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gendered therapists and generally doctors is reasonable, unless there is an issue of competence. If you have a genuinely good doctor, you might go to him despite the gender.
use your time wisely!
Gadol, I am not sure how widespread and approved this behavior is. I heard from some people who were interested in joining a protest while in yeshiva in Israel and were advised by R’Y not to go.
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.
Shalom, I understand. But Hashem protects us through numerous unexpected ways.
for a more dramatic example, some German Jews in early 1930s were complaining that they were discriminated against and are not accepted as true German nationalists … Could you imagine how even more horrible the WW2 were, if German Jews were accepted into the NSDAP?
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!Romain, you are right on the difference between average and median wages. Average wage is going up doe to the top earners, and Israel’s better part of economy, based on hightech, is doing very well last 20-30 years. At the same time, the lower part, consisting of traditional industries, manual work, non-working population are not doing as well. It is a reflection of overall tendencies in the world: technology enables better productivity. A software developer is more productive than a traditional engineer: he creates a program that can be used million of times instead of designing one house. At the same time, a farmer with a high tech tractor still needs to plow the whole field…
There are two ways to change the situation:
1) demand that richer people share their productivity with others. for a small country, like Israel, it will lead to more people leaving to not be over-taxed in other places
2) train more people to do productive work using modern technology so that they can earn accordinglyHaKatan, 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.
> It has everything to do with the patient’s lack of ability to help themself.
As a first step, having a trusted friend or an older person can help anyone to have an independent look at themselves. Therapist is better, of course: you are paying serious money so it is not that easy to reject what he is saying, and he is also an expert at making himself heard. Try paying your friend $20 for the advice to appreciate it more.
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.
RebE > If it was completely different, would be less of a problem.
Indeed, Greeks presented a new challenge. Even early greek myths are already different from earlier primitive beliefs. They are polytheists, rather than idol-worshippers. Their gods are not statures or animals, but representation of forces and ideas. Philosophers were a step further. How do we interact with it – it is definitely both a challenge and an opportunity. After all, Hashem did not “choose” to hide from the world, but to affect it positively, and we would rather interact with Aristotle than with Bilaam. And we have numerous Rabbis quoting directly or indirectly from non-Jewish philosophers (which in the language of the time included scientists). It is a fair discussion about side effect and precautions for interaction, but a belief that Hashem created the whole world as “goyishe culture” that we need to ignore is silly. A doctor treating a dangerous patient will put N95 and gloves to protect both the patient and himself, but should not refuse to treat him (provided he is qualified).
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.
Avira > there are a ton of pitfalls in which a therapist who means well can damage a client
I agree. When a more modern therapist says: I am not imposing my belief, all beliefs are valid, he is at the same time give the patient encouragement to see all beliefs are valid. I saw some suggesting that therapist work in tandem with a Rav to discuss what is possible. Here, I noticed a constant theme going through R Twersky’s books that one needs a Rav who is bokeh in these issues, not everyone with a smicha and a shul contract qualifies.
At the end, this discussion underscores a need for observant and well-trained therapists. Is there a place that trains for that and do we send anyone there? Another avenue – make sure families and schools teach musar and other ways to make people leave healthy lives, and hurt the kids less, so that there will be less need in therapy.
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.
RebE, thanks for the text. It looks like Rav Moshe would approve of Jewish psychologists!
YM, I think you can read this that expertise matters, which is a usual attitude in medical matters: shomer Torah is preferred, but if the only one available mumhe … I imagine if Rav Moshe would advocate going to a non-expert may be an option, he would say that.And both of you, could you do me a favor. As Syag noticed, I don’t like loaded terms like “frum” that everyone interprets as he wants, usually to exclusion of others. Rav Moshe says simply “shomer Torah”.
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
TLIK, I hear you, still as relevant to this discussion, it is preferable to have a Torah observant therapist. That would mean it is laudable to be such therapist, despite the nisayonim. We were thinking about this issue in regards to possible career path for kids. The problem we see is that how would a Jewish therapist treat non-observant clients: what kind of perverse issues you can encounter and need to deal with? And how would you give them an appropriate advice? It may be a great place for a serious expert, and r Twersky brings a lot of exampels from his non-Jewish crazies and alcoholics, but not sure that you can say le’hathila that someone can thrive in this work. So, if not treating general public, you are left to pray that there are enough crazy Jews (and they realize they need treatment) ….
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.
Shabbos 146 has some discussion about the issue. The kids/young rabbanan give aq silly answer – why Babylonian T’ Ch (at least they acknowledge that there are some!) wear special (nice, Rashi) clothes: because they are not “bnei Torah” (I presume it means that people do not see them as such for their behavior is not special as of “bnei Torah”). Awaken R Yohanan corrects them that they are in galut and, thus, need to show to people that they are learned by externality. It seems from this that T’Ch in EY were not dressing like that and also that if everyone dresses special, then it defeats the purpose of separatding T’Ch from the rest.
> Indeanapollis, Indiana
I am surprised you don’t know where you live yet. This should be Indeana.
