Nechomah

Great job! Sometimes I think it’s the yetzer hara that’s behind all of these wild goose chases trying to get us to look for meaning, where none is intended to be found, so that these little things keep us busy when there are really far more important things that we could be processing and dealing with at that time, but we’re wasting our energy on these little things. But really, do you think HKB”H needs to send you a twisted message like that? He can be much more direct to get His point across.

I’ll give you a little example. I had been in a bad relationship many, many years ago. B”H I got out, but unfortunately I promptly got into another bad one, which quickly soured fortunately. After that I ended up in a relationship that I thought was much better and going in the right direction when suddenly it ended. I was at loose ends and did not know what to do with myself. Right at that time one person suggested that I should try going to Aish HaTorah, that they have interesting programs, blah, blah. Right, okay, leave me alone.

A few days later, another person told me that they thought I should look into Aish HaTorah. Right, okay, not now, don’t bother me. Then I was at singles event and was conversing with a nice young man who told me that he thought I should check out the programs that they had at Aish HaTorah.

Okay, now, wait, 3 different people in less than 2 weeks all telling me the same thing. Now you don’t have to hit me over the head with a hammer, right!? Okay, I’ll go!!!!

I ended up going to a Discovery program at Aish a short time later and it was at that turning point in my life that I ended up making a commitment to Torah Judaism. I had no idea that that was what would happen when I went, but I do believe that HKB”H did.

Health, don’t kid yourself, tuition in EY is not FREE!!!

For BY schools, you can send your girls for free, but most boys’ chadorim that I know of cost $. Not like prices in America, I’m sure, but salaries in EY are no where near what they are in America either. I pay around $150 a month for a boy in last year of grade school and they ask for $300 for boys in high school (no dorm), which includes 3 meals (not the most nutritious and definitely not the most appetizing).

My girls are in private school and I pay about $100 per girl per month. I’m not sure what the chassidishe schools charge or if that is subsidized by the chassidus.

It’s normal to come down somewhat after coming back from sem, once out of that vacuum, it’s almost impossible to maintain the levels obtained while there. What’s important is to keep looking forward and up. Life is a downhill escalator. If you’re not working all the time, you’re going down. The more you work, the more you will climb.

As to the question of who you are, you are whoever you want to be – not the girl before sem and not the girl at sem, but a combination. You know what it was like to struggle like you did before sem and now you have goals that you were able to set your sights on while at sem. Let go of the image that you have of yourself before sem and just keep moving forward. It’s the yetzer hara that’s telling you that you didn’t really change and that you’ll never change and can never be like you were when you were in sem. Don’t listen.

Try to get some basic values/guidelines set up for yourself before you go looking for shidduchim. You can’t fit yourself into the mold a boy might create for you. You have to define yourself more and then you’ll know when there is a good fit with the boy you meet.

Like others have said above, get real life guidance. There are many continuation programs in US for after sem. You could find something that interests you and go to some classes and see if the teachers there would be good sources of advice. Don’t rush. Good advice is not easy to come by.

Chin up and hatzlacha rabba!!!

We have one fridge that is Israeli model and has switch for the light. I never turn the switch on so that I won’t have to worry about forgetting before Shabbos. My other fridge is regular American model and we put tape over the little stick that goes in and out when opening/closing door, so the fridge thinks the door is closed all the time. Sorry if this is not great advice, but I think there are enough things to do on erev Shabbos before candle lighting and I do not want to add fridge lights to the list.

LB, be careful about chicken bones. I was told (many, many years ago) that they tend to splinter and can cause the dog to choke. Ask your vet if they’re something that is okay to give your dog.

CT Lawyer, I’m sorry to say, but I think you may not realize what a different stratosphere you live in when it comes to money compared to many people who are here in the Coffee Room. Money is very often the defining point and a dog definitely does not need to be the priority of any frum Jewish family.

