Or not- in my cursory check I couldn’t find what I thought I remembered- so while I feel bad to potentially be choshed bekesheirim, I think we can all agree that this topic is basically flogging a dead horse.

Takahmamash: Ooh! Ooh! Mine!

This year (because I’m in sem) will be my first year not at a hotel on Pesach and I’ve both heard every stereotype and observed each one broken at some point. I won’t ask why you have granite countertops (ours are Formica) or Florida vacations (never been) if you won’t ask why my grandparents decided to spend a lifetime’s hard earned money on (in part, after tzedaka and health care) giving themselves the pleasure of celebrating Pesach with the whole mishpacha in a way we all enjoy.

(The above is not exclusively addressed to TM, just BTW.)

My friend will be going to City next year for engineering… She went for a visit and found a sort of pathetic Hillel group with very few frum people apparently on campus but thinks that there’s potential for a really good experience. I’m sure she will be thrilled if there is another frum girl in engineering on campus…

I just traveled El Al- I don’t believe they weighed my carryon. I took a duffel bag, a small backpack and a purse and had absolutely no problems.

Has anyone ever used Gett/GetTaxi in Yerushalayim?

What are prices like compared to other local companies?

Is it safe?

Just remember- if you do have the hat in front of the rabbit, it may become so withdrawn and emotional that it may even retreat inside of the hat to mope. In which case there’s not much to do (if you ever want to wear the hat again) but simply pull it out.

Preferably in front of a paying audience, accompanied by a few card tricks.

yybc: Nooooooo….

I mean, seriously, for a community which defines itself by its respect for Torah and gedolei Torah, to also simultaneously mix this world of Torah with the sordid world of parliamentary politics, which inherently causes machlokes and the besmirching of Torah scholars and Hashem’s name- it’s disgraceful.

Just go to Israel and see.

This is not a boycott. This is a very belated financially responsible choice.

I agree with ubiquitin. It just wasn’t an intelligent comment.

As Obama is a public servant, criticism is perfectly valid and even warranted, considering that we are part of a government “by the people, for the people.” In fact, the ultimate criticism is not voting him back into office- and that’s the point of democracy. But ad hominem attacks are not criticism. He deserves those only in the same way that any other person would (generally, I’d say, not at all).

the plumber: I believe that most people do not wear a suit in front of the president because of kavod malchus, but rather because, over time, a certain etiquette has developed as far as the way we behave in front of a president. Or, perhaps, it may be kavod malchus (the position, but mostly the mystique, power and “coolness factor” of the office) and not specifically “kavod melech.”

There is also the Alisa Flatow Memorial Scholarship Fund – it is competitive and limited (requires an essay, etc) but it is open to all and takes into account financial need.

(In recent years it has skewed more MO, but historically it has taken people going to places ranging from BJJ and Hadar to Neve to The Conservative Yeshiva (which I’d never heard of until I saw it on the list, to be honest)).

This is also for boys, BTW.

That is not what happened, at least in the case I heard of.

I was talking with some people about this very topic- we were really discussing the Ethiopian Jews who came to Israel and underwent gerut lechumra, and we realized that we didn’t really know what the requirements were for someone to convert only lechumra and not lechatchila. Can someone please explain?

NE: We know that with Transfiguration it would be simple to make his glasses look nicer, and if Madam Pomfrey could fix Hermione’s teeth, regrow Harry’s bones, and basically anything else you can imagine, she could probably fix his eyes. The question is more why nobody does/did this. He may have just liked his glasses… after all, we have no evidence that they were still broken after he came to Hogwarts. (In fact, didn’t Hermione fix them on the train? I could be wrong about that- but Mr Weasley for sure fixed them in Book 2.)

Perhaps it’s linked to Gamp’s Law. Or maybe nobody was in the mood.

I have an Israeli phone and there’s some sort of thing where you can use Facebook to send free texts from the US to Israel. (I’m not sure if it’s just my company or not, though….)

showjoe: *blushes*

Considering how much I love that book, the fact that I didn’t remember that is super embarrassing.

I knew I remembered it from SOMEWHERE…

Basically, we’re trying to revive the old contest trying to derail (or at least temporarily reroute) threads with references to Sir Terry Pratchett’s 40+ book masterpiece.

Discworld is an amazing series.

If you want to know where you went wrong :), it was just mentioning the smallest measurable amount of time- on the Discworld, it was determined that the smallest amount of time measurable must be the amount of time between when the last king dies and his heir becomes king (before coronation- just by virtue of inheritance). The philosopher who deduced this, Ly Tin Wheedle, then deduced further the existence of the particles kingons and queons and owuld have gone even further if the bars hadn’t closed.

First of all, DY and PAA: thank you so much :). I really appreciate your good wishes.

PAA, you summed up what I was saying quite well. (I seem to have been repeating myself a lot without actually making myself clearer…)

DY, one of the things that I’ve been saying is that people assume that what’s going on is right just because it’s been going on. Perhaps it is, but it needs to stand up to sudden independent scrutiny even so. You make the point (or more precisely agree with PAA’s point) that the reasons not to allow it outweigh the reasons to allow it- but like I’ve been saying, those reasons still seem nebulous to me.

I read that article you mentioned, PAA, and I was not impressed. I think that her reasons why it’s a good idea are better than her reasons why it’s not. She makes the very good points that charedi women and their ideas and causes are underserved in the Israeli charedi community and then says things that she doesn’t back up and that I don’t understand- what makes a woman more spiritually vulnerable in the workplace than a man? (One of the sem teachers’ big pro-kollel arguments is predicated on the opposite idea…) What makes her think that the people who don’t want women in the Knesset want women in smaller community political offices or community organizations (beyond a gemach or chessed organization) anyway? How does she plan on getting women a voice- she’s not the first person who’s advocated for it…? She sounds like she’s forming all of her opinions to fit with her preexisting ideas and the status quo, which is just what has been frustrating me so much.

