Gadolhadorah

There are several conservative Republican leaders with similar economic, national security and social policies who are likely to defeat Biden or any Dem candidate w/o the lying, self-adulation, racist and misogynistic baggage. Why put the country through another 4 years of that garbage if you say you liked Trump’s policies but not the individual.

In many cases, it is impossible to differentiate the positive benefits resulting from certain public policy decisions or action as between yidden and people in general. There is no reason so forego praise of someone whose actions result in benefits to society as whole, where such outcomes are not contrary to daas torah.

Agree that clinical evidence thusfar supports vaccination for those who have not yet had Covid both in terms of reducing risks of infection and lower risks of hospitalization/serious affects if you are infected. Studies on benefits for those already infected seem to suggest some benefits in terms of increasing resistance over time, although results are thusfar open to varying interpretation. From a practical perspective however, absent SCOTUS intervention on legality of mandates, being “fully vaccinated” including booster in some cases, may become a defacto requirement for most work and travel so “get over” your philosophical resistance if you want to engage in most forms of commercial activity and movement.

Most yeshiva yungerleit are responsible and are able to use the time of bein hazmanim to renew and refresh, visit with family and engage in some of the special programs available that best meet their interests and needs. There is no single formula. Some prefer to organize their own time and others need a structured agenda. Both options are available.

I think several of the above posts stated it very clearly. Given Hamodia’s ownership, no coverage was better than a series of personal attacks and hyperbole.

In 2015, Rav’ Aharon Leib Shteinman, Z’L, sent a letter to an Agudah/Degel conference on higher education for Chareidi young women in which he insisted that girls not attend college and be educated exclusively “framework of Bais Yaakov”. In the intervening time, studies have shown a substantial increase in the number of frum women attending college, many in special programs designed to address the usual concerns. While still the exception, women are getting out of the kitchen into boardrooms, operating rooms, courtrooms. Check carefully next time before you schedule a root canal or colonoscopy or fight a traffic ticket. Also, make sure that the local first responders know NOT to dispatch a woman to your home and just wait until the right “guy” becomes available. .

It formally ended on the third-day of Chol Hamoed Succos.

Both Chai18 and AIYID sum it up well. As Bill Clinton would say, it depends on what you mean “Survive” and where that “survival” occuurs. Also depends on whether you are talking about a couple just starting out, a family with 2-3 kids or a family with 6-8 kids.

You can sustain a family of 2-3 kids, a used SUV or van, a rental apartment and yeshiva tuition in BOTH the U.S. and EY under the equivalent of $100K (US) income, but easier in EY based on larger government subsidies for schooling and health care. Cost of housing is very locational specific in both US and EY. In all cases, we are talking about a relatively simple lifestyle, buying in bulk at CostCo (or its equivalent), with no spending Pesach at a hotel or expensive summer camps and/or trips to Europe.

Sadly, there still too many frum families at the lower end of the income scale (e.g below $40K), some with very large families and limited employment/earning (either by choice or lack of education/skills) who are nearly totally dependent on government subsidies and struggle day-to-day to stay afloat.

At the other end of the spectrum, a frum young man or woman just out of college today and taking a position with a top U.S. law firm or investment bank (as many more are these days) will earn about $180,000 year and yet they are still kvetching about the high cost of living in downtown Manhattan, Boston or LA.
Its all relative. There are also young frum men and women with less fancy academic credentials but really smart and entrepreneurial, who have started their own computer and internet-based businesses and able to do well while working from home and starting families.
The good news is that there are more opportunities today for frum families than ever before if they chose to pursue them.

Do you think they[IRS Agents} are chopped liver?

AAQ:: No, but I suspect with your 7 figure income, multiple vacation-home deductions etc, you get to deal with a higher calibre of IRS agent in your compliance audits. Sadly, the only two I’ve ever dealt, while extremely courteous and otherwise quality human beings, seemed challenged in understanding their own farblunget rules, much less my lame efforts to find precedents for my tax positions in English common law.

Syag: Sorry if my rather obvious sarcasm was lost in translation. I doubt that even my “progressive” friends believe that AOC has contributed to any real “progress” in their agenda in the House other than perhaps providing occasional social media diversions to some of the equally useless Republicans like MGT. They could have given Dems something to run on 2 months ago by passing the infrastructure bill, although Tuesday’s losses went much deeper than that.

“Comrade” sounds a bit “yesterday”. Any replacement for “participant” should be something more contemporary that also has a least a bit of a yiddeshe taam would be more appropriate. A noun that captures the essence of the high level intellectual discourse and total absence of hubris that permeates every post allowed by the mods. Does anyone have a thesaurus readily available?

AAQ: I trust that most IRS agents have never read the works of a famous 19th century mathematics professor from Oxford University named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Caroll)

The Dems can try and rationalize MaCaullife’s loss to off-year elections going against the party in power in D.C. and his stupid comment about parents being excluded from having a role in their kid’s education which Youngkin quickly and effectively exploited. Both are true. However, if they don’t quickly realize that their core constituency is not as far left as they have been assuming, they will lose big in 2022 and even worse in 2024. They can turn it around but that will also mean a hard turn back to the center.

