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They were certainly heretics, if for no other reason than they used a 364 day solar calendar, not the Jewish calendar.
“I think in the Bais Hamikdash, the Leviim played music on Yom Kippur, on Tisha bAv they didn’t”
Music is a required part of the daily avodah. How could 9 Av be any different?
“New York does with parental and judicial consent permit from 14. With parental consent it is permitted from 16.”
Correct, and there are other states that allow marriage of persons under 16 with parental and judicial consent. In New Hampshire a 13 year old girl can get married with parental and judicial consent.
“Are they required to accept testimony from apostate moslems in America?”
Ah, clever slander directed towards Rabbi Avi Weiss, who even according to his most bitter enemies such as Rabbi Pruzansky is a kosher eid. Nobody who is actually Orthodox could question that.
“Some Muslims want a situation similar to what exists in Muslim countries in which Muslims would be required to use shariah courts and they wouldn’t be a need to gain their consent. That is very unlikely to happen. “
As I mentioned, that is the law in Israel.
“The danger is some people want to make it illegal for a Muslim court to exist and such laws would prohibit arbitration according to legal system other than American law – such laws would probably violate equal protection, freedom of religion, and right of contract and would severely restrict the rights of Orthodox Jews, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and many groups of businesses that rely on private arbitration according to non-US law (which include major companies engaged in international transactions).”
This is exactly the problem; it is exactly what happened in Ontario, Canada.
“But see Burzynski.”
With a few minutes of internet searches you will find many examples where Burzynski failed to follow proper procedures in his studies. Among the problems have been the following:
The head of his Institutional Review Board IRB) to insure the safety of research is on the Board of Directors of his clinic. Imagine a Merck or Pfizer Board Member in charge of safety for their research — everyone would justifiably be screaming “Conflict of Interest!”
When patients have had prior chemotherapy or radiation, it is necessary to wait for some time prior to enrolling them into a new study lest the effects of the prior treatment falsely be attributed to the new treatment. Burzynski has not always observed this.
Burzynski has failed to report all serious adverse events (SAEs) and adverse events (AEs) to the FDA and/or IRB. This means you can’t trust his data regarding the safety of the treatments.
Burzynski has failed to follow proper informed consent procedures.
Burzynski has failed to keep proper records, failed to make proper progress reports, and failed to get the proper IRB approvals.
Burzynski’s IRB (run by a Board member, as noted above) approved research without determining that the risks to subjects were minimized and that risks to subjects were reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits, if any, to subjects, and the importance of the knowledge that may be expected to result. This is an essential criteria for any medical research and was put into place after atrocities such as the Nazi medical experiments and the Tuskegee study. The IRB fell down in numerous other areas as well.
After a child died from the side effects of the therapy — with a blood sodium level 50% higher than normal — the FDA forbade him from enrolling any more children. This petition was an attempt by Burzynski to bypass the rules and regulations that protect patients from these kinds of abuses. I am sorry for the family here, but the only real conclusion is that they and the supporters of this petition have been taken in by a quack.
We’ll just get a property tax increase because of the reduced fine collection.
Those of us in the diaspora have no business second guessing Israel’s elected officials regarding security matters. Period.
“Charlie- that hasn’t happened. “
It happened in Ontario, Canada.
“The fact remains, private parties can contract to arbitrate their disputes however they want.”
And the results from such arbitration are not enforceable in court. If one party doesn’t like the result, he/she can walk away.
It is worth noting that in Medinat Yisrael, sharia courts operate, are binding for Muslims on personal status matters including marriage and divorce, and are paid by the Israeli government.
Halahchically, a boy has to be bar mitzvah age and a girl bat mitzvah age to get married. But secular law prohibits kids that young from getting married in every country I’ve ever researched. In Israel, the couple has to be 18 — period. In most of the US, 16 year olds can get married but only with the consent of all the parents.
Every time it snows, kids with shovels appear at my front door and I always pay them generously. I can’t believe that there aren’t kids in need of spending money in other frum communities.
