@DoubleAA Not sure what you mean. Then what's up with the playset? Shul and Shomrim, I get (though the latter is much less interesting, since it may just be police with different decals)
@DoubleAA First responders concentrated in your locale reduce the response time in your locale.
@DoubleAA Nothing. The Hatzala system screams to me "We're trying to be a self-sufficient community/neighborhood; we take care of our own problems in-house". Then again, I've never lived in an area with Hatzala. Do they refuse to treat/respond to non-Jews?
@DoubleAA I know less about this than many, but I think the history of this is from a time when service was extra-low in Jewish areas. And now, with service being higher in Jewish areas thanks to Hatzolah and Jewish lives probably being saved (on the margin) as a result, rolling that back is a harder call (emotionally and politically for sure, and possibly even morally) to make than, say, removing a Jewish hiring preference in a Jewish hospital
@HodofHod I'd rather not try to reconstruct griping I happened to see (amongst emergency professionals) on the Internet. Fair or not, it was clearly there.
@HodofHod Why not just join and bolster the existing system? Being separate draws attention to the fact that "we" don't join with the community's tzarot.
@IsaacMoses Oh, I'm not even starting on the fairness of it. I was just wondering what they were finding to complain about at all. I suppose I don't really want to know, though.
@HodofHod It provides a more efficient service at the expense of all the other places' service. When "we" don't help the collective, it leads to eivah, which is exactly what Chazal did not want to happen.
@HodofHod For instance, instead of someone volunteering in Hatzala in a Jewish neighborhood that already is close to the top in response time, why not volunteer in a neighborhood that is well below that and could really use the help?
@DoubleAA For the same reason that I would recommend volunteering to do community work in your own community before recommending the one over. If other communities have a lack of volunteers, it would certainly be nice, neighborly, and moral to volunteer there, but does choosing to volunteer in your own make you immoral?
@DoubleAA I once did :( having maintained bracha status up until then. I was on the road and flustered due to a canceled flight and unexpected extra night out of town.
@HodofHod If it leads to Eivah then yes. There is no rule for this. You have to look at the metziut and decide, and I think here it is clear which way it comes out. It's a balance of how much your community needs it vs how much they do and how hard it would be to switch.
This is exactly what Chazal meant by מפרנסין עניי עכום עם עניי ישראל
@DoubleAA "At the expense.." who says that those people would be motivated to help a community they don't know? That is to say, perhaps it is human nature to greatly prefer volunteering in a community that you know. This would also explain why Jewish communities have more volunteers: tighter-knit communities than non-Jewish ones.
@DoubleAA Of their community, precisely. Much as Hatzala treats anyone in their community. But it doesn't say to start supporting another city (or nowadays, neighborhood) to prevent eiva, ein ladavar sof.
@HodofHod Not sure how you extended city to neighborhood, but either way, in a large and regulated emergency response system, things are designed to overflow and compensate for each other in nearby areas when needed. I'm not saying people need to move to bad neighborhoods, but by being part of the general system it can help improve the total welfare by increasing efficiency.
@IsaacMoses I wouldn't call spreading even a little hatred of Jews an absolutely moral thing to do :)
@DoubleAA Yeah. I got into town on Erev Shavu'ot, to a different airport than planned. I forget what path my bags ended up taking. I was just happy to make it home in time for Chag. Then, once the holiday started, I thought about counting and was all "D'oh!"
@DoubleAA Second-order consideration. Not less important, but also not what Hod's talking about.
@DoubleAA I'd argue (as I did above) that volunteering rates among Jews would drop to the same as in non-Jewish ones since the motivation to volunteer in unknown communities is lower universally.
@HodofHod לא נביא אנכי ולא בן נביא אנכי but putting two systems together usually removes redundancy and what not. Obviously an expert would have to be consulted on details.
@HodofHod Because the Talmud tells us that's what we do.
PR/Eivah is not a joke. b"H I haven't lived through real pogroms, but those things are scary.
@HodofHod Just as one data point (and I know there were lots of other factors and rumors and whatever involved), but Hatzala's being a private Jewish service was a contributing factor to the start of the Crown Heights Riots
Probably the closest thing to a pogrom the US has seen.
Let's be practical: those weren't because of hatzala, gemachs, tzedakos, or anything of the kind. It was because Jews are "different". That's not going to change anytime soon (B"H).
