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AAQ: Do you deny the validity, importance or existence of the Rambam’s Igerres Teiman?
More of the Weissman garbage. You might as well put out what the AI at ChatGPT says about this. It would be more intelligent than the OP.
MDD: Provide a source, if it exists, regarding your claim about Rav Yoel zt’l.
You are supposed to get stone drunk on Purim. What the Rebbeum are doing by getting drunk is the best Chinuch for Purim.
BTW, I take full credit for Reb Volf having this massive annual hangup about his failing to get drunk on Purim. If you’ll look through the forum archives you’ll find me needling him for it year after year. It’s left a deep scar on his psych.
All the in Purim spirit, of course!
AAQ: Au contraire. Today, in modern liberal politically correct society, it is popular and brownie-points awarding, to say do not drink/I don’t drink. We have to worry that those who wear a sign saying I don’t drink on purim/I don’t get drunk on purim, are saying so to sound politically correct and goodie -goodies rather than any interest in doing the Mitzvah correctly.
On the other hand, those that the whole year barely drink, but on purim force themselves against their natural inclination to get drink purely lsheim Mitzvah, are true heroes.
MDD: It is definitely a far far greater chilul Hashem to be frei in Eretz Yisroel than in Chutz L’aretz.
Dorah: ad shelo yadah is, by definition, the opposite of moderation.
Dorah: Bush II’s verbal gaffes were nothing remotely comparable to Biden.
What did Mir do in Shanghai?
Zev: There’s a shitta that allows an alternative to getting drunk, so you’re not sinning according to every shitta.
Is regularly biking on the city roads risky?
What do Chabad shlichim and other Jews living in areas unclear which side of the international date line do regarding Shabbos, etc?
Avira, how were the prewar demographics different than today’s demographics?
Reb Yosef: I think Eretz Yisroel was even more dominated by Litvaks before the war than today.
Reb Yosef: Excellent point.
Menachem, can you give some examples of the creatures you’re referring to?
Democrats have played the race card and the sex card victim politics for many decades already. Claims of racism and sexism ring hollow and mean nothing more than politics as usual.
“First, Chananya Weissman has made shidduchim by directly introducing Jewish singles to each other, who are now married to each other.”
So now he’s a Shadchan, too? A Shadchan who is against Shadchanim; this must be a first.
“Second, Chananya Weissman has made shidduchim by personally organizing over 100 events for Jewish singles.
Third, Chananya Weissman has made shidduchim by encouraging mixed-seating at Jewish weddings”
Your “Second” and “Third” result in more boys/girls hookups than shidduchim. I know that proponents are in denial about this fact, but just take a little visit to the Upper West Side, where the “frum” hookup culture thrives on these events.
rightwriter: You could also say it was a miracle that Hitler survived the assassination attempt against him. Does that make the Holocaust a good thing?
Reb Dorah: If one wouldn’t be steeped in modern liberal Western culture, and rather think entirely in terms of Yiddishkeit, the logic would be quicker to grasp.
mentsch1: The frum Jews were elected to the Polish Sejm and dealt pragmatically with its government. Does that demonstrate to you that they essentially agreed that Poland was good for the Jews?
For an alter kocker 40+ year old alter bochor to give dating advice is akin to a thrice divorced woman providing marriage counseling.
The Teimani community was older. And it still exists in Yemen (in tiny numbers for the last 20 years.)
Wikipedia is unreliable, especially on Jewish issues.
SR: Weissman got married very late and was bitter about that. He started penning these anti-shidduch screeds while still an older single. His advocating that the traditional Orthodox community adopt his failed Modern Orthodox style of hookup culture dating is a joke.
The topic of multiple spouses comes up on average less than once a year in this forum. I didn’t raise it in this thread, I responded to it being raised. Despite its great infrequency, the few times it has come up has caused great conniptions, tantrums and hissie fits by the same few posters who simply cannot even tolerate a discussion on a legitimate issue that they disagree with. The only obsession is on the part of those who violently disagree with dialog on this.
Having multiple wives is similar to eating knitiyos on Pesach. Yet these posters who get bent out of shape over any discussion regarding polygamy, have no issues when a poster discusses knitiyos on Pesach. Both are issues where Ashkenazim and non-Ashkenazim have different customs. Indeed, the kitniyos ban is even more severe than the polygamy ban. Whereas Gedolei Ashkenaz today can once again permit polygamy, as Rabbeinu Gershom anticipated and built in an expiration to it and instituted it in a repealable mechanism, they cannot permit kitniyos.
A woman’s place is at home; not in political office.
Baruch Hashem… Dorah and Dofi have both accepted the name that I baptized them with.
SR:1) A State with nuclear arms can get nuked just as much as a state without nuclear arms. 2) Brooklyn is part of a State with more nuclear arms than the State that includes Eilat (which is also part of Chutz L’aretz, unlike southern Lebanon which is part of Eretz Yisroel.)
My parenthetical sentence had a typo. It should have read:
Though, we may have to execute his parent(s), depending on the circumstances.
right writer: mamzeirim are a bad thing; I’m sure you agree with that. So what should we do with a mamzer? We do not kill a mamzer. (Though, we may have to him his parent(s), depending on the circumstances.)
The State is a mamzer.
Do you say that the Holocaust was a good thing since Hashem let it happen?
