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Health, the common term is birth parents, which has only one more letter that real parents.
Joseph, for privacy reasons, I don’t want to go into more details.
As Gamanit pointed out, it’s very unusual to have no clue who the birth mother is. The birth father is a little trickier, but in many cases, it’s a non-Jew. Even if the child was left on the doorstep, he can marry a convert. Likewise, a mamzer can marry a convert (though the children will be mamzerim).
Health, the term “real parents” is offensive to adoptive parents. There are plenty of reasons other than lack of money that birth mothers give up their children. Illness is one.
I think in many cases, children seek out their birth parents because their adoptive parents weren’t honest with them. From the time we brought them home, we told our kids that we had adopted them. They’ve never expressed much interest in finding their birth mother. I know of other adopted children who weren’t told until they were older, with bad consequences.
Does R’ Kanievsky approve of pocket watches for men?
Joseph, I don’t know the details. When I knew the couple (only very slightly) they were already elderly. Someone else told me that they had adopted a non-Jewish baby who rejected Judaism when he came of age. It’s not exactly something one would ask them about.
In the case I know of a child who rejected the conversion, the family was quite frum.
Yichud is not always an issue with adoption. When we adopted, we were told it was not an issue for us. Unfortunately, I didn’t ask for an explanation, and I can no longer ask that posek for one.
I know of a situation where a woman with children converted and married a Jew. Her non-Jewish children lived with them. The couple went on to have children, and the non-Jewish children were not a good influence on the Jewish ones.
Lesschumras, I suspect the cases of mamzeirus are uncommon. Even in those cases, it’s certainly better for a Jewish child to be raised by Jews than to be raised by non-Jews.
ZD, you equate Michael and Ashley? Michael is a Jewish name.
I visited R’ Kanievsky several months after R’ Elyashiv’s petira and I was not told to remove my wristwatch.
Yes. I know of one.
$1600 in 1983 dollars is almost $4000 in 2017 dollars. Different strokes for different folks, but I’m happy with the $40 Seiko I got on eBay. I expect it will last at least 15 years, as did my first Seiko.
Health, if they adopt non-Jewish children, those children can decide not to accept conversion when they come of age. It happens.
Our posek told us to adopt a Jewish child.
RY23, adoption agencies try to make adoption easy for birth mothers. Adoption is more difficult for prospective adoptive parents simply because it’s in society’s interest for them to be suitable parents. I’ve never been a birth mother, but I am an adoptive parent.
Joseph, you didn’t answer my question about whether a Rolex is jewelry.
Wow, who’d a thunk that Alex Jones participates in the CR as “ready now?”
When I was on COBRA a few years ago, I paid over $1600 a month. I just heard a guy on radio say that he pays $2500 a month for family coverage. That’s $30K per year. With Trumpcare, somebody in their early 60’s with pre-existing conditions would almost certainly pay much more.
Unfortunately, there’s still a stigma attached to birth mothers who give up their children. People notice when a woman is very pregnant one week, not pregnant the next, and there’s no baby around. People don’t notice when a woman who’s not obviously pregnant has an abortion. That may be one reason that birth mothers sometimes back out of adoption plans and decide to raise their children themselves.
We see from the incident of the eigel that men and boys wore jewelry. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable these days, since we also see that Rivka Imeinu wore a nose ring, and it’s probably not the kind of thing a Bais Yaakov girl would wear today.
Joseph, I understand that a Timex watch isn’t jewelry, but what about a Rolex? It’s [over]priced like jewelry.
I’m wondering how Trump got through Wharton. He doesn’t read and he seems to be dumber than a stump. CTL, any ideas?
Joseph, true sign languages are more associated with cultures or localities than with spoken languages. For instance, in the U.S. there is American Sign Language (ASL), while in Britain there is British Sign Language (BSL). Neither one is called English Sign Language because neither one is based on English. In Israel, there’s ISL, not HSL. To answer the OP, Wikipedia has a list of sign languages, and there’s no mention of Yiddish. There is a moribund Algerian Jewish sign language.
Shudder.
I’ve been to a bris in the morning where the seudah was fleishig.
I believe this arms sale is much bigger than previous ones. The big problem with selling advanced arms to places like Saudi Arabia is that somewhere down the line, the may fall into the hands of people who aren’t as restrained as the Saudis. Remember, the U.S. sold lots of arms to the Shah.
Repugnican is easier to pronounce.
I don’t think there are a lot of rentals in Matityahu. There are no apartment buildings and the houses aren’t cheap.
Here’s a portion of an editorial Baum wrote in 1890:
The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism.
Trump seems to be a big fan of KFC. Are there any KFC franchises in Israel?
