Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Asian hospitalization rates are lower than white Americans – by 10% young, by 20% in 50-65, and by 30% for older. They should be doing something right. Maybe not just masking, but also having parents at home rather than institutions?
A guesstimate looking forward – compare with rhinovirus that apparently also has multiple strains, the most risky time is up to 24 months, getting about 10 infections. So, somewhere on the order of 10 infections + vaccination should reduce covid to a common cold. So, say half of that would be tolerable. Some, rough estimate 5 encounters would lead to normal. Vax or get sick every 9 months – 45 months, or 3.5 years. Hopefully less if each next vaccine will give not just improve generic immunity but specific to the current variant.
EJM, I think the disparity was bigger 100 years ago. From some lady’s story in Poland: father and brothers went to Rebbe’s tisch for yom tov, and mother and us were sitting at home, not knowing what to do…
As to the younger Rav, I would never vote to fire an old one and hire a new one without a cause just because “we need to attract younger people” or something like that. I also haven’t been to tristate for more than a quick visit for the last decade.
in world news, Germany is reluctant to oppose Russia because it depends on Russian gas due to abandoning nuclear and phasing out coal, and also not having LNG terminals to receive gas from Arabs and US. Then, it says: in 2018, under Trump’s pressure Germany agreed to build an LNG terminal, but this was abandoned after Trump lost the election. How is that for Biden’s achievement by inaction?
look at halokhos of gamblers as eidim. One of the issues is non-productive behavior – that should surely cover watching sports (and betting will bring the rest). BUT, the issue is less severe for someone involved in productive employment somewhere else. So, it might be that some moderate waste of time is OK for a person who learns or works for a living.
Just have some savlanut and experience. One Rav I know starts such stories with “everyone from this story are already niftar, so I can tell it” … Younger rabbis should quote what the learned in yeshiva while they remember it.
CS, it is a good illustration how many things are done as a routine and nobody dares to try until something happens. In the Jewish context, consider Bayis Yaakov schools that Chofetz Chaim supported to begin with, but did not start until one brave lady did.
EJM > Everyone all of a sudden gets suprised when girls start watching tv behind their husband’s back.
I just do not agree that Torah study’s main application is substitute for the desire to watch TV whether for boys or girls. When used like that, you are not moving towards emes.
jackk > Biden is not responsible for people not listening to the advice of the CDC
I am not sure. At the end of Trump’s term, vaccine reluctance was about the same by party. During Biden’s time, Republicans became more reluctant. Maybe it was supposed to be given that R-s have this large segment who do not trust any government no matter what, but surely Biden’s general ineptness and lack of credibility did not help. Remember how he claimed initially that Trump left him no vaccine stockpiled. He could have said – thanks to Trump for developing vaccines, now we will rump up production. He then dismissed the whole Op Warp team without cause, preferring to rely on his official team, and now, one year later, Dr Walensky talks about a need to re-organize the process. It is clear that Trump’s approach of developing multiple new approaches worked better.
> have any statistical evidence that those who “listened to the CDC” fared any better than those in red states
A recent poll shows that those who think that natural immunity is preferable to vaccine have 2-3x rate of being infected.
CS, I think you are right. Employers were reluctant to let employees work from home. Now, it is an accepted model. Not all, but many will stay. This may be akin to great plague in middle ages where reduced labor force created a new environment where labor became more expensive and more respected.
Learning does not have to be linear, blatt by blatt. Could the guy be simply looking for a specific issue across the masechet that he previously learned? for example, all agadot on a topic, or counting all cases where B Shammai’s opinions wins, or what is common between all Gra’s notes. Or learning Mishnayot from the Gemora?
ujm > business owners v uber drivers
this is a great example. I think Uber drivers are always on an edge to get the new ride and not “lose time”. An Uber Talmid Chacham can sit and learn and then pick up a more profitable ride. As a business co-owner, I agree that it takes time. Still, I am working “24 hours but not in a row”. Ability to be there for the family without going and asking the boss every time is priceless. Those who started WFH lately are probably have similar feelings now.
