Gadolhadorah

The question of pet ownership has been debated for decades in frum journals, forums etc. and the majority opinion is that there is no issur under Halacha but simply a question of common sense and priorities. Its a stupid analogy to say that since no one can point to any gadol hador walking a dog or feeding his goldfish, therefore its per se assur. If one can afford a pet, has the space to give it a good lifestyle and it doesn’t limit one’s observance of other mitzvos, no reason why not and to some it may actual help them with stress relief and concentration for learning.

I think you have inadvertently confused an “R” with a “K”. The OK (sometimes called the “Circle K” is one of the most highly respected commercial hashgachos headed by Rav Donald Levy, Shlita. While perhaps not at the gold standard level of some smaller Chasideshe hashgachos, it is still more than adequate for the needs of the poishete yid who want to adhere to the laws of kashruth.

Fox subsequently clarified that his hashgacha may not have been from Badatz as originally claimed and there is an open question about a missing plumba. Both matters have been referred to the Special Counsel, Reb Moeller for a din torah

To CT Lawyer:
The starting salaries for all the major NYC firms this year (for 2L offers extended after last year’s summer associate offers were all north of $163K plus bonuses of $15k for those billing 2K hours. First tier investment banks were generally north of $150 for MBAs. You are correct that these are for top firms but those are the options that a first tier yeshiva bochur with a good analytic mind is foregoing by torah study. As you correctly note, these numbers may seem unrealistic and probably irrelevant for most kollel yungerleit going into chinuch but that is a sacrifice they willingly make. The problem of low market valuation for educators is society-wide and not limited to the frum tzibur. We read here on YWN a while back a story about how many NYC sanitation workers are routinely earning over $100,000 year with overtime while teachers are earning barely half that much.

The varbeshe section of the plaza in front of the kosel always seems to have plenty of room for davening…no need to wander off to Robinson’s Arch area off to the side of the upper plaza (even though I’m told the Ebeshter will listen to your teffilos from Bergen Mall or wherever you are if you speak to him with kavanah).

Maybe we have a terminology problem here. Some posters suggest the issue is “age discrimination” while others say that its somehow “heartless” to fire an older rav who displays (over time) poor teaching skills as determined by the school’s administrators. The issue is one of competence, not age. Some of the best teachers in many yeshivos are the oldest rabbonim. Age is not a predictor of teaching skills. Firing them because they are the highest paid (as a result of age) is illegal under civil law. Not firing them even after becoming aware of their incompetence means the administrators are incompetent.

To Daas Yochid:

What evidence do you have that failure to provide lifetime tenure to non-performing rabbonim in chinuch will jeopardize the future supply of rabbonim willing to pursue a career in chinuch. One hears the same argument with respect to public service employment, etc. I would suggest that imposing some market discipline would benefit the market, since right now, there are too many rabbonim coming out of yeshivot who surpress the salary of teachers. If the supply curves bends down relative to a fixed or growing demand curve, wages will rise and thereby attract more highly qualified yungerleit receiving semicah to pursue a career in chinuch. Our schools are not designed, nor should they be asked, to function as employers of last resort for rabbonim lacking teaching skills.

In just about every case of this type, those indicted and chargde continue to profess their “innocence’ until the evidence is presented at trial and/or they negotiate a plea agreement with the prosecution. These types of cases have among the highest conviction rates of any types of felony cases. As the moderator above correctly notes, one cannot rely upon the representation in a website posting as the basis for contradicting the facts in a sworn statement supporting the indictment. Even a Rav would first have a local lawyer or accountant review the facts of the case before lending his name to any fundraising effort. Rather than encouraging her friends here in the CR, this woman should first get some independent party confirm her version of why she was incorrectly charged.

That is not what I meant. I simply meant that unless verified by The Chesed Fund, there is no way to be certain where the money is going.

To Joseph:
You say that “Becoming a “gadol” is not just for the brightest…”

Well, its clear that I am living proof of your comment but that also makes my point. It is relatively easy to determine after a modest amount of time which of the guys shteiging in the beis medrash are “gadol” material and especially which ones have more than a .0001 percent likelihood of becoming a “gadol hador”. Its unfair to both baalei tzadakah and the bochur himself to use scarce resources for someone in his mid-20s to be painfully trying to understand the complexities of “shor sh’nagach shor”. In some utopian society with unlimited resources, maybe…but in the real world, have everyone find some vocation in which they can excel and move on from that in which they cannot.

