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Al Qaeda says he is dead.
The conservative Republican Mike Pence says that release of the photographs will endanger the lives of Americans.
Unfortunately, in addition to the Truthers and Birthers, we now have the Deathers. Nothing will satisfy these people who are unwilling to subject their beliefs to the test of reality.
“women certainly have more of a specific obligation to keep it, differently from men. To be clearer, I should just have pointed out that generally we are taught from childhood that those are the big three for women”
Technically, for those three mitzvot the obligation is identical for men and women. The very, very strong minhag is that women light the Shabat candles in all Jewish homes. Someone has to take challah from any bread that is baked that is greater than a certain amount and since in most homes, it is the woman who does the baking, it is the woman who takes the challah. (In commercial bakeries men often take the challah.) A woman is trusted to tell her husband whether or not she is niddah and whether she has gone to the mikveh, so the way taharat hamishpacha works in practice the woman is responsible.
The source for these being considered “women’s mitzvot” is a mishnah in tractate Shabat that is read every Friday night in most Ashkenazic synagogues, part of the “Bamei Madlikin” chapter.
You can find it in any Nusach Ashkenaz Shabat siddur.
(I should add that I have no desire to change any of these minhagim; but we should be precise in our exposition of halachah. Personally, we never bake enough bread to require taking challah, and I only light candles when traveling out of town, or when my wife, a physician, is busy saving someone’s life as Shabat comes in.)
“Thank you”
You are welcome.
“men CAN, but women MUST–the way that men must do those other things, and women can, but don’t necessarily have to”
Actually, that is incorrect. Not all Jewish men know this, but if they don’t have a woman lighting Shabat candles for them they must light themselves. If a woman OR a man bakes a sufficiently large amount of bread (CYLOR for the exact amount), no Jew can eat it until challah is taken whether the baker is a man or a woman. And of course both women and men must follow taharat hamishpachah.
‘Unfortunately, the non-Orthodox have decided, as you have, that women are not “observed” enough in religion, & look what happened.’
Good point. We should simply follow the actual halachah. Women can do plenty within the bounds of halachah, as I have shown in several earlier comments.
“Is doing your taxes Bitual Torah?”
How can fulfilling a mitzvah be bitul torah? It is a mitzvah to pay the taxes you owe; all halachic authorities agree that it is an aspect of dina malchutcha dina!
“we were put on this world to become close to Hashem by doing his mitzvos.”
True. And many of those mitzvot require secular education. The Sanhedrin had to know seventy languages, and also astronomy and veterinary science.
“werent many of our greatest personalities doctors and scientists, and quite well versed in secular knowledge?”
Indeed. Many of the gedolim had university educations, including Rambam, Sforno, Rav Hirsch, Rav Hildesheimer, Rav Herzog, Rav Soloveitchik, the Lubavicher Rebbe….I could go on and on.
“chemistry. there is no reason the boys should have to learn this murder subject “
Rav Herzog would disagree; he earned a PhD in Chemistry at the University of London and used his knowledge to research techelit!
” its not like high school boys (or girls by the way) are being asked to learn philosophy and evolution. “
Philosophy — at least that of our greatest sages — should be taught in Limdei Chodesh! We need to teach our young people what our greatest thinkers like Rambam, Rav Hirsch, Rav Kook, and Rav Soloveitchik wrote.
“trigonometry will NEVER help you in life! “
It has been essential to my career. The Lubavicher Rebbe had to master it in order to complete his electrical engineering program.
“it pays to just learn it in college if your going for one of those majors. “
Nowadays if you want to enter one of those fields you start out way behind if you haven’t taken CALCULUS in high school, not just trigonometry. And you won’t get accepted into any engineering school without at least completing trigonometry with a good grade.
The number of mitzvot from the Torah for which men are chiyuv and women are patur is rather small — about a dozen or so, with the exact number depending on whether you count head and arm tefillin as one mitzvah or two, whether you count evening and morning shema as one or two. The difference in the number of mitzvot is greater when you compare male Yisraelim to male Kohanim. Are male Yisraelim Jewish? Similarly, farmers in Eretz Yisrael (men AND women!) are chayev in about two dozen more Torah mitzvot than all the rest of us. Does that mean that they are Jewish and we aren’t?
“are you, that is, men, not jewish because you don’t take challah, light candles, or keep thm “
Men are required to take challah, light candles, and keep thm. Male bakers take challah all the time.
