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Three thoughts. First, those who insist on determining which side is worse tend to get into battles with each other, giving aid and comfort to the real enemy. Let’s not. Second, my vote goes to those on the Left, mainly in academia, who’ve been developing a “scientific” antisemitism and teaching it to the young. It has more harmful potential than much of right-wing antisemitism, which centers heavily on hoary Xian tropes and promotes thuggery. Third, there are centrist and rightist Jewish academics, some frum, who could be making a bigger impact in research, media, and public life, than they are making. I sort of fall into that category, having made aliya and doing little against the ghastly developments in the “old country.”
So I’ll stir the pot.
First, we of all generations ought to question the idea that Hebrew, modern or other, must be spoken to be “real” or “national.” In our generation, people may communicate more by writing than by speaking, as we are doing now. Jews across exile communities did this for centuries — and in shu”t and international trade, to give two examples, the language was Hebrew. Today, whole languages exist that aren’t spoken at all: computer languages, sign languages, etc.
Second, of course masses of Jews spoke Hebrew regularly: in davening. Apart from the shemone esre, davening is loud. There’s an etymological notion that the very word “daven” comes from a Germanic word that gives us the English “din,” as in putting up a din. And should we argue that, well, back there they just mouthed the words and didn’t understand them, I think that’s an anachronism — typical of lots of us but not of lots of them. Evidence: massive lending of Hebrew words to Yiddish and the (many) other Judeo-languages. You can’t lend what you don’t own.
Third, Jews in exile did speak Hebrew to communicate with each other when they had to.
Finally, two ironies: First, for whatever reason, the Emancipation in France was greeted by a drasha in shul in French and then in Hebrew. Ironic because the theme of the drasha was the renunciation of Jewish nationhood per Napoleon’s demands. Second, the Old Yishuv won some battles against Modern Hebrew but lost the war because it couldn’t make its case without using Modern Hebrew.Seen in western France: signs with French on the top and a Celtic language in smaller letters below — a concession to the Celtic population there, which agitated for recognition in the 1970s.
Seen in southern Slovakia: signs with Slovakian on the top and Hungarian in smaller letters below — even though Slovakia chafed under lengthy Hungarian occupation.So he should stay in yeshiva against his better judgment because the “right girl” won’t want him otherwise… Now suppose the “right girl” wants a yeshiva man against her own better judgment because otherwise the “right boy” won’t want her. How does this shidduch play out?
Just a guess: “leaving the yeshiva without a degree in order to earn a degree and become a professional.”
Maybe he’s showing his frum credentials by punctuating Gemara-style….
Dunno how the Federal government should honor my right to cheap gas. However, it’s both an American thing and a Jewish thing to take personal control of matters. A person can lower their own price of gas by, say, swapping their car for one that gets nearly 50 mpg. Yes, I did it. I’m part of a couple, not an eight-person family, so a Chevy Spark with standard shift isn’t for everyone, but. And for city dwellers, bike paths have uses other than angering us about the clothing some bikers wear. That solution isn’t for me — age 68 and living in a rural mountainous area — but. Finally, the smallest car can hold four, not one, and is willing to do so without protest. It takes coordination, but. (We do round up much larger quora for davening.) All this, without mentioning public transit. Combined, they might lower someone’s personal “price of gas” to half or less of what the pump says.
A word in defense of speed davening on weekday mornings: every man in attendance could do otherwise. When he’s done with the speed davening, as often as not he gulps down a cup of coffee and races to the bus or the car. He could swap this for an extra half-hour of sleep and a leisurely cup of coffee but forgoes it for tefila be-tsibur. Respect.
Zehava’ Dad writes: “Goldstein or Steinberg might be anglosized [sic] but they are clearly jewish [sic]. Ironically, our Goldsteins and Steinbergs probably got their “clearly Jewish” names by coercion. It began on July 23, 1787, at the hand of the Austrian emperor Joseph II. Much of Prussia followed in 1790–1794. Napoleon did the same in 1808 for France and all lands west of the Rhine; many other parts of Germany required it within a few years. In 1812, when Napoleon had occupied much of Prussia, surname adoption was mandated for the unoccupied parts; and Jews in the rest of Prussia adopted surnames in 1845. Concurrently, Jewish surname laws emerged Western Galicia (1805), Frankfurt-am-Main (1807), Hessen-Darmstadt (1808), Baden (1809), Westphalia (1808, 1811), Bavaria (1813), Wurttemberg and Hannover (1828), Posen (1833), Saxony (1834), and Oldenburg (1852). These areas were home to the great majority of European Ashkenazic Jews. (Extracted from Jeffrey Mark Paull and Jeffrey Briskman, “History, Adoption, and Regulation of Jewish Surnames in the Russian Empire: A Review”).
