Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
” their parents were extremely angry at their gadlus, so they started Open Orthodoxy”
That is not how it happened. Rabbi Weiss wanted better training of the RIETS rabbinical students in practical rabbinics and pastoral counseling and was prepared to set up internship programs with leading MO community rabbis to allow this. (Most of Rabbi Weiss’s former Assistant Rabbis are now leading large successful MO shuls today.) YU wasn’t interested — I am not sure why — and then a major donor offered to endow a yeshiva for Rabbi Weiss. What rabbi would turn down a big donor offering to endow a yeshiva? Interestingly, RIETS now DOES have a lot of practical rabbinics and pastoral counseling training in its semicha program.
“People will bring things from ace to place that are not shabbos related”
That actually has nothing to do with eruvim.
The halachah is according to Rabbi Shimon, not Rabbi Yehudah — we are lenient on mutkzeh. (That is the next to last daf in Bavli Shabbat — and one of the few examples of following Rabbi Shimon when he paskens against another Tanna.) Something does not have to be specifically Shabbos related, it just has to not fall in to a mutkzeh category, for you to be able to carry it, either in your house or in the “courtyard”. Carrying something from one end of the eruv to the other — some eruvim are many miles wide — is like carrying something across your living room.
We should obviously be careful about mitkzeh but thanks to Rabbi Shimon it is not that hard to observe. 🙂
“they will be supporting policies that promote economic growth and prosperity”
They are opposing such policies now; why would they change next year?
“Once the pandemic is behind us, there could be major growth. ”
Assuming that we can dump Trump and his destructive policies on trade and immigration, the US and in particular NYC is going to see a boom like we have rarely seen as soon as the pandemic is past. Our infrastructure remains in place; Democrats will invest massive amounts in renewing it. (Trump promised to, but he lied about that like he did on everything else.) Even more importantly, though, is that there is HUGE pent-up demand for travel, entertainment, and eating out. Airline tickets will be expensive and hard to get — travel will have to be planned 11 months in advanced. Amtrak will be packed to the gills and hopefully the federal government will finally deal with the tunnel problems. Hotels will sell out months in advance and major tourist destinations like NYC will need even more hotel space (hopefully the next Mayor will run roughshod over the NIMBYs with more success than De Blasio). Broadway shows will be sold out for years. Restaurants will be packed and will have to extend hours. This sector will lead the rest of the economy and the Trump Recession will be merely a bad memory.
“The housing market is doing very well”
The housing bubble may have finally burst in NYC. I saw a 1 bedroom co-op in Manhattan Upper West Side advertised for $150k. That isn’t “doing very well” that is massive crash! But such as crash is actually very good if it is for real; NYC may finally become an affordable place to live.
“they will liberally print money ”
Actually it is the Trump Fed who is printing money right now — to prop up the stock market. Close to seven trillion dollars worth. Expect them to stop that as soon as Biden is elected, causing a stock market crash that they will blame on Biden.
Dear Akuperma,
As n0mesorah pointed out, Antifa isn’t an organization. It is a bunch of anarchists who like to riot, now known to also contain a bunch of far right folks who join in in an attempt to discredit everyone on the left.
BLM isn’t Nazi at all. It is run by Marxists whose hero is a convicted cop killer now living as a fugitive in Cuba. Prior to the Nazis coming to power the German Marxists fought street battles with rocks, clubs, and the like. (Both sides would have used guns but they had been banned at the insistence of the US, UK, and France in 1919.) I have been calling out BLM’s national leadership since 2014
“Palestinians, free elections? Ha!”
They had one — in 2006. Party lists associated with terrorist groups got 97% of the vote.
“The MO community is aging”
Where did all those strollers at HIR come from? Where did that huge youth program at HIR come from? Where did that packed playground at HIR come from?
HIR built a huge addition less than a decade ago and it was already out of space for the youth programs when the pandemic hit.
“RCA, OU and YI banned anything to do with Avi Weiss”
No, Rabbi Weiss was a member in good standing of the RCA until the day before he retired, The Hebrew Institute of Riverdale is an OU member shul.
As others have pointed out, YI is dying in most places, in part because it got too much into right wing politics and lost its identity. The two YIs in Riverdale are going strong though.
