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@lakewhut What you are describing is called in English “stealing from the government” and in Loshon HaKodesh “G’neivas Akum”. Like I said to the other guy, I’m not mekabel that such things happen on a large enough basis to affect reported income levels. That’s pure Lashon Horah.
@aviradearah What you’re saying is that even in the Yeshivish interpretations of the German mehalech, secular studies are needed for both Torah and parnoso. Let’s just stop there. The controversy of Rav Hirsch was not that he encouraged secular studies, but that he encouraged it more than other Rabbonim felt necessary. No Litvish post-war institution up until the last 20 or 30 years said that Gemara-only is the mehalech for boys after they’re Bar Mitzvah. That mehalech is wrong and we are seeing it now with less and less men able to make a parnoso or interact with the world as necessary. Who will fight the government when they come after Yeshivos if the next generation can’t even talk to goyim in a way that they can understand?
@ujm I don’t understand your point. If some goy wants to spend all of his time and money getting a useless degree and rely on his and his non-gender-specific-significant-other low paying job to afford their life, that’s his prerogative. However, if a Yid chooses to live in a lifestyle that forbids his wife from holding a job, and forbids him from working for more than 50k annually, without being mevatel pirya v’rivya, that is also his choice. But the fact remains that such a life is impossible without massive amount of support from people who do not live such a life. And it should not fall as a burden to the oilom to support such an individual. Forget Yisochar/Zevulum, that involves supporting a person who shows that he is capable of sitting and learning his whole life, not supporting entire communities to raise their children teaching them tiflus. As Yidden we need a basic understanding of how the world works along with math and sciences. If you want to say the only reason is for parnoso, then fine! But it’s still absolutely necessary!To all of you: The current education trends in the frum community are a very real danger. They go against the Torah and are setting us up to have to rely on open miracles to survive. This is absolutely a bigger problem then whatever it is that has you guys all worked up about Modern Orthodox philosophy or whatever.
That’s nice. Can you also give your opinion on the Zeta function zeroes, information loss due to Hawking radiation, and the formation of sedimentary pyrites?
@AvirahDeArah I am close with more than one person who knew Rav Breuer ZT”L personally and they all said that his interpretation of Rav Hirsch’s “Torah Im Derech Eretz” was that the Derech Eretz has purpose, not just to make a parnoso. Do you think Rav Breuer got a doctorate so that he can make more money? And on that I agree and you should too. Banning children from learning anything other than Gemara and Halacha is against Yiddishkeit and would lead to our communities being lost in this world. Again, the communities that follow these tracks only survive because rely very heavily on people who don’t.
@lakewhut That isn’t true at all. Income is income. A nursing home manager in New Square isn’t Elon Musk with billions tied up in stocks and securities.
@ujm I was going according to the census of Palm Tree, which is 100% Satmar. Orange County as a whole has a much higher median wage. Also, your analysis is soiser itself. An household income of 30k is half the median household income. If you’re saying it’s because only one of the spouses has an income, then that’s the reason. It still puts them far below the poverty line and entirely reliant on socialist government policies and tzedaka.@ujm According to the latest census of Palm Tree, Orange County, Monroe, NY the median income is $40,000 which is almost half the median income of the rest of the US of $70,000. So please don’t tell me this narischkeit of large families being the reason for the poverty levels. The Agudah’s defense of this is that the community is younger than average. That does not however translate to the massive discrepancy in income shown here. Simply put, the Agudah’s white paper is wrong.
Good for them. Environmentalism does little to affect Jewish life in the short term (oh boo hoo, I have to put my bottles in a different can, and bring my own bags to the supermaket) but out of all things that goyim can get worked up over, this one is probably the most in line with the Torah and best thing for life in the long run. I don’t know about you folk, but I like the fact that these days it’s not unusual to see the night sky above NYC. That was not always the case.
