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Biden is worse than Trump. By this, I am not praising Biden. Note that I am basically a neo-con on national security, a tea-partier on economic policy and a libertarian on civil liberties.
1. Trump’s isolationism. Surrendering in Afghanistan was his idea, and Biden was more than happy to follow through. What made America great was its willingness to defend freedom and democracy abroad. An interesting comment was that the Mexican War was the last time the United States fought overseas for its own economic interests. Like it or not, the non-cons are right. The Democrats “big lie” is that the United States has never fought for the freedom of others, and the best thing the US can do is not to meddle in the affairs of other. If we has a president who wanted to make America great again, we would never have stabbed Afghanistan in the back, and wouldn’t be stabbing Ukraine in the back (and in the long run, such policies failed, since tolerating tyranny encourages more tyranny and the longer we wait, the bigger the mess will be).
2. Trump supports “big government” and has always been fiscally irresponsible. Biden’s worse. At this point the Democrats appear to be intoxicated, and the Republican inebriated.
3. The United States needs immigration. The “boomers” (frum Yidden, and their children, excepted) failed miserably at producing children. Either we shrink our economy (i.e. get poorer) to match our labor force, or we need to import labor. We should not be chasing away Hispanic (meaning primarily indigenous Americans with a touch of Spanish ancestry) immigrants who are intending to be hard working and law abiding Americans. We need them. The supply chain disruptions are due to a shrinking workforce.
The Chinese persecution of both the Uyghurs and other Chinese minorities (particularly the Tibetian) is widely discussed, and along with public outrage over China’s opposition to democracy in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, are major reasons why the US appears to be drifting towards hostilities with China.
This is a good time for business that rely on Chinese imports to find new sources, and for investors to move their investments out of China before they end waiting for compensation from the alien property custodian.
The Senate has done the job they were intended to do. To block stupid and unconstitutional and anti-democratic (small “d”) legislation. Unless unlimited postal voting were combined with voter ID (e.g. you have to mail the ballot in a post office and have your ID verified), the Biden proposal would for all purposed prevent fair elections in the future. The Republicans have save American democracy.
How about staying home and spending more time on Torah and Mitsvos. For most of our history, Yidden got along quite fine without going away on vacations.
1. Does adequate mean adequate to pass the GED, which opens up applying for jobs (among the goyim) which require a high school diploma, or does adequate mean being able to apply to elite universities which de facto means completing multiple AP exams along with excellent scores on the SAT (while some schools aren’t asking for the SAT, that is to enable them to reject “deplorables”, which probably includes religious fanatics who dress funny, with high SATs in favor of those deemed worthy by WOKE standards). If you mean adequate to hold down a job within the frum community, the answer is that the yeshivos do that very well.
2. How do you take into account the possibility of a student (presumably with parental support) studying on their own (or using online resources) to take the GED, CLEP or AP exams on their own?
3. Do you realize that if you were attempting to match the level of studies in a good yeshiva as well as the level of attainment in a good secular school, e.g. a prep school or a good public high school, the student would probably need to work in excess of 24/7. This is why when the goyim, when adopting the “modern” school curriculum roughly 150 years ago, gave up their “classical” curriculum (faced with the same choice, most frum Jews try to do both, i.e, provide a traditional Torah education as well as a modern secular education).
Possible solutions:
1. The government can hire hunters to kill the deer, and donate the venison to soup kitchens (as is done elsewhere). Allowing amateur hunters to hunt in suburbs would be unwise
2. The frum community can get permission to capture the deer, leading to a kosher venison industry
3. Based on common law, the crown owned the deer and those rights went to the states, so the deer are owned by the state. And, New York is an infamous “nanny state” known for rather ridiculous projects to waste taxpayer money. So the state can round up the deer, force them to listen to road safety lectures. and release them wear yellow safety vests. This idea might appeal to someone such as De Blasio if he manages to get elected governor.
