On ChabadTalk, there is a discussion going on regarding the authorship of the prayer Nishmas Kol Chai, which is recited on Shabbos mornings. The general consensus of the posters in that thread seems to be that Shimon ben Shetach wrote the prayer.
However, it seems that there is an old Christian legend that the prayer was written by Paul (Saul) of Tarsus. That legend is discussed in the thread as well.
During the course of the conversation, someone made the following comment about Paul:
I have also heard it said that this Saul/Paul was actually sent by Chazal on a mission to make Yushkie-worship a completely different religion so that it could not be confused with Judaism.
I highly doubt that that legend is true. However, there just seems to be something very ironic about such a statement coming up on a Chabad message board. I wonder how long before some of the anti-Yechis believe the same thing about some of the Meshichists.
The Wolf
Showing posts with label ChabadTalk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ChabadTalk. Show all posts
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Why Are You Even Bothering With Med School Then?
From Chabadtalk:
I'm engaged in the study of medicine and in modern medical textbooks there is very little (if any) restraint in what pictures they post of people and body parts. Ranging from very explicit diagrams, to real-life pictures of private organs, both living and otherwise, to pictures of cadavers etc...
I know the Rebbe opposed using cadavers for medical study but beyond that I'm not sure
My feeling is these pictures are not appropriate, but firstly it's very hard to avoid when studying the reproductive system etc.
OK, let's get one thing straight... I'm not a doctor (Psychotoddler, are you out there?), but I would be *highly* surprised to find that there exists any medical school in the United States that does not require a basic anatomy course which involves studying all parts of the human anatomy -- male and female. Furthermore, I would think that anyone who is intelligent enough to qualify for medical school would have known this going in.
If this is really a problem for you, then you shouldn't be studying medicine.
(Can you imagine what the state of medicine would be like if doctors could only study anatomy from pictures of *clothed* subjects? Can you imagine a gynecologist whose first look at a woman's vagina comes from his/her first patient?)
The Wolf
I'm engaged in the study of medicine and in modern medical textbooks there is very little (if any) restraint in what pictures they post of people and body parts. Ranging from very explicit diagrams, to real-life pictures of private organs, both living and otherwise, to pictures of cadavers etc...
I know the Rebbe opposed using cadavers for medical study but beyond that I'm not sure
My feeling is these pictures are not appropriate, but firstly it's very hard to avoid when studying the reproductive system etc.
OK, let's get one thing straight... I'm not a doctor (Psychotoddler, are you out there?), but I would be *highly* surprised to find that there exists any medical school in the United States that does not require a basic anatomy course which involves studying all parts of the human anatomy -- male and female. Furthermore, I would think that anyone who is intelligent enough to qualify for medical school would have known this going in.
If this is really a problem for you, then you shouldn't be studying medicine.
(Can you imagine what the state of medicine would be like if doctors could only study anatomy from pictures of *clothed* subjects? Can you imagine a gynecologist whose first look at a woman's vagina comes from his/her first patient?)
The Wolf
Thursday, January 08, 2009
This Must Be The Stupidest Tznius Story I've Ever Heard
From a Chabadtalk thread:
Well mcp, just for the record, a few years ago I was driving and I almost crashed because I was driving with my eyes closed, only because I tried to avoid seeing a couple of young women who were very poorly dressed...
I find it extremely interesting. Of course, one is required to be martyred rather than engage in prohibited sexual relations. The gemara even takes it to an extreme where they prohibited a dying man from hearing a married woman's voice. But, in that instance, there was no danger to anyone except the potential sinner. And yet, this guy knows better*... because he's not only willing to risk his own life by closing his eyes while driving, but he's also willing to risk the lives of his passengers and anyone else on the road.
Talk about being a tzaddik on yenem's cheshbon (someone else's account)!
The Wolf
* Actually, he doesn't know better. The halacha is that while you are required to die rather than sin sexually, you are not required (or permitted) to kill someone to prevent them from sinning sexually. If this applies to someone who is actually sinning, it certainly applies to someone who is an innocent passenger in a car or walking or driving on the road. Or that's my take on the matter. However, I'm not a rav. If anyone knows otherwise, please feel free to say so.
Hat tip: OnionSoupMix
Well mcp, just for the record, a few years ago I was driving and I almost crashed because I was driving with my eyes closed, only because I tried to avoid seeing a couple of young women who were very poorly dressed...
I find it extremely interesting. Of course, one is required to be martyred rather than engage in prohibited sexual relations. The gemara even takes it to an extreme where they prohibited a dying man from hearing a married woman's voice. But, in that instance, there was no danger to anyone except the potential sinner. And yet, this guy knows better*... because he's not only willing to risk his own life by closing his eyes while driving, but he's also willing to risk the lives of his passengers and anyone else on the road.
Talk about being a tzaddik on yenem's cheshbon (someone else's account)!
The Wolf
* Actually, he doesn't know better. The halacha is that while you are required to die rather than sin sexually, you are not required (or permitted) to kill someone to prevent them from sinning sexually. If this applies to someone who is actually sinning, it certainly applies to someone who is an innocent passenger in a car or walking or driving on the road. Or that's my take on the matter. However, I'm not a rav. If anyone knows otherwise, please feel free to say so.
