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“I am not inclined to give any of these factions an opportunity for nonsensical debates.”
On behalf of the Jewish people, I apologize. We’ll try to do better. With that off my chest, I do feel the need to mention that the true “halachic debates” are not taking place here in the CR, nor on the streets, nor even the shul kiddush.
ujm,
“This timeline coincided with the mass entry of women into the workforce.”
I think this is a factor, but there are other reasons as well for the declining fertility rate. There has been a decline in physical fertility as well, partly due to people marrying and trying to start families later, but also potentially due to environmental factors that are slowly becoming more defined.
huju,
“I do not recall any post this long or detailed from ujm. Did he/she have help in preparing it, and was he/she paid, directly or indirectly, to post it?”
You must be fairly new here 😀
Also, just because a poster supports a position you disagree with doesn’t mean he is paid to do so.
n0mesorah,
“A good start would be by looking at the hard facts and cold science, before getting into hard to define cultural issues.”
What’s cold science?
Make sure to roast the egg before Shabbos, or if roasted on Y”T, eat it on Y”T.
Reb Eliezer,
“The Rav can pasken if it is a chiyuv”
Boom. Thank you.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“But, no, it is more scholarly to go through all achoronim on an issue that will not affect most of us.
FOCUS on what is important.”
Yiddishkeit is not a zero sum game between mitzvos l’Makom and mitzos l’chaveiro. To think that focusing on one causes loss in the other is the influence of the yetzer hara. One should focus on and be stringent in both, because both are important. Those who have said otherwise have gone on to form things like Christianity and Reform Judaism.
Reb Eliezer,
“Use your common saichel”
You and rational have brought in sources but have failed to answer this specific shaila. You talk about tircha b’tzibbur, but kaddish yasom said by a chiyuv is NOT tircha b’tzibbur. And rational brings halachos about a non-chiyuv saying kaddish yasom, but we are talking about a chiyuv. This is not a matter of what’s the bracha on corn flakes. This is a real shaila that deserves to be asked. And given Always_Ask_Question’s clear lack of knowledge of the halachic process, I am rather surprised that you would discourage him from asking a shaila of a rav. That’s dangerous.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“Note the differences between my examples and yours”
My purpose in bringing that story was to show that we do not pasken from stories. That is not how Judaism works. You are not the rabbis in your stories, and your situation is not like theirs. Also, I believe you are misapplying the message of those stories you’ve brought. The strong reaction from the rabbis regarding someone asking a shaila when there is a safek pikuach nefesh is to teach us to never delay in acting when there is a safek pikuach nefesh. The message is NOT that shailos are to be avoided when possible in all matters.
“This is straight halakhic reasoning.”
No it’s not. It’s not even close.
“how did Bolshevik coup in Petersburg happen in Moscow, and why did some Bolsheviks went after Jews on that day instead of going after the Provisional government as they were supposed to?”
I was recalling the story from memory, so the specific details may not have been correct. Whatever. I’m not the one trying to pasken from a story.
rational,
And do you have any comments on the idea of paskening for oneself based on stories and implicit permission through not getting rebuked? Do you think a shaila should not be asked?
rational,
Always_Ask_Questions I believe has a chiyuv.
And since we can apparently pasken with stories, here’s a famous one:
A Jewish man who worked in Moscow’s diamond exchange was walking to work one morning, when an older fellow accosted him on the street and asked him to help make a minyan so he could say kaddish (he had a yartzeit). The man followed the older man into a small shul, thinking he was number 10, and the guy would learn some mishnayos, say kaddish, and share some nosh. But upon entering the shul, he saw he was number 6, and the older man went back out into the street to find more Jews. He waited for a while as the man slowly found some other men, and finally there was a minyan. To his shock, the man began davening shacharis from the beginning. He felt some annoyance, and told the man he needed to get to work, but the older man shushed him and said he had yartzeit and would say all of the kaddishes and davening. The man grumbled, realizing how late he’d be to work, but didn’t want to break the minyan by leaving. So he stayed, and the older man davened the whole shacharis, said some mishnayos, and shared some nosh. When the man went back out into the street, there was a great commotion. That day, the Bolsheviks had staged a coup and taken control of the government, and Jews were being rounded up and arrested at the diamond exchange. By delaying him with the davening and kaddishes, the old man had saved his life.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“Those who say tircha is not a big deal, maybe forgot the beginning of the thread: this is an outdoor minyan on a cold windy day. Piskei d’Zimra and kadishem before were already skipped. Nobody is sitting, kal vehomer talking. (Those who feel that masks are a threat should feel even stronger).”
