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Health: Immortality, huh? Now that’s one thing I’ve never seen Clinton accused of! 😉
Joseph, I’m very surprised at your attitude. I would think that even the merest suggestion of impropriety would be reason enough to stay away from this so-called deal.
I don’t understand the question. Do you mean to say, is it okay to go to the beach? As opposed to davka, is it okay to bring your kids to the beach? I’m not sure why it would be okay for a frum adult of either gender to go to the beach, but somehow not okay for them to bring their children there.
Pray tell, what makes talking and laughing a “girl off the street”?
“Is smoking thee root cause for lung cancer or perhaps air pollution due to frivolous driving is the cause? If you would slow down instead of speeding, beside consuming less gas and creating fewer accidents it would decrease the amount of air pollution. Likewise instead of hopping in the car to go a block or two besides saving gas and time and the environment it is also healthy.”
You are wrong. Because science.
In my case, not very much, because the guests had already contributed to hachnasas kallah to make the wedding.
My husband and I would have much preferred a smaller wedding and a larger nest egg, but we were overruled.
“Jewishfeminist02 By your own admission the claim o that a smoker loses ten years is false and under Jewish Law testimony that is partially proven false is totally false and they are no longer believed.”
Um, no, it’s not false. It’s not a literal statement and was never intended as such. You are being ridiculous.
My mom was a frum girl who went to Neve. Of course, this was a long time ago but I think at that point it was mostly frum girls, actually. Most of them were more frum than she was and were trying to “mekarev” her to become like them!
Footsteps is not to “make people OTD”. It’s to help people who are ALREADY OTD to integrate into secular society and help them find college educations and jobs, etc.
Project Makom visited my community a little while ago. I hosted a few of the participants for Shabbos. They were very sweet and sincere but I had a hard time relating to them because their backgrounds were so different than mine. And they did have a LOT of questions. Which I think is a good thing.
coffee addict, what if I told you that I don’t believe you’re really Jewish? I believe that you’re a real person, but not a Jew! How would you feel?
Sparkly, I’m not literally suggesting that you should become transgender. However, since you said “i see nothing different about being a male or female or why someone would insist on being a male or female”, I’m asking you to think about why it’s so important for YOU to “insist on being a female” and then maybe you’ll understand how transgender people feel.
Ben Levi, I don’t understand your point.
dovrosenbaum, not all feminists are liberals and vice versa. It’s also not true that they all believe in moral relativism. I don’t see where “evil” comes into the picture…
There’s nothing “not tznius” about women talking and laughing in public. For heaven’s sake.
I don’t agree.
I think it’s very possible that Trump will be elected.
Ben Levi, google “Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation”. It’s a nice summary of the scientific literature on the topic as of 2009.
apushatayid, 40%?
Health, forget it, we’re just going in circles here.
Of course you can “manage in life” without knowing how to make cake. But that is not why it’s not “important” to know how to make cake. It’s not important because, well, it’s not. Why don’t you tell me why you think it IS important and we’ll go from there.
I don’t believe that if a girl goes to a gadol (R’ Shach or R’ Kanievsky or whoever it was) to ask a question about a Ramban, that that means that she plans to spend her entire life learning Ramban and will never take on any real responsibilities. I just don’t buy it.
On another note, this sentence:
“When someone gets married, they can’t spend all of their time learning Rambans, since they have to spend some time taking care of their families, whether that means baking cakes or changing diapers or spending time with your kids, etc.”
Also applies to men. And I guarantee you that no man who ever asked a shaila on a Ramban was told that some things are more important than learning Ramban and he should make sure that he knows how to make cake and potato kugel.
“then she said the craziest things…”
Yeah, Clinton is definitely the one we should be worried about in this election when it comes to “saying crazy things”. #sarcasm
Sparkly: But you said that you’re smart. So your children will (probably) be smart even if you marry a guy who is just as smart as you are, but not davka smarter.
“Or am I just over doing???”
Yes.
“It will take ten years off of your life. Does that mean that you will look ten years younger?
