akuperma

In addition one needs to remember the following: 1) Iran’s struggle with ISIS/al Queda is a matter of survival for the Iranians – if ISIS wins and establishes itself as the leader of the Muslim world it will be very bad for the Iranians and their fellow Shiites; 2) The Iranians are not kin to the Palestinians and belong to a rival faction of Islam; 3) “100K” missiles may not refer to ICBMs capable of mass destruction but merely to short range rockets that the Soviets developed as a “cheap” version of artillery (no need for a massive artillery piece, but the cost is higher than an artillery shell).

lesschumras: English is a mixture of French and German, relating to several centuries when the upper class spoke a dialect of French while the lower class spoke English (which at the beginning of the time was little more than a dialect of German, but by the end of the period was an entirely different language). BTW, Yiddish is also a “fusion” language with large amounts of German mixed with large amount of Hebrew and Aramaic (and some slavic mixed in to the eastern dialects, and recently a lot of English and zionist Ivrit thrown in for good measure). “Pure” languages like French, and German, and Arabic are far less interesting.

Neturei Karta is a political movement. If you define “hareidi” as meaning non-zionist, you end up with many modern orthodox as being hareidi (consider Avraham Burg). If you define “hareidi” based on dress or halachic humras, then you have many fanatic religious zionists in the West Bank who are hareidi.

One could argue that “hareidi” is anyone that the Modern Orthodox consider to be “too frum”.

Surveys can be very unreliable. The authors of a survey usually are looking for confirmation of their hypothesis, and people answering a survey tend to give the “right answer.”

Consider that based on scientific techniques one would exect that Britain overwhelmingly wants to stay in the EU, Netanyahu and Cameron were both voted out of office in the last election, and Jeb Bush has a lock on the Republican nomination for president.

P.S. Given the strong economic and social incentives to be “off the derekh”, one might want to study why anyone would willingly give up most of their economic prospects and agree to live in a marginalized ghetto just because Ha-Shem told them to 3000+ years ago.

I never heard anyone say that “denim” is prohibited by “hukas goyim” but most frum Jews tend to dress in a reasonably formal clothes, but not too fancy since we don’t want to show off or embarass the poor – and denim is almost by definition a fabric for informal usage. If you work in construction you might wear denim, but not to go to shul. You might wear denim when building a sukkah, but not for sitting in it. But that is a matter of fashion. If one arrives at the point where goyim wear denim when dressed up (e.g. lawyers wear it to court, the president wears it to his inaguration, etc.), it will start being worn by more frum Jews.

Joseph, As long as the husband is paying the wife’s bills (as per the general understanding of the kesubah), and if no Beis Din has been involved, and presumably there is civil divorce – why would anyone expect the husband to give a “get”. He’s still married and obligated to support the family.

Unless your “advocates” are a Beis Din, if the people are not divorced why would they expect him to give a “get”. If the man has abandonned his wife and started civil divorce procedures, the “advocates” go to the Beis Din which order the “get”.

RE: “There isnt exactly anything as “proper yiddish” anymore”

1. Most languages do not have official institutes, and the one’s that do are usually ignored. For example, the French and Israeli language academies keep trying to invent local words to use rather than words based on English, and fail miserably. YIVO was set up by a bunch of secular fanatics to try to invent a standard Yiddish (taking vowels from one dialect and consonants from others) – they never were taken seriously be actual Yiddish speakers.

2. By “proper” in a language you mean spekaing the language the way someone spoke 300 years ago? Do speakers of proper English still use the 2nd person familiar (Thou) or the subjunctive (as in “I be”)? Dead language have “proper” rules, living languages evolve because people keep inventing new words without ever bothering to talk to professors or official language commissions.

3. Yiddish never developed a standard in part since Jews never used it for serious books (though some ultra-seculars tried in the pre-WWII era). Yiddish is/was for fun stuff, the popular press, children’s books and as an aid for those lacking the intellectual skills to read Hebrew. Serious literature was alwayws Yiddish speakers was written in Hebrew, a langauge all children learned and the language used for official documents by Jews (such as court records). To cite an example, the famous sefer by the Satmar Rebbe telling people to use Yiddish, is written in Hebrew.

So was ancient Israel a monarchy? None of the leading kings, the ones we name our kids after, was the eldest son of a previous king?

It seems very clear that David appointed the next king – rather than hereditary sucession.

