Avodah Mailing List

Volume 24: Number 24

Tue, 23 Oct 2007

• 1. Re: Just what ARE the rules of p'sak anyway? (Rich, Joel)
• 2. Re: Kohanim in Cemeteries (Zev Sero)
• 3. Re: May Kohanim visit the Rebbe's Ohel by means of a "box"? (Richard Wolpoe)
• 4. Re: Minhag Yisroel (Zev Sero)
• 5. Re: Minhag Yisroel and Gra on 2 Matzos vs.3 Matzos (Chana Luntz)
• 6. Re: Minhag Yisroel and Gra on 2 Matzos vs.3 Matzos (Arie Folger)
• 7. Re: An-im Zemiros (Moshe Y. Gluck)
• 8. Re: What did they learn in the yeshiva of Shem and Ever (kennethgmiller@juno.com)
• 9. Re: Religion and Falsifiability (David Riceman)
• 10. Re: Religion and Falsifiability (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: Religion and Falsifiability (kennethgmiller@juno.com)
• 12. Re: Religion and Falsifiability (Rich, Joel)

	

1.	

let's recap:
He claims that the Bavli trumps all and THAT is a rule of pesak:


1.	is that a fact?  is the Bavli the final arbiter of pesak?
	
2.	Or is the the decisiveness of the Bavli a matter of debate? 
3.	are there sources to prove one side or the other? [believe me I
am looking at this ll the time?

Toby claims that R&C rabbis decide the issue first and find support in
texts that suits their agenda.  But Rabbi ABC posits that Behag, Toafos
and many Orthodox rabbis do this frequently, too. That a decision is mad
on some agenda and sources are mustered to make the argument plausible,
or cogent post facto.  First comes a minhag afterwards come the
rationale. 

How can  I answer Rabbi ABC? As a jew in need I request YOUR help!


Disclaimer: I do not consider Rabbi ABC an honest broker of the facts of
how Halachah works. But in the interest of da mah lehashiv, I need
something that can be "makheh es shinav". 



-- 
Kol Tuv / Best Regards,
RabbiRichWolpoe@Gmail.com
 
========================================================================
==
This goes to the point of my long discussion with  R' AF  -  if you
claim 2 poskim can come to different conclusions on exactly the same
questioner/question without pointing to algorithmic differences (libi
omer li, lev shel torah, personal experiences), then as long as a posek
can show a source (e.g yerushalmi, tosefta....), you can't refute
logically other then by saying he is not a member of chachmei hamesora
who can choose what source to rely on in the particular circumstances.
 
KT
Joel Rich
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Jonathan Baker wrote:

> so why not use the box on shabbos to carry stuff?  wear the box on
> suspenders, and carry stuff inside.  you're inside a fence.

But you'd be carrying the fence itself through a RHR.  I can't find a
clear issur for that, but nor can I find a heter.

Or perhaps the problem isn't that you're carrying the fence, but that
with every step you take it's as if you're constructing it anew, which
is forbidden on Shabbos.  (If I'm reading the Shulchan Aruch correctly,
the people who make up a human mechitzah must not know what they're
doing until they've stopped walking.  Once they're in place and not
moving, they can be told what they're doing and to stand still, and you
can carry in the middle, but after that they can't walk any more.  I
assume the reason is that if they walk they're building the mechitzah
anew with each step, with the intent of building, which is forbidden.)

None of these considerations apply to a cohen in a cemetery on a
weekday, when both carrying and construction are permitted.

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

ON a cold wintry New England Day - I think it was President's Day -, a
funeral was conducted in the YI of West Hartford for its former president.

In oure relatively small community there were numerous Kohanim.  In order
to  keep the Kohanim from having to suffer outside in the cold, the niftar
had given a tzivuy to leave HIM in his casket in the hearse outside - so as
to permit the Kohanim to come INSIDE for the  hespeidim. And AFAIK no
Kohanim precede to the cemetery

=======================================================================

I conducted a funeral for a bas Kohen a few months ago.  Her great nephews
all came and stood outside of the funeral home and drove along to the burial
in Trenton, NJ. But AFAIK the Kohanim made no attempt to go inside the fence
of the beis olam.

-- 
Kol Tuv / Best Regards,
RabbiRichWolpoe@Gmail.com
Please Visit:
http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/
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Richard Wolpoe wrote:

> Can we make the 5th of Iyyar a holiday like Purim NOWADAYS?

