interjection

The family I married into is probably the polar opposite of my family. Both our families are well respected in their communities but they are each very different from each other. People were shocked that we found each other bec our families are so different. All you need is that your husband is open to marrying someone from your background and that you’re open to marrying someone from his. Every other guy in the world can reject you as long as your dh is willing. Trust in Hashem and it will happen when both of you are ready for each other.

How do you know what did or didn’t happen to the bully? How do you know the kid with the phone didnt have extenuating circumstances that had been worked our beforehand? You want, when its a rich kid, that the punishment is broadcasted so everyone knows that the rich kid got proper treatment. So you want him to get worse treatment than everyone else.

Anyway those kids are the reason that your kids can go to that school. Jewish schools function, not through tuition but through fundraising. If the rich parents wouldn’t fill in the gaps (and then some) the not rich parents would be forced to pay full tuition. It doesn’t excuse raising kids to feel privileged for nothing they did but it does make you understand why a school would want to keep those parents happy.

If you believed Hashem has your bashert you wouldn’t ask this question. Yes there are guys that wouldn’t marry you but there are guys that you wouldn’t either want to marry. The guy who you marry will be the best person for you and every other remaining guy in the universe is irrelevant. Much hatzlacha and daven that it should be a quick process.

fkelly, I understood what you were trying to say. But that also falls under ‘vechai bahem’. Also it’s not something you can explain to someone who’s, thank God, never experienced anything like a panic attack or severe anxiety.

Ask a relative you’re close with. Is that really how it is? That because you thought of it first you guys can’t date?

“This discussion is resolving around cases (such as the op) where the person was originally frum and then dumped halacha. So there’s no tinok shenishba or issue of him having been unaware of what chillul shabbos was or constituted. He was well aware having previously been shomer shabbos himself. Thus he has no such excuses for constantly violating such a severe prohibition.”

Someone who stops keeping Shabbos was never keeping it in the first place. If he doesn’t value Shabbos it’s because he never experienced it. A person can go all their life not doing any melacha on Shabbos and still not know what Shabbos is. As for me, it took until I stopped keeping it and then started again before I felt my first Shabbos.

Mdd: he never said he’s in combat. If, for example, he wanted to do engineering for the idf, they would pay for his education.

Zahavasdad: “Not everyone can get married at 19 and have 14 kids , not everyone can sit and learn 15 hours a day and not everyone can go into the outside world and work with all kinds of people including those who life lifestyles your abhor without making comments.”

What’s with the chip on the shoulder;) God forbid I don’t abhor anyone! I was just commenting that Modern Orthodoxy is constantly reforming itself perhaps because each generation tends to head either right or left but they don’t generally remain of the same hashkafa of their parents. On the other hand, in the yeshivish community (which I am not a part of, although I have nothing against it except that it doesn’t work for me) the reformations are generally more subtle. That’s all. Hope you’re not still insulted.

Ultimately a parent wants their child to be happy. Parents will promote the lifestyle that they believe will make their child happiest and when the child rejects it and the parents are upset, it is because the parents believe that the child will be less happy. If you truly believe this is the right decision for you, explain to them why you feel this is what you need for your life and for your happiness. Besides, modern orthodoxy is unsustainable. It essentially is the cultural aspects of Judaism without the heart which almost forces one to choose one way or the other.

Women have a chiyuv and men have a chiyuv. Women have a chiyuv to follow basic halacha (up for interpretation according to one’s rav and according to one’s unique situation, and no it’s not your business to find out verbatim what someone else’s individual psak was) and men have a chiyuv not to look. The standards of dress expected of a woman are only AFTER a man had extended himself halfway, by NOT LOOKING. A woman is supposed to keep xyz covered in order that when a man glances up for a second he’s not aroused. However for a man who’s looking anyway, no amount of her covering up will ever be sufficient.

Each person should worry about their own chiyuv and less about their sense of entitlement that the other gender ‘owes’ them.

Also, all this putting women in their place (with tznius, gemara, etc) doesn’t seem to be helping. Maybe better tactics are required.

“The Gemora states explicitly that if a wife does cover her hair, the husband should divorce her.”

Source? I was taught, with a source (which I don’t remember as it was years ago), that a man CAN (not should!) use that as a grounds for divorce. However if when they got married she didn’t cover then he cannot use that as a reason. If you can find a source I’ll retract this.

I did because I discovered that there are multiple acceptable paths towards avodas Hashem.

” I know of Rabbeim who talk the whole Davening, including chazaras hashatz and kaddish,”

You know that they didn’t daven beforehand? If not I find it hard to believe.

@jewishteen: Tomer Devorah is straight up Bais Yaakov seminary but with non-Bais Yaakov girls.

I haven’t read the book but it seems to me that a couple that needs to know a thousand questions before they get married aren’t ever going to feel ready to make the leap.

The teacher is mrs Solomon. I went to baer miriam but my year she also taught in ateres. It’s possible she teaches in more places.

-Mods it doesn’t allow me to edit my original post. Please post this instead.-

This is part of a letter I just sent to my high school principal.

