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> Is full time Torah learning not a productive lifestyle?
not from the point of view of taxpayers – other than classes accredited academically and qualifying for educational subsidies. Maybe, if we behave in a way that Americans see the value of learning and write it in the law and regulations, then it will be great. Say, one who gets unemployment/welfare can either be learning a profession, search for work, or learn Torah. For example, Aleph has a certified program that helps prisoners and they are teaching Torah there, leading to earlier release.
Would it be possible to qualify kollel classes as educational the way some yeshivos/seminaries do? Maybe PhD in Yevamos?common > push the so call clean stuff.
news alert: EU just included gas and nuclear back into “green”. Greens are getting red from anger at that.
> moshiach is on his way
Omein. Is he going to subsidize esrogim? (cf. Rav Huna – either vinegar become wine or prices of vinger went up).
amom > Men going into chinuch is also a completely different topic than kollel men
I see it as relates topic of men not getting prepared to earn parnosah. Again, not to deny the wonderful Rebbes and learners. I am talking about those for whom this derech is not working out.
Just read R Avigdor Miller who is speaking very carefully: yes, it is a good idea to teach a kid the language of the country so that he can earn a living. No, it does not mean that if your yeshiva is not teaching that language, that this is wrong. don’t think that. But, if your yeshiva does teach that language, they are doing the right thing. I hope I reproduced this pretzel correctly.
Avram > projecting it onto an entire group of people.
to a degree, yes. Some people with whom I had such experience, clearly felt superior based on superficial look at our demographics without knowing anything about the family and talked from that perspective. I perhaps talk similarly when asked about statistics of something by an amateur (and I probably did it here when we were doing covid numbers). In my defense, I can say that none of the Talmidei Chachamim that I consulted about these issues, tried to correct my misunderstandings and mostly commiserated. Not because I was out of control – I was specifically asking whether I am reacting correctly.
amom, I hear you. (and I am sure Israeli kollel wives will deny that they have difficulties and find a tirutz for your concerns).
We have a lot of halochos that are built to maintain good social behaviors even in the face of potential bad behavior. As the daf is starting ketubos – we encourage chatanim to spend some money on the wedding – so that he has hard time deciding soon after the marriage that single life was better, why just not give her a get … and, in general, we have a ketubah and not saying “most husbands will be good”. what I am saying here, there are modern mechanisms to monitor business and learning processes – and I am wondering whether they are used or could be used. Say, I can see how my kids learned math by looking at standardized test. I can’t evaluate their mishna skills with the same precision, and you probably can’t evaluate your husband’s learning – or even his learning when you were getting married. Maybe, every rosh yeshiva provides exact feedback on the level of learning to brides & wives, do they?
Avram,
you are humbly describing your productive lifestyle using available government program as part of it. I also used welfare for several months when I was in a similar stage of life. I still get paid by the government by applying for competitive contracts … In the considered – hypothetical – case, if there were a government program listing Torah learning as an allowable occupation (a sign Moschiach is coming?) one can make a case for taking that money, despite Rambam’s opposition.Current life is, on one hand, incredibly safe on average comparing with the past – we have less sickness, better healthcare and fire department, GPS, calories printed on every food item – , and, on the other hand, full of potential dangers that are very close to everyone – random people driving on your street, random people contacting kids on social media … The first leads people to understand when there is unusual danger and the second means that we need to interfere in almost every moment to prevent these dangers.
At the times when half of the kids did not survive childhood and you knew everyone in your neighborhood – comparative risk of the kid going to the store was very low.
New definition of chutzpah. We need to demand a shomer shabbos Jew on Supreme Court in the name of equity so that he can point this out.
I am not denying some insight from these comparisons, but Europe literally consists of people who during last several hundreds of years preferred to stay in their current condition rather than taking a chance and hopping on a boat to the New World. Either they were very rich and comfortable or did not dare. No surprise these people don’t want to own their self-protection! Note that most of them had no problems killing lots of people as long as they were doing it as part of a large group and under orders.
jackk, are hearings already over and I can switch the radio back or are they waiting for new explosives and we should all stay behind a cover? pls keep us updated!
