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While
1) it’s obvious that Assaf does not want a lot of the answers given here (like the guilt-tripping),
the fact also remains that
2) asking a question like this on a site populated by the types of people who are generally on here will probably NOT bring him the kinds of answers he expects.
Adding to this the fact that
3) there is really no good answer for the question,
I think that while I sympathize with Assaf’s plight (having to disappoint his parents), there are no good answers, as the two options seem to be to a) tell them or b) not tell them. There’s no way I can see to make it more palatable to them than it would be in a regular scenario. Now, of course, I have no idea what kind of a reaction you’re expecting from them, which is why I agree and disagree at the same time with PBA: while if his parents will completely flip their lids and sit shiva that’s not particularly healthy (to say the least), sometimes, a child might simply want not to disappoint their parents at all, and it seems (and obviously I have no way of knowing this) that Assaf merely wants a way of explaining this to his parents so that they’ll understand and not blame him at all. They could still ACCEPT him and LOVE him without APPROVING of his life choices- and it seems like Assaf wants to eat his cake and have it too, which may happen but there’s really no way to know for sure without knowing your parents.
While I love Eretz Yisrael, if I make aliyah this won’t be the reason why.
I don’t “do” Monopoly, but over Rosh Hashana my cousins played a two-day-long game that ended rather abruptly when my cousin found out that about six hours before my brother had stolen money from the bank to get him out of bankruptcy.
It’s hard to face up to the fact that my kid brother is a felon… 🙁
Oooh, wow, haven’t done a good sukkah hop in YEARS. I’m not even sure my neighborhood has them anymore (I think they died with the Bnos group).
We never, EVER brought candy bags. We just walked around the neighborhood to the houses of the people who agreed to give us candy, which we always ate in the sukkah, and then ended up at the sukkah of one of the neighborhood rabbanim who told a dvar torah. It was very nice.
No idea how it’s done in Israel so can’t really comment- you just sent me on a trip down memory lane 🙂
lkno: That’s not going to convince her when she doesn’t think they’re profanity at all.
I don’t know for sure that I do either- actually, I personally have not such a problem with “what the heck” but I try not to say “freaking.” Actually, I try not to say either, because words like those are crutches- they end up overused and by the time one’s done speaking one hasn’t actually SAID anything of substance. Also, they tend to be conducive to certain situations- not only am I more likely to say a word like “freaking” when I’m upset, but it almost makes me MORE upset because that’s the context of the word in general. Sort of like how thinking of raindrops and roses and cute little kittens makes people feel happy (even if they, like me, don’t like cats).
But I DON’T think they’re curse words. In fact, I think they’re quite blatantly NOT curse words because in the popular context, which, as I’ve said multiple times here, is the REAL dictionary of words, they are perceived as absolutely not being curse words. Perhaps they’re seen as one’s trying to sidestep the issue (even that I’m not sure of as they’ve sort of morphed into their own personal identities), but they’re not even CLOSE to being seen as curse words.
If that’s something you don’t want to be seen as doing, then kol hakavod. But IMO, calling it “nivul peh” or “cursing” is a trifle much (especially when I started reading the OP and I was under the impression that she was talking about kids using words that get bleeped out on TV). It’s a sensitivity issue, but those who aren’t quite that sensitive aren’t doing anything WRONG.
WIY: There isn’t a curse word dictionary written on women’s knees. Any correlation between the two would seem to come exclusively from the guy’s side.
lkno: I don’t think he was talking to you.
frumnotyeshivish: As a teenager with two X chromosomes, as I’ve reiterated, I’ve been shooting my mouth off here from MY perspective. I completely disavow all claims to knowing anything about the male mind. Would it help if I just deleted all those other posts?
Edited. I think the rest of what you wrote is okay.
PBA: Will not think about that, thanks, for reasons I’ve already mentioned.
Yeah, they do, but it’s at most as popular as cousin marriage (read: not that popular at all).
WIY: But once you see someone as a kid (especially when they behave obnoxiously) it colors your view of him/her. I’m sure that he remembers me as being a whiny little scaredy-cat as well (though I bow to your and Popa’s privileged views into the male psyche so feel free to correct me). I’m not saying that that kind of thing is impossible (my cousin married her brother’s best friend), but I don’t think it makes romantic feelings MORE likely- I’d think that the contrary would be true.