He does not believe the polls, and so should not you! It is People’s short attention span fault, Senate’s fault, Rep Governor’s fault, Putin’s fault, Afganis’ fault, next will be Ukranians’ fault. Why do people apply for jobs where it is someone else’s fault, anyway?
Pew 2021: 47% of currently married non-O Jews are intermarried, with 60% of those who married after 2010 and 18% of those before 1980. So, for those who are 40 y.o. numbers are like Avira says or higher.
other findings:
First intermarriage is quickly followed by 2nd: among those who have one Jewish parent, 80% have non-Jewish spouse.
40% Of R- have some “in common” to O-. 76% of C-s. No branch 24%/
50% O- feels some in common with R-, 63% to C-. So, it is about mutual.
Interestingly, in each group there are 7-9% of those who do not feel in common with their own group.Among 65+ 44% are R, 25% C, 22% none, 3% O
Among 18-29, 29% are R, 8% are C, 41% are none, 17% are OAmerican democracy is built on the free speech idea that everyone can say whatever they want, and, after hearing them all, the voters will make their reasonable, if not perfect, choices, and complicated multilevel system will make it so that one bad choice will not ruin the country, like it happened in Weimar republic.
Jewish debating rules are different, and we all are supposed to strive for truth and not mislead each other. So I am surprised to see here people repeating partisan slogans without trying to bring it to some level of truth. It is unbecoming.
When isro said Baruch Hashem, it was an embarrassment for the Jews.. so even then nonjews were faster at acknowledging Him. Jews tend to complain first.
I don’t know specific statistics of who is or is not Jewish in each temple, but there are currently millions of Jews either affiliated with reform or not affiliated who don’t know much and are being lost, and all most people here seem to worry is how they affect “us” … I understand such feelings during the time of tzoros like when reform or communists were attacking us, but not nowadays.
Ejmr, you are following Rehoboam preferring young advisors to older ones with disaster to follow. If you aren’t sure what I mean, ask your wife to locate this gemora for you
Ujm, it’s not just salary, it is also lifestyle choices. In some professional settings, people are tied to a conveyor, in others, you can take time off for learning and family … It is not of course fully goes by degree, there are lawyers on firms and independent ones, and there are plumbers who are in charge of their life, but generally more education gives you more control.
At the very least, the guy could have said: b’h there were only four people at the minyan!
Syag > erroneous view of what you are trying to fix
well, just list what you disagree with rather than musing about my character. I am really interested in hearing different opinions, especially if they give some explanations. You can also look at the nearby threat of colleges, where OP coming up with seemingly such list of colleges that give you BA for no work. Anyway, we need to define what the goal of the degree is and a path to it. But overall I think the middle path is the right one – not the fancy ivies and not the degree mills, but reasonably-priced local or online or NYC Jewish colleges that give quality education without exposing to hurtful environment.
RebE +10
similar quote: a person who tells his son to learn Torah will raise a man who will be telling his son to learn Torah.
EJMRBro, I applaud the idea of doing BA, or better BS, quickly and moving on Masters, but make sure you actually learn something. You don’t have to demand more from the college, you can use online resources like Khan Academy or MOOCs. If you end up a professional, whether a lawyer or an office manager, you need to provide honest service for the money you will be paid. If you can not, you will be stealing or fired or both.
Syag > how much enjoyment you get out of painting the learning community as a bunch
Syag, not much. I am saying what I am saying in a hope to make things better. I actually think it is very reasonable to send kids to a local cheap school. For sure better than to send to expensive mid quality school far away to study who knows what as many modern people do. I am sorry that I am not very good at cheering people up: when I start analyzing the problem, I immediately start thinking what can be improved. Offline, I might keep it to myself, but I see no reason not to express opinion here where we have a chance to discuss it. I am not the only one (not to compare, but to illustrate). R Steinsaltz once showed a video of some guy from CT approaching Lubavitcher Rebbe to tell him that their community just built a mikva. Rebbe replies I give you a brocha to build a mikva. The guy thinks that Rebbe is not hearing well and repeats louder that they _already_ built the mikva! The Rebbe repeats, the guy gets louder, etc, until the Rebbe clarifies – I give you a brocha to build the next mikva.
