Avodah Mailing List

Volume 24: Number 26

Wed, 24 Oct 2007

• 1. Re: Religion and Falsifiability (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: Religion and Falsifiability (Micha Berger)
• 3. Re: Minhag Yisroel and Gra on 2 Matzos vs.3 Matzos/Rabbi shopping (Chana Luntz)
• 4. Re: Minhag Yisroel and Gra on 2 Matzos vs.3 Matzos/Rabbi shopping (Arie Folger)
• 5. Re: Just what ARE the rules of p'sak anyway? (Arie Folger)
• 6. Re: Rav Schachter on Kiddushei Ta'us; and a hypothesis re: Annulment (Arie Folger)
• 7. Re: Minhag Yisroel (Rich, Joel)
• 8. Re: Shabbas he mi lezok (Was An-im Zemiros) (Marty Bluke)
• 9. Re: Minhag Yisroel and Gra on 2 Matzos vs.3 Matzos/Rabbi shopping (Chana Luntz)
• 10. Tefillin Wrapping (Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer)
• 11. Re: Tefillin Wrapping (Harry Maryles)
• 12. Parshas korbonos at Mincha (Dov Kay)

On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 05:06:36AM -0400, david guttmann wrote:
: RDR said:
:>If I can translate, RMB says it would make him question, not the Torah, but
:> how we implement it today. 
...
: Not necessarily. See the introduction to pirush Hamishna of the Rambam (page
: 23 in the Kapach edition)...
: His famous twofold answer follows :All people exist to prepare the
: environment and serve the few Ovdei Hashem and second to keep company to the
: few savants...

I find this Rambam exceedingly difficult.

The differenece is that the Rambam is placing us much closer to the
peak of what mankind is capable of acheiving, and thus has to explain
why HQBH made creatures that way.

However, it makes no difference in our original question. Each person
still has to live as to become one of those few. The Rambam may explain
why Hashem created a world in which most people don't get the Torah
and of those who do, most do not try to follow it, and of those who do,
few get it right. But the Rambam does not change the basic premise that
few do get it right, few are true ovedei Hashem, who "implement the Torah"
correctly. And the rest of us are obligated to try joining that few. The
need for the rest of us to rethink our implementation of "keeping the
Torah" is still there.

All that said, I would be surprised if our community did show a lack of
measurable refinement overall. In chessed alone: all 5 of North Jursey's
most charitable communities (according to a local paper's audit) contain O
communities. How many non-Jewish communities pull together a bikur cholim,
volunteer chevrah, tomchei Shabbos, pull together their own EMS service
(as needed), a dozen gemachs, etc...? I am just defending my decision that
it would not be a show stopper for me -- just a source of surprise.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where
micha@aishdas.org        you are,  or what you are doing,  that makes you
http://www.aishdas.org   happy or unhappy. It's what you think about.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Dale Carnegie

On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 05:06:36AM -0400, david guttmann wrote:
: RDR said:
:>If I can translate, RMB says it would make him question, not the Torah, but
:> how we implement it today. 
...
: Not necessarily. See the introduction to pirush Hamishna of the Rambam (page
: 23 in the Kapach edition)...
: His famous twofold answer follows :All people exist to prepare the
: environment and serve the few Ovdei Hashem and second to keep company to the
: few savants...

I find this Rambam exceedingly difficult.

The differenece is that the Rambam is placing us much closer to the
peak of what mankind is capable of acheiving, and thus has to explain
why HQBH made creatures that way.

However, it makes no difference in our original question. Each person
still has to live as to become one of those few. The Rambam may explain
why Hashem created a world in which most people don't get the Torah
and of those who do, most do not try to follow it, and of those who do,
few get it right. But the Rambam does not change the basic premise that
few do get it right, few are true ovedei Hashem, who "implement the Torah"
correctly. And the rest of us are obligated to try joining that few. The
need for the rest of us to rethink our implementation of "keeping the
Torah" is still there.

