WinnieThePooh

Here in E”Y we give money to Rebbeim for Purim, not Chanuka. The Mishloach Manos the boys give their Rebbeim is just the excuse to include a check in a more b’kavodik way and make it a bit more personal. I am sure it comes in handy in the coming weeks for Pesach expenses.

ujm, we’re talking about frum society, not the secular culture. It’s hard for children to thrive if they struggle speaking the language everyone else is, feel uncomfortable in shul, yeshiva, have trouble with shidduchim etc. As I said, it works if one stays within a tight communal bubble, which is what chasidish society is, the question is whether that bubble can be maintained among the olim community in E”Y, which is not as unified and all-inclusive as a chasidish community is.

All are Torahdik schoolson the BY spectrum, but there nuances.
2 and 3 are considered more American type, but since 2 has been around longer, you’ll also get some Israelis there who don’t want a standard BY. 2 is not actually in aleph, but in the beginning of Bet, the kids commute from Aleph. In these schools, you’ll have the kind of families who may spend the summers in America, send their kids to American-style camps, have more goodies and gadgets than your typical Israeli family, generally fathers will be working and they’ll be on a higher economic standard than average and that is reflected in their lifestyle. 3 is private, meaning you’ll have to pay some sort of tuition. A girl coming from an American BY will probably feel more comfortable in one of these schools, but will also be less likely to integrate into Israeli society since she’ll be surrounded by other English speakers.
1 is a typical Israeli BY, with probably a more strict set of rules (e.g. tights only even outside of school, no birthday parties for classmates, etc), but being in Bet Shemesh with a large percent of chutznikim, I would say it is a bit more open-minded than say a BY in Yerushalayim. It will be a mix of kollel and working families who want to integrate into chareidi Israeli society to as much an extent as that is possible in RBSA. They do not want iphones or internet, but make exceptions for work purposes with permission from Rav. Be aware that it is the neighborhood BY for those living near it (Revivim, includes the areas up until the Ayalon park)- for those on the other side of the park (Sorek, Nachshon, Lachish, Uriya), there is BY Mishkinot Daat. That’s a slightly more yeshivish, less chutznik part of town, and that’s reflected in the BY. To the right of that, even more shtark/chareidi, is Darchei Rochel, also private,

Rebbitzen, the school situation is not the same – I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think that the issue was girls who needed special schools or were not fit for formal schooling who did not get into the mainstream BY High schools. I don’t think they were part of this pool at all. Getting everyone in to school is something that can be taken care of in a matter of days or at most weeks, if people have the will. How can you compare girls missing out on a few weeks of school to couples waiting to get married for 10 years?
And Joseph, the reason I did not reply to you I think is obvious. No current Beis Din is forcing all the single 30-40-50 year old men to get married, so the Halacha L’maaseh is not as you make it out to be. My opinion on the matter is moot.

Say your proposal was implemented. Let’s look at a hypothetical grade of 50 BY girls who just came home from seminary and are now following your takana. (sorry, this is going to be long)
The exceptions clause:
1. Sheindy has medical issues that will make it very hard for her to get married. She goes to the vaad and gets an exemption that the class does not have to wait for her. Chaya has emotional issues stemming from her dysfunctional family life, and will need extensive therapy for many years before she can have a healthy relationship. She too gets the exemption. Rocheli was abused as a child and does not feel ready to be married. She goes to the Vaad too. Now the Vaad puts out a list of the singles that the class need not wait for- and everyone knows that these girls who until now kept their issues private and discreet, have serious problems. They stop going to public events because they are embarrassed by the pitying stares and murmurings about what their issues may be. And when they do work out their issues, if possible, their chance of getting married is about 0.
2. Dina also has some issues that makes her feel not ready to get married. But seeing what her 3 friends have gone thru, she dare not approach the Vaad for her own exemption.
Everyone else should be able to get married now, as long as their friends make sure to make their shidduchim.
10 girls get engaged the year back from Sem. Another 15 the following year, and another 10 the next year. So 35 of the class are engaged by 21. They are all busy trying to set up their remaining friends, which moves things along nicely for most of the class. Another 5 get engaged the following year.
except:
1. Yocheved gets engaged to a guy from a more modern background, which fits her perfectly. Problem is that the guys in his circles are not appropriate for her other classmates who are more yeshivish, and as much effort as they put into it, their suggestions are turned down as not appropriate.
2. Yael gets engaged to Moshe. She wants to set up Moshe’s chavrusa, Shimon, with one of her friends, but Moshe insists that he is better for his neighbor’s daughter, Shifra, who went to a different school. Yael agrees that Shifra is probably better suited for Shimon, but her idea wins since they both want to get married as quickly as possible. The shidduch does not work out, and then they try to set him up with 3 more of Yael’s classmates. By then, Shimon is reluctant to take any more suggestions from Moshe since they have been so off. It takes another 3 years before someone else thinks of the idea and Shimon and Shifra get engaged.
3. Penina gets engaged to a much older guy whose friends are all married already. Try as they might, they have no one to set up Penina’s friends with.
4. Mindy is a very shy, introverted girl who most people forget about. After some struggling, she gets engaged to Dovi, who is very much like her. They are very happy together, but because of their limited social skills and class connections, they just can’t make a shidduch.

