There are some great rafting places up north that are a lot of fun- I like Kfar Blum.

There’s also the Hula Valley, where you can rent bikes and bike around the lake.

Also Tzuk Menara (which I’m pretty sure is next to Kiryat Shmone), which has a gorgeous cable car ride and Alpine slide. (Do this instead of Har Chermon- just as pretty [though in a different way] and much less out of the way.)

In addition to the mekomos hakedoshim in Tzfat, just getting lost in the old city can be a lot of fun (though perhaps not with little kids…).

There are banana boating places on the shore of the Kinneret.

Lots of great hikes in the area- if your kids are old enough and nobody is afraid of heights, the Arbel is a lot of fun.

If you’re interested in hiking and archaeology, Gamla in the Golan is extremely cool. In fact, there are amazing archaeological digs all over the place up north- Katzrin mishnaic village, ancient shuls all over…

(Can you tell I just came back from seminary? 🙂

I wanna go home!)

Just saying- if you’re in Yerushalayim and have a car (though it is accessible by public transportation), do the Temple Mount Sifting Project. Very cheap (10 NIS for two hours) and really, really amazing.

Many/all of these arguments seem to be against gay relationships. While some reference specifically marriage, it really does seem that the only difference between one and the other is that in marriage one gets specific governmental benefits.

Unless the point is that marriage itself is a charged term or concept which should not be changed (which I could sort of see), I really don’t see why this makes a difference at all. If not for the PREVIOUS acceptance of gay relationships, this ruling (as well as all of the previous state laws) would not have passed or even come up, meaning that the likelihood of a gay relationship occurring at all doesn’t seem to be increasing overmuch through the ruling itself. As this whole issue is a societal one in which the legal issue seems to be both minuscule and simply financial benefits, and considering that passing or not passing a law can do NOTHING about this societal issue, I really am not sure I see the nafka mina here.

This is actually really funny.

(***May be the only way anyone will marry me, but oh well***)

Actually very funny and clever. And disturbingly plausible.

No veisse zacken after Labor Day.

Gofish: In EY, many Karliners do have chassidish peyos (especially the children). Veisse zacken I don’t think.

Who_cares: I only mention things that are specific to the chassidus. Of the family I know best, the husband likes astronomy and the wife puts her potato kugel in the cholent, but unless it is indeed a unique chassidus in many ways, that does not reflect the views of the rebbe.

I have Karliner relatives in EY (who I’ve been to several times and whose friends and neighbors, particularly the women, I’ve often for various reasons met). This is what I’ve observed.

Women dress ordinary charedi, not necessarily with a double covering and suchlike. I’m not sure if women drive. Men do not necessarily wear streimlach. Girls learn normal Bais Yaakov Chumash. Not sure about boys, but girls learn secular studies including English starting sixth grade. I don’t know if this is unique, but a lot of the ones I’ve met (though I could have an availability bias) have been either baalei teshuva or newcomers to chassidim and are often drawn by the intense feeling and spirituality. They seem very down to earth, substance over style.

What do you think sem and beis medrash are?

My name doesn’t start with Q. I just don’t follow rules.

If you’re going to be here for a year it’s probably not worth it to get an apartment because it means having to patchke a bit more, which might detract from your vacation experience.

I’d recommend a bus tour of Chevron, at the very least. You may want to do others especially if you don’t have a car. Public buses are a pain. It makes it much easier to get around if you have an organized group.

Do you want the big sites (especially if you haven’t been here in 20 years)? Or are you looking for just small cool things to do?

A cool thing to do in general- Temple Mount Sifting Project. A pain in the neck to get to by bus but pretty ok by car, it’s in a gorgeous park next to Har Hatzofim. 20 shekel for two ridiculously cool hours of sifting through dirt from Har Habayis for an archaeological dig. Until you’ve found a Bayis Sheni lamp in a pile of pebbles you can’t fully understand how cool that is.

Highly recommended.

PBA, DY- don’t we generally pick a rebbi/posek/mashpia who is on our wavelength? Perhaps they may agree- who’s to say what’s the chicken and what’s the egg in this case? It really seems like you’re being choshed bekesheirim in stam assuming that it’s just because they agree with the idea in theory that they are doing what their rebbeim are so vehement about.

Can’t it work the other way? How do we know that Rabbi Chareidi from Lakewood or Bnei Brak is sending his kids to single-gender schools because that is the psak of his rebbi? Maybe it’s the way he grew up that convinced him it’s a good idea. Maybe he’s been to so many frum schools his whole life that he doesn’t see why he WOULD go coed. Hey, maybe he read some article in the NYT about how great single-gender education is for girls. (R”L- now I’m the one being choshed… 🙂 )

I don’t think that anyone is denying that some questions are pretty universally “straw man” (though, from experience, I’d say that many chassidim do in fact ask those sheilos). The question is (and this is what you aren’t really clarifying) is which of those questions fall between obviously-halachic and straw man. One man’s straw man can be another’s “I can’t proceed without hadracha” issue.

It seems to me like a premise of your OP is that if MO people did ask daas Torah they’d be getting different answers and doing different things. I could easily be misreading but that was my impression. To use it as MY straw man, then, I personally have seen this to be untrue. From the rav’s perspective, I know a prominent rebbi and mashpia in the YU community and I’ve seen how he is inundated with hashkafic sheilos and how people will not embark on something (or quit it mid-go) upon his negative psak. And they’re STILL being told to sign a prenup…

The solution is obviously to have special shadchanim dealing with the yellow-liking population to match like and like so that the rest of us don’t have to deal w—

ahem

-so that it is easier for them to find their true bashert.

