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Avira and ujm raise an interesting question: where is the boundary between behaving morally in the nonjewish world and accepting what we should not. Even haleivi’s simple list is questionable: not just freedom and racism, but even opening a door for a woman so that she would walk in front…
Rather than arguing about boundaries, I would rather make a list of unquestionable items and train yourself in those, like returning items (I have to concede finally a place where walking in a bekesha helps to create a kiddush Hashem), paying on time, following traffic rules, paying taxes, keeping one’s word, etc
A rosh yeshiva who, in my view, has impeccable manners, told me that he once met a prospective F-I-L who had even more impeccable manners, eating a sandwich with a knife & fork. Given that the shidduch did not happen, I presume that F-I-L was annoyed by the lack of manners of the future RY.
>> it’s OKAY to be impolite!
As OK as eating treif. Rabbi Akiva, Beitza > Derech Eretz MinHatorah
Ubi, apologize, took your words out of context
Can we resolve the issue towards non-Jews that we should follow their standards towards them? That is, you don’t need to go to the extent of halakhic obligation, but do at least what a normal non-Jew will do, maybe a little more – return to “lost & found”, pick up from the ground to a chair, don’t take it at all …
For a benchmark, see a current story on YWN front page about someone in Indiana finding an old photo that flew 100 miles from Kentucky tornado, posting on FB and eventually finding the owner. However awesome it is, it is slighyl below the Jewish standard that would require spending another 10 minutes googling the name directly instead of relying on power of FB …
Also, I personally benefited from non-Jews calling to deliver a lost purse (in NorthEast) and just not touching a purse on the window for several day (in the South).
Ubi: Rambam Gezeila 11:3
Note also that Rambam refers to “reshaim olam”, so the issue seems to be not just avoda zara but maybe those who are hurting Jews or world in general? Not clear what would he say about Muslims.
Also, note as Avira said that S’A is not fully following Rambam here, but modern poskim seem to stress that possibility of Hillul Hashem or a chance for Kiddush Hashem really cover a lot of cases.
What is interesting in this case is that it is clearly not a mitzva of hiddur v. halakha – you can make a wrong decision both returning to an inappropriate person and not returning when appropriate.
I said it on the front page. I am shocked, shocked home many “frum” people watch TV. Is it permissible?
> (which the goyim associate with global warming), being next to the ice machine may not be such a bad strategy
You might be sharing this spot with some Swedes enjoying sauna.
there is definitely a difference in Olam Haboh real estate:
In Taanit 25, R Elazar b Pedat complained to Hashem about his health in his dream, was offered to reverse the world so that he can start again with a possibility (not certainty) of better life, he passed this chance and as a reward was offered 13 rivers of pure balsam oil. (True to his nature of complaining?) he asked for more, but Hashem replies that this would be a problem of other tzadikim (who apparently would then also request raises, leading to grade inflation and shortage of balsam oil).In today’s Taanit daf, one is allowed to be immodest and behave like a Talmid chacham in matters where he has a loss – such as not working around 9 Av. So, someone who behaves like a Talmid Chacham (dresses up) in matters where it brings positive attention to him, or do it as part of culture – should not get your preference in shidduch over a guy who is not showing off.
This is not to deny reasons Avira and others bring why it helps community to stay strong by dressing certain way. Just to say, that someone who is erleche and yashar without dressing up is not to be looked down upon.
Goldilocks > you should definitely practice at home!
He should practice to the point when he is sure he’ll be doing it when married. If he is practicing just to impress the shidduch, and then he’ll revert to his non-manners, this could be mekach taut!
I think Talmid Chacham has a priority in pidyon also
Health,
I agree on testing, but we are talking about people, especially from the stubborn Jewish community. For those who are not going to test (and many will not), they should isolate.The Talmidei Chachamim I know always test after coming from a crowded Jewish community before mixing up with their congregation. It is pretty easy right now, $20 per home test, I believe. I am reading that Europe now provides these test for free, but Brandon did not dare doing it and is trying complicated schemes like asking people to submit receipt to insurance. This will not increase use.
