Avodah Mailing List

Volume 33: Number 131

Fri, 09 Oct 2015

• 1. Re: Cancel Simchas Torah! (Ben Waxman)
• 2. Re: Cancel Simchas Torah! (Prof. Levine)
• 3. Re: Cancel Simchas Torah! (Saul Guberman)
• 4. Re: Cancel Simchas Torah! (Saul Guberman)
• 5. Re: Cancel Simchas Torah! (Prof. Levine)
• 6. Re: Cancel Simchas Torah! (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: Cancel Simchas Torah! (Saul Guberman)
• 8. Re: asmachta (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: THE MISSING "VOV" (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: Cancel Simchas Torah! (Prof. Levine)
• 11. Re: Cancel Simchas Torah! (Prof. Levine)
• 12. Re: esrogim from Israel (Ben Waxman)

Rav Druckman was basically raised by Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook. When the 
latter died, on Purim, Rav Druckman said that today is a day of 
celebration. Tomorrow, we'll mourn.

Ben

On 10/4/2015 8:39 PM, Prof. Levine via Avodah wrote:
> Still too drastic? How about just shortening the last dance--and 
> pausing to speak about the Henkins, about their orphaned children, and 
> about what practical steps American Jews can take, in the realm of 
> political action, to respond to the murders. Is that too much to ask 
> of American Jewry today?

At 02:52 PM 10/8/2015, Saul Guberman wrote:
>Professor, what allows you, collectively, the 
>community, to publicly mourn on the Chag??  Not 
>having the 7th hakafa does not sound like an appropriate halachic response. ?

I merely sent out an email that I received.  It is not necessarily my opinion.

That being said,  IMO  I think that much of what 
goes on in shuls on ST is not 
appropriate.  Drunkenness,  eating large 
quantities of food,  silliness, 
etc.  are,  IMO,  not appropriate for ST.  Have a 
look at  A. Ya'ari's sefer  Toldos Chag Simchas 
Torah to see how ST was celebrated over the centuries.

I do not stay for Hakafos at night on ST.  There 
were no Hakafos at night in 
Germany,  and,  IMO,  the reading of the Torah at night is problematic.

On ST morning I ran the Hashkama Minyan at the YI 
of Ave J in Flatbush.  We started at 7 am and 
order and decorum were the themes of the 
day.  The Hakafos were timed and took about 35 
minutes total in time.  There was quiet during 
the davening both for Shachris and Musaf.  The 
kohanim were told that they would duchan during 
Musaf, and there would be singing during the 
duchening as on other Yomim Tovim. Since there is 
no drinking during shachris, indeed, there is no 
drinking during davening at all,  I saw no reason 
for the Kohanim to duchan during 
shachris.  (BTW,  Rabbi Arthur Scroll mentions in 
his Machzor that some congregations duchan during 
musaf on ST.  I consider our minyan "some congregation.")

We finished everything by 10:25 am.  At least 75 
men and boys showed up for this davening.  (We cannot accommodate many more.)

I see no need to cancel this kind of ST davening 
and hence ST can proceed in this fashion IMO.

YL
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Professor, what allows you, collectively, the community, to publicly mourn
on the Chag?  Not having the 7th hakafa does not sound like an appropriate
halachic response.




On Sun, Oct 4, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Prof. Levine via Avodah <
avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:

