catch yourself

I absolutely agree with the main point of the OP.

But I think it’s necessary to point out that the fact that we are still alive without having done things quite the way we are accustomed to does not, by definition, mean that we “managed to live without.”

The true meaning of your post is that we should learn from current experience to recalibrate our value system.

For example, nobody who at least pretends to be an Orthodox Jew would add Tefila B’tzibur, Tefila B’veis Hakneses, Kerias HaTorah, Birkas Kohanim, or Tefilas Tal to this list. We all understand that there is a tremendous cost to the fact that we unfortunately find ourselves without these things.

Joseph +1

I don’t know if this is the primary intended message (I hope it isn’t), but it certainly is one that we should learn.

The median family income in the United States is just over $63,000 a year. Even if someone earns twice that, it is absurd to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding (including all the ancillary expenses such as clothing, travel, etc.). We should take this opportunity to change the culture for weddings and other Simchos.

klugeryid –

Without getting involved in the personal fight, I think there is an important point to be made.

You said, “Did you read the piece I quoted from the Chafetz Chaim?
If you substitute schmoozing between mincha and Mariv for watching the Superbowl it is indistinguishable from Josefs comment.”

Here is the quote from the Chofetz Chaim:
ח”ח פתיחה, עשין אות ו, בהגהה
וכל שגן לפי מה שמצוי בעוונותינו הרבים בשבת קודש אחר סעודה שלישית, שיש כמה כיתות אנשים, הלומדי תורה מסתמא משיחין בדברי אלקים חיים –ושארי אנשים” מסתמא!!” משיחין בענין הבלי העולם. ובוודאי מתגנדר על לשונם דברי לשה”ר והוללות וליצנות. אם כן מי שפורש מהבעלי תורה והוללות ומטה אזנו לחברה הרעה הזאת כדי לשמור מהם סיפוריהם ההבלים עובר על מצוות עשה זו לבד מה שכובר על לא תהיה אחרי רבים לראות… ע”ש

Joseph said, “People rationalize all sorts of aveiros; so expect a litany of excuses here why this aveira is okay and why this aveira (pritzus and whole list of worse things) “really” isn’t such an aveira. Or that one day a year is okay to take a break from not doing aveiros.”

There is a world of difference between the two. The Chofetz Chaim was saying לתועלת that a person must be aware of what goes on in the various groups so that he will know how important it is to steer clear of the wrong crowd.

Joseph’s comment appears to be a cynical indictment of any number of people with no apparent תועלת.

@ Pro Schnapps
“Also today they are coming after out bags tomorrow chas vshalom they will come after worse things. U think it ends with this??? No. Ymach shimom.”

I totally agree. It’s a very slippery slope from plastic bags to Milah, Torah, Shabbos, and Rosh Chodesh. This is clearly a Hellenistic decree designed to force us into total assimilation, and we should risk our lives to battle against it. Let’s go to war against the NYS National Guard over the Kedushas Minhag Plastic Bags!

This is not a comment on you personally. I do not mean to impugn your integrity. This is merely an observation of the behavior of our political leadership and media talking heads, which is mimicked by many people.

In general there is absolute transparency when it comes to this discussion. Historically, it has always been this way. Members of the President’s party say, “As long as <my guy> is doing a good job as President, who cares about his character/morality?” At the same time, members of the opposing party decry the damage <this lowlife> is doing to the Presidency, and, by extension, to Western Democracy itself.

We need only to remember the late 1990’s to see everyone wearing their shoes on the other feet, as was in fact documented on the record during the Trump impeachment trial.

So forgive me for yawning at this as politics as usual.

A very choshuve Rav in New York told me once, before Shacharis, with his coffee in his hand, “It’s the first thing in the Siddur.”
ודפח”ח

@klugeryid thinks I supported the impeachment…I did not

@ jackk thinks I am a Trump supporter…I am not, and never have been

@chash understood that I meant merely to point out the true underlying reason for the impeachment, which @MDG puts so succinctly as, “hatred”.

