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29 – That is a very good point. Thank you! And thank you for caring enough about the issue to respond.
As I was writing my post, I realized (and was even hoping) that someone would make a similar point that basically means the same thing (although I hadn’t thought of it in those precise terms).That is the fact that even if I knew LB in person, of course one nevers 100% for sure that his response is the correct response. This is the case whenever a person chooses to speak or not speak, to act or not to act. And yet we have an obligation to speak or to act many times a day, without ever knowing 100% what the correct course of action is.
With the knowledge that one has, he has to weigh both sides (what the likely consequences are for acting/speaking vs. the likely consequences for not doing so), and decide which way the potential damage is greatest and act accordingly.
In this case, I felt the potential danger in not adding those words was both the more likely and the greater danger.
I hear your question, and I have an answer, but I’m not sure I can give it in a public forum. Sorry!
Suffice it to say, I would never have written that unless I thought it HAD to be said. Let’s just say that it was a combination of this: “In all honesty though, it was a lot of stuff that I bottled in and wanted to share it with someone who would understand and maybe hopefully make sense of it because this person is close to said rabbonim and I really respect them.” and what I already know about LB.
והמבין יביןrasha and non-Jew are not the same.
That may be true but LB wanted to know if she spoke LH and needs to do teshuva.
“Many people will water down their regular liquid hand soap or dishwashing liquid”
I don’t think everyone even says you have to water it down (especially dishwashing liquid. The regular hand soap I’m less sure of).
But again, there are different opinions, so LOR in this case for sure. And mention that hygiene is an issue for you.
um..pardon my ignorance, but what’s Shabbos soap? I didn’t know that existed.
LB – if the point was that you felt you needed to discuss it with someone because it was “all bottled in”, it was 100% mutar! Not only that, but it was probably an obligation! Hashem wants us to be emotionally healthy. You are allowed to talk about something if it’s for the purpose of your emotional health – to make you feel better about it.
It is best if you can find the right person to talk to – someone who will understand and help you to deal with it. It sounds like that is exactly what you did!
I think I once told you about a pamphlet called something like, “How to get deeper into Torah without going off the deep end”. I believe it talks about this issue here – it gives a basic guideline for knowing when it’s forbidden and when it’s permitted to speak l”h.
One of my teachers once pointed out that sometimes people are too careful about L”H and don’t speak when they should.
When you are trying to figure out if something is L”H or not, I think the two things to think about are: 1. What is your purpose in saying what you are saying? 2. What will the results be?Bottom Line: no teshuva needed here.
LB – good point! Even at my age, I always get pen marks on my hands! Imagine what would have happened when I was 6!
Bar soap is a problem according to everyone (as far as I know). Liquid soap is a machlokes. It also may depend how thin the liquid soap is. Some will only use it if it is watered down, and some will use it the regular way. There may be a difference between dishwashing detergent and the hand liquid soaps (which are thicker).
It is possible that there are some people who would only use the dishwashing detergent (on their hands) and not the liquid hand soap, and that some will use either one, but I’m not sure.
Definitely an LOR question. And when you ask, make sure to mention that hygiene is important to you!
“meno: For EVERY jew that was not religious and wouldn’t have become (which was a lot) it was the BEST thing that could have ever happened to them!”
What? I would never differentiate between religious and non-religious Jews in a matter like this. For one thing, we don’t know who really is religious and who is not. There are many Mitzvos in the Torah and everyone has a different bechira level and we have no idea who is on a higher level than who. There can be people who are considered “non-religious” who are actually on a much higher level than some who are called “religious”.
We do believe that Hashem controls everything in the world and that Hashem loves all us, religious or not, and therefore whatever He does to us is in our best interest. This applies to both religious and non-religious Jews.
However, as I pointed out, I would be careful about the context in which I apply this concept. Of course, technically, it applies everywhere. But when you are talking about something like the holocaust, it is a concept that can’t be explained in one sentence, and therefore it is better not to say such things in a forum in which it would be impossible to explain what it means. Since it can easily lead to misconceptions.” but you think Joseph is on the level of Rabbi Akiva? ”
what? lost you there… what does it have to do with being on the level of R’ Akiva. The discussion was about whether or not we are supposed to yearn for/daven for being killed al Kiddush Hashem. In the end you acknowledged that he was right, so how can you say he didn’t mean it?And I have read through a lot of old threads. I see no reason to believe that he doesn’t mean it.
