akuperma

His methodology aroused bemusement among genealogists, who usually start with themselves and work back. Doing it the other way around, picking a person and working forwards, ends leading to virtually meaningless results if you start going back too far – and 500 years is stretching it. I used the book to study the development of surnames and found it fascinating.

At this point, virtually every Jew, and probably almost every goy in Europe and the Middle East, is related to Avraham Aveinu, as well as to everyone else from that time. People were constantly moving around. Indeed, we have a mesorah, admittedly al pe kaballah, that every human had a common ancestor less than 5000 years ago (the goyim hold the common ancestor was probably more like several hundred thousand years ago).

Remember also that tools of genealogy don’t pick up converts, since we had to forge fake yichus for them since if the goyim knew someone converted they would execute them as a heretic. It also misses people who went off the derekh, whether or not they later returned, since it would have been loshon ho’ra to record such matters.

My response to someone who starts boasting of yichus is to point out I’m from the family of Adam ha-Rishon by way of Avraham Aveinu, and then ask them what they are descended from.

If you are really sure you want to be a doctor , realize you’ll have to borrow a humongous sum of money to pay tuition and support your family, and will probably never get rich being a doctor, and your wife likes the idea – why not?

Would you hold by the science available at the time of say, R. Moshe Feinstein and the Satmarer (the real and original) Rebbe?

What about the science from the time of the Hafets Haim, or the Vilna Gaon.

Define internet!

Do you mean paying for things with plastic cards, or increasingly via a cell phone, so much that paper money and coins are increasingly for collectors, not shopping? I doubt that’s what you object to.

Do you mean the possibility of a hospital to access your medical records held elsewhere before they give you a fatal dose of a drug you are allergic to? I doubt that’s the problem.

Probably you object to use of graphic browsers to see “inappropriate” images – though in all fairness, people found ways to find inappropriate images long before there were computers, or photographs. Some of the oldest man-made objects known appear to be pornographic (and if you hold by our Torah as an historical document, that should not be a surprise).

However the increasing trend of younger people to get information in short bursts, with a high graphic content, rather than from reading and understanding texts is a real problem. Since frum Jews spend a lot of time pouring over documents, we’ll probably be the last ones with decent reading skills.

“but there is no classified checklist locked in a defense ministers drawer that reads “list of ways to break frum people and turn them into secular zionists after enlistment”…”

Actually the Defense Minister believes that the conscription of hareidim is a dumb idea since it will recruit many soliders who will not be helpful in defending the country (unlike the hareidi volunteers, who in fact might not continue to serve once conscription of yeshivos is put in place), and will be soldiers who will be very expensive to maintain (since married draftees, especially with children, are paid substantially more). From a military perspective, there is no “case” to be made for conscription of yeshiva students.

1. Pogroms happen. They have been happening for several millenia. Before that, we had problems like foreign armies hauling away most of the population. We are old hands at surviving genocide. To a “Reform” Jew who believed that the European were the greatest civilization in history, and that the Germans were the most civilized and most advanced people in the world – the holocaust was a horrible shock. To frum Jews, it’s a matter “oh, that again”. They try to kills, HaShem stops them, we survive and carry on. In a few years we recover. It’s happened before, and will probably happen again. Live with it.

2. At this point in time, if we consider how many people would be putting on tefillin this morning if nothing happened – going back to 250 years (i.e. to just prior to the start of the modern period) — the leading cause of reducing the number of Bnei Torah is not the holocaust or even pogroms in general during the period — but assimilation. In fact, most Bnei Torah in America today are the descendants of the refugees from, and survivors of the holocaust. The 90% of American Jews who roots predate that period are for the most “gone”. A handful survived, and a handful of those on the verge of being lost became Baalei Tsuvah — but almost all are lost just as much as the ten lost tribes, or the six million who died during the last world war. It’s nice that most Americans (and probably most goyim in Europe and Middle East) have some Jewish DNA (or rather, DNA inherited from Jews), but what matters are the number of people learning Torah and doing mitsvos.

