Sometimes I Wonder Why I Bother...

I have a love/hate relationship with the Yeshiva World News coffeeroom.

I love them because they give an interesting insight into the frum community that doesn't really exist anywhere else.  I always love to find out what other people think about various subjects, especially from people who might disagree with me on various matters -- and the Coffeeroom provides that to me very well.

However, there are things about it that I hate and sometimes downright depress me.  I'm not going to start providing a laundry list of the things I don't like -- most of them aren't really relevant here.  However, one of the things that sometimes baffles and frustrates me to no end is the moderation policy.

The Coffeeroom's policy is that all messages must be approved by a moderator before appearing.  Personally, I think that's the wrong way to run a messageboard -- but so be it.  However, the items that they choose to suppress are sometimes mind-baffling.

Take the recent Thanksgiving thread.  After a back and forth, one poster brings up Rabbi Brodye's Broyde's thoughts on the matter and says:

Rabbi Michael Broyde authored a comprehensive analysis of the issue. He cites both sides of the debate, and essentially concludes that there is upon whom to rely in allowing a celebration of the holiday.

Another poster, instead of trying to show where Rabbi Brodye Broyde is wrong, goes for the ad hominem attack (note the change in honorific):

Professor Broyde surely makes some interesting academic observations on the matter. But for halachic conclusions, we rely on Rabbonim. 

My response to the second poster is that instead of going for the ad hominem attack, why not simply address Rabbi Brodye's Broyde's point?  In other words, if you think Rabbi Brodye Broyde is wrong, why not simply show us where he is wrong?

Apparently, suggesting that a poster is using an ad hominem attack is verbotten in the CR, since the moderator actually removed that portion of my sentence.  In a later post, I even gave the poster a link to Rabbi Brodye's Broyde's words on the matter and challenged him to show us where Rabbi Brodye Broyde is wrong.  That post went down the memory hole.

So, apparently, according to at least one of the moderators, attacking a Rabbi is okay, but asking him to actually back up his words with rational arguments is forbidden.  Issuing an ad hominem attack is okay, but pointing it out is forbidden.

Go figure.

The Wolf

Do People Actually Hear Themselves When They Speak...?

... or write, in this case.

The proposed Park51 community center/mosque/whatever you want to call it has been in the news for the last few weeks.  Personally, I'm of two minds about it and can hear both sides' argument.  As a result, I don't have terribly strong feelings on the matter one way or the other.

Other people, of course, have strong opinions about the building -- and they're certainly entitled to them.  But sometimes people make some really silly statements and I wonder if they actually give much thought to their statements and whether what they're saying might be just as equally applicable to themselves or their community.

Let's take a look at a few examples, courtesy of the YWN Coffeeroom.

The first response in the thread is a good example in fear-mongering.  

What I find scary about this whole thing is they'll build one mosque, than another and another....and than they will literally just take over!  

Now, I'm going to switch just one word in the quote -- tell me how is sounds to you.


"What I find scary about this whole thing is they'll build one synagogue, than another and another....and than they will literally just take over!"

Not too nice sounding, is it?  But I bet you could have heard some people saying the same thing in communities where Orthodox (and even non-Orthodox) Jews moved in.  I would not be surprised to find out that such sentiments were uttered by long-time residents in places such as Lakewood, Williamsburg, Boro Park, Postville, Monroe and Flatbush in the past who saw the character of their neighborhoods changing.  And if someone uttered it today, we'd (rightfully) denounce the person as a bigoted, ignorant and antisemitic.  But yet, the very same people who would scream and holler about it being said about them have no compunctions about using such language against others.

A similar sentiment is expressed further down the thread by a poster named Baruch-1:

It's bad enough to have a growing Muslim population in America, I don't want it in my back yard in NY! And if it means using logic like not allowing a mosque on WTC grounds, then I'm up for using whatever it takes to prevent Islam from growing here. 

And, again, here's the "revised" quote:

"It's bad enough to have a growing Jewish population in America, I don't want it in my back yard in NY! And if it means using logic like not allowing a synagogue on WTC grounds, then I'm up for using whatever it takes to prevent Judaism from growing here."

Again, sounds pretty ugly, doesn't it?  We'd scream and protest (again, rightfully) if someone said that today, but to say it about Muslims and suddenly everything's okay?