Joe: I laugh, because at the levaya I felt very self conscious as the only person reciting the tehillim with Havara Ashkenazis…

Now that I speak Hebrew more, I’ve gotten into the habit of saying Hebrew phrases that way. Half my friends are trying to switch over for everything but I won’t bother trying til someone actually proves to me that it’s more correct than Ashkenazis.

I’m working on mil-el vs mil-ra, though.

Just something interesting from R Aharon Lichtenstein’s levaya (that I’m sure most of you won’t agree with but that I think is still more than worth saying).

For context, R Aharon was not only a gadol baTorah, but rather also a PhD in English literature from Harvard.

The last maspid said that many people spoke of R Aharon as someone who was mattir. He was mattir reading secular books, he was mattir secular studies, etc. But no, this was not the case- he wasn’t mattir anything. As someone who spent his entire life in pursuit of excellence in avodat HaShem, he regarded everything we do as something in pursuit of that goal. If you believe in using the whole world (laHashem haaretz umelo’ah) in order to work on your avodat HaShem , then it’s more than just “something the Rav was mattir” but rather a chova. If it is not lesheim Shamayim and entirely for the sake of growing in avodat HaShem, by that token it would be assur.

I know that most of the population of the CR will probably disagree with most of the premise here, but I’m mentioning it here because it’s a fascinating perspective to have even for those with a more charedi, kulo Torah perspective. A lot of what this thread is arguing about is college as a bedieved and as a necessary evil, or about work as though it is not optimal. Even so, though, we can’t just divide these aspects of life into ikkar and tafel. We can’t just blow off the rest of life as though it’s valueless. Everything we do needs to be viewed through a lens of “is this helping me in my avodat HaShem? Is this giving me a new understanding of HaShem’s world and wisdom?” Even if it’s not the first choice way to spend your time, we need to be aware of the ways in which we need to bring HaShem into every aspect of our lives, even college.

It’s the 19th story.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t be so pedantic but that’s actually the subject of a chapter in one of the books.

Wow I loved those. Even the math one.

Shaychus- I thought that “lo kam beYisrael keMoshe od”…

Didn’t realize we had a Rav of equal stature in our dor.

Joe- you’d be surprised How many Israeli girls tremp. I know I was.

I’m in Israel right now and after hearing inside information from a search and rescue volunteer who was one of the first on the scene after the three boys Hyd went missing I have been thoroughly scared off tremping. I didn’t do it in the first place but now I thank HaShem that I never did. But in Israel there’s a huge tremping culture, especially in areas like the Gush and Shomron where buses are few and far between and people need to travel for school and jobs. I’ve passed the trempiada where the three boys Hyd were taken and it’s as well used as ever. The whole thing scares me. On the positive side, as a reaction to this, several towns and settlements have started to offer free hasaot at key times to prevent tremping.

In the US I never hitch and never offer rides. Caveat: I’m a girl, and every time yeshiva bochurim run up to my car at red lights to try to get rides they run back twice as fast to the curb when they see who I am… Funniest was when I forgot to lock my doors and the guy was practically in the car.

I now always lock my doors.

ETA- did not realize this was such an old thread… Oh well.

Very cool thing I learned in high school-

There is a well known experiment called the Asch conformity experiment in which subjects are placed in a room with several other people (all planted by the researcher) and all are asked which of several lines displayed is longest. When all of the confederates would pick a line that was clearly not longest, even when the person was sure the correct answer was different he would still pick the one chosen by the other in the room.

How did Solomon Asch conceive of this experiment? Back when little Shloime Asch was a seven year old boy in Poland he stayed up until the end of his first Seder and was told by his grandmother to watch the kos of Eliyahu because he was going to come and drink from it. He kept watching it and watching it until he was convinced that the cup was emptier because he was told it would be. After he grew up and became a well known social psychologist, he became intrigued by what has caused this feeling in him and created the conformity experiment.

My grandmother actually used to do that sometimes but she would jiggle the table first- maybe when I grow up that will be the next experiment.

/endnerdrant

Wow, I posted on way too many of those threads…

🙁

I actually was faced with the sheilah once of whether I should return cigarettes to a smoker.

On the one hand:

They were in a place where the person would find them if I did not return them

He used to smoke in such a way that many people (including me) were forced to spend hours inhaling the second-hand smoke

He had other cigarettes at that moment

Lifnei iver?

On the other hand:

Hashavas aveidah

He would keep smoking no matter what I did

I believe (IIRC) that I was told to return them.

I read a great teshuva from the YU roshei yeshiva that would assur smoking. I don’t remember if it touched the lifnei iver aspect.

I know that my grandfather used to smoke and was told by R Moshe that bemetzius he should not smoke so he stopped.

Lung cancer is not pretty.

(I am aware that very little of what I just wrote is germane as far as the matter at hand is concerned- I just have very strong opinions on smoking. The week after a relative of mine passed away of lung cancer I literally yelled at a yeshiva guy who was smoking. SO yeah.

My friend had to actually drag me away.

And he was also wearing a Kahane Tzadak sticker so that didn’t really help matters.

Boy, everyone will know who I am now…)

R Moshe holds that part of grufa uktuma is covering knobs…