Always_Ask_Questions

To bring some sholom here – Dennis Prager says that he does not want to discuss future with his non-Jewish political partners – as long as they are our partners right now, when M comes, we will then discuss whether he came first or second time. Similarly, ma nafka mina of the debate of whether a particular Rebbe will be a Moschiach? If my local Rav is destined to be a moschiach – will other Rabonim oblige to follow his psak now? Lo b’shmayim hi…

Now, if this belief leads people to drive on red light on the way to ohel, then we can deal with that directly.

Started in 1853, Samson Raphael Hirsch School was a Jewish Orthodox school in Frankfurt am Main . It was a secondary school for boys and a lyceum for girls of the Israelite Religious Society .

Mizrachi Yavne started in 1902 in Vilno, girls school was in Slobodka, Kovno; not sure of the founding year.

BY schools had 50,000 students in 1934 Poland. Seems like BY achieved mass attendance comparing with other smaller schools. that probably means poorer girls. But the idea of girl education was clearly there before. And note that better off people might have used private tutors.

Be careful what you write in public domain. Your grandchildren will be learning from LLMs that were trained on your posts.

modern, true, I neglected to say – talking about where Sara Schneirer lived. Chofetz Chaim wrote several letters addressed to women in general and women assemblies in 1920s Poland – he asked them to support kosher hedorim for their sons; he asked them to learn halochos niddah; and to read this halochos (that he summarized in 1-2 pages of the letter) to other women who are not fortunate enough to know how to read. In none of these letter I found him suggesting to teach those women alef-beis or to open schools for poor girls. As he obviously valued women literacy, maybe he saw no hope in calling for women’s school or thought that limited resources should be spent on boys. That resources were severely limited is demonstrated in his other letters where he asks Polish authorities to suspend sanitary regulation on mikvaos explaining that Jewish communities will not be able to afford having clean mikvas.

> would agree it is best for the wife to remarry after becoming an almana

I think halakha directs men to remarry, and at the same time assumes that the woman would like to be married. I don’t know whether halakha taki directs women to look for another husband.

> circulated the notorious canard that Gedolei Yisroel were responsible for the destruction of many communities because they did not urge immigration. This charge is, of course, a gross distortion of the truth,

Could someone clarify what the Rav meant here by “distortion of truth”? Especially in light of the poster’s further quotes.

Could we not compare learning with working (on both or more sides of this issue).

A working person works as much as he, and his wife, wants him to. In my opinion, most, including myself, should work less and spend more time learning and raising their families.

A modern learning person is usually supported by someone else. If he is supported by the working wife or a shver or a Zevulun, he should learn as much as they demand from him. If he is supported by the kehillah, then CR posters can question his time, as much as they are part of the kehillah … If they are, fully or in part, supported by US or Israeli taxpayers (directly or thru their wives and sponsors applying for various programs), then they should make sure they are not violating any laws and creating any Hillul Hashem by channeling funds for poor people into their learning. In this case, shteiging 24 hours a day will not help, same as cooking pork for 10 hours will not make into kosher beef.

What about a katlanis who had a zechus to be married to three tzaddikim? Do they form a beis din and vote on her fate?

Non> how LLMs (Large Language Models) AI work,

Well, first, nobody, even LLM, knows how exactly it works, of course …

Note that while LLM is not fully coded by the programmer, it is dependent on the training data that programmer fed into LLM. One hypothesis from an expert is that the current generation of LLMs is the best we will have (contrary to the usual always-improving tech). Explanation: LLM learns from publicly available texts. Next generation of human writers will be writing with the help of current LLMs, directly or indirectly, leading to decreasing quality while increasing quantity. Thus, next generation of LLMs will be essentially learning from the noisy data it generated. This is an AI version of “yeridas hadoros”.

This is somewhat believable as we already see now that people using Internet are not always smarter than people reading seforim… I am hopeful, though, that we still have enough of informed individuals who will understand the problem and start training LLMs on a combination of Plato, Aristotle, Gemora and Rashi.

First, Ms Schneirer did not offer olam habo to anyone. She tried to help others the best way she could. Some rabonim, like Chofetz Chaim (*) and Beltzer Rebbe, favored her efforts, many others did not and made it not easy for her. Be realistic – she is not supervising BY brand min hashmayim, the way McDonalds Corp does with their franchise. So, a school claiming BY label is run by specific people the way they see fit, within certain limits. OOT BYs are different from in-town ones, for example. And what is “asur by gedolim” in one, would be OK in others.

So, the main lesson from Ms Schneirer is that educating girls is important. To clarify the problem she was solving: boys went to schools that were paid for by relatively affluent Yidden and poor ones got included. As there were no established schools for girls, rich Jews used tutors and poor ones were left ignoramas. So, maybe apply the same approach today. Find a small group of girl parents who can afford paying tuition and want companionship of several other girls and start your own classes. Find a kollel yungerman who will teach them chumash and Rashi, his wife to teach them davening and middos, enroll online to get English and Maths. This will not be a full-blown BY with entertainment, but you can always enhance it later, maybe apply for Jewish Federation grants to help you or find a Rav who will be willing to give high quality classes a couple of times a week. This is way better that sitting around, complaining about out-of-control school admins. Think what lessons you want your children to learn.

Why not spend your time helping widows and widowers, and others, to find shiduchim b’olam haze instead of speculating? The only issue l’maase I see here is that some widows were reluctant to re-marry to 2nd husbands who were not at the level if their first ones. If anyone here is such a lady, please press on. If you are a bachelor wooing such a lady, the solution is simple – be a better mench… Although gemora warns about second marriages – not all etzavim shavim, four people in bed, etc

qwerty, I understand your feelings, but am not sure I understand your argument about Avraham. How’s caring about other people an insult to him, given that he was arguing to save Sdom, etc?