Hat tip: OnionSoupMix
Monday, March 26, 2007
Clueless at ChabadTalk
MSNBC came out with a list of the top 50 rabbis in the America. I don't really want to debate the inclusion, exclusion or placement of any particular rabbi. I don't know enough to argue that any one rabbi belongs on the list more than any other.
However, apparently some of the folks over at ChabadTalk are upset with the list. One particular poster is upset with the #2 selection, Rabbi Krinksi of Chabad. In placing Rabbi Krinksi number two on the list, the Newsweek editors said:
Krinski has truly built a shul on every corner and brought the Chabad movement mainstream prominence. He is the leader of Chabad and its CEO.
Now, one could argue (I suppose) the merits of Rabbi Krinski and his position within Chabad. One could say he should be higher on the list, lower or should be excluded altogether. The whole list, after all, is highly subjective.
One particular poster at ChabadTalk, however, seems to think that Rabbi Krinski shouldn't be on the list -- he should be replaced with someone else. In his (her?) own words:
this couldn't be further from the truth, the Rebbe is the leader of chabad and the one sending out shluchim and making shuls not this guy.
In other words, the poster is upset that Rabbi Krinski was on the list, and that the Rebbe was excluded. When I pointed out that while *he* may believe that the Rebbe is alive, he certainly couldn't fault the Newsweek reporters for believing that he has passed on, the response I got was that, in effect, if they were going to exclude the Rebbe, then no Chabad rabbi should be on the list.
I'm not sure which is sadder: the belief that the man is physically alive, or the failure to comprehend the fact that even if (a) they consider the Rebbe physically alive or (b) simply spiritually alive, that doesn't impose any obligation on the Newsweek reporters to consider him so.
The Wolf
However, apparently some of the folks over at ChabadTalk are upset with the list. One particular poster is upset with the #2 selection, Rabbi Krinksi of Chabad. In placing Rabbi Krinksi number two on the list, the Newsweek editors said:
Krinski has truly built a shul on every corner and brought the Chabad movement mainstream prominence. He is the leader of Chabad and its CEO.
Now, one could argue (I suppose) the merits of Rabbi Krinski and his position within Chabad. One could say he should be higher on the list, lower or should be excluded altogether. The whole list, after all, is highly subjective.
One particular poster at ChabadTalk, however, seems to think that Rabbi Krinski shouldn't be on the list -- he should be replaced with someone else. In his (her?) own words:
this couldn't be further from the truth, the Rebbe is the leader of chabad and the one sending out shluchim and making shuls not this guy.
In other words, the poster is upset that Rabbi Krinski was on the list, and that the Rebbe was excluded. When I pointed out that while *he* may believe that the Rebbe is alive, he certainly couldn't fault the Newsweek reporters for believing that he has passed on, the response I got was that, in effect, if they were going to exclude the Rebbe, then no Chabad rabbi should be on the list.
I'm not sure which is sadder: the belief that the man is physically alive, or the failure to comprehend the fact that even if (a) they consider the Rebbe physically alive or (b) simply spiritually alive, that doesn't impose any obligation on the Newsweek reporters to consider him so.
The Wolf
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Can You Possibly Get Stupider Than This??? (Rambam and Science)
I was over at ChabadTalk, that old bastion of geocentrism, among other things. While there, someone (not me) made the comment that the Rambam was mistaken about science. Another poster asked for some elaboration, which I provided:
The planets aren't attached to spheres, for starters. Even the most ardent geocentrist would have to admit that the Rambam was wrong on that.
In addition, even if you're a geocentrist, the orbits of the planets are ellipses, not spheres, as the Rambam describes.
The Rambam states that the Earth is 40 times larger than the moon - in reality, the Earth is eighty times as massive as the moon. He also states that the Sun is about 170 times the size of the Earth -- that, too, is wrong, by quite a margin -- the Sun is about 333,000 times more massive than the Earth.
The Rambam states that there are no stars larger than the Sun. That's true to the observable eye, but is clearly false -- there are many stars that are much larger than the Sun.
He also states that there is no "star" smaller than Mercury. Well, that's true on the face of it -- a body that small cannot start nuclear fission. However, if you're going to posit that the Rambam used the term "kochav" to mean any celestial body (as you would have to, unless you are positing that Mercury and the other planets are stars too), then that statement is false, as there are plenty of celestial bodies smaller than Mercury.
All these statements of the Rambam can be found in Hil. Yesodei HaTorah chap. 3.
One poster decided to answer my challenge regarding the weight of the moon with what has to be the single most mind-numbingly stupid thing that I've heard in all the science/Torah debates (bolding mine):
The moon isn't made of gas, as far as modern scientists know (the bunch of crackpots that they are).
Of course, we have to realize that 1) nature changes (so maybe in times of Rambam the moon was takeh made of gas), 2) modern science does not rely on certainties but only on probabilities, so it is only 99.999% probable that moon isn't made of gas; on the other hand, everything that Rambam wrote was guided by h"p, so he can't be wrong, even if he himself said (for kiruv purposes surely) that sages of Torah may be wrong in the matters of science. Which makes it 100% true that moon is made of gas.
