Avodah Mailing List

Volume 22: Number 20

Thu, 28 Dec 2006

• 1. Re: Al petach beito mabachutz (Zev Sero)
• 2. Re: Al petach beito mabachutz (Marty Bluke)
• 3. Re: Halachic justification for short sleeves (Moshe Feldman)
• 4. Re: Yetzer HoRa Issues - warning - - Long Post (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: Yetzer HoRa Issues - warning - - Long Post (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: Prophet - mashgiach or godol hador? (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: History of Havarah (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: undeserved punishment? (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: zman hadloko erev Shabbos and motzoei Shabbos (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: Keil melech neeman (David E Cohen)
• 11. Re: Prophet - mashgiach or godol hador? (Moshe Yehuda Gluck)
• 12. Re: Prophet - mashgiach or godol hador? (Zev Sero)
• 13. Purim Torah (Moshe Yehuda Gluck)
• 14. Women/Korim (SBA)
• 15. Re: History of Havarah (Michael Kopinsky)

Marty Bluke wrote:
> R' Zev Sero asked:
> <She'elas tam: Who, exactly, "instituted" this? Where, and how long ago?
> 
> It is a Gemara in Shabbos 21b, the Gemara states "mitzva l'hanicha al 
> pesach beiso mibachutz ... u'bisha'as hasacana manicho al shulchano v'dayo

That's not the "institution" posited.  That's an accomodation for sh'as
sakana, and only for sh'as sakana.  It was suggested here that there was
some sort of "institution" that we should always light inside, even when
there is no sakana, in case there should ever be one, or something like
that.  This was given as a reason why most people light inside today.
I want to know where there is even a zecher to such a takana.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas

R' Zev Sero asked:
<She'elas tam: Who, exactly, "instituted" this? Where, and how long ago?

It is a Gemara in Shabbos 21b, the Gemara states "mitzva l'hanicha al pesach
beiso mibachutz ... u'bisha'as hasacana manicho al shulchano v'dayo
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Rabbi Yehudah Herzl Henkin has good Tradition article on this: "Contemporary
Tseni'ut" --found at
http://www.traditiononline.org/news/article.cfm?id=100680.

In Section A, he has a comprehensive discussion on what part of the zero'a
needs to be covered and concludes:
<< A typology can be established, then, as follows:

1. sleeveless dresses-forbidden by all opinions, as body can be seen.
2. short sleeves, loose-forbidden by all opinions if body can be seen.
3. short sleeves, tight-body cannot be seen, but forbidden if most of the
upper arm is uncovered (rubo ke-kulo)

4.sleeves half-way to elbow-forbidden because of tefah meguleh, room for
limmud zekhut 
5. sleeves to within a tefah of the elbow-minimum permitted
6. sleeves to elbow-recommended
7. sleeves to below elbow-first level humra
8. sleeves to wrists-second level humra.
>>

He also notes that covering the arm is based on Das Yehudis:
<< Zero'oteha megulot is the same regarding Keri'at Shema as it is regarding
Dat Yehudit, the binding customs of modest Jewish women.

In Ketubot 72b, "R. Yehuda said that Shemuel said, '[Dat Yehudit is
violated] if she displays her upper arms to people.'"
>>

In Section B of the article, he discusses whether Das Yehudis is fixed
(l'kulah) as of the time of the gemara, or whether it depends on the custom
of the particular locale (even l'kulah): 
<< Rashi76 defined Dat Yehudit as practices adopted by Jewish women
(shenahagu benot Yisrael) that are not required by Scripture. A number of
Rishonim imply that these practices vary according to time and place.
Tosafot Rid77 writes that Dat Yehudit does not inherently involve a
prohibition, but only that "women behave [nohagot] in such fashion as a way
of tseni'ut," in the present tense, i.e., it depends on contemporary
practice. Semag78 writes that Dat Yehudit requires that a woman wear a shawl
"like all the other women" (ke-shaar kol ha-nashim); hence, if the others do
not wear one, neither need she.

Moreover, Rambam is clear79 that Dat Yehudit varies from place to place. For
what he says in Hilkhot Ishut 24:12: . . . .
>>

RYHH does not specifically state that his "typology" of zero'a covering in
Section A depends on the practices of the locale, and that in a locale where
women wear short-sleeves (even less than half-way to the elbow), this is
permitted.  However, this would seem implied by his discussion in Section B.
Unfortunately, he did not integrate Section A and Section B.

