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mentch, often having a “nes” is a last-resort action to protect someone and may take away your zechuyot. To use your analogy, you will be better off using air defence to protect your home than relying on the nes to have debris falling around you. In Taanis 20, R Huna is using zechuoyos of another Chacham to save wine from a shaky building and the chacham is not happy about that.
Rambam in Letter on Astrology: Know, my masters, that it is not proper for a man to accept as trustworthy anything other than one of these three things. The first is a thing for which there is a clear proof deriving from man’s reasoning—such as arithmetic’ geometry, and astronomy. The second is a thing that a man perceives through one of the five senses—such as when he knows with certainty that this is red and this is black and the like through the sight of his eye; or as when he tastes that this is bitter and this is sweet; or as when he feels that this is hot and this is cold; or as when he hears that this sound is clear and this sound is indistinct; or as when he smells that this is a pleasing smell and this is a displeasing smell and the like. The third is a thing that a man receives from the prophets or from the righteous. … something will happen one way and not another, and that the constellation under which one is born will draw him on so that he will be of such and such a kind and so that something will happen to him one way and not another—all those assertions are far from being scientific; they are stupidity. There are lucid, faultless proofs refuting all the roots of those assertions.
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science of the stars that is genuine science is knowledge of the form of the spheres, their number, their measure, the course they follow, …On all this and the like, the wise men of Greece, Persia, and India wrote compositions. This is an exceedingly glorious science. … How many amazing conditions are made intelligible by this science, all of which is undoubtedly true. It is this calculation of astronomical cycles of which the (Talmudic) sages said that it is wisdom and understanding in the sight of the (Gentile) peoples (Shabbat 75a). But as for these assertions of the stupid astrologers, they are nothingNeville,
it was reported that (1) US did not fully support Israeli actions, (2) Hamas did not agree to the deal earlier.Even if put aside US influence, positions now are different than last year due to Hizbolla demise, etc as we discussed. Better negotiating position leads to better results.
ard > that it’s not a yeshiva bochur’s (or yungerman’s in this case) job to worry about the hostage deal. his job is to immerse himself in torah as much as possible
as I mentioned, we might not have the context for RY words. I posted my guess. But as to your interpretation, a person who is learnt in Torah obviously should have an ability and a desire to reflect on what is happening in the world. As an example – R Avigdor Miller suggests we learn lessons from what is happening in Vietnam, because if you don’t learn from that, you might get a lesson closer to you … in this case, those lessons were pretty close. Of course, one might argue at which point of learning one should engage with the world and where a particular student stands.
We have a discussion in perek shlishi of Taanis – what is called normal or abnormal house collapse. If you did not build the house well, then house collapse is not something that requires extra praying or fasting. So, maybe you can apply same logic. Was the Torah protected well, etc
Simcha, sometimes kids simply repeat what they read in the papers and maybe even start arguing with each other using words from opposing papers or tiktoks, so this could be referred as devarim betulim. Maybe this is one of those “you have to be there” moments to understand what the discussion was about.
nisht > , after alleging all sorts of impropriety at the schools how they hide things and doings that are not above board says
as several people are “asking questions” here, I am not sure who is referred to, but being seen as doing things yashar is a requirement for Jewish institutions. It is up to institutions to make their finances transparent and to try to improve education an finances of students. In reality, schools often see benefits of their institutions as primary. I heard arguments like “what would it be for school”, “no, thanks we already have many students in this class, we dont really need more”,”what if other families would want to do this”. This is sufficient evidence to presume that these schools can not be trusted unless they show evidence of such. At the same time, I talked to principals who said “this is the best I can do”, “I am not able to get another teacher, unfortunately” – and I never doubted their words.
> I would recommend you retract what you said about believing in mazalos because it is just flat out denying Torah sh’beksav.
I think he is also on firm ground if he follow Rambam on this.
Eliezer > There is an argument between Ptolemy and Copernicus
There are no winners in this debate. Either you can hold that it does not matter what the center is, or if you think there is a center, you should go to the center of the galactic or to from the place all galactics are moving away from.