@AvirahDeArah I didn’t come here to bash or defend Chassidim. I came to say that the idea of a school that stops teaching anything but Gemara and Halacha is against the Torah and absolutely unsustainable in both the short and long run. You are arguing that Chassidim (specifically Satmar) are the proof against this since they are successful, but the men barely know more than 2+2 by the time they’re adults. (And the Rebbe saying Kollel is good for a few short years is exactly what I meant. He did not want the current Litvish trend of long term Kollel as the default).
But either you’re intentionally fudging the truth or your metrics for success are way off. Going on tons of federal aid because of large family sizes is fine, however there are goyishe communities (Quiverful, Mormons, etc.) who have similar family sizes and aren’t relying on handouts nearly as much. If your criteria for success means that 90% of a community has to rely on tzedaka and poverty aid, then I’m afraid we won’t see eye to eye. And yes, I have lived amongst Chassidim. No, they don’t all do well. Many can make it by and still put up a good front of living nicely (sometimes even legally), many more spend a huge percentage of their time literally begging.
Again, without the intervention of the Agudah and Misnagdish askanim in many of the Chassidishe community’s problems, who knows where they would be? They have to rely not only on tzedaka and the government, but also other Yidden who didn’t choose their life choices, just to stay afloat! That is not success.
You talk about college. I wasn’t talking about college (in which you’re wrong, BTW, many gedolim encouraged college when they recognized it didn’t have the same danger as the European gymnasiums, Rav Breuer ZT”L was controversial because he said that college is important to be a Jew, not just to make a parnoso. Even many of Rav Aharaon’s ZT”L original BMG talmidim ended up in college). I was talking about basic skills and knowledge that your average Chaim Berliner learns in the afternoon. If you take that away from most of klal Yisroel (as the Yeshivishe oilom is currently doing), you will have much bigger problems than MO kids from barely shomer Shabbos families eating treif.
The counties and zip codes have been compared. The Chassidishe ones are overwhelming more poverty stricken than the others according to US census. If they don’t “capture all sources of income”, then I guess what you’re saying is that they are getting by with hiding income, g’neivas akum, and dina d’malchusa. Not mekabel Lashon Horah like that.
@lakewhut Everything else aside, you’re making a lot of objective statements bashing other frum Yidden with nothing in the way of evidence to back it up. “Chassidim give more than modern” isn’t a factual statement. It’s an opinion.
And I’m going to have to hotly disagree with you that exherting power and taking on local governments is always a good thing. Plenty of times this power was used for personal gain and often it was used in ways that created a massive chillul Hashem. Besides, in the current big matziv where New York is going after Yeshivos, it’s the Agudah, with their askanim who are knowledgeable and educated in the ways of the world, putting their necks on the line for the Chassidim who are unable to do the same.
@AvirahDeArah Don’t pick on one aspect of my comment and ignore the rest. I addressed your questions, now you address mine. I only brought up “Horeb” as an example of a non-Gemara curriculum that Yeshivos can follow (notably, it doesn’t mention teaching your kids to choose their own pronouns).
Satmar, to their credit, encourage their Chassidim to learn business and go into it. (The same cannot be said of many other Yeshivish and Chassidishe communities.) I’ve heard once that if the Rebbe ZT”L would have agreed with Rav JB Soleveitchik ZT”L on one thing, it was kollel. The big Satmar companies, however, are still just yechidim. A few hundred successes in a sea of tens of thousands. And of those tens of thousands, many have reportable income far below poverty level. I think something like nearly half of all Palm Tree residents are on Welfare and Food Stamps, which is far far above national average. You cannot point to a handful of nursing homes and mortgage brokers and say “Well it obviously works” when on the other side you have that.
@ujm I think that the authors of those articles are a little too optimistic about the lifstyles that the OTD generation grew up with. Take a poll of people in their 30s who went to a MO Co-Ed highschool and I would venture to guess you will find few that made any effort to put on teffilin every day, or be careful about mitzvos when they weren’t in school or shul. This is already two or three generations down the line. Of course kids are going off the derech! Their parents were barely on it to begin with!