I looked up “insurrection” in google trends – it spiked on Jan 6 and then again a year later, it gets almost no attention the rest of the seasons. It spiked in June for half of 1/6 anniversary but now almost fell back. I hope they keep some explosives for a week before elections, as the interest wanes pretty quickly.
RebE > man who needed to nurse
absolutely. That means that people who get miracles to save them from preventable problems use up some of their future rewards.
RebE > he made a new opening in the middle of the castle
This is actually a standard way to enter insurgent buildings trying to arrest them – to avoid booby-trapped doors and windows. Not only wall is unexpected, but it is not known in advance what part of the wall will be breached.
a better question is whether 100 virtual bochurim from 100 different IP addresses will suffice.
> Specific suggestions that ignore communal needs, values, mores, and culture are meaningless.
If communal norm is to, say, rely on welfare to support learning; or to refuse transparency by suggesting “trust us”, it is worth questioning those.
I think both sides have a point – yes, we can be more machmir in some cases where we were not earlier, and, still, there a lot of chumros accepted by some of the community with the end result being visible separation between that part of the community and other observant Jews. And, while some learned people here and elsewhere understand what drives the change, the vast majority of neo-O simply draw a line and see those that are not with them as beyond the pale.
In many cases, Sephardim are more sensitive to the ideal of having one community: whether they are trying to blend into neo-O by wearing black hats or into general O- by using eruv that does not correspond to Sephardi halakha (and chasidim will not use it). disclaimer: I heard a Sephardi Rav explaining this to his congregation, but I did not see him himself carrying 😉
This reads like a medical nightmare: New variant of TDS meets covid brain and goes viral. At least, reports from the 1/6/1/6/1 committee were informative. Maybe we should to those factuals.
huju, for several years, US fracking worked as an upper bound on oil price – the moment price goes above, I think, $60, fracking becomes profitable and US oil flows. Saudis tried to put frackers out of business by keeping prices very low and, for a time, were not successful – frackers were simply pausing operations and then resuming, while fracking costs were slowly decreasing due to tech improvements.
so, if this industry were still healthy – and apparently it is not, in large part, due to government long-term restrictions – current situation was not possible.
wait until you see “cheap” etrogim for “just $100”
Meshugene horse, Yabia,
while Rambam says In hilchot deot that the middle road is the right one, he also allows for _temporary_ deviations from the middle path. So, it is reasonable to react to general decrease of observance by increasing it; to progressive education by avoiding it, etc. – but not to make these deviations into a new religion. Note that this “opposite” approach is not just recent. For example, from the time of Rishonim, some started emphasizing that we are “religion of action” rather than just belief – in opposition to the other religion that proclaimed that “belief only” is sufficient.
We also used to have 10 commandments as part of daily public service, and we stopped it again because of minim who said that the 10 are the only ones that are important. We had also lots of takanot against Tzdukim that we now barely pay attention to (shabbat hagadol, for example).Overall, it might take centuries until we figure out which innovations are genuine improvements, which are harmless changes, and which are temporary measures that we don’t need to take a neder on.
Yabia > until maybe 60 years ago only a few groups kept Rabbeinu Tam?
According to my understanding, those who followed Rabbeinu Tam did it on both ends. But when we all moved together into big cities, it became unseemly that some people go to shul while others are still riding their horses and late Rabeinu Tam before shabbos was stopped.
bochrim learning w/ R Moshe … are these same as this generation bochrim?
Online forums give an opening to yetzer hara as one can be rude to people they can’t see and not be seen in their behavior. So, maybe every poster need to make sure they have a friend who is aware of their avatar. Then, the two yetzer tov method will work. If everything else fails, think of mods who can trace you, or of cyber thieves who can expose you.
Ray, yes, a similar thought is expressed in Chacham adif min haNavi: Navi gets a message from Hashem for every incident; Chacham can uncover rules that work in Hashem’s world that can be used in many situations.
