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Hearing someone make a nasty remark about African-Americans in general when most of my co-workers (and some of the nicest) fall into that category.
Charlie: car ownership and gun ownership don’t match up. Most families have a car and maybe two, but not usually more. With guns, lots of people have no guns at all, and many of the people who do have guns have several or lots.
A more sensible statistic would be percentage of households owning guns, rather than simple number of guns. My bet is that it would turn out that having a gun in the house is a lot more dangerous than you think, especially if there are kids around or the gun owner drinks/drugs. (And don’t pretend there aren’t Yidden who fall into that category.)
I can use a gun and also drive a car. Both are very dangerous.
Potching a kid on the behind in private and smacking a kid on the face in pubic are two very different things. Being a private school teacher doesn’t give you a license to quit being mentshlich.
And the age matters, too. What a five year old will accept will send a ten or fifteen year old straight out the door.
There are several segulos for making parnassah.
1. Daven (as for everything else)
2. Be job-ready. Have skills that the employers in your area want. If you don’t have them, get them. (Humility works here – you may feel you deserve a wonderful job just for existing, but you have to have something to trade for that substantial salary.)
3. Be ready to start at the bottom if you’re new to the market. You may be wonderful, but your boss will want you to prove it. (More humility – you have to start out taking orders before you can move up to giving them, and entry-level salaries won’t make you like Bill Gates.)
4. Go to your local job agencies, state local and frum (if there are any). Ask for help when you need it.
5. Network.
6. Daven. (Again.)
Sam, what’s your beef? You seem to have something very, very personal going on. Were you mugged by an illegal immigrant? Are you running for office and using the CR for practice speech-writing? You bring a whole new dimension to the term “rant.” Does it make you feel good to say nasty things about people you don’t even know?
I think we ought to obey the law, and I think that the availability of illegal immigrants willing to work at substandard pay is bad for working Americans, but I don’t get seriously enraged by it. Immigration reform is a good thing, but it has to be done humanely and sensibly. And I’m certainly not going to get high blood pressure over it.
Another source of the disparity:
Men negotiate about their salary, benefits etc. when they’re hired and after. Women don’t. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
On the other hand, a woman who negotiates is frequently seen as being “aggressive” – which is still negative for women. Men are expected to be aggressive.
So yes, there’s a double standard. But with what’s happening in the economy now, I’d guess that men aren’t doing too much negotiating either.
The bottom line: check out the going currrent salary in your field, location, level of experience, and hold out for it. A woman shouldn’t just assume she has to take what she’s offered if it’s below the going (local) rate.
Hadn’t thought of the tax angle (don’t own a house). So yes, that’a a reason to be concerned. Check with your local tax authorities to see if there’s any way you can prevent it affecting your own tax rate. I sometimes do statistics, and adding one very large value into a group can drag the average really really high – not so good for the “typical” homeowners.
Thanks Popa, now I don’t have to look it up.
Lunar eclipses are fun and impressive, although not as much fun as a solar eclipse. I saw one of those once and it was really something, but tricky to watch since we needed eye protection.
As for lunar eclipses, we had an impromptu block party the last time we had one here, and the new people on the block got to meet all the longer-term ones. But that one wasn’t at one o’clock in the morning 🙁
As for it being a siman ra, never heard of that one. What/who is your source? I can’t see Eclipse as being a siman ra for anything 🙂
Yaff80 – had a similar problem where I used to work. Someone would set “Number of copies = 50” and not change it back to 1. I would bounce up with my single copy, and suddenly find it spewing out tens of copies of some memo. Eventually I got paranoid and started checking the setting, but even then I occasionally forgot and got an (expensive) surprise.
No TV. Not for ideological reasons, I just don’t like the junk that’s on it. I do have internet and already waste enough time surfing. And since I don’t have kids at home – no filter. I also have a DVD player and watch the occasional movie from the library. At my age if I haven’t learned how to choose what’s appropriate I’d be a hopeless case and supervision wouldn’t help anyway 🙂
I also don’t look down on people who have TV or internet. Just, if you’ve got kids around, be very careful to monitor what they see.
Hey Blueprints – better check out a linguistics textbook. There sure are “American” and “British” English. Try “petrol” “bin” “jumper” “chipolatas” – and that’s just from the Harry Potter books. Whole real linguistic textbooks have been written about the differences. For that matter, there are plenty of regional differences within the US itself.