@AviraDeArah So you think it’s appropriate to (as Chazal tell us) teach your children how to steal? Because all your justifications don’t amount to much against that one thing.Yes, Acharonim recognized that we are not on the level of our predecessors. We simply cannot gain everything we need to know from the Torah alone. We need to learn about the world around us. Studies of math and science aren’t “secular”, they are part of what we need to know. I’m not saying that you can’t learn Torah without other learning, but that other learning is absolutely an essential aspect of Jewish life. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Tosfos explains a geometry problem in the same way Socrates wrote it out hundreds of years earlier? Could the Agudah have launched their offensive against the New York government and Times without the help of hundreds of frum lawyers and people experienced in writing? Would we have Shabbos ovens had not engineers worked with GE and designed what was needed?
That’s not to say we need to have gender studies classes in Bais Yaakov C”V. I doubt even the most liberal MO schools have gone that far. It means what I said (and you conveniently ignored). Yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs need to teach basic science, language, and social studies. There is a chapter in Rav Hirsch’s Horeb where he outlines a school curriculum. It’s probably not nogeya today (this being 21st century America, not 19th century Germany) but it’s a great insight into what is needed.
Communities who live with this apikorsus idea of a Torah lifestyle means “only Gemara and halacha” absolutely are not “wildly successful in business”. For the most part they are destitute and rely on a combination of tzedaka and government handouts, with many of the more desperate ones resorting to cheating with things like cash-only businesses. There are yechidim that are successful and they (along with educated Torah Jews who are a bit naive from outside the community) keep the whole house of cards from falling. You have your facts as wrong as the NY Times does.
@ujm The OTD rate is misleading. Most of those MO people who leave you would be surprised that they ever considered themselves “Orthodox”.
@AviraDeArah “Bilingual” is a stretch, I doubt most people who grew up in the “Gemara only” Yeshivos can have full conversations in more than one language. Many can barely have conversations in their native tongue to people outside of their social areas. And if the only reason was “Navigating the American system” I may concede that you have a point. It’s however far more reaching than that. Knowledge of basic language, science, math, history, and geography are crucial to our Torah values. We are not RASHBI, we can’t live our lives on Bitachon alone. I would go as far as to say that raising children completely ignorant and closed off from the world is sinfulness, apikorsus, and the upheaval of yiddishe values.And no, people who grow up like that for the most part do not have “physical success”. Some neighborhoods have economies equivalent to that of third world countries with many families relying on theft from the government just to make ends meet. And the rampant ignorance of basic concepts tevah and society has lead to crazy situations such as disease outbreaks, and kids getting thrown into jail in Japan for smuggling drugs. When the current NY government got all up in their business about this very issue, it fell to the Agudah to try and bail them out. Which is kind of ironic.
I would argue that MO for the most part does not have leaders who encourage “institutionalized heresy and promotion of sin”. Sure the individuals may follow these paths, even some entire communities as a whole, but (again, with the exception of some notable individuals) you’re not going to find Jewish Action promoting that people start dating in high school nor will NCSY give classes on how to understand the Documentary Hypothesis (Rachmono l’tzlan).
Personally, I think that the current trend of denying children an education of anything that isn’t Gemara and Halacha starting from age 12 is a far worse problem than any Modern Orthodox liberalism.
The elements of Modern Orthodoxy that you are troubled by have always existed in Yiddishkeit and are right not Baruch Hashem fading (except in certain circumstances where certain Rabbis who graduated from certain non-YU places call themselves “Modern Orthodox” but are not frum).
Right now I think the responsibility we have is in taking the beam out of our own eyes. There are numerous endemic problems right now in frum trends that many people are afraid to openly address, and those that do are labeled outsiders. And it’s only getting worse.
If you aren’t in a time of active war, then presumably the gun is for security purposes. If you live in such a dangerous place that you need killing weapons to protect yourself, then on Shabbos you should hire a goy to stand outside your home and shul to protect you. There are almost no circumstances today in the US where carrying a gun should be allowed.