“and is that really the more important point?”
Yes, it is. Being dan l’kaf zchus is one of the most important Mitzvos and probably the one that will bring Mashiach and the lack of which is keeping us in galus.
LB – what was the reason that you wrote the stuff that you wrote?
Did you say the person’s name/s that it was about?
btw, WTP, I checked and it turns out that my niece is off on Monday Lad B’omer and not on Sunday Lag B’omer. So it does seem that Lag BaOmer is actually being pushed off.
Ubiquitin, first of all, shkoyach on being able to admit you may be wrong. (although I personally am still not convinced you are as per my last post, but since you don’t think the way I do about paradoxes, according to your way of thinking, you would have to say you are wrong if the source is correct).
Second of all, you now have to concede that you were wrong about the more important point here. That is the fact that you misjudged Joseph and assumed that he didn’t really mean what he said.
“Ask the person you spoke l”h about for mechila.’
That may be assur. If no harm was done to them, you are not allowed to tell them that you spoke L”H about them. If harm was done to them, it is a machlokes, and you either have to tell them or you are not allowed to tell them (because it will make them feel bad).
Either way, you have to do the regular teshuva between man and G-d which involves: Admitting your sin, regretting it, and taking on yourself not to do so anymore.
You also have to try to undo any damage and/or do damage control. If it is possible to go back to the person whom you spoke L”H to and tell them that you were mistaken, you should do so. If you can’t actually tell them you were mistaken, at least find a way to make the L”H less bad (like by finding a “limud zchus” for the person spoken about or finding something good to say about them). Also, tell them not to send the email to anyone else or to tell anyone else what you said since you realize it may have been mistaken or inaccurate.
But first, we have to clarify that you did in speak l’H. Again, I didn’t quite get the situation?
“Vindication is sweet, isn’t it.”
meaning?
sorry, LB, I don’t understand what you wrote. Can you clarify?
You are not sure about what? Saying nothing or saying something about what? What do you mean by a human – who else do you send emails to?
Are you not sure if it was loshon hora or not? Are you unsure if there was toeles?
Please explain. I’m lost.
שור שנגח את הפרה for Women: That sounds interesting!
Although I think that desiring to die al kiddush Hashem is not necessarily the same as davening to die al kiddush Hashem. I think that desiring to die al Kiddush Hashem is actually closer to what I was talking about when I said that one should strive to be on the level of dying al Kiddush Hashem as opposed to davening to actually die al kiddush Hashem.
You can feel a desire to die al Kiddush Hashem without actually davening for it.
which is totally not the same thing as saying that it was good for people that they died in the holocaust. All it means is that given the choice, spritual death is worse than physical death. But the best is not to be given a choice and not to have any kind of death.
That is very interesting! And the first really good source anyone from either side has brought.
Everything that happens is the best thing that can happen to everyone. Although one does have to be careful how, when, and where one applies that so that it shouldn’t be misunderstood.
Anyhow, he doesn’t actually know me. Does knowing someone in the CR count as knowing someone?
“We weren’t allowed to use pens until our teacher decided our handwriting was good enough to make the switch, sometime in fourth grade”
It’s good I didn’t have teachers like that; I’d still be using pencils!
only if you think it’s fun to be mean.
I know your name is “Meno”, but I never thought of you as the mean type. : )
In fact I only just realized that your name is a homonym for meano.
It sounds like it could be a good idea. In terms of being expensive, it sounds like the point was to save resources so they end up gaining financially.
My concern is that I’m wondering if an official non-Jewish organization can really do this the right away. They are going to look at it in a very technical way using very objective criteria that can be computed and calculated. I don’t know how these things work, so I can be wrong, but aren’t there many subjective criteria involved in these things? And wouldn’t the Frum world have different considerations than the goyish world?
My pet peeve about holding pens: Why is that I got 4 points off of a Chumash test in 12th grade for bad handwriting? And why was my handwriting always criticized?
If my handwriting was really so bad, why didn’t someone along the way just teach me how to hold my pen correctly or fix whatever it is I needed to fix instead of making me feel bad about my handwriting?? Okay, so I didn’t actually feel that bad about it, but even so, wouldn’t it have been more productive for someone to tell me what to do about it instead of criticizing me for it???
Actually you know at least two (unless you meant me).
Thanks Editor and team and Mod 100!