Now who’s filling in the blanks with the worst possible assumptions? I did not write tircha b’tzibbur was no big deal, nor did anyone else on this thread that I recall. It is a big deal; however, saying kaddish is also a big deal. And we need to sort out which “wins” halachically in this specific case. And you decided for yourself to not say kaddish, but seemingly based it on gedolim stories that dealt with pikuach nefesh and the fact that you went ahead and did it and the gabbai/rabbi didn’t object. I don’t think that reflects the serious consideration or requisite knowledge that this shaila and those kaddishes deserve. You may discover that your course of action is correct per the rav in this particular case, but it is far better to have that certainty than a bunch of maybes. We don’t get on the freeway thinking, “maybe I buckled my kid in his car seat… I am a strong believer in safety belts, and he’s not piped up that he’s not buckled.”
rational, Reb Eliezer, and Always_Ask_Questions,
We are not talking here about adding extra kaddishes. We are talking about skipping kaddishes that are part of the set davening, e.g., after R’ Yishmael omer, after mizmor shir chanukas habayis, and after the shir shel yom (I’m assuming the one he does is the one after Aleinu). Those kaddishes certainly do not fall under the category of unnecessary or added, so I do not see how the halachos you are pasting are relevant to the shaila. This is not about being flippant with Hashem’s brachos or kaddishes. We are supposed to say those kaddishes and get great merit for doing so.
In fact, the rampant misapplication of halachos to this discussion only underscores the absolute necessity to ask a shaila of a knowledgeable rav.
Reb Eliezer,
So you quoted two specific halachos regarding tircha d’tzibbur. Does this mean we can use tircha d’tzibbur to cut things out of davening without a shaila? What about tachanun? Kaddishes? Chazaras hashas? Pesukei d’zimra?
Always_Ask_Questions,
“Avram, I was totally not nogea b’davar: I was not in a hurry and not cold.”
Those are not the only factors that would make you nogea b’davar.
“I did not need rationalizing.”
So why are you? You have not stated any direct halachos or opinions in this thread that you are relying on for skipping kaddishes. Your main arguments have been rebbe stories that are irrelevant to the issue at hand and the fact that the gabbai and rabbi at the minyan are not directing you to say the kaddishes. That is textbook rationalizing.
“I saw other people being cold.”
So perhaps it is your personal rachmanus that makes you nogea b’davar. Or perhaps like the OP you feel embarrassed for some reason making people wait for you. Who knows? Unlike what you accused below, I’m trying to avoid speculating. All we see is that you have made a controversial halachic decision without consulting a rav, And when pressed on it you have provided no halachic basis, only rationalizations, and you have decided to make not asking a shaila your hill to plant your flag on and make your stand. And that’s a really strange hill on which to make a stand. Everything you have brought forth in the rebbe stories about not asking a shaila pertains to pikuach nefesh situations where taking the time to ask a shaila may increase the danger. This situation is NOT equivalent. At worst it is a question of tircha d’tzibbur (and I maintain that a regularly scheduled kaddish is NEVER tircha b’tzibbur). It is incorrect to extrapolate from one to the other. And we have psakim for these situations, not maybes and rebbe stories.
