Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
> We are, at times, forbidden
ok, so when you now qualify with “at times”, hopefully everyone agrees. Not sure what others are argueing, I am not so much for altruism, I am more arguing that derech shalom, properly understood, in most cases will make you do the same things as you would do out of altruism. Shalom is not a downgrade from a “real mitzva”.
Avira > They deny the evils of …. [list of aveiros omitted]
Funny that this comedian seemingly was not guilty of the things you mention, maybe of others. Avira, you seem to be very brisk about two Rambams, but in several cases, you are not able to make hakira between different types of people, and different types of motivations, and different types of circumstances. It is OK if you want to stay and deal with Rambam and ignore borsch Belt jokes, but then you should not make rush judgments and pronouncements.
Maybe relevant to the topic is Netziv’s Hakdoma to Chofetz Chaim Ahavat Hesed where he talks about Hesed being a fundamental part of the world applicable to all nations, and similar ideas in Haamek Hadavar on Yaakov and Yosef
Avira, and the other antiZ here, don’t feel so isolated. You sound like choni who fell asleep 70 years ago, while ruled by a government of socialists and communists… Look around at the current Israeli society: lots of religious Jews, some Z, some not, you may disagree with them on many issues, but you can’t say that Hashem wouldn’t want shomer shabbat community in EY
Then, there are traditional Sephardim who respect bet knesset and who were not part of those who hurt you 70 years ago. Add Russian Jews, people who escaped 80 years without shul, yeshivas, subsidies for being Jewish – things that you think are a must to be Jewish and some non Jews who were tzadikim enough to marry Jews in an anti semitic country, and not responsible for Zionism either, plus Arabs who would be there anyway, are even more antiZ than you. With all of them, you have a slither of commies who live in a different city, and who exist in any country except Saudi Arabia… Feel goodAvira is using a phone that capitalize after a period. Like this. As caps are reserved in the Humash for only special occasions, Avira is too traditional to use caps where he doesn’t have a mesorah. Even if some non Jews invented the language, he thinks darkei shalom do not apply between the Jews. Rak Emes.
Common, what there were no takers? Sad. But whole ice cream issue is not a joke. The issue is whether other american businesses will follow in the political environment that supports it. Seems like many progressive companies are under pressure, and they feel that feds will not create problems. In unrelated news, russkies are threatening to upgrade Syrian air defense, after reportedly talking to US and getting a feeling that US will not get involved in supporting Israeli raids there.
Gh, there’s a simple way to test your fellow progressives on sincerity of their concerns about the poor: education. They should be in the front of the movement to test school performance, close non performing schools, open charters, if not vouchers for private schools. If they do not, then they care about politics, not poor people. Side note: president is proposing flat federal budget for charters among adding money for everything else, House changed it to reduce amount.
Ok, Gadol Hadorah is jus a little gaava, but are we allowed to call a person by such a derogatory name?! I believe halakha is that you don’t use such names even if the person himself uses it. So, just say “Chicago Mayor”
RebE >> sometimes we rely on emunah and we stop asking questions.
get it. When is sometimes? and why? A git shabbos, as you might say.
RebE > I came from Hungary under communist rule
This is a good comparison. So, you had one year under Nazis (after Horty) and then what 10 years and Communists? (I am not comparing suffering, of course, just the length of servitude). It seems as long as people remember the previous generation, they can hold on. Did you ever met Soviet Jews from Vilno and Riga who emigrated in the 70s? They had pretty good Jewish background (they were first occupied in 1940, while most other Soviet Jews were under commies from 1918). Those who came to Israel in 1990s had 80 years of destroyed Jewish life. You can’t take the pale to the farmer if you don’t know what kosher means.
RebE, I am not sure we argue here. Maybe I was not clear. I am for people following their minhagim and singing their .פיוטים I have an opposite problem with those who say that their 13th gate can be a substitute for the 12th particular gates and inviting those from other gates, or without a gate, to go through the 13th instead of the gate of the person who asks.
RebE > living in EY, the palace of the King.
That speaker gave his answer that halakhot of speech – lashon hara but not only – would be something Jews find difficult.
