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huju, there is no proof that Putin wanted Trump to be president or that he wanted him to be re-elected.
He obviously wanted to have a week president and, to that end, made Hillary look bad before the election. There is no proof that he knew better than all pollsters in US that Trump is going to win.
On re-election: did we have any dirt released on Biden (other than by Hunter himself)? why didn’t Putin stole from FDA and released embargoed vaccine results?On policies – was he happy with T stopping NS2, stimulating oil production, posing some opposition to him in Syria, sending weapons to Ukraine? most of these immediately and predictably reversed by Biden. I just don’t see where is the case for Putin trying to re-elect T, unless Putin is over-watching MSNBC …
ubi, a good question. If you are allowed to search for a new job, then why can’t someone help you in that? Maybe the difference is who is Jewish in various scenarios. Would result be different if the babysitter were Jewish? If you have a chance to give a Jewish babysitter a better job, is this wrong?
But re:headhunter, even if it is mutar, you may not want to do that job yourself. Similar to meter-maids – they do a necessary job, but who wants the ayn hara!? (I once put a quarter into someone’s meter when the metermaid was coming and she gave me an ayn hara back!).
mariampol is in lita/poland, mariupol is in eastern ukraine, I don’t think it is the same thing
Avira, how is this Chazon Ish relevant to a Jew who was under soviet rule for 3 generations? Next, you’ll tell us we can’t read Megilas Esther because she was married to a non-Jew and had a private dinner with two non-kosher goyim.
ubi, employer/employee relationship is a contract, but not of equals. Halakha recognizes it. Employee has an aspect of avdut as employer control employee’s time. So, employee is allowed to quit without prior notice. There might be an issue of damages if someone is not done on time or spoils, but the employer should let employee go even if this causes inconvenience in order not to enslave him.
So, it should be possible for employee to consider another job. On the other hand, you should be sensitive and not to take away a job from a Jew who is already working, unless it is a rare opportunity that is important for you.
For the US:
As US became richer, number of regular people needing a hike decreased. So, the chances that a hiker is a dangerous person increased, and generally picking up people is not a social norm anymore.Waze allows people to register as riders and drivers. If you have specific Jewish destinations, I suggest may people aware of this Waze option so that people register and start helping each other.
> I have not checked any of this up (no time) but just pointing out and suggesting
nice. I wonder whether gotaggodpoint is mechalel shabbos or stole anything lately, or maybe watches inappropriate movies. Just a though, no time check. < Hope for mod understanding >
motcha, I thought I heard this about R Yaakov, but that charity might have gone thru a number of meshulachim 🙂
Sam, R Eliezer, great we are in agreement. If you want to ensure you are a Rebbe l’shem shamayim, you can do this: work in a well-paid profession half a day/week and then teach for free the rest of the time. You will be free from thinking that you are teaching for money, you will not be scared by principals or parents.
> what extent do we have to suffer (with higher gas prices etc.
This is overhyped as yet another excuse for current economic policies. Gas prices are going up without US boycotting Russia. US gets 3% of supply from Russia. Arabs and US are capable of increasing supply by a lot. We do need to worry about nuclear WW3, but other things are less of a concern.
akuperma, yes on marriage, but I think handling non-mevushal wine is going too far on this type of sofek. I believe for public purposes that do not have lasting consequences, when you see someone behaving like a kosher Jew, you don’t have to inquire further. We check out a new kohen in shul not because we are concerned that he’ll read a wrong part of the Torah but because we don’t want people to conclude that he is a kohen if he is not.
Sam,
I hold in high esteem people who are happy with their helek, don’t spend time working and spend time learning. I suspect this is not a majority of people, though.I have less respect to those who are doing hishtadlus but then expect to get something they did not earn, such as using non-Jewish welfare funds, force Israelis to be zevuluns, working as Rebbes when they are not good at that, etc.
Not doing hishtadlus expecting a miracle, like a lottery, also seems suspect. Either you are a tzadik and deserve a miracle, and then this miracle is subtracted from your zechus; or you do’t and then either you will be frustrated and disappointed or become a thief and dishonest person in some way.
Also, our times allow us to escape this shtark trade-off between hard work and learning. There are plenty of jobs where you can be involved in mitzvos, so you are not wasting time. You can go teach torah, open your own school, babysit, open a Chabad house, a kosher restaurant, or be a mashgiach, be a doctor, a lawyer, a social worker, a soldier – each of these jobs involve a lot of good things you can do for Jews and other people.
Gadol, you sound convincing, but I saw 3-7% of US oil/gas imported from Russia thrown around. In terms of investment, again you sound like a bokeh, but common business sense says that future prospects determine desire to invest. If federal government is openly (but not during debates, though) says that it will shut you down like a virus – desire to invest decreases.
