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Those who allowed a microphone would turn it on prior to Shabbat and not turn it off until after Shabbat.
I don’t see how manipulating the flow of electrons qualifies as melakha.
Unborn eggs (Ayerlach) were very popular in the alte heim. I’ve seen them eaten at different shabbos meals in chicken soup.
Young Israels used to have mixed dances in the 1950s.
I don’t support mixed dancing, but I think that using it as a pretext for determining the kashrut of an establishment’s food (especially while opposing people who want to have “ethical certifications” to reflect their values) is hypocritical and a poor decision.
Some eggs are fleshig. Most eggs are considered a separate entity from the chicken once they’ve hatched. YD 87:5 says that if fully formed eggs are found inside a chicken these may be consumed with milk products, however, if the eggs are not fully formed (i.e. fleshig, or unborn eggs), they may not be consumed together with milk although one would be able to eat dairy products after eating one of them.
Zilusa d’ shabbos and uvda l’chol are totally, 100% subjective phenomena. Your rebbe’s psak shows that Rav Elyashiv agreed more or less with Rav Shlomo Zalman’s psak on electricity.
In all honesty, while I don’t operate electricity on shabbos, I honestly know that this is a fixture of convention, rather than any actual halakhic concern.
The OU was against mixed dancing. Most of the ship’s business came from kosher-keeping Jews who still wanted to be able to dance on their anniversaries and whatnot. The type of economic bracket that would oppose giving kosher supervision to a place that allowed mixed dancing probably couldn’t afford such a cruise.
There was one, but you can thank the OU for shutting it down for non-kashrut related reasons.
I never heard of mustard in chulent.
Onion soup mix, or Osem powder, is a good ingredient, since it offers a meaty flavor while still being pareve.
I do know that R’ Simcha Levy and R’ Poliakoff of Baltimore allowed a microphone’s use on shabbat. A lack of scientific understanding regarding electricity results in many faulty psakim.
I’d hope the baby and its mother are safe. Other than that, I don’t care any more about this baby than I would any other baby.
There are definitely a few kosher stores there, and I’d imagine ShopRite in the mountains stocks kosher items in the summer, at least.
There is truth behind that, especially considering that the mechitza’s legal status is flimsy, to put it mildly. They actually had a policy of not placing their musmachim in non-mechitza shuls, but that policy changed. Now, 2 Orthodox synagogues lacking mechitza, in Overland Park and Denver, have YCT rabbis.
In NYC, I’d suggest buying what you can at Costco and stores like Pathmark and ShopRite (certainly, not keeping CY makes shopping at normal stores easier). I frequently go to 3-4 different stores for different items, according to the sale prices.
If you re-read my comments, than you’d see that I said that DEVIATING from a Talmudic standard results in a less textually-grounded approach and one more rooted in social need.
If you say that the keriat shema can be said around a married woman with uncovered hair, than that sounds a lot like saying that in this day and age, based on social reality, a married woman’s hair is not considered ervah. If that’s not a limmud zechut, what is?
Where are you? In Kansas, where the non-mechitza shul has a YCT rabbi? From what I gather, YCT graduates tend to be hired in non-denominational contexts (chaplaincy, teaching, Hillel, etc.), or by synagogues in out of town places where the Orthodox synagogue has mainly nonobservant members, or they’re taken on as rabbis in a handful of more progressive shuls (such as Kadimah Toras Moshe in Brighton, HIR, the shul in Potomac, etc.)
Onion soup mix, root vegetables, lots of onions, oil, etc. are all ways to get a good parve cholent.
Does saying “G-d bless you” pose any halakhic problems?
R’ Weiss-haLivni (who is wholly a traditional figure), in his attempt to make his peace with the data that leads some to DH still included a revelation of the original text of the Torah word-for-word to Moses at Sinai as a historical event. (Although he believes we lost it and our current Torah is reconstructed from remnants; see his Chateu Yisrael theory discussed in his books Peshat and Derash and Revelation Restored). R’ Farber’s view falls significantly to the left of R’ HaLivni’s views (both on this issue and women’s issues; those who are familiar with the actions of R’ HaLivni and his UTJ colleagues know that when R’ HaLivni was rabbi of KOE on the West Side, women were generally not afforded partnership minyan-style opportunities, and his colleagues R’ Pinchas Klein and others believe that homosexuality is immoral- the UTJ even disaffiliated the Montauk Minyan in Brooklyn a decade ago when they invited R’ Steve Greenberg to speak).
I don’t see, honestly, how he differs from others who have engaged in similar analysis. Whether or not the American Orthodox establishment treats him like another R’ Louis Jacobs is something to look towards.