If you are saying that a smoker dies 10 years before his time? How do you know when his time is up? Only G-d Knows. If you can predict the future can you tell me what next weeks winning Lotto number are.”
What a ridiculous argument. According to that logic, why don’t we all engage in other dangerous behaviors. Why don’t we run across the street without looking, because “only God knows when your time is up!”
Obviously a smoker doesn’t literally lose exactly ten years. That’s an average. Calculated from scientific studies of life expectancy of smokers and non-smokers, controlling for other variables.
“Did ‘their Torah’ change between 1992 and 2006?”
Yes. That is exactly what happened. “Their Torah” can change at any time.
lilmod ulelamaid: Yes, I know that it’s in the written Torah, and yes, I know that they have access to the written text. You’re not understanding my point. They don’t accept the written Torah as an inherently binding legal text– their Torah she’baal peh can go anywhere, even in direct contravention of pshat. So to say, “But it’s right there! They KNOW it’s forbidden!” is misleading, because while they can see the same words that we see, they don’t operate on the same level of “it’s forbidden” that we do.
dovrosenbaum: I am fully aware that he is a daas yochid. However, he’s a heavyweight posek. You can’t just disregard him.
coffee addict: “Everyone knows they exist (we aren’t in Iran) they dot have to shove it down our face”
Actually, that’s not true. If you say, as many people here have been saying, that a transgender woman is not a woman at all, but rather “a man in a dress,” you are essentially denying that transgender people exist. Because you’re saying that they’re not really transgender, they’re really whatever gender they always were, and they’re just confused. I don’t think that asking to be properly acknowledged and identified as who you are constitutes “shoving it down our face”.
Sparkly: If it makes no difference, why don’t you try being a boy for a few days and tell me how that works out for you.
Sisterhoods do exist in frum communities, and some of them are quite active. It depends on the community. But they’re mostly made up of older women.
“as important as it is to learn Ramban, it is also important to know how to make cake”
Um, no it’s not.
Sam2, the Torah is not a chronological narrative!
The analogy was meant to be provocative. I was responding to lightbrite, who suggested that clothing that our ancestors wore because they were required by secular governments to differentiate themselves from the general population, is “Jewish” clothing. It’s not. Just because we historically did this or that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a part of our identity. It depends what the reason was. If we had our own independent traditions to wear such and such, that would be a different story. But if we wore it because the government told us to? Uh-uh. No different than a yellow star.
Yes, he would, in theory. The problem is that when you pick up a package of meat at the grocery store, you have no idea who the shochet was.
Except that according to them, it isn’t a Torah law at all in the first place.
Mods, is there a specific reason why my second comment is still awaiting moderation? I’d be happy to edit, if you explain what it is that needs editing.
Health…do you understand the meaning of the word “conspiracy”?
Never mind. He said it is because of meshichism.
Why do you davka want a guy who is smarter than you?
Meno, as I remember (and I’m sure it has been told and retold in many variations, so the one that I read may not be 100% accurate) two girls came to Rav Kanievsky and asked him a shailah on a Rambam, and he responded by telling them to go to the kitchen and his wife would show them how to make potato kugel.
I was outraged the first time I read this, and then I read it somewhere else that said that their shailah was something really obvious that any yeshiva bochur could answer, and that it was clear that they were only coming to him to make some kind of statement and not because they really had a question. So that gave me some perspective. Still, I can’t imagine that his way of dealing with them was effective– if anything, it may have just encouraged them more.
Yes, I know. That’s why I said “they should” and not “they have to”.
Although actually, why would they have a chiyuv to learn mussar?
MaidofCH, no, the Torah does not allow it, and I have never suggested that it does. However, this is not binding for goyim. And according to the Tzitz Eliezer, once the transition is complete, the man does indeed become a woman (even for a Jew!)
I wonder what you mean by this:
“Some of your threads strike me as highly distorted. What you’re essentially saying is this: ‘I want to do or be whatever I want, and everyone has to go along with it. Ergo, if I want to pretend to be the opposite gender, the world must accommodate me.'”