Thus you shouldn’t get all bent out of shape about the Arabs (with whom we have a disupte about real estate – dinei mamonos at best), but should be panicing over Lapid. You should not place your faith in the IDF to protect you since they incapable of saving us from what threatens us, but you should be worried about the “war” be launched against the yeshivos in Eretz Yisrael, since that is our first and only line of defense against what really threatens us.

It was an off the derekh kid. Onemight suggest there is a connection between taking up cheeseburgers and taking up larceny – they are both prohibitted by the same laws, which he has rejected.

Is this limited to Americans (including American expatriates in Israel)? I haven’t heard about this problem elsewhere among frum Jews, and there are many complaints about American youth abusing alcohol. If it is an “American” issues rather than a “Jewish” issue, it affects how to address the problem.

Is this problem limited to the more “modern” types within the frum community who are trying to be cool? I haven’t observed the alcohol abuse among groups such as Satmar that minimize contact with mainstream American culture – suggest the problem is one of kids having too much access to internet, television and movies.

Everyone has a shidduch crisis, until they get married.

NO, it means you believe in statistics.

The only person who had a serious problem finding a shiduch was Adam Ha-Rishon, and Ha-Shem had to intervene to resolve the matter.

Everyone has a shiduch crisis, until they get married. No exception. No hiddush.

lesschumras: I’ve spent a good deal of time working with Reform and Conservative Jews. They hold that Orthodox Judaism, with its strict adherance to mitsvos, is a recent innovation, and that they (the Reform and Conservative) are really normative Judaism. To them we are a misguided cult who invented all this stuff out of whole cloth over the last few centuries. That is why they see no problem is trying to get the Kossel switched over to “normal” (as they see it) Judaism rather than the (weird, as they see it) orthodox practice of gender segregation.

1. Self-employment means running your own business. The alternative is to be an employee. Virtually all career offer the choice between “being your own boss” and being an employee.

2. Career refers to the substance of one’s work, not whether one is an employee or not. Running a business is a career, whether you are the owner or an employee.

3. Unless its a hobby, no business is permanently small by design. As a business grows, it ceases to be small. THat is the goal.

to those who asked” Akuperma: “confiscating the money they raise abroad, as well as throwing the talmidim in prison.”

What are you talking about? Where did you hear this?

YNET and Israel Times sites.

They have decided that cutting off funding for yeshivos won’t work, since many yeshivos (the noisiest one in protest the government) never accepted government money, and that many yeshivos rely on foreign fundraising. Therefore the idea of merely cutting off government money won’t be effective in punishing yeshivos that oppose conscription. That requires fines that have to be paid from money raised from private donors, which means from America.

They also realized that fines against penniless yeshiva students (and face, even the most middle class 18 year is penniless unless he inherited a trust fund, which is very rare even in America and unheard of in Israel) are uncollectible, and therefore they will need to throw them in prison for refusing to serve in the army.

Look it, I know you guys really believe that the medinah was the beginning of the geula. But it times to admit that the zionists are the ones we daven for in Shmonei Esray every weekday with the bracha that includes “v’kal oyvei amecha meharah yekarasu”. Ha-Shem will protect the Am ha-Torah. It might still be, just not in the way you think.

1. So why did he propose closing down the non-zionist yeshivos (that is the effect of confiscating the money they raise abroad, as well as throwing the talmidim in prison) – and its pretty clear that is what is being planned (according to the secular press).

2. If he’s concerned about frum parnassah, why not propose making it legal for people to get jobs outside the hareidi community without serving in the army – at present they will be arrested if they do so.

3. If he’s so concerned, why not propose an American style anti-discrimination law requiring what in the USA is “reasonable accomodation” of religious minorities (and is Israel is considered “religious coercion”).

There is no hazakah that he is a evil person (yet), so we need to be Dan le-Kay Zechus. He may have been misled. Some people joined the Nazi Party in 1933 not realizing it would engage in genocide. He can now resign, or better, join the opposition, and come home to Torah world he only recently left.

1. The Germans maintained they were acting in self-defense (which had the won the war, history would duly record — though the surviving Jews would have an oral tradition to the contrary). I believe they also renounced the Kellogg-Brian Pact.

