Avodah Mailing List

Volume 16 : Number 138

Wednesday, February 22 2006

• schar for women wrt limud HaTorah
• Re: zebu and turkey
• Re: zebu and turkey
• Re: zebu and turkey
• Zebu and turkey
• Re: Tevel
• Re: reading in the bathroom
• Re: Tal Umotor
• Re: Calling A Spade A Spade: Rambam and Kollel
• chametz
• Re: chametz
• RE: Tal uMotor
• Emunah and Machashavah
• Re: Killing kinim on shabbat
• RE: the Mabul
• RE: Shiras HaYam

wrt to the lengthy discussions on Areivim about women spending much of
their time in mitzvos that they are not m'ztuve in, and the schar for
those mitzvos

a m'makom..

the maharal in drush al HaTorah, pg 27-28 says that women get more
schar than men for Talmud torah (based on the Gemara in brochos 17a
..nashim shannos..

..rotze lomar, adraba shescharan [shel nashim] harbea meod yoser meshel
anashim..

[ve'eem tomar] eem schar hanashim godol.., kol shekain haya roui leheyos
yoser godol schar haanashim halomdim osah...?

ayain sham ma sh'terietz

mordechai cohen

R' Danny Schoemann writes:
>* It's non-trivial to  identify a kosher bird, and it can be
>  debated that the turkey doesn't pass  all the tests. (Wikipedia
>  <http://tinyurl.com/qvt28> claims that "they  are omnivorous, eating
>  acorns, seeds, berries, roots and insects, sometimes  snakes, frogs or
>  salamanders." From what I was taught, kosher birds are  herbivorous.<<

Chickens eat bugs and worms AFAIK. They are mainly herbivorous I think
but not exclusively so.

 -Toby Katz
=============

"Danny Schoemann" <doniels@gmail.com> wrote:
> * It's non-trivial to identify a kosher bird, and it can be
> debated that the turkey doesn't pass all the tests. (Wikipedia
> <http://tinyurl.com/qvt28> claims that "they are omnivorous, eating
> acorns, seeds, berries, roots and insects, sometimes snakes, frogs or
> salamanders." From what I was taught, kosher birds are herbivorous.)

Kosher birds:
Chicken: omnivore
Duck: omnivore
Goose: herbivore
Pigeon: herbivore
Quail: omnivore
Peacock: omnivore

"Danny Schoemann" <doniels@gmail.com> wrote:
:             ... From what I was taught, kosher birds are herbivorous.)

What I think you're recalling that birds that are doresim are non-kosher
(Chulin 59a). IOW, they can be omniverous, but not hunters. This then
becomes a statement about how the bird's toes are laid out. If it has
a back-pointing toe, then the foot isn't designed for derisah.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
micha@aishdas.org        I awoke and found that life was duty.
http://www.aishdas.org   I worked and, behold -- duty is joy.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Rabindranath Tagore

I wrote:
>> Slifkin misunderstood the tshuva of the Netziv. The Netziv was not mattir
>> based simply on the fact that many people are doing it, and it would be
>> wrong to say all those people did avairos. The problem with turkey is
>> a lack of mesora, so he suggests that since many people are eating it,
>> they must have started based on a mesorah that we now are not familiar
>> with but did really exist.

RNS wrote:
> I do not see where the
>Netziv says that one assumes that there was a mesorah. After discussing
>why he believes a certain bird not to be permissible to eat, he writes 
>as follows:
>"However all this is if it approaches us from the outset. But after they
>are already conducting themselves to eat them, and presumably then too
>it was due to the ruling of a scholar to whom it appeared that it was
>a type of kosher duck, and they grasped hold of this (huchzaku bazeh)
>such that it was permissible, we are not to prohibit it and to raise
>murmurs against our ancestors that they ate a non-kosher bird, heaven
>forbid." He continues to discuss the tarnegolta d'agma of Tosafos, and
>states that people ate it even without a mesorah since it appeared to be
>kosher, and nobody protested until it was shown unequivocably otherwise.

