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It is unlikely that the mitzva of pidyun shvuyim applies to a person who was imprisoned for knowingly violating multiple laws solely for their own gain and possibly giving dangerous information to enemies.
@Syag-Lchochma I am not the originator, only the messenger. I am simply quoting Chazal. If Chazal is the platform that I am “so attached to” then I will stand by it and so should you.
The gemara in Kesuvos says “הכל בידי שמים חוץ מצינים פחים ” – “Everything is from Shomayim except for cold sickness and heat sickness”. The מפורשים explain that it means that if you slept with a window open on a freezing night and wake up with pneumonia, the fault is on you.
Tehillim rallies are nice, but an ounce prevention combined with a pinch of סכל a dash of השתדלות would go a lot further to help our situation.
All this kvetching reminds me of this old joke
Yankel sees his friend Moish in shul and asks him how the job search is going. “I’m ap-p-p-plying for a j-j-j-job in b-b-b-broadcasting as-s-s-s an announcer”. Yankel wishes him hatzlocho and moves on. The next week they meet up again, “Nu Moish, how did the interview go?” “Feh! I d-d-didn’t get th-th-th-th-the job, they’re all ant-t-t-t-t-ti S-s-s-s-semites!”
Some places, like Monsey, have hit 9%. Other places are also 3 to 4 times higher than NYC on average and rising fast. Several people passed away last week, and for every person who died there are dozens more in hospitals, and for every person in the hospital there are dozens more who are experiencing severe COVID-19 related health problems, and for every person experiencing severe COVID-19 related health problems, there are dozens more experiencing mental illness from being unable to go outside.
We should be doing everything possible to stop this from happening! Not pretending that it’s all over or that it’s not so bad!
@syag-lchochma I don’t appreciate the sarcasm. I thought we were having a good discussion before sorry that you had to get nasty. I’m sorry I wasn’t being clear before that the purpose of everything all the guidelines and personal responsibilities is so that we don’t have to shut down like we did in April. Masks and social distancing is important both because they allow us to continue with our regular lives without infecting people and putting them in the hospital and to allow sick and elderly people to be able to go out.
@reform-rabbi I think you misunderstood something that was said. Back in April (feels like a millennium) the CDC asked people to stop buying N95 masks because medical professionals need it and weren’t able to get it. Less than a week later they said that everyone should be wearing masks as much as possible when around other people.
I think we need to measure how many people are affected by mental illness vs. how many people are affected by coronavirus. Like, locking everything down such as we did in April will lead to more mental difficulties. Opening everything up like it was 2019 will lead to C”V thousands of hospitalizations, permanent lung damage, and even deaths. We have to find ways to keep things open while keeping people from getting infected. That is why the CDC guidelines are so important. If a kid wants to play at his friends house, they can both wear masks, stand apart, and wash their hands. If you want shul to be open, you can have a parallel minyan in the parking lot, Purell stations, and mandatory masks. That way we don’t have to worry about the social problems nor the debilitating health problems COVID-19 brings.
I’m not a Trumpkopf, but I feel like this was super misrepresented. If you hear the whole conversation it goes something like this:
Moderator: Why don’t you tell white supremacists to stand down?
Trump: Which ones? Give me a name.
M: The Proud Boys.
T: OK. Stand down. Stand by.
@Health Wasn’t Rav Moshe’s psak in regards to clinics that serve mostly goyim? What was his response when asked about the halachos of a Ben Noach?
Read the recent “Open Letter” from Rabbi Avi Shafran (spokesperson of the Agudah) co-signed by several Rabbonim. There’s no mitzva to vote for Trump. And to think that he’s so much better than Biden because of his position on Israel is misguided at best, and a dangerous precedent at worst.
I have no interest in voting a Red menuval or a Blue shoteh as President. However, I can see that people like Biden’s opinions on publicly funded programs that can help many Yeshivos and yungerleit who rely on the government for their healthcare and basic welfare. Very similar to Trump’s position when he ran for president in 2000.