For all I know you guys are right, because I don’t talk to my cousins at least partially because they don’t talk to me (another reason may be that we have nothing in common anymore besides grandparents).
Whatever. This doesn’t turn into a big deal for me in daily life, unless you count my playing Boggle with them and being polite to them as being complete pritzus and inappropriateness. (Though, as far as one of them is concerned, I actually stopped playing Boggle with him, though only because I got tired of losing.)
As I said, I admit naivete regarding the male mind for somewhat obvious reasons.
I just wrote a college essay and used the words “staying by” in it (not for a frum program). Luckily my friend read it and pointed it out- I literally headdesked.
Baal Habooze: Oh, you mention Mimkomcha- it reminds me of a funny story last year Sukkos when my whole extended family was at my Sukkah and some one suggested that they sing Mimkomcha- immediately, three different people began three different tunes :).
Whatever zemiros you usually sing will probably work. A bit of alcohol will probably suggest one or two to you 🙂 (I think I’ve been hanging around my cousins too long…).
PBA: Completely disagree. From experience: if they start off as friends from childhood, playing together and all that kind of stuff, then I don’t think it turns out at all romantic if it stays friendly and brother-sistery. Take me and my cousin: we actually don’t really talk to each other anymore, but if someone told me that it would be normal for me to have romantic feelings for the guy I grew up with, who spent ten years refining the art of teasing me, thought the epitome of fun was throwing bubble gum at my head, and loved burping the ABCs, I would look at them like they were crazy- too much history. (Oh,boy, I hope too many more people don’t figure out who I am…) Depending on closeness of the cousinly relationship, you can possibly compare it to adopted siblings.
Now, a cousin I’d barely see, maybe… I don’t even know about that.
I spent Rosh Hashana at a very modern YI shul where women did not dress in keeping with this site’s ideal of tznius by a long shot and they said a mi shebeirach for chayalei Tzahal (with names added of the children of congregants in the army).
I spent Yom Kippur at an extremely yeshivish shul where I felt like the most modern person there and Neturei Karta pamphlets have been known to have been seeded.
Both davenings were beautiful.
As someone mentioned above, it was just the yamim noraim, people. Chillax. Why do we need to take sides, anyway? I personally don’t- it’s confusing and limiting (I have friends at both shuls mentioned above).
Cousin marriage -> defects is actually not that common. (My mother says that some random relative married a cousin and had a kid with a limb missing r”l but I won’t swear to the causality.) Sure, in some cases it may make it more likely for recessive traits to be passed on, but the risk only gets really bad after more than one generation of cousin marriage, statistically speaking.
PBA: Why is it worse if the cousin is like a sibling? Doesn’t that add somewhat of a squickiness factor to the whole idea of a married relationship? The only people I know of personally who married cousins didn’t know their spouses well before marriage (one couple, my great-grandparents, grew up in two different villages and didn’t meet until the shidduch was made). Ask the average person (well, girl, I guess, as I can’t claim to understand boys) her opinion on marrying a close cousin and the answer would probab;y be a decided “ewww.”
Cheeeeeeeeeeesecake….
I must have put on ten pounds from licking that bowl.
Sometimes I thank Hashem very, very sincerely that I don’t live in NYC but rather in Monsey. This is one of those times.
Other times I thank Hashem that I’m not yet eighteen and I don’t need to care who’s running for election. This is also one of those times. (Monsey is not immune to annoying elections, though ultimately it doesn’t matter who you vote for.)
My friend swears by the deep-fried pickles at Wolf and Lamb.
My friend swears by the deep-fried pickles at Wolf and Lamb.
My uncle is the rav of a shul and has a lot of guests over yomim tovim so they always make their sukkah into a talking point to stir up discussion. I haven’t seen the 5774 edition yet, but last year my cousins covered the walls of the sukkah with sheets of clics. It was very cute, but I have NO IDEA where they got all those clics from…
Our sukkah is very old-fashioned and boring wood, but the cool part is that we’ve somehow figured out a way to jam 25 people, including 2 wheelchairs, into a 12×12 space.
