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Plenty of non-church stuff to see, zahava’s dad covered them. We took a picture in front of the Arch of Titus- I was pregnant at the time, and I love this picture, because it goes to show that Titus and his precious Roman empire are long gone, but we Jews are still here and going strong by having Jewish children 🙂
WIY- what about someone who is divorced but remarried (presumably happily)? Would they be qualified to be a marriage counselor?
A philosopher (forget who) once said that before he was married he had 6 theories on how to raise children, and now he has 6 children and no theories…
There’s a lot I was so sure I would never do as a parent until I became a parent. There’s also a lot I was so sure I would never do as a wife until I became a wife. Marriage and parenting- you can read up on them, but you will never be prepared for it until you’re there. Most of it, you pick up as you go. I mean, do you honestly think that people who yell at their spouse think it’s ok to do that? Most people know it’s wrong, but sometimes, in the heat of it, you lose it. Same goes for kids- you think you’ll never give them candy, but on a rough day, you just can’t help it. These are thing you can’t truly understand until you’ve been there.
Anyone who thinks this is a lack of bitachon has a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept. Bitachon doesn’t mean going through life believing that Hashem is watching out for us and therefore nothing bad will happen, because tragedies do happen. It means that you believe that whatever Hashem throws your way is for the best, even if you can’t see how. You should prepare yourself for certain possibilities (within reason); you should have a Plan B (again, within reason- maybe a plan C,D,E would be a bit much, but nothing wrong with a Plan B). You do your part, and when Hashem throws a curveball or a particularly nasty slider, you deal with it, always with the understanding that He’s looking out for you even when it doesn’t seem that way.
I don’t have a source or anything, but I heard a story about a couple who got separated during the Holocaust, both survived and found each other, but they had to get divorced because he was a Kohen and she had been assaulted by a Nazi.
if you want to do it part time, maybe you could work with small groups- that way you can get more paying customers without the hours. There was a lady in my area who was doing this awhile ago- giving aerobics classes. She did pretty well- between all the girls in shidduchim, and all the married ladies having babies, lots of frum women are looking to lose weight and many need someone to help them along.
I have this issue with a family member. It’s so much easier with a purely treif home, then everyone knows you can’t eat there- they may think you’re silly for keeping “all those rules”, but at least they won’t be insulted because they know they’re not keeping the rules. But someone who THINKS they’re keeping perfectly kosher will be insulted if you insinuate that they’re not.
In my case, we try to come at times when they’re only serving snacks (in other words, out of a package, so you know what you’re eating is kosher) and don’t eat meals there. We do make sure to always eat something while we’re there (something that we know for sure is ok, not off the dishes etc). Maybe there’s a way you can still eat certain things there?
Droid- it’s quite clear from looking at the rest of the mishna that this particular mishna is NOT halacha. So yes, it is possible to say that the guidelines set forth in the mishna are not applicable nowadays.
Mamashtakah- this gadol knows both mine and my husband’s families well (and yes, he knows us too). We see him once a year for a bracha (he comes to our area once a year). I suppose we could have asked for a reason, but we were upset at the time about hearing no and kind of just took it silently.
There’s a widespread misconception about what “kibbud av va’em” means. It means you must respect your parents. It does NOT mean you have to run your life the way they want you to. You are under no obligation to listen to them if they tell to marry X or follow Rav Y. However, even when making divergent choices, you still must accord them the proper respect. Even if they ask you to do an aveira (in which case you are FORBIDDEN to do as they say), you still have to act respectfully.
We wanted to start planning the move for next summer. Then we went to a gadol for a bracha and he said it is not the right time for us. True, unless I name this gadol, you’ll all be skeptical, and some of you will think we are silly for asking and following blindly when said gadol didn’t even give us a reason, just a a statement that now is not the time. But that’s that, for now. We will in the meantime daven that when we ask again next year, it will be the right time, and we will be zocheh to make the move.
In my experience, “no iron” means just that IF AND ONLY IF you treat the shirts properly- as in, wash according to the directions, and hang them up in the closet. If you’re going to throw them in a heap on the floor, or crumple them in your going-away-for-Shabbos bag, then you bet you’re gonna need to iron them!