2. The Germans passed a law authorizing the government to take all necessary measures (the “Night and fog” law) and if this was legal, it would be a defense under German law. The Allies disagreed. There’s a good chance than had Rommel become the new leader (in the unlikely event the July 1944 putsch won), he probably would have found many Germans were acting illegally (and one can argue that the Nazis were more afraid of a future German government blaming them for the holocaust than they were afraid of the Allies or the Jews, since they assumed they would be summarily shot if they lost the war – something the US wouldn’t allow). Needless to say, any Germans with “fear of G-d” probably fled the country or ended up being executed (though some survived).

3. From a Jewish perspective, everyone involved in the holocaust was guilty regardless of who gave them orders, though that position is not universally shared by the rest of the world (whose legal traditions allow for a criminal defense based on following orders).

To “Charles Snort” — translations

???? ??? ????? ?????? ???? ?? ?????? = The words of the teacher, or the words of the student, to whom do you pay attention (as in: what Ha-Shem tells you to do, or what anyone else tells you to do, which do you pay attention to).

???? ??? ????? = [you are required] to allow yourself to be killed rather than violate the law – this applies to unlawful spilling of blood, idolatry in all forms, or engaging in a sex crime — whomever is trying to coerce you to violate these laws is considered a pursuer trying to kill you and you may kill him in self-defense

??? ??? = period of persecution – such as when the powers that be are demanding non-observance of mitsvos as part of a program to undermine Torah and mitsvos — in this situation, even the most trivial minhag (e.g. tying shoes one way, if the non-Jews tie it a different way) is mandatory even if it will result in death

1. We still do. Men wear a robe (actually a cloak, such as a tallis). To make it more convenient, it now has sleeves. During the 20th century, the style for men moved towards shorter jackets, with longer jackets (frocks, kapote, etc.) only for more formal usage (among goyim, note that the Netherlands king wore a kapote when he took his oath, and most men work similar jackets for the wedding of the Prince of Wales). Long jackets lost popularity when King George V stopped wearing them in the 1920s (Jews couldn’t care less about him, so we didn’t get the message).

2. It appears that jackets, and pants, became a lot more popular in western Europe at the end of the middle ages (perhaps due to the climate suddenly got colder). Robes, without pants, are popular in many countries. Since the Americans and Western European conquered the world, their fashions become more prestigious.

It is always to be a centrist. The problem is that there is some moral dubiousness between being a centrist between good and evil, or right and wrong. Germans who avoided killing Jews, but made a point not to get involved with the extremists who tried to overthrow Hitler, were centrists – and are still apologizing for it.

Would you want a doctor who considered an effective treatment and doing nothing, and being a centrist decided on a somewhat effective treatment? Doing a little bit of the right thing is very centrist, and very hypocritical.

Whether (or “how many”) Hareidim serve/served in the IDF depends on definitions.

Many people define Hareidim in part as “not serving in the army.” By this definition, any Hareidi who serves in the army ceases to be hareidim (what the secular fanatics are hoping for). By this definition no hareidi has, is, or ever will serve in the army.

Once you broaden the definition to include such aspects as strict in kashrus and mitsvos (but that applies to all orthodox Jews), dressing “funny” (but that leaves out many such as the Frankfort au Main community), or holding that the Israeli state as now constituted does not have the power to pass laws that contradict halacha (but many Religious Zionists held the evacuation of settlments was against halacha, and considered armed resistance – does that make them Hareidi?) — you get a much larger hareidi community, many of who have always served in the army.

Do you mean as formal dress for shul, a wedding, etc. Very few people consider a straw hat to be anything other than informal wear. In all contexts, wearing a straw hat suggests you consider the activity you are engaging in is not something very important. Straw is a very inexpensive fabric.

Do you mean informal usage? Such as wearing while on a picnic in the mountains?

And how do you define hareidi? If you define hareidi as wearing a black felt hat, then by definition no hareidi wears a straw hat.

If you define hareidi based on hashkafa (being mehudar in mitsvos, and perhaps most importantly, not accept the legitimacy of the Israeli government and holding that in a clash between Israeli law and halacha, we hold by halacha), then many hareidim wear 21st century western style clothes (but they still would not wear a straw hat in a “dress” situation).

If you like being bored, ignore this website. Ignore the news. Ignore the internet. Probably skip learning Torah (especially if you are a Ben Torah).

