Avodah Mailing List

Volume 28: Number 220

Wed, 02 Nov 2011

• 1. To Stand or Not to Stand for a Chosson and Kallah (Prof. Levine)
• 2. Re: Birds & Fish in the Mabul (Chana Luntz)
• 3. Re: Birds & Fish in the Mabul (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Birds & Fish in the Mabul (Lampel)
• 5. Re: Is there any issur here al pi halacha? - New (hankman)
• 6. Re: Is there any issur here al pi halacha? - New (Rich, Joel)
• 7. Status of Non-Jew born to Jewish Father (Daniel Bukingolts)
• 8. To Stand or Not to Stand for a Chosson and Kallah (Joseph C. Kaplan)
• 9. To Stand or Not to Stand for a Chosson and Kallah (Prof. Levine)
• 10. Re: Birds & Fish in the Mabul (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: Birds & Fish in the Mabul (Lisa Liel)
• 12. Re: Status of Non-Jew born to Jewish Father (Zev Sero)
• 13. Re: Is there any issur here al pi halacha? - New York man pleads guilty to selling Israeli human organs (Zev Sero)

At 08:41 PM 11/1/2011, R. Micha wrote:
>REMT and RSM also noted here a while back that originally people sat
>when the chasan and kallah came in. Admittedly, we can view that as a
>transition period, not long enough to define a minhag. I don't know.

>However, li nir'eh that now that it's de rigeur, and people associated it
>with "chasan domeh lemelekh", refraining from standing makes a statement,
>not joining in on the hanhagah. It seems to be a trivial way to contribute
>to simchas chasan vekallah. So why not?

Rabbi Zev Cinamon published a sefer entitled "Beyom Chasunaso." In it he
gives "an explanation and analysis of the laws and customs of a Jewish
wedding." One of the sections of this sefer discusses this topic.

I have posted the material dealing with this topic at 
<http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/levine/standing_chasuna.pdf>
.


At 08:41 PM 11/1/2011, R. Harry Maryles wrote:
>It was never an issue until seats were put out for the ceremony.? Until
>recently the ceremony was always outside and all the people stood through
>the entire ceremony.? This is still done at many weddings.? Putting out
>seats & having the ceremony inside seems to be the chukas hagoyim issue,
>not standing for C&K.

I recall being at an outside chupah at least 20 years ago when there
were chairs set up and people sat.


At 08:41 PM 11/1/2011, R. Micha wrote:
>Why is it that everyone stands for the chasan and kallah at a wedding,
>but so few of us have a minhag to stand for Lekha Dodi? There we have
>a kalah, and in some nusachos, she is identified with "Shabbas Malkesa".

I stand for the last stanza of Lecha Dodi when we welcome the Shabbos
queen, but not before. This I think is the original Ashkenaz minhag,
but I am not sure if this is indeed the case.

YL

RMB wrote:
> : > Similarly 7:19, "kol heharim hagevohim *asher tachas kol
> hashamayim*".
> 
> : > "Mitachas hashamayim" and moreso "kol hashamayim" lack the
> ambiguity
> : > of whether eretz or adamah refers to the whole world, a piece of
> it,
> : > a clump of dirt, etc...

And I responded:
 
> : But note that your translation does assume that, for example, the
> mountains
> : on the moon are a part of shamayim (not to mention those of Mars,
> Venus
> : etc).  We now know and are able to touch rocks and clumps of dirt
> that make
> : up the great mountains of the moon and these planets.
> 
And RMB further responded:

> This is not a problem with my translation, but with the words
> themselves. After all, if we take shamayim in the spiritual sense, then
the pasuq
> would be saying that the moon, Mars, Venus, and galaxies beyond were
flooded.
> So it must be meant in a spacial sense.

....

> I think etymologically it is built from "sham", and thus means
> "thereness", and would be a term referring to any unreachable domain.
> (Contrasted to "aretz", that which can be spanned, related to "rutz"?
> At least that is RSRH's take on alef-prefix nouns. But in any case,
> my comment about "shamayim" stands no worse without this contrast.)


