Always_Ask_Questions

Gadol, you can get the steak if you pay for the steak. Spirit serves cheap fares and achieves it by cutting those expenses. People at Spirit presumably meet daily and see what else to do reduce your fare from $29 to $28.

I thought you are somewhat a liberal and care about poor people. Would you regulate to Spirit to provide higher wages for talent that show you how to wear seatbelts and masks? The best way to do that is to allow businesses to serve people. That what “liberal” used to mean before socialists took over the word.

Avi K, thanks for the reference. The question is how to affect things lehathila. Maybe, Jewish communities instead of requiring vaccine passes, simply prepare a shtar to be signed, saying in case beis din determines me responsible I will take the practices listed above to the extent of my responsibility? That is, say, 1 of 3 people had infected 4th, then each should fast every 3rd week.

If we can figure two people holding one tales, we can figure out this.

Avi K> I am shocked that people who are machmir on any little minhag are so meikal on nefashot.

“pray for the welfare of the government”. I got new appreciation for both civil governance and halakha: people routinely follow so many rules from (mostly) stopping on red lights to (usually) saying mincha before zman, attending schools, paying for groceries, parking in the designated places. It is only when you get into an unsettled situation, then people change. Read about behaviors in Soviet and Nazi labor camps, some people behaved, some did not … Especially, when the danger is unseen…

RebE, on the other hand, there is Berdichever – My son, do you not know that you can’t smoke on Shabbos/ Maybe you don’t know that today is Shabbos/See, eibishte, how honest are you children, will admit all aveiros but will not lie …

So, we have here Jews who are confronted with a new, confusing, situation, using their Jewish independence streak to make stupid decisions. To paraphrase Satmerer, don’t wait for rofeh cholim to daven for them, start at honen hadaas…

First, learn halakha from Spirit and do not travel close to Shabbos. Second, have a balance – if you need once to buy an extra ticket, it is probably less than all savings from all years. CS, you may be a certified engineer, but for large low-income families, Spirit provides a way to see the velt …

RebE, I am talking about a slightly different case: Sukkah 8, where Rav Yohanan does computation of number of people who can sit in the round sukkah. That number comes correct if you use precise values for Pi and sqrt(2). Amoraim then try to re-do that using their numbers, come up short and then start coming up with tirutzim, like they are sitting at the outer circle, rather than at exactly the radius. See p. 140 in “Do Scripture and Mathematics Agree on the Number π?” by Professor Isaac Elishakoff and Elliot M. Pines, PhD, Fifth Miami International Conference on Torah and Science, 16-18 December 2003, B’Or Ha’Torah 17 (5767/2007)

But geometry is not all to math. Look up lectures by Econ Nobel Prize winner Robert Aumann where he compares Gemorat with modern economics:
three appraisers Bava Basra 107a, three widows Ketubos 93a, moral hazard – Ketubos 15 incentives Bava Basra 89a

RebE > someone who is vaccunated should not have to wear a mask when the other person has the optiion to vaccinate
coffee > This calls for a kiddush

No, this calls for retrospection. Coffee, I understand RebE that he does not want to bother protect someone who does not care about himself. I.e. as in a mitzva to help the animal “with the owner”, i.e. only when the owner participates. So, RebE writes off these people from “reecha” .. nothing to celebrate … I would not go that far – not greeting is ok, but not care at all …

By the way, as I just quoted in another thread, Israeli research showed that out of 40 vaccinated health workers who got infected, ALL were infected by unvaccinated. So, unvaxed remain a threat to others.

common, curious – what were “public schools” in Poland before WW2? I listened with kids to a bunch of Ellis Island interviews, and all Jews were like – We did not have enough money for school before, and here I was able to go to a high school for free …

while looking at info about re-infections, found this interesting article
Moriah Bergwerk, etc Covid-19 Breakthrough Infections in Vaccinated Health Care Workers. New England Journal of Medicine, July 2021 reporting on 1500 vaccinated health care workers. Here are interesting tidbits: 2.5% (40 cases) of them got infected (Covid-alpha) in 14 weeks. Of these, 1/3- no symptoms, 2/3 – mild.
Likely source of infection – 100% unvaccinated persons (60% – household member, 30% – other healthcare worker or patient: 7 out of 11 from just one patient)

Most who got infection had low antibody levels – thus antibody level can serve as a marker of risk (contrary to “asinine” CDC recommendation not to do these tests)

I quoted before someone who was invited to Satmar to be a doctor for yomtov, and shared with the Satmerer Rav that he is not just a stam doctor, but is also preparing to get a (kosher but modernishe, I presume) smicha. Rav responded – besser rofeh cholim mimatir asurim

>> “The book 1984”……what compelled you to read this trief?”