A unicorn is a privately held start-up business worth over a billion. They are quite rare.
The English word “unicorn” refers to a horse with one horn and is often associated with various activities involving non-Jewish mysticism and witchcraft., so Jews should probably stay clear of them. Given the level of natural science in the middle ages, it is possible rabbanim identified them incorrectly with the tachash.
If one mutilates a horned animal, e.g. a goat, one can create a creature with one horn. Halacha prohibits us from doing so.
If commercial custom is that renting over a holiday period gives you more days than a usual rental, why is there a problem, especially as the firm making the rental seems to have closed (though they really should specify the day they wanted the rented moveable returned).
People yelling at each about how to run the government is actually a good thing. If you want a place where everyone acts respectful to the government, try North Korea. If you think its bad now, look at the past (a hundred years ago, most good Jews were open to Jews, as long as they worked Shabbos, changed their names and were baptized – when a frei Jews was appointed to a major office, it was considered very radical – serious Torah education for an American usually involved a trip, often taking weeks, to a yeshiva in Europe – openly anti-Semitic groups were considered to be politically respectable in the US), and stop whining.
In the original accounts, he was usually invisible and worked by stealth. By definition, this would leave no trace, and its existence can be neither proved, not disproved.
The “modern” version of a “frankenstein” type creature who beats up goyim with brute force is reflective of the “haskalah”, and while reflected in the modern superhero genre (largely invented by frei Jews, probably based on non-frum Jews misunderstandings of the “golem”), has no real basis in Jewish tradition, and clearly never exist.
“inquisitive girl”- Kal ve’homer, if they didn’t object to hareidim getting killed and tortured, why would they object to hareidim being beaten or harassed. Also, the reason the Nazis got in trouble was not they they were killing and torturing Yidden in Germany, but they were doing that to a lot of other people and invading all their neighbors.
duvidf: The government benefits limited to those hareidim who support zionism. Many would argue that a hareidi who supports zionism, even if only to get the money, is not really hareidi. The complaints against the government are from the anti-zionist hareidim.
The world didn’t object to the holocaust (unless they had an ulterior motive to do so), so why should they object now?
a person is a monster only to those who oppose him politically
if you agree with his motives, the person is at worst a bit “overenthusiastic”
virtually no one ever does something that they regard as evil
which is why we need to be wary of those whose idea of being evil does NOT include killing people like us
Freud gave much of the intellectual support for the changes in how physical relations are regarded in the secular world (from do the mitsvah of having children, to a type of recreation). While there has always been much perversion among the goyim (and OTD Jews, in all eras), Freud introduced the revolutionary idea that such perversion other than wrongful behavior.
The universe stands based on Torah, Mitsvos and Gemilas Hasadim, and when Jews go OTD and abandon our responsibilities, the universe is placed in jeopardy.
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Gadolhatorah: Without subsidies (in the form of price supports, though government purchases of unneeded crops or paying farmers not to grow certain crops), prices would be much lower, meaning marginal (and inefficient) farmers would change occupations, and consumers would pay lower prices. Corporate welfare paid to producers of carbon-based fuels is probably a reason why electric vehicles had problems in the past.
While a strong argument can be made for the government paying money to the poor (the modern equivalent of tsadakah, though the government seems to cherish humiliating the poor and impairing their ability to rise out of poverty), various forms of subsidies are just welfare for the undeserving rich, which hurt the bulk of society. Better for the government to stay out of the economy, and let free markets decide what is most efficient.
If the Democrats stay in power it won’t be optional. If you aren’t rich enough to afford a car, you don’t get to drive (don’t worry, only deplorables will be unable to afford electric cars).
If electric cars were practical, the government wouldn’t be subsidizing them and mandating them. The auto companies would switch of their own free will.
