Avodah Mailing List

Volume 07 : Number 094

Tuesday, August 28 2001

• Re: Minhag was Re: The SR's views on yishuv EYQ
• Yishuv Eretz Yisrael and sinners
• Re: Minhag was Re: The SR's views on yishuv EYQ
• Re: minhag and majority
• Re: minhag and majority
• Re: Minhag was Re: The SR's views on yishuv EYQ
• Re: science and tradition
• Re: Avodah V7 #93
• science and tradition
• tefilas Rabbim always 'heard'?
• Re: Minhag was Re: The SR's views on yishuv EYQ
• Ben Ish Chai

RRW: I am NOT saying nothing was overlooked, I am saying mistakes could
not have NOT been noticed IN THE LONG RUN.

RMB: Which means that they were unnoticed in the almost-as-long run. And
leshitascha, no one could end that run.

RRW: Not necessarily. And you are implying is that both Halachic scholars
and practitioners could be oblivious to errors creeping in.


RMB: It would only be within a generation of a practice becoming minhag
yisrael that anyone could claim the run isn't all that long. In which
case, the window for catching things and successfully putting an end to
them is tiny.

RRW: Not necessarily. Why didn't Gedolim leave Mendelsohn alone?
Or Hirsch for that matter?

RMB: My basic position is that there are a set of dinim about how to
make din.

RRW: So do I have a set of dinim...

RMB: Precedent is one of them, but can be trumped.

RRW Yes by a Sanhedrin. Or by the Rabbinical Assembly <smile>

RMB: That's not to say that precedent is weightless, or that normally
it isn't binding.

RRW: Rather since the churban it is pretty much the only thing that is
binding from one generation to the next.

RMB: Again, you're arguing that if I hold there are halachos that override
minhag yisrael, it's akin to holding that one doesn't even need those
halachos to override it.

RRW: not necessarily see below.

RMB: Who allowed a minhag that was found to be keneged halachah (not
just pointless, but possibly assur) to stand?

RRW: but if a minhag has stood we can presume it was not knegged halachah
- or that everyone including gedolim were OK with violating halachah.
Therefore why change it if is legitimate?

E.G.: If I came into a nusach Sephard shul and insisted on Davening
Ashkenaz would I not be implying that the existing Nuasch is flawed
somehow? Why would anyone change a legitimate praxis for another if the
existing one is equally legitimate?

RMB: IOW, "I know how halachah works, and any gadol who disagrees wasn't
a master of pesak"? Please!

RRW: You're Welcome! Do you say, any Gadol knows that the last 500
years had it wrong and so that everyone during that era overlooked the
correct din? Or do you say: "hey if this minhag was around for so long
it probably had some justificaiton or other and was probably NOT flawed.
So let's find out why it has become normative." I would say this was
the AH's approach.

RMB: Note that this excludes Maran Bet Yosef, who also was willing to
chuck minhag yisrael when he thought it was based on derech emori. Did
he too not understand how pesak works?

RRW: The SA in 591 evolves a minhag in to a din about laundering during
the shavua shechol bo. I'm sure there are numerous other cases, I found
this one w/o even looking. If you look in the dinnim of the 9 datss you
will see that the Rema and MB include numerous cases of evolved Minhag.

An ad hoc rejection of precedent by the BY does not prove a general
principle. Although I do suspect that Sephardim are less attached to
precedent because the Ben Ish Chai was able to overturn many Maran's,
and AFAIKt almost all were Zoharic.

RMB: The A"H works to justify minhag yisra'el. He has that level of
confidence we were discussing was so common amongst Ashkenazi rishonim
(outside chassidei Ashkenaz). However, he too occasionally admits defeat
--and then overturns earlier p'sak! The fact that R' Haym Soloveitchik
notes them in his footnote in "Rupture and Reconstruction" as exceptions
doesn't change the fact that when the SA finally did reach this exception
he DID change pesak from what was noheig.

RRW: there are exceptions to every rule even this one. That does not
overturn the rule in general, as above.

Re: the agenda was Sephardic.