> your tochacha is unspecific, based on negative stereotypes
I was making some specific suggestions in the middle of stereotyping. If you feel any of these issues worth addressing, feel free to propose your specific solutions. It is, in fact, the right approach when you hear tochacha that feels very unfair – any tochacha is valuable, so search even an unfair one for possibly something relevant. for example, based on your comments, I’ll try to check more often how many cars are going the wrong way even if I don’t think I do 🙂
> wrong-way driver in I-95
I am trying to stay on the sidewalk rather than risk driving the wrong way. That is, I am not participating in partisan activities. I may sound like a partisan to you as I am addressing several specific points where I think community is going in a wrong direction, but that does not make me a liberal goon, I hope. (My kids said that they have to assure their friends that I am not a liberal because I am pro-mask).
Ctlawyer,
you are being modest. You said before that your 5th generation come from Germany where he was in big business. It may not mater exactly when someone arriving has funds with him, but rather education and attitude. I had relatives who lived through tumultuous times, building and losing businesses for economic and political reasons, and the attitude was a more valuable inheritance to the next generation than a specific accumulation.Sometimes you can hear family history in little things. I heard, amazed, from a hoshuve (MO) Rav discussing an eruv and mentioning that his family lived directly opening to a huge highway at the entrance to a big American city. I am pretty sure that, whatever financial circumstances are, people coming from some families would get a house where kids do not run out of the house on the huge highway, eruv or not.
RebE, my apology, I am not against davening for neighbors. and not neighbors too.
RebE > we only see the big picture from hindsight.
Absolutely. One example from an auto-biography. Two cousins, with their families, were in Soviet-occupied part of Poland in 1939. Soviets requested everyone to get Soviet citizenship “or else”. One cousin refused, they – and other likewise Jews – were arrested in June 1940, exiled to Far North. They were able to build up and prepare for winter, and after two horrible winters, when General Anders started forming Polish army, Soviet let Polish citizens to join, they travelled to Persia and survived (not many did, of course). Ethnic Poles were treated better and given another 6 months. So, when they were exiled to the same area 6 months later in the middle if the winter and were left to their own devices, they had nothing prepared for winter and they all died. The second cousin accepted Soviet citizenship and was allowed to stay in the same area. One yer later, Nazis came in and killed everyone.
ujm, of course, especially early on, as modernity came there early and Jews were unprepared (nobody was). This discussion is specifically about a starting point with R Hirsh’s observant followers v. Eastern European Jews at the same time. One can say this is not a fair comparison – R Hirsh is dealing w/ a group after many non-observant people left, while Eastern European Jewry at that included everyone, including future Maskilim. Still, R Dessler’s position seem to be that he respects Frankfurt approach in producing observance, but not great Torah, while his anonymous opponent disagrees with the latter. Maybe R Dessler is under-counting relative success of EE Jewry given that he saw loss of their observance with his own eyes …
We can also see that post-war yeshivos did not replicate pre-war, or emulated R hirsh, moved to a third model of popular Torah learning rather than just focusing on raising gedolim, and had tremendous success along that path.
Syag > We are not in control.
R Avigdor Miller brings another example of someone opening a door and inviting a beggar into the house, giving him a cup of tea. Then, while beggar asks for a second cup, and baal habais goes to get it, the beggar throws hot tea into a baby’s face. How does this hashgaha matches the chesed?! Simple: he did an aveira leaving a baby with a crazy person and is punished for that. Sometimes, we diminish our understanding of Hashem by claiming that things are beyond understanding.
As to OP, if this were happen with CTLAWYER, who habitually arrives 10 minutes early to be on time, and still through a strange coincidence, he would be late and all the above happened, I would also see solely hashgahat pratis here. This is not to deny that if this were to happen with me, I would claim the same defense! Maybe my own shortcomings called me to notice the problem, as it usually happens.
Tuna, I was paraphrasing Berdichever who said to a Jew running “after parnosah” – maybe parnosah is in the opposite direction? Just making sure that this wonderful event would not become your excuse to be late, expecting Hashem to fix your mistakes
to compensate for the ruined joke, R Twersky talks about a miser who asked a Rav what to do with a quarrelling wife who does not accept a divorce. Rav quoted Gemora saying that an unfulfilled tzedoka pledge is punished by the early death of the wife. He says – great, goes pledges, comes back – she is not dying. Rav explains – this is supposed to be a punishment, not a reward! Go buy her gifts, talk nicely to her … does that, comes back – she is now very nice to me! Do you still want her to die? No! Then, quickly run fulfil your pledge!
