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I have lots of non-Jewish friends. I don’t apologize for Torah at all. I’m very confident in my hashkafah and don’t feel like anyone else’s ideas are at all a threat.
“there is approaching ZERO significance to a warming trend of 130 years in relation to the pattern over 5 billion years. “
The last time the sea level rose substantially, about 11,000 years ago, we didn’t have over a billion people living at the old sea level. That is NOT non-significant.
“Drill, Baby Drill” got us the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
But the fact that you repeat that mantra shows that you don’t understand energy economics. The US does not have ANY easily extracted petroleum reserves left. None. Saudi Arabia has huge amounts. It could, if it wished, dump so much oil on the world market at such low prices that ever well in America would be unable to recover its production costs. Higher costs are GOOD for American oil production because it makes more wells competitive.
Coal is a terribly dirty and dangerous fuel in every respect. People die from its extraction and burning. And it is unsuitable for motor vehicle fuel unless you want to bring back steam railway locomotives, which would require huge government subsidies. And most of the easily accessible coal in the Eastern US was mined out decades ago.
Natural gas is a fuel that is in plentiful supply in the US, but much of the gas requires advanced “fracking” techniques that are very problematic environmentally and very expensive. If such production ever comes to the Catskills, New York City will have to spend ten to twenty billion dollars on a new water treatment plant, as will all the upstate communities that rely on either Catskill groundwater or NYC surface water. NYC residents will see increased taxes and some of those small commuities might go bankrupt. The alternative is to make the gas producers pay for these externalities, but there probably isn’t the political will to do this, and in any case it would make the cost of the gas noncompetitive. It should be pointed out that the current ban on drilling for oil and gas in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico is in part based on the fact that the people in Florida think that their beaches are of greater economic value than the oil.
Nuclear power has not been cost effective in the US for decades. And it only works as an electricity generator. Electric cars have not taken the country by storm, to say the least.
Biofuels are generally not cost effective without subsidies.
Hydroelectric power has reached its maximum potential in the US.
Use of wind and solar power is increasing but they will never make up more than a small fraction of the energy supply in the US.
—
The truth is that it will take a combination of most if not all of these to meet America’s future energy demands. “Drill, baby, drill” is a mantra not an energy plan. And higher energy prices are good because it will encourage more of these energy alternatives and potentially reduce the flow of dollars to the anti-Semites.
To all: I’ve said this before.
If you REALLY want to carry a concealed handgun, move to Vermont. No permit is needed. Just don’t take it into a government building or school, and don’t take it out of state.
And enjoy the fact that Vermont has a Democratic Congressman, a Democratic and a Socialist US Senator, a Democratic Governor (as of this coming January), and overwhelming Democratic majorities on both houses of its legislature. 🙂
“We DO need the criminal laws we have TO BE ENFORCED. “
No argument there in principle, but the US law enforcement and judicial system are actually very draconian. Within the past year we have seen Shalom Rubashkin sentenced to 27 years in prison and Martin Grossman executed. And Jonathan Pollard remains in prison, unable ever to appeal his life sentence BECAUSE THERE AREN’T ANY LIBERAL JUDGES at least at the federal level: If a convicted felon misses a deadline for an appeal, our Lock ‘Em Up and Throw Away The Key Judges with whom Republicans have packed the judiciary don’t care about justice, they care only about process. And it is attitudes like yours that are keeping the situation the way it is.
Josh31 is correct on both points. You can’t definitively attribute any one storm or event to global warming. It is the long term trend that is clear.
And indeed too-draconian restrictions on energy use could potentially have a severe effect on economic productivity. That would be insane. But reasonable restrictions and/or higher taxes on fossil fuel use will improve the environment, create jobs in countries that have few energy resources (and the US now falls into that category as essentially all of our easy-to-reach oil reserves have been drilled out), and reduce the power of the oil-wealthy anti-Semites in Latin America and the Arab world. There is really no downside here and I don’t understand why more Jews don’t realize this.