WSJ report (full version, not YWN) says there were several stipulations made by Trump’s envoy:
to Israel
– if hamas reneges on the agreement, US will fully support resumed fighting
– US will work with Israel to create Gaza government without hamas
to Arabs
– US will press on Israel to continue with the 2nd part of the dealcommon > gentile dating system.
Do you mean bars or tinders? And that is why it was called the Vulgar era.
Neville, the problem with “secular” midnight is not that it is goyish, but it is not based on any physical event.
Hatzos is defined by the time between sunrise and sunset. As we see with DST, midnight is totally a human convention. For example, if you have two cities nearby in different time zones, as often happens in US when they are in different states – do their mazalos differ by an hour? And whole China is one big time zone – so their 6th hour could be in the middle of the night or day.
So, you are trying to be traditional and follow a minhag and then tie it to a totally artificial convention.
As to the main sugya, it may be that both following and ignoring mazalos have respectable traditions. For example, gemorah has a lot to say about amulets (but provides for an empirical procedure to test their efficacy), while Rambam rejects them. We could apply Pascal’s wager here (if you are an agnostic – not sure that G-d exists, it is less risky to be frum) and follow mazalos, unless you can encounter a large expense, such as paying for an extra hour for the wedding hall. For some, just having their soup cold on Shabbos evening outweighs other considerations.
eddie, we agree that we need a CPA advice here. Anyone?
Neville > When has that ever worked out for Israel or The US?
A fair question.
Iraq would be such an example. It went from a brutal dictatorship that fired Scuds at Israel to a poorly functioning democracy that is, at best, a most junior member of Iranian coalition against Israel via their militias. You don’t hear about it in the news, but Iraq is a success of an intervention, even while it is not a Jeffersonian democracy, and even after Obama abandoned Iraq and enabled creation of ISIS as a state.
As to Syria, nobody knows what will happen, but it is ok to take a moment to enjoy the downfall of a rasha and to commiserate with people who are digging the prison grounds trying to find out what happened with their arrested relatives. At minimum, Israelis bombed away half of Syrian army and can now fly towards Iran without worrying about Syrian air defence.
I understand all the feelings you guys think and I am not saying you are wrong also, I just think you don’t appreciate what involves in the decision making by Israeli government and army. I am not saying that we should analyze them from the position of reverence “David never sinned” and “R Yohanan could not say that”. Or, from a modern example, one Rav send a shaliach to R Ovadia Yosef to confirm that he can apply a ruling R Ovadia made 20 years earlier, and also brought a citation from Meiri that supported the ruling that was not mentioned in the teshuva. R Ovadia confirmed the ruling and smiled – ata hoshev sheani lo yadati hameeri hazeh?!
So, Israeli decision-makers are surely aware of pros and cons that you are quoting. There is a reason it took them so much time to get to this point. So, if you take them seriously, you need to look what were latest changes that lead to this agreement: destruction of Hizbollah, fall of Syrian regime, bombing of Iranian air defence, change of US president, taking over border with Egypt cutting off supplies, more gradual – Hamas growing losses, of which Sinwar is part. What are the effects?
For one, this changes Hamas position. Their strategy was to involve “partners” into war against Israel and get supplies through. Sinwar was the architect. Now, the architect is no more and the strategy is not working.
2) Israel can be now more sure of coordination with US. Who knows what were discussions with Trump’s envoy? They now know what support they may (or may not) get in case of certain actions they do, or what enemies can do.
Last, but not least, Bibi has tremendously successful record over decades by this point. He confronted Clinton/Arafat/Obama/Nasralla/Biden … Just this year’s operation against Hizbollah. There is a good reason he was PM so many times. Does not mean he is always right, but you need to take his decisions seriously.
Dr Pepper > We choose schools based on where our kids are going to succeed the most- not to show the schools that we have other options.
