Avodah Mailing List

Volume 24: Number 83

Thu, 29 Nov 2007

• 1. Re: Borchu UVoruch Shemo between Borchu and Shmono Esreh (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: piyyutim (Micha Berger)
• 3. Re: Fables and Lies (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Semi-Circular Menorah (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: Yekum Purkan (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: Gentlemen and Ladies; Who Goes First? (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: Fables and Lies (kennethgmiller@juno.com)
• 8. Unifying Rules (Rich, Joel)
• 9. Re: gravity (T613K@aol.com)
• 10. what did we learn for 350 years? (Jonathan Baker)
• 11. Re: Fables and Lies (Rich, Joel)

AISI, the question of whether BHUS or "Or olam" (or other piyutim), or
even singing during Keil Adon would be a hefseq first depends on
defining hefseq. I can think of three definitions:

1- Something which causes hesekh hada'as
2- Something which breaks the matbei'ah tefillah
3- Something causes a pause where none is allowed -- eg a birkhas
hamitzvah which would no longer be oveir la'asiyasah

I don't see how singing could cause #1 oe #2, and I can't think of a
case where we sing between a berakahah and the mitzvah/hana'ah.

BHUS isn't hesekh hada'as, nor are some of the Sepharadi reponses (eg
responding to chazaras hashatz "Atah qadosh" "Emet!" "veShimkha
qadosh" "Emet!" "uqedoshim..." "Emet!"). Quite on the contrary -- they
encourage thinking about what the Chazan is saying. They are a hefseq
in the sense of disturbing the matbei'ah, but the responses are only
made by people not trying to be yotz'im with the berakhah, so again I
don't see the problem.

But where it comes to breaking the matbei'ah, the question that comes
to my mind is how firm must the matbei'ah be before it's a problem? Is
the body of a berakhah more solid of a matbei'ah than the body with
the piyut, that we need to ask how it could be disturbed? Shouldn't it
also make a difference if the piyut is inserted between the "me'ein
hachasimah" at the end of the body and the chasimas haberakhah itself?
And what about minhagim to change the chasimah? Do any of these
changes (eg: oseh hashalom) refer to versions that aren't simply
equally old other variants, equally holy matbei'os? (I believe all of
them are, actually.)

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
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

On Wed, November 28, 2007 3:17 am, Arie Folger wrote:
: Absolutely, We do, as do other yeckische minjonim. In fact, in EY,
: there is alittle revival going on.

(Shouldn't that be "jeckische"? The "y" and "sch" are a tarta
desasrei, no? <g>)

:> Even in shemonei esrei there is a consensus which piyyutim are
:> skipped. In fact Artscroll puts them in an appendix.
:> Anyone have any idea how this came about?

: partly it is the result of popularity, probably induced by tunes and
: by active participation.

: However, it is also partly a result of content.

I would remove the "however" -- I would guess one is almost always
caused by the other. Most of the piyutim which get tunes and therefore
more participation got those tunes because the content spoke to
someone and he found a tune. (Which then made it "usual" to sing, so
someone else found a different tune, etc...)

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
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

On Tue, November 20, 2007 6:12 pm, R Daniel Eidensohn wrote:
: You have brought no evidence that the sources I have cited are limited
: to an individual blaming himself for his own suffering....

Presumably rabbanim doing so for their communities as well. As well as
Chazal making statements condemning earlier generations for things
their talmidim may well still have been doing (aval anachnu
va'avoseinu chatanu).

The gemara discussing yefashpeish bemaasav (Berakhos 5a) doesn't make
sense unless speaking as a prelude to teshuvah for one's own sins.
Since expanding the other meqoros beyond that runs against my moral
instincts, I would dump the burden of proof back in your court to show
they do perforce include aveiros I am not doing.

I think the whole point of the excercise is not to make claims about
history or current events, but to motivate teshuvah. Which is why I
moved my reply to this subject heading. It segues into...

