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I know this is nothing but hearsay, but it sounded at least possible when this was first told to me.
So I understand those who will want to take it with a grain of salt.
About 25 years ago someone had told me he had heard of a lubavitch chassid who had been diagnosed with Cancer.
I was told this chassid who did not eat much to begin with, cut his diet even more to where he just had a small can of Sardines each day and cured himself by starving the Cancer out.
This is not to say this would work for everyone, just that it worked in his particular case.
But my point here is that according to the one who told me this (I don’t remember who after all these years, but someone in Crown Heights, might know this story, if it’s true.), said it was accomplished through a strict diet but ###not### a Vegan or Vegetarian diet.
Sam2 I can believe that sincere people trying as you say to be Ovdey
H-sh-m, can have questions about MBP and about Kaporos.
But usually (I’m not saying necessarily everyone, but probably most)
of those who have their minds totally made up that such practices are wrong and should be forbidden, also have other serious problems in other areas of Yiddishkeit that show (Or would if their neighbors and others in the community knew about all their private thoughts about such things) they really are not so frum or really have all the sincere emmunah and bitachon they seem to the outside world like to have in such abundance.
I knew for example someone who was the epitome of this
type of person.
She was well liked by her bais yaakov students and a perfect mother and friend and hostess etc…
But she hated kaporos and later told me she thought that the rabbis
had just made up the halachas to benefit men and that women had been
cheated by the male dominated system.
And yet anyone who knew her would have been totally certain she
was the ultimate frum wife, mother, teacher and friend.
Only G-d can look into someones heart and know for sure if they
are as sincere an Ovdey H-sh-m as they appear to be.
Many have talked to me about the issues about these practices and in many cases I have also learned some intimate details about their private
lives and about their sincerity, and every one of them who
thought kaporos and/or MBP were totally wrong, also had serious issues with belief in Torah in other areas, as well.
But their friends and neighbors and even their own families (some have confided in me and I have kept their confidences) in some cases, simply did not know, and thought they had as much emmunah and bitachon as anyone could hope to have.
YIW That story about those chickens dying in the heat is terrible and certainly things like that must stop.
I do not think that means that all places where kaporos are done are automatically guilty of such cruelty.
Similar charges have been made against meat processing plants
and yet within the frum community, we don’t have large numbers (if any at all) saying we should all stop eating meat.
Remember how easy it is to smear all Jews as “dishonest” because of Bernie Madhoff and a few smaller crooks who happened to be Jews, did such things.
So I would not be so quick to believe everyone running a kaporos place is necesssrily wrong, or that those who do, mean the whole concept must be wrong.
Sam2 all those kaporos are moved to different locations on modern smooth roads and can be done on airconditioned vehicles and the claim as far as I ever heard was the supposed cruelty of swinging it over the persons head, not about how many were transported.
What changed that makes MBP so much more dangerous only now when those saying so are saying nothing about the fact that these days hospitals have an excessively high rate for causing new infections and no one is demanding hospitals be closed down.
Also many of those who are against MBP are also against bris mila at all, and say that it is “barbaric” and “mutilation”
I never heard tubes were used till modern times.
I have heard from my ravs son that he had learned that tzaddikim he learned about have said that using a tube had a lowering effect on the spiritual level of the boy the bris was done, on.
Sam2 my question is not did any sages ever say that.
My question was if they did, why did it not become common and accepted
teaching in the big and prestigious yeshivas down through the centuries?
There must have been some reason why this was not taught to the average student in the average or more prestigious yeshivahs.
When a rabbi states unequivocally that the Earth is fewer then 6000 years old and that humans do not share common descent with any other life form and then scientists claim we did, to say Torah says it’s possible is a reinterpretation from what all those rabbis teach.
And yes the whole “we don’t need to eat meat or wear fur beacuse it is (supposedly) cruel, is largly if not all, because of supposed modern enlightenment.
Same for MBP which is championed by the Toveia marrige crowd.
These things were not so cruel or dangerous 200 years ago that the rabbis forbade them, when
We had no modern transportation for chickens or sterilizing sprays for surgical utensils.
I was told that (I believe it was) the Rema said that the blood of Bris Mila was to be spit out on the floor, which obviously means it had to have been in the mohels mouth which back I was told by the (older and long married, ie: not a kid) son of my rav that is the basis today for MBP.
