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Takahmamash – I’m not trolling. I don’t really agree with your argument, lots of professions have to take their work home with them and deal with rude customers and difficult situations. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be called “work”. Even if teachers work 45 hours a week, every week (I doubt it), they still get to take a good quarter of the year off. The typical median full time US salary is $51k x 75% = $38.25k. That makes teachers salaries seem not so far fetched. In fact, if you look at the wages per hour that public school teachers make per the US Dept. of Labor, it is beyond regular white collar administrators, and almost as high as the category of engineers.
There’s a prohibition in deriving benefit from any melacha that’s initiated on shabbos, even by a non-Jew, if that melacha is done specifically for the Jew. Even if you didn’t ask for it to be done, if you’re deriving benefit from it, it’s assur. You also run into issues of turning on lights when you open the doors and having to give destination instructions to the computer. Let’s assume the melacha is not done just for you, but that you are tagging along for a ride with a non-Jew who opens all the doors and directs the car to it’s final destination. You still have the problem with your weight increasing the load on the motor, and thus making it work harder for you. If it’s an internal combustion engine that means higher RPMs needed to achieve the same acceleration as if you weren’t there. For a 4-cylinder engine that could be thousands of additional melachas per minute due to your weight. If it’s 100% electric, it’s a machlokes, but still not muttar. You also move the car when you get in and out of it, so it would be a violation of muktzah. It’s also definitely not in the spirit of shabbos.
Rebbies and teachers complain about not making large salaries. I don’t get it. They only work, say, 5 hours a day and get two months off in the summer plus several weeks off for Jewish holidays during the year. What profession pays their employees a large salary and lets them vacation 1/4 of the year and go home at 3:00?
Avram in MD: “Since when is it a crime to request asylum?”
The way you phrase this question shows complete intellectual dishonesty and twisting of the truth. There is a big difference between “requesting asylum” and illegally sneaking across the border. One is a crime the other is not. Let’s not pretend anyone is saying we should no longer accept legitimate asylum seekers who don’t try to skip the line ahead of everyone else who is trying to go through it the legal way. Oh and by the way, most of the illegals who sneak in do it for money not for asylum.
Are you being serious right now? You DO realize that if you, as a citizen, commit a crime punishable by jail and you happen to tote your kids with you that your children will be taken away, right? Would you rather the kids be put in jail with the supposed “parents”
(who most likely are really just human traffickers), or would you rather just the police let people use the presence of a child as a get-out-of-jail-free card?I went to a yeshiva that focused on teaching talmidim “how to learn,” but it seems most people who go into the working world don’t have the time or the peace of mind to actually learn to that depth after leaving yeshiva. It does shift to a bekiyus type of learning. It’s not a bad thing that you focus on depth in yeshiva, because you still use those critical thinking skills once you leave, you just don’t dwell on the pilpul for so long. I don’t think any yeshiva advocates talmidim should limit themselves to the handful of “yeshivishe masechtas” and neglect tanach and the rest of Shas.
I don’t enough time to educate you on all these issues. If you sincerely care to listen to the opposing point of view go listen to conservative thinkers like Ben Shapiro. My point was you can debate this issue from a religious perspective and from a democratic perspective, but you shouldn’t conflate the two arguments.
Then there is a machlokes in daas Torah since ALL the LORs I have consulted support gun ownership as proper hishtadlus.
Ubiq – If you don’t believe people die at the exact moment they were supposed to, regardless of whether a gun was the cause, then nothing anyone says will help you.
Also, Americans can argue that the Jewish traditions and way of life (shchita, milah, etc) is stupid and dangerous. You can’t just waltz in and say, “it’s a stupid way of life, get rid of it!” as you do above. This is also ignoring the fact that the anti-gun lobby has yet to prove the harms of firearms outweigh the benefits, both in terms of safety and with respect to the idea of an armed society keeping its government from straying towards tyranny, which was the whole initial premise of the 2nd Amendment according to many. It also ignores that the vast majority of legal gun owners never shoot anyone and are significantly less likely to commit crime.
Lumping suicide by gun into statistics as the anti-gun lobby does when arguing the severity of gun violence is disingenuous since most suicide is not committed with firearms. Therefore a logical premise is that those who are suicidal enough to kill themselves would just as easily intentionally overdose or throw a toaster in their bathtub; instead of saying that if only guns were outlawed there would be no guns, and if there would be no guns, there would be no option for suicide for these people.
