Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Like African Americans, we are quick to assume a “hate” motive when subject to violence. It’s a function of history (some would say “paranoia” but then you get to the joke about is it really paranoia if someone is out to get you).
It turns out to have probably been an insane person, though his choice of target may reflect prejudice factors in his life or his community.
The “custom” began when Jews started coming in contact with Christians whose minhag was to give gifts for their winter holiday (details vary among countries – the custom goes back to the Roman holiday of “Saturnalia”, which is the origin of the holiday the goyim observe in December). A good argument can be made that giving presents at this time is clearly avodah zarah, since gift giving has always been part of the avodah of their holiday.
The “Hanukah gelt” custom involved giving a few coins to be deposited in a pushka.
popa_bar_abba: “they’re uncomfortable with the ethnic/racial element of Judaism. “
I believe they are uncomfortable with the religous element of Judaism. Gairus is basically naturalization. When you become a citizen you give up your previous loyalty, adopt the culture of the new country. In “normal” countries (US, France, Britain), becoming a citizen does not require you to adopt a religion. Frum Jews regard being Jewish as a matter of religion (being Jewish is about mitsvos), and secular Diaspora Jews see Jewishness as ethnicty (being Jewish is about gefilte fish and bagels), whereas zionists see being Jewish as being about being a loyal supporter of the State of Israel which is why they want the process of becoming an Israel, which includes geirus, to focus on zionism rather than Torah.
The Israeli left-wingers are fanatic zionists in the original meaning of the word (non-zionists lefties leave Eretz Yisrael as soon as they can). As good zionists they want Israel to be a normal state, which do someone whose focus is Europe, means there is a national religion in which everyone is a nominal members (note that piety isn’t a factor, this is a matter of patriotism). While they can tolerate a few non-Jews who are members of other religions, they want all non-Palestinian Israelis to be Jewish. Thus is someone wishes to be a good zionist, i.e. a patriotic Israeli, that is good enough for them to be Jewish. Their model would be the historic desire of many immigrants to join the established church, not out of a theological belief, but out of the desire to be normal. That’s good enough for them To the leftists, all the “Torah” stuff went out when Herzl and Ben Gurion replaced Avraham Aveinu and Moshe Reabbeinu, and they object to tying geirus to ideas that most Israelis have long rejected.
Elections are good entertainment, even in this case when the results are probably going to simimlar to the last election (Nationalist parties in control, but forced to form a coalition with the hareidim and/or the centrist block consisting of ex-Likudniks).
And at least the Israelis have elections. Many countries have other ways of picking leaders (see neighboring Syria for a popular alternative method).
A frum gym might be a good business oportunity. Remember most gyms are for-profit businesses. It could have separate hours for men and women (with separate staffs). While a JCC/YMHA might have separate hours, they really could do no more and the building would stay un-frum.
By “talk back” do you mean to disagree or contradict, or rather do you mean to be rude, crude and sarcastic. The former is always acceptable if done correctly, and the latter (which seems to be the primary method of communication online) is never correct regardless of whom is speaking. I have met many gedolim and never heard them “talk back” even to an Am ha-Aretz, kal ve-homer, it is incorrect for an Am ha-Aretz (or talmid) in speaking to a “rebbe” (regardless of whether one means an elementary school teacher, or a gadol).
Both parties agree that if you got rid of the other, the country would be much better off.
If both parties move to extremes, a third party would develop, but that isn’t likely since the American system is rigged to elect middle of the road (which is why an election between Elizabeth Warren and Rand Paul is highly unlikely).
Why would anyone do such a thing? In our community (unlike among the goyim), age gains respect and adds credibility. Why would anyone want to look younger than they are?
Employment is a good thing. Not all that easy to come by. Assuming one’s father isn’t setting up the propsective spouse in a business, employment is the next best thing. It turns out that those who are employed tend to stay that way, and those that are unemployed have a problem.
