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Instead of adding my voice to the WIY-bashers, I’ll propose something worse (not): that the essence of halakhot and minhagim is, in fact, the reconciliation of different demands with each other and with external situations. This is why the Shulhan Arukh fills many volumes instead of a ten-page pamphlet and why hilkhot sefira fill a ten-page pamphlet instead of a single sheet. Shaving during sefira to keep one’s job reconciles clashing values — mourning the death of R. Akiva’s talmidim vs. supporting oneself as Hashem told us to in Bereshit — by allowing it only for that purpose. It isn’t a violation of minhag but part of it.
Kanoi next door remarks: “See, us crazy ultra-Orthodox Jews believe in this thing called ‘halacha’, which we follow no matter what.” Is this so? Halacha generally comes with reams of fine print for situations in which “no matter what” creates more problems than it solves. An example is the principle of bending rules when not doing so puts Torah to ridicule. This aside, as a hediot, I doubt the possibility of maintaining a cohen’s purity when all cohanim today are only behezkat cohanim and are presumed to be tameh to begin with.
Kanoi next door warns against likening Zionism to avoda zara by saying, “Let’s not push it.” In the next breath, he likens the establishment of the medina to the Holocaust. “Let’s not push it,” indeed.
Oh Shreck says: “The only meaning to these days […] is such hakaras hatov to Hashem” despite seemingly ample reason for Hashem to withhold the tov. He concludes: “Now that is cause for celebration.”
It truly is. Nothing could better express the whole theology of Yom Haatzmaut as celebrated by Religious Zionists.
Enjoy the celebration, Shreck. Have no shreck.
Those who speak of gezeirot should remember what the word really means: cutting things down to their proper size (memory says that I got this insight from Sefer Haparshiyot). That’s what a tailor does when he performs gezeira on his cloth; he surely doesn’t “punish” it and the cloth doesn’t rise up in anguished protest. So is it when a government acts to reduce a bloated budget deficit, to downsize a set of educational institutions that has enrolled too many people, etc.
Health, government doesn’t work that way. When you sit in one, you bear responsibility for everything it does by commission or omission.
I’ve been following this thread with a sinking sensation. The commenters have lowered a lovely spiritual concept to crude numbers: more talmidim, more protection; more Zionists, less protection. Or maybe it’s the percents of talmidim and Zionists that count (and a Zionist can’t be a talmid, of course). I have a modest proposal: maybe the true measure is weight. Shouldn’t a beefy bachur provide more protection? Or is it the other way around — shouldn’t light weight have an advantage, as with Singapore Airlines? Either way, it’s ??? ???? ????; the commenters have crowded HKBH right out of the calculus.
Health, I missed your gem until now and I’d like some elaboration. What degrees of aveira should I kill to avoid transgressing? The big three? All mi-deoraytas? Derabbanans too? Tying my shoes? Should I kill everyone in sight or just the one who’s getting in the way of my shoelace? Please clarify and cite your authority so I can quote him when the vile secularists haul me into court.
A good way for a gabbai to remove stigma from giving kids gelila is to give pre-mitzvah kids all functions that they are allowed to do, and to give bnei mitzvah everything they can handle. That makes it a matter of hinukh as opposed to vying for kavod. I saw this done 30 years ago in a YI shul in southern Israel, and today only the old members of the shul are left … because the young ones built their own frum neighborhood.
chez11, the sweeping statement “frum yidden are legally prohibited to work” isn’t true. Anyone who’s been drafted and deferred cannot work, frum or not. This was my status for six months in 1982. I was allowed while deferred to finish teaching a course, but only by special permission and only because the course was for demobilized soldiers. Besides, your statement implies that only full-time learners are frum yidden and vice versa; I hope you didn’t mean it that way.
Popa, army rabbis work their heads off to uphold halakha amid a majority that isn’t on the program. To consider them *personally* untrustworthy on halakha sounds to me like lashon hara unless you’ve got some evidence for it and a good reason to make the allegation here. Please provide the evidence or retract the comment.
Akuperma refers to a “law prohibiting Jews from working unless they complete army service.” There’s no such thing. Anyone with a legal exemption (on medical grounds, for being an Arab, for being a frum woman on her say-so, for being deemed unsuitable for service, etc.) is free to work, learn, and anything else. In contrast, those who declare “torato umanuto” are given deferments, making them de jure soldiers on something like extended leave. This and only this is why they cannot work.
