Avodah Mailing List

Volume 28: Number 36

Thu, 10 Mar 2011

• 1. Re: Molad Alert: Friday night (Zev Sero)
• 2. Re: Moshe Rabeinu and his family (Arie Folger)
• 3. Re: Molad Alert: Friday night (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: yotzros (Arie Folger)
• 5. Re: Moshe Rabeinu and his family (Zev Sero)
• 6. Kedusha - Remaining Silent During the Chazzan's Recitation (Prof. Levine)
• 7. Re: Moshe Rabeinu and his family (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: Moshe Rabbenu and his family (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: Kedusha - Remaining Silent During the Chazzan's Recitation (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: Kedusha - Remaining Silent During the Chazzan's Recitation (Micha Berger)
• 11. serving on a Jury?? (Harvey Benton)
• 12. Re: Moshe Rabeinu and his family (Arie Folger)
• 13. Re: serving on a Jury?? (Micha Berger)
• 14. Re: Boreh Minei Bessamim: Stop And Smell The Flowers (T613K@aol.com)

On 9/03/2011 3:57 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> Nisht azoi pashut. As I wrote last Fri
> <http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol28/v28n033.shtml#08>:
>  In the mid-4th century, the currently announced molad would have
>  been accurate for mid-way between the Nile and the Euphrates....
>  But the tides are still there and the month is still getting shorter
>  ...
>  At this point, the molad is something like 108 chalaqim
>  off. Alternatively, we could keep the molad correct and say the
>  "timezone" is sliding east. Not sure why we would want to, but enough
>  web sites and books do this excercise. So, we could say that we now
>  compute the molad accurately for Kandahar, Afghanistan.

I don't understand the basis for this.  What has the precession of the
equinoxes got to do with the molad, which only concerns the Sun-Earth-
Moon system?

> But as far as I can tell, it was never actually for Y-m. It was for the
> center of the Jewish world in the final days of the Sanhedrin.

The Rambam says it's for Yerushalayim and the areas within six or seven
days' travel around it, from where eidim might come. (Presumably a rider
on a fast horse can travel in one day what will take a person on foot
6-7 days, and so arrive in Y'm before the BD closes at noon.)  He further
defines the area for which his calculations are made as three degrees
longitude and latitude around Y'm, whose coordinates he gives as roughly
32 N and 24 W (from the prime meridian of his day).

> The Shaar haKollel's (and my father's or early-grade rebbe's) explanation
> implies that the qehillah should know what the time of the molad means
> in terms they think in.

I don't see how it implies that at all.  According to this explanation
the announcement that the molad is imminent (or has already occurred)
takes the place of the eidim's announcement that they'd seen the moon.
What has the exact time of the molad, or the scale in which it's
expressed, got to do with that?  It's not as if the eidim actually
announced the time of the molad.  All they announced was that the newly
born moon was visible the previous evening (on the western horizon just
after sunset, which is the only time and place a new moon can be seen),
at such a location, and with such a north/south declination.  How much
earlier than that was the molad?  How should they know?

[Email #2. -micha]

By the way, since we're on the subject, the Shaar Hakollel was the LR's
great-great-grandfather, not his father-in-law.  That was the previous LR.

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
z...@sero.name                 eventually run out of other people?s money
                                                      - Margaret Thatcher

On 9/03/2011 2:15 PM, Arie Folger wrote:
> I don't claim that Bat Par'oh [...] told Moshe who his birth mother
> was, nor that she knew (though the narrative strongly implies this
> was clear to all participants

RSZ replied:
> How is it implied, strongly or weakly?  On the contrary, I think the
> text implies that she did *not* know.

Very simple. If you read the text without preconceptions, you see that
it highlights a number of interesting twists. First of all, there is
the already mentioned fact that the daughter of the Pharao is the one
who notices and then decides to save the boy, making a conscious
decision against her father's policies.