Respect. We all want the best for our kids. There are still limits. And, by the way, the kids grow up with expectations that they’ll be getting the best regardless of price their whole life … As a Rav from, Ithink, Lakewood was telling Borough Park parents – when you indulge in a little of luxury, you understand that it is luxury, but for our kids this becomes necessity.
For example, when I showed kids that paying extra school tuition easily includes what we could spend paying for their college, they suddenly became more price-sensitive. I also showed them that without (good) college-based profession, they’ll not be able to afford that tuition, that they take for granted, for their kids.
So, _IF_ your school is not reasonable in terms of pricing and providing schooling you want, then I found it pretty healthy to explain to the kids where schools acts in their own interest, and how we can achieve our goals in a different way, even if they are not going to see their friends often. I also pointed out that friends who stop being friends because you are not in the “right” school are not real friends. Of course, if you think that your school provides the right education for you and it is just you are asking for something that is expensive, you have no reason to change.
xctL > I have never been through the tuition/scholarship application process.
I don’t know whether having professionals, as you suggest, will solve the problem.
A system that will keep dignity should either be free or heavily subsidized by the community or fully competitive where parents have a lot of choices and competition determines price, not inquisition.
hashalem, a board member representing parents is a great idea!
This is similar to European/German way to run businesses – where “stakeholders”, not just “stockholders” join the board. One can argue that US corporations that focus on stockholders are doing fine business, but schools are already not run as competitive business, so German model might be beneficial. At minimum, this board member can make public what can be made public from school finances, such as cost per student.
I wonder whether anyone tried this model and what was school response was?
eddie: (repeatedly) full tuition is not made by taking the budget and dividing it by the number of students (see above) It is a number that the school feels that their clientele should be able to pay, for the most part.
Accounting works with cold numbers:
School’s revenues = tuition + donations + endowment + gov funds
school’s costs = salaries + rent + expenses + taxes.
Cost per person = Cost/(number of students)For one person,
donation = tuition (and other payments for little things here and there, including unpaid labor) – (cost per person).
If donation > 0, you should get a receipt to write off the taxes. Is there a problem for the school to define this is as a donation? affects their taxes or reputation?
if donation < 0, you are getting charity and should try to earn more and spend less, make your shabbos like chol, but try to pay your fair share.there is a complication whether costs are “fair”. They may include spending that you do not consider needed or spent right, or even spent to the benefit of school-affiliated people, H’V.
Schools are a system with limited competition that exists, for example, in defense industry where there is often 2-3 or even one supplier. In such system,
(1) suppliers develop strategy to divide market such that each of them is a monopoly. In defense, companies focus on vertical integration in one weapon system. Schools similarly teach you “derech” instead of stam mishna and halocha so that you can’t switch to a different “derech” without losing face
(2) the customer strategy in defense (used successfully during Reagan times) is to create as much competition is possible by subdividing tasks, using two suppliers for the same item …So, how do you develop stronger negotiating position (may vary by school and place, of course). Here are my ideas, what are yours?
– send kids to two different schools so that each of the school knows that you can move remaining kids to the other school. You can ask for a discount for moving kids there
– change schools with some frequency
– be prepared to go to a different school or move to another town if negotiations fail.
– be prepared to online/home school for a year, maybe create a group ready to do that
– be known in the community as a decent person whose opinion is valued. What would people say if you changed schools?!
– maintain a community school that is cheap and teaches minimal standards for many groups without pushing ideology and is flexible in letting parents add things according to their preferences and interests. So, then people from many schools could use this school when they have problem with their own. It may not be the best, but beats moving to another town.eddie: In a convoluted way I can see the point of the parent who wanted a tax deductable receipt for the costs above educating his child.
let me explain this logic: some people pay more, some people pay less. Regardless of how your committee squeezed those funds, those who pay more are in effect subsidizing those who pay less. So, that person requested donation receipts for the extra amount so that he can write it off. Maybe you can explain why the school refused to do that. Maybe they do not want to acknowledge what the true costs are v. published tuition?
