Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Propose the elimination of proposal papers from the curiculum. Recursion always gets a good laugh.
Stam kelim enam ben yom?
I think I’ll do that tomorrow. One of my professors is requiring us to attend a lecture outside class time and I need something to do.
In NYC students are only entitled to free rides through graduation from high school. As a college student I have to pay the same gouged price for the same awful service as everyone else. I usually walk or bike.
Joseph: Your ignorance is amusing. Please keep it up.
We put North at the top of all maps today because it makes sense for people using a compass, which always points north. (Cue nitpickers talking about compasses from china in the year 1000 that pointed south).
I’m not sure I would eat. It depends on why my rabbi was assuring the food.
I took it to mean that he thought both yarmulka’s and the doube-covering are of ancient provenance. I was just mentioning that neither are, at least among the hamon am. Of course now that the yarmulka is accepted by almost all of klal yisrael the history is totally academic. I was just mentioning the fact.
I can ask around and find out if any of my friends have sisters who need to fill chessed hours…
Your trouble is in two parts, language barrier and the learning per se. For the language barrier get yourself a dictionary aimed at the Torah like Dr. Jastrow’s or Rav Hirsch’s Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Bible and a basic diqduq book. If you use those two as you learn you’ll find that you need them less and less as time goes on.
For the learning itself, get Rabbi Bonchek’s books on Rashi. He has one for each chumash, each focusing on a different aspect of learning Rashi. Once you work your way through one cycle with them (you don’t need to read every page) you’ll have enough grounding to learn Rashi, RaMBaN and probably Ibn Ezra on your own.
Mr Kent, let’s leave the yarmulka and its relatively recent origins out of it please. Trust me, you don’t want to go there.
Yes, just like every other thread. 😉
Hmmm… I just did something similar less than half an hour ago. On facebook, no less. This is pretty funny.
Ika d’amri that it took 5 hours in one of the bobov’s (I confuse the two) because they had to klop for every Mordechai.
It’s an old joke.
Even though we usually think of the gemara’s wine as being very different from our own, the real difference was quantity. In those days they drank it like water because water was rarely safe. The only time we drink like they did is on purim so it might be worthwhile to follow all the advice in the gemara about how to properly dilute wine so you don’t get sick. If I remember I’ll try it next year.
mw13: Thank you.
DH: That leaves off-topic posts, wrong answers, and people who can’t or won’t follow instructions. This should be fun. 😉
Just my two cents, answer honestly and if it gets too personal tell the yenta(of either gender) to mind her own business.
We started the seuda late because someone asked to come over to hear megilla when I leined for my grandmother and then got delayed. The seuda itself was great. Great company, great food, great wine. Afterwards I went to a chassidishe purim seuda at the local shtibel. First time I ever went to one of those and it was a very good experience. I got to dance off the effects of outdrinking our russian guest.
Grandmaster: I doubt it.
tbt: yes, he is part of the yeshivish world yet can see the problems with that world. Why? Because it is a culture made up of human beings. Human beings have faults. Yes, the extent to which one tries to live according to Torah will result in self-betterment, but the fact remains that merely belonging to a group — no matter how noble that groups alleged mission statement — does not render the group or any one of its individual members automatically perfect. That is what anon1m0us is talking about and is what you fail to comprehend. By the way, you don’t do yourself or your credibility any favors when your strawmen are this blatant.
Alcohol lowers inhibitions.
Perfect example of people using halacha to be jerks. It’s endemic and the only thing that will help is making middos a more integral part of the culture.
Grandmaster: “Know his customers?” He may or may not, but you definitely don’t. It isn’t a kiruv shiur where he has to worry about frightening people off. In fact I’d be very surprised if less than 90% of the people there have smicha. As an aside, about half of them do wear hats. He could insure that the baal tfilla wears a hat without any trouble at all, but he doesn’t.
tbt: Really? Any proof of that at all?
I agree. Yeshivos that follow Rav Kook’s derech have a daily seder in “emunah.” Not mussar, not chassidus, emunah.
Someone who wears a hat will identify himself as part of the group that wears that hat style, at least in the eyes of people who look at such things. It really makes no difference in the great scheme of things, but gives people something to shmooze about in various real and online coffee rooms so what harm can it do?
PS
FWIW, when I go to Rav Hershel Schachter’s shiur in flatbush on Monday nights there is a maariv minyan afterwards. Not once has he asked the baal tefila to put on a hat.