RMB: Lima'aseh that's what happened. But that wasn't the agenda.

RRW: I'm sorry. The agenda was to Zoharize praxis. This is obvious.
What is not so obvious - but is nevertheless the case - is that the
Zohar's customs are oriented towards Sephardic praxis. This can be
demonstrated by those that refused to go along. It can be further
demonstrated by Sephardim who would find similar Ashkenazic intrusions
into their traditions outrageous. Just because some Ashkenazi Gedolim were
enamored with Sephardic esoterica does not justify ignoring Ashkenazi
Mesorah. An example of this can be shown that in Franfkort they threw
out R. Nosson Adler - AIUI for introducing Duchaning on a daily basis.

Re: Chassidei Ashkenaz... I was merely offering an Asheknezic esoteric
alternative to Sephardic partcice.

Anyway, noting that circumstances have changed and ignoring normative
praxis on the presumption it was based upon erroneous presumptions, and
taking these theories into practice are basic to Conservative Responsa.
As I've posted, I assert and posit that had the Gra himself seen this
Conservative Phenomenon, he would have stuck closer to precedent.
Therefore noting that the Gra ignored these rules during his era, does
not serve as a precedent for us in the post-Reform era.

Shana Tova,
Rich Wolpoe
RabbiRichWolpoe@aol.com

> He answers that maybe Chazal are telling us that only when the 'Yochid' -
> Yechido shel Olom  - is with the Rabim - then the Halocho is with the
> Rabim... (See VM pgs. 55-6)

R. Norman Lamm quoted this vort approvingly at a Chag Hasemicha some
years ago. I am not a YU alumnus, but my wife is-- with a B.A. and M.A.,
and this past spring she was awarded an honorary doctorate--and this was
reported in an alumni magazine she received. I wrote R. Lamm a sharp
note in which I suggested that this was spineless approval that would
legitimize that Gadol's derech. The Gadol and his court were the source
of decades of unprecedented personal defamation and vituperation of other
Gedolim who did not share his derech. These included even Gedolim of
Agudas Israel--those of the Mizrachi, it goes without saying.. According
to that Gadol, they were all heretics and doomed to hell for not sharing
his implacable opposition to any ties whatever to the State of Israel.

My grandfather z"l commented that in the time of the Bet Mikdash that
Gadol would have been judged a zaken mamrei. My grandfather was both a
Gadol haDor and Tzadik haDor, and he was not in the habit of speaking
ill of anybody. He was merely being factual. Noone suggests that a zaken
mamrei was a conscious rasha. On the contrary, he was a great scholar,
one worthy of belonging to the Sanhedrin. He was also clearly sincere,
even being ready to die for what he thought was correct in Torah. But
sincerity had nothing to do with it. He was an extreme individualist and
a threat to the majority rule of Torah and was dealt with accordingly. No
one suggested that R. Eliezer was a rasha, either, when they put him
in cheirem and announce that anything that he had ruled tahor should be
treated as tameh.

[My grandfather's own attitude to the State of Israel deserves mention.
He was strongly opposed to its establishment because he felt that a war
would ensue, and Jews would be killed. He left Agudas Israel because
they supported establishing the State and he opposed it. After its
establishment, however, he strongly supported the State, for the same
reason: if already there was a State, if Jews would not support it
there would be more war and Jews would be killed. For that reason he
was the first and perhaps the only Gadol who openly protested against
those religious circles who in the early 1950's demonstrated against
the State of Israel in front of its consulate in New York and through
advertisements in the non-Jewish press. If Goyim saw that even Jews
were against the State, how could Goyim be expected to support it? The
result would be that more Jews would die. This practical approach was
as far removed as could be imagined from the various ideological and
theological positions of both supporters and opponents, then and now.
Incidentally, as a esult of his public stance he was denounced by Satmar
zealots, some of went so far as to harass him via vituperative phone
calls in the middle of the night. This, even though at the time he was
considered by many to be the major posek in North America. (R. Feinstein,
14 years younger, published the first volume of Igros Moshe only in
1959. when my grandfather was almost eighty.)]

