Q&A: Several Questions
Several Questions
Question
Hello Rabbi, thank you for responding and answering whenever you do… it really isn’t something to take for granted. I wanted to ask a few questions:
1. Is it permissible for girls to enlist and/or do national service?
2. In your opinion, should one study ethics / morality works? Every day?
3. Is it permissible to divide the seven blessings under the wedding canopy among several people?
4. During the reading of the haftarah, should one read along quietly with the reader?
5. If someone owns a bookstore, may he sell books that it is forbidden from a halakhic standpoint to read?
6. Does the value of equality adopted by postmodernism contradict the Torah and Judaism?
7. On the verse, "It is not in heaven," the Sages expounded: it will not be found among traders and merchants. My question is: but aren’t there also traders and merchants among whom Torah is found?
8. If a person watched a forbidden video (meaning that its content is forbidden—for example, immodest exposure) and clicked “like,” did he commit a prohibition by clicking “like” because he is strengthening the hands of transgressors? (I’m not referring in my question to the prohibition of watching the video.)
9. Is any gambling permitted?
10. Is there an obligation to answer Kaddish? If so, on all its parts?
Thank you very much in advance for your attention…
Answer
- National service is certainly permitted and very appropriate, and apparently enlisting is permitted as well.
- No.
- This is done every day.
- No.
- Certainly not.
- It isn’t well-defined. Equality certainly does not contradict Judaism. The question is in the details. The postmodernist version of equality is also not well-defined, because there are different views (insofar as postmodernism can be considered a view at all).
- There are traders and merchants, but not “trader-types” and “merchant-types.” It seems to me that the added ending indicates that this is talking about a character type and not a profession. But of course there’s no need for that, since statements like these are not claims about every individual case but a general statement.
- Maybe.
- Yes. See the parameters of asmakhta.
- Do you mean answering Amen to Kaddish? Simply speaking, yes. This is said regarding blessings, but logically it seems that the same law applies to Kaddish. See a review here: https://ph.yhb.org.il/10-01-09/