I hate the guy so much it pains me to say this, but he’s probably the lesser of two evils when it comes to Israel.

Regarding “Living within your means”:

A decent sized house that can fit a couple with extra bedrooms for kids and guests, within walking distance to a shul, in a sizeable frum community goes for about 400k on the low end. So that’s a monthly mortgage payment of about $3000, tuition bills for two kids run you another $2000, kosher shopping (even being cheap) costs you about $1000, cars are $200-500. Then there’s taxes, repairs, saving for Yeshiva/Seminary, saving for marriage, simchas, and other various sundrys. You’re talking an easy $120,000 annual salary for even a small family.

Can someone please explain to me what low effort job will allow a family like this to “live within their means”?

There is a Rema that says that a test for bird kashrus is to put the bird on a wire, and see if it splits its claw with 3 toes on one side, and one on the other, or two and two. Modern egg laying chickens sometimes walk with two toes in front, and two in back. That’s where the shayloh comes from.

@Always_Ask_Questions We know how LLMs work, we just don’t know every detail of every machination in its network. From a technical standpoint, there’s little difference between LLMs and a Magic Eight Ball with weighted results that change at random for every question.

None of those items are an either-or thing. Like that guy from Harvard who talks about anti-Semitism is Chabad Yekkish Modern Orthodox.

I never liked calling myself “Zionist” for obvious reasons. However, these days “Zionist” seems to mean “does not want Israel to be destroyed and everyone killed or expelled”. So I guess, much to my great-grandparents (A”H) chagrin, I’m a Zionist in the eyes of the world.

@SACT5

Pluto will always be a planet

Nostalgia for your very educated mother serving pizza is clouding your eyes. Pluto only barely passed muster as a planet when it was discovered in 1930. Over the intervening years its status as a planet was called into question again and again and again, especially with the discovery of other dwarf planets, like Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake (they ran out of Roman avodah zoras and started using ones from different cultures). By the time Neil DeGrasse Tyson and the NYC Museum of Natural History Hayden Planetarium decided to get rid of it in 2000, its status as a planet hung by a thread. The decision of the International Astronomical Society five years later was only the last nail in the coffin. So if you’re going to insist that Pluto is a planet, start learning a new mnemonic. Maybe “My Very Educated Mother Can Just Sell Umbrellas, Not Party Hats However Magnificent.”

The frum oilom is EXTREMELY susceptible to propaganda and fake news.

Is it muttar to eat pork outside of a Sukkah?

Maybe talk to Misaskim about their beach chairs that they give out to batei aveilim?

I wish the frum oilom would stop fawning over Trump as if it’s some sort of mitzvah to put your full support behind him.

@sechel83 There are hundreds of quotes, but I thought Rav Aharon Feldman’s public letter was more well know. He says that anyone who believes that a dead man is Moshiach is dangerous and one should not associate with them nor entertain their beliefs. He’s one of the heads of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah and pretty much everyone else on it agrees with him on that.

Yes.

If you can get through Tisha B’av with the right amount of sadness and making your day truly meaningful, then by all means do! However, most children have a hard time getting into the right mindset of Tisha B’av. By the afternoon, most adults are too exhausted to really give that over. Learning Torah is out. So a meaningful movie, for all those children and hot+tired adults, is just fine.

@Dr-Pepper Just a quick reminder. You are defending Donald Trump, not the Ribono Shel Oilam in this comment thread.

You are again relying entirely on something the very unreliable and biased Bill Stevenson wrote about 35 years after his marriage ended that contradicts with everything everyone else said on the subject. Then you are saying that Stevenson is somehow more reliable than everyone else.

Looking at the classified documents case alone should be enough to know the differences between Trump and Biden. Trump spent all of 2015 ranting and railing about how Hilary Clinton should go to jail for keeping a classified computer system in her house. Then he goes and intentionally stores 10x more documents in boxes scattered around the place where any cleaning crew could just pick up and read. Then goes on and on about how he can legally do that because he was once president. Contrast that with Biden who had I think it was four or five single pieces of paper buried in hundreds of other papers in his filing cabinet. An offense, sure, but clearly an accident.

Frankly, Trump has done a lot of good but his abrasive personality, addiction to lying and hypocrisy, pritzus, scandals, alienation of people around him, and general insane rhetoric, makes me not want to vote for him. I don’t want to vote for a Democrat, but saying things like “justify to השם in the next world why they voted Democrat” sounds like those Xtian cow farmers from Alabama who are calling him Yoshke reborn.

Can you link to the thread? I have a vague recollection of arguing with someone on gun control where they used the same old tired NRA talking points. But I don’t want to discuss it unless I see it in front of me.

@sam-klein Amen! B’m’heira v’yameinu!

@Dr-Pepper You’re coming across extremely aggressive. I hope you’re not like this in real life, because the tone of your comment sounds like something that would get you a stern talking to if you were in shidduchim.

Anyways, I’ll address everything. My sources for how and when Joe and Jill met is mainly an oft-cited July 17th 1977 article in the Wilmington Morning News where they talk about how they met and have on numerous occasions corroborated the story. You can also look for an article in “The Review” titled “Behind the Stone Balloon” and a Vogue article called “All the Vice-Presidents Women”. As far as I can tell, the only source that Jill and Joe dated before her separation from Bill Stevenson is Stevenson himself. A secret he kept quiet about (including in divorce proceedings) until he wrote it in a book he published a few years ago.

