Veltz Meshugener

Back to my original post: the reason that I don’t get this whole BTL thing is because my buddy took college as a joke and dropped out after the first year. It doesn’t make sense how he’s in Harvard law with this BTL. I doubt he wouldn’t gotten into Harvard law had he stayed in college.

I think what your portraying is not so accurate. First of all, if it were true that he slacked in college even for one year, it’s unlikely that he could have gotten into Harvard. In order to get into Harvard he would have had to have a GPA of at least 3.7 including all courses that he took before getting his BTL, even if they weren’t counted toward his degree. Most people don’t even get a 4.0 in Yeshiva, and if he got straight Bs in college his GPA would have taken a hard hit.

Second of all, slackers don’t do well on the LSAT. I know there’s a yeshivishe myth of the guy who takes the LSAT on a whim and gets a 180, but that is, as I say, pretty much a myth. I took the LSAT myself; I know other people who have taken it and gone to top schools; none of them fell into it. They literally worked hundreds of hours to prepare for the LSAT.

Third and less relevant, if it’s any consolation to you, if he did indeed exploit the system to get into Harvard, he is in for a rude awakening. He will be graded on a curve against people who are used to getting straight As in top schools around the country, people who have worked in the most intellectually demanding fields, and people who have known nothing but hard work and success their entire lives. If he’s the slacker you seem to think he is, he will certainly be exposed and forced to drop out.

BenignUman: Nobody at Georgetown gets decent jobs. I had a friend who was top 15% there and the only job he could find was in some far flung office in Westchester because he didn’t get a job in NY. I don’t know how he’s going to cover his loans because the firm can’t possibly pay as much as the NY firms. He’s lucky that Monsey is close enough to commute or he’d have had to move to some podunk town to get any job at all.

VeltzMeshugene: “[Y]ou can’t know that without having the foggiest idea what it is that you don’t know.”

“It teaches them to be slackers” – Any empirical evidence to provide an informed basis to that undefined generality?

1. No, you still can’t, because you have no idea what the person is basing his claims on. Furthermore, it’s pretty obvious that one person’s opinion of the general usefulness of a subject is not indicative of its usefulness to other people. Every day in colleges worldwide, there are people studying math who think it’s a waste of time because they are going to become psychologists. But the people who appreciate math will never find that out if they never try it.

2. I have not done a study, and I am sorry if my post gave the impression that I had. However, it is reasonable to imagine that encouragement of apathy toward secular studies would have at least some effect on engagement with other pursuits. Anecdotally, I feel that it affected me that way strongly, and my social circle to an uncertain extent.

Pretty much. Whoops, there I go again.

After the recent decision of the DC Circuit on the recess appointments, it is unclear whether previous agency action can now be called into question because the officers were not legitimately appointed.

In this thread, ignorant people debate the relative importance of things they don’t know they don’t know; using undefined words and uncertain norms.

I think that you have to tovel a keli if you buy it from a non-jew but non-jews can have non toiveled kailim.

Also, even if you did have to, would it make the food non kosher?

Chevron, I’m glad you asked. Although I would still maintain my position no matter what the OED says.

1. Chevron and DY: If a dishwasher at least arguably cannot become treif, then how exactly would one utensil within a dishwasher make another one treif? Is the entire dishwasher filled up with water at the same time? Are we assuming that if some amount of treif food was stuck to the pan and went into the dishwasher and during the wash cycle that food touched a coffee pot within the swirl of soapy water, that the pot would then be treif? I mean, maybe. But I can’t imagine that if it happened in your kitchen sink, your rov would say it’s treif. Why should it be different if it happens in Starbucks?

2. That is not how halachic suspicion works. If someone knows someone who switched the milk in a specific case, that does not mean that there is a halachic chashash that the milk was switched in other cases.

2a. I don’t believe that there’s a substantive difference between keeping Cholov Yisroel as a din or as a chumra. Since nobody can claim that it has the status of treif al pi halacha, it becomes a matter of what words you use to refer to it, but the milk is the same.

And the reason that they wouldn’t is exactly this; they have a hashgacha that they presumably pay significant amounts of money to, so they obviously want to get frum customers. They wouldn’t switch the milk because if customers find out and tell the rav hamachshir, they will lose their hashgacha and not be able to cater to the frum community. (In the case of a convenience store who happens to carry cholov yisroel milk, I miiiiight think that it’s at least worth a case by case examination.)

I can probably make a case for being the most liberal person who posts here with any regularity and I think that this lawsuit is a disaster that will waste money and accomplish nothing.

Saysme, which of those things did you not do in camp? And did you not go on trips, have parties, hang out, etc?

