Always_Ask_Questions

I think most public schools (at least outside south) teach a lot about race. I think the ranting about “CRT” reflects a more general phenomenon – schools not teaching about US history and government properly, but only complaining about what they want extra.

We, Jews, are doing the same, paying attention to what we did not get. There is less excuse for us, given that we know a lot of history and can appreciate the difference. There is a school of thought that it is better for Jews to live among bad goyim to prevent assimilation, but, based on recent history, I am not sure whether we can calibrate antisemitism high enough to keep us in line, but low enough to keep us alive. A better theory (Rav Shach, for example) is that we need antisemitism only when Jews assimilate.

Avira, we had haskalah and Reform a little earlier than 1920. Maybe this is when they arrived to Brisk and even that is not so. There were probably always people not interested in observance, but they often did not have any good options, so they stayed quiet, and maybe their children or grand-children straighten out .. In cases when they could – Greeks, Spain, Germany, they left.

And I don’t think majority of “klal” has a lot of urgency about the issue. How many BTs are in regular shuls? how many ever meet or talk to secular reform Jews, Israelis or Russians? How often do Rabbis talk about outside other than about the danger? In most places, not often.

Shimon > It isn’t because of covid, that is for certain.

Shimon, I think this is their sneaky way not to allow people who think like above. I don’t think there is a mitzva of taki visiting Eretz Isroel while increasing their chance of getting some new variant … Better go visit North Korea while you have time on your hands, shake hands with Kim after coughing.

despite all our complaints, the rest of the world generally moves money into US during troubled times. But diversify, of course. Yaakov kept two camps when meeting Esav. We mention on Purim that this was the time of high risk because all Jews lived in the same empire.

One Biden’s measure benefited the Jewish community – he increased child credit to 3-3.6K per child and made it fully refundable, that is you don’t need to earn money to get “credit”. So, sort of UBI for children. Bli ayn hara, this could easily add up to 20+K for a family. I presume, schools that require tax documents or are just aware of this, get a part via decreasing discounts.

Health, I just put in the next line that I looked at a number of these publications. Don’t respond after reading the first sentence.

In the Jewish community, I know people who were and who were not affected. People who were affected were generally the ones who stayed uncareful, whether because their work/teaching or because of personal attitude. Several cases were people affected early in nursing homes and some older people during recent spikes whose relatives brought it in. I heard about only one case among my professional contacts (a professor in March 2020). Benefits of sane behavior are much higher than of any drug or vaccine, approved or not. As Gemora says, Hashem gave us Torah as medicine.

Actually, malaise works wirelessly, he does not even need to touch anything. Markets, allies, and adversaries all change their behaviors with expectations of your behavior. Companies stop investing in energy or in general expecting taxes and rule changes (happens right now), allies do not expect your help and look elsewhere, adversaries anticipate your reaction (Iran, Crimea)

crazykanoi listed all things that were done by Trump (thus “additional” in every line), except the infrastructure bill that did not pass yet, may be a waste of money, may be coupled with a bigger waste of money, and was somehow not of interest to Dems when Trump was the President.

Also, could someone clarify re:security – I’ve seen lots of funds going to private school during 2020 relief but my impression was that in 2021 a lot of funds are restricted to public schools. Didn’t look carefully, though.

GH> ben torah (chashuvah or not) can sometimes act like a jerk

I disagree. There are multiple quotes about Talmidei Chachamim that we can use as a definition of the term, such as T Ch merabim shalom b’olam. That is someone who is not doing that, is not one.

In particular, if you see T’Ch doing averah in the evening, you don’t need to give him tochacha next day, as he surely did teshuva. From this, we see that T’Ch can do an avera, but he will not do it repeatedly or habitually.

Nat, between us Drs, I have no idea who Joe Rogan, Gupta, CNN are exactly, and what it has to do with the price of cholent in China.

I have no problem researching various medicines. I just don’t understand how a couple of possible medicines became a part of a call to forgo all other protection layers – vaccines, SD, masks, other medicines. You seem to be listening to crazy right arguing crazy left and trying to figure out who is right. This is insane. I smell a rat here, hope you will too.

> My point was that they were taking a relatively harmless medication and trying to hype its danger by listing items other than side effects as side effects

It seems that many ignorant people are literally taking horse portions and so public health people are trying to prevent it. You can also probably get to the horse does by taking it repeatedly as vitamins. This is not a vitamin.

> if someone is on that madreiga

Even if you are on that madreiga, but your wife is not and wants you to look at her – you will have to look. This is presuming you are at least listening to her.

> It is my opinion that modern day life is much harder for people labeled ADHD.

Not sure. Would an ADHD person be happy harvesting wheat hour after hour, day after day? Or washing clothes in the river? There are way more creative occupations in our days.

It is really a sign of failing schools if they can not attend to kids who are different from those who sit quietly and do not talk. You need to stop relying on schools and attend to your kids yourself, just like you do other mitzvos – putting tefilin, making a sukkah, having children.

Could you guys PLEASE tell us what are you information sources? I really want to understand

> Mexico has “ended the pandemic” (as reported here in YWN)

Mexico daily deaths are increasing from July and are currently gradually decreasing and are 2x below US, and 2x over UK, Israel, Canada. Not ended

> India
Indeed, Indian medical commission had HCQ and IC in their COVID protocol. They took them out in August 2021 due to low effect. Cases and daths did not increase after that.

