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Hopefully, if s/he/them sticks around, he’ll improve his manners from the rest of us (NOT:)
CS, I do the same re:kippah as you do (except I was not elected or worked for civil service, you seem to have an interesting career), but somehow I do not have such visceral reaction to those who do not, even in our, supposedly more tolerant, times. Esav soneh Yaakov is still the halocha and some people feel it more than others. In some cases, it might be a menchlich thing to do. Say, you are a lawyer representing a client and the jury may be negatively affected by your yarmolka. I would think that your responsibility to the client would be to not wear it. Or, you are a doctor in an area, where people think Jews have horns. You may find that patients trust you more if you don’t have to show each of them that there are no horns under your headcover.
You did not answer, though, how is it tolerable to take Avira’s smicha away for the sin of teaching maths.
ENS, thanks for the numbers. Here KJ is close enough to Bronx.
I am sure we need to do some adjustments here. First, you have a good approach doing “family” rather than person, this compensates for larger Jewish families. Another question would be ages – if Jews have larger families, than maybe average age is lower and this greatly affects the income. Also – are these numbers before or after government transfers? This will affect all calculations.
also, you want to compare KJ with other similar areas, not parts of NYC.
ujm, yes, but it is a center of many other things also. Maybe Lower East Side was more Jewish, but not the rest of it.
YU does have a Bronx campus for grad schools and Touro in Brooklyn, so maybe the change is gradually happening.
First, an attempt to _kill_ rehitza would show that the world is built on killing …
2nd, each yetzer has another side and eliminating the negative side will eliminate the positive. For example, when yetzer for A’Z was eliminated during BM2, so did prophecy. T’Ch tried to eliminate yetzer hara totally, but this stopped marriages, work, and egg production.
While the theory is clear, I am not sure what would be the downside of eliminating rehitza? No more shehita and surgeries? Maybe it goes to what is the motivation for rehitza – power and envy? The downside for those might be a drive for business and building communities.
I very much hope that Jewish schools produce better education than the most failing inner city ones. We just need to turn these anecdotes into numbers that can be published in the press. Do Yiddish school in IL teach maths? Can we translate a standardized test into Yiddish, administer to a school and show those results?
Given the schools under discussion, why are we having most “prestigious” Jewish colleges in the middle of Manhattan? Is this the most accessible place for commuting students from the whole community – from Brooklyn to Queens to NJ suburbs?
Maybe they can subdivide into several campi – in Brooklyn and somewhere outside of NYC with less access to bad middos? Here R Kotler was ahead of time! Toms River, maybe?
Opps, I did not realize mdd is your yet another account..
mdd,
I would be interested to learn what is the source of your views on this matter? Is this something you know first hand? Heard from family and friends? in your community? TV? online? I would appreciate if you can enlighten us. This would help us to appreciate your views better.> That would take him out of the line to be king then…
THAT behavior would probably invalidate lots of kings along the line … Maybe a good reason for a sofek and saying brocha bli shem when meeting a Monarch?
Dig up NYCLU article and their reference to East Ramapo “wealth”. Their presentation is extremely biased, but there are some public numbers they are using that you may want to unpack to show the economic state of the community.
CS, R Meir Shapiro et al did not “serve” in the government. Do you understand the difference between elected and civil service? Elected officials represent their voters, so even a frei Jewish politician might put a kippah once in a while. There is no downside. Maybe it also says something about Polish state during the interwar period where ethnic activities were in the open even if under some pressure, contrary to other states that were trying to erase those. I presume institutions in EY were under political control, so one had to deal with it. Note, that even Avira here says that he is called Rabbi when teaching kodesh, and Mr when teaching chol. Would you say he should stand up for the honor of his Rebbeim who gave him semicha or stick to his parnosah?
I just heard in the discussion of the Queen’s demise that R Soloveichik paskened not to watch the mass part of JFK funeral, because, if I understood correctly, Pope said that one can do that mass over TV, thus it being a mamash a’z.
Avira, yasher koach.
> make more money than the average
We have claims about income going to each extreme .. according to press, some of our communities are both highest receivers of welfare and also “high assets” while people according to recent NYCLU paper. Strange, they went to assets rather than income… does it mean we are buying houses instead of spending on vacations? Do we have any reliable numbers to analyze economic well-being of our communities?
Gadol > You cannot keep the next generation in a cave forever.
But define “forever”. 20 years sounded reasonable, is 200 more “forever” than 100? Many of the functions you mention can be fulfilled within the community with a Yiddish speaking travel agent or a website (der vebsait?). You don’t need to be extreme here, it will be rejected anyway, just try different pathways for some people who can handle it, and see whether the community is ready or not.
