Always_Ask_Questions

R Zeira (Babylonian) avoided marrying his teacher’s R Yohanan’s daughter because he thought his yichus was better.

I agree with akuperma, everyone who was in USA for several generations and not within strictly O community is a suspect. Most people from other countries are in a better position, either having local batei dinim, like Israel/UK or government papers like USSR.

farrockgrandma> A young men takes on most mitzvas at the time of his bar-mitzvah. For a girl/woman, we are responsible for the most important mitzvas at the time that we marry and start a family.

I would hope that the lady would spend previous years preparing for that great mission whether by being a sidekick to her mother or babysitting or/and actually learning. After a child is born, it becomes a little hectic to learn …

I also noticed that men tend to delegate sholom bayis to their wives, even if a lot of gemoras direct their instructions to men.
I once offered a chatan a book about sholom bayis (that I thought he needed). His immediate reaction was “I am sure my kallah has such books”.

statistically, as most marriages are between a jew and a non-Jew, the one with the Jewish last name is Goyish (Jewish father), and the one with a non-Jewish last name is Jewish.

Seriously, distribution is uneven. There are whole pockets of Jews where most are non-Jews (Reform temples in the south?) and pockets where there is rov yehudim: Israelis, Brooklynites, Russians from smaller towns in Ukraine. Uzbekistan, etc …

Sen Vance had a good argument yesterday (T mentioned it also at the end of his debate). Dems present very very appealing ideas – but why didn’t you implement them in the last 3.5 years?

This is the core issue – all progressive ideas sound very appealing: why not “give” everyone $50,000 to have a house, to go to college, to have a child, to have a new kiddush cup. Not all of these ideas are bad, some are good. It sometimes takes years to see what works and what does not. The only serious counter-argument is to consider reality and experience. This election is very special – we have two candidates who were either Pres or VP. They have track record. Consider that before engaging in all your hypotheticals. This is what we are told how we verify whether someone is a true navi or sheker – make them do predictions and see if they happen. Maybe if we introduce capital punishment for politicians and economists shekarim, elections will be easier to bear.

coffee > I didn’t know you smoked! You really should stop, as it isn’t healthy

And you should stop drinking coffee. I thought nobody is reading this thread, only writing.
This thread is the most unhealthy thing for blood pressure, you should stop reading it.

Bayit > Totally separate from every Taava

this seems like a haredi version of helicopter parenting (of which I am also guilty). Where does it say in the Torah that Hashem promises us to guarantee any encounter with yetzer or hara or any other challenge in life? Jews encountered all kind of problems over generations. True, you are not supposed to go and create problem for yourself, but army service is not entertainment. It would seem that a person who goes to serve for a right reason will be granted same protection as all other shluchei mitzzva and mesiras nefesh.

> So in addition to the learning and tehillim perhaps the Hareidi community can think what can they do to lift up the morale. Women in Beitar provide shabbos good for families whose husband’s are off fighting, for example.

this is a great idea. I don’t want to disregard this at all, but one logical extension would be for the learners to learn temporarily at their own expense and donate (not theirs, but) government subsidies to families of chayalim? I think this is one of the suggestions that is being imposed from outside, but why not make it a nedava instead?

Impeccable timing in turns of yomei teshuva and the war .. YWN front page has a tweet from another supporter who starts his tweets with “b ezrat Hashem” and talks about “zionist regime”. You are keeping a good company.

Kuvult, many good points.

> no one had any idea about a Holocaust in the 1930s
It was already clear that the 20th century is different. First WW1 (aka at the time as a Great War) with unheard of losses in “developed” world. Then, by this time, millions of Jews, as well as non-Jews, died or/and suffered immensely in USSR and threatened other countries already.

I agree that association of Jews with communism was not helpful to obtaining US visas and might have contributed to immigration restrictions of 1920s in the first place. We see in our time how nativism strengthens from what they see in the arrivals. This association also added to Germans conflating Jews and Communists.