Next, we turn to the hypocrasy that some of the posters, knowingly or unknowingly, exhibit.

Here's one from a poster with whom I usually agree and is usually pretty level headed:

No, it should not be built. The freedom of religion does not apply to a religion that BANS ALL freedom of religion.

I would suggest that before she suggests stripping Muslims of their freedom of religion on the basis that they don't allow it that she actually look into just how much freedom of religion is allowed to non-Jews under halacha.  Granted, they don't have to be Jews, but their choices are actually quite limited and Judaism clearly does not have the concept of "freedom of religion."

Baruch-1 (who provided a quote above) also gave us an example of this as well.

Islam is by its nature (according to the 'pashut' reading of the Quran) a controlling and an intolerant religion! There I said it! Forget about contemporary Talibans and Wahabis, since its very creation, Islam has subscribed to the belief that Christians and Jews are Dhimmis thus making them subserviant to Muslims under Shariyah law.

Is Baruch not aware that halacha is also very controlling and, at times, intolerant?  Does he not understand that, under halacha, one could find situations where non-Jews are subservient to Jews?  Is he really so blind as to not see it?  And yet he basis his opposition to Muslims on this.  As the saying goes, "doctor, heal thyself."

I have no beef with people who have strongly held opinions on whether this building should be built.  As I said, I can see both sides of the argument and both sides have valid points.  But when people resort to pure hatred and hypocrisy to make their points, then I consider it out of bounds and in very bad taste.

The Wolf

American Rabbanim Being Silent on the Giyur Bill. Why?

That's what a YWN Coffeeroom poster wants to know.

Tonight the government decided to postpone by 6 months a crucial Geyur Bill that would have strengthened the hand of the Rabbanut HaRashit and helped to halt Reform and Conservative "conversions" from creeping into Israel.

HaGon HaChacham Shlomo Amar shlita even demanded that the religious parties quite the government should the bill not pass. The reform and conservative movements in the US waged a serious battle that lead to the postponement of the bill, but for some reason the Orthodox movements outside of Israel remained more or less silent.

As a person living in Israel I cannot understand this! We cannot allow the reform and conservative "conversions" to reach Israel, we are the last place standing.

I gave an answer, but the moderators decided it was too... whatever... to put up.  So here it is.

Why should most American Rabbanim support a bill in Israel that will delegitimize most of the converts that they create?  Do you really think that they will stop with simply questioning the conversions performed under Conserative or Reform auspices?  This will affect large numbers of Orthodox rabbis, too, who aren't on the list of acceptable rabbis.  So, why should American Rabannim support a bill that will throw the lives of thousands of legitimate converts into turmoil and limbo?

The Wolf

How NOT To Run A Messageboard

Over at the YWN Coffeeroom, we were having an interesting debate about the proper way to run a marriage. One of the posters brought the Rambam and the Shulchan Aruch which say that a wife is supposed to (among other things) wash her husband's feet. This led a female poster to post a poll on a female-only message board as to whether or not women do this for their husbands. She reported back that none of them do and that at least one poster thought it was "gross."

This lead a someone to wonder how someone could be intimate with someone if they find the concept of washing feet gross.

I commented that people are not always logical about these things. After all, I am willing to kiss my wife, but I won't take her pre-chewed gum.

I was going to write "french kiss," but I was afraid that that would freak out the YWN censors too much.

As it turns out, even kiss was too much. A moderator edited my post to say "embrace" rather than "kiss." What's worse, they didn't even notate that they edited my post.

My main disputant in the thread, Kasha, came back and said something to the effect of "come on, Wolf -- there's a big difference between touching someone with your hands and taking their pre-chewed gum."

Of course, he's right in his objection. He had no idea that my post was edited to the point where it was ridiculous.

The fact of the matter is that it's one thing to enforce an editorial policy on a board. It's another thing altogether to change a poster's words and then NOT EVEN NOTE THAT YOU'VE CHANGED IT! That's just wrong and dishonest and make me want to reconsider participating in that forum.

It's obvious that I have disagreements with people over at the Coffeeroom -- but that's fine -- I don't mind debating in a heated environment. But when the administrators are willing to change your words, undermine the very point you're making and then make it look like you said it, then you have to wonder whether an honest, intellectual debate is even possible anymore.