My ideal endgame begins with Jewish unity and ahavat Yisrael that persuades Mashiah that it’s time to come. It continues with the reconstruction of the Mikdash and the restoration of the Red Heifer procedure to cleanse us of tum’at met. It ends (???? ????) with visiting a supermarket to buy Red Heifer powder and having to choose among forty different hechshers, none of which is considered totally reliable for Pessah.
Health, I just noticed your retort. I hope it’s only grammar that you’ve been distorting by turning yehareg ????? into yaharog ?????. If you really mean it and follow through on it, you’ll be facing real police, not language police.
Dotnetter writes, “The difference is, taiva for a treifus is ok. Taiva for arayos is not ok.” Very well, but how does one (or a whole society) deal with it? Is it the answer to raise the young on continual distrust and rigid barriers?
One cannot, I think, base successful marriages on the notion that the principals can and should be carefully typecast, regimented, pigeonholed, manipulated, and choreographed to the huppa. Case study: a whole society appears to be trying it that way and is writhing in anguish.
In my opinion, typecasting and all the rest can work only as far as the huppa, and even then only if the principals are taught that they’re types and not people. Their resumes and investigation files don’t explain how they’ll cope with the deviations from type that each will display as time passes. And they will deviate, unless they’re still play-acting as though married life were a shidduch date. The “shpitz” who burns out at age 25. The eidel maidel who wants to join a gemara shiur. The haredi-lite bachur who turns to the Right. Everyone in this forum can add examples.
Akuperma says, “If they wanted kollel students to join the “over the table” workforce, they would abolish conscription so they could take jobs in the mainstream economy without serving in the army.” It sounds as though you agree with Hiddush, Mr. Regev, and others who accuse them of using kollel as a draft dodge. What would you say to my son, who spent 2+ years in kollel, *then* did his compulsory service, and *then* enrolled in a teaching degree program?
Akuperma adds, “As it is, the law [on observing halakha in the IDF) if observed only if there are hareidim with lots of protectksia making vocal complaints.” During my regular and reserve service (1982-2003), I often reminded my commanders to uphold these things (kashrut, negiya, time for davening, Shabbat, etc.) by making firm but polite requests. I got my way every time because no commander will balk when halakha *and* IDF rules are in agreement. And I’m not haredi.
And a technical note to GoldersGreener: the law in Israel speaks of only 2.5 years of compulsory service. The extra 6 months was tacked on because the army was short on personnel. These months are paid for at the career soldiers’ rate and is given to these inductees in demobilization bonuses and the like. If so, reverting to 2.5 years would do more than spread the military burden more equitably; it would save a ton of money.
And a final swipe at those who wax nostalgic for the Czar and the ghetto because Jews can’t be trusted to observe Torah on their own: ?? ????? ????? ????
Mdd says, “If enough force is applied, it will work. Plenty examples from world history of governments enforcing things.” Four U.S. presidents applied force in Prohibition and it didn’t work. Four other U.S. presidents applied force in Vietnam and it didn’t work. Stalin applied force (some 20m dead in Ukraine in the 1930s) and it didn’t work. Mao applied force (up to 100m dead in the Great Cultural Revolution) and it didn’t work. If so, how much force should be applied to compel Orthoprax?
Would it be plagiarism if each participant would past in his/her posts in the great “Gut Shabbos” debate and call it a draw?
To some of you who’ve posted to this thread, I can only hope you’re being tongue-in-cheek when wishing the apocalypse upon the Jews in Israel: civil strife, imposed observance, expulsion, collusion with the Arabs to destroy the country, etc. My hope is for your sanity, not for the disproving of your visions/hopes, because they’re being disproved on the ground every moment. For example:
1. Army food is kosher, period. Not sorta/kinda. It may be deficient on hiddurim (although less and less so), but it’s kosher.
2. Every Shabbat rule in the army is fully grounded in halakha. A whole library has been produced on the topic in recent years.
3. There’s a demographic slope but no demographic cliff. All Jewish population groups in EY have healthy birth rates.
4. It’s a waste of time to count “BTs” versus “OTDs.” Nearly half of Israeli Jews make at least one major switch in religious orientation in their lifetimes; some make more.
