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I think the better approach is to have it the other away around. I will explain. Learing the logic of the gemara is no different in some ways than learing to play piano or baseball. If you do not learn the fundamentals right you will never really know how to do it. Learing the fundamentals at a young age when you start with gemara or baseball or the piano is a lot easier than learning it at an older age. Therefore, I think that when someone starts out in gemoro he should focus on truly understanding the logic of iyun, from the inside out, in order to develop these fundamentals. Once he develops his wings, as an older bochur, he should be able to fly and the focus should be almost exclusively bekius and halocho.
I dont get hakatan. no one disagrees that the zionists were not good jews. but they no longer exist. and look what they left behind. the jews who came to this country by and large became goyim. soemthing like 75-80% are either complete goyim or will be within a generation or two. the ones who went there stayed jewish, with few exceptions. and since they remained jewish they are still there to come back to hashem unlike the american jews who are now, with some exception, goyim and gone. and we see every day the jews in israel come back in greater and greater numbers. so cant we agree that israel was a net benefit to the jews?
very good point. the anti-zionists feared not becoming their worst enemies from the moment that they preach.
Here is a simple question: why is it that in almost every single picture of rabbi shneerson that shows him wearing tfillin do the tfillin shel rosh droop well below his hair line and on to his forehead?
commonsaychel: that was a silly post i wrote to highlight how absurd the reform claim to judaism was. i thought most people will have the common saychel to figure that out.
There are some serious halachic issues about owning pets. Are pets muktze on shabbos? there are two contemporary opinions. Can you walk your dog with a leash on shabbos? If you have a small dog that is low to the ground and no eruv, its not so pashut. What about food? Can you feed the dog trief is it has bassar bcholov? No. What about chometz on pesach. What about picking up the poo on shabbos? is this allowed or not? again, two differing contemporary opinions. What if your dog scares others? Its a problem in Halocho. What about castrating the dog? Not really allowed. What about tzaar baalei chayim? you also halachacly need to feed your dog before you eat. For the busy frum yid, its not so pashut. So while I agree with the OP I also understand why owning a dog as a frum yid is not so simple and its really not for everyone.
Whether or not eggs need hashgacha (they don’t), the more products carry the hashgacha, the better it is for the Yidden. This is common sense. For one, if I am opening a food related business and I see that 75% of the market carries a particular certification then I will want it too. Second, if a hashgacha company can charge an egg distributor a half of a penny per carton for the hashgacha then the money that comes in from something like that can offset the high cost associated with a hashgacha on a product made in Peru or Indonesia that receives a hechsher from that same hashgacha. So we can chuckle about it but we only have to gain from eggs having hashgacha.
HaKatan,
What if chas veshalom, in the Olam HaEmet, you are taken to task for shmutzing Rabbi Willig? Could you not have expressed yourself without the loshon hora, sinuh, vitriol and hate – just in case there is a slight possibility that your opinions turn out to be wrong?
philosopher: i hate to break it to you but every single song you have ever listened to in your entire life evolved from another song and every single “jewish” song you have ever listened to in your entire life evolved (sometimes immediately and sometimes after one or two generations) from a non-jewish song.
this idea that there is such a thing as “jewish music” and “non-jewish music” is a complete fabrication. the concept of there being something called “jewish sounding” music is a lie that made me lose my respect for certain rebbes i had growing up.
jackk: if you look at the contect of trump’s statement he was not talking about the bombing, I can understand democratic-party fanboys making the claim that Biden has been pretty good to the Jews (even if i disagree) but no one seriously thinks there is any question about which candidate would be better. the claim that trump will not be as good for israel as biden is laughably dumb.
These ad hock personal attacks on jackk make me very uncomfortable. 85-90% of the frum world think differently than jackk on politics but these personal attacks have no place in our society. attack the position not the man holding it.
by the title of your post i thought you were commenting on the new Hatzolos Nefashos organization and the rabbis letter.