The Wolf

EDIT: They finally put up my note to Kasha explaining that I did not use the word "embrace." Of course, that post was edited as well.

The Wolf

Pesach Hotels, Yet Again...

The annual discussion of whether or not it is proper to go to a hotel for Pesach has once again reared its head -- this time in the YWN coffeeroom.

Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. Eeees and I don't go away and, truthfully, cannot picture it. For us, Pesach has always meant staying at home (or with friends or family). Even if we had the money to go away we probably wouldn't.

But that's just us. For others, going away for Pesach is "their thing," and I just don't see anything wrong with it. Every year I hear all sorts of arguments against the practice, but I have yet to find one that makes any sense. Two years ago, Dayan Shalom Friedman suggested that it's wrong to go away because you won't clean your house. I posted about that at the time and showed how that argument was totally without merit.

Another popular argument that arises is that the money could be better put to use in charity. As one commentator in the thread suggested:

With so many people out of work, and people needing to take from Tomche Shabbos to put food on the table, wouldn't it be tremendous if every person took the thousands of dollars they spend on a hotel and gave it to tzedakos that need it desperately?

Perhaps, perhaps not. However, there are two problems with this suggestion:

1. I think it's a bit galling to tell people what to do with their money. The commentator has no idea how much tzedaka the people who go to hotels give. Perhaps they've already met their obligations regarding tzedaka? Who is he to tell them that they have no right to spend some money on self-enjoyment?

2. The commentator is worried about people out of work, but he doesn't seem to realize that by closing down the Pesach hotel industry, a lot of people will be thrown out of work. I'm fairly certain that this provides a nice chunk of the annual salary for a number of people.

3. Why stop at Pesach hotels? Why not tell people to buy the cheapest esrog they can find for Succos and put the rest towards Tomche Shabbos? Does he take his kids on a trip on Chol HaMoed? Perhaps he should cancel the trip and explain to his kids that others need the money more. Does he buy flowers for his wife on Shabbos? Perhaps he can do with a single stem (or none at all) and give the rest to tzedaka? Who *really* needs music and flowers by a wedding? A wedding can be perfectly, 100% kosher according to all opinions without them. Perhaps that should be given to tzedaka too? And on and on it goes. In other words, if you're going to tell people they can't spend money on X because it can be put to better use in charity, then why not carry it to its logical conclusion and simply say that everyone must turn over every discretionary penny they have. Of course that's not what the commentator meant, but why not apply his principle there as well?

Of course, the more I think about it, the more I come to realize that perhaps going away to a hotel for Pesach *is* the authentic Jewish thing to do. After all, in the times of the Beis Mikdash, you went away for Pesach *every* year (unless you lived in Yerushalayim).

The Wolf

Being Uninformed Is Not The Same As Being Stupid...

Over in the Coffeeroom, someone opened up the whole science/Torah can of worms again. In this case, the topic came down to what happens when the empirical evidence that you can see with your own eyes contradicts traditional Jewish sources.

Charlie Hall, who sometimes comments on this blog, mentioned that the available evidence shows that the world is more than 6000 years old. A poster named Joseph, took him to task on this stating:

charlie disagrees with the Rema, the Maharal, Aruch Hashulchan, Chasam Sofer, Rabbeinu Bachyai, the Alshich, the Radvaz, and the Chida amongst others.

I choose the Rema, the Maharal, Aruch Hashulchan, Chasam Sofer, Rabbeinu Bachyai, the Alshich, the Radvaz, and the Chida over charlie.

When another commentator vouched for Charlie's intelligence, Joseph responded as follows:

Smarter than the Rema, the Maharal, Aruch Hashulchan, Chasam Sofer, Rabbeinu Bachyai, the Alshich, the Radvaz, and the Chida combined?

Smarter than any one of them.

Charlie and I both responded to that with the same point almost simultaneously -- that the aforementioned sages did not have access to the evidence and information that we have now.

Sadly, I see this from yeshiva people all the time - anytime you bring up the idea that X did not know Y, they take it to mean that you think that X is stupid (or less intelligent than modern people who do know Y). But that's not the case -- it's simply that we, today, live in a society that has the infrastructure and knowledge base to know Y while X did not.

