Always_Ask_Questions

Mod, respect.

care to elaborate?

an interesting question – why Yaakov was worried about Esav’s Zionism and not Efron’s. Several ideas:

1) Yaakov is the person who worries about his zechuyos often, Avraham did not so much. R Twersky connects this with low self-esteem in a different place (Midrash that Yaakov was offered a chance to go up the ladder, but did not).

2) We have here an issue of who is inheriting. Not Efron. Esav has zechuyos as part of his claim.

3) Yaakov is afraid of encountering Esav. It is just about comparing with him. Efron could be a tzadik gamur but he is not coming to confront Yaakov.

It is 4.
Midrash Rabba – why is it now particular famous?! it is called “rabba” somehow
Meam Loez expands on that (as he usually does 🙂
Vilna Gaon – unreferenced by R Twersky. I am sure if you ask in your community, someone knows by heart
R Twersky – expands on both Midrash and Gaon, in his parsha book.

n0 > but going to all different rabbonim may make you confused in your knowledge of Torah

this is a serious question. I learned it the following way: it is better to first learn under one Rav or in one place, so that you got knowledge systematically, without skipping. After that, it is beneficial to go learn from multiple teachers to acquire different approaches.

One allusion: Alter Rebbe says that he was thinking about going to Gaon to learn Torah or to Maggid to learn Davening. He says “I knew a little about Torah, but nothing about Davening” …

n0> I’m not aware of any Chassidim not using an eiruv because of a chumra.

I did not research this beyond the visuals. I understand that this is a legit halachik difference between the communities (unless you hold that chasidim are illegitimate group of Ashkenazim who changed the minhag), not a chumra. My quote from Sephardim is that they’ll follow Ashkenazi community halakha when it contradicts theirs. Same reasoning they are sporting black hats, blending into the yeshivish community.

jackk > Similar to Oil companies making record profits this year and everyone blames Biden.

I don’t want to interrupt your lovely discussion, but this argument shows that you are way off track. You can blame free market faiulures after all government actions are done right and the market is still not working. Expecting free market to be healthy despite all kind of restrictions is a way fascists and communists convince people to make even more restrictions leading to a black hole. Same applies to medical market – did we try making, say, insurance portable between states and any other free-market reforms? Trump issued regulations to make hospital prices transparent, the due date was early in Biden administration, I am not sure what the status of that is. Maybe someone knows.

Dr. Pepper, I am a small business employer and look over available policies every year with brokers. I totally agree with you – somewhere around ACA all plans became unaffordable and deductibles are such that insurance is rarely used (Baruch Hashem). So, essentially ACA is a combination of a tax and elimination of medical insurance as we knew that except in catastrophic cases. And elimination of doctor’s private businesses that used to be a parnosah for previous generation of Yidden. Right now, people who frequent hospitals report that where there were Jewish doctors, there are now other ethnicities.

Ubi, nice comparison of the communities. Now, try putting yourself in the Rashi’s shoes, if I may. Did Rashi mean to foreclose our thinking about Chumash? Did he order printers to put his commentary in a special Rashi script to underscore that nothing else should be said after and avoid confusion?

Another option is that Rashi is there every time you are reading a posuk and have a concern, you are likely to find a helpful Rashi giving you an explanation. As if he is preparing you to be able to master the text and start serious analysis after that.

Tzait to daven for rain in Iraq

coffee, Yaakov was afraid that Esav had 2 mitzvos – live in EY and respect for parents. I would not be hutzpadik with, for example, someone who does those 2, and eats kosher, and keeps shabbat, and served in the army, just because he is not wearing the hat you do.

Avira, yes, I recall that option (in Makos?). I think it is a general statement of an option available to beis din in cases where do not have acceptable witnesses but are sure of the guilt. Nothing to do with the political situation during late BM2, which is what Gemoras in Shabbos and AZ are talking about.

Re: beis din in old times. IT is Avoda Zara 8b: there were so many murderers that beis din could not prosecute all, and moved out so that there will be no death penalty
מ”ט כיון דחזו דנפישי להו רוצחין ולא יכלי למידן אמרו מוטב נגלי
ממקום למקום כי היכי דלא ליחייבו

Sholom,
following up on logician’s speculation: maybe the issue is sharper in golus. In Israel, you can presume better mastery of sources by rabbeim and students, so they do not worry that Rashi will be ignored.