Joseph Says:

“Being a Kollel man should not have anything to do with learning ability. Someone who is a poor learner but has a great desire to learn Torah full time has just as much right to be a Kollel man as the best learner in Brisk. ”

If you are a “poor learner” and also poor from a financial perspective, its probably a good idea to move yourself from behind a shtender and into the workforce. Neither the taxpayers of NY/NJ nor the generous askanim who support worth mosdos have any obligation to support those who are not cut out for learning and are too lazy to get a job. Once you find employment and can support your family, than perhaps its appropriate to find a part-time chavrusah who can learn with you at your level (whatever that might be). There are several very good website that are designed exactly for the purpose of matching part time learning partners who have similar skills and interests. Some provide for meeting at some local shul/beis medrash and others create “virtual” learning chavrusahs online. Either way though, don’t become a burden on the taxpayers or wastefully suck up the limited tzadakah available.

There are many dedicated learners who are fortunate to have affluent parents and/or in-laws or a wife who has a professional career who can provide the resources to support a family in comfort. However, in the absence of those options, one presumes that those choosing to learn full-time have developed a plan or strategy for economic sustenance beyond “the Ebeshter will provide” or “the taxpayers of NY/NJ have an obligation to support my wife and family”.

I also find it hypocritical for Yungerliet to “blame the yeshivos” for not training them and providing them the needed education to earn a parnassah. Hello??? If you are sitting behind a shtender in a beis medrash for 10 years and shteiging 24×7 what would you expect? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that your are not going to get hired at a good salary (outside of chinuch or perhaps as a mashgiach which itself requires special training) if you have not secular education, are not proficient on computers, etc. Its your OWN FAULT, not that of the yeshiva which you yourself voluntarily chose to attend. We have recently seen the courts throw out lawsuits filed by college grads against their schools for not adequately training them for good paying jobs. IN those cases, at least they had some training and education. For someone to metaphorically hide themselves in a cave for 10 years, then come out and cry “gevalt” about their limited options in the job market is laughable and doesn’t warrant any sympathy.

The point has been made here repeatedly on multiple topics and in multiple contexts. The notion of a very large percentage of chareidi young men foregoing any secular education and vocational training and instead spending 10+ years shteiging while throwing their families on the welfare rolls is a true chillul hashem (overused term) and totally inconsistent with how prior generations (with exceptions for a few future gaonim) found the time to do both. These yungerleit fully know the hole they are digging for themselves and their families by rejecting all the available options today to combine secular studies and job training with their learning so the laments about making the transition after 10 years of zero effort on acquiring the skills for a paranassah cannot be taken credibly.

There is a misguided notion that learning and earning a parnassah are mutually exclusive. Throughout our history, with few exceptions, there have been generations of those who lived a balanced life including limudei torah, working for a parnassah and spending time relaxing with family and friends. Its only in the last generations that the notion of learning 24×7 while throwing your family on to the public welfare rolls and private charities has become the norm in some communities. Its time to go back to basics with respect to living a balanced life. Sure, maybe a small subset of brilliant talmidim might learn full-time, but 90 percent of the shteigers in BMG, et. al. are NOT brilliant learners.

Its somewhat bizarre that a Rav who cannot even get along with his own brother feels competent to give musar to the yidden in France whose own sense of security is at risk. He says nothing about how they can resolve their security issues and instead uses his comments to exploit their fears and tell them their children will go OTD if they c’v move to eretz hakodesh where there security will be substantially approved.

If I understand your perspective, any behavior or communal committment explicitly addressed in the Torah is a fundamental moral imperative….everything else is a discretionary policy choice over which reasonable yidden might disagree. I guess that works for you but what about the young child of a single mother who would like to observe the mitzvah of “u’shamartem es nofshosechem” but sadly lacks the resources to provide for preventive health care. Is it the responsibility of the tzibur to provide a social safety net or simply allow for those who want to voluntarily give tzadakah to do so and if not, the child may be at risk from fatal childhood diseases.

To DaasYochid:

Do you really believe “the market” will provide what society doesn’t value…..if adequate health care for children is not treated as a “right” (as it is in EY and most of the world outside the U.S.) and subsidized as necessary by the government, the market will NOT voluntarily provide care to those who cannot pay (we can argue why) but run in the direction of offering higher quality service at increasingly higher prices to those that can afford it. Health care is different from any other product or service in the economy. If you insist on protecting “life” in the womb as an objectively moral requirement under penalty of law (one infamous state law would have made abortion a capital crime) than you are equally obligated to treat that life with dignity and value after it emerges into the world. As a yid, you seem to be saying that unless some social value or objective can be explicitly found among taryag mitzvos, it inherently must be assigned a lower priority.