But then, it gets stranger. It isn't the boy's mother who watches from
afar to see what is going to happen to him, but his sister. This jibes
perfectly with the midrash that Yokheved prompted her parents to get
back together - what both factoids have in common is that it is the
girl who took charge of things, messing up the usual hierarchy.

It becomes however positively daring when the slave girl* disregards
all protocol and addresses the mighty princess directly. When you put
all these together, ought we not to ask why a girl would, out of
nowhere, appear and suggest haeilekh lakh ishah meineqet min
ha'ivriyot? It becomes quie clear to all present that this girl must
have some relationship to the boy, making it very likely that the wet
nurse, the ishah meineqet, is the boy's mother. After all, wet nurses
don't just run around by the thousands among the poor, the destitute
and the downtrodden. It's a profession for those employed by the most
wealthy, not for downcast slaves and their cousins.

Then, the Pharao's daughter tells the woman to take that boy to nurse
him, and she will pay her wage, which is as much as asking the
presumed mother to relinquish her motherhood, since she will now nurse
the child as Bat Par'o's child, not as her own.

All this information is transmitted wordlessly, but it's very present.

( * = never mind 'Hazal's statement about shevet Levi not being
enslaved; they could not have been too high on the social ladder, or
otherwise they would not have been as worried about keeping the boy at
home)

For the sake of lehavi geulah la'olam, I'd like to acknowledge that I
learned this insight from R' Yoshua Berman.

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* The Onset of Death in Halakha IV: In the Media
* The Onset of Death in Halakha III: Noteworthy Discussions
* Audio-Schiur ? Psalm 126 ? Gedenklernen f?r Herrn Heinz Althof s.A.
* Le psaume 92 - cours multim?dia en fran?ais
* Is Outsourcing Ethical?
* Kalendernotiz: Neue Vortragsreihe zum Thema Gebet

On Wed, Mar 09, 2011 at 04:58:58PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
> I don't understand the basis for this.  What has the precession of the
> equinoxes got to do with the molad, which only concerns the Sun-Earth-
> Moon system?

The molad is only accurate to the nearest cheileq. Add to that what
I wrote about before (although exaggerating the size of the effect)
about the changing length of the month and of the days we use to
measure them.

(Synodic months as measured on atomic clocks are getting longer, because
tides draw energy out of the system. Days are also getting longer, and
they're one of the units of measure in the molad -- people don't just
translate it all to chalaqim. So, overall, the amount beyond the 29 whole
days that makes up the thing a molad estimates is shrinking.)

The molad is too long by 0.6 sec, which added over enough months comes
to a signficant error. And lemaaseh, today the molad does accurately
give you the lunar conjunction for Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Similarly, if you work the same math backwards to Rabbi Hillel II's day,
or chasimas hasha"s, the general era in which our algorithm was finalized
(except for one dechiyah about which machloqes arose), we find that
then the molad would have been accurate for something closer to midway
between Nile and Euphrates -- Alexandria and Nehardaa -- than Y-m.

(Search for "Afghanistan molad". There are people who explained it far
better than I just did.)

>> But as far as I can tell, it was never actually for Y-m. It was for the
>> center of the Jewish world in the final days of the Sanhedrin.

> The Rambam says it's for Yerushalayim and the areas within six or seven
> days' travel around it, from where eidim might come...

WADR to the Rambam, I don't see how that fits the math. I can't speak
further without knowing long distance travel speeds in the amoraic period.
We can compute when the lunation actually was back then. And it wasn't
over Y-m.

So, I'm not sure you should be figuring out the time based on literal
Y-m solar. Perhaps you should use that midpoint, or if you think the
error should be translated into geographic slippage rather than time
slippage, Kandahar.

>> The Shaar haKollel's (and my father's or early-grade rebbe's) explanation
>> implies that the qehillah should know what the time of the molad means
>> in terms they think in.