The vort serves to justify an outspoken Gadol's dismissal of virtually the
entire world of other Gedolim, and should not be approvingly quoted to
young musmachim. This I wrote to R. Lamm. On the the very real Halachic
question of how such a Gadol should himself be treated--as the Mishneh
leMelech wrote, "Why are you concerned [only] for the honor of the one
who denigrates, be concerned for the honor of those he denigrates!"--see
Bnei Banim vol. 2, no. 34. in the context of the a question when does
one have to say zichrono livrachah when mentioning a deceased scholar.

I am not impressed by the claim no one has reviewed and refuted all of
that Gadol's arguments regarding aliyah. I do not see why any serious
scholar would want to take the time to do so, especially as in this
case there was no likelihood of "et vaheiv vesufah," given one side's
propensity to brand those who disagree with him as heretics. I recall
starting to read another work, "Al haGeulah veAl haTemurah." Early on,
I read what I thought was an arbitrary interpretation of a Rivash (or a
Ritva-- I don't have the sefer). A little later, I read another seemingly
unwarranted interpretation. I stopped reading, wondering if this was a
sefer written for his chassidim. Of course, that was a polemical work
which may not be representative. I also read another article by that
Gadol, on the topic of shemittah. If I recall correctly, it contained
ridicule of opposing views.

With Torah blessings,
Yehuda-Herzl Henkin

On Mon, Aug 27, 2001 at 04:18:10PM -0400, RabbiRichWolpoe@aol.com wrote:
: RRW: Not necessarily. And you are implying is that both Halachic scholars
: and practitioners could be oblivious to errors creeping in.

Yes. But it's not me -- it's all those people already discussed who do
halachah in the way you don't like. If the S"A says that kapparos are
derech emori, then he's implying that everyone until him was oblivious
to the error.

Also, note that "wrong" is also a matter of perspective. Something can be
totally assur from within one derech, and yet commonplace or even central
to another. (C.f. our discussion of the practical kabbalist on Areivim.)

However, it's still wrong for that person.

: RMB: Precedent is one of them, but can be trumped.

: RRW Yes by a Sanhedrin. ...

Only if the original din was created by a Sanhedrin. If an acharon paskens
X, and the world does X, doesn't another acharon -- perhaps centuries
later -- have the right to pasken Y? And isn't halachah kibasra'i?

: RMB: That's not to say that precedent is weightless, or that normally
: it isn't binding.

: RRW: Rather since the churban it is pretty much the only thing that is
: binding from one generation to the next.

No, halachah is. Again, you seem to conflate precedent with the power of
a rigorously defined halachah.

: RMB: Who allowed a minhag that was found to be keneged halachah (not
: just pointless, but possibly assur) to stand?

: RRW: but if a minhag has stood we can presume it was not knegged halachah
: - or that everyone including gedolim were OK with violating halachah.
: Therefore why change it if is legitimate?

I will ask again -- who is your makor? Who, aside from guesses about what
motivated the Ba'alei Tosafos -- believes that minhag yisrael is the final
say in all cases?

Actually, you're in a catch 22. If for the past 3 centuries we've paskened
that minhag yisrael can be overturned in certain situations, than that
principle, that metahalachah, is itself a minhag yisrael. To overturn it
would be to admit that a universal halachic practice (in this case,
universal amongst posekim) can be wrong.

In which case, it is possible for minhag yisrael to be wrong, and it ought
not be overturned!

There is no way, from within a stance of absolute power of precedence to
restore that power now that it was ubiquitously abrogated. (If it every
existed.)

: An ad hoc rejection of precedent by the BY does not prove a general
: principle....
: RMB: The A"H works to justify minhag yisra'el....
: RRW: there are exceptions to every rule even this one. That does not
: overturn the rule in general, as above.

Sure it does. You're saying it's assur to overturn precedent. But if
these posekim do it even once, it certainly argues that they didn't
consider it assur.

: Anyway, noting that circumstances have changed and ignoring normative
: praxis on the presumption it was based upon erroneous presumptions, and
: taking these theories into practice are basic to Conservative Responsa.