“many in the media are strongly opposed to sharia law in any form being implemented in the US, however, we never hear anything about beis din which is pretty much doing the same as the sharia courts”
And in fact jurisdictions that have banned arbitration by sharia courts ban arbitration by beit dins at the same time. We need to stand with the Muslims here.
‘Only Charlie Hall could call that “well-stated”. A long useless pike of drivel listed as an excuse why they won’t even look into something. It says absolutely nothing, except that they did not even look into the particulars. ‘
You clearly didn’t read the response. So I will excerpt the most important part:
Burzynski has to ask for approval from the FDA for compassionate use. Until then, there is absolutely nothing for the FDA to do in this case.
A well-stated response.
The halachah is that if someone is a kosher eid you accept their kashrut — or at least their testimony as to what they have done in their kitchen. Another halachah is that when you settle in a new community you accept its halachic norms. By not doing these things you are following a different religion from Judaism.
Sorry to be so blunt but this is the kind of mishigas that divides the Jewish people.
“In the days of heavy use of DDT and other pesticides”
DDT was not used as an insecticide until the 1940s. What did people do before then?
“It’s pretty impressive that over 2000 years only 9-10 differences have shown up.”
Amen.
That we had lost the mesorah from Sinai regarding the spellings in the Torah was known by Chazal. See Kiddushin 30a. The real question is why people who know better say otherwise, such as in the introduction to the Artscroll Chumash.
Nevertheless the fact that there are 9-10 differences today, and more spelling differences with the manuscripts that existed in the time of Chazal and the Rishonim, not to mention the Qumran manuscripts, must not be used as an excuse to be nihilistic and to question the validity — or the Divinity — of the Torah. Not a single one of the spelling discrepancies has any halachic consequence. Nor do the apparent post-Mosaic additions such as the last 7 verses that describe Moshe Rabbeinu’s death, or a few other such examples cited by Ibn Ezra and a few other classic commentators. Every one of the small number of variant spellings, and every one of the few apparent post-Mosaic additions, needs to be treated as the word of our Creator. As in other areas of human inquiry, the simplest explanation here is the best, which is that a few spelling errors slipped in thanks to copying that was 99.9% perfect but not 100% perfect. Only HaShem is perfect and He commanded *us* to write sifrei torah; he didn’t miraculously create them.
I know lots of “mixed” couples like that. In every case the Ashkenazic partner has gotten to love the more flavorful Sefardic food!
We are a two Subaru family. We don’t need our street to be plowed (and in fact it is consistently one of the last in the city to get plowed).
“Assume it’s a question whether one may copy music for a friend. Half the poskim in the world say he may, and half say he may not. “
Not the best example because in most cases it would be illegal under secular law. Even if you limit the scope of dina malchutcha dina, people have gotten fined for doing things like that and if you do it on a large scale you can be prosecuted. Better to pay for the music.
I presume the RCA will also be censuring the dozens of its members who signed a public letter attacking Rabbi Lopatin a few months ago.
‘A tad ironic coming from someone who thinks that social “advances” should change halacha, and that chazal were a bunch of bigots seeking to oppress women and other groups.’
I have said nothing of the kind and I do not believe either of the things you claim.
Rabbi Avi Shafran, official spokesperson for Agudath Israel of America, has published essays in the New York Times. I presume that a condemnation of Rabbi Shafran by the RCA will be forthcoming.
“nobody argued that we need a microscope”
I didn’t bring up the possibility of a microscope. But there is no fundamental difference between a microscope and a simple magnifying glass — both are simply ground glass lenses. Neither were available to Chazal. And neither were light tables. If you start allowing technological advances to change halachah, ein l’dvar sof.
“Perhaps you consider being informed a chumra. And a chumra that you are not willing to accept.”
I’m not suggesting eating bugs that aren’t kosher. I’m just pointing out that to insist that you have to do inspections that were impossible in the times of Chazal and that if you don’t you are eating non-kosher bugs you are saying that Chazal ate non-kosher bugs chas v’shalom!