As I understand it a check is a specific kind of shtar mentioned in the gemara. IIRC there is a case in the first perek of Bava Metzia where someone writes to the chenv’ni to pay xyz to his creditor. That case is the etzem metzius of a check — pay ot the order of ploni.
Paychecks might complicate things because direct deposit creates issues of shibuda d’rav nasan, but at the end of the day, the employee is the “levi” figure in the shibud.
I conjecture that the box is no longer a box.
Until it sinks in.
Don’t get drunk in front of girls.
According to the story you relate, Rav Soloveichik was telling the man not to walk around on shabbos in his shirt sleeves because he was leaving his hat and jacket in shul. (The practice of wearing a broad brimmed fedora without a jacket is a relatively recent shtus.
charliehall: You can write a much longer list than that, including many rabbonim who lived after the fedora came into style. We can start with Rabbi Eliezer Silver.
But are they allowed to mitzad hadin?
Reb Berel, are you by any chance a member of the illustrious Schmoigerman dynasty of Creedmoor?
Comparing debating Cromwell’s actions in Ireland to Holocaust denial is a pretty egregious example of Godwin’s law. Drogheda and Wexford were nothing like the Chmielnicki massacres. For one thing, Chmielnicki never negotiated with towns for surrender nor did he abide by the accepted rules of war of the time, both of which Cromwell did. He may have been a total rasha in many regards, but you cannot pretend that he was an out and out barbarian unless, of course your ancestors came from Wexford or Drogheda in which case you are entitled to your cultural conditioning.
I’m learning the sugya now. I’ll bring that up tomorrow.
Any form of skilled labor makes a nice living. A master electrician does have to learn his job well, but when he does he can charge $150 to show up and then move upwards from there.
There is a nonprofit organization in NYC that trains carpenters for free over 17 weeks, slightly longer than one college semester. I think there are similar programs for plumbing and electricity.
That’s an important thing to fix. I’m curious as to what your approach would be. Would you open up a Sefer Hamada and start reading like the halacha sefer it is, or would you treat emuna differently kind of like mussar is already? Both sides have their pros and cons though personally I favor the former.
Benazir Bhutto
Curtis Sliwa
Rene Descartes
Andrew Jackson (despite the trail of tears)
Benjamin Franklin
Henry Thoreau
Robert Louis Stevenson
Thomas Moore
Charles Babbage
Bertrand Russel
Just throwing out a few more. There are many non-Jews who inspire me. It’s a very interesting question.
charliehall: Whether Cromwell actually committed genocide is hotly debated by historians to this day. For a brief introduction check out the wikipedia article. For some more detail see the books listed in footnotes 48-9 of that article. (They’re the only ones I know anything about.)
observanteen: you misunderstand me. I was not talking about the Moreh, which is well beyond even most people who do try to learn it. I was talking about the simplest of the simple yesodos which RaMBaM put in the Yad — the book aimed at the masses — for a reason. That reason was because it was meant for the masses. They are part of what you call the “dry facts.” Emuna is not supplementary to Torah, it is the ikkar.
Mark Twain
Raphael Molino (a current US army sargeant)
Mark DeLorenzo (another one)
Winston Churchhill
Thomas Paine (his attitude towards religion notwithstanding)
Alan Turing
and several others
THe point being you wanted to belittle the people who signed up. I’m telling you that people are interested in doing it right.
observanteen: I hope you don’t take this the wrong way but I feel very passionate about this subject.
You say you don’t want to “enlighten” the kid. Why not? I challenge you to come up with an answer to that question that doesn’t lead directly to either kfira or worse. As I will demonstrate, those seem to be the only alternatives. We have a faith. We worship a God. In fact we worship the God besides Whom there is no other. That is the aleph-beis of basic Judaism. In a sense this aleph-beis is easier than the regular one because it has only thirteen “letters.” Yet it is still not part of our curriculum. How many bochurim in yeshiva can list all 13 ikarim without peeking? How many of them have sung “yigdal” every day of school through 5th grade?