My understanding is that Touro provides way less “entertainment” relative to (somewhat lower quality) education. And more kids go home and not joining clubs. Still, it would be a bigger problem for Touro that caters to more right-wing population. If someone does not mind to go to a same level of college without being in a protective environment, they can do it way cheaper and closer to home, wherever they live. YU has more leverage.
Hope YU will stay without clubs. I am not sure why parents and tax-payers spend ridiculous amount of money on institutions to provide social life opportunities. Separate clubs from YU. If someone wants to sponsor those clubs, separately from tuition, gezunte heig. If YU can lower tuition based on that (not holding my breath), then it will make YU more attractive to those who now send their kids to “goyishe colleges”.
RW did not ask “who is right”, he asked “what was original” minhag. That is not the same. You don’t tell your students that Yaakov wore a shtreimel to support a minhag, I hope.
Avira, maybe Ubiq patients are not the readers of Yiddish magazines. They used to be mostly socialist, do we have mostly religious yiddish papers?
Esrog – Eastern Europe would often get one esrog per town, according to stories. Would they really refuse it if was a pitom or pitom-less type?
RW, in most cases, the best minhag is from your family, unless it was clearly off “minhag shtus”.
Sephardi Torahs seem to be easier to handle and store upright. Also, their minhag is to do hagbah BEFORE the reading, which seems to make a lot of sense: you demonstrate the text to the kahal and then read it. If someone sees the problem, he can point it out beforehand. What is the explanation for the Ashkenazi order?
Sherer OR Emes? (Sheker has a stem, is shaky, Emes is yasod)
Mishna: STAM – halakha? Rebbi Meir?
Schools: a STEM or ST’M debate!
> ONE OF the methods a school can demonstrate public school equivalency is by administrating the Regents exams to their students
and then you have a theory that equivalency include also music, art and more…
Would then these regulations be good for many mosdos – you pass the regents and there are no other requirements? Is regents just math & science, or do they go into inappropriate material? Even if they do, they should not be _that_ hard – just score higher on math and instruct kids not to even open inappropriate subjects.
Syag > we were actually discussing is that you are happier with your kid’s exposure to this other stuff than learning “too much religion”.
This is not what I am trying to say. I am responding to people who say that exposure to public ed is all about inappropriate behaviors and bad ideas. I am giving you an example of what one can learn from it. I am not saying it is harmless, just giving people ideas of what it really is.
> Is this really a family mesorah or just what you picked?
It is. Both my wife and I have several generations of people with medical/engineering/business experience; some Jewishly educated well, some less, depending on place & time. This is not about philosophy of combining Torah and Derech Eretz/Maddah, etc, it is simply a way of applying oneself in a trade honestly, while being true to Torah at the same time. You seem to argue vehemently with me in the issue of chinuch, but not in other issues of middos and politics. Maybe, just maybe, if you are generally OK with what I learned from my predecessors, B’H same will apply to my kids.
My only difference from my parents and grandparents is that they did not argue about the derech on internet. Maybe, I should have followed.
Avram > than if the benefits help Jews learn Torah than they are fulfilling their purpose even in eyes of the government
I do not think it is kosher to take someone else’s money and decide on our own what is a better way to spend it. This is no different, conceptually, from the communist shitah that they know better than the property owners how to manage it. Government provide funds for English textbooks, and we should take those. They provide transportation and let’s take it, and government has no hesaron if students have Torah classes in addition to English, as cost of transportation is the same. Government gives out child credit, so we can take it. This is different from government (presumably reflecting common sentiment) provide funds to help poor people, and we say, fine, we are not gonna working and use those funds. I do realize there is some politics involved here and, maybe, there are some people who will be happy for everyone to get “helped” but, in my – possibly biased – estimate, most people do not support “welfare volunteers”.
I looked up comments to a WSJ OpEd responding to the NYT article. A Cathlic writer is generally sympathetic to yeshivas and so are many comments. Putting aside occasional anti-semites, who, as you are saying, are always happy to blame Jews and occasional philo-semites, who are happy to give money to Jews, most other comments revolve around getting government funds and performing what is required by that. Most are fine with Jews living their own self-sufficient life and most are not fine with whole communities receiving a lot of government funds to support their own lifestyle.
The article also mentions a relevant Supreme case in 1970s where Amish got away with less number of years at school, saying that their kids work and do not need calculus. Part of the decision looks at the facts – that Amish community is decent and self-sufficient.
Avram > If we are truly concerned about the klal, we should do what we can to support those learning to prolong their learning as much as possible.