5. Those who narrow the views of the gedolim down to “assur” and “no” are crediting the gedolim with the intelligence of doorstops. Is this what emunat hakhamim has come to?
I could go on but my workday isn’t over (I’m self-employed and the boss is abusing his prerogatives as usual). Let’s just say that Israel is, guess what, a state. States do things in state ways. Israel has been so successful as a state that one cannot explain it without crediting Hashem — unless one denies that success outright and relishes the country’s failure, which to my mind is monumental ingratitude to HKBH.
There’s no reliable answer because neither group maintains membership lists. In 1998, I attempted to estimate the matter by merging several large-scale polls and came to the astonishing conclusion that nearly half of the adults in Israel make some significant change in their religious orientation at least once in their lives (meaning that some make more than one). This was years ago and concerned only Israelis, but …
So Bear, after confusing fantasy for fact you’d “much rather live under Salem Fayyad than under Yair Lapid or even Bungling Bibi”? Right on. You’ll have plenty of homes to choose from. Thousands of Palestinians have left their autonomous territories to crowd into Jerusalem city limits and live under those vile “tzioinim.”
Litvishe, kollel students are not exempt from military service; less still are they allowed to “exempt themselves.” Instead, they are deferred on the specific grounds of their studies. Leaving kollel for any purpose (not only to go to work) revokes the deferral. The same applies to small numbers of university students who are allowed to earn degrees in specialized fields provided they sign on for extra years of army service afterward.
You speak of “secular university students” but the university system doesn’t distinguish between secular and other. Students don’t get cash in hand from the government, although universities do give stipends to a small number of selected postgraduates. What does exist for universities is massive government funding, without which tuition might be twice as high as it is. Those who can’t gain admission to universities go to colleges, which get no subsidies of that kind and charge whatever their prestige and track record allow them to.
Comparisons of kollel with university are mostly apples vs. oranges, and since in Israel both systems vie for a piece of the same pie, it’s almost structurally inevitable that each would accuse the other of leeching…
A note to the folks who mis-transliterate ????? as “yaharog”: I hope you’re grammar-challenged, because otherwise you’ve recommended killing people over the issues discussed here….
BearBack, didn’t you mean to write “Noirth Koirea” and its capital, Pyeeng Yung? Just askin’.
The apocalyptic remarks above are a true eye-opener. Who knew that North Korea has such a large Jewish community and that the only way to criticize anything there is to refer to the local regime as “Israel”?
MDG intones: “A friend of mine – former chayal – told me how Tzahal bussed in chayalot to the soldiers for the express intent of hooking up.” This friend must have reported the ghastly incident to someone, say, a media correspondent, a government watchdog, or a lawyer acquaintance, especially since he knew what the “express intent” had been. The resulting investigation must have generated lots of headlines. So, MDG, please tell us what came of it, apart from providing you with titillating fodder for lashon hara against the IDF.
DerechHamelech says, “We are a nation that strives to perform the mitzvos.” Are we really, or are we a nation that strives to have the mitzvos perform themselves and that flees from anything that poses a “problem”?
Avhaben, again, your “we” is fraying like a bumper sticker in an Israeli summer. Its hard core may revert to its numbers as they were two generations ago. Then maybe there will indeed be a “we” that can be exempted, a prospect that all sane Zionists accept. But not a population of hundreds of thousands that (unlike the Amish) yearns to participate in the mainstream.
Avhaben, your post excellently summarizes decades of knee-jerk draft refusal. The “we” you speak of, however, is fraying at the edges and, possibly, crumbling at the core. Two main things have brought this about: the rapid growth of the frum population and the dawning realization among its members that the rest of Israel is not only quite normal but attractive in positive ways, putting fallacy (I won’t call it “lie”) to the horror stories (as in fictions) that are common coin in this world. Many young frum Yids have abandoned the hate-the-state approach that they were taught. If you keep propagating it as the essence of frumkeit, they’ll abandon frumkeit too.
Your weakest argument is that “the Army doesn’t need us. They are doing fine without us.” Mr. Kuperman terms this a form of conscientious objection. Neither way works when a population group (or in fact its leaders) defines itself as exempt on the grounds of “We’ve got better things to do,” even when for some of us the “things” might really be better.
