Neville Chaim Berlin

“But rav shlomo zalman would agree that if the therapy isn’t working, as is the case with many of these gender delusional people”

Bingo. So, what he is saying is that if therapy doesn’t work, then transition surgery WILL work. This is not supported by science or anything other than leftist quackery. L’maaseh, they’ll kill themselves anyway. The transition does not help. If anything it makes things worse. What a shocker, the Torah was actually right about assering it I guess.

The rabbonim were awfully quiet about all the suicides and overdoses caused by the 2020 lockdowns that many of them supported. I’ll spell this out again: they only apply the suicide-omni-heter to leftist political causes. This isn’t coincidence. This is the side effect of consulting with doctors and making the mistake of assuming they’re impartial. This practice needs to stop, and I’ll criticize it no matter who does it and no matter how black his hat is.

“The fact is that it has real meaning to the majority of the people that the Office of the Chief Rabbi serves.”
Who cares? At least Avira gave real answers. You actually seem to be of the opinion that even if this was completely assur, he should do it anyway because it makes his employers happy and it’s “meaningful” to them. So far, everything you’ve said here is at least as absurd as anything on the YCT teshuvos thread.

“Was the Chazon Ish the only posek in his time? I think not.”
When did I ever claim otherwise? I have no idea what even brought this comment on.

“You are not allowing a middle ground on the issue. The beyond the pale kulos of electricity on Shabbos is that electricity can’t be prohibited because it’s not fire.”
What are you talking about? This thread isn’t about whether or not electricity is melachah. This is about the fact that power plant workers do melachah in order to generate the power in Israel (full, unambiguous melachah like lighting actual fires). By the way, I’ve never had to ask because I don’t live in Israel, but for all I know I hold like the meikelim. I have no personal skin in this game.

“It is beyond question that most of the reponsa concerning electricity ere based on incomplete or misunderstood information.”
It is beyond question that the only type of person that would say this does not understand halacha and thinks he knows better than the poskim.

“Of course, the Xtian and Muslim operators are not a concern.”
Even this is not pashut. It’s melachah being done at the request of Jews, for the benefit of Jews, on Shabbos specifically. I’m sure there are ways to get around the amira l’akum issue, but it’s not “of course” not an issue.

“Please note that I have been building and operating power plants for 50 years and I have a pretty good idea how they work.”
I’ll take that into consideration if I have an engineering question, but if I have a halachah question, I think I’ll keep trusting those who are experts in that field.

Jackk, you think you’re being brilliant and whity by talking like nobody would ever be lowly enough to want to work those blue collar jobs, but it just makes you look like a spoiled champagne socialist. Jobs going back to working class Americans rather than going to illegal slave labor is generally viewed as a good thing, even by democrats.

“You could also be saddened by yourself insinuating that those who used electricity in the 50s were using Reform-like justifications.”
That part was not about using municipal electricity in Israel; I would never say those people are conservative/reform. Ray’s comment was much further reaching than that if you read between the lines or are familiar with the standard Conservative/Reform rhetoric.

“There are many technological and societal changes since the Chazon Ish.”
This isn’t true at all (as it pertains to this issue). Israel is still rov Jewish, and would presumably still employ Jews at the power plants. Nobody is saying you “must” hold like the machmirim, but let’s not pretend there’s been a real change.

“Most Jews can’t not survive without electricity for 24 hours or longer nor afford private generators for Shabbos.”
Actually, most Jews are not currently hooked up to life support that rely on electricity for survival, but some are. Part of the question is whether that makes it mutar for everyone. If you mean “can’t survive” as in “omg I can’t even, like, oh my gosh, if I didn’t have power I would liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiterally die,” then yeah I’ve wasted my time responding to you. Affordability of generators is irrelevant. Maybe people “can’t afford” to take off shabbos/yom tov; that doesn’t mean it’s mutar to be mechallel shabbos.