Thanks for a clear explanation of your position. I totally agree that those who are capable of quality learning, should learn and kahal should support them. Ad kan? One of my teachers was asked to help out a struggling shul on shabbos when he was in yeshiva. He asked R’Y and got an OK for that. The shul then asked him to help on one chol day. R’Y said – no, you need to learn full time, that will make you more useful for them later on. I do think though that too many people are pushed into long-term learning for social reasons and are then upset that they are not successful against this criteria.
Avram > . You spent much of this thread decrying learners taking benefits they are entitled to by law by erroneously calling it tzedaka in order to bring in your Rambam
If there is a stirah between AAQ and AAQ, go by the later one! He took into account your lomdishe comments and modified accordingly. I am here more to learn from other POVs and discuss ideas with people with different opinions. In R Yohanan’s derech, I’ll go mad from posters agreeing with me.
But I looked up above and I stated at minimum thta I am OK with in-laws and gevirim supporting learning and you stam responded that you don’t believe me.
Where your observation is correct – I do have problems with multiple steps in the justification of the current system, some more questionable than others: taking tzedoka in general when one does not have to, taking tzedoka for learning, taking non-Jewish funds (that I agreed not to call goyishe tzedoka according to R Henneman even if the source is bery brief and not very convincing), taking non-Jewish funds not designated for such purpose (that is, yeshivos taking transportation money v. putting learners on welfare). And I do not make any representation about how widespread each practice is, I am looking at what is kosher and what is yosher (2 separate questions really). Hope this clarifies, but not holding my breath.
Avram > As AviraDeArah and DaasYochid both stated, the Rambam makes two statements that appear contradictory, and the halacha does not follow like you.
right, and this is why I enjoy talking with them. I would like to look further and how these stirahs are resolved. There are other Rambams like that (sleeping 8 hours AND learning at night). What I have a problem with is that the Vaad refers to a Rambam, omitting the other one. Nobody asked them about the Rambam. They could have referred to S’A or to R Kotler. As Gemora says in other circumstances: “this is the Torah and this is the reward?!”. Maybe, they saw this post as a polemic piece and thought that the person who asked a question is the type that gets impressed by Rambams. Maybe a webmaster wrote the piece, not the dayanim. And I went to their site specifically looking for a kosher lomdishe place – a business beis din in the most famoous yeshiva. So, maybe this is just a mismatch.
Avira, right, I heard, I think, from R Nosson Sherman that multi-culti philosophy is generally a disaster, but allowed up to build a better community comparing with previous “melting pot” pressure. So, maybe for every NYT article, we need to thank Hashem for how comparatively easy we have it, comparing to other times and cultures.
> Tach ve’Tat massacres? The Petlura pogroms? Most pogroms in the Russian Empire were carried out by Ukrainians in Ukraine.
These are all different and complicated events. And as jackk mentioned, Jews were not allowed into Russia proper, so all our tzoros were with other Imperial subjects: Poles, Ukranians, Lithuanians, where Jews actually lived.
You need to understand what the word “pogrom” means and why it came into Ivrit and English from Russian. We had Romans slaughtering Jews, York massacre, crusades, but only Russians got their own word in. Here is one of the definitions: “perpetrators of pogroms organized locally, sometimes with government and police encouragement.” That is, it is not just random violence by drunk Ukrainians. It is supported by (Russian) government. You can not organize and fight a “pogrom”. Police will arrest _you_ (channeling Yaakov Smirnov’s: ” in America, you come to a party, in Russia, party comes after you”, etc).
> are you aware that many people in southern and Eastern Ukraine do want to join Russia?
Yes, a decreasing number of them. There are legit public surveys and, if I recall correctly, even areas with lots of ethnic Russians are slightly pro-Nato. You can also have multiple election results over the years. There were lots of corruption, but you had a lot of candidates that were clearly pro- or anti-Russian. As you seem to know the area better, could you please look into this and give us some numbers. I also wonder, closer to home, what are American and Israeli “Russian” Jews think about it (some are of course Ukrainian). Are there any surveys on that?
mdd > The ones “deported” to Russia wanted to go there
why didn’t they go “there” before the war? Even now, some deported Ukrainians apparently are able to travel through Russia and third countries and return to Ukraine.
could you check with your sources – wow many Ukrainians before the war immigrated to Russia or one of the Russified territories.
> If you kill civilians you better be ready to show the world that you tried your hardest not to kill them
Again, this might be how beis din rules, and how NATO and Israel try to behave, but I don’t think it is an international chovah. I think – as long as you can claim that you had a military goal in mind, it is sufficient.
jackk > Boggles my mind that you can call civilians killed as being “unintentionally” killed by “shelling or crossfire” as an excuse for war crimes. Civilians are not targets. Never.
