Gadolhadorah

To avoid all this craziness, why wouldn’t the obvious solution be to politely request the women to move to one side so this “Tzadik” could comfortably exit the shul? Clearly, putting a mechitza is a good solution in a shul, but most publicly accessed commercial facilities, such as a grocery market, are NOT going to put mechitzas by the door.

“However there is no halachic requirement to spend a massive amount of money getting married…”
As we have discussed here under multiple threads, there is no chiyuv to spend massive amounts nor is there any prohibition on such spending either IF the baalei simcha can afford it and also have contributed what they perceive as reasonable amounts to tzadakah. One can argue that the same issur should apply to the massive spending we routinely see here on the YWN news pages when the child or grandchild of some chashuvah rav is bar mitzvah or married. A poishte yid is entitled to the same benefit of the doubt. Specifically, if a yid is matzliach and fortunate to have accumulated some wealth, she is free to spend it on her son’s/daughter’s wedding and there is NO fixed percentage in terms of what a yid MUST allocate to tzadakah versus discretionary spending.

Reb Yosef should know. He apparently DID improvidently provide a diamond ring to his first kallah but did not feel the imperative for Nos. 2 and 3 who simply kvelled in the realization that their future lives would be enriched and g’benched by being married to YWN’s troll-in-chief and globally acclaimed nuclear physicist and Trump afficianado. Diamonds are definitely not a girl’s best friend when you can have R’ Yosef instead.

“What is your opinion regarding children joining a dancing circle at a wedding or Simchas Torah? Must all the men immediately leave the circle lest they face arrest??'”

No. If the parents of a child allow them to join the dancing, than they are providing consent for the child to be touched by others in the circle. In the other instance, there was no expectation by the mother than some guy would start shlepping her child towards the door. Whatever his motivation, he exercised very poor judgement.

“Everyone knows that the democrats want to control everything..”
Yup. Everything, including the modalities of people’s intimate relationships, decisions on terminating a pregnancy, etc.

As others have noted, dental problems can quickly morph into major medical and social problems such that a relatively small government “investment” underwriting dental health would save many more dollars in “covered” medical expenses (especially for the elderly). There are probably others here in the CR who can speak to the real world issues of older folks who cannot afford the tens of thousands of dollars needed for partial or full mouth implants and “replacement” teeth and forego social interactions, have difficulty with good diet. etc.

Quayboard: Years ago, when I wanted to troll some of the more rabid “climate deniers” I would accuse them of being over the big Mitzvah of “Tikun Olam” for which they would lose their chelek of Olam Haboh (assuming the Olam Hazeh lasted that long). Invariably, aside from the cries of Kefirah and demands for a source in torah for this Big Mitzvah (No. 614) there was an underlying theme that even if specific actions (e.g. recycling) improved the environment and made economic sense, adopting such practices was either minhag hagoyim or simply encouraged more “extreme” demands from environmentalists (e.g. not paving over your front lawn to park 2 minivans or not trashing local parks during chol hamoed outings). Such demands were clearly anti-Semitic rants from self-hating yidden .
The good news is that over the past decade there has been considerable progress in how the frum tzibur has adopted common sense environmental practices while pushing back against those who use “environment” as an excuse to deny yidden opportunities to expand their communities or attack our religious practices.

The sheer stupidity of assuming that 6 million yidden in EY would be better off living under a Palestinian or some other Arab overnment is both laughable and depressing. ANY governing authority would need to tax residents to raise the revenues needed for providing basic public services. I doubt R’ Chaim had really thought through how to maintain basic infrastructure and public services absent some form of taxation. Perhaps he was assuming that imposing “user fees” instead of calling the revenues “taxes” was somehow a way of circumventing the halachic concerns but that obviously would be a highly regressive form of taxation.

R’ Yosef: In some jurisdictions, you would be drowning in your own trash since the trash and recycling trucks would refuse to empty that one beloved garbage can you are so proud of. Some of the local rules are crazy but there is no logical reason not to separate out waste that can be kept out of scarce landfill space and profitably recycled or used to generate steam and/or electricity in CHP plants.

If the Ebeshter wanted Israelis to be subject exclusively to a judical system Talmidei Chachimim Dayanim sitting on a bona fide Beis Din acting in the capacity of a Din Torah, he would have sent Moishiach by now. Until then, Reb Aryeh is a convicted felon removed from office by a PM indicted for his own felonies.

“Trump does not have any Grade A attorneys anymore…”

Well sort of. Trump actually hired Chris Kise, Florida’s former SG and a well respected litigator to represent him in the criminal investigation related to the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago but I am skeptical someone of Kise’s stature would want to take on the appellate work related to this clown-show.

Thats sort of like the question of “who is a bigger gadol”?

Really depends on the metric you are using in “gadlus”. Obviously MBD is the “bigger” name (commercially) has more recordings, has appeared at more “big” events, etc. Yossi has probably a more diverse and complex set of compositions. Again, it really depends on how you measure.

How could there be an echo in a black hole?

We learn from Chazal that if a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it really make a sound? Likewise, it can be brought down that if a CR message is deleted by the mods before it is posted, was there ever really an OP??