Different Tracks of American Yeshivish Orthodoxy
You have the right elements which look similar to Chareidim in Eretz Yisroel, though there are generally a few more folks who understand that we’re not RASHBI. Then you have the more left side – the shpitzy Lakewood types. You’ll even find those within that camp who dress casual during the week and aren’t in kollel and their wives wear long sheitels, but are too afraid to call out the dangerous anti-everything elements. You won’t find a Lakewood type rabbi as realistic as he may live call out some of the problems that exist within Chareidikeit and try to elevate the normalcy it it’ll make the yungerleit and shadchanim upset. When a young Rav tries to get his shul off the kollel-only train, often times they won’t get a new contract. Now I think the Lakewood working folk have a lot of ehrliche yidden but the gains could be so much more if they weren’t too scared of getting their daughters married.
To get off my sarcasm seat for a second, yes I’m well aware that Steve and Steve called their company “Apple” because it was “plucking the fruit of knowledge”. However, we have the Gemara which brings several pshatim as to what the fruit was and none of them are apples.
@yeshivaguy45 Who are these people? Goyim?
There are more Chassidishe boys in Shidduchim and there are more non-Chassidishe girls in Shidduchim. I don’t know if there’s data to support it, but I’m pretty sure everyone here has heard that time and time again. If it’s a myth, so then it’s a myth. But right now I’m willing (at least for the sake of this discussion) to believe it.
@daas-yochid Getting a job or education is called “twiddling thumbs” now? Are bachurim sitting in the freezer or Eretz Yisroel just being mevatel Torah until they get married?@always_ask_questions Now you’re getting to a different matter. What price do we put on our children’s chinuch? If the local Yeshivish place charges $20k tuition, but there’s another place whose tuition is only $13k but the Rebbeim are B-class, what is one supposed to do?
But to get back to seminaries, $15k is still a large amount of money, but over a year (and with loans, scholarships, FAFSA, etc.) it won’t bankrupt an average frum family.
@yuda-the-maccabi Why would an apple remind someone of the Eitzim in Gan Eden?
On one hand, I don’t know if non-Chassidishe girls would be willing to shave their hair and wear a tichel. On the other hand, tav l’meisav tan du m’l’meisav armelah.
@Always_Ask_Questions It is too much money.
- The price has gone up far more than inflation can count for.
- The neshomah and happiness can be achieved by going to local seminaries
- If spending a year in Israel is the price for a shidduch, the problem is on the Shadchanim and parents of boys who prioritize this narischkeit and they should all be given a stern talking to by that Rebbetzin my sisters were always so petrified of
I feel that the main issue is the money. Seminaries cost as much as a car these days and people are put into serious debt to make sure their daughter has “the best” because chas v’shalom what would the shadchan say? Not only that, it’s starting to make a rift between those who can afford 45k for each one of their daughters and those who simply cannot.
Instead of doing away with seminaries, we should encourage graduating girls to attend local seminaries, and short summer or Yom Tov programs in Eretz Yisroel for the “Israel experience”.
“If all Roshei Yeshiva would get together and….” would solve like 99% of all internal problems in Klal Yisroel today. However, not only do too many people (including many Roshei Yeshivos) have too much riding on our current system, it’s also really really difficult to turn the ship that is our community in a different direction, no matter how many people are pulling at the rudder.
Most people who can’t afford dental insurance also can’t afford to fly out to Budapest on a whim. Just saying. If you mamesh can’t afford it but are too wealthy to go on MedicAid, then check healthcare.gov to see what plans your state has in place for subsidized insurance.
Because it’s all about economics.
Way back in the 80s, the Yated Ne’eman decided that they aren’t going to be the arbiters of what is and what is not tznius and decided to make a blanket prohibition on printing pictures of woman. Flash forward to the 00’s and the explosion of frum newspapers. None of them wanted to be the paper on the shelf that people will pass over for being “less frum” so they all had to accept all the ridiculous chumras of all the other papers and then add some. There are maybe 5% of readers who will consciousnessly choose a paper without woman over a paper with woman in it, but those 5% are a big market share and all the papers have to market accordingly.
However, the same 5% are also the people who will either not have Internet access, or not admit to having it. So pictures of women on the web won’t deter them from spending their money.