“we can make kiddush etc if there is no man around”
L’chatchala a woman can make kiddush for her husband on Friday night. In fact, if the husband has davened maariv but the wife does not daven maariv (for example, if she holds by the Mishnah Berurah and davens shacharit and minchah but not maariv), the wife actually has a HIGHER level of obligation to make kiddush than her husband and strictly speaking from a halachic perspective it would be PREFERABLE for her to make kiddush (and not just for her husband but for any guests as well). For other reasons this is not typically done, but my wife often makes kiddush for me at our table on Friday night. (And yes, I clear this entire logic with my Rav.)
“Women do not wear tzitzis, do not wear tefilin, do not wear yarlmukes, do not learn, daven, eat in the sukkah, or really do any of the mitzvos.”
Women can wear tzitzit. Women are required to learn all the mitzvot for which they are chayev, and are permitted to learn almost everything else. (Rov Soloveitchik z’tz’l said that we are REQUIRED to teach gemara to women.) Women are required to pray the Shemoneh Esrei by Rambam, the Shulchan Aruch, the Mishnah Berurah, the Aruch HaShulchan, in fact by every halachic code except the Magen Avraham. Women eat in the sukkah in most communities and an Ashkenazic woman recites the brachah before doing so. To say that women “don’t do any of the mitzvot” is a massive distortion of halachah!
“They don’t count for a minyan, they can’t be motzi Jews in mitzvos, they can’t read from the torah, they can’t be a witness, can’t be a judge, etc.”
Minyan is not from the Torah, it is a d’rabbanan, and according to Ran and HaMeiri a woman counts for a minyan in anything for which she is actually obligated such as reading the Megillah. A woman can motzi any other Jew in any mitzvah who has an equal level of obligation; for example, a woman can recite the Friday night kiddush for her husband according to all opinions (and my wife often does this for me). A woman can read from the Torah in a group of women. A woman is a kosher witness for many things including kashrut and taharat hamishpacha. (Good thing — if not, you’d never be able to have marital relations or eat from your own family kitchen!) According to Rav Uziel z’tz’l, a woman can be a Dayan as long as the parties to the case accept her and that particular tshuvah was universally accepted by all Orthodox communities; in fact there are no women today who have as of yet earned the Yadin Yadin semichah necessary to judge property cases but that does not change the basic halachah.
“The son of the Mitzri was not originally Jewish because he was born before Matan Torah.”
We don’t know that. Ibn Ezra says that the Mitzi converted to Judaism. That would create a problem because Mitzrim are not permitted to marry born Jews until the third generation. (That Shlomo HaMelech did this greatly troubled Chazal.)
“For the same reason as mentioned earlier there shouldn’t be such heavy testing”
Jewish schools should have HIGHER standards, not lower standards!
“Also the secular studies teachers should be frum people that are shomrei torah umitzvot.”
The kind of model you describe will not produce shomrei torah umitzvot people who are at all competent to teach in yeshivas. You will be stuck with non-frum people and non-Jews.
There is an Orthodox synagogue, Kesher Israel, very close to downtown, within the eruv if you are there over Shabat. They will probably have a sukkah. We visited it there several years ago and found it very friendly, and their rabbi, Rabbi Barry Freundel, is a brilliant talmid chacham and worth going out of your way to hear. http://www.kesher.org/ has a list of kosher food options. Enjoy!
One other bit of advice regardless of which site you use: You have to fill out a questionnaire in which you have to check a lot of boxes in order to categorize yourself. Don’t exclude someone who is a prospective match purely on the basis of that person having checked a supposedly incompatible hashkafah box. For example, there are plenty of yeshivish and chasidic people with lots of interests beyond torah, and there are plenty of modern orthodox folks who are dedicated to learning torah at every opportunity. You may find your basherte is someone from a very different background. Minor differences in minhagim can be overcome. My own wonderful spouse did not check the same hashkafah box as me. Pay more attention to the essays, not the pigeonholes.
To everyone who claims he isn’t dead, that this is all a fraud:
I worked in Washington for 11 years. It would be absolutely impossible to keep such a fraud a secret for more than a few hours: The place is full of leaks and leakers. Conspiracy theorists, give up!
And to the Obamahaters: Get a life.
Well I met my wife on frumster.com, so I have a bit of a bias ;).
I had tried SawYouAtSinai but did not find that the system worked for me. I never had a personal meeting with any of their shadchanim so they didn’t really know me, and they regularly sent me suggestions for matches that were inappropriate.
I didn’t even realize the wedding was last Friday until it was over. And I don’t understand what the big deal is.
A.
Note that all the Muslim terror groups think he is dead; only the Obamahaters are holding out.
