St. Moritz

@kfb It was never stated in the Constitution what “marriage” means. I think you are referring to the Defense of Marriage act, which lasted a few years but was repealed by Supreme Court ruling.

These people are only not considered married, because the Torah defines what marriage is for us. So let the government re-define marriage to be whatever they want it to be. Let people marry their cars if they want to. Why should I care?

@shmoel The Briskers accept money from the State. There are thousands of Briskers in Eretz Yisroel, are you trying to tell me that every single one pays for their own health insurance? Or never took advantage of the law that pays for land to build a shul? Or ever got a kollel check?

@derszoger Which Gedolim? The Gedolim have been divided on these issues since 1948. Rav Shteinman famously said that bachurim going off the derech should join the army.

I have several opinions on the topic. First off, people living in Eretz Yisroel have to live like Israelis. That means either being Da’ati Leumi and allowing your children to join the army, or being Chareidi and letting your children sit in kollel for their entire life.

Secondly, the situation as it is now, is terrible and in serious need of change. Joining the army (even Nachal Chareidi) is not an option for most Chareidim, and sitting in kollel forever is also not an option. Something has to change, and I believe that with the exploding Chareidi voting population, change will happen to allow for more and more options other than kollel or army.

As for the “Seudas Hoda’ah” I’ve heard various versions of that since 2000, so I doubt that it happened at all, and certainly not in 2009 as Sam2 postulates.

My favorite is a song that goes “Mi-she mi-she mi-she nichnas Adar” to the tune of an obscure bluegrass melody, “Pick a Bale of Cotton” from the 1950s.

Harry Potter books are fine up until Book #5.

A Rebbi I know allowed his kids to read all of them except #5.

Sherlock Holmes is selfish, arrogant and condescending. The Hardy Boys (despite their girlfriends) are probably a better influence.

Personally, I don’t feel that there is any problem with 99% of juvenile books written before 1980 or any book written before 1930. But if you really want your kids to read stuff that you are certain won’t have a bad influence on them, then they should only read books by Marcus Lehmann.

Well, YW Moderator-42, at least I know what both your subtitle and the number after your name mean. But you have to know the question, v’hamavin yavin.

Yes. But I’m not the one who’s going to dress like an idiot.

Seriously, that’s the mindset. It’s like when my wife wears a green dress (instead of black-and-white like everyone else) she gets tons of comments on how good she looks from people wearing black-and-white.

This is nothing new. They’re a group of women based out of Ramat Beit Shemesh that have been promoting this “Taliban Tzniyus” for the past few years. There already have been numerous statements by rabbonim decrying their lifestyle, and one of the leaders was arrested on child neglect and abuse charges.

This site is a schtickle gneivas da’as. (but I’m not paskening). All you need to do is go to google, and type “site:theyeshivaworld.com” or “site:theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom” to search for something. All j82.us does is add that in front of your google search and get money from advertisers. YWN mods, you should delete this sticky.

They’re not in Yerushalayim, the recent attacks stemmed from a group centered in Ramat Beit Shemesh Aleph. There was an article in Ami magazine over Sukkos that discussed it.

Have you tried the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory? http://jhuapl.edu/

They generally only hire right out of high school, but it’s worth a shot.