Secular Jews (OTD to use the current terminology, though often they were second or third generation removed) have made much mischief in the world. Secular Jews are largely responsible for nuclear weapons. Karl Marx has to be blamed for the miseries wrought by his combination of socialism and authoritarianism. To we even need to mention Freud. This list gets to be quite long. While we can say it serves the goyim right, since they encouraged Jews to go off the derekh, we are probably better off in joining them in condeming the secular Jews who are both antagonistic to us (the frum community) as well as a nuisance to the rest of humanity. Goyim have every right to join us in denouncing our wayward cousins, so absent anything else, that is not evidence of anti-Semitism. The “test” as to whether those who attack frei Jews are anti-Semitic is their attitude towards Shabbos (do they support fair Sabbath laws), kashrus (do they support kosher slaughter), and education (do they support Jewish schools able to offer Torah instruction without government interference).
But since most of the damage from Covid19 came from dumb politicians, most of whom were elected by those who suffered the most, that would argue that our elected leaders are a plague from shamayim (hmmm, frogs and lice, and then Biden and Trump, and what comes next?).
Trump, Pelosi, Biden, Putin, Xi and Netanyahu are all part of a secret conspiracy of boomers (okay, Pelosi and Biden are slightly pre-boomer) to trash the planet before turning it over to the next generation. A counter conspiracy came up with Covid19 to get rid of the boomers (that explains why Trump was so anxious for a vaccine, probably the most successful accomplishment of his presidency – but it does explain why the elderly leaders of the world were in a panic over Covid19, which for those younger that boomer age was just a bad case of flu), but it came too late.
Hardly uncommon. It is reaching the point where we should assume that any Baal Tseuvah is probably safek goy. Where someone who is frum discovers they aren’t Jewish by halacha (or more likely a safek), conversion is very uncomplicated. Among Ashkenazim, a large number of people have been going off the derekh for the last 200+ years, and given the custom of western Jews to use paternal surnames, only a genealogist can determine the halachic status of a non-frum Jew.
During the period referenced in the gemara, the Christians were a major group in all regions that Jews lived, and had already settled on observing Yom Rishon as their sabbath (lower-case), which would explain why frum Yidden would have been anxious to avoiding the appearance of having a special day on the day that the Christians claimed was a special day.
If a state with a large frum population set up such a voucher system for private schools, we (meaning the frum community) could always set up a separate corporation to provide the “English” education, which could accept aid unless it was tied to conditions we found unacceptable. Heretofore, most private schools have been for the very wealthy, which is why few states subsidize them.
The Supreme Court is likely to hold that if states which to subsidize non-religious private school, they have to have subsidize religious schools (at least those that meet the same secular criteria). This has almost no impact on us since there are very few places where there is political support to subsidize private (also called “prep”) school, and that any standards on teaching secular subjects would be hard to meet for the better frum schools (i.e. the ones that offer high quality Torah education).
charliehall: The Japanese had already fought the Soviets in the 1930, and both sides were considering the possibility of a full scale war. Remember that Japan had conquered most of northeastern China, and once Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, it might have been an easy target. Also, the US was also trying to provoke Japan by aiding China (including using American troops disguised as mercenaries, i.e., the famous “Flying Tigers”) and enacting serious economic sanctions against Japan. Japan could have easily skipped Pearl Harbor, respected Philippines neutrality (still a US protectorate, though a date for full independence had already been set), and concentrated on attacking British and Dutch colonial territories knowing that very few Americans would go to war to protect foreign empires). Both political parties were isolationist, and if the Axis put up with American government provocations, it is unlikely the United States would have entered the war on its own, and it is unlikely in that even that the British Empire and Soviet Union would have prevailed, and the Third Reich would still control most of Europe.
And thus the bottom line, Pearl Harbor needs to be seen as something from Shmayim that saved European Jews (meaning the original poster would not be around to post anything since his parents would have died during the war).
