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Iced, this argument: “Jews pay more taxes per capita than the rest of society, on average, and we should not be shy about accepting money and benefits that Jewish taxes are paying for.”
I fully accept that a taxpayer who meets h/her obligations under law is entitled to benefits under law, but not that “we” (Jews) have a collective entitlement because of the extra-high “Jewish taxes” that we pay.
Iced, your argument is somewhat valid only if the U.S. imposes a dhimmi-like “Jew tax” or a Czarist-like collective tax. Do you really believe this? Got any evidence for it?
Nanny, does “goodbye America” mean that you’re about to make ‘aliya? Congratulations on a wise decision! Here there’s mandatory healthcare and elected officials serve until they drop.
This is disheartening indeed. It resembles recipients of tzedaka who turn down “too small” gifts in contempt. Well, recipients are also obliged to do hessed. In this case, the right thing for the organizations to have done, in my opinion, would be to withhold the snide-sounding remarks, say thank you, and pass on the used stuff to other organizations that could send it on to those whose needs rule out all contempt.
Yeshivishsocrates1, what are those things that Modern Orthodoxy omits against the Creator’s will? Can you give us a list?
zahavsdad, I wonder if the whole dinosaur debate came from Evangelical Xians who learn the “Old Testament” with false commentaries or none at all, or who put their hearts into it without any learning. It’s embarrassing to see rabbanim (or rabbinical-looking people) occasionally get sucked into the same patterns of defensiveness and truculence. R. Shimshon Rafael Hirsch offers some very good tools to deal with this, chiefly: we’re here to master Hashem’s world and to find Him in all its aspects, including and specifically the sciences.
There are extensive dinim and psakim on the topic. Very concisely, the factors to take into account include whether the existing business exploits its monopoly and overcharges, whether the new business might use predatory tactics, whether it offers superior goods/services, etc., etc., all of which depending on the location, the size of the community, etc…
Sam2, I figure Naysberg meant the following: Nationhood includes all sorts of things, many of them secular but one of them (in most cases and in most of history) religion. We never lacked territory either; we were physically barred from it.
WIY, your post captured every element that has made finding a spouse a nightmarish ordeal: the fine-tuned typecasting, the meddling parents (and the possibility that they’re not meddling enough), the importance of impression over substance, the need to align the spouses’ unbending religious practices, the quest for perfect resume tricks including references — all of which before the boy and girl are even allowed to meet! The only exception was Point no. 6, but then, has anyone since Eliezer trusted Hashem with something as important as a shidduch?
The most daunting thing about it is that every word was meant to be helpful.
“Spectrum” shouts: IN ORTHODOX JUDAISM WE DO NOT COMPROMISE ON OUR VALUES. Well, almost every page of halacha starts with centered text that explains a value. It continues with notes and commentaries that posit contrasting or interfering values. It ends with … compromises — like the compromises that Spectrum made in order to have his/her Internet connection, to post to the CR on Hol Hamo’oed, etc.
WIY, one way NOT to find the right person is to view people (and investigate them) as “types,” “kinds,” and so on. We marry people, not species, and a dismaying number of us don’t discover this until after the chuppa. And while you look for the “type” who will “juggle things like working and taking care of the kids and make supper,” it might behoove you to become the “type” who will do some of those things, too.
When a proof needs its own proof and slumps toward reduction to absurdity (600,000 witnesses wearing black hats, etc.), it’s in trouble. It ought to be enough to demonstrate the sustainability of Torah, its ability to sustain Am Yisrael, and its (distorted) adoption by other nations to satisfy all but the most dogmatic doubters of its underlying truth. As for accepting the truth of the details, we call it faith, don’t we?
Akuperma, purely as a hediot I challenge your statement: “If they were targetting Jews in order to force Jews to go off the derekh – then one is required to die rather than do even the most minor averah.” This sounds like the din of sha’at shemad, which goes into effect — so I learned — only if the Torah as such or the entirety of Klal Yisrael is under lethal attack. Even in the Holocaust, I recall no consensus that such was the case, it being argued that a Jewish population of millions (in the U.S.) was not threatened.
