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Lostspark, great idea but could you do it somewhere nearby like Canada or Cuba? R Avigdor Miller writes that we should learn lesson from reading about Vietnam; if we don’t learn, events move closer and closer until we learn. So I suggest learn from history
RebE, you are entitled to your own opinions but not the facts. I understand it is not your fault, your radio is on some wicked channel. He had multiple advisors who are independent thinkers, and they had disagreements and discussions. In some cases, he changed or delayed his decisions. Most anti T republicans complain about style but not substance of his policies on any topic. If you admit the facts, I’ll take your opinions seriously then.
> Black and white, with a fedora.
this is circular reasoning – we dress properly because we dress like we dress. And others are not proper because we are Hashem’s fashion setters.
at least for women who lately dress in similar colors, sans fedora, Gemora says mefurash that in some places a present for ladies are coloured clothings – that were way more expensive back then.
U> Jews dress differently than gentiles.
There is value here, but we need to admit that generations and generations of Sephardim, Ashkenazim, Bavlim, Israelim dressed like most people around them. Some wear a hat because “this is proper to be dressed in front of an important person” – opposite of what you are saying.
easier voting benefits low education/income voters that are in many case Democrats.
Raban Gamliel lost the argument that only proper students could learn and they brought in extra benches, but did they put all the benches in the first row!?
I recall from learning this sugya that there is absolutely no problem taking difficult things like talmid chacham – not working on erev 9Av, etc.
Good question. There is definitely a value of dressing up like someone and then you start behaving like one, sort of a neder. On the other hand, possible problems:
– Tocho Kvaro – you presenting yourself as something you are not (yet?), leading to:
– gnevas daat – people get up when you come in, do business with you, marry their daughters to you, etc …probably most concerning – others have a mitzva to aspire to be talmidei chachamim, and they will look at someone who just dressed up as an example, and then _they_ serve as an example for the next generation ….
Personally, I am not concerned that Talmidei Chachamim dress a certain way that they can be seen from afar. I am concerned that non-Talmidei Chachamim dress like Talmidei chachamim causing confusion for others – and themselves.
Yserbius > Rebbe did so with the kavona that going to the Mikvah would save him from hypothermia.
Rebbe here is interfering with a good story! Original story teaches us to be moser nefesh and machmir in every situation, while the real one lacks educational capacity other than Rebbe trying to survive. I can see teachers using the first one even if they know the second.
Yserbius, I think we need to take into account the issue of moris ayn. Not only elections have to be reasonably fair, they need to be seen so by most of population. And it is a challenge given amount of possible disinformation around. So, I would support reasonable transparency actions – observers, voter ID, etc that help people feel that elections are fair, even if I don’t think amount of possible fraud is not high. As an example, my kid read the rules that the first time voters need to bring an ID and did so – and was surprised that he was not asked for one!
> there’s nothing wrong at all if they decided to dress like they did in Europe,
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Freudian slip 🙂1 is the one! the problem with the platfoem our days that you lose more voters than you gain with it. Romney had a reasonable platform and lost. Modern elections seem to require certain level of populism and massaging the message to be competitive. If D-s give away money strategically to various groups not just in general (as Romney mentioned 47% even ar his time) but right before the elections, you need to counter with something to activate all your voters.
chance of winning is the same, but expectation of winning is different, right? Not sure how this works, with accumulation of the prizes, is playing becomes actually profitable on average at some point? or everyone understands it and starts buying thousand of tickets?
What was Chazon Ish’s explanation of his position on elections?
Avira, other than not liking my explanation on the background of what Rashi is saying, maybe you can comment on the substance?
As to “political”, it only means that some issues are more acute at certain time periods. If Rashi were to live during Melech Shlomo’s time, maybe this would be less of interest. Is it not interesting that Rashi lived actually during times when goyim were fighting between each other for EY, while trampling through the area where Rashi lived with tragic consequences? When you read Chazon Ish 100 years from now, would you include background on his relationship with Ben Gurion et al as context?
coffee, these problems are a little harder than what you have in standard statistics. You may think about a problem: given 10 random events, I get 10 same outcomes, this is not likely BUT in this case, the criterion for selecting 10 random events is usually constructed post factum. That is, there are 100 ways to define events you plan to look at: those that were within 1%, or those in the South, or whatever. Then, the chance of having these 10 events having same outcome is subject to selecting these 10 according to some rule.
the way to test this is by dividing your data in (at least) two parts: use 1990s data to analyze and define how you select events, and then check ONCE on the data from 2000s.
What would be wrong with wearing Arab or Persian levush according to those who wear Polish levush?
> you should always be allowed to be mechalel shabbos for cancer research
right question. Here is where logic of the teshuva applies – this is multi-year multi-person work and one needs to rest some time … even then – if a person really makes an impact on humanity with a reasonable probability, does he need to go to minyan? learn the parsha? drive to pick up kids from school and buy chalav isroel? I am not even talking about watching TV or posting on YWN …
is this far-fetched for a regular guy who is tinkering in the lab with mice?
a quick calculation:
life-expectancy in US increased 10 years in last 70 years, or 1/6th of a year per year. Let’s say 25% of it is attributable to medical research, or 1/25th year per year per person3 mln people die per year in US. So, medical research saves 100k man-years every year.
there are 100K medical researchers in the world, so each researcher saves on average one person every year just in USA. And surely some more than others … hope I made this correctly.