RebE, yes, some teich people to follow minhag of the one who asked: “we do this, and you do this”. I am very comfortable asking such Rabbis shailohs, as I know they’ll answer according to the one who is asking. See example of R Feinstein advising someone to follow person’s Rebbe, r Soloveichik, on an issue, on which r Feinstein just signed a public letter opposing that position.
The other shita – everyone has its gate, but their gate is bigger than other gates and open to everyone, is more problematic, as when many groups start claiming their gates … I am not even sure whether this shita has a history in Gemora or Rishonim, or should be considered a modernishe one.
> how the owners lived at home
that sounds like overreach, but what about a hashgaha accountant certifying store and school business practices?
It is a hard question when someone is sneezing occasionally or all the time. The guy I mentioned at the beginning made like 3 trips for tissues during just one shmone esre (normal speed) sneezing all the way through, without even having a foresight to grab more tissues in one run. Maybe we should measure sneezing old fashioned way – in beitzim or handkerchiefs (anyone remembers those, spellchecker just did). I would say if a person runs out of one handkerchief, he needs to go home.
Other than kids at school, at shul or business meetings, I don’t recall seeing people with constant sneeze except rarely. Maybe it is a matter of minhag hamakom. We did not send kids to school when they were in constant use of tissues. My mother later admitted that she would sometimes (not often) tell me that I was coughing at night and should stay home when she judged I need some sleep and rest. She did not want me to think that school is optional.
confused on “Russians”, here in America, peole say “Germans”, “Russians” meaning Jews from those countries. Maybe it is different in Israel. But then when you say “1 million”, you mean all of them, so maybe you now realized that you over-reached. That’s good. Would you judge Jews coming from concentration camps for eating Treif there? Then, maybe you can be more understnading for people who spent 70 years in socialist gan eden…. Looking up research on “Russians”, Several interesting observations, some how Jews are being seen by these immigrants:
Israel, numbers by Rabbinate count:
– up to 1990 – 10-20% non-Jewish
– 40% 1990s
– 55-60% in 2000s
– out of 1 mln total, 350k are non-Jewish. This seems like a slight over-estimate, as there are some who claim to be Jewish but are missing documentation.politically. leftist researchers complain that Russians lead to Israel becoming a right-wing majority, by the way. Russian-speaking voters have 15 seats in knesset.
80% of newcomers are center-right, their children are 8% (!) more “progressive” than their parents and 25% are left-wing. 1% total voted for Meretz (is it not on par with general population?!) Yesh tikva indeed.. sounds like there are more Meretz voters in Mea Shearim than in Ashdod. 15% for BLue& White in 2019. 40% for Liberman, Likud 27%, Kulanu 6% Labor 2% New Right 3%, Shas 1.5%US data:
– US has 700K, half in NY area, 40% from Ukraine, 30% from Russia
– 60-70% in US self-identify as “definitely Jewish”, 20% somewhat, 15 non-Jewish. I think these US numbers are significant as contrary to Israel, there is no pressure to identify as Jewish. “somewhat” might be a mixture of one Jewish parents and people not very attached in general. I think these numbers are on par with generic “American Jews”
– 25% of marriages are intermarriage (only 12, same as with Americans
– for 36% religion importnat/very important part of their life
– 13% are synagogue members (all denominations), more attend without membership. 32% say religion is personal, 13% do not attend because do not understand what is going on. 8% do not feel welcomed, 11% not interestedto the question that we discussed – report makes no attempt to separate R- and D- leaning polls. They took all public polls on realclearpolitics, 538, etc and lumped them together.
They compare accuracy by type of polling: joint online/phone polling is only 1% off, while pure online and pure live polls are 5% off. 50% of these joint polls are by one company that they do not identify, so it seems that this one company has good methodology. I looked up realclearpolitics:
final general results are Biden +4.5, and closests polls are IBD/TIPP, The Hill, Emerson, sounds like one of them is that great poll. Rasmussen biased 3.5% towards Trump, the other TEN polls are 2.5 to 6.5% towards Biden.So, no conclusion can be made about different polls in this report, except the above, because the report does not address the question. The expert who was quoted did not have any data to support in this report.