Again, what C does or doesn't do has nothing to do with the discussion.
You can't argue that something is wrong on the grounds that something that
to you seems similar lead C astray.

Particularly we haven't even established that they actually are
similar. I would think the contrast between ignoring precedent and
having a complex but rigorous system that merely includes precedent
is greater than that between absolute precedence and the middle
stance.

: Therefore noting that the Gra ignored these rules during his era, does
: not serve as a precedent for us in the post-Reform era.

Why? You're advocating *abandoning* precedent?

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger                     Time flies...
micha@aishdas.org                        ... but you're the pilot.
http://www.aishdas.org                           - R' Zelig Pliskin
Fax: (413) 403-9905          

Rich Wolpoe wrote:
>4) Because the Rema relies heavily upon sources, he doesn't have
>to be as "big" a gadol as the BY to argue with him. This may leave
>the Levush in a precarious position - iow if you begin innovating
>how can you challenge the Mechaber?

I don't understand.  At what point in Ashkenaz was R. Yosef Karo considered 
the biggest gadol beTorah?  Are you saying that R. Mordechai Yaffe was not 
considered great enough to argue with the Mechaber?  He did not have to be, 
because the reality was that all Ashkenazim were de facto arguing with the 
Mechaber by not following his pesakim.

>5) Now this leaves me with the difficulty of how did Ben Ish Chai
>{BIC} supercede the Bet Yoseph? BIC frequently changes Minhag against
>BY based upon the Zohar. This troubles me because the BY lich'ora was
>a master Kabbalist and probably new Zohar very well himself.

Are you saying that the BIC woke up one day and decided to try to change 
practice because of the Zohar?  I don't think it happened that way.  Think 
of it this way.  If the Zohar was introduced into your community and you 
began to study it because it is the holiest book, wouldn't you start to 
adjust your practices based on its teaching?  I can't believe that the BIC 
fought this battle all by himself and managed to convince everyone to change 
their minhagim.  Of course, many did not change their minhagim based on the 
Zohar.

>Acctually the AH followed the MB and was considered the more
>authoritative Poseik in his time and for a time beyond.

Says who?  Maybe in Navardok, or rather within his kehillah in Navardok.

A rosh yeshiva has many more followers than the rav of a kehillah, even an 
influential rav.  The rosh yeshiva has all of his talmidim plus their 
congregants and students.

Gil Student

RGS: I don't understand. At what point in Ashkenaz was R. Yosef Karo
considered the biggest gadol beTorah? Are you saying that R. Mordechai
Yaffe was not considered great enough to argue with the Mechaber?
He did not have to be, because the reality was that all Ashkenazim were
de facto arguing with the Mechaber by not following his pesakim.

RRW: I am not saying the BY was definitely a bigger gadol, Although I
can make a case for it. I am saying, even IF we all agreed that he WAS
a mucyh biggre gadol - no matter. I think Gil you echoed this point.

RRW 5) Now this leaves me with the difficulty of how did Ben Ish Chai
{BIC} supercede the Bet Yoseph? BIC frequently changes Minhag against
BY based upon the Zohar. This troubles me because the BY lich'ora was
a master Kabbalist and probably new Zohar very well himself.

RGS: Are you saying that the BIC woke up one day and decided to try to
change practice because of the Zohar? I don't think it happened that way.

RRW: I'm not sure BIC seems to talk like that in his sefer….

RGS: << Think of it this way. If the Zohar was introduced into your
community and you began to study it because it is the holiest book,
wouldn't you start to adjust your practices based on its teaching?
I can't believe that the BIC fought this battle all by himself and
managed to convince everyone to change their minhagim. Of course, many
did not change their minhagim based on the Zohar.>>

RRW: Yes but since the BY knew the Zohar too and did NOT pasken that
way - threfore what gave the BIC a right to assume he could make that
change and overrule Maran?

RRW: Acctually the AH followed the MB and was considered the more
authoritative Poseik in his time and for a time beyond.
 
RGS: Says who? Maybe in Navardok, or rather within his kehillah in
Navardok.

