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“why the hechsherim were jeopardized by actions and decisions having nothing to do with the food or the cooking”
Community rabbis have the power to require more than the laws of kashrut being followed. And 100% of us would agree with this: Nobody would want an Orthodox rabbi to certify the food at a shomer Shabat strip club. The question is where to draw the line. Another consideration is the concern for existing businesses if a possibly competing business wants to set up shop in the same neighborhood. Batei dinim have ruled in favor of existing businesses being able to keep out competitors. Another possible consideration is making the food available to all; the local Vaad in my neighborhood requires Jewish grocers to accept food stamps if they want the hechsher.
‘the founders of this country were proud Christians, and since their concept of “God” is the trinity’
Many of the Founding Fathers were NOT trinitarian Christians. Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Rush, and Paine in particular espoused what for Christians would be considered heretical views. And George Washington appears rarely if ever to have taken communion. Not until 1888 would the United States elect a person as President who was a communicant member of a (small-o) orthodox Christian church at the time of his election.
I’d love a Daf Yomi forum, perhaps moderated by a rabbi who is leading a DY shiur.
‘Is describing someone as “pretty” a subjective description?’
Yes. Standards for such in the popular culture have clearly changed over time.
<Only the original can do that.>
Only the original accompanied by the traditional rabbinic commentaries.
<Even Onkelos’ “translation” is often more of a commentary than a word for word translation.>
This is correct — and Baruch HaShem Onkelos’ translation itself has recently translated into English; the last volume is due out this month. It brings alive Onkelos’ often-difficult Aramaic.
not since i became frum — but there were a few days when i put them on in the afternoon when i was so sick that i couldn’t get out of bed in the morning
“This is Yeshiva World not Jdate.”
Maybe a dating page would be a nice addition? ywdate.com?
“YCT is not Orthodox.”
Why do you say it is not Orthodox? The faculty are shomer mitzvot, with Orthodox semichah.
“Take the girls up to YU. Lots of available single males, all shomrei torah umitzvos.”
I suggested this to the mom of an unmarried yeshivish young woman. Mom didn’t have a problem with it, but the young woman herself rejected it out of hand, as she had been brainwashed into thinking that YU is treif.
“Besides isnt that illegal in the US? (not that it cant change at the rate we’re going…)”
It is indeed illegal but there hasn’t been a prosecution for it in decades.
“The basis of the age gap theory is about as statistically sound as charliehall’s quote about Medicare overhead being 1/5th that of private insurance. “
Sorry, but it is a fact.
And it is also a fact that as long as equal numbers of boys and girls are born each year, an increasing population means that girls will have to accept younger husbands if they are ever going to get married.
“Girls (parents) should seriously start with shidduchim at 18 barring extraordinary circumstances, and in any case discuss with g’dolei and manhigei Yisroel how to proceed.”
Boys, too — at least according to the Mishnah.
Jewish women never used to change their names upon marriage; the custom is an example of the acceptance of a goyish minhag.
Blackberry Bold through Verizon Wireless.
While the device works fine — the email is often on my Blackberry before it is available to my desktop or laptop computer — there is a good reason why people call these things “Crack-berry”. It is addictive! Were it not for Shabat I’d never turn it off.
“A non Jew who is intellectually honest understands that the normal marriage relationship produces children”
Actually lots of marriages do not produce children and Jews are encouraged to marry even late in life when children are impossible.
‘If I was an informed non-Jew I would know that same gender “marriage” falls under gillui arayos.’
Only a marriage between two men.
Here is one: Daven Maariv right after plag and Minchah right before sunset at a different shul.
Or, on Friday afternoon, at the same shul! There are two shuls in my neighborhood where there is a maariv minyan before a minchah minyan.
(Somehow I don’t think this works ;).)
“What is problematic is the same person doing both Mincha & Maariv after Plag.”
You wouldn’t know that there is a problem by the number of shuls where this is done, especially erev Shabat.
“I also mentioned how she would be better off to just take a full year, receive only a portion of her salary through the maternity leave but at least have that special first year with baby at home.”
There is a young frum couple a block from us that we have often hosted for Shabat. The mom, a lawyer, is staying home with her nine month old. They plan to send the kid to public school so that they can afford to get by without the two of them having to have workaholic careers and not be able to parent their child.
