I thought these answers were interesting... from some magazine called "Country Vues"..

Somebody asked me the following question, and I wanted to hear your thoughts...

Do you think "chareidi" looking people (mainly the kippa) are at a disadvantage when looking for a job? I know the answer probably differs for different industries and company size, i.e. technology, financial services, law, etc. And I'm sure the question can be posed to people in the workforce already (whether they feel they are at some competitive disadvantage), but my guess is that once you are "in", performance is the key factor.

I know statistics recently published say that it is a factor and haredim are hired less. It could be for a variety of reasons though (qualifications, lack of army, lack of education) and not necessarily due to appearance, so i am nto sure how accurate of a picture those statistics really paint.

The story of the lady in Israel who wanted to surprise her mother with a nice gift but ended up causing a disaster has been picked up by news media all around the world, even CNN.

She bought her mother a new mattress and threw out the old one, hoping to surprise her mother. When dear mother came home and saw the new mattress, she freaked out, as she had been socking away her life's savings in her mattress - to the tune of $1,000,000!

Needless to say, the mattress by then was gone and they could not find it.

The story stopped there, with a nice quote from the daughter about how one must accept the good and the bad.

The story, however, does not really end there. The papers and radio discussed the situation with her. She has not given up and accepted the bad. She is looking for the mattress and money.

She has gone down to the dumping ground for the area, where the municipalities dump all the trash, and she has been searching for it. Knowing people would come looking for it, the administrator placed security guards there to keep them out. Unable to find it, but still looking, the woman said dejectedly that she probably will never find it - a security guard told her that had he found it he would just have pocketed it, walked away and not said a word to anybody, and she realizes that that is probably what happened.



There are two questions this raises in my mind:

1. If I was the security guard (or even if not - if I found the money), would I do the same? Would I just take the money and disappear, or would I return it? $1,000,000 is a lot of money, but it is also a lot of guilt to live with...
2. I wonder halachically if the person who finds it would be allowed to keep it. Clearly there is a siman - it is in a mattress stored in a certain way, which we know is a good siman even for money which usually has no siman. Also, she is looking for it, so there is no yi'ush. But on the other hand, despite the fact that she is looking for it, she has expressed yi'ush saying that she will probably never find it.

I actually wonder about the first question more than the second. I think I would like to believe that if I found it I would return it. But $1,000,000 is a pretty big test....

I have a couple of questions maybe someone could help me with:

1. Why do we call it "Bedikas Chametz" rather than something like "Chipus Chametz"? Bedika is more like an inspection of an item to see if it is chametz or not. Chipus is to search for chametz. When we overturn the house and do a bedikas chametz, it is really a chipus chametz. I have an idea or two, but am looking for something better before I share my thoughts.

2. Why do we make such a big deal about Birkat Hachama and make communal get-togethers everywhere to say the bracha? Why do we not do the same, even at a smaller level, for birkat Ha'ilanot? That is fairly rare as well - it is a brach a we say only once a year. Yet we do not see big gatherings being arranged on Rosh Chodesh Nissan to say Birkat Ha'Ilanot as a community. Why do we do this by Birkat Hachama?

The following question is directed toward the (religious) male audience:

If your wife or daughter were performing in a play for women, would you watch the video? If you would watch the video performance of the play, would you be interested in the play itself, thus watching other women perform and sing, or would you basically just be watching so you could see your wife or daughter spots with no interest in the rest of it?

I am not looking for a halachik discussion on the permissibility, or lack thereof, of watching such a video. I am just curious how you relate to it. Of course, you can comment anonymously (if you are going to say that you watch such videos) so nobody gets upset at you for watching videos of womens performances.. :-)

Let me ask you a question. If you walked into a public bathroom, and saw a box there with a note saying you should leave a shekel for use of the bathroom - would you drop a shekel in? Let's add to the scenario - there is nobody sitting there making sure you put the shekel in. You don't even know if anybody official put the note and box up - maybe some guy just figured he can make a little money off other people with no effort.

So what would you do? Would you put the shekel in or would you use the john for free?

One day on our tiyul we had to go through Tiberias to pick something up. As we were on our way out of Tiberias, some of the kids needed to use a bathroom. A short while later we passed a sign for a public bathroom, so we stopped. There was a box and a sign in the bathroom saying that use of the bathroom costs 1NIS per person.

Us being the friars we are, we put in 1NIS per person using the bathroom. (a friar is an Israeli slang word that refers to someone who is a "loser" or contantly being taken advantage of). Some guy is probably getting "rich" off us friars who actually put the shekel in.

Can anyone please explain something to me:

A short while ago there was a big deal made about the PM of England visiting Israel and speaking in the Knesset. He was going to be greeted by the Knesset choir singing Hatikvah. It was decided, and announced, that there would be no women singing in the group, out of sensitivity to the Haredi MKs - so as not to force them to walk out so as not to hear women singing (kol isha).

The media made a big deal out of it and many people were upset... Now the news is reporting that some womens groups are organizing some form of protest in which they will sing from the guest section of the Knesset, and in other places...

OK, whatever.

What I do not understand is this - have women never sung before in the Knesset? What did the Haredi MKs do in those situations? If they did not make a big deal out of it in previous situations, why did they do so this time? If women did not sing previously, for the same reasons they did not this time, why is everyone making a big deal out of it now?

Basically, what changed, and why did it change?

Now that we are within a couple of weeks of concluding the tractate of Kesubos in daf yomi, I have some questions..

1. Why is the kesuba nowadays still written in Aramaic? It was written in Aramaic originally because that is the language they spoke. Even most Jews living in Eretz Yisrael at the time spoke in Aramaic (proof is if you watched the movie by the anti-semite Mel Gibson called Passion of Christ). So instituting it in Aramaic at the time made sense. But there is no intrinsic holiness to the kesuba nor to the Aramaic language.
So why do we continue to write the kesuba in Aramaic and not switch it to Hebrew? Some might want it in Yiddish, or English, and I see nothing wrong with that either, but at least we should switch it to Hebrew!
As it is in Aramaic, nobody understands it. We all sign on our kesubas and how many of us have actually read the document? Do you know to what you have obligated yourself? Even those of us who have read it hardly understand most of it.
So why continue writing the kesuba in Aramaic? Why not switch to a language that is used nowadays?

2. What is the role of the kesuba in today's marriage?

We had two separate divorced people (separately) speak to our shiur about the topic. Our main question posed to the two of them was during the divorce proceedings in beis din, did the issue of the kesuba come up? How ws the kesuba used in the divorce? Did the judges say let us now read the kesuba to see what you promised? Did they discuss how much value the kesuba had and how much he had to pay her because of it? etc.

The answer of each of the two divorced men who spoke to us was the kesuba had absolutely no role in the divorce. The judges never asked for it. They never looked at it. There was never a discussion as to what the value of it was.

I would guess the reason why it is irrelevant is because in today's divorce settlements the man is generally going to be paying much more that what the kesuba obligates him to pay, so there is no reason to bother getting into the kesuba itself.

But if the kesuba is so irrelevant that it is not even used or even looked at in the divorce proceedings, why then are we so insistent that the couple have a kesuba, to the point that if they lose the kesuba, they cannot live together until a replacement kesuba is written.

So what is the point of the kesuba if it is not used at all anymore in case of divorce?

anybody?