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Excellent post, OneofMany.
How is this two foot snowstorm going to be the biggest of the century, when we all remember bigger storms two winters ago? Are we running a new century now, from 2012-3012?
We in the frum world have a tendency to conceptualize and abstract everything to the point where it can get divorced from reality. An article that seems to claim that liking ones partner before getting married (because that is, after all, what chemistry is) is not important tests the limits of reasonableness and is unlikely to result in anything good.
I would subscribe to the second tranch but only if it comes with the right to be converted into saying shir hashirim if the first group produces too much challah and the second is not necessary.
Golders Greener, since you blatantly lied when you said that they don’t go to the factory, and then later acted as though that was a minor oversight, I don’t think that you have much credibility on this subject.
You have to ask a Rov who is familiar with the particulars of your situation.
Presumably, a mother whose child is crying during shofar already knows that she should leave.
Whether the babies should be there or not (and to me it shows mesiras nefesh on the part of the mothers, which is a good thing to show during tekias shofar) it is useless to shush them. All it does is make the mother more embarrassed than she already was. The baby is not going to be quieter because people are shushing it.
I’d also like to give a shout out (if it’s okay in your topic) to the people who shush when a baby cries during shofar.
I don’t get it. Mesholim don’t prove anything, they simply demonstrate things. To prove that this is the case, let me give you the following moshol: Once there was a person who said that he would prove something, but he didn’t prove it; he just gave a moshol to it. The people that heard the moshol were not convinced. So too over here.
I already bought one, but it was just because Slickdeals had buy two get one free. Of course, they’re not going to bury you next to a gadol if you bought the bargain graves, but I’m gambling on important people wanting to be buried next to me (and my wife, and one lucky friend!).
DY: Because this benefit requires trust, which is both a cause and function of love. In the real estate transaction that I used for illustration, it is only a smidge that is required and the benefit is purely financial. But in order to get the maximum out of a relationship in terms of both creating and benefiting from love, giving with trust is a cornerstone.
Alternatively, love is essentially a material transaction.
The answer to this question is rooted in classic game theory. Let me explain:
Imagine that two people are facing a negotiation for a piece of property. There are four options. The most basic ones are more and less – the buyer can pay either more or less for the land. However, there are two more options as well. Both the buyer and the seller can create extra value in the transaction by giving up things that are less valuable to themselves, but more valuable to the other person. E.g., the seller knows that there is no lead in walls and so it would be almost cost free for him to give a financial guarantee to that effect; while the buyer might be very nervous that he will have to immediately spend a bunch of money deleading the walls and would raise the purchase price if he could get such a guarantee. Meanwhile, the buyer has a lot of liquidity and could close the deal almost immediately, while the seller is borrowing money on bad terms to stay afloat until the deal is complete.
The highest value will be achieved if everyone “sells” the value that is worth little to them for an amount between the value to them and the value to the other. However, for each individual person, the best decision in each individual circumstance is to claim the value for themselves. If the seller can refuse to offer his guarantee and instead simply wait for the buyer to offer an early closing date, he will be better off than if he offers the guarantee. Meanwhile, if the buyer simply refuses to offer the early closing date, and simply waits for the seller to offer the guarantee, then he will be better off than if he offers the guarantee. Because of this “self-centered-ness”, the transaction might fail, and even if it goes through it is not as “efficient” as it could have been.
In order to overcome this problem, both parties need to trust that the other is going to act in the interests of the two of them. If that happens, they will both be giving, not only as a result of their own altruism, but also because their trust allows the two of them to gain value that would otherwise be impossible to unlock.
Thus, in “giving” through an understanding of mutual trust, it is not only possible but likely that you are personally better off than you would have been by simply waiting to receive.
Veltz Meshugenner: I don’t care if you come up with self-serving textualist arguments to avoid giving money to poor non-Jews, it’s still a bad thing to do.
GAW: (Comes up with self-serving argument to avoid giving money to poor non-Jews.)
DY and GAW, what you’re saying is completely illogical. When you give out large sums of money in small increments to different people, that is not the same as giving a large amount of money to one person or cause, and it wouldn’t be reasonable to do research for each individual person.
I don’t care about the exact definition of my terminology. It takes a uniquely bad person to think that he’s being good by refusing to give charity to a non-Jew. It doesn’t matter to me if you find some mussar sefer who says that naval bir’shus haTorah is a specific halachic term of art – that’s the same type of self serving textualism that would lead someone to claim that giving charity to a non-Jew is a bad thing.
That can’t be what Oomis meant because he/she wasn’t talking about significant sums of money.
Someone who justifies not giving money to a beggar because it’s not a mitzvah to help non-Jews is a naval bir’shus haTorah.
Eh, big deal. I used to keep it fresh from erev shabbos until erev shabbos.
–Sarah
Because he’s been collecting many years it matters whether he’s Jewish? I can’t imagine why that would be a relevant point.
How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk.
Oomis: That’s a compelling point. I also once found evidence that there was someone who claimed to need money, but actually didn’t. I had no choice but to conclude that no one ever needs money.