If we had a Sanhedrin, whose authority was accepted by klal yisrael,
then we could.  The fact that in practise we can't isn't because of
some defect in the process but because we haven't got a Sanhedrin,
and can't achieve enough unity to re-establish one. (Assuming that the
Rambam is right that it *can* be re-established without Eliyahu Hanavi;
of course, one unresolveable machloket among us is on that question
itself: whether the halacha is like the Rambam.)

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

RAF writes:

> No. It is my contention that it is inappropriate to go 
> shopping, particularly after having asked R' X. By going around from
posseq to 
> posseq, the shoel might be failing to fulfill his duty. When he
approached the 
> first posseq, he  was in effect in the process G"d wants him to go
through 
> (assuming the posseq isn't obviously wrong). Furthermore, assuming the
likely 
> situation whereby  one posseq knows the shoel better than the other
one, for 
> example, the shoel will, by shopping around, possibly fail to get the
pessaq 
> appropriate for him.

OK how about a real case.  This happened to a friend of mine, although
before I knew her.

This friend of mine went for a number of years in her marriage without
having kids.  She and he went to doctors who checked them out and told
her basically, that she was ovulating during her shiva nekiim.  She went
to her Rav who told her there was nothing that could be done and just to
keep trying.  Some time later she got in touch with (not via her Rav) a
certain Dayan, who looked at the case, realised that she could get a
clean bedika on day four, allowed her to do a hefsek tahara on day four,
and hey presto, today, two beautiful kids.

When she told me this story, she thought that this Dayan was some
amazing gadol who gave her this incredible heter.  I'm afraid I
disillusioned her a little bit, telling her that this is a pretty
standard heter in precisely these circumstances, it is written up
explicitly in various teshuvas (including IIRC Igeros Moshe) and while
it was good that the Dayan was there to walk her through the heter (he
apparently asked to check her hefsek tahara the first couple of times),
I was appalled that her Rav did not either know about the heter himself,
or have the humility to pass her on to somebody who knew a smigeon more
about taharas mispacha than he did.

But if this woman had not done some shopping, there are two Jewish
neshamas who would not exist in the world today.  Now she did some
shopping before meeting me and telling me this story and getting an
appalled reaction as to the level of knowledge of this Rav.  She did it
because the answer from the Rav was not something that could be borne
without every stone being turned.  And I suspect that this is not an
uncommon case - even (or perhaps especially) in cases which are actually
halachically more difficult than that of my friend.  Somehow I suspect
that gedolim are not that infrequently approached by people who appeal
to them directly because they have had no joy from those of lesser
stature (as a different route to the more obvious case of a gadol being
approached by a more junior Rav to take on a case that the Rav
understands as being too difficult for him).  In an ideal world, rabbaim
would never behave like this Rav, and pasken about matters they know
nothing about with such devastating consequences.  But given the non
ideality of this world, I am not prepared to say that it is always
inappropriate to go shopping.

Of course, once one becomes sensitised to the existance of such
problems, one might get very chary about asking anybody about anything
really really important (into which category I would put something like
whether one ever has kids or not) without first having a pretty good
idea about where they are on a spectrum of sensitivity to such matters.
But what that means is that people with a bit of knowledge are in a
position to go shopping before they go shopping, but people without that
knowledge are not.  If one or one's wife is pregnant with Tay Sachs
child, knowing the machlokus regarding the permissibility (or
advisability) of abortion in the theoretical can allow one to avoid R'X
or his followers without actually asking R'X and seek out a talmid of R'
Y.  But without a bit of knowledge, you may find that your local Rav
(who has always answered your kashrus shialas fine) belongs to a certain
line of psak which can devastate your life, whereas if he had been a
talmid of Rav Y, he might have answered your kashrus shialas pretty much
the same (or at least not in a way that really would have matter to you)
and yet answered the one really meaningful shiala in your life in the
way that was best for you.

Regards

Chana

R'nCL wrote:
> But given the non
> ideality of this world, I am not prepared to say that it is always
> inappropriate to go shopping.

It is hard to argue in the specific case you mention. However, there is a 
workaround, as explained in halakhah. If you find out about a different 
opinion, go back to the first rav and confront him with it; he may change his 
mind or be unconvinced. Nonetheless, you do show that there are exceptions 
worth considering.