I didn’t really get it till my son was born. 2 sleepless nights and what felt like 8,000 dirty diapers were enough to warrant a phone call to my parents letting them know that I get it now 🙂
It all boils down to my pre-motherhood days versus post-motherhood. As a teenager, and also as a married woman yet to have kids, I went to shiurim and stayed up all night. Now that I’m a mommy, I stay home taking care of the baby and (hopefully) getting some sleep. I suppose one day in the far future, I will have a youngest child who will be old enough to stay up learning, and when that time comes, I will probably go back to doing what I did prior to having children.
I had a great-uncle who married a non-Jew and one of their children converted in his mid-20s. Aside from the fact that he most certainly kept up a relationship with his parents, there were some interesting tidbits- like, halachically, his Jewish father was no longer considered his father. When he died, this cousin did not sit shiva or tear kriah b/c there was no obligation to do so. He did, however, say kaddish because his father was still a Jew who needed someone to say kaddish for him.
physically or politically? If you mean physically, then me too 🙂
It’s legal to withhold rent, but not a good idea, because it can be held against you in court. Courts don’t look kindly on self-help, even if you were right. Consult a lawyer for the best way to handle this.
It often depends on how much older we are talking. My husband got married before his older brother but they are only 15 months apart, so my brother-in-law didn’t care one whit and had even expected that it would happen that way. He was no old bachelor when we got married, did not have that much more shidduch experience than my husband had, and he ended up getting married about a year later anyway. If the siblings are, say, 5 years apart, then I could see how it might be harder for the older one and more sensitivity would be required.
You mean aside from women who follow one of the aforementioned minhagim? No. I have only heard of pregnant/nursing women possibly being allowed. And that was not a blanket heter, it was a case-by-case thing, and even where it was allowed, some were told they still have to go according to a legitimate minhag (such as the yekke or dutch) and can’t just eat a steak and wash it down with milk.
There is little practical effect in our situation. Just because the halacha says the money is my husband’s, doesn’t mean he can keep me out of the loop. We both know how much money is coming in/going out, what our credit scores are, where all our money goes etc. We never hide purchases from each other. We pay our bills and file our taxes together to that we both know what is going on. It is so important that regardless of who is making the money, or who the assets ‘belong’ to, BOTH spouses at least know the general financial situation.
OTD doesn’t happen from one minute to the next- there must have some inner turmoil going on for a while before it became outward.
In any event, there’s not much you can do if you don’t have a relationship with. Maybe talk to a Rav who is knowledgeable in these matters and see what advice he can give you. And daven for her!
From what I understand, OP is asking about cars at an Orthodox shul on Shabbos (presumably it would not be such a surprise to see cars at a Conservative shul…) Some Orthodox shuls have a congregants who are not Orthodox but for whatever reason prefer attending that shul; it’s been known to happen.
We won’t go to basketball or football games because of the cheerleaders, and we stay away from hockey because of the fighting. But we LOVE baseball (Go Yankees!) and that has none of that- it’s all good, clean fun. We go to a few Yankees games every summer and we bring our little boy, and it’s good clean fun. He’s only 1.5, but I hope to teach him how to fill out a box score in the next few years 🙂
My husband’s best friend is divorced less than a year after he got married. The stereotype that divorced men are always the bad guy is KILLING his shidduch chances. Abuse is a very extreme scenario in general. Most of the time, both sides are at fault. My husband’s friend is one of the nicest guys we know, and admits that he made some mistakes in his first marriage. His ex-wife also contributed to the break-up, probably more than he did, but he does not go around blaming her for his problems- he has worked on himself so that he’ll get it right the next time. Unfortunately, too many people pass up this gem of a guy because of stereotypes and unfair assumptions, and it’s heartbreaking to watch.
My parents had a ‘good’ divorce, much like Shloime Dachs’ parents. They both came to all my (and my brother’s) school events, visiting day, birthday parties etc; they always lived within walking distance of each other; they were pretty good about keeping a consistent parenting style and if one of us needed to be disciplined, they would talk on the phone and decide on a course of action together. Rather odd how they managed to be so amicable post-divorce when they couldn’t manage even basic civility while married, but ok. They’re an example of divorce done right. It still hurts, yes, and it was traumatic, but we both came out fine because they always put our needs ahead of their issues. I had no problem getting married (and keeping up great shalom bayis)and my brother is just entering the parsha and will probably be ok too. My parents walked me down the aisle together because they raised me together, even though they were not married for most of that time; when my brother IY’H gets married, they will do the same. It’s the parents who can’t keep it civil who ruin their kids.