@coffeeaddict Yes, the tests are only about 90% accurate. However, this individual was exposed to someone with the virus, experienced symptoms very similar to COVID-19, tested positive, and it lasted a while. There’s almost no chance he wasn’t reinfected.
Just like a person can get a cold a few months after recovering from one, one can also get COVID-19. Very scary!
@Milhouse What teshuva did Reb Moshe say that? The one I saw he calls it “similar to murder” but doesn’t actually call it murder, and still says that it’s necessary at times so the oilom shouldn’t follow the X-tian right wing and ban all clinics.
What does the Moetzes say about your side, since they are very clearly not anti-abortion?
@Reb-Eliezer Sorry, can you be a little more clear? I don’t think we are allowed to paskin from a pasuk like that, though I may be wrong. Is the Maharsha giving a psak halacha l’meisah? Does he say if there’s a difference in how far along the baby is? I seem to recall a gemara that states that there’s an early period of time where the fetus isn’t considered alive.
A guy I know (not from New York) was very sick from COVID-19 around Pesach time. Baruch Hashem he eventually recovered with only a nasty lingering cough for a few weeks afterwards. A few weeks ago he went to a chasuna where the ba’alei simcha weren’t careful about other people’s health, thinking he’s immune. Unfortunately he started feeling unmistakable symptoms a few days later and was tested positive.
COVID-19 is similar to the cold or the flu. Getting it once protects an individual for to three months to a year, max. After that, the immune system stops producing the antibodies and is open to re-infection.
@milhouse @rational @motcha11 @Reb-Eliezer
I usually trust @charliehall’s opinions on matters of politics and halacha, since he is a well known expert and talmid chacham. But I’m wondering what the other tzad is. My understanding is that the current “conservative” approach to abortion is based on Catholic ideology which is much more machmire than frum halacha.
How do your poskim, like the Tzitz Eliezer, shtim with Rav Moshe Feinstein’s famous teshuva on abortion clinics? Or the more recent lobbying of the Agudah (presumably with the guidance of the Moetzes)?
@syag-lchochma You wear a mask when inside, shul, stores, or simchas. That’s what counts. Outside is not as important, I can understand if you have asthma or something and difficult time wearing a mask 24/7.
I have never heard a doctor say anything but “please wear a mask as much as possible”. My local pediatrician, Dr. Zelenko, my friends who are doctors, Dr. Shanick, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, Dr. Jerome Adams, my co-workers who are epidemiologists, all say that if everyone wears a mask the disease will be halted. What country are you from? Maybe it’s a cultural thing that where you live doctors are against masks.
The mask being porous is a misconception. COVID-19 viruses can get through a mask, that is true. But it’s the medium in which they travel that the mask blocks. That medium is spittle and other bodily fluids. Try blowing out a candle while wearing a cloth mask. You can’t! Just like your breath is severely hampered, so to your spittle doesn’t get far, certainly not far enough to carry a COVID-19 virus into someone else’s mout.
Masks work. Everyone who is professionally educated about viral transmissions or works in healthcare are near-unanimous on that front.
@refoelzeev I don’t believe that’s 100% true. It may be more chamur for a goy, but I’m pretty sure under certain circumstances at certain times it’s still allowed.
@SyagLchochma Good to hear that you’re taking big weddings seriously and not having a huge crowd of potential plague vectors. I’m not sure what you mean by misinformation. Every doctor has been beyond clear on the topic: an infected person with a even a cloth mask on has almost no chance to spread the disease. Were you referring to N95 masks in regards to getting infected? I think that’s still true, that only an N95 or above can protect yourself.
Again, I like hearing that people like you are taking it seriously, despite all the misinformation out there. I’m glad you wear a mask all the time.