Furthermore, before demanding prophetic vision from FDR, we should look at our own leaders who were often similar blind of the upcoming danger. FDR might had better military intelligence, but Torah wisdom should not be less than that …

some > because you love the kofrim so much you will shecht kosher yidden.

I am not sure what this refers to (and do not want to know), but this might come sometimes because we (and Torah, and Hashem) has different requirements for people at different levels. We ask less from people who were born outside of Torah or even worse inside anti-Torah movements, comparing with people who learned all halochos, but sometimes do not live up to them.

jewish unity, thanks for these great references – and for your service. Is your experience similar to what is described in the 2nd article?

Also, note if you click on a link in the first article, you’ll see another one with quotes from R Schach, Steipler saying that those who are not in full-time learning (meaning no other occupation at all), should be in the army, otherwise they are rodfim on those who are. Any other opinions about these quotes – are they correct or taken out of contxt, or there is more in the sources?

I thought capitulation refers to a recitation of a capitul of tehilim.

please,
there are often complicated questions. Even R Yohanan was not sure whether he was correct minimizing his request to Vespasian. Upheavals of last 200 years, and especially last 100 are probably unprecedented, more than times of BM2 churban and Spanish expulsion. Did anyone know exactly how to respond to assimilation trends 200 years ago? Some tried to translate chumash in German, some tried to establish yeshivos, some tried to teach both secular and Jewish studies, some wanted to teach girls chumash, there was no one answer and no one “gadol” who knew all the answers. We are at a little better state now (not counting millions of Jews that we are not reaching), but still there are several different approaches that survived from this great struggle. Is it not our responsibility to investigate the issues to our best ability. And I mean here at least people who have sechel, information, and learning for that. As I just posted in another thread, if you were born in Kletzk, and I was born in Pinsk, does this mean that your emes resides in Kletzk?

Again, there are different minhagim, but there are also issues that we all are thinking about and should be listening to each other.

Aside of the stupid opinion on charedim, this tactics is still being used by the Russian army right now in Ukraine, sending former prisoners, minorities, foreigners, etc forward. The only change is they are not sending 1,000,000 people at a time into the line of fire any more, but usually in small groups, one group after another. Soldiers reported walking over bodies of previous groups.

please > What bothers me is the complete disregard for this fact that as long as one is following Halacha from his Rabanim, he is doing Ratzon Hashem.

We do not currently have a Sanhedrin, that we should follow – and if Sanhedrin makes a mistake there is a Torah-prescribed procedure for karbonos, so it even a mistake by a Sanhedrin is not an unthinkable situation. So, as we have multiple groups of rabbonim makes different rulings, at some point you become responsible for your decisions. This should especially apply to modern charedi community where many people spend years learning and, in addition, can access variety of other opinions with modern communication tools, starting with this CR. Respect for Rabbonim is great, but a large community of Talmidei Cahchomim should be able to ask questions of those Rabbonim – and, at the end, Rabbonim are indirectly elected by the community itself: you decide where to send your shailos, where to send your children to school, which Rebbe’s tisch to attend.

Menachem > The same applies to Torah learners and physical fighters:

The problem is that partnerships are agreed upon (same applies to Issachar/Zevulun). It seems that learners and general Israeli public (ranging from loony left to traditional to observant-zioni to sephardim) do not fully agree on this. Surely, both sides are to blame, and probably there is not much can be done to appease the anti-religious left. But if many observant and Israeli traditional public is not happy with the arrangement, it may be that the learning-only community is at fault i their midos, learning, attitudes towards army, etc. Rather than saying “no” to any kind of engagement, they should be looking how they can help in any possible way.

