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I have not followed this trial too closely but I agree with ujm 100% on his sentiment towards the justice system. Although it is better here than practically anywhere else.
I think you should all research the names Gershom Scholem and Martin Buber and then come back here and opine on neo-chassidis.
sidyid: this can only bother you this much if your “friend” is actually your husband.
I love the mitzvah so much I practice all year for Purim.
**standing ovation**
Eddiee: you wrote: With regard to Shemen Akum, it is still assur. they were only matir it for that year.
You are wrong.
perhaps youre confusing the fact that r’ yehuda first batled it for his dor and then his grandson batled it completely?
ujm: i agree with you that this man did nothing wrong and I have every reason to believe he is a complete tzaddik. i have a lot of problem with our justice system, believe me, but I strongly believe that in this case, even without a camera, he would have been exonerated quickly and granted bail. But I am not sure. Unfortunately, mistakes happen and often times the consequence is not fair at all. I am not sure we can create a perfect system that is mistake free.
As for the hanhaga, I want to be clear: the tznius issue is obviously real and is halacha, in fact a deoriasa. but the tznius issue is a problem whether you are passing between women, behind women, on the side of women. it is specifically with regard to the witchcraft/impure issue of passing between two women, palm trees, pigs, dogs – which is not a halacha – that certainly the hamon am’s sensitives need to be accounted for. in other words, i am very machmir on both ve’ahatva lereicha kamocha as it applies to offended women in this case and the issues of avoda zara/emunos tfeilos that apply here as well.
eddiee: i already pointed out that most poskim disagree. furthermore, you are incorrect, we find that the sensibilities of the oilam at large is taken into account when decided hanhagos, as was with (1) the gzeira against eating meat after the beis hamikdash was destroyed or (2) the gzeira prohibiting oil of nuchrim, these gzeiros were batteled by the hamon am.
Ujm: I think you are (purposely) missing my point. You point to the six seconds as if that fact exonerates the man. My point is that the six seconds tells us nothing because that is how long an actual abduction takes. What exonerates him isn’t the six seconds you keep pointing to but the fact that he is innocent as shown in the video.
As for second point, it has nothing to do with my wife to your mother. Here is the kitzur, in full, unredacted:
יש ליזהר שלא ילך איש בין שתי נשים, ולא בין שני כלבים או שני חזירים, וכן לא יניחו האנשים שתלך ביניהם אשה או כלב או חזיר
Now read this to any frum, yeshivish, chareidi woman. ALL such women will always have one of the following two reactions, she will either tell you she is offended or she will lie to you.
There is one lesson for me here. If you watch the video, there were a number of adult men he could have asked to help him, but he did not. It seems to me that he did not ask an adult because he was afraid of the reaction, the ridicule and disdain he would face. He realized the only person who will not judge him is the child. And the lesson I take for myself is that we should be more tolerant of others’ hanhagos. I do not practice this hanhaga but I shouldn’t make someone who does feel uncomfortable. We should be more accepting of other people’s minhugim even if they seem foreign to us.
ujm: i am not sure why the six seconds here and the six second there matter to you so much. How long do you think an actual abduction takes? As for the mesira, are you upset the mom called the cops in this case or would you also be against leiby kletzky’s parents calling the cops? are you against “mesira” in general or do you think that in this case there was no need to call the cops?
To call the practice against walking between two women a Halacha is a misnomer. It is not brought down in any of the classic Halacha sources (rosh tur shulchan Aruch rambam). In fact the practice comes from the belief in witchcraft as the Gemoro says psachim 111 :”הני תרי נשי דיתבן בפרשת דרכים, חדא בהאי גיסא דשבילא וחדא באידך גיסא, ומכוונן אפייהו להדדי – ודאי בכשפים עסיקן. מאי תקנתיה? אי איכא דירכא אחרינא – ליזיל בה, ואי ליכא דירכא אחרינא, אי איכא איניש אחרינא בהדיה – נינקטו לידייהו בהדי הדדי וניחלפו, ואי ליכא איניש אחרינא…”.
