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Thursday, April 28, 2022

Rav Gershon Ribner: If You’re not Competitive in Learning, It Shows you Don’t Care Enough

 

In a recent vaad, Rav Gershon Ribner said that if someone is not competitive in his learning, it’s not a positive quality, but rather it’s because he does not care enough.

The Rosh Yeshiva shlit”a gave a litmus test to determine whether a bochur or yungerman is “inspired and dedicated” or if he is second-tier. (He also referred to it as the “A train” and “B train”.)

He said, “Are you competitive about your learning?” He added that it’s not a higher quality in ruchniyus to not be competitive in learning, because Kinas Sofrim tarbeh chochma.

“Its not an aidelkeit…if you’re not competitive. Rather it’s because you don’t care enough.”

Even though Chazal criticize the attribute of kinah, he explained that’s only the negative type, but not the positive desire to succeed in learning. The implication seemed to be that being relaxed and laid back about one’s learning may in some cases be a negative attribute.

The Rav listed other questions as well:

  • If you go home to Brooklyn for Shabbos and have a date Sunday night, also in Brooklyn, would you return to Lakewood Sunday morning to learn in person with your chavrusa?
  • If you bump into a Gadol at a wedding, will you speak to him in learning or just ask for a beracha? Do you have something to discuss, or would that require too much effort?
  • Are you writing your learning down after you complete a sugya?
  • Do you get tired of a sugya and wish you can move on?

The Rosh Yeshiva emphasized that while even second-tier Bnei Torah are certainly good to have in yeshiva, they are in a different classification than those on the “A Train.”

Some answers to this article:

My two cents
 8 hours ago

I’m female and don’t learn gemara but just from learning Torah in Bais Yaakov, I would think HKBH has a different cheshbon for what makes a strong learner. Would a competitive A Train bochur leave his learning to help an old lady or his parents? According to this article, no. We learned that those talmidim of Rabbi Akiva were killed so I think I’ll take a B Train bochur who practices what he learns and doesn’t “compete”. Yuck. I don’t think that’s what HKBH has in mind. As far as I know, Moshe Rabbeinu loved teaching EVERYONE Torah.

shlomo zalman
shlomo zalman
 6 hours ago

I’ll answer the questions.

  1. No. Instead of traveling for four hours for my Sunday night date, I find a bes medrash in Brooklyn and learn there for the day. Common sense.
  2. I ask for a bracha and don’t waste the Gadol’s time on my gaivah-motivated-chiddush If my chiddush is that good, I write it up and send it to the godol by mail. If I’m lucky, it’s his daughter that I dated Sunday night.
  3. Why would I write it down? That’s obsessive behavior. A real lamdan has to remember what he learned.
  4. Of course I move on to the next sugya. Staying on one sugya for too long is obsessive behavior (see question 3) and is the leading cause of am-ha’aratzus in yeshiva boys.

I don’t know Rabbi Ribner, but it sounds to me that he has obsessive tendencies and can benefit from professional help.

With respect
With respect
 7 hours ago

There’s this thing in yiddishkeit called ‘Lishma’. sounds familiar?

anonymous
anonymous
 14 hours ago

Is this Rabbi a “A” Rabbi or “B” Rabbi? I have never even heard about him before.
“If he is not competitive enough” as a Rabbi it shows he doesnt care.

LionofZion
LionofZion
 6 hours ago

And yet, his Yeshiva and also all the others don’t bother with tests or any other way of documenting whether anybody is learning anything. Is this guy advocating that the B and C learners go do something productive, like join the Israeli army or learn how to support their own families? Of course not.

Guest
Guest
 11 hours ago

Getting tired of a sugya and wish to move on is not a crime. One can enjoy one sugya over another or have a better understanding or interest of another topic. Everybody is that way – everybody.

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Yerushalyim Rabbi Gives a New Meaning to Kiruv .....arrested on suspicion of sexual assault.


 A rabbi in his 50s, from Jerusalem, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of sexually assaulting women, Israel Hayom reported.

Police have also arrested two of those close to the "rabbi."

According to Israel Hayom, the "rabbi" in question heads an organization dedicated towards helping Jews come closer to Judaism.

The arrest follows the receipt of complaints which raise suspicion of sexual offenses, as well as exploitation crimes and financial crimes. The investigation raised the suspicion that the "rabbi" carried out his crimes against women for whom he served as a "spiritual father," as part of their process of returning to Judaism.