1. The phrase is normally used after the name of someone who was murdered. It expresses the confidence that He-Shem will take care of the matter. Note that there is no “should” in Hebrew, so it really should be translated as “Ha-Shem WILL avenge his/her blood” – as a statement rather than a request.
2. When used after someone killed by someone not universally considered to have been our enemy (e.g. Jacob Israel De Haan, murdered by an IDF precursor in 1924), it becomes is a very loaded political statement.
The mailing it to yourself works for copyright, not patent. For patent you need to file with the Patent Office, which then has to agree it is indeed an invention. This gets tricky which is why one tends to use professionals to help.
Grand theft auto — NOT
consider:
Chess (many versions)
Firaxis (originally Microprose) such as Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, etc.
“Without the yishuv, Hitler would have killed Judaism.”
Actually, it should say “without the Americans”, Hitler would have killed Judaism (okay, the Brits and the Russians deserve some credit to). While one can (and should) perceive the Allied efforts to defeat Hitler as an example of Hashgacha Pratis, the yishuv did not play a significant role. Indeed, the efforts of the zionists were a major factor, and perhaps the only factor, explaining why the British were anxious to keep Jewish refugees out of Palestine, and in fact, out of any other other place, and one can argue that it was due to the zionists that the expulsion of European Jews (which was Germany’s original plan) became the genocide of European Jews.
Until 200 years ago, virtually all Jewish communities in the world were hareidi and were autonomous. In the 18th century, when a Jew wanted a divorce, he or she went to Beis Din, even in what is now the United States. All Jewish communities were expected to run their own institutions, without government funding, and all Jews were expected to use the Jewish institutions rather than the government’s (which, at the time, were usually run by the local church in Christian countries). With the “enlightenment” we started losing autonomy, and when some Jews responded by demanding control over the goyim’s institutions, we started having troubles.
Diseases such as Ebola, and quarantines, were quite common until about 50 years ago. All they have to do is dust off their old laws and go back to the procedures then used – which included quarantines of travellers from affected countries. Given the way the world’s economy is connected, anything other than a short term travel ban would disrupt the economy which is why no one is discussing it. Fortuantely ebola isn’t very contagious (unlike influenze or smallpox), and while it is more contagious than AIDS (HIV) it still isn’t a big threat to places with functional public health systems (which includes most of Africa, except for a few countries that destroyed their public health system recently with messy civil wars).
Avi K.
Most of the world feels otherwise which is why almost a third of the world embargos trade with Israel and almost unanimous votes against Israel in the United Nations.
Obviously Rabbanim disagree. R. Yosef spent most of his employed life working for the Israeli government, and obviously supported involvement with the zionists, and receiving government funding.
Of course no one is forced to give up Torah – if the hilonim were “anusim” rather than “apikoresim” the views towards zionism among hareidim would be different. Unfortunately, secular Israel consists almost entirely of the descendants of frum Yidden who went off the derekh when they became zionists.
The only way the Israelis can have peace is to give up zionism (no problem for hareidim) or to sucessfully wipe out the Muslims (similar to how the Spanish took care of the Aztecs and the Incas, or least similar to how the Anglo-Saxons got rid of the Celts in what is now England, etc.). The zionists claim that Jews need to give up Torah and become good modern secular Israelis in order to defeat the goyim – and even if that were true, which it isn’t, it would be too high a price to pay.
1. The continued existence of Israel is still in debate and its continued existence is up in the air. On multiple occasions, the American rescued the Israelis (in 1948 by forcing the British not to re-occupy Palestine which was clearly their plan, again in 1967 and 1973 where but for the Americans the Soviet Union would have intervened). Given America’s increasingly isolationist policies, such help might not be forthcoming in the future. Given that most of the world regards the zionists as crimials for stealing Eretz Yisrael from the Muslims (note that the zionists reject the idea that G-d gave us any rights there), Israel is facing a permanent threat to its existence.