When people you hate get railroaded by the justice system, no one cares. Hence the reaction among our people when the system went after Lev Tahor one by one. Lev Tahor is vile ergo I don’t care if they get railroaded. Its all fun and games until the system is used against someone you don’t hate, maybe even Shalom Rubashkin.
Random: No one said deliberately target civilians. before the war started the estimates were that there were 40,000 Hamas and jihad soldiers. You target each one of them and if you collaterally destroy each soldiers 2 wives and 3 kids so be it. Do the math on that.
Israel made a terrible mistake when it tried to play this stupid game. Israel should have come out of the gate much harder killing hundreds of thousands of Gazans in the first weeks of the war which would have forced the Gazans to leave or die. Israel was going to face international sanctions no matter what it did and as it turned out, Israel acted with the greatest restraints and still got blamed for genocide. In street-basketball, if the shooter is going to call foul no matter what you do, you make sure your foul is worth it and doesn’t allow the shot to be taken. The same is true here. If Israel would have done what was necessary, Israeli leaders would be facing the same exact ICC accusations but the war with the Arabs would have been finally over for good. Israel never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
chaim87: i dont think the NK at the protests are really part of the NK community. They seems to me to be satmar rejects. that said, it could be that genuine NK in Meah Shearim really do care about tznius but the stooges at the rally only care about the $300 a day that they are getting paid.
If we were to wait for the perfect politician to come along, one whose heart and mouth align perfectly and who is running for public office only out of the great desire to be a humble public servant, we will never have a President. So instead, we forgive the narcissism (by definition to run for President you must be a narcissist to some degree), we take campaign promises with a grain of salt and we focus on the man or woman who will create a better world for Yidden and the rest of the world.
Under President Biden’s leadership, or lack thereof, America has given history’s largest-ever and most prominent platform to the most vile, far-left propositions dug up from the sewers of communist South America and Marxist Europe; including, most importantly, the most offensive public anti-Semitism this country has experienced since the 1930’s. To understand what a continuation of these policies will lead to you need look no further than the college campuses where Biden’s policies fast-tracked to become the public norm. Another four years and the streets of America will become exactly the same as the campus at Berkley.
We will hold our noses and vote Trump and daven that Hashem gives his administration the wisdom to steer us back to normal.
There is obviously a conspiracy between prominent actors in the Democratic Party to subvert the will of the people by weaponizing the legal system against the likely winner of the 2024 election. The only question is whether once in office, Trump’s DOJ goes after these actors, including any ex-Presidents who may have been involved, in a Federal RICO action.
whether or not an eclipse is a bad omen is irrelevant to my question of why dont we make a brocho on it. We make a brocho on rainbows dont we? We make broachos on actual calamities like earthquakes. halevi says we dont make a brocho because it is a flaw in the creation of the world. as theologically flawed as that answer is, at least it is not logically deficient.
did the pro-hamas demonstrators change people’s minds?
If we make brochos on earthquakes and thunder and rainbows why dont we have a brocho for an eclipse?
Jackk: Jews who vote for Democrats are like a wife whose husband ran off with a younger woman but insists that if she just shows her husband how loyal she is and how dedicated she is to the relationship then maybe he will come back. Pathetic, sad and sorry.
Your vote doesn’t matter to the party anymore. They have moved on to the ultra liberal and Muslim vote. It’s over. Move on. Get over it. edited
lol wat
CTLawyer: you are a dinosaur and completely out of touch with the modern party which, with fewer and fewer exceptions, is set to turn on the Jews. The fringe has unfortunately become the main stream and Schumer today sounds exactly like Sanders. Biden’s abandonment of Israel seems almost complete as he is poised to call for a ceasefire.