Are these the teachers that "Yaafad" Wants to put into Yeshivos? Asking for a friend!

 

Japanese Guy Has a Solution for the Shidduch Crises

 

While Kondo acknowledges his relationship might be odd — he understands Miku isn’t a real person — it doesn’t change his feelings for her. Since falling in love with her in 2008, Kondo was finally able to interact with Miku for the first time in 2017 thanks to a Gatebox, a $1,300 machine that allowed device owners to interact with characters via holograms and even unofficially marry them.

But now, his four-year marriage took a turn when support for Gatebox software was eliminated, meaning that Kondo could no longer speak with his wife Miku, according to Newshub.

Kono insists it hasn’t lessened his feelings.

“My love for Miku hasn’t changed,” he told Mainichi, which noted he now carried around a life-size version of Miku. “I held the wedding ceremony because I thought I could be with her forever.”

Kondo is far from the only person in the world in a relationship with a character. Thousands of “fictosexual” people in Japan have begun similar unofficial relationships with a variety of fictitious figures, the Mirror reported.

While some relationships are just for kicks, Kondo’s is, to him, very real. For a long time, he said he knew a human partner just wasn’t for him due to his intense attraction to characters like Miku, a popular figure in anime and Japanese culture. Created as a synthesized voice using Yamaha’s Vocaloid technology, Miku entered mainstream media as a human, but fictionalized, character in Manga, anime series and video games. Eventually, she became prominent enough to tour with the likes of Lady Gaga on her 2014 Artpop Ball tour.

ut Miku isn’t just famous. She’s also helped Kondo with his depression.

Kondo first became familiar with Miku in 2008 after bullying at work caused him to become depressed. Despite finding it difficult to accept his feelings at first, he knew humans weren’t right for him after being met with rejection by others.

“I stayed in my room for 24 hours a day, and watched videos of Miku the whole time,” he told Mainichi.

In 2017, his relationship blossomed with Miku, thanks to Gatebox. The machine gave Kondo the chance to propose to Miku, and he invited his family and co-workers to the ceremony — but none of them came. But 39 people did attend, including strangers and online friends, some of whom are also “fictosexual.”

“There are two reasons why I had a wedding publicly,” he told BBC at the time. “The first one is to prove my love to Miku. The second one is there are many young otaku people like me falling in love with anime characters. I want to show the world that I support them.”

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

"Groiser " Conservative Rebbe in Cleveland arrested for soliciting an investigator who posed as an underage boy online

 

A Cleveland-area rabbi was arrested and suspended from his congregation after allegedly engaging in explicit online conversations and attempting to meet with an undercover investigator posing as a 15-year-old boy.

Rabbi Stephen Weiss, who has served as senior rabbi at B’nai Jeshurun Congregation in Pepper Pike, Ohio, since 2001, was arrested Monday evening by law enforcement officers with the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. The 60-year-old had traveled to a pre-arranged location to allegedly engage in sexual activity with the purported child, after communicating on a social networking app. 

According to the prosecutor’s office, the vehicle he was driving was searched and law enforcement officers found a box of condoms and two bottles of lubricant. Weiss was charged with one count of attempted unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, one count of importuning (soliciting sexual services) and one count of possessing criminal tools, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Court records show Weiss posted a $50,000 bond. According to the court docket, as a condition of his jail release, he is required to wear a GPS standard monitoring device.

The day after Weiss’s arrest, his congregation announced in an email to congregants that it had suspended him from his position and barred him from the premises. B’nai Jeshurun President Rebekah Dorman and Senior Rabbi Hal Rudin-Luria, newly appointed to his position following Weiss’s suspension, also wrote that the synagogue was “unaware of any other alleged criminal incidents involving Rabbi Weiss.”

The synagogue said it would make confidential counseling available to congregants.

“Our synagogue has been strong and vibrant for 156 years and faced many challenges along the way,” Dorman and Rudin-Luria wrote. “We will continue on in that tradition as a synagogue family that supports and cares for each other in challenging times.”

Neither Weiss nor his attorney returned a Cleveland Jewish News request for comment.