I pashut don’t understand people who keep saying “You don’t have to, I don’t understand, it’s confusing”. You put a piece of fabric on your face! The six year olds at my local cheder sit for hours with masks on, why can’t adults do the same?!
For all those here saying that abortions are murder, the reality of halacha is a lot more complex. Rav Moshe spoke about the issue as did many Rabbonim after him. For a recent example, the American X-tian right wing lobbies supported the Iowa so-called “Heartbeat Bill”. In contrast, the Agudah, with the guidance of the Moetzes, put out a public statement calling it against the Torah.
@SyagLchochma
I’m glad that you’re on here promoting mask wearing, especially with the horrific trend of people ignoring the major health crisis we are having. You are right: a mask won’t protect from COVID-19 germs, they are smaller than the mask which is why wearing a mask doesn’t prevent you from getting Coronavirus. You forgot to mention the other side of the coin, though. If someone with Coronavirus (probably asymptomatic and unknowingly) is wearing a mask, their breath doesn’t go much further than their face and it’s highly unlikely that they will infect anyone.
I had a different moshul I used on another thread. Imagine if everyone in a city carried a gun at all times with their finger on the trigger. No one knows which guns have blanks and which have real bullets. Despite the fact that most of the bullets are blanks, it’s still imperative that everyone keep the safety on at all time lest they accidentally pull the trigger.
So Rabboisai! Please please please wear a mask when you go out! None of us know for sure that we don’t have Coronavirus, so we have to be extra careful!
@Health That’s really hard to hear. I feel comforted, as I’m sure do you, when I walk into shul and see everyone wearing masks. Seeing that I know that even if someone chas v’Shalom, is sick (with or without showing symptoms) it’s very unlikely they will get me sick. Ignorant people walking around without masks make me nervous, how many people could they unknowingly infect? It’s horrible! And like you said before, sure there’s medicine to treat it, but why should we have to rely on getting hospitalized when there’s a perfectly cheap, safe, reasonable, and more effective method?
@n0mesorah People don’t like having their reality questioned. If they decide not to wear a mask, they are afraid when they hear the reality that they are a danger to others. So they attack.@n0mesorah What is a mask attack?
@Health No I think you’re mistaken. Lakewood is a town of yungerleit and Rebbeim, not of medical professionals, certainly not people who know more about medicine than medical professionals. The people you saw must have been sick. Healthy people who can wear a mask, especially Bnei Torah, aren’t so callous about other people’s lives to walk around without a mask on. Could you imagine what would happen if we gave one hundred people a gun but only one was loaded? Most people are pretty sure their gun doesn’t have real bullets, and even if it did, it’s not likely they would hit someone, and even if it did, most gunshot victims survive, right? I don’t see Lakewood people doing that, so I have a hard time processing what you saw.What do you think about it?
I feel terrible about that. There are so many people so sick that they can’t wear masks? Why davka Lakewood? Is there a lot of asthmatic people there?
I mean, considering Lakewood Rabbonim hold that people should follow the advice of Dr. Shanick and wear masks indoors, this must be something serious if so many unhealthy people who cannot wear masks are being forced to leave their homes in the midst of a pandemic!
Just last week we heard stories of previously healthy people who are now gravely ill due to catching COVID-19. Baruch Hashem it seems we will not have a repeat of six months ago will nebech so many meisim. Hashem has given doctors the knowledge how to treat most patients.
But we still have to be vigilant shomrim and make sure we keep our distance and wear masks! We never know if we may have COVID and so we should try as hard as possible to make sure people around us don’t C”V end up in the hospital medicated.
הכל בידי שמים חוץ מצינים פחים
Everything comes from Hashem. But if we aren’t watching our own health and the health of our chaveirim, then the sickness comes from the hands of Man.
