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“NYC can provide the filtration themselves like every other state”
True — but at a cost of many billions of dollars to build a large filtration plant. Given the hostility towards taxes expressed in forums such as these, this isn’t going to happen.
Rather than the speculation that we’ve mostly seen in this thread so far, how about restating what rishonim and acharonim have said on this topic?
” Why do so many people have a problem COMING HOME?”
In our case the answer is simple: I have been told quite definitively that I will never get an academic job in Israel no matter how good I am, because it is a closed system. My wife would easily get a job as a primary care physician, but since the salaries are about one third of those in the United States, she would have to default on her medical school loans which is an issur d’oraita.
” I am not sure about the Yankees”
I have davened with a minyan at Yankee Stadium during games.
‘So what you feel is that we should ignore all halacha so that nobody should find it difficult to be “religious”?’
There is no halachah that prohibits computers, cell phones, or movies. A lot of their *material* might be asur, but all three media can also be used to spread Torah!
“Do you not wear a Yarmulka during the National Anthem?”
Yes, I wear a yarmulke almost everywhere. I’m even wearing it in Europe right now.
“In what way were they different and how is that relevant?”
Pagan religious ceremonies were an integral part of the program. That is VERY relevant.
An additional problem is that a common feature of the circuses (not the theaters) was gladiatorial games in which the gladiators fought to the death. I’ve seen sources that indicate that Jews were in at least some cases encouraged to attend these horrible events in order to plea *en masse* for the gladiator’s life, as it was often the sentiment of the crowd that determined the fate of a defeated gladiator. Unfortunately, many Jews were enslaved as gladiators by the Romans after korban bayit sheni.
Grill Bar may get confused with Grill Point if you are in the New York area.
“The Yalkut in Shemos 1 says (among other reasons) that the problem the Egyptians had with us is that we filled their theaters and circuses. “
Theaters and circuses in ancient times were completely different from theaters and circuses today.
“We do not choose for ourselves what the correct approach to the world is, we defer to our Rabbis.”
True. But it needs to be pointed out that many of our rabbis do not see movies or theater as asur.
“Actually the modern are the exception. They, b’shitta, don’t have to listen to the words of their leaders. Much like the non-Orthodox. “
This is a slanderous lie.
” The modern constantly knock Daas Torah, both here and elsewhere.”
Rav Lichtenstein and Rav Willig are both 100% correct. There is a difference between asking for advice and asking a halachic shilah. I can’t believe that it is even an issue.
A man is required to cover his head, but it doesn’t have to be with a yarmulke. If I walk into McDonald’s to use the rest room or buy a Coca-Cola, I put on a baseball cap.
“Some small society that is ethnically homogeneous, has little drug use and high taxes so that no one can really get ahead or even has the ambition to kill anyone?”
I’m in the largest city in that country and it looks almost as ethnically diverse as New York.
“The lowest street crime ever was in Mafia-dominated parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.”
You bring a proof from the Mafia??? Do you really think that that is the answer to the crime “problem”?
Did you know that New York City TODAY, with no Mafia to speak of, has the lowest rate of sexual assault of any city in the US that reports statistics, and also the lowest rate of property crime? I put “problem” in quotes because NYC has one of the lowest violent crime rates of any large city, too. Most of the homicides are related to illegal narcotics.
“They’ve clarified it pretty well; you’re mechuyav to kill a moser.”
Indeed they have clarified it. My rabbis say definitively that it is a chiyuv to report people to the authorities when they are a danger to the community. That includes people who commit sexual assaults (including on children), murderers, drug dealers, people who drive while drunk, ponzi scheme artists, and money launderers. I can’t see how anyone would rule otherwise. That would leave out people like illegal immigrants and those with minor zoning violations.
“I’m learning that Eid doesn’t mean only an Eid but any evidence that the crime has occurred.”
That is a serious pilpul on Rambam that is not consistent with the rest of the treatment of Noachide laws, where he simply follows the pshat of the gemara. Nowhere is there any suggestion that an eid is anything other than a witness. Remember that we are not talking about Jewish courts here.
“If you’re arguing for deterrence, so long as the system worked (killed murderers and kept innocent people alive at some acceptable ratio) imperfect deterrence would still be ok.”