> I don't see how it implies that at all.  According to this explanation
> the announcement that the molad is imminent (or has already occurred)
> takes the place of the eidim's announcement that they'd seen the moon.
> What has the exact time of the molad, or the scale in which it's
> expressed, got to do with that? ...

I figured that eidus is to al-pi-re'iyah as exact time is to computed
calendar. In both cases, one is demanding knowledge that the month is
being done appropriately before proceding.

Speaking about that dechiyah I mentioned earlier, on Wed, Mar 09, 2011
at 21:54:08 +0200 Eli Turkel wrote:
> There is a debate among rishonim about the validity of the calendar of
> Hillel II.

> Did they declare in advance the kiddush of every month or do the Jews of
> EY do the kiddush today as representatives of the entire nation. RYBS
> postulates that announcing the time of the molad and our prayers are
> the re-enactment of the kiddush hachodesh by bet din in each synagogue

After meeting up here, RYGB and RYZ collaborated on a paper on the
subject of R' Saadia Gaon's calendar controversy for JO a"h. One of the
more central points of the controversy was whether the Gaon had authority
as the globally accepted gadol hador, or whether R' Aharon ben Meir had
priority as he led the qehillah within EY. That sounds like it could be
what RET is talking about.

(The central issue seems to be: The molad for Tishrei being at noon or
later forces a dechiyah. Is that noon as a fixed number (RSG), or is it
subject to slippage based on where the easternmost community is (RAbM)?)

The original paper is at
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol05/v05n038.shtml#08>. Further discussion
is at
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/getindex.cgi?section=C#CALE
NDAR%20CONTROVERSY%20ARTICLE>
(or <http://bit.ly/f5QSFn>) and a few following related subject headers.

Here is one mythbuster excerpt before I go:
    Nevertheless, it is not clear what, precisely, Hillel II fixed. It
    was not the final version of the calendar we use today and it did not
    ensure that there were no future debates over various details of the
    calendar. [2] There are several problems (other than the one that
    will preoccupy us here) that preclude the possibility that Hillel
    II firmly set in place the precisely fixed calendar we use today. [3]

    Eventually, one of the last Ge'onim, Rabbi Nachshon Gaon, formalized
    a 247 year (thirteen nineteen-year cycles) cycle. A perpetual luach
    based on that cycle (Iggul d'Rabbi Nachshon Gaon) is reproduced in
    the Tur Orach Chaim, at the end of siman 428. All modern luchos,
    such as the ubiquitous Ezras Torah luach and others, are based on
    that table. But that only occurred in the 11th century CE.

    [2] The fixed calendar is not mentioned in the Mishna or Gemara. Rabbi
        Hai Gaon is our earliest source for the mesorah that Hillel
        II fixed a calendar cycle. There are many places in Shas that
        indicate the absence of a completely fixed calendar - for example,
        Abaye's discussion in Ta'anis 29b of the halachos of a Tisha
        b'Av that falls on a Friday.

    [3] It is possible that Hillel II only established the rule that the
        seven out of nineteen years be leap years. Thus, for several
        more centuries there was some variability regarding which years
        should be the leap years. One argument in favor of this relates
        to the four "dechiyos" - rules for postponing Rosh Hashana
        that exist within the calendar rules. As we shall see, only
        two of the four are mentioned in the Talmud. Tosafos, Arachin
        9a d.h. Mai, clarifies that the other two dechiyos were later
        developments. A wealth of material concerning the luach comprises
        the entire thirteenth volume of Rabbi Menachem M. Kasher's Torah
        Sheleima. See the discussion of this and other proofs in Torah
        Sheleima there pp. 166-167 and 176-179.
... [much skipped, they switch to summarizing work by Engineer R' Yaakov
Lewinger of Bar Ilan] ...
        It is, reasonable to assume that those who set our calendar cycle in
        place began counting these nineteen-year cycles from a year
        in which the Spring equinox coincided closely with the molad
        of Nissan. ...