Gevald! Are you serious? No one wearing masks? Mistoma, you’re talking about outside, presumably they put them on when they went in where the danger is much greater. So many Yeshivas had to close because of COVID spreading from unmasked talmidim. We all had a great Rosh Hashana and hopefully our tefilos went to Hashem’s ears to remove this machla of COVID-19 so people can stop getting sick and schools, shuls, Bais Yaakovs, batei midrashim, and Yeshivos no longer have to close to prevent people from getting sick.
HCQ+Zinc may work or it may not, but COVID-19 is still a deadly virus and we shouldn’t have to be somech on medicine like Remedisvir or ventilators. Especially when people fall gravely ill before they even know that they have it.
@Health There is a lot of evidence that HCQ doesn’t work. There is no evidence that HCQ+Zinc works. Baruch Hashem doctors have found regimes and treatments, including the drug Remdesivir, that there are mountains of data towards their effectiveness. So much so that the US has one of the lowest rates of death for people with COVID-19 in the world.
But do you know what’s more effective? Not getting it in the first place! Dying is only the worst thing that can happen to a person, but there are still other bad things that can happen. Many individuals with COVID-19 still experience horrific symptoms, some that last for months or are even permanent.
Even though US doctors have become experts at staving off people from dying of COVID-19, the US still has one of the worst death rates in the world because so many people have got the virus. And hospitals are still full of not-dead people too sick to breath on their own.
Can I chime in as a guy who knows a thing or two about computers?
As usual, everyone here besides @charliehall is either a leitzon or wrong. On 95% of modern laptops you can’t just remove a piece of it. The bluetooth, Wifi, and networking cards are usually either part of the motherboard or so ingrained with the electronics they can’t be tampered with without breaking something else.
Before you go about spending hundreds of dollars on something then breaking it, I would ask what you need a laptop for. There’s a good chance that whatever it is you are doing either requires the Internet at some point, or there’s an alternative.
I would suggest getting a computer with spyware installed through Guard Your Eyes or similar organization (BIG NOTE: They can see everything you do, including passwords. So don’t open an email account or bank online).
If that’s not an option, you need to find a tech-savvy friend that can to techiyas hameisim and install Ubuntu on a 12+ year old laptop with removable networking and no WiFi.
I haven’t seen any Medical Evidence that HCQ + Zinc doesn’t work for Covid19, when started within a Few Days.
I haven’t seen any evidence that rubbing raw beets between your toes doesn’t work for Covid19 when started within a Few Days.
This site also severely under-reported the open letter by Rabbi Avi Shafran and a few others that made the controversial statement that (gasp!) maybe don’t be a Trump cheerleader but look at politics objectively and through a frum lens.
I use OpenDNS and it allows VPN (Baruch Hashem, otherwise I would have been out of work for the last six months!). You may be able to get an exception if you call the company. Also, some filters allow a lot of customization.
While being a misnagid, I never understood Rosh Hashonna in Uman, I can certainly commend the people who are mamehs being מוסר נפש to go this year. Unlike previous years, where it was a simple few flights and a few days of Yom Tov, this year is over a month commitment to go. Not only do the מתפללים and Chassidim have to spend long hours on a flight and in airports wearing masks, but they will have to leave next week and stay in quarantine in Ukraine for two weeks before ראש השנה then another two weeks when they come home! This is an unprecedented level of commitment to Yiddishkeit and may we be zoche to see משיח this year in their זכות.
When I was Color War General we used “Birchas HaBayis” by MBC. The song “Yisroel” by Suki & Ding ft. Dov Levine was originally a Camp Rayim Alma Ater song.
For those still wondering if there’s legitimacy to Q, I used to spend a lot of time browsing far-right wing forums and watched the whole Q-Anon thing hatch from the beginning. They may not all be anti-Semites, but I have yet to find one who isn’t.