I don’t know what Kabbalah says about it but I have heard Mussar about controlling anger and not talking like one is angry, especially not so angry as to make physical threats, not even in the most ‘lighthearted’ manner.
Yitaywing are you really telling me you don’t understand the difference between the sages interpreting Torah and scientists claiming to have ‘debunked it’ with scientific evidence?
I ask sam2 and you if there are valid and accepted Rishonim or other teachings (by the Tanaim and the Sages since then) that say everything before Avroham Avinu is not to be taken literally, then why has this not been taught in yeshivah, at least not to me and not as far as I remember hearing, from any of the many rabbis I have talked to about it who never brought it up even when
I told them that the seemingly ‘overwhelming’ scientific consensus is that they (dawkins for example) talk about it as if it totally disproves the Torah claims as I remember being taught what they supposedly were.
It would be very easy for me to reconcile Torah with Evolution (including HEA) if I had learned of these Rishonim in yeshivah and if I had further been taught that these Rishonim were acccepted as a perfectly valid way of understanding Torah and the physical world.
But I wasn’t and it keeps bringing me back to my bottom line question…Why throughout history has it not (from what I can see) been taught that way, in all the great yeshivahs?
Sam2 OK but that is not how most people seem to look at it.
They like to cliam that common descent is set in stone and proven and supposedly can’t be challenged.
Another problem is that if you can in light of ‘modern science’ reinterpret Torah, then other aspects could be reinterpreted as well.
Dennis Prager for example once wrote an article on how you could supposedly keep Shabbos by just keeping it in spirit such as not turning on the radio while driving on Shabbos so you have a Shabbos atmosphere in the car.
And you have all those against metzitza b’peh and against using chickens for kapporos all because of ‘enlightened understanding’.
mdd you are right about the increased problems of being raised more secular vs more frum.
Also (I know you did not bring this up, so the following is a general idea and not addressed just to anyone in particular) no one, can know all the details of how someone was raised, no matter how much they ‘think’ they know: Not even if they grew up in the same family.
They cannot know every word of every conversation they had or every private good or bad moment that may have occured between parent and child, or every ache and physical or emotional pain the child had that may or may not have been addressed properly.
If only G-d can judge then that reservation of judgement to G-d alone, must include that only G-d can decide if the parants really ‘did everything right’ or not.
I know this is hard on a continual basis, but you might try to keep
in mind that your job allows you to have your Shabbos meals and to give tzoddaka and provide for your family and how all that is fulfilling
G-ds’ commands.
This is (to the best of my memory of what I think, my rabbis have taught me) especially true if you have set times for Torah study even a few words if that is all you have time for, in the morning and another few at night.
It also helps if you enjoy your job, which admittedly is also hard for many people.
I find for myself, reading something on each weeks Torah portion and how it relates in some way to the week or that part of the month, helps to make each Shabbos new and something to look forward to so the work week goes by a bit faster and easier.
I wish you much hatzlacha.
Shraga18
I like that story, and believe it is probably true.
What I am looking for is something that for example would have been
reported in the New York Times, or other similarly large secular publication, that could be shown to a skeptic who could not easily dismiss it for having been reported by those biased toward belief or as a mere coincidence or anything like that.
I just remembered a story I read a couple of months ago in Yahoo News, about a car accident in which someone was trapped inside his car and the emergency rescue crews including two full companies from two firehouses plus police had closed off the roadway in both directions and were trying to free the trapped person in the car.
Their jaws of life which were supposed to tear open the twisted metal to free the person inside, were not working and the crews could not get him out.
Suddenly a priest showed up from out of nowhere and in a calm voice told the rescuers to try again and that their machines would work this time, which suddenly they did.
After they freed the man they went to thank the priest who had disappeared as mysteriously as he had come, despite there being no way in or out without the police and fire crews having seen him come and go.
Later there was a report that one priest was claiming he was the one who had been there and told them the comforting words, after which everything started working.
But that report could not explain how he had gotten in or out and the car he said he had driven there was not a make or model, anyone had seen in the area that day.
In the comments section skeptics and athiests were making fun of the idea of belief in G-d and in anything supernatural, but they could not explain away the miraculous nature of this story which had been witnessed by so many well respected professionals.
