nisht: Okay, makes sense, kind of, though it was REALLY not clear in your original post. However, you must admit that the WoW fiasco is publicized much, much more than anything Eliyahu Fink writes.

If you’re talking about being embarrassed about the way the goyim see charedi Jews, it’s different than what you seem to be saying, that you’re embarrassed of how there are frum Jews who don’t act in the way that you think frum Jews should act. After all, Lipman and Piron are probably making the Orthodox community look great- look, I’m Orthodox and I’m reforming the antiquated school system! Not like those loonies. And the bloggers are probably seen as muckrakers, and the WoW as trailblazers in women’s rights in the Orthodox community. From a PR perspective, it’s the charedim who are completely ruining their collective image.

Remember, Orthodox doesn’t mean litvish, chassidish, or whatever. I’m sure MO people are just as annoyed at being asked by people, “Oh, you’re Orthodox, right? Like those hassids who threw chairs at the women’s lib people?” as you are by people saying, “Oh, you’re Orthodox, just like those blog dudes?”

Random thoughts of someone studying for the Bio AP tomorrow:

Yissachar is to Zevulun like mycorrhizae are to trees.

The Jewish community is social Darwinist in its shidduch system.

Learning biology makes you truly appreciate niflaos haBorei. How could a world that’s so exact have possibly been evolved randomly? (And this is even after I’ve memorized all the ways CliffsNotes says it happened because there’s probably gonna be an FRQ.)

Chemistry is a lot more interesting now that I know how it all applies.

I’m gonna completely FLUNK this stupid test.

It’s kind of awkward to feel your heartbeat and think to yourself “vena cava, right atrium, tricuspid valve, right ventricle, pulmonary semilunar valve, lungs…”

I hate the feeling of reading the book, feeling like you know EVERYTHING, and then taking a test and realize you don’t, actually.

AYLOR. If there’s a kosher alternative, a posek will probably tell you to stick with it, even if it’s more expensive, but a) not necessarily and b) if there’s no alternative, there’s probably no reason not to be able to.

notasheep: The question is, what is femininity?

I personally don’t agree with the popular notion of feminism, which in and of itself undermines itself, as it’s implying that men are better than women and we need to try to reach their madreigah. (Because you’re NOT better than us, guys. Live with it.)

The difference is, is femininity simply expressing the differences between men and women or is it wearing fluffy pink dresses and makeup all day and waiting on top of a tower? I think that women have their own kochos, but I think that Jewish people are actually buying a little into the whole fairy-tale aspect of how delicate and vulnerable and etc. women are. According to the inyan that eishes chayil is meant to be taken literally (expressed by R’ Chaim Volozhiner, among others), an eishes chayil has a lot more capability and strength than just making herself look pretty for her husband and cleaning the floors. (Yes, I know that to an extent that’s there, but also along with haysa ka’aniyos socher.)

And if you want to have women be these delicate creatures who can’t do anything outside of the home, then let it be both ways, please. It’s like the joke: after the eitz hada’as incident, women were cursed with pain in childbirth. After epidurals were invented, they also received the curse of going to work. (My mom and aunt found this one hysterical, for some reason…)

“But there was no luchos sitting on the top of har sinai on shavuos as many pictures erroneously show.”

Yaakov Avinu and Moshe Rabbeinu didn’t wear hats and jackets, either…

I personally wouldn’t pay (or more accurately, my mom wouldn’t pay…) $90 for a skirt. I occasionally wear denim (I have a really cute denim dress) but the skirts tend to be very form fitting, which I’m not sure is that tznius and which really, really, REALLY looks bad on me…

I think it’s the kind of thing Ruthie’s in Monsey might carry.

Okay, then post something that says, “Hi, I’m Daniel Rosen,and I disagree with the idea of Maharat because of x, y, and z.” And then, if anyone wants to respond to you, they know what they’re getting into.

But this is just baiting.

I’ve gotten nice dresses from Jewish stores, department stores online and department stores in person. If you live near a Lord and Taylor, Macy’s, Century 21, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, or any area equivalent, they usually have nice stuff. (Some of the above are mucho expensive, but if you’ll use it enough and don’t get something too fancy, so that you can use it for Shabbos and Yom Tov, you may find it’s worth it.) Online are the websites for the above stores and also Zappos, Amazon, etc.

For my last two cousins’ weddings I got dresses from Nordstrom online (discount) and, wait for it, David’s Bridal. If you’re wearing long, that might actually be a great resource- they have nice stuff and are really not THAT expensive (my sister got hers for $80).

