Stealing –> Kefira

Since this post was all about you, I won’t comment on the post, but I’ll say a little something here. Seems like money is the major issue here. Is that because the people who don’t work are usually the one’s with large families? What if the couple did have the money to support a large family, would people still have problems with it?

On to the next topic of stealing. Tuesday night I went to a shiur by R’ Pearl on the topic of what is keeping Moshiach. Previously I had also heard him speak on a Shabbos afternoon, on the topic of stealing.

He said that if someone steals then they are an apikores, because in essence they are saying Hashem can’t take care of their business. So they feel that have to steal in order to make money. (To me saying no to having children because of money, has the same ring to it, but we won’t go there).

One time a Satmar school got in trouble with the government. So the went over to the Satmar Rebbe to ask for help, to get them out of it. The Satmar Rebbe told them to “get out”, because they stole from the government. They told him that they didn’t keep a penny for themselves, that it was all for the Mosdos. The Satmar Rebbe then said “If you had to steal for the Mosdos, then shut down the Mosdos”. That you can’t use Treif money.

There are so many stories of righteous children who were taught not to steal, and when they were given a chance to “get in for free” they refused, saying it’s geneiva. We have to instill in our children this sensitivity of what stealing and cheating is. When going to an amusement park where they allow 4 year olds in for free, you can’t claim that your 6 year is 4 just because he’s smaller. That is stealing and cheating!

Next up: Academic Cheating

Interactive Post - "Your Say On Big Families”

“Big families” seems to be a popular topic around blogosphere. Over the past couple of weeks I have collected some tidbits here and there of what you bloggers/tweeters have to say about “big families”. This post is all about you, none of these quotes are from me. If you have something more to add, feel free to leave a comment and I will add it to the post. (If you would like your name added to your quote, you can let me know and I’ll do that for you as well.)

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Negative

"laughing at chassidish women with 10 children following behind them and over stuffed strollers"

"That mother with 10 kids? All her kids are in *matching* clothes! Now what happens when kid #1 outgrows his/her outfit? Does food stamps cover this???!?"

"so far I only have 2, but apparently that means I'm already "mass producing" as one friend put it!"

"we had our first 3 in under 3 years - i was called a baby machine..."

"Men who are married, have 12 kids and don't work or do the army. They already get enough of my money through taxes."

"On the one hand, I think it's too intrusive for the Rabbi or whatever to outright forbid them from having children. On the other, it seems unfair that people get to act irresponsibly and then put responsible people in the awkward position of having to fund their lifestyle or be considered immoral and unfeeling brutes"

Positive

"Ah ok so my family isn't chassidish at all, my dad is a pediatrician and I am the oldest of 11 BH. (Oh yeah my uncle is a radiologist in Queens he also has 10 kids BH--- and they did not come from such a big family, my dad was 1/6) While I'm not a huge fan of big families I really hate when people with small families judge us. It's true that the ones on food stamps shouldn't have their kids matching in fancy boro park clothing because chances are if the father's a rebbi and the kids look like that, they're not paying yeshiva tuition but somehow have $ for 'important' things like this (which is why the yeshivas are all in such financial messes). It's a ton of work to have a big family so they should be admired not scorned- but on the other hand if it's clearly hard on the mother I just don't get the point of going on like that, it's not a mitzvah to suck the life out of your wife. Oh another thing, these people who like making fun of big families are often using birth control without a proper heter so they really have no place passing judgment. It's a sensitive issue because it's weird for people to discuss others' 'family planning' but this is our religion and bearing children holds a key role. We were just talking on Shabbos- my sister who's 11 wants to become a veterinarian and it's not so simple because R' Moshe Feinstein paskined that it's assur to neuter pets... so if by animals it's this way you could imagine what it's like with humans. A better alternative should be a trend away from sitting and learning, perhaps if we were more 'torah im derech eretz' oriented we'd be able to afford larger families without government assistance and without the mother killing herself trying to work and raise a family all at once. Again there's no way of circumventing this piryah v'rivyah thing, I'd like to hear a rebuttal from someone who thinks they can"

"I like that I have a gigantic family, and love the reactions I get when I tell people that I'm one of ten children."

"A rabbi of mine was giving a lecture and told over the following anecdote. There was an irreligious Jewish woman who was very upset about the irresponsibility of her religious son-in-law who, at the time, was studying full-time, and had six kids and a wife with no way of supporting them. She wasn’t so upset about the fact that her daughter’s husband was studying full-time, but that there was no attempt at birth control. The young man complained to my rabbi that his mother-in-law was driving him crazy and was wondering if there was anything to be done to get her to stop complaining about the number of children he had. My rabbi told him to line up all six of his children for his mother-in-law next she came to visit, and ask her which one shouldn’t have been born. The man reported he never heard a word of complaint about his kids from her again."

Helping Those In Need

I am taking my third philosophy class and I have to say I am enjoying it very much. I like thinking about different moral issues and debating what I feel is correct. So here’s to issue #1, helping those in need, to what extent are we obligated, and are we obligated at all?

Peter Single in 1971 wrote an article called “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. In this article he talks about this topic of helping people in need. Singer claims “If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally to do it”. For example: If you are walking past a pond and see a child drowning, you ought to go in and save the child. This will mean getting your clothes dirty, but that is insignificant, where the death of the child would be a very bad thing.

Singer claims it makes no moral difference whether the person you can help is a neighbor’s child or a child from a 3rd world country whose name you don’t even know. Singer also claims that there is no distinction between cases in which you are the only person who could do anything and cases when you are one in a million in the same position.

Singer believes a person should give till they reach marginal utility, where if they would give any more then they would cause harm to themselves.

Singer believes that there is no such thing as charity, but rather a person is required to give away money they would use to buy new clothes they don’t need, to help famine relief. Singer claims it is wrong not to give away the money.

Arguments:

1- Distance can make a difference. We always learn that Chesed starts at home. So I believe we should first help our family, friends, and those we care about, before we help strangers.

2- I don’t believe a person has to give so much that they are left with as much as the poor people have. A person needs an incentive to continue working, if they were to always give everything away, and not keep any for themselves then they would no longer work as hard, and then we would have to be asking for help.

3- I think there is such a thing as charity, we have tzedaka, where it’s a mitzvah to help someone out. Although 10% is required of us, we are not permitted to give more than a certain percentage. Even if Tzedaka is required of us to give, we still get acknowledged and rewarded for it, it’s still considered a moral act.