R' Shteinman - Haredi girls learning University studies is like a pig with a shtreimel

There was an anti-academia conference of the Haredi spritiual leadership for girls where the leading Rabbis went on as to how girls must only learn in Beis Yakkovs and that academia was a terrible thing.

The Haredi leadership is burying their heads in the sand. There is a financial crisis in the Haredi world in Israel. The problem is very simple, the men sit and learn and make little to no money and the women need to go out and work and support the family on the very meager salaries that they can make without an academic degree.

Here are some of the statements of the Rabbanim at the conference:
R' Moshe Hillel Hirsh Rosh Yeshiva of Slabodka:
There is no doubt that the situation today makes it hard for households to function. On one hand the woman doesn't make enough money to afford more then the bare minimum and on the other hand the husband is an avrech kollel who barely makes any money. There are no answers [my emphasis]. By the way I have to say that thank god there is an initiative by American Baal Habatim to provide money to many families
... [he goes on to explain why Beis Yaakov is so important and why it can't change]

Unbelievable, he admits he has no answer for the financial situation but still will do nothing. Relying on American Baal Habatim is not a realistic solution.

R' Yitzchak Zilberstein said:
Rachel Imenu sat on the idols and didn't burn them. She wanted to denigrate the wisdom of the other nations, she didn't want to burn them, rather to teach the Jewish people, I don't need any outside wisdom and therefore she was priviliged with having Yosef who astounded the world with his wisdom which was solely torah based. 

We have to instill in our daughters: A jewish home that is free of any trace of non-Jewish wisdom and learns only Torah will never be hurt.

This is unbelievable and WADR stupid.  Who in the Haredi world is astounding anyone today with their wisdom? What has Haredi Jewry really contributed to the world? R' Zilberstein uses the fruits of non-Jewish knowledge every day of his life, whether it's electricity, telephones, cars, modern medicine, etc. This reminds me of this Could Shlomo Hamelech have invented cars? and this Could Shlomo Hamelech have invented cars II?

Mishpacha magazine in Hebrew recently published a column Where have the Yiddishe mamas gone? lamenting the fact that so many mothers are not home in the afternoon to greet their kids coming home from school, rather they are out of the house working and the kids are suffering because of this.

A week or 2 later the magazine devoted a whole section to responses mostly from women who were fed up. The basic point was how dare you blame the women! The women pointed out that they have little choice. The schools have brainwashed them their whole lives that they should only marry a kollel guy and that they need to support him. Then when they go out and do that they get blamed for not being good mothers. What can they do? If they don't work, they won't have money to pay the rent, buy food, etc. If they do work, they are neglecting their children. To top it off, they are also brainwashed to have as many kids as they can as fast as possible so their expenses keep on going up and up without an increase in income and making it harder to actually work.

I really believe that the Haredi world is ready to explode. The financial stresses are continously rising and no one in the leadership is offering any answers. In fact, the leadership is condemning those who are trying to solve the problem by getting an education and making a good salary.

Source: http://www.kikar.co.il/216994.html

Apologetics about the role of women

See Will women's subordinate status be changed in Messianic Era?

My biggest takeaway from this is that like with every other important theological issue there is no consensus. Her thesis that today's women have changed and that is why they are not satisfied with their roles and want to become more intellectualy involved is clearly in dispute. Again on a critical issue there is absolutley no consensus and in fact there are radically conflicting opinions. What does ths say about the veracity of orthodoc Judaism?
 

How could Yaakov have slept with Leah and thought she was Rachel?

In this weeks parsha ויצא, we have the famous story of Lavan tricking Yaakov into marrying Leah instead of Rachel. The Torah says that Yaakov only found out in the morning that it was Leah. That is  very hard to swallow. Yaakov had sex with Leah and thought she was Rachel? Really??? Can you imagine having sex with someone (who you knew very well for 7 years) and thinking they were someone else (if you were not really drunk)? He loved Rachel and worked 7 years for her and yet on his wedding night couldn't figure out it wasn't her? This also raises a halachic question, there is a halacha that a בן תמורה, a child born from a sex act where the husband is thinking about another woman, is considered פגום (see the Gemara Nedarim 20b). This would seem to be exact the case with Yaakov, he had sex with Leah while thinking about Rachel. Yet, nowhere is Reuven considered to be פגום.