        Counting backwards, 359 CE, which is 4119 by our calendar,
        falls in the 217th lunar month of a cycle. In the first year of
        this cycle, 4105, both the actual spring equinox and the molad
        of Nissan fell on 29 Adar, March 20, 345, with only about a
        six-hour difference....

If we use this reasonable guess, the basics of our calendar were put into
place during the 5th generation of amora'im, before Ravina and R' Ashi.
And in fact, Rabbi Hillel II was nasi 320-365 CE.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "'When Adar enters, we increase our joy'
mi...@aishdas.org         'Joy is nothing but Torah.'
http://www.aishdas.org    'And whoever does more, he is praiseworthy.'"
Fax: (270) 514-1507                     - Rav Dovid Lifshitz zt"l

> Absolutely, And those yotzros are very, very beautiful. Calender buffs
> should definitely do the one for IIRC parschas hachaudesch, which
> mixes math with poetry.

RSM asked::
> Are the texts available online?

Sure. The yotzer, followed by the ofan for this week (hafsaqa rishona)
begin at the bottom of the page:
http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=43126&;st=&pgnum=560

KT,

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* The Onset of Death in Halakha IV: In the Media
* The Onset of Death in Halakha III: Noteworthy Discussions
* Audio-Schiur ? Psalm 126 ? Gedenklernen f?r Herrn Heinz Althof s.A.
* Le psaume 92 - cours multim?dia en fran?ais
* Is Outsourcing Ethical?
* Kalendernotiz: Neue Vortragsreihe zum Thema Gebet

On 9/03/2011 5:36 PM, Arie Folger wrote:
> On 9/03/2011 2:15 PM, Arie Folger wrote:
>> I don't claim that Bat Par'oh [...] told Moshe who his birth mother
>> was, nor that she knew (though the narrative strongly implies this
>> was clear to all participants
>
> RSZ replied:
>> How is it implied, strongly or weakly?  On the contrary, I think the
>> text implies that she did *not* know.
>
> Very simple. If you read the text without preconceptions, you see that
> it highlights a number of interesting twists.

Sorry, you're seeing things that are just not there.



> It becomes however positively daring when the slave girl* disregards
> all protocol and addresses the mighty princess directly.

Who says there was any protocol against it?  And in any case, protocol
never controls children.  A cat may look at a queen, and so may a seven-
year-old.



>  When you put all these together

All of what?  How was Bat Par`o aware of Miriam's role in getting her
parents to remarry?  She has no idea who this girl is.


> ought we not to ask why a girl would, out of
> nowhere, appear and suggest haeilekh lakh ishah meineqet min
> ha'ivriyot?

Why would we ask?  What is unusual about a little girl playing down
by the river?  And since the girl is Jewish, and sees a Jewish child
in need of a wet-nurse, what could be more natural than that she should
offer to be helpful and go find one?


> It becomes quie clear to all present that this girl must
> have some relationship to the boy

How?

> making it very likely that the wet
> nurse, the ishah meineqet, is the boy's mother.

Why?

> After all, wet nurses
> don't just run around by the thousands among the poor, the destitute
> and the downtrodden. It's a profession for those employed by the most
> wealthy, not for downcast slaves and their cousins.

Excuse me?!  That is the exact opposite of the truth.  Where *else*
does one find wet-nurses *but* among the poor, the destitute, and the
downtrodden?  Who else is it, do you think, who has spare milk?


> Then, the Pharao's daughter tells the woman to take that boy to nurse
> him, and she will pay her wage, which is as much as asking the
> presumed mother to relinquish her motherhood

Again, huh?  How on earth are you seeing that there?  What is in the
least unusual about offering to pay the wet-nurse the usual wage?
Did you think they work for free?

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
z...@sero.name                 eventually run out of other people?s money
                                                      - Margaret Thatcher

Interested in knowing the "proper" way to say Kedushah?  Please see 
http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/Ashkenaz/kedusah.pdf

Why is it that we have deviated so much from our Mesorah?  YL

On Wed, Mar 09, 2011 at 05:57:27PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
>>> How is it implied, strongly or weakly?  On the contrary, I think the
>>> text implies that she did *not* know.