HCQ has failed multiple clinical trials. It has been proven to be useless against COVID-19. There is nothing else to day.
Rabbi Yirmiyohu Kaganoff has an essay that discusses this issue on his web site rabbikaganoff dot com: “The Torah’s Instructions to Non-Jews—The Laws of Bnei Noach”. He identifies the source as Shu’t #10. I don’t have that sefer at home and haven’t been inside a beit midrash in months 🙁 so if you have it and can confirm, please do so.
Rabbi Kaganoff identifies acharonim on both sides of this issue. He interestingly points out that non-Jews would need to go to beit din rather than secular courts to resolve property disputes if the halachah is according to Rema. Is there any beit din today that accepts disputes between non-Jews? And in some places, arbitration by religious courts is not enforceable.
Also, at the time Rema would have written that, Jews had been expelled from England, France, Spain, and Portugal and had never lived in Scotland, Denmark/Norway, Sweden/Finland, or Russia. 🙁 There was still a Jewish community in China at that point, but not in Korea or Japan yet. So much of the world would be over all these issurim.
It is a good question. I do not know the answer. There must be some Chasidim here who can answer.
Regarding zmanim, Yerushalmi Berachot paskens according the Tanna Kama in the first Mishnah and against the conclusion of the Bavli that we really do need to recite the evening Shema prior to chatzot. We see Yerushalmi coming to different conclusions than the Bavli on a regular basis. What is the methodology used to chose which one to follow? Rambam follows Yerushalmi over Bavli on most issues in Seder Zeraim.
We have been losing so many gedolim lately. I still haven’t gotten over the loss of Rabbi Nahum Rabinovitch z’tz’l and now we lose Rabbi Goldberg z’tz’l.
“can only point to one MO yeshiva”
I used to be a YU prof but I actually agree that having only one MO yeshiva was a big problem. Many of its leaders have tried to slander and sabotage the second one, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, from its very start — even though Rabbi Avi Weiss was himself a YU professor and YU itself was trying to recruit Rabbi Dov Linzer to ITS faculty. It didn’t like competition. There are many MO yeshivot in Israel which is why MO religious Zionism is much stronger there. YU should have spun off many mini-YUs.
There has been no place in the history of humanity that has treated Jews worse than Ukraine. 🙁
The only good news is that in recent years the openly anti-Semitic parties have seen their support decline. The main anti-Semitic fascist party, Svoboda, only managed one seat in the 2019 parliamentary elections.
“Is the old Salanter Yeshiva from Webster Avenue that moved to Riverdale 20+ years ago or thereabouts still operating and if so, would it come under the “MO” nomenclature??”
Yes, and yes. It is the “S” of the SAR schools after a three way merger in the 1970s. Oldtimers tell me that Salanter was a traditional European Yeshiva. However, SAR is similar to other MO day schools. It is co-ed.
There are three other Jewish schools in Riverdale. The Yeshiva of Telshe Alumni is in Riverdale; it is a traditional European-style Yeshiva. Ohavei Torah is another school in Riverdale; it combines a traditional yeshiva education with a very strong secular curriculum. Those are boy’s schools. There is also the Kinneret Day School, founded as a secular Zionist school. It now operates as a co-ed community day school; its top two leaders are orthodox rabbis. It really pushes bilingual education better than any other Jewish school I have seen in the US. Many religious families send their kids there.
“Women don’t have to go to shul”
Actually, men don’t have to, either. I did not attend a minyan between March 13 and August 8 and still only have gone to outdoor minyanim. I bought a shofar a week ago to learn how to blow for myself, my wife, and neighbors because we are not going to be going to shul on Rosh HaShanah. (My wife was actually in tears yesterday bout not being able to go to Rosh HaShanah services this year.) 🙁 🙁
“Charlie Hall’s comment about strollers very much describes RJC if you have ever passed their building on a Shabbos morning. ”
Absolutely! Also Riverdale Minyan and both Young Israels.
“As Charlie can attest”
I do so attest. We indeed do work together; the idea that other shuls don’t want to have anything to do with the Hebrew Institute is a statement from someone who doesn’t know what they are talking aobut.
