Avodah Mailing List

Volume 17 : Number 082

Wednesday, July 5 2006

• flags with crosses
• Re: Bishul Akum
• Re: me'ein hachasima
• Re: historical contingency and brachos
• Re: historical contingency and brachos
• historical contingency and brachos
• mtzius
• sushi
• Re: flags with crosses
• Re: historical contingency and brachos
• Re: are sociological statements of Chazal binding
• Re: Foie gras and veal
• Re: are sociological statements of Chazal binding

I am creating a clipart library for a Torah Umesorah subsidiary
website. While creating clipart of flags from around the world I
realized how many have christian crosses on them (in other words the
crosses aren't just designs they are there representing the xianity of
that country). Does anyone know how Jews in those countries (England for
example) deal with that problem? Do they fly it without reservations? Do
they display it in their shuls (often up next to the Israeli flag)?

cbk

Zev Sero wrote:
> T613K@aol.com wrote:
>> Second of all, was there such a thing as sushi when Yakov
>> Herzog was looking for something to eat in a restaurant?

> Well, it existed, of course - in Japan, and probably in a handful of
> Japanese restaurants in North America. But it was not nearly common
> enough to exempt (those species of) fish from bishul akum. Nowadays it
> certainly is.

It still may not be common enough. Certain posqim feel that raw fish
consumption still constitutes a mi'ut shebemi'ut of all fish consumption
or a mi'ut shebemi'ut of all fish eaters, or both, and thus still subject
to Bishul Yisrael.

> Which brings us back to sociological changes affecting the halacha.
> There probably isn't a gemara that definitively states that fish is not
> commonly eaten raw, and so is subject to BA; but what if there were?
> Would anyone claim that since Chazal said it it must be true, everywhere
> and forever, and that to say otherwise is to be "makchish magideha"?

The fact that Hazal used the rule of edible raw versus supplying a list
should suggest that Hazal was intentionally ambigous, considering that
Bishul akkum was a Gezeirah.

Jacob Farkas

FWIW, Machzor Livorno has Uvesefer in the same place as Ashkenaz and
Sfard, after "vetov yihyeh be'enecha...", right before the chatima,
which is "hamevarech...", just as it is all year.

Interestingly, it also puts "uchtov..." right before the chatima of
Modim, rather than before "kol hachayim" as Ashkenaz/Sfard have it,
and it specifically notes that the minhag in Venice is to say it before
"kol hachayim" (i.e. the minhag in the rest of Italy was not so).
There is also another addition - "zechor rachamecha", which Ashkenaz/
Sfard only say in chazarat hashatz on RH/YK, is said in every tefilah
during the 10 days.

 -- 
Zev Sero
zev@sero.name

RMB wrote:
> By your [R'n LL's --af]  understanding, there is no reason for shevatim to
> have local batei din.

Most questions taht kehillah rabbanim (who have under their responsibility
the full gamut of what belongs in a kehillah, from hashgakhot over 'hinukh
to issues of personal status, not to forget synagogue, miqveh and dinei
Torah) see are not those requiring tremendous creativity. Knowledge,
yes, but creativity, far, far less. And that is in a time when we do
kiruv and where the synagogue is the center of many people's Jewish life.

Imagine a world in which dinei memonot and kenassot are being dealt with,
with ba'alei din saying "mossif ani 'aleikhem dayyanim", and you can
easily see what the shevet's Sanhedrin was for.

In addition, if during exile far flung communities managed to stay in
touch with each other and keep halakhah mostly uniform (take you lomus
spectacles off for a minute and look at halakhah from the outside in,
from the perspective of an anthropologist with no preconceived notions
of Judaism).

Therefore, I fail to see why shevatim, living pretty near each other
and expected to meet at least three times a year would have divergent
real halakhah.

Kol tuv,
Arie Folger

On Sat, 1 Jul 2006 23:22:00 -0400, Micha Berger <micha@aishdas.org> wrote:
>On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 01:08:28PM -0400, Lisa Liel wrote:
>>R' Micha writes that "In fact, most questions must not have gone 
>>forward to the central beis din in Yerushalayim, the Sanhedrin." 
>>But I think the Rambam disagrees on this and makes it clear that 
>>halakhic questions must have been answered based on knowledge, or 
>>they went to the Sanhedrin. The "creativity" so desired by certain 
>>movements was the sole province of the Sanhedrin.

>By your understanding, there is no reason for shevatim to have local 
>batei din.

I don't see how that follows. There were local batei din, region batei
din, etc. The Rambam describes this in detail. It was a tiered system,
with local batei din answering the questions they could, and going up a
level to a regional beit din if they couldn't. And the regional beit din
would answer if they could, and ramp it up to Jerusalem if they couldn't.
And so on, until it came to the Sanhedrin.

