rational

ujm: בושה לך

To the best of my knowledge, all or almost all Orthodox people in the U.S. eat only glatt. I doubt one can even find non-glatt at a reputable butcher. Due to the high standard of living of most Orthodox, this chumra has been well accepted and is easy to observe.

However, this uncompromising and modern chumra comes with a heavy ideological price tag. One can throw out the vast majority of hilchot treifos, as these halachot have become irrelevant. Not glatt? throw it out or sell it to the goyim. For more than a thousand years, poskim were consulted to make a halachic decision on kashrut that made torah she’be’al peh a living torah and not an ancient relic. I am not advocating eating non-glatt meat. But I do not think that it should be a litmus test for inclusion in the frum community. No one would question a Posek’s authority to pasken hilchot nidah, an area which has not undergone modern revision. When a posek sees a mar’eh and paskens l’heter, no one questions this heter, that’s why we go to the posek. But for treifos, a deision l’hatir has become obsolete. it is unfortunate that any question of glatt/not-glatt-but-kosher has been sent to the dustbin of halachah.

I am fully in favor of the traditional pre-selichot mussar shmuess, followed by a traditional selichot with the traditional nusach. No guitars, no dancing, just selichot. That’s what we had in my Dati L’umi shul, western edge of Mateh Binyamin. God’s country. We’re preparing for shmittah, by the way, but I guess that isn’t included in the religious concerns of most of the clientele here.

I am confused by the complaint of the OP: Ma Nafshach; If the new musically-oriented selichot are MO, then why bother mentioning it at all? You are preaching to the choir here (no pun intended) and that is batel b’shishim in what the MO stand for, as we all know. If you are preaching to the yeshivish, then shumu shamayim, how could this possibly be happening? Say it ain’t so…

To the OP: Well, you asked for it. If you have any complaints , you’re in the wrong forum.

“Gemstone therapies work. Emotional maladies, mental complaints, and acute and chronic illnesses of all kinds have responded to gemstone energy medicine in unprecedented and exciting ways.”

The most effective gemstone for any malady is the placebo stone. But you have to believe in it for it to work.

Phony segulahs. Correct, but redundant.

OP: Nice thought.
There is no such expression as “yemei tovim”. “Yamim tovim” is correct.

after me. you may have to wait a bit.

יישר כחך is a common Hebrew expression. For those of Eastern European ancestry, it is pronounced ישר כויח , but they are one and the same. It’s always amusing to see people claim linguistic knowledge that they don’t possess.

Kashrus has always been subject to extra-halachic considerations. Every learned person knows that a Rav can declare meat treif if it comes from out-of-town and endangers the financial stability of the local kosher butcher. When I was young, the Rav of Silver Spring, Md. did just that to the meat coming from Baltimore.

Before one rants about what the halachah is and determines with no hesitation that a given halachic opinion offered here should be disregarded, one should consider the following:
1. Have I ever learned the halachos of hachanah from the primary sources?
2. Do I know how to look up the halachic sources in order to offer a halachic opinion?
3. Is the responder possibly a Rav or halachic authority himself, and if so, who am I to berate him?
4. Am I qualified to determine what is a widely accepted halachic loophole?
Sometimes a bit of self awareness helps.

IYK:
I’ve read your posts carefully. You write English and transliterations very well, indicating educational depth and maturity, both on a Torah and secular level. Therefore, it surprises me that you came to the coffee room with such heavy baggage. You know very well that no one here will solve your issues, if indeed you have them. Get professional help.

I am far from this hashkafah, but I must ask eishis chayil: If you use shadchanim exclusively in your chassidishe environment, what did you think the Coffee Room could possibly offer you?

“If the scorecard is for fundraising skills, than its R’Alter by a knockout”

Not really. Although $20 million is a hefty sum, the Gerrer empire is worth approximately 100 times that amount and fundraising can be accomplished almost at the snap of a finger. The surprise was that there was more support for the opposition than was assumed, and that this breakaway faction was a spiritual and political force that needed to be reckoned with.

“They’re on the same page.”

Someone’s either living in la-la land or doesn’t keep up with the news. Or both.

“Sefer Bamidbar: Studies in Lomdus”

Hardest to get into?
A much more accurate barometer of quality is the market value of the boys in shidduchim.

You don’t have to make a living in Israel. Your wife does. She was moichel her k’suva, no? You should just learn and have bitachon that the money will work out somehow. There are plenty of America-based jobs available for her including hi-tech, medical billing, book keeping, etc…

“DY, he means to say that it beautifies the tefila like cufflings on a shirt or icing on a cake which should not be a hefsek.”

Reb Leizer, well put, that is exactly what I meant.

Furthermore, there are piyutim in the davening that are so integral to a specific tefillah that few even realize that they are piyutim. Ha’me’ir la’aretz is a piyut that contains the acrostic aleph-bet. The paragraphs preceding the birchot kriat shma (l’kel baruch, ahavah raba, etc…) are all piyutim. The fact that they are very early piyutim as opposed to later piyutim written after chatimat hatalmud doesn’t change their character. Mimkomcha in kedusha of Shabbat is a piyut, as are all the intermediate phrases of the kedusha of both shacharit and musaf on Shabbat (mimkomo, hu elokeinu, adir adireinu, etc…) . No one would dare say these piyutim are a hefsek.

Furthermore, the fear of hefsek seems to have been totally forgotten on tefilot yamim no’ra’im. The examples are so many and so well known they don’t require itemizing.

I find the hefsek argument to have too many indefensible holes, without even mentioning that piyutim are steeped in both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic mesorot. Kol ha’meshaneh yado al hatachtona.

In Israel, Minhag HaGra says piyutim only after Chazaras Hashatz.

I am a yeshiva bochur
I want money that I don’t have
I can ask Tattie, he has money
If he won’t give me, I can ask Zaidie, he has lots of money.
If Zaidie won’t give me, I can ask the rest of the world. There’s tons of money out there.
It doesn’t really matter who gives me the money.
The bottom line is that I am a YESHIVA BOCHUR and the world exists thanks to me. And I want money. Someone out there should just give it to me. NOW.

I guess most pashkevil printers are unreliable. No wonder, pashkevilim are a socially acceptable method of ruining people’s lives without having to prove anything, and without the affected person having a way of defending himself. Go for it, מתאים לך.
Of course, there are productive uses for pashkevilim such as promoting a sefer or announcing a petirah. But there are better methods for both. If needed, YWN provides this service in a very dignified way.

Do yeshivas really give the boys off on Lag Ba’omer?
I know of no litvish yeshiva in Israel that does that.
Yes, the chassidim go to Meron, but no one really holds them to litvish standards.

Beethoven cannot be translated into English, and Shakespeare cannot be translated into Hebrew. So too, the Zohar cannot be translated into a foreign language. You’ll first have to learn some Aramaic and some Hebrew. Then you can only begin to learn Zohar. The Pseudo-Aramaic in the Zohar requires studying with someone with Yiras Shamayim learned in Kabbalah and Zohar. Don’t do it yourself, you will get nowhere very fast.

Dear Syag

What you did was very commendable. Halachically, it was “lifnim meshuras hadin”. There certainly was no gezeilah or gneivah on anyone’s part.
One could have made a reverse argument. Assuming you knew you had these items that you would gladly give your friend at no cost, why would you allow a situation in which your friend had to incur an unnecessary expense? Why is the profit (minimal) of the store inherently preferable to the expense (maximal) of your friend?

Don’t sweat it. you did a noble act and you need not worry about it.