Germany was trying very hard to avoid going to war against the United States. We were sending massive amounts of arms to the British, and our forces were attacking German submarines in international waters, and Germany pretended it wasn’t happening. When Japan attacked the United States, Germany honored its pledge to Japan to go to war against the Americans if they did. I suspect the Germans would have much more content if Japan attacked the Soviet Union, or at least respected American neutrality and left Hawaii and the Philippines alone (focusing on Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and India). American public opinion was very anti-war, and few Americans saw anything worthwhile it going to war in order to rescue the British, French and Dutch Empires. While war between the United States and Germany was probably inevitable, it would have had a different outcome if it took place after the fall of Britain.
More importantly, we can see that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had a great deal to do with “Haschaga pratis” since had the attack not taken place, it is unlikely that any European Jews would have survived. Those who were liberated in 1945, had little chance of being alive in the liberation was postponed by months, let alone years. And unless the US was at war with Germany, the US would not have been in a hurry to aid the Soviet Union, and especially if Japan did attack the Soviets, the outcome for Yidden on the Eastern Front would have been horrific.
And if Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbor, there is a good chance the United States would have stayed neutral in the European War, and war would have ended with much of Europe under Nazi control, meaning there would have been very few holocaust survivors.
If the person was not an experience airline traveler, they may not have understood the implications of having tefilin as part of carry-on luggage, e.g. knowing you can’t hold something (for fear of it flying off and hitting someone during landing and take-off, which are the parts of the flight most prone to problems).
and this is the first time you heard about the goyim being dumb racists?
Mazel Tov is this was since you were so busy learning Torah and doing mitsvos (for the few millennia) that you haven’t noticed what the real world is like
Pilpul aside, the “folk” explanation is that to a man the hardest part of becoming a father is to sponsor a kiddush and/or a Shalom Zachar, as opposed to what a woman has to do to become a mother (and remember that until recently, the chance of a woman surviving childbirth was similar to the chance of a soldier surviving a war). All the proper explanations pertaining to men have more mitsvos would sound better if being male didn’t make for a much easier life.
Gadolhadorah: Yes, but most of those things that make Tel Aviv famous are not things we can discuss in public
Yidden in Tel Aviv? Last time I heard, it is most famous for the sorts of things we can’t discuss on YWN.
It probably won’t have that much of an impact on babies getting killed, since rather than hold that the 14th amendment bans abortion (to protect the rights of unborn citizens), they will hold that it is a matter for the states (under the 10th amendment). Since nothing would stop women in pro-life states from going to pro-abortion states, and since most abortions at very early and are increasingly non-surgical (done with, as has been the case for all abortions until modern times), it won’t have that big an impact. Potentially it could mean that in states like New York, infanticide might be legalized while in many “red” states abortion will be limited to situations where the mother’s life is in danger (meaning a woman in those states will have to come to New York, in the immediate pre-Roe period, travel agencies offered combination abortions/Broadway plays for out of state women seeking New York abortions).
Whether we want the 14th amendment weakened and the 10th amended strengthened is a new issue. If you trust your local government (mayors, governors, etc.) to be friendly, you favor a strong 10th, but if you don’t trust your local leaders, then a strong 14th is good for our community (even if it results in goyim able to killing their own kids).
We probably should define a “Jew” as someone who at the least in Shomer Shabbos and Shomer Kashrus (and just those two sets of mitsvos more or less preclude being part of “normal” American life). If you throw in things such as dressing frum or a man having a beard and pe’os, you will discover that there are almost no Jews in political office outside of low level positions serving districts that have a high percentage of frum Yidden.
It is probably in out interests to let the (increasingly non-Jewish) descendants of Jews identify with the Jewish aspects of their heritage since that precludes the “racial” anti-semitism that led to the holocaust.
That non-frum Jews celebrate Hanukah is amusing, since the holiday celebrates a war in which the frum Jews defeated the secular Jews (there was no racial anti-semitism back then, the Greeks loved assimilated Jews,it was only frum Jews who were persecuted). But we should probably not say that when the secular Jews are listening (why pick fights when you don’t have to).