Of course, for most of this you’ll need a shell and/or skirt underneath. If you don’t like that idea, then I have no idea what you should do- sorry… 🙂 I’ve never shopped in Brooklyn, so I have no idea if they have any already-tznius dresses there, but if you’re gonna be in Brooklyn and it’s that important to you then it may be worth getting there and looking.

Good luck!

If everyone’s making all these arguments about the woman’s sphere, and how leaving it damages a woman, then why have gender roles been switched around, for all intents and purposes, with women going out to work and husbands going to kollel and many times staying home with the kids? Doesn’t that damage some kind of internal thingie in the man that’s supposed to be all macho or something? It should work both ways, no?

CORRECTION, notasheep: that’s WHY they can’t handle it.

“And if he does have enough time after high school(ie. he gets married a few years later), then he is already serious- so why not give him the necessary courses at that time?”

Have you tried to learn a new language since you were a kid? You presumably learned English from birth (correct me if I’m wrong) and you probably know at least a semi-decent Hebrew, maybe Yiddish, some operational Aramaic from Gemara, maybe some other languages.

The fact is that if I plopped you into a new country and told you to learn the language, it would be much more difficult than it was to learn any of your other languages- not impossible, but definitely harder. Our brains don’t adapt to new languages well after we’ve gotten older- even only past adolescence, which is why I’ll never understand why high schools start us on Spanish in ninth grade. They could do it, but our brains are much more elastic at younger ages, which makes it easier to learn.

Did you know that they’ve tried your idea already? The problem is that many students have quit from the sheer difficulty and magnitude of learning an entire new language, new math skills, new scientific skills at such a late date. Remember, they don’t have that much time to waste learning this stuff- bittul Torah. So they need to grasp all this and immediately, not in stages like how you and I learned it, start on professional training. I know I’d probably crack.

charliehall: “Not true; there were medical schools, not abstract but concrete, in ancient times and in the middle ages. Sforno got a medical degree from the University of Rome.”

Many of these medical schools were, as I mentioned, more in the manner of the master physician teaching a few students- more of an apprenticeship. Perhaps “abstract” was a bad word to use in this case.

In the Christian Middle Ages, there were very, very few colleges at all, and pretty much no medical schools- many of the woman doctors did achieve degrees informally, as did the male doctors. These prefab med schools really came about in the time of the Renaissance (the time of the Sforno).

In the Muslim Golden Ages, there were medical schools (the Rambam went to one), but I’m not sure how regimented they were or whether women were permitted to be students. I also don’t know if there were noncertified female doctors in Muslim lands.

Daniel Rosen:

If it’s so pashut, the mods have nothing to lose by letting these kofrim duke it out with the real Jews.

If it isn’t, then there’s no reason for the mods to shut it down if they really want a place of discussion open to all (and they apparently don’t always, which is their right, I guess, but it’s still contrary to your point).

“Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day; set a man on fire and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”

— Terry Pratchett (forget about his books, he has the BEST funny quotes)

To repost my original point in the post that was taken down (thanks, mod!):

Torah: Just like you wouldn’t want a doctor without a degree, no matter how knowledgeable, you would probably prefer a rabbi with semicha over a random rebbetzin. Even if logically, for your purpose, either one would do the same thing, we lean towards the one that is accredited. As you mentioned, a title commands respect.

Also, do you know me, or are you just guessing? (If I’m the only wannabe doctor in the whole frum universe, then that’s a shame, IMHO.)

Torah: Well, I want to be a doctor, so let’s say, hypothetically, that I know everything I need to know to set up shop, but since I didn’t go to med school, I can’t get my MD- even without the title, even though I can practice medicine as well as any doctor, I’m obviously limited in what I can do with my knowledge, as nobody wants to be healed by someone who’s not an MD (or RN or PA or whatever).

Perhaps to some, the title of rebbetzin signifies the kind of female rabbi indicated in benignuman’s post; for many, however, that does not seem to be the case.

(BTW: I have no interest in becoming a rabbi- as I already mentioned, I want to be a doctor. This isn’t so much devil’s advocate as trying to see both sides of the point. Besides, I can say that really, I don’t care about being a rabbi, who needs it, and all that stuff, but the fact remains that people DO care that they can’t be rabbis, including a couple people I know, and I think that that is a very valid feeling to have- whether halachically permissible is a COMPLETELY different story.)