Before the mudslinging about Hebrew and nusahim gets serious, may I suggest celebrating how *close* all the nusahim to each other are after centuries of exile and how well modern Hebrew fits with LK to enhance learning?
Rabbaim, when it comes to compelling behavior from the grave, including worthy behavior, Gentile courts (American ones, at least) operate under the principle of “You can’t take it with you” except under very odd circumstances. Out of ignorance, I do not know whether batei din behave differently. My hava amina is that we have our time in this world to make our efforts, and when it’s done, it’s done. But does anyone on this thread have a credible answer in halakha?
Shlishi, RSR Hirsch did take a dim view of the Zionists whom he encountered and his vision of medinat ha-yehudim was far from the mimicking of Gentile-style sovereignty. But the Zionists of whom he knew (up to 1888) had no grand political concept or goal at all, let alone modern statehood. They focused on getting away from the goyim, which to R. Hirsch’s thinking (if I understood it) is a repudiation of our ohr la-goyim mission in the world. Therefore, I don’t think it’s valid to project R. Hirsch’s view of this embryonic Zionism onto the later political Zionism, let alone the medina once it was established.
Gregaaron — correctly you say, “Chessed, like all other things, needs to be within the framework of Halacha.” A framework leaves space for freedom up to boundaries on all sides. Halacha usually does the same. My dispute, and it’s a big one, is not with halacha but with people who repudiate the freedom and see only non-negotiable boundaries — who narrow the derekh so severely that one can hardly avoid going off.
PBA, you’re spot on. When the thread turned to the elaboration of rules and hashkafot on helping females in distress (how much distress, who determines it, etc. — and it was you who set the standard of “absolute need” that she has to determine, in the absence of which she should decline help), my eyes kept reading but my mind went numb. Your rebuttal brought my head somewhat back to life; it recalled the concept of chessed as something that has no ????? — something we should do without calculating.
I understood that night is precisely the right time to immerse oneself in material related to emuna. The basis for this comes from ????? ??? ???? ????
“????? ????? ???? ??????? ??????”
Tehillim sounds like a good fit.
Am I alone in being uncomfortable with commenters who treat psukim, gemarot, rishonim and ahronim like used newspapers with which to roll up and whack each other across the nose?
In 1998 I did a non-scientific analysis of polls in Israel on major changes in people’s personal religious orientation. It turned out that about half the population made at least one major change at some point in their lives and many made more than one. The parenting lesson that I learned from this is not to do anything irreversible. But David Hamelekh pointed this out long before: ??? ??????? ????? ??? etc.
PBA and others, it’s hard to help people in distress if we first have to determine that they “absolutely” need it. What makes a need absolute? Broken bones? Be-de’avad a bad sprain? Weeping and groaning doesn’t sound absolute at all. How about simply offering help? It can even be done wordlessly.
Toi and Cherrybim — RSRH says (I’m paraphrasing) that Eisav went wrong because his parents provided an education tailored to Yaakov’s middot but left no room for someone with Eisav’s middot to serve Hashem. RSRH believed that hinukh must be intensively individualized and that no mida is off-limits in serving Hashem if it’s educated correctly.
You can imagine how this was greeted in certain circles.
Fire away.
Yos – sadly, R. Eliyahu Kitob went through a similar ordeal at around the same time. He wrote a chapter on this topic for Sefer ha-Toda’a that had much the same content and (so the story goes) chose to leave it out due to concern for his publisher’s livelihood. He published it separately as a kuntress; I have a photocopy.
I thought the only difference in Mashiach’s time will be the termination of ?????? ?????? . Or is our prayer for ????? ?? ????? ???????? meant to be taken in credit card terms?
Maybe they’re doing an appropriate Jewish thing. They aren’t consulting with the heads of the secular opposition, are they? But I don’t think they’re asking these gedolim shailos…
Nitpicker, a possible answer is that halakha discusses ribbit problems in transactions involving many kinds of documents (shtarot, etc.) that aren’t money but are close enough to deserve the same attention. By the way, it is an eye-opening experience to learn hilkhot ribbit with, say, Rambam, and appreciate the complexity of the transactions described.
