charliehall

Headcoverings for women are a machloket poskim; with some saying from the Torah, others from the rabbis, and a daat yachid here and there saying it is a pious minhag. OTOH, Rav Elyashiv and Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef forbid wigs, but OTOH Rav Hirsch said that a woman can fulfill the headcovering requirement by fashioning a wig from her own hair! Every Jewish woman should follow her own rabbi on this one — and we Jewish men should honor them when they do that, however they do that.

92% of whites voted for a white candidate in a Mississippi Senate race. Were they all racists?

Two of the six O shuls in my nbhd are dry. And the one I attend on ST duchans at mussaf, which is treated with the seriousness that it deserves.

Last month I attended a research conference in Spain. I was the only guy there in a kipah. As the conference was ending I wanted to print out my boarding pass for my trip back to the US. The bank of computers to be used by the conference participants was being shut down. I found the speakers’ ready room, which still had one computer that was still turned on. I asked if I could use if for a few minutes to print out my boarding pass and the technician said it was ok, even though he was clearly in a hurry to get out of the building before he was kicked out.

He asked where I was going and I told him “Newark”. He complained that he was unable to print out his boarding pass. I asked him why, and he said, “security”. It turned out that the technician was a secular Jew from Israel and his airline required that the boarding pass only be issued at the airport. He was a model of good midot and helped me print out mine, though! I think he realized that there was another Jew he could help, and he went out of his way to do so even though it cost him time.

I was proud to be a Jew that day. So was he. My brother Jew.

Joseph,

Notwithstanding your quotes from Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, and his son Rabbi Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik, an older son, Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik, joined Mizrachi. Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik’s son, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, became the head of Mizrachi.

Regarding pants, the religious Zionist kibbutz movement explicitly *permit* pants for women. You and your rabbis may disagree with the ruling, but they are a legitimate part of the worldwide Torah community, and therefore their opinion must be accepted as valid, and the members of that community may rely on it.

There can be no direct governmental support to Yeshivas in New York as long as the state’s Blaine Amendment is in the State Constitution. An effort was made to repeal it way back in the 1960s and it was voted down by the voters. (Does anyone remember why?) And I see little chance for any change with the current political climate — everywhere in the US that voters have been given a chance to vote on possible tuition voucher programs, they have been voted down, usually by huge margins. Suburban voters fear (correctly) that some of their extraordinarily high property taxes will be diverted to private schools if such a program were proposed. And it doesn’t help that the most vocal proponents of tuition vouchers are ideologues who really would like to destroy public schools. That is not our agenda; we just want some fairness!

That said, Ms. Isler makes some great points. There are in fact huge economies of scale in the operation of schools. Joint purchasing and insurance can result in some significant savings — and possibly better benefits our teachers deserve. But can we really get agreement? Will the charedi yeshiva really use the same biology textbooks as the MO high school in my neighborhood whose students were #1 in the entire United States? Will the MO high school really accept history taught according to the Seder Olam chronology?

And will parents really enroll their children in schools whose philosophies differ from theirs? Are charedi parents really willing to walk their kids to the co-ed community day school? Are MO parents really willing to enroll their kids in the yeshiva with minimal secular studies? Will the rabbis permit any enrollment into public schools?

I’m also unconvinced that enrollment into public schools will make much impact. New York City has over one million students in its public schools. Even if every single frum kid in the city were to enroll into public schools it could handle the extra enrollment. It probably WOULD matter in small suburban districts, but the districts themselves have no power to help our yeshivas because of the Blaine Amendment.

I salute Mr. Isler for being willing to talk about the issue and to suggest bold solutions. I look forward to more.

I live in the Riverdale section of the Bronx; I used to live in Pelham Parkway. I’ve never seen unsupervised children that young in my neighborhood. Parents take their kids to the playgrounds and watch them like hawks.

I’ve always been taught that tzniut was at least as much about “insides”: That when I truly internalize torah values, that I will naturally want to dress and express myself modestly and the relatively small numbers of specific halachot regarding dress will not be an issue.

This sounds similar to check kiting, which is a serious crime under secular law. Generally, if it sounds like a scam, it probably is. I would not try this.