charliehall

“gedolim without beards”

Also Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein.

“what ever happened to just following the torah?”

Good question. That’s what I try to do!

YU High School for Boys in Washington Heights, Manhattan.

Yeshiva of Telshe Alumni (“Riverdale Yeshiva”) in Riverdale, Bronx.

” the frum velt believed that it is inappropriate for a frum yid to study secular sciences and math and that everything you need in life can be obtained from the study of torah”

I dispute that statement. Rambam and Sforno attended secular universities. Were they not frum? The Rema didn’t attend university, but he studied history, astronomy, and philosophy on his own and was friendly with the professors at the university in Krakow (which was one of the great secular intellectual centers of the entire world during his lifetime). The Vilna Gaon wrote on mathematics and directed a student to translate Euclid. Were they not frum?

“there is a branch that believed in studying secular studies lishma”

Rav Hirsch explicitly supports this. I don’t have it in front of me but I think the essay on that is in Volume 7 of his Collected Works.

“about going to a mixed school”

I agree with zahavasdad. This is one for a rabbi who knows you well. Good luck!

“It is not legal to sell guns to violent felons (or any felons) or mentally ill people.”

In most of the us, if you don’t KNOW if the person is a felon, it is legal. And as you point out, there is no way to easily find out unless you are a licensed firearms dealer. Universal background checks are needed.

“this does, in effect, remove someone’s rights without a trial or conviction of any sort”

Which is why there needs to be a way to get off this list. Just as there needs to be a way to appeal your denial of a gun permit. This is not complicated!

I just did.

“There’s already enough gun laws in the country”

Wrong. It is legal in most states to sell a gun to a convicted violent felon, someone who is so mentally ill that he/she is a danger to society, and someone who belongs to a terrorist organization. They are able to amass a huge arsenal with nobody knowing about it until they strike. The “crazy ways” are to continue to allow this!

I got the Samsung Stratosphere with the full physical QWERTY keyboard. I love it.

And it also works really well at recording and playing back shiurim.

I can’t believe that an allegedly frum Yid would even CONSIDER lying on ones resume. Have you never heard of geneivat da’at? Woe to you! Woe to your yeshiva teachers!! Woe to your parents who wasted their tuition money!!!

Besides, you WILL get caught. And fired. And possibly prosecuted. Of course, that is a good way to become a full time learner in a prison kollel. My rabbi is a prison chaplain and he would love a new chavruta. He won’t eat the prison food, though, as he doesn’t trust the hechsher.

Of course not all of halachah was given at Sinai — the rabbinic decrees were in the future.

“The Rov held that Yom ha’Atzmaut is to be exclusively be observed on Iyor 5th, irrespective of whether Iyyor 5 is Monday, Wednsday, Friday or Shabbos.”

I heard that from my rav as well. I personally recited Hallel in his shul on 5 Iyar when it fell out on Shabat.

“Somehow I feel like you’re not responding to me.”

I responded. You just don’t like the response. Taxes are mutar — I even gave you the Talmudic source — and in a democracy the recipients of tax revenues can vote themselves benefits.

That is in fact how the charedim in Eretz Yisrael get so many benefits — the charedi political parties would support whatever government provided those benefits, paid for by the rest of Israel’s citizens, regardless of whether the government was of the Left or of the Right. They certainly are not promoting the idea that laissez-faire is the Torah way!

“Unfortunately Inherit the Wind, a novelization of the event, has been taken as fact and given people a false impression.”

The trial was broadcast live on the radio and Darrow was very convincing. But even more important was probably H.L. Mencken’s daily accounts, which put a very negative spin on Bryan. Mencken made it look like Bryan was losing faith by conceding a point about the 24 hour days. Bryan died only five days after the end of the trial; Mencken lived another three decades.

The robber barons feared Bryan more than any other politician of his generation; he represented the poor and underrepresented (at least those who were white) and correctly saw that laissez-faire was destroying their lives. It is ironic is that most of the spiritual descendants of Bryan have now allied politically with the spiritual descendants of those same robber barons. Bryan is certainly turning over in his grave.

“It seems to me that its main point is that government should not be coercive regarding economic activity.”

Even the most extreme supporters of laissez-faire — other than Rand — agreed that there needs to be some coercion. Hayek supported mandatory health insurance and Friedman a negative income tax.

In any case, Torah law is FAR more coercive. Leket, Peah, Shich’chah, Shmita, Yovel, Trumah, Maasrot, the prohibition of Geneivat Daat, the prohibition of Ona’a, the prohibition of Ribbit, no provision for limited liability, no provision for securitization of debt — the Torah financial system is so different from what we in the capitalist world today are used to that we find it hard to imagine.

There is a fascinating interview Ayn Rand made with Mike Wallace back in the late 1950s; a search can easily find it on YouTube, usually in three segments. While the video is poor quality, the audio is very clear and you can hear what she really thinks. It chills me to think that even some Jews with yeshiva educations can imagine her as a philosophical model to follow.