The far-left, which has now become the mainstream of the party has a version of anti-Semitism which is far more dangerous than the anti-Semitism of the far-right because on the left, there are no principles of liberty and freedom which the right more or less accorded to all – even the ones they hate. Rather, the socialist, Marxist Democrat party of today is prepared to strip Jews of all rights, sell Israel out for some votes in swing states and make life for Jews in the US as impossibly difficult as they made life for Jews on college campuses. And dinosaurs like you will continue to defend a party of the past which no longer exists.
ujm: i have never been on a pesach program nor have i ever been to uae but can’t one see through his upbringing that if israel and arab countries get along it is good for klal yisroel? at some point does one not step aside and ask “where has this upbringing brought me?” at some point, when someone is actively rooting for things to go very poorly for jews, does that person not wonder whether it is pure, unadulterated gayva that prevents someone from recognizing that some of his earliest beliefs may have been wrong. that some of the people he loves and hold dearly may be wrong? many great people were wrong about important things. it does not make them less great.
What kind of upbringing does it take to make a yid rejoice and gloat when things are going poorly for Klal Yisroel?
AAQ: you cnt just cobble together any five towns. over jewish history there were only two “five towns.” One was Sedom, Amora, Admaa, Tzvoim and Tzoar. The other one you already know.
I am looking forward to lower my grocery spending by 75% and I hope all the stores that charged us through the nose go out of business. Hilchos Onaa meant nothing to them, these tzadikim who charged us 3 and 4 times the price of other places.
I do not believe there is much of Jewish life anywhere in NC. If you are willing to go as far our as NC I strongly suggest you look at Cleveland or Detroit. They both have robust a Jewish life; midwestern friendliness (non-judgment) and solid health professionals. You cannot beat the cost of living.
say no to crack
compared to other places in usa, cleveland has affordable housing and jewish education (and people from cleveland are much nicer than other jewish areas in usa) but if you cannot make it in jerusalem, you wont find it easier in cleveland. unless you have an advanced degree, there are no jobs at all in cleveland.
Yussel: after the war. you cannot change horses in midstream.
Goldilocks: I agree. Can we stop talking about the Nazis? In fact, we need to stop teaching the Holocaust to children. All they need to know is Hashem.
With the support the Arab and liberal world has demonstrated for Hamas over the past week it is now clear that we are looking at pure evil in the face. Amalek. Hamas is Gaza and Gaza is Hamas. There are no civilians in Gaza, only terrorists, mothers of terrorists and future terrorists.
OP makes a valid point, of course. Hamas are pure liars. They literally recorded their pogrom and had the audacity to come on tv the following day and claim they did not kill any civilians. Propping up Hamas lies as a valid view point is the material support of terrorism, a federal crime for which Talib and Omar must face the mandatory minimum: life in prison.
is there any way we can get a listing of which starbucks uses this union? maybe we can avoid those specific ones.
I am not sure why conversations about whether Jews were treated decently in Muslims lands always turns into a debate about how much worse the European persecution was. Both of these statements are true:
1) Jews were treated terribly by their Muslim rulers.
2) Jews were treated much, much worse in Europe.And while I admonished those that need to make the comparison, I will add that an argument can be made that Europe also treated its Jews better than Muslim rulers. In Europe, Jews would go through phases where they were loved and cherished by their rulers. Poland adopted special laws to attract and protect Jews. “Paradisus Judaeorum.” Of course, it never ended well and the untold suffering eventually unleashed on the Jews is unrivaled.
akuperma: you are wrong that in the Muslims there were no forced conversions. there is a large jewish community on long island ny that are decendants of anuseh mashad. forced conversions under the threat and actual imposition of death was common.
Moshe kapoyer: many people who reject modern lubavitch recognize the gadlus is rabbi schneerson. There is no stira.
5ish I am afraid you are not aware of how far outside machane yisroel the lubavitch have fallen. Those few who would permit their children to marry lubavitch are dwindling. Fewer and fewer other yidden would daven in chabad institutions. This is happening across all streams of Judaism. I don’t think I’ve agreed with a single post avira has ever posted on cr but I ageee with everything he wrote here. Crown Heights, we have a problem.