Of course, it could be that the paying parent gets additional services, like advanced math class or personal Gemora tutor. In that case, the extra tuition would not be deductible. In any case, transparency will help everyone understand the other side.
eddie, you bring an interesting point of view but it is based on your insider position. As you see, we parents are not privy to that magic. Maybe we’ll be more considerate if the school shared details and gives more decision-making power to the parents.
Chaim,
I agree with your position as explained now – take into account all types of income and maybe also major sources of expenses – how many kids in school, in college. Sort of like IRS deductions work.But this discussion shows how complicated this committee approach is. We do not usually have a town-wide respected beis din who can be trusted to deal with these issues in a way that everyone can trust. School management has obviously lots of vested interests and would not be accepted as dayanim oe even witnesses in a beis din about school issues.
Maybe, our times call for a traditional halachik solution: unlimited competition.
More schools – more options, cheaper salaries, more parents can afford tuition and find a school that works for them.
Then, yeshivos will not be checking your income, and parents will not complain about curriculum. The practical question is how to encourage competition.FHalakha proposes this: neighbors can restrict you from opening a business in a common yard; Town can limit your ability to open a store that competes with locals. BUT, nobody can restrict you from opening a school.
Note that “school” does not have to be K to 12 to semicha institution, you should be able to open just one class in your basement. This also existed at least in Lita. R Ruderman and R Kamenetsky know each other from their first grade rebbe’s yard. They grew up fine without having a school building.
Participant, take a longer view – there is just no possibility of a deal that will not make half of Jews and half of the world upset.
There are demonstrations to make the deal and demonstrations against the deal.At this point, I would just trust Bibi’s government and army officers to reach the best deal they can given (unknown to us) options and limitations.
We should also appreciate that Israel defeated Hezbollah, that lead to vanishing of Syrian dictator and closing Iran-Lebanon corridor, and, so far, deterred Iran and now also gets anti-Iranian president in USA. Hamas is also partially destroyed and lost most of external support.
If Hashmonaim had our attitude, they would, H’V make chanuka a day of mourning because the war did not end and oil lasted only 8 days.
She is a siman rah. First, voters fired her. Then, she wanted to become a governess of a sunny state and it also went on fire.
measuring expenses may be against Gemora that suggests not to measure how much water is being spent along the rivier “lifnei darkei shalom”. Too much intrusion into people’s private life. But it is happening! There are questions on applications like do you send kinds to camps? where did you go on vacations? When I had very little kids, a school financier shared with me “outrages” he needs to deal with – “a guy asked for tuition reduction, and I peaked into his yard, and I see him engaged in some sort of a business!”. Some years later, we finally met to negotiate and I was prepared (built a fence around my business :).
One wat to reduce tensions between two groups would be to clearly charge working parents tuition that corresponds to expenses without marking it up, and then use fundraising to pay for discounts to the rest. Someone mentioned before about parents requesting at least documentation of a charitable donation but was refused. This is not right.
YSerbius, was this maiden in the middle of the field or in the middle of a Manhattan store?
RebE, right, so mazalos follow halachik shaos, and have nothing to do with DST.
YS, I am saying both are right – there are false reports and there are true reports. I don’t know which ones are what. Possible terrorists could first spread rumors and then deploy real ones. Who knows. In security, you don’t always operate on what is “most likely” but “what is possible”.
SQRT > we NEVER see African-Americans publicly attacking each other
maybe this is because (1) you are not reading their publications, (2) they are writing less in general
A black friend of mine literally cringes when one of those popular politicians is mentioned.
Neville, Natan Strauss was trying to protect simple people, aka ignorami, who did not know that spoiled milk kills their children.