Ray,
What you’re saying is the standard Conservative/Reform defense of electricity on Shabbos (eg. the poskim don’t know anything about anything, etc.). As usual, I’m saddened that this forum now let’s this stuff through.

As far as this issue goes, it doesn’t matter how electricity works. Power plant workers are doing melachah.

“So many people have a real hard time with this fact.”

Because it’s not a fact. It’s the delusional ramblings of someone who wants this outdated tourist trap to be relevant, and is upset that the entire world recognizes that it’s just silly.

“it’s very sad that Americans don’t understand the royal family.”

No, we’re the ones who DO understand it. You guys have drunk so much of the kool aid that you actually think it’s anything more than a joke.

It seems strange that a man would be allowed to daven on the woman’s side, but I’ll take your word for it; I don’t have access to the sefer you mentioned.

I would imagine that if such a person made teshuvah, the advice would be for them to get a haircut, lose the dress, and start identifying as a man again even if the surgical aspects are irreversible. If he’s still halachically a guy, then I’m not sure why he would be advised to continue dressing as a woman and sitting on the woman’s side. If we’re talking about a person who is unrepentant and wants to continue identifying as the falsified gender, then I think the question is best answered by N0mesorah’s TCT teshuvah above.

Uh oh… That’s actually kind of an interesting shailah when you think about it.

From my understanding, most poskim say that the person remains their birth gender with maybe some exceptions. So, couldn’t an artificial female actually duchan? Would it be a problem of bal mum?

“I would think with the state of the world today, that there are more important things to worry about than when one can listen to music.”
There are also more important things to worry about than whether or not we can eat pork, but it doesn’t mean that we should. You can “worry” about more than one thing at the same time.

“But it’s mitaam minhag, not mitaam halacha. My point is that people need to be educated.”
It wasn’t clear that that was your point. The whole concept of minhagei aveilus during sefira is technically a minhag, albeit minhag klal Yisroel. I’ve heard people unironically make the case that they are Baal Teshuvos, therefore they have no minhagei avos, therefore they don’t have to keep sefira minhagim at all. This is the risk of going around telling people it’s “just a minhag.” Most learned people already know, and many unlearned people would misunderstand the meaning.

“I just wonder why 33 days of mourning for 24000 and zero for 6 million”
You could say stuff like this about virtually everything we do. I’m personally happy not having a Holocaust-centric religion, but if you want to carve out another 33 days somewhere else in the year you can give it a shot and see if it catches on.

“You know what? Forget the Shulchan Aruch. The Gemara doesn’t mention music. Nor do the Geonim. Nor does the Rambam. What do you guys want?“

The Rambam was of the shittah that music is always assur until the Beis Hamikdash returns, I believe. It came up once when learning the Yalkut Yosef where I think he asks exactly the questions you’re asking, and concludes that even if there is no real inyan of avoiding music during sefira (or maybe it was 3 weeks?), then you’re just being choshesh for the Rambam during these times, which is a good thing.

The points you’re making aren’t as insane as everyone is making them out, but they also aren’t as brilliant as you think. These have been addressed before and I really wish I could cite where it was in the Yalkut Yosef, but this was like 5 years ago so I couldn’t even begin to remember.

“yidiishistes and tarbut, cultural Hebrew school. I don’t see Mizrahi mentioned. Did I miss it?”

Yes you did. Those “cultural Hebrew schools” or Bnei Akiva, etc. were all absorbed into Mizrachi. And, sorry to curb your excitement, but by “Yiddishists” he was also referring to Zionists. The faction of them (eg. YIVO) who wanted Yiddish to be the language for the medina.

Thanks for the proof to help the anti-Zionist side. Good to see people bringing sources again.

“But regarding the Brooklyn eruv, a psak was made by the preeminent gadol hador with the support of the overwhelming majority of other gedolim behind him.”

The same could be said here. Every major rabbi ever has asser’d going to church services. If anything, that’s a lot more to being going up against than just Reb Moshe alone.