Parents would be wise to teach their kids the value of a dollar and not just pay for everything the kids ask for. However, if the parent WANTS to pay for everything, that’s their business. Not the wisest idea, but that is their own fault, not the kid’s.
Certainly if she looks pregnant, give her your seat. Happens to be, pregnant women could also use the seat even before they look it, although I don’t think there’s a reason to assume every young lady you see is pregnant and not showing. When I was going through morning sickness, I would just ask for it- I looked green enough that I usually got a seat (that, or they didn’t want to risk getting thrown up on if I really was as sick as I said 🙂 ). By the time I hit 5 months, I didn’t have to ask anymore, there was always somebody who stood.
If people would just give me a straight answer- yes or no- without requiring 87 phone calls back and forth to decide whether or not to go on a single date, maybe, just maybe, I would set people up more often.
Downs is genetic but not hereditary. Having healthy children makes it no less likely to potentially have a downs child, and having a downs child makes it no less likely for your other children to be healthy. Siblings of a downs children are no more likely than anyone else to have downs children.
It’s a long road, so you have to really want it and you have to get on the road early on; the people who go to med school are not the people who change their major 5 times…
I know a few frum woman doctors and I wish there were more b/c it’s much more comfortable for woman to see a woman, and it’s helpful in general to have a frum doctor who is aware of potential halachik concerns. There are fields of medicine that are less demanding (hours-wise) than others, such as dermatology and radiology, so a lot of women flock to those fields.
As for shidduchim, can’t help you there; I am sure some guys would be uncomfortable with it, but do you want those guys anyway? I am in law school- another place where you don’t see too many frum girls- but I got married right after coming home from seminary, before I had even started college, so shidduchim were of no concern by the time law school became relevant. So maybe do it my way? 🙂
DO NOT TAKE ANY UNILATERAL ACTION WITHOUT CONSULTING A COMPETENT LEGAL AUTHORITY. I’m not a lawyer, but I am in law school and I recently learned about this. You are probably entitled to relief, including possibly paying less rent b/c of your landlord’s breach of the warranty of habitability, but if you take action on your own, you could end up as the breacher and on the hook. Better to first bring up the complaint with the landlord, ask him to fix it and ask if you can deduct from this months rent. If he’s a decent human being, he’ll do the right thing. If not, talk to a lawyer who can advise you on the best way to proceed. Of course, lawyers are expensive, and it may just be worth it to let this slide. But whatever you do, don’t do it without first checking to make sure you don’t mess yourself up.
I’m left-handed. While I can’t tell you anything about tefillin (I’m female), I can tell you a bit about being a lefty. It can be inconvenient at times, but other than that, it’s nothing, you just learn to deal. There are stores (you can google them) that sell lefty products such as scissors or can openers, and you can buy those kinds of things for your son if you feel they may be helpful. Personally, I like that I can get out of having to do anything artsy because I can’t cut straight 🙂 Also, if your son plays any sports, lefty-ness can be to his advantage. In any event, don’t make a big deal out of it. It’s just a fact of life.
I don’t think its so much that people think they’re a bad person as much as our community seems to be rather behind the times when it comes to understanding what mental illness is, what causes it, etc. A lot of frum people still view it as some sort of chisaron on the part of the individual. Let’s take, for example, depression: Maybe if s/he studied more Torah/did more chesed/had more bitachon, they wouldn’t be depressed; s/he needs more simchas hachaim, needs a mussar shmuz from the Rav, because after all, the Torah says must be happy with your life, and if you’re not, clearly you’re not working enough at it. In reality, true depression is a medical condition requiring medical attention, and all the mussar/tischen/what have you will not make it go away. That’s where it stems from, and that’s where people need to be educated.
