Always_Ask_Questions

Avira > The notion of intelligent life contradicts the ideas of Hashem not creating something for no reason

As the first Beis symbolizes, we do not know everything that Hashem knows. There might be other worlds that we do not know of (or were as Midrash Rabba posits: ????? ?????? ???????? ???????? ???????? ??????? ????????? ????????????, ??? ????????? ??? ??????) and Hashem does not care for us to know of. If we were to encounter another civilization, then we will have more questions, but until then I would not worry too much.

Avira,
you may be right and your opponents holding by minority opinion, but generally exalting R Moshe to press people to disregard a different serious posek is simply halachic bullying. With pasken with R yohachan against Resh Lakish in almost all cases, but R Yohanan did not resort to “do you know who I am” argument and one time when it became personal did not end well and is probably a lesson for us.

n0 > I like the idea of being objective as the goal.

a question to those involved in serious learning: how consistent is self-evaluation in terms of a student understanding his level and his ability to reason. I presume that if a teacher is a great Talmid Chochom, he will give that feedback, but – what if he is not? How does the student know? how does a prospective mechutan knows? Trusts representation of the teacher? Gvirim of the past generation would hire a talmid chacham to evaluate the prospective choson, but this does not seem to be done in our days.

Many professions and hobbies have objective markers – SAT, GRE, marathoner’s times, chess rating… Why don’t we have some public-facing measures that will help learners and others to see the quality of the product? I know that any measurement affects the process and people start learning for the test, but still an imperfect test might be better than none.

ujm > The first one seriously learns for 10 hours; the second one seriously learns only for two hours, and is “battling” his other eight hours there.

I have two job candidates. One works hard the whole day and does not produce anything. Another – works great for two hours and then browses internets. Who would I hire? None of them. Why are your choices so poor?

Seriously, to the person who sits and sits and learns nothing. R Preidah who lived long had a student who required 400 repetitions to learn (note, he learned eventually). He might be better off going to work and having yissachar/zevulun parternship with someone. This is what someone who cares about this guy would suggest (one of the amoraim did this with his son who was not good at learning, then he tried to teach him business ..). If he has no other prospects and is financially secure, it is great if he sits and learns and gets his sechar – 1/400th of infinity is still infinity. Usual caveat – if he is using OPM (other people’s money) this would work only if there is a full disclosure to the donor, whether this is a private philanthropist or a taxpayer, and they are happy to fund his learning

Gemora mentions, I think, R Yaakov who sent his son for a semester, then examined him and, after finding his learning lacking, told him to stay home and work the fields, and went to learn himself. He is them placed into a room with some nasty mazik that would kill anyone else – to clear real estate for the yeshiva, so he presumably had a good judgment. So, when you are suggesting that someone not learning much should sit in the yeshiva whole day – is he doing it at the expense of someone else who could use a stipend? Maybe someone who is working and learning, but a stipend will help him free a couple of extra hours a day for learning? Of course, if your community balabosim are supporting everyone who wants to learn, then it is not a problem.

As to those who learn 2 hours and don’t do much the rest of the day, those are worse of course, especially if they are paid to do that. But it is not a very good argument to say that someone is better than outright thieves.

There is a sevorah here: if there are multiple civilizations, then some of them will be more advanced than ours and they’ll figure out space travel and we would see something from them. An alternative is that they all ended somehow, whether in nuclear wars or floods, which seems to be supported by a midrash that Hashem created and destroyed worlds before ours

ujm,
thanks for your psak. I presume a frum yid would not pasken it for himself. And asn0 says, there are possible differences here. Are there any written or oral or whispered teshuvos from that period? Also, interesting for WW2 generation.

yes, you can.
A question that has an easy answer as long as you wait enough.

Not sure what the argument is about but I agree on a possible difference of perceptions – Sephardim start with basics and do them well and even when learning Gemora focusing on peshat and practical implicatiosns, with Ashkenazim focusing on lamdus. Similar to a professor from my bubba’s lessons – why do I need arithmetic, when I am professor of calculus (she was evidently not a Brisker). This latter approach used to be controversial by Maharal, etc. Our time brought a new challenge when we have. Baruch Hashem, multitudes learning rather than just yachidim. I suspect lamdus goes with them as well as calculus with most of college students.

