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The person’s name is Rabbi Marder (I think I spelled it right) from Brooklyn. I believe that after teaching in the morning, he learned in a kollel in R’ Scheinerman’s shul on Ave P. He told me the story, and said he witnessed it himself.
Obaminator: If the mods here will allow it, I can even tell you the name of the person who told it to me. He learned in Lakewood under R’ Aharon Kotler, and was there when the story happened.
I once had a Rebbe who was a student of R’ Aharon Kotler. He told us the following story which he witnessed:
Some bochurim (including my Rebbe) were traveling with R’ Aharon to a simcha. On the way, they stopped at a nearby shul to daven mincha. The shul davened nusach sfard. R’ Aharon asked if he could daven for the amud, and they said yes. He walked up, and davened nusach Ashkenaz.
Afterward, one of his students asked him why he did this, if the minhag hamakom was to daven sfard. He replied, “Minhag hamakom is proper at times, but this is the proper nusach!”
There are many couples that need medical help to have children. Bonei Olam now has over 3,000 babies that they’ve helped with. Fertility treatments have a higher chance of multiples being born. Maybe that’s why there are more twins.
I’ve charged $60 for an hour of high school math.
Rabbi Bender is one of the top mechanchim in the world today. Unlike many other schools, he does not have a specific mold he tries to fit everyone into. He really knows what is best for each student, even if it doesn’t fit the standard “party line”.
The heavy rain over the first days caused my tarp to cave in the middle. For next year, I’m going to need a new shlock. ICOT, did you ever find out if Leiter’s sells that plastic shlock you mentioned?
The first time I davened Mussaf for the amud on Yom Kippur, I was talking to my grandmother about it afterward. She asked me what tunes I used, and one of them was the Ani Maamin mentioned a few posts ago. She told me that she clearly remembers sitting in the barracks in Auschwitz, singing that Ani Maamin. I guess someone from that train must have taught it to them – or she mistook it for a different tune.
Shalom bayis overrides leftover food. If your wife gets upset by it, then don’t do it!
Dr. Seuss: maybe R’ Ovadia didn’t say it’s pidyon, but he did say the Shas ministers should vote for the deal.
Minister Yishai met with R’ Ovadia Yosef to discuss this question, and was told it’s pidyon shevuyim, and they should do it.
People are debating whether it is right or wrong to release hundreds of terrorists to get back one person.
I don’t know the answer to that. I choose to focus on the positive thing here – after five years, it looks like Gilad is finally coming home!
I had tears in my eyes when I read the report. I can only imagine the joy they are feeling right now.
Just a short time ago, we all davened for Gilad to have a good year, and asked that this be the year Gilad gets to come home. Thank You, Hashem, for answering our tefillos in the affirmative!!!
deiyezooger: Ich hub nisht gelernt der yiddisher shprach. Afilu azai, ich trachten az ich tun a gitte arbit!
Thank you Google Translate for a few words I didn’t know!
Jothar wrote the position of the Moetzes on Weiss’s ordaining women. Here is the statement from the RCA:
In light of the opportunity created by advanced women’s learning, the Rabbinical Council of America encourages a diversity of halakhically and communally appropriate professional opportunities for learned, committed women, in the service of our collective mission to preserve and transmit our heritage. Due to our aforesaid commitment to sacred continuity, however, we cannot accept either the ordination of women or the recognition of women as members of the Orthodox rabbinate, regardless of the title.
That seems pretty clear cut, just as the Moetzes’s statement is.
msseeker: how often do they speak out against it? How many letters have they written?
The RCA has said that it doesn’t consider YCT a real yeshiva, and they’ve said that many things Avi Weiss does are wrong. They’ve been attacked for not doing more, not speaking out more often, etc. Why is that different than how chareidim treat NK?
When it comes to buying an esrog, what is important to people here in terms of the way it looks? Obviously it must be kosher, but the hiddur is in the look of the esrog.
I like mine to have a nice shape, and not to be too yellow. I find that if I get one that’s already bright yellow, by the time I get to Chol Hamoed, it’s starting to turn brown already. I prefer the pale yellow/light green shade, as it stays through the whole Yom Tov. After I have those two things, I’ll look to see how clean the esrog is.