Most Ashkenazi Jews who didn’t adopt Gentile-sounding surnames by coercion did it voluntarily in order to enjoy the benefits of the Emancipation.You are flaunting your ignorance. It’s known in the literature — and anyone with ADHD can tell you — that people with ADHD are *sometimes* capable of feats of mental stamina and concentration. You use that fact to dismiss the whole disorder, when it’s actually part of it. You’re dispensing wrong medical advice.
Wrong. An ADHD kid (or adult) can’t follow the thread of a shiur and perhaps not even the thread of a Gemara without agonizing repetition that makes them look stupid in others’ eyes. Creativity can’t solve it, least of all a frum environment.
Turn to leyning — the only authentically Jewish music.
Retract that. Ammo contains explosives. Storing it requires special protections by law and by common sense. Venishmartem.
I think he’s interpreting the expression “mamonam shel Yisrael” as meaning that individual Jews’ wealth actually belongs to the Jewish collective, Yisrael, and that Jew who puts it to personal use transgresses this principle. There’s something to be said for that but within limits.
You’re big-league wrong about gold. It is famous among investors as the commodity that they rush to when instability and recession threaten. The expression the use is “flight to safety.”
So I’ll be the devil’s advocate. I leined one weekday shaharit at Shomrei Shabbos. Beginning at my normal medium speed, I was asked after cohen to pick up the pace because otherwise the men would miss their train to work. At that place and time, normal-speed leining was a tircha de-tzibura! If I were saying a “voluntary” kaddish, I’d bear this in mind.
Why put it through rigorous scientific testing first? See under: Thalidomide.
“Since when is it bad to invite a lot of people to a simcha?” When you run yourself into debt for it. When you do it only because your wealthier (or equally bullied) neighbors did it. When you do it because your guests come not to give you joy but for you to give them joy, as in providing them with a full-bore rock concert. That covers a large percent of all simchas today, doesn’t it?
Sure. And now as the population of candidates grows, the potential of their meeting each other shrinks. Go figure.
How do you reconcile faith in Hashem with all that compulsory human engineering? Is it so that only detectives and gossips can match besherts nowadays?
Is it better to be Chassidish or Litvish? Yes.
Yabia Omer — Eretz Yisroel is definitely frummer. It negates the State of Israel and Sephardi pronunciation all at once.
Maybe it should be ף, as in “feh sofit.”
PracticalPost, there is adult-onset ADHD too. The web is full of real professional information about it plus anecdotal sites where adults talk about it.
Redleg alleges that ADHD is “vastly over diagnosed, very often by teachers and menahalim who have no medical training at all.” If teachers and menahalim engage in diagnosis, they’re impersonating physicians. Is it so?
The only truly Jewish music = leining.
Neville’s remark about “ong” reminded me that the Dutch Jews use “ong” for ע, saying “shmong Yisrael” and so on. As for New Yorkers and others who have a hard time with this or that letter, usually it isn’t that big a deal to add a new sound to the repertoire. Arabs who go to the trouble pick up “p” perfectly. As for me, I make it my business to learn and say ע and ח in leining and in talking because the letters are there and, since I casually refer to Hebrew as לשון הקודש, I may as well talk the talk, too. If as an Ashkenazi I need an excuse for doing to (although no one has asked me for one), it’s enough to mention the great ba’al qore at Lederman’s shul, who is maqpid loud enough for hundreds of people to hear.
So it’s the “Where are we safer?” debate again and Joseph and others argue the bodycount way and declare Israel the loser. Two problems: first, they don’t use data to back their tally. Fact; in goyish year 2018, 12 Israelis hy’d lost their lives to terrorism. This is from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. Second, that unfortunate count is 12 out of more than six million. Let’s assume that no Jews lost their lives to terrorism in 2018. So it’s 12 to 0. But another fact: For an individual living among a population of millions, the count of 12, or of 0, or the difference between the two, is statistically meaningless. Jews are not in measurable danger of death by terrorism in either location, or really anywhere.
So it’s the “where are we safer” debate again and Joseph and others argue the bodycount way and declare Israel the loser. Two problems: first, they don’t use data to back their tally. Fact; in goyish year 2018, 12 Israelis hy’d lost their lives to terrorism. This is from the Meir Amit Terrorism and Intelligence Information Center. Second, that unfortunate count is 12 out of more than six million. Let’s assume that no Jews lost their lives to terrorism in 2018. So it’s 12 to 0. But another fact: For an individual living among a population of millions, the count of 12, or of 0, or the difference between the two, is statistically meaningless. Jews are not in measurable danger of death by terrorism in either location, or really anywhere.
During a very fast minyan at Shomrei Shabbos one Monday morning, I found myself doing the leining in my normal Eretz Yisrael speed. After Kohen, a man nudged me and said, “Unless you speed up, no one here will have time for breakfast.” You bet I sped up and finished the davening with huge respect. Why? because every man there could have davened yehidut and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, but didn’t.
