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One update is that Rabbi Kelemer is still recovering from the hit-and-run that happened a few weeks ago.
Joseph, that’s true in some cases, but when was the last time you heard of someone contracting polio or smallpox?
Molester is spelled with two e’s, not two o’s.
Re LB’s letter from Trump to Kushner: I guess Kushner’s not Big Gedaliah Goomber.
LB, there have to be two kinds of food. Water doesn’t count (not everyone knows this). Toothbrushes, floss, and shampoo certainly don’t count.
Lenny, it’s JCPenney.
Joseph, you must have really old suits. Syms went out of business in 2011.
LB, the OU website has a video entitled The Pareve Mesorah: Gelatin. Watch it and report back here.
It’s better the increase the matanos l’evyonim and minimize the mishloach manos. Most of the stuff we get is stuff we don’t want.
RY23, there’s certainly some question about the claim that Zoroastrianism is monotheistic. In some senses, it’s dualistic.
LB, some (maybe most) pareve gelatin is derived from cattle. The stuff from fish is good enough for marshmallows and not much else. There may also be a question of where in the fish the mercury accumulates (the gelatin is made from fish skin).
Avi K, you ignore the fact that they weren’t required to go to the festivities. Why couldn’t they have stayed home with their young kids and had a meaningful Shabbos? That would have been a real kiddush Hashem.
Joseph, I believe there’s a machlokes regarding whether Christianity is AZ. OTOH, I don’t know if anyone paskens it’s OK to enter a Christian sanctuary (as opposed to entering a Catholic school to provide services or a social hall for a meeting or to vote).
B”H we don’t have a king in America, at least yet.
lightbrite asked about a Jewish president being inaugurated on Friday and CTL pointed out that Friday at noon isn’t Shabbos. But what about January 20 falling on Shabbos (as it will in 2029)? Maybe there would be a private swearing in like there was for LBJ.
The information about Trump’s bedtime reading came from a Vanity Fair article in 1990. Here’s the relevant part:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a prominent anti-vaxer. He met with Trump a couple of weeks ago. Trump’s spokesman said they discussed vaccines. After the meeting, Kennedy said Trump had asked him to “chair a commission on vaccination safety and scientific integrity.” The Trump transition team later denied it. In any case, Trump has in the past tweeted anti-vaccine messages. Of course, if you look at Trump’s opinions over the years on many topics, they’re all over the map.
Joseph, most American voters likewise voted against Trump, and today most Americans seem to have an unfavorable opinion of him. If you believe the latest Fox News poll, Hillary and Trump are equally disapproved of. They each have 55% unfavorable, of which 44% are strongly unfavorable.
My daughter went to a well-known Brooklyn high school. On the first day, one of the girls was sent home because her skirt was too long.
Health, most of the country voted for Hillary.
I suspect that a few hundred years ago, at least in eastern Europe, very few varieties of produce were available, and the ones that were — potatoes, onions, beets, etc. — didn’t have infestation problems.
You could invest in Muslim banks, which apparently use something like a heter iska.
Unless they’re in a location that’s exposed to dampness, mezuzahs are less likely to become pasul than are tefillin. At least that’s what a sofer told me, IIRC. It makes sense to me.
I haven’t checked prices recently, but I suspect it costs at least 10 times as much to buy a decent quality mezuzah as to have one checked.
The last case I was on was a civil case and a judge was there. Again, this was a few years ago and it was in Queens. It may have changed, and it may vary by jurisdiction even in the same state.
Joseph, I haven’t served in a few years, but in my experience, the judge was there when the jurors were being questioned. This was in Queens.
Joseph, think of poor Zevulun.
lesschumras, you must not live in New York. If you do NY state jury duty, even just showing up and being dismissed, you’re exempt for 6 years.
Avi, your use of the term “clergy exemption” is the point of contention. It implies that clergy are automatically exempt. As CTL points out, there’s no such thing in CT and as iacisrmma points out, there’s no such thing in NY. I just checked out MA and NJ, and there’s no such thing there either. I leave it up to you to check out the other 46 states.
CTL, I couldn’t believe that there’s no riverboat cruise company based on the Mississippi, so I googled it. There’s the American Queen Steamboat Company in Memphis. Either this is a subsidiary of one of your friends’ New England based companies, or there are more than two river cruise companies in America.
Lightbrite, you need a good mnemonic for remembering how to spell mnemonic.
Pneumonic: of, relating to, or affecting the lungs, as in pneumonic plague, which is more virulent than bubonic plague.