At best it’s a hanhaga tova. Most Poskim file this information where they put other outdated hanhagos like zugos.
Some achronim bring it (as does the Zohar). This is how the kitzur says it:
יש ליזהר שלא ילך איש בין שתי נשים, ולא בין שני כלבים או שני חזירים, וכן לא יניחו האנשים שתלך ביניהם אשה או כלב או חזיר.
Please read that to your wife and mother and come back here and tell us her reaction to the kitzur.
Leave the mother alone. She did what she needed to do as a mother. I would rather live in a society where mothers protect their children and occasionally make mistakes than in a society where mothers have to think five times before calling the police. It was the police’s job to investigate before making an arrest and they failed to do so and it was the DA’s job to review the footage before bringing charges. The mother did her job as a mother.
Avira: but humans can destroy the world, there is no real question about that. We can use nuclear weapons, for example. The only real question is whether we are.
Zushy, ALL the phones being sold at the target store are filtered – all of them – they just do not have the right hechsher.
Thank you, ujm. I am familiar with the ran. The ran can be teiched as saying that non-jewish governments cannot tax jews in israel but jewish governments may. According to Avira, Rav Chaim was speaking specifically about this current government. How can I see this letter from Rav Chaim?
Our response is: ledidi, the passuk tells us in bereishis 8:22 that Hashem will control the climate for eternity but ledidaichu, at least be moideh to the fact that science tells us that the world is billions of years old and has always had hot streaks and cold streaks, hot climates and ice ages, many of which happened long before humans were even present so what makes you think that all of those climate changes over the millions and millions of years were natural and humans had no power to cause it or prevent it but THIS one is different?
Avira: can you please point me to the source for this:
Rav chaim kanievsky clearly wrote that israel, as an illegitimate state, has no right to impose taxes on its citizens.
AAQ: I don’t know that he was really racist i think he was just saying it because someone told him its how to get out of jury duty. also, if i remember correctly he said i was once assaulted by a person of the same race as the defendant and that is why i cannot be impartial. he didnt stam say he was a racist – and the judge still punished him for it.
my point is that in practice, in ny, a judge may come down on you if you use racist.
CTLAWYER: i am familiar with a yeshiva bochir called for jury duty recently who said he was a racist and the judge was very upset with him for saying that and told him to return to the jury pool and sit there until the week was over even though every other juror that gets dismissed goes home.
you can argue moshe rabbeinu was an ethical orthodox jew. the gemoro in maseches nedarim says that when he married tzipora, moshe rabbeinu made a neder to stay in midyan and had to do hataras nedurim (hatara done by Hashem himself) in order to be able to go back to mitzrayim, later on. but once he satisfied his orthodox obligation as far as hilchos nedarim are concerned and he did his hataras nedurim he STILL went back to yisro to get his permission to go back to mitzrayim because that was the ETHICAL thing to do even though his halachic limitations were already addressed by the hataras nedarim. Ethical orthodoxy.
I dont know how to measure level of depravity or torture but if you look at sheer numbers, the holocaust alone outnumbered all those killed in muslim countries, like ujm says.
that isnt to say that things were even decent under Muslim rule like akuperma implies – at times they were just as awful but never on the same scale.
and anyone who believes that the creation of israel caused the muslims to hate the jews is simply ignorant. jews in muslims were continuously subject to pogroms and forced conversions – in the middle ages and into the late 1800s as Historian points out – but again – never on the scale experienced in europe – but definitely not caused by israel.
Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.
scientists tell us that the world is billions of years old and has always been in a constant state of flux. It gets hotter, its gets colder. We go through heat ages and ice ages. I suppose we are now trending up. The real question for scientists is: what makes you think that the millions and millions years of climate change was natural and out of our control but this most recent one is not?
jackk: the democrats have been calling for santos to resign which will allow the democrat governor to put in a replacement which will probably be zimmerman. sorry but democrats are trying to overturn an election.
i dont think the voters cared whether or not he was Jewish they didnt want Zimmerman, his opponent and they wanted a Republican. I wish Democrats (and Republicans) just learned for once to respect the outcome of an election instead of trying to get losses overturned.
What about the trolls that write YWN headlines and articles about President Trump?
לעולם הלכתא כדברי ב”ה והרוצה לעשות כדברי בית שמאי עושה כדברי בית הלל עושה מקולי בית שמאי ומקולי ב”ה רשע
מחומרי בית שמאי ומחומרי בית הלל עליו הכתוב אומר (קהלת ב, יד) הכסיל בחושך הולך אלא אי כבית שמאי כקוליהן וכחומריהן אי כבית הלל כקוליהן וכחומריהן.חולין מג:- מד
midwesterner: halacha has a methodology and that methodology tells us that beis shamaya “eina mishna” (see, e.g., berochos in the neighborhood of lamed vov). That has nothing to do with rishonim providing various pshat, drush, agada, etc on the mikra. eilu ve’eilu divrei elokim chaim but not all of them are pshat.
quite frankly, i do not understand how certain segments simultaneously tell us that mikra should not be taught and at the same time tell us how to study mikra. I am sorry but if your hashkafa tells you to ignore the study of mikra, then your opinion on how to learn mikra doesnt matter.
I have not read the sefer and can only comment on the comments here but it seems universally accepted that rashi is more often than not – not pshat. the rashbam himself in his intro to his peirush claims that Rashi had told him that if he could have had his time over again he would have put more emphasis on the pshat of the text. so if you set out to write a sefer focused on pshat you by definition have to be giving the ramban, rambam, ibn ezra, rashbam, ralbag, etc. to the detriment of rashi.
as anyone who learns mikra can tell you, the ramban is not really a peirush on the torah but rather a peirush on rashi (and to a lesser extent the rambam and ibn ezra). virtually every ramban begins with rahsi’s pashat and why rashi’s pshat is not pshat.
would rabbi feldman put the ramban in cherem?
As a famous Rabbi used to say, “May Hashem save us from both Jesse [Helms] and Jesse [Jackson].” He also used to say that the Earth is round so if you keep moving to the far right or to the far left you end up meeting at the same point.
avira: from the passage quote from Rav Sternbuch, above, the Chasam Sofer seems to be saying not to learn Tanach without meforshim.
ujm: did you know that Rabbi Avigdor Miller was a real master of the Tanach – having mastered it at a very young age when his only form of Jewish education was his grandfather’s teaching? I do not know whether Rabbi Miller would agree with Haruv Sternbuch on this issue.
Perhaps Rav Sternbuch is reacting to his society where Israeli public schools teach tanach the same way they do shakespeare and in the way the chiloni public venerates the tanach (for the sole purpose of disparaging the talmud).
ujm: interesting take. doesn’t it discount the chazon ish, the steipler and the post-war gedolim of israel, though?
of course not every yid is a tzaddik. the reform and conservative leaders imach shemam are reshaim. as for the passuk. veamcha kulam tzadikim, our chachamim already explained that this refers to oseh maaseh amecha – one who behaves like a jew. bernie sanders? norm finkelstein? howard zinn? noam chomsky? there is a mitzah to hasten their deaths.
מאה מיתות עדיפות על פני קנאה אחת (דברים רבה ט ט).
רקב עצמות קנאה (משלי יד ל)
הקנאה והתאוה והכבוד מוציאין את האדם מן העולם (אבות ד כא)
As regular followers of the news from Israel, we should know better than to simply accept the media narrative as is.
How many times did Israel go into Gaza and later withdraw after reaching its objectives only to see the fake news declare that Hamas kicked the Jews out and won the war?
