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Not to get too deep in this, but regarding divorce, regardless of whether Chassidim or Litvish have a higher rate of divorce, such a conclusion ignores many other concerns. Namely, is a lower divorce rate by itself indicative of an overall better situation or not? Perhaps more Chassidim live in dysfunctional homes and due to increased barriers to divorce (financial/social/familial considerations) they can’t make a decision that would be beneficial for the entire family. Also this whole idea of trying to measure one community by another ignores some basic questions such as what is the right thing to do or how to live. Numerically growing or larger or more unified communities do not prove anything, as otherwise you would have to look outside the Jewish world to see how you compare to any number of Christian, Muslim, and other groups.

Youngerman123 – I based it off what others mention is the cost of renting the place out for concerts and other events. No reason to think it would be more than that.

Gadolhador – They can charge what they want. No complaint with that. Rather I am pointing out that it seems they are commercializing religion here. Whatever, I get it that those who pay more money or have money get feted by various events and whatnot, but I just don’t recall seeing it approaching this level of being in your face. And of course, the choice to go or not is mine. As to having adequate input from Ashkonim or Rabbonim, not going down that rabbit hole. Maybe this is just my opinion, but I think many of these institutions are run opaquely with little transparency or accountability.

Renting Met Life probably costs about 1.5 Million. Even if they spend another million on this event that is 2.5 million. If they have 85,000 seats, they can sell them at $35 a seat to cover the cost no problem. If they are getting on average $50 a seat they have an extra 1.7 million after the above costs. So even if costs were 2 million in addition to the rental there is little to no financial reason (in terms of the siyum itself) to charge these rates. It is obvious this has become a gigantic fund-raiser for Agudah. Not against supporting Agudah but perhaps attempting to guilt Yidden into attended a siyum, which instead of being a “siyum” has now become the next commercialized thing (a la Oorah’s chinese auction), not surprising to see people a little hesitant to shell out the money to be part of it. At least Oorah convinces you, you can win prizes and you get a stupid DVD. Here you have to listen to speeches about how great it is for Klal Yisroel to join together, while thinking in the back of your mind, “well perhaps make it more inclusive and do your fund-raising elsewhere.” Definitely promoting the private boxes and the special level of access you get if you pay excessive amounts for seats is a turn-off as well. Klal Yisroel’s siym has inevitably clearly become just another commercial event where you pay to play. Yeah, I know in the past you also had more expensive seats, but somehow I don’t recall them being promoted like they are now.

Next, Yeshiva dinners will have special cordoned off sections with better food for those who pay more. The Yeshiva’s will still reach out to their alumni begging you to join just to show your support.

Before you think my issue is envy, it is not. I have no problem paying for nice seats, rather it is simply a distaste for the commercialization of religion.

Sam, the Torah writes that but what does that mean? If you desire to do a mitzvah, should you not run after that? Perhaps you need to expound on your newfound issur d’oraisa of going to restaurants. I think in pashut it is pretty clear that such an admonishment is primarily referring to things that are assur. Perhaps you can learn from it a general approach to life to not chase after various desires and temptations but to suggest that running to a restaurant to have a juicy steak is an issur d’oraisa may be a bit of a stretch.

FYI, the Satmar Rebbe calls zionism avoda zarah… Which raises an interesting issue that how can anyone who claims to follow the satmar rebbe reside in Eretz Yisroel or even visit there.

The obvious conclusion is all these followers of the satmar rebbe are foolish folks who lack consistency in any sort of dedication to Judaism and should not be taken seriously as bearers of authentic jewish tradition.

Encourage more girls to wait till they are 22-24 to get married. That will also solve the shidduch crisis. And girls can do that without making boys change. Boys have an obligation to support their family. How is a 19/20 year old girl able to take on that commitment before she has finished schooling. Further, things like automatic tuition breaks for kollel families is equivalent to support via tzedaka which goes against the dictates of chazal. Better to collect garbage than to take charity. So, going into life with the opinion that you will suffice with jobs that cannot provide for a family, just does not seem right to me.

More like the charedim like akuperma (not everyone charedi is opposed to listening to chazal and learning a livelihood… funny that those who don’t follow the dictates of chazal are called charedi…) are afraid that if they do participate in voting people will even have less tolerance for the derelict of civic duties.

It gets very tiresome to have to respond to incorrect information and mischaracterizations of what I say…

1. Joseph wrote a long post regarding earning $93,000 based on NY’s SNAP guidelines. The data I uses is based off of Census data, which shows that the communities mentioned earn less then national standards. False information will not help you in court. As an aside, my point about the poverty level and reliance on social programs, is that it lets the State make a claim in court that the school is creating students that are a burden to society, hence the State has the right to burden religion in imposing its standards. This means the Yeshiva will be on the defensive to show that they should not be regulated strongly, that is all. It is significant as it changes the position you find yourself in court.

