Always_Ask_Questions

Going back to Reform – imagine we would have all the tools and institutions we have now at the time reform, communists, and maskilim were starting up: yeshivos, BYs, Artscroll, YU, Hillels on campus, Chabad houses, R Lord Sacks, R Berel Wein – would you think many of those Jews stayed within the boundaries, satisfying their yearning for gashmius or spirituality using these tools? So, we did not have them in time and it is the whole community “fault”. Again, “fault” as shortcoming, I am not saying that 18th century Berlin Rabbis were expected to come up with all of this. But Mendelhson at least tried, and those who opposed him also tried.

> Michelle Obama 2024. Can anyone beat her?

Is this a play on: Pres. Obama, when did you stop beating your wife?

We talk about reform and socialists as if they are an external threat, but they came somehow from inside of the normative community. We can blame the czar, Pascal, Marx and Napoleon but still the Jewish community and leaders let the reform happen… This is not to blame someone specifically, we are talking about new unprecedented challenges, but we need to admit that all movements came from is

we have about 4 mln Jews in America without any connection to anything genuine and on the verge of disappearing. Why question any attempt to save these people!?

Syag, you are right. When I am zooming in on specific streets on data cityofchicago org, each street is relatively safe. Say, a (random) bloc near Kriser’s pet store had only 3 events this year: battery, criminal damage, attempted armed – handgun. I guess, it is a relatively low crime area. Maybe this helps understand our difference risk perception on other items. Here in Podonk, this would be an undesirable area to live.

my apologies to a gantzeh Chicago, including Dearborn park that had 1,300 crimes committed in the last year. I should have known better than touch that in this group (or go there with or without a yarmolke).

This makes me wonder: would it be considered mesirah for YWN to respond to a lawful subpoena about a poster? What do poskim say?

Avira > without …, who don’t inject …, who revere …

again, this is a subjective list through which you feel free to reject anything you don’t like. Just say – “I respect anyone I respect”. This is as non-Torah attitude as some of the excesses you are, often rightfully, criticizing.

it is sakonos nefoshos to go have a yarmolke on your head, or in your pocket, in some parts of Chicago – should we let Russians bomb it?

phil, whatever things happened on the territory of Russian empire for last several centuries, you need to acknowledge that people there, whether Russian or Ukrainian or Polish, are human beings, descendants of Adam Harishon. Many of their forefathers were criminals, but as many, if not more, were themselves victims of the Czar, Gulag, Nazis, etc.

Current generation of Russians seems to be following in footsteps of their fathers, or at least many of them at least support that. So, we add their sins to their fathers’.

Current generation of Ukrainians go to work, harvest wheat, vote, including for Jews, steal from the government, pay bribes, generally behave like 2nd world citizens. They do not seem culpable for whatever was done in their country before they were born. If and when they’ll start behaving the same way as Russians, I’ll join you in saying “no surprise here” and will not support them in any way. So, did we find a middle point to agree here?

fascinating question, we need a barbarity index across civilization.

One example of civilization meeting across different levels – Aztecs, with their sacrifices, or Spaniards, who defeated Aztecs and who should know better …

Avram > the shul did not actively throw anyone out who wasn’t wearing a mask,

If this was pre-vaccine and there were older people in the shul, the question would be how big the shul was. If it is a huge hall with enough place for people to separate, this would be fine. If it is “6 ft” theoretically, but 3 in practice – in 1 dimension, with people being close together, then it was not responsible at that time.

given unexpected hunger for data in this group, I verified my early unscientific survey on Shabbos with a more systematic data collection … I started making mental notes by brochos, continued while waiting for the 10th, and finished by shmone esre. Hope my small (*) decrease in kavanah is justified by this small contribution to science.
(*) small decrease as my initial kavana was not high enough

So, out of 10 people, I a priori evaluated 6 is uncareful and 4 as careful based on previous behaviors. Out of 6 uncarefuls, 3 were no sound, 2 (adult + teenager) were dry-coughing every 10 minutes, 1 (adult) – every 20 minutes. Multiple coughs b-toch-dibur were counted as one. Out of 4 carefuls, all no sound.

As they say in exploratory analysis, this data is of course not enough to make any conclusions, but it is sufficient to define what to collect for. So, others are welcome to follow the same protocol: evaluate people in advance, then count cough rates per group.

jackk > know only how to point out issues but have absolutely zero ability to solve them.

Jackk, it is understandable you are confused. Republicans prefer giving people freedom to act on their own, so it is hard to see the connection. Dems prefer “hands on” approaches, as Reagan said “I am from the government and I am here to help you”. “sometimes” solutions do not work, so there is even more effort, and then another effort to solve problems created by the first effort, so everyoe is very grateful “for the effort”.

Here is an example for you to ponder: Pres Obama suggested that private lenders are wasting money, so government will save a lot of money by making student loans by itself. This “helped” to get money for other spending priorities. Several years passed, and now Pres Biden uses the fact that the loans are now in gov hands – to simply forgive them. Forget all the promised “savings”.

