Always_Ask_Questions

two more records for Pres Trump:
survey says: 40% think he is the worst, 20%+ that he is the best president.

Both numbers are higher than for previous ones (by 20 for worst, and by 10 for best). I am not sure whether they did this survey at Alexander time … Maybe Lincoln was seemingly polarizing.

PS Upon some hard thinking – I am not sure how the above can be correct. Obviously, Washington had 100% on both scores.

rational: The best learning boys will hold out for the most money.

This is indeed an old system, but does it make sense now? We used to have a small number of Talmidei chachamim who were able, and wanted, to learn full time and a small number of very rich people and lots of very poor. Now, we have much larger professional middle class and a high cost of living – who can have comfortable lifestyle by working, but not enough to support several sons-in-law.

what is thenn the motivation of the multitude of learners (except the true top ones), select a life partner based on money, instead of learning how to support themselves. I they are that bright and kodesh, they could work in a profession 2-3 hours a day, it will be enough to modestly support their families.

how and who determines the level of someone’s learning?
are you going by quality of institution?
do you differentiate between the ocean and overturning mountains? or is the latter a negative behavior?
is there an SAT-type test that let us evaluate the bochur learning?

Are Rabbis exempt from gramah damages as professionals? I presume here that he is a professional in psak but not in electrical engineering.

So, if a Rav suggest toiveling and then the device is damaged or there is a fire, is he liable?

common: @does that apply to the Rebbes and Teachers

changing gears somewhat: It seems that Congress will not pass blanket protection to businesses, then you might be able to sue your Rebbes in secular courts if the following happened (not saying it happened to everyone, but all happened somewhere):

1) they were not careful enough (for example, going to unmasked minyanim), or were not promptly reporting cases to parents,

2) you discovered how bad teaching is when seeing teacher on zoom

3) that your child learned better and got better midos out of school

4) your child was able to learn at home without medication that school insisted on

5) your school always insisted that their school is better than online schools, then continued charging full tuition for online/phone classes

Syag >> No charlie, you are wrong. You follow your rabbis on halachic matters

First, there seems to be a room for being more careful personally. Namely, we feed a patient on Yom Kippur when either a doctor OR a patient say so. Is there an acharon that says a Rav should review their opinion?

2nd, there is a diversity of halakhic opinions here. I was very impressed by R Meir Twersky’s psak early on. I quoted him here before and do not remember any response. One thing he said sounded true: we generally recommend listening to your respected doctor, but due to high uncertainty of the new virus, we should listen to worst fears of several opinions. At the same time, discussing the plans with one of a pretty reasonable local Rabbis, his initial position was “Let’s trust this doctor X”.

Another early warning came from R Heineman: when asked whether it is OK for several families to stay nearby to form a minyan outside, he answered – if you do that at the time when this is forbidden, it will lead to some Jews being denied ventilators by someone saying – they caused it to themselves.

So, when asking for an opinion, you may want to make sure you ask someone who heard enough factual information and has enough historical depth. If you are not sure, provide that information to him.

Reported Phase 3 trials were over-conservative in their design. Their primary goal was to fly through FDA rigid acceptance rules. The risk of failure was – months to do another trial.
They passed it. Note the French fiasco. I understand that they did not achieve sufficient efficacy and now going into another Phase 3 (= several months).

All indications are that it will be soon (1-2 months?) clear what is effect of vaccine on transmission – by analyzing current data, updating trials, observing vaccinated population.

Another guess: possibly, recommended dose is too high (to guarantee passing the test). mRNA teams could do that because there is no risk of getting COVID. Traditional vaccines have to more careful. So, if the doses will be lowered, there will be more of them and less side effects.

A note for those taking it soon: today’s FDA panel discussed that taking more time between two doses gives more final protection, but it is hard to recommend more time as this increases time when a person is protected less by just one dose. So, if you are not an exposed medical worker, but a relatively isolated alter – you may want to ask your doctor about spacing doses a little longer.

ujm: current position is no.