” It is the desecration of shabbos that really drives me away from eruvs”
Eruvim are mutar. They PREVENT shabbat desecration. And we pasken leniently as eruv is entirely a rabbinic innovation (admittedly from three thousand years ago). There is an entire tractate in the Oral Torah about it — in fact we are learning it now in Daf Yomi! (This will be the third time for me. 🙂 )
“less people getting drunk at the kiddush at Avi Weiss’s so call shul”
It is a real shul, now with the largest membership in the Bronx. It remains a member of the Orthodox Union.
And it isn’t Rabbi Weiss’s shul any more. He retired five years ago and does not play a role in decisionmaking there.
And the shul has not served alcohol at kiddushes in decades. There used to be a kiddush club but Rabbi Weiss spent years trying to stamp it out; he succeeded by tearing down the building to which it had been exiled. It is nice to go to Purim and Simchat Torah and not be surrounded by drunkenness.
Good news! I am able to get consistent notes out of the shofar after only four days. Tomorrow I will blow after Mussaf as my first official shofar blast. 🙂 I have a long way to go before I will be able to do 100 blasts but as in other things, growth comes slowly.
“call him Rav Yoshe Ber”
To us MO folks he is simply, “The Rav”.
Well I can say that in my own MO community, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, all the MO shuls were packed every Shabbat until the shutdown. Young couples with small children have created a massive problem as the shuls do not have enough space to park all the strollers.
I heard one little old lady at a shul board meeting once say that we need to take the eruv down so that the women and small children would stay at home on Shabbat, solving both the space problems, but she was ignored.
“The decline of the YI movement is a factor. ”
The prevailing attitude is that the YI movement today is more about politics and power than it is about Torah.
” I am asking tat you show the same respect for those who wish to daven with a minyan indoors without masks.”
I give no respect to such rashaim, People who go indoors without masks who are a major reason why we have death panels in Texas.
” save some YI and Avi Weiss type shul ”
Rabbi Weiss retired in 2015, but the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale is still not sure what it can do. Before the pandemic it was standing room only in the main minyan every Shabbat and the fire code set a limit of 496 on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. A downstairs minyan in the social hall added another 300 or so, and shul members also run services at another location for about 180 more. However, with social distance, only about 25 people can be accommodated in the outdoor terrace, about 50 in the main shul, and about 30 in the social hall. And there aren’t a lot of other options.
“would you be willing to daven for extended hours inside a shul that opens its doors next month”
No. I bought a shofar two days ago and am learning how to blow.
The 1949 Armistice Line remains the *de jure* border of Medinat Yisrael.
My wife and I walk around my neighborhood on Shabbat!
More Trumpie lying. They know that they can’t win by telling the truth.
Years ago I shared here that there was one category of Jewish music that had no parallel in goyish music: The atonal serial music of Arnold Schoenberg.
Schoenberg actually composed a setting of Kol Nidre — commissioned by a Reform Rabbi — but it is unsuitable for use in our shuls as it uses musical instruments (including an organ). And interestingly it is not atonal even though it was written in the late 1930s.
I get medicines by USPS. I could afford to have FedEx ship them, but a lot of people can’t.
The entire problem is that the Republicans decided that USPS had to pre-fund all its pensions and health care costs for 75 years in the future. No government agency faces that requirement; no private sector business does. This was under Bush. If the USPS were permitted to follow generally accepted accounting principles, most of the problem goes away. But Trump would not have an excuse to shut it down.
“perhaps 1 in 200 die”
In the US the number is a bit more than 3 in 100 have died. If we do what Trump wants and open up everything, that translates to about ten million dead Americans once the virus runs its course.
Actually some other developed countries turned out to be even worse than the US in terms of death rate. Italy got hit early when nobody had a clue. It also has an incompetent government, currently a coalition between a Trumpist party and a center left party — imagine Trump and Pelosi trying to share decision making and you get the picture. Spain has also been badly hit and its own incompetent government is also a weak coalition that is even more wilder than Italy’s — imagine Trump, Pelosi, and Ilhan Omar trying to govern together. The UK and Sweden have been badly hit, in part because both governments decided initially to let the virus run its course and create mass death. At least Boris Johnson got scared back into sanity; Sweden, which has a leftist government, proved that stupidity is not limited to right wingers. Finally, Belgium has he highest reported death rate in the world, but because it counts cases differently, its stats aren’t really comparable.