I am looking for more stories like this.
Torah is the eternal truth given to us by G-d.
So how could it have stories like the creation account and
the Flood if scientists claim it did not happen that way?
There is a direct contradiction between the rabbis who
tell us such things happened and that humans did not descend
with animals from a common ancestor over hundreds of millions
of years, and the scientists who tell us we did.
Both groups can’t be right.
I too would like to know of any such events or any other evidence of the spiritual impacting on our physical lives here on Earth, which could be verified by reliable observers.
The closest I have come so far is stories of some stories of Israeli doctors who were strong devout athiests who became frum after witnissing recoveries that should have been totally impossible with absolutely no room whatsoever for any mitigating circumstances such as a misdiagnosis or some treatment working better than expected or anything at all to allow for any ‘natural’ explanation.
But I only heard these as stories that had been retold many times by the time I first heard them and I have never been able to get the names of any of these doctors or otherwise verify that the stories are true.
I wish I could, though.
Ben Levi, thank you for clarifying that.
When anyone’s first post to someone starts out with personal attacks or when all you can do is say “all you said was nonsense” which I did not do and no one can prove I did, they might as well admit they have no proof and no logic.
Once again all the great rabbis who say common descent is
opposite what Torah teaches are either right or wrong.
If they are wrong then all the Torah they taught is questionable and cannot be taken as the truth of H-sh-m.
That is the bottom line.
If for example someone does not believe Noah’s Flood (whether because no account of it was found in Egyptian history or for any othrr reason) really happened then on what basis should G-ds giving the Torah on Har-Sini be believed?
Ben Levi are you saying that Adam Ha-Rishon lived hundreds of millions of years ago when the animals supposedly would have been so much larger.
If Torah supports millions of years of evolution as taught in public schools and in universities, why was I not taught that in yeshivah (especially since it was a baal teshuvah for those like me who came directly from college)?
Why do the vast majority of Chassidic rabbis seem to all teach the Earth is fewer then 6000 years old and that G-d formed the progenitors of each species separately and not as descendants from one common ancestor?
And are you saying you know better then all of them and that they are all wrong?
00646 #1 which books should I read that will specifically mention the evidence I pointed out that you csn find bhy googling the phrase I mentioned above?
All you did was mentioned the words and did not in any detail actually
explain what they meant.
I could bring up words and make claims and tell others to go look them up, but for some reason that is never accepted as valid if I say it, so why should I accept it from you as a valid argument?
#2 Case in point, go read some books on the subject.
See how that works?
#3 As I said same for Torah.
What’s your point?
#4 You saying that is what those with the anti Torah agenda claim, but you saying it does not make it true.
Also the fact that ‘books’ say it does not ‘make’ it true either, especially when there is evidence that says otherwise which I have previously directed you to.
I never brought up Piltdown man, but since you did, one case does not as you yourself pointed out prove any kind of systematic attempt to weed out any and all false science especially when it supports the liberal agenda.
So you are saying that when scientists (not ‘science’ as you erroneously claim) say that HEA is an absolute proven fact, that we must blindly accept it as fact (which is what I am being told here when some here tell me to “read books on the subject” because obviouly sources that I mention that contradict those books are automatically dismissed without any actual research as being false just because “books” say so)
But when the forensics say just solidly that a certain suspect is indeed the murderer we should suddenly change how much we accept the science just because “it’s a different branch”?
That does not sound either scientific or logical.
As for your claim about how I supposedly view things, aren’t you the one who was complaining about mind reading?
If what I said about the weather was ‘silly’ you would be able to let people see that for themselves instead of telling them it dupposedly was.
It reminds me of TV commercials where they show a promo for one their comedy shows then they tell you there channel is “very funny”.
The minute they have to tell me how funny I am supposed to believe it is,
the more suspicious I get that it probably is not funny at all.
The same goes for your unfounded proclomations about everything I said that you so obviously think you have to tell everyone what they are supposed to believe about it instead of just presenting your arguments and letting everyone draw their own conclusions.
Looking at rocks and bones that are supposedly hundreds of millions of years old (again no proof they are so old since no one went back in time to see for themselves) cannot be anything more then guesswork.
There is no possible way to verify it.
I never said being anti business had anything directly to do with evolution.