Kol tuv,
Moshe

On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 12:50:23 -0500, R David Riceman <driceman@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> The Rambam (Shmona Perakim 2; cf. MN III:8) says that almost all sin is due
> to the passions and not to the intellect (he doesn't use those terms).

In 8P the Rambam includes passion, but only as one of two factors. "It's important to
know that all acts of disobedience and obedience mentioned in the Torah actually
apply to only two parts of your soul: your senses and passions." But in 8P he's talking
more about the domain of chiyuv. For example the Rambam excludes "your digestive
system or imagination" in contrast to enjoying the food or the emotional responses
evinced by dimyon, and writes that the question of choosing thought is somewhat complex
but possible.

Not that all sin is due to the passions, but the concept of sin can only apply to
the domains of the sensory and the emotional.

In the Moreh the Rambam says the whole Torah exists to help people overcome their
gashmi urges, which are the causes of all sin. That goes beyond using different terms,
IMHO. For that matter MN 3:8 promotes asceticism of a sort. E.g. (tr Friedlander):
> As for eating and drinking in so far as it is indispensable, they will eat and drink
> only as much as is useful and necessary as food, and not for the purpose of pleasure.
> They will also speak little of these things, and rarely congregate for such purposes.
> Thus our Sages, as is well known, kept aloof from a banquet that was not part of a
> religious act, and pious men followed the example of R. Phinechas, son of Jair, who
> never dined with other persons, and even refused to accept an invitation of R. Jehudah,
> the Holy. Wine may be treated as food, if taken as such, but to form parties for the
> purpose of drinking wine together must be considered more disgraceful than the
> unrestrained conduct of persons who in daylight meet in the same house undressed and
> naked.

The Rambam here, where he does speak closer to our topic is more like ruchnius vs
gashmius than passion vs intellect.

> The Rambam (SP 4 and H. Deoth 1:7) says that the way to control the passions
> is by practice.  There is, however, another approach.  Modern exponents
> include Rabbi Ziv....  That is by imagining
> scences which impel one to the correct behavior, so that one is trained
> before one encounters the actual experience.

Yes, Mussar can be considered a Behavioral-Cognitive approach, involving both
qabbalos for practicing the new middah, and cognitive elements like hispa'alus
(a way of learning a text and internalizing it) and hisbonenus (what the Alter
is being cited as describing here).

I was going to mention hisbonenus as a positive use of the koach hadimyon. There
is a description of Slabodka hisbonenus in MmE IV which I am not done looking over
before posting. The idea is that since emotions run to deeper levels of our
decisionmaking than ideas, and since emotions are shaped far far more by experience
than by thought, we must construct experiences that allow us to shape who we are.
This is easier through visualization than by setting up live experiences.

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             "The most prevalent illness of our generation is
micha@aishdas.org        excessive anxiety....  Emunah decreases anxiety:
http://www.aishdas.org   'The Almighty is my source of salvation;  I will
Fax: (270) 514-1507      trust and not be afraid.'" (Isa 12) -Shalhevesya

Missed one nequdah I wanted to make...

Same RDR post:
> Of course we all know that
> "yetzer hara" means different things in different contexts.  It's not
> always something bad, e.g. "bchol l'vavcha: b'shnei yitrecha"....

While I agree with the maskanah, this ra'ayah doesn't work. Without the
job of overcoming a yeitzer hara, one isn't doing avodas Hashem. It could
be that one serves H' "beshenei yitzrekha" by following one and overcoming
the other. The conclusion isn't compelled from the pasuq.

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 21:47:51 EST, RnTK <T613K@aol.com> wrote:
> What would the Rambam have thought of Rav Yosef Caro's  Magid?

1- He would have thought the Mechabeir needed psychiatric help. Not
the kind of thing the Rambam would have agreed existed.

2- The Mechabeir's pesaqim are unaffected. I've even argued here in
the past that perhaps the reason why the SA is based (admittedly
loosely) on the idea of a rov between the Rambam, the Rif and the
Tuv is because he couldn't rely on his own Magid-informed knowledge
of the inyan and had to make sure he was following the sources.