As to testing sugyos, I would suggest first test ability for sevorah, ability to reason logically, that is a prerequisite to any meaningful lamdus.

interesting discussion. I suggest when there is a key number in these calculations like OTD rates – try to come up with several sources/way to compute it. Don’t trust one source that might be biased, but don’t dismiss it either.

for OTD rate – what is distribution by age? I resume teens, early 20s would be the time. If boys get married older, they might have more time to go OTD before marriage .. this might be a “good thing” preventing a family tragedy later or a good thing, preventing the OTD from happening.

The idea that we need more people @ FDA to have more formula is questionable. Biden just used pda to alleviate problems created by current FDA employees.

ujm, are you by any chance a gilgul of Robespierre?

Mod, you decide whether this should be a public or private post.

I noticed on Russia-related front page posts several posters provide in-your-face pro-Russian defences are posting 1st or 2nd time and were registered recently. This is a classic example of Russian paid activists that are active on web and social media all over the world. I wonder whether you or your provider provides any screening for such things (repeated IP and other simanim) to make your life easier. Possibly, you already rejected 1,000 of them and we see only a couple.

If this stays private, I’ll send specific links

If you send names we’ll delete them if they show up on this side

All these tuna-eating yidden, do you know whose daas Torah were they following?

When L Rebbe was paralyzed and moschihism was igniting, a local Rav called Rebbe’s secretariat and asked them how he can be of help in these difficult times. They asked him to publicize that this craziness is not coming from them. So, the Rav said it publicly. So, while this is not a direct testimony of what the Rebbe himself would think about it, but as close as it gets.

Clearly, multiple wives exist on halakha, but what about real life?
Tosefta Ketubot 5:1 : R Tarfon engaged 300 women eat terumah during hunger. (on this note, one of my relatives engaged or faked marriages with several women to take them to the safer side of the war front during WW1)
Tosefta Yevamot – saus 2 families of cohanim come from tzaros
Yerushalmi Tevamot mentions R Yehuda HaNasi telling one brother to do yibum to 12 sisters-in-law
Agrippa
Raban Gamliel II (through yibum)

Archeology: found a ~ 440 BCE ketubah saying that the husband agrees not to take 2nd wife

source: Goldfeder, Mark. “The story of Jewish polygamy.” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, vol. 26, no. 2, 22 Oct. 2013,

MRS. SEMINARY GIRL

How do say oxymoron in Yiddish?

Somehow I agree with syag when she chastised someone else 🙂 the lesson learned is that everyone fills in the blanks with assumptions. In this case, it was a simple fact, other cases might be more subtle and stay undetected, reinforcing biases even further. I was also confused by lack of a location, so suspended judgment until I saw the references.

I don’t suggest the boy to break shabbat at all. My first idea is to make it public by just coming there. Separate suggestion to do experiments that might be allowed might be wrong in this case when Muslims did not change the rules, so this became an issue of principle rather than pure melocha

You can’t patent this solution. A matrona tested it at the beginning of sotah and it didn’t work well. But it maybe not so much the precision of match needs to be relaxed, but what the features you are matching on. Some suggested here that tie for Mincha is a good siman, another rosh kollel told me that he had only one question – are mehutonim honest in business. Maybe rosh kollel takes tie for Mincha and being in business as obvious, and maybe your rav presumes that honesty is there and only the tie needs to be checked.

Great kid. I wonder whether he could have gone there and just told them what to do so they felt bad about it. I guess it would be easier with questions rather than labs. Any chemistry would be mutar? Heating using a blech? Mix into food and drink? Might have worked for some experiments… Or just say there learning Mishna as a protest, maybe other kids would support him

Those who admire Rashbi and aspire to emulate him in avoiding derech eretz, should recall whether they were able to stay in quarantine for two weeks eating just carob

> if you are first a big person in learning, politics will not affect your halachik jurisprudence.

politics was never easy and there were places/times to stand tall or compromise. For example, R Yohanan b Zakkai successfully asked Vespasian for what could have been saved – and dreaded later in life whether he made a mistake and could have asked for more … Chofetz chaim successfully ran away from Soviet Russia and later regretted that he, and other Rabbis, abandoned remaining Russian Jews

this approach of first having gov mess things up and then use the crisis to blame others and take more power is not unique to baby formula. for example, Obama switched student loans from private to federal programs “to save money”. Now, the government has power to “forgive” those loans on our behalf.

jackk, missing facts seem to be: FDA blames manufacturer, manufacturer does not see their fault, nothing was found. Investigation was going for 3 months. FDA did not see to realize or warn superiors what it means to close a major plants for 3 months.

Bigger issue – states issue discounted one-supplier contracts leading to industry consolidation, so that one plant closure is catastrophic.