Avram in MD

Always_Ask_Questions,

“But this goes hand-in-hand with the overall theory of schooling: if the teacher is sure that he is “frummer” and he just needs to save kids from the parents’ aveiros, then there is no need to inquire.”

So I asked earlier about all of this hand wringing: “Maybe what you’re fearing is the rebbe telling his talmid that his parents’ yiddishkeit isn’t good enough?” and you didn’t respond. But I think this new post indirectly answers me in the affirmative. How do you see this playing out?

Always_Ask_Questions,

“Here is a quote from a book by a yeshivish Rav who both uses the hats but sees the limits”

Is that a quote or a paraphrase from your memory? And what book are you referring to?

DaMoshe,

“There was an interview years ago with R’ Yosef Tendler zt”l, who was one of the early students of R’ Ahron Kotler in Lakewood. He was asked if the talmidim at that time wore black hats. He said that no, only the Rosh Yeshiva and Mashgiach did, and it would have been considered disrespectful for the boys to wear them.”

Can you point to a source for this interview? I find this difficult to accept as presented. First, in the 1940s when Rav Kotler started BMG, everyone wore hats, Jew and non-Jew alike. Black fedoras were extremely popular in the US. So it certainly wasn’t just the Rosh Yeshiva who would be wearing a hat. Second, I have seen photos of yeshivos from that era, and everyone was wearing hats. Sure, not all of them were black, but many were.

“How times have changed.”

It’s ironic how chareidim get dinged on both ends of this.

commonsaychel,

“the fact of the matter is that during Covid anything Fauci said was viewed by you as absolute truth and you pilloried anyone who offered a differing opinion”

You may be confusing AAQ with some other posters. AAQ has expressed distrust in government officials, so he’d likely be willing to put daylight between himself and Fauci, despite his positions on the Covid response being fairly similar.

Always_Ask_Questions,

“Avira, my problem is your equating of decent behavior with getting a hat.”

Did he say this in a different thread? Because reading through this one, his example was a boy averting his eyes to avoid seeing pritzus, nothing about a hat.

“That said, why does your influence leads to their desire to get a hat, out of all things people can do to improve their middos?”

Because kids are hardwired to imitate their role models. If a boy really likes a particular baseball player, he’s going to want to wear that player’s jersey, even if he can’t smack a ball over a fence 400ft away. If he likes the Yankees or Orioles, he’s going to want a Yankees or Orioles hat to wear. If he’s inspired by his Yeshiva, he’s going to want to dress in a yeshiva style. I really don’t understand why you perceive this as bad. I see many MO families in my community with sons dressed in hats and jackets, and the parents have not torn their garments.

“Can you think about influencing them in such a way that the parent calls you to say – thank you very much, my son today said a wonderful dvar Torah, asked me to tell him about my grandfather and how he kept Yiddishkeit in Hungary, and cleaned dishes after the seudah?”

Do you think it’s an either or? And perhaps you’re putting too much of the parents’ job onto the rebbe. Parents should ask their kids for divrei Torah at the table. Don’t sit idle and wish the rebbe would do it. And I don’t expect a rebbe to know the background of every talmid’s grandparents and great-grandparents. What if the talmid is a child of BTs, and grandpa isn’t frum, and he ends up feeling left out? As for washing dishes after a seuda, again, this has more to do with parental expectations, though the rebbe should certainly be reinforcing kibbud av v’eim and helping out at home.

I have a feeling that a lot of this is a diversion. Maybe what you’re fearing is the rebbe telling his talmid that his parents’ yiddishkeit isn’t good enough?

n0mesorah,

“What if he refuses to tell us what he believes?”

Well then, he just might not be a good candidate for the job.

“Is there supposed to be some kind of inquisition to make sure people are of the right mind on various critical matters?”

This is an appeal to an extreme. Did I say everyone needs interrogation? And inquisition is a loaded term. We are human beings; we cannot read someone else’s mind. If a Jew is making obvious efforts to follow the mitzvos (living in a frum community, observing Shabbos, YT, kashrus, dressing Jewishly, etc.), then he is assumed to be appropriately suited for basic communal functions. In some cases, we investigate more (or should investigate more), but at the end of the day we have to rely on the answers given. Have some people taken advantage of this (e.g., missionaries posing as frum Jews)? Yes.

“(Deep breath,) don’t ask me to get involved in who you choose as a rabbi.”

