akuperma

Chess has a long and venerable tradition among frum Jews. Even a Rishon wrote about it. Of course, you can’t play with an electronic clock or record moves, but that only affects official tournaments.

Most Israelis believe that their country was founded as a place where they could be safe from Torah and Mitsvos. The handful of frummies who see kedusha in the medinah are a very small and hated minority.

Georgetown in DC is the “fancy” neighborhood but while it has a shul, it has no schools or restaurants. The two restaurants in DC are near Du Pont Circle, which is in the downtown area. For all purposes, the Jewish community in Washington is in Montgomery COunty (part of Maryland, on the DC Metro) which has a wide variety of shuls, restaurants, schools ,etc. There is also the popular option to commute from Baltimore (about 45 minutes away by car, 55 by train) which has radically cheaper housing, and radically more frumkeit (especially if you are frummer than modern orthodox).

takahmamash: Except that in Israel the government wants to take yeshiva students (and girls, if you see the fine print) and put them into a military that sees one of its goals as being the secularizion of all Israels so there will be uniform culture (meaning that if you are conservadox or a left-wing religious zionist Israel is perfect, but not if you are frum).

MorahRach: In Baltimore, there are single family detached houses with respectable yards and driveways in the $100K-$125K range, generally built post-World War II, within a ten minute walk of the major shuls (including the German, Yeshivish, Hasidic and modern orthodox ones). For more money, you can a newer house. If you want to live in Baltimore country (a few blocks away) you pay at least twice as much for the house, but the tax rate is under half of the city (other differences is that Baltimore County has better public schools, which is why housing there is a premium – that can be important if one’s child is so special (i.e. handicapped) that they need to go to a non-Jewish school.

Also note that DC and Baltimore are in a relationship similar to Brooklyn and Manhattan (except that they only have separate teams in baseball and football, but do have separate newspapers). If general, Baltimore is frumer than DC, but there are plenty of modern orthodox and non-frum in Baltimore, and plenty of “penguins” in DC (or rather Montgomery County which includes Silver Spring, Rockville and Potomac). The heavily subsidized commuter trains connect Baltimore to DC (but as yet no one has managed to set up a minyan on them, many people drive to Silver Spring to make early minyans before continuing on to jobs in DC).

to: ‘The Haredim can leave whenever they want. Nobody is holding them hostage. Just make sure the door doesn’t hit them on the way out. “

1. The Hareidim were there first. Before the zionists. Before the Arabs. Before the Greeks and Romans.Being a bunch of religious fanatics with weird ideas on halacha, we were chased out of what is now Iraq about 4000 years ago.

2.What is the basis of the zionist claim to Eretz Yisrael?. Zionists have lived in Israel for barely over a century. Compare that to the Americans who have been in their land for 400 years, or the English who arrived 1500 years ago, or the Palestinians who arrived 1400 years if you ignore the DNA evidence that they aren’t really Arabs and are a mixture of Jewish hilonim (a.k.a. mityavanim), Greek and Romans. Based on DNA, most Jews are only partly over middle eastern ancestry, and that’s concentrated on the male line – there were apparently many more female converts in ancient times but they were convereted based on good old fashioned hareidi halachas. As of the 19th century, very few Jews spoke Hebrew except for hareidi fanatics who learned in Hebrew, rather than Latin or Arabic as did normal westerners. Except for a few hareidim, few Jews wanted to live in Israel (and it wasn’t the Arabs who kept us away, if fact they welcomed Jews back when the defeated the Romans – probably figured anyone who hates Romans can’t be all bad).

rebdoniel: “I’d be even happier if we had an influx of Haredim into the US, as long as they voted Republican. “

Hareidim, in America, tend to be solid Democrats. Have you noticed which party people like Dov Hikind caucus with? While we are social conservatives, we tend to believe the government should help the poor, and not worry too much about balancing the budget. Arguably they got the idea from us. The traditional conservative approach in America was that giving tsadakah would corrupt the poor, deprive them of self-respect, and discourage them for bettering themselves (thus welfare was only if you were down to the clothes on your back, and involving moving to the “poor house” or “debtors prison”).

While the 21st century warrants a reconsideration of these positions (and I am much closer to Von Hayek than Lord Keynes), Hareidim tend to be natural leftists on economic matters (something that may prove very “interesting” in Eretz Yisrael in the immediate future, since that will facilitate allying with Labor and the Arabs against conscription).

