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I solved this problem decades ago. I found a job that requires a law degree but doesn’t involve practising law, and lived happily ever after. I explain to people that I went law school, passed the bar, and then did tsuvah. No clients to rip off, no clients in need assistance in ripping off other people, no letting criminals go free, no locking up innocent people – and I haven’t missed a meal except for taanisim.
If you aspire to be a licensed (by the government) social workers, a BTL isn’t all that useful, and might be worthless. What you probably want is an bachelors degree in social work, meaning you want to find a school giving such a degree that gives you credits for yeshiva study. A BTL won’t meet the requirements for licensing as they require specific courses. You need to check the licensing rules in the state you want to work in, and also check the website of the National Council on Social Work Education. There are “distance education” programs for both a bachelors and masters in social work.
The school/camp gives a hecksher to itself, based on whomever they say they follow in matters of halacha. If the school/camp is not associated with someone well known, or is run by people not consider all that frum, they will need to pay for hecksher.
Consider, does the OU or Star-K need a hecksher for their own activities?
What’s the difference between a sweater for a male and a sweater for female? The same goes for a sweatshirt.
1. The Babli covers more interesting stuff, and covers it more thoroughly. This is largely a function of the fact that the Yerusalami’s development was interrupted whereas the Babli’s continued longer (goyim can be a nuisance at times, can’t they).
2. Since the Babli is more respected and more widely studied, it was printed more often. There isn’t even a universal structure to a Yerusalami page, whereas the Babli has had a set “Tsuras ha-Daf” for 500 years.
On the contrary, the spies thought that Eretz Yisrael could only be conquered by having a superior military (they probably favored a policy of focusing national spending on the military and taking people away from learning Torah to play soldier). Yehoshua trusted that Ha-Shem would hand over Eretz Yisrael to us with minimal effort on our part – no need to replace Torah and Mitsvos with military training. The spies lacked faith that Ha-SHem would deliver Eretz Yisrael to us in spite of military inability to do so by force.
Of course, the zionists aren’t so dumb. They know that Ha-Shem never told to conquer Eretz Yisrael from the Yishmaelim, and by many shitahs told us not to start the war and seize the government from the goyim, and since the zionist war isn’t a mitsvah they can expect no help from Ha-Shem, and are forced to rely on their own efforts.
“Potato bread” includes wheat flour (check the ingredients). “Corn bread” traditionally did not include wheat, and no one has managed to produce a bread usually coco or coffee beans.
Chocolate (similar to corn and potatoes) are American in origin, and while coffee is African in origin, it didn’t become widespread in Europe until the period of the achronim.
Quinoa is American in origin and didn’t become common on North America until recently, and reasonable aruge whether to treat it like corn or like potatoes (though if one looks, there are online bread recipes for it).
If you held that you eat only foods with a mesorah going back to ancient times, none of the American foods would be allowed, and neither would coffee or sugar, which entered our cuisine post-biblically.
Can one make bread or pastry out of coffee. They can be added to flour, but one can’t make them into anything that one could confuse with bread. Corn and rice (and quinoa) can be turned into bread or cakes. Coffee and cocoa are just flavorings.
Of course then you into a discussion of why potatos are allowed, though when you make a flour from it, it is only “bedievad” that it can be turned into bread of cakes, whereas corn can be used to make passable bread and cakes.
Natural cocoa is largely inedible and is virtually unobtainable retail. If someone is claim their product is “natural” they are lying. Cocoa beans are largely inedible unless you doing something unnatural to them.
Furthermore, there is nothing special about Netherlands when it comes to cocoa (there might have been 400 years ago, but not today). The leading cocoa producers are in West Africa (even though the product is indigenous to Central America), and it is processed globally.
I suggest buy whatever chocolate products in your home country have a good hecksher, and ignore puff talk about “natural” or “Dutch” or “Swiss”.
zahavasdad: Actually, a great many American Christians believe that the ancient Jews were all blond, blue-eyed, pale complexion and spoke perfect English. They are shocked when told that their “King James version” is a translation (some woujld argue, adaptation, but why rub it in).