This is not absolute. We are used to American army spending hours following terrorists to minimize civilian casualties. Still, when we needed to get IS out of Raqqa and Mosul, we bombed those places. We did not _target_ civilians but knew that the risk for them was high. (Risk of staying under IS was also high, of course). So, when Russians are bombing cities where there is an opposing army hitting mostly civilians, it is barbaric by our times standards, but may not necessarily be a war crime. Nuremberg/Belgorod tribunals after the war will answer for certain, of course.
What I am really flabbergasted about is this week’s precision bombing of power infrastructure. (they use precision bombing because their dumb artillery is too far to reach the targets). And Russian’s apparent gleeful reaction to that. How can you cheer people getting stuck in subways and walking out in the dark, This may not be the highest loss of life, but an indicator how low these people fell.
> Remember Tach ve’Tat massacres? The Petlura pogroms? Most pogroms in the Russian Empire were carried out by Ukrainians in Ukraine.
These are a lot of things here. Again, reminding, this is a nice history discussion, no interpretation of these events justifies murdering probably already over 100,000 people. If you are a Russian who cares about saving people, just allow Russians from other countries to immigrate to your country. This is what USA did for Soviet Jews and some other people. This is what Israel does. Is this something Russians discussed between each other? You got tons of space. Use it.
RebE > one gets sick when the natural equilibrium is upset. To get healed one must restore it.
In Deos, Rambam suggests going, carefully, somewhat to the other extreme to compensate for previous errors and traqin yourself in the opposite middah, and eventually settle in the middle.
Maybe the same applies to limudei chol – Jewish community was destroyed (not just “decimated”) by onslaught of modernity, so we went to the other extreme to protect ourselves from the plague, and eventually need to get back to normality. Practical question is when.
ymribiat, i think RebE’s Rebbe answered the question – if you are in limudei chol and not doing anything, this is Bitul Torah. Does this answer the question?
Extending this approach makes it difficult for others:
– if one works well beyond what he needs, is it bitul Torah?
– to what degree you need to build up 401k or should you just have bitahon?
– if you eventually need to start working at low wage, is it bitul Torah that you could learn to do a better job and work less hours?RebE > why didn’t Shlomo Hamelech, who was smarter than anyone, think of it?
Kli Yikar sounds like something Aristotelian to my untrained ear. Melech Shomo was smartest before Aristotle, so there is no kashya.
> So why is gold a commodity and silver the currency? People don’t want to spend the more valuable but hoard it.
Just had a simillar statement in Ketubot ~ 70: when a kalah brings cash int the family, it is added as 150% of the value as the husband will use the money to invest [it is not ribis as it is a present, not a loan]. This works for silver, but gold may not qualify for a 50% mark up because it is usually not used for transactions, but only as savings.
> they were being taught chumros that put their own parents observance in question
Adam taught Hava a chumra as halakha and now we need to work for a living … I learn with a number of Rabonim yasharim who do, and teach, chumros and I have no problem learning from them. So, teaching Torah in a way that distorts halakha and middos may be done out of good intentions and even a great need to keep people committed to Yidishkeit, it is just not my family mesorah. Mine is closer to what CT described here before. I may be too pushy here for this approach, as I feel there are people who will benefit from it if they were aware of such derech. Not dismissing that some people will benefit from a more closed approach.
maskil > is a fallacious argument .
I agree. I did not mean that one can do an aveira because someone else did. I am saying these things are connected: we are trying to establish a Jewish chinuch system in a challenging environment. Both systems are dealing with the same issue – accept some government support and avoid demands we do not like. As we use roads and bridges and, hopefully, pay taxes, everyone has to deal with that.
So, my point is – different approaches choose different ways to deal with the issue and have different population they address. Each of them has their own challenges. No reason to denigrate another group for having an issue to deal with. Just ask a question – are they helping some people, to which extent. You will find out that there are pepole who benefit by going to YU instead of Penn State, to Touro instead of Podunk U, and to Vizhnitz yeshiva instead of Brooklyn high.
nisht > That’s actually the law in NYS outside of NYC.
There is a nasty follow-up to NYT article by a so-called “rights organization” describing the plight of pupils in a majority-Jewish district. They don’t mention “Jews”, they simply explain how “white people” oppress the “not English-speaking people” (sic!). Funniest numbers there is that average district spends – gasp – $26K per pupil, while these poor souls get “only” $23K and, thus, are failing schools in huge numbers. Still, some of their allegations might have regel l’davar. They are admitting that transportation and textbooks to all students are legal, but they hint that the district increased eligibility – possibly in a legal way, as you say. They also imply that there is something funny going on with contracts given to the bus companies. While the source is totally treif and manipulates numbers even worse than NYT article, they obviously have some information that this is based on.