Questions on Parshas Toldos

Toldos has always been one of the most difficult parshas for me because there are so many questions/inconsistencies that crop up.

I. Did Esav have free will to not be a Rasha?

If we look at Rashi at the beginning of the Parsha it seems that Esav had no free will and was a Rasha from before birth. 

1. Rashi quotes the famous medrash that when Rivka walked by a house of idol worship Esav tried to get out (to worship avoda zara). Let's think about this. Esav is not even born yet, has no yetzter hara and yet wants to worship Avoda Zara. 
2. Rashi on ממעיך יפרדו writes that already from when they were in the womb they were separated one (Esav) לרשעו and one (Yaakov) לתומו. Rashi writes explicitly that Esav was a rasha already in the womb. 

From the above Rashis it is clear that Esav had no free will to be a Tzadik rather he was a Rasha from before birth. This of course contradicts the fundamental principle in Judaism of free will.

Yitzchak and Rivka in Gerar

Because of a famine Yitzchak goes to Gerar and uses the same tactic as Avraham, introducing his wife as his sister. However, this raises a number of questions:

1. Yitzchak was famous, he was the miracle child of Avraham who was very well known and who in fact made a treaty with Avimelech. Given that, how does Avimelech not know that Rivka was his wife? After all, Yitzchak was a miracle child born to Sara at 90 (and Avraham at 100) and they had no daughter. So how could Yitzchak pass Rivka off as his sister? Also, you would think that Yitzchak's wedding would have been a big event.
2. Avimelech discover that Rivka was Yitzchak's wife by observing them having sex (see Rashi). The Meforshim on Rashi raise the obvious question, this was a gross violation of tznius. You aren't allowed to have sex during the day and even at night it is supposed to be pitch dark. So how could Avimelech have seen them? 

The Berachos

Towards the end of his life Yitzchak wants to bless his son, Eisav. Rivka however, wants the blessing to go to Yaakov and therefore uses subterfuge to cause Yaakov to get the beracha. This raises a number of questions:

1. Rashi explains that Eisav fooled Yitzchak into thinking he was pious. However, the Medrash (and Rashi) portray Eisav as a really bad person, a murderer and an adulterer, how gullible could Yitzchak have been to want to bless Eisav? In fact, the Torah tells us that both Yitzchak and Rivka didn't like his choice of wives. What does this say about his "daas torah"? 
2. Why couldn't Rivka talk to Yitzchak and explain the situation? In parshas Lech Lecha, Sara tells Avraham to send away Yishmael and Hashem tells him to listen to Sara. Why couldn't Rivka talk to Yitzchak and explain the situation? Why did she have to deceive her husband?  Even later, after the berachos, she still doesn't tell Yitzchak the truth. Instead of saying that Eisav wants to kill Yaakov, and therefore Yaakov should run away, she tells him that she wants Yaakov to marry her relatives. 
3. How can a beracha gotten by deception actually work? Yitzchak thought he was blessing Eisav not Yaakov. Is a beracha magic? 
4. What is the rationalistic explanation of the whole story/idea of the berachos? How do they work? 

The laws of Ribis and a modern economy

Daf Yomi just started learning the fifth perek of Bava Metzia which covers the laws of Ribis (interest).  Basically the Torah prohibits charging interest on loans and the Chachamim added a whole bunch of additional prohibitions. This is one of the more complex areas of halacha that most people know little about.

This leads to the following question, could a modern economy be run al pi halacha?

IMHO the answer is no. All modern economies run on credit. Interest bearing loans are the lifeblood of modern economies both for consumers, companies and governments.