All that said, I would be surprised if our community did show a lack of
measurable refinement overall. In chessed alone: all 5 of North Jursey's
most charitable communities (according to a local paper's audit) contain O
communities. How many non-Jewish communities pull together a bikur cholim,
volunteer chevrah, tomchei Shabbos, pull together their own EMS service
(as needed), a dozen gemachs, etc...? I am just defending my decision that
it would not be a show stopper for me -- just a source of surprise.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where
micha@aishdas.org        you are,  or what you are doing,  that makes you
http://www.aishdas.org   happy or unhappy. It's what you think about.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Dale Carnegie

RAF writes:

> 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.

Yes, but this only works for those who know enough to "find out about a
different opinion".  Especially in something as private as ta'haras
mishpacha, especially when it involves women, that is not that likely.
Would she have even told me in the days when her Rav told her there was
nothing that could be done?  I don't know.  She told me this story a)
after it had all happened and she had children and b) after the Jewish
Chronicle (not the world's frummest paper) did a write up on halachic
infertility (basically the article we all commented on - was it in
Ha'aretz a few months back).  And then I happened to be over there just
after she had read it.  And only then did this story come out of the
woodwork.  OK, after I told her what I told her, the next time I went
around, I discovered that she had been talking to her shabbas guests
about it, and I suspect that it is not going to stop there.  But how
many other cases might there be out there like this?

Similarly RMG writes:

>In R'n CL's friend's 
> situation, it clearly was a question of Hanhagah, and 
> therefore Muttar.

Yes, but.  My friend, is a lovely person, but she is certainly no
talmida chachama, and does not have the knowledge to know the difference
between hanhagah and halacha.  That means you are restricting the
shopping ability to those with some knowledge about where they overstep
the bounds of acceptable shopping (or alternatively it is going to
happen in the wrong cases, because first the person would need to ask a
shiala about whether one can shop, and then shop).

Going back to my discussion with RAF:

> > 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. 

But, then you need to ask the question - how is that anybody ever
chooses a Rav?  I suspect that if you dig down deep enough, you will
find that people end up with a Rav in two different ways - a) somebody
happens to be around and is convenient or b) somebody gells with one's
metahalachic or philosophical standpoint.

Now often it may be that one only is forced to think about the
metahalachic or philosophical issues that matter to one, when one gets
put into a crisis situation (such as a Tay Sachs pregnancy).  Let me
give you another real case that happened to other friends of ours.
Their first child was stillborn.  Now here in England, one becomes a
member of a burial society by means of shul membership, and their
particular shul was a member of a particular burial society, which meant
that the baby ended up being buried by that burial society.  Now our
friends found the way that this particular burial society, under the
guidance of their Dayanim, handled the whole matter insensitive to say
the least - they wouldn't let them go to the funeral or tell them where
the baby was buried and there were just a whole host of issues.  Now
this particular couple, after a number of subsequent healthy children,
then had a child diagnosed in utero with a very life threatening
situation.  Basically there was very little hope.  Anyhow, they went to
full term, and as soon as the child was born, it was whipped off to
Great Ormand Street (which is the premier children's hospital in the UK)
and the NHS, as it will do in such circumstances, pulled out all the
stops to try and save this baby's life.  But there is only so much that
modern medicine can do, and the child only lived for around 10 days.
Now perhaps because they had already had one experience with the
particular burial society and set of Dayanim, or perhaps they had formed
other links in the meantime, but they went to a Dayan from one of the
other betei din here (actually the same Dayan of my previous story - I
don't know if that is a coincidence), who seems to have been a pillar of
strength during the whole ordeal, (and was happy for them to name the
child even though there was no, and no real chance of, a bris etc etc,
something that gave them a lot of comfort).  And he made it clear that
if the child was being buried under his auspices, then a lot of the
matters they had found so difficult last time would not have occurred.
Unfortunately, because of the way these things work, they were stuck
with the burial society they had, but it was still helpful to have
somebody of this Dayan's calibre assisting them in their argument.