Because that’s not what I’m saying at all. (And for the record, it’s not “I”. *I* am a woman, born with female anatomy, married to a man, born with male anatomy.)
People who are gay and transgender are not asking the world for anything, except to acknowledge that they exist.
RebYidd23, it sounds like you are looking for the exact opposite of libertarianism. Interesting.
Rashi seems to be quoting a Midrash, do you have the citation for the Midrash?
lilmod ulelamaid, how is this:
“Chalilah, no one said that their Mitzvos are worth nothing!!! I am the first person to say that every Mitzvah that every Jew does is worth an unbelievable unimaginable amount!!!!”
compatible with this:
“Better not to keep the Mitzvos than to deny the truth of any Mitzvah, which renders someone an apikorus.”
It is not clear that belief in God and acceptance of ol malchus shamayim is a halachically binding mitzvah. So I don’t know where you are getting this idea from. To push it a bit further– why is it so bad to be an apikores? Is there a mitzvah to not be an apikores? Well, that depends on whether or not there’s a mitzvah to believe in God. Which is a machlokes. Back to square one.
“the Chiloni and OTD Jew mentioned above are keeping some Mitzvos– they are keeping the Mitzvos of not denying that Torah is M’Sinai and not denying that every Mitzvah is from Hashem. And those are the most important Mitzvos!!!!!”
Those aren’t mitzvos for sure. There isn’t a mitzvah to “not deny” something. But regardless, a secular Jew who keeps zero mitzvos but doesn’t affiliate with liberal movements of Judaism doesn’t necessarily believe in God and in Torah MiSinai, anyway. (In fact, I would hazard a guess that the majority of them do not hold these beliefs.) As you already acknowledged in Qualification 3.
Joseph, you are being deliberately obtuse. lilmod ulelamaid is correct– the fact that they “have a different Torah” would be what makes them apikorsim.
Now, I’m not at all convinced that sincere Reform and Conservative Jews nowadays qualify for apikorsus at all. (Too many commenters here have been saying things like “well, we can’t judge them, and they may be tinok shenishba, but nevertheless, they’re apikorsim!” which seems very backwards to me– I don’t see how a person could be both).
But– if they are apikorsim at all– it is for the reason I describe, that they “have a different Torah,” and not for the reason you describe, that they know that the Torah forbids XYZ for all Jews and knowingly and deliberately do XYZ anyway. The essence of these movements is that they reinterpret the Torah. They don’t identify with the Torah that we have. They identify with the Torah that they have created. They aren’t naughty little boys who do something they know they aren’t supposed to. The problem is much deeper than that: they don’t acknowledge in the first place that what they are doing is something that is wrong. And how can they believe that? Because, again, they don’t have our Torah, they have a different Torah.
This is what makes the liberal movements so insidious. Because they normalize and legitimize lifestyles that are inherently incompatible with our mesorah. But at the same time, I’d much rather see Jews engage with Judaism, even in this way, than reject it altogether.
Joseph:
Why not? Because it’s impossible that a feminist could be married to someone who understands halacha? Or because it’s impossible that you could ever be wrong about something?
Health, what you’re essentially claiming is that the APA forced through a policy that contradicted the available scientific data at the time, because of wanting to conform to societal pressure (or, to use your term, because they felt a need to be “politically correct”). And then, when NARTH presented them with scientific research that contradicted their position, they stifled it. Because, again, they wanted to be “politically correct”, so they abandoned all usual rules of governance, scientific methods, etc etc in service of this political correctness.
What on earth do you call that, if not a conspiracy?
apushatayid, no, the other 40% weren’t being intellectually dishonest…in 1973 when the vote actually happened!
But decades later, after a great deal more scientific research has been done…well, to take that position today is a completely different story.
Does anyone know a source for the idea that we do pidyon haben because the firstborns instigated egel hazahav while the leviyim did not participate at all?
My friend mentioned this to me and I had never heard it before, so I asked her where it was from and she didn’t know. My husband doesn’t know either and so far, my Internet research has not been fruitful.