“Immediate and permanent increase to oil prices (from a stable $30 per barrel)”
As yehudayona points out, oil prices have been anything but stable for over 40 years. But in fact oil prices have not been as low as $30/bbl. since late 2003. (My source is the US Department of Energy Energy Information Administration.) This is one that might well be able to be blamed on the Iraq war, which ironically was supposed to result in cheaper oil.
It should be noted that oil prices are highly dependent on the state of the economy. They reached $145/bbl. in July 2008, then plummeted to $30/bbl. by December. Gasoline prices had a similar plummet, from $3.41/gal. to $0.79/gal. on the New York spot market. Obamahaters here criticize Obama for high gasoline prices; do they really want to return the economy to the way it was in December 2008?
“Can you also give links to the DJIA time series? How about to the time series showing the combined wealth of America’s wealthiest families? “
Why don’t you look for yourself? I’m not your research assistant! The stock market has indeed boomed, proving that Obama is the most incompetent socialist in history.
“So I’m not sure why you are clinging to CPI after I made it clear I have no argument there.”
I didn’t cling to the CPI; I gave you the GDP deflator. You have presented no data that indicates that inflation is a problem.
“There is too much money chasing NO goods.”
There isn’t a shortage of goods, as any trip to a shopping mall will confirm. And most Americans would disagree about there being too much money.
I typed “GDP deflator historical data” and found a site at the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank with a time series going back to 1947.
Typing “CPI historical” to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics web site gets you numerous links, one of which gives you the complete time series of consumer price index data from 1913 to the present.
Those were my sources.
“You can’t just go making conclusions on two pieces of data.”
If the moderators permit, I could give the links to the entire time series of CPI and GDP deflator data. I did not misrepresent them.
” It isn’t much better than the poster you are responding to who only had one piece.”
No, he offered no data at all.
You can provide some key terms so that someone interested can search for it, including the name of the website. -100
“However, no one is admitting that CPI is an effective way to measure inflation.”
Only the 314 million Americans who face consumer prices think that it is effective.
But fine, the GDP deflator may well be better. Here are its historical rates:
2003-2013: 23%
1993-2003: 20%
1983-1993: 35%
1973-1983: 103%
1963-1973: 47%
1953-1963: 19%
“The inflation has been caused “
As the statistics show, there is no inflation, at least nothing more than has been seen for decades.
“All of that money ended up in the hands of those who needed it the least, and no trickle down has occurred to date. Nor will it ever.”
Nice to see someone else here admitting that the Republican “trickle-down” theory doesn’t work. And unfortunately the Republicans in Congress won’t allow anything else to be enacted.
“quantitative easing”
QE is exactly what Milton Friedman recommended to Japan in almost identical circumstances in the 1990s.
“This is not your 1970s style inflation although it seemed like it at first.”
There was actual DEflation at the beginning of Obama’s term, as indicated above. (It ended earlier by the GDP deflator, but it was there.)
“It isn’t much better than the poster you are responding to “
The poster I was responding to made a claim and did not back it up. I debunked it with real statistics. Do you have any statistics to show that inflation is “rampant”?
“What is the inflation rate historically?”
2003-2013: 26%
1993-2003: 28%
1983-1993: 47%
1973-1983: 126%
1963-1973: 42%
1953-1963: 15%
1943-1953: 55%
1933-1943: 37%
“Might there have been other inflationary pressure during those previous 10 years which was removed?”
Yes, the economic crash so destroyed the economy that we had two years of DEflation, which is far worse (and far more difficult to deal with) than INflation.
“I bet you you would find a lot of live stuff at those strengths!”
At those strengths almost no food would be free of infestation and we would starve to death. That isn’t what Chazal intended.
“I need a magnifying glass.”
Magnifying glasses did not exist in talmudic times.
“Rampant inflation due to printing money to fund the debt”
That has not happened.