Snf you still haven’t answered the question: “Are you a native-born American?”
About twenty-five years ago a rebbe in a NY area yeshiva lost his temper and ran a child’s head into the blackboard. The child suffered a brain hemorrhage and died the next day. I knew one of the area social workers who was trying to get some sort of action going against abuse by teachers. The excuse for not firing abusive rebbbeim? Usually, the rebbe has a family to support and needs a parnassah. So for this he can hit students.
There are three good practical reasons for not allowing hitting.
A. One can never be sure that physical harm will not be done, or that the rebbe has enough self-control to limit his actions.
B. If the rebbe needs to hit in order to maintain control, he doesn’t know how to teach and shouldn’t be in a classroom.
C. Abuse of any sort is a major factor in kids going off the derech, especially if the teacher is abusive and the school/parents don’t protect him.
HItting one’s own child is also iffy – if you do it you have to do it right, and know when. Violence is no substitute for seichel, and just because your parent or rebbe hit you, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea now.
BTW, slapping someone in the face is NEVER allowed. It’s being m’vazeh the tzelem Elokim. Remember that if you cause someone’s face to change color that it’s the equivalent of murder.
Nursing. Psychologists these days are a dime a dozen, but we really need more good, caring nurses. A good nurse can very literally make the difference between life and death, particularly if the doctor makes a mistake (and believe me, they do).
But of course I’m prejudiced, because my mother a”h was a nurse.
Midavar sheker tirchak.
Or to quote Rav Breuer zaztal, “If you want to be glatt kosher you better also be glatt yoshar.”
The question about “the Jews” being responsible for the death of J isn’t a joke and it often isn’t individual anti-Semitism. For many Xtians it’s a matter of religious belief, like 2+2=4, and not a personal matter at all. If he’s not saying it to your face and he’s not trying to be offensive, don’t react. It’s only recently that the Catholic Church has officially stopped holding the Jews (all Jews) responsible for the crucifixion. Xtianity was until recently openly anti-Semitic. It’s only in the last hundred years or so that many groups have become a little broader-minded.
Many of the people I went to public school with think I’m “going straight to Hell” along with all other Jews and anyone else who doesn’t “accept J.” It’s difficult to get one’s head around this sort of thing, but after all we’re in Golus. It isn’t all Xtians, and many of them mean well. Juzt make a little psychological space and don’t get too shocked.
Aren’t we all getting a little paranoid here? Like asking “Who’s the FBI plant?” On the other hand, maybe there’s a shidduch detective service which goes online to check people out by making controversial posts….
The CR is the CR. You just gotta take chances like everybody else. Life is one big risk. The CR is a little risk. You want to be bored or what?
I always thought this mother-in-law thing was picked up from non-Jews. I didn’t hear it by Jewish people growing up, but I did hear lots of negative jokes about marriage and mothers-in-law from other groups.
You can never judge a person on a “statistical basis.” (I know some statistics – I’m not just talking though my hat 🙂 The kids didn’t cause the divorce. The parents, and sometimes only one parent, caused that. You have wonderful, warm people coming out of very difficult situations. What if it were you? Would you want to be judged and automatically condemned for something you had nothing to do with?
That said, of course you have to do your homework. But even with someone from a non-divorced family – what if there were terrible problems in the family, which severely affected the children, but they didn’t get divorced because of fear of social disapproval, and just toughed it out, mangling the kids in the process?
And as far as mechutonim go – some perfectly “normal” family situations can include an in-law you wish lived in Seattle.
There’s no safe rule. Life is hazardous. Do your homework, daven, and make up your own mind.
Dream-tickets….
Back in 1994 the Republicans were ecstatic that they took back Congress. The result? They got blamed for everything. Clinton got a free pass for a second term. Google “Pyrrhic victory.”
Yep, it’s the economy this time around too, and the same people that were mad at Pres. Obama because he didn’t wave a magic wand and make everybody prosperous again are now going to be mad at the Tea Party and the Republicans because *they* forgot their miraculous powers.
We will once again have a Democratic administration and a divided Congress. Maybe we all ought to start learning about this weird thing called “bipartisanship” like in “Work for what’s good for the country, not what’s good for your ego.”