> yes, they change their numbers as it gets closer to the polls. I
the question is – do these changes consistently going from pro-D to competitive and then they analyze their final results as unbiased. I am not saying this is the case, I am saying this is something to check out.
Avira, the shaila was apparently asked by a legit person. a good question when is “research is not active pikuach nefesh”? What is a direct or indirect link? In this case, vaccine development was a pretty specific set of steps, not research of some unknown things. For example, mRNA formulations were done within the first month, after that there were a number of steps testing, developing specific techniques, mitigating problems, etc. Granted, there were uncertainties in each step – some approaches did not work out, some slowed down, in some cases manufacturing failed, but it was a set of a small number of paths, each consisting
To put it in simple turns – you hear that someone’s boat is slowly drowning in a lake. You are going to get your boat and tow it to the lake. So will 20 other people. Some of them will get stuck in traffic, some boats are old and may not start. Some on the boat may not survive until any of you will come. Is this direct or indirect?
Another question here – how do we deal with expected results when probability of success are small but payoff is high? That is, 1% chance is multiplied by 1,000s of lives saved.
When other politicians were thinking on how to re-educated Sephardim, Begin was addressing them, elevating them, reminding them that they are descendants of traditions of Rambam …
> Begin was the closest thing to a frum PM … He also kept shabbos and Kashrus.
Sigh
coffee, not always, some stories, even by reliable sources, do not get published or of interest. We read what we want to hear.
Coffee, right, so he works through person’s natural qualities. Maybe your quote can be understood the following way: melech is elected by people, therefore, we deserve what we elected, and thus Hashem is reacting to our election decision, rather than personal decisions by the elected official. He is there to represent mitzvos and aveiros of the voters and to get corresponding rewards and punishments.
akuperma, agree on most points. If someone gets too concerned about current events, go to the library and open papers from any previous times and see how unhappy and worrying people were.
Of course, what is different now is that we see everything faster. If you read about German population attitudes during WW2 – they do not look different from what Russian population does now: similar attitude that the world is against us, thus we are doing what is needed to survive, and “look what they are doing to us” … any Nazi escalation included “we now call for peace”,” they started shooting across the border”. etc. You may get concerned – “but now you can see events in real time”. Note that German attitudes generally did not change towards the end of the war and shortly after. for example, during death marches from the camps in the last days of the war, Polish villages would generally help/feed the prisoners, while German would not.
coffee, best defense of Biden I ever saw. Send him a message, he will start saying “Hashem made me do this”. Maybe he is more like Pharaoh, his behirah was taken away on the account of all his previous stubborn statements.
A related shaila was asked by someone involved in covid vaccine research in 2020 – whether he should continue working on shabbos. The answer (I think from someone from YU) that he should not – (1) as he needs to rest at some point, he can as well do it on shabbos, (2) there are multiple companies working on this and why do you presume that you in particular are the person to develop the right one.
In retrospect, I do not fully understand the teshuva. Speed of vaccine development was such that there were multiple projects overlapping and dependent on each other. A lot of effort went into speeding things up. So, if someone was involved, he could have a reasonable case to work on those shabbatot when his project made a difference. A day was worth several thousand deaths.
yungerman > doesn’t give him a right to throw away the entire Torah cause now currently he’s busy doing a mitzvah
Right. This is why we are talking here about being meikel rather than “throwing away the entire Torah”. But it is also true some people feel that way on every chumra. I am not sure if this is more of standing for Hashem or personal insecurity that giving up on one chumra will break the person. Maybe there is a difference between someone considering adding or subtracting a chumra if you had it from childhood. Same as difference between taking and rescinding a neder in general.
538 approach is not bad, but I still suspect some pro-D bias there. It is virtually impossible not to introduce your own preferences in the models after tinkering with them for months. Also, 538 and similar tend to paddle dramatically towards Republicans in the days before election so that their final prediction is closer to the final result. At least, it is my recollection. It would be interesting to test these sites about their early prediction – that is when they affect voters, not their last minute position.
As to this election, they went from 35% R- chance in the Senate to 60% at the end during the last month, so the trend would hit 100% by the time they count the votes 🙂
people who were late for minyan (aka captives) have an option to say Shma/Shmone Esre with the kahal first and then catch up.
Does Menchaem Begin have anything to do with encouraging Sephardim to uphold their own, leading to creation of Shas?
Sephardim dressing up as Poles aristocrats in 17th century is surely to the glory of the revived Polish state … or, in other words, somewhat absurd.
The way it works – Sephardim are mostly for blending in reasonably. They dressed like Arabs among Arabs … So, now they are surrounded by Litvish-dressed people in B’nei Braq and Leikwud – so they assimilate into this community. If they were to really have the same shitot as Ashkenazim about maintaining their traditions in every aspect – they would walk around in colorful turbans.