It’s a fact that second marriages have a significantly higher failure rate than first marriages. That’s not to say they can’t work- both my parents are in happy second marriages- but they take MUCH more work, and remember, oftentimes, the first marriage ended because of a lack of effort. The spouses going for a second shot automatically have baggage, if there are kids, you have to deal with the tremendous pressure of trying to get along with them (and they won’t make it easy), there is crazy money pressure, especially where you have a husband who has to pay alimony/child support to an ex wife. The odds are stacked against the couple; they are faced with unbelievable pressure, and that’s why so many don’t make it. This is not to say don’t get remarried, just that you have to know what you’re getting into and be prepared to deal with it, and work much harder than you would in a first marriage.
No guarantees with Columbia but you can definitely get into Fordham and they’ll probably offer you a nice scholarship to boot. There are tons on frum guys with BTLs at Fordham.
When you’re ready. And I doubt a person can really be ready less than 6 months-a year after. My mother started dating 1 year after, it took another 3 to actually get married; my father was still not ready to date again at that time and did not remarry until 10 years post-divorce. There is a lot of scarring and emotional damage that must be dealt with before trying to share your life with another person. Also, barring extreme cases, both spouses have a hand in the failure of the marriage. Once you’re done fuming at all the things your ex did wrong, you need to figure out what YOU did wrong and fix it (or at least significantly improve it) before foisting yourself on someone else.
I have big time yichus. Not saying who, but I’m willing to bet my house that most of you have at least a volume or 2 of his magnum opus in your home. That being said, my father is a BT. Clearly, someone a few generations back went OTD- someone who obviously had the same yichus, and was generationally closer too! So yeah, yichus doesn’t mean much more than interesting family history unless the descendants actually live up to the name.
Another child of divorce here, chipping in my $0.02: Yes, we are scarred from it, but all that means is that you have to check out the person and make sure that s/he has adequately recovered. If they came out ok, then there’s no reason to write them off. A few have said it already, but it bears repeating: many of us children of divorce are actually more motivated than a lot of other people to work on our marriages and avoid the mistakes of our parents, because we know first-hand the consequences of failure.
I also hate the argument that we didn’t have “good marriage models” to learn from growing up. Aside from the fact that there is plenty to learn from the bad- as in, what NOT to do- the assertion that we don’t know what good marriages look like is often patently false, especially if one or both of the parents remarried and did well. Both my parents are in successful second marriages (my mom remarried when I was 11, my dad when I was 15), and yes, I did pick up plenty of good habits from that.
One last thing- divorce is not the only childhood trauma that ought to be scrutinized in the context of a shidduch. Do people treat someone who lost a parent at a young age with the same caution? Well, they ought to. My husband lost a parent not long after his bar mitzvah, and believe me, he is plenty messed up from it. I don’t regret marrying him, b’h we are very happy together, but I can’t pretend that there weren’t problems- which all turned out to be directly related to his loss. I was put through the wringer because my parents were divorced, but nobody thought twice about whether or not the poor, nebach yosom was marriage material. Really, anyone who went through ANY significant childhood trauma needs to be looked at carefully, they may not be sufficiently healed to be ready for marriage.
In general: When there is a lunar eclipse, it will always be on the 14th, 15th, or 16th of the Hebrew month. That is why it is not uncommon for a lunar eclipse to happen on Purim/Pesach/Sukkos.
As for the siman ra: I too have heard that. It would explain why we Jews have had it rough over the centuries- lunar eclipses are pretty common (and correlate with our calendar), and are quite frequently visible somewhere in the world given the right time of month.
As most posters here say, most who intermarry really don’t care. If your religion is nothing to you, what’s to stop you from marrying that nice/smart/funny/attractive person you met in college/your favorite bar/the park and fell in love with?
Failed 4 times, and have given up for now 🙁
You should let your child get a license as soon as the law allows; driving is a crucial life skill and it’s best learned young. I wish I had learned at 16 (I didn’t learn b/c I was living in NYC and didn’t feel like it was necessary), I’m now 22 with a baby and I’m struggling to get it done now. I’m no longer in NYC, so I really need a car to get around- I can’t leave the neighborhood unless my husband is around or a nice neighbor is going where I am.
