It’s hard when I share stuff about my life and people jump on me for having chosen orthodoxy… ultimately I feel like everyone has their mind up what I should do, whether I should stay or leave. I feel like no matter what I do, I’m betraying someone or something or idk. Sometimes I get close to leaving or think I might but then somebody attacks me for having the audacity for having tried to be orthodox as a queer Jew… for having the audacity to think I could be accepted. I don’t belong in the otd community because I chose orthodoxy, but I don’t belong in the orthodox community either. I don’t belong in reform or conservative or really anywhere. I have so much childhood trauma from my family of origin, and I have so much trauma from orthodoxy and from Halacha and from trying to make myself fit. Judaism saved my life and I jumped on it full force because I needed it so bad but now it’s crumbling and everything’s crumbling with it and I feel like it would be better if I could disappear. I feel like everything’s all my fault according to some so what’s the point of leaving when I have no where that I fit anyways and i have no right to feel bad about anything because I’m just a stupid useless person who makes bad decisions and should just be happy with finding an orthodox community that is fairly accepting.

You know the deal by now. Feel free to discuss your Shabbat plans or whatever else.

Growing up religious I was always very familiar with how animals are shechted as part of Kashrut and was taught about how aside from the purely religious aspect, being humane to animals was a huge priority in the process (well, as humane as it gets given slaughtering animals for food) and how that focus was lacking in mainstream animal slaughter. On top of everything else there are supposed to be the health benefits, with more inspection of animals, more cleaning/removing blood and other parts, and no adding in random meat additives, etc. I'm less familiar with Islam but have always heard similar benefits/rationales regarding Halal.

In the last decade or so there seems to be a growing backlash to Kosher/Halal slaughter, particularly in Europe where bans were even implemented. I'm sure there is overlap in that movement with people who are against animal slaughter of any kind and see it all as inhumane, but my question is ultimately why is there such backlash specifically against Kosher/Halal slaughter in favor of mainstream methods used today?

Were the things I grew up knowing about shechting incorrect, is this antisemitism/islamophobia, and/or is it just another tool for those in animal activism circles?

Hi, so I'm looking to reexamine my beliefs about Zionism, what with the knowledge that growing up consuming mainly frum media hardly gave me an objective view.

Can anyone recommend some good books/articles on the topic? Looking to research the history of Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thank you!

I asked Eli to come back on the podcast to discuss a question that I've been asking all my guests of Jewish background: "What caused so many people of Jewish background to become great thinkers?"

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction
3:19 Math is actually philosophy... a critical tool for most of the sciences.
9:06 How to analyze religious texts using mathematical reasoning.
14:15 Jews and Ancient Greeks were at roughly the same level of wisdom, while Jews focused mostly on morality and the Ancient Greeks focused mostly on nature.
17:10 Why were the European Jews better educated than other Jews, and why were Jews better educated than others in general?
27:32 Jewish culture values individual responsibility.
30:27 The role of parenting in Jewish culture.
35:31 Math teaches that its ok to not know the answer immediately. More generally you're developing your process of thinking which you then use for all your thinking.
41:10 Does Jewish culture also encourage parents to induce a love for education in their kids?
46:52 We don't care if God exists or not. It doesn't matter.
51:01 (Rami) I switched from "reason is most important" to "love and reason are most important". (But to be clear, there's no conflict between love and reason.)
55:13 Important question for every insight: What are its boundaries?
1:03:40 If a scientist makes a hypothesis and refutes it by experiment, then non-scientific thinkers see this as bad, but it's good!
1:08:41 Anti-scientific thinking even among scientists | Richard Feynman's role in the investigation of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
1:19:16 We must learn from our failures, and in order to do that, we must tolerate failure in the right way.
1:20:12 Learn from surprises because a surprise is a signal that at least one of your "assumptions" is (at least partially) wrong.
1:21:09 Every 2 things in the universe are the same and different. What matters is whether a sameness or difference is relevant to a problem (or goal) we're thinking about.