2. Joseph says the parent’s are best suited to determine the education of a child – I am not disputing this, rather following the logic of cases such as Yoder, and subsequent cases, where it is well established the State has certain rights to demand a child is given an education that it sees fit. Obviously, as in all things, the State’s right is not carte blanche, and there are limiting factors. This has all been expressed here already. Again you yelling that parent’s have rights, will not win you in court.

3. Joseph and DaasYochid makes certain claims about what the new regulations require such as 7 hours a day. First of all, it is not clear exactly what the requirement is. Second, it is not clear what will actually be enforced. Third, and this I absolutely agree with, if the State actually mandated 7 hours of secular study a day, I think the regulation would not be found to be legal. This is why I stated I would think the State will not start up much with Schools that perform well.

4. Joseph makes a comment about R’ Reissman and achdus. It is very clear that the driving factor is what he sees as difficult rules coming to Yeshivas that already provide a good secular education. He sees that as evidence of an agenda against Yeshivas. He basically implies that if they just went after the schools that don’t teach english he would not care. This is why I believe that the second the State clarifies that they will not make changes in schools that provide a good education, assuming Torah Vadaath meets that criteria, you will find this achdus falling apart very quick. It is one thing to have achdus against a perceived attack on Yeshiva education, another to have achdus to support Yeshivas that don’t follow the Torah and provide the necessary education for today’s jobs. One other point, the State likely has to go after all private education, as otherwise it would be accused of being discriminatory and it would be prevented from regulating, so I am not sure there is antisemitism at play here, just perhaps a reflection of the legal reality of engaging in regulation.

5. Joseph then makes some arguments about families with one parent working. Again this does not change the data as to income levels and social welfare reliance. The reasons will not matter much, simply the fact that there is lack of self-sufficiency will be enough for the State to meet its burden. Yeshivas will have near impossible standards of proof to argue that this outcome is not due to Yeshiva education (the State does not need to prove it is due to Yeshiva education, just that the outcome exists).

6. DaasYochid, makes arguments about the reason for impoverishment that if not due to lack of education it makes no sense to address by changing educational standards. This argument is flawed and will not hold up in court. Simply put, it makes a claim that is impossible to prove. You can’t prove that the impoverishment is not due to educational standards unless you first improve those standards and show that the result is not better. This is why the focus on outcomes is pretty much all that will matter and not the reason for them. The Amish, were self-sufficient and rejected social welfare, hence the State could not show any problems with the outcome that mattered to society. Yeshivas will not be in that position as the outcomes are not so good in many cases.

7. Joseph mentions about the Diocese and their protest of the standards. See point 3. If the State clarifies it requirements and schools that have good outcomes are convinced they won’t be negatively affected it will be all the schools that don’t provide a decent education on their own, and they will lose.

8. Mammele, who says she does not agree with me, actually does agree with me, as the points she makes are essentially the same one’s I make. (A) the 7 hour requirement will not hold up, (B) the State has the right to burden religion, but it has to limit itself to where it has a vested interest, hence teaching subjects that are not appropriate for Yeshiva students, if the Yeshiva can convince a judge that this subject is not critical, will be an area the State has to make reasonable accommodation for religion, (C) the Achdus is only due to the uncertainty about the regulations, the moment the State clarifies and only imposes reasonable standards, all the schools that meet the standards will leave the rest on their own.

I will refrain from posting further in this thread, as I am less then impressed with the arguments placed forth by some of those here. A decent amount of time spent reading and understanding legal decisions will go a long way to helping you understand the position the Yeshivas are in. Court is not 1rst seder, where you can engage in endless arguments. You can also be convinced you are right from today till tomorrow, but that will not help you in court. You need to meet the legal standards which is a very different standard then what your intuition tells you the result should be.

“That doesn’t make sense if the reason for the poverty level isn’t related to education.”

It is not so difficult. If the State can show that students of a Yeshiva are not self-sufficient and rely on social programs, the Yeshiva will not be able to make a strong case based on Yoder. The State does not need to show why they are impoverished, just that a disproportionate are. The burden of arguing that they should not be regulated will fall on the Yeshiva as a result.

FYI, if a school were to argue that they teach their students to avoid gainful employment and instead to rely on social welfare, the State may decide they have the right to shut-down such a school. So if in theory you were to argue that we teach a belief that the students should go learn, which will result in being funded via social programs, nevermind the chillul hashem such an argument would cause, it would be tossed out of court so fast.

Five Towns Yid – Towns like Kiryas Joel and New Square have some of the highest number of people living below the poverty line. Also Yiddish speaking Williamsburg has a very high incidence of Section 8 voucher applications. You can point to your example of someone making 200k+ a year and getting child health plus, but that is ignoring the large population that makes very little and is eligible for all sorts of social programs.