I think the fear of the draft emanates from something different, expressed in extreme form in a poster I saw in Meron. It proposed the elimination of bein hazmanim because bachurim are able to circulate at that time of year and encounter things that (get this) make them hate the state less. Yes, hate: ???? ??????. The hate rhetoric directed at our country loses its effect once you know the country. And serving in the army is the paramount way of knowing the country — geography, population, and all.
I rest my case.
Last remark (not?) about Bus 160: board it only at its first stop (the Central Bus Station). Sometimes the buses fill up there and do not pick up passengers at subsequent stops.
I posted only the 160, which is totally bulletproof. The Gush buses (160, 161, 164, 167) haven’t been so for a few years. And not to be nitpicking, but one should allow the 160 an hour and a half each way, taking account of traffic jams, the swing around Kiryat Arba, etc.
Here is tomorrow’s schedule of buses from Jerusalem to Hebron and back. It’s a typical weekday schedule; Sunday and Friday schedules are different. Each trip takes anywhere from a little over 1 hour to an hour and a half. All buses are bulletproof. Residents’ cars are stoneproof and Molotov cocktail proof but are not bulletproof.
The bulletproof buses have been used to and from Hebron since around 1995. No one to my knowledge has been injured in any of them.
From Jerusalem to Hebron:
6:20, 7:20, 8:00, 8:45, 9:30, 11:30, 12:00, 12:40, 14:00, 14:40, 15:00, 15:30, 16:15, 17:45, 18:15, 18:50, 19:10, 20:10, 21:10, 22:15, 22:45, 23:15, 24:00
And from Hebron to Jerusalem:
6:00, 7:05, 7:20, 7:50, 9:05, 9:35, 10:05, 10:35, 11:05, 12:50, 13:20, 14:00, 15:20, 15:50, 16:50, 17:20, 17:50, 18:35, 20:05, 21:35, 22:20
Have a wonderful visit.
I think it a good idea before learning from a translated sefer to take a look at the translator’s/publisher’s preface to get an idea of what they had in mind. A translation is almost inevitably a perush because Hebrew is deep while English is broad. That is, the translator must choose among multiple meanings and nuances that attach themselves to the Hebrew/Aramaic expressions. This limits the depth of learning that a translation allows; that’s in the best case. In the worst case, the translator chooses or is instructed to “adjust” the text to what the non-Hebrew-reading learner is “supposed” to understand. By saying this, I am not attacking “haredi revisionism.” The most egregious example I’ve seen is in a purported translation of a collection of Rav Kook’s drashot.
mtydhd, you’re neither crazy nor paranoid. However, visitation to Hevron is setting records all the time and takes place safely. Incidents on the Jerusalem-Hevron road are few and far between (not to belittle the ones that do happen!). The army very much wants this road and the Jewish area of Hevron to be safe, for its own valid reasons and to avoid the bother of dealing with troubled civilians. By the way, all public buses that use the road south of Gush Etzion are bulletproof. If you’d like me to post the bus schedule, let me know and bs”d I’ll do it Sunday morning Israel time.
KovodHabriyos, Joseph Lieberman once referred to various Senate issues that would have massive effects on large numbers of people and described guidelines that his rav gave him. It might apply to Lew’s case as well.
I find it disturbing to think that the current rules of frum human engineering might take precedence over a marriage between compatible people (assuming that they’re ready for marriage).
Bear, tsedaka collectors are free to present haskamot to convince us of their bona fides, but I have never heard of it as a requirement. If it were, the panhandlers who elbowed me to distraction in the middle of shmone-esre during my visits to Borough Park would have presented them. As for kefira motives, what would those be and how would they be manifested at a job fair?
Medium Size Shadchan spoke about preferring “low lying [sic — it’s “low hanging”] fruit- young, still flexible and not yet set in their ways and stubborn.” But today’s shidduch “system” acts against flexibility at any age. It promotes rigid typecasting, scripted “dates,” choreographed weddings, etc. The “solutions” offered by most commenters call for more of the same: rigorization of the shadchan “industry,” collective panacaea such as shorter visits to E.Y. earlier onset of dating, and so on. Human engineering hasn’t worked anywhere else; why here?
I was taught that arranging employment for down-and-out Jews is the highest form of tsedaka: ??? ???? ???. Since lesser forms of tsedaka don’t require a “haskomo,” why should this superior form?