SPECIAL MENTION:
7:22 Isaac Newton's system's thinking (i.e. cause-and-effect logic) was a core part of Eli Goldratt's TOC and its a core part of all scientific thinking. (If you want to know what I'm talking about, see my explanation here.)

-------------------------

PS. I'm the guy who posted Let’s talk! Discussions between ex-Muslims and ex-Jews

This is kinda crazy but is there any concept of a marriage between a Jewish woman and a non Jewish man that is considered halachically viable/recognized? What steps would have to be done to achieve this? Obviously I know that this is extremely forbidden but is it halachically impossible?

https://youtu.be/gUlWiDt0vWc?si=0BSwOoLs3-DY1y7U

Yes obviously I'm aware of Yiddish culture. This is more about an ex chasidish woman singing on a profesional single

Does anyone else hate the Orthodox dating website Simcha Spot? It's basically a platform for couples to show off their engagement. As someone who's stuck being single at 32, depressed is an understatement for how it makes me feel. I don't think it's right to subject single people to that.

How do you explain the fact that out of the tremendous amount of bombing that's been done (and still being done) , very few reached places where people lived

And most importantly, there's this thing about rav kanievski and another one who promised nothing will ever happen to bnei brak....and indeed nothing happened in all those years , afaik

(I have my idea on the topic but I am not sure as I haven't checked everything. Truth be told, I don't know how to gather data and how to seek for the truth and the lies within it, as I've never learnt how to do that )

I think it lies with Israel high competence and Iran weaknesses , but , if what we're told is true, there's something rather miraculous happening isn't there ?

EDIT: I feel the need to add this edit . I do not take these as proofs , I'm just asking for your guys' help in order to counter those arguments which aren't MINE

So, my parents are getting me a therapist. I'm 16 and I live in Monsey, a very frum area. We have the option of a religious therapist from a clinic that takes our insurance, or a private non-Jewish therapist that would cost a lot more.

I had a frum therapist before and I don't think it's so bad. However, a lot of my issues are related to different sexual things. I don't know how comfortable I would be discussing this with a frum therapist. My mom says they've heard everything and it's nothing new to them. But, I'm also wondering if they would have an unbiased view.

For instance, I know there are some healthy sexual behaviors and some unhealthy ones. A non-Jewish therapist could probably be able to guide me in that. But would all sexual stuff be unhealthy from the perspective of the frum therapist?

I just need an unbiased view of what's healthy/unhealthy bc nothing online helps. There are those that will be disgusted by other people who do certain things and then there are those that do it. In some ways, it causes me shame, but if I knew it was perfectly fine, it wouldn't. I also feel like maybe a Non-Jewish therapist wouldn't understand where I'm coming from. Maybe it's better to have someone who understands.

I would probably prefer the Non-Jewish therapist but I feel bad making my parents pay so much more if the frum one would work too. Any input would be helpful.

I am 20 years old I learn in yeshiva but I don't believe in judaism. If I leave judaism I will probably loose my family and friends. On the other hand I am not interested in leading a double life. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Just in time for halloween.

https://www.academia.edu/37491231/Shalom_Sabar_Childbirth_and_Magic_Jewish_Folklore_and_Material_Culture_in_David_Biale_ed_Cultures_of_the_Jews_A_New_History_New_York_Schocken_Books_2002_670_722

Let us imagine the birth of a Jewish baby in a remote shtetl in Poland or Russia

before the onslaught of modernity: a woman is in labor in her bedroom, sur-
rounded by a midwife and a few other women. No man is allowed in the room,
not even the husband or a doctor. Fearful of the grave dangers of childbirth,
shared by all people in the pre-modern world, the room is provided with protec-
tive amulets and other magical objects. The midwife or perhaps a member of the
family slips a mysterious book under the pillow of the woman in labor. This
book contains magical formulas against the murderous spirits and evil demons,
such as Lilith, who threaten the newborn and his mother.