On Thu, November 22, 2007 1:27 am, Ben Waxman wrote:
: Why not simply get rid of the linkage and use the tragedy itself to
: get people to do tshevua? Instead of linking, the gadol could say
: something like: "Tragedy has struck Am Yisrael. It is the
: responsibility of every Jew, man and woman, to search his actions and
: find ways to do teshuva, in the same way that it is the
: responsibility of every Jew to get rid of bread before Pesach."

Before RYGB corrupted me with exposure to Mussar (and my worldview
revolved around RSRH, the Scholastic rishonim, and RYBS), I probably
would have agreed. One thing he made me realize was that it's not
sufficient to know what's right.

Bi'ur chameitz is a mitzvah ma'asis. It may be harder to perform
without engaging one's heart, but you can intellectually convince
yourself to do so.

Teshuvah inherently requires emotional engagement. The senses, and by
extension mental images, engage emotion. (The koach hadimyon, but in
the original sense of the word "dimyon" -- the ability to have a
mental picture / MP3 / smellograph/ etc...)

That's the role of myth or poetic imagery. It's like RSRH's comments
on the need for mitzvos that are osos, or why nevu'ah is conveyed via
a chazon. His words are (roughly, I can't remember a mar'eh maqom)
that the symbol is at the crossroads of the intellect and the heart.
The mind can grasp more of the topic through use of analogy than it
could by simple description. The heart is moved by the pictures shown,
experienced, or conjured up by the words in ways a description
wouldn't cause.

Also,

Reality is a network of causes and effects. The RBSO, knows them all,
knows every cause -- sufficient or insufficient, necessesary or
unnecessary that would go into an event. Questions of the limits of
hashgachah aside (for another post that will probably have to wait for
another sitting), wouldn't hashgachah therefore reflect EVERY factor?

Thus the rav needn't identify /the/ spiritual cause in order to
honestly claim that some sin was a factor. Every sin ever committed
was a factor. The threshold would only be whether Hashem weighed this
factor in favor of His final decision, or decided what He did
.despite/ that factor.

And so,

When a rav identifies a sin to motivate teshuvah, he really has quite
a bit of leeway. His burden of proof is REALLY low. But I would still
fail to see the productivity of identifying aveiros we can do nothing
about, and which willy-nilly will cause us to think less of other
Jews. (Particularly "achikha bemitzvos".)

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
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

On Tue, November 20, 2007 7:02 pm, T613K@aol.com wrote:
: From: Aryeh Herzig _guraryeh@gmail.com_ (mailto:guraryeh@gmail.com)
:> Moshe was shown how it should look on Har Sinai.  KaMar'eh Asher
:> Hor'etha BaHar.

:> This "straightness" of the neiros is, therefore,  a Halacha LMoshe
:> MiSinai

: When the BHM'K is rebuilt, bimheirah beyameinu, we will then know what
: the menorah is supposed to look like.  I am confident that it will be
: aesthetically beautiful, classical, and not modernistic.

I think there are two things being conflated:
1- How did the menorah look?
2- How MUST a menorah look?

The first question is broadened by the realization that over the
course of the 1,270 or so years (so far) that we've had a miqdash of
one sort of another there were multiple menoros.

The second question broadens the topic by distinguishing between what
a menorah must look like kedin lechatchilah (bedi'eved it would seem 7
spears would be okay) and how that din was fulfilled.

I have no reason to believe that the menorah /must/ have curved arms
or straight ones, perhaps both are fine even lechatchilah. The pasuq
mentions many requirements, we would be adding the burden of
explaining why this one isn't in there if we insist on one shape or
the other.

I therefore have no problem believing that Herod had a menorah built
in the latest style, with images on it -- assuming it doesn't violate
"lo sa'aseh lekha ... kol temunah". Or that earlier versions of the
menorah had three legs, which he made as three balls under a hexagonal
base.

And therefore the possibility of a beautiful modernistic menorah isn't
necessarily ruled out.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
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

On Wed, November 21, 2007 8:29 am, David E Cohen wrote:
: While we're on the topic, it's always puzzled me that chazzanim
: generally say the second "Yekum Purkan" quietly, given that it is
: addressed directly to the tzibbur.