I obviously cannot speak for anyone else but as for myself, it is the entire Lubavitchers belief system that is dramatic, tragic and fascinating. In my view, so much of Chabad today closely resembles early Christianity and makes me wonder what religion Lubavitchers really practice. It is not a simple machlokes over whether or not you follow shitta a or shitta b but rather a much broader question in my mind whether Lubavitch is even still considered within Machane Yisroel or whether they have formed a new religion. The rebbe question is only the largest symptoms of this and gets the most attention. What makes this harder is the fact that so many Lubavitchers I know do not subscribe to the mainstream Lubavitch views so how can I throw out the entire movement. Also, in my mind, Chabad was so close to perfecting Judiasm before they introduced these crazy ideas I feel like if we can only get back to the way it was we can have a perfect Judiasm. I still go to the Ohel as often as I can. Besach Hakol, i obsess over Lubavitch because it is fascinating, dramatic and tragic at the same time.
minor edit
My own thoughts:
The Chidushei HaRim and the Sfas Emes do not contradict. The Chidushe HaRim is explaining what Moshe wanted to find out and the Sfas Emes explains what he ended up finding. I think Pshat in the Chidushei HaRim is that Moshe wanted to know if all of the effort that Avraham Avinu put into teaching all the inhabitants of the land about HKBH was passed down to future generations (which would make a war against such righteous people difficult to win since they had the zchus of Avraham Avinu’s teaching) or if they had abandoned what Avraham Avinu spread in that land all those centuries ago.As for the Kedushas Levi, I do not think he is saying the same thing. He is saying that although the Jews wanted to explore Israel for its physical beauty and resources, Moshe wanted the spies (and eventually all of the Yiddin) to feel spiritually connected to the land that Hashem promised them and hoped that the spies will feel the Mitzvah of Kum Vehithalech Baartez when they got to Israel thereby trying to convert the spies’ physical desire into a spiritual one.
אַל יַעֲלֶה עַל הַלֵּב שֶׁבִּימוֹת הַמָּשִׁיחַ יִבָּטֵל דּבָר מִמִּנְהָגוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם. אוֹ יִהְיֶה שָׁם חִדּוּשׁ בְּמַעֲשֵׂה בְּרֵאשִׁית
אָמְרוּ חֲכָמִים אֵין בֵּין הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה לִימוֹת הַמָּשִׁיחַ אֶלָּא שִׁעְבּוּד מַלְכֻיּוֹת בִּלְבַד.
לֹא נִתְאַוּוּ הַחֲכָמִים וְהַנְּבִיאִים יְמוֹת הַמָּשִׁיחַ. לֹא כְּדֵי שֶׁיִּשְׁלְטוּ עַל כָּל הָעוֹלָם. וְלֹא כְּדֵי שֶׁיִּרְדּוּ בָּעַכּוּ”ם. וְלֹא כְּדֵי שֶׁיְּנַשְּׂאוּ אוֹתָם הָעַמִּים. וְלֹא כְּדֵי לֶאֱכל וְלִשְׁתּוֹת וְלִשְׂמֹחַ. אֶלָּא כְּדֵי שֶׁיִּהְיוּ פְּנוּיִין בַּתּוֹרָה וְחָכְמָתָהּ. וְלֹא יִהְיֶה לָהֶם נוֹגֵשׂ וּמְבַטֵּל.
doom777: if the government goes bad your guns cant help you.
The second amendment needs to be abolished. At bare minimum, if someone wants a gun he or she needs to take a course, pass an in-person test, have a background check and get insurance. Like getting a drivers license. There also needs to be strict vicarious liability for gun owners like we have for car owners. This is the bare minimum we need.
I agree with SquareRoot – it is anti Jewish to be a kofeh tova and the essence of a Jew to have Hakaras Hatov and Donald Trump deserves a tremendous amount of hakaras hatov. (And Obama also deserves it and BH I have never seen a Yid daven for Obama to suffer). I have always maintained that the best President for the Jews was Trump and a distance but still second place finisher is Obama.
I disagree on the point that Trump bears no responsibility for inflation – of course he does. The handouts started under him. He always talks about the market V that he created post Covid. Well that V caused this inflation.
As for the indictment, I do not understand what was illegal.
