V'dibarta Bam - 2013-02-11

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12:09 AM

@yoel How is it blatant motzi shem ra and lashon hara? These are public and known issues. And since they might have nafka mina, it would seem there is a to'elet here.

2 hours later…

2:04 AM

@DoubleAA Nice!

@eykanal There's a list here, FWIW.

Not sure if I have a legit question. I just saw this. Do any of you know what to make of it? It's

user image

Description forthcoming (if you can't make it out)...

Tzitzith (Techeleth, btw, looked like P'til Tekhelet, in fact) on the four corners of a trench coat, cut off at the strings (so just knots).

The tying scheme was hard to make out, possibly GR"A or Hinuch.

2:29 AM

@SethJ Cut off at the strings doesn't sound so kosher, but I'm not completely up on that

guy had a long beard, but no Kippah. He had two companions, one of whom was a woman with a scarf covering her head/hair.

Well, @isaacMoses I'm wondering if this was a J4J type.

Anyone here know how to make mobile apps? Idea: An app that lets you take a picture of a food (or other) item, superimpose an o-cmon symbol wherever on the picture you want it, at the scale you want, and then share the resulting image with friends via FB, Twitter, etc.

@SethJ Or Karaite, perhaps?

Maybe? But they don't hold of P.T. and certainly not rabbinic knots.

And I don't know why they'd cut them off.

@SethJ huh, weird. My first thought was non-Jew who bought the coat second-hand and said "what's with the loose threads?". But I would expect such a person to remove them, not just cut them off, unless he didn't like the holes. Wild speculation here -- never seen that before.

@MonicaCellio I agree with @HodofHod that +1. Maybe I'll try to form a coherent answer, but basically, the more "modern" you go, the more women you're likely to find engaged in serious learning. One example for lay people in NY: yu.edu/cjf/midreshetyomrishon

2:42 AM

@IsaacMoses thanks to you and @HodofHod. I realize it's vague and I appreciate the help and feedback. So Modern Orthodox would be a good place to start looking? (Or is there more modern than MO?)

@eykanal, I've had Kosher tequila, and it was anything but "good".

I'm not getting ready to immediately jump congregations -- I have a fantastic rabbi and a wonderful Shabbat morning minyan. But there are things that are challenging and lots of people participate in more than one shul here (we have a bunch in my neighborhood), and it would behoove me to get more familiar with the wider world out there and see how well that suits.

@SethJ what makes a tequila good or bad? (I don't drink it so I've no clue.)

Or maybe @HodofHod can tell us about the merits of various alcohols? :-)

@MonicaCellio Stick to the ~~opium laced~~ poppy-seed hamantashen

@HodofHod but those could mess up the random drug tests at work. Alcohol passes through more quickly. :-)

@MonicaCellio Ah. In that case, I'm partial to a good wine (Cabernet, usually) or beer (IPAs). :) Don't really drink much of the harder stuff anymore. I've had tequila maybe twice. :(

2:58 AM

@HodofHod I tend to go more for ales, stouts, and porters myself. I don't like hops very much. Whenever I get a variety pack from our informal beer club I try to trade away the IPAs. :-) (In PA you can only buy beer in cases, or way-overpriced in bars. But if you get 12 people together you can each get two bottles of 12 different beers... or other math works too, of course. Most recent was 24 people.)

@MonicaCellio Sounds, lehavdil, like a korban pesach

@MonicaCellio Is that law?

@Monica cellio, it smelled (and, in my imagination, tasted) like gasoline. I don't know if it was that brand or if that's standard.

@HodofHod law, yes. PA is very restrictive -- wine and hard liquor only from state-run stores (but kosher groceries have an exception), beer from beer distributors by the case (or bars in single bottles, or you can get a few cheap things as six-packs from Sheetz etc I think, but nothing good). Our legislature is currently pondering changing some of this.

@SethJ eww. I've never had tequila straight (dunno if I've had it... I guess if it's in margaritas then once or twice), so no idea if that's standard.

@MonicaCellio Strange. I'm used to mix-and-match places. I'm always trying new things. Being forced to buy a case sounds..... strange. What was the rationale for that, I wonder?