RRW: most litvisher rabbonim This has been brought downi n the Jewish
press as CC was the Taddik hador but AH was the poseik hador. I think if
yo uare sh'al zkeinecha they wil ltel lyou EXCEPT for Yeshivishe cirlces
the AH was preferred.

RGS: A rosh yeshiva has many more followers than the rav of a kehillah,
even an influential rav. The rosh yeshiva has all of his talmidim plus
their congregants and students.

RWW: WADR this is post WWII revisionism. RY were NOT poskim in the
good old days. R Chaim went to R Yitzchak Elchanan. R. Chaim Ozer was
the poseik of his dor. The MB took over by a concerted effort of the
yeshiva movement.

Now there are some grey area types. RMF was the poseik hador and know as
Reb Moshe to one and all, excpet LATE in his life his followers insisted
he be address as "the Rosh Yeshiva" I heard this from an East Side old
timer who claimed to know RMF well. Bottom line RMF was a Rav AND a
RY. So was RYBS for that matter.

AFAIK the CC/MB was never a Rav in a kehillah,and AFAOK never published
Teshuvos. Which does not mean the MB is a bad sefer. It is a terrfic
sefer, but I prefer to uuse it as a learninga text over its value as a
psak text. Over time the MB has taken over as THE sefer psak anyway and
the AH becomes like a Levush to the SA. No matter. The question is will
RMF and RSZA etc. supercede both of them soon. Eventually someone will
compile new MB or KSA….



In a message dated 8/27/01 5:20:17pm EDT, micha@aishdas.org writes:
> I will ask again -- who is your makor? Who, aside from guesses about what
> motivated the Ba'alei Tosafos -- believes that minhag yisrael is the final
> say in all cases?

maharil and rema and that entire school of thought
probablyh maharam mirothenburg and others

In a message dated 8/27/01 5:20:17pm EDTime, micha@aishdas.org writes:
>: Therefore noting that the Gra ignored these rules during his era, does
>: not serve as a precedent for us in the post-Reform era.
 
> Why? You're advocating *abandoning* precedent?

yes lishitascha!  

KT
RW

On Mon, Aug 27, 2001 at 05:44:11PM -0400, RabbiRichWolpoe@aol.com wrote:
:> I will ask again -- who is your makor? Who, aside from guesses about what
:> motivated the Ba'alei Tosafos -- believes that minhag yisrael is the final
:> say in all cases?

: maharil and rema and that entire school of thought
: probablyh maharam mirothenburg and others

All you can show is that they tended to preserve precedent. Since we
It's not like we have a rishon who clearly spells out such an issur.

Since we can find at least a single exception to the rule, we know that
they didn't hold it was assur to overturn precedent.

:>: Therefore noting that the Gra ignored these rules during his era, does
:>: not serve as a precedent for us in the post-Reform era.

: > Why? You're advocating *abandoning* precedent?

: yes lishitascha!  

But lishitasi, it's consistant. Precedent has value, but can be abandoned
when certain criteria are met. Vehara'ayah, there is much precedent for such
abandonment.

Yours produces paradox. Now that precedent for such overturning exists,
denying that posekim have such power is itself overturning precedent.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger                 A cheerful disposition is an inestimable treasure.
micha@aishdas.org            It preserves health, promotes convalescence,
http://www.aishdas.org       and helps us cope with adversity.
Fax: (413) 403-9905                - R' SR Hirsch, "From the Wisdom of Mishlei"

On Sun, Aug 26, 2001 at 06:01:46PM -0400, Isaac A Zlochower wrote:
: Another tack has been to posit that physicists no longer adhere to a
: "belief" in causality.   Such a change in philosophy would, supposedly,
: make the idea of miracles more scientifically "acceptable".

I think you misunderstood what I was discussing.

Science has done away with causality. See, for example, Davies' "The
Arrow of Time", Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind" or "A Brief History
of Time" by Hawkings. However, that has nothing to do with the acceptability of
miracles. It means that science today is about equations that relates
the states of a system regardless of the direction of time between them.