176> parents of girls going to male therapists
I would think that girls going to therapists may often have problems at home to begin with, so relying on parent supervision may not work well. Do we have places that teach therapists and halakha and hashkafa together, so that graduates can be relied upon?
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 ….
Let’s apply poasts to posts that boast.
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.
Syag, my last point was that glass and sunshine are helpful in many aspects, literally and figuratively. For the record of my fairness, that was a MO school.
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!> No adult should work secluded with a child
glass doors and windows would help. In one college, a Rav designed a new building with his whole wall to the busy street being of glass. Some years later, a new Rav put curtains …
Windows in classroom doors are also helpful for parents. I was once on a tour, with a school admin inviting us to seat in several classrooms. I managed to also quickly peak into small windows in other classrooms that we were not invited in and saw a more realistic picture of the classes.
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.ym> You dont find alot of Orthodox veterinarians
A good point. You want to select a profession that is helping the world in some way. With all due respect to animals, being a psychologist is way more important.
Syag> who told him he needed to be true to himself
yes, this is type of advice that we need to be careful about. R Feinstein says that non-Torah psychiatrists are preferred to psychologists – they just give you pills and do not mess with the values.
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
On one hand, we have so many brochos on food, and one for Torah, and also several for natural events. Seems like Hashem gave us a variety of products to enjoy them.
On the other hand, they say that as Aron did not take space in B’M (20-10*2=0), so shoudl T’Ch not take much space. Taken literally, a T’Ch who eats a lot will take too much space.
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.
Avira> most who go to work don’t go off, but a significant amount do, and a much bigger amount have a yeridah.
I do not observe this among young professionals I observe, whether yeshivish or MO. Where I saw problems, they typically manifest in high schools or shortly after, due partially influence of school atmosphere, teachers, and parents, but not after. Could you clarify: what is the source of this yeridah, as you observe? what is a typical job, home lifestyle and how does yeridah manifest itself?
re: working conditions, both of you seem to simplify the other side. Most teachers are always busy and have to prepare classes and deal with parents and do not charge per hour … But many other professionals spend too many hours and have to deal with unruly people and are devoting evening hours, although may be not as unruly as children. The biggest teaching perk, of course, is not just reduced or free tuition, or shorter hours, but an opportunity to lead meaningful/Torah life during working hours. When a builder have a problem, he calls a plumber. When a teacher – he calls his Rosh Yeshiva and enjoys a discussion. In the working world, too many people treat their workday as just wasted time in compensation for money and see no mitzvos and growth opportunity there.
therapists are somewhat different from lawyers as they are dealing with people who have psychological problems and are, thus, prone to be abused, and may have limited support and care at home (where psychological problems might be coming from).
Ubiq, you are right that this is machlokes between stam amorah and Avira. Avira has good arguments for his approach and has modern authorities to support this. I used modern on purpose, as some people like to blame others for deviation from heilicke tradition, but then ignore other aspects of Torah.
In this case, I already said that the current system seems to be justified at the time, but gemora warns us of long term damage. As R Avigdor Miller says, if you go into the fire to save a baby, you will still have burns. So, we need to acknowledge and deal with side effects. Whether my solutions are too radical for some is a separate issue.
Participant, I don’t know much about desantis, but I liked Brandon shtick. Funny and harmless. Less sure about his COVID policies, some sounds good, others may be political at the expense of health. His educational policies look good. Yes, he might have some governance experience but not as sharp as Trump’s.
Agree on prevention. If you establish safety rules: glass doors in key areas, etc, then any behavior that deviates from transparency will be noted early on. And possibly training of principals on such systems, and kashrus type certificate that principal implemented such a system
Maybe the important question to ask is: do people see possible signs of abuse and ignore them as this sounds unlikely or too difficult to get involved? Did any institutions have relevant information and let it pass? Sotah and halokhos yihud teach that nobody is above suspicion in these issues
Avira > currently a great number of those who claim to want to follow rebbe yishmoel go off entirely or partially in trying to do so, while almost none of their learning counterparts do.
This is the danger, and it was surely happening across the board 100 years ago. I am not convinced that this is the case now, though.
Judging from your writing about “MO”, you are usually talking about people who were not/not very observant to begin with. I see a lot of observant young professionals who went to MO schools and had observant parents. When I see a parent a child together, they see to be on average equally learned – in some cases, the father is more learned, in some cases, the son. I, of course, do not see those who do not come, but my impression is that those from MO/community schools who come from observant parents stay that way, and those who were sent there to be in a private Jewish school also stay that way, sometimes being more observant than parents. Does not mean there is no downwards pressure – I heard from such parents about pressure to be less tzanua and go to Ivy League instead of more Jewishly appropriate schools, but many seem to withstand the pressure.
DY > In many countries, items such as basic food, housing, and medical care are subsidized
Right, Cubans do! OK, EU does it too. But notice that the most basic products are provided by the market, starting with food. Yes, there are subsidies but, as much as possible, they should not distort the market. Thus, foodstamps and vouchers are preferred solutions.
