There’s a reason that the Rabbi’s say to stay away from water or long trips during the 3 weeks….

my wife and I hope our first kid will be a girl….so no 🙂

Yeshudayona you have to tell your inlaws that you have x amount of money and you want to invite x amount of guests and as a result you must go with a meal plan that fits within your budget.

Obviously you have to show them that you have made some sacrifices on your part for the sake of their “standards” by not inviting as many people as you would like to. Tell them they have to be fair and considerate of your needs and it’s not fair for them to mess up your financial life because they want 6 courses of food (in which a large portion of it ends up trashed anyways), or because they want 6 photographers, 2 video cameras and whatnot(there are many budget oriented photographers that do phenomenal work). Other additional useless things like flowers, candles on all tables or whatever additions are just that – non-essential additions. It doesn’t make or break the wedding, the people do.

I wish you would make me talk to your in-laws so I could set them straight. I’ve been exposed to your type of situation enough times that it really gets my blood boiling seeing such inconsideration from our very own fellow jews.

They can’t reject to pay the difference, bring it up again. You have to give them an ultimatum, cheaper meals or pay for the difference. There is no other option. Say you’re extremely sorry and everything but that’s how it has to be. You have X amount of people that must come and you have X amount of cash and you can tell them that the people you are inviting don’t need to eat a $120 meal to enjoy the evening. (Imagine going to a restaurant and spending 120 on yourself…for a middle income family that’s what you would call a glutton).

Don’t forget to stress as often as possible – the wedding is a few hours, the extravagance of a wedding pales in comparison to the joy that the people bring (and that’s FREE).

I hope this helps.

yehudayona: The best way to deal with how many people will be at the wedding is like someone else suggested earlier – you pay for whoever you invite and they pay for whoever they want to invite.

If what you CAN afford is not according to their standard you simply have to explain to them that your standard is different and both sides should respect that. If you want a meal plan that involves $60 a person and they want $120 a person then they should pay the difference for each guest you invite in addition to their own. YOU DO NOT NEED A FANCY WEDDING TO HAVE A HAPPY MARRIAGE! If her in-laws will be upset they’ll get over it eventually. Who do you think your daughter and son in-law will appreciate more in the long run, the person who gave her the super fancy wedding or the person that gave her money to survive after her wedding? From your support after the wedding is what will make your son in-law appreciate you and he is certainly going to be your supporter when you have to deal with your inlaws.

Personally, when it’s my kids turn to get married, I will tell my new in-laws, I have X amount of money for the wedding, take it and do what you want with it – beyond that don’t ask me for more because I don’t have it and I cannot afford to take out loans.

The hardest part is to not give in to THEIR requests thinking that it is for the sake of your kids. Don’t make that mistake like so many other parents I’ve seen who did. Sometimes you need to just have the guts and say *no, I’m sorry – I can’t afford it*

shein: except with kids your word can be the final law….good luck doing that with a wife.

I have a hard enough time trying to figure out the female thought process of one wife. And I’m sure every female thought process is different than the next…..having to try to figure out two people at the same time? My brain would explode. (Not to mention that each wife would probably be CONSTANTLY comparing what you do to the other. Oh but you did this and that for her 30 times and only 29 times for me, don’t you love me as much as you love her!??!?!?

Back then it was probably easier to deal with multiple wives because you had more of the day to yourself but today…you work well into the evenings, back then soon as it was sundown everyone ran to get home because of robbers/killers/animals/etc.

Besides….I doubt you would find more than a tiny handful of women who would be willing to even do this.

@haifagirl stopped reading before I got halfway through your first sentence. No one really cares to read about spelling/grammar mistakes….on the internet.

@OP If something looks wrong with your kid you should check it out. But just to take a kid to a psychologist “to be safe”!? You can visit 50 different psychologists and they will all rip you off with 50 different issues they “find”. Everyone has psychological issues but the majority of them do not require a psychologist. You would not find a single person in the entire world or it’s history that would not have some psychological issue according to modern psychologists after their inspections and greed.

I personally had seen people who were perfectly “normal” have some retarded psychologist tell them they had problems. I have studied a lot of psychology and i can easily say that it would take me only 5 minutes with anyone on earth before I can somehow or another relate some “problem” that they have and need meds for.

Meh, I learned that leaders of countries have no free will when it comes to making decisions for the country. So frankly, obama or romney, same thing. In the end they will make the choices that Hashem wants them to make. If he wants the president to have another holocaust – in america (god forbid), doesn’t matter who the presidernt is, it will happen. If we’re good it doesn’t matter how bad the president is, he’ll protect us.

probably because the guy with an iphone has access to the internet…and we all know what kind of dirty things are there…so we assume this person does some bad bad aveyros…

You guys are going to make me cry. The rambam says you have to *know* Hashem. One can only know him when you can prove with an undeniable proof that Hashem exists. This is the first principle of the 13.