>  That Magid is
> something mysterious that has long  intrigued me.  Maybe you (or others on
> Avodah) can tell me something about  who or what the Magid...

According to the Maggid Meisharim (attributed to RYC), the Mechabeir's Maggid
was the mal'akh who embodied the Mishnah. Goes together with RYC being a gilgul
of Rebbe.

The Maggid Meisharim has it that the Maggid told the Mechabeir that he would
die al qiddush H'. This is something that he aspired to, actually. (R' Aqiva
was happy to have had the opportunity too.) So we can conclude that even if
the Mechabeir didn't write MM, it was written by one of the mequbalei Tzefas
in his lifetime. Why would that line be published after RYC's death of natural
causes?

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             When memories exceed dreams,
micha@aishdas.org        The end is near.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - Rav Moshe Sherer
Fax: (270) 514-1507      

On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 22:00:56 EST, RnTK <T613K@aol.com> wrote:
> RMB:
>>I'm not sure if it's possible for it  to be a physical speech
>> defect. ... If  they really lacked the mobility ... they would have
>> lost half the alphabet, not to mention having a hard time  drinking.

> I don't know why you would say that a speech defect must be either learned
> (like an accent) OR the result of a physical malformation....

Since you're forcing me to look at my own position in more depth:
I was arguing that it's either physical or habit, and if the habit is common
in one population that habit must have been learned. For that matter, I would
say that a habit that is learned through imitation /is/ an accent.

Lisps and r/w switches are because those are hard articulations. Toddlers often
get it wrong and since they are not motivated to fix it if they're understood,
some of them won't unlearn it before it's well ingrained.

BTW, the distinction between sounds is learned. Israelis really can't hear the
/i/ /ee/ difference as readily as Americans, and some who never were exposed to
another language until adultood never do. Similarly Japanese speakers and /l/
vs /r/; Japanese has a single phoneme that makes two sounds similar to each (but
more like things in between) depending on context, so they associate those sounds
with a single meaning. They lose the ability to differentiate. Another example:
Russians need to learn v vs w. Or when my Indian co workers try to show me some
of the differences between their letters and I just can't hear it.

On Mon, 25 Dec 2006 14:41:49 -0800 (PST), afolger@aishdas.org wrote:
> RMB wrote: <<1- Sounds dropped because they do not exist in the local
> language, or mutated to the nearest equivalent in the local language. The
> American qamatz, cholamand reish leap to mind.>>
 
> While the mechanism you propose is sound, I wonder, VOS IZ SCHLECHT MIT
> DER AMERIKANISCHE OHSSPRACHE fin choilem in raish?! Actually, some argue
> that they are superior. The American reish may be a reish refuya.

... which (to spell it out) is almost every reish in Tanakh. Only 14 have a
dageish.

I didn't mean to criticise the American /r/ sound, just to spell out its
historical origin, or perhaps rebirth. The American chowlam, though, is a
bit too round, it's a dipthong with a vuv at the end. For those of us who
expect a cholam malei to have a different sound than a cholam chaseir, it's
a likely candidate for the malei. With that one qualification (limiting to
cholam malei) I happen to think both are superior to what my family left
Europe using. ("Superior" being defined as closer to something at least some
shevatim were using during Matan Torah, and hopefully even my own.)

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Nearly all men can stand adversity,
micha@aishdas.org        but if you want to test a man's character,
http://www.aishdas.org   give him power.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                      -Abraham Lincoln

On Mon, 25 Dec 2006 21:25:43 +0000, rabbi@att.net (Mordechai Torczyner) wrote:
> Worth noting: The maamar chazal is that Moshe doesn't understand it, and
> indeed asks HKBH about it. That's hardly a statement that "no one really
> claims to know."

It's on "upanai lo yeira'u". Even Moshe, who saw more of Hashem than anyone
else was denied knowledge of tzadiq vera lo, which is what is meant by seeing
Hashem from behind. (Maybe that tzadiq vera lo can only be understood with
sufficient hindsight?) "Even Moshe" would mean "no one". So I stand by my
claim.