Agreed it must  be a spacial sense.  But it is still a problem for your
translation.  On what basis do you include in the definition of shamayim the
spacial area that includes the moon, planets and galaxies?   When an all
knowing observer knows that these are places that man is capable of reaching
with the development of the right technology.  I agree totally with your
etymological explanation of both shamayim and aretz. But in terms of
ultimate reaching, the moon and planets are no more a part of "thereness",
ie unreachable, than Australia is.  Alternatively if the moon and planets
are part of thereness because *at the time of Noach* they were unreachable
and the distance was unspannable, then the same could be said for Australia,
it was just not possible for Noach and any of the dor hamabul to make their
way, or "rutz" to Australia.  On the other hand today, we can span the
distance to the moon, making it not part of shamayim, and we travel freely
to Australia, and England, and the many islands in the Pacific etc that
require serious sea going capability, making them no longer unreachable
domains either.

But you see, this way of defining (ie translating) these terms makes it
dependent upon the people in relation to whom they are defined.  Aretz and
Shamayim are thus relative terms, expressed in the language of man, derived
from looking at the people at the centre of the relevant discussion and
their accessible domains.  Thus shamayim in the context of pashat Noach
means the parts of the universe (both spiritual and physical) that people of
the time could not reach, and aretz meant those parts that they could and
did.  Today the same can be said to be true, holding the meanings of the
words constant, but the shamayim is physically smaller and the aretz is
physically bigger.  Note however that a consequence of using these
definitions there is no requirement for a flood any more universal that the
people in relation to whom it was defined.

Otherwise you end up saying, as you did:

>I think more common is to recognize shamayim as having multiple
translations. Rather than talking about the moon and angels sharing the same
abode.

And Aretz too of course, sometimes including the moon and planets and
sometimes not.  But if you agree that there are multiple meanings, then how
can you assign one meaning with any certainty to the use of these words in
parshas noach?  And especially assert that "kol hashamayim" has to mean one
very limited definition of shamayim - out of a whole range.  Why cannot it
mean that indeed the moon, Mars, Venus and galaxies beyond were flooded?
Scientific evidence?  Gut instinct? 


> Tir'u baTov!
> -Micha

Regards

Chana

On Wed, Nov 02, 2011 at 02:28:59PM -0000, Chana Luntz wrote:
:> I think etymologically it is built from "sham", and thus means
:> "thereness", and would be a term referring to any unreachable domain.
:> (Contrasted to "aretz", that which can be spanned, related to "rutz"?
:> At least that is RSRH's take on alef-prefix nouns. But in any case,
:> my comment about "shamayim" stands no worse without this contrast.)

: Agreed it must  be a spacial sense.  But it is still a problem for your
: translation.  On what basis do you include in the definition of shamayim the
: spacial area that includes the moon, planets and galaxies? ...

... and most of the atmosphere. I guess our ability to get there with
special equipment doesn't count. (Maybe like our ability to see some
bugs on lettuce only with magnifying glasses.)

Off the cuff, these examples leaped to mind:
"Ve'of ye'ofeif al ha'aretz, al penei raqia' hashamayim" (Ber' 1:20)
"... ulechol chayas ha'aretz, ulekhol owf hashamayim" (Ber' 1:30)
"... ve'atzar es hashamayim, velo yihyeh matar..." (Dev' 11:14)

But I think you're arguing in the wrong direction to make your own point.

Noach was told that everything under shamayim would be destroyed. That
includes all of earth no matter which homonym is intended by "shamayim"
here. Your ability to raise problems is tangential, unless you can prove
that "shamayim" has yet another meaning that is yet smaller.

...
: But you see, this way of defining (ie translating) these terms makes it
: dependent upon the people in relation to whom they are defined.  Aretz and
: Shamayim are thus relative terms, expressed in the language of man, derived
: from looking at the people at the centre of the relevant discussion and
: their accessible domains....

But I think that day 4 tells us more about what shamayim was presumed to
mean to the reader than you're willing to grant.

...
: And Aretz too of course, sometimes including the moon and planets and
: sometimes not.  But if you agree that there are multiple meanings, then how
: can you assign one meaning with any certainty to the use of these words in
: parshas noach?...