My uncle is the rav of a shul and has a lot of guests over yomim tovim so they always make their sukkah into a talking point to stir up discussion. I haven’t seen the 5774 edition yet, but last year my cousins covered the walls of the sukkah with sheets of clics. It was very cute, but I have NO IDEA where they got all those clics from…
Our sukkah is very old-fashioned and boring wood, but the cool part is that we’ve somehow figured out a way to jam 25 people, including 2 wheelchairs, into a 12×12 space.
HakunaMatada: You say a perfect world, but really, we’re not in one. Do you deny that we’re on a different madreigah, in different circumstances, from am Yisrael in the midbar?
There is no OBLIGATION for one to rely on someone else to learn Torah.
A) Where is the father in law’s money coming from?
B) While I’ve heard it argued that a wife can be mochel on that section of the kesubah, if she doesn’t want to be, she has every right to ask her husband to live up to it.
Fact is, however good and proper the concept of kollel may be, it hasn’t been the norm pretty much ever until now- are we on a higher madreigah now than any other generation with regard to this?
(BTW: I really have no objection to kollel, though I’m not entirely sure I’d want to marry a kollel guy myself- my objection is to your bit about “no excuse” on the bottom there.)
Okay, then:
1) You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink
2) The early bird catches the worm
3) All that glitters is not gold
4) (I know this one, I know this one… but I can’t remember the saying. THIS IS DRIVING ME CRAZY. I know what the words mean but I must never have heard the quote.)
5) A fool and his money are soon parted
6) A bird in the hand equals two in the bush
yichusdik: +1,000,000!
whatdoiknow: I based my assumption (as did many others, looking back at posts on this thread) on something else bym mentioned in the original thread. What her personal thoughts have been her whole life I don’t know, but I very specifically understood from her thread that once she felt like she wasn’t being 100% sincere in her teaching she stopped.
At my cousin’s recent aufruf, the kallah’s entire family was there besides for the kallah herself.
I can’t imagine what she was doing home by herself- reading Mishpacha? Never asked.
Either way, mazal tov! Remember, all he’s missing is the possibility of being clocked on the head with a bag of stale za-zas.
Judging by a lot of preschool parsha sheets, the streimel is apparently halacha leMoshe (literally) miSinai.
HakunaMatada: In the midbar, Jews could learn all day because there was man falling from shamayim.
In contrast, now:
A bochur is meeting with his potential future father-in-law and is asked by him, “so what are your plans for the future after you get married?”
The bochur answers calmly, “G-d will provide.”
Afterward, the future father-n-law talks to his wife about the encounter. She asks, “so, is the fellow nice?”
He replies, “Oh, I liked him a lot. Very nice guy and he thinks I’m G-d!”
I think it’s a big step to say that the state of Europe before the Holocaust is “THE WORST DEFECTION FROM THE TORAH SINCE THE BEGINNING OF OUR NATION’S HISTORY” (capitalization, I assume, Leyzer’s). From a historian’s perspective that’s risky to say as we can’t know everything that happens- we basically see the things that happen most recently and are prone to inflate their importance because that’s what we know most about. I’m not saying that for sure it WASN’T the biggest, just that how do we know?
You know, it’s funny- a lot of these posts (ON THE SAME SIDE!) all contradict each other. On the one hand, there’s the argument that R’ Miller brings up about the Holocaust obviously being a punishment for the Holocaust, because of basic cause and effect. On the other hand, the response to the “good things happening to bad people” question is that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about. Personally, to me, these don’t seem to really match up.
Put it this way: the way this thread’s been going, the two CONFLICTING theories of the Holocaust are
R’ Miller: The Holocaust is a direct cause-effect result of aveiros on the part of many Jews, and the many who did NOT do these aveiros were collateral damage.
R’ Kelemen: The Holocaust’s effect on each person was based on their individual “account” with Shamayim.
(Yes, I know that this is overly simplistic, but I’m trying to make the point that logically, you can’t say that the two intersect. The only way they could is if you say that most of the people were punished for assimilation and the others were punished for their own individual aveiros, which would leave out the people who assimilated and survived.)
Basically, my point is that I don’t think we can really rationalize these kinds of things. They seem to be “teiku” at the very least and possibly insoluble by us even after me’ah ve’esrim.
Shopping- it couldn’t possibly be people on YWN- I like to be DLK”Z and assume that we’re frummer than that over here.