So it can be argued that it is only if and when one finds oneself in
these kind of anguished sorts of situations, that a true aseh l'cha Rav
occurs, and that is inevitably focussed on outcomes.

>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.

Agreed - but what I am trying to show is that it is when the chips are
down, so to speak, that who one is may come to the fore.  I think here
you were assuming that the person would necessarily be avoiding a talmid
of RMF and finding one of REW - but I was trying quite carefully not to
make that judgement.  I can just as easily see somebody discovering that
they felt deeply and intensely in their heart that indeed abortion was
murder, and that they could not abort the fetus they were carrying - in
which case, going to a talmid of REW, who is likely to tell them that
they really ought to abort, and to think of the suffering to be caused
in the world for no reason if they do not, would not be helpful.  Such a
Rav may well be much less of a support for the inummerable halachic
shialas that are likely to come up if the couple didn't abort and then
had to deal with a Tay Sachs baby.  Somehow I would guess that a Rav who
thought that the couple had taken the moral decision not to murder would
be much more approachable in such a situation than one who thought they
were being machmir at their and their baby's expense.

Getting back to the outcome aspect of this - let's dive off into
another, topical and highly contraversial topic.  If one becomes
increasingly convinced that the whole shmitta/heter machira debate ends
up being a debate between those who prefer to be machmir (or not be
makil) in ben adam l'makom, and those who prefer to be machmir (or not
to be makil) in ben adam l'chavero - what do you do? (OK here I am
clearly slanting the debate a bit, if you were coming from the other
side you might say somebody appears to be a bit too makil in shmitta for
your comfort). Do you end up following a Rav whom you may have gone to
in the past even though you are now finding yourself philosophically
opposed to what appears to be his philosophical standpoint?  Do you
confront him?  If you do confront him and you seem to get no
understanding, do you go somewhere else?  Is this not about shopping
around?  Do we not effectively do this all the time as we form our
halachic personalities (eg in yeshiva/sem, as life throws us things that
we never anticipated in yeshiva/sem)?

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

Well, one of the things that as one gets older, and more and more of
one's friends seem to have one set of unusual circumstances or another,
one starts wondering whether that is not the nature of life, it just the
question of which set you get.  It does start to make one wonder whether
in fact shopping around is the essence, ie finding somebody who gells
regarding the big things, and then taking the little things in your
stride, because they really don't matter (ie, if it does not matter to
you whether an egg is treif or kosher, then you are not going to make a
long trip to an extremely sensitive gadol to ask about it).

> KT
> -- 
> Arie Folger


Regards

Chana

On Wednesday, 24. October 2007 12.03:25 Chana Luntz wrote:
> But, then you need to ask the question - how is that anybody ever
> chooses a Rav?

R'n CL has posted some human interest stories with considerable detail. While 
they should prompt fellow Ovedim, especially those who are called upon to 
guide people in such situations (rabbonim, dayyonim, but also chaplains and 
good friends), to think deeply about these issues, the stories are neither 
about pessaq nor about halakhah, but about the human interface.

Regarding the above quoted question, R'nCL herself suggests that one chooses a 
rav based on a common hashkafic outlook or by accident of history (being the 
right guy at the right time). I agree, but, as she indicated herself, I, too, 
would categorically exclude choosing someone based on the particular desired 
question to a particular question. Essentially, with choosing a rav, we 
choose a relationship with a particular derekh in Torah. However, let me just 
add that being a meiqil or a ma'hmir doesn't sound like a derekh to me.

It is the combination of this derekh and the particular facts of the shoel 
that prompt the posseq to give a particular answer. Hence, two shoalim and/or 
two possqim can give different answers to a similar question and no one will 
be wrong, and yet halakhah wouldn't be ambivalent.