I think Senator Murkowski was correct in saying that as an institution, Congress had failed because the pure partisan nature of the Representatives and Senators on both sides precluded any possibility for a fair and honest trial.

I also think that Senator Alexander was correct in saying that, even conceding that the President did what the Democrats alleged, his conduct, though wrong, did not warrant removal from office.

I would take it the step further that the entire impeachment was unwarranted, repulsive though one may find Mr. Trump’s character to be.

Trump was impeached for being a sort of person absolutely abhorrent to his political enemies. He was impeached for the same reason that people said prior to his election that he was not fit for office. The list of his character flaws is too long to put in to this post, but all of them are the reason he was impeached.

Everybody knows that whatever political/legal/constitutional grounds were put forth were only the excuse for the impeachment. This is like when your child says he can’t study for tomorrow’s test because it’s already bedtime.

This is not a comment on his suitability for office, merely stating the obvious about the impeachment.

I haven’t had a chance to see the חפץ השם yet, but I do plan to check it up.

I think your קושיא is really interesting. How are we to reconcile the גמרא of אפילו חרב חדה וכו with the מנשה of תפלת שוא?

In addition to the מעשה רב from Rav Shlomo Zalman ZT”L, I would like to point out that רבי עקיבא איגר in הגהותיו לשלחן ערוך או”ח סימן ר”ל says that in a case where there is no medical chance of survival, one should not Daven for it, and that it is forbidden to ask Hashem to perform a miracle (his specific case is a בן ח’ חדשים which the Gemara says can not survive and it is אסור לחלל שבת עליו. Thanks to the miracle of modern medicine, such cases routinely survive and thrive nowadays).

I’ve only had time to do precursory research as of right now, and I haven’t found any sources on this yet. A thought which occurred to me is that perhaps the מחלה of חזקיהו wasn’t [yet] at a terminal stage. The image of חרב חדה is perhaps different from illness because of the element of בחירה.

“When saying or looking with jealousy on the good fortune of someone can awaken the accusers above (kitrug) to check his books whether he is worthy of it. As mentioned above, the red stting (sic) acknowledges his guilt, thereby quieting the kitrug, giving him foregiveness (sic) and protecting the child by showing mercy.”

Rav Dessler (and others) say the idea of Ayin Hara is a kitrug only if the person is somehow responsible for the jealousy of the other. Acting in a way which invokes jealousy in others is a failure which exposes one to prosecution.
When I gave the example (in my previous post) of “wearing a shesi v’eirev”, I didn’t realize how well it fit the conversation, because I had missed the post quoted here. The idea that a newborn child is somehow guilty and in need of forgiveness is one of the most fundamental mistakes of Christianity, and undermines the entire basis of Torah and Mitzvos, as explained at great length by Rav Hirsch in Parashas Bereishis and many other places (and, I’m sure, many other Gedolei Hadoros as well).

If anything, the case of the midwife tying the red string on Zerach’s hand proves that there is no general custom to wear such a thing. She tied it there because there were twins and it was important to know which was born first. The younger brother obviously would not wear it, and presumably neither would the older brother, once each could be identified without external help.
In any case, as mentioned, that red string was for a simple, pragmatic purpose: to identify the firstborn. The red string worn by many people today, as rightwriter pointed out, is for a superstition. As I mentioned earlier, this is Assur.

@rightwriter
You wrote, “I’m aware of advanced technology but i still like using a CD for driving which I can control from the car buttons easily and not have to be distracted looking at the phone to change a song.”
Sounded like you have the capability to play the music off your phone, but that you didn’t want to have to look at your phone while driving.

Spotify and Apple Music are both 15 dollars a month, so look at it like accessing all the music for the cost of 12 albums a year (although you don’t always get access to the newest albums right away).
You can create your own playlists (Spotify also allows you to access others’ playlists that aren’t private), which you can then navigate just as easily as a CD using your car’s controls.