Because the problem I posed -- that the flood is described as being global
-- holds under any of the attested definitions of "all the shamayim". And
why "kol", if people thought in multiple senses and Hashem meant the most
limited one?

I think, therefore, that even if there is a more limited sense than the
area that birds fly across the face of and rain comes from above, it still
wouldn't fit.

:                                                              Why cannot it
: mean that indeed the moon, Mars, Venus and galaxies beyond were flooded?
: Scientific evidence?  Gut instinct? 

Actually, if there is no macroscopic life anywhere but on earth, Hashem
could destroy all the yequm that is under all the shamayim by only
flooding the earth.

But I wouldn't go there, except as food for thought.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
mi...@aishdas.org        G-d as King of the entire cosmos and all four
http://www.aishdas.org   corners of the world, but sometimes he forgets
Fax: (270) 514-1507      to include himself.     - Rav Yisrael Salanter

On 11/1/2011 8:41 PM, avodah-requ...@lists.aishdas.org wrote:
> RMB:
>
>
> "Mitachas hashamayim" and moreso "kol hashamayim" lack the ambiguity
> of whether eretz or adamah refers to the whole world, a piece of it,
> a clump of dirt, etc...
Besides, 40 straight days and nights (a miraculous accurance, they say) 
of  torrential rain, not to mention the waters of the "fountains of the 
great deep," would seem to have to result in somewhat more of a local 
flood, no? And the relevance of Hashem declaring that seasons would not 
cease, as they implicitly had during that entire year of the Mabul, 
would also indicate a major, more than local-flood kind of occurence. 
Finally, Chazal speak of the Mabul having been preceded by another major 
Flood in the generation of Enosh, that had flooded merely one third of 
the world. So whatever amount of land that involved, the Mabul involved 
three times as much. (I don't buy the non-historical-meaning thesis, at 
least not in this case.)

RMB wrote:

The rich person who has money is like the one person in the desert who
has the canteen. As R' Aqiva says, "vechei achikha imakh" -- if it isn't
going to be "imakh", there is no obligation of "vechei".

This is why I focused the question not on the buyer, but on the broker.
The broker's position is more like a health care provider or the public
kupah, who have halakhos of triage.

CM adds:

I too was thinking along similar lines. From the perspective of  the buyer,
the principle of chayecha kodmin should apply. He (as RMB wrote) is the man
with the only canteen of water in the desert. Our case is about the broker
which in terms of the moshol used would be three people in the desert, a
rich man, a poor man and one with two canteens of water so he could only
save either the rich man or the poor man but not both. May he sell the
second canteen to the rich man (the first is for himself [chayecha
kodmin]). From the perspective of the seller, we of course get involved
with the question of risking your life to save another (which can get quite
complicated and very fact dependent ? how imminent the risk, how great the
risk, how sure of success in saving the other, organ going to pool or to
individual, can he assure a Jew gets the organ, would saving (or only
helping) another trump your risk, etc, etc.). then of course if there is a
problem from the seller?s perspective 
 then that in turn could get reflected back to the buyer and broker as an
 issue with lifnei iveir unless the buyer?s risk has risen to imminent
 pikuach nefesh and not just better health or less nuisance (eg. spending
 hours at dialysis etc).

Kol Tuv

Chaim Manaster
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RMB wrote:

The rich person who has money is like the one person in the desert who
has the canteen. As R' Aqiva says, "vechei achikha imakh" -- if it isn't
going to be "imakh", there is no obligation of "vechei".

This is why I focused the question not on the buyer, but on the broker.
The broker's position is more like a health care provider or the public
kupah, who have halakhos of triage.
CM adds:

I too was thinking along similar lines. From the perspective of  the buyer,
the principle of chayecha kodmin should apply. He (as RMB wrote) is the man
with the only canteen of water in the desert. Our case is about the broker
which in terms of the moshol used would be three people in the desert, a
rich man, a poor man and one with two canteens of water so he could only
save either the rich man or the poor man but not both. May he sell the
second canteen to the rich man (the first is for himself [chayecha
kodmin]).