How did you people make it so far without being able to prove Hashem exists?

Proof #1 – The only religion in history to have had millions of people witness the giving of the Torah. Could you image millions of people all of a sudden claiming God came down to them and gave them the torah? No other religion can claim this. Could you image today – an entire nation suddenly saying they saw God? It’s ridiculous and would never happen – you would have at least a handful of people from that nation claiming it never happened and that everyone is lying!

Proof #2 – Back in the old days people were certain there were only a couple of thousand stars in the sky. Yet in the gemara it has a ridiculously large number with something like 18-ish digits. This is before Galileo and his discovery that there were in fact many more stars. How in the world could anyone have known this without seeing it? The only answer is obvious, it was given to us by Hashem.

Proof #3 – Bris milah. Modern day doctors have discovered that 1 day out of an entire persons life the body produces an extreme amount of vitamin K(this vitamin can only be created by your body). Vitamin K is the main cause of healing in your body. It it coincidence that this one day in your entire life is the very same day that we do a bris milah on? We didn’t have microscopes back then, there was no way of knowing about this. Doing this on any other day in a babies life would cause potential death from bleeding. You think anyone could have just guessed this out of the blue like this? Heck no. Without doubt this had to come from a divine being.

Proof #4 – The lunar cycle. Just a few years ago Nasa released the exact amount of times that each lunar cycle lasts. Down to something like 7-8 decimals past the seconds. It was something like .0000002 seconds different than the gemara states. Not too long after that some german research group released a revised number, it was .0000001 different than the gemara. It’s impossible to have been so accurate back when the gemara was written. Give or take a few more years and I bet it will be exactly like what the gemara says. Totally impossible to have known this without a divine being.

Proof #5 – The red cow. Few know but the only way of knowing if a red cow ever worked (which would make it unfit for a sacrifice in the bais hamikdash) was to check it’s eyes to see if they were cross eyed and if a 1 hair in their back was standing up straight. So if say the cows owned put something on the cow, like his bag for 2 seconds so that the cow would carry it. Immediately the eyes would be come crossed and the hair would straighten up. You could go on a stretch and say ok the cross eye thing we could catch, but who could possibly think to look for a single hair on the back???

Proof #6 – Torah codes. Stuff like aids, wars, dates, names, events all near each other in appropriate places in the torah that are relevant to those events. For example you can find the name of every fruit or vegetable in breishis via torah codes. Or stuff like the first person who discovered aids, name, year etc, in the torah. Many people say that yea sure anyone can take a giant book and find torah codes but the fact is that the chances of finding a “code” in other books without messing up the whole story in it is as likely as 1000 monkeys bashing a typewriter and eventually coming up with shakespear. Or a tornado coming over a house and restructuring it into an airplane. If the torah had only a handful of torah codes then you could say yes ok it was just chance. But to find thousands and thousands of them with the story still intact is impossible in any other book no matter how large it is.

There are so many other proofs that make it obvious that no simple man could have written the torah, not even the greatest genius(s) in history could do it without divine assistance.

@Curiosity most likely the rosh yeshiva was saying to work out your issues like not learning daily, not davening, etc.

It is not a requirement to wear tzitzis. The actual mitzvah is IF you wear 4 cornered clothing then you must put tzitzis on them. Also if you plan on sweating a lot u should take them off…or wear and undergarment.

The standard practice today is to wear them simply because it is an easy mitzvah to do, not because we are required to do so.

You wanna hear bad? Check my boss out. I design websites and this boss of mine is completely insane. She has terrible memory. She will tell me to make something blue and then later yell at me for not making it red. She constantly blames me for her changing her mind, she will constantly say ok from now on do so and so and then later freak out at me about how could i do something so stupid. Should i ever confront her telling her, “well you did tell me to do this and that”, she’ll go nuts and complain how she never said it and she is most certainly not senile (She’s in her 60’s I’d wager).

Her sense of design is also horrible, she thinks anything “Blue” is actually purple and purple should NEVER belong in any website, ad or anything. However, she does like to WEAR purple stuff.

And well, I could write a book on the garbage i have to go through daily…God I wish I could get another job but with working so late i have no strength to look for other work.

MCP – learning and getting paid – do you consider this “making a living”?

Few are fortunate enough to “make a living” in such a way – I wish I was one of them.

eh i know what you mean about deleted posts…i make a really well thought-out post and it just gets deleted, very frustrating.

@sam2 I don’t remember the source, could be the shulchan auruch, ask a rav im sure he will know.