“he defended himself with some teshuva he found, and they decided not to get rid of him.”

This is how the process should work. As you can see from this thread, the pro-church crowd thinks that explaining halachic reasoning is comparable to sharing nuclear secrets (but only when it’s a heter, of course). Occum’s razor is that the reason they aren’t making this whole controversy go away by just sharing their reasons, is that they have no real reasons. I would be happy to be proven wrong.

“But because I’m not very familiar with the british rabbinic scene”

From the rest of your post, you seem to be more familiar with the British scene than you are with the American one. The Brooklyn eruv was a project by chassidishe rabbis, including the Nitei Gavriel. Not unlike what you said about Britain, they “get along” with the greater frum tzibbur. However, unlike the case of Britain, they don’t turn around and support the gay agenda. Given your shittos, you would consider the Brooklyn rabbis abjectly more respectable than those in England, yet you’re more willing to criticize them.

But it might be worth the large selection of Yeshivos.

Point taken, though. If everything else were equal in terms of frum resources, it would make no sense for a huge part of the frum world to congregate in one of the world’s only doraysadik reshusei harabim.

Avira:
Why are you unwilling to question of heter of the London Beis Din, but will happily argue against the Brooklyn eruv matirim?

Both cases are similar: respectable rabbis are being matir something that is seemingly totally assur with no obvious heter and not doing a good job of explaining their reasoning. You have three main choices:
1) The left-wing approach: never question a heter. Only haters question heters.
2) The right-wing approach: conclude that the otherwise respectable rabbis have chosen to ignore halacha completely with no basis and are apparently closet Zionists or something.
3) The approach that will still make people accuse you of being a crazy right-winger: have the seemingly reasonable expectation that when rabbis make a massive chiddush publicly with far-reaching consequences, that they explain their reasoning so as to not cause confusion and halachic mishaps ch”v. And, yes, even be willing to criticize them when they don’t do so. Suddenly all these posters who usually accuse us of “gadolatry” passionately believe that all rabbis are above criticism (assuming what they’re saying is b’tzad heter).

Shailah: I purchased a copy of the US Constitution at a gift shop, but now I want to throw it away because my Gender Studies professor told me that the founding fathers were all evil racists. Can I throw it away in the regular trash, or does it require geniza?

Teshuvah: Firstly, you should not have purchased it to begin with because your professor is right. However, it does have some level of kedushah. As the famous story goes, a ger came to Avi Weiss and asked him to teach the entire Torah standing on one foot, Rabbi Weiss replied “dina malchusa Torah he! The rest is commentary.” The ger didn’t understand, but we converted him anyway.

The point is, following dina malchusa is at least as important as the Torah itself, whether that country be the US, North Korea, or even occupied Palestine. Properly filing taxes is more important than keeping kosher, which is why we now offer our “yosher” hashgacha based on business practices rather than outdated dietary rituals. We can be m’dayek from all this that the laws of any given country are straight from Hashem.

Mentsch:

From your hypothetical questions you seem to agree that the heter should extend to all comparable circumstances. If the heter is legitimate, then I agree. What’s insane is that other posters on here seem to be acting like this one narrow occasion is the only time this action would ever be mutar. I say, if you can do it to please a symbolic king, kal v’chomer you could do it to please people who actually matter.

The only point where I’ll disagree: no the king of England could not ever use political influence to help the Jews because he has no political influence. Al Sharpton has more political influence than the British Royals.

Thank you, Avram.

I’m skeptical that any form of government other than oligarchy has ever truly existed in the history of civilization. We definitely don’t need to just blame the voters in the USA. We aren’t a direct democracy to we don’t vote directly on policy. We vote for people from a short ballot of choices given to us, most of which nobody actually likes. And I’m talking about the US. In parliamentary countries they don’t even kind of have democracy. A fringe swing party can end up with insane power, not to mention many of them (eg. Israel) don’t have primaries for their parties.