3:04 AM

@HodofHod no idea what the rationale was, but I wouldn't be surprised if it (and the state stores) were to discourage drinking. These stores also aren't open on Sundays (recent targeted experiments aside), by the way -- the blue laws are strong here.

@MonicaCellio Heuristic I recommend: 1) Find the Orthodox shul with the modern-est reputation in town. 2) Look at their list of weekly classes, and drop in on one that looks interesting to you. If it's a Talmud class, and you get the sense that it may be de facto men only, call first to find out. 3) Make your own observations about who's learning what, with whom, on what level.

@IsaacMoses thanks!

@IsaacMoses Thanks... I have the cRc and the Star-K lists, but they both just some brands

I was hoping that someone could recommend me something that's, you know, good

@SethJ I was afraid of that :/

4:00 AM

I really like this question.

1

Q: Can I tuck tzitzit into the fabric square corners?

These are Neatzit, a tzitzit undershirt. In dealing with a child who fidgets and therefore picks at the tzitzit, such that at the end of the day, they are entirely undone, can I tuck the tzitzit into the corner fabric squares? These squares are already partly open, to facilitate tucking the tz...

halacha tzitzis

And this one.

10

Q: Dangling tzitzit

Do tzitzit need to dangle? Can one use some velcro to pin the strings down along the side of the beged so that they don't dangle down and get in the way of things?

halacha clothing tzitzis

Do we have to close every dupe?

@SethJ I did not close it. I even put in a question mark.

@double aa, I know, but I don't disagree that it's very likely a dupe. I just would really like to see a solid answer to Josh's specific case.

4:17 AM

@SethJ So would I

@yydl true my intention was if one of the sides of the velcro was sewn to the back of the beged. — Double AA Nov 29 '11 at 21:30

In your examples they are still dangling off the beged. What if I attach them to the beged itself as in my quesiton? — Double AA Nov 29 '11 at 17:35

@DoubleAA Is there going to be a purim torah event for the community bulletin?

I'm just concerned if the meta post falls off.

@HodofHod Am I a navi? :)

@DoubleAA What? I thought for sure....

I'm not sure we really need one. A) Meta processes pretty slowly. B) This isn't the ikar of the site. C) There should be enough main questions up top normally that all have links back to the policy post.

@SethJ If it is one? Yes, IMO.

4:21 AM

@HodofHod Am I not a navi? :)

@HodofHod Featured status should last a month, which is through the postability season.

@DoubleAA I agree, esp. with B.

Blog - Stack Exchange: Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication

Jeff Atwood on November 15, 2010

As Stack Overflow grows — or any other Q&A site in the Stack Exchange network, really — there’s a natural pressure to discover and link duplicate questions. The more questions you have, the higher the possibility a given new question isn’t in fact a new question, but a duplicate of an older existing question. Because of this, we’ve continually enhanced the tools for finding, linking, and merging duplicate questions:

Handling Duplicate Questions Linking Duplicate Questions Improved Question Merging …

Oh I missed that it was featured.

@msh210 @SethJ ^^^ (before Hod's)

Hanach lahem l'Yisrael! Im enam n'viim, b'ne n'viim hem.

@DoubleAA Ah, yes, I'd forgotten about... that rather unclear blog post.

4:24 AM

@msh210 I'm not saying it applies here necessarily. Just pointing it out.

@HodofHod I have a vague recollection of a play-on-tape with people bowing to Haman, saying "salaam-i, bologna". Is that the same tape?

@msh210 Yep. Still love that tape. Been listening to it on repeat for several hours now, as it happens.

@SethJ I'm really not so sure now why I accepted that answer. I think maybe at the time (back in my Mi Yodeya youth) I was satisfied with yydl's comment there, so accepted the answer it was on. (That's a reconstruction of what happened not a recently triggered memory.)

@DoubleAA I'm getting mixed signals here. :)

@HodofHod Haven't heard it since the fifth grade, but I remember I liked it. We also listened to a tape with a song whose refrain was "We like, we like the city of Prague". Any idea what tape that was?

4:29 AM

@msh210 Oh, I've heard people sing this one, but I don't know it personally.