The Netziv writes that the chochom compared it to a kosher goose (shenireh
lo shehu min avaz hatohor), i.e. a known kosher bird. Also the tarnegolta
d'agma of the Gemora, they compared it to a chicken (hoyu medumim shehu
min tarnegol), i.e. they understood that what they had was the same as
the type they had been eating up till now. In both cases, the heter is
based on continuing a known mesorah and assuming that this is included
within that mesorah.

Akiva Blum

On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 10:48:00AM -0500, Shaya Potter wrote:
: how does one understand this mishna l'melech in the context of baal
: tosif?  if a d'rabbanan is to be viewed in the same context as a
: d'oraia?

K'ein de'Oraisa is still short of being passed off as a de'Oraisa. It's
only the attempt to pass it off as de'Oraisa that fits the Rambam's
definition of bal tosif.

-mi

To my knowledge, this general topic has been covered in Avodah previously
under the following subject headings (and please check the Avodah index
under each subject heading for responses to the first post of each).
Obviously, each new iteration emphasizes different points, ve-ken yirbu,
le-hagdil torah ule-haadirah :
1. limits of kedushah? http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol08/v08n028.shtml#03
2. bathroom reading http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol12/v12n040.shtml#10
3. Learning in the "little library" 
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol12/v12n042.shtml#02
4. learning in bathroom http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol15/v15n041.shtml#05

Be-oto inyan,
The current issue of *National Geographic* includes a photograph of
a newly discovered fragment of Va-Yikra from the Dead Sea Scrolls in
which shem havayah (although rubbed slightly) is clearly visible. One
wonders what course of action one who stumbles upon this photograph while
otherwise preoccupied is required to take. Turn the page quickly? (If
so, is there justification for keeping the magazine in that room at
all?) Or does the source of the photograph, or indeed the assumed
(theology? doxa? of the) scribe of the fragment, invalidate its kedushah?

Yisrael Dubitsky

The Julian calendar is irrelevent. It just happens to be another calendar
that uses 365-1/4 days as its approximation for the solar year.

The equinox is any time from late Sep 22nd to the 24th. So, we should
start saying TuM 60 days later, Nov 20 - 22.

Let's say Mar Shemu'el used the exact solstice when he made his
taqanah. He lived in the 3rd century. That would mean that the effect
of his estimate accumulated over 1800 years or so. Comparing it to
the Gregorian estimate, it runs ahead roughly 3 days every 4 hundred
years. So the cumulative error is around 13-1/2 days.

Late Nov 20th plus 13-1/2 will bring us to Dec 4th, and early Nov 22nd
plus 13/12 will get us to Dec 5th.

QED

-mi

PS: The primary point is that I relied on when Mar Shemu'el set up his
estimate, not on when the Gregorian adjustment was made, what it was
made to correct in canon law, etc...

-- 
Micha Berger             With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
micha@aishdas.org        G-d as King of the entire cosmos and all four
http://www.aishdas.org   corners of the world, but sometimes he forgets
Fax: (270) 514-1507      to include himself.     - Rav Yisrael Salanter

I wrote:
> the
> money being brought back wasn't the money that had been invested, but
> rather the new money earned....

RZL:
> I agree of course to the second possibility, which was my original
> contention: The Rambam's brother, without benefit of the Rambam's capital,
> provided the Rambam with a portion of his profits, so that the Rambam
> could spend his full time in Torah studies without being encumbered
> by business dealings. (And the sea accident would be the cause of his
> losing the money that was coming to him -- the "uveyado mammon rav li.")

That isn't what I wrote. When you lend money, the money paid back is
always new money. The old money was lent so that the debtor could spend
it, perhaps on an investment (an 'isqa, half debt, half piqadon). The
one who owed the money was none other than the Rambam's brother.