=======================================
It?s not so clear to me that ?ownership?  is the issue. For example,  a
poor talmid chacham/kohain and a wealthy woman/convert/am haaretz are
drowning and you can only save one, the wealthy one offers a million
dollars to save them. Can you do halachically do that?	The poskim argue
over the 3 people in the desert where one has water but doesn?t need it ?
does he give it to one of the others to live or must they split it and die?
What if there are only 2 people and the one grabs the water and is koneh it
through shinui?...

The beat goes on.

KT
Joel Rich
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Shalom :)

My father and non Jewish step mom just had a baby girl on Friday. This is
his second non Jewish child from two different women. What is the status of
non-Jewish children born with Jewish fathers? Is there a different or
easier geirus for them if they decide to convert? Are they given a choice
at a certain age to simply be Jewish? Should we actively try to sway them
towards Judaism? My father had a bris for my non Jewish half brother
(details unknown, but I believe done by chabad rabbi). Would he require
chatafas dam if he decides to be Jewish?

May all klal yisroel experience only (yiddeshe) simcha and bracha,
Daniel Bukingolts
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""Why not" would be because of Chukos Hagoyim. That said, another reason I
heard (and I think I posted it last time this came up), is that we stand
before people who are doing a mitzvah. The chosson and kallah are coming to
do the mitzvos (to link to a recent thread) of Ki Yikach Ish Ishah and
Piryah V'rivyah, so we stand in their honor."

Why is it chukat hagoyim?  I've seen lots of non-Jewish weddings on TV and
don't remember the guests standing when the bride and groom walk in. I do
recall that they didn't stand at William and Kate's wedding.

As far as why we do it.  ISTM that "chosson domeh lemelech" and "they are
doing a mitzvah" are all post facto explanations.  My best guess is that we
do it as a grass roots action of giving honor to the bride and groom, not
because they're royalty or doing a mitzvah, but because they're -- you
guessed it, a bride and groom and today's their big day.  Really simple; no
need for any halachic lomdos. And once some people started doing it, it
caught on because it appealed to us.  There's no halachic mandate to do it,
but does everything we do need a halachic mandate? And do we have to search
for some reason to prohibit every new thing that's done?

Joseph Kaplan

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At 09:38 AM 11/2/2011, R. Moshe Y. Gluck wrote:

>"Why not" would be because of Chukos Hagoyim. That said, another reason I
>heard (and I think I posted it last time this came up), is that we stand
>before people who are doing a mitzvah. The chosson and kallah are coming to
>do the mitzvos (to link to a recent thread) of Ki Yikach Ish Ishah and
>Piryah V'rivyah, so we stand in their honor.

I think you mean that we stand before people who are *going* to do a 
mitzvah.  After all, most people do not stand throughout the entire 
chupah, only when the Choson and Kallah walk down.

If it is indeed the case that we stand when people are going to do a 
mitzvah,  then why don't we stand when the Baal Kriah gets up to 
lein,  when the Baal Shachris goes to the Amud to daven,  etc. ?

YL


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On Wed, Nov 02, 2011 at 11:34:31AM -0400, Lampel wrote:
>            And the relevance of Hashem declaring that seasons would not  
> cease, as they implicitly had during that entire year of the Mabul,  
> would also indicate a major, more than local-flood kind of occurence.  

Unless they ceased only in the relevant area, which HQBH promised
never to do again.

Just as 40 days of local rain would cover one locale no less than
40 days of global rain would cover the globe.

> Finally, Chazal speak of the Mabul having been preceded by another major  
> Flood in the generation of Enosh, that had flooded merely one third of  
> the world. So whatever amount of land that involved, the Mabul involved  
> three times as much. (I don't buy the non-historical-meaning thesis, at  
> least not in this case.)

You can't mix and match, though. If you are insisting that chazal
were speaking historically, then we have their variety of opinions --
the whole globe vs. everything but EY. And then the whole question of
understanding the flood as referring only to some subset of the Middle
East doesn't even get started.

>                      (I don't buy the non-historical-meaning thesis, at  
> least not in this case.)