I’ve played a lot of chess, but this is the first time I see both sides shouting CHECKMATE. Moschiach is coming.

> your hashkofos have moved leftwards.

maybe he moved to DC? This is an observable trend – politicians moving to DC (such as Supremes) move leftwards over time.

Also an observation relevant to this topic: hemlines vary with the stock market. So, tzniyus is up during recessions.

Parents (that are capable) should teach their kids usingall means available. I didn’t think it is controversial until I got here. People here, who recite shinantem levanecha twice daily, explained to me that this is controversial. Thanks, I learned a lot from these discussions.

Communists are as bad or worse as nazis and both should be mentioned when we talk about our prosecutors. This used to be controversial but less now, as the term “Russian Nazis” became widespread.

@yankel berel

I think we settled on a lot of point already, great.

> R chaim kanievsky did not have smiha and certainly [over]qualified as a talmid haham al pi hahalaha.

of course. I reviewed a little of modern history of “rav” and it seems that it was “exceptional T’Ch in _his_ generation” in the times of Sh’A and became a “knowledgeable in Torah” by Mishna Berurah. R Chaim qualifies for both, of course.

> Muflag behohma bedoro is found in shulhan aruch hilch kvod rabo in YD .

I think YD refers Muflag re:standing up, while reserving “Rav” to the primary teacher. Given changes of “rav” by now, your inference looks reasonable.

> RCV is not gadol meraban shmo .
In my mind, he does, given his role in establishing _the_ yeshiva and the role yeshivos play now. (yes, “yeshiva” changed the meaning faster than “rav” but still).

Interestingly, there are sources that stress danger of over-titling. R Akiva Eger, I think, minimized his own titles and maintained that you can be a Rav or a Gaon but not both … with danger being once you give all titles to person A, then person B also demands them, and ein ledavar sof, and public becomes mislead who is a real T’Ch. R Akiva Eger lost this battle by now just by looking at how we dress…

Introduction to “Making of the Gadol” offers a great solution – the author uses R in front of all names giving permission to the reader to choose between Reb/Rav/Rabban/Rav Gaon.

> opened an Igros Kodesh and was excited to find a letter that said “ברוקלין נ.י. שלום וברכה

Not a joke. I was at the Kosel shortly before my wedding, and a suspiciously looking individual said he is collecting for a yeshiva. Skeptical, I asked what yeshiva. He named the yeshiva from a mid sized town my kallah was from.

Shtell > I assume the gedolim knew a little bit better .. It is well known that after they cancelled bein hazmanim because of the yom kippur war, that was the worst winter zman for many of the bnei torah.

This is unclear – are you claiming that gedolim know better because they are gedolim – but then how they made “the worst winter zman” in 1973? Or you are saying that gedolim know better because they absorbed experience of 1973? (the latter corresponds to Bava Basra description of creating a school system through “trial and error”).

yechiell > Trump has hinted at dropping support for Ukraine. Where is the guarantee he won’t do the same 2 weeks later, to Israel? He is too weird to trust mo

you are right, he is not predictable .. when my kids asked me (pre-covid): do you think Trump’s presidency is successful, I answered – yes, so far, ask me on the last day ….

But the choice is between T who has a track record of doing a lot of stuff right, yes, unpredictably and with a lot of drama, partly generated by him, partly by liars in the media; – and a lady who has no track record other than making her way through politics. She is less predictable.

Sechel > vilna gaon was fed lies by the misnagdim, thats why he made a cherem against chassidim,

could you tell us whose opinion this is? Most chassidim and misnagdim made peace by now, and I think the prevailing view is that Gaon’s position against excesses helped Chassidim to become a better movement. I think Alter Rebbe also contributed to that process.

yechiell > Maybe, but hers is as good as any other politician’s.

Not the same. She is mostly known for her political statements, not actions. So, repeated 180 degree turns are jarring. There is no underlying substance there to understand her. for comparison, when Joe Biden says something positive towards Palis, we can go back to his previous relationship with Israel and Israeli leaders and make some conclusions. Mine were that he will generally be helpful to Israel during an acute crisis, but will also try to cover his political bases. With her, I have no idea what positions she will take. And there is no other middos that can compensate – I can’t say – well, she is a smart and honest person so I hope she’ll figure it out. No record there also. So, you are playing Russian roulette here hoping for the best.

Yankel, thanks for the exposition. As Koreh lrabo applies to one’s rav, you use muflag b chochma. I understand the latter as applying to one’s own generation as much as we are commanded to listen to rabbis of our own generation. Are you saying that this applies to anyone who was in HIS generation? Is there a source for this or your own idea?

For me, r Chaim certainly qualifies as gadol merabanan, as I don’t think he is not recognized now by any of the modern groups. Every Yeshiva that calls itself yeshiva attaches themselves to r Chaim. For example, I think I write r Salanter, because even as maybe there is not much open opposition to mussar, not many groups follow his approach.

Anyway, as one measures offense by the other person’s sensitivity and not his own opinion, I’ll certainly try blind neder to follow your convention.

It could be both sides are right – R Falk is a machmir and, among those who say R Falk is a machmir, there are those who dress inappropriately.

There was an incident in NYC a couple of years ago – a redneck attacked a Jewish lady, thinking she was a Muslim. This is now my personal test for tzniut excesses – when you are confused for a Muslim.

I also do not understand black fashion both for men and women. Gemora disapproves red, but not other colors. IT also disapproves black and recommends it only when someone cannot control his yetzer hara and needs to do something inappropriate. It may be that some were wearing black because of poverty, or maybe we are mislead by old-time grayscale photography. Similar, l’havdil, all these Greek statures that are white does not mean they were all wearing white, just the colors wore off.