Even if you take the Yeshivas that teach secular education, you will likely find an inordinate amount of graduates who are in Kollel on social welfare. So from a social welfare standpoint the State will likely have a pretty easy time showing they have a right to insist on minimal standards. Lakewood, has an increasing poverty rate (up about 6% over the period from 2000 to 2010, when the population grew 60,000 to 92,000) and they are also far above the national poverty rate.

There are the numbers based off census and tax return data. I think the State will not have much difficulty arguing that Yeshiva education, for many Yeshivas, does not lead to self-sufficiency, hence they have a very strong vested interest in improving the education standards. The State would also argue the parents do not have a right to decide that their kids should get a sub-par education and not be self-sufficient, as that violates the kids rights.

Joseph – The full text of the case is easily found.

In the Syllabus of the court makes 4 points. Both point 3 and 4 refer to their non-reliance on social welfare.

From Point 3:
“long history as a successful and self-sufficient segment of American society”

From Point 4:
“for the Amish have introduced convincing evidence that accommodating their religious objections by forgoing one or two additional years of compulsory education will not impair the physical or mental health of the child, or result in an inability to be self-supporting or to discharge the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, or in any other way materially detract from the welfare of society.”

In the detailed decision there are numerous references to the sufficiency of their education, but here is one quote where rejection of public welfare is clearly noted:
“The State attacks respondents’ position as one fostering “ignorance” from which the child must be protected by the State. No one can question the State’s duty to protect children from ignorance, but this argument does not square with the facts disclosed in the record. Whatever their idiosyncrasies as seen by the majority, this record strongly shows that the Amish community has been a highly successful social unit within our society, even if apart from the conventional “mainstream.” Its members are productive and very law-abiding members of society; they reject public welfare in any of its usual modern forms. The Congress itself recognized their self-sufficiency by authorizing exemption of such groups as the Amish from the obligation to pay social security taxes.”

Finally, not going to bother with the quotes here, the Amish get 1-8 education, it was the couple of years of secondary education that was the issue. Many of the Chassidic Yeshivas don’t even have a sufficient secular education at the elementary school level. Regardless, the issue of social welfare will very likely be one that the State can use to claim that they do not need to allow a religious based exemption from secular education. The Yeshivas that do put out many students who rely on social welfare, will very likely find that the Yoder case does not help them much.

1. You say that to risk one 1 life we can’t help or save 1,000. Interesting equivalence.
2. You call these people horrible things. Do you have any statistics for what percent of people who are apparently traveling with their children across the border actually commit the crimes you allege, or are you just repeating fake news.

Regarding the Christianity vs Muslim upbringing of a child, I don’t think the case referenced here addresses such an issue directly (but it does give some indications where courts are moving on such issues). This case, was whether an arbitration panel could make the parent’s religious lifestyle a single factor that decides custody, which was determined to be a violation of here constitutional rights. No one seems to be suggesting that the emotional harm from such a lifestyle choice should not be considered, but that is not the same as determining it alone based on the parent’s religious observance (i.e. Which is not considering the emotional harm in light of the overall other factors. For example, perhaps it is healthier emotionally for the child to remain with the mother despite her mother’s lack of religion as opposed to being in a religious environment away from the mother… by removing the religious observance of the mother as the primary factor, you now can consider the overall situation). The issue with the specific upbringing of the children is more complex as we are moving beyond the personal life of the parent but to things directly impacting the children. In any case I would expect to see courts move away from specific religious upbringing requirements as they all place the court in a very difficult position of requiring something that the court is essentially supposed to be blind to.

I believe so long as they have a police escort they can use their lights and sirens and run lights. On the other hand without such an escort I think they are violating the law. When, say, the pope is in the US he gets a major escort, but then technically he is a head of state and he has millions of followers. Point is that escorts are not out of the norm for important leaders. But they should be done to comply with the law as to minimize any chillul hashem or racism that results (i.e. if you follow the law, you are more likely to get support from political leaders and others when people criticize your behavior, which hopefully minimize any negative fallout).

1. You cannot prove God exists. Philosophy has well established this and all the arguments to the contrary are meant for those who do not understand why the arguments all fail.

2. Anyone trying to show from Archaeology that there is evidence for the biblical accounts is generally limiting themselves to interpretations of the material given by a handful of “biblical archaeologists.” The majority of the time the claims made by these are based on ignoring the problematic evidence or are based on too little evidence. To understand what I am saying, go to Aish.com and find articles on Archaeology and then go do a web search for that same item and see if when all the evidence is added up it makes sense to conclude the way that Aish presents it. I have found it does not.

3. The OP asked for help in approaching Yom Kippur from a standpoint of struggling with belief. He specifically asked not to get into proofs for and against religion as there are plenty of other threads here and in other places that have debated this issue a lot. If you want to be helpful, give him so inspiration to help get through Yom Kippur.