It’s like that popular story where it was a rabbi vs. a court of rabbis were arguing about the halacha. So lone rabbi says if im wrong let the (im using fake examples cuz i don’t remember what they really are) let the walls bend(though i think this one was real), and the walls bent. But the court still said you’re wrong, the rabbi then said let this happen and that happen and it all happened but the court still rejected his claim. So he asks them how can you deny me even after even heaven shows that it is on my side. They simply respond that even if you ARE right you are still wrong because we are the majority and you have to follow us.

And I think there was a commentary on this story saying that when this happened Hashem was smiling in heaven and said my children won against my torah….or something like that. I probably missed a lot of detail and butchered the story horribly but that’s the gist of it.

@jbaldy22 Really? Are you kidding me? Tell me how many psychologists did we have before psychology was even a word? You don’t automatically need to send someone to a mental institute because he doesn’t perfectly conform to your world. Everyone is different and this issue is so common and so so easily avoided. Also, ohr chodosh is wrong as are you. One of the wifes responsibilities is to keep her husband in check. If he’s not going to shul – nag him till he goes, if he doesn’t learn bug him till he does. If he does stupid masochistic things on the internet you stop him so he can’t do it anymore. You *DO NOT CARE* about your husband if you do not help him work on himself. PERIOD. He is destroying his soul, his marriage and his children by watching that stuff. You gave absolutely ZERO logical explanation as to why my method is not simple and effective. Think two steps ahead my friend of *your* solution. Send him to a psychologist? Really? REALLY? You honestly think that sending a guy to a psyc is LESS embarrassing then installing a filter? I mean….are you for real?

@Bustercrown your rav most likely did not understand the severity of the situation. You MUST tell him, the utter shame that he would face if any other person in the world told him other than you would be farrrrrr greater….think about it, he would know that not only do you know but you went around talking about it to other people. Do you really think his shame would be less like that?

You are the *best* person to intervene. You must get his trust back. Explain to him that he lied and really hurt your trust, explain to him that you understand that he gave in to his evil inclination and that you are there to help him. Don’t be stupid and avoid it until it eats your marriage inside out. Don’t be stupid and listen to these idiots who tell you to send him to a psychologist- THAT alone could destroy your marriage from the shame of knowing that you told other people.

If you are not strong enough to do this yourself then you do something even better – install the filter on the computer, password it – tell him that you are installing it for the children. If he asks you for the password counter his question with asking him why he needs it. Obviously he will make up a legit site to go to and just tell him that if he needs to go to a site you will be more than happy to help him – but under no circumstance should you give him the password. Don’t ever let him watch you type it in, don’t make the password anything he will ever figure out. Check on the computer occasionally that the software is installed – you never know because he could uninstall it. IF he does uninstall it – the only thing you can do at this point is tell him the truth and do it nicely, calmly, understandingly and he will thank you in the long run.

*The solution is incredible simple.*

The wife simply needs to lay down the law. Install an internet filter, password it – do not give him the password. If a page he needs to go to doesn’t load – give him access to that page and only that page alone.

Sometimes you need to be clever against the Satan, an internet filter is your solution.

As a side note – tell him to stop looking at every woman he see’s on the street. It takes a lot of effort and time but this is how you help prevent one thing leading to another. As it says in mesilas yesharim, we cannot alone win against the satan. “Brute” strength against him is impossible, we need to be clever, *and* we need to constantly ask Hashem for help in fighting him, doing it together is the only way.

Even though all the signs for moshiach have passed – the fact that he is not here leaves just 1-2 things left before he comes. Which I’m going to go out and guess is that Hashem is doing 2 things – waiting for all the pieces to be set and/or giving us the maximum amount of time possible for us to do tshuva before our time runs out – which is actually the year 6000. So all those people who think moshiach is coming “soon” don’t realize that even their children may not see moshiach in their lifetimes. Our grandchildren…might live to see that time. “Soon” is just relative to 5772 years of waiting and only have <250 years left. AND even then, if after 6000 years moshiach does not come we are still required to come. We only make an assumption that each day of creation was equal to 1000 years, we are not 100% positive, it could be 10,000 or 100,000 or who knows.

Just like Z pointed out – even after all the signs have passed, there have been many wars, tons of instability and so on. Do you really think that it’s impossible that ww3 happens, moshiach does not come, 100 years later ww4 happens, moshiach STILL doesn’t come, ww5 happens – moshiach comes. That is a totally realistic scenario… The gemara says that jews will have nowhere to go for safety just before moshiach and even though things are bad now, most countries tolerate jews. Even america is supposedly supposed to turn on jews like in germany, things don’t seem to be as bad as they probably should be before moshiach. Don’t get me wrong – things are bad but in ww2 – they were a lot worse then now.