>
> Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2015 23:59:19 -0400
> Subject: [RCA Forum]: Fwd: fyi - Cancel Simchas Torah!
> From:
> To: rca-member-discussion-fo...@googlegroups.com
> I like the sentiment. Not sure about the actual suggestion. Any thoughts
> on doing something, or not,to acknowledge the current situation?
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Rafael Medoff" <rafaelmed...@aol.com>
> Date: Oct 3, 2015 10:28 PM
> Subject: fyi - Cancel Simchas Torah!
> To: rafaelmed...@aol.com
>
> CANCEL SIMCHAS TORAH!
>
> by Rafael Medoff
>
> (Dr. Rafael Medoff is the founding director of The David S. Wyman
> Institute for Holocaust Studies, and winner of a 2015 Rockower Award from
> the American Jewish Press Association for Excellence in Jewish Journalism.)
> One of the most poignant anecdotes I have encountered in thirty-plus years
> of Holocaust research came out of an interview I conducted many years ago
> with the daughter of a Brooklyn rabbi.
>
> She told me of a remarkable rule that her father, Rabbi Baruch David
> Weitzmann, imposed on his Brownsville congregation in 1942, after the first
> reports about the ongoing mass murder of Europe's Jews were confirmed.
>
> "He wanted us to feel the tsa'ar of the Jews who were being killed in
> Europe," the rabbi's daughter recalled. "So if somebody wanted to get
> married--and there were a lot of these situations, involving boys who were
> about to go into the army--they came to our house, there was a little
> chuppah, some cake and soda, nothing more. No celebrations, no dancing,
> just the chuppah. He explained to us that you cannot celebrate at a time
> when other Jews are dying."
>
> Consider, for a moment, how drastically this deviated from normative
> Jewish practice. The mitzvah of making a bride and groom happy at their
> wedding is considered so important that it is one of the few commandments
> which supersede the obligation to study Torah. Normally stoic rabbis set
> aside their books to take part in wild dancing and assorted ribaldry to
> entertain the newlyweds.
>
> The Talmud (Tractate Brachot 6-b) declares that one who gladdens the
> hearts of the bride and groom at their wedding "merits to acquire the
> knowledge of the Torah." One Talmudic sage compares making newlyweds happy
> at their wedding to bringing a sacrifice in the Temple in ancient
> Jerusalem; another says it is the equivalent of rebuilding some of the
> ruins of Jerusalem.
>
> This is the mitzvah that Rabbi Weitzmann in effect temporarily suspended
> in 1942, in order to raise Jewish awareness of the mass murder in Europe
> and, hopefully, galvanize his congregants to action. The importance of
> feeling another Jew's pain, he decided, took precedence over the obligation
> to celebrate at a wedding. There is a time for singing and dancing, but
> there is also a time for mourning--and mourning sometimes must extend
> beyond one's immediate family.
>
> The very existence of the American Jewish community, after all, is based
> on the premise that Jews should care about, connect with, and assist each
> other. We are not merely a haphazard mass of individuals who happen to
> practice similar religious rituals in our private lives. We join
> together--in prayer, in celebration, and in other activities of communal
> partnership. The classic United Jewish Appeal slogan, "We are one!,"
> resonated deeply precisely because it spoke to the essence of Jewish
> peoplehood.
>
> Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, in his seminal book "Were We Our Brothers'
> Keepers?," confronted the painful fact that most American Jews in the 1940s
> failed to adopt an appropriate sense of urgency with regard to the plight
> of Europe's Jews. "One looks in vain," he writes, "for a sign that American
> Jews altered some aspect of their lifestyle to indicate their awareness of
> the plight of their European brothers [and] keep the matter at the
> forefront of their consciousness and to generate feelings of sympathy and
> solidarity?.The Final Solution may have been unstoppable by American Jewry,
> but it should have been unbearable for them. And it wasn't. This is
> important, not alone for our understanding of the past, but for our sense
> of responsibility in the future."
>
> One wonders how Rabbi Baruch David Weitzmann would have responded to this
> week's brutal murders by Palestinian Arab terrorists in Israel. Two rabbis
> stabbed and shot to death in the streets of Jerusalem. A young couple
> gunned down in front of their four children. The latter attack hit
> particularly close to home for American Jews, as one of the victims, Rabbi
> Eitam Henkin, was the son of the renowned educator Rabbanit Chana Henkin,
> who has touched our lives through her writings, lectures, and her Nishmat
> school, where so many young women from our community have studied.
>
> If he were alive today, maybe Rabbi Weitzmann would cancel the singing and
> dancing of this year's Simchas Torah holiday. Maybe he would say this is a
> time to feel the tsa'ar of the Jews in Israel, not a time for celebrating.
>
> But today's Jewish community may not be ready for such a dramatic step.
> Perhaps something more modest would be in order. There are seven extended
> dances in the synagogue during the Simchas Torah celebrations. Why not
> cancel the seventh one? --and, of course, explain the reason for the
> cancelation.
>
> Still too drastic? How about just shortening the last dance--and pausing
> to speak about the Henkins, about their orphaned children, and about what
> practical steps American Jews can take, in the realm of political action,
> to respond to the murders. Is that too much to ask of American Jewry today?
>
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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> _______________________________________________
> Avodah mailing list
> Avo...@lists.aishdas.org
> http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org
>
>
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On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 3:42 PM, Prof. Levine <llev...@stevens.edu> wrote:


> I merely sent out an email that I received.  It is not necessarily my
> opinion.
>
> That being said,  IMO  I think that much of what goes on in shuls on ST is
> not appropriate.  Drunkenness,  eating large quantities of food,
> silliness, etc.  are,  IMO,  not appropriate for ST.  Have a look at  A.
> Ya'ari's sefer  Toldos Chag Simchas Torah to see how ST was celebrated over
> the centuries.
> SNIP
> I see no need to cancel this kind of ST davening and hence ST can proceed
> in this fashion IMO.
>
> YL
>
>
A/A is for discussion.