The idea of a woman changing her name on marriage is clearly a non-Jewish custom. Traditionally a woman would be known as “Pilonis bar [father’s name]” for her entire life. The goyim started to force Yidden to adopt family names a few centuries ago (the better to tax and conscript us), which explains why Jews have been very unattached to their surnames and frequently change them (by way of contrast, many western European goyim have surnames that have been in use for thousands of years, and are critical in researching ancestry). Rabbanim have allowed women to adopt the husband’s surname even though it is a goyish minhag (as are inherited surnames).
While there are no “Jewish” arguments on change of surname, there are practical reasons for the wife to adopt a husband’s name, especially if they expect to have children and if they are going to be on the same health insurance.
As long as you stayed with the tehum (roughly a kilometer) it would probably be okay as long as you don’t use any sort of engine (assuming you could manage to grow powerful wings, but that might raise the problem of mixed breeding with other species). The major problem is that Ha-Shem created gravity, and gave us relative heavy bodies, and those whose bodies are designed for flight have very small brains. This might be a shailoh if Yidden ever manage to get into space or on other planets.
People dress and groom in all cultures. Humans are like that. Ha-Shem made us that way. Enjoy the diversity. Don’t get so anxious that everyone in the world isn’t a clone of yourself.
Some people can’t cope, and perhaps that is an attraction to joining the military where everyone dresses the same, and cuts their hair the same, and are supposed to think the same (assuming they are of a high enough rank where thinking is encouraged). We aren’t like that.
Up to know the government rabbanut was controlled by a mixture of strictly frum modern Orthodox and quasi-Hareidim. Many Hareidim regarded government kasrus as being dubious at best, and preferred private hareidi kashrus (best know was that of the Badatz of what was originally the pre-zionist frum community during the Ottoman period). To many Hareidim, saying something had a medinah hecksher meant it was probably not kosher. The current “reform” will give people who are less that strictly Orthodox a say in what is kosher, so those who in the past never took state hecksher as being reliable, get to say “I told you so”.
DYNASTIC??? How many of today’s “rich” were affluent 75 tears ago?
Defining “poverty” is a problem. Some people (using Brooklyn as an example) consider poverty to mean they can’t afford to go to the mountains for the summer. Many Americans would consider inability to own a house or a car to indicate poverty. Many people are officially considered to be in poverty, yet also suffer from diabetes (consider that to have type 2 diabetes, one almost certainly needs to be overweight, which implies more than adequate food).
One should ask what percentage of Israelis lack housing (and in particular lack housing with running water and indoor plumbing), lack the ability to afford Torah education for their children, lack enough to eat, are unable to afford sufficient clothing and are forced to wear rags or go barefoot. A good reference point is to examine the standard of living most Jews had in the 19th century (whether in the Russian Empire or the Ottoman Empire) and compare it to today.
1. One side would argue that it is similar to the “King’s birthday”, for which frum Jews in the past did join in the celebration (especially if we liked the king in question). What make’s Thanksgiving different is the President’s tradition of declaring that it is a quasi-religious holiday .
2. The origins going back to colonial times were that days of Thanksgiving were religious holidays, though never tied to a specific religion or denomination (always careful to avoid anything to insult any specific religious group, while probably insulting atheists though that isn’t an issue for us). If one holds that when Christians talk about the “creator” references in Breishis they are talking about Ha-Shem rather than a pagan diety, that eliminates some of the objections. One should ask if a frum political leader could call for a day of Thanksgiving for some national deliverance and ask Christians and Muslim (but not atheists) to join us. It should be noted that the connection to Plymouth in the 17th century in declaring a day of Thanksgiving is ahistorical. (at most a precedent, but more of a gimmick).