The Obamahaters won’t believe anything the President says anyway, so the rise of the Deather movement should have no impact in his decision.
What should matter are two considerations: First, potential danger to Americans, so eloquently stated by Congressman Mike Pence (who BTW is a right wing Republican). Second, there may be a concept of kvod hameit even for non-Jews, even rashaim.
“I agree that it’s not helpful to merely state that it’s asur, but I disagree that the assumption that some people who are considered rabbis doing something means it’s not.”
It means that it is a machloket. I was aware of R’Ovadiah’s tshuvah on the matter; not everyone agrees with him on this.
As I said, we don’t have a television, and I encourage those who don’t have one to give it away. But “asur” is not something that the entire Orthodox world accepts.
Mosherose, just saying “television is asur” is not helpful; there are plenty of rabbis who watch television from time to time.
What happened for us is that both of us had been watching less and less television over time by the time we got married that it didn’t really matter. We still have an old set that doesn’t get over the air channels that we use for playing old VHS videos. For newer DVDs we use the computer. I truly don’t miss the over the air television; I do a lot of traveling for work and I don’t even feel tempted to turn on the television sets in the hotel rooms.
“we have a minhag to just follow halachos.”
So do we.
I live in Riverdale and it is nice because it has about every hashkafah of frumkeit you can imagine, from the Telshe Yeshiva and its kollel and two Chasidic shteebles to several Modern Orthdox Zionist congregations where women learn Talmud, and yet everyone eats in everyone else’s homes.
falsehood be told wrote:
‘BHO is funny. “At my direction…” He opposed the war on terror. He actually even gave up the name. That was one of his first foreign policy moves, to stop “The War On Terror”. ‘
Give up. He got the world’s number one terrorist. That is much more important than all the cheerleading done by the previous administration.
” He would have offered to sit down with Bin LaDin and work out the differences if BL had humored himself with that game like the iranian terrorist.”
Actually, he said during the 2008 campaign that he would kill Bin Laden. He kept his promise.
You owe him an apology.
I agree with Dave Hirsch’s insightful analysis above.
May he rest in pieces.
Who was the rishon? I’d never heard of this one. I didn’t know that this was even a shilah!
“btw the spanish expulsion was on the 9th of Av 1492/5252 “
Actually it was 7 Av.
The edict of expulsion from England was, however, issued 9 Av 1290/5050.
Rav Soloveitchik z’tz’l also opposed the institution of Yom HaShoah. Was he charedi or right wing?
Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach permitted classical music during sefira. My rav agrees.
Yes, there have been female Jewish singers. See Exodus 15:20-21, Judges Chapter 5, and and Ezra 2:65.
Ron Paul has put out overtly anti-Semitic material in his publications. He and his son are trying to end US aid to Israel. I hope we can all agree that they are both beyond the pale.
“Considering that matzah’s were hand-made for the approximately 3,500 years from Yetzias Metzrayim until the 19th Century CE, it would be foolish to assert that it is better than hand-made matzah’s, as such a claim would effectively mean that the kashrus was lacking in the matzah’s of Am Yisroel in the 3 millennium leading up to the invention of the machine. “
Considering that Am Yisroel drank unfiltered water for the approximately 3,500 years from Yetzias Mitrayim until the 21st Century CE, it would be foolish to assert that filtered water is better than unfiltered water, as such a claim would effectively mean that the kashrus was lacking in the drinking water of Am Yisrael in the 3.5 millenium leading up to the “discovery” of copepods.
“Why are so many gedolim and yidden willing to pay $30 a pound for hand-made, instead of $5 a pound for machine-made? “
Maybe because it tastes better?
em even if you can name a Gadol who does wear techeiles (and I’d rather avoid the debate “who is a Gadol”), he is certainly batel b’shishim. /em
A gedol BATUL??? A gedol is a gedol, even when other gedolim disagree with him.
“the cheif rabbi (who then was actually a rabbi in Ireland) Reb Yitzchak Isaac Halevi Herzog ZT”L.”
He was the Chief Rabbi of Ireland for about 20 years. The techelit research was done for his doctoral dissertation in chemistry prior to his appointment to that position. Rav Herzog z’tz’l was well respected by all, even those who did not choose to wear techelit.
“Radiation does not kill regardless.”
This is a false statement. Many died as a result of radiation from both the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and from the Chernobyl disaster.
” I know that you are all learned yidden who follow halacha meticulously”
If they are talking during tefillah or the torah reading, they aren’t following halachah meticulously.