As the "name" says, it's addressed directly to the One Who establishes
salvation. It is said /about/ and for the salvation /of/ the tzibbur.

Is there an inyan that someone getting a berakah or the beneficiary of
a baqashah ought to hear the tefillah in question?

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

On Wed, November 21, 2007 8:13 pm, Meir Rabi wrote:
: Rashi tells us that YaAkov would direct the males to go before the
: females, unlike Esav who directed the females first.

: Yet when YaAkov gets the family introduced to Uncle Esau, the ladies
: go first until Yosef steps in front of his mother.

Safety before kavod. It almost seems straightforward, if someone can
explain why Rachel was in more danger from Eisav than the woman he
could claim should have been his, and why Yosef saw a danger Yaaqov
did not.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

R"n Chana Luntz wrote:
> It may be, therefore that the word myth has become too
> difficult to use (in the same way that one cannot, today, use
> the word "gay" instead of the word "happy", particularly when
> teaching children).  But if we have no other words, then we
> may have to, in a discussion like this one, revert to using
> such words and explaining what we mean by them, or what was
> meant to be be meant by them, instead of what modern parlance
> tells us we are supposed to understand by them.

I agree. Like the children who have only one understanding of the word "gay", I have only one understanding of the word "myth", and really have difficulty following RCL's usage. Perhaps the words "poetry", "allegory", or "parable" might be closer to what RCL means?

> ... note that this is precisely what happened, in effect, to
> RAM. He believed (and may still believe) the modern understanding
> that truth is contained fully in historical fact (and felt
> Judaism was superior to Xtianity based on this).  Then he
> realised that the Asarah Harugei Malchus, as set out in the Yom
> Kippur davening, did not meet this criteria, and it caused him
> great pain.  If he had never been set up for the fall in this
> way, by assuming that the modern chronological understanding was
> the only true way of understanding things, he would not now be
> finding himself in the position of criticising the Yom Kippur
> liturgy and those who put it together - when he discovers that
> the formulation as there written does not correspond with
> chronological fact as demanded by modernity.

I think it is now a good time to explain my views a little better.

It does not bother me at all that children are taught about a race between a tortoise and a hare. Even the youngest of children understand that such animals do not talk, and never could have actually set up such a race. They understand the story for the message it teaches, and the historical inaccuracy is irrelevant.

Was there ever a boy who actually cried "Wolf"? Did someone invent the story from thin air, or did the story actually occur and was then used as a teaching model? I don't know, and I don't care, because the boy is anonymous and has no historical relevance.

Betsy Ross, on the other hand, starts to get into the grey areas. For non-Americans who are unfamiliar with the story, Betsy Ross is said to have sewn the first American flag during the War Of Independence, and her story is often used to get people into a patriotic mood. Unfortunately, little or no evidence exists to support this story, and some have claimed that it was someone else entirely who created that first flag. Yet the story of Betsy Ross persists, and I think that this might be the sort of thing which RCL is calling a "myth" -- a story whose main value is the lessons it teaches, regardless of its historical accuracy. And because the *lessons* are true, the myth is considered "true" even if modern people who are hung up about history might call it false or questionable.

I don't have much of a problem with this sort of story either. But that is specifically because Betsy Ross was mostly obscure and unknown except for this one point.

That is the critical point in my eyes: Does the subject of this myth appear elsewhere? If not, then all is fine, and the myth can teach its message. But if the subject appears in other contexts as well, then the author of the myth must realize that it is natural for people to compare the character's appearance here, with the same character's appearance there. And if they are inconsistent, then woe to the author for confusing his audience and leading them to falsehood.

If Ayleh Ezk'ra would have been a story about the death of ten gedolim, and it would have been written to give the impression that it was a single event, even though it actually stretched out over a few generations, that would not bother me much, because the Roman oppression DID last for a very long time. The poet can talk about the ten murders in a single context, because it WAS a single context, and that can provide the emotionalism and rhetoric that the myth needs for its impact.