> The first possibility, that Rambam had some debtor residing across the
> Indian Sea, seems less plausible to me. I'm not sure if you're suggesting
> that lending money was the regular source of the Rambam's income. It would
> not seem to be so, because then his brother's misfortune would not have
> caused the cessation of his ability to learn without distraction. The
> Rambam could have just continued his money-lending activities and not
> begin practicing medicine professionally.

He needed the logistical support of his brother. Plus, the money his
brother was bringing back was a repayment, hence when that money was lost
at sea, Rambam could not ask the debtor to repay once more (according
to your idea that the Rambam engaged in moneylending).

Arie Folger

The gemmara distinguishes between the 5 grains and other grain-like
substances in their ability to become chometz. Similarly the gemmara
distingusihes between water and juices in their ability to bring about
chametz. Is there a noticeable distinction chemically in these processes
or is this purely a halachik tradition/distinction?

Gary J Schreiber MD wrote:
> The gemmara distinguishes between the 5 grains and other grain-like
> substances in their ability to become chometz. Similarly the gemmara
> distingusihes between water and juices in their ability to  bring about
> chametz. Is there a noticeable distinction chemically in these processes
> or is this purely a halachik tradition/distinction?

One of my sons did this as an experiment for a school science
fair. Actually, the bread rises faster when made with juice. My guess
was with the extra fructose in the juice, the yeast thrives. Perhaps
someday we'll add fructose or some other sugar to water and see how
quickly it rises, but I never saw that experiment done.

RD GJB pointed me to the machloqes R' Yochanan ben Nuri and the Chachamim
on orez before posting the question to the full olam. The gemara only
makes sense if one assumes that either (1) they didn't know that rice
flour makes dough that can rise, or (2) they are defining leavened
rice food as sirchon, so as to not use the word "chameitz" which the
conversation is using for a technical meaning that does not apply --
even though the science does for the literal sense of the word.

Since in the first case, Rav those who hold of the position on chazal and
science that we have been attributing to R' Kook would require Sepharadim
to treat rice as we do one of the 5 grains, and I never heard of anyone
making such a statement, I will assume Chazal were making a statement
about halachic label, not science.

By parallel, one can ask whether leavened dough made from juice gets
the same chalos sheim chameitz as if made from water, or if different
criteria apply. Once we said the biology doesn't map intuitively to the
din, why not?

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Here is the test to find whether your mission
micha@aishdas.org        on Earth is finished:
http://www.aishdas.org   if you're alive, it isn't.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Richard Bach

R' Avrohom Dubin wrote:
> If I understand your post correctly, your point is (or must) be that
> following the Tkufa of Shmuel means that the Tkufos do NOT necessarily
> fall on the solstices and equinoxes. Do you have a source for that and
> how then would you explain the concept of Tkufa according to Shmuel?

Shmule calculated the tekufa (for the purposes of Tal U-Matar) as
follows (Eiruvin 56a):
The Tekufot are separated by 91 days, 7 1/2 hours.

Multiply 91 days 7 1/2 hours by four and the result is a year calculated
to be exactly 365 1/4 days (365 days + 6 hours). The problem, however,
is that a more exact astronomical calculation of the length of a year
is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. As a result of this
discrepancy of 11 minutes and 14 seconds, the Tekufah has slowly moved
forward during the last 2,000 years at the rate of one day every 128
years, and about 8 days each millennium.

The Gregorian calendar fixed this drift, however, our calculation for
the tekufa was never updated and therefore does not actually fall on
the equinox.

R Daniel Eidensohn wrote back on Tues the 14th (8 days = billions of
years email time <g>) on the thread titled "Creation & allegory":
> I recently had a discussion with a rosh yeshiva who criticized my sefer
> Daas Torah. He asserted that real Jews don't need to research seforim and
> study the range of views to understand hashkofa. A  person who grows up
> with a strong mesora just knows the true point of view.. He asserted that
> Rav Soloveitchik expressed this idea in this essay on the two mesoras
> - the first being textual analysis and the other of deed....