You said the answer yourself. Parents had genuine love for their children, so they were able to inculcate proper respect in their progeny.
Today’s parents who are so self-absorbed that they can’t even give their kids proper attention, let alone love, should not be surprised to find that their offspring don’t show them the respect the parents feel they deserve. Do today’s parents model respect in the way they act towards their children, spouses, Rebbeim/Rabbonim, and friends? Do today’s parents model respect in the way they act towards their own parents?
You complain that today’s Yeshiva Bochrim are holier-than-thou and disrespectful to their parents, whose rebukes go unheeded. Could it be that the Bochrim are acting the way they learned from their parents? How do the parents react when criticized by others? Do the parents make a point of belittling others? How, for example, do the parents speak about “today’s Rabbonim/Gedolim/Mechanchim?”
Yaakov Avinu waited forty years to rebuke his son because he was wary of the effect it would have. Moshe Rabbeinu learned from him and withheld from criticizing K’lal Yisrael for a similar length of time. How long do today’s parents wait to criticize their children for even the slightest misbehavior? How often do they criticize their children?
There is also the effect of the culture around us, which can not be discounted.
Good parenting does not happen by accident. It takes a lot of patience, time, effort, introspection, planning and deliberation.
It has been noted that the Holocaust erased an entire generation of Torah leadership, and that we are still suffering the effects of this until today. This would explain the rapid deterioration in this area, as in many others.

But of course, blame the Mechanchim. It’s their fault for not teaching and emphasizing Kibud Av va’Eim enough. Well, if your children ever heard you say something like that – even once – there’s your answer. You taught them not to respect those who are supposedly deserving of respect.

The fact is that this, like so many other things, can only be taught in the home. Mechanchim do spend considerable time and effort to teach Kibbud Av va’Eim. However, Mechanchim can support the lessons learned from parental example, but they can not replace such example. They certainly can not overcome a negative example provided by parents.

There is a מנהג to eat fried food on חנוכה as a זכר to the נס of the פך שמן. Eating food fried in anything but oil, then would be a less than optimal way of observing this מנהג.

Those who made their Latkes with schmaltz (probably a relatively recent innovation, which has been, like so many others, artificially and incorrectly invested with the aura of “Mesora”), therefore, are the ones who are in the wrong.

The analogy to switching from Nusach Sefard to Nusach Ashkenaz, therefore, is quite appropriate, since Nusach Ashkenaz is the one with a real Mesorah, and Nusach Sefard is a relatively recent innovation that does not even pretend to be based on a Mesorah going back to אנשי כנסת הגדולה. This is why Rav Moshe Feinstein ruled that one may switch to from Nusach Sefard to Nusach Ashkenaz but not the other way.

There is also a מנהג to eat dairy foods on חנוכה as a זכר to the נס of the מלחמה (and the story of יהודית).

It is proper to combine these two מנהיגים so as to express the idea (put forth by the Maharal and many others) that the purpose of the נס פך השמן was to demonstrate the miraculous nature of the military victory.

Applesauce, on the other hand, has absolutely no basis in מנהגי חנוכה and is only being eaten for תאוה, which is part of the legacy of the Yevanim.

It is probably for this reason that Hashem ברוב חסדו וטובו made it that Latkes taste so much better with sour cream than with applesauce (and, in fact, even plain is better than with applesauce).

Mazel Tov!
May you be zoche to build a Bayis Ne’eman B’Yisrael!

Learn to appreciate people, even if they are different from you.
Like we read in the Haftarah on the morning of Yom Kippur, if עניים מרודים תביא בית then אז תקרא וה’ יענה תשוע ויאמר הנני.
Who could be more עני מרודה than a person who eats alone on שבת?