There really isn’t much evidence that death penalties deter much of anything. It certainly didn’t deter Martin Grossman.
And in any case, the secular legal system is biased towards protecting the innocent. It is better to let nine guilty people go free than to convict a single innocent person. In fact even with these safeguards there are numerous cases of people being convicted and given death sentences for crimes they did not permit. And the Torah goes much further than does the secular legal system in trying to avoid unjust death sentences.
IIRC, Rav Ahron Soloveichik z’tz’l held that Noachide Courts are only permitted to administer a death penalty at a time that the Sanhedrin is able to administer a death penalty. When Gov. Pataki was considering reinstating the death penalty, Rav Soloveichik was quoted as saying that if the governor acted on the death penalty, he would be the leader of a “bloody government”.
“it would have worked to deter the crime committed here”
In our desire for justice, we lose sight of the fact that it is impossible to stop every single murderer, just as it is impossible to stop every single terrorist attack. There is just no way to stop a single deranged individual who wants to do evil and doesn’t let anyone else know what he is doing. Even Singapore, which has probably the most draconian and certain “justice” in the world still has a few homicides a year.
“Name them.”
Sanhedrin 57a, and Rambam Hilchot Melachim 9:14 require an eyewitness to the crime.
If there are examples in Chazal or Rishonim who allow a non-Jewish court to execute without an eyewitness, please name them.
I would never have gone out with a smoker.
“Charliehall brought up the old liberal canard (and statistics to back it up) that the death penalty does not deter crime.
He is wrong. The Torah says to execute criminals to scare others. It is common sense, also. What about the statistics? The answer is simple. In the states where the death penalty exists, it is applied very seldom and after a long wait — it is not enough to scare criminals.”
You have absolutely no data to indicate that would work to reduce the murder rate either.
I am currently visiting a country that abolished its death penalty in 1981. Its murder rate is about 70% lower than that in the United States.
“The Goyim should seek the death penalty in a case of circumstantial murder.”
The gemara and Rambam disagree.
Rainus, I think you are right. The Jewish legal system is not about punishment, it is about atonement. Most murderers would go free.
” if you plan to vote for Obama in 2012″
I plan to vote for Obama in 2012. But this is really irrelevant to this thread.
Furthermore there is not way to give Leiby’s killer a death penalty without amending the United States and New York Constitutions to permit a person to be punished at a level that was not permissible at the time of the commission of the offense — something known as an ex post facto law. This is so important that the original Constitution, prior to the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment, restricted the States from doing this!
“No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.”
There really isn’t any point in continuing the conversation here.
New York is one of 14 states without a functioning death penalty law. Interestingly, of the states with the 14 lowest homicide rates, ten have no death penalty, and one of the ones that does, New Hampshire, hasn’t executed anyone since 1939 (although it does have one person currently on death row). Three of the other four states with no death penalty have homicide rates lower than the national average (the exception is Michigan).
“make you want to dance like a member of an African tribe”
This is a racist statement that should be deleted. I’ve seen far worse behavior among frum Jews on Purim than in any other ethnic group, and to make matters worse, people claim that the Torah requires it.
“The only true shoite is one who votes for the present occupant of the White House in 2012.”
Why are you hijacking this serious thread?
“Does the state of NY still have the death penalty?”
No. The New York Court of Appeals ruled that the jury instructions required by New York’s Death Penalty statute were unconstitutional. Specifically, the law required a jury to unanimously choose either death or life without parole in a capital case — and if the jury was not unanimous, there would be an automatic sentence of life with the possibility of parole after 20 years. This bizzarre rule meant that if a jury was evenly divided between death and life without parole, a defendent would get a more lenient sentence than either possibility! The court overturned the statute on the basis of due process provisions of the New York State Constitution and is therefore unappealable. The legislature could modify the instructions by statute, but it has not chosen to do so.
And there is a serious halachic issue with the death penalty as it is administered in the United States, as the gemara in Sanhedrin 57a requires eyewitness testimony even in a Noachide court. Rambam brings this down as halachah in Hilchot Melachim 9:14. However, in the United States you can convict and give any penalty, including death, based on circumstantial evidence. I’ve had multiple rabbis tell me that because of issues like this, Jews should not serve on juries in capital cases in the United States.
