Ironically, “Am Hanivchar” isn’t from Chazal. The phrase probably originates from 19th century anti-Semites.

Thank you bigots and anti-Semites of the world over for reminding us that we are in galus.

@Joseph Your trolling schtick to get people angry may have been funny once, but now you’re just being dangerous. Telling people that measles “aren’t so bad” is validating the horrendous activities of the so-called anti-vaxxer crowd. Please think about what your doing.

@Joseph You’re reading the statistics wrong. I’m not sure if you’re doing this in-character, or you’re honestly unclear about the situation. Irregardless, there are probably people who believe as you do with misleading statistics.

For a person that has measles, they are far more likely to end up in the hospital than a person with the cold or flu. And the less people that vaccinate, the more likely someone from a family that does vaccinate will get the disease. That’s why anti-vaxxers and their apologists (“I personally vaccinate, but I understand bla bla bla…”) are a danger to us all.

@akuperma Yes, Baltimore is for the most part a single frum community with one Vaad and one major hechsher, which is amazing. But Chabad has always operated independently as its own thing as Chabad is wont to do in frum communities. The Chassidishe community/cheder is kind of artificial. The entire thing is a multi-Chassidus kollel supported by one guy and they also operate in seclusion with little interaction with the major frum community.

@tralala1 People don’t care about how you’re dressed or where you go for vacation as much as they do in New York. People wearing last-years style and going to their in-laws in St. Louis for Yom Tov is not something that even elicits a passing comment.

There are no Chassidish schools. Just one playgroup and it’s only for members of the Chassidish kollel. The closest thing you’ll find to a “mainstream” school is Torah Institute for boys and BY for girls. Both have a larger variety of backgrounds than you may expect in NY (like, kids with TV and also kids who’s parents learn in kollel for life), and they are excellent schools.

Beazer is a Maryland goyish developer that built a huge development next to the frum community. It was the In place for a while, but it’s kind of Out these days. A Beazer house will still run you 600k for four bedrooms and an unfinished basement, and they are almost impossible to get. Summit Park is very In and just as close.

Assur according to the Gemara. The couple has to have a choice and they must meet beforehand.

The Satmar Rebbe Reb Yoel ZT”L put a stop to the practice many moons ago, but many Chassidim unfortunately refused to listen to his psak.

@Joseph, I’ve never wanted to use nivul peh on a troll as much as I do to you. I don’t know why you still get to me, everyone here knows you’re faking it. There’s actually far less crime in Baltimore than NYC, Lakewood, or Monsey. I can’t name a single Baltimorean who went to prison, but I can name many from NYC, Lakewood, and Monsey.

@tralala1 if you’re asking if something is “suitable for in-town” you’re probably going to be disappointed no matter what the situation is as you’re clearly already judgmental and/or sheltered.

I second @Gamanit. The Brother HL line are excellent printers.

I disagree.

Goyim have always had anti-Semites in their ranks and have always covered for them. Whether it’s the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Green Party, or the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia, there are anti-Semites and people make excuses for them.

Let’s get this straight: There’s one person you’re talking about (Ilhan Omar) who made some comments that were intended to criticize Israel, but worded rather anti-Semitically. She was roundly criticized by her entire party and that should have been the end of it. But now every time she speaks about foreign policy, some idiot in the ADL or NY Post is trying to make it as if she asked for another Holocaust.

Meanwhile, our beloved President has said far worse and gotten away with it. Steve King R. IA has had openly racist and anti-Semitic views for a long time and the worst that’s happened to him is that he doesn’t sit on any major committees.

So by all means, make fun of Jewish Democrats! But don’t come crying to daddy when your own Republican hypocrisy is revealed.

A friend of mine was in a seforim store buying his arba minim. A Rosh Yeshiva of a small local high school walked in behind him and starts hemming and hawing over the lulavim. He was frustrating the moicher, so he starts ribbing him. “Hey, Rabbi Ploni was here yesterday and kvetched that you hadn’t paid him in weeks”. The Rosh Yeshiva mumbled something about bad finances and they went veiter. The moicher then started a new topic “Rabbi, lately I’ve been having a terrible Yeitzer Hora. I have a huge tayva for an aishes ish” The Rosh Yeshiva was shocked and started telling him how terrible it is and he has to keep away at all costs. The moicher then responds “well, you’re being oiver on a d’Oraysa too, so I guess that makes us even”.

I’m bothered by it. But I recognize that there’s little I can do. So I try my best. Most of my browsing is on incognito mode. I don’t use my real name on any social media. I buy from a variety of online and brick+mortar retailers. I never use store credit cards.

Basically, as long as you’re happy living like it’s 1998, you have nothing to worry about.

New topics are infrequent enough that they all end up on the front page anyway. I never check the specific topics.

Yes. As an 8th grade Rebbi in the school I went to once said “Black shoes must be black like a RACIST_EXPLETIVE_DELETED with a closed mouth”

Professor Quirrel may have something to say to the Great Hall about something in the dungeon.

What a pretentious and offensive question. Don’t you feel like your life would be better off supporting a family and sacrificing your precious spare time for some Mussar or Limud instead of being all smug and self-righteous on the Internet?

In my opinion pictures are stupid and serve zero purpose. But this is the way the world works, thanks to increasingly ridiculous demands (mostly from the parents of people in shidduchim, and the shadchanim capitulating on said demands).