“William Jennings Bryan.”

William Jennings Bryan was a fundamentalist Christian who used Christian imagery in his political campaigns on a regular basis. He got a bad rap from his sorry defense of the Young Universe in the Scopes trial, as he actually cared a lot about the well being of those less well off — and his religion was the basis for that caring. He could not have been more opposite to Ayn Rand.

“Had no idea what a gold or silver standard was or why it mattered, and still don’t really.”

Basically, the idea is that the government only issues currency to the extent that it holds these precious metals. Until the 1960s, you could actually take a Silver Certificate to the Treasury and redeem it for silver; until the 1930s you could take a Gold Certificate and redeem it for gold.

But it didn’t work very well. It limited the amount in currency in circulation and that led to serious deflation which destroyed the lives of anyone in debt. During the time when the US was on a pure metal standard with no central bank (basically, 1836 to 1914, with the exception of the American Civil War) there were repeated financial panics that a lack of liquid cash in the economy made much worse. It was not until the Panic of 1907 that the robber barons realized that their own prosperity was entirely dependent on the welfare of the country as a whole, that they accepted the idea that the money supply had to grow if the country was to grow. The result was the Aldrich-Vreeland Act, which allowed the government again to print large amounts of paper currency. That proved essential at the beginning of World War I, as the warring powers withdrew all their hard (backed by metals) money from the US economy. Treasury secretary William McAdoo had to close the stock market for four months to prevent disaster, and the paper money allowed by the Aldrich-Vreeland Act saved the livelihoods of millions of Americans. Shortly thereafter, the Federal Reserve System was put into place (it had already been enacted into law but wasn’t yet operating at the time of the crisis) and since then most US currency is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States rather than metal in vaults.

The United Kingdom tried to go back onto the gold standard in the late 1920s; Winston Churchill, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer and in charge of this effort, later said it was the worst mistake of his life.

For the US to go back on the gold (or silver) standard today would be unthinkable except in the minds of those right wing nutcases who live in an alternate reality. These commodity markets are subject to wild fluctuations and at times actual manipulations by speculators. Why, just in the past two work days, the price of gold has dropped 13%! The total gold reserves of the United States are now valued at approximately $365 billion. However, there is currently approximately $1.18 trillion in US dollars in circulation. To reduce the amount of money supply by almost 70% would completely destroy the economy of not just the United States but that of the entire free world.

” I read that the world was a much better place under her and Regan”

Actually it was much, much worse. The Soviet Union was still around. It ceased to exist after they left office.

Interestingly, Thatcher was never that popular in the UK. The most her party ever got in a general election was 43.9% of the vote. And she was big into high taxes including a 90% tax on North Sea oil and the notorious poll tax that ended up driving her from office. Reagan, on the other hand won a majority of the popular vote in 1980 and a landslide in 1984.

“This doesn’t have a Din of Milchemes Mitzva”

In another thread I pointed out at least three gedolim who disagreed with that statement: Rabbi Shlomo Goren z’tz’l, Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli z’tz’l, and Rabbi Shlomo Aviner shlita. There are probably others as well. In any case, without the IDF, there would likely be no Jews in Eretz Yisrael or anywhere else in the Middle East today, as the Arab rodfim would run all over us and kill us all.

I don’t think those of us in galut should be telling Israelis how to run their defense forces.

“Ancient Assyrian Archaeology?”

This may have been thought of as a joke, but in fact it should be taken seriously. The language of the Assyrians was a Semitic cognate language to Hebrew, with much shared vocabulary, so this should be a natural for Jews to explore. There are thousands of untranslated Assyrian documents in the British museum alone; any one might turn into a doctoral dissertation.

Good luck!

Charlie

The four largest Orthodox synagogues in my neighborhood will all recite Hallel on Tuesday. I don’t think any observe B”H”B.

My rav insisted that he heard Rav Soloveitchik z’tz’l insist that if one is to recite Hallel for Yom HaAtzmaut, it MUST be recited on 5 Iyar ONLY. My rav always did this when he had a shul, even when 5 Iyar fell on Shabat, but now that he has retired I’m not aware of any shul that will be reciting Hallel on the correct day.

“Can You?”

No. It is not possible for a mere mortal like me to prove or disprove the existence of HaShem. It is an ikkar of faith.

Mutar according to the S”A. My rav confirmed it and even said that there is no issur to attend live musical performances.

He did say that it is asur to get married during this period, a halachah honored largely in the breach.

“Speaking of Tisha BiAv, that is the REAL day for mourning the loss of the 6+ million kedoshim of the holocaust, not on some artificially invented Zionist day. “

Rav Soloveitchik z’tz’l agreed, and he was the leader of all of Religious Zionism.