” He rules that we cannot assume that a medical treatment that was tested successfully on a Nochri will also be successful on a Jew.”
Notwithstanding the Chatam Sofer, there are no treatments that I am aware of that work differently on Jews and non-Jews.
“It’s not really an option to ask my professor.”
My advice as a professor: Ask the professor. Do not let up until he can explain things so you can understand them. We professors are paid to answer these kinds of questions.
I will add that I learned the hard way that pestering professors with questions was essential to academic success.
Lieberman is definitely shomer Shabat. I saw him a few weeks ago davening at an Orthodox synagogue erev Shabat.
Cantor may belong to an Orthodox synagogue, but he is not shomer Shabat. Or at least he was not last summer as he appeared at a public event on Shabat.
I don’t know about Gilman. What synagogue did he belong to?
There are other members of congress who have belonged to Orthodox synagogues. I am aware of Ben Cardin, Arlen Specter, and the late James Scheuer. There are probably others.
“when girls should start wearing makeup”
When they appear on television. Same for boys.
Seriously, Nixon lost the debate with Kennedy because the lack of makeup made him look awful under the bright lights. People who listened to the debate on the radio thought Nixon had won.
“one must report total household income when applying for most (if not all) government benefits”
Indeed I sat on a federal grand jury last fall and voted to indict someone who appears to have lied on an application for government benefits. She is facing a long prison sentence.
Billy Budd, an opera based on the famous novel by Herman Melville, with a score by Benjamin Britten and a libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, has no female singers. The Metropolitan Opera will be performing it next spring. This would be a great opportunity for those whose poskim don’t accept Rov Soloveitchik’s opinion to see and hear what opera is all about.
In her response to the President’s State of the Union address she gave a good impression of a deer in headlights.
There is a reason these things have been called “crack-berries”. If it weren’t for Shabat and Yom Tov I’d never put mine down.
I don’t see why it would not be permitted, although of course it would be problematic on Shabat as you would be traveling beyond the techum limits.
*The Lion King* was awful. Ethnic stereotypes, and glorification of children rebelling against their parents. I would have walked out except that my six year old niece was there and liked it.
“those that bowed to the cross and attended church without believing it in their heart”
Many such Jews got out of Spain and Portugal as soon as they could and in fact the Jewish community in America was founded by their descendents.
I put a 2012 Obama bumper strip on my car last Thursday.
“If there is no shitah in Mishnah and gemarah that say they are not chayov how can there be a rishon who says against a gemarah with no other gemarah supporting him?”
In some cases there are tanaitic sources outside of the mishnah that might disagree with the mishnah and gemara. An example is the case for women reading the megillah: There is a tosefta that can be interpreted as it being a problem for a woman to read the megillah for a man even though the mishnah and bavli definitively rule that a man can fulfill the mitzvah by hearing a woman read. Rishonim disagree and the machloket continues to this day, with the majority of Ashkenazic acharonim siding with the Rema, and Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef ignoring the Rema (as he should — he is Sefardic!) and ruling that l’chatchila a woman can read for a man.
I have all the weekday tefilot on my Blackberry.
“The torah standard is two witnesses who are not psulei eidus. “
Actually for a gentile court it is one witness of any type. See Sanhedrin 57a. But even that standard was not met in this case.
“is this a reason for me to say no, cause i dont like her name?? “
Absolutely not! If you keep waiting for the perfect person, you will never get married.
“Is it a lack of bitachon to live within a budget, and to have (almsot) every penny figured out?”
No. While everything belongs to HaShem, we have no idea how much He will allocate to us in any particular period of time. (Unless, of course, we are prophets, and there hasn’t been one for a very long time.) Therefore, NOT to live within a budget is wasting HaShem’s precious resources.
“Where are the Torah leaders in our fringe communities?”
There in fact have been some pretty amazing Torah leaders in ‘fringe’ communities. Rabbi Eliezer Silver, Rabbi Ephraim Greenblatt, Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, Rabbi Norman Lamm, Rabbi Yaakov Yisroel Twersky, and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik are some that come to mind who have served communities with few observant Jews. There are others.