This year, I was debating between 2 esrogim. One was 100% clean – no scratches, no marks, nothing. Completely clean. The problem was, I didn’t like the shape too much. The other esrog had the perfect shape, but had 2 small scratches near the bottom. The top half was completely clean. I went with the 2nd one, as the shape is more important to me.
If the store is owned by non-Jews, it’s not a problem. Dunkin Donuts has many kosher locations. Carvel had (has?) chalav Yisrael locations in Brooklyn, and they were open on Shabbos.
ItcheSrulik: I’m not saying to throw seniors to the wolves, I’m saying some shuls aren’t Orthodox, even if they claim to be. If a shul says its Orthodox, but its members don’t keep Shabbos, what does that tell you?
People who don’t think the RCA is frum enough are just looking for excuses to attack. If it wasn’t YCT and Weiss, it would be something else.
As long as the RCA sticks to its guns and doesn’t accept YCT semicha as legitimate, things will be ok. Most shuls won’t accept a Rabbi who’s not an RCA member.
I have a friend who got semicha from YCT. He’s a great guy, but I wouldn’t use him as my Rabbi. When he got a job, it was in a place where most of the members of the shul weren’t shomer shabbos, and the youngest person there was over 70. If they stick to those shuls, I think we’re fine.
The fact is that Modern Orthodoxy made its stance. It issued statements against the radical changes that Avi Weiss wants to implement, and is not treating his school as legitimate. Other than that, they just don’t even acknowledge it. Why should they?
Mine was fine, but my wife had a very rough one. She wasn’t feeling well, and asked our Rav what to do. He told her to go home and sleep. She replied that she had to watch our kids, and couldn’t sleep. He told her that R’ Shlomo Zalman has a teshuva about this case, and he wrote that in such a case, the husband should go home from shul and watch the kids so the wife can rest.
Of course, my wife didn’t tell me he said that until I got home from shul after Maariv. Now I know for next year!
When I was in yeshiva, once on Erev Yom Kippur I got a box of donuts. I sat down, and said hineni muchan u’mezuman l’kayem mitzvas achilah b’erev Yom Kippur, and stuffed my face with them.
How did Daniel die?
Does anyone know the words to MBD’s Mi Keamcha Yisroel? It’s on the Tamid B’Simcha album.
I listened to the version from Abish Brodt, and I was right – he switches the words Machnisei Dimah for heilige bashefer quite a few times.
The people in the sect are real nut-jobs. There was a case where a woman from the sect was abusing her kid, and the people running the sect encouraged her. They do many things that are against halachah, and many Rabbonim have spoken out against them.
I have a family member who is a teacher. She worked for a school for many, many years. A few years ago, something happened in the school, and a number of teachers were told they wouldn’t be returning the next year, or some left on their own, including my relative.
After this happened, the school stopped paying them for the rest of the school year. It wasn’t because of a lack of funds, it was because they knew they didn’t need them back the next year (this was proved).
A number of teachers went and called the school administrator to a din Torah. He never showed up. The beis din gave them permission to go to court over the matter, and they filed a lawsuit.
In my relative’s case, the amount owed is in the tens of thousands of dollars. She did not join the lawsuit because she felt it was wrong. The people controlling the money never asked for forgiveness.
How can you forgive someone like that? Who knowingly does wrong, and continues to do so? In such a case, there is no chiyuv to forgive, but still, you’d like to forgive those you don’t have to. In this case, I don’t know how it can be forgiven.
When I was still in school, I’d take a piece of bread so I should pas my exams.
BaalHabooze: I don’t know if the picture from the museum is really him or not. It’s probably one of those things we’ll never really know.
shlishi: There are some cases where Jewish children are available for adoption, but they are very few. Most times, when a Jewish couple adopts someone, it is a non-Jewish baby. They will usually do a geirus as soon as possible. At bar/bat mitzvah, the child has to decide whether they want to stay Jewish or not.