Avira, what I think these Sephardim (and Maharal) were holding by – learning mikra as kids first. The person I mentioned was a Rav in a golus community afterwards, so he did learn more than mikra either at that school or later. I’ll try to find out more details. But also I think you kind of assume that the school was “the education”. hopefully, most students did not go to meet their Maker right after graduation. So, they would learn the rest later on. Persian merchants were more likely to afford – 3-hour-a-day work and learning the rest than most ashkenazim. (Another sephardi community I heard of worked for several weeks a year, travelling to pick up some carpets and then selling them to support themselves for the rest of the year).

RW, you should go visit Israel with a fresh look. Rather than looking for violators, you might find a lot of places with kosher food only, a lot of people stopping working Friday afternoon and experiencing Shabbat way earlier than many in galut. Same as Rashbi noticing a Jew running with two bouquets in honor of shamor and zachor.

Yabia, I brought the info, I am not saying that Tosfos is better. In fact, Maharal criticizes the approach of teaching pilpul to young kids before they master the basic material.

this is just how these Sephardim learnt, and I think this is relatively representative. Even when learning Gemora or Halakha from Sephardi sources, I am struck with how much closer to the text and reality they typically are, addressing the core problem first, rather than looking for some outlying conditions. Generalizing, of course. And, again, this worked great before Sephardim needed to address modernity. I don’t think this straight approach learnign whole Mikra first works well when people are confronted daily with complicated issues.

many BYs and loal shuls put out newsletters with mazal tovs. You can probably count there. Record year of publication and year of graduation

It seems that Hebrew in 2009 and English vol. 2 in 2019. OU review actually calls R Bernstein “the author” while giving due to R Copperman. Are the letters about English or Hebrew, or both?

In the story with the other book (in English), the author was later saying that some of the Israeli gedolim, who did not know English, relied on others for information.

interesting. could you also collect ages of both, numbers over time, year of marriage (so that we can compare different years), and similar numbers for boys.

Avira > if chazal were around today, they would institute a bracha “shelo asani moderni”

So, do you think Rambam would change some of his scientific and medical writing based on current information? Would he update, say, his recommendations on how long to sleep with an iPhone app recommendations? And if yes, what sources will he use? Would he go to yeshiva students who learned his old seforim (and then sometimes overrule him with later sources), or will he go to the physicists, psychologists, economists who else know what the halakha requires (say Dr Schroeder, R Twersky, R Aumann) …

Do you think amoraim who discuss all kind of medical and nutrition recommendations will look at what modern dietologists are saying? I am not saying that they’ll go to college to get degrees. Maybe they’ll simply learn English, public health, statistics. Maybe they will ask someone in Lakewood to translate “Nature” into Aramaic …

I never knew that summer is longer than winter! (in northern hemisphere). one more thing to thank Hashem for.

Avira, nice town. Might be your great-grandparents were in wood business, sending it by the river.

This is close to an area where some of the Vilno Rabonim, like R Grozdinski will go for the summer, so they might have stopped by them.

Wiki and others list 3 shuls, schools of multiple derachim, including Zionist, all for 2000 Yidden. So, it was indeed a heterogeneous community. several photos shows one picture of girls in berets, the rest look like not-so-observant

Congrats to everyone from that flight. Sounds like a good reason to travel them again.

I saw an article about some entertainment person decided to ditch a “nazi”-owned Tesla and got … a VW instead.

Note that while R Yohanan “predicts” Vespasian’s election, he is also does not know how much to ask, decides to ask less, and does not know whether he made a mistake until his death… Maybe his greeting was a combination of knowledge of Roman politics and also a desperate need to flatter the general. If he does know how V will react to an ask, he also does not know whether V will punish him for the wrong title, but increases the chance of making V look favorable at his request.

We did not always knew the source. In fact, we have halochos of demai – sofek that am haaretz who is generally keeps kosher actually tithed the produce. Of course, maaser can be fixed, not everything can.