I get a lot of people asking this, but they do it for real, and I’m always like, “what did YOU do to me? You’re one of the sweetest people I know!”
The only way I do a text to more than one person at a time is if they are all linked in the same scenario- sometimes I like to ask just in case I did something and didn’t realize, so, for instance, I sent a specific text to the (four or five) people I worked with this summer. I don’t think it’s impersonal- as there wasn’t a specific thing I was apologizing for, and as I made it very specific to the situation, I think it worked.
Bekitzur: LOVE these!
Just saying- my post does NOT mean to insinuate that BYM did a 180. My post is PURELY a response to ultimateskier.
How absolutely outrageous. Like Torah said, you’ll have to give a cover story to everyone you know so that this unbelievable craziness doesn’t get out.
🙂 Mazel tov to friend and kallah!
As soon as someone asks you for a psak, tell them that.
(This is not meant to be offensive at all- there are definitely rabbanim who say no when asked about IVs. But the fact that a very large number says yes doesn’t mean that they’re unnecessarily meikil just because it would seem so intuitively.)
She said that when she started to have doubts she pretty much stopped teaching or advising, if I remember correctly.
That’s why I’ve never been “obsessed” by teachers and all that kind of thing. I can like them a lot, but I know too many teachers in real life (wonderful people though they are) to necessarily put them on pedestals. Call me a cynic (and trust me, people do) but I’ve gotten burned expecting teachers to know all of the answers, and I’m not going to make who I am dependent on who my teacher is. Obviously I’m very fond of (most of 🙂 ) my very lovely teachers, but if they did a 180 then I would wonder why they chose to become teachers in the first place but I wouldn’t be completely disillusioned.
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell.
I don’t really like his pop psychology books, but I LOVE this book, which is basically a collection of the best/favorite articles that he wrote for the New Yorker. You will find yourself fascinated by the development of advertisements for hair dye and training dogs. It’s also very, very well written, obviously.
If you don’t want to spend on it or shlep to the library all of his articles (including many more than are in the book) are on his website, but the computer is an annoying way to read.
Honestly, I never knew that stuff about “kk” until now. I’ve seen it all the time but I didn’t know it had any different connotations depending on the number of “k”s…. I’ll have to start inspecting all of my chats and texts to see whether my friends have been brushing me off without my suspecting it…
(kidding- I really don’t care)
The smiley face, as I’m sure you guys have picked up, I do use for when I find things cute or funny. Though it’s funny, because until you wrote it out here, I hadn’t realized that I’ve also used it as a conversation ender. I just never realized it, it just turns out that way.
Redleg: Poskim have ruled on this, you know, and many say that it’s completely fine as it’s not achilah (an exception is R’ Moshe). If someone asks a shailah and is given the go-ahead then why would it be cheating?
Why not?
My family’s really close and I’ve known my cousins forever, which honestly gives me squicky feelings about cousin marriage- I mean, seriously.
We played with each other when we were little and still play board games and stuff. I really don’t talk to them so much, especially as they’ve gotten older, but everyone’s nice and friendly, everyone says hi when they meet each other, etc.
A lot has to do with age- my 15 year old cousin (in a super-shtark yeshiva) is more likely to talk to me than my 18 year old cousin.
Look, whatever makes you and everyone else comfortable.
Okay, popa, thanks for opening an old wound.
When you mentioned inshidduchim, I immediately remembered this thread. And immediately went to go check it out. And immediately became very, very sad.
It’s really not nice to make girls cry.
Anyhoo, I’m hoping that this story hasn’t run its course and that we can get it up and running again, just because I love it so much and there are loads of fantastic writers on here to make it awesome (enough soft soap yet? 🙂 ).
Whaddaya guys think?
T613: Really random, but I was actually reading Confessions of a Jewish Cultbuster (original 1985, not current reprint) and there’s a story about how they were picking up a guy to deprogram him and they had to pretend not to be Jewish so a guy wore a toupee instead of a yarmulke because he didn’t want to uncover his head.
I have no idea of the halachic ramifications, but it’s just what popped into my mind.
(Also a great book, anyway.)
Completely unrelated-
Just my observations from Rosh Hashana and the very modern shul I attended:
I really, honestly, truly don’t care what color your shirt, suit and yarmulke are (though the guy dressed completely in pink was a bIT much). My only pet peeve, however, is that it’s really not bakavodik on Rosh Hashana to wear a Yankees yarmulke.