Let us now shift our gaze to a similarly traditional Jewish household in an Is-

lamic town—be it Teheran, Baghdad, or Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan. The scene is
the night before circumcision—believed to be the most dangerous night for the
newborn and his mother, because this is the last opportunity for the demons to
attack the male child before the protective ceremony of circumcision would take
place. As a measure of protection, the chair of Elijah—a chair with magical func-
tions among the Jews of Islam—stands in the center of the room. The chair is
ornamented with Torah finials, hamsas, healing plants, and holy books—includ-
ing at times the book of magic formulas. Inscribed metal and paper amulets in
the room are based on the formulas in this book, Sefer Raziel ha-MaVakh (Book
of Raziel the Angel).

It is thus clear that, side by side with the normative and written system of the

halakhah, Judaism developed what we may call “folk religion.” Although com-
prehensive codes such as Joseph Karo’s Shulhan Arukh (The Prepared Table;
Venice, 1565) set out to cover every aspect of the life of the Jew, there was suffi-
cient room for unofficial, often unwritten, beliefs and practices.

...

In this chapter, we have seen how the grave problems and risks of childbirth in
the pre-modern world led to the creation of a system of Jewish folk beliefs and
traditions. This system is deeply rooted in Jewish sources, though it is also nour-
ished by local customs and the practices of the surrounding society. Biblical
verses, talmudic passages, and other “official” texts were always readily quoted
on amulets.
...
Although some authorities, most notably Maimonides, fiercely spoke against such customs, the “official”
representatives of Jewish law, by and large, collaborated with the needs of their
communities. In Islamic lands, for example, the writings on the silver amulets
were carried out by the hakhamim, who would wash themselves in preparation
and observe the same laws of purity required for writing a Torah scroll or other
sacred texts. The psychological needs behind the practice of giving amulets were
apparently understood as well. This point is nicely illustrated in the following
folk story, which emanates from the Kurdish community of Zakho (Iraq), one of
the major centers for the creation of amulets before the mass immigration to Israel:

"This is a story about a woman from Zakho whose son had a sudden attack of

weeping. He could not stop weeping all day and all night, and nothing could calm him down. The woman was at a loss and finally went to consult the sage
Shabbethai ‘Alwan, of blessed memory. The sage entered his room and after a
few minutes came out and gave the worried mother an amulet, saying “Hang
this around your son’s neck, and he will calm down.”
The mother did as he said, and after several hours the child calmed down
and fell asleep. When the child grew up and no longer needed the amulet, the
mother, out of sheer curiosity, opened it and found a blank piece of paper with
nothing written on it. She thought that perhaps the holy letters had flown away
or were written in invisible ink. So she went to the sage Shabbethai and asked
him about the mystery. He replied, “Is it important to you whether the paper in
the amulet is written on or not? It is sufficient that your son’s illness disap-
peared, and thank God for that."

For some context, I grew up Orthodox in a fairly yeshivish community and am no longer part of that and I'm engaged to someone who grew up in a Conservative Jewish community. I am having a lot of anxiety while dealing with wedding planning because I'm worried about upsetting my family. I went wedding dress shopping recently and found a dress I love but it's not particularly tznius and I'm worried I'll be miserable just worrying about my family and their friends. I'm also really scared to tell my parents there will be mixed dancing at the wedding. My partner's family doesn't care about any of this stuff so it's just my family. Any advice for how to stay true to yourself but also manage the stress and guilt? I don't have a good relationship with my family separate from the religious piece because of a lot of dysfunction so it's a complicated dynamic.

I typically don’t pay much attention to some of the ridiculous segulas people post online. Or I just laugh it off. I’m having a hard time with being resentful towards Judaism at the moment due to things going on in my life and how it’s impacting me.

I came across this post online and it just hit me the wrong way.

I’m going to try to minimize these kinds of things that I come in contact with, but it’s going be to challenging with being ITC.

If you struggle with this, how do you cope with this? Feel free to reply to this or hit me up via Dm.