> my duty to tell you that its ok to show it in your flaw house but NOT on a date
1) if you do it at home, rest assured you’ll do it on the date. Maybe on the 3rd one.
2) Maybe you should demonstrate your manners now in order not to mislead the other side.
Syag > while you isolate them and monitor their oxygen levels.
Syag, don’t under-estimate non-doctors. One of the first people (I think in April or May 2020) to notice value of oximeters for monitoring Covid was an engineer who noticed the issue, contacted several doctors, made a couple of experiments, and wrote an OpEd in a major paper. By now, there are research papers confirming benefits.
Historian, I agree that latest immigrants is a different issue and probably have more non-Jews – same as with Beta Israel, most Jews came first, intermarried and converted later on. There is less of emergency now and should be no excuse of not checking them out. We were talking about large aliya of 1990s – and later conversion (of them and their children)
inquisitive, +1 on using the work ehrliche. Maybe you should be telling your friends that this is what you are looking for and, B’H, you’ll find!
edited!
Avira > why you don’t think it’s important to look different than the non Jews
I acknowledge we have many times when we dressed differently (from midrashim on Mitzraim to medieval Europe), we have cases when Jews apparently got dressed as non-Jews maybe with certain exceptions, such as red color. Both in certain parts of modern Europe, Spain, Sephardim, Italian Jews, Talmudic times. In some cases (Germany) dressing like non-Jews was a sign of assimilation, but not always. We discussed this even for Talmidei Chachamim, kal vehomer for the general community, even if you call the community “bnei torah”.
Syag > That’s not a clarification, that’s a completely different message. … assume he has covid and isolate. And monitor his oxygen levels.
thanks for correcting me. “In addition to whatever you plan to do for the flu, test or presume that you might have covid and act accordingly”
I listened to (just several minutes) “halakha” class from TorahAnywhere and it is similar in spirit to what Avira said – pointing differences between non-Jews and Jews, and briefly mentioning “kiddush Hashem” issues. I don’t know whether this is a representative class, but I hope those who learn this way understand that this is learning S’A, but not learning halakha l’Maase, without taking into account modern society and sensibilities in terms of Kiddush/Hillul Hashem and other subtleties of halakha.
Syag, I am not playing a doctor. To clarify – if he thinks he need to go to the doctor, he should. I am suggesting additional precautions only. I am considering here that he presumes it is a flu and it could be Covid. Same goes for people presuming they have sudden allergies. Everyone with possible covid symptoms should slow down and find something to do for a couple of days.
Rough estimate: flu is defintely back this year after missing last year. there are 800 flu hospitalizations per week and 50,000 with covid, so if someone is having a difficult case, R’L, covid seems more likely. Probably less for a young person, though.
> No one during the holocaust had a choice
While true in general, there were often choices to be made, although often unclear ones … first, there were choices to try to emigrate before WW2 to Palestine or US. Another example I saw in a book – 2 brothers with families who ran away from German Poland to Soviet in 1939. They were then offered Soviet citizenship “or else”. The one who accepted, stayed there until German came and perished … The one who refused was soon arrested en masse, sent to GULAG, was then recalled by reconstituted Polish Army, was able to make it to Persia and from there to Palestine.
Nechomah, as I am not familiar with exact procedures mentioned here, I do not have an opinion on how rigorous they are and – if they have lower standards – whether they are justified. I just pointed out one extra consideration for these conversions v. , say, someone converting in NYC for marriage considerations.
BY1212, we were able to take at least a million of Jewish souls in the 90s who were behind the iron curtain for 70 years already. I don’t think there was an ability to immediately vet all families for everyone being Jewish, and presumably there would be many who would stay if their non-Jewish spouses were not allowed in. There was no way to predict whether USSR was dissolved forever or would come back in 5 years or would be a mild dictatorship like it is now. US and Israel succeeded before with getting a trickle of Soviet Jews out in the 70s and then it stopped.