There are other animals that can teach children responsibility, including things like fish or birds. I am aware of the benefits that dogs do provide, especially to people like your MIL and other people as a form of animal therapy, but given the vast majority of chareidim who live in apartments, as you yourself said, there is little space for them in such quarters under normal circumstances, which is what we would be referring to.

RY – From plants we see niflaos haBoreh, all of the amazing and different kinds of living things that give us people life. We can learn a lot from that. From animals, there are other things to learn. I believe it is said that one can learn tznius from a cat (feel free to tell me I’m wrong, just remembering teachings for many years ago). From a dog I recall that we learn chutzpah, as a dog can bite the hand of the one who feeds it.

I also grew up having a dog and loved having one. Nothing like unadulterated love that a dog can give its owner. But dogs cost a fair amount of money and in most frum households there is not so much spare money available to be able to spend it on a dog, who has other issues, like tumah (maybe you have to wash your hands after touching him) and muktzeh, and we have enough human beings to support with our money that having a dog is not really in the budget. From these considerations, there is a complete lack of exposure to these creatures, so the children grow up fearing them.

My husband holds that we are supposed to eat fleishig meals on Shavuos, just like any other YT, but we space it out that we have a fully milchig meal as a third seudah that we wash for in the mid afternoon on YT.

LB, I think true understanding why things that seem horrible to us are good for certain people can only happen once a person has left this world of limited understanding and gone on to the upper spheres. Are you going to point your finger at someone sitting in a wheelchair and say, yes, I know that it was best for you to suffer in pain your whole life and not be able to walk like a normal man? No, I think that would be very insensitive of you and really how can you “know” all the details of that person’s life that would permit you to “know” such a thing as a fact. We have to have emuna that HKB’H” is running the world and whatever he does is from love and have the humility to admit that I do not understand why terrible things can happen to people. Anyway, most things are better understood with lots of hindsight, but that could take many, many years to come into focus.

If you have the difficult situation that you are confronting yourself, believe me that you will be hard pressed, even with loads of emuna beforehand, to not stumble and doubt that this is really good and have questions that you did not have beforehand and need support from people like the mentors the mods have mentioned in the other thread in order to come out of the situation (even if the situation cannot have a “happy” ending) with our belief that HKB”H is running the world and loves us intact, but that is the most important thing.

Just as a side note, think about Megillas Esther, which we just read on Purim. Who would thought, particularly if you were Esther, that her being picked as the new queen for Achashverosh was a good thing at the time that it happened? Not you and probably not anybody else. The fact that it truly was a good thing only became clear when the opportunity presented itself to someone with clear thinking like Mordechai, who saw that “perhaps for this situation you rose to your position” and from there came the yeshua that no one could have foreseen. Do you have any idea how long the whole story of Megillas Esther took place? Find out if not, I’m not sure myself, but I think it was much more than 20 years from start to finish. Who would remember the details from 20 years ago and connect them later on to the final parts of the story. The Megillah was written with ruach hakodesh, so that is how we have all the pieces put together in front of us in the Megillah, and we can see the connections and understand that what happened in the beginning was from HKB”H and was truly good, but without the help of the megillah and the hindsight that it provides,

I heard a great story of a girl who went to Amuka with a group of friends and they took pictures of the group/individuals while they were there. Later, after she got married, she was looking back at old pictures and came across her pictures of that day and what did they see in the background? Her husband was there the same day as they were!!!!!

I did go to Amuka once and I did in fact meet my husband and get married within the year.

It’s also known as Givat Ze’ev HaChadashah. Good choice aymdock.

I think that if a person is noticing things that are happening around, then they are not focused on what the person they are conversing with is saying. That is not good when you are on a date. You should be focused exclusively on what the person is saying, as you might miss something important. That person deserves your undivided attention. Let the background noise fade and pay close attention to what this person is telling you. I think this applies to all conversations, giving 100% attention to the other person, I mean, but so much more so in a shidduch.

Personally, I find that if I’m talking to someone and they are doing something else at the same time (it could be simply looking around – eye contact is a very important way to communicate that you’re paying attention), I feel rejected, as if the other person does not care to talk to me, so I just abandon the “conversation” at that point most of the time, but this is just me.