> How do you know its treif “

Don’t know for sure whether any Gedolim read 1984, but R Steinsaltz Z’L was able to recognize a quote from the last page of “Animal farm”, so he read the whole thing – and that book is literally full of hazer.

RebE, thanks for the story.

CS, if we are doing Yichus here, when my grandmother O’H was in Petersburg Empress’ school for girls (before going to college in Germany), her father arranged for a Rabbi to come and teach her when the school had their religious studies, and other Jews there joined also.

> asinine to think that the a vaccine gives you greater immunity then natural immunity.

I respect you asking the question and approaching it with the research attitude. Could you quote what you found regarding antibody serology tests a couple of months after the COVID and after the vaccine? This will help you convince RebE to let you into CR minyan!

In addition to those numbers, there are additional questions to consider, though:
– how much COVID you have? probably best is to get your own serology test. You probably already had – would you mind sharing it with us, given that you are anonymous here?

– possibly (sic!) disease gives broader protection via other mechanisms, not captured by serology

> it needs to be attacked by different ways. The fact that the Government focused only on one way, is Very suspicious

It is attacked in different ways. There are 100s of ongoing studies of all kind of medicines. Tracing teams work daily to identify new clusters and warn as many people as possible. Testing is done in many businesses to prevent outbreaks.

Still, it appears that Trump vaccine and moderation in partying are best response to Wuhan virus. Possibly, as virus rapidly damages multiple systems by the time most people get to the hospital, it is very hard to contain the damage. As we know, Hashem sends cure before the disease, the way vaccine does.

Avira, I agree it is legit, especially in our days, not to learn philosophy. Philosophy used to include all sciences (I am a D. of Ph. but did not have to learn Plato, just to come up with some new math formulae). So, at Rambam’s time it was the best science available. As your example shows – Rambam learned from Aristotle, liked his general wording, connected it to relevant chazal, corrected it, and it sounds like not even always quoted explicitly.

But in our times, we have an explosion of general knowledge that is very practical and specific and not speculative. Do you think Rambam would not attend a medical school now, when you don’t have to pretend to be a Muslim to get into first in the world university/madrasa in Fes? Obviously, we don’t need Talmidei Chachamim to drop their learning and all get into math and chemistry, but we need to stay connected with the world knowledge and have some Chachamim who can know enough to be able to converse with experts. And for those who have no clue of sciences, have decency to respect, and not disparage, those who do.

for a contemporary example, just heard a Rav describing what was lost/gained from Corona and he mentioned loss of respect to Rabbis as he said “while health departments were running schools”. I think this is abdication, talmidei chachamim should havev been in the forenfront of solving problems (and some were), and those who do not may have lost that respect for a good reason. And same happens in other cases. Let’s say a Rabbi does not understand how Gemora in Sukkah compute PI, is this good? It actually seems to be the case there – that Tannaitic computation is very precise, but Amoraim do not understand the Mishna and use more complicated solutions (inside circle, outside circle).

> vaccinated don’t get as sick to end up in the hospital and die

the risk is proportional to exposure. 95% efficiency quoted from Phase 3 were under condition of “sort of” blind test – ostensibly, the subject did not know what they got [we know now that many of those who got a real vaccine felt it, but still …]. so 95% [20x] is under assumption that people behave same way. If you used to keep SD and now dance at the weddings, then your reduction is less. And may decrease with time. On the other hand, T-cells, etc seem to offer long-term protection against worst outcomes.

on a stupid side, CDC, and doctors who “follow their science”, recommends against doing antibody tests to see if antibody levels are holding because “it is not yet approved”, despite papers showing serious correlation between antibody levels and protection on average. CDC explains, in their usual amateur social engineering style, that they do not want people to see high antibody results and then behave irresponsibly. Of course, as now 50+% are already irresponsible, there is value to identify people who have low levels and are at highest risk and, thus, should be more cautious.

we learn that women can not stay idle at home and are supposed to be busy at something, right?
Eshe Chayil lists lots of things to do in a normal household. By now, men, with Hashem’s help, automated most of these activities. Women world over, follow the halakha above, increased their standards of cleanliness and tideness to the level that never existed in history, but still … So, if women are to only stay home and, in many Jewish families, send kids to schools and often using household help (sometimes cheap even if not very legal) – they should be doing something useful. They could teach their kids at professional level, for example. If not, then there is a question about even volunteer stay at home. [My wife did while kids were little and she was fully engaged with them].

As to women who want to work outside, I agree with Gadol here, there are plenty of precedents of women working and having businesses. It is possible that some Rabbis give public advice as a desirable social policy, but that does not mean that specific individuals can not balance home and work.