It is not illegal to have an affair. It is not illegal to pay off the zona. Some have couched this as follows: he took the payment as a business expense when it was not. I do not believe he is being charged with any tax violations and I am certain he would have been had he evaded taxes. Some have said that the payments amount to a campaign contribution which he should have disclosed. Why does not a person have to disclose campaign contributions to his own campaign? I understand that we need to know which special interests, corporations or countries are making campaign contributions but we all assume that a person use as much and as liittle of his own money on his campaign and it ill not change the influence a person has on himself.
Everyone should be chilled by the idea that a county prosecutor can go after a Federal official and leading candidate for petty crimes. What will stop some county prosecutor in Iowa, Idaho or South Dakota from going after a leading Democrat for petty offenses?
The whole thing looks un-American and wrong both to Trump supporters and to other Republicans, Independents and many Democrats. The American people are not stupid, they can see what is really happening.
I take issue with the statement by @someday that Israel had Shmad up 1 million people. We know that Jews living in USA, France, South America left Yiddishkeit at significantly higher rates than those in Israel. In USA, 10% or fewer remained frum and the rest intermarried and are gone. Same is true everywhere else. They are never coming back. They are gone for good. In Israel for every yid that left observance you have 5 yiddin who are chozen btshuva and very very few are intermarried and gone. They are all there still to be chozer btshuva sooner or later.
This is not a defense of the Israeli policies over the years but statistically, a Yid had a much better chance remaining a Yid in Israel over any where else.
coffee addict: are you sure the rioters were not just using the reforms as a pretext to protest losing the elections? if that was the case, no amount of hasbara would have been enough.
jackk: israel is a country of the jews so every jew has the right to meddle (to a certain extent) in the affairs of israel. obviously non-israelis cannot make the place unhabitable with their meddling – but all jews should have some say.
akuperma: what you say about the telavivians being the engine of the economy is true but only because they boxed out the rest of the society who the telavivians see as sub-citizens. As for the army, the telavivians do not serve in combat roles. They go to the army and serve in the choir or sit at some desk. the national religious, the russians and the druze are the combat soldiers.
There is a famous joke about a European Yid who came home from shul crying and depressed. His wife asked him “whats wrong?” He said, “the Rabbi said Moshiach is coming and we will all go to Israel. But what will be of our farm and our chickens and our cow?” She says, “Don’t cry. We are maminim bnei maminim. Hashem saved us from Lavan and Paroh and Amalek and Sisra and Yuvun, Hashem will also save us from Moshiach.”
Jack: one of the things about trump that bothers me the most is that he demands absolute loyalty but offers zero loyalty. What he did to Cohen is disgusting. But we all know that had he committed an actual crime, he would have prosecuted for that crime and not for this nonsense. I’m not even sure why paying hush money to cover an alleged affair -as immoral and gross it might be – is illegal. We all know this is a political witch hunt and we should all be against political witch hunts no matter how gross the target may seem to us.
My personal feelings about Trump (mixed feelings) are irrelevant to the issue at hand. Democrats were so worked up about the “lock her up” chants and whined about the fact that locking up your political opponents is so un-American. But they knew and we all knew that Trump was never serious about locking her up. But the Democrats have spent every second trying to drag this man into prison for the terrible crime of entering politics. We all know that had he never entered politics, Bragg wouldn’t have cared about Daniels. So this makes Democrats hypocrites for behaving in a way they decried and it makes them evil for hunting down people with an opposing viewpoint. Contrary to CT’s defense that political parties lack the jurisdiction to carry out prosecutions, Tish James ran on the platform that she will use her position to prosecute Trump. Before she even knew for what.
Not that it matters at all but I voted for Obama twice. I am definitely not MAGA. On many social issues I am far-left. But you need to call a spade, a spade. This isn’t Bill Clinton’s Democrat party and its not even Obama’s. What we have today is a Democrat party that is quickly spiraling into a Nordic-style socialist, oppressive, regulatory, Big-Brother (and by the way, anti-Jewish) party.