1. There aren’t any movies. The “cool” is in Tanach is largely in the agados, and even if we don’t talk about kaballah when the goyim are interesting, we also don’t teach them about the Torah she baal peh.
2. Jews do not use the term “Old Testament”, so I question the background of the person who started this thread.
3. Most movies goyim make of the ancient world tend to dress the ancient people like modern secular liberals. While the ancient Egyptians were underdressed (at least in summer), most ancient people were quite modest. Running around underdressed is largely a modern invention (at least of the peoples we “associated” with in the Middle East and the Mediterranean region. Apparently being civilized usually involves clothing (which makes one wonder about our secular cousins).
edited
We do look similar. If we were any more alike it would be impossible to tell people apart by sight (and Ha-Shem didn’t give us a strong sense of smell, unlike dogs). If you compare humans to the nearest non-human based on genetics and anatomy (various types of apes), you should have no trouble telling them apart. Difference such as height, skin color, etc, and actually trivial and change quickly whenever people move to new regions (i.e. after a few thousand years, people who migrated to high mountains developed better lungs to handle the thin air). You should note that when humans who look “different” live in close proximity, they produce children with characteristics from both parents, which further supports my argument that physical differences are negligible.
Many people have “offshore” accounts, including anyone who spends time in both Eretz Yisrael and Golus, since a bank account in one is an offshore account in another. For Americans, this requires filing one simple tax form per year.
The term “offshore” means “not in your home country”, and isn’t a big deal UNLESS you are doing in secretly (usually to avoid taxes, sometimes to avoid the local equivalent of the “Shin Bet”, the “FBI” or the KGB)
If Ha-Shem wanted babies to be able to care for themselves, he would have designed things so that women would lay eggs and leave (as turtles do), and babies would be born with sufficient intelligence to carry on by themselves (just as baby turtles are born with sufficient intelligence to carry them through turtlehood).
It should be noted that many secular scientists have decided that it is a good thing for babies to be born a bit dumb since it allows time for the parents to educate them (and of course, the scientists never give Ha-Shem credit for this feature).
Siberia
Why not list the ones that are a problem? Most jobs can be done by a frum person, but there are some exceptions, such as: professional athlete (at least in team sports, some individual sports might be possible), hitman (hired assassin working for other than the government), thief, etc. Really, the world isn’t that restricted, though in almost all fields you give up a lot economically to be frum.
Joseph:
1. While frum Jews rarely sue each other in a non-Jewish court, it does happen when a third party is involved (e.g. the insurance company in a state with “fault” insurance, or in bankruptcy when a third party assumes a claim);
2. The American rules of evidence are very narrow, whereas in halacha the Beis Din can use any information at their disposal (we don’t have “exclusionary rules” as even when a type of evidence is not formally allowed the court can still consider it). On a jury, you are legally free to consider facts that are excluded – a good example is most jurors know that when a defendant “please the fifth” it is because he is guilty of something he doesn’t want the jury to know about, and all the “curative” instructions from the judge don’t help.
3. If frum Jews avoid serving on juries, you can count on people we don’t like taking our places. It similar to voting – you can argue against it, but the bottom line is that’s its in our interest to serve as jurors.
Joseph: In many if not most matters in which a jury is likely to be involved, Jewish law follows the local goyim’s law under the doctrine of “Dina di-malchusa dina”. Furthermore, a jury never determines the law but only the facts (thus being a judge is a more serious shailoh, since judges actually decided cases and rule on the law).
Jurors have a right to ignore the law and acquit a person. If a teacher doesn’t know that, it suggests serious incompetence of your school district in recruiting teachers. The law used to be different (jurors would be arrested for not convicting someone), but it was changed well before American independence. While judges and lawyers often want jurors who will follow the judges instructions, it is well known that they can ignore the judge as a matter of law. If a jury wrongfully convicts, the judge can ignore the jury and acquit, but not the other way around.