Halachically, when we do pidyon sheviim – do we vet every person to be a Jew, or can we just say, there is 50% surcharge for saving each of the Jews?
Also, note that these non-Jews married Jews in an anti-Semitic country. How bad can they be (I am sure some are, I am talking averages here).
US was sending materiel to Britain and USSR starting 1941 already through lend-lease. Given intensity of the fighting on Eastern Front, this clearly made a difference. As well as helped Western front going.
Refuah Shleima,
you should either test or presume that you have Covid and isolate. If continue not feeling well, one recommendation is to measure your oxygen level with an oximeter, should be available in CVS, ask someone to pick up for you. Levels below 90 are worrisome.Avira > consider what the liars who pretend to be totally frum would do if they dressed the way they behaved in private
You are right that the dress would limit some people from additional aveiros, but it also comes at a cost: people will equate their behavior w/ Talmidei chachamim … not an eas y trade-off.
Avira, thanks, look like you are right. Rambam puts a reason of not giving money to people who prosecute Jews, but Rashi, SA and later stand by all non-Jews. So basic exemptions are exactly the thread title: avoiding Hillul Hashem (purse lost in a Jewish area, business loss that will be later attributed to you …), or, as mentioned creating Kiddush Hashem: put your biggest hat, write “Rabbi” on the envelope … R Lebovitz adds a hiluk of doing a normal action of returning to the “lost and found” that could be made in polite, not antisemitic society, and making a major effort, which can be done with accompanying Kiddush Hashem. He quotes Smag, R Aaron Soloveichik (that not pursuing moral behaviors may be the reason for current Golus) and Beer Hagolah who says that he knows many people who took advantage of non-Jewish mistakes and became rich but at the end did not have brocha, and many who did opposite and had brocha. So, this seems a complicated subject…
> , halacha is very clear that not returning a goy’s aveidah when failure to do so will result in a chilul Hashem is assur
Maaseh Rav, when he found a purse, he called the owner/neighbor and asked him to stop by the shul, specifically to enhance kiddush Hashem. when you consider a desire not to return, you may be looking at discussions related to Avdei Avodah Zara. This is not a given for an average American.
DY > kikayon wasn’t made by reshaim with the intent to destroy Yiddishkeit.
Hashem explains his moshal to Yonah – think of multitudes of people and even animals .. I am not sure would this include reshayim or are we saying that Ninve did teshuva and only therefore deserve being saved. Even in the second case, surely that current Israel has multitudes of observant Jews (if you count wider than a specific political group) that deserve protection.
HaLeivi > no person in Tanach or Torah Shel Bal Peh criticizes Gedolim of previous generations. S
I agree that we need to show respect to all (acceptable) opinions in the past. The current machloket is on what is “acceptable”. Gemora filtered out those that were not. We are not counting various sects mentioned on Gemora as viable opinions. An extremist view (both on the left and on the right) is only to count your own group as acceptable. A more expansive view is to count anyone who is a great Talmid Chacham as acceptable as long as he affirms halakha (Acher was a learned person, but rejected halakha openly, as do many academics or reformim).
Another question is – where is boundary between generations. Sometimes it is imply teacher-student (R Akiva wins against chaverav, but not against his teacher), but more generally we have longer divisions – tannaim/amoraim/rishonim and there are arguments within them. When did the previous era ended? Maybe with Shoah and move to US and EY? Or with Mishna Berurah?
Volozhin example is something to think about, for sure, but differences are too stark: we are talking to an only Yeshiva, forced by a hostile government to introduce Russian classes, informers, etc – totally breaking educational process. Rav Salanter was offered a job of heading a system of Russian schools and he refused (after a lot of consideration, thinking that he’ll make it less painful).
HaLeivi, I think people are “triggered” by the differences themselves in the time of “equality”.
smerel > However from a frum perspective government funding of private schools would be bad news. There will almost certainly be rules attached that will exclude Yeshivas.