Avi K. If you have not served in the army and are officially listed as learning full time (in order to evade military service), you are legally prohibited from working “on the books”. Thus if you hold, as most hareidim do, that military service is contrary to halacha due to the hostility of ther army to a Torah-based lifestyle (which is the case except in some specialized units), you do not have the option of working outside the frum community (which is technically “off the books”). Obviously the army could stop persecuting orthodox Jews, but as the recent incident involving religious zionists who were expelled from officer training for refusing to listen to female singers (which is considered erotic and lewd in Jewish culture, some similar to if am American officer coruse required going to a burlesque show as a condition of commissioning), it is unlikely that the IDF will make the necessary adaptation to allow hareidim to serve (other than in the “Jim Crow” type units such as the “Nahal Hareidi” – i.e., the Israeli equivalent of the American colored infantry regiments or the British native regiments).

However once hareidim resistance forces the zionists to end conscription, frum Jews will free to work, and the IDF if it needs manpower will be forced to see toleration of a Torah lifestyle in a positive light. Thus I am optimistic about the law term future.

“the humbling that the Haredi parties “

It was more of being disabused of the notion that they can be Hareidi and Zionists. They learned that the Eidah Hareidis had been right all along. The two ideologies, Torah on the one hand, and belief in a nation-state with sovereignity over a piece of land on the other, and inherently incompatible. The two (really three, Degel ha-Torah and Agudah are separate but in alliance) parties (not to mention many YWN readers) had come to believe that Medinat Yisrael was good for the Jews and was a country that supported Torah and Mitsvos, even though the evidence is that the medinah has always had a policy of coercing Jews to go “off the derekh” and support for yeshivos was only a bargaining ploy to buy off those hareidim who were able to be bought off.

The irony is, that real political considerations in Israel may force the zionists to abandon conscription. It is already unpopular with many hilonim and virtually all Arabs (who are about half of the goyim living in Israel, the rest are zionists with some Jewish ancestry but not halachic Jews), and the open resistance of the anti-zionist hareidim will be such that the zionists will end up abolishing conscription and switching to a professional army. Once that happens, hareidi baal ha-battim who are on the books as learning full time, will be able to be on the books working and the hareidim community will prosper. In addition, the army (and eventually Israeli at large, which copies the army) will finally make a good faith effort to accomodate hareidim in the military not as a result of political bargains but out of a need to recruit soldiers, and not just for a handful of “Jim Crow” units. So the future is actually quite bright for the hareidim community, once the tumult over the (to be soon realized as being futile) attempts to mass conscript yeshiva students are abandonned.

Among our species, the optimal child bearing years are about 30 years before the peak earning years. If we waited until we could afford families, we would become extinct (as, by the way, appears to be happening in many secular cultures).

Having no money is a nuisance, but one can manage. Medicaid covers most medical bills. Assuming you don’t plan on home schooling, you can usually find some school if one is still poor when the kids reach school age. The more frum the school, the easier to work a deal if you are poor. It’s been a VERY long time since the typical poor person in our community had a one room room apartment (back then, the parent’s bed typically had curtains – and no one else had a bed). Especially in “blue” states, there are plenty of welfare programs in addition to programs such as “Food stamps” and “WIC.”

Remember that this is the first time in history where a major public health issue among the poor is obesity. Poverty today more often means having fewer luxuries than the neighbors. Note how people lived 100 years ago (tiny housing, no private cars, no air conditioning, often no central heating, no antibiotics, severe discrimination against orthodox Jews, and if you lived in Europe, frequent pogroms with the worst about to happen), and don’t whine.

It should also be noted that the marginal cost of each children is quite low. Schools (both ours, as well as universities) pay attention to family size, Adding one more place at the table costs little. And by the time kids reach middle school, they probably are doing a fair amount of work (especially in poor families).

1. Actually some counts estimate over 30 Shomer Shabbos MKs, and a noticable part of all the anti-religious parties are Shomer Shabbos. This is a good sign. The fact that the leading enemy of the yeshiva wears a yarmulke is a clear improvement.

2. The conscription crisis will disappear over time. The anti-zionists will refuse regardless, and the Israelis will back off from being seen as persecuting peaceful religious fanatics. Public opinion is more concerned with getting hareidim in the “workplace” and that can best be accomplished by ending conscription (in which case all those who want to be Baal ha-battim but refuse to serve in the army will leave the yeshiva and get “on the books” jobs).

3. The hilonim are dying out since they enjoy material things, and that discourages them from having kids. We are doomed to take over.