The arrest comes amid a spate of recent revelations about misdeeds by rabbis in Ohio. In the Toledo area last month, Rabbi David Kaufman was arrested after being accused of rape; he was fired by his synagogue, which said in a statement that the accusation did not involve a member of the congregation. And in Canton, Rabbi Jon Adland was named in a Reform movement report as having previously been engaged in misconduct involving a 14-year-old girl. 

In the latter case, congregants did not learn about the rabbi’s alleged misdeeds while he served them. The community severed ties to Adland after the release of the national report.

This story was originally reported in the Cleveland Jewish News

Netflix Fires Employees as Subscribers Jump Ship

 

As consumers dump their Netflix subscriptions in droves, the far-left streamer is reportedly taking an ax to its animation department, cutting programming and firing employees in the latest sign that the company’s days of carefree spending are over. 

Netflix laid off its director of creative leadership and development for original animation, Phil Rynda, along with some of his staff, according to a report from The Wrap. 

The streamer has also pulled the plug on existing and in-development shows. Some Netflix animation employees have also accused the streamer of using manipulated data to justify the cancellations. Planned animated series based on Jeff Smith’s popular comic book series Bone and Roald Dahl’s novel The Twits have been cancelled. 

An upcoming series based on Lauren Faust’s Toil and Trouble will also not move forward.

Not Shaving During Sefira is actually a "Goyishe Minhag"

 


From Emailim Batorah...

 הלכה ולא למעשה


NOT SHAVING DURING SEFIRA - GOYISHE MINHAG

The Mekubal & Doctor, Harav Moshe Dovid Valla
(תלמיד of the רמח"ל)

claims that not shaving or trimming the beard during
אבילות, and ספירה 
is a Goyishe Minhag.

"Only by Goyim, since they all shave during the year,
so refraining 
from shaving shows אבילות.

For Yidden, since they have been growing beards during
the year, therefore, letting it grow during ספירה is not a
form of אבילות. Chazal didn't have 
beards in mind 
when they said not to cut the hair during that period.


However, since the masses don't shave their beards
during the  
ספירה, we should condone it and come up
with the reason, it's 
done to be ממתיק הדינים (sweeten
& lighten the harsh judgments) 
of the long hair*."

The שו"ת חתם סופר יו"ד שמ"ח  too, claims the Poskim's
intention was 
only for the hair of the head and not
the beard.


* Kabbalistic
 
 
 
Emailim Batorah · 2770 Dufferin Street · 223 · Toronto, Ontario M6B3R7 · Canada

Libs absolutely losing their minds... with the Musk affair

 


 Listen to this meshiginar leftist telling the truth!

NJ man lived double life as ‘sleeper agent’ for Hezbollah


A New Jersey software engineer lived a dark double life as a “sleeper agent” in an elite Hezbollah unit, scouting terror targets in New York City for the militant group, federal prosecutors charged at the start of his trial Monday.

Alexei Saab, 45, kept up appearances as a “normal” law-abiding US citizen — all while gathering intelligence on a number of Big Apple landmarks, tunnels and bridges, Assistant US Attorney Sam Adelsberg said in his opening statement.

Elon Musk can save Twitter despite what liberal loons say


 It’s all over for Twitter, Twitter’s heaviest lefties are telling us. The shrieking is at cat-tail-slammed-in-door levels. When Elon Musk takes over, they warn, Twitter will become a flaming toxic radioactive cesspool . . . of politically incorrect jokes and links to accurate reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

On the right, many people I respect such as Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review and Megan McArdle of the Washington Post think Twitter is beyond saving. As McArdle points out, Musk can hardly run Twitter himself, and young, brainwashed zombies from the Cult of Woke ultimately make the uncomfortable decisions about, you know, which presidents to ban. Musk can’t possibly clean house and bring in reasonable centrists who love free speech to staff every moderating job; as is true of the media, the pool of potential employees in Silicon Valley is as blue as San Francisco. And these eager young censors grew up this century — the era of trigger warnings and safe spaces. Many of them, I’ll wager, have never had a substantial conversation with a conservative in their entire lives.

But I still think Musk can save Twitter: How about trying clear, fair, nonpartisan rules and telling content moderators to err on the side of letting people rhetorically slug it out? For those whose tweets get barred, there should be a clear and transparent appeals process. And nobody should be banned just for being a jerk. Threats? No. Doxing? Not allowed. Porn? Go elsewhere for that. But Donald Trump should be let back on. Whether something is “disinformation” or “a threat to democracy” ought not concern Twitter’s moderators, because what’s accurate will drive out the inaccurate over time. Oh, and in our glorious Muskian future, people will be free to joke again.