There is a story about Chofetz Chaim brought as a character witness for an Yid in the Polish or Litvish court. The attorney first introduced the Rav to the judge by quoting some of the stories about him… The judge asked – are you sure these stories actually happened? Attorney responded – no, but for some reason nobody tells such stories about you and me …
Disclaimer: I do not know whether this story is true.
bump
It would be even better if bochurim have educated opinions about who and what they are voting for.
Rav Moshe wrote that voting is showing hakaras hatov. What exactly did he mean? I presume not only that non-Jews check that Jewish towns voted (that would be Hillul Hashem issue) and not simply to “fund our yeshivos” (that would be “self interest”) but actually knowing what is good for the country and voting accordingly.
Make sure to ask them to find time and place to say mincha there.
How about people being meikel in learning when they are involved in helping klal, or meikel in raising family when they are involved in learning.
Generally, if you are trying to achieve an extreme result in certain area, you need to sacrifice a lot in others. So, the question in advance is whether you are the person to be meikel in something, especially if it is at smoeone else’s expense. for example, at some point R Ovadia Yosef’s wife was feeding the baby under the table so that he does not interrupt his learning in their room. I am pretty sure if I tried to emulate the Chacham in this, I would be learning outdoors.
Avira > That’s not unexpected at all – increasing too much too fast is just k’balo kach palto
right, but I thought I was already taking this into account and included that in the question, but the Rav suggested slowing down even further.
Avram,a good point that this person is not likely to be rattled, or even reading this. The reason I suggested that he might have second thoughts is because he respects Torah and he is reading here many people who claim to know Torah well and they are so adamant in their worship of chumros. So, he gets cognitive dissonance.
Some things are not predicatble. Biden had a behira to be a centrist or not. He achieved a position he was pining for so many years and he is old enough to know better. The first sign that he is not choosing well was when he came out and said that Trump did not leave him any vaccines. It went down from there.
Dov, a good example. I once had a chance to ask R Gans @ Mattesdorf about how much effort I should do to increase learning, and he responded, unexpectedly – m’at m’at…
Syag > right. that 30 minute drive for cholov yisroel will cause one less surgery.
I am not sure why this is farfetched. There are many people whose life is filled with responsibilities and mitzvos. Adding one more would require subtracting another one.
I simply responded to your claim of a mesorah that destroys the traditional y/z partnership. And, again, I understand the social need you mention, but it doesn’t change the ideal. Whatever you read in Mishna berurah, it’s author ran a store and traveled around selling his books, after personally marking up each copy after he checked that it was bound correctly. It is not that difficult to support yourself in our times, those who are able to should take this chumra upon themselves. Now we are back on topic
What if it is hard for me to be meikel?!
seriously, you need to define what is “an effort”. For many people, it is psychologically easy to be “like everyone around them”. They also feel accomplished by focusing on chumros, so this all sounds like nedarim and caveats above apply.
And also – how balanced is the person in all aspects of his life. Let’s say someone is a moser nefesh to be a surgeon, saving lives daily after an early minyan, then learns with a chevrusa, then learns with his children, helps them study towards a profession, spends quality time with his wife and delivers food and nachas to his elderly parents. At this point, he wonders – based on reading YWN – whether he is “frum” enough and wonders whether he needs to spend an extra 30 minutes of drive to pick up chalav isroel yogurt and milk, so that he will either learn less, has one less surgery, or disregard either the wife or one of the kids. What would be your advice?
My mesorah, going back to Rambam, says that Y will only get schar if hashgaha made him unable to earn his own living. Otherwise, the whole reward goes to Z. Otherwise, it is not logical to spuriously decide that one does not want to support himself.
Avira > my rosh yeshiva says bshem the gaon that Y/Z having the same schar only applies if the Z tried his best to bea Y, but hashgocha led him to have to work. Otherwise it’s not logical
Right, whatever was logical for centuries, now is not based on your personal mesorah. Were you in charge of Gan Eden, would you know expel those Zevuluns that got there before this psak?
Avira > how many baalei batim have a total Y/Z relationship? Most, do not.
True, I am also not aware of people paring up this way in our times. It is mostly some provide funding, and some take. There are lots of people who provide for multiple learners – some names are on the buildings, others are not.
First Rashi on Bereishis came up in another thread – that we can use an argument that Hashem gave us EY when arguing with goyim. This is written around the time of two major religions fighting for the right to own EY in first crusade, so this was quote a political statement! Did he not expect goyim to respond with the reference to the oaths?!
RebE, I am not sure what is the context of people looking down at Talmidei Chachamim. We have lots of maamarim chazal that I see as definitions of a Talmid Chacham: merabim shalom b’olam, do not rebuke him in the morning for the aveira in the evening, etc.
I don’t think that people who are living these definitions are looked down upon in our communities, unless we are talking about some other societies, but then how would a pasuk interpretation affect them? Maybe the Rav’s idea is similar to Rashi quoting (his father?) R Yitzhak on Bereshis that we can point to the Chumash that EY was meant for us. How is that going to convince non-Jews? one explanation: it is there to strengthen ourselves and then we will be able to convince. Maybe same here this is to strengthen Talmidei Chachamim themselves.