“I agree that if I were to have personal inclination to skip, I should have asked the Rav in the minyan. The problem was – the Rav might have been cold, so he was nogea b’davar :). He would have been forced to tell me to say all of them in order to resist his own yetzer harah! In truth, if I were nogeah b’davar, I would not have skipped.”
That’s not how things work. The rav cannot change his psak based on whether or not he is cold. The halacha is the halacha, so he is not “forced” to tell you one way or the other based on his feelings. If he’s concerned that his personal involvement may color his psak somehow, then he can ask his own shaila.
“As to Hashem’s will, maybe He wants us to take care of other people despite our desire to say an extra kaddish – rather than ask shailos about it.”
Just ask the shaila. It’ll take 5 minutes and you can remove the “maybe” from your sentence! We don’t want a lot of “maybes” when doing Hashem’s will. That becomes very dangerous very fast.
“please notice that you seem to put in the worst assumptions about any missing pieces in my story: I had my own interest, I don’t know whether my Rav will correct me or not.”
I am only responding to what you have written. I have made no assumptions about your motivations or anything else.
Always_Ask_Questions,
“I personally was involved in a couple of competitive intellectual pursuits over years, so I know what I don’t know reasonably well.”
I’m not sure you are getting the point of why it’s important to ask a shaila regarding skipping kaddishes. This isn’t about how much you know. You may well know of opinions that allow skipping things in davening, but if you really felt sure about the ground you stood on, you wouldn’t be writing things like the gabbai sees me do it but doesn’t object – that’s rationalizing. In fact it’s even worse, because you’re essentially relying on a gabbai who doesn’t even know he’s being silently asked a shaila for your psak rather than directly asking a rav. When you paskened skipping kaddishes for yourself, you did what you thought best and followed your own will. Our goal as Jews is to follow Hashem’s will. We put Him in the driver’s seat, not drive ourselves and hope He came along for the ride because the gabbai didn’t object. And the best way to do that is to ask a shaila of a rav who is not nogeia b’davar. Asking shailos isn’t always because you “don’t know.”
Little Froggie,
“Interestingly, their battle cry used to be “Global Warming”. When faced with an many an occasional “global cooling” (like today), they changed their anthem.. now it’s climate change.”
You’re mixing up your mocking. The line is supposed to be, “back in the 1970s it was global cooling, then it became global warming, and now it’s climate change.” But I have a few questions. Who are they that have a battle cry? And who’s heading up the department of semantics on what to call it? Climate scientists still frequently use the term AGW (anthropogenic global warming), so somebody’s gotta get them on the right page.
“Like years ago the climate didn’t change.”
Of course it did and does, with both harmful and beneficial impacts to the inhabitants of this world. Does this mean we shouldn’t optimize how we adapt to it? Or investigate whether we are one of the factors that cause changes in the climate system? And how we can maximize the benefits and minimize the hazards?
Reb Eliezer,
We generally want ozone to be up in the statosphere, because when it’s at ground level, we find it rather unpleasant and issue air quality alerts for it.
WolfishMusings,
“So, I’ve been wondering if I am guilty of wasting people’s time and, if so, what can I do about it?”
A few of my thoughts:
1. When mispallelim come to shul to daven, the expectation is that kaddishes will be said, hence the brief awkward silences that occur before people realize nobody is saying kaddish and they move on. Since people have already mentally given this time to kaddish, it cannot be a waste, and you are actually preventing awkwardness by saying it.
2. I heard someone recently ask a rav a related shaila at a late maariv – the man noticed that at the shacharis and mincha minyanim, there was a fellow who would say kaddish after aleinu if there were no mourners present. He himself didn’t have a chiyuv to say kaddish but felt drawn to doing so and was wondering if it was appropriate for him to so something like that at maariv. The rav said (in a simplified retelling) that it is considered a good thing to end the davening with a kaddish, and the man was welcome to say kaddish at the end of maariv if he wanted to. And so he has ever since. So adding kaddishes enhances the tefilla b’tzibbur, certainly not a waste of time.