> If one or one's wife is pregnant with Tay Sachs
> child, knowing the machlokus regarding the permissibility (or
> advisability) of abortion in the theoretical can allow one to avoid R'X
> or his followers without actually asking R'X and seek out a talmid of R'
> Y.

Here I have a problem, for the shoel is focusing on the outcome. I find that 
quite unappealing. Choosing between RMF and REWaldenberg's respective 
pessaqim in this matter isn't one of mere choice. Going to mikveh a night 
earlier may be a violation of minhag, or in some cases, of a derabbanan 
(usually only a strong minhag); aborting a child is, according to some, a 
toladah of murder.I am not invalidating REW's opinion, but I do feel that the 
shoel, too, must approach his role with gravitas. That gravitas is called 
yirat shamayim.

Of course, in this scenario, too, one could argue for some unusual 
circumstances making the pre-shopping shopping more acceptable.

KT
-- 
Arie Folger
http://www.ariefolger.googlepages.com

R' Rich Wolpoe:
Re: Shbbos & Choleh Mishebeirach's
<SNIP>
Point? The Gemara SAYS: Shabbos hi mili'zok. But MOST communities ignore
this. Does that make it muttar ipso facto? 




Rashi over there (Shabbos 12a) makes it clear that the Gemara's formulation
is only when one is talking to the Choleh himself. Do you have a Makor that
it is Assur to pray for a Choleh on Shabbos? IIRC, the reason why we are not
Sho'el Tzarcheinu on Shabbos is because of Tirchah, but it is permitted if
one wishes to do so. 

KT,
MYG

R' Micha Berger wrote:
> Actually, check out leshon Chazal, ... It is Sheim's academy
> in Yitzchaq's day, then it's Eiver's in Yaaqov's later trip.
> I do not know if there was a time when both ran academies
> simultaneously.

Here's a great opportunity for those who have computers which can search Chazal for various phrases: How many times do you find the phrase "yeshivas shem v'ever", and how many times do you find the phrase "yeshivOs shem v'ever"?

Or does someone want to claim that it is "yeshivos" even without the vav?

Akiva Miller

I'm somewhat perturbed by the responses I've been getting, so I'm going 
to summarize what's been going on.

RMB cited someone anonymous who asked: <<What information would you need 
to be presented to take off your kipah? >>

I suggested the following:  <<Suppose, however, that someone asked you 
for an example of evil behavior, and then produced a survey showing that 
observant Jews were evil in that way more than <picture your favorite 
control group here>.  Would that affect you? >>

To my surprise no one has claimed that that couldn't possibly happen in 
a well designed survey.  Instead three people have responded with 
apologetics which have left me stunned.

RMB himself responded <<To be honest, all it would do is prove my 
suspicion that there isn't a statistically meaningful population of 
people who actually follow the Torah.>>  If I can translate, RMB says it 
would make him question, not the Torah, but how we implement it today.  
The Torah is Morashas Kehillas Ya'akov, and RMB suspects that nowadays 
it really belongs only to a favored few.  Shouldn't such a result induce 
RMB to rethink how we implement the Torah so that more people "actually" 
follow it? Maybe I'm taking the initial question too literally, but see 
Tshuvos Maharshal #72 that wearing a kipah is part of the implementation 
of Torah.

RRW responded <<I can posit that we follow Hashem's commandments because 
he acquired usfrom Par'oh.; IOW the religion is now about serving God as 
a slave serves his master.>> See Rashi Berachos 33b s.v. "midosav", 
disagreeing with the Rambam I cited in my initial post.  I'm too much a 
product of the modern world to find the analogy of God as an arbitrary 
tyrant palatable; RRW may also be because he continues, not following 
that Rashi, <<I would posit that hashem's over-arching agenda - the 
preamble to ourconstitution so to speak - is taht we be mamleches 
Kohanim v'goyKaddosh. [iirc Dayan Grunfeld says this in his intro to 
Horeb] The Torah is not about SELF-PERFECTION but creating SOCIETAL 
perfection, i.e a mamlehces kohanim>>. I don't understand the solution: 
how can a society be perfect if it's members lack basic middos?