Report underestimates the level of the problem – polls showed 11% preference for Biden in October and then paddled down. So, I think, reasonable Dem voters should understand frustration of the R- voters at these polls (together with other media influences) that undoubtfully affected voter enthusiasm – given how narrow the election was (50K votes in Presidential, 50-50 in the Senate and the House)
On sneezing in general:
many people would not normally go sneezing around to shul or office before COVID. Not just moris ayn, just kavod habriyut. Cultures might differ.
publicly quoted experts say that it is generally not possible to differentiate between COVID and less harmful viruses based on external symptoms, so your friends did the right thing to go test. I am thinking it is true only one way: if you have a cold, you don’t know what it is. But I heard some COVID cough that does not sound like anything I ever heard, and especially from that particular person.jackk, the report goes through a lot of stuff and is inconclusive, indeed. Their main supposition is that some of the Trump voters were under-sampled. That is they sampled Republicans in general, but not the most ro-Trump ones that also happened to be distrustful of the government, pollsters, etc. We see similar in vaccination, so this rings true. Here are characteristics that were undersampled in the polls the most when tried to re-match regression of the population data to election results by counties: solid Republican, white, less populated cases, more covid cases.
Another interesting item: a very high number of “new voters” – who did not vote in 2016. Pollsters struggled understanding how many of these voters are and what their preferences are, as they often relied on previous data to stratify voters. These new voters went +14 for Trump in Florida and +10 to 20 for Biden in many other states. There is a lot to unpack here – enthusiasm, groups that started to care, early voting. I imagine this is where suspicion about dead voters and vote harvesting will from. Some of the numbers for new voters and confirmed voters are way abnormal for Georgia and Michigan (see Table 11, for example), I did not try to understand whether this is due to their data collection or something else.
the bottom line of the report that polls on average under-weighted Republicans and Conservatives by 3-4% everywhere, and the final result was worse than in many years before – even as they corrected some of the 2016 errors (stratifying by education). Reagan was the last candidate to be undercounted by as much, and in other races they say delicately “worse in 20 years” with an asterisk that they only track data for 20 years, or, in blunt Trumpian language, “worse polls EVER”. Note that polls were biased towards Republicans in 1936-48 by 4-12% and after that all large outliers 2-8% were in favor of Dems (1952, 64,80,92,96,2020) with an exception of 2012 Obama (2%).
Note that most of the analysis is done on average, linear approximation, without focusing only on elections and states really mattered. So, use conclusions with care
Syag, I gave you just one example where a Rav applied Hillul Hashem broadly to a person not wearing a mask. But maybe either you or other posters can help us with their definition of moris ayn/hillul Hashem.
RebE, someone asked a good kashia: Hashem told each nation a mitzva that was hard for them. We preempted that by saying naase v’nishma. But He surely had one hard for us in case we ask for a sample. What do you think that was?
Syag> Mares ayin and chilul Hashem have specific halachik criteria. You seem to use those terms loosrly to mean, “something that makes religious people look bad” that isn’t how it works.
Every time I learned this sugya, the Rabbonim indeed bring expansive definition of this, regardless of the Rav’s hashkafa. A pretty Haredi Rav said that he stopped a maskless person dressed as a Jew in the street when there was a state gezera on outside masks and explained to him that this is Hillul Hashem. The next day after gezera was off, he was walking without the mask and joyfully questioned why I do. so, his major concern was Hillul Hashem not anything else. (I answered because I found my humra, I later updated the answer – because it helps me keep my mouth shut, although it is not really true)
common > Really, you have MS in mechanical engineering?
Thanks for the tochacha, I have a PhD in a related engineering, but I am indeed not qualified to build anything, even a Sukkah.
I read up specifically on airflows [some of the work published last year was fascinating – such as measuring air flows in simulated airplanes] and did some experiments myself in several offices and shuls to measure CO2, particle levels – that are proxies for how much air re-circulates and particle level indicates how much air is filtered and and how much comes from outside (I can do calculations, my MS is in Applied Math). I ran the results by a couple of “real” engineers. And I think I know when to send for a real mechanical engineer, like you. What were your recommendations for your shul/school/office?
Avi > Morris” is from a couple of generations ago. Today MO Jews also give their kids Hebrew names.
This Moshe/Moses is ok b’dieved, but there is a little busha involved: Please call Moishe. There is no Moishe here, only Moses. Ok, please call Moses. Moishe, someone is calling you!