Mdd can also calm down. History is an interesting topic, but not really relevant when discussing current atrocities. Russia violated international law multiple times over the years. If she did not have nuclear weapons, a UN veto and a pipeline, it would have been punished long time ago.
Ukraine is a reasonably democratic country, so if a majority of Ukrainians wanted to join Russia, they would have. Even a tiny non-democratic Belorussia, almost surrounded by NATO and Ukraine, is not joining their Russian brothers. Furthermore, Russians made a silly mistake – Ukrainian elections used to be 50-50 between corrupt pro-Russians and corrupt nationalists. When Russia got spooked by their side losing elections, they occupied the most pro-Russian areas – and the rest of Ukraine is now voting decisively pro-West, not even pro-nationalist. This is similar to US civil war: North and South had equal representation in the Senate and guarded that while adding new states. As a result of the hostilities, South forfeited their voting power for the war and some time after that.
chief > And on a side note, does anyone think Russia was kinder to the Jews than Ukraine?
yes and no. At the times mdd pines for, Russia proper did not allow Jews into their country, so they did not do anything bad to the Jews. Jews were invited into Poland by the Kings and then were opposed by competing burgers. Then, Jews figured out that they can work for Polish aristocrats by supervising their remote Ruthenian villages and bringing income back. Obviously, this created tensions, culminating in Khmelnitsky pogroms. Parenthetically, it would be interesting to see teshuvos from that time: how did Rabonim react to people leaving heilicke communities of Warsaw and Krakow and moving to Uman or Lubavich. This is like going to Texas ourdays.
common > I see frum Lawyers, Doctors, Judges even cops who wear a yalmulka,
Did you einekle steal your account?! Lots and lots of lawyers and doctors in previous generations walked barehead, while being fully observant and learned. Also lots of Sephardim did, depending on location. You should remember that. Not sure it is still not happening. In fact, once my chasidishe kollel hevrusa was genuinely surprised when I told him a story that implied that I wear kippah in public work meetings. His presumptions were from other professionals he learns with.
akuperma > rabbanim cited in the Talmuds
with all seriousness, there should be no question that all of this is permitted for some. Raban Gamliel had same number of students learning Torah and Greek. I presume the equal number is symbolic here, same as 10 commandments divided in 2 groups of 5.
It is really a practical question – how much of including non-Torah material will destroy Jewish life as we know it. The answers swing over time.. When our communities were secure, you can do more; when not, you need to protect more. Unfortunately, both sides sometimes do not talk directly to the issue but try to strengthen their rhetoric by claiming that something is verbotten or, opposite, a mitzva.
Avira > they only shut down when it was time for reading/writing.
I don’t have inside experience in fully insular schools, maybe they are conditioned to reject foreign culture so they react that way? But I observed a different thing: math and especially science in high school is taught by people with some background in the subject, maybe even a normal science teacher. We do not expect someone who is good at teaching Parsha to go do algebra, at what3ver dumbed-down level it is taught. On the other hand, English can be taught by a regular “frum” person who is either not teaching kodesh this semester or is someone’s relative. After all, the person speaks passable English and is a teacher in general, what else do you need?! So, no wonder these teachers are not generating enthusiasm. I don’t know how widespread this is.
“All hat, no cattle” is a better version… Yidden used to do shehitah right in NYC, so it would be possible to get some cattle going. Deep South might be a more heimishe place. From my little experience, there are people there who are very excited to see Jewish people outside of the pictures in their Bible class. The biggest cultural problem though will not be hats but drastically different speed of speech, A NYer will not be able to stand there for 10 minutes waiting for the local to finish the greeting.
What do you mean, you don’t know what they learned today? Hope not. Please share.
Maybe I was no clear why I brought this example. The chol subjects are not a substitute for kodesh. What I wanted to illustrate that these subjects are not all shtuyot. They open a way for a different discussion. The kid himself flagged the issue, we discussed that, he is not going to confuse aseres hadibros with the school version, but he now understands how the world sees it, how they transferred some Torah values into modern “weekend”, how they lost part of meaning because they do not know the Hebrew original.
Of course, if this would be done outside of supervision, the results will be negative. For example, some of my kids had pretty liberal chol teachers, who blew up over Trump and probably wasted some of the class time on that. I don’t think they affected the kids, as the kids were making fun of them, probably not to their face, but it could have happened, I presume.