Q&A: Several Questions
Several Questions
Question
Hello Rabbi, thank you for responding—you always reply and answer… that’s not something to be taken for granted. I wanted to ask several questions:
1. Is it permitted for girls to enlist in the army and/or do national service?
2. In your opinion, should one study ethics? Every day?
3. Is it permitted to divide the seven blessings at a wedding ceremony among several people?
4. During the reading of the haftarah, should one read along quietly with the reader?
5. If a person owns a bookstore, is he allowed to sell books that are halakhically forbidden 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 is not found among peddlers and merchants. My question is: but aren’t there also peddlers and merchants among whom Torah is in fact found?
8. If a person watched a forbidden video (that is, one whose content is forbidden—for example, explicit content) and clicked "like," did he commit a transgression by clicking "like" in the sense of supporting the hands of transgressors? (I am 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, to all its parts?
Thank you very much in advance for addressing this…
Answer
1. It is hard to prohibit it from a halakhic standpoint. In my view, national service is preferable.
2. If it helps you, then study it. It is certainly not an obligation, and in my view it is also not helpful. But that is a personal matter. In my opinion it also does not count as study, and certainly not Torah study. I have explained this here several times in the past.
3. Why not? That is what is usually done.
4. In my opinion, no.
5. No.
6. No. But it has its limits, of course.
7. The Sages were apparently speaking about a certain type of such people.
8. Yes, assuming it really is a forbidden video.
9. Yes. See overviews online.
10. To answer Amen? Yes.