Regarding Dave Hirsch’s call for more facts and figures, with a quick internet search will find many time series that clearly show the warming — and none that don’t. Anything prior to about 1880 is based on limited data and/or imputation from descriptions of climates. After about 1980 we also have satellite temperature data. Further evidence is the melt of sea ice, retreat of glaciers, and the advancing of deserts, all of which have been well documented.
I should also mention that in Riverdale you can’t tell the FFBs from the BTs from the gerim — everyone is a part of the community. I happen to think that is as it should be but if you want a place with a caste system you should not consider it.
I live in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. It is very friendly, and although the black hatters are outnumbered by the modern orthodox like me, we eat in each others’ kitchens, pray in each others’ shuls, and greet each other with Good Shabbos.
However, it is pretty expensive here (although much less so than Manhattan) and there aren’t that many singles.
Why this promotion of Yeshivish? Wouldn’t it be better to use proper Hebrew, Yiddish, and/or English?
yutorah.org has more shiurim than any person could listen to in one lifetime.
Scrabble.
My not-yet wife consistently beat me. I like smart women.
“I’m constantly told that I have no right to disagree “
Maybe you don’t. But your rav does!
‘And if I dare to follow a rav who offers a lenient opinion, all I hear is “is your rav greater than Gadol X?”‘
The people who say that need to consider two things:
(1) Your rav may indeed be greater than Gadol X, just not as well known.
(2) Gadol X might well be equally lenient in your particular situation.
If you are following your own rav everyone else must accept that.
IIRC the other issue was that Chazal didn’t see gambling as a productive enterprise so they pasuled any professional gambler for eidus. As usual, consult your local orthodox rabbi.
em<Aren’t we supposed to “meditate on [the Torah] by day and by night?>
It is a chiyuv d’oraita for every Jewish male to recite the shema every night. In fact, it is the very first mishnah in the oral torah!
A few years ago someone in my neighborhood failed to comply with an order from a beit din to offer his wife a get. The rabbi of his shul, a prominent talmid chacham, banned him from the building and forbid anyone from giving him any social or other benefit according to the harchakot of Rabbeinu Tam. One member was instructed that he needed to be disinvited from a family simchah.
He went to the other synagogues figuring that the other rabbis in the neighborhood wouldn’t honor the ban. To the contrary, not a single rabbi in the neighborhood would have anything to do with him! After three months he finally relented and gave the get.
If all neighborhoods would be like mine, we wouldn’t need as many listings of agunot in the Jewish Press.
Oh, the Shabat after he gave the get he was back at his old shul. The rabbi who had banned him ordered the gabbai to give him the shlishi aliyah. All was forgiven.
“Once in a while” is not a problem with gambling.
As to whether it is a halachic problem to gamble, CYLOR.
“What about women who work in an environment that precludes covering your hair with a hat or tichel or snood? What are they supposed to do?”
My wife’s employer has an absolute rule against wearing headcoverings EXCEPT when required for religious reasons. Most employers in America will be lenient here, especially in the NY area where there are so many Jewish and Muslim women who cover their hair. There may also be some protection under state civil rights law.
My wife has a whole closetful of hats and scarves for a total cost of less than a single human hair wig.
“When did Jewish women wear wigs for the first time?”
While they seem to have been mentioned in the gemara as commenters above have noted, wigs were pretty much unknown in lands were Jews lived for a thousand years and returned in Europe in early modern times as a non-Jewish custom among both men and women. Most of the founding fathers of the United States wore wigs. (George Washington was an exception.) Jews simply followed the non-Jewish customs. With rare exceptions such as British judges, men stopped wearing wigs about 200 years ago.
There WILL be some countries that will benefit from global warming in the long run, most notably Russia and Canada. More land will be habitable, more land will be arable, and the Northeast and Northwest passages will become navigable more of the year. However even in the short run they are suffering; both countries had horrible forest fires this past summer because of heat and drought.