I am not saying I support the Russians or the Ukrainians and I am not saying the news that Russia is losing is most definitely fake but what I am saying is: you cannot believe the media at face value.
ujm: if you delete the conservative/reform/unaffiliated jews of the usa from your definition of who is a jew, as i do, then not only do a majority of the jews speak modern hebrew but they speak it as their first language. Most certainly, in 40-50 years those fake American “Jews” will not fit anyone’s definition of Jewish and so by then, an overwhelming majority of Jews will be speaking modern Hebrew as their primary language. I view it as most unfortunate, as Yiddish is a beautiful language and culture, but Yiddish is shrinking fast and has absolutely no future. It is sad. BH some chassidism will still teach Yiddish alongside Modern Hebrew and English so that Yiddish does not complete die off in our lifetime.
When the British ruled, they made all signs in English for the ruling British, in Hebrew for the Jewish population and in Arabic for the arab population. When Israel returned as the sovereign, it kept the British practice in place in all cities and even on the money. The new Israeli cities don’t continue the same tradition and the signs in all new cities are in English and Hebrew and not arabic.
kahane was banned from running in the 1998 elections because polls showed him reaching 10-12 seats. He was a growing force and had he not been assassinated in 1990, who knows? It took Ben Gevir a long, long time to get back to where Kahane was in 1990 but he may be there now.
ujm, your comment about Kahane being a typical zionist reminds me of a saying by leftist Kahane biographer Shaul Magid who accurately said, “many people love Kahane and many people hate Kahane but very very few people actually bothered to read Kahane.”
You what this sounds like to me? Like Barry Freundel complaining that the women in the mikveh were not being tzanua. Why the aitch are you looking, man? An ehrlich yid knows what he should be avoiding – including all of youtube.
The productions are by women and for women and you are not invited to participate. Stay in your own lane, brother.
The idea here is that women don’t live in a man’s world. Rather, men and women share this world and need to learn how to give each other the privacy and respect so that each gender has an opportunity to enjoy it.
Women like to remember the good times they had at a wedding and they like listening (and creating) music and would like to participate in these healthy kosher activities without being encroached upon by men. So if men would kindly give women the privacy and respect we can share this planet without abusing each other’s rights.
Mesora from rabbi Miller. That’s rich. Rabbi Miller was a very nice pulpit, young Israel rabbi.
ujm: i think you’re making my point. Of course there is some absolute emes in what the tosfos YT says – we believe that because who TYT were – but how are we supposed to digest this truth? Talking in shul is bad. Kibalti. Talking in shul formed a straight line to children being slaughtered in cold blood in front of the parents? What?
Mishkav Zachor appears a whole lot worse in Hashem’s eyes than talking in shul but monkeypox does not compare in any way at all with the horrors of Tach VeTat.
So is there any real, constructive, point in this exercise?
If the point here is to recognize that there is a boreh olam and he is mashgiach and he rewards and punishes, i understand the point – but any attempt to oversimplify Hashem’s cause and effect seems like a waste of my time.
I am not convinced that ascribing motives to Hashem’s actions is a healthy activity. There is no question that Hashem wants us to act in a certain way and not act in a certain way and we also believe with complete emunah that Hashem rewards and punishes – but how can one be so pretentious as to draw a straight line from A to B and say Hashem did A because of B?
And when Hashem zeros in and punishes very specific babies r”l with Tay-Sachs who is he angry at?
Oy Lanu Miyom HaDin – when we see Magefa in the city we ALL need to examine our ways and look to improve ourselves first.
moish26: even if your tafkid was not to be a writer, there is value in being able to express yourself in the written word. not everyone is a Shakespeare or need be one, but everyone should be able to deliver his thoughts in writing. the fact that you do not value literacy is an indictment of the education you received (not something you should personally take as an insult).
Moish26, I don’t disagree with your sentiment, but your syntax plays very well into the hands of YAFED.