“The satmar rov was very educated in chasidus. He had some very choice words regarding the lubavitcher rebbe…”

AD: I hate to share this with you, but there are many Chabadniks who have even more choice words about the R’ Aron and R’ Zalman, and most of those words would never make it past the Mods.

Most importantly, a baas yisroel must have the common sense and self esteem to simply ignore frum misogynists doing their best imitation of a 19th century Kaiser Whilhem II defining them in terms of “Kirche, Küche and Kinder”. They know their role, are confident in who they are and can step back and feel pity for the same pathetic guys who constantly try to redress their own sad situation in life by asserting some level of gender superiority (clumsily cloaked in daas torah and justified by saying women have a “special place” in yiddeshkeit (between the sink and nursery).

” having bad weights (bad accounting!) is worse than arayos”

Now that is really interesting. Our accountant is already worried about the 80,000 new IRS agents contemplated by the Biden plan to audit all the tax cheats and raise revenues. He should really be worried about UJM and the gang who just can’t wait until the Sanhedrin start with their post-Moishiach capital punishment program for tax evasion which apparently is worse than arayos and violators are chayav misah.

Philosopher: Given the accelerated decline of what passes for “reality” these days, I would submit that “virtual reality” may offer substantial benefits compared to the “real thing”.

Nope….I can assure you that many frum families in South Florida, LA, Boston Chicago, etc also have regular house cleaning assistance, especially when both parents are working outside the home. Its a function of both income levels and availability of affordable cleaning services which simply are not available in many smaller OOT locations.

“If the internet is an example of how technology is used by humanity I’m predicting that virtual reality will bring more tumah into the world than ever before.
Philosopher: It can be said that just about EVERY innovation in modern history has been used for positive and negative societal outcomes. When the first mass-published books were facilitated by the printing press, I’m sure there were some who feared that it would result in pritzus becoming widely available, which indeed it did. However, using whatever metric you wish, having widespread access to printed books, including seforim for yidden, has vastly outweighed the negatives of those published works with ilicit content. Same for variations of the internet. The ability for individuals to instantaneously access information and communicate and transact had changed the way we live and learn. Yes, we have to tolerate a lot of garbage but its a small price to pay for the massive societal benefits the internet yields. We are never going back to life in the Alte Heim although I’m sure some would prefer that simple and pure lifestyle.

UJM: There was a chassidishe nigun about the Hotel California in the mid-70s sung by a group called the אָדלער. The lyrics were roughly as follows:

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
“Relax, ” said the night manager
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! “

School Board members are generally elected and thats where parents have their input as to the policy views of those who set instructional and curriculum guidelines. If you don’t like those norms, vote for candidates aligned with your views or send your kids to private schools. You cannot have individual parents making decisions for the school system at monthly board meetings.

Yes its partially a distraction, but transitioning to the Meta has been part of Zuckerberg’s /FB’s long term strategy for 2-3 years (per Q2 2018 earnings call). I doubt Congress will enact legislation requiring divesting various FB properties nor make serious changes to the section 203 immunity .
Metaverse is already here. I hope to be around in 5 years to see how the CR has evolved. Perhaps when we log in, we will all have tziniusdik avitars sitting around a table in real time responding to the latest misstatements from our esteemed colleagues with the option of “throwing” virtual brickbats when something especially outrageous is said. We might also be able to change the avitars of our colleagues to better reflect how we perceive them in real life.

Anyone who can recall the ancient times (i.e. pre-Zillow and online listings) when real estate ads constituted the single largest ad revenue source for newspapers, you probably also recall the long list of adjectives used to describe various properties. A “fixer upper” might be something that failed all local building codes and “cozy” might have been a unit where you and your shver could not have fit into simultaneously, and an “industrial feel” might have indicated your only window looked out on the HVAC units and a smokestack.
Somehow, back then, we didn’t think about “fake” product descriptions or reviews since there were practical limits on how many such “fake” descriptions could be deployed in hard copy media. Today, thanks to Al Gore, such lies can be propagated instantaneously on multiple websites and slightly tweaked to make them appear form different sources.

Am I the only one, or are some of these new thread topics becoming increasingly bizarre…..I guess I shouldn’t have complained about the 108th variation of the “shidduch crisis” or the biweekly gevalt alerts by our favorite misogynist bemoaning the “tzinius spéciale du jour”.

Farbycoff: Someone who uses what are commonly considered as pejorative or derogatory “nicknames” probably shouldn’t be a magid shiur or is in need of some sensitivity training by the rosh yeshiva. Its not a matter of “political correctness” or being governed by “liberal” or goiyeshe “norms”…its common sense that we shouldn’t characterize people by their physical attributes, positive or negative. What would you say if a bochur called his tall rebbe “Strech” or an obese rebbe “the groise reb”??