We had people boycotting bunch of countries, including Israel, for a lot of milder issues. There is green investing. How is avoiding supporting murder not a good investment advise?
jackk, re: no fly zone
2 days ago, David Deptula (who ran no-fly zone over Iraq) was answering questions about that. He does not dismiss it, just says it is a complicated operation, requiring defining the rules and risks of escalation.He concludes with ambiguity: there could be a “nuanced option” that might permit a limited no-fly z one. “If proposed by the [European Union] or the United Nations, if there was established a humanitarian exclusion zone from conflict in western Ukraine, one might posit that one could establish a no-fly zone there,” he said. “But you’d still want to have a degree of strategic ambiguity over who’s going to enforce that to get around the complication of NATO and Russian forces directly engaging one another…But even that becomes difficult.”
for those who argue about jobs. Unemployment rate is a somewhat misleading number as it excludes people who are not seeking employment. A better number is Labor Force Participation Rate , especially for key ages 25-54 Yrs. (LNS11300060) (the latter excludes a drift in ages over time):
it fell off during Bush I from historical high 84 to 83 and stayed there,
continuously fell to 81 under Obama, started going up Jan 2016 and straight up thru Trump years up to Covid – back to 83
at Covid fell to 80 and back up to 81 under Trump,
up to 82 under bidenResident > democracy isn’t the Torah way
while I agree with your other points, I think Shmuel alef strongly disagrees with you warning people not to abandon freedom and democracy in favor of a king.
Gadol, who are these Fuentes, AFPAC,… I don’t know whose these people are. Am I so far from R- mainstream!>
By thy way, this urge to talk about Trump right now is not random noise, it is a recent D- party line. Politico reports that Biden is afraid to brag about his current “successes” because he is afraid that things will go bad [AAQ: they are bad now too, but it is possible to talk about being great], but others D-s see that there is a potential to prevent a disaster in November by playing up Biden’s great war management and contrast with whatever faults they can imagine about Trump. This is a pretty sad and pathetic strategy. And it is not without danger. It leads Biden to pursue shiny actions – one day, we are declaring two oligarchs non grata, another – closing airspace, third – allowing Ukrainian refugees into the country. All nice gestures, but they are not changing the events on the ground.
jackk – you are watching too much fox news – there are no Hannity and Tucker republicans. Read people at the level of Bob Gates. On war: people like David Petraeus, David Deptula, at least journalists who have deep knowledge of military affairs. People disagree but at least their statements make sense.
On no-fly zone. I don’t have a good answer. Recall Putin did “humanitarian” convoys into Eastern Ukraine. Maybe we should do “humanitarian” no-fly zone to ensure delivery of medicines in western ukraine?
Note that the west is already behind with every measure – all sanctions now go as punishment for the things that happen rather than deterrent. And as it is inadequate punishment – you bombard a city, we arrest your yacht; you level a city, we will stop buying vodka – it creates an impression that we will never respond in kind. Right now a powerplant is burning with wind towards west. How is that not a threat to Nato that requires a response?
jackk > I don’t see a single failure in all the cases you mentioned. They are all foreign policy successes.
they are not successes. You are saying that there are excuses for the failures and that situations were difficult. Blaming “intel” is not good enough. Presidents are supposed to lead, ask questions, seek independent opinions. Trump had several generals and thinkers around him who many times disagreed with each other and him, he used to call people he respected in business. Even Obama consulted Biden after talking to generals – even if he did not follow Biden’s opinion.
Biden is known in the past to reverse his silly opinions (like partitioning Iraq) when confronted with strong arguments and opposition. But now he is not getting it: he is surrounded by the bubble of like-minded people, who are less experienced than him. Media is making it worse – they do not criticize him until it is a total failure.
We learn from this how happy we should be that Hashem punishes us for every little error, while other nations only when fail fully.
Avram > I think this is an excellent practice.
Agree, except need to watch inflation – soon giving a dollar will be as insulting as giving a quarter.
huju, thanks, I don’t think this is a full estimate. See my discussion above. I looked CJR 2008 review – for CPB, it also has 14% universities, 10% foundations, and 21% business. Another chart for NPR is is similar – 40% is programming fees coming from local stations that are also subsidized. Each of these groups have a lot of public funds involved.
Here is what is purely private for NPR: 1% membership dues, and maybe 20% sponsorship although this can also be in part from public sources.