Shaszeri > but they are at least contributing to some extent by learning Torah and becoming תלמידי חכמים

I am more worrying about quality of Torah Learning than of lack of soldiers in Tzahal. If students are subjected to distortions of Torah for political reasons – on either side of all these complex issues – then it is not a real Torah they are learning. This “learning” might solve the social role keeping a community observant of many of the mitzvos, but I don’t think it is a learning that keeps integrity of Torah. So, people end up spending their lives at a shtender and miss the mark. We see it here sometimes with posters being rude, obnoxious, ignorant, and dismissive of truth, while at the same time being “learned” in gemora and poskim.

You don’t need to judge T’s future policies by campaign. He already has a record. And so does, sort of, K.

T’s pattern is – as Gadol says above – transactional. It has both a positive and a negative sides. Positive – he is looking to resolve the issue, get a better bargain, including getting feedback from his advisers. Negative – his calculus might change. But I don’t think this is so different from others, he is just less polished, or cares less, about niceties.

K’s pattern is – to say anything. She accused Biden of not letting her (daughter of two academics) to get on a bus to school. Then, she becomes his VP and has no visible impact on his policies. Then, she does not notice that President has mental problems. She seems to have been on both sides of any issue, except abortion, thru her life. Based o just this one issue, one can presume that she is liberal at core.

So, is there a risk with T? Sure, more in Ukraine than in Israel. Some suggest that he was listening to advisers more earlier but may be more self-assured now. But there is an upside also. With K, there is only downside.

Some Jew I don’t know says that lost children are not something to focus on, klal yisroel needs to move on and have a peaceful shabbos or two.

yankel > RAMBAM versus Ptolemy, Einstein and Newton , has zero bearing on “interpreting gmara and rishonim

I understand what you are saying in terms of technique. As R Steinsaltz used to say – if you want to know what pipe was Abaye smoking (Rav was a smoker himself up to some point, I believe) – ask the archeologist, if you want to know what he is saying – ask Rabbis …

Still, in this case, I am addressing the substance of Rambam where he writes about science. He himself studied astronomy, etc both from ancients and from contemporaries (I think both in Spain and when he was on the run in Fes where there was the famous Fes madrasa that some call “first modern university” before English and French). So, you would need to know the subject to appreciate what Rambam is saying. Of course, you can pretend that Rambam of halakha is a different persona than Rambam of science.

pekak > we accept that they will take care of things for us.

So, this is what is done “in town”. I presume even those here who are tzadikim gemurim and practice defensive and kosher driving, still heard about other people getting in trouble. So, do people rely on insurance or go to B’D? say, one person’s daas Torah is for insurance path, and another – for B’D – do we get a B’D to resolve this?

Also, in reality, many people often pay off the other side to avoid going thru insurance or sometimes do not have it – are these cases going thru B’D or people simple settle on their own?

some > was that we are talking about a rasha who is no longer part of klal yisroel.

I missed that, and when I am re-reading this thread, I still do not see that. This started with Tzahal that has different types of Jews. If your statement of the doctors is limited to rashayim, presuming we agree on the definition, this is different. But your statement reads as unqualified applying to any doctor, except “frum” by your standard.

yankel > Like a non frum doctor who happens to excel in his field, patients should be referred to him.

R Soloveichik writes that in Lita towns where non/anti-observant people were not tolerated, they would still have a non-observant doctor and pharmacist – because there were no others, and people needed them. He says that in his experience (1950s) it was better to talk to a non-Jewish doctor when there was some religious sensitivity (kashrus, fasts, family issues) than to a non-religious Jewish doctor. From that, he suggested (l’hathila) that YU medical school will be useful: non-religious Jews who would come there might not become religious, but at least they’ll come out with appreciation of the views that religious Jews hold.

Lay off the mods, they are doing a hard job. And you don’t want to this be your last approved post either!

Also, some mod decisions may be delayed while the mods are consulting Alter Rebbe to clarify unclear passages in Tanya.

I am thinking you re going to Beis Din that might suggest filing the claim. But in town people should tell us how they do it.

I think hashgaha on beitzim is definitely in order right now, I heard three are counterfeit ones coming from lebanon.