RRJ responded <<Because maybe the A's were by nature worse and so their 
current equivalence to B's results is a great difference from where they 
would have been without religion!>> If I understand correctly he's 
suggesting that we are so vicious that we need the Torah just to keep us 
mediocre.  I find that flabbergasting.  Does any one here work in kiruv? 
Is it your experience that the people attracted to your operations are 
the particularly vicious ones?

David Riceman

On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 07:56:29PM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
: RMB himself responded <<To be honest, all it would do is prove my 
: suspicion that there isn't a statistically meaningful population of 
: people who actually follow the Torah.>>  If I can translate, RMB says it 
: would make him question, not the Torah, but how we implement it today.  
: The Torah is Morashas Kehillas Ya'akov, and RMB suspects that nowadays 
: it really belongs only to a favored few.  Shouldn't such a result induce 
: RMB to rethink how we implement the Torah so that more people "actually" 
: follow it? ...

Except that I already have strong ideas as to what it means to follow the
Torah, and why the majority of today's frum world is not quite doing it.

The Torah is supposed to be a program to follow to acheive deveiqus and
temimus. How many of us live our lives with daily consciousness toward
reaching these goals? How many of us approach Torah and shemiras hamitzvos
with the awareness that we're following a program altogther?

We live in a world with unprecedented talmud Torah and widespread
search to learn how to perform halakhah correctly. But a mindset in
which aggadita is just something to gloss over in order to qualify for
a siyum isn't going to lead to /meaningful/ observance.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

R' David Riceman wrote:
> I'm somewhat perturbed by the responses I've been getting ...
> To my surprise no one has claimed that that couldn't possibly
> happen in a well designed survey.  Instead three people have
> responded with apologetics which have left me stunned. ...

> RMB says it would make him question, not the Torah, but how
> we implement it today. ... Shouldn't such a result induce RMB
> to rethink how we implement the Torah so that more people
> "actually" follow it?

Yes, RMB should indeed rethink how we implement the Torah. But he began that project a long time ago. I started to look at the charter of the AishDas Society, but I didn't need to go that far. Right in the center of the home page (http://www.aishdas.org), AishDas is labeled as: "Committed to the advancement of meaningful avodah in the Orthodox Jewish community."

RDR quoted RRW's response, and asked:
> I don't understand the solution: how can a society be perfect
> if it's members lack basic middos?

But no one claims that our society has already reached that perfection. We're still working on it.

RDR quoted RJR's response, and asked:
> If I understand correctly he's suggesting that we are so
> vicious that we need the Torah just to keep us mediocre.
> I find that flabbergasting.

I would interpret it a little differently. Try this: "We are so mediocre that we need the Torah to become good." or "We are good, but we need the Torah to become very good." or "We are very good, and with the Torah we can be great, but we're atill not perfect."

I would like to suggest that we revisit the original question, where RDR asked:
> Suppose, however, that someone asked you for an example of
> evil behavior, and then produced a survey showing that
> observant Jews were evil in that way more than <picture your
> favorite control group here>.  Would that affect you?

Such a survey would not show what you expect it to show. To be valid, it should show that observant Jews are more evil than the other group in *all* sorts of ways. Just because a few observant Jews commit one particular action which *all* members of Group X refrain from - that proves nothing.

But I maintain that even if *all* members of Group X were better than us in *all* sorts of behaviors, the most it would prove is that all members of Group X were better than us in all sorts of behaviors.

I agree that it would strongly suggest that they are more moral people than us, and/or that they have a better chinuch system than us, but there are still many variables to be taken into account. For example: Are they a small and isolated group, where it is easier for the leaders to influence and control them? Or are they spread throughout most of the countries of the world, under all sorts of influences, like we are?

But in NO case would it prove anything about the truth of our religion, or of theirs.

Akiva Miller

RRJ responded <<Because maybe the A's were by nature worse and so their
current equivalence to B's results is a great difference from where they
would have been without religion!>> If I understand correctly he's
suggesting that we are so vicious that we need the Torah just to keep us
mediocre.  I find that flabbergasting.  Does any one here work in kiruv?

Is it your experience that the people attracted to your operations are
the particularly vicious ones?

David Riceman

------------------------------
I assume you mean RJR (although I was once congratulated on becoming
president of YU :-)). I was simply suggesting that your conclusion,
while attractive, is not compelled since there is an alternative
explanation.

KT
Joel Rich


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