...
> I, too, am in favor of following the counsel in Kol Dodi Dofek - but
> discussing the approaches of Chazal, and pitting them against each other,
> is hardly declaring any of them to be definitive. It's legitimate to ask
> why one Tanna or Amora didn't take into consideration the answer of
> another.

I was posting in reply to someone taking one idea and posing it as a final
answer WRT a specific tragedy. I do not think any of Chazal meant any of
their answers as final, which was the thrust of my post. But even if not,
we can't take any one maamar from the resulting set that way.

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             The fittingness of your matzos [for the seder]
micha@aishdas.org        isn't complete with being careful in the laws
http://www.aishdas.org   of Passover. One must also be very careful in
Fax: (270) 514-1507      the laws of business.    - Rabbi Israel Salanter

On Tue, 26 Dec 2006 01:47:44 GMT, "kennethgmiller@juno.com" <kennethgmiller@juno.com> wrote:
> And I tend to feel that way too. But a thought just occurred to me:
> For purposes of Tal UMatar, we hold a solar year to be exactly 365.25
> days, even though Chazal knew it to be inaccurate. ...
>                                  Perhaps this is also RT's reasoning?
> For the great majority of the world, and for the great majority of
> the year, 72 clock minutes is more than enough time to insure that
> Tzeis has passed, so we use it in all cases for simplicity's sake.

It's one thing not to ask G-d on the correct dates for the season. Rain
doesn't go that exactly by the calendar anyway. Similarly when they
decided how often to say birkhas hachamah -- what's wrong with some
extra shevach because the sun and the earth and the day of the week are
only somewhat in alignment?

If you're speaking of issurim deRabbanan that misevara should be based
on the stars and they tell us to use an approximation, I would be
only slightly less comfortable.

However, doesn't this involve issurim deOraisa? Chazal can't give us a
lo pelug or lo daq that would lead people to violating a deOraisa.

Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             One who kills his inclination is as though he
micha@aishdas.org        brought an offering. But to bring an offering,
http://www.aishdas.org   you must know where to slaughter and what
Fax: (270) 514-1507      parts to offer.        - R' Simcha Zissel Ziv

R' Micha Berger asked:
> How can the Prof attribute it to the Zohar Chadash (published to include
> material found in Tzafas)? It's already in the Machzor Viri...

He was not attributing the idea of 248 words to the Zohar Chadash, only the
solution of having the chazzan repeat the words "Hashem Elokeikhem emes."
He writes explicitly that it was known in Ashkenaz long before that (its
earliest source being in the Tanchuma), and that it was the reason for the
old minhag Ashkenaz of saying "Keil Melekh ne'eman" (he does not mention the
"Midrash Aggadah" about the 613 words).  I apologize if this was not clear
from my original post.


> If someone can explain how not stopping helps complete 248 words if one
> already said KMN, I would appreciate it.

I think it's just saying that the 248th word is "emes," so you need to join
it together with keri'as shema`, rather than pausing after "Ani Hashem
Elokeikhem" and then proceeding with "Emes ve-yatziv..."  In other words, it
seems to be providing a different reason for a din that the gemara already
gives us a reason for (Berakhos 14a-b).

--D.C. 

R' MB:
> According to the Maggid Meisharim (attributed to RYC), the Mechabeir's
> Maggid
> was the mal'akh who embodied the Mishnah. Goes together with RYC being a
> gilgul
> of Rebbe.

And with R' Shlomo Alkabetz's telling of the famous Shvuos nights incidents.

KT,
MYG

Micha Berger wrote:

> The Maggid Meisharim has it that the Maggid told the Mechabeir that he
> would die al qiddush H'. [...] So we can conclude that even if the
> Mechabeir didn't write MM, it was written by one of the mequbalei
> Tzefas in his lifetime. Why would that line be published after RYC's
> death of natural causes?

Doesn't it also say the reason why he lost that zechut?  If so, it would
make as much sense to write the story after his death as it would before.



-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas

Yes, it's unseasonal, but I just saw it. 

 

R' Baruch of Mezibizh ws asked, "We know that Achashveirosh ruled over 127
countries. How many were at land, and how many at sea?" He answered, "It
says, 'Vayasem hamelech mas al ha'aretz v'I'yei ha'yam.' "Mas" is gematria
100, and "v'I'yei" is gematria 27. 100 by land and 27 by sea."

