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Mammele: What’s your concern about the math? Suppose today the age gap (or whatever the multitudes of causes) results in 5% of girls being unable to get married due to their being a shortage of unmarried men, if the rabbonim permit 5% of girls to be a second wife, that would greatly alleviate the problem of those girls who otherwise were r”l doomed to have been unable to find someone to marry. If the percentage is 10%, then 10% could be allowed to become a sister-wife. On either of those two examples it would mean 95% or 90% of the people would still have “traditional” one-husband/one-wife relationships.
Now I’m not suggesting that this is a quick-fix that will overnight resolve the shiddduch crisis. Or that, even, the percentages of plural wives families will automatically equal the exact percentages of girls who are short a husband. But certainly it will go part of the way, or hopefully even a long way, towards helping resolve the shiddduch crisis we are experiencing regarding an imbalance of boys and girls in the market. Even a partial fix is better than none.
And as stated, this solution will need to be highly regulated by the rabbonim shlita to ensure its success both in terms of who is capable of participating in it as well as to regulate its occurrence/frequency remain in hand. But as I stated, I think there will be more of an issue of finding enough people willing and capable of participating (even though only a small percentage is needed in the first place) than a problem of having too many willing participants. But even a smaller than needed participation rate will go a long way in helping resolve the crisis.
And, again, I stress I’m not advocating a hefker velt in this or that this program be started by any Yankel or Mirel on their own. It first needs the haskama of gedolei yisroel before it can get off the ground (no one has the right to do it on their own beforehand). Even the NASI program of encouraging close in age shidduchim got the signed haskama of gedolei yisroel first. As noted the Sefardim have been doing this for centuries until very recent times and some Teimanim still have plural wives even today. I don’t think any of the children will be discriminated or feel second-class or even feel differently than other children. Children of divorced families manage in a frum world of mostly married parents.
And there have been rabbonim in the past who suggested the possibility of the current rabbonim ending the cherem is a real and serious possibility if the circumstances were right. I believe the Gra is one of the rabbonim and I know that on one of his easily available Torah tapes that Rav Avigdor Miller suggested the rabbonim could do so.
Mammele: That all being said, I’m confident that there would be some interest and uptake in the real world on this idea from both genders. Indeed, one longtime poster on this very forum, who happened to be an older single girl, had more than once expressed support for this idea.
[Mods, I removed the reference to any individual poster.]
The Septuagint was the first time the Torah was translated into another language. And it was done under the threat of force. Being it was the first translation it was tragic in that it, for the first time, made possible for the gentiles to take our Torah, corrupt it, and later even seek to lay claim to it.
Once it was already translated, a future translation doesn’t add their ability to take it from us since they already had the first translation.
That all being said, some shittos in fact opposed the Artscroll and other translations.
Secular studies in yeshivos are somewhat limited and done to the extent they are mandated under local secular law. And often the yeshivos, in fact, do less than State law mandates, if they can get away with it. And some shittos hold that secular studies shouldn’t be taught at all in high school, if avoidable.
Mammele: Please note, again, my initial comment on this topic above. I suggested this mechanism be strictly limited and restricted. I did not suggest it become a widespread practice. Nor would I anticipate the vast majority of folks to consider this option to be their calling or practice. I would, indeed, very much expect most people by far to be uninterested and consider this not their thing. So a survey you conduct resulting in such results would in fact fit into my expectations.
I suggested exactly that, above. One legal marriage registered with the state, and no more. The Utah case involved a gentleman religiously married to multiple wives but only the first was legally married to him under State law.
Do you want to do it in COBOL or BASIC?
rob: Chabad is not mekarev goyim. And they are not the biggest chasidus. Satmar is much larger than Lubavitch.
BTW, I think that the Religious Zionist/DL community had been losing representation the Kenesset every period from ’48 through future elections. Compare what the RZ party won in the first two elections to what they won in later elections. Eventually the NRP got so small they were wiped off the map. The current situation with Bennet might be an exception because he made his party partially secular/non-religious, i.e. Shaked.
Mammele, RY23 is also correct that the technical prohibition of polygamy is on its last legal legs in the United States. A federal court in Utah has overturned the states law against it less than two years ago. Though, as noted, it has consciously been unenforced for over half a century, anyways, except in situations where it involved an underage party.