By1212, again, this is pure speculation, each side can put their own explanation. If Putin were to think that Trump is weak, he would surely use it to advance somewhere. Why wait for a strong President with 40 years of experience who will unite all allies around him? Given how much Russians tried to affect US elections (going back to at least Reagan), they would surely use their electoral luck. Why meddle then? At worst, they could have attacked after election results were published. would you say that Putin was waiting for Pence to de-certify the results?
the only plausible locations where Putin advanced was Syria and it is not clear how we could have stopped him after he was there already. Case can be made that we limited his advances. note that there were reports that Russian heavily rotated unites in Syria, giving their forces a chance to practice modern warfare – mostly bombing cities. So that was preparation for UKR. As they didn’t include tanks there, this may explain why many of them are standing on the highways.
I don’t think Zelensky actively pursued anti-T policies. He was desperately trying to avoid getting involved on either side of US politics.
Ok, so 3 R-s voted against House resolution. So that is the size of R- Russian caucus? There was before a vote to give visas to Afghani interpreters. 16 R-s voted against. This is the size of isolationist caucus.
Even voting against their own President’s withdrawal from Syria – 60 R-s against.ChZn well said!
crazy, American political system revolves around 2 parties, so, inevitably, crazies (pardon me) will belong in both parties and they vote. The trick is to keep crazies under 25% on each side, then majority of Ds and Rs will elect moderates within their parties. Maybe someone can count how many Reps in each party belong to the crazy wing. I agree that we here see more of crazy Ds as most of us probably live in blue states. I presume Jewish community in Alabama has a different perspective.
An alternative is to have a multi-party system, like in Italy or Israel, where crazies form their own parties and have representation in parliament. They can then have much larger platform and get influence on their specific interests. It is “more democratic” but historically does not seem more stable. (See: Weimar Republic)
jackk, not saying that there is a simple solution to this problem but in most cases Biden’s original declarations do not hold out – Kabul fell when it was not supposed to; limited sanctions showed Putin that he might go in, thinking that this will be it; supporting NordStream2 possibly showed same thing; declaring before the invasion that we will not fight there; now declaring that we will not enforce no-fly zone as UKR is asking. There are multiple possible justifications for some of these policies – staying in sync with Germans, but excuses for failures is not same as successes.
I think the problem is that current foreign political team is inexperienced and full of theories that they learned. And they apply these theories and are often wrong. Some report that Biden selected such a team to be able to do things he was asking for before and was always frustrated that he was laughed at by Ivy Leaguers (not just Gates, Obama and Bush also disregarded his sage advice).
jackk > Trump voters view Putin more favorably that Biden
why are you falling so low to use this in a discussion? This is a good pun that someone at YWN did. You can as well say that Biden is less popular in US than Putin, or something. Both are marginally popular.
I still have my doubts. Y can now see how unwelcome he is. He will not have time to enjoy his palace and acquire more wealth. He can look at formerly independent Belorus dictator.
There are now articles in the media explaining away why Putin did not attack during Trump time – because, allegedly, Trump was doing what P wanted, such as weakening NATO. Some wording was really hard to come up – T _inadvertently_ (sic!) strengthened NATO (demanding they increase congtributions or else). The fact of such articles is a siman that everyone is asking the question. In truth, we can’t fully rely on such information – dictators do what they decide and they may choose to strike or undermine a US president whenever they want. Much easier to look at specific actions a President did. Most of anti-T articles rely on statements and pictures – he said this and called for that. I feel for those who read this propaganda daily, their heads are becoming soft and ready to be also infected by Russian propaganda that uses similar methods, Ch’V.
These are your meshulachim, they ain’t local and they are dressed “in town” …
Rav stops them from doing it in the middle. It looks like they have lists of times and rules in shuls. Maybe shared online?If this is a genuine need, though, I do not think we should stop that. After all, we are supposed to give tzedoka during davening. Does it have to be to a pushka rather than a person?
Sometimes you can see that the person is really in trouble and even why. I saw one guy several times. he is always distracted, running out every 5 minutes talking on the phone. Once, maybe it was an emergency. But many times – I did not see company CEOs getting so many important calls during davening. Maybe this guy was running some multi-level multi-shul scam and coordinating assaults? Would giving a mussar advice be a substitute for tzedokah? I was thinking about arranging with some local business to recommend them to go work there for a day. Would it be offensive to give a business card?
huju, how did you come to 10%? is it in some IRS docs that they post? We discussed here that claimed 2% is incorrect, but I was not able to get to full estimate.
> Its reporting is generally accurate.
well, we just found out that they lie about their own funding – which is something they could fact check. Are you saying – they only lie about their own benefit, but can be reliable otherwise?