So on one hand we have multiple contemporary reports, articles, statements from parties involved, and statements from people uninvolved. On the other hand, we have the questionable statements of a disgruntled ex-husband that you admit is very biased.

Now morality isn’t a zero-sum game, nor is it a contest. But if it were, Biden would win hands down. I mean, I repeat myself, but you’re basically comparing the standard immorality of the standard politician to someone who is literally off the charts in terms of immorality, gaivah, lying, cheating, and stealing.

I’m not saying to vote for Biden or Harris (I sure don’t want to!) but all this fawning over Trump as if he’s the goyishe Moshiach is ridiculous and frankly embarrassing.

Look, I don’t have an instant recall of every CR thread I commented in and I’m not even sure I even saw the comment where you listed my lies. So I honestly don’t know how to respond to all of that.

@ujm I want you to ask the three Rebbis and Rabbonim you are closest with the following question. If a woman has been separated for a year and has a get, but not yet a legal divorce. May she go out on a shidduch date or not?

@coffee-addict Is anyone voting for Doug Emhoff? Did lie and misuse funds to pay off that cleaning lady? Did he divorce his wife for that cleaning lady and is now parading her around?

@ujm Now you’re just picking at nothing. Do you prevent divorced women from dating a year later if they haven’t received their get yet?

@SQUARE_ROOT I would agree, however I think that both politicians stance’s on Israel are similar and the differences are exaggerated by the media. Neither wants to anger their pro-Israel voter base, nor get directly involved in the war. So both will continue to talk and talk while doing the exact same thing.

You know who else wants a truce? I want a truce. You probably want a truce. The only people who don’t want a truce are those terrorists who would rather die murdering people than see Israel continue to exist and those unfortunate Yidden who are fooled into believing that there is some sort of mitzvah to kill all the arabs and move into Gaza.

Do you know what I want even more than a truce? A guarantee that Palestinian terrorists will never harm innocent people ever again.

Jill Stevenson was separated from her husband for over a year when she met Joe Biden. They hadn’t formalized the divorce yet, so she was only technically married, but still very much single.

Trump, on the other hand, has always been a massive philanderer and has openly cheated on all three of his wives.

@sechel83 I listened to bits of the podcast you mentioned and while I heard Rav Schachter condemn many Chabadskers for worshipping a man, I did not hear him say that it’s OK to believe that Moshiach can come from the dead. Neither did I hear any of those other Rabbonim say such a thing. Regarding the “Kuntrus Shmo Shel Moshiach” you should read those haskomos a little more carefully. Rav Breitowitz and Rav Cohen are giving the most lukewarm approval for the kuntrus, and are both very adamant that Moshiach cannot be a dead man. The haskomos are basically saying that there may be some poskim who hold that it’s not outright kefira to believe so.

I am forced to conclude that your beliefs are biasing your senses into misinterpreting things you hear.

@dr-pepper I can answer for that. Trump’s lies are on a level of magnitude worse than Biden’s lies. It’s like comparing some college kid saying “I don’t like Netanyahu” to a rabid fascist declaring that Jews need to die and saying that they are both the same.

@sechel83 I want you to even out your hat and beard, dress more Litvish, and go around asking a random assortment of non-Chabad Rabbonim (Chassidish, Modernish, Yeshivish, whatever) whether there is anything wrong with thinking a dead individual is Moshiach. I am curious how many you will have to go through to find one that doesn’t give an immediate “no”.

@EchadHaemes I’m repeating myself, but you seem to be unaware how uniquely Chabad-centric your view point is.

First and foremost, the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Sichos were not meant to be learned b’iyun. He would have much preferred if his Torah would take a distant fifth place behind Gemara, Rishonim, Acharonim, and Halacha. Second, again, you have Gedolim like Rav Ruderman ZT”L who had the capacity to see more b’iyun in a “casual” reading of Torah than anyone alive can do in weeks, who learned Chabad Torah (Rav Ruderman was from a Lubavitch family and had daily sedorim in Tanya and other sifrei Chabad), learned the Lubavicher Rebbe’s sichos, and still didn’t see them as deep as some young bachur straight from Tzfas seems to see them. And he’s far from the only Gadol who did.

Have you learned Alei Shur? Pachad Yitzchok? Rav Hirsch? RAMCHAL? There are hundreds of sifrei hashkafa, most of which you’re probably unaware of. Who’s to say that learning b’iyun any of those wouldn’t have a similar epiphany that you achieved from one Gadol alone?

@EchodHaemes Saying that the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Hashkafa is “quantifiably different” is a uniquely Chabad perspective that I don’t think you realize. Again, outside of Lubavitch, Rav Schneerson ZT”L is viewed as one of the great gedolim of the previous generation. Not the greatest, but probably in the top ten. And yes, @sechel83, that perspective is held even by those who read his speeches and seforim.

@Always_Ask_Questions Exactly. So the concept of traditional wife who prioritizes homemaking never really existed in any extended capacity.