ItcheSrulik,
Thank you.
It doesn’t matter. Period.
Define “halachic kefira”.
clap, clap, clap!
Anyone who doesn’t like the job the moderators do is free to start their own site.
“Socialized anything has never and will never work. “
Another lie. Some counterexamples:
The development of the M1 rifle. (US)
The development of the atomic bomb. (US)
The electric utilities in France. (Their nuclear power plants are much more efficient than those in the US and French consumers have historically paid a lot less for electricity than we pay Con Ed.)
The bullet trains in France.
There are many others.
“The claim that poor people could not get healthcare was bull! All they had to do was walk into ANY hospital and they would be treated.”
This is also a lie. If you walk into any hospital that has an emergency department (some don’t) you get emergency care, for which you will get a large bill. But you are only guaranteed to get emergency care, which means that you get stabilized to the point that they don’t think you will die THAT DAY. You get no help with the chronic conditions that are the major causes of death in America.
“Do you really think that Medicare has 1/5th the amount of administrative overhead that the health insurers have?”
Yes. It is around 2%. The best private insurer is about 10%, and one of the reasons the health insurance industry was so strongly opposed to Obamacare was that it limits administrative overhead to 15%.
Edited. I will address them one by one.
“In the USA without ObamaCare we are allowed to go to any doctor we want whenever we want and spend how much you want. Granted if you have insurance you may be limited to co-pays, referrals, etc. The bottom line is, it is YOUR choice”.
It is only your choice if you have the money to pay for it. Otherwise, your (probably) for-profit health insurer decides who you can see. The exception is if you are lucky enough to have Medicare, as it does not restrict choice at all. And that is a government plan.
“Under ObamaCare you will be a ward of the govt. They will be the ones to approve or disapprove your doctor visits, procedures etc. Care WILL HAVE TO BE rationed in order to as Obama claims, “keep prices in check.” Of course the left – which are the only ones pushing for this – claim that isnt the case however that IS the case anywhere else there is socialized medicine.”
This is not just a lie, it is hypocritical. The plans available under Obamacare will be private plans, not government plans. And one of the big criticisms of the Republicans has been that Obamacare costs too much. They can’t seem to decide whether it is better to attack the President for providing too much coverage or for providing too little.
Furthermore, government care is not necessarily restricted. All my wife’s patients have New York Medicaid. Not once has Medicaid ever denied coverage for a treatment she has recdommended.
“Check it out, people in Canada who are able DO COME to the USA for treatment instead of waiting for treatment there. Foreigners DO COME to the USA for treatment when they have a wait in their country. People like CharlieHall (an uber left liberal blogger) will tell you thats not the case however they are either lying to you so swallowing Socialist flavored Kool-Aid without thinking things thru clearly.
And Americans go to Canada and Mexico for treatment.
“I had a brother who got sick (coma etc) in the UK and I saw the shoddy healthcare they had there. The primary care doc didnt want to do certain tests because he was insistent to my mother that all my brother had was a cold and he didnt want to go to school. Had he run a simple check, he would have seen that the airway was closing!!! I am not CHV questioning HKBH’s plan but we do have to think of derech ha’teva too.”
And had the doctor asked for the tests, he would have gotten them.
“Anyway, hospitals there closed or were revamped. Now when you get sick you go to hospital 1 and if you need additional care they transport you to hospital 2.”
That is actually the way things work in much of the US, too.
” In USA terms lets say CHV something happens, you are transported to the doctors office. If you need additional care, such as surgery, scans etc., they transfer you to another hospital. THAT IS SHEER LUNACY!!”
Not necessarily. Clinics and hospitals refer patients all the time. And one of the reasons health care costs in the US are so high is the over-use of higher-tier levels of care.
‘People talk about E”Y. Well E”Y has a minute amount of people we do. We have 325 MILLION people and counting!! In EY, my sister broke her finger and needed a splint. She was told to come back in the morning. HELLO!! Something is VERY WRONG with that!! If you cant rely on the hospital to have the equipment needed to do what they have to, whats the point of the hospital?!?!’
That is better than in much of the US. Go to many emergency departments with a broken finger and you will spend the night in the waiting room. They are busy dealing with people with life-threatening conditions.
