This video is Ask the Rabbi Volume 12.
The first question is, an unmarried woman want to know, for modesty purposes, should she cover her hair.
The answer is, for modesty purposes is “no”. Your Orthodox would say cover your hair only when you are married. That way, they can tell who is married. They believe the laws of hair being arousing to a man applies basically only when you are married, and therefore, married women should wear their hair covered. In the Orthodox world, there were wigs. In the manner of Orthodox world, there were hats, but in such a way that they cover most of the hair. Most of the women who are married were doing this.
There are other reasons why women cover their heads, and that is egalitarian. Men cover their heads for honor of God, so women should. But that is not that common in the Jewish world yet.
A certain fellow was irritated with me he thought that I was suggesting that Muslims do not, in general, treat Jews well. Now, of course there are some Muslims who many who think Judaism is terrific. But he was mistaken, and I believe, in the idea that Islam considers Judaism equal.
First of all, Islam is based on Jihad, most of it, a country in the world for Islam. Second of all, Jews and Christians are called “dhimmi” which are the people the book protected classes but is observing into Islam. Third, in the practical real world which he did not understand at all, many of the Muslim mass are on the Friday. Sermons are blasting Jews for infidels and devils and all kinds of horrible things.
So in the practical world, much of Islam does not think Judaism as valid or equal to Islam. I thought there was really absurd.
Then somebody else wanted to know if it is okay to study Kabbalah below the age of 40.
First of all, 40 today is not what 40 was then. The idea was it should be male and well-versed to be an exorcist. Kabbalah should not be a substitute for real Jewish study. It should be based on authentic knowledge of Judaism, but certainly younger people than 40 can study it. And it does not have to be restricted to man, so I do not think those were retained anymore. But real mysticism should be based on real cover study and not just Kabbalah-centered stuff that is not, in my opinion, valid.
Then, some fellow want to know why it was not okay to make a living selling drugs. Illegal drugs and introducing it will be prohibited. I did a video on the concept of “dina demahotah dina”, which is the civil law of the land as the Lord. That anything is prohibited by the secular of society as illegal would also be considered an illegal Judaism, unless the law is completely immoral. That is a different situation. But the society says that illegal drugs are illegal and it is not okay to profit from them.
Somebody wanted to know if they could convert Judaism, even though sometimes their work require them work on the Sabbath.
Well, there are very different standards of conversion. Orthodox rabbis would absolutely not convert someone probably under those circumstances. Conservative rabbis probably would, as I would. Generally, we want the declaration of faith in the standards that we have, ask people to make Sabbath an important part of there lives and construe in part of their lives, but it does not say you have to be strictly Sabbath observant. We would like people to work for that or fully cognizant that virtually all conservative Jews do not observe the Sabbath fully.
Somebody wanted to know also, was is it okay to drive on the Sabbath.
A conservative sudden issue for reconstructions for rabbis, the Orthodox wants to show or used to be parked two blocks away and then walk the rest of the way, but I think that it is changed now and very few Orthodox Jews are going to be driving to the synagogue. Some of the Jews permit it on the basis of the importance of the mitzvah of public prayer supersedes the issue of driving, so we permit people to drive to the synagogue on a Sabbath.
Somebody wants to know if eating fish and cheese was okay.
The answer is yes. Fish is considered herb. It is not meat. And so eating fish and cheese together—a fish burger, a cheese-fish sandwich—will be perfectly fine.
Like this, somebody wanted to know why fishes are not slaughtered, and the answer is there is a hierarchy in animal slaughtering and therefore, animals are slaughtered, fowls or fish are not. Those are the rules of the Torah.
Somebody else wanted to know what the morning and evening blessings are.
For evening, at least at the Shema and the Vehatra, the paragraph before you go to bed. And in the morning, there is a whole series of morning blessings as part of the ritual. There is a prayer for the bathroom which I did a video on.
If you open up a morning prayer book, the Siddur, you see lots of prayers, Modeh Ani is the first thing you should say, which is “thank you God for giving me my soul back”. There is morning blessing; there are several prayers to say in the morning. And of course, the service in the morning as well.
And finally, somebody asked about food blessings. They want to know that if you are eating chicken, peas, rice and water, do you say B'racha for eat item. And the answer is, no.
For a meal, you say the most important blessings. So, if you are eating bread, the motzi covers everything, the whole meal except for wine. If you are having wine, you say bo-rei p'ri ha-ga-fen. If you are having a full meal besides bread, you say she-ha-kol ni-h'yeh bid-va-ro. That would cover everything.
If you are having individual snacks then you will look for right B'racha, like Ba-ruch a ha-eitz for a fruit from a tree, or a Ba-ruch a Me-lech for potato, or bo-rei mi-nei m'zo-not cookie.
That is the basic rule for a prayer before meal. I hope that answers a lot of questions for this session of Ask the Rabbi 12.
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