The whole zach started by a guy posting laughable cryptic predictions on the 4chan /pol/ message board. They would sign off as someone with “Q Level Clearance”. What’s funny is that this individual had a hilarious misunderstanding as to what US clearance levels are. The US Department of Energy has some individuals with Top Secret clearance that know where nuclear weapons are stored. On their badges, those people are labeled with the letter “Q”. This yutz thought that “Q” is some sort of sooper seekrit ultra high level clearance. Anyhoo, the messages themselves were ridiculous. Lots of nonsense that could mean literally anything, stuff like “The storm will not be slowed. Who runs the money? 7-16-2018 comes closer. Why is Syria without a bank?” People analyzed these like they are lehavdil a blatt Gemara, and ascribed meaning to garbage. That’s all it is and all it ever was. A silly movement based around believing a random anonymous narischkeit on a message forum.
The makor has little to do with the minhag. The Shaarei Teshuva mentions (I think Misha Berura chelek gimmel) that the Ari Z”L’s son went to the kever RASHBI on Lab B’Omer to give his son his first haircut.
Somehow that turned into “No haircuts until three then a big party”.
Electronic books. Most libraries (I think all major systems in the US) have tons of online resources. Including borrowing books that can be read on your computer, or handheld device. Check to see if your library has Overdrive/Libby, 3M Cloud, or Hoopla.
@syag-lchochma Baruch Hashem you are right. But my gut tells me that someone who ignores a positive test result is the same type of person who will walk around town without a mask on and maybe visit Bubbie and Zaydie.
The reason that things are what they are now and not like they were in March, is precisely because people are being careful.
@syag-lchochma People were dropping like flies all over NYC only three months ago. How soon we forget. Don’t you think that the responsible thing to do after receiving a positive test result would be to self quarantine? Even if there’s only a %50 chance it’s right, that means that there’s a %50 chance that you have COVID and will infect others, including some elderly or infirm people. Would you want that on your cheshbon?
Conversely, there are also a lot of false-negatives. You may be exposing and killing people left and right for NO REASON!.
“Chareidi” is an Israeli term that refers to Israelis who believe that the proper lifestyle for a Yid is to stay in Yeshiva rather than join the Tzahal.
“Yeshivish” is an American term that refers to a frum Jew who isn’t modern Orthodox.
They are two separate things that refer to two separate concepts, even if there is a lot of overlap.
Look, I believe in institutional racism because studies and evidence support its existence. If you don’t believe in it, may I suggest an experiment? Invent a black name, like, I dunno, Lamar Washington. Build up a fake resume that involves going to a historically black college and living in a black community. Make up a similar resume with the exact same specialties but a white name and background. Send them around and see what the results are.
Those talking about “contributions to society” can you please explain to me exactly what Jefferson Davis contributed to the betterment of society in the US?
@catchyourself I meant people <i>disagreeing</i> with you, sorry. First off, ignore @Joseph. She’s a troll who gets her jollies by saying extreme things than calling everyone who disagrees with her a koifer.
With that out of the way, what I’m trying to say is that I’m just irritated and offended by those people who claim that racism isn’t a problem and black Americans can just pull themselves up by their bootstraps or something. On the other hand, if there’s an issue in a frum community, these same people will often be the first to blame it on anti-Semitism. Du ken nischt getantzen en tzvei chasunas. Either racism and anti-Semitism exist in the US and are problems, or they don’t.
The worst, in terms of Torah, people I work and interact with are Jews who are openly kofer b’Shem. Some were even raised in frum, nurturing environments. I cannot hate them because I am not Hakadosh Baruch Hu and cannot judge them. So I love them and treat them with respect hoping to perhaps make a Kiddush Hashem. And the same, but different, goes for the goyim I work alongside irregardless of their personal aveiros.
What’s with NY not wearing masks anymore anyway? Did not enough people die the first time around we have to go for round 2?
For @catchyourself and everyone else agreeing with him, I have one thing to say:
There is no more anti-Semitism and you have to owe up to that.
If you can say that black Americans are “bullies” and there’s no more American racism, then there’s also no more anti-Semitism and every claim otherwise is just “what did I do?”