Touro
YU/Stern
Michlalah
Univ of Mryland, Baltimore
John Hopkins
Florida State
Arizona State
McGilljackk > They prevented the will of a majority of Americans. That is not democracy.
jackk, I don’t know how old you are or where you were born, but you need to level with the fact that you live in a republic, not a democracy. Pure democracy was considered a failure for most of human history, and I don’t think it was a Jewish thing also. 20th century “people’s democracies” just proved the point, that on an island with 9 poor people and one rich one, the nine will take everything from the rich and execute him even if they are losing the minyan.
EEEE, could you recap?
Orange,
the main advance is having rapid tests that CDC/FDA was not approving for a long time because they are not as good as PCR. The role of the tests is statistical – it shows with high probability that someone is infectious right then, rather then telling 3 days later that someone has a minute amount of virus with 100% probability.It probably matters a lot for people who are in risky environment but not so much that nobody cares and everyone is getting sick … then, removing those who are sick will stop transmission even if it does not guarantee safety of one individual. There are lots of “interesting” techniques – batch testing, where spit of multiple people is tested in one shot; wastewater monitoring that quickly picks up the virus in population even if they don’t bother to go to doctors. I am not sure all of this is used correctly and timely, but it is getting better. Many colleges test a lot and post numbers publicly. One college near me has 100 times more cases this week comparing with October.
Orange, it is not just 4 tests. Starting Jan 15, insurance is supposed to reimburse everyone for several tests a month. It is a somewhat INSANE idea to make it go through insurance companies instead of government paying CVS directly – so that people are deterred by paperwork and paying upfront. It is a DOUBLE INSANE idea to see the problem growing in December and announce reimbursement from mid-January. I understand that in Europe these tests are all over the place, free or a couple of euros. If money is an issue with such large volumes, maybe make these tests accept batches from families, if this can work.
Same goes with masks – 3M seem to sell 60 N95 masks for under $50. Why are they not all over the place already and were waiting for the website to be built.
> And Yeshiva boys speaking inappropriately at the table or in the beis medrash or at any other time should also be corrected by their rebbes/menahels.
Rebbeim may not be there. I heard it from an esteemed Rav that when Magid Shiur will tell them that they are skipping the next blatt, the boys will be spending that might learning through it … Things are different now with Artscroll.
Ad kan? The kid went to school for like 13-14 years already, 9 to 6 every day. B’H she is going to be married in a couple of years. Maybe parents want to spend some quality time with the kid for a couple of years in between instead of sending her away to learn something else from some other people they (parents) do not know well?
+1
You also get a good feeling that you have at least one person reading your post – and carefully. In some cases, you are sure that it is exactly one person (unless there is a moderator review).
you start by Capitalizing I’s and proper site names, putting “the” where appropriate, and then davening. And using Oxford comma, of course. And not starting sentences with “and”.
RebE > What has the Senate done lately?
RebE, did you read Federalist 62 or 63 lately? [sorry for answering question with a question]
Syag, I agree that in many circumstances there is no need to test, especially w/ latest variant. I did not test so far. The reason to do home test would be if one heads to a meeting with either many people or an at-risk person and are going to be in close contact there. Then, a positive test – right before the meeting – would prevent risk. Not fully clear what does negative test mean. On one hand, stats say that those home tests are detecting 60-90% of cases. The claim on the other side is that they detect those who are most infectious at that moment, i.e. they detect the most dangerous ones.
There is an article on front page about the Rav who tested positive before his son’s wedding – after symptoms? Now, say the test would be negative – how would the grandfather pasken? Or maybe the father would not have even asked? Maybe they should do N-95 veils for kallot.