I heard of one boy who, at bar mitzvah, said he didn’t want to stay Jewish. He said he believed in the Torah, but didn’t want to be a Jew. He keeps the 7 mitzvos b’nei Noach, and is a good person. He said, why would I want all these rules when I can be a good person and get olam haba as a non-Jew?
workaholic: I never said it’s lower. I said it’s not better than the norm. It’s on par with everyone else. In the chassidic world, people are just more likely to live with an unhappy marriage than get divorced.
shlishi: I’ve listened to many tapes/cd’s from R’ Yaakov Bender. On one of them, he tells over a story where he was in a bungalow colony with R’ Moshe zt”l. Kids were crowding around taking pictures, and someone asked R’ Moshe if he should make them stop, as he felt it was disrespectful towards R’ Moshe. R’ Moshe responded with what I wrote above.
I don’t remember what tape/cd it was. Listen to all of them, and you’ll find it! Rabbi Bender is worth listening to!
This year, someone had a disagreement with my wife and decided to take revenge. How did they do so? By targeting our young children to get to us. The person did it anonymously, but I was able to find out that it was them. At first, they even led me to believe it was someone else!
That is something I can’t forgive. If someone does something to me, I can forgive you. But targeting my children is something I can’t let go. Not even having the guts to face me for it, and ask for forgiveness, makes it worse.
R’ Moshe Feinstein zt”l was very much in favor of children taking pictures of gedolim. He said it was better for them to put pictures of gedolim on their walls than pictures of baseball players.
This question is a powder keg waiting to explode. I’ll help light the fuse 🙂
I think that chassidim have a different view of the relationship between a man and his wife, and on marriage in general. They believe that love does not come beforehand, it only comes after a marriage, when the couple spends years together. When they first get married, they definitely don’t love each other. They probably don’t even like each other – they don’t know each other!
When I got engaged, I didn’t love my wife. She didn’t love me. We admitted it to each other. We liked each other a lot, and knew we were definitely compatible. By the time we got married, I did love her, and she loved me. That was because we spent time together during our engagement, and our relationship deepened.
A chassidish friend of mine told me of one other issue in the chassidish world. Divorce is so taboo there, that even if someone is not happy at all in their marriage, they will not get a divorce. They think they will be excluded from the community if they do. Sadly, sometimes they are right. Chassidim may have a lower divorce rate, but they don’t have a higher rate of happy marriages.
The Chofetz Chaim’s grandson, Rabbi Zacks, told me that his mother said “The man in the picture looks like a good, frum Jew – but it’s not my father!”
soliek: Let’s go through your allegations against MO.
doing away with shelo asani isha: I’ve never heard of a MO place doing this. Can you please name one?
having women baalei tefilla: Only Avi Weiss’s does this, and they’re not MO. The RCA doesn’t recognize the semicha from YCT as valid, and they took a stance against Avi Weiss when it comes to the role of women in a community.
modifying tefillos: Again, how is this being done? What tefillos are being modified?
when internet is ADVOCATED for young children without any caveats or provisions: not true. YNJ, one of the big schools in Bergen County, sent out this to parents of 6th graders, as a pilot program: “Internet Safety. All parents in the sixth grade have received RYNJ Safe Home Pledges. Based on Rabbi Price’s PTA Parent Links presentations last year, all sixth grade parents have been asked to commit to use filtering and monitoring of internet devices. By joining together and undertaking a unified commitment we hope that every child will be safe from the dangers that accompany internet usage. The parental response of our sixth grade parents has been highly positive. We hope to extend this movement throughout the yeshiva.”
when television is lauded: Again, untrue. Most people probably have TVs, but they are definitely not lauded.
Now, let’s look at the yeshiva world, and things they’ve changed:
Dress code: boys only in black & white, and more and more chumros on girls that never existed before.
Kollel lifestyle: a new thing after WW2. The reasoning was originally that we needed to rebuild after the losses in the Holocaust. Now there’s a new reason given: the world is so bad, that we need long-term learning to shelter ourselves from it. Now who’s changing Judaism because of the modern world?
The Living Torah Museum in Brooklyn has another picture. I believe it is an invitation to the writing of a Sefer Torah from soon after the Chofetz Chaim passed away, in his memory. It has a picture on the invitation. You can see it here: http://www.torahmuseum.com/Viewer_personalities/Person01_ChofetzChaim.html