A careful author or poet can - and should - accomplish this without bringing blatant falsehoods into the story, and that is where I feel that Ayleh Ezk'ra went over the line. One example might be how Rabi Yishmael Kohen Gadol picked up the severed head of Rabban Shimon, but perhaps he actually did do this (as some recent posters have written). The part that really bothers me is how the author portrays what happened BEFORE the murders: The ruler got the ten of them together, he made up the story about the shoes, the ten of them sent Rabi Yishmael on a mission to find out what's happening in Shamayim, and they agreed to docilely go to their deaths.

THAT's the part of the story that I'm claiming to be like Santa Claus. We know from elsewhere that Rabbi Akiva's skin was torn off with rakes, and the poet uses that emotion to build a myth about being moser ourselves to the non-Jewish government. Did the Ten Martyrs go like sheep to their slaughter, even trying to go first rather than see a colleague die? Or did they put up some sort of resistance?

But please don't bother trying to answer that question. Because if you tell me that they did put up a resistance, well, thank you, but a few words of information now don't do much to overcome years of disinformation. And if you tell me that they did go like sheep, I have to wonder why the poet had to fictionalize the story.

Hmm... Maybe that's the whole point that RCN is making... Maybe they did go like sheep, but it was NOT a fiction. Maybe that's the point of the virtuous myth, that it does not fictionalize, only poeticize. Could it be that the Ten Martyrs did go willingly, and that the only distortion of the truth was that they each made this decision individually, rather than collectively? If that is indeed the case, then I can see the distortions as minor and benign.

Akiva Miller

R' HS gave an interesting shiur last night on halacha's view of
perception versus reality. 
Some examples were the squareness of tfillin, the kashrut of letters in
a sefer torah,worms in fish (kosher if "internal"),tzurat hapetach,
enzymes from stomach lining, sunrise sunset rally based on sea
level.....
His last statement was that there is no underlying rule as to whether
halacha looks to  perception or  reality and that each case must be
evaluated separately.
Of course I was hoping for a meta answer (my yeshiva training was to
always look for the unified field theory).  Anyone ever see anything on
this?
KT
Joel Rich
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From: "Eli Turkel" _eliturkel@gmail.com_ (mailto:eliturkel@gmail.com) 

> Why will it happen anyway? Who said that there would be gravity  without the
> RBSO decreeing that it be there every second? It seems  pretty clear L'chol



>>According to general relativity  gravity is not even a force but a warp
in space-time. It really is part of  the essential fabric of the universe not
something to be constantly  imposed.<<

>>>>>
Hello, what is this "essential fabric of the universe" and what keeps it  in 
existence?  Why is there something, rather than nothing?  Saying  "gravity 
isn't a force, it's just part of the fabric" doesn't change the fact  that 
without G-d willing it to exist at every moment, there would be no gravity,  no 
fabric, no you and no me.  

 


From birchos haShma:   "uvetuvo mechadesh bechol yom tamid  ma'aseh 
Bereishis."





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



**************************************Check out AOL's list of 2007's hottest 
products.
(http://money.aol.com/special/hot-products-2007?NCID=aoltop00030000000001)
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From: "Moshe Y. Gluck" <mgluck@gmail.com>
> R' AY & CB Walters:

>> The Geonim say that from the chasimas hatalmud by R' Ashi until the Behag
>> was 350 years.
 
>> Now, AFAIK, the Behag was the first post talmudic sefer, he was probably
>> from the early gaonim/late saboraim.
 
> I believe the She'iltos D'R' Achai Gaon preceeded him. ?

Maybe. The Sheiltos and the Siddur R' Amram gaon are about parallel,
R' Amram and R' Achai were heads of academies at about the same time
(850s CE). 

R' Saadia Gaon (Emunot veDeiot) was about 75 years later.