 

KT,

MYG

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From: "Rich, Joel" <>
R'YBS was known to feel that women should not go korim on Y"K since it
was not done in the women's area of the  bet mikdash when the avodah was
done. Does anyone know of a source that says women should/could do this
today?
>>

I have no source, but AFAIK, in (some?) Yekkishe kehilos it was done.

SBA

Another issue is when a community decides, for reasons legitimate or
not, to change their havarah.  The South African community changed
their havara to sefaradit (ie Israeli) I believe in the 1950s as a
move of "solidarity" with Israel, who had made that same decision.
Now while such a move is debatable in Israel, where there were at
least different cultures rapidly converging and at least superficially
it makes sense to make a "compromise" havara, in SA, with its mostly
litvish contingency, such a decision is much more difficult to
support.

As I was born in SA, I grew up speaking sefaradit, and recently
switched to American ashkenazis, as I could not justify an active
decision to change a minhag, with no halachic justification.  While I
don't see American ashkenazis either as being an accurate reflection
of the havara of my ancestors from Lita, it is at least a natural
development/evolution from the same, rather than an artificial attempt
at creating a new havara.

On 12/27/06, Micha Berger <micha@aishdas.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 22:00:56 EST, RnTK <T613K@aol.com> wrote:
> > RMB:
> >>I'm not sure if it's possible for it  to be a physical speech
> >> defect. ... If  they really lacked the mobility ... they would have
> >> lost half the alphabet, not to mention having a hard time  drinking.
>
> > I don't know why you would say that a speech defect must be either learned
> > (like an accent) OR the result of a physical malformation....
>
> Since you're forcing me to look at my own position in more depth:
> I was arguing that it's either physical or habit, and if the habit is common
> in one population that habit must have been learned. For that matter, I
> would
> say that a habit that is learned through imitation /is/ an accent.
>
> Lisps and r/w switches are because those are hard articulations. Toddlers
> often
> get it wrong and since they are not motivated to fix it if they're
> understood,
> some of them won't unlearn it before it's well ingrained.
>
> BTW, the distinction between sounds is learned. Israelis really can't hear
> the
> /i/ /ee/ difference as readily as Americans, and some who never were exposed
> to
> another language until adultood never do. Similarly Japanese speakers and
> /l/
> vs /r/; Japanese has a single phoneme that makes two sounds similar to each
> (but
> more like things in between) depending on context, so they associate those
> sounds
> with a single meaning. They lose the ability to differentiate. Another
> example:
> Russians need to learn v vs w. Or when my Indian co workers try to show me
> some
> of the differences between their letters and I just can't hear it.
>
> On Mon, 25 Dec 2006 14:41:49 -0800 (PST), afolger@aishdas.org wrote:
> > RMB wrote: <<1- Sounds dropped because they do not exist in the local
> > language, or mutated to the nearest equivalent in the local language. The
> > American qamatz, cholamand reish leap to mind.>>
>
> > While the mechanism you propose is sound, I wonder, VOS IZ SCHLECHT MIT
> > DER AMERIKANISCHE OHSSPRACHE fin choilem in raish?! Actually, some argue
> > that they are superior. The American reish may be a reish refuya.
>
> ... which (to spell it out) is almost every reish in Tanakh. Only 14 have a
> dageish.
>
> I didn't mean to criticise the American /r/ sound, just to spell out its
> historical origin, or perhaps rebirth. The American chowlam, though, is a
> bit too round, it's a dipthong with a vuv at the end. For those of us who
> expect a cholam malei to have a different sound than a cholam chaseir, it's
> a likely candidate for the malei. With that one qualification (limiting to
> cholam malei) I happen to think both are superior to what my family left
> Europe using. ("Superior" being defined as closer to something at least some
> shevatim were using during Matan Torah, and hopefully even my own.)
>
> Tir'u baTov!
> -mi
>
> --
> Micha Berger             Nearly all men can stand adversity,
> micha@aishdas.org        but if you want to test a man's character,
> http://www.aishdas.org   give him power.
> Fax: (270) 514-1507                      -Abraham Lincoln
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Avodah mailing list
> Avodah@lists.aishdas.org
> http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org
>


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