Ok, I won’t. But do you disagree with the need for any investigation into the beliefs or character of a man being considered to lead a community? Should we not care about whether the man who paskens Hashem’s law to us actually believes that Hashem exists and gave us that law?

AviraDeArah,

“Some use the term orthopraxy to describe people who go through the motions of yiddishkeit while their hearts aren’t into it – that is NOT the issue here.”

I’d contend that the majority of people defined orthopraxy this way, which may be why you’re encountering significant resistance in this thread.

Always_Ask_Questions,

“while American founders ended up being friends in later years; one “minor” civil war”

I’m not sure yet how much I want to wade into this thread, but the US Civil War was most certainly not “minor”. The war killed close to three quarters of a million soldiers, which, considering the population at the time, makes the conflict one of the deadliest in human history. Divisions over slavery and the balance of Northern and Southern power began shortly after American independence and roiled for decades before Lincoln’s election and South Carolina’s secession and shelling of Fort Sumter. The impacts of the war continue to affect many southern states generations later, and it is difficult to understand the United States without knowledge of the war. True, the conflict did not spill over borders into other countries, but the Battle of Gettysburg was on par with Waterloo, and the Civil War was the first “industrialized” conflict, forever changing how wars are fought.

Always_Ask_Questions,

“authorities dared to inconvenience your lifestyle”

Oooh, you’re teaching a masterclass in gaslighting and emotional invalidation. If you think the pandemic response was merely an inconvenience for most people, then the only person who thinks we reside on the same planet is Avi Loeb over at Harvard.

Yserbius123,

“There are problems in every frum community. Most of them admit it and have long discussions regarding how to fix them.”

This is entirely and sadly untrue. N0mesorah has been criticizing your fictitious descriptions of Lakewood, and I’m here to call out your equally fictitious descriptions of MO communities.

“But there are communities that have very blatant open issues that are so big they affect people outside those communities.”

Whatever.

“And people are screaming at them to fix it, but they adamantly refuse to acknowledge that there’s even an issue.”

Hmm, maybe “people” can take a break from bashing “Lakewood” and have some long discussions regarding how to fix this. Maybe “Lakewood” people don’t like being hated on and misrepresented. Maybe they see your community’s so-called “solutions” and don’t like them, or don’t see them as solutions at all. Maybe they don’t see things in your community as wonderfully as you make them out to be, and they don’t like the hypocrisy of “people” wagging a finger at them while their own house burns. Maybe they even have young musmachim coming into your community offering Torah learning to disaffected young people, because they realize that we’re all Jews.

ujm,

“If driving customs are based on local minhagim, how is anyone not from the area to know what the local driving customs are”

There’s no way to know, and it’s almost impossible for a driver in an unfamiliar area to completely “go with the flow” and not cause any annoyance. But there are some broad generalizations that can be made:
1. Nowhere else in the US is driving quite like it is in the NYC metro. So NYers should in general when outside of the NYC metro should give extra space between their vehicle than others (perceived as aggressive), try to avoid changing lanes into tight spaces (perceived as cutting off), avoid quick maneuvers like fast and sudden U-turns (perceived as scary), and accept the fact that OOTers have a slightly slower reaction speed to light changes (they’re not intentionally trying to harm you).
2. Driving is a bit more NY-like inside big Northern cities and parts of South FL (DC, Baltimore, Philly, Boston, Chicago, Miami), but less so in bigger Southern cities (Orlando, Atlanta, St. Louis).
3. For OOT drivers going into NYC, stay alert and even-keeled, and say some tehillim. Short honks are more like communication than rudeness (hey I’m here, ooh guess what the light’s green!). And pedestrians in NYC can chew off metal bumpers.

Always_Ask_Questions,

“it is interesting why frumer Yidden drive similar to other MY-ers”

You already answered your question above: “You are supposed to follow local minhagim“. Based on your story, a failure to do so results in a good loud honking.

“One trick my kids and I are using is counting how much hesed you do during a trip, letting people inside the lane, make a hard turn, etc. If you remember about it, you can consistently do it at least 2-3 times per trip. “

So why not do this in a black hat and make a kiddush Hashem?

Note that the nuances of driving are complex. For example, when at a 4-way stop, it’s first come first go. If you decide to be Mr. Gracious Chosid Shoteh and let others go ahead of you, it causes frustration, as you are doing something the other drivers do not expect, which increases uncertainty (uhh why aren’t you going fella?). Safe driving requires a high level of decisiveness, so your movements are predictable. Also, if you allow kol haolam kulo to merge in front of you, that’s fine for you, but who permitted you to sentence the driver behind you to a delay?