Most of propagation is going through young population, thus it will continue for some time, while, hopefully number of difficult cases will be gradually reducing. Presumably, with lower deaths, youngsters will be even less careful, and thus, move to herd faster.

Re: transition. Recent studies compare locations with and without colleges and see that half of deaths are attributed to presence of colleges by eventually propagating thru the rest of community.
Most direct route – medical students that were, in the studied example, 25% of nursing home staff.

DY >> Your loss if you don’t support talmidei chachomim

a basic question: how do we determine who is a Talmid Chacham. Like Rabbi Yannai?

Sefer Maccabees reports following tweets on the 8th day of Chanuka:
– how do we know it was real oil and not an illusion, so it does not count
– so many people came to see it, I could not see anything anyway!
– and what are we going to do tomorrow? why didn’t you generate more miracle oil!?
– tzedukim would do the same, and they would not aggravate the yavanim by their “Jews first” racism

Have some appreciation for those who worked hard for whole year to get some help to billions of people, even if not everything is known 100%

Hard to tell Biden’s health. Unfortunately, voters were not given a lot of chances to evaluate his thinking or, more importantly, his positions. Best chance when he offered a contest with a “fatty” in Iowa, but there was no follow-up.

Presumably, he has a lot of “reasonable” positions, but this is guesses, as he mostly refused to answer any questions that will divide his coalitions of centrists, neverTrumpers and extremists of different flavors. The fact that society in large part went along with such uncontested election is a sad phenomenon.

I tried to tip my cooking stuff, waiters, cleaning service, landscaper, butler, dog walker, hairdresser, delivery service, repair-person, laundromat. My wife refused the tips, but the kids took some.

DY >> it’s muttar and therefore proper.

Here is SY YD 246:21 REMA, Sefaria translation:

first, the benefits of working and learning, tell me you are not envious:
A person should not think to engage in Torah and to acquire wealth or honor with the learning, for one who ventures to think such a thought will not achieve the crown of Torah… make his Torah fixed and his work contingent, and should reduce business and engage in Torah…work all day for his livelihood if he does not have enough to eat, and the rest of the day and the night he should engage in Torah. ..great quality to generate one’s sustenance from the work of his hands …

2) scary threats, are you not afraid?
Anyone who puts in his mind occupying himself with Torah and not working, but supporting himself from tz’dakah, behold, this one desecrates the Divine name and dishonors the Torah. .. it attracts sin and he winds up robbing people.

3) now what is mutar, tell me which category you belong to below – old, sick, Rav of the city, very poor talmid haham, get [direct?] donations from sponsors, unable to provide for yourself and learn at the same time (according to most lenient of lenient opinions – use this one if you always follow lenient oipinions, of course)

an elder or a sick person [AAQ – better to be paid for Torah than get Medicaid]
some say that it is permitted even for a healthy person…
Rav of the city has an income and provisions
sage who needs it, but for a wealthy person it is prohibited.
some are more lenient, saying that it is permitted for a sage and his students to accept subsidies from those who donate ..
Nevertheless, one who is able to provide for himself well from the work of his own hands and to engage in Torah, it is a pious quality and a gift of God, but this is not the nature of all persons, for it is impossible for everyone to engage in Torah and to become wise in it and to provide for himself by himself.

GH: >>escape the real world >> filling in as surrogate teachers

I feel opposite on both issues:
– an opportunity to connect to fellow Jews and hear different opinions
– an opportunity to fulfill mitzva “ve shinantem levaneha” on your own instead of using some randoms as substitute parents. While the process is not without challenges and negative parts, we enjoy discussing interesting things with kids instead of reacting to what schools do to them. YMMV.

Encouragement for grandparents here: says somewhere that someone who teaches a grandchild gets olam haboh. Explanation – parent can teach a kid merely by example. Grandparent can not, the kid can not relate to his example that is too far removed. So, a grandparent is force to teach in a way that generalizes from his generation to the kid’s, and that merits olam haboh.

>> with no issues despite what the manufacturer says.