PAA, I can see issues with her arguments as far as why it wouldn’t davka require women to be in the Knesset, but otherwise I think that those points are sound. Yes, it’s true that women can theoretically get involved in other ways, but that’s not happening either. At the same time, the issues she mentions are important. And like I said, I wasn’t impressed with her rebuttal of these points.

DY: First of all, I apologize for my harsh tone in a lot of these posts, especially the last one. I unfortunately had a very hard week and was in a lot of pain and I overreacted to a lot of things.

I’m not denying that you respect women and I’m not saying that it’s impossible to respect women and still think they shouldn’t do certain things. The Torah says that as well.

I’m just trying to figure out how we can halachically figure out where the line rests. Here in seminary, we learn a lot of halacha out of the Shulchan Aruch and Mishnah Berurah. I wrote a term paper where I needed to carefully attribute my sources. We learned about the process of deciding halacha and it is based on precedent, pesukim, gemara, etc.

I have no problem understanding that a rav and posek may pasken that a woman shouldn’t be in the Knesset- I was just wondering if, in halacha, there is a specific don’t-cross-this-boundary point that makes something like the Knesset more of an issue than any other workplace.

That’s really it.

The best time to go to Chevron is on chol hamoed when they have Ohel Yitzchak v’Rivka open. It’s amazing.

No, it doesn’t address your question (I don’t have the answer, sorry…) but it had to be said.

It’s like the settlers Floating Market. It’s the best.

(And if you got that reference then I love you.)

PBA: So what are the defining differences between this “paradigm of MO-machmirness” and a yeshivish person? Because you’re making it sound like yeshivish is a default position and everything else is just a variation on the theme. I don’t think that’s so true- yeshivish people are also more likely to have a different attitude, for example, toward kollel, toward secular studies, college, women’s roles, etc. It’s not just exterior observances and movies and singing Hatikvah.

I’ve seen “MO Machmir” families and yeshivish families where the two families were indistinguishable, but they wouldn’t be able to have a conversation where they would be on the same side on an issue. I think that MO is (or should be!) more of a state of mind, not a “what do I keep” cheshbon.

DY: Considering that that’s the entire issue under debate, I don’t think that I can let you get away with that :).

Like I said: “My point is merely that people seem to be going by visceral reactions- “there’s no way this could possibly be acceptable, after all no charedi woman’s ever done it, so it must be a tznius issue” without pointing out why it’s halachically worse than going to the grocery without a burqa.” Or insert accepted female activity of your choice.

MDG:

Why would there be an issue of serara? She isn’t in a “unilateral position” of power- she’s one more voting hand in the Knesset.

And the whole concept of the tznius aspect is so murky and imprecise that in the hands of the wrong people it could be applied to justifying the sartorial choices of the burqa ladies. I’m not necessarily equating the two points, just saying that technically their argument is yours just after it has already slipped down the slope.

PBA: ?

How can a religion that has any mechanism at all for conversion possibly be an ethnicity? (Or, alternatively, how can it stay an ethnicity, however it may have started out?)

PAA: You’re for partnership minyanim now? That’s definitely a box…

🙂

I think you’ll find you need seven people. Or just take secretagentyid instead of me, though I’ll volunteer to start a N’shei.

And yeah, probably both are quite accurate. Or apply to different people.

oyyoyyoy: Just having like-minded people is generally nice. I had almost none until high school, and that makes me more sensitive to it than others may be.

I mean, I have out-of-the-box friends who seem to be a lot less hung up on it than I am, and I have some who don’t seem hung up on it but when I talk to them really are.

I’ll tell you what- I really don’t care what other people think my hashkafa is. I already have friends who wondered why I didn’t apply to BJJ and I have friends (as well as my eleventh-grade halacha teacher)who think that I’m halfway on the road to maharat-hood.

I want a place for myself, though, a place where I feel at home and where there is someone (SOMEONE!!!) who I can basically mostly (ish) agree with. I’m a hugely argumentative person but sometimes it’s actually nice not to need to fight things out. And then I think about things like- when I have my own family iyH what kind of school will I send my kids to? What kind of shul will I go to? Will I have any framework at all with people with whom I really belong?

I don’t care what other people label me- I just want to know where to go from here.

And PAA, I definitely agree with you-halfway- about being able to relate to more people this way- many of my friends who have stayed in the same community most of their lives find it hard to understand some things that others do, just because it’s not on their radar and because they’re used to a certain mindset. I know that I’m used to a lot of mental gymnastics as far as this is concerned so I feel somewhat less limited in that way and I find that it makes me more accepting IN GENERAL. However, I feel like because I don’t feel a specific kinship with any community, while I’m equally accepting, I’m likewise equally cynical…

oyyoyyoy: I can see your point but I don’t necessarily agree with it. I don’t feel the need to be a cookie cutter but finding a comfort zone is also important. After all, “o chevruta o metuta”- and having experienced the loneliness of friendlessness (in an environment) personally, I can tell you that a comfort zone is one of the most important things to have.

Pediatrician.

PAA: When I was about seven and I read that book I refused to say it because I was sick and tired of being a little kid.

When I reread it last year I found myself whispering it under my breath and I was mortified. 🙂