Lebanese "Tzaddik" Elia Hawila Arrives In Israel, Declares: ‘I Hope I Merit To Kill Nasrallah, I Will Fight For Israel’

 

The Lebanese groom who was exposed after his marriage to a Jewish girl from New York’s Syrian community has now arrived in Israel – and is determined to rehabilitate himself.

Elia Hawila, who was initially thought to be Jewish, then exposed as a South Lebanese Muslim named Ali who had masqueraded as a Jew, is now claiming to be Jewish in a number of ways. Hawila investigated his background and did a DNA test, revealing that he actually has rare genes which are synonymous with Ashkenazic Jews. Moreover Hawila’s grandmother revealed to him that his great-grandmother, whose name was Sarah Dweck and lived in Alleppo, had run off with a Muslim from South Lebanon and converted to Islam, meaning that he is actually halachically Jewish.

Additionally he underwent a further geirus (conversion) due to the fact that his family had practiced Islam for a number of generations. Hawila succeeded in convincing Israeli authorities to allow him entry to Israel despite his Lebanese background and is now enjoying his celebrity status in Israel. He still yearns for his wife and hopes that one day she will be persuaded to rejoin him but admits that he lied to her and deceived her prior to their marriage.

Interviewed by Israeli reporter Roi Kais, Hawila stressed his hatred for Hezbollah, stating that “I hope I merit one day to kill Nasrallah” but added that Israel and Lebanon had never been enemies before Hezbollah took control of Lebanese affairs. “It’s a war between Israel and a lowlife terror organization,” he insists.

When an Israeli tells him to “find a girl and settle down,” Elia corrects him. “I’m still married to my wife. My Ketuba is kosher.” The man tells him that he “has to get a divorce, she doesn’t want you” but Elia is not convinced and says: “Who told you?” He dreams that she will come and live with him in Israel but in the meantime he is building a new life for himself 6000 miles away from her.

Monday, April 25, 2022

Taylor Lorenz Washinton Post reporter ‘DOXXES’ Chaya Raichik a frum Lady in an Attempt to Silence Her


 

 

Most people are focusing on the hypocrisy involved in The Washington Post doxxing an Orthodox Jewish woman who anonymously ran the popular conservative Twitter and Instagram accounts known as @libsoftiktok.

 The person who ran them had said that she feared retaliation from those who didn’t like her politics and had chosen to remain anonymous.

 But Post reporter Taylor Lorenz tracked down Chaya Raichik, showed up at her relatives’ homes and then published an article that included links to professional documents that listed the woman’s home address and place of business. And though the story was about the social-media accounts she ran, which recycle extremist rants from left-wingers, Lorenz also went out of her way to note that Raichik was an Orthodox Jew.

The Post’s decision to expose Raichik was highly debatable, but putting a spotlight on her religion, which wasn’t necessarily germane to the question of whether there was something inherently wrong or controversial about her social-media accounts, was equally troubling. But most of the blowback about the story centered around the fact that only a few weeks earlier, Lorenz, who previously covered technology and the Internet for The New York Times and the Daily Beast, had gone on MSNBC to complain in a viral video about being subjected to criticism that led to online harassment and threats. Yet what she would soon do to Raichik was far worse. Until the Post article came out, Raichik was a private person; Lorenz would go on to publish details about her life and expose her to exactly the same kind of harassment that she herself had wept about on television.

The willingness of one of the country’s largest newspapers to devote so much space to finding out who it was that was posting under the anonymous tag of @libsoftiktok may have puzzled those who don’t follow the world of social media. They must be equally astonished at the newspaper’s decision to publish Raichik’s personal information—a disreputable practice known as doxxing, as well as to highlight her faith at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise in the United States.


The real question here is not so much the willingness of a mainstream media giant to target someone whose politics are reviled by its liberal staff and readership. It’s whether the substance of what Raichik had been doing—reposting content posted on social media by left-wingers so as to provoke discussion about social and political issues—is fair comment or, as Lorenz’s article argued, a form of hate speech intended to generate prejudice against the LGBTQ community.