I do not believe it's R' Dr Haym Soloveitchik's dichotomy of mimeticism
vs textualism. Rather, it's emunah peshutah vs machashavah amuqah. The
two chakiros are similar, but not identical. Perhaps one could say that
one is the halachic parallel to the other's classic aggadic distinction.

The difference between the two is what enables an era that is stressing
textual halakhah ever increasingly is also one that is putting ever
tighter restrictions on studying sifrei machashavah.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Here is the test to find whether your mission
micha@aishdas.org        on Earth is finished:
http://www.aishdas.org   if you're alive, it isn't.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Richard Bach

R Zev Sero wrote on Tues Feb 14:
> But the things in rotting meat aren't kinnim, they're tola'im. When they
> say that kinnim can be killed on Shabbos, they *are* talking about the
> thing which lives in human hair, or the similar thing which lives on
> human bodies and lays its eggs in clothes.

To go back to the original question, since I seem to have dug myself
into a hole by not noticing the difference in words in the gemara...

RnTK asked about the contradiction between the existence of the expression
"beitzei kinim" and this din. And furthermore, she asked a question
based on the fact that the existence of lice eggs are obvious to anyone
who checked heads for lice -- it's not some hard-to-ascertain fact.

What remains of my answer boils down to suggestion that perhaps they
are not talking about the same bug. Whether the bug they're talking
about is one that reproduced abiogenically and doesn't currently exist
(leaving aside the question of whether it historically existed), or if
it is one that reproduced in a manner similar to RDL's take on tola'im,
wouldn't change the din.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Here is the test to find whether your mission
micha@aishdas.org        on Earth is finished:
http://www.aishdas.org   if you're alive, it isn't.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Richard Bach

R Simcha Coffer wrote:
>> No, I mean that nissim aren't experienced by someone whose awareness is in
>> olam ha'asiyah. The essay is all about teva vs neis and the differences
>> in olamos. And in it REED explains why a difference in perspective truly
>> puts someone in a different olam.

> For some reason you are choosing to focus on certain passages in the
> ma'amar and intentionally averting your gaze from others. Rav Dessler
> states clearly that there are three levels of nissim.

REED spells out a spectrum, starting with nissim that are felt and seen by
all to those which are only seen by some. "All bechinos of olam ha'asiyah
are not absolute at all, but are relative to tzorekh ha'inyan." (p 310,
part of closing sentence of pereq 3) Which admittedly is not the same
as lefi ha'olam. I do not get how the olamos thesis of the ma'amar as a
whole and its connection to nissim developed in the previous pereq becomes
"tzorekh ha'inyan" in this pereq. So I did overshoot my mark there.

The relationship between bechinah and metzi'us is the subject of the
next paragraphs (the first two of pereq 4), "We find that we learn
according to this that our bechinah is itself the metzi'us of the world
for us. ... This havchanah seems strange to us, but it is only because
we live in olam ha'asiyah and see the physical as mamash absolute..."

To apply this to our question: Is there a tzorekh ha'inyan -- other than
biasing our bechirah -- to our experiencing the legacy of the nissim of
parashas Noach? If not, we shouldn't expect to experience them.

But, as RCS pointed out at the top, this means that a hypothetical
archeologist who did merit nissim wouldn't necessarily have a tzorekh
for this particular neis either.

The basic resolution works, but not this claim.

>              The biggest ra'aya that this is true is because Rav Dessler
> himself admits that the goy must have seen the amidas hashemesh in the
> case of Nakdimon ben Guryon. In fact, he entertains the idea that the
> entire Yerushalayim may have been privy to this neis. Surely they were
> not ALL living in the olam haYetzira.

And the basis of his sha'alah about the rest of Y-m -- lefi hatzorekh.