A week passed already – any good news?
Now you need awareness campaign for people who are “having a flu” to use the tests. Free might help. Maybe give prizes to people who get positive tests, or will this cause them to go out and get it? Get an extra aliya to say gomel?
We are not allowed to wear fully black, which is a non-Jewish minhag. Overall, there were different minhagim in history: in Israel, men would buy line for their wives; in Bavel – coloured clothes, if I remember correctly. Red was not OK. None were black.
Hashem sends medicine before the sickness. Not so (current) US government: it waits for a crisis, then starts sending out tests. After that, masks. After that, they’ll start working on speeding up medicines.
Gadol > there are multiple Republican leaders in the state and federal government whose policies are generally aligned with Trump but whose persona,
There are lots of leaders on both left and right who are “aligned” with the right policies, but are not capable of implementing them in real world. Say, Obama genuinely desired to have peace with the Muslim world, but ISIS refused to cooperate and Obama did not know what to do. Trump was actually able to do a lot of things he talked about, often in unusual risky ways.
Moishe, you are right that ISIS started to retreat by the end of Obama. But “started to retreat” does not mean it was “done” or that people expected it to be gone soon. See below a quote from foreign policy paper by a liberal prof. He mostly blames Obama for failure with Assad and initial ISIS growth, but you can see there that the expectation was that ISIS will keep territory and continue projecting terrorism threat to Europe. If you search news in 2016, you can see more of similar. Some specific action taken by Trump were: providing actual weapons to Kurds “as they were” instead of training some future pure force; allowing shooting targets without spending hours vetting with the White House; working effectively with Iranian militias in Iraq (thru Iraqis, without any formal partnership).
Syria Will Stain Obama’s Legacy Forever
Yet a third result of Obama’s ineffectuality lay in the rise of the Islamic State, a terrorist organization even more bloody-minded and bent on conquest than the al Qaeda fragments from which it sprang. Obama obviously did not create the Islamic State, contrary to Donald Trump’s absurd campaign-trail slanders. But his administration was laggard in countering its gathering strength. Although the terrorist outfit is on the defensive now, it continues to orchestrate deadly strikes in Europe, and, indirectly, to inspire lone-wolf attacks in the United States, guaranteeing that terrorism will remain a major threat on both continents for years to come.Avira > Rav belsky would tell some talmidim
And I believe the same is true for many other Rabonim, including R Feinstein, that their private advice depends on a person, including Rav Pam’s advice to someone NOT to go into teaching. I’ve seen some who did not ask R Pam. Obviously, only the best should go into teaching, and traditional halakha approach of allowing unlimited competition between teachers works towards same goal.
I understand the idea of learning without thinking of college. This is fine as long as there are responsible adults who will direct the turn when appropriate. But where the focus is on learning and discarding those who do not keep up, may work well to train talmidei chachamim, but less so to develop a healthy community.
Gadol, I know a number of people going this way, I just don’t know how prevalent it is, maybe others can enlighten us. Even when I was looking for a shidduch in the previous millennium, one shadchanit was musing about Lakewood bnos figuring out that learning SW in a small local college ad working as programmers is a great way to support their kollel husbands. But if this is under-radar and b’dieved, this is probably not done the best way. Kids have limited community support and insight into what they are doing and probably getting more of a diploma mill. For example, it is rare when people complain about English education, but English skills on average are horrible. It is just everyone feels inadequacy in math or science, but it seems to many that as long as you can talk in some English, this is enough. I would guess inability to write well is a barrier to a lot of jobs. You will just not be told after you send an email.