@HodofHod What I wouldn't do for a copy of that Purim Story tape (on CD though :-))

@msh210 "The Longest Pesach"

@msh210 I have it in mp3

@msh210 Yeah I realized that I have that on my computer too

@HodofHod Nice! No chance you could break copyright laws for me? :-)

(I kid.)

:)

(The fifth-grade rebbe who played these tapes for us was Rabbi Mordechai Mehlman, whose name you may recognize.)

@HodofHod Where did you get it from, though? (The Purim Story one.)

4:40 AM

@msh210 Ummm.... I don't even remember. I've had it for years.

Btw, if you have an urge for old memories, skip to :30 on this preview israel-music.com/shmuel_kunda/longest_pesach

@HodofHod All right. Thanks anyway.

@HodofHod Thanks. :-)

@MonicaCellio 'Modern Orthodox" is sometimes a useful abstraction, but like other things it's more a spectrum than an organized unified movement. For some gross oversimplifications you can of course start with Wikipedia.

@HodofHod Ah, it seems to be available: mostlymusic.com/the-purim-story.html

@msh210 In cd. Strange that they don't have it for download.

@HodofHod Yeah.

4:46 AM

@hodofhod holy moly. I remember that tape! And "The Talking Coins".

@SethJ Was the vent in the back of the coat split up most of the way?

@SethJ @msh210 Yep. Chabad.org has released his Purim tape online. It's implied that the others may soon join them. chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/2128060/jewish/…

@IsaacMoses It's quite a complicated sugya in fact. See OC 12 for example.

:8058239 So did I. This is a different Purim tape. The Talking Coins and The Longest Pesach were both made by R' Shmuel Kunda (along with many others)

@double aa, iirc, it went up to the belt.

4:53 AM

@HodofHod Oh, good!

@msh210 The Purim Story that we were discussing is not his, unfortunately. :(

@HodofHod Yeah, I know.

@DoubleAA makes sense. Thanks.

5:13 AM

Just commented on one of Alex's answers and it occurred to me: If and when he does visit again, he'll probably be immediately scared off by the huge red number of inbox messages.

user image

3

@HodofHod Did you make that picture? Nice.

@msh210 Easy with Chrome's Inspector.

:)

@HodofHod Ah, yes. Probably Firebug could do it, too.

Mistameh, isn't Chrome's tool based off of it?

@HodofHod No idea.

Well, good night, folks. Happy Adar.

5:23 AM

@HodofHod If we really want to get to that number, we'd have to have a hundred Yodeyans pinging Alex once per second for only about...1 million years. That should do it.

3

5:33 AM

@DoubleAA Totally doable.

11 hours later…

4:11 PM

What's the matter? Were you all up too late chatting to get back into the swing of things this morning?

4:31 PM

@IsaacMoses Ugh, I cannot believe I forgot to tag you when I responded: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8057231#8057231

@IsaacMoses, and the line below that as well.

4:43 PM

MISHE MISHE MISHE MISHE, MISHE MISHE MISHE MISHE, MISHENICHNAS ADAR!!

...MARBIM MARBIM, MARBIM BESIMCHA!!

5:43 PM

@SethJ I spent the morning moving onto a new machine at work (not done yet). Translation: I've just updated my browser and I can't do a thing with it. :-( (Figuring out all the firefox customizations I'd made for accessibility and re-implementing them, whee...)

Apropos of that, does anybody know how to turn off the chat-ping sound? (Cube farm...) I don't want to surpress all sounds; the corporate IM and meeting alerts are important.

@MonicaCellio Top right of the chat room. Above the room name. There should be a speaker icon.

@DoubleAA thanks!

1 hour later…

7:07 PM

hiii

7:48 PM

@Ali, hi. You confused yet about Purim Torah?

@msh210, I think that, despite our best efforts to explain how Mesorah works and how, to us, when an answer doesn't cite a rabbinic source it seems incomplete, to others, and in this case to @Ali, it diminishes the value of the scripture cited. ...

1

A: Clear Definition of God in Judaism

Hard to do better than Maimonides (Y'sode Hatorah 1): The basis of all bases and pillar of knowledges is to know there's a first existing being. He brought into existence all that exists, and all things that exist… only exist from the truth of his existence. If he were to not exist, if...