I've seen people cite Talmudic excerpts to prove the "evilness" of Jews, portions on women, gentiles and etc with all sorts of horrible stuff.

The rebuttal tends to be stating that it is removed from the context and needs to be explained by a scholar.

How do I verify who's legit here. Can non-Jews read and study the Talmud? What if I'm a polytheist idolator? Would I be allowed?

So I recently started not eating kosher. And I just wanted to know what are the best not kosher fast food that every American has had. I don’t like burgers so definitely not McDonald’s. What are the stuff you got to eat before you die?

To be clear, I am not saying that religious extremists or mystics are schizophrenics. I am speaking more to the idea of holding contradictory views about reality at once, where the mystic belief seems to be much stronger than the rational belief, to the point of the mystical view influencing your conception about reality and your actions in your waking life.
....

Let''s say we lived in a universe where multiple realities exist at once. In one reality, is the one we see - physical laws, gravity, solar systems, nature, etc. The other reality is the mystical reality, where forces of impurity lurk behind every corner, and one small misstep invites bad luck and evil forces in your life. Like not washing your hands in the morning.

What I find baffling is some people out there seem to be hardcore mystics and profess in scientific laws of nature and the universe. I tried to balance these two extremes, and it was impossible for me to maintain. In my view, I do not think they are compatible.

Anyone else here a former believer in deep Jewish mysticism?

I’m heavily torn when it comes to Zionism. I feel that Israel should be allowed to exist, but ideally without displacing people and all the unfortunate events that have happened so far.

Sometimes, I feel like anti-Zionism rhetorics come across as another form of anti-Jewish hate. I see people being ripped to shreds for having an Israeli flag on social media because it’s a “Zionist symbol”. I feel like things are going out a bit extreme.

The whole “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” thing also makes me super uncomfortable. Idk why leftists don’t realise that’s a violent statement. Same with how many are defending Hamas. I’m an ex-Muslim and grew up with a large Arab (mainly Palestinian) Wahabi community who supported Hamas. They held very radical extremist views, preached jihad, sharia, ‘al wara wal bara’ (a concept that teaches to hate disbelievers for the sake of Allah). I was taught a lot of Jewish hate growing up. So for me now to see my liberal peers siding with the hateful Wahabis makes me super uncomfortable.

I’d love to hear the perspective of secular/liberal Jews.

I'm struggling to comprehend my rabbi's reaction to a recent event:

A congregant was hit by a car while crossing the street, resulting in a bruised face, injured legs that impair his walking for a week or so, and some trauma. Upon entering the synagogue, the rabbi sang a song to praise God for the congregant's relatively minor injuries. Here's my confusion:

If the congregant hadn't been hit, we wouldn't be singing praises to God. And if God orchestrates every tiny event as all frum people believe, then He arranged for our friend to be struck. It seems we're thanking God for harming our friend and causing him trauma.
The alternative (but a not typical frum approach) is to believe that God allows nature to run its course and doesn't control everything, which means He didn't cause the accident. Then, we could argue that God intervened to ensure the injuries were minor, and that's what we're celebrating. However, this logic is flawed because it implies the incident was extraordinary, suggesting worse injuries were likely which was not necessarily true. Moreover, if God wanted to protect him, He could have prevented our friend from crossing the street at that moment. Am I right in my thinking?

I feel very lost… I struggled with a crisis of faith and then kind of was able to resolve some things in my head at least to the point where I want to stay in the community but some things are not the same since I went through this crisis of faith. For example, I don’t pray 3 times a day any longer, and I have been using my phone privately on Shabbat. I still believe in orthodoxy, I dunno what’s wrong with me. Part of it is October 7… I struggle with knowing I was completely unaware of what was going on when it was happening and that night was actually the first time I used my phone for a reason that wasn’t pikuach nefesh. Part of it is I’m just really lonely, I live alone. I think if I could get married I might go back to being fully observant but I’m gay. I just feel… I dunno, confused and like I’m living a bit of a double life.

