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Zahavasdad: and the insiders who have them are by definition outsiders.
Halacha has begun developing in a new way. First, it is publicized on sensationalist anti-frum blogs, say in 2007. The reaction among the mainstream is, eh, you can’t believe everything you read; they’re just trying to stir the pot. Then people begin to acknowledge that yes, it is the practice among more right wing communities, and of course it works for them, but we each have our own rabbonim and my rov said it wouldn’t make sense for someone in the US, in fact it would be a bad idea which would cause more harm than good. Then it becomes something that is admirable, but definitely not a chiyuv. Then, if you don’t keep it, your kids can’t get into school – and it’s your fault; this has been the halacha since 2007.
I am very opposed to buying German cars. I don’t think that we should contribute profits to the country that murdered so many of our people. A few years ago, I bought a Volkswagen and just smashed it to pieces with a crowbar.
I thought Cambridge was a college in England. Turns out it is also a city in the US. Who knew?
They simply make no sense. You could, in theory, take the LSAT. You could also, in theory, do well enough to transfer out of a bad school, although the whole class is planning on being the top few %.
After that, you can’t leave school. If you transfer and get a job, the job is not until the next summer. You need to get a certain number of classroom hours to graduate.
Hi Ender. What do you feel about law school? Are you currently in law school, or are you a recent graduate, or an applicant? Or perhaps you are one of the Harvard Law students that seem to be all over this board?
YW Moderator, the President didn’t go to Cambridge, he went to Harvard. And no amount of dental care can remove the taint of a liberal institution that supports Arabs and Gays and hires kofrim like Allen Dershovicz.
I love law school discussions. There’s thousands of frum lawyers – why don’t you ask one of them, instead of coming here and listening to PBA and Benignuman talking out of their hats?
I loved the second song, and I was amazed that it was just as good as the first.
It’s okay, I just got rid of it. Tell him not to worry.
It is terrible that the Yeshiva world frowns on anything other than learning.
1. It is a shortcoming on the Yeshiva world themselves, because it limits their own understanding.
2. It deprives their talmidim who are going to pursue careers the opportunity to maintain their connection with the Yeshiva world.
3. It leads to grotesque results, like the Baalhabatim in Lakewood who delude themselves into believing that they are still yeshivaleit, and kvetch about their kids not getting into Beis Shprintza.
I prefer to judge the act rather than the person, but it was a HEROIC act. Since 9/11 the government has cut huge chunks right out of the Constitution, and the only terrorism they’ve managed to prevent are plots that were facilitated by government operatives to bring down delusional losers who thought they were terrorists.
Think about an American citizen getting asylum in Russia or China after making the public aware of government surveillance, and that tells you all you need to know.
Gamanit posted:
ZD- That would be beyond stupid, because how can you enforce that?
1. Clearly being stupid is not something that bothers them, because they’ve already made this rule.
2. The way to enforce it would be obvious. They will take a close look at people’s eyes, possibly with a magnifying glass. Of course, news of this will soon reach the outside world, and the following conversation will ensue:
YWN poster: Did you hear that Bnos Zichron Gadlus Hatorah is checking students’ eyes for contact lenses? That’s crazy! It’s invasive and intrusive and serves no purpose!
Other YWN poster: Who are you to say what serves a purpose? They obviously feel that for their derech, it’s important not to wear contact lenses. And they wouldn’t be checking unless it was actually likely to help. If students are bothered by the checking – it’s their own fault because if there weren’t people wearing contact lenses the school wouldn’t have to check.
If the “shidduch crisis” is our only aim, we can double the efficacy by simultaneously engaging in kiruv of men and richuk of women. (It’s also well known that women don’t really have mitzvos, so we can be merachek them pretty much with impunity.)
Whether Rabbi Feldman apologized or not, or whether Lipman really believes that Yeshivas should close down, is a series of irrelevant conversations. At bottom, the Charedim are not going to agreeably contribute to general Israeli society on any level, and everyone to the left of them is going to be annoyed. Exactly how annoyed and exactly what terms they use to express their annoyance as well as what language the Charedim use to respond would have been a wonderful topic for batlanim to discuss, if there any batlanim anywhere, which of course there aren’t. But it won’t affect anyone’s actual opinions on anything meaningful.
I listened to them a bit as a kid. I guess the appeal was supposed to be that they were subversive and politically incorrect, but to get away with being subversive and politically incorrect, you first have to be funny, which they very much weren’t.
Ah, the old “bechukosaihem” rationale. In a US court, it would be void for vagueness.
My bunions disappeared and my skirts got longer, but no so long that they went past mid-calf.
I wonder if the ideal of “working at something you love” can be correlated with the rise of available distractions.
If there’s something wrong with “hanging out”,it’s a symptom, not a disease. People think that closing pizza shops will save whatever is happening from happening, but it will just result in the type of people who would act out acting out in different, and likely worse ways.
Iunno, Popa, still seems circular to me. You are saying that we are born with this instinct, it’s completely natural to be born with this instinct, and philosophers agree that that it’s the natural state of things. But that doesn’t explain why, after determining that there are other ideals that are brought into play, it is a good thing to be natural.