>I do not see, though, where the Rambam requires that every question 
>be resolved by the national beis din. Yes, as you write, questions 
>that can't be answered by knowledge (presumably those of local 
>rabbanim or batei din) did go to the Sanhedrin, but many questions 
>couldn't have.

For example?

>For example, there is archeological evidence that both "Rashi" and 
>"Rabbeinu Tam" tefillin were in use during bayis sheini, that 
>Sanhedrin didn't resolve *every* divergence of opinion.

Could you provide this proof? I've heard this claim in the past, but
I've never seen it substantiated. We know that during Bayit Sheni,
sects multiplied, and so did machloket. The Sanhedrin, for a good part
of Bayit Sheni, was under the control of people who didn't really care
a lot about the Torah and were all about the personal power. In a
situation like that, and lacking modern telecommunication options,
it wouldn't be that surprising to see errors creeping in. In fact,
our tradition claims that's exactly what happened.

>Which would allow room for regional pesaq and differences, which 
>during bayis rishon would translate into differences by sheivet. We 
>already established that havaros differed by sheivet (sh/siboles) as 
>well as nusach (our opening topic).

Regional accents are hardly the same thing as different halakhot.
And nuschaot of tefillot were not originally a halakhic issue either.
You're speaking in wide generalities, but you still haven't found any
basis for there having been divergent halakhot. Certainly, when Israel
and Judah were split, the northern Shevatim didn't bring questions to
Jerusalem, but that's only one of many things they did wrong. If that's
what you're talking about, fine. We know that they allowed egel worship
in Dan and Beit El, and that certainly wasn't cleared with the Sanhedrin.

There is no historical basis for a multiplicity of conflicting halakhot
being an acceptable state of affairs when a central halakhic authority
exists.

>Questions also get more detailed with time; the bigger questions 
>would arise earlier and get a pesaq then. Second, the world was 
>bigger during bayis rishon than sheini (particularly after roman 
>harness technology and roads), also making larger differences more probable.

It's an interesting theory, but it really has no basis, and is
contradicted b'feirush by the Rambam.

Lisa

R' "David Riceman" <driceman@worldnet.att.net> writes:
> I told my son recently that if the Torah had been given on 
> Mount Rushmore instead of Mount Sinai we would make hamotzi 
> on tacos. That's actually a slight exaggeration, since I'd 
> guess brachos were established by Hazal during and after the 
> period of Anshei Knesses HaGedolah ("HaTov Shelo Hisrihu 
> v'hameitiv shenitnu l'kvurah").

>  From a historical perspective this makes perfect sense. From 
> a more philosophical perspective, though, why should that 
> period of time be priviliged over other periods? Why have a 
> special bracha on bread because of ancient dietary customs? 
> Why not make hamotzi on tacos zeicher l'galus America?

Interestingly, Jared Diamond in "Germs, Guns and Steel" effectively
gives a very interesting answer to your question.

The book is written to answer the question (made by a Papua New Guinea
politician to Diamond when he was doing anthropological work in Papua
New Guinea) "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo
[material goods] and brought it to New Guinea, while we black people
had little cargo of our own". Or, as Diamond rephrases the question:
"Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are, rather
than some other way? For instance, why weren't Native Americans,
Africans and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjegated,
or exterminated Europeans and Asians?"

Obviously there are racist responses to such questions. But in exploring
non racist answers, Diamond provides some fascinating insights. One of
the fundamental reasons, according to Diamond, as to relative development
is the availability (or lack of availability) of wild cereal crops that
were readily domesticatable. Those places that never had native cereal
crops that were domesticatable (like New Guinea) never developed the
agricultural base to support further development. Those places that
had some wild native cereal crops that were domesticatable, but with
some difficulty (such as corn) did indeed ultimately develop them as a
domesticated crop, but it took a lot longer.

Only the fertile crescent had the range of easily domesticatable wild
cereal crops that made a transition to intensive agriculture easy.
In particular, he singles out eincorn wheat, emmer wheat and barley.
This is because:

High productivity: - Experimental studies in which botanists have
collected seeds from natural strands of wild cereals in the fertile
crescent, show that annual harvests of up to nearly a ton of seeds per
hectare can be obtained, yielding 50 kilocalories of food energy for only
one kilocalorie of work expended (p136) - this is because: - barley and
emmer wheat, the two earliest important crops of the fertile crescent,
rank 3rd and 13th in seed size of the world's wild grass species (p139) -
the wheats offer the additional advantage of a high protein content (in
contrast to the most important cereal crops of Asia and the New World
rice and corn) which have a lower protein content (posing significant
nutritional problems (p 138).