In the ten years after the Iraq war, consumer prices increased 26%.
In the ten years prior to the Iraq war, consumer prices increased 28%.
“Did they even have strawberries in Europe a hundred years ago?”
Yes, the modern strawberry originated in Europe about 250 years ago (selectively bred from Chilean strawberries).
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a huge opponent of anti-Semitism, a huge supporter of Jews who were being oppressed all over the world, and a huge supporter of the State of Israel. Rev. Dr. King spoke out loudly against the oppression of Jews in the former Soviet Union before it was on the radar screen of American and Israeli Jews.
“Jewish music is music whose mother was Jewish.”
The music can also convert in front of a beit din of three, accepting all the mitzvot applicable to music, with immersion in a mikveh (hopefully the ink is water-resistant), and with a hatafat dam brit if the music is male.
My street is just getting plowed as I type.
If you are in NYC you can see what streets have been plowed recently, and your priority, here:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/oem/html/nycsevereweather/weather_plowtracker.shtml
“Rabbi Meiselmann’s actual Ph.D may be in mathematics but his actual curriculum included many other subjects (that’s what goes on in any university)”
As others have noted, graduate study does not generally include study in other fields, other than possibly a foreign language. I looked up MIT’s requirements for a PhD and there is no non-Mathematics coursework except for Applied Mathematics students, which Rabbi Dr. Meiselman was not. And Mathematics is not Science.
“R’Meiselmann knows what he wa told by his Rebbi in the private one on one study sessions”
Rabbi Dr. Meiselman has been found to have distorted Rav Soloveitchik’s views by no less a figure than The Rav’s translator Prof. Lawrence Kaplan. Rabbi Dr. Meiselman has even made the outlandish claim that The Rav agreed with his uncle the Brisker Rav on Zionism!
“Certainly in Riverdale, where the alternative is a Rabbi who uses his shul as a dance hall for priests.”
When did it become mutar to spread motzi shem ra against numerous distinguished rabbis?
“merely G-d reallocating the stuff that He owns, and bears no resemblance to when you reallocate the stuff that I own”
You own nothing. HaShem owns everything. The Rabbis issued a gezerah to require that the things that HaShem had lent to you be lent to a different person. Secular governments do the same thing for hundreds of years — at least since the enactment of the Poor Law in England in 1601 (versions of which were enacted by every colony).
“far better examples of quintessential right wing economists are Hayek and Friedman”
I have not criticized Hayek and Friedman. They knew what they were talking about! It is today’s right wingers who are opposing kind measures to help the poor that Hayek and Friedman supported who need to be called out. (In addition to supporting negative income taxes, both supported forcing people to purchase health insurance.)
“the right answer is somewhere in the middle.”
Absolutely. My criticism has been directed towards the right wingers because there aren’t many socialists in the frum community these days.
The author of the Tosafot Yom Tov blamed talking in shul for the pogroms in Ukraine in the 1650s. Maybe the talking in shul is why our enemies are succeeding so well.
I overheard a baal tshuvah tell his rabbi that his family thinks he joined a cult. The rabbi told him that he was supposed to be the cult leader, but that he couldn’t even get people to stop talking in shul!
edited
“It is highly unusual to get a general consensus of rabbonim “
When Rabbi Willig completed the Riverdale eruv, he asserted his authority and laid down the law that absolutely nobody was permitted under any circumstances to question those who use it. For anyone who questioned it, it wasn’t necessary to use it themselves but it was absolutely forbidden to characterize those who did use it as non-shomer Shabat.
We need more rabbis like Rabbi Willig.
I haven’t watched television in over a decade. While I was watching very little by the time I finally gave it up, what worked was that my then 22 year old television set wouldn’t turn on any more, and I didn’t bother to replace it.
I agree with the person who said to put your TV on the curb. A recovering alcoholic does not keep beer in the house!