I agree that it isn’t wise to answer questions that were never asked, especially when we’re talking about those questions that don’t have any answers. But neither of us are talking about teaching elementary school students about theodicy and the Kuzari principle. We are talking about teaching the things that are the foundations of what it means to be a Jew and, unlike our reconstructionist brethren, we both know that it doesn’t mean gefilte fish on Friday night. It means that we believe in one God who gave us one Torah. There are a couple details where there might be room to disagree on how much we dwell on the nature of yichud, the issurim of shituf etc, but that much we all hold as the basis of our faith, yet none of this is ever taught in a high school classroom, boys or girls! To quote my rebbi (one of the men I mentioned in my earlier post) “Yankele sings ‘Hashem is here Hashem is there’ when he is 5 years old and he goes the rest of his life with a five-year-old’s understanding of the concept.”
You want to change that situation for the better and I admire you for it tremendously, but please take a look at what you’re saying when you say you want to let a kid plod along his tmimusdig way. You imply one of two things. Either a) teaching him/her yesodei hadas will ruin his/her tmimus or b) it won’t but you have another reason for not wanting to tell him/her.
a) is kfira pure and simple. “a” says that the very foundations of our faith, the most significant of the ikarim cannot withstand any scrutiny at all. In fact, you are saying something even worse. You are saying that they are less than nothing, that someone who accepted Torah beforehand will leave it now that he knows Who he’s doing it for!
b) is worse. B is a chazon ish shiur of avoda zara mit alle “hiddurim”. You know that he will continue to keep Torah umitzvos after he knows about God but you refuse to tell him anyway. Why? Because you don’t want him to know about God. Why don’t you want him to know about God? Because you are deliberately keeping this person from acknowledging his or her Creator for your own selfish purposes. Comparisons can be drawn to either migdal bavel or the calves of Yeravam ben Nevat for different reasons, but I don’t want to get too carried away.
I apologize for the rant and assure you that I speak only from a place of ahavas yisroel. Any harsh words I said come from pain and not personal animosity; I hope you understand.
But I ask you one last time: Why not teach them?
The simple answer is because it’s easier.
Someone with no background who becomes interested in Torah approaches it from a completely different angle than someone who grew up frum and begins to question.
The former is a much easier person to satisfy. If you’re discussing hashkafa the exchange boils down to this: s/he asks “what do Jews believe.” Hopefully you have what to answer.
With someone who grew up frum, it’s different. The questions are more complicated. Not all of them have easy answers and not all of them have answers at all. Because a frum kid with questions — say a mesivta bochur named Itche — does not ask “what do Jews believe?” He starts with “why has no one told me that Jews believe X if all the rishonim consider it so important?” and it only goes downhill from there. Quite often the person asked barely knows what “X” is. Then — if he doesn’t get disgusted and wander off looking for someone competent elsewhere (which many do) — he moves on to learning yesodos ha-emuna b’iyun, and when you learn b’iyun you have kushyos and stiros. To do “kiruv krovim” you have to be able to learn hashkafa b’iyun and know Yesodei Torah not as well as you know To’en v’nit’an — but as well as your Rosh Yeshiva knows to’en v’nit’an. Having been on the student side of that kind of learning, I know that I have met exactly two people in my life who are qualified to do that and only one of them is actually “in kiruv.”
Ha lachma anya — this is the bread that makes us poor.
Di achala avhasana b’arra d’mitzrayim — that our parents ate in Egypt, but not here because they can’t afford it.
$18.50 sounds reasonable. I recall seeing it slightly cheaper last year and you might be able to get a better deal if you bake with a chabura.
yenta: 100% of the women who asked me what time candles are next week do not plan on lighting after tzeis.
When the British ruled India they also had to deal with Muslim terrorist acts, both against colonial rule (which they got from the Jews too) and against the Hindu majority. They dealt with it by hanging any Muslim convicted of those crimes in a pigskin with a piece of pork stuffed in his mouth. It made a great deterrent. Israel needs to bring in the death penalty for murder.
I remember being sent in with a film canister.
commonsense: Jewishness was paraphrasing a passuk from tehillim 137.
The real question is where the mishteret gvul was while this was going on.
Answer: Harassing settlers.
It all depends on the spirit in which it was offerred. If it was friendly I’ll say thanks and decide on my own whether or not to take it. If it was given condescendingly or with a belligerent attitude I simply explain to the guy that it’s really none of his business.
If their ads are spelled atrociously it usually indicates that they didn’t put much effort into their advertising — often the mark of somebody in a basement who has several scams going at once.
The murderers’ who else?
Grandmaster: yeshivaworld.com is not the appropriate place for a lengthy critique of the culture, society, and theology of the Yeshiva World.
The monday edition of Hamodia has a long gemach list. Some of them pick up too.