However, there aren’t many young rabbis today who are willing to leave the big Torah centers in New York, Monsey, or Lakewood. Today only Chabad shlichim and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah graduates seem to be willing to go to where there aren’t frum communities.
“How dare we sell out our values for a few dollars from the government?”
I will add that it is easy to be righteous on these matters when you aren’t the person who will be responsible for handing out the layoff notices when you’ve turned down the government funding and have to close the institution. The fact is, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which is where the Christian and Gay clubs are, is pretty much the only truly frum-friendly medical school in America. Students never have to worry about a class on Shabat or Yom Tov. The cafeteria is kosher. There are multiple minyanim every day, many shiurim, an active beit midrash, several orthodox rabbis on campus, a large Shabat-observant student population that lives on campus, and a few frum faculty members like myself. And we do pretty well in the medical school rankings; I just found out today that yet another of my research proposals is getting funded. Would I prefer that my institution adhere more strictly to halachah? Absolutely!!! But it may not be possible to run a medical school totally according to halachah in the United States. Would it be better to shut it down? I now have a sufficiently strong reputation as a researcher and teacher that I am sure that I could get a job somewhere else that would respect my observance. Junior faculty might face a harder time. And students have no ability to say “no”. The Albert Einstein College of Medicine makes sure that they do not have to be placed in that situation.
“The Zevuluns are killing themselves to do the right thing, and some are up at 5 am to learn!”
My Daf Yomi shiur is a little later, at 7:30am. It was particularly good today!
“As far as the Rav Gifter reference is concerned, he was speaking about YU actually recognizing a MZ club in the university. The school itself was recognizing the toeva.”
YU takes government money and is therefore subject to government anti-discrimination regs. YU also “recognizes” Christian clubs.
Think about that the next time you complain about how the government refuses to fund yeshivot.
I am sure that Richard Joel would be quite happy to accept your contribution of ten billion dollars; that would enable YU to turn down future government money.
I didn’t follow the trial, but my understanding is that the prosecution’s case was based on circumstantial evidence. The gemara in Sanhedrin 57a requires an eyewitness to execute someone for murder, which is what the prosecution was trying to do. The jury may have saved the country from being in violation of one of the Noachide laws.
This is a free country. Anyone who doesn’t like what the mods do is free to start their own competing site.
I should add that the editing of my first comment by the moderator did not change the meaning of the comment; I had simply given a bit more detail as to what The Post had published and the moderator correctly determined that it was inappropriate for a frum forum. That an factually accurate description had to be edited says something about The Post!
Correct -95
“Charlie: Your point is unclear.”
I was being sarcastic. Rupert Murdoch is the biggest peddler of legal smut in the world, but conservatives love him. He runs Faux News and The Post.
The NY Times is indeed no paragon of virtue. Its journalistic standards in the last decade or so have been awful. It still has yet to apologize for Judith Miller’s shilling for the Bush administration, supporting the lies that lead to our disastrous involvement in Iraq, at a cost that has brought the US to the brink of default and has made it impossible to do anything about the real threat, Iran. And they sold their profitable classical music radio station, one of the few gems of broadcasting. The NY Times doesn’t peddle smut, but that is faint praise.
“I would suggest to you that Israel is really America East. It is a place where American Money is used to build an economy and a military and it is fully in cooperation with the US Mission overall.”
You might want to review your US history. While Israel has never been an enemy of America, the American government was incredibly hostile to Israel during the Eisenhower administration, threatening war during the Suez crisis and pursuing an alliance with Iraq, then as now in a state of “hot war” with Israel. Fortunately Kennedy came to power in 1961 and started to change all that.
“Do you guys put bumper stickers on your vehicles?”
Yes. I have a Cuomo 2010 bumper strip on my car and I am about to put an Obama 2012 bumper strip on it.
“And the Daily News is shmutz (like the Post.)”
NO! The Post is a Conservative newspaper, published by Rupert Murdoch, who runs Fair and Balanced Fox News. It consistently supports right wing positions and slanders liberal politicians. Therefore its horribly licentious gossip page, and its full color inappropriate photos on its cover are totally excusable in the name of destroying the evil liberals who are of course the people responsible for such anti-Torah smut. (Never mind that in 160 years of publication the New York Times has never published such garbage, we have to boycott the Times and support Rupert Murdoch!)
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