jewishfeminist02

Give yourself a time limit. Start slowly. Go from 2+ hours to 1 1/2 hours, do that for a week, and go down from there. If the news is important to you, there’s no reason to limit it entirely. Just set an end goal of let’s say 10-30 minutes per day. Also, that way it will be much easier to actually succeed in your goal. If you know that you can’t read the news EVER anymore, it will be that much more tempting– a more realistic goal is to limit rather than eliminate.

Fleishig?

Sparkly: Why do you say that? Why would it be apikorsus?

DY: Laws, for instance. Or a historical account of something horrific that happened. It depends on the context. One might “struggle to accept” the fact that Dovid HaMelech’s ancestors were alone on a bed together at night before having been married, for instance. And in fact, all the meforshim on this subject clearly do struggle with it. You can substitute different words, though, if that makes you feel better.

lilmod ulelamaid: Isn’t it better to keep some mitzvos than no mitzvos? Don’t you think a person who keeps something is more likely to someday become frum than a person who keeps nothing? Do you realize that not all people who call themselves Conservative or Reform actually identify with the ideals of those movements, i.e. apikorsus?

Sparkly, yes I know…perhaps you didn’t see the original comment I was responding to.

I.M. Shluffin wrote “There’s something incredible and otherworldly about opening a sefer and learning it, connecting it to other sources, discussing it (or arguing about it, if you’re a man)”.

My point is that it is not only men who argue back and forth when they learn Gemara together. Women who learn Gemara do the same.

Health, yes I see that article, but I still don’t see your point. The article gives the history of homosexuality and its classification. It was removed from the DSM when a majority of members of the APA voted to remove it. Wonderful. So what? There’s nothing in there about “PC” anything…

Ben Levi:

1) Yes, but even once it was peer reviewed, a large majority of the reviews were critical of the study and its methods…

2) Even so, the scattershot nature of the so-called “therapies” made the whole thing rather dubious, and Spitzer’s own conclusion at the time was that while therapies might sometimes work, they would not work in the vast majority of cases.

3) I didn’t say anything about unlicensed therapists. Only that while some participants were getting actual therapy from licensed therapists, many others were off on their own doing who knows what and calling it “therapy”. And it wasn’t just the therapists who had a political agenda, it was many of the participants themselves. And I’m sure you know very well the meaning of “anti-gay bias”.

4) Yes, I know who he is, but it doesn’t change the fact that this particular study was seriously flawed.

5) Google “how to ex an ex-gay study, Psychology Today” to see what Zucker really said and why.

6) You can nitpick all you want, but the bottom line is that conversion therapy has been completely discredited in the scientific research. All you have to argue against that is ONE single study with a checkered history– and that’s putting it kindly.

Ben Levi, read my comment again. You seem to have deliberately skipped over the second half of that sentence: “Part of feminism is understanding that there isn’t such a thing as “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs”, because jobs should always be given to the most qualified candidate regardless of gender.”

That should be clear enough. But I’ll humor you and explain it anyway.

There is no such thing as “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs” in that ANY QUALIFIED CANDIDATE, regardless of gender, should be considered for a job, EVEN IF a person of that gender does not typically apply for those jobs.

I am not in any way denying that trends exist, as far as who is typically a) interested in, and b) capable of, certain jobs. HOWEVER, the fact that those trends exist should NOT be used as an excuse not to hire a perfectly capable candidate who happens not to fit in with that trend.

In other words: Most construction workers are men, because most women don’t want construction jobs, and/or couldn’t do the work even if they wanted to. That is a fact. BUT, if Jane Smith is a woman who enjoys construction work and is strong enough to do it just as well as any man, the construction boss should NOT refuse to hire her just because “women don’t do that.”

He doesn’t agree with Chabad hashkafos OR halachos…he won’t eat their shechita, believes that their mikvaos are not kosher, etc. (Probably bedieved, if I got stuck in a place where only a Chabad mikvah were available, he would allow me to use it. But lechatchila not.)

He does, however, agree with me that Chabad is to be greatly admired and respected when it comes to kiruv. And since we travel often, we have seen firsthand the generosity and hospitality that Chabad is known for, and we will always be grateful to them for that.

Compared to Joseph, just about anybody is a feminist.

Yes, I think so.

I live in such a community, except that the school is not run by Chabad. My husband would never, ever agree to send our children to a Chabad school.

Huh?

Yes, the exceptions are people and I would not try to force any individual person to fit the overall trend. But neither would I deny that the overall trend exists.

