Interesting Posts and Articles #292

1. A great, accidentally ironic comment, at the Matzav post about the dybbuk:
   

   why does everone have a picture of rav batzri up they should put a picture of the fraudster up with big letters accross it FRAUD

   Heh. Meanwhile, see the comment by Brazilian, below, at that site, and see at BeChadrei Chareidim.
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2. Life in Israel about the latest tznius chumra, which might well be an old one. IIRC, people also point out that Rebbetzin Kanievsky covers her wrists, perhaps down to the palm.
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3. Should girls and guys wear read, as a solution to the shidduch crisis?
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4. At Avakesh, Talmudic thinking and secular education, that secular knowledge and thought processes get in the way of understanding and accepting Talmudic reasoning. And my reaction post here, about how Eliyahu Segal can read a Yerushalmi better that Rav Chaim Kanievsky.
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5. Reactions to a 15 year old chareidi boy getting married. There is a famous (presumably apocryphal) story about an instance where there was both a chosson and bar Mitzvah boy in shul, and the question was who was to get preference to lain. They asked the Satmar Rebbe and he replied, "Whoever is older." :)
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6. At the Breslov blog, all about kabbalah red strings.
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7. Yes, I've let some of these links get somewhat old. But in terms of the Bears and the Avos keeping the Mitzvos, first, here are two videos, by krumbagel. The first is called the Slifkin debate:
   
   and the second is called Yeshiva Guy says over a vort.
   
   This second video sparked this response by Rabbi Yair Hoffman in the online edition of the Five Towns Jewish Times, and in Vos Iz Neais. How he thought this was mocking Rav Elyashiv, e.g., is beyond me. Rabbi Gil Student posted his take at Hirhurim, and subsequently, krum as a bagel, the author of the video, made a response post. An excerpt from this last one:
   

   The target of the video was not what Rabbi Hoffman calls the “maximalist” position, but rather a kind of uncritical acceptance of that position taken to an absurd extreme (e.g., Crocs on Tisha b’Av) and treating it as the only legitimate derech, an approach than I find quite common in yeshivish circles. The video portrays a yeshiva student who heard some cute “sholosh seudos torah” at his rebbe’s house. Rather than accepting the vort in the spirit in which it was given, when faced with a set of reductio ad absurdum arguments from his interlocutor, he proceeds to extrapolate from the vort an extreme position not only about the Avos’s mitzvah observance, but their omniscience as well, that I don’t believe has any support in traditional sources.

8. At DovBear, scare tactics from Kupat Hair -- plus how they lie to steal your money. Update: actually, kupat ha-ir style, not Kupat HaIr in this particular instance. I read the headline to quickly as I was writing this summary.
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9. How Rav Yaakov Kaminesky might have no longer been a gadol hador:
   

   He said, “I happened to meet once with HaGaon HaRav Yaakov Kaminetsky, and I told him of this difficulty I was having, and he said to me: ‘I did not open a gemora until I was fifteen years old.’ I said to him, ‘If you could give me a note to that effect . . . if I could produce a note from a gadol hador to that effect, it would be of tremendous help to me in trying to convince the community that we should not be starting gemora at such an early age.’ HaRav Kaminetsky put his arm around my shoulder and said: ‘If I gave you such a note, I would not longer be a gadol hador.’”

   However, see the comments, and especially the update.
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10. Because of fears of offending Muslims and Jews, a ban on a plastic pig from a toy set in the UK. Rather silly. We wouldn't find this offensive. And those, such as Chabad, who would not buy such a set would not only avoid the pig, one non-kosher animal, would also avoid the dog and the horse, which they left in!
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11. Rabbi Yair Hoffman defends the frum couple who appeared on the People's Court.
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12. Here on parshablog, why the brothers didn't try to stone Yosef to death.