One of Many: (I see that PBA called you OOM but that becomes confusing with Oomis…) I have no pretensions about my understanding of seminary, and I have no problem explaining the limited information that my opinion is based on. I readily admit that the hashkafah and halacha that girls learn in seminary is not something that I value at all, mostly because I believe that it’s not legitimate halacha or hashkafah. I see the appeal of a ten month extended camp, and I see why it costs what it does, simply based on multiplying the cost of camp by ten; but I question its value as anything more than that. We can debate the specifics of the halacha and the hashkafah and the camp and the mechanisms through which people are induced to participate in the seminary exercise; but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Though seminary ends up being one of the largest “investments” (LOL) that middle class frum families make, it is not susceptible to “objective” studies because it does not purport to offer anything “objective”. And as PBA pointed out, my mother, wife and sisters all went to seminary and I saw nothing in their experiences that justified the stress and financial strain that it involved.

In a world of “check the box” shidduchim, why is it weird? That’s how it’s supposed to work.

One of Many: Of course you can calculate values for services rendered. Why would it be any different than for sneakers? If you are going to school, you are presumably going for a purpose and that purpose has value. People calculate that value all the time when they decide whether to go to university. How much value does this have? What are the alternatives and how much do they cost? That it is sometimes not immediately obvious doesn’t mean it can’t be calculated. And Seminary really doesn’t seem to be a hard case.

Seilish: I guess it depends how you define relevant and worthwhile.If you define it as something that almost never happens and is of little consequence when it does, then yes, I agree.

First you say that money and seminary mean different things to different people. Then you say “…it’s [?] unlikely to be a financially prudent decision based on beneficial analysis of what money and seminary are worth to that person.” Given that money and seminary mean different things to different people, how exactly were you able to evaluate the financial prudence of the decision “based on…what money and seminary are worth to that person”? Do you know this person or something?

Although money and seminary are worth different amounts to different people, there is a range within which one can surmise the decisions are made with healthy motivations, and outside of which one can surmise that the motivations were unhealthy. As an analogy, if a wealthy person spends $140 on sneakers, it can be unobjectionable, while if a desperately poor person spends that same amount of money, it would lead one to question the prudence of that decision, despite the poor buyer’s clear indication that he values the sneakers over insulin for his diabetic grandmother.

Also, how exactly does having less money and it having been harder to come by make someone less capable of making “financially prudent decision based on beneficial analysis”? I didn’t say that the person is inherently less capable. I just said if they were to make this particular decision it would likely be based on an unhealthy motivation.

Finally: Can you explain how this statement

…you get to do all kinds of fun things that someone else pays for, while convincing yourself that it’s important for Hashem that you do it.

segued into what you have just explained?

I don’t think they are necessarily related, except insofar as they reflect a certain amount of scorn for seminary as anything other than 10 months of camp. The initial scorn addressed the supposed value to Hashem that allows people to justify spending other people’s money on extended camp. The second part was addressing the scenario of a poor HS graduate paying for seminary themselves.

One of Many: It would be silly for me to jump to the conclusion that it’s a waste of money. Money is worth different things to different people and so is seminary. But in the context of someone who 1. Doesn’t have much money and 2. worked very hard to get what little money they have; I think it’s unlikely to be a good decision, barring some sort of undue or unhealthy social pressure.

Smile e. Face: If you know people who had a substantial portion of the cost saved up on their own, and used that to pay for it, then I apologize for suggesting that such people are having others pay for it. The criticism in that case is that they are terribly brainwashed if they would spend $8,000, which much be incredibly hard to earn as a high school girl, and blow it on seminary.

Everyone would want to go to seminary. It’s amazing – you get to do all kinds of fun things that someone else pays for, while convincing yourself that it’s important for Hashem that you do it. Don’t push too hard for it, though. Your time will come.

Assuming the original question before the thread descended into nonsense – it depends. If you don’t eat chalav stam then you are oveir two issurim – since you don’t eat chalav stam, you must believe that there’s an issur to eat it outside of the issur to eat pig’s milk, since you keep it even where there is no legitimate chashash of pig’s milk. However, if you do eat chalav stam, then the only problem with it is that it might be pig’s milk – which in this case is all it was.

Now, this might sound like I’m saying, if you eat chalav stam you eat chalav stam, but it’s actually much more lomdish.

Torah613: No, but it took a lot of learning mussar before I was able to stop feeling guilty.

I think it’s great when cousins get married. It is marbeh simcha when more than one person in the same family gets married! However, they should be careful to marry different people.

I don’t believe in feeling guilty. If I was trying to be cute, I’d say that was my guilty pleasure.