We are trying to give kids Jewish names that will not make them want to avoid in whatever environment you are, like David, Aaron, Ruth, Miriam, Joseph, etc. A second name gives a kid an extra chance if he is uneasy about the first. Another shita, that we do not subscribe to,
edited
> There is a 3 page executive summary
if you would not learn halakha from a Mishna, you would not understand statistics from an executive summary.
boruchbrown123> a much deeper and fundamental aspect to “darkhei shalom”
Agree whole-heartedly. And Talmidei Chachamim merabim D. Sh. It got to be something important if someone has to take his time off learning and go appease some random non-Jew!
> If you don’t respect a godol hador because they are a “Zionist”,
He is not the only one. A lot of people – on all sides – enjoy quoting only people they respect and call it “everyone agrees”. If Beis Hillel would do that, we would have never heard of Beis Shammai, and will be totally unprepared when Moschiach comes.
“After all, their local cougher ”
>> You do realize there are other viruses besides covid out there, right?
this is an important question. People should realize that if they have symptoms, they should, most probably, not be in public. There is less flu and common cold now, so there is a high chance this is Covid. by the time one realizes that this cough (or stomach issue) is not same as usual, you already infected others. Even if assume you got your regular allergies, there is a high chance your assumptions are wrong (to be complete, there might be a reverse starting as people catch flu with going out and losing immunity after a year). Second reason is, even if are sure, you should not go out of moris ayn and hillul Hashem you will create. People with flu should not go out either.
Also, wear a mask for allergies. I recently realized I did not have allergies last 2 years. got them back when taking mask off.
>> so he just wandered around hoping you wouldn’t have him thrown out.
He did not wander “around”, he wandered towards me, and I was pretending to “wander around” while wondering where he will wander next. I always wander during davening where I can, so it was not a big deal, and it was his shul anyway.
Syag
> There’s no issue of offending people. They aren’t judging youI mean that they’ll think that I am judging them and might get offended or upset. Post-vaccine, this does not sound appropriate.
> Your willingness to be less careful is not their doing. It comes from knowing the danger doesn’t really exist.
I did not compromise, I moved way away. By now, I am boke on airflows, I did a bunch of experiments in different buildings, and can estimate based on volume of incoming air, ventilation locations how much air is re-circulating. The only thing not visible is how good air filters are and when they were changed. One Rav told me that they were careful and changed the filters but did not know what kind. There is a lot of mechanics and statistics that people do not understand and then discuss in public, hopefully it will make into high school curricula in 10 years!
ujm> On the other hand, every Jew has a Torah right to live in Eretz Yisroel
I heard of this Ran but did not learn it. What is the context – paying taxes to a local hegemon? In the Israeli context, you are not just paying ransom, but for specific services that the government provides. There are halochos that cities can charge for building walls. If you don’t want to pay for, say, IDF, then at least you should not use their protection.
I think you are guys are making a legitimate point that you do not want to receive from the regime you do not respect and do not want to feel obliged. I am not 100% sure that the whole community lives up to the good standard you are using, but the principles sound reasonable.
Maybe the best way to advocate for your way of life – and get respect from those who do not trust your approach, would be to fully form your own community without relying on Zionists. Purchase a piece of land from PA or Hamas, or maybe even Syrians, Egyptians, or Jordanians – a lot of these areas might be Eretz Isroel – and form your own tax system, roads, defense forces, or hire someone. If this experiment works, then it will be great Kiddush Hashem, and others will learn from it.
It seems that it is ok to daven in a different nusach, but one should follow that nusach correctly. Maybe there are different malachim per nusach – litvishe, taimani, etc, so you want to be accepted fully by one of them. It makes sense: you can figure out one word by knowing the person’s nusach from the rest.
>> davening is for US
here is an example where capitalization is used, but may be confusing. Who knew that davening can be so America-centered!? on the other hand, Hebrew has no captal letters, so I doubt that Sh’A addresses this
>> And if the zionist had not admitted 1,000,000 russians,
First another poster suggests Sefardim will be better off in Islamic State, and, I guess, Russian Jews would be better in Russia. I guess you are OK with Americans as they send you money. There is not much difference between American and Russian Jews except the former moved to Goldene Medina despite the Rabbis warning them about assimilation. This cruelty to the Jewish people borders on obscene.