> one wife is half the punishment?
not necessarily, but two as a package (with ensuring interaction between them) surely is!
Gadol, ya, this is simple mnemonic to get used to July 4th – $4 dollars. Thanks, Brandon.
So, if you are not helping your neighbor but davening for him, it is helpful for both. Good to know.
I don’t see high hostility from MO to kollel in my area. some interact and come to learn, others – ignore and have their own learning. We might be an outlier as MO community is mostly academic and medical, not business or finance or other argumentive professions 🙂 Where I see problems is from people arriving from “in town”, mostly into professional teaching, showing hostility to MO or anything that is not “their way”. Mahybe we are getting those who were rejects in their local educational system.
Avram, a good point on yetzer hara, but I am not sure why the lame excuse “we are not perfect”. Our community has no problem on taking on various chumros, but suddenly in the matters of lifestyle and integrity, we are looking for kulos. I am thinking of incremental measures that can help raise the standards, such as using modern business methods to monitor what is happening in schools or get feedback from kollel families. To mix the subject: while I was going around at the start of covid, trying to explain with a CO2-meter shuls that windows need to be opened, one local public school system has these measurements online in real time .. I know measuring learning is not as easy as CO2, but still …
Yserbius, thanks for restoring my faith in humanity.
Jackk just fantasized about a possible way Trump could have changed election results in a completely legal way, using elected representatives and judges. You should have posted this earlier, so tha we could have passed it to T.
modern > I was never supervised by parents after kindergarten.
This is a statistical mistake. You see how many people turned out well after not being supervised/going to bad schools/etc – except you do not see those who got into an accident, went with wrong people, intermarried…
Amil, I am afraid this is not a troll, or a very sophisticated one. She had previously posted that she abuses her children less than her parents did.
jackk,
I think you are projecting values from individual nuts to Republicans overall. I am sure we also over-react to the Democratic nuts. And when you ask your questions in a reasonable manner, people do answer. Some are just too emotional – “deny pandemic” while ignoring unprecedented pro-active spending on vaccines is pure ungratefulness. “R- love Russia” despite decades of anti-Soviet/Russian stances by most R-s. Yes, W found soul in Putin’s eyes and T asked him for Clinton’s emails, but both administrations were populated by anti-Russia/China policy makers. “more americans dying” – while US life expectancy started decreasing first time after WW2 under Obama (except 1993). Just try to formulate a claim that does not sound ridiculous and maybe people will talk to you.What is the story with posthumous divrei torah? Are they reprints of old ones? quotes from seforim? Or thoughts of the current generation? I picked up latest Toras Avigdor and found an interesting and relevant discussion of Trotsky, but then the mehaber says that he thinks Trotsky was _probably_ killed in Mexico and his last moment was “with a gun to his temple” – and still did not do teshuva. The Rav was 30+ years old when Trotsky was killed, so he surely knew that the guy was killed in Mexico and with an axe. I am sure he made a couple of jokes about it. so, who is actually writing this?
And it made me think that Trotsky was killed in such a sudden way to maybe prevent him from attempting teshuva?
Dems tend to think about their social priorities, relegating other goals to “good enough” – oil prices not too high today, Russia is not starting WW3 … Eventually, they mis-calculate, inflation stops being “temporary” and everyone is focused on what was the last mistake that caused the disaster. The strategic error came earlier when focusing on wrong things. Flood the world with cheap oil, surround Russia with NATO troops, make our economy strong and enemies weak, and then there will be enough money for all social equity and green innovations. As it is now, Republican administrations accumulate wealth and strength and Dems are spending them.
yaakov, why do we need everyone under oath just because someone is outraged? why not Hillarsy Clinton under oath – is it true or not that she attempted battery of a sitting (laying & lying) President with an electrified weapon (throwing a lamp at the President)? What did President Obama mean when he promised more flexibility to Russia on a hot mike?