And many hospitals don’t have facilities or staff to treat everything. For example, if you are shot, stabbed, burned, bitten by a venomous reptile, or seriously injured in an auto accident, you want to go to a trauma center and not an ordinary hospital. If you are threatening suicide, you need to be at a hospital with a locked psychiatric inpatient unit. Not every 100 bed community hospital can handle everything.
“The American people were told this will bring healthcare costs down saving the govt money which is a lie! Until now, we were paying for the healthcare. If we went to a doc, we paid either out of pocket or with a co-pay but the GOVT DID NOT PAY. Now, the govt will pay! So if someone had 100k worth of medical expenses in 2011 which was paid by the insurance provider, and now the govt pays for it, that means the govt takes on an additional 100K of debt for your healthcare. Where is the govt saving in that? If you didnt buy milk and now the govt tells you you have to buy milk, you ARE spending money on something that you had not done before. This is an additional expense to you.”
The plans to be made available under the law are PRIVATE plans that YOU have to pay for.
“There are other problems with the bill as well. It is unconstitutional for the govt to mandate that you buy something and you are mandated to buy health “insurance” of some sort with this bill. The left will tell you that you have to buy auto insurance but there is a fallacy in their argument. You see, you have a choice with auto insurance, in the fact that if you dont have a car, you DONT have to buy auto insurance. You dont have a choice not to breath.”
Well several courts have disagreed with you. And given that the federal government passed a mandatory health insurance purchase law in 1798, it is likely that the courts will ultimately follow a 213 year old precedent.
“And it is clear that the problem with most drugs that are deemed not cost effective is not that they are not effective, but they are too expensive. “
Actually a lot of new drugs offer minimal if any benefit over existing drugs. (That is particularly true for cancer.) But in any case the US is one of the few developed countries that does not regulate in any way the price of prescription drugs. What in fact happens is that in the US, for-profit health insurers are the ones making most of the decisions for what to cover.
“In the U.S. I was not able to get insurance at all. That’s not quite true. I could have gotten insurance through the state government, but the cost of the insurance premium plus the cost of my rent was more than I earned each month. How would I have been able to eat?”
And this is precisely the problem. Everyone who proclaims how wonderful the US healthcare system is forgets that if you don’t have insurance, you get none of those benefits. Haifagirl was actually in better shape than many because for more than her monthly income she could have gotten insurance. People with disabilities or with pre-existing conditions would not even have that option. And the opponents of the Affordable Care Act have not suggested any alternatives.
My wife once had to call the police about someone who was illegally blocking our driveway. It was a possible pikuach nefesh issue as she is a physician there was the possibility that she might have been called into the hospital in an emergency.
The cost of the ticket is probably less than the cost of the hours of your last sleep. He should be asking YOU for mechila.
There are over 200 kosher restaurants in Paris. Enjoy!
A basket for the bicycle is the appropriate solution.
Edited
Cucumber,
Your claim that Canadian healthcare is worse than the United States is nor born out by objective outcomes. And had your friend visited an urban emergency room or primary care clinic she would have had a very different experience.
Popa,
I know that it is inconsistent with the Religion of Laissez-Faire, but it is a fact that Medicare has about one-fifth the administrative overhead of the best private health insurer in the US. Economies of scale are a major contributor, as are the lack of need for underwriting and marketing.
“we’ll end up with a system like they have in Canada (which many wouldn’t mind, and many would).”
The main disadvantage of the Canadian system, as applied to the US, would be massive unemployment among the paper-pushers at private insurance companies. But we would be spending much less for health care and likely get better outcomes.
m in Israel,
I’m not familiar with the details of the Israeli system, but I spent last week with people in England who are intimately involved with the UK’s system. They have a cost-effectiveness criteria by which any procedure or drug that is below the threshold gets covered, and any that is over does not. My colleagues there were active in a controversy over a new treatment for which the drug company decided to charge an absolutely extortionistic price. The UK government (correctly) balked. I agreed with this decision because the new treatment had minimal efficacy over what had been available.