It was just a really funny image at an unfunny time by kedusha when the guy opening the aron at the end was all solemn but in this sports theme yarmulke.
/endrant
rebdoniel, squeak: never read the others, but happens to be that I loved The Chosen. My friend recommended it and I was hemming and hawing because Potok has a bad reputation as far as his portrayal of frum people, etc., but then I read it because she said that it really wasn’t like that and she was right. Sure, so Danny becomes a psychologist instead of a rebbe, but he stays frum and Reuven ends up a rabbi in the end when he was originally the much more laid-back, less frum one (I just spoiled the plot in three lines, so yeah, sorry). The book did not seem critical of frumkeit at all unless portraying a rebbe as less than perfect is kefirah (while I’d think it would be the other way around, that portraying a rebbe as perfect would be kefirah) so honestly, personally, I thought it was fine. (The rebbe also gets explained, if not completely redeemed, at the end.)
Just wanted to also recommend anything by Haim Sabato (starting with The Dawning of the Day).
And Maus. GREAT book. It’s NOT frum (so just don’t expect it to be) but it’s an amazing approach to the Holocaust, especially bearing in mind that it’s for the general public. It could be that I liked it so much because it syncs with personal experiences of mine, but I think that even without that element, it’s extremely well done and a wonderful read.
Also, not fiction (though Maus isn’t really fiction either) but The Prime Ministers was a great book- HIGHLY recommended.
Personally, if anyone said any of this stuff to me, I’d flip.
It’s not (necessarily and IMHO) me being completely resistant to criticism- the point is that there are a lot of variables.
If this is something so blatantly obviously a violation of tznius that the person just doesn’t seem to care, then MAYBE I would get the rebbetzin or someone with some kind of official capacity (NOT a random do-gooder from around the block) to broach the question. A lot would depend on whether the person would be willing to listen- it’s not a mitzvah to rebuke someone who doesn’t want to be told, IIRC, and it can actually make the matter worse.
If the person is wearing something that in other communities is acceptable but in this one is not (eg. a knee covering skirt in a place where people usually wear mid-calf, a more bright but still tznius outfit in a more somber environment) then as long as there are no actual issurim being broken I think this is absolutely counterproductive. If you want, just keep the whole “holier-than-thou” mantra running through your head and whenever you see her, just remember that you’re better than that poor, deluded, pritzusdikke soul.
(Yes, I’m bitter, thanks for asking. Though the actual advice is 100% serious.)
I go to a pretty yeshivish shul where I am one of the more, shall we say, creative dressers. Nobody cares, which is nice. I have, however, been in similar shuls where some nice lady told me that my skirt is too short or my top is too bright. I don’t get dressed blind, and my mom doesn’t buy me clothing that she doesn’t think is tznius. If I’m wearing it, that means that my family and therefore my rav thinks it’s fine. (The most annoying is when someone tells me my shoes are too “trendy”- I mean, honestly, in three months you’ll be wearing them, and there’s nothing intrinsically WRONG with them tzniuswise. It just doesn’t make sense.)
OURtorah: I may not have been clear- I was thinking that while the tafkid of men seems to be limud Torah and the tafkid of women (from all of these inspirational lectures) seems to be something else, it seems to be at least mostly okay for women to learn Tanach- why that and not gemara if we’re supposed to be devoting our time to some other tafkid of ours?
OURtorah: Is there any special reason why gemara SPECIFICALLY) as opposed to any learning in general) is part of a man’s tafkid and not a woman’s? If that viewpoint were “oh, it’s a man’s tafkid to learn and a woman’s tafkid to raise a family/run errands/be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen etc.” (just examples), then okay, as much as I’d hate it I’d respect the consistency. But to limit it to just one element of study? What’s the point? What’s the difference?
bym: I agree with a lot of what you said (though none of my cousins would be stupid enough to say what yours said in front of me- they know me too well 🙂 ). SO MANY of the sentiments you express are things that I feel all the time as well. Also, I feel like, as I mentioned above, the reasoning for why women CAN’T do certain things doesn’t always satisfy me.
But, as others mentioned, just so far as I’M concerned, I can’t see why learning gemara would be more than a Band-Aid at best for the issue. Perhaps it’s different for you, but what do you think it would do?