Anecdote. Riding on a bus in EY back in the day (and fresh off the boat myself). Hanging from the strap when I suddenly realized I was looking down the muzzle of the Uzi being carried by the soldier in front of me – and the magazine was in. Tapped him on the shoulder…”Hamagazin shelcha….” “Oh, slichah.” and he moved the gun so it pointed at someone else 🙂
Begging your pardon, but aren’t we all immigrants (except for the Indians)? Wasn’t Eretz Yisroel built in part by illegal immigrants, because our lovely British friends didn’t want to irritate the Arabs by letting in too many Holocaust survivors?
Maybe we should be deporting illegal aliens as a matter of upholding the law, but should we be getting self-righteous about it? BTW, are you an immigrant yourself? Homeowner’s got a point – I grew up in the Middle West and never ever heard a “real American” say “whilst.”
Is it a matter of “big” or a matter of “fancy.” Someone with ten kids may want a big house. That’s different from having gold-plated water faucets (yep, seen those) or designer brick work or two-ton chandeliers – that’s “fancy.”
The real issue is life-style. Are they going to put pressure on their less affluent neighbors to compete with them?
Maalot in Baltimore – great limudei kodesh and you learn a parnassah without hassles.
Yavneh in Cleveland – top of the line limudei kodesh.
Believe it or not, there are good seminaries in North America. You can even get “out of town” without paying a fortune and running the risks of being alone in EY. (And believe me, there are risks even at the best seminaries. If the girl isn’t ready to be on her own, it can get very sticky, and the teachers can’t take the place of your parents.)
If you’re posting from work – be careful. Lots of places monitor workers’ computer activity – that means they save everything that gets sent from their office. Before you post from work – imagine your boss reading your deathless prose, and if he/she isn’t frum, trying to figure out what in the world you’re talking about.
Eclipse – 100%. It takes two to tango, but only one to start a fight, even when the other party is trying to keep the peace.
That’s the point of a screen name. Hopefully nothing comes back to haunt you when the shadchan calls about your kid who’s in the parshah.
I don’t know about 40 – but it definitely changes after 50. If you want to keep off the pounds on the same diet – you’ve got to get a gym membership or have some other serious exercise program. And cut back on the nosh. Eat because you’re hungry, not just because you’re sitting in front of the computer posting on the CR….
And it still might not work 🙁
Another problem with training martial arts is “beginner’s syndrome.” You learn some, your instructor says how great you are. Then, you get held up on the street, the guy pulls a knife and you react. But, lo and behold, you get cut anyway. Or worse yet, the guy has a gun. Been there. Did not do that. You NEVER argue with a gun.
Same with old-fashioned personal assault. Is the guy bigger? Faster? Multiple? Are you that good? If you’re not, you can get really mashed.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for learning basic self-defense. In fact, I think it ought to be required, along with a genuine phys ed course. BUT it can get you in a lot of trouble if you’re overconfident. Better to back off, and run if you can. Only fight if you absolutely have to.
R’ Yaakov Kamenetzky zatzal was another gadol who was famous for this, and for “sever panim yafos.” See Yonasan Rosemblum’s biogrpahy. And as for not being able to say hello to everyone, just by having a pleasant smile on your face you are saying it without words.
TMB – Kissinger is an extreme example. One could even make a case that he hates being Jewish so much that he’s not really playing with a full deck. (We know now that Nixon wasn’t.) He also didn’t grow up in the US, so it’s hard to compare him to American born politicians. Believe it or not, it’s not against the law (or halacha either) to be a Democrat. It doesn’t automatically make a politician anti-Jewish. To make a case for that you have to quote specific issues.
Kissinger is a bad egg, and the world would have been better off if he had decided to become a dentist.
Another great sefer that deals with anger is R’ Zelig Pliskin’s “Gateway to Happiness.” It deals with a lot more than just anger, but that chapter is very well written and practical. A gem of a Toradik “self-help” book.
Yes, self defense is a worthy endeavor, and learning martial arts is great for your self-confidence, BUT
You will be learning how to do other people serious injury and even kill them. Along with the “art of war” you must also learn “the art of peace.” You’ll have to learn to keep your temper under perfect control, even in a street situation. “He said X and I just lost it” is not a legal defense. Violence or the threat of violence has to be met on its own level. No over-reactions.
Can you take an anti-Semitic insult which is not accompanied by a threat and just turn around and walk away? If you think not, then it’s better not to learn how to kill people with your bare hands. Martial arts aren’t cute – they’re “deadly” serious.
And yes, I’ve trained martial arts. It’s a responsibility.