Continuing — about Gibraltar: last November my wife and I spent 8 amazing days in Gibraltar, representing Israel at a sporting event. “Gib” has an impressive, strong, and respected Jewish community (approx. 700 people) that maintains 4 shuls, elementary and high school, 3 kosher food stores, a kosher bakery, and a kosher restaurant that prepares meals and sends them to Gentile banquet halls, which know how to heat them up. A supermarket in the town carries some products with British and EU hechshers. The community is emphatically Sephardi and sees itself as sustaining the authentic pre-expulsion traditions. It has even published a collection of piyyutim with CDs. I have phone numbers if you want them.
All this, apart from the astounding qualities of the place.
Marbella has an Orthodox shul:
Jewish Community (Costa del Sol)
Beth El Synagogue – Orthodox (Orthodox)
29600 Marbella, Spain
First synagogue built in Andalousia after 1492. Consecrated in 1978
Parnas: +34 952 82 49 83
Fax: 95-277-8243
Email: [email protected]
More contacts: http://www.jewishmarbella.org/index.php/en/cummunity
Website: http://www.jewishmarbella.org/
Rabbi Meir (Michel) OHAYON, [email protected]
Tel: +34 952 89 47 74, Cell: +34 690 17 23 55
Mikveh: http://www.jewishmarbella.org/index.php/en/mikvmainmenu-35
Hospitality Rooms: http://www.jewishmarbella.org/index.php/en/hosts-rooms
Rooms with bath available next to Synagogue
Services hours:
Summer: Evenings Fridays & Holidays at 8.30pm
Mornings Saturdays and Holidays 10am
Winter: 7pm & 10am
Sefardi Nusach: On Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur Ashkenazi services: at the adjacent Annex Hall
Special Events: Seder 1st night, Great Summer Party in August, Yom Haatzmaut celebration, Seudat Purim
Telephone numbers available:
Tel: (34) 95 282 4983 (English, French, Spanish)
Tel: (34) 95 282 6649 (French, Spanish)
Mobile : 610 91 61 70 (Hebrew, Spanish, French)
Mobile: 669 03 90 32 (English, Spanish, Hebrew, French)
Fax: (34) 95 277 8243
Email: [email protected]
When the Jews approached David Hemelech and asked him to provide them with parnassa, he didn’t lecture them about Hashem as the source of parnassa. He told them to make a living from each other, i.e., to establish a labor market. Male nursing is much in demand in the labor market and pays well for that reason — as opposed, sorry to say, for social work. (I’m allowed to say that because my wife is a social worker.) As for switching majors for money, assuming you put your money to positive uses, more money means more positive uses….
Shmendrik, why take tradition only back to “the bais hamedresh in Villna (sic), in Lodz, Lublin, Rastov etc.”? Why not back to the mellah in Iran, where half the worshippers were blind and most of the others were illiterate? Why not back to the Gemara in Megilla, which allowed whole villages to reschedule Purim for market day because no one back home could lain the megilla? Or to the Gemara in Rosh Hashana that describes the “people in the fields,” who didn’t know how to daven at all but might get some benefit from hearing the shofar?
It would apply to all of Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy as a movement, going by that name, is a 19th-century novelty: a reaction to the Emancipation and the Reform.
It may be helpful to view the issur as pertaining to “listening” as opposed to “hearing.” Hearing can’t be prevented but listening can, by mental distraction. So, twenty years ago I parked a 2200-page encyclopedia of baseball statistics in that room, and since then, even away from home, I associate entering this place with studying the doings of Mickey and Ty and all the rest. It’s also useful in kol isha situations; it eliminates the need to go to prison, spit in people’s faces, yehareg, etc.
Loyal Jew is neither Joseph nor a troll. I “met” him in another forum where foolishly I used my real name, on which basis he went after me in ways that could have harmed my business. I had to threaten him with a libel suit to back him off.
There’s a famous and comprehensive biography of him by Robert Caro (a descendant of the Mehaber?) and innumerable references to him online and elsewhere. But one warning is in order: the sources tend to emphasize Moses’ abrasive personality and strong-arm methods; they then lead you to conclude from this that his decisions and beliefs were wrong. It’s a good idea to keep the two issues apart.
Farrocks and Iced, both of you make it sound as though there’s collective “Jewish taxation” in America for which collective “Jewish benefits” should be extracted. Is this so, or is it a question of lifestyle choices?