Also, Hareidim can deal with the Arabs more realistically since we can make concessions that are meaningful to the Arabs whereas the hilonim can only offer land which is irrelevant. We can compromise on sovereignity and make Israel more of a middle eastern country, and the hilonim can’t. Part of the increased fanaticism of the hilonim is since they have “read the writing on the wall” and realize they have no future basic on demographic factors that are not irreversible.

zahavasdad who wrote “A stipend for learning (Or any other reason) from the government would be called Welfare or a handout here in the US “

Actually it isn’t. Pell Grants and other forms of scholarships to attend academic institutions are not considered to be a form of welfare. Once the student gets beyond a certain point (typically by graduate school), stipends given to students if they do more than cover the cost of tuition (tuition waiver) and basic room and board, are considered income and are taxable in many cases (and if not taxable, only because specific rules were issued to protect them from taxation). The Israelis don’t considerd teachers in yeshivos to be the equivalent of university teachers or fellows since they would have to draft them. If in fact, if anyone receiving money (often from private donations raised abroad) beyond the cost of tuition and room and board in return for being a “Ben Yeshiva” were considered employed, unemployment in the frum community would be minimal. That is why the people in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem don’t act as if they were in a city with a high unemployment rate – if fact they have a low unemployment rate.

While in the United States “welfare” is what is given to the desperately poor, in most western countries “welfare” is when the government covers basic needs such as housing, living costs and medical care from the public treasury for all persons regardless of need. In the US, programs that are need-based such as Medicare or Social Security or subsidized tuition at public schools are NOT considered to be welfare, though in Europe the equivalent programs are considered part of the “welfare state.”

The real issue in Israel is that the ruling class wants Israel to be what to them is the “zionists” – meaning free of the yoke of Torah that they came to Israel to escape — and the hareidim are very publicly destroying their zionist dream. It’s not about employment or welfare or even serving in the army and schechting Arabs.

If Ben Gurion offered a 60 year draft exemption (i.e. yeshivas allowed for 60 years, then no longer) – the Hareidim would probably have supported the plan to make Palestine into an American Trust Territory. Any significant Jewish opposition to independence would have tilted the balance. American policy is to leave self-contained peaceful religious minorities alone.

Note that the zionists aren’t discussing defunding yeshivos, but of seizing the students and their money, and seizing money raised in America so it can’t be used to support students learning Torah. Even the British and Muslims never did that. So this means Lapid and Bennett are more in a class with the Crusaders and Romans as enemies of Torah.

All the Nationalists such as Likud, Bayit Yehudi, Yesh Atid and even Livni who is an ex-Liukd princess) will accomplish is to end up forcing an end to conscription (which will be good for the Israeli economy, and excellent for Hareidim who want to work outside the frum “ghetto”). They won’t be willing to throw people in jail, and fines won’t work since the people they want to fine don’t have any assets. They seriously underestimate the extent the yeshiva world gets money from overseas (both as donations and tuitions), in part since for ideological reasons they won’t admit that this is “income”, and also haven’t realized that the “welfare state” is a more important source of income than subsidies paid to yeshivos, and limiting welfare state benefits based on political views is very problematic. They will manage to encourage many Hareidim who are inclined to volunteer to decline to do so, since even Hareidim who want to play soldier, don’t want to be seen as opposing yeshivos. Most importantly, unless they back down quickly, they may find that the current kenesset “opposition” group of Socialists, Hareidim and Arabs will evolve into a coherent political block united by support for liberal welfare policies, and opposition to conscription (which they are now just discovering) which will make Israeli politics more interesting.

The economy today is so different it is impossible to apply modern terms to what the Rambam or any contemporary said.

Money as we know it didn’t exist 1000 years ago. They bartered using commodities, goods, and pieces of rare metals (gold, silver and copper in particular- which are really just commodities).

Due to globalization, crop shortages don’t result in starvation. Indeed, even in the poorest countries, obesity is the fastest growing public health problem. If some is starving today, it means their government is causing it to happen by some deliberate policy.

Jews have always had a propensity to stop working once they have enough to eat and spend more time learning. We have always been more concerned with how a job affects ability to do mitsvos than with making money.

Giving someone money so they can spend more time learning is hardly welfare. It’s a tradition. Whereas goyim learn only to find a way to get more money, we learn since the existence of the world depends on it. Among the Jews, only those who shirk their duty concentrate on getting rich, leaving the burden of Torah and Mitsvos to those who tend to be moser nefesh to have the time (and given today’s economy, it doesn’t take all that much meserias nefesh to find the time).