If “taking a tour” means paying attention to the other cars on the road – not to mention pedestrians – then maybe the fast-paced life can sometimes come to a sudden stop, hopefully with no injury except to the car.
NYC is the only place I’ve ever heard of where people get run over while they’re standing on the sidewalk.
squeak –
Touche!
Another peculiarity of NYC cars – it seems that there’s a law that the horn has to be connected to the accelerator, so if you take your foot off the gas the horn automatically goes on. Also, if the car is stationary for more than ten seconds (for instance, at a red light) the horn also automatically sounds.
The safest way to drive in NYC is to take the subway.
Thye new 7 Mile Market has a large selection. In the deli department some of their dold cuts are GF too.
Close by in Colonial Village Shopping Center on Reisterstown Road there’s a SunSplash natural foods store that has some gluten-free things (check the freezer cabinet too.)
I think there’s a place in Rockville but I’m not sure. The DC area is getting quite frum-friendly these days, with less and less need to trek up north to Baltimore.
Actually it gets erased every few seconds no matter what, because the electron beam creating the picture is moving constantly. Don’t believe me? Try taking a photograph of your computer screen. One half of it will be blank, because there’s a time lapse so one image doesn’t overlap with another. I found this out the hard way when my printer wasn’t working 🙂 But you have to have a short exposure time.
Try making music! Sing out! Sing along as a group with your favorite CDs, or go to your local sefer store and see what books of Jewish music they have. Learn to harmonize. If someone has a guitar or plays piano, they can play along.
Of course, you’ll have to check for stray brothers hanging around the house – but they should be out learning anyway 🙂
APY – Depends on the size of the yeshiva. If it’s a really big one, 4-8 in half a year works out to 8 – 16 in a full year, not entirely unbelievablegiven what’s going on these days. But vnishmartemmeod makes it sound like some kind of plague – like a contagious spiritual flu.
And of course, aren’t ALL yeshivas “metzuyan?” 🙂
Mabye the whole story is apocryphal? It sounds like a frum version of a supermarket tabloid.
It isn’t just shidduchim that are confusing. It’s LIFE that’s confusing. When we’ve (hopefully) finished being confused about shidduchim then we get to be confused about marriage…then about raising children. Then we have teenagers, and life REALLY gets confusing 🙂 And then having our own children “in the parshah….”
Consider what you’re going through now as training for dealing with the rest of your life. Learn not to be distressed by not being in control. The only one in control is HKBH!
There seem to be three questions here:
1. To what extent can we lump Reform and Conservative together? Answer: no way. I used to be Conservative. Conservatives by and large respect halacha, just don’t keep it. Reform are another story entirely. The whole point of Reform was to reject halacha and being separate from mainstream society, i.e. radical assimilationists.
@. Are most Jews in non-Orthodox circles halachically Jewish? Depends. Conservative, probably still the majority, but better check. Reform – iffy – the real assimilationists drop out after a generation or two, but there are plenty of intermarriages. So – better check for sure. Non-affiliated? Anything goes. Check back three generations.
3. Conversions. By Orthodox standards Conservative conversions can’t be al pi halacha because if nothing else the witnesses aren’t shomer Shabbos and therefore aren’t kosher. Of course, the converts themselves are usually sincere, just ignorant. Conservative converts tend to be fairly well educated. Reform conversion classes seem to be a joke. BTW Conservative rabbis might get a little frustrated, because most serious Conservative converts eventually go on to convert and practice Orthodox. I know one person who went through four conversions – Reform, Conservative, Modern Orthodox and Hareidi. For those FFBs who think so highly of themselves, would YOU have had the mesiras nefesh to do this? I feel privileged to know this person.
The bottom line: NEVER put ANYONE down. No one gets consigned to any junkyard here. You can’t be oiver ahavas Yisroel (including Reform and unaffiliated) and get away with it long-term. And for non-Jews you have to have kavod habrios. HaShem has plans for us all – Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, non-Jew. So let’s stop name-calling and start working on doing our job.
Don’t assume that just because a book is “heimishe” that it’s good for your child. I’ve read a few of these “frum” books and the plots are straight out of secular thrillers, with a yarmulke and some davening thrown in to “kosherize” them. One had sadistic violence of a sort that made even me as an adult uncomfortable, kal v’chomer a child. Inflicting gratuitous pain is inflicting gratuitous pain, even if the perpetrator is a Mossad agent.