A good argument can be made is that Trump is a traditional Democrats in the mold of people such as John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt, whereas the Democrats have moved radically to the left and are now support positions that in the past would have been considered off-the wall radical. If we had proportional representation, we could accomodate more parties but we have a “winner takes all” system. Note that in periods where the Republicans were dominated by conservatives, Trump was a Democrat.

His nativism and his pungnacious campaign style really don’t reflect his ideological background or his substance. In terms of issues, he’s either a conservative Democrat or a liberal Republican.

Define monarchy. Does it mean a strictly hereditary system, or perhaps one in which the leader is chosen from within a narrowly defined group. For example, the Brits has a strictly hereditary system meaning, other systems are more flexible (e.g. the Saudi monarchy, the Catholic Church, and the way the frum community chooses its leaders with gedolim emerging from a narrow somewhat hereditary class of persons).

The opposite of a monarchy is a republic. Republics, and Monarchies, can be based on democratic or non-democratic principles. Many Republics are dictatorships, and many monarchies are friendly and democratic.

From a Torah perspective what matters is what they do. We have had friends (and enemies) who were presidents, and others who were kings. Similarly we have had democratic friends (and enemies), as well as un-democratic ones.

It depends on your goal. What do you want to accomplish with gun control. For example, the largest shooting incident in America (involving civilians being shot, and not part of a war) would not have been possible without gun control (several hundred recently disarmed civilians murdered at “Wounded Knee” just over a century ago – if they had guns the casulties would probably have been less). If your goal is to reduce crime and protect citizens, gun control serves no purpose since the bad guys will ignore it. However if your goal is to get rid of pesky minorities, that will be greatly facilitated with an effective gun control program.

Out of town Jews appear better off materially than New York City Jews since the cost of housing is radically cheaper. In Baltimore, probably the second largest kehillah on the east coast, a one family house, detached, with a yard, near the largest frum shuls, can be found for under $150K. The joke is a Boro Parker asks a Baltimore realtor about houses for sale in the frum community, hears the prices, and says “I’ll take two.” This is not a “frum” issue but reflects the overall housing market since New York is infamously expensive (due to high population, limited land not to mention laws that discourage building new housing). But it isn’t an issue of New Yorkers or “out of towners” being more into gashmius.

1. It is unclear that OTD become Reform or Conservative, rather than simply non-religious assimilated Jews who children are not distinguished from goyim.

2. If a potential Baal Tseuvah can’t trace his/her ancestry back to when the family was frum (still possible for 20th century immigrants, a lot trickier from those whose families came before the Civil War), they are “safek” goyim. This may be a good thing since given the breakdown in “morality” during the second half of the 20th century, as well as divorce becoming common, they are also probably “safek mamzerim” as well, so it may be a good thing to start regarding potential baalei tseuvah as being “safek goy, safek mamzer” as that status (as became clear with the mass migration of Ethiopian Jews) is easy to resolve.

Is it not the commercial custom that an estimate of repairs, made by the person who will do the repairs, is in fact an offer to make the repairs, which the other party may reject or accept? The estimate, is really a “bid” (or in common parlance, a “free estimate”). If in fact the person is acting as a consultant, then wouldn’t the consultancy fee have to be arranged in advance?

Either halacha or American law will look to the local custom. In my experience, estimates are offers to repair at a certain price, not consultations generating a fee.

“Jim Crow” (as well as slavery) were the result of state action. Under the English common law (applicable to all states except Louisiana), discrimination was prohibited since someone in business had a duty to serve the entire public. The legislature needed to authorize or mandate discrimination. Similarly slavery was banned in England absent a statute authorizing it (which Parliament refused to pass, which is why in the English quivalent of “Dred Scott”, a slave from America who had been brought to English was declared free by virtue of the fact he was in England). In the United States, the Civil rights law simply preempted the states’ preemption of common law. How important the civil rights law was in ending discrimination against Jews is questionable since by 1964 most (non-Jewish) Americans already regarded anti-semitism as being very un-American (since in all fairness, Hitler gave anti-semitism a bad name among Americans, and religious discrimination was always regarded as un-American going back to the Revolution).

Charliehall:

Hillary may have been intervention-oriented in the past but she won her nomination (if she does) by the narrowest of margins, largely due to the un-democratic (small “d”) inclusion of super-delegates designed to thwart the will of the voters. And the one who almost beat her is super-isolationist, which shows which way the winds are blowing in the Democratic party. And of course, no one knows what Hillary believes since her views seem to switch every new poll (remember the Clintons were originally “conservative” Democrats, at least until they were elected).