Daas Yochid and Joseph, the opening of the freezer and the discharging of “100’s of boys [to] begin searching for their zivvug” (Haimy, above) is emphatically a human-engineered phenomenon. It’s followed by the human engineering of mediators (shadchanim, parents) by whose exclusive offices “boys” and “girls” can search for their zivvug. I get the impression that the mediation has been more and more exacting as the years pass, as evidenced in the invention of the “shidduch resume” and so on — even as (or maybe because) the eligible population is growing. And again: I do not mean by all this to “attack” the Chareidim, since it’s all evident (at least partly) in my society too.
I am far from the milieu described above, but not so far to notice something weird: A community that professes absolute faith in G-d’s management of the world is committing itself to rising levels of human engineering (e.g., the “freezer”) to introduce “boys” and “girls” (elsewhere known as young adults) to each other. I get the feeling that as the population becomes larger and larger, the individual’s options are getting narrower and narrower. Some of this is also happening in my Israeli national-religious environment, and thirty-six years into my successful marriage I wonder if I’d be matched with anyone today.
Yserbius123, who guarantees us anything in life? Has Mashiah come?
Wyoming is no solution for an American-national frum Jew. It is a solution for 10,000 of them, with proper organization. Best of all is Eretz Yisrael.
For those who liken Trump’s wall to Israel’s because Israel’s wall “works,” fuhgeddaboudit. First, Israel’s wall is not a wall for most of its length, and in some parts it hasn’t been built at all. Even along the Gaza Strip, it’s basically a fence. Second, Israel has extensive freedom of action on the other side of its wall, as America doesn’t. Third, Israel’s wall does not keep out tens of thousands (I’m being conservative) of Arabs who do DDD jobs in Israel. There are multiple ways of avoiding it.
The Warsaw ghetto uprising began on erev Pessah. Those who set Yom HaShoah as they did realized that all of Pessah had to pass first and chose a date that falls in the week following Hag Sheni.
But of course there’s a solution. With each passing year, Israel grows in population, wealth, and cohesion. Yeah, I said cohesion. Everyone in Israel is Israeli today, including chareidim and, for the most part, Arabs. Now look at the other side: “nations” crumbling so badly that one can only conclude that they weren’t nations to begin with. A generation ago, the country faced real armies. Today, it faces terrorists who cry “we’ve won” whenever they succeed in claiming one victim r”l. It reminds me of the transition from the defeat at Horma to the victory over the Canaanite (Amalekite?) king in which the enemy managed to take one prisoner. מאת ד’ היתה זאת and it should be נפלאת בעינינו
The notion of a Palestinian Arab national identity became possible in 1916, when Sykes and Picot separated the southern sanjaks from the rest of the former Ottoman Syrian vilayet (=E.I). This separated the Arabs in the southern areas (“Southern Syria”) from their erstwhile capital, Damascus. That’s not to say that they became a Palestinian Arab national group. Evidence: the Mufti chaired the Arab Higher Committee, not the Palestinian one, and the 1947 UN partition plan and its related literature spoke only of Arab and Jewish states, never a Palestinian one. The Palestinian national consciousness is more recent than that and more recent than R. Gafni’s birth.
Abba_S, Advil is an anti-inflammatory in addition to being a pain reliever.
kj chusid lets his ideology mask several facts. First, the largest and fastest-growing “settlements” in JS are haredi. Rav Shach’s death opened the floodgates. Second, hasidic groups preceding these localities by establishing Emmanuel, which failed due to its developers’ corruption and not due to safety concerns. Finally, the which-is-safer debate is fallacious. Central Mongolia is safer than all the places mentioned but no yidn are rushing there.
Both sides are wrong. The Australian outback is the safest place on earth. Let’s all run there. And if things get rough there, let’s try the high plains of Paraguay. Then upper Saskatchewan. Then Catalina Island. Then…
DaasYochid, I ask that the State of Israel be referred to by its name. Leave it to the Arabs and the antisemites to choke on that expression and call the state “Zionism” or “the Zionists,” as if it were an ideology that happens to have an air force.
DaasYochid, I love Eretz Yisroel. Should this thread therefore be renamed “Is Eretz Yisroel still the yetzer hora?”
I find it upsetting that commenters cannot bring themselves to say “Israel” or “the State of Israel,” instead falling back on “Zionism” or “the Zionists.” It matches word-for-word the practice of Israel’s mortal enemies (who are your enemies too). Am I alone in noticing this and reacting?
I propose a psak: Anyone who says “Jews wake up!” must explain what the awakening should be composed of. Make tshuva? We beseech Hashem for the ability three times a day. Reverse the new mabul-on-the-way? Please explain how. Etc.
Agav, Naftush-2 is really Naftush-1; I floundered around for my password until the system gave up, so I started over.