Can anybody recommend a good history of the Mir Yeshiva - specifically until the outbreak of World War II, but ideally even inclusive of the war years? Shaul Stampfer has an excellent history of Volozhin, Novaradok, Telz and Kovno (Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century) and Gil Perl has a...
So. We’ve torn through the advent calendar, tossed aside all the wrapping paper, and (hopefully) obsessively screencapped our gravatars wearing various kinds of silly hats. As of last Friday, Winter Bash 2012 is officially over!
This event was awesome. We had a total of 46,710 users participating across 76 sites, and we gave away 108,924 hats total. The most common hat was the And I Feel Fine hat, which 23,171 users earned for activity on December 21st. The least common hat earned was I Do Say, which was obtained by Bohemian, on Stack Overflow, and kalina, on Arqade for posting an epic 30 …
I am widowed and know little of my Jewish Heritage. Of this, I know, I observe the Torah and do my best to abide by it. Since I know little, and I am interested in marrying a non-Jew who is a Free Mason, will that be a contradictory?
@SethJ I think it's whether a Jew can marry a non-Jewish Mason. To those of us who, unlike the asker, are familiar with the general prohibition against intermarriage, this reduces easily to whether a Jew can marry a non-Jew. I think that indicating as much in a sensitive way, as TE613 did, is the right way to answer this.
According to what I've been told by several people who have inquired of "practicing" (is that the right word?) Freemasons, and supported by Wikipedia, "Freemasonry explicitly and openly states that it is neither a religion nor a substitute for one. 'There is no separate Masonic God', nor a separa...
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@SethJ No; there's also the question of whether a non-Jewish Mason and a Jew counts as intermarriage, which is why I think we should not edit the question.
... Here's how I see the question: "I have a vague idea that there's some class of people that Jews shouldn't marry, and some class of people that they should marry. I wonder which class Masons fit into, since I'm Jewish and interested in someone who's a Mason (and oh, happens to be non-Jewish)." Note that OP doesn't indicate whether she thinks Masonry may be a qualification or a disqualification.
... Given that the question is specifically about a non-Jewish Mason, only the qualification side is really relevant. However, now that I think about it, given the ambiguity in the question and the fact that from OP's a priori point of view, the fact that he's not Jewish is presumed to be incidental, I think that the disqualification side is also relevant, and yes, a dupe of judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/22905/…
@SethJ There's another nuance (though I don't know how important, and it doesn't apply to OP): whether there are transgressions a Jew can do that disqualify him as a spouse, and if so whether being a Mason is one such. For example, AFAIK no one says you can't marry a Jew who eats pork, and many probably say you can't marry one who's a J4J. So there could be a third question here: intermarriage, ok to be a mason, and this.
@SethJ For this asker it doesn't matter. I'm inclined to leave the question alone since it already has answers that address the real issue (intermarriage), but I don't feel super-strongly about that.
But, in my search I found this interesting nugget:
(8:4) And even though it is a Mitzvah to listen to the words of the B"Y in his explanation, in any case, it seems to me that what the Tur wrote in covering(? hard to make out the print) his head, so that he won't be with an uncovered head....
...this is as (it seems) simply, since without Tzitzith there is no prohibition to walk with an uncovered head, just a pious measure.
<end quote>
Know anything about this? I've never heard before that there is a difference between whether or not you are wearing Tzitzith in determining whether or not you must cover your head.
@DoubleAA, also, if you can identify where the D"M has that complaint about the B"Y, I'd appreciate it.
Those aren't his exact words, but the reference in DM 9 was to his hakdama, where you'll find (in his discussion of why he wrote DM even after BY was already published): השלישית והוא העיקר, והוא התכלית המבוקש בזה המחקר, כי ידוע שהרב המחבר בית יוסף, בטבעו אל הגדולים נכסף, ופסק הלכה בכל מקום על פי שני ושלשה עדים, המה הגאונים הנחמדים, הרי"ף והרמב"ם והרא"ש בכל מקום ששנים מהם לדעת אחת נצמדים, ולשאר רבוותא אדירי התורה לא חש עליהם, רק במקום גדולים עמד לפסוק הלכה כדברי שניהם, ואף כי הם קמאי ולא בתראי ולא חש לדברים שצווחו בו קמאי דקמאי, הלא הרי"ף שפסק סוף פ"ב דעירובין והסכימו עמו רבים לפסוק הלכה בכל…
If anyone hasn't read the hakdamot of Beit Yosef and Darkei Moshe (in that order), they are hereby highly recommended.
I am widowed and know little of my Jewish Heritage. Of this, I know, I observe the Torah and do my best to abide by it. Since I know little, and I am interested in marrying a non-Jew who is a Free Mason, will that be a contradictory?
