Always_Ask_Questions

Amom,
so you are also blessed with MIL who helps you with money. Baruch Hashem. I don’t think this is irony that she gives more to the other siblings. There is a mitzva to help someone to pick up an animal “with him”. So, if other brothers are working hard to support their families, she wants to help them. If your husband prefers learning, then his mother feels less obligated to help with him with something he does not bother to attend to himself. And, again, I hope your husband finds a way to make his mother happier about it – not by nudging her, but by doing something that will deserve her respect in whatever ways she sees it. I personally do not know Talmidei Chahamim who do not try to excel in kibud av.

As to using public funds, as you already see, there are other opinions. It depends how programs are structured: I am all for using public funds to support Jewish schools, provided those schools fulfil the general public goals, educating responsible citizens. If the State of NJ consider establishing programs to support Torah learning as it benefits the world, I’ll vote for it. As to using programs designated for poor, as you already see, there are differing opinions here. I see several parts here:

1) benefiting from Torah learning (that is saying my kollel is working, pay me for that). You can ask your husband to point you places in Gemorah of people who refused to have any physical benefit from their learning. So, just the system of paying people to learn is problematic to begin with, as much as we have good social reasons to have it.

2) taking money from charity designated for poor, rather than for learning. In old Jewish communities, poor were supported but checked out also. I am not aware of T’Ch being supported that way. Maybe someone knows.

3) personal attitude. Why would a T’Ch want someone else to pay for his Torah learning, especially questionable? You figured out a job that pays. If you feel you do not get enough, your husband can figure out how to work for a couple of hours a week. you said a Rav permitted it. Did you ask the Rav whether you are permitted to be machmir and not do that?

4) taking general public funds designated for poor. This is a can of worms. When you asked me about a false choice between supporting homeless and a T’Ch: I will obviously pay for both. I would rather donate to a T’Ch of my choice directly and benefit from the mitzva, rather than paying extra taxes and gaining no benefit! Or maybe just use an extra hour to learn myself instead of working to pay the tax. This sounds petty as T’Ch is 1% of welfare funds – but in some places we now have whole cities and people can do analysis how much of public funds is spent on voluntarily poor.

amom, CTLawyer,
google tells me:
The average Public School Teacher salary in New Jersey is $66,876 as of November 29, 2021, but the range typically falls between $58,376 and $77,219.

A wise older friend, while going out of state to fix his sister’s problems, told me: remember that your relationship with your siblings is longer than with your parents or your children! (is this discussed anywhere?)

Also, pandemic is a great way to make the little siblings under your control into friends and hevrusas between each other. Hopefully, it will serve them well in life.

amom,
schools are pretty different. CTLawyer describes a different reality.

How many kids are in the class and how much tuition are they paying, nominal and real, in your school ?

I am saying that it is not ideal to keep bunch of kids, esp teenagers, in one room and expect them to learn behavior from each other and one adult, who was appointed to that class. Ideally, you want the kid to be in a room with several well-behaving adults and maybe a couple of good peers. The problems that are discussed are following from that.

RebE > someone carrying in a place where there is no eiruv don’t mention shabbos

say, eruv is down, and you see a mother with a stroller who is not aware of it. You are not supposed to alert her until she gets the kid home safely. Now, in your humros-ness, you say “Hi, whats up” instead of “gut shabbos” immediately alerting the lady (who also learned halokha, of course). As you are probably reluctant to continue exchanging the kid with a lady, not your wife, every arba amos, you would have to find another lady to help, while you will be standing there till the end of shabbos to guard the $1,000 stroller.

Zaphod > Most of the incidents I was referring to actually happened between children

Without detracting from your main idea, I am also wondering how sensible is the prevailing approach of shoveling tens of kids of the same age into a classroom and educate and socialize them that way?

This is obviously a practical way to deliver instruction to multiple children at the sane time, let them do work at the same time, and let the same teacher check multiple similar tests at the same time. But how would you educate a kid, given unlimited resources? I would probably put a kid in a small group of older people – some old to be an example of learning and behavior, some a little older than the kid so that he can relate to them, and let him listen and sometimes participate in the discussion. I would also let him work on his own a little to develop independent skills and sometimes to work with younger kids and explain material to them. Sitting in the room with other kids of similar skills and possibly worse behavior seems to have the least educational value.

Indeed, Einstein in his later work was motivated by the goal to show that there is one unifying theory of the world.

But I think the Big Bang theory was an even bigger (and simpler to grasp!) contribution to the Jewish-Greek dialogue whether this world was created or existed eternally.

ujm> opening up the Pandora’s Box known as the Internet.

I know we obviously can’t “see” here people who are not on Internet, but I have an impression that a large part of the community gets the negative side of internet already. Many/most adults have social media. mostly on their phone, judging by grammar. Many teens also. Those who do not have access – they seem to be getting “news” from those who do – either directly or through several steps. So, this virus is already inside.

At the same time, most seem not to have general internet literacy – how to search for information, what is a reliable source. As a result, they follow inane and insane sources and are not able to process information. I don’t know at what age, but at some age, there should be a class about using internet responsibly.

use your time wisely!

n0, yes, I am paraphrasing mussar suggestions. Maybe we have so many mental cases referred to doctors because we dont work before at earlier stages.

Romain, there is a fallacy in the numbers you bring:
you compare median salary with (average) cost of living. Average cost of living closely tracks AVERAGE salary: people spend as much as they earn! So, your economist is simply saying that median person can not live like a rich person!

HaKatan, you are free to organize your anti-Zionist community anywhere nearby – Syria, Jordan. They should be quite supportive. You missed a moment to live under ISIS.