But if you really want to do pictures, there has to be an agreement with the shadchan that both parties will receive each others picture. Otherwise it’s just prust and arrogant to ask.

1. What does the ‘S’ in Harry S. Truman stand for?
2. How many hours of sleep does the Mashkiach reccomend for the bachurim?
3. How expired does your registration have to be before you get pulled over?
4. What is the state of CR?
5. How hot does your mother have to be before she lets you out of the house without a jacket?
6. Who wrote the Constitution of the United States?
7. What is the name of the gnome who lives in the big mushroom in my backyard?
8. Who is the current head mod of CR?
9. Why do people say Chava ate an apple?
10. A user on Usenet invented 🙂 when he wanted to clarify that his sentence was sarcastic. That’s accepted to be the origin of the emoticon, but it’s not technically an emoticon. In the 1990s, messaging software started automatically changing 🙂 and 🙁 into 🙂 and ☹. Later, features started to become standard where the user can insert a “face icon” into their text, but that was limited to the application used for the message and non-standard. Japanese tech companies in the 2000s went a little overboard with these icons and started added tons of them into their custom messaging applications. When the Unicode Consortium sought to standardize international character sets, so that every device can read a webpage in any language without having to install specialized fonts, the asked each county to submit a set of characters in their native language. Japan sort of raised their hand “Um… we’ve got a standard pictographical alphabet, phonetical alphabet, ancient alphabet, and this thing with pictures that the kids are really into that we call ’emoji’ “. The Consortium was like, “K”, and that’s how we got emojis! 🤡👾💙✌💅🧙🦽🤹🐹🥐🕍🕍🕍

DO NOT LISTEN TO @DaasYochid. Any printer (and I emphasis any) that costs under $100 is simply not worth it. Those are ink-based printers whose cartridges only last 100 or so pages and cost about $50. You’re not buying a printer, you’re signing up to a subscription service for printer ink.

Get a laser, preferably Brother, and expect to spend at least $200 up front. $300 if you want the all-in-one.

Nah. They are usually eight to ten feet tall, grey mottled skin, covered in warts, live under a bridge, and constantly say things like “Rachmono litzlon! A REAL frum Yid would never have a smart phone!!!!!!”

Anyone remember how Mincha-Maariv would start right before shkiya, then take a ten minute break (during which the Rov will usually give a shmuez) followed by Maariv after tzeis?

Breuers I believe was the first American shul to start relying on kulos and doing Ma’ariv right after Mincha. I believe everyone else started when half of Monsey would pack into KAJ every evening.

@AvrohomAdler if you’re asking an Internet forum, you shouldn’t be doing it. Whatever question you have, you’re better off asking a Rov. If the Rov holds that a Goirel is the way to go, he will do it himself.

Ok, I’m going to have my fun for tonight, then watch these fireworks for another few weeks.

@doomsday:

1. “Thousands of parents report autism after vaccination”: Already shlugged up dozens of times in this thread. Diagnosis and symptoms for autism happen around the same time that kids get their first shots. That’s why you need scientific double-blind studies. Which there were. And they showed zero correlation.
2. “Autism rates went to 1:10”: Shlugged up time and again. We simply got better at diagnosing autism instead of declaring everyone retarded or slow
3. “Hundreds of studies” No there aren’t. You claim that that there’s a list of hundreds of studies, but the only list any of us found contained hundreds of studies that did not show a link between vaccines and autism. I even provided an article that debunked the studies one at a time, but you waved your hands and dismissed it because (and I quote) “The guy who wrote it is a doctor and can’t be trusted”.
4. “CDC never did a comparison study”: Yes they did. You just have a very narrow criteria (based on your vast knowledge of science and years of dedicated study, no doubt) of what you expect a comparison study to be and the CDC never hit that.
5. “Fraudulent CDC studies”: Only a small handful out of many many other studies. Not enough to even cast a shadow on the research. And in the worst offenders, the fraud was monetary and didn’t affect the actual data or research (the Danish Study).
6. “Unvaxxed kids have less autism”: There’s one study that people claim shows this, but you’re simply misinterpreting the results. Have you ever done what I suggested and emailed the authors to see if they recommend vaccinating? The results may shock you.

A real conspiracy theory? Hillary Clinton bought votes to get elected senator in 2001. There were three people in jail for defrauding the government out of quite a bit of money. Hillary went to campaign in their small, near-insignificant, hometown and spoke with the guy in charge behind closed doors. Very little was said about what was discussed, and the town overwhelmingly voted for her. Several months later, her husband stepped down from the position of President and among the dozens of pardons were three men in prison for fraud.

@Health Narischkeit. Planned Parenthood and other places of its ilk is an absolute necessity in America where poor people have limited access to pregnancy and birth control education and care. No federal funds go towards abortions by law. The wall costs 5 billion, the amount in the Planned Parenthood federal budget was 500 million, or about 10% of what the wall would cost.

And I have no doubt that the wall can be effective in small areas, but that’s only because they have less secure areas they can cross into. If the wall would cover the entire border, I highly doubt you would see much difference. Better funding of US border patrol agencies and local PD along with more incentives for private companies to hire citizens and legal workers costs a lot less than five billion dollars and will go much further than a wall.

It’s a machlokes Rishonim if Christianity is A”Z or not. Last I checked, Rabbonim have absolutely no problem voting for Christians. Why should a Hindu be different?