@syag-lchochma Right now are people dying and getting hospitalized at the rates they were in late 2020?
On another note, going back, who is Rav Sorotzkin and Rav Dessler? The only individuals I know that bore those names passed away long ago, YBChLCh. I’m curious as to what exactly it was that they said, especially considering how it conflicted with many things I’ve heard from Rabbonim who I know and trust.
Being a mazik because of being uneducated is wrong. Being a moser is wrong. I was saddened to see how many shuls and other institutions flagrantly (or secretly) ignored all COVID restrictions, even at the beginning when people were literally dropping like flies, but it was even more saddening to see how many of these places were raided by the police because of a fellow yid who massered on them.
Ignorance leads a person to being a mazik. Back in the day, people refused to refrain from drinking before driving because “I can hold my liquor”. They were mazikim and caused untold amount of death and destruction to others. So too with people today who refuse to give their children proper healthcare and instead subject them and others around them to diseases like measles and whooping cough. The ignorant mazikim in question are those ignorant of how contagious diseases work and how dangerous COVID is, thus causing hezik to many around them.
Can we at least all agree that the current trend of Shadchanim and parents encouraging girls to get professional pictures to send around is absolutely disgusting and violates so many tzniyus issues it’s not even funny?
If I wouldn’t be wasting time arguing on here, I would be wasting time arguing on Yenner Website.
This is my way to blow off steam during work. I don’t think of it as a waste of time, unless I find myself spending more than just a few minutes a day.
@AvirahDeArah I knew about the Ba’al HaTanya’s imprisonment, I did not know that it was also a yartzeit. Still, I’m not sure if that answers my question? Like why did this event, out of all other wonderful things that happened to Klal Yisroel, warrant a special Yom Tov for Lubavitch? And why do Chabaskers assume that everyone should celebrate it?
I’ve never seen a Yud Tes Kislev event that wasn’t organized by Chabad. I think it’s just that many of them have more funding and are reaching out with bigger campaigns.
No stupid questions, but can someone remind me of what the significance is of 19 Kislev?
Some guy is going all blitzkrieg on this random sefer. Dude, seriously. Did Peshuto Shel Mikrah hit you as a kid or something? I mean, there’s a million seforim coming out every year and I’m sure there are plenty that people can find fault with. Does this one sefer really warrant the number of Roshei Yeshivos this guy got to sign a petchkvil about?
During the times of the Bais HaMikdash, we were on a much much higher madreiga and there was a halachic rule over the land. Yet it still didn’t stop hundreds of thousands from being open avaryanim in some of the most disgusting ways possible. This resulted in the worst punishment in history of having our Bayis destroyed and exiled to galus.
Who are we to think that a “Jewish Israel” would some how not suffer the same fate?
I think something that needs to be said is that a kashrus agency often relies on the honesty of the owners to keep the food kosher. And they cannot rely on an owner who is not yashrus themselves.
Mr. West has been saying and acting like a mentally unhinged individual for well over a decade now. His political opinions were never consequential because who cares what a crazy person thinks? So now his particular brand of crazy aligns with the crazies who openly hate us and want to kill us. Nu nu. Next week he’ll be saying he’s the president of Madagascar or something.
This is a good question and leads into a subject that a lot of liberal Jews are talking about. Namely, should a kashrus agency certify a company that engages in tza’ar ba’alei chaim? There are Rabbonim who say that we shouldn’t eat veal, because the calf needs to basically be tortured to produce it and regular beef is just as available.
I have seen far more people “attacked” for wearing a mask than people were for not wearing one. Perhaps the COVID amnesty is that I need to forgive the guy who walked over to me across shul and made snide comments about how silly I look?
@ujm I have no love for Democrats, but as Yidden we shouldn’t support baseball teams nor political parties. Both parties are bad. Here are some example headlines:
“Congressional Republicans on Monday… demand a slew of policy changes… including Medicaid funding cuts that could result in millions losing coverage.”