@HodofHod We can be different and still friendly. You'd be amazed how little differences can matter when people are friendly and caring.
^^ non-specific "you"
I have to drop out now
here's the quote from gittin 61
אין ממחין ביד עניי נכרים בלקט בשכחה ובפאה, מפני דרכי שלום. ת"ר: מפרנסים עניי נכרים עם עניי ישראל, ומבקרין חולי נכרים עם חולי ישראל, וקוברין מתי נכרים עם מתי ישראל, מפני דרכי שלום.
I'll just note that I haven't yet argued that darkei shalom is different than eiva in that the former is a positive things in itself, while the latter is just fear of pogrom (and I think an excellent argument can be made for this in the rambam at least)
By the way, if I remember correctly, Hatzala was called (to help the injured child) during the famous accident before the 91 riots in Crown Heights, but the police told them to go back to avoid confrontation with the locals.
@soandos YD is Yoreh Deah. 1 means the first volume of YD (he wrote multiple volumes on each section). 8 is the responsum number. Sometimes there will be a third number listed which is the paragraph within the responsum.
@soandos Sometimes he'll subdivide a discussion in one responsum into sections, labeled 1,2,3. I think that's what people call a 'branch' of the discussion.
There seems to be some confusion as to whether a question can be asked if the questioner knows the answer. I have asked some questions where I knew the answer and have often received answers I was not aware of. In addition as I have mentioned in the past new questions are needed to keep the site ...
@DoubleAA, another Eiva source to go after: Brooklyn's version of snake-oil salesmen: 'One caveat, she said — the cure only works on Jews: “Gentiles are not capable of taking this.”'
Must one face Yerushlaim (or the Hechal) when reciting Kaddish,the way one should for Amida? This seems to be generally practiced; does it have a source in the Shulchan Aruch or achronim or is it a misconception?
@SethJ The question does. I understand if it has a good answer that's general (or no answer at all), then generalize the Q. But if it has a specific answer then why generalize the Q, invalidating the answer making the answer weaker by having it apply to only some of the question? All the more so if another question has been asked about "Alenu". I can understand broadening the new one, but not the one with an answer.
@SethJ You're right. But there is a specific reason for kadish that does not apply to other things (see the answer there) and that Q should not be closed. Likewise, there may be a spcific reason for "Alenu" that doesn't apply elesewhere, so that Q should not be closed. No?
@msh210 (I'd like to note that the answer on the linked question brings no sources, and that I'm not convinced of the accuracy of one of its main premises.)
@msh210 As to your second point, you may be right. I might not be able to comment, though, until someone posts an answer. I don't really intend to go look this up.
On the Mi Yodeya page there is usually a line at the top where I can see my name and reputation points and badges, and also links to chat, review and meta. Right now, its gone. Also lost is my ability to type in a few letters and obtain tag suggestions. I had that promblem a few months ago. Fi...
I was speaking yesterday, at some length, with a yeshiva rav who is also involved in broader relations with the community. I told him that recent controversies has filled me with questions and concerns about the concept of daas Torah when it appears, often, that some rabbanim who are considered ...
I would assume that tefilin bags have similar 'Holy Dust' as does torah coverings, but you will have to confirm wih your local rabbi. — Ess Kay39 mins ago
@Daniel I assume it was meant metaphorically actually. That is, that they have some holiness to them -- which Ess Kay was calling, metaphorically, "holy dust".
@DoubleAA Q asks for logic and/or sources, so no. And the insistence on keeping the joke in makes me less interested in leaving it around to try to salvage.
@DoubleAA Eh. It claims evidence of absence through absence of evidence, which is pretty weak, but I think is an answer. It's not a good answer, and it wouldn't be a crime to commentify it, but it doesn't beg for it like the joke answer.
@IsaacMoses The question explicitly says "What do you suspect is the answer?" (which is a very lax criterion) in big letters and the clarification in small ones. Benefit of the doubt (which I'm not sure is warranted), maybe the answerer missed it.
This answer has the format of spam/noise, but it's been there for a long time without being deleted. I can't understand the text on the other side of the link. Could someone who can please advise?
@IsaacMoses The source's source is given as some book with a title but no further bibliographic information given. I don't see why that's any better than citing the secondary source.