For most of the rest of the world, there isn’t much benefit. And if the sea level does rise, we will be facing Katrinas all over the world.
Zach is correct, there was actually a New York Times article a few days ago that explained the science behind the fact that some climate zones will become more wet because of global warming. And wet combined with thirty degree weather means snow!
Mod-80 and Dave,
There is NO question that the earth has warmed over the past 130 years. That is the period over which we have decent temperature series worldwide. Being a sceptic about that is like being a sceptic about whether a pig is kosher — the data are that clear.
While the increase does correlated with increased fossil fuel consumption and increased intensive agriculture, that is not an absolute proof as correlation does not automatically prove causality. Furthermore, the association between other potential factors are not strong enough to explain the associations between the human activity and the warming. Therefore most scientists agree that human activity probably is responsible for at least some of the warming. However, it is possible that some other factor may eventually be discovered.
Also not completely well understood is why the greatest temperature increases have been in the Arctic. Increases in temperate zones have been relatively small by comparison. Fortunately the melting ice in the Arctic is sea ice, which does not increase the sea level.
One of my former professors, Dr. Richard Lindzen, is well known as one of the “sceptics” but he is simply unconvinced about the causes of the warming, not that the warming exists. Another one of the sceptics, Prof. Bjorn Lomborg, still thinks it is a serious enough problem that we need to take action. In short, the question is NOT whether global warming has happened: There is NO doubt about that. The question is what to do about it.
“do you have any other alternatives? “
There are sources within our mesorah that took an allegorical approach to Bereshit. There is nothing in our mesorah that would preclude HaShem from setting up evolutionary biology.
“I think that 5,771 years ago Hashem created the physical universe by rapidly expanding the initial singularity. Then at some point He said ‘dai’ and that expansion slowed to a crawl.”
You can think that, but there is no Tanna, Amora, Gaon, or Rishon who suggested it. The idea of a young universe looking old originiated with Christians in the 19th century. I get my hashkafah from Chazal and Rishonim, not modern Christians.
“I heard scientists claim there was no flood.”
There is absolutely no evidence that Mount Everest was ever under water, so this is a problem if you are a biblical literalist like some Christians. But Chazal say that the flood did not cover the entire world, so this is not a problem for us. Furthermore, there are flood narratives from different cultures all over the world that had no contact each other until modern times. Finally, there is absolutely overwhelming scientific evidence that sea levels worldwide rose by hundreds of feet about 11,000 years ago, and some evidence of other significant rises in bodies of water such as the Black Sea.
“Splitting the sea is not a rational occurance. “
Why not? There are places in Canada where tides regularly retreat 17 meters — vertically! Why could something like that not have happened at the sea at the time described in Sefer Shemot?
“Nobody can tell us that the Torah was always misunderstood, even if we can argue about certain translations and phrasings. “
As yitayningwut points out, some of our classical commentators DO say that the previous understandings are misunderstandings. You can’t get around the fact that Rambam and Ibn Ezra insisted on certain interpretations that Chazal did not suggest.
“a supernatural being as a possible variable. this supernatural being could have created the cosmos as they were and set them to shift thus skewing those calculations”
A supernatural being of course could have done that. But there is nothing within our mesorah that indicates that is what happened.
“Charlie, You cannot apply the Aggadaic rule to the Torah.”
I never said to do so!
“The Torah was given to be understood, and it was understood a certain way for 3000 years.”
This is misleading. Rishonim came up with novel understandings that had no precedent in Chazal. Even some Acharonim came up with novel understandings.
“How to reconcile the Torah’s description with science’s findings is up to you.”
This is correct; there is no chiyuv to believe any particular reconciliation. Reconciliation is not something that particularly troubles me.
bombmaniac,
Science does not object to God. It just describes and predicts natural phenomena. If you could predict God’s actions, you would be either (1) a prophet, which we don’t have today, or (2) God Himself.
metrodriver,
The Big Bang was conclusively proven by the discovery of the cosmic background radiation by Penzias and Wilson in the 1960s. (This had nothing to do with Darwin who lived a century earlier.) That discovery also gave a proof of the approximate age of the universe: 14 billion years. There is also a lot of evidence for evolution and no competing theory explains as many facts and predicts as many observations; Darwin was not stupid but a careful observational scientist. It is not rational to dismiss empirical facts.