Because the vast majority never knew its origin before it became ubiquitous. If they did, it never would have become so popular.
Should be and is are two different things.
If your knew how many roaches occupy the kitchens of even the fanciest restaurants, you’d never eat out again.
Mod-12.
Main site and the CR have different sets of moderators.
rob: The truth is shocking, isn’t it? A “quite revolution” had occurred in Orthodoxy over the last 35+ years. Orthodoxy had become increasingly Chareidi to the point today that American orthodoxy is overwhelmingly Chareidi, as a highly respected secular national polling/survey outlet with no skin in the game or reason to fudge had reported. In Israeli Orthodoxy it is the same story.
The reason this is a hidden revolution is because chareidim have a tendency to congregate and live in very close proximity to each other and overwhelmingly live in large numbers in a small number of metropolitan areas’ very limited neighborhoods. So when you’re outside in the wider world it’s very easy to miss this phenomenon.
As far as the Russians I’m referring to, they are not even Jewish. They are outright gentiles. Even the Zionists admit add much and thus try to pretend they “converted” them despite their continued eating pork and not keeping Shabbos post-pseudo-conversion.
Mammele: Polygamy had been practiced by Sefardim until recent times and there are Teimanim even today with multiple wives. Nothing radical at all.
And the Mormon fundamentalists and some African immigrants practice it in America today. It isn’t illegal unless one registers more than one marriage license with the government. Living with more than one woman isn’t inherently illegal. The authorities tolerate the fundamental Mormons.
rob: Do not put words in my mouth. Nowhere, absolutely nowhere, have I “wrote that the chareidim are becoming a majority of jewry”. Nowhere. There are still more Reform Jews than chareidim. I wrote about Orthodoxy and Orthodoxy only. And Chareidim have already become a majority of the Orthodox. By a long shot. Not even close. As cited, 81% of American Orthodox Jews aged 30 and younger are Chareidi, and 71% of American Orthodox Jews overall are Chareidi. So the pattern is very clear. With each younger generation orthodoxy is becoming increasingly Chareidi. In Israel the trend is the same notwithstanding the Russians who many/most are not even Jewish, let alone Orthodox. (Despite their hocus-pocus ” conversion” before getting right back to their pork and shellfish meal.)
Reinstatement of polygamy on a limited basis, where individuals would need a heter approving their ability to properly handle a second wife, would resolve the shiddduch crisis.
1. There is no evidence or reason to believe families with many children have better or worse mental/psychological health/copying than families with less children. Indeed, I’ve seen surveys indicating parents with more children were generally happier than parents with less children.
2. Being honest, most people who supress the number of children they have do so for ostensible financial reasons rather than mental health reasons. They will even tell themselves that if they had ten million dollars they’d have a large family since that would make them happy.
clergyofberlin: The massive Russian influx (of which many or mostly are non-Jews) to Israel is what kept them from a higher mk representation. It is remarkable that despite millions of new Russians in Israel, the chareidim *still* didn’t become a lesser percentage of the population and Kenesset. They managed this by their massive population growth.
P.S. I told you this same point five years ago.
P.P.S. The number of DL families with a lot of children are today a very small percent of their population. You are mostly limited to the Merkaz HaRav types and not the average DL family.
No, it means that at heart you’re a chosid. Now come out of the closet and start admitting the truth!
1. There are grave spiritual dangers with sending impressionable Jewish children to public school. This is a virtually insurmountable objection.
2. Despite the admitted financial difficulties, difficult as they may be, the Yeshiva system continues to work in America for the past 65+ years.
Goq, and if it has to do with the birthrates, that ought to tell you that those with the lower rate have it lower because they are suppressing their rate.
You have Rav Chaim, Rav Aharon Leib, the Skulener Rebbe, Rav Shlomo Miller, etc. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you lack world class gedolei Yisroel shlita.
My basement is dark as squeak and I play chess behind locked doors.
Sam, nu, so they were off by a percent. Even scientific surveys aren’t exact. But the trend is undeniably clear that chareidim are constituting an increasingly larger percent of orthodoxy. And very quickly.