Hishtadlus towards your self protection by carrying a defensive weapon is VERY different than saying that your hishtadlus to get the government to ban a particular type of weapon will save anyone’s life. If you don’t believe me go ask your LOR (Emphasis on the “O”.) If you don’t want to ask your LOR, you are also being disingenuous.
Arguing about gun legislation is a moot point when you consider the deaths in this country by vehicular accidents and medical malpractice far FAR exceed the number of deaths by firearms, even if you consider suicide by firearm which is the largest chunk in the pie of gun related deaths. All you do by arguing for gun control is further harp on a highly divisive issue of culture and tradition for Americans and further divide the country. You can save MANY more innocent lives by enacting safety regulations for transportation and medicine. Beating the gun control issue is appealing to the average American who views mass homicide without the lens of hashgacha, thinking that “if only” guns were banned their child wouldn’t be dead. While it should be treated as a sensitive subject due to the emotions of those affected, in reality it doesn’t fit into Jewish hashkafa of hashgacha. Banning guns. Won’t save people. In terms of hishtadlus, focusing on the more prolific killers such as vehicular accidents, mental health, and medical malpractice is more significant.
“You” are your neshama. Hashem gives you your body which is just a levush. I take it for granted that your body’s DNA and all the ramifications of your genetic make-up are simply part of the body that Hashem gives you – again “you” being the neshama. By creating a living clone body one is still not able to determine the neshama inside of it. Thus a clone is a different person that the source.
Part of any proper self defense education is conflict avoidance and de-escalation, but what if you find the bum in your bedroom at 3:00 AM?
Mw13:
If there was a magic button that rid the planet of weapons, i would push it, but there isn’t – we need Mashiach for that. There are more guns than Americans in this country, and there is no way, at this point in time, to confiscate all arms Without starting a second civil war. The sad truth is that there are weapons smuggled into this country every day, and needless to say, they are not sold to the type of people who have the ability to pass FBI background checks and purchase guns legally. Ironically, the same people who constantly try to take away the rights of Americans to own firearms are also the ones who fight against securing the borders, through which illegal arms are smuggled across and into the hands of criminals in the US. That being the case, the constitution protects the rights of citizens to defend themselves. Disarming the good guys doesn’t prevent the bad guys from obtaining illegal weapons and using them against us. If this psychopath was not able to obtain his weapons legally, he could have done it just as well in an illegal form, or just used a different kind of weapon like a homemade dirty bomb. That’s why it can’t be prevented.Additionally, reports said it took 72 minutes for police to reach the madman in Vegas from the moment of the first emergency phone call. Granted, there was no armed civilian in the hotel (a “gun-free zone”) that was able to be proactive and stop the guy, but my point is, the police are not always there to defend you when C”V evil attacks. The right to self-defence is God-given and the Second Amendment is there to protect it. For these reasons, disarming the good guys is viewed as a bad decision by much of the country. To specifically use a tragedy as a tool to push a political position that is known to be controversial and is especially aggravating to much of the country is insensitive and divisive at a time during which national unity is needed more than anything else.
Gaon, who in their right mind was advocating for kids to pack heat as a fashion accessory?! Where in the conversation did this become “the issue at hand”?
Since automatic weapons are already outlawed, perhaps a better alternative would be to require highrise buildings to have cheap sensors installed to detect broken windows, so that their security teams can more quickly locate a shooter or jumper. Also, maybe a better job can be done for organizing the evacuations of mass gatherings. This could be requested by municipalities when someone tries to pull a permit to hold a large gathering. The gun is simply the tool. The same or more carnage could have been accomplished much more simply with a pickup truck and a few bags of fertilizer turned into a big IED. The sad truth is that there was no good way to stop this attack. The perp had no criminal or psychiatric history. He wasn’t even on the radar screen. Those turning this into a gun issue are just standing on the graves of the victims to try and push their agenda down other Americans’ throats.
DovidBT. Have you seen the videos? No flash. And have you ever fired a rifle at a target 500 yards away? Have you ever fired an automatic weapon at night at a target 500 yards away without hitting anything around it that shouldn’t be hit? To say this is “easy” shows your only experience in the matter comes from video games. Shooting back towards the hotel would just create more collateral losses. I hope you’re just making a bad joke.
“Gaon” there is a big difference between wearing a dagger/sword for ornament as many Arabian citizens still do, and carrying a tool for self defense.