“Judaism beleives in immmutable proprty rights, but that those rights belong foremost to G-d by virtue of His creating the property. Socialists simply disregard property rights in outright theft. “
The last chapter of Peah describes a system where the government, not through democratic processes, taxes all who have to provide food for those who haven’t. Rambam codifies this system, called a “kuppa” as halachah in Hilchot Matanot L’evyanim, where he also provides that the government can force you to pay and even give you lashes if you refuse.
That may or may not be theft, but it is certainly a rabbinic mandate in Judaism.
“If colonists (or later immigrants) weren’t coming here to practice their religion in peace and avoid discrimination for being a member of a religious or political minority, they were someing here to be free of the economic constraints of living in societies where everyone had a place and if you didn’t like your station in life you had very few means to change it.”
And they created an even worse system in America! Every colony permitted chattel slavery, and the early arrivals got all the best land and used that economic power to oppress even the non-slaves.
“in which world are apikorsim kosher as eidim”
Rabbi Weiss is not an apikoros, unless you think that someone who professes belief in Torah Mi Sinai and the authority of the Rabbis to interpret that Torah, and is makpid in every mitzvah that applies to him is an apikoros. Supporting innovations does not make you either an apikoros or a pasul eid.
edited
“When people learn in Kollel all day and take government benefits like Food Stamps and Medicaid, that IS Socialism.”
Actually that isn’t socialism, it is a generous welfare state. There is a difference.
“A case of politics determining what should be solely a religious determination.”
That is correct, although for the opposite reasons you think. Nobody with any knowledge about Rabbi Weiss, even those who oppose his innovations, thinks that he has said or done anything that would put him outside the halachic bounds of what constitutes someone with kosher eidut. It is his enemies in the RCA, who won’t even come forward and identify themselves, who think that current politics should decide halachah, and snookered the Chief Rabbinate into going along with them.
“Americans (other than blacks) came to America to have the personal and economic freedom that was always lacking elsewhere. “
That is not completely true. Most of New England was settled by people who were fleeing religious tolerance in England and the Netherlands in order to set up a theocracy that offered no personal freedoms beyond what the clergy allowed. Maryland and Virginia were also theocracies. There are many documented cases of religious heretics being expelled from settlements, burnings of churches that professed the wrong theology, and even a few executions of heretics. (And yes, Jews were not permitted in five of the original 13 colonies.)
In addition, every colony implemented a version of England’s 1601 law for the relief of the poor, which is quite similar in many respects to the kuppa that Jewish communities used. Tax rates for poor relief were at times quite high, and the idea that poor people were to be left on their own to suffer appears to be absent.
Looks like this dispute is over. The JTA and the Jerusalem Post are both reporting that the Chief Rabbinate backed down and has decided to accept Rabbi Weiss’s eidut, and that Minister of Religious Affairs Naftali Bennett had intervened to obtain a resolution.
Hopefully this will bring an end to this kind of controversy.
Socialism in its extreme form is inconsistent with Torah. But so is laissez-faire capitalism. Both Karl Marx and Ayn Rand were apostate Jews, and their philosophies were directly driven by a rejection of HaShem’s directions for us. Rand in particular would strongly opposed the torah commandments peah, leket, shich’chah, maaser oni, shmitta, or the rabbinic institutions of kuppa and tamchui, and would have been horrified had she known that Rambam codified as binding halachah that anyone not paying the assessment to the poor that the communal government mandated would face lashes! And both Marx and Trotsky both rejected the Torah’s limited permission for individual private property. (It *is* possible that they both would have been horrified by the crimes against humanity carried out by Stalin and Mao; Trotsky was one of Stalin’s victims.)
More benign forms of socialism, such as in the UK and Israel in the three decades after World War II, actually work quite well. None of the religious parties objected to Ben Gurion’s economic policies and it is highly likely that there would had been massive starvation of poor olim in the 1950s had Israel been a free market economy at that point. Economic disaster came only after the free market oriented Likud came to power and brought hyperinflation. Command economies can also work very well in brief crises such as in the US during both World War I and World War II.