One takeaway is appreciation of halakhic public policies that regulate both religious and social life.

Seeing disintegration of norms and sanity and lack of unity when we are confronted with novel problems makes you think – how would Jews behave if they were not repeatedly told to daven every day, wear proper clothes, and not steal from each other. It is rare to see Jews fighting for a seat in shul or who gets an aliya because we have rules about all these trivial matters. You can come to most any shul in the world, and you feel comfortable knowing what the rules are. Many “lo plug” takanot make one wonder – would people really confuse chicken with meat, but seeing people confusing scarfs with masks convinced me.

YS> set up an awful phone conferencing system after a few weeks

I don’t think we should fault anyone for doing something wrong: this was an unprecedented situation. As long as they honestly tried, and then changed something based on feedback. As it says – if you see a Talmid Chacham sinning at night, do not reprimand him in the morning, as he surely did teshuva. That is, a person can be a T’Ch without being perfect, but being able to do teshuva is a requirement.

Syag > I said you don’t like frum. I didn’t say you don’t like the terminology.

I usually avoid personal remarks, but this one required clarification. My perception may be wrong, but I often see people using this term usually do it to – arbitrarily – exclude large swaths of Torah observant Jews from their notion of “amecha”. This may not be true for native Yiddish speakers, but often looks so for those who throw the term into English discussion. Especially here, we now have a full text of the teshuva, thanks RebE, and Rav Moshe, a Yiddish speaker, is clearly NOT using this term, yet everyone mis-quotes him. I may be oversensitive here.

Even Chofetz Chaim, in more “frum” times, when community was besieged by haskalah, had reservations, saying: people say: in our times, you need to be “frum, frum, and klug”, I say, you have to be “klug, klug, and frum”. So, I am pro-klugkeit.

ujmI understand that if you have a dispute with any Jew, you need to invite him to a BD first before going to UN. But Romain can simply move to any of the neighboring aniti-zionist countries

Syag, > should go with a frum psychologist as opposed to not but that a non frum psychiatrist is okay.

Thanks, this is what I was trying to say, but maybe did not phrase accurately. Now, I am looking further, I am not sure this is the full picture.

The source is Igros Moshe YD 2:57. Can someone with full text access look it up please. It seems that the question was about doctor who is a “min” or “kofer”. He says it is incumbent to go to someone who is “shomer Torah”, but if not available, negotiate with the doctor not to discuss beliefs.

> Indeanapollis, Indiana

I am surprised you don’t know where you live yet. This should be Indeana.

n0 > they have to be open to a lot of criticism. .. There is zero reason anybody should mind teachers getting paid more.

They should be, given the importance of their job. Nuclear plants have a lot of oversight, and so should teachers who affect young neshomos. I am not sure though whether we use right tools for the criticism – meeting teachers twice a year and expressing displeasure with end product would be frustrating for everyone involved. There are lots of tools that could be used: standardized tests with published results, student evaluations, glass doors with occasional parent accees, easier ways to switch between classes, more competition, paying good teachers more ….

Gadol, chicken used to be way more expensive. Maybe it is cheap now due to industrial methods raising them. So, when we say that men need “basar” for yom tov, we are saying that they should be OK with just meat, without the chicken. Rav, who offered beans, meant – I can give you what I eat myself. An interesting nekudah is the sister that appeared with the chicken: she was travelling for days, so Hashem gave her an idea to prepare the chicken for the poor man who will come to Rav several days later, anticipating his response.

I think protecting religious people at Baba Sali is more important than the NY goers, so they are doing the right thing. Not only because Baba Sali attendants are likely to be more religious, but also
– NY goers are probably younger
– those who party at NY, will party anyway. Those who go to Baba Sali don’t do it daily, so protecting them will be more effective!
– They can well daven to be protected and we do not want to rely on miracles that will diminish schut of these people in olam habo!

Nothing wrong enjoying the food, just check whether it affects your decision making:
if you are choosing between staying home or going to a dvar Torah, you hesitate and a kiddush after that makes you go – that is fine at some level. But if one shul has a better dvar Torah and another – better food, and you choose food, maybe this is not fine. If you go get “free” food because you are hungry – fine. If you get it because it is tastier than what you wish to spend – then, less so. There are though several agadot about poor people who demanded “stuffed bird” (a delicatessen of Gemora times) and being offered beans instead .. Conclusions seem to be inconclusive, but generally supportive of the demand – one guy choked and died without favoring food, in another case, Rav’s sister suddenly comes in from faraway and brings the stuffed chicken.

Get yourself books by R Twersky to understand a Jewish psychologist.

Furthermore, R Feinstein at some point paskened that it is ok to use a non-observant psychiatrist – who is prescribving drugs, but not a psychologist, who “fixes” your mind and may propose non-kosher attitudes. This means it is so important to have learned psychologists to address the needs of the community. I don’t know whether a combination of psychology/halakha/hashkafa is taught anywhere, though.

Edited

Gadol > Rs can move beyond Trump (and the Trump waanabees) and find a principled conservative

I think you are right on D “free stuff” context and I also do not see how it can be avoided, once the sharks smell the (free) blood in the water already, but I think you are misreading R- direction. Trump disturbed R-s rules of the game and was proven right in most cases: discarding polite campaigning and not responding to lies by Romney; fear of recognizing Yerushalaim; free (one-sided) market with China; ISIS; Ukraine; 5 years for vaccines, taxes, making D- into a pretzel by eliminating SALT; increasing Spanish vote. So, any future R leader has to integrate these new ideas somehow, it is impossible to go back. Even Biden recognizes it and continues many policies whenever he is not pressed by Commies.