Germany did much, much better. Angela Merkel is competent. Canada also did much, much better; I had never been impressed by Justin Trudeau (unlike his father, one of the greatest 20th century leaders any country has ever had) but he did address the pandemic well. Worthy of note is that Israel also has a low death rate compared to most developed countries.
The problem is that the US is not headed in the right direction, and since Trump ordered a hostile takeover of the statistics and still hasn’t dealt with the testing problems we can’t even tell for sure where we are.
“tell me which action(s) did he do or didnt do that caused 160,000 deaths and counting”
The biggest one was banning all testing for weeks in February. We had absolutely no idea how bad the problem was. And we STILL do not have adequate testing capacity, SIX MONTHS LATER.
Another one was actively obstructing the delivery of medical equipment to where it was needed. The lack of protective equipment in nursing homes was particularly deadly. (But it is more fun to blast Cuomo.) Trump had his goons actually seize bought and paid for equipment. The Republican Governor of Maryland had to use his Korean-born wife’s contacts in her home country to get a supply of equipment shipped directly to Maryland and then had to hide it in a secret facility protected by the Maryland State Police to protect it from Trump’s goons.
Another one was deliberately creating mass spreading events when he finally banned travel from outside the US in mid-March (no he did not ban travel from China in January). People tried to beat the ban and created humongous crowds at the immigration and customs facilities at multiple international airports. That was probably the reason hospitalizations exploded here in NYC just a few weeks later, with tens of thousands of deaths.
Another one was his promotion of medical quackery in the form of hydroxychloroquine. He dissed experts who warned (correctly) that there was no real evidence for its efficacy. That made it difficult to enroll people into clinical trials either for hydroxychloroquine or for treatments that might actually work.
Another was promoting an end to shutdowns even as hospitalizations and deaths were exploding. It made people think incorrectly that they weren’t vulnerable. Unfortunately some of the Governors in his cult went along with him; we can see the results in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and Arizona. I remember discussions here about death panels; Texas got death panels but nobody seems to care because it was under a Republican governor that that happened.
Another is refusing to wear a mask in public.
I could go on, but you get the point. Essentially he did everything wrong at every turn. We could have been South Korea or Germany. Trump didn’t create the virus but he really screwed up.
” mayors aren’t even capable of keeping us safe from guns”
Giuliani and Bloomberg couldn’t, either. (They had many more homicides than De Blasio.) No NYC mayor will be able to as long as the Federal government refuses to act. The database of firearms transfers isn’t even computerized, making it impossible to track illegal gunrunning from the states like Pennsylvania with lax gun laws. (Virginia finally tightened up some of its insanely lax gun laws this year; it had been a major source of illegal guns for NY criminals.) And you don’t even need to simplest background check to transfer a firearm in much of the US.
“Trump did try to ban immigration but the Democrats objected”
Typical Trumpie lie, which I have already addressed.
“how many deaths resulted from legalizing marijuana ”
The total number of deaths from acute intoxication caused by smoking marijuana in the entire history of humanity appears to be zero.
“9/11 occurred while George W. Bush was President, not Clinton.”
And 57 times as many Americans have died from the coronavirus as died on 9/11.
Clinton, while a rasha in her personal life, did leave a healthy economy and a budget surplus — the first President to do that since Lyndon Johnson. Bush left us with an economic collapse. Obama left a healthy booming economy and now we have the highest unemployment levels since the Great Depression.
“America is usually a turn for the worse after 8 years of Dem leadership.”
America is usually a turn for the worse after Republican leadership. There, fixed it.
I have noticed that most Jewish music is very similar to the music that non-Jews create in the same time and place.
“Thanks to Charlie Hall”
You are welcome. I have not been back to Ithaca since 1974.
The Democratic Party isn’t becoming AOC; it is nominating candidates for President and Vice President who don’t share her agenda.
The problem isn’t that a QAnon follower won a primary in a hopelessly Republican district, the problem is that the entire Republican Party has no problem with her, just as they had no problem with Ron Paul for 23 years.
There isn’t one. Trump is too far behind. Polls in 2016 only had Clinton ahead by 3 points; she won the popular vote by 2 points.
abukspan,
Thank you.