The rules aren't mitigated at all, instead they are phrased as apparantly
time reversable equations. (Although I think that's untrue once you include
boundry conditions.)

:                                                                 Micha
: seems to be confusing microscopic reversibility wherein the fundamental
: steps in a process may have forward and backward rates in time, but the
: process as a whole is irreversible (e.g. the breaking of a glass)...

In all of the books I named, the macroscopic time irreversability is
blamed on thermodynamics -- a broken glass healing itself reduces
entropy. As I said in my post, I believe this just begs the question.

:                                One such writer, who is a practicing
: physicist, had at one time, used an argument from Einstein's "special
: relativity" theory to suggest that the "divine" reference frame was
: sufficiently close to light speed relative to our "earthly" frame that
: several billion years in our frame was equivalent to each of the 6 days
: in the "divine" frame.   This totally ad-hoc and arbitrary argument...

Schroeder's argument was based on general relativity, and has to do
with time dilation due to gravity. Given the energy density of the universe
at the time particles differentiated into those we know today, there
was enough dilation to shrink 15billion years into 6 days.

Nor is it arbitrary. For example, if particles become distict at temps
of 9.7e+12deg and below, then the 6 days would translate to 14.2 billion
years. 10.9e+12deg would yeild 15.75 billion.

The exact number is as yet unknown. But the expected value is within
the right range.

: In this continuing saga of conflicts between science and tradition, a
: "tzarich iyun" is a proper approach rather than offering would-be
: solutions that can not withstand critical scrutiny.

Personally, I prefer the Maharal's approach -- we simply can't understand
beri'ah. Be it scientific understanding or nevu'ah. So, while there are
conflicts, it's because neither will ever describe what really happened.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger                     Life is complex.
micha@aishdas.org                    Decisions are complex.
http://www.aishdas.org                   The Torah is complex.
Fax: (413) 403-9905                                    - R' Binyamin Hecht

> Remember that to the Kuzari, "philosophy" meant the Greeks, Metukalemun
> and scholastics. He could not address much of the positions you've been
> citing in this discussion. As the word was used in his day, philosophy
> was entirely about finding foundations amongst the first principles.

If finding foundations means discovering propositions that one is really
certain of, based upon reason, and then building on top of that, it is not
clear to me that the Rambam is a foundationalist (nor Plato and
Aristotle).

Rambam's proofs of G-d are not based on reason but on inferences from
scientific theories of the time, some of which he himself considered
debatable. Regarding creation, providence, prophecy etc. he did not deal
with proofs.

Many contemporary writers on the Moreh, including the late work of Prof.
Pines, in a very different way, Marvin Fox and yibbadel l'hayyim tovim,
Warren Zeev Harvey, see Rambam's thought as multilayered, with the deepest
layer being what Harvey calls "mysticism."

One reason that the Kuzari and the Rambam could not maintain the modern
positions that I describe is that those modern positions were formulated
in response to Descartes' (& subsequent philosopher's) foundationalism.

(Note: Rambam & Kuzari spend little or no time on skepticism. In any event
the skepticism of antiquity was very different from that of the modern
period beginning with Descartes. I can't give bibliography for ancient
period off the top of my head, but Prof. Foster's Hegel and Skepticism
presents some of these issues very well.)

From: Isaac A Zlochower <zlochoia@bellatlantic.net>
>                                                   The recent news about
>a supposed change in the value of a fundamental constant (the
>fine-structure constant, alpha) over what it was 12 billion years ago
>should be taken with a "grain of salt"....
>            It is, therefore, premature - to say the least to sieze on
>this news item as a basis for positing that the earth and the universe
>are much younger than what scientists have claimed based on rates of
>radioactive decay and inferred astronomical distances.

I am confused any changes in the age of the universe according to science
is irrelavent to us. What difference does it make if the age is 20 billion
or 1 billion or even 1 million years make. The questions are the same.