@msh210, what I mean by that is that if you had simply cited the verses and explained how they define G-d, @Ali might have been satisfied. But once you introduced it as a thought explained by a rabbi, even though it cites verses in TaNa"Ch and especially the Torah, it appears as though you are relying on a non-"revealed" source to stretch the meaning of the verses, rather than presenting the verses to stand on their own (with the same, word-for-word explanation).

@Ali, is that about right?

8:31 PM

@Ali, Jake's answer contains one of the other verses I was going to cite, as well as the one I mentioned, and a few more, so I'm deleting my answer unless and until I think of several more that haven't yet been mentioned.

@SethJ Makes sense.

Does judaism.stackexchange.com/q/26072 remind anyone else of boat programming? ("What's the best way to get hot food on campus -- as a Jew?") I think that because it seems like the answers are precisely the answers to "What's the best way to get hot food on campus?" minus the one answer "eat in a restaurant". Thoughts?

9:03 PM

@msh210 I don't like it, but I'm not sure it's totally the same.

@msh210 My hangup with it is that it's entirely unanswerable. Each instance is independently challenging with different sets of circumstances.

@msh210 Nah. The Boat Programming question could have been rephrased as "How can I use a computer on a boat?" There wasn't really anything specific to programmers about it. The question here may well be unanswerable, but I think it is specific to Jews. (Issues with food allergies or intolerances would be in some ways similar, but different enough to be distinct.)

There are many other religiously mandated diets, but I think the kosher rules are the strictest.

9:18 PM

@msh210 I'm not thrilled with the question but I'm not sure it's off-topic either. On consideration I don't like the "here are things you can cook" list in the CW answer; I think Dan's answer is valuable and the "grandma meal plan" part from the CW adds another option, but the rest feels too open-ended to me.

9:34 PM

@IsaacMoses @MonicaCellio I find it actually not uncommon in Chabad too, although the ones I know tend to prefer a Maamar over a Blatt.

Also, I find it to be more of a one on one thing, rather than class. But then again, I'm from a very small community, I'm sure larger ones have classes and things.

10:17 PM

@HodofHod @MonicaCellio I have no first-hand experience, but in offhand comments in his lectures, R' Rakeffet (YU sage; absolutely not a chossid) occasionally lauds Chabad / the Rebbe for "solving the problem of feminism" by creating a strong, fulfilling role for women within the chassidut. IIRC, he's mainly referring to shelichot, but what I gather is that they're doing and providing intellectually fulfilling learning.

... he, incidentally, is a big proponent of women learning at the highest possible levels in this day and age (though he adheres strictly to traditional gender roles in ritual and the rabbinate), and prides himself on teaching thousands of women at Michlala and Machon Gold at high levels

@IsaacMoses @HodofHod, interesting, thanks! My one attempt to crack Chabad locally was a dismal failure, but maybe showing up for services wasn't the right way to approach them. Finding out about their classes and going there should work better.

Pittsburgh has a sizeable Chabad community, did you go to a Chabad shul or a Chabad house? (There's a difference, even if there shouldn't be.)

@HodofHod There's even a girls' HS there, isn't there?

@IsaacMoses That IDK, but I have heard of a Yeshiva Ktana . I have several friends who went there.

@HodofHod shul. You can't just show up at a chabad house, can you?

10:29 PM

@HodofHod It looks like the two are part of one institution yeshivaschool.com/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/657636/jewish/… yeshivaschool.com/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/135174/jewish/…

@MonicaCellio Depends on how large/small or new/settled the Chabad House is. I find them much more "available" then Chabad Shul's, but you may still want to call, if only because it sometimes takes longer for a Chabad House to build an audience for women's services/classes then men's. (A man is almost guaranteed to be comfortable dropping in on services. A woman (unfortunately) will always be accepted with the same happiness, but in newer establishments she may be the only one there = awkward.)

That's very unfortunate, but it may be that men are simply more accustomed to going to shul, so it's easier for Shluchim to build that audience.

@HodofHod Going to shul is much more necessary, halachically, for men

@IsaacMoses Right. Which means that women who do want to go, are less likely to have company. Good for kavanah, for being comfortable.. not so much. :)

@MonicaCellio Then again, with your knowledge and background in learning, the Shliach/Shlucha may just end up recommending a class that the Chabad Shul is already giving. Every community is different, for all that the newspapers like to write about Chabad's "organization".