Remember that it is a curse to wish someone to “live in interesting times”

1. The government of Israel gives money to yeshivos if it is popular enough to attract votes. If they don’t give the yeshiovos money, the parties who want yeshivos won’t support them. As a result of the last election, the parties favoring support of the hareidi yeshiovos did poorly relative to the anti-hareidim, so the government will cut funding.

2. This is how a parliamentary system works. Each faction joins the government, and gets patronage and money for their favorite projects. It is very democratic and good politics, though from an economic efficiency perspective it stinks (in part because it guarantees high taxes).

3. Conscription is a separate issue. The government might end up saying that they will only fund veterans in yeshivos, but not non-veterans, which is their right. However passing a law that makes it illegal for at least some 18 year olds to learn Torah (requiring them to stop learning and join the army) is unacceptable to much of the frum community.

Whether any Rav supported the medinah between 1948 and 2013 is irrelevant now, since an agreement to exempt yeshiva students from the military was in effect then, and it no longer is. An analogy would be to quote someone discussing how we view Germans from the second reich (1870-1918) and saying that was how the person felt during the third reich (1933-1945) when the policies changed.

Conscripting yeshiva students is a “game changer.” Not funding yeshivos, or structuring welfare benefits so as to injure the hareidi community is mere politics since no one argues that a non-Jewish government has any obligation to give moeny to yeshivos or to give money to frum people and causes. Drafting yeshiva students and ordering them to stop learning Torah is very serious. Even if Dina Malchus Dina applied to the government of Eretz Yisrael, it would apply to such a decree.

There’s even a gemara in Sanhedrin suggesting that if the military police come to arrest yeshiva students, they are allowed to to kill the police (i.e. that the Lapid-Bennett program means the zionists have a din of a rodef – and everything they’ve been arguing to support schechting Arabs as pikuach nefesh, now applies to the zionists — which, BTW, is a more radical position than even Neturei Karta has advocated).

rabbiofberlin:

1. “Rock of Israel” was a compromise. Ben Gurion et al rejected the idea that the zionist claim was based on Torah (remember they were planning a very secular, socialist state – and a large faction wanted to ally with the Soviet Union), and this was the closest to referring to Torah they would allow.

2. During the 1948 (post agreement on yeshiva exemptions) to 2013 (yeshiva conscription) many rabbanim were quite willing to work with the state. They accepted the money and were content with the yeshiva exemptions (even if it came with a big price – most hareidim were legally banned from accepting jobs outside the hareidi community). That period is over, and it is clear that if conscription of yeshiva students is introduced, many rabbanim who were happy to “collaborate” with the zionists, will reconsider the 1948 to support the medinah (an alternative at the time was to have Palestine become an American colony) and perhaps go back to the positions that led to Dr. De Haan being murdered (and the groups that are now the Edis Hareidis being intimidatged into staying out of politics), names support for a single-state solution including both banks of the Jordan with an autonomous hareidi community under a majority-Islamic government (note that even the worst of the terrorists have rarely targeted hareidim and have never attacked an anti-zionist yeshiva – since 1929 which is well before the medinah and involved some dubious behavior by the British and perhaps the zionists both of whom clearly knew about the attack before hand).

zahavasdad: “You live in a country you have to obey the laws of that country. “

So you feel Israel should apologize to the Eichmann family?? He was following the laws of the country he lived in. There is a theory that “Dina Malchusa Dina” applies in Eretz Yisrael, but even if it does, its rather clear that the gezerah on conscription is motivated by a desire to uproot the Torah world which means that it is a law we can ignore , as any other of the zionist laws that are aimed to undermine the Am ha-Shem and their dedication to Torah and Mitsvos.

We live in Ha-Shem’s world, and follow his laws. Ha-Shem hoo Malkainu (or if you want to be more modern, our President, our Prime Minister, our CEO, etc.). This is especially true in Eretz Yisrael in which the Jews only claim to the land is that Ha-Shem gave us permission to live there on condition we used this extraordinary grant (no other people were given their country by Ha-Shem) to we follow his laws. Perhaps those persons in Eretz Yisrael who are of Jewish descent who don’t want to follow the laws of the country they live in should move.