@IsaacMoses @MonicaCellio I have a couple of crayon dreidels. I don't think they draw, really, as they're hard (so don't easily leave residue) and light (so don't push on the paper too much), but I can imagine others that would.
@MonicaCellio Or perhaps some mechanism other than friction for releasing the pigment. Like, it could release it though its sides by centrifugal force.
... stand back, though
BRB building an ink-jet dreidel
I'm thinking four colors of pigment, one on each side, to capture the dreidelness. The apertures for ink release would have to be just large enough that centrifugal force beats surface tension when the dreidel is spinning at normal speed.
Something would probably have to be done to prevent sloshing from messing up the spin.
@IsaacMoses yeah, I'll say! Part of why I mentioned a fountain pen is that those are very good at dispensing ink with, seemingly, no pressure at all. :-)
@IsaacMoses The expected abbreviated response reminds me: I was insulted/complimented recently at s'uda sh'lishis in my shul. (I'm not sure which. Actually, most likely neither) The shul serves machine-made matza. I sat down after washing, looked in the box to be sure there were a number of matzos, took one out, made sure it was whole, held it with the box, and said "hamotzi". Then I put down the box and ate my matza. Someone told me, "Only an F.F.B. would call that lechem mishne".
@IsaacMoses Nor I. Maybe that marks me as an 'FFB'.
Maybe that marks you (@IsaacMoses, @HodofHod) as 'FFBs', too. (I don't know whether you are in fact, don't expect you to say one way or the other, and don't care.)
@IsaacMoses AFAICT, the person I was speaking with was stereotyping 'FFBs'/'BTs' as less/more careful to do things exactly the way they were taught or the 'standard' way as opposed to the halachically-correct-even-if-nonstandard way. (Which, like most stereotypes, has some basis in truth, but is incorrect.) So I guess the point was that there's nothing wrong with it precisely. I'm not entirely sure, though.
@IsaacMoses Or knew my biography. I don't remember who it was.
I am not an expert in CSS, but it seems that the issue is in .container and #footer. I think that since Mi Yodeya (unlike all the other SE sites I checked1) is using a repeated image as a background, the repeat-x property is repeating enough to fill only its div's width. In this case, it seems ...
@msh210 Huh. I guess that makes sense. Have you ever heard the rule "the number of boxes of tinfoil that you go through on Pesach is inversely proportional to the length of time that you have been frum?" :)
@msh210 I'd probably be marked as a shaigetz, since I don't tend to be makpid on lechem mishne at Se'uda Shelishit, for better or worse. This may or may not be related to being an FFB, the son of BTs.
> One should be able to hold the challot directly when one recites the berakha. Therefore, one ought not wear gloves during the birkat ha-motzi. Additionally, it is proper to recite the birkat ha-motzi on challot which are not wrapped up or inserted in bags (MB 167:23, SSK vol. 2 55:11 note 38, and R. Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg shlita, cited in The Radiance of Shabbat p. 79, note 18). See also paragraph 3 B below.
> The one who recites the blessing should grasp both challot in his hands, recite the birkat ha-motzi, and then cut the appropriate challa (OC 167:4). The Rema(167:14), Arukh Ha-shulchan (OC 167:29) and Mishna Berura (MB 274:2) rule that the mevarekh (the person reciting the blessing) should first say "bi-reshut" (with your permission) prior to reciting the birkat ha-motzi, while the Vilna Gaon reportedly (Ma'aseh Rav no. 78) considered this insertion a hefsek (an interruption).
@DoubleAA "ואם הוא לבוש בבתי ידים נכון שיסירם בשעת הברכה" (~"it's correct to remove gloves"). I suppose the MB cite is to the first sentence ("ought not wear gloves") and the SSK / R'CPS cites are to the next sentence ("not wrapped up or... in bags"). Dunno, will have to check SSK / Radiance.
(Incidentally, I think the book is called The Radiance of Shabbos, not ...of Shabbat. Unless they're two different books. I wonder whether this is the resultof wholesale search-and-replacement.)
Must one face Yerushlaim (or the Hechal) when reciting Kaddish,the way one should for Amida? This seems to be generally practiced; does it have a source in the Shulchan Aruch or achronim or is it a misconception?