>> Very simple. If you read the text without preconceptions, you see that
>> it highlights a number of interesting twists.

> Sorry, you're seeing things that are just not there.

You mean, like your earlier assertion in reply to REG that:
>> Midrash Berasthi Rabbah 1:26, however, says that he was weaned for 2 years,
>> not Sepher Shemot.

> Two years was the standard time for nursing.  The pasuk says his mother
> had him until he was weaned; therefore that was two years.  There's no
> need for any midrashim.  This is peshat, not derush.

That first sentence isn't in the book, it's "only" in chazal. Comments
on Yitzchaq's age of weaning (24 mo) and the lateness of Shemu'el's.

Back to RZS's reply to RAF:
>> After all, wet nurses
>> don't just run around by the thousands among the poor, the destitute
>> and the downtrodden. It's a profession for those employed by the most
>> wealthy, not for downcast slaves and their cousins.

> Excuse me?!  That is the exact opposite of the truth.  Where *else*
> does one find wet-nurses *but* among the poor, the destitute, and the
> downtrodden?  Who else is it, do you think, who has spare milk?

Well, when a potential future caesar needed milk, they wouldn't settle
for anyone lesser than the wife of the nasi. Admittedly they're centuries
apart, but it does seem to defy your exagerated (and pointlessly hostile)
"exact opposite of the truth" and a "where *else*".

>> Then, the Pharao's daughter tells the woman to take that boy to nurse
>> him, and she will pay her wage, which is as much as asking the
>> presumed mother to relinquish her motherhood

> Again, huh?  How on earth are you seeing that there?  What is in the
> least unusual about offering to pay the wet-nurse the usual wage?
> Did you think they work for free?

Slaves usually do.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is capable of changing the world for the
mi...@aishdas.org        better if possible, and of changing himself for
http://www.aishdas.org   the better if necessary.
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Victor Frankl, Man's search for Meaning

On Wed, Mar 09, 2011 at 09:57:44PM +0200, Eli Turkel wrote:
: Just came from a shiur of R. Benny Lau...
: Basing himself strictly on the pshat and what he admitted was a minority of
: midrashim he had a completely different take on the entire story...

Can you at least share rashei peraqim?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

On Wed, Mar 09, 2011 at 06:12:37PM -0500, Prof. Levine wrote:
> Interested in knowing the "proper" way to say Kedushah?  Please see  
> http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/Ashkenaz/kedusah.pdf
> Why is it that we have deviated so much from our Mesorah?  YL

First, I'm not sure all of minhagei Germany actually predate --
or at least actually became uniform -- before the Crusades promoted
the settlement of Eastern Europe.

In general, though, we tend to rely less and less on the Chazan saying
things for us. Much like Qedushah, muttering "Yomar na Yisrael..." et
al is also newfangled. The idea, dating back to the gemara, is to
be responsive. The Chazan says the pasuq, we reply explaiming "Hodu
Lashem...!"

Is either technically a hefseiq though, that there is something inferior
to the way we are doing things now?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The true measure of a man
mi...@aishdas.org        is how he treats someone
http://www.aishdas.org   who can do him absolutely no good.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                   - Samuel Johnson

On Wed, Mar 09, 2011 at 06:12:37PM -0500, Prof. Levine wrote:
> Interested in knowing the "proper" way to say Kedushah?  Please see  
> http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/Ashkenaz/kedusah.pdf
> Why is it that we have deviated so much from our Mesorah?  YL

First, I'm not sure all of minhagei Germany actually predate --
or at least actually became uniform -- before the Crusades promoted
the settlement of Eastern Europe.

In general, though, we tend to rely less and less on the Chazan saying
things for us. Much like Qedushah, muttering "Yomar na Yisrael..." et
al is also newfangled. The idea, dating back to the gemara, is to
be responsive. The Chazan says the pasuq, we reply explaiming "Hodu
Lashem...!"