Just imagine when QUINOA gets accepted widely. Then we can have kosher-le-pesach pizza and hallah. Of course, once such recipes become common, I suspect opinion will turn against accepted quinoa as kosher-le-pesach.

I would be very skeptical if R. Herzog (who held positions in Ireland, Britain and Israel) would observe “St. Patrick’s Day” since in Ireland it has always been a solemn holiday in which attendance at Church services was the highlight of the observance. The celebrations involving alcohol are of Amercian origin, but even in America they are in addition to the religious ceremonies (and note that the parade routes are designed with the religious element in mind).

The Arabs will never make territorial concessions. They will insist that Eretz Yisrael be art of an Arab Islamic state (even if it is an autonomous Hebrew speaking entity with its own army). They will insist that Arab Muslims are considered first class citizens (which they certainly aren’t). Our insistence that Arab Muslim be a tolerate minority in places they have lived in for centuries is the cause of the war (a war that, BTW, the gedolim opposed, and had the zionists listened to the gedolim, the war could have been avoided).

Hareidim demand that we can control our own affairs. We don’t want to impose our laws on the goyim. Thus Hareidim are in a better position to negotiate. We might be willing to agree to ban abortion, ban public same-gender you know what, require wearing decent clothes in public, prohibit ribis, etc., as the price of peace. Indeed, if the Arabs agreed to let Jews live anywhere in the Land of Israel, I suspect even many of the settlers might agree.But as long as we insist on “sovereign” status (which, BTW, means no one, even G-d, is above the state – meaning the whole idea of soverignity is apikoresdik), there is no hope for peace – meaning the eventual end will be like all other nations, which sooner later, means being something found only in history books.

In light of the latest news from Eretz Yisrael: ??? ??? ???? ????

Likud and Bayit Yehudi might reconsider how much they want to permanently antagonize the Hareidim, and limit the sanctions for not serving in the army to loss of yeshiva stipends (rather than fines, loss of welfare state benefits, restrictions on civil rights, etc.). The fact that Likud always has an option to substitute the Hareidim for Lapid will serve to limit Lapid’s options.

Or- the you know what hits the fan and the next year will be very “interesting” (as in the proverbial curse, ‘may you live in interesting times’)

OblateSpheroid: As I said, not all colleges accept CLEP or APs, and not for all exams. In general, the better the school, the fussier they are. At a place such as Johns Hopkins, only some APs are accepted, and only with very high grades. As you work down towards the better public schools, you’ll find most APs and most CLEPs are accepted. On the bottom rung, you’ll find general acceptance. Needless to say, most YWN users probably are more likely to find themselves going to Brooklyn College, a community college, or piecing together secular credits for a BTL – than they are to be seeking admission to an Ivy League type universitiy.

If someone is from a school that doesn’t have a good academic reputation, e.g., a frum yeshiva that doesn’t usually send its graduates to universities, the AP and CLEP exams pose an addition role in proving the student can do college work – meaning it counts for admission rather than credits.

No one says its treff.

The only Jewish food is matza. The rest we copied from the goyim (even gefilte fish). Yidden are too busy with Torah and Mitsvos to invent our own cuisine.

A monarchy can have an elected king. The Resh Galusa was one, so were Polish kings, so is the Pope. You can also have someone filling in for a king (equivalent to the British concepts of a Regent or a Lord Protector).

There are many ways to argue that a frum government needs consent of the governed. A Jewish king could always agree to a constitution with elected representative – and presumably would be bound by his promise (or oath) to respect it.

A Sanhedrin would require all the gedolim to agree (Ashkenazi and Sefardi, Satmar and Lubavitch, Hasidim and Young Israel). When that happens, you’ll know the revolution has arrived.

The end game involves restoration of the monarchy, a sanhedrin and an kohen gadol. It’s the middle game that’s problematic. In such a state, all military units would resemble hesder units, and hilonim would be in charge of nothing more important than cleaning latrines.

In the interim, and realizing that it is probably impossible for a zionist state to ever make peace with the goyim (a major factor in our gedolim having opposed the zionists), they should switch to a professional army. Based on the percentage of volunteers for combat units, they shouldn’t have a problem. If they want frum recruits, they’ll have to offer them terms and conditions of service that are attractive.

Most western cultures respect a minority seeking to be left alone, and consider it bigotry for the majority to force their norms on the minority. The secular Jews (and many of the Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionists as well) have let their prejudices get the best of them. Most of the world will see the persecution of the Hareidim (denying social security benefits, denying passports, seizing their money) as religious persecution.