I am personally acquainted with a Kohen Ba’al Teshuva who had to divorce his wife when they found out that he wasn’t allowed to marry her since she was a Giyores. There were no Shalom Bayis issues, but the Halacha required the divorce. I was good friends with one of their sons who is a Challal, and whose younger brothers [from his father’s second wife] are Kohanim.

cantgetit, seahorse:

The Gemara there is discussing the legal possibility that a divorce may happen over such trivialities, not whether it is recommended. In fact, that same passage of the Gemara says that if someone divorces his first wife, even the Mizbei’ach cries over it. Divorce without strong grounds is strongly discouraged in our Halachic literature and in our culture. Halacha also prohibits a man from divorcing without legitimate cause.

In any case, if there were true Shalom Bayis, it is inconceivable that a man would divorce his wife over a burnt supper, or because he found a prettier wife.

Speaking as a Rebbe who has a smartphone (albeit in an out of town community and school), it’s definitely a bigger issue that he checks it during class and davening than that he has it in the first place. Of course, everybody’s phone should be tagged (Rebbe or not), and I’m sure his phone is tagged. In the community where I live, there are dozens of Rabonim, Dayanim,Roshei Yeshiva, Roshei Kollel, Kollel Yungerleit, Menahalim, and Rebbeim who have smartphones, and a handful who don’t. I know of only one of those people who doesn’t have a cellphone at all (his wife does). With all that, these Klei Kodesh present a magnificent set of role models for the youth of our community (as well as the adults). Perhaps this is because we don’t use irrelevant and arbitrary markers to determine what constitutes a good role model. It’s more likely, I think, that parents here are very good at exhibiting respect for the role models of the community even when there are things with which they disagree.

Perhaps the difference is that “okay, Boomer” went viral and became a motto, so it caught my attention in a way that the other didn’t. For example, “Millenials…”, after all, as far as I know, was never used on the floor of Parliament to dismiss an opposing politician.

Maybe the difference is that I never saw the “Millenials…” epithet used directly at a specific person (at least, not that I recall at the moment).

It’s possible that I see them differently because it’s one thing to decry a particular character trait that a person (or generation) has, and quite another to write off the person himself (or the generation itself).

Personally, I never used the Millenial epithet, and I do not agree with it, or with stereotyping in general.

Whataboutisms aside, I do think that using pejoratives reveals poor character. Same for not appreciating the value of an older generation.

And I reiterate that the Torah attaches great importance to respecting elders.

“Many”, of course, is a relative term.

Of all the possible candidates to put up against Trump, why would they choose the only one who has proven she can lose to him, and who will not be able to make his corruption the major issue of the campaign?

Either she’s just looking for attention, or she is delusional (I know, they’re not mutually exclusive).

Randomex,

True. The point I was trying to make is that frustrated talents (and interests) often force themselves to be expressed in a way which could be more detrimental than any supposed danger of cultivating and channeling them properly.
This is not to say that a person who does not have an inborn talent should not pursue a skill in which he is interested.

Well…
If it’s the same people who return their air conditioner to Walmart at the end of the season,
If it’s the same people who pretend that their children are young enough to get the cheaper rate at attractions,
If it’s the same people who perpetrate any number of other types of geneivas da’as and/or geneiva,
Why are you surprised?

Of course, there is a Mitzva of Hochei’ach Tochi’ach. However, the Torah cautions, Lo SIsa Alav Cheit. Correcting your friend must be done in a way which does not offend him, and which will cause him to do the right thing.

The first step is to determine whether in fact the “Halacha” in question is a bona fide Halacha. For this, do not rely on “what you were always told,” or even what your Rebbe said in High School. Go ask a competent, practicing Rav. Proceed only if a true Halachic issue is present.

The second step is to determine whether there is some extraneous factor which will prevent the other person from listening to you. (For example, is there some existing relationship between you and him in context of which he will automatically feel defensive when you approach him?) If so, get someone else to approach him.

The third step, once the first two have been satisfied, is to prepare a nonthreatening, friendly, SINCERE, way of presenting the problem to him. (It is important, for example, that this is done in a dispassionate manner, without condescension.)

My experience (repeated many dozens of times without fail) is that if this procedure is followed, people are grateful for the assistance and happy to change.