2. The State has caused tremendous damage to the Torah world by encouraging (some would say by coercing) people to give up a Torah lifestyle and become secular. This has been by design. If you hold that Torah, not political control of Eretz Yisrael, is the key to Jewish survival, Zionism is a fiasco.
3. Before the zionists, Jews lived at peace with the Muslims (okay, it was sort of like being African American in the USA before World War II, but it was peace and the Muslims never objected to Torah), and the zionist decision to go to war with a group that includes about a billion people means we have acquired a enemy who can do very serious harm to us. If the price of defeating the Muslims is to give up Torah, which is what the Israelis claim, it is too high a price.
Those who support zionism and the medinah, should serve in the army, and in fact many if not most do. Those who oppose zionism, favor peace, and are neutral in the Arab-Israeli Conflict (such as groups allied with Satmar), are legitimate conscientious objectors and shoujld not be conscripted.
Those who favor the state, but who want someone else to do the work, are hypocrites.
By impression is that most hareidim are ideologically sympathetic with the Satmar (i.e. Eidah Hareidis) position, but are by trying to peacefully co-exist with the zionists have created a misimpression that they support zionism. Rather than trying to be neutral in the Arab-Israeli conflict, they are trying to be neutral in the conflict between Torah and Zionism – which is a mistake but is understandable since we have a tradition of trying to avoid conflict with Jews (even apikoresim like the zionists).
Acording to contemporary accounts, the Hevron massacre was planned with the knowledge and approval of the government (then part of British Empire). They were trying to get a war going between the Jews and Arabs, which is why they targeted the non-zionist community in Hevron (much easier to start a war if the Jews were led by zionists). Unless the Jews had sufficient military force to defeat the British Empire, more Jews armed men wouldn’t have helped.What might have helped was if there was a Hareidi-Arab alliance, but that fell apart after the zionists (which British help) assasinated Jacob Israel De Haan in 1924.
to AviK who wrote: “Another possibility is an international fund to pay them to emigrate to countries that need moneyed immigrant”
What would happen if instead they offered any Israeli Jews a “green card” and $100K and the choice of moving to the country of their choice. Already so many seculars have fled Israel for the greener pastures of golus (which are less green from Shomer Shabbos), that it impacts elections in Israel (the “left” is desperate for absentee ballots since their voters have left the country).
Unless it is accompanied by the Palestinians giving claims on Israel within the 1949-1967 boundaries, an internationally recognized Palestinian state would be claim the whole of the former British mandate, and thereby setting up the possibility of the United Nations calling for an international peacekeepking force to remove the zionists from Eretz Yisrael, etc. Given the weakness of the zionist claim (remember they reject Torah, and base their claims solely on international law and a United Nations resolution no one ever took seriously), an internationally recognized Palestinian state would seriously undermine Israel. Outside the United States (that is to say, outside the Republicans and Jewish Democrats), there is little support for Israel outside the Jewish community and in most countries the Israelis are seen as thieves who stole Eretz Yisrael from the goyim (Rashi addresses this is his famous opening of his commentary on Humash, but the Israelis reject the idea of a Torah basis for their enterprise since the whole idea of zionism was a secular western state – even though the secular west things the zionists are fools at best and criminals at worst).
charliehall:
The amount of damage Hamas can do is negligible. At worst they can force Jews out of Eretz Yisrael. Not quite the end of the world. We’ve survived that.
The worst the medinah can do is cause Jews to abandon Torah and Mitsvos. That would be fatal.
Hamas is like a sprained ankle or a pulled muscle or a mosquito bite. Zionism is like cancer or AIDs – which often aren’t painful at first, but are likely to be be fatal in the long run (unlikes the Hamas type illnesses which are a mere annoyance but not life threatening).
I assume you mean you want to learn in peace and not be an activist opposing the medinah and that you are not ineligible for military service for some other reason. There are many fine yeshiovos in countries not controlled by zionists. If you are a hareidi opposed to military service, living in Eretz Yisrael is like being on the front lines in a war, and while there is much zechus for a soldier to be “kravi” (as the zionists say, in their war with the goyim), if you want to learn in peace it is best to be “jobnik” (as the zionists refer to those who want to be in the army but not do anything that might get them shot at) by learning elsewhere.