I posted the following up near the top, back on 5/2, mentioning the issue of throwing wheat. I obviously made a mistake by saying a symbol of fertility, as siman bracha makes much more sense. I think the whole thing got combined with goyish customs as far as combining the wheat kernels with confetti and then finally leaving out the wheat altogether (though I have still done that at a few chassanahs in the last 10 years) possibly due to issues with chometz in the chosson’s streimel, as I mentioned in my original post. Thus, I do not believe that there is a mekor for throwing confetti, but it did start out as something Jewish that morphed into doing something stam/goyish.

“I have been at many chassanahs where they do throw “confetti” on the chosson at the badeken. I was told that the original version was to throw wheat kernels as a symbol of fertility. Later that got mixed with confetti and possibly due to issues with chometz (famous story with R’ Shmuel Salant and the wheat in the soup on Pesach) many people do not use the wheat anymore and just throw the confetti. I see this less and less these days. it does make a mess on everybody.”

A mamin, I thought the minhag of wearing white was because the day of the chassanah is like Yom Kippur for the chosson and kallah, and just like a man wears a white kittel on Yom Kippur as a symbol of purity, since all of their aveiros are being forgiven that day, the kallah wears a white dress. I do not know what the chassidim do. I do know that a lot of kallahs are not wearing pure white but rather cream these days.

As far as luxury of a kallah dress, most people I know take one from a gemach, pay a minimal fee for upkeep and return it in the days after the chassanah for the next girl to use it. At least 3 or 4 girls can wear a single dress (obviously not all at one time) depending on how many alterations are needed for each girl.

I was told that the dresses are fancy so that a poor kallah can have “jewelry” on her dress like a “rich” kallah. Of course we all know that girls still wear their jewelry to the chassanah, so somewhere this idea got diluted or forgotten. I’m just relaying what I heard many years ago.

I have been at many chassanahs where they do throw “confetti” on the chosson at the badeken. I was told that the original version was to throw wheat kernels as a symbol of fertility. Later that got mixed with confetti and possibly due to issues with chometz (famous story with R’ Shmuel Salant and the wheat in the soup on Pesach) many people do not use the wheat anymore and just throw the confetti. I see this less and less these days. it does make a mess on everybody.

All veils hook on the back. in the hair. I think I’ve seen even chassidish kallahs from rabbinish families wearing regular veils on the back. There is sometimes a style of not wearing a veil, but I’m not think it’s very common. This is worn during the whole chassanah.

The covering on the front is only from the badeken (covering the kallah – if you look carefully you can see the work “dek” in the middle, which is where the work “dek-tuch” that I mentioned earlier comes from) during the chuppah. There are opinions that once the chosson has identified her as the correct kallah and has covered her face, it is not appropriate for other men to look upon the face of the kallah during the chuppah. Nobody needs that piece of material to go down much past the chin. That’s why, LB, you saw the kind only to the chin. That’s not the “veil” that everybody thinks of. It is just supposed to cover her face. If it’s the really thick kind (like I had at my chuppah and my daughter had) you really cannot see out, but it is good to at least be able to look down underneath it and see the ground where you are going to step.

Unfortunately, amongst the more modern, they simply take the veil piece from the back and cover the face. It is very transparent and everybody can see her. I can actually tell you that it is nice to have that bit of privacy to be daavening during the chuppah. Less chance of looking around at who made it to the chuppah, etc. That would be very distracting, IMHO.

Well, I think curly peyos depends on a couple of things. First, if the man/boy has curly hair, then he will have curly peyos. How curly will depend on how curly his hair is. Now the perfect bottle curl that the chassidim wear is not so easy to come by and most of the time they will have to do what was suggested above and that is to get a “perm” to the peyos hairs.