Because of the high productivity there was a corresponding ease of
domestication: - "The wild ancestors of our wheat and barley crops look
so similar to the crops themselves that the identity of the ancestor has
never been in doubt. Because of the ease of domestication, big-seeded
annuals were the first, or among the first, crops developed not only
in the Fertile Crescent but also in China and the Sahel. Contrast this
quick evolution of wheat and barley with the story of corn, the leading
cereal crop of the New World. Corn's probable ancestor, a wild plant
known as teosinte, looks so different from corn in its seed and flower
structures that even its role as ancestor has been hotly debated by
botanists for a long time. Teosinte's value as food would not have
impressed hunter-gatherers; it was less productive in the wild than
wild wheat, it produced much less seed than did the corn eventually
developed from it, and it enclosed its seeds in inedible hard coverings.
For teosinte to become a useful crop, it had to undergo drastic changes in
its reproductive biology, to increase greatly its investment in seeds, and
to lose those rock like coverings of its seeds. Archaeologists are still
vigorously debating how many centuries or millennia of crop development in
the Americas were required for ancient corn cobs to progress from a tiny
size up to the size of a human thumb, but it seems clear that several
thousand more years were then required for them to reach modern sizes.
The contrast between the immediate values of wheat and barley and the
difficulties posed by teosinte may have been a significant factor in the
differing developments of New World and Eurasian human societies." (p137).

If you posit that in order to have the Torah be given on Mount Sinai,
one needed previously to have yitziat mitzrayim, and in order to have
yitziat mitzraim, you needed to have both the famine and the storehouses
recommended by Yosef - whose effectiveness would seem from the above
to be predicated on the existence and cultivation of the cereal crops
found in the Fertile Crescent (ie wheat and barley), then you probably
end up saying that the Torah could never be given on Mount Rushmore (or
at least a Mount Rushmore where corn was the dominant cereal crop). Hence
a privileged position for the product of the cereal crops of the Fertile
Crescent would seem logical.

Regards
Chana

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 from R. "Rich, Joel" <JRich@Segalco.com> 
[R Zvi Lampel:] 
:> In full agreement with using scientific clarifications to determine 
:> metsius (where metsius is relevant; metsios invisible to the naked eye, 
:> for instance is another issue, such as in kashrus). Computer scanning 
:> of sifrei Torah (plus human input) is an example. 

> can you provide some further examples of cases which you would or wouldn't 
> accept mtzius clarification(eg where would identification of deceased 
> and cause of death by medical devices fall) 

Sorry I made it sound as if I was making such decisions. I was agreeing
that I've heard of the noted decisions by recognized poskim.

Zvi Lampel

Many current posqim are of the opinion that fish needs Bishul Yisrael
in spite of the popularity of sashimi and raw-fish sushi. The reasoning
is [and not limited to] the fact that most people do not eat fish raw,
and/or that most (overwhelming majority) fish is not consumed raw. The
mi'ut of people who eat raw fish or the mi'ut of fish that is consumed
raw is not qove'a fish is a food that is ra'ui l'okhlo k'shehee hai and
thus exempt of Bishul Yisrael. There are posqim who disagree, and use
the fact that raw fish is edible as proof that BY is not needed.>>

In my small town several Sushi restaurants have recently opened up.
At what point is it considered a significant minority?

What bothers me more is that all fish are lumped together.
For vegetables it is clear that bishul akum depends on the properties of
each individual vegetable. Why should the eating habits of trout effect
if bishul akum is permissible for raw Salmon?

 -- 
Eli Turkel

Showing flags is quite an American thing to do, isn't it? And showing
the Israeli next to the American flag a MO-through-Reform thing? I wonder
how common this is at all in other countries.

The question might be extended to countries with a crescent in the flag,
or a five-pointed communist star, even though the "Star of David" used
to have five points as well once.

ELPhM

On Tue, Jul 04, 2006 at 10:44:09AM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote:
:>For example, there is archeological evidence that both "Rashi" and 
:>"Rabbeinu Tam" tefillin were in use during bayis sheini, that 
:>Sanhedrin didn't resolve *every* divergence of opinion.

: Could you provide this proof? I've heard this claim in the past, but
: I've never seen it substantiated. We know that during Bayit Sheni,
: sects multiplied, and so did machloket...

In which case, nothing can be proven archeologically, since one can
always suggest that the tefillin were produced by a divergent sect.
However, the source is Yigal Yadin's book on tefillin at Qumran (1969),
which detours into a comparison of other tefillin of the general period.
However, we're talking about cubical things painted black. Every sign
of being kosher lehalakhah when they were new. Which makes the idea that
they aren't Pharasaic / Rabbinic very unlikely.

:>Which would allow room for regional pesaq and differences, which 
:>during bayis rishon would translate into differences by sheivet. We 
:>already established that havaros differed by sheivet (sh/siboles) as 
:>well as nusach (our opening topic).

: Regional accents are hardly the same thing as different halakhot.
: And nuschaot of tefillot were not originally a halakhic issue either.
...

But they do show a level of isolation between shevatim.