For the majority of Jewish people, who want some combination of Jewish and general education, the current system is totally unmanageable. It makes no sense to lose $10K/child to send him to a totally private school. So, it is either sacrificing quality in one of those areas, or a great financial burden that causes parents to be at work full day and stressed on shabbos. For many, other attractive options cause people move to non-Jewish suburbs, etc.
If you prefer to keep your schools as is, then you can keep them. Or, more likely, take government money for minimal secular education, equivalent to bad public schools. Ideally, government should pay at different tiers depending what your school wants.
akuperman > any standards on teaching secular subjects would be hard to meet for the better frum schools (i.e. the ones that offer high quality Torah education).
a fair point. There are different needs. I presume that if some of parents in these schools would like to teach their kids professions, even a minority, they can organize such a school. If traditional schools will cooperate a little, then such schools can exist as separate entity or as an option in the school.
HaLeivi > This whole idea — that simply doing any Mitzva openly, even when it’s despised, is a Kiddush Hashem — seems to be a reaction to the opposite idea, that we should be ashamed of Mitzvos deemed inappropriate by the outsiders.
I think you are right that we often stand by a point to separate ourselves from others. IT is often important to protect community in a short term, but, in a long term, distorts who we are. One example I saw quoted is emphasizing that Judaism is a religion of actions/mitzvos rather than stam belief (from lo lishma, etc) that we affirm in the face of neighbors who insist on being saved through faith. Similarly, emphasis on miraculous in the face of haskala rationalism.
So, I hope Supremes will clarify that paying just for secular studies has nothing to do whatever else schools are doing with private funds. The next case should be to demand that NOT allowing private schools is unconstitutional: a state has a need to teach three Rs and they should allow any qualified operator to fulfil that need, same way the government buys everything else on private market. If US can buy destroyers and missile defense, it can test math knowledge at a high-school level with an online test.
Gadol > for the statute claimed that it was because the state did not have the ability to to monitor whether a fringe religious school was including such teachings
By this logic, we should close most public schools and stop giving state funds to any universities. I closely monitor kids in online schools and they have a lot of fringe views. In one case, an English teacher included a Middle East map with “Palestine” (sic) in green and Israel in white ( that is as almost not there, same color as off-map) and balanced a Palestinian anti-Israel story with an Israeli anti-Israel story. This was a one-off, but teaching US Government starting that Electoral college is in the way of progress before explaining why it was created, is more routine (maybe in half of the cases)
Gadol > state did not have the ability to to monitor whether a fringe religious school was including such teachings,
The idea is that state pays school or parents for teaching kids skills and knowledge. This can be verified by a test. Presumably, if kids passed the test, it means school spent the money to teach it. Whatever they do during remaining hours of the day is up to them and private funds they want to spend.
It seems that we mostly agree that learning quick lessons from history is presumptuous. On the other hand, as RebE says the lessons are surely there, whether we are talking Shoah or Covid or any other world event. After naviyut, it is said that the way to interpret is through midah k’neged midah, but supposedly we are not smart enough to see that nowadays also.
Maybe a practical path would be to generate possible hypotheses of midah k’neged midah, verify that they are not simply your personal/group bias (blame every event on smartphones), and carefully verify that possible solutions are not against halakha or have danger in them (for example, create machloket by by blaming some group of Jews). Then, emphasize those areas, understanding that this may not be an ultimate answer, but something that is worth working on anyway and is a possible path for us to take.