Yerushalayim?
dovrosenbaum, you are straw manning again…Warren didn’t “make up stories” and certainly did not take advantage of affirmative action.
I think Democrats and Republicans can all agree that Rachel Dolezal is crazy.
There are actual physical differences in the brains of transgender people that prove they’re not just dressing differently because they feel like it.
Anyway, I’m not sure why any of the so-called “confusion” you describe would be a reason why “we need Trump”.
Yeah…liberal politicians don’t actually want to enforce sharia law or ban ownership of guns and SUVs. Nice straw man, though.
How well do you know her?
It will take ten years off of your life. No joke. If that’s not a reason not to start, I don’t know what is.
“Care to explain the halachic reasoning?”
It’s not my own, it’s my husband’s, so I don’t know. I’ll try to remember to ask him. I’m 99% sure it has nothing to do with meshichists, though.
“Chassidic garb is very Jewish, but that is because historically Jews were required to dress differently from the non-Jewish population.”
In that case, I suppose yellow stars are also “very Jewish”. Maybe we should go back to wearing them.
lilmod ulelamaid: Encouraging not frum people to formally affiliate with the Conservative and Reform movements is not a problem that frum people have. Yes, it would be better if they didn’t have those affiliations, but some of them do and it’s certainly nothing to do with us. That doesn’t mean that the mitzvos that they DO observe are now worth nothing.
Joseph: Our Torah is not their Torah. The Torah that they have doesn’t forbid homosexual activity (not, as you said, homosexuality– not even our Torah forbids that).
Obviously the text is the same, but not the Torah she’baal peh. So they believe they ARE keeping the Torah.
Not saying it’s right. But that’s the reality.
A woman is not an expensive jewel. A woman is a person. Her purpose is not “to look beautiful for her husband” nor anyone else.
Just because a woman doesn’t feel a responsibility to look out for men’s neshamos doesn’t automatically mean that she “feel
a need to dress in a way to make mens’ head [sic] turn”.Most women don’t dress to excite other men. They wear what THEY like.
Health: So basically, your argument is that there’s a massive conspiracy going on.
I don’t buy that.
apushatayid: You’re accusing the scientific establishment of being intellectually dishonest? In favor of a Christian organization masquerading as an academic institution, which you believe knows better?
That’s rich.
Ben Levi:
1) “This was what you wrote
‘And to top it all off, the study was not peer-reviewed, as is standard, before being published. It’s no wonder Spitzer retracted’.
As I wrote that is a completely false statement.”
No, it’s not “completely false.” It is in fact true that the study was NOT peer reviewed before its initial publication. Yes, it was peer-reviewed AFTERWARDS and was then re-published…not that that helps your argument much, because a majority of the reviews were critical.
2) and 3) Yes, I understand what the goal of the study was, but when you set standards that are vague and employ methods that are not controlled, and then collect your “results” from asking people to remember things that they felt several years ago…well, you’ve so many variables in so many different categories that it’s hard to take any conclusions seriously. Also, I’m not sure what marriage therapy has to do with this, it’s a completely different field.
4) I don’t believe that you don’t know the meaning of “political agenda”. We’re not just talking about people who want help to treat a condition. We’re talking about people who are activists, who oppose gay marriage on principle, who are participating in the study not just because they’re hoping to find successful treatment, but because they want to make a statement to the world. Of course those people are going to take advantage of already shoddy methods of measurement (the subjects’ own thoughts, emotions, and memories, which are highly subjective and unreliable to begin with) and manipulate them to fit the conclusions they want, for the sake of the broader political agenda.
5) No, Zucker didn’t say that the therapies work. Read that Psychology Today article.
I’ll say it again: if all you’ve got is ONE study, which has been both a) retracted and b) discredited by the entirety of the rest of the scientific world, you’re grasping at straws. You can’t just ignore broad scientific consensus by bleating “But there’s a study!” Guess what, one study isn’t absolute proof of anything. That’s why you need to have good research methods, and even then, you need to have independent corroborating studies as well. Those don’t exist. So we’re back to the status quo, which is that conversion therapy DOESN’T work.