I recently read an article that claimed that the debate between religion
and science is getting larger because of the advances in biology. In
particular on the definition of life.

kol tuv,
Eli Turkel

In the recent Kol Korei from the moetzes gedolei haTorah of Agudath
Israel of America, one of the things recommended is that people should
be careful to daven with a minyan ("Each Jewish man should accept on
himself during the upcoming days of divine mercy and concern to be
very careful regarding davening with a minyan, that all his tefillos,
Shacharis, Mincha and Ma'ariv, be part of a "prayer of the multitude"
that is always heard.").

This is a reference to the teaching in the gemara that HKB"H is not moeis
in the tefillah of a Rabbim (the posuk 'hen Kel kabir lo Yimos' is cited).

However, does that mean that the tefillah from a tzibbur / with a minyan
is always granted?

Licheora I would say not.

To elaborate.....

1) IIRC there are some that point out that the loshon in Chaza"l is
that Hashem is not moeis (does not reject it in disgust) in tefillas
Rabbim / tzibbur - not that he necessarily accepts it. I saw a lengthy
dicussion of this in a sefer called something like Tefillas Rabbim, by
R. M.M. Gerlitz IIRC (came out a few years ago), though I don't know if
he concludes as I am saying here.

2) Even if you say that such tefillah is always 'nishmaas' (heard),
does that mean that Hashem grants everything asked for? Licheora not -
just like any other tefillah. To use a moshol, perhaps someone would a
group would be powerful / influential enough to have their point of view
get through to ('be heard by') President George W. Bush - but does that
mean that he would always grant them what they asked?

3) Licheora, bipashtus, the tzibbur of every tzibbur is not equal and
licheora a powerful tefillas yochid can be more powerful than a deficient
tefillah betzibbur. For example, let's say the 'tefillah betzibbur' is a
group of people speeding through davening with little, if any, kavonoh,
mangling words, with people talking and other such 'maalos' and the
tefillas yochid is slowly, with kavono....which one is better / stronger?

4) A moshol often given to explain the inyan of the power of the
tefillah of a tzibbur is that when a group comes to a checkpoint /
passport control, etc., each member is usually not checked / scrutinized
as closely (esp. if the group as a whole seems okay) as individuals coming
to the same point. Nevertheless, a group is usually checked / scrutinized
at least somewhat and sometimes members are rejected, while individuals
can be waved through ' with flying colors', if they pass scrutiny.

Comments?

Mordechai

In a message dated 8/27/2001 9:43:27pm EDT, micha@aishdas.org writes:
> Yours produces paradox. Now that precedent for such overturning exists,
> denying that posekim have such power is itself overturning precedent.

And yours produces a justificatoin for overturning Halachah via svara -
something C exploits very nicely thank you. And some of them even credit
the Gra and Hassidism with this groundbreaking trend. Since they can
modify the Siddur to fit heir shita, so can we. This has been quoted to
me directly.

The Maharil warned against this.

Anyway if the Gra was OK with overturning precdent why did he put
Hassidism in Cherem?

Shana Tovah
Rich Wolpoe
Moderator - TorahInsight@yahoogroups.com
"Knowledge without Insight is like a horse in a library" - Vernon Howard    

>5) Now this leaves me with the difficulty of how did Ben Ish Chai {BIC}
>supercede the Bet Yoseph? BIC frequently changes Minhag against BY based
>upon the Zohar. This troubles me because the BY lich'ora was a master
>Kabbalist and probably new Zohar very well himself. Lich'ora Sephardim
>are less-MInhag centric than are Ashkenazim

It is not clear how much of Zohar BY knew and this is a very controversial
topic. There seems to be various proofs that he never saw the Zohar
in its entirety and only knew small portions of it.

I assume your agrument is the reason ROY stresses the BY over BIC.
On the other hand I know of sefardi communities that ignore piskei halacha
of ROY because it is against their community minhag!

>The MB has become a standard text. Acctually the AH followed the MB and
>was considered the more authoritative Poseik in his time and for a time
>beyond. As is often the case, the more popular learning text becomes the
>more normative psak text over time. Eventually, one text takes over as
>primary, in this case it seems the MB won the verdict of history over
>the AH.

which was exactly my point that history frequently determines which
opinions win out and not necessarily the greater lamdan.

Eli Turkel

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