What does running a Minyan with your decorum rules and your timing have to
do with cancelling the 7th hakafa to mourn a tragedy?  The premise of the
piece that you posted is to have some mourning /awareness of tragedy during
the Chag.   That is what I am commenting on.  We can have another
conversation about the halalchically appropriateness of the various
practices done in many shuls on Simchas Torah.

Saul
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At 03:55 PM 10/8/2015, Saul Guberman wrote:
>A/A is for discussion. ?
>
>What does running a Minyan with your decorum 
>rules and your timing have to do with cancelling 
>the 7th hakafa to mourn a tragedy??  The premise 
>of the piece that you posted is to have some 
>mourning /awareness of tragedy during the Chag. 
>?  That is what I am commenting on.?  We can 
>have another conversation about the 
>halalchically appropriateness of the various 
>practices done in many shuls on Simchas Torah.

One more time,  I did not write the email that 
you are referring to, and I personally never 
advocated cancelling the 7th HaKafa.   However, 
if I recall correctly, there were places that 
made only 3 Hakafos and some 5,  so what is the big deal?

The entire ST has evolved and IIRC correctly 7 hakafos is not in stone.

YL
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On Thu, Oct 08, 2015 at 03:42:04PM -0400, Prof. Levine via Avodah wrote:
: I merely sent out an email that I received.  It is not necessarily my opinion.

But you do state your opinion when you reposted the email:
> I like the sentiment. Not sure about the actual suggestion.

: That being said,  IMO  I think that much of what goes on in shuls on
: ST is not appropriate.  Drunkenness,  eating large quantities of
: food,  silliness, etc.  are,  IMO,  not appropriate for ST...

I have not been in a shul that tolerated silliness (kids tying the men's
talleisim together, sprinkling water on the bal tefillah when he says
"umorid hageshem" etc...) in decades.

There are also major halachic problems discussed here in the past with the
evening hakafos. And other pro forma issues with standard ST observance.

But what does that have to do with an email advocating reducing dancing
and hakafos, which were not on your list, in light of tragic current events?
How does your dislike for other ST practices relate to a call for aveilus
betzibur on Shemini Atzeres?

...
: We finished everything by 10:25 am.  At least 75 men and boys showed
: up for this davening.  (We cannot accommodate many more.)

Most of whom then eat brunch and join the main dancing, but without a
long shleppy wait for aliyos and mussaf taking up much of the afternoon.

: I see no need to cancel this kind of ST davening and hence ST can
: proceed in this fashion IMO.

Vesamachta bechagekha vehayisa akh sameiach is inconsistant with
calls for minimizing activities that evoke simach in the majority of
people who do not share your proclivities.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When you come to a place of darkness,
mi...@aishdas.org        you don't chase out the darkness with a broom.
http://www.aishdas.org   You light a candle.
Fax: (270) 514-1507        - R' Yekusiel Halberstam of Klausenberg zt"l

On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 4:28 PM, Prof. Levine <llev...@stevens.edu> wrote:


> One more time,  I did not write the email that you are referring to, and I
> personally never advocated cancelling the 7th HaKafa.   However, if I
> recall correctly, there were places that made only 3 Hakafos and some 5,
> so what is the big deal?
>
> The entire ST has evolved and IIRC correctly 7 hakafos is not in stone.
>
> YL
>

I did not say that having 7 hakafos is written in stone.  You mentioned the
minhagim of Germany.  It is not the only place that has minhagim.  To
deminish the Chag is a serious issue.  Below is an excerpt of what happened
on Shemini Atzeres in Neriya, the town that the Henkins' HYD lived in.


http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/simchat-torah-in-the-henkins-hometown