Do CNN or Fox have local stations that get federal funding? Advertisement should be different. Hope it is treated non-partisan, although it could be that some agencies funnel money to preferred media. For example, if someone wants to advertise to minorities that they should apply to Yale, they would naturally go to Black stations that are liberal. Might have happened to covid funding also.
Gadol, thanks for updating me. You never know what you can learn on YWN.
ujm, you seem to have good sources? there are unconfirmed reports today that Y is indeed currently in Belorus measuring a hat of Kievan princes. So, maybe your hat will survive.
besalel, Ukraine had a lot of Jews even after WW2. Lots of Israeli and NYC “Russian” Jews are actually from Ukraine. Many of those from Eastern parts were more “Russian” oriented than Ukrainian, but recently it seems that even previously pro-Russian people in Ukraine turned against Russia. Presumably, that would include Jews.
This seems to be complicated. Many say that it is not a problem to give even when the recipient is dishonest – “you will get a reward anyway”. I asked the Rav what to do with “out of (my) town” “in town” visitors who scroll their phones until davening ends and then go around? (I saw him giving them). Rav suggested not to refuse at all, but “give a dollar”. Then, I realized why he is always getting money out of the same drawer to give – this is where he had single dollars.
R Kamenetsky’s first job in America was to collect tzedokah o behalf of some organization. He asked someone for an amount “that is same you give last year”. The businessman checked his books and said – you made a mistake, my last year donation was less, please tell them to correct. R Yaakov said – sorry I can’t – I don’t work for them any more, I just resigned.
another SOTU puzzle – why did someone invite Ukrainian ambassador? President said that we are going to watch the war and defend NATO territory only. It made more sense to invite Polish or Latvian ambassador instead of insulting the poor lady and make her thank us for closing our airspace to Russians instead of hers.
L’tzad shut, President did not know that she is there or did not know that these lines would be in the SOTU. He is too much a mench to behave like that. He did not invite former Afghanistan President, for example.
Latest increased appreciation: drones and molotov cocktails
ujm, good, if you checked the heksher, you are already thinking about how it will go down .. take it with Ukrainian vodka. Maybe it will dissolve.
jackk, Bob Gates is not daas yachid. There are plenty of people not thinking Biden is not a boke (as of now about 60% of US population). I think the reason this phrase is repeated is because of Gates reputation as being moderate and mild. And this was unprompted. And quite a succinct way to summarize 40 years.
ukraine is threat to russia
locks are threats to thieves
police are threats to robbersrussia had no problems with ukraine when a pro-russian president was in charge there. Finland is not a threat because Russians don’t speak Finnish. They simply can’t afford having a russian-speaking democratic country on their borders. It will melt their lies.
teen, he moved SOTU to a later date – until Omicron decreases (like Adar 2 because spring is not here yet). He said that he will shut down the virus by July, he just did not say which year
common, is cannabis from plastic bags legal? Teiku
I think he just called all of us mental … “Let get all Americans the mental help they need”
it is not about US. Ukrainians are now majority for NATO membership, including in areas with large russian population (currently being bombed by their “brothers”). They have a democratically elected government and they now have path to Nato in their constitution. Finns were neutral from 1939 (when they fought back Soviet invasion) but are now majority for Nato. Nations are literally standing in line to get into Nato, while nobody stands in line to partner with Russia. Stop blaming some possible tactical missteps for the situation.
jackk > Gates just said today that he thinks that Biden is handling the situation with Putin and Ukraine very well .
I found this was a CNN interview. He is not praising Biden in general. He is asked a pointed question and answers tersely “this was done right” and several minutes later talks about things we need to do differently which implies they were done right before. You are just not used to listen to polite people talking. He is not going to go on a rant and tries to find good things to praise wherever he can find them.
common, a fair point. I doubt Putin would allow CRs out of sight and out of line. R Salanter refused to head a Russian school system when offered to make havdala between kosher and treif. Lazar made his deal with the devil presumably to take care of the Jews there but it came at a price.
Gadol, I think the general principle is that Hashem sends us challenges that make us stronger, but it is presumptuous for us to create our own challenges just to show off. We both seem to agree that pursuing college degree is a legitimate direction in order to be educated and productive members of the society (some obviously disagree), then the question is what risk are coming with the territory and some are taken for no reason.
> with a nonjewish spouse wearing a Chev Guevara t-shirt.
you missed the comma from that horrific story (that is not the spouse, but the child being a Trotskyist)
I am glad for your kids. 2013 Pew numbers are that 85% of O- educated in general are still O- in the 2os, 60% when in their 30s and lower further. I can’t find numbers correlating these losses with college attendance but would not be surprised that there will be.