As far as what LUL saw with a man curling his peyos, that is very often seen in chassidish neighborhoods since the men go to mikvah daily and will often spend much time doing this curling activity with their peyos to restore the shape and curl to them. If a man goes with “batteriot” as they call it here, the very tightly curled ones that go behind the ear (not to be mistaken with straight litvish peyos that also go behind the ear), then those can be arranged less frequently, twist tightly and put behind the ear. Gerrers often wear their peyos up under their kippahs.

NP Joseph. Thanks for pointing that out.

29 – Sorry, hope you weren’t offended. I hope you’re getting paid big bucks for all of the changes you’ve been working on.

I think the various colors of gray are very. The light is too light and almost not visible. What’s the point. Office 2013 “upgraded” so that it removed all background colors and went to three options of gray for background colors, and received numerous complaints. I do not think having “participant” and “reply” in such a light gray is helpful at all.

Also, what is the point of having different topics headers where you could put your thread if there is no way to access those topics apart from the main list of topics. The only way I found to get into questions on shidduchim, for example, was to go into a thread on that topic and then once the topic was on the screen somewhere, to click on that link. Too round about. If there is no direct access, who needs them?

I think even the machmirim recognize that when there is necessity to be in a foxhole, it is pikuach nefesh, which is docheh hakol and would not be machmir on mehadrin kashrus. But the vast majority of the time, there is no pikuach nefesh involved in army duty and the fact that they are not willing to provide mehadrin kashrus to soldiers who request it seems to me to be “lehachis”.

To Redleg: I am well aware of the 2 million number, but I did not want to post such a number here and then get called out to start explaining where I got my information. It is good that you could bring it with a source. Thank you very much.

I think a person has to consider whether their child will go by their Hebrew name at all. If you name your child some kind of old-world name from Tanach that is not heard in our times, then he might be embarrassed by it as he gets older. Since his name will be called when he gets an aliyah, that might become an uncomfortable situation for him to be in, one which he might decide to avoid encountering. This may seem extreme, but we are not naming our child for ourselves, but rather as a reflection of his neshama. It is said that a parent gets ruach hakodesh when naming his child. The name does affect the child.

Just to make it clear, in case Joseph didn’t already, for those in Yerushalayim or in a place where there was known to be (or a question of whether there was) a wall during the times of Yehoshua, then Purim is on 15 Adar, not 14 like the rest of the world. If you sleep or spend most of the night in one of those cities, the best known of which is Yerushalayim, then you have Purim on 15 Adar and have all of the chiyuvim of Purim, including Megillah, seudah, mishloach manos, and matanos la’evyonim. This is all regardless of where you spent the night of 14 Adar. You may very well have been in Bnei Brak or some other city outside of Yerushalayim and had Purim there already, so now you have 2 Purims. This is, of course, unusual, but many people travel back and forth between these cities to enjoy the lebedikeit on Purim on both days. We had Purim yesterday (Sunday) where I live and today I hope to travel to Yerushalayim with my family to visit friends who have Purim today. We will not have the chiyuvim like they do, but want to enjoy the freilachkeit.

Hope you all had (or have) a wonderful and happy Purim.

I do think that you will be happier with someone who understands what you got involved with and why you left it, etc, from her own experiences, like a BT or someone who grew up more modern and became more frum. Shadchanim who deal with girls like that are probably a better address for you. But most importantly, DON’T LOSE HOPE. The right girl is out there for you. It may take a little longer to find her, but this is all part of the big plan. HBK”H loves so much the hard work you put in to turn your life back around, He won’t abandon you. Your tefillos will be answered at the right time. Since you’re not really so old, it could be that your future kallah just has to do some more work on herself to be ready to get such a terrific shidduch.

Just as a last note, about the smoking=OTD, don’t equate the rabbonim and gedolim you know with a bochur your age. In the last several years, the rabbonim have come out very strongly about a bochur not starting to smoke. Now that we know how unhealthy it is to smoke, the best thing is not to start and then you won’t know the nisayon of trying to quit. They have not come out with a psak that it is ossur to smoke because they realize that the tzibbur would not be able to stand to such a psak and then people would be oiver on their psak but have a tremendously hard time stopping.