Note that using results from such countries to project to USA is anyway questionable. Say, people in India are missing in Zinc. Then, having a vitamin would help them a lot. Does not answer that it will help in US – maybe yes, maybe no. The fact that you can’t show one developed country, tells a lot. Just think about it.

IC effects:
Sep 2021 review from Italy of 11 RCTs finds slight improvement using IC stressing very low quality of data. So, it is potentially something to add to other methods, but not a substitute.

First, the daughters are helping the mother to make the matza balls and may not have time to wait until all older siblings sign their fir kashes

2nd, in some homes, women would be sitting in a separate room from the father and it is indeed not proper to shout from another room for any gender.

Also, girls may not require so much proding, they’ll listen and feel the story without a need to show off their sharp questions.

> Everyone went through the same system. Some people suffer more than others in life but those are not necessarily the ones who throw away Yiddishkeit. Today’s stupid excuse is trauma when most don’t have trauma it’s fake news.

Not everyone agrees. R Yaakov Kamenetsky had a 2nd grade teacher in Lita who accused him of lying when he was late and had an unusual explanation – he was urgently sent to find a substitute knife for a bris milah, Rav was hurt but survived. Later in life, he and his former classmate Rav Ruderman wondered how many more Chachamim could have came from that class, if not the teacher …

Health, there are numerous organizations and country and state leaders, I am sure at least some of them are interested in this. Lack of proofs was not surprising a year ago, but it is suspicious now.

To support somewhat your position – look at heterogeneous boosters. Every manufacturer organized trials for boosters using their own vaccine, but it was left to a university to test boosters between different vaccines. And all they were able to do so far is to test antibodies in the lab. So, yes, yetzer hara of profit and organizational biases are a big motivator. But what is the alternative? Note that Chinese and Russians vaccines are not doing better than Western.

Still, organizing a test of very cheap treatments applied in mild cases seems to be (relatively) easy.
I can’t believe there is nobody to do that.

The list of those who think it is avoda zara is long and includes most modern authorities, and the list of those who think it is not for non-Jews is shorter but also long (starting w/ Meiri), and it s very annoying when people quote sources from one side only, as if this is a football competition.

should we treat them as sofek?

I do not see anyone differentiating between different groups? Are they all the same indeed?

How do we treat individuals, who might be clueless. Anecdotally, one ger reports that when he started explaining to a devout relative why we don’t think that 3=1, the relative admitted that she never really understood why 3=1 herself …

Artscroll may help some, hurt some, but beyond the first layer – they tend to simplify the discussion, translate with a certain slant, and quote only some opinions. So, I think, OK to use it as a help in translating words, looking up references, marvel the clear script comparing with yellow pages of the re-re-reprinted Vilna edition, but not to use it as a source of learning.

> but you’ll get through, everyone makes it through in the end

not true, many don’t get through – get on meds, develop low self-esteem, miss out on learning.
You need to sit down with the kid daily and entertain him, while building his knowledge and capabilities until he finds something exciting and runs forward. My parents made sure that I’ll know curriculum before the class, then I easily go and read further ahead while teachers were murmuring something. In cases where I was not ahead, I will fall behind and teachers would make my life miserable. Was I cured? No, as my PhD advisor asked me to go test for ADHD after I suggested changing the topic of my thesis in the middle of the program. One of my kids continued saying that he has bad memory (as the teachers told) while interrupting almost any midrash I tell him with “you told me this years ago”. When we made him skip a grade, grades improved and whining stopped.

farby > i mamash couldent sit still and i started walking around

this is a good sign. During school year, try moving more during recess, after school while learning by heart or listening to a class. Have multiple locations at home where you can work, prepared with whatever you need – pencil, paper, light, so you don’t waste time organizing when you move. Maybe ask teachers to let you leave class once in a while. In lower grades, wise teachers send such kids out to do chores – bring a pencil, etc.

Health > I can tell you one thing – the government isn’t doing a good job Stopping this Pandemic!

A good point, but if let’s look at _developed_ countries that do it much better: some are remote AND used quarantines. Many European countries have somewhat better vaccination rates and using a different mix of similar vaccines. Some may be using smarter masking strategies and measuring antibody levels. Did any of them succeeded due to Ivermectin? I do not have that data. Please, examples, but from developed countries only please.

Remah lived when Protestantism was just emerging, so we may want to look at later poskim also. One possible hiluk may be that it is avoda zara for Jews, but not for non-Jews. A book by two experts says so, but when I asked the first author, he said this was only because his co-author insisted so much, so I don’t know whether this is a strong shitah.

Islam was not considered avodah zorah in some of the times when they were even crazier than now, what changed now? Who said that only idolworshippers can be crazy?

> Or it’s an alliance

Air Forces do joint exercises for a reason – to make sure they are able to work together if needed. Maybe as a sign to some neighbors, especially with increased uncertainty of the US position …

> Avrohom Avinu never looked at Sara Imainu

(until he was going to mitzraim). And mitzrim considered her beautiful. Either she had hair or Mitzri fashions were similar to Hungarian.