Avira
Rav Moshe re: “bnei yeshiva”
this is an important distinction that is somehow lost in translation. For me personally, it is obvious that someone going into Rabbonus & Chinuch should spend 110% of his time on limud, and maybe another 10% on getting some general knowledge so that he can apply his learning to current life and relate to his students. You don’t need to become a boke in science, but you need to acquire enough worldview to be able to learn later in life.Now, for the rest of population, we currently have multitudes going to yeshivos (parallel to masses going to college) – which is a good thing in general, but we need also to train them to earn an honest living. They do not need to go to Ivies, but they can go to local/Jewish/online colleges – and the question should be how to make it safe, not whether. For example, use yeshiva classes/CLEP/AP for humanities to avoid indoctrination, do not dorm in strange places, have hevrusas, combine w/ learning (when R Twerski wrote to Steipler whether he can go to Med school, Steipler replied – with daily hevrusa, mussar/chasidus learning, mikva, I think). I believe this is actually happening under the radar, with people using small NJ colleges to pass at lowest requirement level.
ujm, note that R Moshe is writing about 60 years ago. A lot changed. Threats changed. At that time, a college was a direct path to assimilation. Nowadays, it is still for some, but there a lot of observant professionals who have no such problems. The balance for “need” of college to earn parnosa also changed a lot. Lots of jobs that required high school only are not there any more. This caused a lot of social problems not just in a Jewish world. Note that people did not become noticeably smarter, so a lot of current “college” is really remedial high-school with credential for an office job, and not the high end college that R Feinstein was talking about (and that BY aspires to).
before election day:
61% of Ds, 64% of Rs and 63% of others planned to be vaccinated.
right after, Ds jumped to 75% Rs stayed the same. This is when a gap started.more fun stats on effect of media:
More viewers of Newsmax (40%) and Fox News (34%) correctly estimated the COVID-19 mortality rate than viewers of CNN (22%) or MSNBC (24%). Twenty-one percent (21%) of One America News (OAN) viewers correctly estimated the coronavirus mortality rate. Among Americans who say they don’t watch cable news at all, 38% correctly estimated the mortality rate as less than 2%.and some other covid numbers from the survey that some might be curious about:
those not vaccinated: 30% were positive
those vaccinated: 17%
keep in mind that 1 out of 2 years were before vaccine and number of deaths is same by year,
then year 1: 15% both groups are positive, and year 2: 15% v 2%. This may be an over-estimate but points that the difference is drastic.even better predictor of who is likely to get covid:
answer to “Which is more effective in preventing COVID-19?”
Natural immunity – 36% got it
Vaccination 14%
Equally 18%
Not sure 11% (maybe these are those who thing that none are effective and are careful?)jackk, here are self-reported numbers from Rasmussen – 26% of Rs report being positive for Covid, 21% of Ds and 18% of the smartest ones – independents. So, from this sounds like there will be indeed less R voters, although knowing age distribution by paty would help.
Other interesting stats of self-reported covid:
22% of men and 20% of women
22% married and 20% not married
24% children at home, 19% no (hey, kids!!! but could be also age)
(these 3 may explain some of the of R/D difference – R are more men and married)
13% for age 65+, 23% before
19% white, 18% black, 27% other, presuming mostly Hispanicvaccinated:
D 80%, R and independent 60%BY, I see where you are now – already away from home and looking for an Ivy.
I think your choices are
– large MO school – NY, Atlanta, Boston, LA. Each of them have strong communities and kollels where you may find a family that will help you stay strong.
– small yeshivos in same type of cities. They are often started by people who want same as you. In those places, they would know what quality secular education is and somewhat compete with those MO schools
– go back home and together with your parents organize your own education – possibly Jewish one in one place and general in another. Be creative – find partners for each of them. Say, one semester/year in a yeshiva, and one semester/year in general studies, plus summer. Tutors. Summer schools in colleges. One resource that I am using for my kids – online state schools. My older kids did this for just two last years and went to a mid-tier (online) college, having 4+ GPA and access to AP classes. Maybe more than 2 years would be needed. If your parents have time to engage with you, you can achieve a lot. My kids are saying that they are 2x more efficient when they don’t need to treck to school a t a certain time, can skip or repeat classes as they need. They are having less fun, but I don’t think that is what you are looking for.