RebE, doea tefilah works without hishtadlus?
This is like a Russia’s tactic – first try to encircle half a country, if this does not work: encricle a village a declare victory. Here, we have gone from trying to size the government to attempted seizing the SUV wheel from a designated driver via disputed hearsay. I would say, even if there were kosher eidim on both sides, the wheel stays with the secret service by chazokah.
common > college grads are almost never the opulence worshippers
indeed. As Wall Street hustlers asked economists – if you are so smart, why are you not wealthy?
To which economists relied – if you are so wealthy, why are you not smart?average college grad is reasonably secure in his job (unemployment < 1% over many years) and he can think about other things. Hopefully, learning, but often – vacays, of course. A hustler is not secure in his future, so he runs after the next deal. He also has no competitive advantage in skills, so he needs to compensate wit zerizut and boasting, hopefully not by dishonesty.
I could not find R Moshe’s speech yet, but let’s presume for a second that you quoted without distortions. The argument seems to be that most Yidden can reliably (without miracles) earn enough for honest parnosah without college. The downside is time wasted from learning Torah (not sure, is this about time during college or occupation during the rest of the life). Let’s apply this to our times:
most importantly, what percentage of people went to college: 1960-80 had tremendous growth from 8% to 16% of population > 25 y.o. graduated from college (and 40% to 78% high school). Currently 38% of population graduated from college. Now a lot of this is from women (male enrollment went from 3 mln in 1970 to 5 mln in 1990 and 7 mln now, women – from 3 mln in 1970 to 6.5 mln in 1990 to 10 mln now), but still …
So, if we presume that education correlates with wealth, then R Moshe says – you don’t have to be like top 10% – and this is obviously true for 90% that will not be and may be true for those who want to be in 10% but can live without it. In our times, this is saying – you don’t need to be like top 40% .. I wonder what this number will be if you only count areas where R Moshe thinks it is proper for a Yid to live, presumably area between Queens, Stamford, Monsey and Lakewood.
So, to normalize R Moshe’s position to our times, it would be – you don’t have to go to Ivy League (1% of total college population), or even top 30 colleges (7%) So, Touro is OK. YU (in about top 100) is marginable – given that it has Torah learing also).
R Yitzhak Adlerstein brings aq quote from Michtav Me-Eliyahu vol.3 pgs 355-360. – R Hirsh’d system in Germany produced observant Yidden but no Talmidei Chachamim. Eastern Europe with Torah-only education produced a lot of Talmidei Chachamim but at the expense of tremendous drop out rate from observance. An anonymous wrote a response in 1960s questioning the downside of German system:
The upshot of all this is that the claim that the Frankfurt approach was not capable of transforming gifted students into geonim in Torah is erroneous. It is certainly true that gifted students suffer no loss of talent by engaging in increased study. Thus, quite the contrary to the extent they increase their secular study, their minds are broadened and their Torah studies are deepened proportionately, so long as they truly study for the sake of Heaven. On the other hand, a student lacking in intelligence, who is also denied exposure to secular study, will hardly grow in Torah and become a distinguished gaon due to that denial alone. R. Baruch of Shklov [the talmid of the Gra]…states: “There are Jews who are bereft of intelligence and secular study, which is precisely why they denigrate the wisdom and knowledge they lack. Moreover, they hurl accusations of heresy against the wise, so that they be stigmatized and viewed as outcasts by the masses… Had not R. Samson Raphael Hirsch established this approach for us, we would not dare to expropriate it without the prior approval of the roshei ha-yeshiva and gedolei ha-Torah of our generation. But since R. Samson Raphael Hirsch merited producing several generations…all who follow this path walk in a well-trodden path and drink from a well dug by experts. Those who, for the sake of Heaven, oppose this approach must admit that such a ban on secular study in our time and in our countries [i.e. in contradistinction to Israel, as he writes later] would be a “decree that the majority of the community could not comply with… It seems to me that both [i.e. the approach that allows secular study, and the one that does not] educational approaches are well-grounded in the sources, and both are essential for the continued existence of the Jewish people in our time. So it shall remain until the redemption takes place.