But since you mention it, those professors who belige in it tend to be socialistic or even communistic because they belive ‘overpopulation’
will depleat to many resources to support everyone and must therefore lead to conflict and poverty and war.
They tend to be the ones who think America has prospered by wrongfully using up more then our fair share of the worlds resources.
Go ahead and show me which major university teaches that the above ideas are wrong.
If evolution stands or falls on the evidence then why can’t you talk about that without the raging anger you show, as if any disagreement somehow hurts you personally?
The fact is, that there is absolutely no actual solid irrefutable proof for HEA and no no one has ever seen any species ever evolve into a new species which was genetically incompatable from the one it evolved from.
Re college, show me one major university anywhere that would not fire a professor who teaches the truth of Torah and the fact that man made global warming is a hoax.
I can’t find one, can you?
Wolf I am not the one venting any anger here or making personal attacks.
So your opening paragraph obviously applies far more to you then iit possibly could to me.
It sounds like you believe in cyberbullying and trying to ridicule into silence anyone who disagrees with you.
It makes me feel sorry for you.
I hope you get better.
#1 I gave you evidence, in the whole anti business so called man made global warming establishment which has made cars less safe and more expensive to lower gas use because of their shrill and unfounded demands that “we do something now before it’s too late.
#2 No mind reading, (at least not on my part).
Read or listen to what Richard Dawkins says about anyone who
believes in G-d as well as Christopher Hitchins and Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan who are the top ‘go to’ people for most scientists on the subject of evolution.
Go on any other (other then one run by religious people) blog where
these issues are discussed see all the viciousness and vitriol
against the very idea of belief in G-D.
There are thousands of videos on youtube supporting belief in evolution.
I’d bet you can’t find one single one by someone who will say he lives his life based on what G-D tells people (lip service saying they ‘believe’ but do not actually treat others with differing views, decently, is meaningless ) to do.
Redleg
#1 What did I say about economics?
#2 Yes they do.
You cannot show me one single scientist who believes in
human evolution from animals (HEA) who will admit it
might all turn out to be false.
#3 This is not just one or two isolated cases.
This is the official doctrine.
Just today Rush Limbaugh reported that Popular Science magazine
has closed down it’s comments section because too many posters
there do not accept evolution and man made Global Warming
as absolute fact.
#4 No it’s not so accurate as I showed and no one has shown what I said to be wrong.
RE: PS No it has not necessarily passed all the tests.
But those who are in the majority who decide ‘truth’ by whatever the powerful majority decides is truth will not allow their claims to be tested
or questioned as Popular Science just showed.
SaysMe, some places can get up to 80 degrees in Summer and the places that stay 20 degrees colder do not as far as I know, have any kind of Jewish community.
Well OK, I don’t know of any decent size Jewish community anywhere at all in Alaska, actually.
More and more we see evidence of scientists proving to have personal agendas and falisfying data to promote those agendas.
They do not want to be bound by G-d or his laws so they will do and say anything and ‘find (supposed) evidence’ to support their agendas.
They are educated in schools and universities where belief in G-D is hated and feared and ridiculed and where morality, it is taught, is ‘relative’ and that there is no such thing as absolute right and wrong.
One well known example of this is in the anti business anti prosperity agenda that tells us we can’t have private cars and can’t have many other things because they supposedly cause global warming.
The fact that they have been caught falisfying data and deliberately leaving out evidence that contradicts their agenda is dismissed as ‘insignificant’.
Also even besides their agendas getting in the way of real scientific discovery, science is just not nearly as exact and infallible as evolutionists would have us believe.
We can’t even predict todays weather accurately (or they would be able to tell us things like “today the city will get exactly .164 inches of rain which will start at exactly 4:39 PM and end 2 and one half hours later”
instead of “30% chance of light showers somtime in the afternoon” which actually wind up starting at 2 AM the next morning) but they expect us to believe that they know what the exact climate was, 250 million years ago.
If science were so exact and infallible we should need no witnesses in most murder cases.
The forensics should be plenty to gain a conviction when the suspect
actually committed the crime, no mattter what the witnessses all say an d no matter how good his alibi, is.
00646
#1 Could you please explain what you mean by nested hierarchy and give some evidence for actual prediction of evolution?