This is not a new idea to care about society. Romans promoted public baths and roads… From Gemora Sanhedrin 19:
one woman walk with a kid behind her, bandits behind her snatched the kid, she turned around looking for him, they told her that the kid ran into a hurban, and followed her there … After that, there was a takana that women should walk with children in front of them.So, next time you see a parent of any gender coming out of the front seat of the minivan , while kids jump out behind to the road –
just come and tell him – Sanhedrin yud tet …to clarify, Kepler actually introduced the term Vulgar Era – seems because he discovered that it does not really correspond to what AD stood for, so he introduced the idea that this is just a convention used by people. This may be an actual good reason to use it – as CE does not correspond to anything in particular.
you can even explain – I do not want to offend your religion by using the wrong date expression
somejew, I am not sure sources for what you guys are looking. I was recently reading an interview with a person who was regularly coming to R Eliyashev with IDF-related questions. Once he had a question about what an Yid can violate while pretending to be an enemy on a Mossad mission, and while they were discussing halachik problem v. personal risk v. Mossad needs, this person says he was _shocked_ when he realized how well R Eliyashev was already informed about “Mossad needs” – he clearly had other contacts also.
amom > Public Health may have parts that were successful, but mostly unsuccessful.
Look at the trust the public has in this agencyIf you take a broader/longer view of public health, it is extremely successful. Just think of families, R’L 100+ years ago when up to half of children routinely did not survive till adulthood … there were also problems that were caused by modernity. For example, people drank milk with reasonable safety – until they moved to big cities and milk was transported and stored …
Of course, Jews were practicing natilas yadayim well before that. Interesting fact, Natan Strauss (Macy’s/Netaniya, Rehov Strauss in Yerushalaim) spend a lot of time convincing New York City to pasteurize that milk – fighting those ignorami who did not trust it. Btw, he also built Lakewood hotel – because when his relatives were visiting him, they were not allowed to stay at the hotels in Lakewood …
YS, of course there are lots of false reports after an issue becomes public knowledge, some reasonable errors and many simply hysterical. This does not mean that nothing happened and, more importantly, nothing could happen.
nisht, I think Chaim is presuming way more than one child in schools, Bh. Update your computation for 6 kids:
rebbe – 3 free (the gender he is teaching), 7kx3=21K pretax. Left 60-21=39K
accountant – 6x7x1.2 (tax) = 50K, left with 90-50=40kbtw, I am not 100% sure that taking low salary and tuition reduction is really kosher in terms of “savings” on taxes. I did not hear of people arrested/fined for that, so it must be mostly legal.
eddie > Parents want Caddilac service at Yugo prices.
There are 2 (related) issues:
1) high cost v. family resources
2) issue of control and potential abuses of poweron (1), the focus is on fundraising, families struggling and teachers being paid little… maybe we need to be more realistic on what we can afford and what priorities are, and be more innovative in how we price things. Lots of examples:
– expensive seminaries are ripe for a takanah that seminary can not be mentioned on shidduch resume and responded by references on the punishment of herem.
– small classes often have students of different level … use remote classes of advanced general studies
– allow kids to go part time to a different school for specific classes. Optimally, to increase competition, parents should buy one class/teacher at a time rather
– enable transparency of school/class/teacher successes (publish test results)
– enroll those who want into online public schools for general studies (several yeshivos did that, not sure where they stand now)
– move to states with voucherson (2), in my estimation, 50% of problems are objective, see above, and 50% are due to school admins – incompetency, self-interest, protecting school reputation/family members, lack of respect to other shitos, etc.
“Neville, CE (first VE – vulgar era) is several hundreds years old.”
Source?J Kepler was writing to prove the “common error”: that their deity was not born in the year 0
Johannes Kepler (1615). Joannis Keppleri Eclogae chronicae : ex epistolis doctissimorum aliquot virorum & suis mutuis, quibus examinantur tempora nobilissima. Frankfurt: Tampach. OCLC 62188677
The History of the Works of the Learned. Vol. 10. London. January 1708. p. 513
Bottom line is that we need to have good Jewish education affordable to normal jews who work. Without that, we will continue having social distortions. parents consider staying in chinuch to afford education for their kids, schools using the tuition powers to dictate all rules, kids seeing their parents in constant financial distress despite working hard..
Neville, CE (first VE – vulgar era) is several hundreds years old. Whether to use it will depend on the culture and pressure to assimilate that vary over time/place.