>> It is not clear that Republican pollsters did any better
I did not read the whole report yet (I am interested in statistics of the issue), I saw this phrase and it does sound like a weaseling phrase “it is not clear” rather than “there is no difference”. Prior to each of the last 3 elections, there was clear difference between lefty/”mainstream” and more sympathetic to right wing pollsters. So, there should be difference at the end. Let me get to read that.
As I said, intentionality may not have been proven. But this is now a fashionable trend – you are an implicit racist if you don;t perfectly balance your race-blind hiring to exact race quotas. Same here – if your polls are always wrong same way … I almost said – good for goose/gander, but realized that this would be also verboten.
> Frum kehilla is a good 15% of the population, probably more
way more – just voters of 3 religious parties is 18% + halfs of 3 more parties + more children. Unless, of course, you limit “frum” to a subset of religious Jews for some strange reason.
Mod-29, would it be possible to auto-email when you are censoring? you probably do not want to do that as it will invite protests and attempt to communicate with you, but I am not keeping a list of posts and then verifying what happened with them.
Many posters have asked us questions which we can answer in bold within your post, or if need be, answer in bold and then approve as a private post visible only to the poster and mods.
I heard a quick response from a Rav, who said it is not a psak:
Q1: boycott? We have history of boycotts usually when the price is outrageous – fish on shabbos. A couple of gemorahs where Rabonim threatened merchants that they will rule according to a minority opinion (what hadasim are kosher, etc) to ruin their business if the prices do not go down.
Q2: should one destroy ice-cream in his freezer? It is not hurting the company, even if you post the picture of that on twitter, and there is bal tashlis issue. Maybe, only if you physically feel like you are eating treif …
I am glad that this icecream brought all of us together. Even the staunch anti-Zs understand that we are all the same for anti-semites.
Someone wrote that in some place in Poland when Nazis were putting a shul on fire, a socialist ran in trying to save a sefer Torah …
I like questions and these are fascinating! It is not of question to monitor kashrus of business practices. If you are from Lita, check your old seforim by Chofetz Chaim: if it has “Muga” scribbled in pencil, that is because the author was personally checking that the books were printed and bound correctly. There are various organizations that check whether funds invest in illegal diamonds, child labor. some might do what these tzvei alter ice-screamers did – object to Israeli investments …
So, it might be possible to have a kashrus organization that checks the books and certifies them.
Need to know the standards though, maybe there will be:
gnivas israel heksher that allows over-charging non-Jews
tzvei dinim heksher – allows two sets of books, as long as both pass the kashrus separately
2-hand image heksher – given to those who shook hands with R Shimon bar Yochai
picture of an elderly Jew – to those who fully pay social security tax
hebrew national – certifies that you were not yet fined by IRS
1099 heksher – all employees working as contractorsSyag,
again, I was/am calling on people to look at online options – full or partial, I do not doubt that it might not work for many people. I am just saying that it could work for more people than previously. My pre-covid research showed a couple of mainstream right-wing yeshivos and BYs in CA and Rockies that specifically incorporated state resources for general studies into their curriculum in a similar way as we did. I see MO less interested in such approaches as they are trying to go for best secular studies throwing more resources into general education – and having more parental funds to do that.RebE > Why weren’t the machines fixed for Biden were Trump won like Florida and Texas and most of the South?
nobody can win this debate. you will get the answer that maybe machines were fixed, but not enough to counter increasing Florida Cuban enthusiasm for Trump and Rs in general. Lefty politicians now complain that they can not get donors to support candidates in Florida as Dems start writing the state off.
Syag, you are right, there are many gray areas here. One Rav who gets shailohs on this issue, says that reopening turned out harder than closing. In one nice shul here that has a lot of space, the pattern I noticed that real doctors still have masks on, while Rabbis and PhD do not. I felt like an imposter.
I am getting more appreciation for Gemora discussions where everyone agrees that 4 tefahim is too much for sechach, and 3 is Ok, but what about between 3 and 4…. These intermediate cases are really making things complicated. But if you approach it with intellectual curiosity, it feels better. In this case, I tried to balance my own view on what is right with not offending the locals. I think distance was less visibly jarring to them than being over-masked. After all, their local cougher was trecking for tissue and back as much as I did. He might have been the only one who noticed that I was making circles around him, but he did not look like he cared much.