To give a simple example: Could Rashi have constructed an airplane? The answer, very simply, is no. And that's not because Rashi was stupid -- on the contrary, Rashi was extremely intelligent. But he lived in a society and a time where it would have been impossible for *anyone* to build an airplane. Rashi did not have access to the physics and engineering that we have today. If he lived today, could he have done so? Maybe -- but we'll never know for sure. But to say that he couldn't do it is not to say that he was stupid or any less intelligent than today's engineers. It just means that today's engineers have access to better resources.

Similarly, the chachamim that Joseph mentioned did not have access to the scientific evidence that we have today regarding the age of the universe. That doesn't make them "less intelligent" than Charlie - it just means that they went with whatever information and evidence that they had at the time - just as we do so with the evidence that we have today.

The Wolf

P.S. The shocker in the thread came a bit later on. Charlie asked Joseph:

Would you eat a piece of meat that the author of one of your sources had told you was kosher, when you yourself had seen it taken from the carcass of a pig?

To which Joseph responded: Yes. Just utterly shocked.

The Wolf

Very Sad Shidduch Story

From the Yeshiva World News Coffeeroom:

Estherh wrote:

I run a chassidish shidduch group. We have 2 girls and one boy on our list that are close to thirty.(not from the same family 3 different cases) No suggestions made are ever good enough for their parents.

What's really sad is not the fact that no potential groom/bride is ever good enough for the parents (well, that is sad... but not the saddest part of this). The really sad part is that these singles who are approaching thirty are still giving their parents veto power over whom they can or cannot date.

Yes, perhaps I just don't understand the cultural system of chassidim that allows for this sort of thing. But if that's the case, I'm curious... at what point do the "kids" get emancipated? Does a fifty year old single still have to ask her father if she can date a guy?

The Wolf

The YWN CoffeeRoom, Plagiarism and Multiple Personalities

It seems that there is a rash of plagiarism going on over at the YWN CoffeeRoom.

In a discussion on evolution, four consecutive posters simply copied and pasted their anti-evolution arguments directly from Frumteens (without attribution). Mind you, this is *after* I called out another poster for plagiarizing (although, I suspect, he was merely copying himself under a different username).

"Toras Moshe" has a post that starts:

Once should never confuse science with scientists. Science is knowledge; scientists are people, complete with their own agendas, weaknesses, and dishonesties. Their PhD’s do not make them any more moral or honest or objective than truck drivers.

The Frumteens Moderator posted that back in September 2005 here.

"Hill of Beans" wrote an essay that starts:

Scientists are involved in finding "scientific fact", which is not the same as "truth", or even plain "fact." This is because scientists - not science - have agreed to restrict "scientific proof" to things that fulfill their own self-imposed criteria, which limits the type of truth they will find. Example: If an experiment cannot be reproduced in the laboratoy, it is not considered scientifically proven.

However, he stole that from the Frumteens moderator here (second post).

"Bogen" starts his piece with:

That Hashem first made man from dirt and then blew into him a Neshama is not in question. But to say that the Torah can agree with the theory of evolution is another matter entirely. The theory of evolution - and the word itself, which means slow change, the opposite of "revolution," which means sudden change - requires many generations of gradual development, and man was already functioning on the day he was created.

However, that, too, is ripped from FT here.

"Will Hill" starts his piece with:

Evolution, by definition, means "slow progress", the opposite of revolution, which means sudden progress. When did this "evolution" supposedly occur?

That, too, comes from FT here (second post).

That four *consecutive* posts simply rip their arguments from another source (and the same source, at that), tells me that something stinks in the CoffeeRoom.

I don't mind a paragraph copied and pasted (with attribution) to support a point you're making, but to simply mass-copy your argument and present them as your own is simply wrong (and doing it under four different names so as to make it appear that you have a multitude on your side is even worse). How about a little honesty guys...

The Wolf

(P.S. -- For the record, I posted in the CR thread about my findings. Let's see if the post is actually approved. UPDATE: It went up.)

Are Labels Inherently Bad?

Over at the Coffeeroom, someone began a discussion about the practice of labeling that goes on in the Orthodox Jewish community. The OP began with a very reasonable question:

I was always wondering... if we are supposed to have ahavas chinam, why do people constantly label different people? Labels mean different things to different people, so there really is no point, is there?

The majority opinion seems to be that labels are a bad thing. I, on the other hand, seem to be not so convinced.