“Why are Republicans attacking WIC: GOP finds new scapegoat for baby formula outrage”
“GOP failure in Congress boosts Medicaid effort in Kansas”
“GOP senator considering blocking school meal funding deal ”
“What happens to the expansion of Medicaid? It would be phased out under all of the Republican bills.”
I’m sure you’re also conveniently forgetting 2014 where the Affordable Care Act was supposed to be the biggest federal medical aid to people who coulndn’t afford insurance and was relentlessly blocked by the Republicans over and over again.
@ujm Republicans have consistently voted against anything that gives poor people money for decades. Consider literally every healthcare law, from Medicare to Obamacare, that is supposed to eliminate medical debt. They’ve all been pushed by Democrats and fought against by Republicans. Federally funding colleges (which include Yeshivos), increasing handouts like Welfare and Foodstamps, have all been Democrat votes with the GOP firmly standing against it.
Also, if Republicans fully get their way, it would completely gut the Kollel system which survives in a large part due to federal handouts like FAFSA, Section 8 HUD, Wellfare, Footstamps, and MedicAid. All of which the GOP has a consistent record of voting against since their belief system is that people should work instead of relying on government aid.
I would rather that some goyishe school teach immoral goyishe things (like they’ve always done) than our Yeshivos require beefed up security guards and armed teachers.
@SyagLchochma Point out to me where he didn’t say that.
@commonsaychel I don’t understand your logic. Hundreds of thousands of people died because of COVID which was made worse because of the huge initial wave and lack of knowledge as to how to treat it, and you’re saying that somehow we should have made that wave bigger and allowed more people to catch the virus by not locking down?
For all of those kvetching about the billions going to Ukraine, mistomah you have a similar issue with the billions going to Israel, no?
@common-saychel That’s a terribly dishonest way of putting things. The people that died because of COVID rules still died from untreated COVID due to overcrowding hospitals, etc. The reason they died was because of how poorly understood the situation was initially. Which only goes to show how important it was that people followed at least the basic COVID precautions, like wearing masks in public not going to crowded indoor places, or staying away from people when you felt sick.
@AvriaDeArah On that we will have to disagree. I know of few good women who agree with the more extreme ways in which tzniyus is sometimes taught. It’s not Torah, it’s not yiras Shomayim, it’s just scare tactics by lousy teachers who don’t know how to explain something in a way that makes it beautiful. I don’t know how much Gemara I would have learned if my Rebbeim would have focused on “Learn Torah or BURN IN GEHINNOM FOREVER!!” instead of instilling the geshmak and beauty of it.
I don’t know if there’s a connection between body acceptance and gender confusion. I don’t. But telling kids that they don’t have to starve themselves or work out like a Yivoni to be beautiful is something most Yeshivas and Bais Yaakovs teach.
@AviraDeArah I think @SyagLchochma is getting at the overzealous way in which some people teach tzniyus. Like there’s an old story written by a Yiddish maskil about a girl who was being dragged by Cossacks and pins her skirt to her legs so that she bleeds to death rather than be un-tzniyus. It was written, like the Chelm stories, as a way to sneer at those crazy fundamentalist frummies. Unfortunately, I’ve heard that there are places that teach it as a lesson to aspire to.
I didn’t want to get involved in a discussion about gender but here we are. My two cents on this are that the medical community has been bullied by certain individuals and groups to accept some things when there is little to no evidence behind it. Like the whole nonsense about “non-binary genders” with people saying “my pronouns are they/them” or whatever. It basically started ten years ago as a fad among teens and younger adults. Now, doctors are ostracized if they dare go against the idea that a six year old child whos parents insist “they don’t identify as a boy or girl” isn’t just a little confused kid.
@philosopher The surge in ADD/ADHD diagnosis is a thing of the past. Doctors have recognized for the last 20 years that not every hyper kid has an attention disorder and Ritalin and Adderal were overprescriped.
If you speak with a modern psychiatrist, they will probably echo similar things to what you are saying. Medication for mental illness is usually the last line of defense. Doctors, psychologists, and other therapists usually go for months of therapy and only medicate if the patient is showing little improvement (or if the patient has a very clear diagnosed and dangerous condition).