It’s nothing to do with women having access to “mans jobs” [sic]. I mean, part of feminism is understanding that there isn’t such a thing as “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs”, because jobs should always be given to the most qualified candidate regardless of gender. Of course, you are going to see some pretty significant gender disparities within certain fields, just because of natural aptitude or self-selection (for instance, female construction workers and male speech pathologists are both very rare breeds!) but the point is that if a woman CAN do a job that is usually held by a man, and she WANTS to, she shouldn’t be automatically turned away just because of a long-held prejudice that “ladies don’t do that”. Unfortunately, that happens quite often, even today. That’s the playing field that needs leveling. Plus, even once a woman has found a job that she likes, she won’t earn as much as a man would. Even in the identical position, with identical skills and experience. That’s another playing field that needs leveling.

I wasn’t talking about feminism within Judaism…that’s a different story altogether.

It’s hard to say because I don’t work with patients or clients…I suppose I would read the scholarship and try to figure out if there was something different about the population I was seeing, some distinct trait that they had or the location where I served them or something, that would explain why their experiences were so different from the overall trend. Maybe I would speak to my colleagues about it also and ask what their experiences were.

And the feminist baiting count is up to 2.

Not touching this one, either. Try again later.

No, it’s still racism. The schools accept Ashkenazim no matter how much money they have, but by Sephardim you have to be a millionaire. Just because they accept SOME Sephardim doesn’t make that not a racist policy.

Neville ChaimBerlin: False. Feminism doesn’t want women to have priority over men. Feminism just wants a level playing field for everyone.

Affirmative action was for minorities, not women.

I’m sure you don’t realize how inappropriate your second paragraph is. How about you try replacing “feminists” with “Jews”, and then read it in light of hundreds of years of Jewish history, and see how it sounds.

“People probably thought Jews would go away when parcels of land in ghettoes were granted to them, or when usury gave them an unfair advantage, but it didn’t. They will just keep asking for more like when you give a dog a little piece of human food: it doesn’t go away satisfied, it just begs even more.”

DY, you’re the one who keeps using the word “values”. I never said that a person should struggle with “Torah values” or feel uncomfortable with “Torah values”. I said that sometimes when we study Torah, the text of the Torah can make us uncomfortable, and that we should acknowledge that discomfort and wrestle with it.

mentsch1: Yes, absolutely. If there were an anti-vaccine thread on the Coffee Room (there may be, I haven’t checked, but certainly not an active one) I would be vocal there as well.

You didn’t clarify anything at all. You just said some vague made-up nonsense.

“adocs, have you ever asked a shaila from a posek or Rov whether the Halacha in the Shulchan Aruch we’re discussing, as well as the equivalent Rambam, are utterly meaningless and irrelevant in our modern day, with our era having replaced the anarchistic practices and rulings from the days of the Mechaber? No? I didn’t think so. So I’ll tell you what. Call a posek of note and ask him if a) the Shulchan Aruch and Rambam we’re discussing can be scratched out as irrelevant and to be ignored without any meaning for our times or b) the Shulchanch Aruch and Rambam remain relevant for us today and ought to guide our lives in some manner.”

Um, that’s not how shailahs work. You don’t call a Rav and ask him “Do I have to follow this Rambam?” You call a Rav and ask him “Can women drive wherever and whenever they want to, assuming the errand is not inappropriate, or does there have to be a special reason for them going out because it’s only bedieved?” and the Rav will give his answer based on his knowledge of Shas and poskim. Either he will pasken based on that particular Rambam, or he won’t. But you don’t ask the shailah on the Rambam itself.

“How many doctors do you know that have a male secretary?”

How many doctors do you know that have ONE staff person, no nurses or anything, and that one person is a 17 year old? Forget gender for a second. Something’s off here.

I will repeat, he is a nobody. His “findings” contradict the entire rest of the medical community. There isn’t really any merit in “examining both sides” when on one side you have the weight of all the top names in research and scholarship, and on the other side you have one random guy with a Ph.D and a couple of his buddies.

What? I didn’t change topics. This was my original comment:

“…sometimes you will encounter parts of Torah that make you feel highly uncomfortable, that you will struggle to accept, and that that struggle is itself something holy, insofar as it pushes you to get to the heart of the text and to really internalize it in a deeper way.”

If you can read the story of the Pilegesh B’Giv’ah and find it merely “emotional” but not at all shocking or disturbing, good for you, I guess? I can’t do that. But it doesn’t mean that I have “foreign values”.

I just don’t understand why you think it’s so important to police emotional reactions. I will reiterate that I don’t believe there is a wrong way to react to a Torah passage. It’s what you do with that reaction that matters most.

They may deal with people who have not yet physically left their families and communities. But those people have already left Yiddishkeit itself.