I’ve been taught that the best kiruv is to be an example of all the good things in the Torah.
Not 24.
“I think everyone running for Chometz is overrated. Opinions?? “
I agree. What I really want is some rice!
The internet is a pretty rude place. People say things here they would never say to anyone in person. It is sad. The internet has so much potential.
I’m the only person who put up a real number: Dr. Marvin Schick estimates the number of children in Jewish Day Schools in the US and the number for 2009-2010 was about 228,000. However, 36,000 of these children were in non-Orthodox schools, leaving an Orthodox enrollment of about 192,000. That is totally inconsistent with a total Orthodox population of a million, and given our large families may even be inconsistent even with a total Orthodox population of a half million — over the entire US!
Geoffrey Beene “Sateen” shirts truly need no ironing. They are fit to wear right out of the dryer.
Given that there are only about 200,000 children in all Orthodox day schools in the entire US, it is highly unlikely that there are a million frum Jews in New York State.
“as Florida’s junior Senator, he’d attract Florida,”
Maybe if he could get Rick Scott to resign. He has really tarnished the Republican brand there. And Ryan’s plan to End Medicare As We Know It will be a huge weight on Republicans in any state with a lot of elderly voters.
” and as a Cuban-American, he’d draw the Hispanic vote, which is an enormous bloc”
Voters of other Hispanic ethnicities vote the opposite of Cuban-Americans.
BTW, add Pennsylvania to the states where an unpopular governor may be tarnishing Republican prospects. According to a recent PublicPolicyPolling survey, Corbett’s favorability is now at 34%. Toomey is doing even worse, 32%.
Of all the mentionees here on the Republican side, I think Daniels would be the best candidate and a serious threat to Obama. He is a true believer right wing conservative but he also understands that government is needed — and he doesn’t go out of his way to offend people the way Chris Christie does. And Indiana is in pretty good fiscal shape today; he would certainly carry his home state, which Obama carried in 2008. (The last time that a candidate lost his home state but still managed a victory was 1916, and there is no way that Mitt Romney is going to carry Massachusetts.) The trouble for Daniels is that the reason Indiana is in pretty good fiscal shape today is that Daniels raised the sales tax, and that will kill him with Republican primary voters. The Tea Partiers who want to destroy government rather than to make it work better won’t accept that.
On the other extreme, I suspect that Trump or Palin might lose 49 states to Obama. (Trump could lose 50.)
Looking at things state by state, it is pretty hard to see Republicans switching enough states from 2008 to defeat Obama in 2012 — and Republican governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida are a major reason for that. Paul Ryan’s attempt to end Medicare as we know it has probably killed Republican chances in Florida.
” Don’t worry about Lichtman’s Keys to the White House. I leave these theories up to liberal professors (in the likes of our fellow member Charlie Hall”
ROTF!!!
While Lichtman *is* indeed a liberal, the last time the Lichtman keys failed was 1856. He predicted both the Bush 2004 and the Obama 2008 wins far in advance and predicted an Obama 2012 win last summer.
“It was common practice back in the day to show an animated cartoon or two before the main feature. “
I stopped going to movie theaters when they got rid of the cartoons.
“2.5+ mil. 2010 population count + 1/4 mil. commuters + 2.8% undercount.”
The 2010 data aren’t out yet, but here is what the Census Bureau found in 2000:
Total resident population 2,465,326.
Total workers working in the area 667,477.
Total workers living in the area 901,027, of whom 431,559 worked in Brooklyn.
Daytime population 2,231,776.
“how many years did all jewish men and woman boys and girls never carried on shabbos”
Warsaw had an eruv until 1939; Jews carried in what was then the largest Jewish city in the world.
“If one sticks to loshon Hakodesh, he’s got all the seforim he needs and doesn’t need these aids in other languages. “
Funny, Chazal didn’t agree. Neither did Rav Saadiah Gaon, Rabbi Bachyah ibn Pakuda, Rambam, Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi, the author of Orchot Tzadikim, the author or Tzena Urenah, the authors of Meam Loez, Rav Hirsch, Rav Herzog, Rav Soloveitchik, Rav Lichtenstein….
“there are females dressed inappropriately in virtually every movie.”
There are females dressed appropriately by gentile standards, but not according to our stricter standards, on every city block in New York. But we don’t imprison ourselves.
I rarely go to movies, and don’t have a television, but there are some brilliant movies that are worth seeing. We often buy them online, download them, and watch them on the computer.
My only Pesach chumrah: We don’t sell chametz.