doom777

Serious question: what would you expect Rabbis to say, had they been given a microphone? To remind people about Hashem? Whoever believes, believes, and whoever doesn’t doesn’t. To call for more learning? People should be learning more always, what does that have to do with the situation? If you want to say that it is lack of learning that brought this calamity, what is your evidence? I’ve been to frum atzeiras for the matzav, and even the best speakers had nothing to say.

The only Rav who was able to convincingly connect current events to Torah was Rav Meir Kahane, and he is no longer with us.

All the speakers were boring, they were not there to provide any insights, but rather only to show support through an act of speaking. Ideally, there would be no speakers at all, we’d just all gather in the National Mall, chant ‘no ceasefire’ three times, daven mincha, and go home.

Torah learning is only one of the mitzvas. The state of the Jews is a function of Jews’ overall dveikut to Hashem.

With regards to the “civilians” conversation,

We need to make a differentiation between Criminal Justice, and War. In Criminal Justice, especially Jewish Criminal Justice, you can only convict someone if you have certain proof that they committed a transgression. You need two witnesses, and a warning, and a minor can not be liable.
In War, your priority is to protect your people from attack, or to conquer an enemy. Even Western armies will kill a six year old child if he points a gun at the soldiers. In fact, Western inspired international law is much more lenient that we imagine, and most claims of “war crimes” are not. As Jews we must follow Jewish law in warfare, just like we follow Jewish law in eating, Jewish law in marriage, and Jewish law in civil disputes.

An excellent question, lakewhut. It should be asked more often.

It looks like Israel’s goals in this war are shrinking with every day. While in the begining, they wanted to “Flatten Gaza”, the goals now are merely to rebuilt deterrence, and incapacitate Hamas’s military and administrative capabilities. If that sounds familiar to you, it should — these are the same goals that Israel set for itself at all previous engagements with Hamas. This shows that all talk about a change in “contzeptiya” and deep soul searching is empty — Israel is back at the same plate.

The reason Israel is regurgitating the same concepts that have shown themselves so impotent, is Israel has no other concept. Israel has to either 1) accept Arabs next to them, or 2) expel them, or 3) expel themselves. Expelling the Arabs, like Rabbi Kahane zt”l hy”d begged us to do for decades, will carry with it a stiff diplomatic penalty — Israel may find itself as isolated as North Korea, which will also be a victory for Iran. We just need to consider if that’s better than what happened two weeks ago.

Yserbius: because you are using only conjecture. I have personal experience with the system, and it’s significantly worse than you can imagine. Noone that didn’t go through it doesn’t know what it’s like.

For example, the prison uniforms are not made of shatnez, but the “Mashgiach” in the kitchen is another prisoner. Not only are these prisoners often careless about halacha, but also there is an obvious conflict of interest where the Mashgiach lives in fear of the institution he has to look over, and I saw one case where the Mashgiach found bugs in the rice, and told that it’s pasul, but there wasn’t enough to replace the afflicted rice, and the completely secular prison warden tried to force the Mashgiach to approve it nonetheless, and when the Mashgiach still refused, he was punished and placed in solitary confinement.

First, “Elokeihem shel elu sone zima hu”. Meaning sexual based offenses are considered especially heinous, even if the word “toeva” is used for both.
Second, there are no “unscrupulous business practices” parades, no “unscrupulous business practice pride month”, and unscrupulous business people are not trying to turn the entire world “unscrupulous business practice.
In relation to previous point, it’s the difference between leteavon, and lehach’iis

The problem is not the positive mitzvos, it’s the negative ones. Someone who is mehalel shabbos is haiv. Someone who is not mehallel Shabbos, is not Haiv even if his reasons for not doing it are stupid.

Many of my friends in Israel dropped out of school at age 13, started working construction, and by the time they are 25, they each have a small construction company, wife, several kids, own a home, and learn Torah every evening (mostly Likutei Moharan, but still). Some have even later completed school and gotten engineers degrees, or at the very least general contractor licenses.

This is the first time I am hearing about Rabbi Weismann (a google search shows that he is a rav, if he is not, I apologize). I am only responding gufa to the article.

We should strive to emulate the naviim. For example, David HaMelech wrote songs to praise and thank Hashem, so should we. Now our songs will probably not be as good as the original David’s Tehillim, and they may or may not be remembered for generations, but that’s no reason not to try.

Simcha:
“halacha is not unethical, but one can be an Orthodox Jew and a Shomer Torah UMitzvos while still being unethical”
1. If the Torah and Mitzvos don’t say that something is unethical, then who are you to say that it is?
2. Do you accept upon yourself Torah UMitzvos? Are you willing to hurt people, commit crime, and fraud when the Torah requires you?

I think that there is an intuitive code, called “derech eretz” which is “kodma latorah”. However the Torah supersedes any d.e. considerations, and informs us on what true d.e. really is. I.E. “tikkun olam” is not a reform invention, it’s mentioned in mishna, but chazal used it sparingly.