Something I just saw in R Soloveitchik drasha in June 1945 (right after WW2 and in the middle of political ups and downs in Palestine):
Cohen godol had tzitz (symbolizing Torah learning, answering Torah questions) and hoshen (answering practical questions – to go to war or not, etc). Note that the same person wears BOTH, that is Cohen godol is responsible both for learning and for practical action. Then, he laments that in our days, these two are separated – our tzitz (T’Ch) are focused only on analyzing shulchan oruch (he quotes specifical seforim), and our “cohanim” who are running politics are doing it as if they are the smartest in the world without benefit of Torah views. And he calls (Mizrachi) to be that force that unites both. So, he clearly sees both values and problems in both charedim and zionists and calls to unify for the common goal.
Good thoughts, but most of us do not know how the committees work. Presumably, those who are closer to the school, either as family, by hashkafa, by teaching there, etc will get a better deal. I am all for making the system more transparent, but practically speaking we are using the approach that we saw several of older “working” friends were using:
do not submit any financial forms, simply come to school and suggest that you’ll pay X $$$ or X%. The number should be fair, depending on your circumstances, number of children in school. your dependency on the school and how much markup the price is over the true cost. Do this number yourself, do not leave it to them. Generally, it would be 50%-70% of published price. This presumably covers your own children, excluding paying for the “non-working” families. If, say, general studies are so bad that you will have to teach them separately, then maybe 40%.
How do I know this is a good number? I once started conversation with a new financier, saying “I would like 30%” (meaning I am asking for 30% off). He thought that I am asking to pay 30% and almost had a heart attack. I quickly finished the sentence and we immediately shook hands.
If you run a business, you can define your own financial year. Maybe make it by Julian calendar – January 13. I wonder whether IRS will accept Tishri 1 or Nissan 1.
Dec 11 – a person with chinese name arrested in CA for allegedly flying a drone over and taking photographs of Vandenberg Space Force Base
Dec 12 Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH closed airspace
Dec 15 – 2 people arrested in MA for flying near airportthere are also reports like this:
June 18, 2024, – arrest in upstate NY for shooting down neighbor’s droneOne thing that can be tried in USA – let states do different things. Then, we can compare results of different policies – and even move there.
Rocky, thanks for the information.
As to disclosing info, one of my local chabad-affiliated very small schools posts 990-like info in their bulletins, together with ratio of funds coming and going attributed to different types of activities. So, it seems that even a small organization is capable of providing some info to the public.
As to TU focus on chareidi v. other schools, I found this in 1945 speech by R Soloveitchik in the process of developing ideas of early day schools, paraphrasing:
Some of those deep in NY boroughs assume that there are two types of youngsters: ones in yeshivah, and the rest immersed in materialism. As I live in “real world” town, I can attest that there is another group – youngsters who are deeply interested in spirituality, religion, philosophy – but not having right information and environment. We should not cut them off, and the most successful way to address them is through schools.This discussion is one-sided: obviously, would-be posters who object to the years will not post posts that will have that date posted above their post. Time for a heimishe branch of blogging software with dates from Alexander. AAQ. Year 0 of Trump II.
I think “common”, originally vulgar in latin, before vulgar got current negative connotation does not mean anything good, such that “uncommon” is weird.
Maybe you got corrupted by our democracy that “common” = “popular” = wins the votes …It simply means – used by most people (a fact) and it is a common convention to count years so that we do not get into a mess using different years.
Maybe, it is even better to say VE than CE, the way Kepler said it, if we can get away with calling them Vulgar.
Excellent meta-discussion. I neglected to put a caveat that I am not an accountant and just refer others, hopefully more knowledgeable, to this data.
I don’t think the charity navigator grades are always relevant. For example, they take points of for not having 990 info on the website, something that might be forgivable for a small hemeishe organization whose target population does not live off twitter. Also, their grades may be based on some automatic harvesting of info that might not always correspond to reality. For example, it grades lack of external audit. I won’t rely that it is true or true for all years … again, someone who knows something about accounting should say something.