Also, notice that “not leaving home often” in old times does not mean that the woman will be doing only housework. People were running businesses from their homes all the time. She could be weaving baskets, running a school, a restaurant, while infrequently going out. Being a traveling salesman (and still is) not a good job choice. Now, with WFH, we came full circle and frumme women can do heart surgery online without leaving the kids.

like normal midwestern driver, maybe? not like normal NY driver …
Can someone look up safety metric by state? and per mile driven as Europeans drive less.

There are various defensive driving skills – do not try to outrun others, stay away from huge trucks and cars with mattresses on top, do not stay in blind spot…

And then there is courtesy, some halakhic: do not overtake the bus (a number of Rabbis are quoted on that, although I take an exception when I have more kids in the car than there are people in the bus); buy a drink in the store on the highway if you are using a bathroom (R Yaakov Kamenetsky)

I also try to see how many people I can waive through while driving somewhere – the more the better, a good game for the kids. You end up coming 2 minutes later but in much better mood.
Sometimes there are hard choices – you may let someone in, but the guy behind you is fuming…
This may require a shaila..

A general problem with courtesy on the road – people do not see each other’s face, so they forget that these are people, not self-driving cars. Ever tried to cut someone off and then recognizing the driver?

Avira, fair re: R Meir – but what was the fruit? What was he learning from Aher that he would not learn from others?

re: Rambam & Aristotle.
I am not such a boke on Aristotle, but it seems that the middle path on midos is taken from Aristotle with minor, but significant, corrections to discount Heroism/Gaava. This seems like a reasonable critical approach of keeping the fruit. It is impossible to take other than a polemic all the interpretations of Rambam that basically discount all his work. The logical conclusion would be taht Rambam would have approved burning his own books, so Rabbeinu Yona was wrong on his teshuva?!

another issue on science is that it developed tremendously from the time of Gemora and Rambam. for example, Gemorah often asks for experimental proves, and science now has great protocols to carry those experiments. I would think that most Tannaim and Amoraim in our time would be scouting internet for recent medical and astronomical views. As R Twersky Z’L suggested – to appreciate Hashem’s chochma, study physiology. don’t ahve to do it in yeshiva, do it after hours.

>> catching corona, wouldn’t they also be worried about catching apikorsus

agree here too. But what is the defense: either complete isolation, that I find easier to do form corona than science, or vaccination. For kids, I see isolation working till mid-middle school, and after that vaccination – studying science/history/literature in the Torah context before they encounter these subjects without parental/school supervision.

Avi, I never looked into what was R Meir’s motivation to learn from Acher? Did Acher have Mishnayos that others did not? Did he have his own logical approach? Maybe he was quoting Aristotle and R Meir found it as interesting as Rambam did?

> what Pythagoras and Euclid believed?

Personalities would not matter in pure math. A proof stands on its own. But other sciences are not that simple, especially in pre-experimental times.

RebE Rambam was like Rebbi Meir who learned from acber but we are not on his level to learn from an atheist.

Are you quoting someone here? It sounds like an easy rationalization, you can always say that Moshe rabeinu didn’t misuse public money, but we are not at his level …

I think there are a lot of misconceptions here re “300” years ago, or before haskala. There was mostly one Jewish community, of which a typical member was a tailor or a peddler, not necessarily learned, or looking for humros. BUT, all stayed in Jewish community, and their children were still Jewish. Modernity created a challenge where uncommitted would leave, especially when there were economic incentives. We seem to have found two ways to deal with it: learn how to confront modernity on its own terms, or create a community that is totally separate, knows Jewish law and ignore the rest of the world. Both approaches are new, there is no reason to pretend our great grandmothers went to bays yaakov, both have pluses and minuses, and I don’t think we found the full response to modernity. Those who pretend that they did, whether super modern or super chareidi are both wrong.

And, yabia, Sephardim mostly avoided haskala, so you don’t recognize all these new movements as authentic.

Cdc seems to be very rigid in their decision making. Recently, they first announced full unmasking without any caveat and are changing back only after delta is proven to be everywhere. With several countries on front of us on the same trajectory, they could have been more foresighted

Gadol, you are right. It is a sad thing that destroys society from inside. Neither vaccine nor masks are right or left wing (I am skipping the virus itself until we find out what lab it came from). In US, israel, UK, France, governments were blamed for being too restrictive or too permissive, with opposition being against just because they see an opportunity. We just need not to get caught up in to this.

Even if a child had its own board, the parent is ultimately responsible for making such an arrangement, letting every Ben, Tom, and Jerry child run around with a knife