Some states (New York) have a ridiculous “voir dire” with heavy involvement by the lawyers, as opposed to others (Maryland) where the lawyers don’t get to ask any questions of prospective jurors. That could be changed easily by statute, but its up to each state.
Every “mesorah” has a mekor (origin, source), only you may not know it. What makes a “mesorah” (tradition, custom, practice), halachically significant is that over time it has become widely accepted. From a halachic perspective, the relevant “fact” is not an origin that might be unknown (and is of interest to anthropologists and social historians), but the current status of its acceptance.
1. There is no question that stealing from the government should be a crime, and that the government (“malchus”) can criminalize such behavior. In a democratic country, one’s fellow citizens are also much annoyed when one steals from the government since that means you are stealing from your fellow taxpayers, who in a democracy, elect the government.
2. Many financial crimes involve disrupting markets, such as through cartels, insider trading, spreading misinformation, etc. These involve getting rich at the expense of others.
3. Whether prison is a useful penalty is questionable, but that’s a different issue.
4. It usually seems that being politically connected to those in charge helps one get away with all sorts of outrageous stuff – no hiddush in this matter.
Donald Trump is a successful actor who is taking his character from “The apprentice” to new heights. Imagine if Leonard Nimoy (who created the character “Spock” in the Star Trek series) ran for president claiming he was highly logical and had superior intelligence? What happens if Trump goes back to playing himself is anyone’s guess, however his personal life suggests that he is a reasonable businessman, not a nativist (n.b. his two foreign wives and Jewish son-in-law), and not opposed to international trade – and his positions and past actions suggest he is a liberal Republican (cf. Rockefeller, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford) or a conservative Democrat (though they have been kicked out of the party).
rabbiofberlin: If Trump is such a nativist, why did he marry two foreign women, and why did he not disown his daughter for converting to Judaism – unless his nativism is an part of the act. Trump claims to be against foreign trade, yet he’s an international businessman whose global businesses depend on free trade. Most politicians will “say” what their listeners want hear, and most politicians tend to be highly narcissistic (honestly, humility in a politican would be a severe handciap). We can tell from his record, in areas where his past actions match his rhetoric, that Trump is for big government, not worries about debts, and has no problem with government confiscating people’s property – positions that would make him into a liberal Republican or a Democrat (think Rockefeller or Nixon – not Goldwater or Reagan). While we can be certain of Hillary’s mediocrity, we can’t be certain what we would be getting with Trump, which may or may not be good.
A beckishe (a.k.a. a “frock) is a style. It’s popular with a lot of frum Jews since we tend to follow our own “sense of fashion” and aren’t influenced by what the goyim wear, at least not all that much. The region modern Orthodox stopped wearing long coats (of various sizes) was that King George V stopped wearing them in public (about 90 years ago), and that set the fashion for the modern world – almost immediately “short jackets” were “in” and long jackets were “out” for weekday and “Shabbos/Sunday/Holiday” dress. Something similar happened to hats about 50 years ago (by then the American president set fashion standards).
Since we don’t give a hoot what the goyim are wearing, we never get the message that long jackets were “out”, though a lot of the more modern have picked up on over the last 90 years.
mdd: Wars are declared for, and paid for, by Congress. The same goes for walls.
Trump is a media personality based on the character he developed for his shul. What he’ll be like when he decides to “get real” is anyone’s guess, but its unlikely that its as bad as the loudmouth bully he played on TV.
takahmamash:
Moshe rabbeinu probably did not wear pants or shoes with laces. It is highly unlikely he used a zipper or velcro. He also wore only natural fabrics (no polyester, etc.). It is also unlikely he ever worse warm or waterproof clothing.
Fashion has many elements, including family tradition (and even if not by design, most people imitate their parents) – but we are hardly trying to be biblical reinactors.