Gadol, agree but you are also taking too much on yourself
>> I’m sure the Ebeshter is aware of the concept of the “shortest distance between two points is a straight line”
and I am sure Eibeshte is aware of Riemann and Bolyai-Lobachevskian geometries.Daf yomi: one of possible reasons for maamadot not to fast on yom rishon is because of Christians … This seems ahistorical, but an interesting consideration anyway
M, thanks for bringing other opinions. All seem to agree that we need to balance a mitzvah of davening with inconveniencing others, but disagree either on the extent or possibly the circumstances. R Sheinberg presumably travels on routes typical for having a lot of religious Jews, while other answers may relate to a typical goyishe environment. We need several of those rabbis to travel together for a total of ten and see if someone will dare not to join the minyan! I think this underscores the idea I stressed before that when being Adam lhavero is involved, solutions are not always the same. Luckily our days you can snap a picture, email it to your daas Torah and ask him how to daven in the current circumstances.
somehow we take halakha l’Maase seriously and many people will not entertain partaking of a meat soup with a drop of milk without asking a shailah. But, somehow, everyone has a quick explanation for the reasons while millions of souls that perished, one way or the other. Maybe because you don’t think it is a practical matter and you can say whatever? For some reason, Hashem felt a need to afflict that and other tzoros on us and taking them unseriously denigrates both the neshomos and the One who Did it. Real Talmidei Chachmim are more honest (R Steinsaltz, for example, said that it is too early to answer. Maybe because the question came from a survivor, I don’t know …)
> his opinion was based on foreign influence.
I am confused, which nation is teaching Gemorah to girls so well that they influenced R Soloveichik? If you suspect the infuences, they would surely have come from his German university training. We can presume that even if he was influenced in 1930s, he was aware of the failure of German philosophy to form a society at the end, so he would surely take that into account. Your argument might hold more for Rav Hirsh, for example, with his respect to German culture.
charlie > Judaism is really the original nationalism
not in the modern sense. Judaism does not excuse behaviors because of his nationality. Tanach differs from many ancient texts and stellas by recording negative events about Jewish leaders and people, rather than just victories. In our days, I don’t think the Author of the Tanach would able to get a haskomah or print most of the Tanach at a Jewish publisher despite his infinite powers.
charlie > he orders a school to all their limdei kodesh classes be co-ed.
One possible reason for mutual misunderstanding is that you and your opponent address different communities. I would question whether Rav Soloveichik would suggest opening a similar school in boro Park. To the best of my knowledge, he did not. Similarly, people from different communities can not comprehend his approach.
PS a case of society affecting halakha from Daf Yomi Tannis: community fasts and davens for rain and gets it. It then stops the fast and says Hallel Hagadol. Before hallel, in Israel, everyone goes home to eat to say Hallel in the proper satiated state. In Mehuza, Persia they’ll say Hallel before dinner. Why? Because in Mehuza they might drink too much at the dinner (to prevent the drink driving back to shul?)
DY, what is twisted here? I am trying to apply halakhic concepts to the issue. If you disagree, say why. Or ask you Rav and tell us what he thinks. Just because the concept does not look usual to you, does not mean you dismiss it by that.
Notice an interesting weaving of multiple concerns by r Schachter in his case: on a short flight, one should not bother anyone and daven sitting. on a long flight, you would need to stretch your legs (allowing to bother people), and you can then daven as well. I did not connect these things before, but after reading, I would not call it twisted, just “weaved together” 🙂
Is state of Israel less important than a kikayon?
Syag, your question came before my next post, where I clarified that I did not close that sefer, I just did not read the same one next time. I would not notice who is looking at me until I finished the sugya!
charlie > And an even bigger hitch is that the schools participating in these programs have to accept all students. They can’t discriminate on the basis of religion.
This might go back to Supremes similar to Catholics health plan that does not cover contraceptives. But, in a bigger picture, you are right, there will be some yeshivos that will not want to get into secular education. They are not spending much now on teaching math, so there will no benefit in increasing time on “goyishe subjects” and be paid for that (I am using the phrase borrowed from a Rav who was teaching English and History in his Chassidish yeshiva and introduced himself as “goyishe teacher”). So, this approach will strengthen only those schools that combine Jewish education with a decent general one. Or, open a way to separate Jewish schools (in the afternoon?) who may train bochrim and meidelah from multiple schools (possibly only a small percentage whose parents care about it).