The moon is made of gas?? Forget the fact that we've sent out probes to the moon. Forget the fact that twelve people have actually walked on the surface of the moon. Forget the fact that moon rocks have been bought back to earth. What the poster doesn't seem to realize is that you can simply go out at night and look at the darn thing in the sky and see that it's made of rock. Gas doesn't cause the craters that you can see on the moon on any clear night.
Lest you think that the stupidity ends there, I followed up by asking the following question:
So, how do you then explain away all the data indicating that the moon isn't made of gas???
The response I got from another poster (warning: brain-numbing response ahead!):
well, that's your problem. The Torah is absolute(ly) true.
I'm just completely flabbergasted. Seriously, what we need in our yeshivos is a good re-education as to what exactly is Torah and what is science and where the two intersect. The Rambam's statements regarding astronomy (despite the fact that he placed them in Hilchos Yisodei HaTorah) are not actually fundamentals of Torah. There is no Torah source before him that states these facts - they simply represent the science of the day as he knew it. It's not like he looked up in a Gemara where it says that there is no celestial body smaller than Mercury - it was something that he either observed on his own or learned from other astronomers. The simple facts that he presents can easily be disproved, and yet, people are so blinded by the mistaken notion that everything the Rambam ever put in writing is Torah (and therefore irrefutable - even by the evidence of our own eyes) that these people are forced to come to the mindboggiling conclusion that the moon is either (a) made of gas or (b) somehow changed from gas to rock sometime since the Rambam.
I'd say that the parents of these people should ask for their money back from the yeshivos they went to, but, sadly, they probably got exactly what they wanted.
The Wolf
The planets aren't attached to spheres, for starters. Even the most ardent geocentrist would have to admit that the Rambam was wrong on that.
In addition, even if you're a geocentrist, the orbits of the planets are ellipses, not spheres, as the Rambam describes.
The Rambam states that the Earth is 40 times larger than the moon - in reality, the Earth is eighty times as massive as the moon. He also states that the Sun is about 170 times the size of the Earth -- that, too, is wrong, by quite a margin -- the Sun is about 333,000 times more massive than the Earth.
The Rambam states that there are no stars larger than the Sun. That's true to the observable eye, but is clearly false -- there are many stars that are much larger than the Sun.
He also states that there is no "star" smaller than Mercury. Well, that's true on the face of it -- a body that small cannot start nuclear fission. However, if you're going to posit that the Rambam used the term "kochav" to mean any celestial body (as you would have to, unless you are positing that Mercury and the other planets are stars too), then that statement is false, as there are plenty of celestial bodies smaller than Mercury.
All these statements of the Rambam can be found in Hil. Yesodei HaTorah chap. 3.
One poster decided to answer my challenge regarding the weight of the moon with what has to be the single most mind-numbingly stupid thing that I've heard in all the science/Torah debates (bolding mine):
The moon isn't made of gas, as far as modern scientists know (the bunch of crackpots that they are).
Of course, we have to realize that 1) nature changes (so maybe in times of Rambam the moon was takeh made of gas), 2) modern science does not rely on certainties but only on probabilities, so it is only 99.999% probable that moon isn't made of gas; on the other hand, everything that Rambam wrote was guided by h"p, so he can't be wrong, even if he himself said (for kiruv purposes surely) that sages of Torah may be wrong in the matters of science. Which makes it 100% true that moon is made of gas.
The moon is made of gas?? Forget the fact that we've sent out probes to the moon. Forget the fact that twelve people have actually walked on the surface of the moon. Forget the fact that moon rocks have been bought back to earth. What the poster doesn't seem to realize is that you can simply go out at night and look at the darn thing in the sky and see that it's made of rock. Gas doesn't cause the craters that you can see on the moon on any clear night.
Lest you think that the stupidity ends there, I followed up by asking the following question:
So, how do you then explain away all the data indicating that the moon isn't made of gas???
The response I got from another poster (warning: brain-numbing response ahead!):
well, that's your problem. The Torah is absolute(ly) true.
I'm just completely flabbergasted. Seriously, what we need in our yeshivos is a good re-education as to what exactly is Torah and what is science and where the two intersect. The Rambam's statements regarding astronomy (despite the fact that he placed them in Hilchos Yisodei HaTorah) are not actually fundamentals of Torah. There is no Torah source before him that states these facts - they simply represent the science of the day as he knew it. It's not like he looked up in a Gemara where it says that there is no celestial body smaller than Mercury - it was something that he either observed on his own or learned from other astronomers. The simple facts that he presents can easily be disproved, and yet, people are so blinded by the mistaken notion that everything the Rambam ever put in writing is Torah (and therefore irrefutable - even by the evidence of our own eyes) that these people are forced to come to the mindboggiling conclusion that the moon is either (a) made of gas or (b) somehow changed from gas to rock sometime since the Rambam.
I'd say that the parents of these people should ask for their money back from the yeshivos they went to, but, sadly, they probably got exactly what they wanted.
The Wolf
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