It is interesting to me that thematically, the Yerushalmi is far less textual or objective than the Bavli, for starters. Yerushalmi many times is concerned with observing people’s conduct and codifies observations of what people are noheg to do. Tosafot very often reads Ashkenazic minhagim and more Yerushalmi-based practices into the canon, and AhS, like Tosafot (and even the Ra’avad), is often concerned with paskening in a less textual manner. AhS is concerned with what people are noheg to do (see his limmudei zechut on women’s hair covering, hashma’at kol on shabbat, bedikat tolaim, cantors using tuning forks on Shabbat- which the MB was against, eruvin, etc.) MB seems to be closer to the principles inherent in the Rambam’s approach, IMHO.
AhS is very much lekula in his psakim, and the very fact that he was a communal rav and not a rosh yeshiva is probably a testament to this fact; AhS is more concerned with popular practice than a more academic style, and he has fealty to established custom, even when it is in conflict with theoretical halakha. The Gra was very opposed to this type of approach, hence the fact that the MB is very much reliant on the more Talmudically-based Gra in many areas. If my theory or observation is faulty, I’d accept other views.
I’d say that the acceptance of the MB over AhS is one example proving Prof. Hayyim Soloveitchik’s “Rupture and Reconstruction” theory correct.
The MB’s approach is more textually-grounded; the AhS is more inclined to allow leniency on the basis of human need or what is observed socially (ie. he offers more limudei zechut, typically). AhS allowing people to feed birds on Shabbat Beshalach, or allowing hashma’at kol on shabbat, etc. are examples of this.
R’ Dr. Farber recently came out with a manifesto:
I believe in Torah Min Ha-Shamayim, that the Torah is from heaven, and that the entirety of the book is nevua (prophecy) and represents the encounter between God and the people of Israel.
So where does this inquiry leave me? First, it appears that the Torah is a layered document. While I am not convinced of the documentary hypothesis (JEPD) per se, it seems that the Torah has evident signs of being an edited work which makes use of multiple sources and contains layers of redaction. The Torah contains inconsistencies both in its laws as well as its narratives and lists. At first I toyed with the possibility that these might be literary devices, but this only works for some of the examples (and not for many of them).
Second, religious practices as well as aspects of the Jewish belief system have changed and developed over the generations. The Oral Torah explanation proffered by the rabbis, i.e. that all of the practices not found in the Bible were either told to Moses directly at Sinai or are derived from midrashic reading of text, does not even begin to realistically address the religious changes Judaism has gone through in a believable way.”
I’d look at his own approach and manifesto in its entirety before deciding whether he’s an apikores. R’ Farber, R’ HaLivni, etc. are extremely learned men, and their ideas and accomplishments should be understood fully.
There have long been traditionally/halakhically-observant thinkers who have engaged academic approaches in a serious way. R’ Farber is doing nothing new or revolutionary.
I’m always looking for good parve chulent recipes. I wonder what makes his so good.
It made hodesh Av one with personal meaning and significance for me, I can say that. We seem to live in a granola world, in which sanity is fleeting.
Rabbi Perfect,
How old were you when you began. And which yeshivos did you go to?
I wouldn’t be so quick to condemn Rabbi Farber as an apikores.
Don’t know if this has to do with power dynamics, but I had to end a relationship with someone I was set up with, since it came out that she was taking Effexor and going to a psychiatrist, which resulted in erratic and flaky behavior on her part. What is this world coming to?
They do require kabbalat ol hamitzvot. Their converts have to go through at least a year of study and observance.
Rav Benzion Uziel, zt”l, the first Rishon leTzion of Medinat Yisrael, paskened that kabbalat ol hamitzvot isn’t me’akev, even le chatchila.
There’s a difference between saying the Torah has multiple authors and multiple narrative voices. The latter was proposed and understood by Mordechai Breuer, zt”l, who clearly saw these 4 distinct voices (and offered his own theory, while remaining within the camp of Orthodoxy), but Jews must believe G-d is the source of Torah, ultimately. For anyone to deny that there are 4 distinct narrative voices indicates that that individual never studied religion from a critical or academic perspective. I long believed that Modern Orthodoxy must not ignore the evidence and claims made by the Academy.
They cut the peyot off the heads of little Temani children, as well.
The point is that calling other Jews (especially other observant Jews) “Amalek” is a negative phenomenon not exclusive to the “Haredi” world, but also affects other sectors of the community.
Land for peace has had the endorsement of not only the vast majority of the diplomatic corps, but was also endorsed by Rav Ovadia Yosef, Rav Schach, Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik (who, unlike much of the hawkish MO community in America, was a dove), and other gedolim. Hence the Haredi parties in Israel opposing the settlements.