If you were born with a very Jewish name (first and last or just last), have you considered changing it?

I'm considering it. Any thoughts on this?

You know the deal by now. Feel free to discuss your Shabbat plans or whatever else.

I'm proud to be a (newly-secular) Jew, but I'm so sick of all the frustrations that go into being a Jew these days.

I'm sick of the deep existential dread that guides our behavior, how deeply we follow the religion, our OCD over halacha. I'm sick of us having a peoplehood that hinges so deeply on religion that, despite Israel's existence as a country like any other, we can't fully separate our peoplehood from religion.

I'm sick of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'm sick of the Arabs' inability to swallow their pride and stop trying to relitigate 1948. I'm sick of the Israeli right being unable to untie their conflict of interest between security and nationalism. I'm sick of the hypocritical views so many in our community hold: "We want peace, but they want to kill us all," but also "It's all our land; there's no such thing as a Palestinian people." I'm sick of Hamas and Hezbollah refusing to surrender. I'm sick of the absolute inability for the IDF to enforce discipline and stop rogue soldiers from committing acts of brutality. I'm sick of genocidal statements from Israeli public and private figures sounding like they came out of Radio Rwanda broadcasts. I'm sick of so many Jews in Israel and abroad saying in response to this behavior: "So what? No mercy after October 7th!" I'm sick of the settlements. I'm sick of the deeply unequal military rule in Area C (which is de-facto annexed), with Israeli settlers enjoying far more liberties than Palestinians. I'm sick of settler violence. I'm sick of Jewish legacy orgs failing miserably to combat antisemitism. I'm sick of not knowing which news outlets to trust anymore regarding the conflict's coverage.

I'm sick of Biden stepping in to stop Israel from bombing Iran's nuclear sites. I'm sick of Abbas and co. refusing to indisputably renounce the Right of Return, in hopes of at the very least making renewed peace talks possible. I'm sick of leftist activists having turned "Zionist" into a slur. I'm sick of having to continuously draw myself away from my studies for grad school just to look at the news. I'm sick of none of us are free from the effects of the conflict spilling over into politics outside of Israel. I'm sick of open support among leftists for Hamas and Hezbollah. I'm sick of the death cult of Palestinian terrorism being glorified, regardless of how disastrous its consequences have been for Palestinians.

I'm sick of being caught in the existential war over the Jewish future. I'm sick of the Jewish question still not being solved.

The level of sex negativity in parts of the OJ world is astounding and dies not at all have anything to do with Judaism having a historical aversion to sexual disclosure. In Shtetl times, as pointed out by a commenter, most Jews would live in 1 or 2 bedroom houses effectively making the parents sexual activity a family known affair. The assumption being once the kids were old enough to ask, they were given explanation. The intense taboo around sex is maybe a uniquely American quaker prudish quirk that may have seeped into the Religious ether in this cou try and has affected OJ to a high level. Just comes to show that certain attitudes in religious communities (ie frum world) have literally nothing to do with the religion itself and everything to do with the social and cultural milue in which it exists. A gut Yom tov

It says in pirkei avos פרקי אבות the chain of people that the Torah was passed through from moshe till reb yehuda hanasi who wrote the mishnayos. One of the people that the Torah was “passed through” is shimon ben shetach who the Gemara praises as being the person who murdered 80 “witches”. I was taught that this was a good thing bc they were guilty of a real crime WTF. he killed innocent women and he is the one who Torah was passed through. This idea just pisses me off.

I was surprised to learn that many frum girls never receive any sexual education whatsoever, not even on their wedding night. I've read that it i considered a husband's duty to sexually satisfy his wife and the Talmud talks about sexual acts openly, there are even passages that permit non-reproductive intercourse like oral and anal sex.

Why and when did the frum world become so prudish they don't even teach their children about it? It can't be something inherent to judaism or particularly recent, considering that European culture was a lot more open about sex matters before the victorian era.