A large percentage of the money spent by both affluent and not-so-affluent yidden on cruises goes to pay the salaries of lower income waiters, kitchen help, housekeepers. cleaning staff etc. These are hard-working people, many from developing countries who are away from their families for months at a time. How would those funds somehow end up in the pockets of those yidden struggling to pay their rent if the “cruising jews” stayed home for yom tov?

I’m not sure ANY of the CR gadolim really have a clue as to what and when will bring z’man moishiach any more than those guys with yellow flags running up and down Eastern Parkway, and in some respects, they may provide a higher liklihood predictor. However, in the larger scheme of things, I doubt whether the Ebeshter’s Moishiach Task Force has created a special task force of maalachim to address the disruptions to online social media that might be triggered by a legit moishiach sighting.

I’m not sure what is the purpose of these posts. EVERY airline has its cancellation policies for every class of service and ticket offered on its tariff sheets posted on its website or available at any ticket counter. That is required by law. Any temporary CHANGE to those terms must also be visibly posted on the website. Most, but not all, airlines will ask you to click on an “I Acknowledge” link referring to your having read and understood any refund, change or cancellation charge on the screen before you finalize a ticket purchase. The latter format is not required by law and is sometimes quickly passed over by ticket purchasers.

“Assuming the proportion of male to female births is close to 50% among all Jews, why do you think the numbers differ between chassidim and misnagdin?”

Silly question. As Reb Yosef has previously noted, he is open to relaxing cherem R’ Gershon such that an ehrliche yid could have 2 or 3 wives. Clearly without even addressing the Litvish vs. Chassidish complications the current pool of eligible bnos yisroel is inadequate to support the polygamous lifestyle to which he aspires (absent a substantial number of bochurim changing their preferred pronouns).

What is your data source for the “inverted” gender disparities in the Chassidish velt and is this disparity prevalent among all chassidus or concentrated among specific chassidus for explainable reasons.

One of the more egregious examples were the ways in which some shuls allocated kovods based on the $$ after the s’henadar in the m’sheberach. A poishete yid with a yahrtzeit might be fortunate to even get an alyiah, and might have to “settle” for hagbah/gallilah while a more affluent (but in many cases not an especially ehrliche) yid was assured of achron, achron chaviv.

CA: In case you are having trouble with reading comprehension my comments addresed BOTH the handling of documents and also the subsequent transparency issue. Specifically, I noted that Dems routinely worsen whatever “XXX-Gate” they’ve found themselves in by “dribbling out” information and letting a 72 hours news cycle story remain in the spotlight for weeks or longer (e.g. the Clinton email issues which are still dredged up in a “she did it too”) I think the most recent Biden stuff is a really stupid unforced error compounded by his even more stupid “how could he” comments about Trump, followed by daily disclosures of 3 more pages, 5 more pages, etc.

Jackk’s basic point is correct. Both parties have added trillions of dollars to the debt based on their own priorities. Billionaires can legally “avoid” paying any taxes because our tax code is so screwed up and their Republican friends keeping adding new avoidance schemes and the Dems just can’t wait to hand out more “free stuff” to their friends. And BOTH parties haven’t found a weapons program to which they could say “no’ given the money spent in their districts.

Jackk: No one disagrees that Dental insurance SHOULD be included but it is a perennial casualty of constantly changing and politically driven priorities for the Administration and congress. There are numerous studies showing that from a cost-benefit perspective, providing free or low cost access to prophylactic dental care from a young age would save 3x to 5x as much in long-term costs for both restorative dental work and multiple medical issues derived from dental problems. Sadly, logic seldom prevails in our increasingly toxic political process.

Jackk: In fairness, Bernie Sanders made a big push to have dental and vision costs for seniors included in both the budget reconciliation bill and the final iteration of the the poorly named “Inflation Reduction Act” but to stay within the cost limits the Administration had to agree to obtain the needed votes, they were excluded. The costs for adding dental coverage to Medicaid would run into the tens of billions of dollars in a CBO “cost” estimate. They did add dental coverage for certain children under Medicare and did add the insulin price cap for seniors in Part D but not much else.

CT Lawyer: Thanks for the denial and clarification. I too share a genetic predisposition against anything really sweet which perhaps and been a contributing factor to avoidance of serious dental issues until several years ago when we helped assist our dental surgeon put his two yinglach through college.
While its history, the really stupid decision decades ago to exclude virtually all dental expenses from Medicare coverage as been a public health disaster. Same form most employer-provided health insurance plans. There are horrendous stories of seniors suffering greatly from dental-induced health issues. It also has significant mental health issues in terms of social interaction for those that cannot afford out-of-pocket payments which run into the tens of thousand of dollars for what are called “full mouth” replacements. The dental care provide in Medicare supplement plans is really not much more generous than the stand-alone plans most of us purchase through employer or separately for the self-employed.

This is the first time in 35+ years that there was any issue with this very complex (but borderline obsolete) software and data base system. After fixing a bug last night it failed to properly reboot this AM and was taken offline. Yes, there were interruptions and people were inconvenienced but better to be safe.
The real long-term solution may be to do what most European countries and Canada have done and outsource management of air traffic control to the private sector which could update the software and would be much better equipped to finance and install new infrastructure and networks.
Even something as perfect as the CR software platform does occasionally have a glitch but I don’t see anyone demanding that the Mods be fired.