RebYid23

You clearly have a viewpoint and are entitled to hold by it ….for many of us, getting input from online sources on a subject we know little about is better than making decisions with no information. Most of us feel competent to sort out the information we get online and apply the appropriate discount factors based on the qualifications of the source, how the advice conforms with other views solicited, etc. As another post commented, ANY third-party information requires one to exercise some degree of analysis prior to using that information as the basis for decisions. As to your own challenges in virtual rehab, we all wish you a refuah shelaymah.

Both the torah and our own constitution implicitly approved of slavery, albeit under conditions requiring that slaves be treated humanely. There also are provisions for one yid to summarily execute another yid without going through a judicial process for certain violations of torah law. I’m unaware that the Ebeshter provided his yidden a mechanism to amend his torah by a vote of 2/3 of the shevatim or by a 3/4 vote of the RCA membership. There are lots of things in the torah that might seem morally repugnant today but its not up to us to question. However, as long as we live in galus, we must in most cases to dina d’malchusa and cannot invoke torah law to justify actions that are strictly forbidden under civil law. I find it bizarre how many political conservatives (including some yidden) who rant and rave about outlawing any adherence to Shariah law in the U.S. but are totally quiet (or ignorant) about the degree to which frum yidden already subject themselves voluntarily to halacha, rely on a system of beis dins to adjudicate disputes, etc. Of course, we would contend there is no “moral equivalence” betweeh Shariah and Halacha but from a legal and constitutional perspective we cannot enforce a selective prohibition on ANYONE voluntarily subjecting themselves to any religious code.

What is necessary today are websites that provide non-judgmental, torah-based information to those with questions about lifestyles, education, workplace issues etc. but provide the opportunity for the individual to analyze information and decide for himself/herself their own hashkafah. The old fashioned guidance of finding one’s own local rav/posek is an ideal but often impractical in today’s world where younger people are highly mobile and don’t set down roots long enough to build such relationships. While having your own “virtual rav” would be second best, it also requires that individuals learn to think critically and decide for themselves how they want to live a torah-based life in the 21st century.

I don’t think the actual regents test scores are publicly disclosed for individual schools so it is difficult to make direct comparisons. On an anecdotal level, I’d believe the assumption that yeshiva grads from schools with good secular programs score better than public school counterparts in the same communities. However, I’d be skeptical about the test scores I some frum schools where secular classes are not given much priority.

To Joseph:

Are you really serious about Lakewood being such a “Kiddush hashem”?? You are either trolling as usual or are totally oblivious to the fact that welfare is so widespread in the township that according to census data, more than half of all the children live in homes that receive some form of government assistance for the poor. There are 10,000 more children in households with married couples in Lakewood receiving food, income or state aid than Newark. Clearly, the BMG network did much to help rebuild the frum tzibur and support limud torah in the post-War period here in the U.S. However, do you really believe that Aron Kotler imagined that the frum community he helped establish and nurture would deteriorate to the point It has become the welfare capital of the state??

Avi K is right….if chazal were to opine on the issue today, they would be considerably more careful to qualify their statement so that CR readers would not take it as a blanket statement. Its intutitive that the daughter of a talmid chacham is more likely to have good midos and make a good wife and mother but everyone can probably cite examples where that is not ALWAYS the case.

Perhaps its time to place less empahasis on shiduchim and focus more on allowing our young men and women to meet and get to know one another without all the stress and pressures of the current system where parents, grandparents, family and friends create a sense of near-hysteria if a date for kiddushin is not fixed within a short time of the first date. There is no “shidduch crisis”; there is cultural crisis where we push marriage on children not ready of marriage and make them feel like damaged goods (especially the girls) if they c’v reach the age of 20 w/o a chooson and baby carriage. In the context of young men and women with some physical illness or emotional disability, they have every obligation to be transparent as to their condition, even if it means taking longer to find their beschert. To do otherwise is deceitful and more likely than not to result in a breakup of the marriage or serious marital disfunction.

In today’s world, any mark or symbol of “hasgacha” has great commercial value since it conveys the sense that the product is produced under higher standards, with higher quality ingredients, etc. In some respects, its a second tier version of “organic” or “natural”. You can credit this to a few brands such as Hebrew National (whose hashgacha gets low grades here on YWN) because of their national TV marketing about “we report to a higher authority”. There are various studies, but some estimates indicate that more than 2/3 of the market for specialty kosher products are purchased by goyim for the reasons noted above, This does not include such generic products as nationally marketed baked goods, breakfast cereals, canned tuna fish, etc who have a kosher certification.