I once served on a jury in a case where a guy shot his neighbor over a parking space.
iacrisrmma, while it may be true that in NY you generally only serve one day if you don’t get picked, I don’t think that’s the official policy (unlike Massachusetts, which has a “one day or one trial” rule). The last time I did NY jury duty, I was put on a panel for a medical malpractice case, and as luck would have it, one of the defendants was a doctor I had used. I was sent home that day. Years ago, I sat for several days before being dismissed.
In NY, once you serve, you’re exempt for 6 years, not 8.
Federal jury duty has different rules. I just got excused from Federal jury duty based on something that I don’t think would have gotten me out of NY state jury duty.
You have to remove all the blood from blood oranges.
Until the British adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, they (and the American colonists) celebrated the New Year in March.
There are barber shops in BP that have “We perm payos” signs.
Esav.
It doesn’t take an aficionado to tell the difference between decent brewed coffee with milk and TC with milk. (I haven’t used sugar in 35+ years, so I can’t vouch for that.) If you’re talking about Folger’s or the like, you may be correct that TC is just as good, but just as good as bad brewed coffee isn’t a very high standard.
Joseph, does the government have the right to be a nanny state and disallow parents from marrying off their 6-year-olds?
On Fridays in the summer, many shuls have mincha at a fixed time followed immediately by Kabbalas Shabbos. Sometimes you end up with both mincha and maariv in the same “time zone” (to use Geordie’s nomenclature). I know one shul that does this every day (not just Friday).
I once needed to daven an early mincha when I was traveling. A little research revealed that a certain nursing home had a mincha that I could make. Much to my surprise, it was immediately followed by maariv even though it was long before plag. I was told that it was too difficult for many of the residents to make it to the shul later for maariv.
RR613, surely when you wrote “coffee” you meant “the coffee room.”
LuL, NYC is one of those places. Google “sanitation worked fired for accepting tips.” Sanitation workers want to be treated like police, and it’s obvious why it’s illegal to tip police.
Probably really large too.
When Moshiach comes, we’ll all be whisked to E”Y, correct? So isn’t buying a plot in Chutz L’aretz tantamount to saying you don’t think Moshiach will come in your lifetime?
iacisrmma, why would you use onion powder and garlic powder when you can use actual onions and garlic? I use tamari and a hefty amount of cumin. I sometimes substitute cracked corn (aka hominy) for barley (a good way to make it gluten free, if you have guests who can’t have gluten).
Since a decedent is a dead person, it’s not surprising that your decedent yogurt smells bad, but it is surprising that it smells like fish.
What’s a resteraunt? A sleeping sister of your parent?
Joseph, if the United States had annexed Kosovo, your comparison would be valid. It’s one thing to support a breakaway or a coup, it’s another to annex the territory of a sovereign nation. It’s reminiscent of Sudetenland.
It’s obvious that Russian nationalists, including Putin, are trying to undo the breakup of the USSR. I don’t think they’ll be happy until the western former Soviet republics fall under their hegemony (I suspect they’re happy to get rid of the various Stans, since they’re predominantly Muslim).
Joseph, in 1994 the leaders of the US, UK, Russia, and Ukraine signed an agreement (the Budapest Memorandum) that stated that Ukraine would give up the nuclear weapons that the USSR had kept there. Here’s part of the agreement: “The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.”
When Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, it broke this agreement.
BTW, Ukraine was not the first country in which Russia covertly supported a group of ethnic Russians who wanted to remake the borders of former Soviet republics. There’s also Transnistria (a breakaway from Moldova, and the only territory that still has a hammer and sickle on its flag), Abkhazia, and South Ossetia (both breakaways from Georgia).
So it’s OK to invade a sovereign nation and take over their territory because your toady (who was incredibly corrupt) gets thrown out?
And this is OK (from The Economist, regarding Aleppo)? “Adding to the slaughter, the Russian air force is using more sophisticated weapons. Among them are the TOS-1A, a form of giant flamethrower that can also fire thermobaric missiles that suck oxygen out of the air and create huge blast waves; the BETAB-500, a massive bomb that penetrates buildings before exploding; and the RBK-500, an incendiary cluster munition.” And if you say the rebels deserve what they get, please note that half the casualties are children.
I don’t remember how Caesar began (that was way back in 9th grade), but I do remember the beginning of the Aeneid (more recent, in 12th grade): Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris.
Maybe huju has been reading Caesar’s Gallic Wars. Caesar wrote about himself in the third person. While he was undoubtedly a leader, it remains to be seen whether Trump will be.