Rome, which destroyed Yerushalayim and slaughtered the Yidden, was around for a lot longer than the State of Israel.
Anyone would be best served by doing the opposite of any suggestions by Mr. Weissman. The folly of his “ideas” is consistent and long-standing.
Gedolei Yisroel have associated particular tragedies to particular bad behaviors for thousands of years. From time immemorial until today and all years in between.
For example, the Tosfos Yom Tov let Klal Yisroel know that Tach V’Tat occurred because of talking in Shul. Other Gedolim told us the reasons why they Holocaust happened. Chazal in the Gemorah told us that Beis Hamikdash was destroyed because the women dressed pritzusdik, because of sinas chinam and give a few other reasons. So there can be more than one reason as well.
Wikipedia is a far-left breeding ground. If you edit an article outside conformity with left-wing ideology, your edit will be deleted very quickly. If you persist with non-leftist edits, you will be banned from editing.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Another interesting thought is that throughout most of history, when polygamy was practiced, the financial implications of multiple wives made it impractical for most, since the general household arrangement throughout history was the husband worked and the wives were at home. Nowadays, when polygamy is mostly phased out, for the last few decades with most wives working, the financial implications of having multiple wives have essentially reversed, and a family with multiple working wives could do better financially and have more income and earnings potential than a family with only one wife.
It’s interesting (buckle your seatbelts, since I know some of you are going to get conniptions and start posting a flurry of angry replies), since with the shidduch crisis being mainly an issue of not enough single men and too many single women, ending the Cherem may be a viable solution.
We have a few of them posting in the CR.
Avira, regarding the commonness of having multiple wives you wrote that it was rare to have many wives. That’s a mathematically obvious point (and therefore needn’t even be said). If it weren’t rare to have many wives (IOW, if it was common for people to have many wives), then obviously it would mathematically be necessary for many men to remain unmarried (since many other men had many wives, leaving an insufficient supply for all.)
So its lack of commonness was never a reason for the practice to not exist; otherwise the permissibility of multiple wives would never have existed. Therefore, even with (and when) having multiple wives was permitted and accepted, it obviously was only (mathematically) viable for a select minority. And in order for any individual person to have multiple wives, he would need to have the financial and emotional wherewithal to support them. Most do not have that. But that isn’t, in of itself, a reason to disallow the practice.
Rabbeinu Gershom, at his time in history, decided that for the Ashkenazic community it was causing more downsides than upsides, enough to outlaw it at the time. But even he put an expiration date on his ban since he acknowledged it wasn’t, in of itself, necessarily a bad thing for everyone. He left it for future generations to reconsider. Which they did, post-expiration, and decided to continue the cherem. But if Gedolei Yisroel at some point in current or future generations reconsider it again and decide its time has ended, they can discontinue the cherem against it. (Rav Avigdor Miller made this point once in one of his Q&As, available on recording.)
N0m: To simply answer your specific question, Rabbeinu Gershom himself had multiple wives.
An additional point is that even for Rabbonim or regular people that the Mishnah or Gemara or later Seforim Hakedoshim tell us, for whatever reasons, was married to “Plonis”, there’s usually no way to know that he was *only* married to Plonis and had no additional wives. Chazal and the Seforim Hakedoshim aren’t giving us their genealogical family trees. They don’t give us a list of all the names of their children either; if the Seforim somehow inform or indicate who their child was (or that Plonis father was whoever), that doesn’t exclude the existence of other children who aren’t mentioned anywhere. They mentioned a specific wife for specific reasons; but that doesn’t exclude the possibility of him having other wives. Why are you assuming he (they, as in the plural of those hes) had only one wife?
Two out of three Avos also had multiple wives.
Avira, how was this issue looked at outside of the Ashkenazic communities? For example, among Teimanim, Moroccan Jews and some other Sephardim that still practice it even up to contemporary times. They have no Halachic sources or gedolim that approve of it and/or are even complimentary of it if practiced under proper circumstances? In some communities (i.e. Teimanim) it wasn’t that uncommon.
The Baba Sali had three wives but I’m not sure if any overlapped with another.
Jack: Excellent comment.
RebYidd23: Let’s work on your idea together for the benefit of the non-Ashkenazic communities.
Di kup moiach shtroizat
Dan furlupte nuz
FYI to Dorah: Rabbeinu Gershom’s Cherem *only* applies to Ashkenazim. It doesn’t, and never did, apply to Sephardim, Teimanim or any of the other non-Ashkenazim. Many of those Yidden have continued to have multiple wives up to the modern era, in contemporary times. That’s just as beautiful a life practice as any Ashkenazic way of life on this issue. It’s a simple as that.
And if you would read my last comment, immediately prior to your potshot, you would see that I made a very clear distinction between Ashkenazim on one hand and non-Ashkenazim (such as Sephardim, Teimanim, etc.) on the other hand. Reading comprehension is a critical skill.
N0m: In cultures where men have multiple wives (such as by Teimanim, Moroccan Jews and some other Sephardic and non-Ashkenazic communities), they don’t usually “date” American-style. They’re more old fashioned, closer to how Israeli Yidden and American Chasidim go about shidduchim (beshow types), than to the Western dating system.
Also, their wives are already aware that they could have sister-wives, and many already have a few. So it is hardly surprising to them.
When Ariel Sharon went there, he incited an intifada.