The more hard-line Dati’im and Lubavitchers seem to be the only sectors of the Torah-Observant world to support a right-wing support of the settlements.
ROB,
In a 1998 Shabbos Purim drasha in the YU dining hall, R’ Schachter, in a diatribe against the Orthodox left, said that R’ Saul Berman and Edah(the now-defunct vanguard of liberal Modern Orthodoxy, which was absorbed into YCT) was “a sort of internal Amalek.” Rabbi Berman, at the time, defended the remark as a kind of extreme rabbinic poetry, although he’s since rethought the matter.
I also read that in the 1920s, the Rebbe of Munkatch labeled as an Amalek none other than Agudath Israel, which he thought was a bunch of crypto-Zionists and modernizers.
This is nothing new under the sun, and leaders within the realm of YU/RCA are guilty of it themselves.
It’s a mechanism for the spineless, gutless, and copeless to feel better about themselves.
Ed echad neeman be issurin. The chulent is amde by a shomer shabbos.
I believe that before the RCA condemned a Shasnik rabbi for calling other Torah-observant Jews Amalek, they should have addressed the same phenomenon in their own ranks. A very prominent “gadol” within the YU orbit called Rabbi Saul Berman and the organization Edah “a sort if internal Amalek” in a 1998 shiur. Instead of passing the buck of delegitimization, a mature and proper response would be to say “we disagree with the shita or approach of so-and-so.”
I support R’ Yankel Horowitz and R’ Nuchem Rosenberg. I’ve been to many of the rallies against pedophilia organized by SNAP and R’ Rosenberg. Sadly, they don’t have the backing of major earthly forces, but I am convinced that anyone who responds to the call of duty to help the innocents in our midst is a tzadik gamur.
Somebody above asked “lama?” The idea that Moshiach will fall from the clouds on horseback is a Christian one. Rambam explains that Geulah is something we have to prepare ourselves for. The human race needs to advance itself morally and spiritually and progress towards a place of Perfection on both the personal and societal levels. Human effort is required, and is surely met with siyata de shamaya. Instead of remaining fixated on olam haba, our task as Jews is to sanctify olam hazeh and imbibe our daily existence with meaning and purpose, through shmirat hamitzvot, torah learning, acts of chesed, and progress towards a more just world order.
There are lots of things in this world to cry about, and all are related to the theme of Tisha b’Av: the world is not perfect because we’re lacking G-d’s Presence here, which we were deemed unworthy of due to our many sins and failures in how we treat other people.
Rabbi Morris Raphall went to Congress to defend slavery in an address on the House floor, IIRC. He was rabbi of Bnai Jeshurun on the UWS back when it was a traditional congregation, as opposed to the Reform-Conservative hybrid it is nowadays.
Rabbi Sabato Morais embodied the Sephardic tradition of Religious Humanism to the fullest extent. Thinkers such as R’ Morais, H’ David Nieto, R’ Moses Angel, Sra. Grace Aguilar, R’ Yisrael Moshe Hazzan, R’ Yaakov Moshe Toledano, H’ Benzion Uziel, R’ Eliyahu Benamozegh, H’ Moshe Halfon haKohen, etc. represent the best of the Neo-Classical Sephardic tradition, and these rabbis engaged the world and critical thought in a way that would make many Orthodox Jews very uncomfortable nowadays (and they lived years ago).
I can say that well into the 1700s, Sephardic women of prominence in Ottoman Turkey owned slaves. The rabbinic response to that is something I’ve yet to look into.
Rabbi Morris Raphall went to Congress to defend slavery in an address on the House floor, IIRC. He was rabbi of Bnai Jeshurun on the UWS back when it was a traditional congregation, as opposed to the Reform-Conservative hybrid it is nowadays.
Rabbi Sabato Morais embodied the Sephardic tradition of Religious Humanism to the fullest extent. Thinkers such as R’ Morais, H’ David Nieto, R’ Moses Angel, Sra. Grace Aguilar, R’ Yisrael Moshe Hazzan, R’ Yaakov Moshe Toledano, H’ Benzion Uziel, R’ Eliyahu Benamozegh, H’ Moshe Halfon haKohen, etc. represent the best of the Neo-Classical Sephardic tradition, and these rabbis engaged the world and critical thought in a way that would make many Orthodox Jews very uncomfortable nowadays (and they lived years ago).
I had some fresh fruit, a Greek yogurt, and lots of water.
I use a piece of bread. Ruining perfectly good bread is baal tashchit. I burn a piece of paper in a clean coffee can in the sink.
Because the term is nebulous and can be subjectively used. R’ Yonah Gerondi was a gadol, but so was the Rambam.
Curiosity,
Someone’s not influenced by Ebonic, urban culture at all, jk.
Have an easy fast.