Health: We agree that if something works, it is adopted by the mainstream.
For cures not involving surgery, drugs, etc., you (I assume you are part of the mainstream) fall short. If the same effort made in pushing diabetes treatments such as drugs or injections was made to tell patients to lose weight and exercise (e.g. here are some pills, they really don’t work all that well – if you don’t want to die a horrible death you have to lose half you body weight and spend at least an thirty minutes a day working out), it would be effective. Note how health care plans pay for “Janumet” but not for exercise. I suspect most doctors have long since concluded that most patients won’t listen if told to radically lose weight and exercise, and go to “Plan B” (medication).
If an “alternative” method worked, it would be adopted by mainstream medicine. The fact the “big medicine” rejects something that could use to justify charging you big fees suggests that these new treatments are to be looked at skeptically.
Though if an alternative is “free”, the establishment tends to ignore it. For example, Type 2 Diabetes can be prevented or cured by loss of weight (to the point the person is no longer overweight) and by significant exercise. Exercise and refraining from eating do not generate fees, making this an “alternative” to establish medicine. So in cases where the alternative involves little or no expense, it might be valid even though the medical establishment doesn’t embrace it.
Of course he was human. We don’t hold by supernaturals. Both why would Humash (or the Aggadahs) bother to discuss anything that was irrelevant. We hold that Humash is an deliberately written work (by an extremely hashuv author, the best there is), not a scientific collection of data. Of course it is propaganda, and given who wrote it, it is propaganda we should take very seriously. If many things were left out, they were do so on purpose, and it isn’t for us to question the author’s purpose.
Most people pronounce it “Hip-Pa” regardless of its official name or actual acronym.
Its a federal statute (United States) governing, among other things, privacy. It prevents sharing of medical records and importantly for families, makes it illegal for a doctor to discuss a child’s medical problems once the child is eighteen (though there is a way around it).
They usually get recycled, as some other animal’s dinner.
If you study the definitions, “”Me’anes” is not a perfect translation of the English word “rape”. For example, one can consent and still be raped (e.g. a minor if the other party is an adult). When discussing “legalese” it is best to stick to the original langauge. The are other distinctions in the definitions. It isn’t a one to one correlation.
The rebbe who thinks they are translations probably hasn’t studied enough law and linguistics, and should stick to the original Hebrew term without using an English term he may not fully undertand.
“retarded” itself is merely a polite way replacing more insulting terms used previously
The Polite terms in contemporary English involving combing the words “Mental” or “Intellectual” with “Handicapped” or increasingly “Disabled.”
“Developmental.. ” refers to when the problem started, meaning it started from birth (as opposed to having resulted later in life (such as from disease or injury)
Bnei Torah prefer polite speech, but there is nothing wrong with an Am ha-Aretz using the word “retarded” since everyone knows such persons are intellectually challenged which due to poor training results in vulgarity, and will forgive them.
1. I meant keloiim not shatnez.
2. Tangerines are not a problem, “tangelos” are.
3. When they start producing chimeras on a commercial basis, it will get poskened. Few rabbanim read hard science fiction and none answer shailohs that don’t exist yet.
DaasYochid: In nature difference species do not crossbreed, but the ability to genetically modify organizations raises interesting questions (e.g. a cow that has been modified to produce human milk). Some of the debate over GMO’s is about situations where genes from different animal or plant species are combined in “unnatural” ways (typically to produce healthier food or to facilitate raising them). Is it permitted for Jews to do the cross-breeding, and is it permitted to benefit from (i.e. eat) the results.
1. The question is whether there is an issue of shatnez. Assuming the dead animals were kosher and slaughtered properly (e.g. you are mixing beef and mutton), that’s not a problem but it might be worth asking. However if you bred the animals together it might raise an issue, and with modern technology it might be possible to produce a sheep/cow chimera (i.e. a living cow/sheep mixture), which would be a new shailoh which will probably get asked some day, when its invented.