As someone who has been around guns for his entire adult life, I can’t understand the “in-town” frum crowd’s phobia of guns. Perhaps it’s a result of growing up in the hyper-liberal, anti-gun New York. Wouldn’t you rather your kids learn to have a healthy respect for guns and learn how to treat them responsibly & safely from someone truly knowledgeable, as opposed to learning about them from Hollywood and pop culture, which frequently glorify violence and spread lots of potentially dangerous myths and false information about firearms? I’m not saying frum families MUST own firearms, but it’s ignorant to stick your head in the sand and assume that a child who encounters one in a an unfortunate scenario when an adult isn’t present will know how to react safely. You (hopefully) teach your children how to react to strangers, how to cross the street, and what to do if they find a sharp object, don’t you? What is the taboo with firearms that makes many frum people hush hush about the topic around their kids? It’s almost as if recognizing the existence of guns will turn children intro murderous thugs… It won’t.
Huju, YWN doesn’t allow links, but just google “police shootings by race”. There’s a great article by National Review, and another by the LA Times, if you lack faith in conservative news sources and desire liberal ones. There’s enough research out there on this topic to keep you busy for days. Also, I would humbly suggest that if you must spend your time worrying about dangerous groups, Muslim terrorists should be much higher on the worry list than the elusive Neo-Nazis.
Of course they wouldn’t fire Villanueva, because the backlash would be enormous – he’s a former Army Ranger who wants to respect the flag, and it’s not an official team rule that he must remain in the locker room with his team during the anthem. However, if they did fire him it would be very interesting to watch the chaos that ensues. Much worse than ESPN removing Asian-American Robert Lee.
Why must ye tell others what to saye? *Cough* ye *cough*
Huju, I’m very curious how a liberal justifies the statistics which show no racism exists. White men are just as likely to be shot by police when the incidence rate is normalized over the incidence of police confrontation for violent crime. Meaning, if black men and white men commit the same rate of violent crime (which they don’t – statistically, black men are 3 times as likely to) then upon contact with the police there is no indication that the black man will be shot more frequently than the white man. What say ye?
Also, this is not Trump’s fault. Kaepernick was kneeling while BHO was still in office.
Akuperma. The players’ protest is not protected by 1st Amendment rights since they are on paid time. If their employer tells them to stand they must stand or he can fire them. Likewise, (unless it is buried somewhere in NFL contracts) the league can disqualify a team if they break rules. Apparently standing up for the anthem is not currently a rule, but the league has the right to include it as a rule. Make no mistake about it, the NFL is BIG BUSINESS, and these are business decisions, which is why liberal city teams (Seattle, New England, San Francisco, etc) support the players’ protests, while owners from less liberal cities (such as Jerry Jones on the Cowboys) are against it. They want to keep the financial support of their home towns.
The problem with open windows/doors isn’t really the wind blowing in the house, it’s the pressure differential created by the wind going over your roof and around the corners of your home. If your door is open the incoming air also creates high pressure inside that can tear the roof off. Once the roof is gone, the walls are not as structurally sound because they are now only attached on 3 sides instead of 4, so they can more easily collapse, as well. That’s why homes designed for high velocity hurricane zones should have doors that open out from the structure. Good luck and good Shabbos!
As bad as the political climate is under Trump, I would still rather have him than that sleazy Clinton because unlike her, he actually cares about the country. The only reason Trump’s presidency is in the shape that it’s in right now is because the Democrats didn’t even have the decency to give the man a chance. He started off well, but things fell apart with time under all the pressure from the obstructionist on the left, and now the Rinos.
Dear gadol hadorah, you are completely mixing up three different issues: Issur ervah, kavod hatorah, and the mitzvah of tzniyus. I would humbly suggest that, more importantly than learning the differences between the three issues, you should “man-up” and come face-to-face with the root causes that drive your continuous passive-aggressive bashing of halacha and frum males on a website catered for the people which you so clearly despise.
I’m glad to see that a secular court still respects a dress code. Gavriel613 – having zero tact or respect for appropriate dress code isn’t “a clear tzad”. Being dressed appropriately for the occasion is not a Jewish concept. This woman was not dressed appropriately for a court of law, and she was thus being directly disrespectful, whether by malice or ignorance, of authority. Not a good role model for a pre-teen. Even some fancy restaurants won’t let you enter in shorts or without a collared shirt.
@Gadolhadorah “Especially those whose social skills are limited based on not having grown up in gender-mixed school system and living in a heimeshe community,” … Wow…. How can you so broadly disparage and stereotype an entire community of people in the SAME SENTENCE as talking about being careful not to offend people? I guess you think respect is a one way street.