And that is true for many of the treatments that both private and government insurers don’t want to cover. There was a recent controversy here in America because the FDA refused to allow a particular cancer treatment for a particular cancer type because it had been proven not to extend life and not to improve quality of life. As a result, neither government or private insurers will pay for it. Yet people complained that the FDA was killing people! Frankly, a drug that has been proven to neither extend life nor to improve quality of life is about the first thing I would drop from coverage. Nevertheless people can still buy the drug and doctors can prescribe it.
‘There is a “small” change to medicare, half a trilion dollars riped out over the next ten years to fund Obamacare.’
This is not accurate. What is true is that the law implements policy changes that would result in slower growth in the cost of the program amounting to five hundred million dollars over time. The largest contribution to that change was a reduction in the subsidies being paid to private health insurers.
“AARPs supported it. I couldn’t believe it; it only hurt seniors, and they supported it. Just goes to show how these big organizations are all ideology, and don’t care a whit about their constituency.”
Wrong. AARP has many members age 50-65 who are not eligible for Medicare and can’t get insurance at all today, at any price, because of pre-existing conditions. They are definitely worried about all their members.
The major pro is that for the first time, all Americans will have guaranteed access to health insurance. Every other developed country in the world offers this. That insurance is mandatory for most will limit the cost-shifting in which those of us with insurance pay for the care of those without insurance through higher fees.
There are some cons. Unfortunately, many will choose to pay the penalty rather than buy insurance thus there will still be cost-shifting. Illegal immigrants also aren’t eligible so we will end up paying for their care through higher fees. Providing insurance through private companies is far less efficient than providing insurance through government plans because of the higher administrative overhead. Much money could have been saved by simply extending Medicare eligibility to everyone. There is a near-religious faith that private sector competition will reduce health care costs, but the actual evidence for that is scanty yet the Affordable Care Act assumes that there will be such cost savings. The Affordable Care Act provided for dramatic increases in funding for primary care clinics in order to head off a likely shortage of primary care physicians, but that increase in funding will probably be minimal because of Republican opposition.
There is a nice Wikipedia article describing the provisions in more detail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act
The Rosenbergs were NOT innocent!
“she’s got plenty in her carry on if she needs”
Be careful that it is only dry food, not even a paste-like food. Just last week I had my peanut butter confiscated at by Heathrow Airport Security in London.
“what the United State’s old healthcare policy is/was”
Old:
Universal government-provided health insurance for almost all Americans 65 and over (Medicare), and for all Americans who qualify as very poor (Medicaid). Everyone else is subject to the whims of the free market as limited by state, but not federal, regulation.
New (post 2014):
Medicare is pretty much unchanged. It is easier to qualify for Medicaid. Everyone else has guaranteed enrollment into a private health insurance plan, and there will be a small penalty for those who do not enroll. The Affordable Care Act also included additional funding to expand primary care clinics, but the Republicans are probably going to succeed in killing that additional funding.
Between Old and 2014:
Far too complicated to explain!
“Either a possibly misapplied use of Rav Moshe’s heter “
I was in England last week for a conference. I checked out in advance what I could and could not eat. The conference, held out in the country, paid a small fortune to have kosher meals delivered to me from London by a caterer on the LBD list. International kosher travel requires planning ahead! And I should add that I am grateful to the non-Jewish organizers of the conference for making such a sacrifice; I was willing to eat canned tuna and peanut butter for three days but it was nice to have real food.
We recently hosted a couple with a nine month old. She is a lawyer who is staying home with the child. They have already decided to send her to public school so that she doesn’t have to do the 80 hour a week rat race in order to pay day school tuition, and to hire tutors instead. Talk about traditional values! I couldn’t find a good reason to argue with them — there are a lot of good tutors who need money and you can get a lot of tutoring for the cost of day school tuition.
“Rabbosai, we are on the brink of these disgusting pervs besmirching this State.”
I haven’t noticed any difference in Connecticut.
“Whether not relying on an eruv is a chumra, or relying on it is a kula, is debatable.”
Eruvim is a tractate in the Oral Law. And the overwhelming majority of poskim permit a public eruv under at least some circumstances.
“So what people were calling chumras in the chumrah therad for many that is the halacha. an example is rav Elyashiv and Rav Ovadiah Yosef asuur wearing shaitels. The latter was listed as a chumra.”