It’s amazing how all the minhagim that Jewish and non-Jewish weddings have in common were adopted by non-Jews based on Jewish customs.
I am embarrassed to be associated religiously with someone who could ask this question (or answer it “ask a rov”).
DY: While I agree with PBA that there is nothing inherently objectionable with the use of the word “class”, because it simply implies a distinction, I think that what she meant was that as a practical matter it is impossible to classify someone as keeping the Torah vs. not keeping the Torah in any meaningful way.
Akuperma: Your point about institutions is susceptible to the same definitional problems as individuals.
Chas vechalila to call the Torah bacon. If you have to give a metaphor, it should be, l’havdil, kemach.
Akuperma: At risk of making people’s head explode, what happens if you grow up passively Chassidish in Willy, and end up actively MO in Teaneck – are you then a baal teshuva, because you went from rote performance of a religion in which you weren’t engaged to one in which you were? What if you were brought up frum but then don’t pay the amount of taxes that you owe? What if you were brought up in skver and have the internet? Are you OTD? What if you then get rid of the internet and only watch movies? Are you then both OTD and BT?
It’s hard to figure out numbers generally, but it would be even harder to figure out what the numbers mean, because the population of potential baalei teshuva is much larger than the population of potential OTD. Also, in the area between yeshivish and not frum, where many, many OTD and Baalei teshuva find themselves, it is not always easy to define frumkeit. Are people who live in Lakewood, go to yeshiva, and periodically text on shabbos frum? What if they volunteer for tomchei shabbos? How about people who live in Memphis, keep shabbos (by not driving or turning on lights, but they also don’t have two sit down meals with kiddush etc.) and kosher but don’t wear a yarmulka and have never been in a shul?
From the diversity of opinions in this topic, it seems pretty clear the the gedolim should issue guidelines. Otherwise, people will just decide willy-nilly how long they should date before engagement and how long they should be engaged before marriage. Even worse, what happens if they disagree? If there were clear guidelines, then we would save a lot of strife and start many marriages on the right foot.
When I was in Eretz Yisrael, my neighbor in Geula explained that it was enough to live day to day but not enough to marry off kids. So when that was necessary, he would come to America to raise money.
This argument is flawed in many ways. For starters, even if the essential point were true, anyone who has been to Israel understands that it is not 100% of the chareidim who are supporting the chilonim.
The OP sounds like the mother of every single girl who is not going to BJJ, or whatever the elite seminary du jour is. The good news is that it doesn’t matter in the slightest in any practical way.
Just when you thought he’d hit rock bottom, someone threw him a shovel.
If the parties are not comfortable with their decision, then it is too soon. If they are comfortable with their decision, then it is not too soon.
Not to mention the non-seqitur: “It isn’t anecdotes, anyone who deals with Customer Service can tell you <anecdotes>.”
Did it burn your ears?
T6T: We thought about it, but he wanted to institute a theocracy and I preferred a hedonistic anarchy so it didn’t work out.
i x undrstd da pt. Y wud u do it?
It’s like free advertising, and no one will ever know!!!
T6T: Friend, actually.
I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a stranger assertion than what Ich Bin Ein Berliner tried above. Is that how one decides whether to move to a city? By the number of ra’mim that IBEB decides are prestigious enough for him? I grew up in a yeshiva that has hundreds of alumni who are ra’mim and roshei yeshiva throughout the world; none of them would go near the place with a ten foot pole. Meanwhile, the people I know from Montreal are wonderful people who have nice things to say about it. Perhaps this thread is a good indication – if you want your children/family to end up reasonable like Benignuman or Tzaddiq, Montreal might be a good place for you. If you want them to be hateful and illogical, move to Berlin, or wherever IBEB is from.
I appreciate the title, Popa. There are few with as broad a range of interests as yourself, who can take a breather from long descriptions of complicated medical literature to begin a topic describing a cider-making accident with a line from The Talking Coins.
What if the person who owned the Tuna Fish company doesn’t get tchiyas hamaisim? Where will we get Tuna Fish?
Naysberg, you just continue to push the view that if we’re better on average than the public schools, that’s enough. But that’s not true. The average public school graduate does not need to support a family of 8+ on kosher food and private education. The average public school graduate is likely to be single or at least unmarried until 30-ish, giving him/her ample time to make up for whatever was missing in his/her education. I will continue later, for now, I have an exam…
Ben Levi, you are illustrating the pitfall of a lack of education (although to be frank, I think you’re deliberately lying about not having graduated high school). You don’t know from your personal experience whether public schools do a good or a bad job of educating people generally. As a famous economist supposedly said, “The plural of anecdote is not data.” Additionally, as someone who (supposedly) dropped out of high school, you almost certainly have a confirmation bias toward the notion that PS education is deficient.
Moreover, even if it were true that all public schools do a terrible job of educating every single American child, that would not absolve the chadarim from their duty to provide a good education to the children they serve. Nobody made the argument that we have to learn science as well as the non-Jews do. We’re just making the argument that we have to learn science.