A few weeks ago, Naama Henkin HY?D expressed to another friend that she
would like to have a shiur (Torah class) while the men were dancing the
traditional *hakafot* with the Torah, instead of just watching the men
dance (although we do have women?s dancing as well ? including a few women,
our youth, and always our rabbanit of Neriya). That friend spread the word
and we held a shiur in her memory and in her merit during the *hakafot*.
When Rabbanit Henkin walked in during the Torah class and was told what it
was about, she decided to contribute a few words as well. She gathered all
her strength, and, as difficult as it was, she bravely added that the last
verse of the Torah says: ?And G-d said unto him (Moses): This is the land
which I swore unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob saying: Unto thy descendants
will I give it, I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but over to
there shalt thou not pass? (Deuteronomy 34: 4). Rashi explains the deep
significance of this for the whole mission of Moses, that it?s not that you
die now and hence you rest, but rather, look, now your mission is to pray
and advocate for the nation as they will go onto the next step in their
entrance to the land. So too, Rabbanit Henkin continued, Eitam and Naama
HY?D are not relived of their duties. They are not resting in peace. They
have a mission. And they need to advocate for us at our next step towards
redemption. The final circle of dancing went on longer than ever. It could
not be stopped, and culminated with the song, ?Am Yisrael Chai.?
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On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 09:47:49AM -0700, saul newman via Avodah wrote:
: see point  5   ,   on the idea  that could asmachta  be a talmudic  example
:  of , well let the reader decide
: http://seforim.blogspot.com/2015/09/artscroll-and-more.html
: 
:    According to R. Jacob Moellin, when the Talmud states that a law is
:    rabbinic but a verse is brought as an asmachta, this was done so as
:    to mislead the people into thinking that it is a Torah law so that
:    they would observe it more carefully.[13] In other words, the Sages
:    were engaging in falsehood for a higher purpose.

Actually, the Maharil's words may be understood as consistaqnt with the
Raavad that ashmachtos are Divine suggestions to the rabbis of laws they
may find useful to "turn on" some day.

In which case, it's not falsehood. Rather, the Maharil is saying that in
order to avoid zilzul and qulah, Chazal found a place where HQBH suggested
the possibility of the law and made a point of prmulgating it to the masses.

It is true that current attitudes of the relative value of intellectual
honesty to piety may not have always held in the past. Some of it because
information is so much more available, such tricks are bound to backfire
more often than aid. But not entirely.

I don't think it's mandatory that the Maharil is suggesting piety over
honesty here.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The same boiling water
mi...@aishdas.org        that softens the potato, hardens the egg.
http://www.aishdas.org   It's not about the circumstance,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      but rather what you are made of.

On Fri, Oct 02, 2015 at 02:08:56PM -0400, Cantor Wolberg via Avodah wrote:
: Has anyone ever noticed in the Sukkot Torah reading, third day of chol
: hamo?ed, the word "minchatam" does not carry a vav? (29:24, 1st word)

Shemini Atzeres (pasuq 37) too, but that's a different yom tov.

Other alterations in the mussafim for Sukkos: Most days end
"veniskah". But day 2 ends "venikeihem", and day 6 ends "unsakheha"
(with an inserted yud).

I recall that the extra letters are two used and a mem, spelling
the "mayim" of nisuch hamayim, but I forgot how it worked.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             None of us will leave this place alive.
mi...@aishdas.org        All that is left to us is
http://www.aishdas.org   to be as human as possible while we are here.
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Anonymous MD, while a Nazi prisoner

At 05:29 PM 10/8/2015, Saul Guberman wrote:

>A few weeks ago, Naama Henkin HY???D expressed 
>to another friend that she would like to have a 
>shiur (Torah class) while the men were dancing 
>the traditional? hakafot? with the Torah, 
>instead of just watching the men dance (although 
>we do have women???s dancing as well ? including 
>a few women, our youth, aand always our rabbanit 
>of Neriya). That friend spread the word and we 
>held a shiur in her memory and in her merit during the? hakafot.

I am going to take this opportunity to raise a 
point that has bothered me for years.

IMO ST has no place in EY.  The Torah in EY was 
originally read according to a 3 or 3.5 year 
cycle.  Indeed,  still in the 12th century there 
were two shuls in Egypt,  one that leined the way 
we do now and another that followed the 3 year 
cycle.  Clearly, for those who followed the 3 
year cycle there was no ST celebration every 
year. Hence there was no ST celebration in EY originally.

I fail to understand why when the Jews returned 
to EY they adopted the yearly cycle of completing 
the reading of the Torah rather than going back 
to the original 3 or 3 and half year cycle.

Add to the this fact that one is not supposed to 
dance on Shabbos and Yom Tov.  (I know that today 
there are many who are maikel,  but still this is 
the halacha.)  Outside of EY ST is 
d'rabbonim,  so dancing is perhaps 
permitted,  but it seems to me it is certainly 
not permitted in EY on SA which is also when hakafos are done in EY.

YL
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At 04:43 PM 10/8/2015, Micha Berger wrote:
>But you do state your opinion when you reposted the email:
> > I like the sentiment. Not sure about the actual suggestion.


Not true. Again,  these were not my words, but were those of the 
person who sent me the email.
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He left out that one can do biyur.

Ben

On 10/8/2015 9:35 AM, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
> Additionally, the cooking and consumption of these Esrogim must take 
> place before Rosh Chodesh Shevat.



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