Charlie
“Now that the American Academy of Pediatrics ( among others ) has supported school reopening, the unions have dismissed science.”
Also a lie. this is what the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), National Education Association (NEA) and AASA, The School Superintendents Association, said in a joint statement last month:
“Educators and pediatricians share the goal of children returning safely to school this fall. Our organizations are committed to doing everything we can so that all students have the opportunity to safely resume in-person learning.
“We recognize that children learn best when physically present in the classroom. But children get much more than academics at school. They also learn social and emotional skills at school, get healthy meals and exercise, mental health support and other services that cannot be easily replicated online. Schools also play a critical role in addressing racial and social inequity. Our nation’s response to COVID-19 has laid bare inequities and consequences for children that must be addressed. This pandemic is especially hard on families who rely on school lunches, have children with disabilities, or lack access to Internet or health care.
“Returning to school is important for the healthy development and well-being of children, but we must pursue re-opening in a way that is safe for all students, teachers and staff. Science should drive decision-making on safely reopening schools. Public health agencies must make recommendations based on evidence, not politics. We should leave it to health experts to tell us when the time is best to open up school buildings, and listen to educators and administrators to shape how we do it.
“Local school leaders, public health experts, educators and parents must be at the center of decisions about how and when to reopen schools, taking into account the spread of COVID-19 in their communities and the capacities of school districts to adapt safety protocols to make in-person learning safe and feasible. For instance, schools in areas with high levels of COVID-19 community spread should not be compelled to reopen against the judgment of local experts. A one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate for return to school decisions.
“Reopening schools in a way that maximizes safety, learning, and the well-being of children, teachers, and staff will clearly require substantial new investments in our schools and campuses. We call on Congress and the administration to provide the federal resources needed to ensure that inadequate funding does not stand in the way of safely educating and caring for children in our schools. Withholding funding from schools that do not open in person fulltime would be a misguided approach, putting already financially strapped schools in an impossible position that would threaten the health of students and teachers.
“The pandemic has reminded so many what we have long understood: that educators are invaluable in children’s lives and that attending school in person offers children a wide array of health and educational benefits. For our country to truly value children, elected leaders must come together to appropriately support schools in safely returning students to the classroom and reopening schools.”
“Neither Trump or most of his supporters are anti science or anti vaccine.”
Liar. Trump promoted anti-vax nonsense for years before he became President. Examples:
“Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes – AUTISM. Many such cases!”
“Massive combined inoculations to small children is the cause for big increase in autism….”
““When will NYT write about vaccine damage and its price?””
““Autism WAY UP – I believe in vaccinations but not massive, all at once, shots. Too much for small child to handle. Govt. should stop NOW!””
“STOP LYING at the begining trump was the only one who did anything about the virus”
That is a lie. Schumer, Biden, and Warren called for action on consecutive days in late January while Trump was at the same time doing nothing except banning Chinese citizens (but not others in China) from traveling to the US, and praising Xi Jinping for how well he was doing with the virus. His next action was to ban testing a week and a half later. He would continue to deny that the virus was a major problem for another five weeks after that. And he obstructed the delivery of medical equipment to where it was needed for another two months.
And the Trunpies complain that De Blasio and Cuomo didn’t shut down early enough even though Trump was at that time denying that there was a problem.
“AND AT NO POINT ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY WAS ANY OF THE HOSPITALS OVERWHELMED”
Another lie. NYC hospitals had to do massive numbers of things they should not have had to do. They had to reuse personal protective equipment, which certainly spread the virus — because Trump obstructed delivery of PPE. They had to transport patients because hospitals were nearly full. They had to discharge patients too early lest they need death panels to decide who was to be denied care. Oh, and Texas now has such death panels. But the Governor of Texas is a Trumpie Republican — apparently Trumpies can decide to kill people and they don’t get criticized.
“before the spike there’s tens of thousands of protesters and rioters in the streets”
After the protests, the rate of new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in NYC went DOWN. That is because we didn’t open up. In places like Texas they reopened too soon, at about that time. That is how they got death panels. Oh, and the first death panel was in a small county that didn’t have any protests.
“KEEPS ON CHANGING HIS MIND”
As any intelligent person does when evidence shows that a mind should be changed. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, ““A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”.