Upper class Israel is a first world country. The rest of Israel (the Hareidim and the peripheral areas) are doing very well for a third world country. Israel has a very sharp class divisions, and will probably self-destruct over that if it doesn’t address the matter which would be hard to do as the secular upper class isn’t about to share the wealth.

1. There was a major change in the American economy just under ten years ago, and many “boys” are reasonably postponing marriage until they are better established financially. Similar behaviors have been observed in the past. Many women probably have similar concerns.

2. Due to changes in medical care over the last century, it isn’t such a big deal. When a woman finds out she is pregnant today, she can assume that she will be marrying off her offspring in 20-30 years. In the past, the liklihood of both her and the child being alive in 30 years was not very good. Indeed, the chances that both the mother and child would be alive a year after conception was troubling (many mothers,and most babies, didn’t make it). The bottom line, relevant to our discussion, is that people who delay marriage until their late 20s or early 30s can still end up producing a “house full of children”. There is no reason to panic.

3. If one looks at the cost of raising a child, even paying tuition, and compares it to the life time income of the child, it is clear that having children is a good investment. It would be tragic if people give up having children since they think it would cost too much. There are some cultures and countries (as a country, Japan is a good example, as a sub-culture, secular Jews are an example) in which people prefer to maximize their enjoyment of life by not having children so they have more money to spend on themselves – which in the long term is disasterous since you end up with a community of old people with no next generation and no future.

Depending on one’s commute, it may make more sense to to briefly put on tefillin at the earliest time, say Shma, and then daven without being rushed on the train (works better on a long commuter or intercity train than on a crowded subway) ESPECIALLY IF THE ALTERNATIVE is to quickly daven before rushing out the door. It’s only a minhag, at best, to wear tefillin while davening but it is a halacha to daven with kavanah.

How much is attributable to “anti-vaxxers” and how much is attributable to limited access to adequate primary health care?

Given that Williamsburg’s Jews tend to follow their rebbe, are any rabbanim telling them to avoid vaccines? If not, that would suggest ideology isn’t a factor.

It depends on one’s economic situations? Are you in a country with a generous safety net or not? If you die, what benefits will you get and from whom, and how will it affect expenses. In the United States, survivors’ benefits from the government can be very liberal in some cases, or non-existent in others. In the US, renters may need life insurance more than home owners since often a mortgage includes (i.e. mandates) a term insurance to pay off the loan. Major employers usually offer liberal death benefits, but not a self-employed businessman or a family in hinukh. If you are poor to begin with, your family will still be poor without you, and may actually be better off since they will gain benefits – in which case spending money for life insurance that might better be spent on food and shelter and hinukh is a questionable deal. The higher one’s standard of living, the more you many need insurance (are you a family that assumes each wedding will cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, or are you content with getting married in the shul basement at minimal cost – the wedding in each case is halachicly the same, but the socio-economic differences are great).

If Israel manages to survive and over time evolves into a Jewish state, this period will be remember as the beginnings of a Jewish state. This isn’t impossible since once the hilonim realize they are dying out they might agree to be a tolerated minority in a frum state – and once you have the medinah run by people interested in prioritizing Torah and Mitsvos rather than seeking fulfillment by ruling over others, peace will become possible.

More likely it will collapse, given the overwhelming long term prospects of the Islamic countries becoming more developed and military competent, and given the tensions between the secular ruling caste and the the growing hareidi population – in which case it will be remembered along with Shabati Zvi, and will be something we don’t talk about.

It is unlikely that the Israeli ruling class will give up power, suggesting they will try to coerce the hareidim to leave or perhaps will try to change the political system to minimize hareidi influence (e.g. limit voting to veterans of the army, etc.). If push comes to shove, remember who has the guns and who controls the economy. If the typical Palestinian was secular the zionists could ally with them, but most secular Palestinians are already Israeli citizens and vote for zionist parties, and what’s left would never ally with the zionists.

The demographics suggest that Israel’s future is fairly grim unless the secular zionists can reconcile themselves to living in a Jewish state, and unless the hareidim can “get their act together” and get prepared to take over and run a 21st century state.

and what if the hedge fund you are working for is doing something crooked, or part of the agreement is to rip off other investors (and while big investors are probably ripping your off if they can, even hedge funds end up selling to small investors who may not be able to realize they are being defrauded)

There are plenty of people in prison who used to work on Wall Street, and all of them had lots of lawyers helping them