There’s a well-known theory that the Wizard of Oz is a political parable about the conflict between those who supported the gold standard and those who supported the silver standard. In the book, Dorothy wore silver slippers, not ruby slippers, Oz is the abbreviation for ounce, the yellow brick road represents gold, the Emerald City represents paper money, etc.
FWIW, L. Frank Baum favored the annihilation of the remaining Native Americans.
The proper emoji for a vort is a toad.
My point was that it was very common around the turn of the century for Jews to be mechalel Shabbos (the fire was on Shabbos, and a large number of the victims were Jewish). I don’t think there are any statistics that show how many Jewish immigrants were shomer Shabbos (which to me is a minimal standard for living “in harmony with Jewish observance”), but the Triangle fire demonstrates that it was quite common for them to be mechalel Shabbos.
Unfortunately, one doesn’t have to go back to the Holocaust to find examples. There was Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. who set out to kill Jews at the JCC in Overland Park, Kansas three years ago. He ended up killing three non-Jews.
CTL said: “The vast majority of the pre 1924 Jewish immigrants to the US wanted to live the American dream in harmony with Jewish Observance.” Maybe they wanted to, but they didn’t. Four words: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
Skunk spray is universally repulsive, and not just to humans. That’s why it’s an effective defense mechanism.
If you are deemed to be abusing return privileges, the store will most likely ban you. As regards the halacha, I believe this is considered geneivas daas.
Getting rid of the electoral college is not a matter of changing the law. It requires a Constitutional amendment. It’s very difficult to amend the Constitution, as can be seen by the extremely low number of them (only 17 after the Bill of Rights).
Unlike Ben Carson, Health and Trump didn’t give up name-calling in third grade.
While the FBI director serves at the pleasure of the President, his term is set at 10 years, which obviously means he normally serves under multiple presidents. The only previous president to fire an FBI director was Bill Clinton, who fired William Sessions after Sessions refused to resign despite accusations of corruption.
I predict that Trump will not serve out his term. There are many scenarios that could lead to this, but I’m not going to go into them now.
Boroughist!
You are using chicken livers, right? They’re naturally sweeter than beef liver.
Most people use something like cursive for their signatures.
CTL, if you google “Chinese ballpoint pen engineering” you will find numerous recent articles on reputable websites (Fortune, Bloomberg, the BBC) about how the Chinese have cracked the apparently difficult engineering problem of making the balls for ballpoint pens. Think about how high tech items are very expensive when first introduced but later become dirt cheap. Once you’ve mastered the process, it’s not expensive to mass produce them.
I was also in elementary school circa 1963. IIRC, at some point the teacher issued stick ball point pens to the students. We weren’t given a choice as to what pens to use. Nobody used fountain pens.
Fountain pens are a newfangled invention. Tnere’s no need for an ink bottle on every desk with fountain pens. Unless you’re writing a novel, you can fill them a couple of times a week. I used fountain pens probably from high school into my 30’s. I don’t like the force required for ball point pens. Today I use gel pens.
Ink bottles on students’ desks date back to the era of dip pens (aka nib pens), which held only the amount of ink that the narrow slit in the nib could hold.
I believe the reason ball point pens used to be so expensive is that the ball has to be precision engineered. Apparently until very recently, the Chinese did not have the capability to manufacture the balls, so they had to import them to make ball point pens. The story of their “breakthough” was all over the news earlier this year.
Gadolhador, why substitute whole grains for beans? Beans have less total carbs than whole grains, more protein, and roughly the same amount of fiber. I suppose you could use unhulled barley as a substitute for pearled barley.
LuL, thanks for the explanation. I thought it was because 5 Iyar is the first of BeHaB. It would be ironic if some shuls were saying selichos while others were saying Hallel.
Smith is a relatively common Jewish name, possibly since many Jews were smiths of one kind or another (goldsmiths, silversmiths, and even blacksmiths). One well-known Jewish Smith is Morris Smith, who ran the world’s largest mutual fund.
Many years ago, I took something to a place on 47th Street in the Diamond District for repair. But I like chilliworker2’s suggestion, since I also have a becher that’s quite banged up. Maybe I’ll take it to Israel on my next trip.
If you don’t recognize the number, don’t answer.
You don’t see just one wild boar. They travel in family groups, sauntering in the roads like a large, ugly, scary version of “Make Way for Ducklings.”
Speaking of which, there’s a story in the news about a group of ISIS terrorists who were killed by a stampede of wild boars. When the ISIS guys go to heaven, will they get 72 pork chops?
Golfer, did you know there are wild boars in Israel? I’ve seen them in the Kiryat Sefer area.
I suspect spaghetti is older than spaghetti squash. According to one source, it was introduced by Sakata Seed Co. of Japan in 1934 but may have originated in China.
Dear Confused: If he’s learning full-time, he doesn’t have time to boss you around.