This is an example of the problem. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of Ashkenazic halachic authorities hold that wigs are mutar l’chatchila al pi halachah. Yet you cite a particular machmir opinion held by two poskim and declare that THAT is the halachah, essentially denigrating those who follow the majority.
“Why do you think they were treated differently than other spies? Why do you think they executed at least one, perhaps two innocent people?”
The answer is because of right wing insanity such as is seen today in YWN comment forums. I brought up the Rosenbergs to counter the false statement that nobody had ever gotten as severe a sentence as Jonathan Pollard for spying for an ally.
“If they treat Jews differently, even if it’s not all the time, they don’t have the Din of D.M.D.!”
The Rosenbergs were given a penalty prescribed by law. They had a fair trial. Ethel probably could have saved herself with any kind of reasonable defense. As pointed out by another commenter, his brother cut a deal.
“Actually it’s not. People who treat Jews differently are making the Chillul and Bizoyin of Hashem.”
Go find a country where Jews are treated better. You won’t find one. If D.M.D. doesn’t apply in the US, it doesn’t apply anywhere.
‘And I have this ingratitude after the Judge laughed off my discrimination case.’
Frankly, I would be happy if the courts would be tougher on business on religious accomodation cases. But the past generation the courts have been packed with judges who don’t care. Unfortunately the last President who actually tried to fight this tendency was Jimmy Carter. Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes actively tried to pack the courts with judges who would not second guess business decisions. And despite the lies that people promote here, Clinton and Obama did not try to balance this. And the Corporate Interests who now control the Republican party have fought tooth and nail attempts to get stronger protections written explicitly in the statute.
m in Israel,
The espionage law makes no distinction between civilians and military. The Rosenbergs were civilians, spying for a then-ally. John Walker, his brother Arthur, and Jerry Whitworth have been in prison longer than Pollard; Whitworth’s release date is when he will be 111 years old. Violating one provision of a plea agreement is like violating all of them — and the Pollards violated the gag order multiple times and in a particularly eggregious way. That infuriated the judge — not something that a person who has pleaded guilty should do — and the judge threw the book at them.
The real abuses of the Espionage Act were shortly after it was passed, during the Red Scare during Woodrow Wilson’s administration. Many Jews were caught up in it.
‘Stealing from the government is not a kula. NO responsible rov says it is mutar unless you consider the Admou”r meCreedmoor responsible. It is ossur and a chilul Hashem.’
But we have an incredible ability to listen to our yetzer hara and rationalize all kinds of bad behavior.
“I’ll give one example -J. Pollard -1. Gov. reneging on their plea bargain for no apparent reason.”
Wrong. There was a very good reason: Pollard and his then-wife reneged on THEIR part of the plea agreement by giving interviews to the media without permission. The judge was furious and threw the book at them.
” 2. No spy who got caught spying for a friendly country ever got such a harsh sentence in the good ole USA!”
Wrong again. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed after being convicted of spying for a then-ally. (And Ethel was probably innocent of the charges.)
“I have many examples, including the way I was treated in court.
So unless there is another reason to pay your taxes other than Dina Dmachulsa Dina or that poster is incorrect about treating e/o equally regarding D.M.D., why should you, if you’re not afraid of getting caught? And this would go on lying on Gov. applications also. It’s not stealing because they give out the money anyway, it’s just not following their guidelines which only would be not keeping D.M.D., if D.M.D. applied! This isn’t a Psak Halacha, just looking for opinions.”
I sat on a federal grand jury last fall and voted to indict someone for lying on an application for government benefits. I did not take into consideration whether that liar and thief was a Jew. There is no extra religious tax here, and both Jews and non-Jews get prosecuted for tax fraud. The United States has treated more Jews fairly than any country in the history of the world. Your ingratitude is a chilul HaShem.
“Corn is not suitable for human consumption anyway. It’s animal fodder.”
Corn has been eaten by humans for thousands of years.
“Torching your braces before Pesach.”
I love it!!!
“Ask them why and what they are certifying and upon whom they are relying when they allow their symbol to be printed on a carton of milk. “
All milk sold in the US still requires rabbinic supervision as it contains additives (mostly vitamins). About 15 years ago a dairy in New England added a nutritional supplement from a non-kosher source and its products lost their hechsher.