So, what happens when you provide direct funding to schools? You give more power to school administrators. You hope they’ll pay the best teachers more. But what if they pay their friends more? What if their understanding of what makes a good teacher is not perfect?
Why not have a combination of parents and _independent_ Rabbis/chinuch experts provide additional funding to best teachers directly? The funding will follow the teacher to another school or if he starts his own class.
Syag > These parent put more emphasis on the academics that their children learn, then they put on the hashkafos they learn.
I think I understood you. I agree that this problem exists. I just don’t agree that it has to be so bad. I presume, you go to stores, cook your food, and have more than one change of clothes. How much are you fretting that your family prioritizes food over learning Torah? I presume that someone in your family goes to work? Is he/she prioritizing work over learning? As I said before, our community did admirable job counteracting assimilation and desire to be “like Joneses”. This was appropriate, following Rambam’s approach – if you have a wrong midah, you need temporarily (sic!) go to another extreme until you train yourself and then return to the “golden middle”. Same with the community as a whole – in the process of defending from assimilation, our communities became distorted not just economically, but also hashkofically in terms of how we live our lives. Gemora already said that “many followed Rashbi and were not successful”. So, if we have already 2-3 generations that have distorted values, we will not preserve the Torah of previous generation, but a perverse version of it.
Gadol, I have no problem with private business building any car they want, electric, gas, even nuclear. As long as their doing so is not distorted by the government too much (for example, I think the abovementioned Ford needs “green” vehicles to counter-balance their very profitable trucks and still satisfy the gov requirement “on average”)
user176 > I imagine that teachers usually do not do it for the money
This is true – and one wonderful principal frankly said exactly these words about the teachers she hires … What I see, though, in latest couple of generations is that there are too many people who have no other work options except chinuch, due to their own education. When they grow up, some of them discover passion for teaching and others – do not, but they are expected to go into chinuch. [ Maybe in some larger communities, they can go work for some “frum” businesses who will not be afraid to hire and teach them the business]. So, they go and do the best of it, without much passion.
In some elementary schools, you have one main teacher for at least half-a-day. So, if you get an inappropriate teacher for a kid for the whole year, it is difficult. The fact that the last year teacher was a tzadekes is not helping at that moment… Here is where free market could help. Quoting a Rav who told me of a conversation he had with a principal:
– would you know already who is going to teach 5th grade this year?
– Hashem will help
– So, He will be holding my tuition check for nowSyag > level of academics than the hashkofos. And don’t think their kids don’t pick up on it.
They absolutely pick up! We are teaching kids that academics is hashkofa. Some people prepare for lifetime chinuch and this is great, especially if they understand what is required and ready for it. This would typically be people from families with such traditions. Others prepare to work be erliche yidden in what they do, do chesed, learn, etc. Our family has at least 5 generations of engineers/ businessmen/ doctors and the kids understand that academics is required to follow this derech. They understand that academics is not a goal to supersede others and none of them was interested in going to schools with good academics but compromised behaviors.
Syag, beyond personal experiences, I researched all local frum and even modern schools, and heard from other people about other places. I spoke with a number of Rabbis and teachers both working in those schools and those who were just customers. I do understand that my knowledge is limited, of course. My suggestions are based what I know of halakhic approaches, and you are welcome to bring your own knowledge also. If you are not denying that halakha wants unlimited competition between teachers and all that is implied by that, then the question is how exactly this should be applied.
Well, you may think that this is an inappropriate topic, then, where should I look for suggestions what to tell the kids, who are already aware, and who grew up with these books.
Raising salaries may not solve the problem. As it is, many working families that pay full or close to full tuition find it hard to pay and spend their lives earning money to pay for, edited schools. They have less time to spend with kids and thus have to rely on schools to do more and more of chinuch. Look also at public school system – generally, “taking care” of teachers lead to an expensive system. Furthermore, giving charity funds to schools makes them even responsive to parents (same as in public schools)
Gemora and later halakha provides a carve out for teachers for unlimited competition – so that prices will be lower and parents could afford it. This does not mean “do not pay teachers well”, it means enable true competition and market – enable many smaller schools that parents can easily switch between, encourage transparency of school budgets and educational outcomes, enable parents to use part of the school program, etc. Maybe the generous donors can leverage their funds to move the system this way either directly or by a voucher-type system where parents direct the funds.
For a simple example, why not parents decide which teachers will get additional funds that are coming from outside schools. This will ensure that good teachers stay and not so good leave voluntarily.
> Many teachers give their lives to their students and work 24/7.
I find this more true for the (way) older generation, either because of the harder times they grew up, or maybe just because of natural selection and only great teachers stayed in profession that long. Among younger ones, I see (often, not all of course) more pragmatic interests – feed the family, spend reasonable time/effort, this is the only job she is qualified to do… This may be in part as the only challenges of latest generations were such (pre-covid) or maybe, it is just a phase and they’ll grow up, I don’t know.