Clinton will be eight more years of Obama, though perhaps the first two with a Democratic Congress (cf 2009-2010 and all the mischief that was done, also assume several radical left-wing Supreme Court justices, which will seriously threaten our community.
Trump is unknown. He’s basically a a Nixon or Eisenhower type Republican, but with made for TV clown behaviors. His anti-immigraiton and anti-trade policies could cripple the US, but Hillary won’t be all that different. He might back down from those policies, and especially form his anti-Muslim and anti-Hispanic policies, since Trump’s nativism seems to be a media stunt. His actual policies probably will be normal for a moderate Republican, and he might throw some bones to the conservatives.
Sanders would be devastatingly bad. (think “Yevsektzia”).
There are a few but they aren’t very comprehensive. Most frum merchants are a bit reluctant to invest in the internet since you have to cope with a great many un-frum websites, which undermines frum internet use. Perhaps if someone could set up a comprehensive “frum” intranet (internal network) that could be logged into (or one could set ones computer to access while excluding other sites) it would open the way more involvement of the frum community in electronic commerce.
Most American Jews born in the mid-20th century, while clearly “off the derekh” (usually already one or two generations removed from Yiddishkeit) were likely to be Jews according to halacha. While intermarriage among non-frum Jews was high in that period, it was still well below 50%. At present, several generations late, given the high rate of intermarriage among non-Orthodox Jews, it isn’t especially likely today that someone with a Jewish name born into an other than Shomer Shabbos family is actually Jewish (remember that having a Jewish father means it likely the mother wasn’t Jewish), so in the future one won’t be assuming that a politican (born in the 21st century) with a Jewish name is actually Jewish (unless the person is Shomer Shabbos).
One can pick a tie to send a message (support a team, a movement/party/candidate, announce one’s profession or avocation). Or pick a plain tie to match one’s clothes. If you want to spend much more than $15 for a tie, you’ll have to look for a really fancy store, and unless its to get one with a specific design no one will know the difference.
Sour grapes from Mitt. Romeny and Trump are both “new money” (their grandparents were poor, their parents got rich, and they built on that). Both are preppies and ivies. Yet Romney’s background weighed him down (his “47% problem), and Trump is able to flout it, be obnoxious, and be the “man of the people” and with a little script rewriting get elected. Mitt shouldn’t whine.
Trump is an transnational businessman whose parnasssah would be seriously hurt if there were trade restrictions. His protections may be part of his media “persona”. Of course, all of Trump’s positions seem to be part of a media image. For good or ill, one shouldn’t attach much faith (dispair) to Trump’s positions on specific issues since he’s running on a platform of “I’m angry and plan to do something about it”, with the “it” being left open. Certainly based on his overall stances on issues, he’s a “Rockefeller” Republican with some neo-isolationism thrown in.
Accepting that the field consists solely of Trump, Rubio and Cruz, Rubio has the best change of uniting the party and winning the general election (avoiding a Sanders or Clinton presidency). Winning an election means holding on to Republicans and winning independent and Democratic voters, and Rubio is in the best position to do that. Rubio started out as a “Tea Party favorite” defeating the establishment Republicans in Florida, though hard core nativists will oppose anyone who isn’t a pure blood WASP with roots in the 17th century.
The caveat is that Trump can back down on many of his positions that help in the primaries but not in the general election (e.g. nativism, which as it is sounds weirding coming from someone whose ancestors came through Ellis Island and who is married to an immigrant). While Trump’s views on most issues clearly qualify him as a “RINO” (a.k.a. a Rockefeller or Eisenhower type Republican), conservatives will see him as the lesser of two evils when running against. Trump is running on “anger” rather than platform, so he can adjust his platform to have broader appeal, but unless he does so he is very unlikely to win the election – meaning we could get a vehemently anti-religious socialists as president.
I doubt it has anything to do with genetics.