3. As others have pointed out, there is tremendous spiritual benefit to answer amein to a kaddish. So your question is kind of like asking, “at the end of davening I take a bag of gold coins and toss a few of them to each of the mispallelim. Am I wasting their time?”
4. I think you are well aware of #3, so is your OP meant as a subtle criticism of how people trivialize davening (e.g., that sense of relief that ripples through the room when the shaliach tzibbur starts kaddish right after chazaras hashas signaling no long tachanun)? Or is it a setup for another of your “I’m a rasha” threads?
“i guess we should send our kids to public school”
Survivor bias.
Yserbius123,
“You can, if you want to. But it basically means getting off the Internet entirely. Most non-Google websites use Amazon Web Services to some extent. And online retailers take advantage of Amazon’s infrastructure.”
Which suggests that while not a Free Speech issue, Amazon’s control of the Internet may be an Antitrust issue.
ujm,
“The world was created for the use of it by humanity.
Chop down those trees.”
Agreed – but do you think we have a responsibility to use the world in as smart a way as our knowledge makes possible in order to maximize the benefit to humanity?
PaperBridge,
” I do not believe that Jewish people are more disposed to this ridiculous belief than other people, and I find it incredible that you might think from what I wrote that I do. I am addressing the belief because it was explicitly stated by an individual person to whom I am replying.”
Nah, you are not. The OP didn’t “explicitly” state that s/he doesn’t care about humanity, or refrains from “mixing” with others, or anything about tolerance, art science, whatever. Nor did s/he say s/he was yeshivish, loved money, or anything about fancy eyeglasses. All of those things you dreamed up from your own prejudices and projected them onto the OP.
PaperBridge,
“Better just to love money and maybe also fashion eyeglasses which are very yeshivish”
Antisemite much?
charliehall,
“Can you answer why any religious person could ever support a rasha like Trump?”
I’m not sure if this is a rhetorical question intended to shame Jews who don’t think like you or if you actually want an answer. I have a fairly detailed perspective on this if you are willing to listen and discuss instead of debate and berate. I am disgusted with politics in general, so while I do have strong opinions on various issues, I do not see myself as a partisan.
“I strongly support cancel culture and every Jew should. Just yesterday I publicly called for the cancellation of David Duke, Tamika Mallory, Louis Farrakhan, and Linda Sarsour. If you disagree you might want to look at your priorities”
Lol, everyone would indeed strongly support cancel culture if they got to be the ones doing the cancelling, and could cancel just those people with opinions they despise. The problem is, Linda Sarsour is much more likely to be the decider of what to cancel than you are. Remember that you teach in a Jewish university.
Yserbius123,
“you are pulling the same old schtick of ignoring my main point to focus on some narische technical inaccuracies. Fine I was wrong about Eretz Yisroel. Nu, what about the vaccination program?”
It’s one thing to not read what others write, but do you not even read what you yourself write? Your post had the following structure:
1.) Assertion
3.) Real life example to back up your assertionI then shared a link to a story apparently contradicting your real-life example. I thought maybe you’d say the story was wrong and back that up with information you had seen. Maybe the story was describing conditions a couple of weeks ago and things have improved since and you could show me that. But it seems that you just made up your real-life example because it sounded good, and you dropped it like a hot potato the minute it was contracticted. Narische technical inaccuracy? Eretz Yisroel was your key supporting statement! How can anyone trust your main point when you undercut it with inaccurate proofs? If a rocket engineer points a rocket downward instead of upward on the launchpad and it then explodes in a giant fireball, was that a technical inaccuracy as well, and we should ignore it to praise the engineer for making such a beautiful rocket?
Yserbius123,
“For the first time in weeks, the strain on the hospitals is easing up”
Israeli Hospitals Collapsing: “Soon We’ll Have To Decide Who Will Live & Who Will Die”