Is either technically a hefseiq though, that there is something inferior
to the way we are doing things now?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The true measure of a man
mi...@aishdas.org        is how he treats someone
http://www.aishdas.org   who can do him absolutely no good.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                   - Samuel Johnson

Is a Jew allowed to serve on a Jury where the defendant in the case is Jewish 
(or even not Jewish for that matter, if the punishments for a crime were beyond 
the Jewish pale (say cutting off a limb for stealing))?
If for example, the death penalty is at stake, and Jewish law would say one 
needs hatraah and 2 witnesses in order to execute someone Jewish, but the 
non-jewish medina's requirements to execute are much less stringent; is one 
allowed to serve on the Jury, and then vote (truthfully??) on the case at hand? 
thus effectively sending another Jew to his potential death (assuming all 
appeals failed and he lived long enough to be executed......)

The same would apply to other transgressions - e.g. embezzlement crimes, where 
USA medina for instance would put someone in jail, while torah law would 
probably just impose a knas. 


      
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On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 11:57 PM, Zev Sero <z...@sero.name> wrote:
>> Very simple. If you read the text without preconceptions, you see that
>> it highlights a number of interesting twists.

> Sorry, you're seeing things that are just not there.

Or you just try to read the text with the subtility of a five year
old. I know that you think that is the way to read Rashi, and I fully
disagree.

>> It becomes however positively daring when the slave girl* disregards
>> all protocol and addresses the mighty princess directly.

> Who says there was any protocol against it? ?And in any case, protocol
> never controls children. ?A cat may look at a queen, and so may a seven-
> year-old.

Plain common sense tells us that protocol must have been much stricter
in the times of absolute kings, all the more so when they believed
themselves demigods. The child would have been pushed away long
before. Think about it. Pharao wanted all the Jewish boys killed.
Doesn't sound either peaceful or considerate. It rather seems like the
Nazis' forerunner. So you think the fellow's family and guards would
tolerate a slave girl of the most despised group, no less, to come
near?

>> ?When you put all these together

> All of what? ?How was Bat Par`o aware of Miriam's role in getting her
> parents to remarry? ?She has no idea who this girl is.

I never claimed she was. I do claim that the narrative sets us up to
understand that there is here a qilqul hashurah, with the girl taking
responsibility instead of the adults.

>> ought we not to ask why a girl would, out of
>> nowhere, appear and suggest haeilekh lakh ishah meineqet min
>> ha'ivriyot?

> Why would we ask? ?What is unusual about a little girl playing down
> by the river? ?And since the girl is Jewish, and sees a Jewish child
> in need of a wet-nurse, what could be more natural than that she should
> offer to be helpful and go find one?

You were never a shy child, were you? And even if you weren't, you
never went playing near the most powerful person of the region, who
constantly decides on life and death, without being fair. Think again.

>> It becomes quie clear to all present that this girl must
>> have some relationship to the boy

> How?

Because she cares and risks her life doing something about the boy.

>> After all, wet nurses
>> don't just run around by the thousands among the poor, the destitute
>> and the downtrodden. It's a profession for those employed by the most
>> wealthy, not for downcast slaves and their cousins.

> Excuse me?! ?That is the exact opposite of the truth. ?Where *else*
> does one find wet-nurses *but* among the poor, the destitute, and the
> downtrodden? ?Who else is it, do you think, who has spare milk?

In order to have a wet nurse, you need to prepare her. When she weans
her child, she has to be recruited. That would be much more likely if
she is from among the employees of a household, i.e. a domestic slave,
for example. Otherwise, random populations do not have readily
available wet nurses, because of (a) no demand, and (b) likely not
enough food.