“famous last words”

Why do you disregard expert opinion to satisfy your inner desire to be mahmir?

re: extra day. Besides d’rabanan, we got tradition of doing 2 days after Samaritans interrupted fire signals towards Bavel by creating false fires. By Hanuka, Samaritans were, as Jews, affected by Hellenism, then were defeated by Hashmonaim, so had probably less time to play with fire. Also, they might not have cared about Chanukah that was not their holiday.

Also, you have 25 days to reach Bavel, more than usual 14.

This seems like a Jewish version of internet flames between working mothers and homemakers (Now, settled by Corona to a draw as WFH…).

Looking at bigger picture, it seems that most people are supposed to work – make your shabbos like hol but not get tzedoka; many tried to be like Shimon Bar Yochai and failed; teach your son Torah, profession so that he does not become a thief; Rambam quoted above. Although Rambam himself seems to prefer learning, including science from Muslims, until the death of his brother.

So, obviously, B- full time learning at someone else expense is an innovation, cause by destruction of Jewish communities at modern times. Simply speaking, at times when anti-semitism protected the community, one could be an ignoramus or an apikoires, and still have Jewish kids. So, emergency measures were used and probably were the right ones.

In one reported conversation right after WW2, Hazon Ish quotes to the visiting Satmar Rov the Rambam that his yeshiva system is the desert where you are supposed to go when there is no other place to live. [ad kan Hazon Ish]. Obviously, we are closing on 80 years ” in the desert” – twice more than Moshe Rabeinu – and we now experience negative effects. To such degree, that people have to apologize for working.

At some point, this self-preservation is becoming self-defeating – we are not preserving live Judaism, but some unauthentic dead copy.

to have the humriest grill that all YWNers would be able to emjoy –
cut the cord and scratch the paint off before toiveling

common: is it because with the advent of social media we are more connected?

possibly. this highlights the problem. If many people get “connected” via social media and against the positions of the leaders, they might be getting the worst parts of the connectedness, but not the best. Thus, propagation of social media without ability to properly research information. Maybe YWN should reconsider hyperlink policy by allowing links to, say, academic or government papers.

curious – when someone considers/advises to “go learn Torah” – how do you measure it?

“go eat” can be measured in calories, “go study math” – in SAT, but how do we measure “‘learn Torah”?

I realize that there is a subjective and a mysterious element here, but we should be able to have some measure, even if imperfect.

CTLawyer You are jumping to conclusions

My sincere apologies. But if you borrow liberally (sic!) from the President you dislike, you got to see it coming 🙂 In all seriousness, it is good that we all acknowledge the positive sides of the people we disagree with. It is a basic premise of Jewish communications. Boring to see here people parroting news shows.

As R Sacks ZT”L pointed, we are deluded if we think we can fulfill our obligation to the world by selecting and relying a politician based on “debate between conservatives who claim past that never existed and progressives who promise future that will never exist”.

@catch, you are right. Seems like our esteemed attorney indeed re-purposed Trump’s joke, whether intentionally or not. Give that CTLawyer always dislikes anything President says, this may be an interesting admission … This illustrates ow often we make judgement based on our prior opinions rather tan facts.

@common?!
I am not sure why I deserve such a great comparison, even as a negative. Thank you anyway.

Back to the subject – I am not sure Novominsker Rebbe would agree with that.

Let me quote, for example, what he said in 1995 re:murderer of Yitzhak Rabin: “To New York Times, Chilonim…. we are lumped together… The black plague is here again [sic AAQ]. Rather than projecting the noble character of a Torah Jew, the hotheads have succeeded in besmirching his image”. Look up Jewish Observer, Dec 1995 for his full speech.

In that case, he was concerned with how other group of religious Jews affects yeshiva community.
You think he would take it better when yeshiva community behaves questionably?
I don’t think so.

I propose a penalty term: if a member of Moetzes passed away from Covid in a community that is not careful, then the next member can not be elected from the same community until they do teshuvah.

6 new rabbonim? is this an election year?!