Interesting Posts and Articles #201

1. At Rationalist Judaism, in part four of his series on Chaim BeEmunasam, Rabbi Slifkin points out a major misrepresentation of Rambam's position, when Chaim Be'Emunasam claimins that Rambam maintains that every position in a dispute was MiSinai. Rambam says the opposite, explicitly in hilchot Mamrim:
   
   דברי קבלה אין בהן מחלוקת לעולם, וכל דבר שתמצא בו מחלוקת בידוע שאינו קבלה ממשה רבינו
   
   
   The author manages to provide a different position for the Rambam by dowdifying quotes from the Rambam, at times without even providing ellipses.
   
   
2. Vos Iz Neias posts a YNet story that the Meah Shearim mother who might have Munchhausen's was possibly abusing her other children as well. If true, this is terrible. But it is fascinating how either 'side' (and it is unfortunate that there are 'sides') processes each new bit of information. Check out the comment section.
   
   And also check out The Jewish Worker's post about the Eidah Chareidis' continued campaign to defend this mother, with a fifty-page booklet attacking Hadassah hospital, which ends with the following extremely offensive cartoon:
   
   
3. Bad 4 Shidduchim on hiding skeletons, and what is considered to be a skeleton.
   
   
4. Orthonomics considers the hybrid school model.
   
   
5. Life In Israel wonders (also at DovBear) whether boycotts of Scottish whiskey pose a danger to kiddush clubs. Cute.
   
   In terms of kiddush clubs in general, despite the possible dangers of alchoholism, it seems to me to be an organic innovation, much as the modern innovation of a sermon every Shabbos during morning davening, and perhaps as a reaction to it. Not everyone appreciates speeches, and perhaps the shul experience need not be the same ideal for everybody. מה פרצופיהם שונים כך דיעותיהם שונות. And the people who condemn the kiddush club as entirely improper and a great disrespect to the rabbi seem of the sort for whom, if they would participate, it would indeed be entirely improper and a great disrespect for the rabbi. But not necessarily for others. It might be better to harness this tendency and direct it in a more proper direction, but that is another story.
   
   
6. Blog in Dm, in his emptying his mailbag, posts a link to the following amusing performance:
   
   
   
   
   
7. A post on Hirhurim about checking your tefillin.
   
   
8. This point was raised on a mailing list. In this JPost article about Neturei Karta:
   

   One of the community's leaders, Yoelish Krauss, has a sign on his door stating that "Here lives a non-Zionist Jew" and drags himself daily to a nearby Arab village to purchase some "non-Zionist" milk and bread for his large family. Lest it be said otherwise, he refuses to accept even one Zionist shekel from the National Insurance Institute.

   If true, he is violating pas akum and chalav akum prohibitions because of his stupidity. {Update: See comment thread for why he is not violating anything.}
   
   
9. Here at parshablog, Ki Teitzei sources. And also, whether knowing that moonlight is reflected sunlight demonstrates Chazal's ruach hakodesh, since they obviously couldn't have gotten it from contemporary science.