2. Fish would be a different issue.
DaasYochid: Women tend to be healthier and live longer than men (the only reason this wasn’t a factor in the past was due to high maternal mortality, which Baruch ha-Shem, is history). That comfortably explain the statistic you consulted. The gap is much smaller if limited to newborns.
1. Men live shorter lives (this has been the case since modern medicine eliminated what had been the leading cause of death in women: childbirth complications)
2. In many cultures women are not valued, and female babies are frequently aborted (not a problem among frum Jews, butg a serious problem in several countries including China and India)
3. Wars sometimes increase the unbalance, but many countries have taken to killing women and children, which of course reduces the problem (e.g. after World War II, Germany had serious shortages of males since the Allies killed many German men but few German women, but among Jews this wasn’t a factor since the Germans murdered women equally with men)
How would a crisis be possible?
Are men suddenly less likely to marry than women (e.g. off the derech, decided to be lifelong bachelors, killed off in a war, etc.)? The answer is “no.”
Has the marriage age for men gone up? Probably, especially due to the economic conditions in recent years. Most men (and women) want a parnassah before they start raising a family. The “crisis” seems to be more among Baal ha-battim, than people planning on being impoverished kollel families, i.e. among those most likely to be affected by a strained economy (kollel families expect to be dirt poor, and the expectations are easy to meet).
Among most Americans, there is usually a significant gap in marriage age, with men often being five to ten years older – this is normal since men gain the ability to support a family much later than women are able to produce babies. In the old days, when most women could expect to eventually die in childbirth, and few babies survived to adulthood, a delay in starting a family was serious, but with modern medicine this isn’t a problem.
So relax, and the problem will go away as the men who were reaching adulthood when the economy crashed get established and get married.
edited
Non-goverment scholarships are open to aliens (and all foreign students are aliens). Note that Touro and YU, as private universities, have complete discretation in how they award financial aid that comes from non-government funding. They are also relatively “tight” compared to the leading secular universities (the figure to look at in the guide books is “percentage of need met”). One contacts the school to get more specific information.
1. The original ten tribes weren’t all that lost (and most survivors probably joined up with exiles from the other tribes a few years later).
2. Most of the “lost Jews” people keep discovering are from the mainstream tribes who didn’t start getting misplaced until the end of the Bayis Sheini period.
3. People like discovering interesting and lost lost relations.
4. Many Jews have a legitimate fear of getting lost, so its nice to hear about finding some who were lost and now are found.
The world is in an uproar over Islamic State (not just killing a few American reporters, but large scale massacres of various Muslim minorities, non-Muslims, and massive sexual crimes against non-Muslim women). Do you expect the US to launch an invasion of the Middle East, from which the US was driven out just a few years ago?
If you are good at the STEM (science, engineering, technology, and mathematics) subjects but don’t want to do them for a living, a patent lawyer is an option. Most patent lawyers work for the government, large corporations or big firms (rather than hanging out a shingle in Boro Park). Because most people going into law lack a background in STEM subjects, it is probably a good career prospect if you want to be a lawyer. The usual caveats about lawyers having trouble finding work are less applicable if you have an unusual undergraduate background and skills that are in demand.
If you “undergraduate” is a BTL based on yeshiva credits, you are totally not in the ballpark.
Undergraduate you should get a degree heavy in STEM (exposed to all sciences, major in one, perhaps in general engineering). Take course in technical writing since writing skills are necessary. Learn enough of government/history of the United States so you don’t make a fool of yourself.
An elite school is probably the best for law school, though undergraduate is less critical as long as you have a strong STEM background.