I understand what you’re saying and I agree, I really do. I also try to let people in if I see them signalling, etc. But outside of flagrant rudeness (bad gestures or yelling, sustained honking, dangerous maneuvers that force you to take evasive action), it’s probably better for the blood pressure to work on assuming the other driver wasn’t deliberately trying to be rude than to declare him a boor. Many times when I’ve “cut someone off”, it wasn’t deliberate, and if I had a two-way radio, I’d say “oops, sorry about that.”

Always_Ask_Questions,

“when someone in a black 👒 cuts me off on th street, I point it out to the kids that this is hopefully just an am Haaretz in a hat and they shouldn’t think that talmidei chachomim drive like that.”

Surely there are nicer things you can tell your kids. NYC driving is a completely different world than OOT driving. My grandfather would drive very differently in NY compared to OOT. I asked him about this, and he said, “this is my OOT driving, and this is my NY driving!” Perhaps your talmid chacham fellow motorist had little experience with OOT driving minhagim and thought you had fallen asleep due to your 0.5 second delay and lackluster effort on the gas pedal. Maybe you can provide a service to the Jewish people by producing informational pamphlets about OOT driving. Some suggested titles: “Thanks for the honking heads up, but I am aware the light turned green a second ago, let me finish this email”, “Here in Podunkville personal space means 1 car in a lane at a time”, or “If you make me brake I’ll be sad”.

“I can’t though plant this thought into other drivers’ heads”

You have made my argument for me! You must put on a black hat and jacket, and drive super slow in the left lane, allowing everyone in, waving and smiling. Change those perceptions!

Always_Ask_Questions,

“So – for us – wearing a black hat means dressing like a Talmid Chacham, Slobodka Rosh Yeshiva, etc – and the requirement is to behave accordingly, which is a tall order, and we both humbly do not pretend.”

This is a cop-out. Dress the part then strive to live it. When I’m in the grocery store in a white shirt and black pants, the only people who might confuse me for a rabbi are non-Jews or non-frum Jews. And if they call me rabbi I can correct them. And if they don’t call me rabbi, who cares? They don’t need me to pasken complicated shailos for them, they need a smile, hello, and occasionally to know what aisle the graham crackers are in.

huju,

“I am too tired to fully respond to your comment, so for now, I will say that you have have completely missed the point. Plastic bags are not proper clothing for anyone.”

He did not miss your point. He was asking a question on a statement you made that happens to be incorrect. I have spoken to several hatters who told me that many black felt hats will indeed be damaged by rain and must be protected. Some hats, such as Borsalinos, are claimed to be water resistant. I get from the context that you don’t like plastic bags on the hats, but rather than advising people to damage their hats in order to satisfy your sartorial sensibilities, you could have recommended other means, such as a specially designed raincoat (shaynecoat) or a rain hat, and people would not have “missed the point.”

DovidBT,

“Can tefillin that’s kept in a car get damaged due to hot temperatures during the daytime?”

Most definitely. Heat is one of the worst things for tefillin.

“Does placing them in an insulated container avoid or reduce the problem?”

It can, if the insulation is sufficient to keep the temperature inside the container down.

“If an ice pack is also in the container, will that make it worse by causing condensation?”

An ice pack might be a good idea, but the tefillin should be contained in a waterproof bag so the ice pack stays separate.

Dr. Pepper,

Thanks for those details. I didn’t understand previously how parts of the ACA were favoring large companies at the expense of smaller, and I concur with AAQ’s take as well.

“25% of all claims being preventable amounts to hundreds of billions of Dollars. That’s huge. I see that number sky rocketing if all health care becomes free- people will take more risks knowing that it won’t financially cost them anything”

I do think the study cast too wide of a net when defining “preventable”, but yes human behavior does add to the cost. Projects meant for humans should take human behavior into account. If someone built a stairway that had constant bottlenecks, and they complained and said “if only the crowds did this this and that things would move swiftly!” I’m going to blame the stairway builder for poor design before I blame the people for being people.

“yet that teacher is making $100,000 and you take a teacher from a nearby Yeshiva with the same years of experience, training and certification who’s pulling in $50,000 a year”

In my state (one of the most politically “blue” in the US), the median income of a public school teacher is around $58,000 a year. The 90th percentile (meaning only 10% of teachers make this amount or more) is around $82,000 a year.