Shlishi and others: I live in Eretz Yisrael, where the ribbit question comes up in many kinds of transactions. The technique one sees most often here is the heter ‘iska, which (in a nutshell) makes the transactors partners in the transaction and allows them to divide the profits or losses as they wish. Every bank office here has a Heter ‘Iska certificate on its wall. I have also seen it used in real estate contracts between religious people. As for whether halakha recognizes a corporation as a person, I recall there being a range of views depending on the underlying approach, the interpretation of sources and precedents, the kind of shareholding involved, etc.
Try this: make a list of countries that were established after WWII (there were many). Then make another list of things that countries are supposed to do — not like bringing the Mashiach, just country kinds of things like feeding their citizens. Then try to assess the success of these countries in doing those things. You’ll find one country that’s so far ahead of the others that even a Nobel Prize winning economist like Simon Kuznetz couldn’t explain it all. He suggested that the answer lies in an intangible that lies outside the intellectual debate. Which country do you think he was talking about? And which “intangible”?
PBA, you said “it is a perfunctory greeting. And the purpose is to be friendly.” Webster’s dictionary disagrees: “perfunctory: characterized by routine or superficiality : done merely as a duty : CURSORY, MECHANICAL.”
I stand my ground.
shishi, but a perfunctory GS is none of these. A kosher Jew who says GS (and a Jew is taken to be kosher unless proven otherwise) does not say it to invite the recipient to explain how she feels, to create familiarity of heart or mind, or to generate affection, least of all in the public domain. I continue to flinch from interpreting it as evidence of dire sin.
Incidentally, I ordinarily don’t say GS or other perfunctory things (boker tov, etc.) to women or girls. I consider it a chumra that reminds me to respect tsniut generally. I do respond if spoken to; that belongs to derekh erets and prevents Torah from being taken as grim and antisocial.
oomis1105 and others, this CR began with a question about the propriety of men saying GS to girls. Swiftly it went over to accusing members of both genders of the gravest sins in the book as if they’d been raised in S’dom. Commenters have justified this by waving the tsniut banner, tendentiously translating a halacha that’s ambiguous to begin with, using a commentary by Rashi as a psak, etc. I thank you all for this: this morning I davened ????? ??????? ???????? with something closer to kavana than usual because of the thought that I might somehow fall into the clutches of these self-appointed one-man Sanhedrins who are ?? ??? ???? on the flimsiest of evidence.
Englishman, you answered none of my points. Instead, you transformed a perush Rashi into a psak, equated it to the Torah itself, and accused me of disagreeing with both. It’s quite similar to the judgment that you and a few others pronounce against folks who say GS to members of the opposite gender. What’s next? Loosing violent police on the offenders? After all, Rashi on this week’s parsha “paskened”!
I side with Chayala and Vanilla. In 1987 I had the occasion to study the issue for a sefer I was translating, and even back then, before a potch would bring the law down on you, the author was super-careful in dealing with sources that appeared to approve of corporal punishment. When I had really little kids, I was always ready to leave the store (with an apology to those present) in the event of a tantrum, clutching the kids firmly but not punitively so they’d know that they were being removed. Soon enough they figured out why and life got easier from then on.
Englishman, I continue to disagree and I find it odious to liken a girl saying GS to Shlomit bat Dibri. You and a few others aren’t even bothering to warn about a potential slippery slope. You’re going straight to the wholesale condemnation of strangers for the direst of sins on grounds that are flimsy, to put it mildly. I see no ????? in it, no ?????, no ?? ????? ???? ?? ???? ?????? (because I’m sure you’d object to being on the receiving end of this treatment), etc.
Englishman, here we go again: it’s about a perfunctory GS. Not chattering, not arayot, not luring others into arayot, not negiya, not flirting, not sexual overtones, not (to pre-empt the next commenters) avoda zara, shefikhut damim, etc. etc.
More, a couple who does not observe taharat hamishpachah wasn’t on the derech to begin with…. As for how to treat such children, following Hashem’s example might be useful:
?? ??? ???? ???? ??
mw13, I did not treat the concept of forbidding interactions between the genders as an “outrage”. I used the word to describe one poster’s insinuation that saying GS to the opposite gender is evidence of loose morals.
mw13, you said, “‘Ain shoelin bi’ shalom eisha klal,’ which, simply read, means “do not greet a woman at all.” No, it doesn’t. It means “Don’t inquire after a woman’s health” or, as Yitayningwut says, “welfare.” Wishing someone a GS while passing in the street has nothing to do with it.