Rebbyidd, let’s not pretend men go to the shirt emporium and ask the clerk to direct them to the racks with the see-through shirts. It’s just that unfortunately the quality of the textiles of many white shirts isn’t what it needs to be, so when you are wearing white tzitzis with highly contrasting black stripes, they are easily seen through the white shirt material. But what does this have to do with anything?
Gadol hadorah, what source do you have that interprets that stained clothing on a talmid chacham is a matter of tznius? All classical meforshim understand this to be an issue of kavod hatorah.
It’s ironic that some frum girls complain tsniyus is stressed for women more than men, and yet many a frum girl wears tops that show collarbone & forearms and skirts that reveal calves, while frum men typically don’t wear shorts, and rarely wear short sleeves or forego wearing a collared shirt in public.
Lilmod – The reason is, in America, in order to retain tax exempt 501c3 status, an organization cannot advocate for one political candidate over another. Most gedolim’s organizations/shuls/yeshivahs are 501c3 and therefore cannot legally claim tax exemption and tell you who to vote for in a public, organization sanctioned forum. Nonetheless, daas Torah affects this decision too, and you can ask your LOR or LOGadol in a private forum.
Please consult your LOR before casting a vote. With very strong emphasis on the O in LOR.
Although, if you live in NY it probably doesn’t matter one bit who you vote for.
Zionism shouldn’t be necessary if you observe mitzvas. Supplementing Hashem’s Torah with an -ism implies that the Torah’s philosophy is lacking in some way and needs supplementation.
That being said, the Zionists who go pitch their tent in dangerous areas in Israel may be misguided, but they are our brothers and sisters and we are obligated to love them and help protect them from the Arabs who want to spill all Jewish blood.
The bloodthirsty, savage, fascist, Islamic terrorists who go by the moniker “Palestinians” are the enemies of every Jew, and trying to appease them by throwing Zionist Jews into their claws and fangs will get us nowhere. Jewish sects who blindly teach their children to hate Zionists (and I’ve seen it too) are even more misguided than the Zionists.
19!?!? She’s but a babe! People need to live life on their own a little and learn what they want out of life before they get married. Imho, I don’t think driving from your high school graduation ceremony straight to your wedding is a good thing.
Non-biodegradable garbage definitely is not created by nature, nor is it being “returned” to nature when you litter.
I know exactly how to take care of your problem. *cracks knuckles*
In terms of economics: The Torah does not believe in the Communist or Socialist version of equality. Yes, each person has to pay a “tax” to benefit the poor, but this ma’aser is percentage capped and applies to everyone equally regardless of economic status. Chazal were very sensitive to personal property rights and deal only within the framework of capitalism. There is no judicial movement in Chazal to equalize everyone’s wealth – on the contrary, as some have already mentioned, a financial dispute is based on merits of argument alone, and not on how wealthy or poor the defendant/plaintiff may be relative to each other. Chazal also push for a free market society, but they place limits on usury, bribery, extortion, and dishonest dealings.
In terms of gender equality: Both genders deserve equal respect, but they are strongly discouraged from trying to assume identical roles, in all areas of life (public, private, socially, politically, militarily, etc…).
In short, I think equality as defined by society today is contrary to Torah beliefs.
Can we please get back on topic… WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!
Joseph, assuming it’s not someone else’s cat, and assuming you aren’t violating the law of the land, yes. It is permissible.
HaLevi – Mercy, yes, but “respect”? Do you have a source from Torah/Chazal of this concept of “respect” for animals, or is this just an emotional response? From a mussar perspective, you shouldn’t do anything that is outright disparaging to animals because it affects your character and will likely translate to humans too. However, is disrespcting an animal in a way that wouldn’t affect your middos still wrong? Not saying it isn’t; just asking.
RebYidd23, that’s a cop out answer unless you explain why it’s forbidden, but let’s say we didn’t genetically modify them, but someone else already did.
I know, I’m being metaphorical. I’m not trying to be biologically accurate. I just meant if the chickens were genetically modified to not feel pain… interesting shayla, I think.
Is it still tzaar baalei chayim if science figures out a away to genetically labotamise animals and make them not feel any suffering?
Melody, your story is beautiful, and your motivation is inspirational!! You are a holy bas Yisrael! Do you live near a large Jewish community? You could ask your local Chabad Rabbi if there are other orthodox shuls in the area that you could visit. Also, sometimes organizations including Oorah and Aish need a bit of pushing to let them know you’re serious. Don’t give up! Keep sending them emails, and don’t be scared to call up Aish Rabbis if you get their number. They’re always more than happy to help. Good luck, and keep on truckin! 🙂