yehudayona

Any personal experience with workarounds for neutering a pet? It’s assur min haTorah to neuter an animal (see yesterday’s daf), but I’m wondering if you can temporarily sell it to a non-Jew or something like that. (Of course, I’d ask a posek, but I’m wondering about others’ experience.)

Just Want A Good Oy — If you’re worried about how you’ll feel when you’re folding his socks, you have two workarounds. Either send them out or have him fold his own socks.

mercury, do you still take Nexium? Most insurances in the U.S. don’t cover it these days — they claim Prilosec does the job (which it doesn’t).

The payroll tax is stam regressive — you don’t pay it for income earned over some limit (somewhere north of $100K). I’ve heard almost nothing about eliminating this limit.

I agree that from the perspective of growth, the end of the payroll tax holiday is a bad idea, but how do you solve the Social Security problem otherwise? Make the retirement age 80?

em0616, do you know for sure they used Dor Yeshorim?

My understanding (which may be out of date) is that most cases of Tay Sachs these days are among non-Jews (especially Cajuns).

Is protexia anything like dyslexia?

There’s lots of good shopping in Queens.

Seasons often has meat at very reasonable prices and sometimes has incredible bargains on other things (they had cholov yisrael milk for 99 cents the other week). Main Glatt has very good prices on chicken bones for soup (as low as 39 cents in recent weeks). Aron’s Kissena Farms sometimes has good sale prices. You can check their websites to see if it’s worth the trip. You can sign up for emails from Seasons.

Do you have a deep freeze? I think you can get a chest freezer for less than $200. Then you can stock up on meats when they’re on sale. You can also bake challah in large quantities (if you use 6 pounds of flour, you get the mitzvah of taking challah with a bracha, and you’ll have challah for a few weeks for less than you’d pay for two store-bought challahs).

Fruits and vegetables are a little more challenging in Queens. There’s nothing like the Brooklyn stores 3 Guys and Circus Fruits. There’s a store on Main Street near Valley National Bank that sometimes has bargains (they also sell allegedly kosher meat, but I’m not sure whose hashgacha, and it looks very unappetizing). Kissena Farms has had some good fruit and veggie prices, somewhat reminiscent of the pre-Arons days when the place was a dump, but they had bargain prices on produce.

The OP doesn’t say where he or she lives, so it’s kind of hard to tell what to recommend. I think the warehouse membership places like Costco and BJ’s are overrated. For most items, you can do better by shopping sales at supermarkets. For the rest, I don’t think it’s worth the membership fee.

Double coupons can be worthwhile, but you’ve still got to be selective. King Kullen is the only store in the NY area that I know of that doubles dollar coupons (other stores only go up to 99 cents), but their prices are usually so high that it’s not worth it. I can sometimes get coupons on eBay and make a killing. For example, I got 20 $1 coupons on cereals that I use for $1.35 on eBay. Waldbaum’s had those cereals on sale for $2, so I got 20 boxes for a total of $21.35.

torah613613torah, what exactly is the “broken engagement crisis?” It seems to me that broken engagements are vastly better than divorces.

While quinoa is yummy and nutritious, there’s no way it’s cheap, at least compared to other grains. The lowest I’ve seen it is close to $4 a pound.

Check out Depression Cooking on Youtube. A very old woman named Clara gives recipes that her family used during the depression. We just had her “Poor Man’s Dinner” tonight (cut up hot dogs with potatoes, onions, and tomato sauce).

Nechomah, you’re wrong about tomatoes. Refrigerating them compromises the flavor. Supermarket tomatoes have no flavor anyway, so it doesn’t much matter, but if you refrigerate a real tomato, you’ll turn it into a supermarket tomato.

I’ve heard of Yonah as a girl’s name in America — once.

Inquiring minds want to know why Shmendrick is posting in the Coffee Room instead of learning Torah.

akuperma, the OP’s use of 22 is probably meant to echo the old JDL slogan, “Every Jew a 22.” It’s much catchier than “Every principal a 22.” I recommend “Every principal should be invincible.” Were there any Jews on the planet Krypton?

When making a major purchase, I ask the people who repair them. My car mechanic recommends Toyota, my appliance guy recommends Maytag or Whirlpool (same manufacturer) for washers and dryers. YMMV for other appliances — I’ve had no problems with Hotpoint (GE) ranges.

jewish source, why do you think a principal, who spends most of his time in his office or in meetings, and most likely has no firearms training, would make a good security guard? On the positive side, no kid would dare misbehave.

Putting latkes under your tires will probably make traction even worse due to the lubricating properties of the oil.

Sorry, Wikipedia doesn’t meet the standard of “basic research.”

Of course, none of this discussion of abuse has anything to do with the original topic. I see nothing wrong with a teacher showing physical affection for a child (pat on the shoulder, maybe even a hug), but only in the presence of another adult and only if it’s clear the child will benefit from it. To make it contemporary, suppose a child’s house has been destroyed by a hurricane. He comes to school, obviously very upset. He needs comforting. If he has a good relationship with a teacher, the teacher is an obvious person to comfort him. For some kids, some physical contact is the most effective method of comforting him.

I don’t have a kosher alarm clock so I don’t know how they work. I do have a travel alarm clock that I use for Shabbos. It beeps (not very loudly) for one minute and then is silent. It remains set from day to day. If a kosher alarm clock works like this, I don’t see your problem.

Tzaddiq says ears and noses don’t shrink. They actually grow, especially politicians’ noses.

Perhaps professional basketball players are Bnai Og.

I was once tutoring first graders in a yeshiva. In the beginning, they gave me a little room whose door I kept open. A little later I was told I would have to work with them in the hall (apparently one of the mothers objected to her kid being in a room with me). One day one of these kids climbed up on my lap. I was rather startled.

Morphine is a narcotic that has always been legal for medical use. So what did NJ do? Washington allows people to buy small quantities of marijuana from state-regulated shops (none of which exist yet).

147, it has nothing to do with intelligence or which nusach is “the best.” My paternal grandfather was from Lithuania, so I daven Ashkenaz.