“This may not sound like a big deal to you”

Actually, it does.

Dr. Pepper,

“they created a system that was mathematically guaranteed to fail and the states need to follow it.”

We’re over a decade into the ACA, are we still on a trajectory to fail? What does the failure look like?

“I got to see lots of this stuff first hand during the year that I worked in the ACA and it was pathetic to think that someone actually thought it would work. Most of the stuff is too complicated to discuss here”

Try us. I want to know what you saw, and can handle some complexity and ask follow-up questions if I don’t understand. I don’t find the appeal to authority argument to be convincing.

“take a look at the Risk Corridor 2014 payments catastrophe to begin getting an idea. (In short, despite promising that it’ll be paid out at 100% it was paid out at only 12.6% and many companies were shut down because of that.)”

As far as I’m aware, the risk corridor payments only existed in the first couple of years of the ACA to stabilize the markets and prevent companies from jacking up premiums in response to the uncertainty. Is that not the case? I agree that the initial rollout of the ACA was a debacle (except apparently in Connecticut).

“Public Schools (the ones that I’m referring to) are a huge disaster as they waste hundreds of billions of Dollars and have little to nothing to show for it.”

Exhibit A: NYC. Maskim.

“I believe that the same will be true if the healthcare system turns into a single payer system. In short- I was referring to the hundreds of billions of Dollars that will be wasted- regardless of who pays for it or how it’s paid.”

Do you see Medicare as a big pile of waste?

“I consider a huge salary to include those who work for unions and are getting paid much more than they would be getting if they were paid the going rate- especially the public-school teachers that have nothing to show for it.”

What’s the going rate for a teacher?

“Regardless of who is at blame, who caused it, weather you believe it or not or the amount spent on each age group- the point is that hundreds of billions of Dollars is wasted every year on preventable claims. That number needs to come down before a single payer system can work.”

A Lancet study using 84 supposedly preventable risk factors determined that preventable illness accounted for just over a quarter of the health costs in the U.S. That is indeed very high, but how does it make a single payer system impossible? Medicare already fields perhaps the majority of these costs, as things like heart disease, diabetes, emphysema, and cancer tend to strike more frequently later in life. These are the heavy hitters in healthcare costs, not Billy Bob having to go back to the doctor because he didn’t finish his entire 5 day course of antibiotics.

Now, I sound like I am advocating strongly for a government run single payer health insurance in the U.S. In reality, I am really not sure that I’d support one. But not because of the costs. I worry more about coercion, reduced options, and a UK NHS style breakdowns of service.

Dr. Pepper,

“you’re advocating for the US Government, who failed miserably at the ACA, to be in charge of a single payer system. You need to explain why you think the same US Government could successfully run something of a much larger magnitude.”

So the US Government does not “run” the ACA. The ACA is a conglomeration of laws that primarily expanded eligibility for Medicaid, forbade insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and mandated individuals to have medical insurance coverage. You might be thinking of the disastrous rollout of the online individual insurance marketplaces. Agreed that was truly bad. The blame can be spread around (some states set up their own awful exchanges, others relied on the Federal Government’s), but it was a failure to coordinate resources, share knowledge, and test systems before going live. A slight limmud zechus is that these state and Federal agencies had not put something together like that before, whereas Medicare has been a humming beast for decades.

“I mentioned a few times that a single payer system will turn into a calamity the size of the public school disaster.”

Public schools are not a single payer entity. The majority of their governance comes from the local and state levels of government.

“All this while the teachers (some of them who have no business being around children but are protected by the powerful unions) are bringing in huge salaries.”

I’d hate to see what you consider a meager salary.

“With a single payer free health care for all, you’re going to have people who don’t take care of their (or their kids’) health, don’t follow doctors directions and end up costing the system billions of Dollars in unnecessary expenses while clogging up doctors’ offices, hospitals and emergency rooms.”