Now, just because your teenager HAS a license, doesn’t mean you have to get them a car or give them your keys whenever they ask. While still under your roof, you should let them practice by allowing them to drive you places, but not let them out for a spin or with friends. But that’s an entirely separate issue and should have no bearing on whether or not they learn how to drive. Like I said, it’s a really important skill and it’s unfair and unwise to deprive them of that.
Don’t you need a tv for those things to work? So isn’t it a moot point if you don’t have one?
I think there are different levels of ‘heter’. Sometimes the heter given is “usually not allowed, but this case is different”- probably perfectly fine to rely on such a heter, maybe even a good idea; then there’s “technically you can/there is what to rely on- but better not to”- in which case, you should think long and hard before going ahead. Heterim are important, and following a heter does not mean one is weak, lazy, or looking for convenience; more important is that you read between the lines of the heter (like the above examples) and that you don’t shop for heterim- as in, you will follow the heter you got, but you will also follow the issurim of this Rav.
I also have a nisayon story: I am married to a sefardi and our Rav holds that sheitals are assur (this is a hard psak for me to follow as I grew up ashkenazi). Anyway, when I was interviewing for a professional job, I was considering asking for a heter to wear a sheital to interviews and to work, should I land a job. I figured it would be an easy heter to get, since so many poskim hold that sheitals are fine and even preferable. My Rav did say I can rely on those psakim, but left me with the following thought: “If Hashem wants you to land a job, you will land it no matter what you wear on your head; if He does not want you to get a job, you won’t get it even with the fanciest, most natural wig.” I decided to interview in a tichel, and I got the job! All my worrying about a tichel setting me back turned out to be unfounded and I’m really glad I understood what my Rav really thought.
We don’t buy gifts, but we do tip the super and other maintenance people in the building. I think it’s called a ‘holiday bonus’. Anyway, a little extra something is customary at this time of year to the service people in your life. If you give, they won’t infer that you celebrate xmas, they know full well that you don’t; if you give nothing, they may very well think “see, those Jews are greedy and stingy”. If you give it this week with Chanukah coming up, they will probably view it as you giving them a little something in honor of your holiday, so that may be the way to go about it (that’s what we do with the super).
WIY- did you read the news from the other day? The latest closure was due to owing 2 years in back rent, and it was a fairly large school. You’d also be surprised at how many places that shouldn’t carry a mortgage still have a hefty one. Unless the school has been in current location and building for a few decades, chances are, there is a large mortgage. If they’re in a fairly new building, forget it, they’re definitely still paying for it.
A) This is not caused by the recession; these schools were being mismanaged for many years years before the recession, but they always managed to plug the gaps, extend credit etc. Now that we are in recession, those options don’t exist anymore. Although it took tough economic times to bring these problems to light, they were there underneath the surface for a long time beforehand.
B)WIY- they still have rent or mortgage, utilities, other staff costs, and even if the teachers don’t make that much, when you employ let’s say 75 of them, it adds up. Dinners barely make up for the cost of happening in the first place; fundraising will only get you so far, especially these days; tuition does not cover the costs.
My grandparents are German Holocaust survivors, so in my family, we do not buy any German products ever. We got a set of Wusthoff knives for our wedding and returned them for a non-German brand. The thing is, though, at this point, it’s more out of sensitivity to my grandparents than trying to punish the Germans. Those who were Nazis are almost all gone by now, and I find it unfair to punish the grandchildren who did nothing wrong and mostly feel horrified about what their grandparents did. There is still a Jewish community in Germany- you think they refrain from buying German products? I know a few current German Jews, and they’ve all said hands-down that Germany remains the best country in Europe for Jews right now. They don’t want to even approach that road that so many of their neighbors are turning to these days, so while anti-semitism has been steadily rising across Europe, Germany has mostly stayed away from that bandwagon.
I hate to break it to you, but anything well-paying is going to be “hard of schooling”. Now, if you do something that is enjoyable to you, it won’t matter how hard the work is.
I definitely agree that a sheital is a bad idea in a preschool setting. When I was in kindergarten, the morah got married in the middle of the year, and her first day back she was wearing a sheital. Naughty kids that we were, we yanked at it a lot and flung paint and clay at it. She wore only snoods after that.
By the way, wisewoman, would you say doctors are disorganized and unprofessional because they wear glorified pajamas to work?