If frumkeit or midos were a function of genetics (similar to whether one is left handed, or whether one is bald), what zechus would it be to do mitsvos – since if behavior is a matter of DNA rather “free will”, tsadikkim and reshai’im have no choice but to be what they are.
The original posting perhaps understands the matter better than he realizes. In Imperial Russia a prayer was publicly said for the Czar because even though we hated him but because we feared him – our actual prayers were answered and the ??? ended up in front of a firing squad along with the rest of his family.
So does the State of Israel and its army stand in a similar capacity to the Romanov family and their army (which they saw as a personal possession)? By starting a war against the Muslim world the medinah has put not only its soldier but all of klal Yisrael in mortal dangers. However the Zionists don’t rely on terror to win support (they prefer bribery, which works quite nicely – they’ve won massive support from hareidim by handing out lots of goodies), and unlike the Czar, the Zionists dont’ even believe in prayer or religion (so they don’t look at whether frum Yidden say a prayer, or not, as something significant). I’m sure that if the zionists became more czar-like in their approach to the Bnei Torah (e.g. rounding them up for military service), many Jews would pray for the future of the Medinah, and will probably be horrified when they the bloodbath when their prayers and answered as they inevitably will be.
But at present, most of us prefer to hope that the zionists will disappear or even better, do tseuvah and return to Torah. Even Neturei Karta doesn’t want to see the zionist leadership meeting the same fate as the Romanovs.
If a nab wishes to sleep late, all one has to do is pull an all-nighter, daven at the visikin minyan (or earlier in some places at some times of the year), and then go to sleep. You get to sleep until its time to wake up for mincha. Even on the shortest days, that’s a solid eight hours.
1. Clothing. Basketball poses a shailoh since it is usually played in a warm indoors arena and the traditional uniforms are shorts. Track, Tennis, Soccer and swimming pose similar problems. Except for swimming, the sporting costumes while unfashionably short for a frum community tend to be relatively decent.
2. Shabbos conflicts. While all sports are played on Shabbos, College football is almost all on Shabbos Other sports spread their games our during the week.
3. As a participant, all team sports are a problem since there are rarely enough people to have all-Shomer Shabbos teams. Individual sports such as track and field, or bowling, or tennis or gold have a real advantage for s Shomer Shabbos athlete since they can train invidiually (wheras to train for a team support you need a team).
4. Some sports are more dangerous than others (such as American football, or boxing). Any sport taken seriously will have real health benefits (excluding chess, though some suggest it has mental health advantages especially for older people, though the same is probably true for learning Torah).
To : Mashiach Agent
Islam is a religion based on beliefs. It isn’t inherited. As with Christianity, its rather clear that intellectually it was based on Judaism with a lot of other stuff thrown in. Biologically, there is overwhelming evidence they are descended from Adam ha-Rishon by way of Noach, making them our cousins.
The only Muslims who are “Yismaelim” are in the Arabian penninsula. The rest are descended of those who lived there before the Islamic conquest. While some Arabs resettled in the conquered countries and took (not necessarily with their consent) local women as wives, most Muslims are descended from whomever was living their before with at most a small bit of Arab DNA. That many speak Arabic doesn’t mean they are of Arab descent (just as the fact that we write in English doesn’t prove we are of Anglo-Saxon descent – in fact only a small percentage of English-speakers worldwide have biological roots in England).
If one looks at Trump’s personal life and business career, one might suspect that his claims to be a conservative nativist are a bit of an act, since his background suggests anything but antagonism to “furriners” (his own family came thorugh Ellis Island, not the Mayflower, and he’s married foreigners), and that he supports big government (which means high taxes) that supports corporate welfare and bailouts. While other media types have run for office, they get “out of character” whereas Trump is running as the character he developed for his “reality” TV shows. What he actually supports is anyone’s guess.
Being born on American soil guarantees you a right to citizenship. Congress allows other persons to become citizens at birth, particularly children of American citizens born elsewhere. That is why many Jews born in Israel to American parents have American citizenship.Congress could limit citizenship to those born on American soil but has chosen not to do so.
