Obsolete Traditions Die Hard

A certain gentleman told me he once asked Rabbi Asher Weiss why Charedim won’t say the prayer for the IDF soldiers. Rabbi Weiss answered: we have a hard time changing prayers. 800 years afters that institution is gone, we still pray for the welfare of the Exilarch, the deans of the Two Yeshivos, etc!

From Yekum Purkan:

יקום פורקן מן שמיא חנא וחסדא ורחמי וחיי אריכי ומזוני רויחי וסיעתא דשמיא ובריות גופא ונהורא מעליא. זרעא חיא וקימא זרעא די לא יפסוק ודי לא יבטול מפתגמי אוריתא. למרנן ורבנן חבורתא קדישתא די בארעא דישראל ודי בבבל לרישי כלה ולרישי גלותא ולרישי מתיבתא ולדיני די בבא. לכל תלמידיהון ולכל תלמידי תלמידיהון ולכל מאן דעסקין באוריתא. מלכא דעלמא יברך יתהון יפיש חייהון ויסגא יומיהון ויתן ארכא לשניהון. ויתפרקון וישתזבון מן כל עקא ומן כל מרעין בישין. מרן די בשמיא יהא בסעדהון כל זמן ועדן. ונאמר אמן

 

Whether the answer was genuine or for mere comfort, I don’t know. Myself, I would probably stress other points. Either way, good answer! Yet, why do Charedim (and other Jews) have a hard time changing prayers?!

Note: The exact phrasing above is mine (for clarity).

Re: All the Posts on the F-35

Such as here and here (and Ron Paul here). A powerful summary:

Consider the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a $1+ trillion failure. The aircraft is underpowered, under-armed, insanely overpriced, insanely over-budget and still riddled with bugs after seven years of fixes, making it an unaffordable maintenance nightmare that puts our servicepeople and nation at risk.

But no one in a position of power will speak the truth about the F-35, because it is no longer a weapons system–it’s a jobs program. Defense contractors are careful to spread the work of assembling parts of the F-35 to 40+ states, so 80+ senators will support the program, no matter how much a failure it is as a weapons system, or how costly the failure is becoming.

A rational person in charge would immediately cancel it and start from scratch, with a program run outside the Pentagon and outside congressional meddling. But this is impossible in America: instead, we build failed, under-armored, under-powered, under-armed and unreliable ships (LCS) and failed under-powered, under-armed and unreliable fighters as the most expensive make-work programs in history.

Excerpt from here.