Consumers take out interest bearing loans in a number of situations:

1. Mortgages - Most people who buy a house take out a mortgage
2. Credit Cards 
3. Car loans/leases - Most people either borrow money (with interest) to buy a car or lease a car (which is also financed with interest)
4. Home equity loans
5. Savings accounts
6. ...

Governments also run on borrowed money, government bonds which of course pay interest. Without the ability to borrow money governments could not function today. Companies run on borrowed money as well, corporate bonds which again pay interest. A halachic state would have to outlaw banks.

A Halachic state would prohibit all of these. We can try to work around the prohibitions with things like Heter Iska, however, there are 2 problems with this approach:

1. It is against the spirit of the law. The Torah clearly and unequivically prohibits interest bearing loans. Even if we can find a technicality to get around the halacha, it is clearly not what the Torah wanted. The Torah is supposed to be a blueprint for an ideal society, if the laws in the torah don't allow for that then what does that say about the Torah?
2. It is not clear that these workarounds actually work in all situations.

Was Rivka 3 years old when she married Yitzchak?

We all know the famous Rashi based on the Seder Olam that Rivka was 3 years old when she met Eliezer and married Yitzchak.

The Sifri in וזאת הברכה says that Rivka lived 133 years. If you work backwards from her death she got married at the age of 14 (see Tosafos in יבמות ס"א for the exact calculation).

Why did Rashi pick the medrash that she was 3 against the gemara? It would seem that Rashi thought that was the simpler pshat in the pesukim. It all seems to hinge on when the akeida was. The following facts are mentioned in the Chumash itself.

1. Yitzchak was 37 when Sara died (she was 90 when he was born and died at 127).
2. Yitzchak was 40 when he married Rivka
3. Rivka was born around the time of the Akeida (see the end of וירא).

If the Akeida was when Yitzchak was 37 then Rivka was only 3 when she married. On the other hand if the akeida was 10 years earlier then she was around 14.

The notion that Rivka was 3 years old at the time of her marriage to Yitzchak is untenable.  Could a 3 year old girl go and water the camels? Could a 3 year old consent to marriage? It's just silly to read the dialogue in the Chumash between Rivka and Eliezer and what she is doing and believe that she is 3. Nowhere else in the Torah do we find any evidence that children matured more quickly then we do now, and of course from a scientific/reality point of view that is a non-starter.

The question is how could the Medrash have such an opinion and Rashi quote it when it is so patently ridiculous? Since Rashi quotes this this is the opinion that everyone knows.

Why is the Akeida such a big deal?

The Akeida is looked upon in Jewish thought as one of the seminal moments for the Jewish people. On Rosh Hashanah, the Yom Hadin, we ask Hashem to remember the Akeida.  It is considered to be one of the greatest tests that a person can pass.

However, when you really think about it what was so special about the Akeida? Hashem spoke to Avraham and told him to do it. Avraham listened. We find throughout Jewish history that Jews have accepted their own martydom as well as their childrens without hearing Hashem speak directly to them. Was Avraham's test greater then what we describe in the Kinos about the brother and sister who were going to be sold as sex slaves dying in each other's arms? Was it greater then parents killing their children during the crusades rather then losing them to Christianity? Was it greater then what went on in the holocaust? All of these things happened at a time of הסתר פנים, not only didn't  Hashem talk to these people and tell them to do it, Hashem was not visible at all. If anything, that makes their actions much greater then Avrahams.

The same question can be asked about Yosef's nisayon with Potiphar's wife. Yes, Yosef resisted sexual temptation, but so do so many other people. Sexual temptation is מעשים בכל יום, why is Yosef called a צדיק for that?

The only answer that I have seen is a mystical one that Avraham's (and Yosef's) actions are what made it so much easier for everyone else. They are the ones who pulled this strength down from heaven and made it available to everyone. without them paving the way no one would be able to pass any of these tests.

As with many mystical explanations you either believe or you don't. I don't. Additionally, there is a rationalist tradition in Judaism (e.g. Rambam and others) and they certainly would not accept this explanation. The problem is there is no rationalist answer.