The war in Eretz Yisrael is a sideshow. Islamic State is not about conquering Eretz Yisrael, though if they conquer the Middle East the liklihood is that they will conquer Israel as well. In fact, many Palestinians do not favor the Islamic State/al Queda/Hamas/Muslim Bortherhood movement, and it would be rational for the zionists to reach out to those who oppose the “radical” (as the west wishes to see them) Muslims.
ISIS (a.k.a. Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or increasingly Islamic State) is no less a threat to Klal Yisrael than were the Communists or Nazis. Again, from a “this world” perspective, our survival will largely depend on the Americans (without whom the Third Reich would rule the world today, or the Communists would have achieved the global dictatorship). While we would undoubtedly survive an Islamic conquest, just as we would have survived a thousand year global Reich, or a global “dictatorship of the proletariat” – suffice to say we’ll have more to worry about than which hecksher to buy and where to go on vacation.
edited
While the above deals with “this world” (the world of ???), frum Jews deal more with the world of ??? and have no option other than to concentrate on Torah and Mitsvos and allow Ha-Shem to take care of matters.
It would be almost impossible for the Gazan’s military to operate without endanger civilians. Urban warfare is like that. It’s hypocritical of them to complain that civilians are being killed, but remember from their perspective that if they don’t keep fighting the Israelis their claims will grow stale. Remember that from their perspective, Israel is increasingly weak, with tremendous internal dissent, most of the major western countries looking for a way to push them under the bus, and with the militant and revived Islam growing, the Gazans figure it is just a matter of time until they are able to retake control of Eretz Yisrael.
Most Roman script langauges use capitalization to make it easier to read. By capitalizing the first word of a sentence it makes it easier to locate the start of the sentence. By capitalizing proper nouns, it makes it clearer what (or who) you are talking about. People raised as Anglophones fine the semitic languages lack of capitals to be annoying.
If the man has a valid argument against the divorce (e.g. he is madly in love with his wife and hopes she’ll change her mind), he should make the arugment to the Beis Din. However if the Beis Din told him to give the “get”, it’s a bit late.
There was a disasterous shidduch crisis among the “baby boomers” – but it was among the seculars, and in particular the secular Jews. Many of the non-frum Jews of the baby boomer generation failed miserably at reproducing. As a result, subsequent generations are radically reduced. Combined with our birth rate, that “crisis” is a major reason why the percentage of Shomer Shabbos among Jews has climbed radically over the last 50 years.
The primary “proof” of a shidduch crisis is a falling birth rate and what that results in (schools closing for lack of students, pediatricians retraining to specialize in geiatrics, etc.).
golfer:
The binyanim are not tenses. They are actually a very easy to use device to manipulate roots. It also allows one to “invent” a word as needed, which happens all the time.
The tenses in Hebrew are Avar and Atid, roughly equivalent to the “Past” and “future” (some would say “definite” and “indefinite”), and to simplify matters we manage to do a “present” by using a gerund. However the complex tenses in English (there are over a dozen, which are true of most Indo-European languages) have no equivalents. Whereas Indo-European langauges have very definite verb constructions, Semitic languages are “laid back” about time. The fact that Semitic languages make limited use of a very “to be” is also a serious complication.
Hebrew closely resembles Arabic and Aramaic. Using a translation of the Rambam from Arabic to Hebrew won’t lose much, and neither will a translation from Aramaic to Hebrew. German (of R. Hirsch) is very close to English – at the time of the Gaonim, the people in England could still carry on a conversation with the people in what is now Germany since the languages weren’t that different yet – while English got a lot easier after the Norman conquest, underneath they are still very similar.
So if someone wants to study our Sefrei Kodesh, best to learn enough of the original langauges so at least you can work with a bilingual linear translation, even if you can’t read them outright.
Is any translation “kosher” (which means fit, not necessarily as food). Is it possible to translate from Hebrew into English without losing most of the context? Hebrew is as similar to English as either language is to Chinese or Cherokee. Just consider the problem of translating between Hebrew with at most three tenses (really only two, the “present” is a gerund kludged into use as a present), and English with over a dozen very exact tenses.