העורך Editor

Are There Too Many Yeshiva Bochurim?

Are there too many young Israeli men learning in Yeshiva [and Kollel] in Eretz Yisrael? Yes!

Before you close the window, please hear me out.

I am not saying exactly how many are too many, and I can’t think of any names or faces, myself, I would say this to directly, and I’m certainly not suggesting any of the traditional solutions to the question, and there will never be too many Yeshivos, but as a theoretical answer to the question, the correct answer is: Yes, there must necessarily be too many.

How do you know?

Easy: Torah study is being subsidized, and not privately but publicly. It is a priori obvious, just as Higher Education subsidies mean universities are overfull, and the IDF’s funding and forcible conscription mean those institutions are overfull.

So what?

So Chazal themselves say one who doesn’t see success in his learning after 3\5 years should go work. Maybe this is also what they meant about Hashem crying over those cannot learn but do so anyway.

But don’t we hear the “street” is too dangerous today so all and sundry must spend a few years in Yeshiva first?

This was said about sixty years ago. I don’t see the evidence this is still the case. There are many median solutions to Torah study, instead of full-time Yeshiva. The same is true for Kollel.

There is more to say; another time.

The Jewish View of Transgenderism – I’m Lost for Words

There is a limited spectrum of masculinity for males (pansies) and a limited spectrum of femininity for females (tomboys), but boys will be boys and girls will be girls. (Homosexuality, though related, is a different matter for a different time.)

The knee-jerk response of saying Transgenderism is just “Sirus” and/or “Lo Sakifu”, “Lo Sashchis”, “Lo Yilbash”, etc. and mental disorder seems solid. Those who try to uproot the simple view of things with their customarily shoddy vagueness of: “Yitzchak had a female soul until the Akeidah according to Kabbalah”, or saying Dinah was more masculine by going out and Yosef feminine for improving his looks at 17 because they were exchanged in the womb according to the Targum, are saying… What, exactly?

There are maybe 3 Teshuvos on sex-change surgery’s Halachic effect. And do they have “meat”? If you’re not extracting serious proofs for determining novel cases from the sea of non-Aggadic Talmud Bavli, you aren’t adding value.

Bottom line? Until and unless Rabbi Brand or someone of his stature looks into it anew, it’s a non-issue.

Even Angels Must Avoid Bad Influences

Moshe said, “So said Hashem, At the dividing point of the night, I will go out into the midst of Egypt (11:4)

On the possuk “And I will pass through the land of Egypt” (12:12)) Chazal expound that Hashem said “I and not an angel”.

The Zohar (Medrash Ne’elam, Vayero) asks two questions. Firstly. why did the Egyptians receive the seeming honor of being punished by Hashem Himself rather than by a mere angel? Secondly, if the camp of the Assyrians was smitten by an angel (see Yeshaya 37:36) all the more so should the Egyptians have received retribution through the medium of an angel, because the Egyptian nation was the most degenerate and immoral nation of all, and an angel would seem to be the best medium for punishing them rather than Hashem Himself.

The Zohar answers that specifically because they were so depraved and steeped in tumah was it not appropriate to send something as holy as an angel into their midst. Hence, this was a sign of disgrace for the Egyptians rather than a sign of honor.

So we see that the tumah of Egypt with its heresy and immorality was so severe that even angels were not to come into contact with it. This teaches us how foolish those are who go to live amongst irreligious or non-Jewish people whose way of life is very far removed from their own, thinking that they will surely not be harmed by this. If Hashem wants holy angels to stay away from places of tumah, how much more so mere mortals, who are surely even more likely to be harmed by their surroundings.

Rabbi Sternbuch’s comments on Parshas Bo – the English Parsha sheet