They might not have a choice. If they think it is a temporary situation, it might not be in the kids’ best interest to send them to another school in addition to the fact that it might be impossible.
A home school could be a good idea, but it might not always be possible.
I’m also not sure if it’s so terrible for kids to be out of school for a few weeks. After all, it happens every summer.
I thought they were oiver in the end. That was not how I learned it in 7th grade. Then I learned that they weren’t – that he was just testing her. But the Rav who was shocked said that they were oiver.
“We’re not discussing davening, we’re discussing yearning.”
The Maharal says that רצון is davening But it is possible that there is a difference. Either way, this may make this whole discussion different, as you will see further in my post. Thank you for pointing that out.“R’ Akiva didn’t say “when will I reach that level”, he said ” מתי יבא לידי ואקיימנו “.”
Which may mean that you and Joseph are right.
Secon Possibiltiy (unlikely), when he said “ואקיימנו “, he could have been referring to “reaching the level”.
Third possibility (most likely)- “b’chol nafshecha” refer to “reaching the level of Ahavas Hashem”, and R’ Akiva yearned to actually be m’kayim it.Even if this what R’ Akiva yearned for, I am not sure that is necessarily what the rest of us are supposed to do.
I don’t think that we can talk about yearning to die al kiddush Hashem until we have reached that level. So I still think that what we are supposed to have in mind when we say “b’chol nafshecha” is that we are trying to reach that level of Ahavas Hashem.If you were talking about what one has in mind when saying “b’chol levavecha”, it would mean that we were talking about davening, and then it would have to apply to all of us, since it’s the meaning of the words. If you say that we are talking about yearning and not davening, that means that that is not the meaning of the words per se’, and in that case, it doesn’t necessarily have to apply to all of us. At most, it would be something to strive for.
“Or else the humor is getting overused.”
maskim.“And then there will be those who will take you seriously and start ranting about unnecessary chumros, and how this does not reflect Yiddishkeit, etc etc.”
+1 : )
“No, the last post was a response to me.”
It was a response to your response of her response to Joseph’s post (but I think you hadn’t realized that she was responding to Joseph initially), so it was in essence a response to Joseph’s post (although I think you didn’t realize that).“Also, let’s get real. It is impossible.”
Agreed. I was just explaining what she meant; I was not saying that I agreed with her.I didn’t learn it b’nogeah to hilchos Yichud. I will have to look that up when I have a chance. But we did learn about the concept.
In any case, I don’t understand something. Even if נשים דעתן קלות, wouldn’t that be counteracted by the fact that men have a bigger yetzer hara? And what about the fact that there are more boys at-risk than girls?
And I don’t see what the Bruriah story proves since there was also a man involved.
It wasn’t so much about agreeing as about being able to explain. Except that I think your explanation wasn’t accurate.
“That’s different than what you originally said, that we should spend money on it.”
It’s not a stira. She was talking about two different things in the op and in her last post. Her last 3 posts were simply a response to Joseph’s comment implying that it must be impossible for such a thing to exist.
I would tend to agree with Joseph on this, although it’s not something that one can say for sure.
I realize that there have been many things invented over the years that no one would have thought possible. The difference with this is that it seems to involve people going beyond space which might be against the Torah. But perhaps that is not what it involves. How would it work exactly? It has to somehow work within nature. Is the person literally flying through the air? Are they flying through the walls?
If you are going to say, “well, how does any modern technology work? How do words get from my printed screen to yours?” , the answer is that there is a way that it works within nature. So how would this work?
Because that’s not the reason that I learned. You might be right – I had just never learned that that was the reason. I learned that it was something else.
I still think that my understanding of the Gemara is correct – we daven to be on the level that we would be ready and able to give up our lives al kiddush Hashem if faced with such a situation, but we are not davening to be in such a situation.
On a practical level, even if there would be a concept of davening to die al Kiddush Hashem, you would have to first be on the level of being ready to do so before the concept of davening to do so would have any meaning to it.
Since most of us are not on that level, it would only make sense for us to be davening to be on that level (as opposed to davening to actually have to do so). If someone who is not on that level of Ahavas Hashem of being ready and willing to give up his life al Kiddush Hashem goes ahead and davens to be able to die al Kiddush Hashem, there is clearly something very twisted about that, and it is coming from the wrong place (somewhat similar to what is wrong with wearing a burka).
You can’t daven to die al kiddush Hashem without first being on the level of Ahavas Hashem of being ready to die al Kiddush Hashem.