…

“As mentioned previously, Medicare works because it’s for a more responsible part of the population”

So blaming the citizenry for the sorry state of affairs may feel good (politicians used to not dare try it, but now they love to so long as they can tar their targets with the opposite political affiliation), but it’s just simply not true. Health care expenditures are higher for young children, then drop quite low through early adulthood (with higher expenses for childbearing women), and then increase along an exponential curve once you get older. Per HHS statistics, your superior responsible adults aged 65+ accrue an annual average of more than $11,000 per year, vs. near $3000 per year for the horrible no good rotten 18-44 age group (which even includes most of those childbearing women getting harassed into expensive hospital interventions).

n0mesorah,

“But if somebody would just put out alerts without really knowing what is behind them, we absolutely should ding them for not having the clarity of the Star-K’s approach. This is my opinion. You can disagree with me on this scenario as well as the smartphones.”

I think how I see the scenario is closer to when laypeople forward on or talk about the Star-K alerts they received, not laypeople developing the alerts themselves. I don’t think, for example, that the technology asifa a number of years ago was done haphazardly.

“The fellow responded, the longer I keep you here the better. Because when you leave beis medrash, you”ll be looking at your smartphone”

Was this fellow a teenager or young adult? What he did sounds immature, or more likely in jest.

“What bothers me is that a lot of people think that there is some truth to the retort.”

I don’t think so, especially in the mature adult world.

“It still seems like it is presented backwards to Yeshiva Bachurim”

This seems like a salient point.

Always_Ask_Questions,

“Our times seems to be the first in history where [some] Jews are claiming that their mesorah is to be willfully ignorant.”

This is motzi shem ra.

n0mesorah,

“I think that saying, I got rid of my smartphone is only half of a success story. I got rid of my phone and am smore available for my family, I got rid of my phone and am learning more, I got rid of my phone and my davening improved, is something I can get behind.”

Ooh, I think maybe we’ve distilled the discussion down to the fundamental disagreement. I think if someone gives up their smartphone or puts safeguards onto it because of Hashem – i.e., out of a desire to avoid sinning, that in itself is a tremendous accomplishment. A single Jew standing up to the armies of the tech companies who are besieging his home, and winning against them all. I don’t think I’m exaggerating – in pirkei avos we learn אֵיזֶהוּ גִבּוֹר, הַכּוֹבֵשׁ אֶת יִצְרוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: טוֹב אֶֽרֶךְ אַפַּֽיִם מִגִּבּוֹר, וּמוֹשֵׁל בְּרוּחוֹ מִלֹּכֵד עִיר! Of course we should never rest on our laurels, and should put the newfound free time away from the devices into proper use, but that’s a separate discussion.

“But the populism of the movement is just emphasizing getting rid of the smartphone.”

I’m still not clear on what “the movement” is, but so what? Should we ding the kashrus alerts from the Star-K because they only tell us to avoid mislabeled product X and don’t also exhort us to learn more and spend quality time with our children? I think it’s a double standard you’re applying to “the movement” because you don’t like their message.

anonymous Jew,

“AAQ, whatever respect I had for you is gone. Mental health is no joke, and, because of attitudes like yours, people can be reluctant to get help for themselves or a child.”

I’m not 100% sure if he was joking or not, I mean, he wrote something in a joking way but he may have been serious with his point. I know someone who had a certain type of recurring hear arrhythmia that was misdiagnosed as panic/anxiety attacks (she was usually panicking when the events occurred – because they were scary! and were back to a tachycardic normal sinus rhythm by the time she was seen), until one day when her heart was clocking north of 230bpm and would not slow down, the paramedics got leads on her and a strip showing the arrhythmia. While managing the condition, she found that some foods could trigger the arrhythmia.

Yserbius123,

“In the communities that essentially tell children that if they can’t learn for 10 hours a day and do nothing else for most of their lives that they are failures, kids who can’t do that often act out.”

Ooooh, if we’re just gonna make stuff up about other Jews, can I join too? I thought we were trying to have an honest debate, but we could have such fun instead!

“And we wonder why there is so much teen violence.”

lolol teen violence only exists in Lakewood and is the fault of those horrible anti-vaxxers. I think you’ve hit all the high notes on the people you hate. Do you feel better now? Or should we blame the national debt, ozone hole, decline of morality, and growing old on them too?

n0mesorah,

“They were told things like your not coming on time to seder so we are giving your chavrusa away. Unless you sign the paper.”

Nope. Sorry, I don’t buy it. Something seems very off with this description at first blush, and I would love to hear the other side’s perspective of the conversation. Repeatedly coming late to the learning seder harms one’s chavrusa, so giving him away may well be the right call in those circumstances. And tying in some sort of evil smartphone blackmail angle seems like an attempt to whitewash irresponsible behavior.