Furthermore, empirical observation can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God or of His Torah. That is why there is no contradiction between accepting the results of science and believing in God, including the fact that He created the universe.
I know someone whose wife refused to accept a get. As the rabbis in his case (as in most cases) were very reluctant to grant the heter meah rabbonim, it really soured him on Judaism. I saw some statistics from Israel from a few years ago and there were about the same number of women as men on the chief rabbi’s office list of persons who were in violation of beit din orders to grant or accept a get. It is possible that the Jewish Press may be concentrating on the women because in most cases there is no halachic option for them when the husband is recalcitrant. Have you written to the Jewish Press? I’ve corresponded with their editor and found him very willing to communicate.
“at least in the times of the geonim and the rishonim”
Or today. Rabbi Avraham ben HaRambam’s essay on how to understand aggadata is used as the introduction to the Ein Yaakov collection of aggadata.
Furthermore it should be noted that the classical commentaries often bring down interpretations that stray far from the pshat of the text. (I’ve already mentioned the example of the flood not covering the entire world.) While pshat is very important, we are not permitted to dismiss these commentaries chas v’shalom! Judaism has never been exclusively literalist in its biblical interpretation.
I can’t wait! I haven’t been able to use my cross country skis yet!!! Bring it on!!!!!
” those they tell us are literal we have an absolute chiyuv to believe. “
Rambam, Ramban, and Rabbi Avraham ben HaRambam all appear to disagree with you on this one.
Mod-80. You are correct! I concede the point.
We have cats. Mod-80 mentioned some of the issues. Caring for animals is seen in the Jewish tradition as something that can inspire us to be more caring about our fellow humans. Cats and dogs, the most popular pets, have also provided direct human benefit: Cats because they control rodents (and indeed many small storeowners in NY continue to use them for this) and dogs for a wide variety of work.
Here are some more halachic issues:
While you can’t feed your pet a meat and milk mixture, you CAN feed it a poultry and milk mixture because the accepted halachah is that poultry is meat d’rabbanon.
You must always be sure your pet has food before you eat.
You can’t feed your pet chametz on pesach but you can feed it kitniyot even if you are Ashkenazic.
If your pet, without your prompting, uses its claws to cut toilet paper on Shabat, you can use the cut toilet paper. (I actually asked this shilah and that was the response I got!)
Cat litter is muktzah on Shabat; you can’t make blessings near the litter boxes.
Pikuach nefesh does not apply to animals.
Some communities have the minhag of not keeping non-kosher animals as pets; I’m not sure what is the source for this. This would eliminate cats and dogs, the two most popular pets.
Mod-80,
I should add that if ones posek actually tells someone to follow a particular minhag, I would never say that a Jew should not follow the posek under such circumstances!
Mod-80,
IIRC tosafot and the Rema point out that the non-Jews of today aren’t idol worshipers so the prohibitions stated in the gemara aren’t applicable. We can even do business with them on their holidays.
Regarding staying indoors, B”H Jews aren’t systematically murdered on Christian holidays any more. I don’t think any shul anywhere in the world has cancelled Shabat services this year based on the custom you mention.
nfgo is also correct on the alleged characterization of Obama as a messiah. I’ve been reading dailykos for years and I’ve never seen that term used except by a troublemaking Republican troll.
nfgo is correct. Lincoln was unquestionably the most polarizing President. He could have simply let the South secede. The North would have abolished slavery, and refused to return fugitive slaves to the Confederacy, whose economy would have completely collapsed. The other polarizing aspect of Lincoln was that he pushed throught the aggessive Republican domestic agenda while a war was in progress. The next president to do that was George W. Bush, with disasterous results. It was not until Grant’s presidency that the consequences of the Republican Give Everything to Business economic policy were seen, and what resulted was the longest recession in American history.