Meanwhile, despite the takana and the classmates good intentions, some just don’t get engaged quickly:
1. Esther’s Bshert is 3 years younger than her and does not start to date until he is 22. It takes them a year to find each other, which means she does not get engaged until she is 26.
2. Rena’s Bshert is Danny. In college Danny begins to think about the significance of being Jewish, after graduation he goes off to E”Y to learn in a BT yeshiva for 3 years, then moves on to a more mainstream yeshiva. After 2 years, he is ready to date. He meets Rena when she is 28.
3. Leah’s Bshert, Asher, married the wrong person (the couple felt pressured by the new takana and got engaged even though they both had some serious doubts). After 6 years, much of it in marital counseling, the couple finally realized there was nothing they could do to save their marriage and they got divorced. Asher spent 2 years in counseling before he could think about marrying again. He married Leah, who was then 31.
4. Malky is waiting for her older sister Chana to get married first (she graduated before the takana was instituted). Her parents are insistent that no one in the family skip her. Chana finally gets engaged when Malky is 23, and then Malky starts to go out and gets engaged 6 months later.
5. Batsheva is the cream of the class, pretty, talented, smart, a GREAT girl. Everyone tries to set her up. But none of the guys are good enough for her, and it takes 5 years until she finds the TOP boy to marry.
6. Tova wants to marry a learner and live a kollel life, but her family has no means to offer support. After speaking with her parents and their Rav, they feel she should first get a degree in a good field so she can support her husband before she starts to date. Even with her sem credits and an accelarated program, she will only start to date at 22. While she feels this unusual move is right for her, she will be putting her whole class on hold, and this is another factor she need to think of in what should be a personal decision.

And among the happy 40. who are engaged and waiting for the rest…
Yossy, Reuvein, Shraga and Mutty just can’t wait any longer. They break their engagements and find shidduchim with older girls whose classed graduated before the takana took effect. They get married right away.
Ahuva and Aharon start to argue and get cold feet and break up. Same with Gila and Gershon.
Temima and Tuvya, and Devora and Dovid realize that they only got engaged because of the class pressure and break their engagements as well. B”H they had not gotten married yet…
Levi is very frustrated, and just can’t concentrate on his learning anymore. He also starts to question the system and the Rabbanim who made such a mess of his life. He leave Yeshiva, goes to college, ends up going OTD and obviously, his kalla Liora is left behind as well.
3 other couples just can’t wait any longer and decide to defy the takana. They move to E”Y and get married there.
Brocha and Binyomin are also frustrated. Brocha’s father, who just donated a whole bunch of money to the yeshiva, the girls’ school and the local shuls, gets a special dispensation from the Vaad for them to marry now.
Dassy and Miriam convince their parents to go into debt so they too can “acquire” such a dispensation, but it doesn’t work for them. There is a lot of grumbling in the class and resentment, towards Brocha, the 3 couples who defied the takana, and of course, the ones who are not yet engaged. The Vaad does not make the class wait for those 9 girls with broken engagements who need to find new shidduchim.