ZD: In Israel chareidim are also outgrowing DL by leaps and bounds. And also very quickly.
yichusdik: You have your head deep in the sand if you think the pendulum has swung away from right-wing/Chareidism to something more MO or on the left. The Orthodox Jewish community in the United States has become significantly more right-wing/Chareidi over every 15 year period, including between 1998-2013, for the past 50+ years. And the MO community has, at best, stagnated (in 2013 they had the same number of children in school as they did in 1998 while the Chareidi community doubled during that same period – yes, doubled in 15 years, check Avi Chai). According to the 2013 Pew Research Study, Chareidim account for 71% of American Orthodox Jews, including 81% of American Orthodox Jews aged 30 and younger.
yichusdik: The following is copied word for word from Rabbi Gordimer:
And Rabbi Gordimer is demanding MO fix it myriad of severe failings, aside and separate from any issues with OO.
I’m proud of you, Wolf.
So anyone interested in nature should get a television to watch National Geographic rather than refrain from doing so on account that it might lead to watching less benign programming?
yichusdik: Rabbi Gordimer is not an outsider. He is Modern Orthodox.
Anyone else donning sackcloth?
How many people who regulally go to satmar dont dress , speak and act like one.
You’ve obviously haven’t been in Satmar much.
The answer to your question: Many.
It’s just you.
All the yeshivas I’ve been to serve delicious food. It ain’t 60 years ago anymore when you’d get rocks.
In actuality NYC has become very accommodating and is agreeing to place children where the parents want a very whole lot more than in the past.
gavra: Kicking the kids into the street doesn’t help pay the rebbeim and morahs.
Rav Schwab zt’l offered a solution.
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/modern-orthodox-judaism
Are you asking about the solo or the choir?
How often do you think this happens?
I think it is excruciatingly rare. And in the vast majority of yeshivos it is never done. (Whether it is threatened is a separate question.)
If you wish to learn the tune to this song, look up the music to the “joseph song” from Andrew Lloyd Webers score for the musical Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. It is sung by “Joseph” so no issues of kol isha etc…
Those were the days…
How much more does it cost to operate a public school in NYC than in Cleveland?
New York government may in general be more wasteful than other governments, so I’m no sure how much a comparison between New York public schools versus other city’s public schools will tell you. New York government is also far more unionized and union-friendly.
In the past 12 months Mayor de Blasio has radically changed NYC’s approach to special ed and they now generally do not fight against parents request for private placement. And any Board of Ed in the suburbs has the right to decide how hard, or how not hard, they will legally challenge parents request. If they wish to be more accommodating, like de Blasio has now made NYC, it is certainly within the local BOE’s right to be so accommodating to special ed parents. Especially insofar as not putting up a legal fight against the parents.
But they’re saying (using my paraphrase) that it’s a bad thing. I want to know why.
They’re saying it’s a bad thing because they feel the risk of engaging in negative behavior with the hardware (which some people will only get once there is a positive use such as Torah) outweighs the benefit of having it for positive purposes.
Someone could have a television and only use it for National Geographic programming on nature. But many of those getting it with that intent only will inevitably use it for less benign purposes once they have it.
DY: Someone quoted a national average of $10.6K with many secular school districts as low as under $7K. Granted NYC is more expensive to operate a school, but how much more does it cost to operate a Yeshiva in Brooklyn than in Cleveland?
ZD: No, they cannot increase local property/school taxes in NYS (outside NYC) or in NJ unless it is approved by voter’s in a referendum.
Also, if courtesy busing is taken away from private school (i.e. Yeshiva) students, then courtesy busing will also be taken away from public school students. Non-mandatory busing for public school students living more than 2-3 miles (or whatever the mileage) from the public school is also a courtesy and also can be lost.
And, you should note, that a much larger percentage of public school students receive non-mandatory courtesy busing than the percentage of private/yeshiva students who receive courtesy busing. This is because public school students, as a result of school zoning, are much more likely to live close to their school than private school students, who can choose any private school and most of the time (by far) it is further away and thus mandatory.
Think about that last point. The public school parents will be in an uproar once they lose courtesy busing and almost half of the public school parents will have to newly arrange themselves to get their children to public school and back home.
And the Lakewood monitor, when threatening to end courtesy busing, includes ending courtesy busing for public schools in his proposal.
Suicide is assur. Just as someone killing someone else is assur, someone killing himself is assur. I do not even understand how you can question the possibility of suicide. It is a clear-cut issur.
“Teaneck and Riverdale both voted 70% for Obama.”
Neither Teaneck nor Riverdale are majority Orthodox Jewish.