#2 Because in the example I gave, there is nothing to
have stopped the Boas (they can live in deserts and tropical areas and have no problem crosssing water and there are no high snowcapped mountains blocking the way from South America to Florida) from naturally spreading to all those areas just like the crocodiles and alligators did if they really had millions of years to do it.
#3 That applies to Torah as well.
#4 If you google “man said, G-d said ” and then look up
the section about soft tissue in dinosaurs you can find scientific
documented evidence of so called fossils with soft tissue
that supposedly could not exist if they were really hundreds of millions of years old.
When traveling in some areas with few frum (strictly Orthodox) Jews (and even sometimes in some very frum areas) I have several times been harrassed by some who were very against the very idea of a Jew wearing a black hat and following Torah.
Some of the worst ones, identified themselves as Jews.
So not looking too much at others is simply my way of trying not to look like I am trying to start any trouble with a stranger who for all I know, might be looking for the slightest excuse, to get into some kind of conflict with one of those ‘backwards fairytale believing, religious fools’ as I have been called, more then once.
I don’t mean to be unfriendly or standoffish, but you just never know who is who untill you are properly introduced, and you do start to get to know them.
May G-d show you his guidence and his plan for your life in such a way that you can embrace it and enjoy it, and grant you peace of mind (which I believe is the single greatest blessing anyone can ever have.).
All vehicles properly called cars which in America, are street legal, have wheels and seats and seatbelts and headlights and taillights and turn signals etc…
And they have all this commonality because they were created to coexist with each other and be driven down the same roads together.
G-d would have logically created all living animals and humans to have similar DNA and breathe the same atmosphere and live together on the same planet.
To jump to the conclusion of common descent is an assumption, not
something that has been proven.
Egypt not having a flood story is not proof there wasn’t one.
Evolutionary theory (common descent) has similar issues.
For example: If the Earth were billions of years old and all animals spread out from one original lifeform, then they should have spread out to every place they would have thrived.
Yet Boa Constrictors which can live in every climate, between South America and the Florida swamps where they are thriving better then they did in their native habitat, never migrated there on their own.
They only got there because humans brought them over there.
This shows me a serious flaw in (macro) Evolution.
When people say there is ‘evidence’ for common descent, that is still not proof.
And there is ‘evidence’ for the Torah account of creation as well; As has been mentioned in either this, or in another thread where someone named several rabbis who present such evidence at scientific discussions and debates they have at universities all accross the country (according to the person who made those posts, anyway).
DaMoshe where do you live that it was 40 degrees outside?
If I could afford to move, I’d want to move there.
I love the cold. I am always far too hot in Summer (usually in late Spring and early Fall, too.) and wish I could live somewhere where the hottest Summer day was about 60 degrees.
If you take a distance learning (over the internet/correspondence) course you could Im yertza H-sh-m gain some skills to get a decent job or start a small business (possibly selling some goods or services over the net so you could work as many or as few hours from home as you wish) and earn enough money to move into a more Jewish community.
May G-d grant you bracha V’hatzlacha, B’corave, Mamesh.
All the fossil record shows, is what we think are fossilized
bones embedded in the rock.
That is where the science ends.
The claim and belief that one fossil above the other is evidence that
one had to have evolved from the other is not scientific proof.
It is mere speculation.
There is no actual proof whatsoever, that any species has ever evolved
into a new species that is genetically incompatable from the one it evolved from.
I agree and it does not make frum Jews look very good
in the secular world, anymore then would throwing trash out the car window or anything else that a person could do which is
unrefined or ill mannered.
Just about every married person I talk to about marriage,
tells me what hard work marriage is.
I wonder if more people got more of what they wanted
in a spouse if it might then not be quite so hard to make
it work?
I would start off by saying I’d like for now, to keep it professional.
Then without pausing, I’d quickly ad that I deeply
appreciate his business expertise and guidence.
I would then elaborate on how much his ***professional*** business advice has helped me and my business and how I look forward
to continuing that business relationship.
I would also look into getting mentored by one of the
retired business people from SCORE who give free mentoring and advice
and who have helped 10 million entrepreneurs since they
first opened in 1964.
Some of their seminars and workshops cost a little bit,
but as far as I know their mentoring is still free.
I think many people might feel upset if things they thought they had under control were to suddenly swing out of control.
I do not think it’s just you.