Raichik’s past social-media profile before starting LibsofTikTok showed her to be an ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump and a critic of President Joe Biden. A previous satirical account run by her went under the name of President Houseplant, an ongoing jibe at Biden. At that time, she was still identifying herself as an Orthodox Jew on her account, so some, like JTA reporter Ron Kampeas, think that it was fair game to out her as one even after she had chosen anonymity.

One can argue that anyone who engages in political discourse should do so openly and under their own name. But in a journalistic environment in which people like Lorenz can become stars by specializing in exposing people to opprobrium by uncovering heretofore private information about their lives, a desire for anonymity is understandable. For example, Lorenz wrote a piece for the Daily Beast that brought to the public’s attention the fact that the mother of two young Jewish women known as popular non-political social media influencers was right-wing activist Pamela Geller. Whatever you may think of Geller, the result of that article, which labeled her as an Islamophobe, was that her daughters were booted from a talk show they hosted and subjected to online harassment even though they had nothing to do with their mother’s activities.

Those who speak out in public on controversial issues for a living, like opinion columnists, have always known that hate mail and insults on social media come with the territory. Professional journalists shouldn’t whine about this sort of thing in public. But we live in an era in which every citizen with a social-media account has a platform on which they can express their views and can achieve a degree of prominence if they are retweeted by someone with a huge following. Subjecting them to the same scrutiny that has always applied to journalism professionals is neither fair nor appropriate. And when such scrutiny involves, as the Post’s article did, actual doxxing—whose only possible purpose is to render them vulnerable to exactly the kind of danger that Lorenz cried about—it becomes outrageous.

Just as important is the fact that the Post seemed to think Raichik’s account is inherently illegitimate. The content she posted was all authentic Internet material. Much of it had to do with the issue of sexualizing young children, a topic that has been in the news because of Florida’s HB1557 law that supports the right of parents to be involved in actions regarding their children’s well-being and limits the discussion of gay and transgender issues in classrooms at the kindergarten to third-grade level to those elements that are age or developmentally appropriate. Indeed, many on the left, including the Post article, alleged that the videos reposted by Raichik led Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis to push for the passage of the legislation, which liberal media outlets have mislabeled as a “don’t say gay” law.

That Raichik’s account has earned a large following and been featured by conservative media is not in doubt. Still, the notion that a shadowy religious Jew is pulling the strings behind people in power is a classic anti-Semitic trope. That Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle spoke up in defense of Raichik’s being doxxed by her colleague by tweeting that the fact that the victim is Orthodox means the exposure of her personal details was no big deal is just the icing on the prejudiced cake.

The notion put forward by the Post article that Raichik’s reposts are a form of hate speech—a bogus claim that has led to a number of temporary suspensions by Twitter—is a remarkable inversion of the truth. What Raichik does is to expose extremist statements relating to the inappropriate sexualizing of children posted publicly by the speakers. In a different context, that is exactly what groups like the Anti-Defamation League do when it comes to various kinds of hate speech. Yet the same people who applaud when those extremists are exposed think there is something wrong with doing it in this case.

Many are made uncomfortable with the content that Raichik posts. But Lorenz’s claim that she is fueling hatred by exposing those with extreme views not only doesn’t stand up to scrutiny but would never even be brought up if the subjects of her activity were on the other side of the political spectrum. Moreover, the idea that there is something particularly unwholesome about a religious Jew engaging on the issue of the safety of children or in conservative advocacy is itself bizarre.

One need not be a fan of LibsofTikTok to realize that the decision of a major pillar of the media establishment that is owned by a Big Tech oligarch like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to target a private citizen in this way is a deplorable escalation of our political culture wars. That it also carries with it a touch of anti-Semitic incitement only makes it worse. That this emanates from the newspaper that has on its banner the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” isn’t merely ironic. It’s a reminder that those who bleat the loudest about defending democracy and shedding light on the news are sometimes the ones doing the most damage to the American republic and taking its discourse to a very dark place. 

Biden Dementia Getting worse and worse and is obvious to everyone but the press

 


Something is wrong with President Joe Biden, and everyone knows it.

Last week, Biden was asked if his administration will consider delaying the end of Title 42, a pandemic immigration restriction that allows for fast deportation of migrants illegally crossing our border in the name of stopping the circulation of COVID-19.