>> Then, the Pharao's daughter tells the woman to take that boy to nurse
>> him, and she will pay her wage, which is as much as asking the
>> presumed mother to relinquish her motherhood

> Again, huh? ?How on earth are you seeing that there? ?What is in the
> least unusual about offering to pay the wet-nurse the usual wage?
> Did you think they work for free?

You read the verses disconnected from each other. Once you see that
the odds that the girl and the wet nurse are related to the boy, the
rest is obvious. Don't read passuq befassuq, but read an entire
parshiya together, and you will see that the verses are connected.

[Email #2. -micha]

REG wrote:
>> Two years was the standard time for nursing. ?The pasuk says his mother
>> had him until he was weaned; therefore that was two years. ?There's no

I think that that is very reasonable. However, two years is way too
young to expect the child to recall any education he may have gotten at
home. Do YOU recall anything from when you were two?

So I stand by my claim that it is most reasonable to posit that Par'o's
daughter had a more well developed sense of right and wrong than her
father, and she imparted Moshe both a strong ethical education and a
sense of belonging to the People of Israel.

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* The Onset of Death in Halakha IV: In the Media
* The Onset of Death in Halakha III: Noteworthy Discussions
* Audio-Schiur ? Psalm 126 ? Gedenklernen fr Herrn Heinz Althof s.A.
* Le psaume 92 - cours multimdia en franais
* Is Outsourcing Ethical?
* Kalendernotiz: Neue Vortragsreihe zum Thema Gebet

On Wed, Mar 09, 2011 at 03:32:35PM -0800, Harvey Benton wrote:
: The same would apply to other transgressions - e.g. embezzlement crimes, where 
: USA medina for instance would put someone in jail, while torah law would 
: probably just impose a knas. 

But there is a chiyuv to keep an orderly society (uvi'arta hara'ah
miqirbekha) encumbent on both Jews and benei Noach. And it's on the
strength of that chiyuv that "beis din makin ve'onshin shelo min
hadin". And in fact, R Huna cut off the hand -- shelo min hadin --
of someone who constantly hit other people. (Sanhedrin 58b)

To my mind it's more of a question of defining the limits of that chiyuv.
Does halakhah have a concept of disproportionate punishment wouldn't be
permitted under the chiyuv to have batei din?

There is a relevent teshuvah in the Besamim Rosh about not cutting off
the nose of a woman who repeatedly found non-Jewish men to shack up with.
Thus, making her undesirable to such men in the future, and thus keeping
her and any children she may later have, within the community.

Problem is, the Besamim Rosh is a far from an impeccable source. It
claims to be from the Rosh, but there are real indications it's really
authored by the man who claimed to have gotten ahold of the manuscript,
R' Saul Berlin (1740 - 1794), who had close associations with the early
(and still O) maskilim of Berlin and Breslau. And a maskil would have
clear reason to minimize the role of rabbis as a penal system in a
Jewish autonomous community. Especially such punishments so unpalatable
to modern sensibilities!

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When faced with a decision ask yourself,
mi...@aishdas.org        "How would I decide if it were Ne'ilah now,
http://www.aishdas.org   at the closing moments of Yom Kippur?"
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter

 

From: Isaac Balbin _Isaac.Bal...@rmit.edu.au_ 
(mailto:Isaac.Bal...@rmit.edu.au) 



> Do we shift all the questions of okhel vs refu'ah to scents  as well?
> If someone smells something only for refu'ah, does he make  a
> berakhah? [--RMB]


I'm not sure I understand. Isn't it a  Birchas HaNehenin (unlike Me'orey 
H'oeish which is Shvach)
Are you implying  that there is only Hano-oh if it has a nice smell but if 
that
smell also  makes me feel better I don't have Hano-oh?

 
>>>>>
Smelling salts revive you on a fast day but I don't think most people would 
 make a borei minei besamim on smelling salts.  And what about sniffing  
Vicks-infused steam or one of those menthol-scented tubes for a  stuffed nose? 
 Maybe some people would make a bracha but I don't see  it.
 

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

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