And that is the reason why I think the Gemara can’t mean what Joseph thinks it means.
“Joseph said the exact opposite of the above”
“No he didn’t.”
Yes, he did. If I understood correctly, Ubiqutin had just said that we don’t daven to die al kiddush Hashem, and he is saying that Joseph said the opposite, since Joseph said that we do daven to die al Kiddush Hashem.
Am I correct Ubiquitin and Joseph?
“Trying to avoid something is the textbook stirah to wanting something.”
That is not true. That is exactly the type of stira which I (and I think DY) was referring to.
I once heard the following D’var Torah:
In davening somewhere during Elul/Tishrei (either in slichos or RH or YK davening I think) we say: “Aneinu k’mo sheanisa l’Avraham Avinu b’Har HaMoriah” What does this mean?Apparently, Avraham Avinu was davening the whole time during Akeidas Yitzchak that he shouldn’t have to kill Yitzchak. But at the same time, the Midrash says that he did it “b’leiv shaleim”.
So we see from here that a Jew can have two opposite emotions at the same time. You can be accepting and happy about a situation at the same time that you are davening to get out of it.
This is the opposite of the “Serenity Prayer”:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.”We say that they are NOT two different types of situations. The same situation can involve both accepting and trying to change it at the same time.
So it’s not necessarily a stira to say that one can daven to die al Kiddush Hashem while trying to avoid it.
The only problem in our case is that we are talking about davening to suffer. I don’t think we see such a thing anywhere else. By Avraham Avinu it was the other way around.
But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be true just because we don’t see it anywhere else. Dying al kiddush Hashem may be its own category.
On the one hand, one can argue that Avraham Avinu was davening not to have to do it. (which could prove that one doesn’t daven to die al kiddush Hashem). But on the other hand, that was killing his son and not about being killed himself. And it’s interesting that we only see that Avraham Avinu davened to not have to do it. What about Yitzchak Avinu? Why doesn’t it mention that he davened to not have to be sacrificed?
The response to that (to Ubiqiuitin’s last several posts) is that dying al kiddush Hashem can only take place by definition if a person can’t get away. If a person is not trying to avoid it, it’s no longer dying al Kiddush Hashem – it’s suicide.
So davening al Kiddush Hashem would mean davening to be in a situation in which one can’t avoid it.
The counter-argument to that is that davening is in itself trying to make it happen instead of avoiding it.
And the counter-argument to the counter-argument is that davening is different. Not running away when someone is trying to kill you is not being killed al kiddush Hashem since you are not being killed – you are killing yourself. Davening to have the opportunity to be killed al kiddush Hashem means that you are davening to be in a situation in which you can’t save yourself and you’re being killed will be a kiddush Hashem.
The counter-argument to the counter-argument of the counter-argument is that davening is not different.
I think both arguments (on this point) make sense. I agree with DY that we constantly face similar stiras in our Avodas Hashem. The main difference here though is that we are talking about davening. And we don’t generally daven for such things. And I think that is what bothering Ubiquitin and others (including myself). But I don’t think the other position is illogical – I’m just not sure it’s correct.
+1. I mentioned that previously
+1
that’s not true. We learned about it. We even learned the story with Bruriah in 7th or 8th grade. A Rav I know was shocked when I told him that.
“You still (three times in?) haven’t said what it is that several people have caught on to , you just insist that they have. My point was just that you seem to want to contradict me even when you may be unclear what I am commenting on.”
Since the comment was made to me in response to my post, the obvious assumption is that it was based on my post and was meant to be understandable in and of itself without further explanation.
So what is it that several people have caught on to?
” If every instance of being killed al kiddush Hashem was a misah meshuneh, those words would be superfluous.”
I don’t think that’s true. He may have wanted to stress either how horrible or how much of a kiddush Hashem (probably both) their death was by adding the words misah meshuneh.
LB – that was great!! I just wrote my own response, but you covered some points I left out. And those may have been the most important ones.
Thank you!
“Several posters who mentioned that they “caught on to the truth” as you put it.”
“In other words you have no answer to what you were answering to?”
You are confused about what that was in response to. You said that no one has “caught on to the truth”. I simply stated that several people have.
You still (three times in?) haven’t said what it is that several people have caught on to , you just insist that they have. My point was just that you seem to want to contradict me even when you may be unclear what I am commenting on.