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

RRW wrote:
> ? ?2. The Bahag and Tosafos use the Tosefta to override the the Bavli in
> ? ?ARachin 3-4 that permits women to read megillah for men. [af hein hayu
> b'oso haneis ipmlies that like ner Hanukkah, they can do Negillah]
> ? ?3. Ergo ?Behag and Tsoafos themselves are NOT playing by the rules of
> ? ?Halacha themselves
> ? ?4. And therefore they really are not doing Halachah, but playing
> ? ?games ?C"V
> ? ?5. And [to add insult to insult] they are pursuing a consistently
> ? ?misogynist agenda

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

I believe that the statements of RABC fail on the grounds of a lack of respect 
and lack of consideration for individuals who were unquestionably among those 
who transmitted the Torah to us.

Let's face it, Judaism is alive, it isn't dug out and suddenly discovered in a 
museum. To study halakhah without the highest regard for some of its greatest 
transmittors displays a lack of yirat shamayim and is not very sensible, 
either. After all, just like in the aggadeta Hillel showed the candidate 
convert that TSBP is inherently part of Torah, otherwise we wouldn't be able 
to definitely identify the meaning of the letters and the language, so, too, 
we cannot truly approach TSBP and thus halakhah without the continuous 
tradition PASSING THROUGH Tosafot, as well. What they and BaHaG and the 
Tosefta posited is relevant to our understanding of TSBP.

This does not mean that one could never choose to disagree with one shittah 
and choose another shittah. It might even be possible, in some exceptional 
circumstances, to come up with something altogether novel. But our positions 
grow out of the common beit midrash of the ba'alei hamessorah.

We should also care to add that if one claims that particular ba'alei 
messorah, especially fairly important ones, were biased, where should he 
stop? Why not posit that the Tannaim and Amoraim were biased, too? How about 
some major biblical figures? No, for there to exist any messorah, whatsoever, 
we must accept that at least the major players were acting out of concern for 
Torah, and not out of mysogynism or whatever other biases they may have had. 
This is one of the great differences between us, maaminim benei maaminim, and 
Zacharias Fraenkel's historical positivist school of thought, which gave 
birth to C.

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

Someone (RRW?) wrote:
> OTOH, can a legitimate Takkanah - like a prozbol - be done to ?help prevent
> agunos by some means of a prenuptial agreeement that would be Halachically
> solid and NOT based upon speuclation?

RDJDBleich has published an article in the summer 2004 issue of tradition 
about the feasibility of such taqanot, relaying the fascinating story of an 
attempt to make certain taqanot preventing the establishment of certain 
marriages, in late 18th-early 19th century Habsburg empire.

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

>>> Meanwhile in the absence of a Sanhedrin by what authority did:
>>>    1. Minhag Yisroel morph ma'riv from Reshus to Hova?

>>     It's a neder.  "Kiblu aleihem".

> I didn't make the neder.

Your ancestors did.  A person has the right to make a neder binding on
him and his future descendants.

--------------------------------------------------------


although I could see a community as more logical than an individual)

KT
Joel Rich
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Thank you.

What does "Shabbas he mi lezok" mean? The Gemara in Shabbos (12a) says
that someone who goes to visit a sick person should say this (Shabbas
he mi lezok u'refua krova lavo) to the sick person. Rashi explains, we
are telling the sick person to try not to be sad because it is shabbos
and a person is supposed to be happy on shabbos. The Ran has a
different peshat. He says we are telling the sick person that since it
is shabbos we can't daven for him.

Rashi's peshat fits in better with the mi shebeirach l'cholim, we say
the mi shebeirach and then we tell the people in shul, don't be upset
about the sick person it is shabbos. However, according to the Ran it
is a bit difficult, we are contradicting ourselves, we just said a
prayer for the sick person and we end off by saying we really aren't
allowed to daven for you. The Aruch Hashulchan in OC 287 asks this
question and writes that our minhag is difficult.  Maybe the pshat is
that we are explaining why this is the only tefilla we are saying for
the sick person. Interestingly enough, the Artscroll siddur translates
the mi shebeirach like the Ran.

The Shulchan Aruich Harav writes that one should not say the regular
mi shebeirach but only Shabbos hi .