Actually, rereading, it seems (correct me if I’m wrong) like you want to understand Judaism, because you feel like it was all spitback in school, and part of your path to that is learning gemara, learning all the “sources” they give you in high school (yeah, I always wondered why they would give out photocopies of gemara and that was okay but to learn it out of the real thing- ooh, shtuyot!) for yourself. Is that it? I get it a bit more, but honestly, while that may help you, I wonder if you would be as satisfied if you started that up and expected it to solve these issues. I’m honestly not sure it would. If you don’t expect it to then so far as I’m concerned gezunte heit, but the fact that all of your problems as far as this seem to be painted as symptoms of your lack of gemara or the holding back from you of gemara, it’s just a bit of a question to me. I’m sure it’s not like that- people aren’t that black and white- it’s just something I was wondering.
Personally, I have enough stuff I like that I don’t feel like I NEED gemara, but it would be nice if I knew that I could if I wanted.
Torah613: I know someone who said Queens, waited a beat, and gave the name of the cemetery. But it was for her grandparents.
(I just typed seminary instead of cemetery. Is that a Freudian slip?!?)
It was one of the seminaries (did it again) that she didn’t actually want to go to, so she didn’t. She was a lot more normal by her other interviews.
To lead the conversation in a different direction, I’m about to start the whole seminary parsha, or sugya, or whatever, and I haven’t been interviewed since eighth grade and I have NO IDEA what to say.
For my first choice sem, what do I say as far as why I want to go? Because my friends are going and I don’t particularly want to go anywhere else? Because that’s the truth.
Sample interview (THIS WILL HAPPEN IF YOU DON’T HELP!):
Why do you want to go to my seminary?
Because it’s in Israel, and I love Israel. And my friends are probably going because they have much better interview answers than I do, and they’re pretty okay to hang around. And I like frozen yogurt.
What’s your favorite tefillah?
HaMapil, because I’m, like DEAD when I get home from school and I just want to go to sleep already.
If you could be any fruit, what would you be?
A poisonous one so people don’t eat me. I have a strongly developed survival instinct and it’s very efficient evolutionarily.
Whom do you admire?
My mother because she’s always there for me. (Awkward silence)
Ha’im at yecholah ledaber be’ivrit?
No comprendo! No comprendo!
I, um, like your t shirt…
Yeah, I know, it’s really cool, it’s from Despicable Me. My brother’s obsessed with that movie. Do you want to see my ankle socks? They have Peanuts characters on them.
Okay, so to allay these fears,
1) What questions do seminaries like Michlalah, Darchei Binah, Machon Raayah, etc. ask?
2) If not a uniform, what do people usually wear to interviews that are not held in school?
3) What are some good/cute answers to some of these questions?
4) What are some interview tips? I’m not THAT shy, and I’m actually a good public speaker, but I have no idea if I interview well.
Hey, Gamanit- I think I have that recipe too! If it’s the same one I have, then it’s the best noodle kugel on the face of the planet and I highly recommend it.
Oooooh, sorry, bookworm! *runs and hides*
I need to shut my big fat mouth sometimes.
Well, it depends what comes next. There’s only so far it can really go…
LAB: It’s funny, I play an instrument and love complex, cool music (such as instrumental covers, classical music, occasionally a capella), but that’s not why I like Carlebach. I’m honestly not sure why- it could just be that my father introduced it early enough to get it stuck in my head.
I don’t really like “regular” songs unless they’re really well done and the voice is actually an instrument and not just a bunch of words interfering with the good stuff.
City slicker.
So that he can parallel park for me.
(Considering that I can JUST BARELY drive in a straight line, I prefer to leave all that fancy stuff to someone else.)
Well, he was pretty unique back then as well, no?
Not quite as far back, but I love Carlebach….
…no? Doesn’t do it for you?
(“Atah shiru iti”)
Seriously?
Better prep next time, Sir Paul…
My dad keeps trying to summon up some appreciation for “GOOD music” (namely anything he grew up listening to) in his children, and it doesn’t seem to really be working so well.
Then again, we’ll pick Beethoven over Bieber any day, so seriously, quit complaining.
(Actually, I like Mozart better than Beethoven, but I like alliteration.)