R' Shimon Kayara, one possible Behag, was "first half of the 9th century"
but apparently the Sheiltos and the Halachos Pesukos of R' Yehudai were
among his sources.

R' Yehudai seems to have lived about 100 years before the Behag.  The
Halachos Pesukos are only known in Hebrew translation today.

The Geonim may have been a more oral-torah culture than we are, not
writing as many organized books.  R' Paltoi (9th century) disapproved
of the Halachos Pesukos because it detracted from the study of Talmud,
which gives you some clue what we were learning between the close of the
Talmud (about 600 or later, according to many) and the Rishonim.

Sources: Jewish Encyclopedia.

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker@panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com

On Thu, November 22, 2007 1:27 am, Ben Waxman wrote:
: Why not simply get rid of the linkage and use the tragedy itself to
: get people to do tshevua? Instead of linking, the gadol could say
: something like: "Tragedy has struck Am Yisrael. It is the
: responsibility of every Jew, man and woman, to search his actions and
: find ways to do teshuva, in the same way that it is the
: responsibility of every Jew to get rid of bread before Pesach."

Before RYGB corrupted me with exposure to Mussar (and my worldview
revolved around RSRH, the Scholastic rishonim, and RYBS), I probably
would have agreed. One thing he made me realize was that it's not
sufficient to know what's right.

Bi'ur chameitz is a mitzvah ma'asis. It may be harder to perform without
engaging one's heart, but you can intellectually convince yourself to do
so.

Teshuvah inherently requires emotional engagement. The senses, and by
extension mental images, engage emotion. (The koach hadimyon, but in the
original sense of the word "dimyon" -- the ability to have a mental
picture / MP3 / smellograph/ etc...)

That's the role of myth or poetic imagery. It's like RSRH's comments on
the need for mitzvos that are osos, or why nevu'ah is conveyed via a
chazon. His words are (roughly, I can't remember a mar'eh maqom) that
the symbol is at the crossroads of the intellect and the heart.
The mind can grasp more of the topic through use of analogy than it
could by simple description. The heart is moved by the pictures shown,
experienced, or conjured up by the words in ways a description wouldn't
cause.

Also,

Reality is a network of causes and effects. The RBSO, knows them all,
knows every cause -- sufficient or insufficient, necessesary or
unnecessary that would go into an event. Questions of the limits of
hashgachah aside (for another post that will probably have to wait for
another sitting), wouldn't hashgachah therefore reflect EVERY factor?

Thus the rav needn't identify /the/ spiritual cause in order to honestly
claim that some sin was a factor. Every sin ever committed was a factor.
The threshold would only be whether Hashem weighed this factor in favor
of His final decision, or decided what He did .despite/ that factor.

And so,

When a rav identifies a sin to motivate teshuvah, he really has quite a
bit of leeway. His burden of proof is REALLY low. But I would still fail
to see the productivity of identifying aveiros we can do nothing about,
and which willy-nilly will cause us to think less of other Jews.
(Particularly "achikha bemitzvos".)

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha


======================================================================
Here comes a huge chiddush - everyone is different!  You may be quite
right that in the aggregate more good than harm is done by using the
"REALLY low" burden of proof, however others will look at this and say
hogwash, just say - "Tragedy has struck Am Yisrael. It is the
: responsibility of every Jew, man and woman, to search his actions and
: find ways to do teshuva, in the same way that it is the
: responsibility of every Jew to get rid of bread before Pesach." and
don't pretend to know something that no human is truly capable of
knowing because if you do why should I believe anything you say. (I
guess my bias is obvious)

KT
Joel Rich
THIS MESSAGE IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE USE OF THE 
ADDRESSEE.  IT MAY CONTAIN PRIVILEGED OR CONFIDENTIAL 
INFORMATION THAT IS EXEMPT FROM DISCLOSURE.  Dissemination, 
distribution or copying of this message by anyone other than the addressee is 
strictly prohibited.  If you received this message in error, please notify us 
immediately by replying: "Received in error" and delete the message.  
Thank you.



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