Rn Chana Luntz wrote:
> I think though that you are missing something of the subtlety of the
> approach that refers to hatorah dibra b'lashon bnei adam.

> Let's take a person from the dor hamabul as the mesorah has always
> understood such a person. If you were to ask them to describe "kol
> ha'aretz" would they have included Australia and England and South America
> (for example)?

Is there a maqor that gives this definition to dibrah haTorah belashon
b"a (hereafter: DHBBA)?

 From the gemara's usage, the expression refers to not using extra
words for dershen when they are used in common idiom. Such as ignoring
the keifel lashon of "ra'oh sir'eh" in the parashah of sotah (Berakhos
31b). The Rambam (ikkar #3) uses the idea to explain anthropomorphic
idiom to describe G-d.

But I do not see one in which we're expected to pin that idiom down to
the limitations of knowledge of people of a given time or place. It's not
like the Torah is giving a verbatum quote of what Hashem told Noach --
Noach got a vision, not a text! If anything, you would have to say the
entire known world in the days of matan Torah, which was quite larger
than just the Middle or even Near East. But I would need a maqor before
even saying that much.

However, this misses my point. I'm am sure someone could find a
way to find the appropriate peshat in the pesuqim. Particularly for
"kol ha'aretz", since "aretz" is so variable in meaning; "mitachas kol
hashamayim" is harder, but I'm sure still doable. My problem is in someone
finding new peshatim that aren't because they're implied by old ones.

...
>> This still poses a problem with accepting archeological findings, as
>> Egypt, China, Mesopotamia and many other cultures have records that --
>> *IF* dated correctly, imply a continuous presence since before the tower
>> and flood.

> Yes, that's right, that is what I said above. The dating of human beings
> is an issue - the point being it is an issue whether or not you posit a
> global flood - it is a creation issue in any event, which is why I see
> no point in discussing it in the context of the flood.

Because my position, as stated above, would mean that one can be loose
with the historicity of peshat in the part of the Torah speaking before
the expulsion from Gan Eden in ways one can't WRT the mabul. As there are
meqoros for that -- under debate in a different perpetual thread. Thus,
I'm bothered by the presence of people during the mabul and migdal period
in a way that the issue of our origins does not.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Here is the test to find whether your mission
micha@aishdas.org        on Earth is finished:
http://www.aishdas.org   if you're alive, it isn't.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Richard Bach

R Simcha Coffer wrote:
> Now, Chazal say that the splitting of the yam suf was one of the tinaaim
> of Maaseh Bereishis (vayashav haYam liEisano...litna'o haRishon). That is,
> Hashem decreed during the creative process of MB that the yam suf would
> split when it "saw" klal yisrael trapped in the desert. Consequently,
> the yam suf was merely following its natural mandate for that day based
> on its pre-programmed directive. Accordingly, Hashem said to Moshe
> "mah titz'ak elay"...why are you praying? The yam suf is *programmed*
> to split... tefila is inappropriate.... (The preceding was based on a
> maamar of Rav Hutner)

Aren't all nissim written into ma'aseh bereishis? The Ramban discusses
this in his explanation for why the need for nissim does not imply an
imperfect beri'ah. So then, why ever daven for a neis?

For that matter, teva too! If everything is deterministic in response
to our actions, our matzav, and our tzorekh (to tie threads), how can
one daven at all?

The classical answer is that tefillah changes who we are, and thereby
changes His response to us. Vekhein kan. One could argue that that it's
all preprogrammed directive but we still needed to trigger it.

I also do not know how to make this shtim with the Pachad Yitzchaq in
which R' Hutner explains qeri'as Yam Suf in terms of a change in teva
caused by a change in the olamos ha'elyonim when we agreed to be "beni
bechori Yisrael".

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Here is the test to find whether your mission
micha@aishdas.org        on Earth is finished:
http://www.aishdas.org   if you're alive, it isn't.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Richard Bach

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