Mod-29, I hope you are not working nights because you also have a day job in Beijing Standard Time zone making sure nobody offends CCP.
Syag > They started meeting in person with masks and social distancing right from the start in September.
This is fine. I know people who approached this very responsibly. Many encouraged people to get tested when symptoms came up and ended up with small number of cases when there were outbreaks. It was not easy to do this the right way. for example, some people or schools did not disseminate information quickly, or people disregarded quarantine and went to shuls on yomim tovim. On the other hand, I know people who would visit various Jewish towns and then get tested every time when coming back. To do it right was not easy and those who passed this test should be proud of it.
Was there a negative impact on health is hard to estimate. Propagation happens a lot within younger asymptomatic groups, so you may not notice that something was passed through and then attacked an older person in a family. I saw a pretty convincing research showing that deaths in nursing homes in towns with colleges were 50% higher than those without. Apparently, asymptomatic young medical workers who would go to school and then to work would pass it on, despite testing and protection.
emes, to clarify – there are several recent analyses of 2020 polls done by center-left organizations. They concluded that polls favored Biden and Ds in other races by 4-5% all over despite corrections that were made after 2016. 2016 bias was identified due to several specific factors – such as undervaluing low-educated voter support for Trump (his famous quip “I love low educated” was correct). for 2020, they can’t point to a specific problem. This corresponds to right claims before the elections that polls are consistently showing commanding advantage for Biden, leading to vote suppression – why bother voting, if a candidate has no chance. Intentionality is unresolved, but fact of “systemic bias” confirmed.
Hunter was under investigation and, again according to left-wing sources (I use only those to avoid bias), an extremely independent DE prosecutor decided MULTIPLE months, not days like Comey, in advance of election not to publicize the investigation.. any public suggestions of impropriety were laughed at and suppressed. I am just calling your attention to how the other side sees this is a call for action. If you are a true emes and nicht sheker, you should try to mitigate these issues and help country move to a happy middle point. For a counter-point, Pres Biden just called Fbook murderers and then somewhat retracted. Was his first post blocked and called fake news? I did not check, but let me know.
as of 2016, yes, it appears that Trump benefited from inept behavior by Comey, Hillary (wiping it up) and Podesta (clicking on fake Russian email link), but there was no collusion by any official figures to benefit Trump, except maybe the biggest loser Putin who apparently tried to weaken future President Hillary, but overreached and underestimated American voter and got himself a most anti-Russian President since Reagan. Had to put his plan to fully conquer Ukraine on hold.
Gadol, thanks for the inspiring vort. I am glad you woke up to tell the story.
> how to write posts that don’t need deleting
this is exactly how I plan to use this program!
It is a difficult task to consider whether something offends a particular person, even harder when the person is anonymous. I hope yuo have a good posek to ask shailos about it! Still, the question for posters is even harder – on one hand, you don’t want to offend, on the other – you want to wake them up.
Syag, as I described, my kids bli ayin hara doing great in online programs. And they are much more friends to each other. And it is much better to spend quality learning time with kids instead of having discussions with teachers, driving them, reminding them to do homework that someone else assigned…the only difficult issue was with kids concerned how others will view them, but covid solved that.
And again, this is not zoom, this is well organized program that fosters independent learning skills
We only do zoom for my endless business meetings, daf yomi, and when my kids run educational programs for younger kids.Avira, people will see that I am Jewish just by my name! Who else would always ask questions? As r Steinsaltz haya omer: Eskimo have 100 synonyms for snow, Arabs for sand, and Jews for question.
I was not clear about nafka mina: I am asking what is practical difference for us when returning an object to a jew or a nonjew. What I can see: anonymity. Maybe also returning something that will embarrass a Jew, say who stole that object. What else?
A possible reason to be in one mask. If you are way out of how they behave, they can take it as a serious disapproval of their behavior, which is at this stage inappropriate: it was in a state with high vaccination rates and some people wrote publicly that they got covid, and from the description that they posted openly but our mod is even embarrassed to publish, surely more did.
If you think I enjoy davening 6 amos from the community, I am not. I was very sad.
more sad is your thought that that was the reason for the deletion