popa,
Your analysis is not correct. First, December 25, 2010 on the Julian calendar is January 7, 2011 on the Gregorian calendar, not January 6. And indeed some Orthdox Christians will be celebrating Christmas on January 7. However, in 1923 most Orthodox churches did adopt a calendar similar to the Gregorian and therefore they will celebrate Christmas on December 25. (I have read that this remains controversial.) January 6 is a different Christian holiday, Epiphany. Armenian Christians celebrate Christmas on that day.
I don’t understand why we are allowing ANY Jewish practice to depend on the date of a non-Jewish holiday.
I try to learn torah every night, including Dec. 24 on the secular calendar. Why wouldn’t I?
“The Flood
Didn’t happen as described in the Bible.”
Chazal also say it didn’t happen as described in the Bible. The Bible says that the flood covered the entire world. The gemara says that it didn’t cover Eretz Yisrael.
“Abraham Surviving The Oven”
“Mount Sinai Covering The Jews”
These aren’t in the Torah but in aggadata, and there is no chiyuv to believe their literal truth (or the literal truth of any particular aggadata).
“The nations are obliged to set up laws and enforce them. Do you know where the standards for those laws are discussed? “
Yes, in Sanhedrin 55-59. And the gemara requires an eyewitness to the crime for a death sentence in a Noachide court. The US executes people based on zero eyewitnesses.
His crimes don’t meet the constitutional definition of treason. And it may be difficult to prosecute him under US law as (1) he may have done nothing illegal while *in* the US so there is a jurisdictional issue here, (2) never has an intermediary been prosecuted for espionage, only the original source. The best bet for US prosecution is that if he encouraged others to turn over classified information to him he could be prosecuted on conspiracy charges.
But in the mean time he is facing sexual assault charges in Sweden. It may be a while before the US gets a crack at him.
I agree that what he has done has terrible consequences. He is truly an enemy of the free world.
klach,
Why would it matter?
I’ve been told by two Jews should not serve on juries in capital cases in the US not because of the form of government but because the standards for handing down a death sentence don’t meet the halachic standards of even non-Jewish courts.
“the bochurim in japan were unwittingly doped into smuggling drugs”
They claim that they thought they were smuggling antiquities. I believe them totally.
The problem is, that is also a crime — and also asur halchically. See Bava Kamma 113, which they apparently were never taught.
But why does one need to have learned Bava Kamma in order to know that smuggling is wrong? That should be a natural thing for anyone with decent midot to understand!
nfgo3,
The irony about McConnell is that the tax package he agreed to probably ensures Obama’s re-election as it is essentially a massive economic stimulus. But it now looks like the ONLY essential priority for Republicans is low tax rates for their base supporters, millionaires. Everything else is a candidate to be thrown under the bus.
“Maybe I am just following Dina D’malchusa.”
While the extent of Dina Malchutcha Dina is debated among poskim, none argue that it overrides explicit Torah commandments. See below.
“the states are generally very liberal about allowing you to shoot intruders”
But is HaShem so liberal? I haven’t studied this extensively, but according to some opinions you must give the intruder a warning, and the permission to kill the intruder only applies if it is not possible to stop him with a non-lethal wound (or, possibly, escape). I’ve seen that attributed to the Remah.
Everyone should read the article by Edwin Black entitled, “Why Jonathan Pollard is Still in Prison”. While it was written in 2002, nothing has appeared since that would change any of the things discussed in the article. It can be found via a quick Google search.
YWN editors might want to see if they can get permission to republish it — or, even better, ask the author to update it for publication here. Lack of information, or promulgating things that aren’t factual, will not get Pollard out of prison.
“He gave info to an Allie who should according to treaties been privy to the info regardless “
Nope. The US does not have mutual defense treaties with Israel. Furthermore, Pollard was not authorized to release such information to anyone.