The school does try to teach a lot of hashkafa. However there was in my day a big discrepancy between torah and hashkafa. The reality is that torah and hashkafa are the same; torah essentially IS hashkafa, hashkafa Is Torah. One is not better than the other because they are one and the same. However it comes across that there is one or the other. If something is Torah, it is not hashkafic and if something is hashkafa then although it is Judaic, it is not actually Torah. One thing the school can do is when the Chumash class gets sidetracked and most of the period turns into hashkafa, the teacher should not complain that they didn’t ‘cover enough ground’. Such a response teaches the students that it is not ideal that the Torah should feel too personal nor that it should have too much relevance to their lives. I remember leaving such classes thinking that Torah is just a text and, not only that it didn’t but that it actually shouldn’t be something I could connect to on a personal level. When I left bais yaakov I decided that the Torah is entirely outdated and had no relevance to my life. Seminary thank God changed that for me. If I hadn’t gone to my seminary (not bais yaakov by any stretch) and had my amazing Chumash teacher, I would likely not be observant. This teacher made the Torah so down to earth that I felt like the Torah was written this year, for me specifically.

Another thing they can do is widen their hashkafot. (To be clear i dont mean that they should lessen their standards; they should be very firm on their standards.) For example the school is litvish and when they mentioned hashkafa that was more in line with chassidus it was told over in a way that implied strongly ‘this is not us’. Although they would say the words ‘it is okay if you are not cookie cutter’ when they are teaching in such a judgmental fashion that if your hashkafa is a little different then ‘you are no longer one of us’ it sends the message that if I can’t connect with Judaism in the same way as my teachers, for the rest of my life I either have to fake it or be ostracized. I personally connect more with chassidus but I hadn’t known there was an option. The way I was taught it seemed that in order to connect to Hashem through the teachings of the Baal Shem and others, I would have to dress different and declare that I am not part of the community. However a teenager who has the courage to make such steps to leave the community and is going to be ridiculed may as well leave the community for other venues, not such holy ones. They should allow the girls to discover that there are many routes to serve God and that dress is just dress. The heart is what counts and whether you connect through the kuzari, arizal, rav hirsh, rav elyashiv or, dare I say the Baal hatanya or rabi nachman, it is all torah and all their derachim are acceptable if they bring you closer to hashem. They should allow the students to discover that there are many acceptable hashkafas as long as it is line with Halacha.

That line though is from rabi nachman.

Wiy: (to clarify, i dont think im disagreeing with you) I think it was you who said in a different thread that Torah teaches us how to have the best life possible. So using what (I think) you said, the purpose of the Torah is to make your life better. All the mitzvos help improve our lives but if a person is unhappy then working on kibbud av will just make them resentful. Working on appreciation will bring a person to more happiness which will automatically lead a person to fulfill the de’oraysahs more properly. In other words having proper middos helps a person to better fulfill the mitzvos.

the-art: I don’t know if that’s not gonna come back to bite you. If there’s one thing that has always turned me off about other people is a tattle tale.

If my parents had taken away my lock I would’ve left home. I actually have a friend whose parents didn’t like that she locked her door so often (this was before she didn’t anything rebellious or ‘curious’)

So they took away her lock. She left home within a few months and soon after stopped being shomer shabbos or kosher. So I don’t think they made the right move

Toi- not ny nor Lakewood. Still not getting your point.

” What halocho requires (mechitza in shuls and at some functions) you respect, but anywhere else ,it is just a system to keep women “in their place”.”

That’s exactly how I feel. If you want to make up chumrahs let it be on your own cheshbon. Don’t punish me because you wanna be super holy.

I view it as demeaning and I know many woman who do too. I would much prefer to do as they do in NY where they sit side by side with a curtain in between. I personally get claustrophobic the further back I am so I always like sitting as close to the front as I can. I understand that men may not want to sit NEXT TO a woman but if the issue is that he doesn’t want to see us then I believe it makes more sense to have the men enter in through the back, punch themselves in, and choose the back seats then to choose all the front seats and have the women need to walk through them to get to our seats. Of course if the women had the front seats, there’s not a chance that the seating would stay separate because somehow men would filter their way forward.

I have a mac and I use K9. It fulfills all your qualifications and I think it’s great.

jewishfeminist2: the issur is on shmiras habris so, in regards to this taava it is irrelevant what thoughts a woman has when she looks at a man. Your argument is in a non-halachic sense which is not the discussion here.

Also I know men like to believe that all women dress for make attention, but it ain’t so. If anything we dress for other women’s approval but as far as I know MOST women are disgusted when men ogle them.

Many here seem to be unable to put their finger on why it is perverse other than because they inherently ‘believe’ it should be. So this is my opinion.

Every action in the world has some good that can possibly result. Marriage between man and woman is sacred because although there is desire involved, there is also a higher purpose as there is a potential to create something. Same-sex marriage, on the other hand is perverse – and similar to rape/incest/bestiality – because it is desire for the sole means of acting on desire. Being openly gay is a public expression that one views himself foremost as a physical being as there is nothing positive that can come from same gender relations.

Jf: what you say about roommates – if they want to announce their love for each other, they can buy BFF necklaces and wear them every day. It’s quite different to believe that they should get marriage benefits because of their love. Marriage is a step toward creating a family – creating our (all of mankind’s) future – which is why it makes sense for the government to grant those benefits. (So gays can adopt…I hear)

All that being said, no one is denying their feelings for each other much like one can’t argue with an engaged couple that the feelings aren’t real as ‘true love only comes after marriage’. Instead, my contention is the following: I believe it is perverse because 1) it belittles marriage in general by saying it marriage is nothing more than an expression of love rather than a sacred union, and 2) it is announcing to the world without leaving any room for doubt that ‘I don’t think through through my brain but rather through what will offer me more pleasure’.

Mammele not the same. They have entirely separate hours.

If anything I think the chareidim should be happy. Now if a 13 year old boy is sick and needs a parent to accompany him to the doctor, his mother can take him and his father doesn’t need to take away time from learning.