Shiddiuch crisis solved!!!

Rebbitzen etc, the preventions you mention in your last post are all within their means to accomplish reasonably quickly. Getting everyone in their classes married is beyond their control. Chesed is to try to help others, whether that help will actually take away the tzara is sometimes beyond us. yes, the happily engaged couple can and perhaps should be encouraged to suggest a shidduch, but it doesn’t mean it will work out. We as a couple over the years have set up a few people, nothing came of any of them. I know another couple who have made several successful shidduchim. Our failure rate and our friends’ success rate has nothing to with degrees of selfishness or caring for others.

I think it is more the norm for newly engaged couples to want to share their joy than hide in their bubble. Many couples do try to set up their friends. Among my school friends, there was couple A who set up couple B who set up couple C, all the chossonim were friends from the same yeshiva. (Couple C tried to set me up with one more from that yeshiva, and I was sure by the natural order of things we would become couple D, but surprise, it was not matim…and I only got married many years later).

It took my HS class about 15 years until we were all married, and about 6 years for most to be married. I would not consider it a chessed for anyone to have waited that long-even the 6 years- it would have been more like a churban. It would not have helped anyway. Maybe it would have even discouraged some to date- why bother if they can’t get married until everyone else is? If we would implement your idea, then no one would be able to deny or question whether there was a shidduch crisis.

Do people actually give out their credit card info to some anonymous caller claiming to be from organization X, which you probably never even heard of? It seems obvious, yet when I explain to telemarketers that I can’t donate in that manner, they always seem surprised.

Classic argument that goes back to the days of Avraham Avinu- at least according to the way I learned how to understand the 2 opinions of what the Eshel he planted was- Pundak or Pardes. Pundak is an inn, open for all, corresponding to a teaching philosophy where all are accepted, the more the better. Pardes is an orchard, exclusive to one type of tree, corresponding to the philosophy pf elitism, training only the best of a certain type. The machlokes was which policy Avraham followed when teaching his geirim. Perhaps the answer is both- both types of approaches are needed in parallel.

At the store we shop in, there is self-check out for those who have the store’s credit card. They can randomly spot check your purchases to make sure people are doing it honestly. We got “lucky” the other week. The manager came over and started going thru the list of paid items on the screen asking us to check that we had them in our very full bags piled up in the shopping cart. What was funny, is that the computer asked to confirm some of the things we had scanned, but no one bothered to check that we did not have unscanned items in our bags, or compare the list of scanned and paid for items to what we actually had in the cart- which you think would be the whole point of the check. So basically, I was left to unpack and then repack the purchases for what I thought was a useless policy!

levi, I understand where you are coming from. I too was a bookworm in the days when Jewish literature was quite limited, and having grown up on the classics, I find the current frum fare far below par, with some notable exceptions.
Yet, my kids who are also book worms, do have lots of frum literature and don’t make the same comparisons that I do.
In their pre-reading days, I have read to them some of the English language kids classics (including Little House, the references to holidays were surprisingly devoid of religious content, and since I was the one doing the reading, I was able to put it all in context-I didn’t think there was anything wrong with them knowing that goyim have their own holidays, we actually discussed how strange it was that they had so little religion in their lives. It also spawned discussion of how such a lonely pioneer life would be incompatible with a frum Jewish one.) Now they read on their own, so it is no longer relevant.
But you are talking about a teenager, you would find it hard to be able to control what he reads.

As far as Tolkien, although I loved it way back when, I personally would not recommend it or want my kids to read it. First, it is not merely entertainment for some much needed down-time- the series has spawned a cult-like following because of its power- it brings you in to a fantasy world that becomes so real, it has such a grasp on you. They are the type of books that you can’t stop thinking about long after you read it. That could interfere with concentrating on important things, like learning. Also, if you ever read the prequel- I forget what it is called, but it describes the history of Middle Earth’s creation, is very anti-Torah and putting the Lord of the Rings/the Hobbit in that context, makes it questionable IMHO. Which is also why I would not give the Narnia series to my kids, even though when I was young and read them, I had no idea of the theology behind them.