The job as president requires one be a natural-born citizen, menaing a citizen at the moment of birth, as opposed to one who is an alien at birth and has been naturalized.
Cruz’s mother is from a family that immigrated to the United States in the 19th century and she is clearly a citizen, therefore her son is a natural born citizen. Cruz’s father was an alien until he was naturalized recently.
Trump is being an ignorant jerk, which might explain why he appears to have very little chance of winning the election (unless he decides to be an intelligent mentsch, which he could easily do as he is an apparently good actor).
Homburg.
I’m old enough to remember when goyim wore hats, and the fedora was always the weekday hat not the dress hat.
Homburg is also sturdier than the black fedoras.
Such people tend to be very modest so you don’t hear about it.
Trump is rude and likes to insult people. He makes a point of emphasizing that he lacks “Derech eretz” (which perhaps is an act, as he seems to relish being the character he developed for his TV show, which may or may not be what he is really like).
His ideology is well within the mainstream of American politics (he’s somewhat to the left of the Republicans, similar more to Rockefeller, Eisenhower or Theodore Roosevelt). His style and manners are well beyond what is expected of a public figure.
If this is for a child, there are plenty of nostalgic sources. If this is for serious research, stick to primary sources. Yiddish newspapers would be good (note: if you can’t read Yiddish you can’t do serious research in pre-war European Jewish history – ability to read German, Polish and some of the other Eastern European languages is also important). For frum sources, contemporary shailohos ve-tseuvahs might be good. Be concerned about nostalgia and take any secondary sources (including websites) with a grain of salt.
It depends on how rich or how famous one wants to be? A frum Jew would never end up giving away a much higher percentage of his wealth than even someone like Bloomie or Gates (both of whom give large amounts of money). To sit on that much money would be unacceptable in the frum world.
Getting that rich might be a problem as well, since its unlikely a yid with beard and pe’os and keeping Shabbos and kashrus could have pulled it off.
N.B. “Right” and “Left” refer to which side of the French parliament deputies sat during the Revolutionary period, which was BEFORE Jews were allowed to vote or hold political office.
One should try to translate the discussion into Yiddish, not using “modern” words invented since the haskalah (if you need a date, use 1789 – the year everything changed in Europe). You can’t. In Jewish traditions, the vocabulary didn’t exist.
Israeli (zionist) Hebrew uses the word “Dati” as equivalent to the word “religious” in English. When used for a Jew, it would indicate that person is basically frum (at the minimum Shomer Shabbos and Shomer Kashrus). “Hareidi” (what in English is frequently translated as “Ultra-Orthodox”) is a type of “Dati” (all Hareidim are Dati’im, but not the reverse). Defining “Hareidi” is almost impossible (based on clothings or hairstyle?, how one votes?, if one is for or against the Medinah? etc.).
Note that in Yiddish, there are no equivalent words, since the concepts didn’t exist. The distinction is alien to Jewish tradition.
Muslims don’t accept being ruled by non-Muslims, and Zionists insist on ruling the Arabs. While the Israelis can befried the non-Muslim Arabs, e.g. the Christians, the zionists have no hope of ever living at peace with the Muslims of the Middle East.
The only Jews in Eretz Yisrael who can hope to make peace are the Hareidim, since they do not insist on ruling the Arabs, but the Hareidim are unlikely to regain control of the yishuv, at least in the foreseeable future.
Actually the manipulation of pictures goes back a long time. It isn’t new or shocking. Before digital cameras, one could retouch photographys (e.g. the famous story of how the Communists would “delete” pictures of those who fell out of favor, and inset the new “fearless leader” into heroic events he never participated in). Before that, paintings and drawing (e.g. the famous story of King Henry VIII who was furious when an arranged marriage involved a foreign princess who didn’t look at all like her picture).
It may be an interesting subject, but it is hardly a “new and now pervasive phenominon” as the original posting suggested.