I’m not losing sleep over it, Oomis. I’m just saying that as a rule, the threat of a death penalty apparatus involves more harm than benefit. A big part of that is because I don’t see any benefit in it. You use words like “justice” and PBA says “natural law” but all I see is circular reasoning. If this is justice, or natural law, explain why we it is a good thing to have justice or natural law. And do it in a way that demonstrates why they are not just new words for the impulse for revenge.
Avi, if I had the slightest thought that the death penalty was in fact a deterrent, I would agree that it’s a good idea. But the way it is administered today, I don’t believe that it is a deterrent. Furthermore, there are large costs that are created both in arriving at the decision to execute and in the rare tragic mistakes.
In short, I’m not saying the death penalty can never, under any circumstances be the right thing to do. But I think that our country is so far from that situation that having the apparatus in place is a waste of time and money.
I can’t hope to understand the depths of the Torah’s wisdom. But I can say what motivates the people in the US who currently support the death penalty. And yes, even those who blame it on the Torah.
I like this new legal test that the frum world seems to have adopted. We can call it the Rubashkin/Grossman rule. Under this rule, no Orthodox Jew can be penalized for crimes as long as there is any non-Jew who received a lesser sentence for similar crimes. So if someone in New York stole $300m and got 22 years, then a Jew who stole $247m in North Dakota cannot receive a sentence of greater than 22 years.
Also, any non-Jew who commits a crime will need to be sentenced to a harsher penalty than whatever penalty a Jew who committed an analogous crime received. Nowadays, the most recent Jewish murderer has been Martin Grossman. So any non-Jew who kills, must receive the death penalty.
FWIW, I don’t have any interest in seeing Dzokhar get the death penalty. What will it do for me? It won’t bring back the people who died, or heal the wounded. If you care about the victims, make a donation to them; it will help a lot more than railing about the death penalty on Facebook. The impulse for revenge is a childish one, and should not be encouraged.
There must be some underlying assumptions that are allowed within the community. Why would you stop at school openings? Perhaps people should consult with the community before having children, if they suspect that the children might need a scholarship. Or perhaps you should discuss your 401(k) with the community because if you would trade that for a marginally higher salary, you’d be able to pay marginally more tuition.
Or maybe the school should consult with the parents when they get the principal a fancy swivel chair.
I think that my comments, along with the comments of everyone I knew, were invariably “could do better if he would take things seriously”. I think that if I would add up the number of such comments on my report cards and those of my friends, the total would literally be in the hundreds.
On the other hand, when I was a teacher, I more commonly wrote things like “I’m glad he’s not trying, because if he did, he’d only be disappointed.” And the principal always edited them to say something about a heart of gold.
I know very few people who are off the derech, but if I put them on a graph according to intelligence (not raw intelligence but as applied to life) and stability, there would be a strong bimodal distribution, with many people completely unstable and inept; and many people super high achievers, but very few in between.
Actually, many is not a good word, because between both groups, they don’t total “many”.
It is true that lumping OTD situations together is often unjustified and uninformative. What it does tell us is that our community has lost the strength to hold onto its youth and that the problem starts with the adults in their lives. And don’t bore me with the ridiculous, usually untruthful line about dysfunctional families. It’s sometimes true, but very, very often it is not.
The community has never had the strength to hold onto its youth. Since the emancipation of European Jews, there have always been a significant proportion of people who did not remain frum; and at times it was the vast majority who didn’t.
Of course, we always have to work on improving on the job that we’re doing, but it’s simply false to pretend that it’s worse than ever.
This is an interesting topic. Of course, you might weigh the OTD-ness of the person equally, but there are various ways that you might engage with people who are OTD, and different reasons that you might do it. Also, people are people, not characteristics. So it is obviously worthwhile to understand that there is a distinction between different situations.
For example, if the kid is a drug addict, it’s obvious that his parents beat him. If the kid is at Harvard, it’s obvious that the parents let him read inappropriate books.
EXPLAIN emunah based on personal growth.
You should def. make a pretty awesome bracha. In the olden days kings could only kill people who were nearby or locked up or something. The president can kill almost anyone almost anywhere.
Oh, yeah, Zahavas dad? WELL WHAT ABOUT FRANK ABIGNALE!?!?!?
I am amused by the fact that when someone like Michael Jackson or Steve Jobs dies, everyone is much too sensitive to talk about their shortcomings, but when Margaret Thatcher dies, she’s fair game.
I don’t see why having a doula requires that the doctor be a bad person. Sometimes, even if the doctor means well, he has concerns, conscious or subconscious, which don’t align with the interests of the particular woman at the particular time of childbirth. This is true especially when a doctor is running in and out and the woman has not given birth twelve times before. One needn’t hate doctors to envision a role for someone who is educated and experienced in the birthing process, who can serve as a personal resource for the mother.
DaasYochid, if you posit a limit on positive attributes (and I’m sure you do), then at some level of reduction, any individuality can also be described as negative influences.