I may be over-complicating things, though. If you are interested, you might find a friend who's knows one of the Chabad rabbis/rebbetzins in PA and they might be able to advise you how to crack in.

@HodofHod yeah, I've been the only occupant of the women's section pretty often. At Chabad they ignored me and not one person returned my greeting so I went home kind of put off. At Young Israel they stared at me and didn't speak to me (and I didn't initiate that time). I was dressed appropriately, I wasn't in the way... I don't know what I did wrong.

10:46 PM

@MonicaCellio Some established communities are like that. In a Chabad House, it's kind of the Shliach/Shlucha's job to make everyone comfortable. In a Chabad Shul, they should, but it often takes second place. I like to think it wouldn't happen in my Shul.

@MonicaCellio "They" in each case is men, women, or both?

@HodofHod that sounds like a good approach. My learning is definitely haphazard (comes of learning as an adult) -- more advanced than almost anyone else in my Reform shul, not advanced enough to just go to yeshiva. (e.g. my gemara chevruta is my rabbi and he translates for us -- I get bits here and there but fluency is a long way away.)

@MonicaCellio Then again, maybe it was just a bad cholent that week.

@HodofHod oh, you're Chabad? Sorry; I've been dim.

@MonicaCellio My cover's blown!

Yeah, it's not in my About section, but I think I've mentioned it once or twice.

10:47 PM

@IsaacMoses mostly men. I think there were a couple women in the hall at Chabad (none in the service) that I greeted on my way out, but they seemed to be distracted or something.

(And no, I wasn't offering to shake hands with the men or anything, just a "shabbat shalom" and a nod).

Sorry, I thought everyone knew. (If I had thought you didn't I would've definitely noted it as a disclaimer.)

@MonicaCellio If what you're looking for (in large part, at least) is learning, as opposed to community, then you might be interested in one of the chavruta match programs out there

2

@HodofHod well, you blew it yourself. :-)

@MonicaCellio Well, some men are just chauvinistic/uncomfortable talking to women. Some people are just unfriendly.

@IsaacMoses good point. I'd like both learning and community; a thread that runs in the back of my brain from time to time is "would I fit in better with the Orthodox than the Reform?".

@IsaacMoses yeah, not enough data to generalize, but unfortunately early results influence the effort to go collect more data. This discussion is helping a lot to reassure me; thanks!

10:50 PM

... but a self-selecting class is more likely to have people in it with whom you have what to talk about than a service, which is for everyone

@IsaacMoses good point. And then if I do go to a service and see some of those people, we already have a connection.

@MonicaCellio (I noticed from the recent post on the LJ you've linked to in your MY profile :)

@IsaacMoses yeah, I figured you might have spotted that. :-) BTW do you use the RSS feed or do you just visit from time to time?

@MonicaCellio The former. I'm a compulsive add-to-GReader-er

(That is, I figured exactly one person would have seen both the post and the question, and I was wondering when they would come together.)

@IsaacMoses BTW, do edits cause RSS to push a post out again? If so I apologize; I had a flurry of recent edits to old posts (and that one, multiply).

10:54 PM

@MonicaCellio (When you mentioned the theme of one in a forum related to the other :)

@MonicaCellio I don't think so.

@MonicaCellio Keep in mind that even if you would fit better, the transition period may not be the easiest :( Also, I go to Orthodox Shuls and even Chabad ones, and sometimes some people are just tough to crack.

@IsaacMoses if you didn't get RSS-bombed in the last week then I presume the answer is no. :-)

@HodofHod I think we would "date" for a very long time before anything more permanent happened. And even if I never move (I am very dedicated to my rabbi), I don't always have to stay just in one place.

@MonicaCellio There's no reason you couldn't attend classes in as many different institutions as you want

@IsaacMoses yes. At the community tikkun leil shavuot I always make a point of going to hear people I don't know (at least until I run out :-) ); no reason I can't do more of that the rest of the year.

@IsaacMoses The more classes, the better, I always say.

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Feb '1311

V'dibarta Bam

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