Jospeh, probably, but that’s not what motivated him. He was a big macher and askan and knew tons of people. He left the actual work to my grandmother, A”H who was the quintessential Jewish balabusta.

Joseph if you really want to know the answerr, and are not just trolling, why don’t you look up the sources that The LIttle I know always quotes- today’s gedolim and poskim who surely are familiar with your sources but know better than you (or us) what they mean and how they apply.

I agree with you Mariana that physical force is warranted to protect a kid from danger.
examples:
– smacking a child’s hand as he reaches for a hot pot on the fire
– yanking and pulling a kid as he runs into the street towards an oncoming car
– holding down/physically restraining a child who is beating up his sibling
in these circumstances, talking nicely and discussing consequences just won’t do the trick when it is needed, although they can be used afterwards to avoid repeat behaviors.

Of course not, Joseph. He also cooks, does laundry and mows his own lawn, runs a highly successful law firm, serves on his local government, and regularly hosts his entire extended family. What mere mortal does all that?

Many of the important points people raise can’t be seen in a photo- for example, how tall/short person is will be hard to tell from a photo unless it is of the whole person, and generally even then it would be hard to tell unless he/she is standing next to something/someone else. The photo may also not be recent- perhaps he/she gained weight since. Why can’t these things be clarified from people who know him/her?
whether he/she goes about un-tucked, messy, unkempt, dressed in a way that is not respectful- I doubt that people would send a photo that way. More likely, the photo is carefully arranged and may not reflect how the person actually looks/acts in real life, or even on a date. Ever see a photo of someone taken at a wedding, all dressed up, with lots of makeup, hair done etc, and it doesn’t remotely look like the person usually does?
Yes, looks count in a shidduch. But to make a snap judgement based on a 2-dimensional depiction that may not reflect reality, without giving the person a chance to show personality and chein, which can add so much to a person’s beauty, even externally?

Not station-ary, that’s for the Russians.

Daas, you see you already got more answers that I would have had I really had a friend who wanted advice on portable space heaters and started my own thread on the matter.
But who cares about space heaters. Can you ask the velt about their opinions on space travel for tourists?

I think the proper Hebrew grammar would be “Baalei Bayit” not “Baalei Batim” just like it is “”batei sefer” and not “Batei Sefarim” or “Batei Kneset” and not “Batai Kenesiyot”

By five towns you mean of course,
1.uptown
2. downtown
3. in-town
4. out of town
5. way out of town
correct?
My vote is for 5. No L”H meant against the other 4 choices.
Now that we have clarified the OP, carry on…

Na, Gadol, I usually leave starting threads to others.

CA, what are you talking about? It’s not LH if the thread is about a made-up persona with a made-up problem. Those are the safe threads.

2 cents- Na, I stopped after a few pages, got tired of reading the same posts over and over. But since there were so many parallel threads, skipping anything vaccine related or chabad related meant there was not much for me to do in the CR. Trolls or not, it’s more fun here now. Even of the OP is a troll on some threads, the other posters are not…

Hey, why not, it gives us something to read other than anti/pro-vaccines or Chabad bashing

They’d have good company in mitzrayim- the Rambam in his time, R Ovadiah Yosef (was sent to be Rav there to be mechazek the community when he was young), and many others.

Just wondering, you’re ok with kiruv yeshivos in Russia and Poland and Ukraine and France? The people of those countries persecuted and killed us too, even before and/or after Hitler.

It is interesting that the chachamim made a cherem on living in Spain (some say it only applied to yotzei sefard), yet no similar official cherem was put on ashkenazic lands. So while it is unpleasant, it is also sometimes necessary.

Even shtickier is when there is a sale price on something sold by weight – like chicken. 2 kilo on sale. But above 2 kilo, regular price. You pick up a pack of chicken, go to pay and find out it weighs 2.7 kilo, and you are not getting the sale you thought you were.