HaKatan: See, that’s the thing I wonder about gedolim: everyone says that according to OUR gedolim, something is obviously true. The next poster then (t)rolls along and it’s batuach shelo! Because OUR gedolim say so! (And just BTW, mods, why was the record of that other gedolim thread erased from living memory? I was getting really interesting and occasionally pretty helpful responses to my questions.)

I’ve had teachers whom I’ve liked and trusted say that Zionistic wars were milchemes mitzvah, and I’ve had other teachers, whom I’ve liked and trusted equally, say the opposite. The former category spans the gamut from chassidishe-rebbishe-Israeli rebbetzin (you’d know the name if you heard it) to ultra-shtark dati leumi yoredet who did sherut leumi to regular, JPF American. The latter category- actually, the range is approximately the same (though the ultra-shtark dati leumi yoredet really just said that there are different opinions in this case). They’re not poskim- but ask any of them, and these uber-intelligent, ginormously spiritual women can reel you off perek and pasuk as a proof for what they believe.

This is partly because there are different definitions of Zionism, and partly because there is really no concrete answer, unless you believe that only your mekor is right and everyone else is wrong, which you will find difficult to convince people of.

Pants are a lot more labor-intensive than robes, and are generally common more in cooler climates than warm ones, where “breezy” and loose clothing was probably preferred over tight clothing. Look at traditional clothing in different parts of the world and there is a pattern. It’s not until recent globalization that everyone started to wear the same types of clothes, regardless of locale and climate.

PBA: “Re number 5. I haven’t a clue what he means by that. Mussar and machshava are certainly mainstream in the chareidi world. I suppose tanakh as an independent study is not, but any serious talmid chochom has learned plenty of tanach.”

Who says that R’ Lichtenstein is talking about centrist Orthodoxy in exclusion to any other form of Orthodoxy? He seems more to be laying out his guidelines rather than saying what’s NEW and DIFFERENT about centrist Orthodoxy.

As far as women’s learning is concerned, I agree with the poster above who mentioned the current Bais Yaakov system as opposed to what the tannaim, amoraim, rishonim, and acharonim would have thought. While Judaism doesn’t consciously evolve, except for in the case of events like the churban, I think it evolves subconsciously, as we can see by comparing the current norm of Bais Yaakov education with the old-time norm of, well, no female education.

It’s funny how nobody’s been gloating about the weaknesses mentioned at the end. I think that that is really where the crux of the difference lies.

And you point me out one MO school that doesn’t teach some form of Tanach and machshava, and I’ll….

…………

…………

…think of something extreme to do later.

Or, as my friend the math, physics and sci-fi geek says:

May the mass times acceleration be with you.

I haven’t the faintest idea what she’s talking about. I think it has something to do with Newton.

Three weeks til the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May! Get your lilacs ready…

Well, different people have different tastes in classes… two people could even take the same class and have totally different impressions :).

It just didn’t really work for me.

Those who smoke are also endangering the lives of those with whom they interact. Second hand smoke is a major inyan that is known to cause illness even in people who have never smoked- on a personal note, my great-grandfather got emphysema from second hand smoke. My bus driver smokes on the bus (though not while we’re driving), and when I smell that disgusting reek through the bus, I worry about what might happen.

Thanks! 🙂

I actually think I did okay on this one, unusually enough. Except the problem where I had this problem where I did the whole procedure correctly- but the number I inputted was wrong because I made a mistake in two-digit division in the beginning of the problem. 🙁

nisht: Wouldn’t that be sectses?

Now I feel like Gollum.

just a member: Either this person is looking for a vague difference, in which case he doesn’t want anything too complicated anyway and would tune you out if you tried to explain the subtle differences between a litvak and a chassid because why should he care?, or he’s looking for something really detailed, in which case, go for it.

Honestly, I think it’s a bit like this: I just read The Chosen, which I happened to like a lot, and I then went on a book review website. All of these reviews were about how now they can understand Jews and their different sects and practices, and I was banging my head against the keyboard. But it would be ridiculous to claim that it doesn’t give even a little bit of insight into Judaism and the Jewish community, and if I decided to be well- meaning and write a whole long diatribe about each of the tiny piddling inaccuracies that made it seem so against what I know to be true, people would tune me out. They don’t care. It’s like when someone tried to show me the difference between a real bill and a counterfeit- the differences are there, but they’re so subtle and I don’t care enough about it to really pay that much attention and care that one of them’s wrong.