Sam2, I risk looking like a fool for not having the Rema in front of me, but does he really suggest that by saying GS to someone of the opposite gender I invite strangers to impugn my shem shayamim and convict me of all sorts of aveirot?
RebRY, you’ve done just that in a big way. If I sorted out your dangling pronouns correctly, my saying GS is a solicitation and those who say GS back have accepted it. So if I as a male say GS to another male, is it a solicitation to to’eva?
WIY, your outrage defies common sense. Please show me a requirement in halacha, or in plain logic, to police, segregate, and intimidate young people to the extent of forbidding the exchange of the words “gut Shabbos.” Your idea that these words have to pass a “100% lishma” test is an astonishing hiddush, as is your judgment that these strangers failed the test (“it’s abundantly clear”). That’s as invalid as your earlier “reasoning,” “Who says its [sic] permitted.” The people you’re slandering are on our side. Don’t turn your verbal stun guns on them.
WIY, if you’re going to turn a simple “good shabbos” into krum pritzus, minhag shtus, and flirting, please do us the favor of citing a source for it. To my knowledge, “Who says its [sic] permitted” isn’t a posek.
Shlishi (re earlier post), this is exactly Spain’s and Greece’s quandary. They ceded their monetary powers and responsibilities to the Monetary Union but retained all fiscal prerogatives, which they then used negligibly. A country with its own currency can restore equilibrium by allowing the currency to depreciate (or deliberately devaluating it, as Israel did when it almost went the Greek way in the early-mid 1980s). Greece and Spain cannot; all that’s left to them is budget-slashing.
The purpose of this site being what it is, I’d like to repeat a point I made on an earlier topic: building and running a sound economy has moral value, and for Jews in Eretz Yisrael it has Jewish moral value.
PBA is right as far as domestic goods and services are concerned. In anything involving other countries (imports, exports, transfers, foreign aid), the value of every currency is determined in trading against other currencies. Traders judge a currency in terms of the credibility of the country’s fiscal policies (how it stays within its budget) and monetary policies (how its central bank refrains from “printing money,” among other things). There’s almost no wiggle room; ask anyone from Greece or Spain.
ItcheSrulik, I was told around 1980 that Israel has plenty of translators and I walked through an open door. Today there may be 20 people in the country who can translate academic/economic material into English properly and are available to do it. Israel has plenty of nothing except maybe yeshiva men (fine, go ahead and disagree). It releases terror suspects because it doesn’t have enough Arabic speakers to interrogate them. It discharges patients from hospitals because it hasn’t got enough beds and skilled workers to serve them, including doctors. On and on. I used to keep a Word file of occupations that are shorthanded; I stopped because it got to be too much trouble. I’m not referring to top-level managerial posts but to taken-for-granted things that require certification at the most but no degree. And it’s true for the US too.
So here’s another option: Fargo, North Dakota. There, anyone who shows up with half a mind gets hired for the energy boom. I’m not saying that an individual frustrated kollel man should move there without his family. I favor aliya. This aside, I think several thousand frustrated kollel men should move there with their families.
Instead of using the topic for kalut rosh, can someone recommend a source on the halakhic aspects of leisure, leisure time, hobbies, etc? I think that might capture the issue.
Why is it assumed that husbands visiting Uman are disserving or violating the wishes of their wives? Wouldn’t one expect them to be in harmony about something like this?
And one more: become fluent in a foreign language. America is notorious for its lack of foreign-language skills and Israel isn’t far behind. You’ll qualify for all sorts of service jobs. I have the credentials to say this: I’ve made a great living in Israel for 30 years just by having mastered Hebrew, and the only course I took was a basic ulpan. Kollel men have presumably gone through this in Hebrew and Aramaic.
A whole range of skilled trades and occupations is in desperate undersupply in the U.S. and (more important!) in Israel. Many are related to healthcare (Israel has the most overstrained hospitals in the developed world). Learn one of these occupations, make a good living, and do pikuah nefesh full-time.