I mean, you modified my words to introduce an error. When gemora says that quoting someone in the name gives olam habo, I presume they meant quoting correctly!

phil > herd immunity will be attributed to the “vaccine” that was proven to not prevent transmition nor even prevent people from getting covid

Neither current vaccines, nor having covid, prevents getting or transmitting it several months later, especially with the virus mutating. The difference is noticeable. In one shul I daven, there are people who were mostly careless. I feel sometimes that I am at a smoker’s club as every couple of minutes you hear a chronic cough, mostly young men. In another shul, where people preferred vaccines to natural immunity and this happens way less.

I was trying to explain that the idea of always looking for past “sins” is dangerous. A simple idea of “do not murder” expressed in 10 commandments is much simpler. As an example, I brought the German population that, by itself, was not involved in any murders, they “only” supported it based on their understanding of how bad Jews, Poles, Brits are, or were in the past. So, the world being not black and white does not mean that we need to excuse murderers. If you do accept Putin’s culpability, there is no reason to discuss academic history of Slavs in the same sentence.

huju, I don’t know about lakewhut but why would someone with economic knowledge support more taxes on people with some income? These people are already paying more in taxes that those below (as our taxes are proportional). If you think things are not fair “enough”, why not propose a compromise like “less taxers for those with income below”, such as decreasing further 10K SALT limitation that was introduced in 2017 and is obviously piad by rich people?

Syag, I am not sure what are you accusing me of? Expressing my opinion that uncareful behaviors caused deaths and supplying facts to support my opinion? please clarify. As to actions, I did not detain anyone or forced masks on some pure souls. I did help a couple of places to improve their ventilation, I hope it was not a crime. Those who wanted to breath more virus still had enough places to visit.

jackk, when there is a consistent reaction to current events with “BUT remember”, it is not a reflection of interest in Jewish history, but political support of the attackers.

And history is full of cases where such justification is used for a new attack, such as Germans justifying actions against Jews by a reference to Jews participating in 1918 revolution; attack against Poles by cases of Polish attacks against German civilians. See a recent 2015 book “The German war” by Nicholas Stargardt who brings together diaries and letters from that time.

philosopher, we are zoche to live in a world that at least externally recognizes the value of peace and a number fo countries, at least in Europe and Northern America, do not fight with each other for 80 years. Then, one country breaks these norms and attacks the other, a normal human response is to condemn that. If in response, you start contemplating what happened in these places in previous generations, it is just sick, in my opinion.

But again, my question was not really to you to explain your position, I think I understand it. I am asking the others whether they see people with such views in their communities.

As of now, US excess mortality is 15% on par with Poland (UK, Israel is 9, France, Germany 5).

To what degree this is due to the country medical system or overall organization, I don’t know.
The timeline suggests that it is only in part to “pre existing condition”: US is higher but within a pack of half of developed countries up to February 2021. So, US was doing almost as well as other reasonable countries. Most of relative decline is from June 2021 to February 2022.
“Confirmed deaths” statistics give a similar picture.

So, collective desire to not be bothered cost on the order 100,000 lives.

I understand people who miss going to stadiums and bars, but I still do not understand Jewish thinking. When avos were confronted with hunger, they would go to Mitzrayim (sic!) to get food at the cost of personal safety. They would not rebel against H’ and say – we are gonna learn Torah in EY, do not bother us with gashmiyus. So, I can’t fathom Jews denying conditions that they observe.
And, obviously, many gedolim, like R Edelstein, R Henneman took the events seriously.

Then, the only explanation is that these Jews were convinced that nothing was really happening: people did not die, it is liberals’ fall, they are not fair to us, etc. Those who “identify with Trump” present the most confusing picture – refusing to take vaccines that Trump spent so much effort pushing through government regulations. Among all explanations, Occam razor seem to point to simply uneducated people listening to political radio and websites and following whatever their hearts desire.

a quick summary of R Avigdor Miller on vayera:
Avraham will command his household .. Rambam: it means he’ll teach middos … you need to go specialist. Not just any Rabbi, the one who specializes in middos. You can not know about middos without learning Mishlei. And there are .. roshei yeshiva who did not learn Mishlei. The whole Tanach is full of good council; only you have to learn it in a proper way.

Every Yid or a group who sit down to learn in any small shtibel or in their houses are the Torah world.
The Torah world is not limited to a location or age group.

RebE, good, so when you start looking into that, you see certain things! I am primarily discussing this not for the zchus of politicians but for my concern that we can’t talk ehrliche between each other.

For his cabinet, for example, you need to give him credit for having people like Mattis, Bolton, Pompeo, Lighthizer, Esper, Barr, Sessions, Azar, DeVos, Haley. These are all independent thinkers and actors, often with ideas different from Trump. Yes, he fired some/most of them eventually, but he hired and listened to them first. I just googled Biden, and I see one person who had an independent career outside of being a politician or Biden’s staffer – Janet Yellen. Obama – maybe 2-3 people.

tax breaks for the rich – most significant change was restricting rich people from writing off expensive mortgages and local taxes. Dictators: pressing Europeans to stop Russian pipeline, restricting Chinese companies, forcing Europeans to pay more for NATO. Covid – US mortality is indeed 2x worse than comparable countries – and even worse after Trump, as well as vaccine attitude. Biden, similar to Trump, declares victories periodically because it is politically convenient, except there is nothing like Warp speed, remaining issues are not addressed. In all of the above, you seem to be upset at some Trump speeches, without judging fairly his actions that are in public record. After all the learning you had, RebE, you should be able to be a shofet tzedek.