3, Unlike some non-Jewish holidays (particularly the one based on the Roman Saturnalia, which includes the pagan custom of having a tree in one’s house), eating a turkey or playing flag football do not seem to have religious meaning. Honoring the the 17th century colonists in Plymouth (who were quite anti-Semitic) seems problematic (though accusing them of genocide is a stretch since most of the locals were killed be infectious diseases that neither side understood how they spread). There is prohibition of imitating goyim
It seems reasonable to provide kosher food, tefillin, sefarim, etc.
We can probably offer to keep him under control (to the extent that’s legal). Depending on the country, agreeing to house arrest (in yeshiva), and full cooperation with the police, might work in more developed countries.
We also should look into whether the kid is really guilty.
Exactly what is money needed for? Was the kid arrested in a country where bribery is the accepted method of dealing with the authorities? Is it for a local lawyer? Few countries offer cash bail, and in any event, if you skip bail you lose the money and become an international fugitive.
Would our response be different if the kid were caught shoplifting or selling contraband within our own community?
Because they learned Tanach as children.
The parts they haven’t learned have little practical value, as one doesn’t decide halacha based on Tanach.
It’s fun, so studying Tanach in yeshiva would be like having ice cream for dinner (by analogy Talmud is similar to meat and vegetables).
From a legal perspective, he was innocent. Self-defense is a valid legal defense in almost all legal systems (except in fascist countries where private citizens aren’t allowed to be armed). For a parental perspective, one’s child should not be running around with a semi-automatic weapon confront an armed mod that was engaged in riot, and where the police had fled. Seventeen year olds, are their own, are not supposed to put down armed mobs. In general, when children are put in situations where they might be shot at (e.g. in the military), they receive significant training and there are grownups in charge. (by the way, under international law, children his age aren’t even allowed to be in situations where they might be shot at).
You can always pump water into it (the matter has been discussed, with the idea being to get hydroelectric power as the water falls from sea-level). Much of the water that had been flowing into it has been (and is) being diverted for agriculture and human consumption. This is hardly something worthy of a prophesy (i.e. if you divert rivers from flowing into a lake, the lake dries up – happens elsewhere as well).
One should remember that Aramaic (still a living language) has been around, based on literary records, for at least 3000 years, and the texts Yidden are likely to encounter cover a period well over 1000 years – AND LIVING LANAGUAGES EVOLVE OVER TIME. Compared to English over the millenia, Aramaic is relatively consistent. While Daniel could probably chat with the Amoraim, they would have sound very strange to each other. Do not be shocked in one encounters greater variety in Aramaic than is the case of Lashon Kodesh, since the importance of Tanach tended to slow down the natural tendency of languages to evolve over time.
Gerrymandering has been a tradition of the Democratic party since their opponents were the Federalists. Republicans have picked up on it as well (annoying the Democrats who thought they had patented the idea, and didn’t want to share). The only restriction is gerrymandering in order to keep Blacks (or at least, those Blacks whose ancestors were slaves in the antebellum period of American history) from getting elected. The alternative system would involve proportional representation (such as in Israel), which you never have your “own” legislator, and individual legislators ignore voters since staying in office is totally dependent on winning favor from party leaders (who write up the lists).
Remember, Donald Trump running in 2024 may be the Democrats only hope for winning.
The best way to look good (“cool” if you prefer) is to hand out with someone bad (“uncool”). That probably explains why the politicians tend to hang out with each other. Normal, rational people could look much better if they hung out with the politicians, but they are too busy working and raising families, and probably couldn’t stand the odor.
Nusachs are constantly evolving, and as people migrate and new shuls are created, and people end up going to a shul for reasons that have nothing to do with family traditions. Note how many zionist shuls, especially if they are funded by the zionist state, ended up adopting Nusach Sfard since it was a mixture of traditional the Ashkenazi and Sefardi nusach. If you had a DVD of your ancestors davening, and compared the nusach from the time of the rishonim to today, you would find radical changes that have crept in over the centuries. That’s normal