...
: There is no historical basis for a multiplicity of conflicting halakhot
: being an acceptable state of affairs when a central halakhic authority
: exists.

Aside from the Rambam you cite, who seems to me to merely say that
the Sanhedrin was available for questions that couldn't be resolved
by lower courts. I do not see an argument from you that your more
broad reading is compelling or even more loyal to the Hebrew, so I
can't comment further.

And in fact, the Sanhedrin existed throughout the period of the tannaim
and most of the amoraim. We do not find, though, that "stam mishnah
keSanhedrin", but rather, keR' Meir -- a major compiler and Rebbe's
rebbe -- which sure sounds to me like a personal ruling.

Nor did the Sanhedrin cause the Galil to immediately accept the ban
on poultry and milk.


On Mon, Jul 03, 2006 at 05:37:18PM +0200, Arie Folger wrote:
: Imagine a world in which dinei memonot and kenassot are being dealt with,
: with ba'alei din saying "mossif ani 'aleikhem dayyanim", and you can
: easily see what the shevet's Sanhedrin was for.

I understand what you're saying -- that they existed to adjucate, not
interpret the law. I am not sure how it qualifies as a beis din hagadol
that way, not understand then why they need be specific to the sheivet.

Also, even in bayis sheini, the kohanim ran their own high court to
decide hilkhos qodshim and yuchsin. Not just adjucate. No?

: In addition, if during exile far flung communities managed to stay in
: touch with each other and keep halakhah mostly uniform (take you lomus
: spectacles off for a minute and look at halakhah from the outside in,
: from the perspective of an anthropologist with no preconceived notions
: of Judaism).

I would agree. However, that's largely because we are building from
common precedent. But there were no texts yet, not even standardized
memorizable mishnayos. They had much less common ground to build on.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             The trick is learning to be passionate in one's
micha@aishdas.org        ideals, but compassionate to one's peers.
http://www.aishdas.org   
Fax: (270) 514-1507      

On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 11:09:40PM +0300, Moshe Feldman wrote:
: (1) all statements (even aggadic statements made by individual amoraim) in
: the gemara were divinely inspired, or just that (2) central statements
: accepted by the gemara as psak halacha fall into that category. The case
: of tav l'meitav falls into the latter category, as it is the basis for
: halachos in hilchos kiddushin.

Actually, RYBS takes tav lemeisiv out of this discussion altogether. He
says it's a pasuq -- ve'el isheikh teshuqaseikh. It's therefore not
a sociological statement, but HQBH's existential statement, running
underneath and possibly hidden by psychology and sociological factors,
but still there.

-mi

On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 11:47:59AM -0400, Jacob Farkas wrote:
:> I do find it strange on a sociological basis that fattening geese wasn't
:> carried out in Lithuania.

: Were geese common in Lithuania? [They aren't in NYC...]

In Suvalk, not quite Lithuania, but surely Litta from a Jewish
perspective, a family with a child approaching marriageable age would
collect goose down when eating goose to make comforters and pillows for
the new couple.

IOW, it would seem "yes".

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             "And you shall love H' your G-d with your whole
micha@aishdas.org        heart, your entire soul, and all you own."
http://www.aishdas.org   Love is not two who look at each other,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      It is two who look in the same direction.

RJS wrote on Areivim:
>  This
> is a huge chiddush, and is one of  the reasons RYBS was so angry with
> Rabbi Rackman, for implying that statements of Chazal are dependent on
> social mores (specifically for saying that the rule of tav lamativ tan du
> does not apply anymore).

Yet Chazal claimed that sociology changed in regards to Yibbum, originally
Yibbum was ikkur but since the nature of people's yetzer horo changed
so Chalizta is now ikkar.

Shulhan Aruch claims sociology changed re: the Prayer before the Bathroom
that we no longer presume to have mal'achim guarding us.

Also whether you sleep in the nude vs. pajamas would effect saying
Hashem's name withou washing first. And the gemeara seems to recommend
Elokai Nesesha before netillas yadayim yet we say modeh ani instead and
defer Elokai nehsamah until much later...

Rosh Claimed that the mitzva of writing Sifrei Torah extends nowadays
to all Seforim.

Tosafos claims that we can dance on Yom Tov and Shabbos because we don't
tune instruments....

See The G'mara vs. the Mishna Brura re: Women and Zimun.

Or see re: Women reading megillah, in the Beis Yoseeph the machlokes
Rishonim is whether women can be motzi men,but hakkol modim that they
can be motzi other women, but the Mishna Brura seems to say that for
sure women cannot be motzi men the shai'ilo is if it is ok to motzi
other women or just herself.

Now, I'm not saying Rabbi Rackman is right or that he is wrong, just
that rabbis have been making evaluations like his all along.

Kol Tuv
Regards,
RabbiRichWolpoe@aol.com   

*********************


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