There’s no shortcut. You’ve got to read what your kids are reading before they do, even if it’s gotten good “kosher” reviews. And let’s not forget the “kosher” DVD’s with thriller plots. Are Mossad agents the role models we want for our children?
By all means take your kids to the local library, but stay with them and read what they bring home.
I love coffee – working is actually usually less stressful than school. At least there (usually) isn’t any homework! Unless you’re a teacher, of course.
Mischiefmaker – try some “light” classical music. There’s a CD – Debussy for Daydreamers – that has perfect music for unwinding. I actually recommended it for a friend of mine who had trouble getting to sleep, and it worked for her! Or almost anything by Debussy, for that matter. Take five or ten minutes, turn the music on, close your eyes, and just drift on it. But be sure to turn your cell off first….
I have no cousins. My only aunt died young of tuberculosis in the days before antibiotics. In those days most people got tuberculosis from drinking unpasteurized milk from an infected cow.
One of the things which helped fight tuberculosis was government regulation – mandatory testing of cows for tuberculosis so people wouldn’t die from drinking infected milk. If they had had that “big government interference” back then I might have had cousins.
Then we got antibiotics. But now the tuberculosis germs have developed drug resistance, so some people die of incurable tuberculosis.
So, do you want the freedom to see your kids die of tuberculosis, or would you rather have the big bad old government infringing on the rights of people to innocently kill their own children?
This is confusing. The whole inyan of niddah is brought down in Chumash very clearly. Are BY girls learning Chumash with Rashi and other meforshim and somehow not noticing? Are the teachers not teaching, just saying, “Don’t ask about that?”
And I agree with those who say:
A) You have to know a lot if you’re going to go out into the world to work. Offices can be very iffy places, with yichud issues, negiah (even by the innocent but ignorant) and so forth. And not just for girls. Guys can have problems too.
B) If a girl doesn’t get some serious hashkafahs on this subject she is going to be open to influence by secular culture, and it’s almost impossible to avoid, particularly if she’s working.
We can’t insist that our girls go out to work to support their husbands and leave them without the knowledge to protect themselves.
A better idea – move out of the New York area. There’s a whole great continent out there with frum communities large and small from coast to coast. Don’t like the cold? Try Atlanta. Love snow? There are are Chicago and Denver. Los Angeles, Cleveland, Memphis, Detroit. Those are too far from the family? There are Baltimore, Philly, Boston, even Pittsburgh.
Wide open spaces, cheap housing, less competition in the job market, day schools and yeshivas, and you won’t face the NY gashmius competition either. Plus you will even get to know your neighbors.
Go West, young family! Or south or north. (But not east, unless you’re really good at swimming 🙂
Either everybody on this thread is under fifty years of age or they’ve really got amnesia. Fifty years ago Jews were actively discriminated against in the USA, and it was worse for Orthodox. It was really difficult for a shomer Shabbos person to get a job, and you could be fired for wearing your yarmulkeh or sheitel to work.
A lot of Jews who had been brought up Orthodox went frei because the employers said, “If you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t come in on Monday.”
Many title deeds in white neighborhoods specified that the house could not be sold to either a black or a Jew.
That’s why so many Jews participated in the Civil Rights Movement. If you check the Civil Rights Act of 1964 it forbids discriminating by religion as well as race.
So remember that discrimination isn’t just about *them* – it’s nogeia b’davar for us too. Most people who don’t like blacks don’t like Jews either, they’re just a little more careful about expressing it. Same for discriminating against gays. We don’t hold by their activities, but the same kind of prejudice can get redistributed back onto us if the social climate changes. Better to be against all social discrimination on the public level, and maintain our own standards in our own communities.
Call your local fire department. Ask them what they advise. Why risk your kids’ lives just to avoid the inconvenience of a blech?
Yes-its-me:
Which poskim? Name the names, please, so we know where we are.
As for movies, I’m pretty careful, because like Sacrilege, once the image goes into my head, it stays there. If I’m going to see a movie, it’s on DVD and after reading the reviews. Going to real theater can be really overwhelming for some movies. And don’t ever see “Pan’s Labyrinth” – it’s a great movie but it will haunt your dreams. It’s also anti-Fascist/anti-Nazi, but you’ll still be sorry the images are in your head.
Incidentally, our local kosher dollar store has a whole rack of “kosher” DVD’s for kids. I hadn’t seen this before. How prevalent is it? The stuff looks like regular thriller/adventure, just the secret agents are from the Mossad and wear yarmulkes.