“he made a plea deal which the U.S. reneged on.”
Nope. He and his ex-wife violated the terms of the plea deal by giving interviews without permssion. Prosecutors and judges are not lenient with people who violate plea agreements.
“such blatant miscarriage of justice and religous discrimination”
Nope. There is no evidence of religious discrimination here. John Walker has been in prison longer than Pollard.
“present concrete actions to take”
Have him fill out applications for parole and clemency. He has been eligible for parole for 15 years but has never applied.
“free an ally’s agent who did nothing whatsoever harmful to the US”
You do not know that. None of us know what Pollard sold to Israel, or what Israel did with the information.
“if pollard was a black he wouldve been freed a long time ago by all the black activists”
You have no evidence of that. How many African Americans have been convicted of espionage?
” bush didn’t free pollard either”
Nor did Reagan or the first Bush.
“When the punishment is grossly unproprtional to the crime”
Is it really unproportional? Walker, Ames, and Hanssen also got life sentences. Walker has been in prison longer than Pollard. And the Rosenbergs were executed after having been convicted of spying for a then-ally.
“much more than any comparable conviction”
As I showed above, this statement is a lie. Why do we have to lie?
“In times of war, it is punishable by the death penalty.”
Or not in times of war. See the Rosenbergs. Pollard got off easy compared to them.
” He is the ONLY person in this history of the US with a conviction of life for spying for an ally “
Highly disingenuous. The Rosenbergs were executed for spying for an ally. And Israel technically was not an ally but a neutral country as the US does not have a formal mutual defense treaty with it.
The poor quality of the arguments used here show why Pollard is still in prison and will likely remain so.
One more comment:
“why are all of the roshei yeshiva and gedolim [who have shaychos] staunchily anti-democrat”
First of all, this is not true; Rabbi Genack of YU is a staunch Democrat who campaigned for Sen. Clinton. There are other counterexamples.
Second, it should be pointed out that there is NO reason for Obama to release Pollard if we are going to continue the terrible vitriol against him — and other Democrats — in forums such as this.
Why is his imprisonment immoral? He is a convicted spy and a traitor to the US!
I’m all for letting him out — he has been in prison for 25 years — but his treatment was more lenient than that given the Rosenbergs.
“I didn’t demand FDR to compensate me for the genocide of my grandparents and nation “
FDR didn’t commit genocide.
“We don’t make as much noise – or usually write such long posts – but we’re here”
And I don’t have time to respond to the anti-Obama megillah point by point. I have a day job. And the Obama-haters wouldn’t care anyway.
We just finished the most productive Congressional session in decades. It passed two huge economic stimulus packages. It set up a framework so that no American will ever be forced to go without health insurance, something that was originally proposed (by Theodore Roosevelt!) 98 years ago. It ratified the strategic arms treaty with Russia. It finally provided for the healthcare needs of the 9/11 responders — over nine years after the terrorist attack. It finally got rid of the stupid prohibition against Gays serving in the military. Arguably there has not been a Congress since the 1965-1966 session has so much progress been made in so many areas.
That is pretty good for an inexperienced President. He knew when to compromise and when not to compromise. He gets grief from the Left and from the Right, so he is probably right in the center where he belongs. Similarly, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid deserve a huge amount of credit. Most commenters here are from the Right so they don’t appreciate what has just happened. Our country is better off as a result of the actions our elected officials have taken.
“Yeshivish is NOT a language. Its much less of a language than ebonics anyway. “
I heard a story about a tri-lingual Rosh Yeshiva whose student asked a question in shiur in yeshivish. Rather than answering the question, the RY requested that the student restate his question in his choice of Yiddish, English, or Hebrew, using proper grammar and vocabulary in either.
“unless Yiddish is your familiar language (which it still is for many). “
There is still one RY at YU who gives shiurim in Yiddish: Rabbi Gershon Yankelevitz. He is old enough to have known the Chofetz Chaim, and spent WW2 with the Mir Yeshiva in Shanghai.