I agree with the idea that labeling is bad when people use it to form rejectionist attitudes. And perhaps, in practice, it's bad because those attitudes inevitably form as a result of the labels. But what if we could somehow eliminate that? Are labels, in and of themselves, a bad thing?

I don't think so. Labels do serve for identification purposes. Since our nation's founding, people have used labels for identification -- this one's from Yehudah, this one's from Z'vulun, etc - and there is no inherent disadvantage to being from one shevet or another. Likewise, there should be no inherent disadvantage to being MO, Chabad, Chareidi, Breslov or whatever. As long as you are Shomer Torah U'Mitzvos, it shouldn't make a difference. The label simply shows that you identify with one particular hashkafah. But as long as no one is putting you down because of it, why is it bad?

Who knows? Maybe I'm totally off the mark on this. But I'd like to hear what you have to say.

The Wolf

The Importance of a Good Education

Over at the CoffeeRoom, some of the folks were having an interesting discussion concerning the merits of getting a secular education. Most of the people there seem to believe that getting a secular education (at least through the high school level) is a good thing. As is usual in these types of conversations, some one puts forth the fact that there are those who have managed to succeed without an education. One poster put it this way:

there have been many successful people who have droped [sic] out of school

My response to this was:

I think that I would ask for a definition of the word "many" in this context.

Nonetheless, yes, there are people who have been successful despite dropping out of school - but those people are the (exceedingly rare) exceptions and not the rule.

Sure enough, someone pulled out a small list of people who did well despite dropping out from school. The list they provided was Albert Einstein, The Wright Brothers, Billy Joel, Tom Cruise "and a ton more."

Well, right off the bat, we can eliminate Einstein. While he may have dropped out at one point, he did end up earning a PhD from the University of Zurich. We can, in theory, also eliminate Cruise who did graduate from high school, but we'll discuss him a bit later.

The Wright Brothers did not complete high school -- that is a fact. Nonetheless, they lived in an age when completing high school was more luxury than necessity. Many people in the 1880s and 1890s did not complete high school; they were often forced to go looking for work to help out the family. That reality, however, does not exist today. You really can't use The Wright Brothers as a comparison. Were they alive as teenagers today, you can bet your bottom dollar that they would complete their high school education.

Billy Joel and Tom Cruise have a fairly unique quality -- they have been blessed with very unique talents. Not any shlub off the street can walk into a studio and open a $100M movie based on name recognition alone. Not any shlub can announce a concert at Shea Stadium and sell out the tickets 45 minutes after they go on sale. The fact is that these people (like many professional athletes) have such unique skills that they don't need an advanced education to make a ton of money. But the fact of the matter is that the reason they can make so much money is because their skills are exceedingly rare. You can't tell the average kid "it's okay to drop out of high school like Celebrity X," because the average kid doesn't have the God-given unique talents that Celebrity X has.

That being said, let's talk about what the more typical kid might find. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here are the usual median weekly earnings of people in the US by education for Q3 2008:

Less Than High School: 471
High School Diploma: 618
Some College Education: 725
Bachelor's Degree: 1020
Bachelor's Degree or more: 1131
Advanced Degree: 1333

I have data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics going back to 2000 (email me if you want them, or you can get them from here), and the relationship between education and salary always holds. The more education the average person has, the more they earn.

Is it possible for a person with little or no education to strike it rich? Absolutely. But in just about every case, you'll find that the person either has an incredibly rare and valuable skill or is incredibly lucky (and won the lottery). For the other 99.99999% of the population, you need an education. In other words, you can't look at the exception and posit it as the rule.

It should be noted that an interesting development seems to be occurring in the chareidi world. The Jerusalem Post reported on Sunday that chareidim want to go to college. Many, however, cannot go to college because they lack the necessary skills that they would have learned in elementary and high school. However, I wonder if this isn't the beginning of a change in chareidi society towards seeing the value of a decent secular education as necessary to get by in day-to-day life. Even if these particular chareidim can never go to college, you can bet that they will see to it that their kids don't follow the same path that they did, and that their kids *will* get a decent high school education, even if they have to go through "back channels" to get it for them.

The Wolf

UPDATE (1:20 pm): The person who posted the original comment came back with this response, which I hereby dub "the stupidest quote of the day:"

i hold that statistics dont affect us yidden.

The Wolf