RAF writes:

> R'n CL has posted some human interest stories with 
> considerable detail. While 
> they should prompt fellow Ovedim, especially those who are 
> called upon to 
> guide people in such situations (rabbonim, dayyonim, but also 
> chaplains and good friends), to think deeply about these issues, the 
> stories are neither about pessaq nor about halakhah, but about the
human interface.

I'm not sure I agree.  I would have said that psak is where halacha
collides with the human interface, and that these cases are hence
precisely about psak.  And not only that, there are lots of aspects of
halacha that require the human context to be taken into account - hefsed
meruba, bsha'a hadchak, darkei shalom, meshum eiva and on and on the
list goes.

> Regarding the above quoted question, R'nCL herself suggests 
> that one chooses a  rav based on a common hashkafic outlook or by
accident of 
> history (being the right guy at the right time). I agree, but, as she
indicated 
> herself, I, too, would categorically exclude choosing someone based on
the 
> particular desired question to a particular question.

Umm, I didn't think I did.  I thought that, to the contrary, I suggested
that for some people, a particular question may be so important to them
that it shapes their whole hashkafic outlook on life, and hence they
would indeed categorically exclude choosing someone based on the
particular desired answer to a particular question.

 Essentially, with choosing a rav, we choose a relationship with a
particular derekh in Torah. 
> However, let me just add that being a meiqil or a ma'hmir doesn't
sound like a 
> derekh to me.

Being machmir in ben adam l'chavero doesn't sound like a derech to you?
Isn't that what R' Yisroel Salant was famous for?


> It is the combination of this derekh and the particular facts 
> of the shoel 
> that prompt the posseq to give a particular answer. Hence, 
> two shoalim and/or 
> two possqim can give different answers to a similar question 
> and no one will 
> be wrong, and yet halakhah wouldn't be ambivalent.

You don't think one could categorise poskim on the basis of their known
tendency (either less or more) to take the human dimension into account?
At least in certain areas of halacha?  For example that some great
poskim seem somehow always to be the ones who come up with solutions (eg
on shabbas) for the sick, the elderly, the poor, the infirm?  That is
not to say that such poskim appear always to find a solution for a
particular shoel.  I am not suggesting by this that "where there is a
rabbinic will, there is a halachic way".  But that eg the body of
literature that comes from a particular posek shows a repeated tendency,
over and over again, towards what might be deemed a heterim in a
particular area, whereas the literature of others does not read that
way.  In fact, if I say - heterim on shabbas for the sick and infirm,
does not a name spring to mind?  If one says heterim for difficult
marital situations, do not other names spring to mind? Is that not a
form of derech?  If Marc Shapiro in his article notes that ROY at the
time of the Yom Kippur war worked tirelessly to ensure that not one
single aguna remained out of that war, is that not a form of derech? 

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

Regards

Chana
> 

Has anyone ever seen a reason why Ashkenaz wraps tefillin coming in 
while Sfard wraps going out?

KT,
YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer <ygbechhofer@gmail.com> wrote:
  Has anyone ever seen a reason why Ashkenaz wraps tefillin coming in 
while Sfard wraps going out?  ------------------------
   
  I recall hearing a reason for both. But I only remeber why Nusach Ashkenaz winds 'inward'. It is becuase we are winding toward the heart rather than away from it. I don't know why that's considered important, though.
   
  I'm not sure this is all that helpful but it's a start.
   
  HM




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<<3. Why don't Ashknezim say Parshas hatimd at Minhah as do Sephardim?IOW I get why Ashkenazim omit the ketores but why omit the Tamid?>>
 
True, but... when R. Avraham Berliner (of the Berlin Rabbinical Seminary) returned to Berlin following a tour of Italy (I would guess around the turn of the 20th century), he introduced the custom of the shatz reciting parshas haTamid from the almemar with the taamei mikra before mincha.  This was transplanted to Golders Green Beth Hamedrash Congregation (Munk's) in London by R. Dr. Eliyahu Munk (http://www.ggbh.org.uk/our_kehilla.htm) and is still the custom there.
 
Kol tuv
Dov Kay
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