That's different than believing in a local flood, which is the topic
being argued here. More specifically, is it even possible to fit the
idea into the words of the pasuq. Never mind what such an interpretaion
would mean in terms of our relationship to chazal's aggaditos and
parshanut.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It's never too late
mi...@aishdas.org        to become the person
http://www.aishdas.org   you might have been.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                      - George Elliot

On 11/2/2011 10:34 AM, Lampel wrote:
> On 11/1/2011 8:41 PM, avodah-requ...@lists.aishdas.org wrote:
>> RMB:
>>
>>
>> "Mitachas hashamayim" and moreso "kol hashamayim" lack the ambiguity
>> of whether eretz or adamah refers to the whole world, a piece of it,
>> a clump of dirt, etc...
> Besides, 40 straight days and nights (a miraculous accurance, they 
> say) of  torrential rain, not to mention the waters of the "fountains 
> of the great deep," would seem to have to result in somewhat more of a 
> local flood, no? And the relevance of Hashem declaring that seasons 
> would not cease, as they implicitly had during that entire year of the 
> Mabul, would also indicate a major, more than local-flood kind of 
> occurence. Finally, Chazal speak of the Mabul having been preceded by 
> another major Flood in the generation of Enosh, that had flooded 
> merely one third of the world. So whatever amount of land that 
> involved, the Mabul involved three times as much. (I don't buy the 
> non-historical-meaning thesis, at least not in this case.)

Also, Chazal speak of a localized Mesopotamian flood that destroyed 
almost half of the 70 nations at the time of the Dor HaPalga.

Lisa

On 2/11/2011 12:25 PM, Daniel Bukingolts wrote:
> What is the status of
> non-Jewish children born with Jewish fathers? Is there a different or
> easier geirus for them if they decide to convert?

Not really.  But it appears from the gemara that the father can decide
to convert the child (while still a minor) on his own authority, and the
child has no choice in the matter.  The father simply takes the child to
Beit Din and says he wants the child to be Jewish, he declares his
intention to raise the child to keep mitzvos, the beis din circumcises
(if male) and dunks the child, and he's Jewish.  He doesn't even get an
opportunity to renounce it when he grows up, because it wasn't done under
the rule of "zachin le'adam shelo befanav" but under the rule that a
father has authority over his children.  Just as he can sell his child
into slavery, or marry her off if she's a girl, he can also convert his
child.   At least some poskim hold this way lema'aseh, but if he's not
going to raise the child to be shomer mitzvos then it's best not to let
him know he has this option, because it's bad for the child to be Jewish
and not keep mitzvos.


> Are they given a choice at a certain age to simply be Jewish?

No.

> Should we actively try to sway them towards Judaism?

Only if that will bring the father back.  It may be that if he suddenly
finds that his wife and children are Jewish and keeping mitzvos, he
will realise that he should be doing so too, in which case it was worth
doing.


> My father had a bris for my non Jewish half brother
> (details unknown, but I believe done by chabad rabbi). Would he require
> chatafas dam if he decides to be Jewish?

No.  That's what the "bris" was for; it was done leshem gerus, in case
the child eventually decides to convert.


-- 
Zev Sero        If they use these guns against us once, at that moment
z...@sero.name   the Oslo Accord will be annulled and the IDF will
                 return to all the places that have been given to them.
                                            - Yitzchak Rabin

                    
                

On 2/11/2011 5:48 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> This is why I focused the question not on the buyer, but on the broker.
> The broker's position is more like a health care provider or the public
> kupah, who have halakhos of triage

The public kupah has these rules.  I don't see why a private broker
should be bound by them.  He is acting for himself, or for his client,
not for the public at large.


On 2/11/2011 8:58 AM, Joseph C. Kaplan wrote:
> RZS responded similarly; that this is the way of the world -- the rich
> have it better. And that's true. Bt the question I raise is whether that
> has to be the case. And thus, even if it is true that "every attempt to
> change it has failed," why does that stop us from trying to change again
> if that would be a better, fairer, more just and ethical way of acting.

Because the way it is is right and just.  Hashem morish uma`ashir.
That's why Rebbi honoured the rich -- if Hashem saw fit to bestow riches
on them then they deserve honour.  It is also right and just for the rich
to recognise where their money came from, and to be generous with it; but
it's not as if it doesn't really belong to them, and there's something
wrong with them spending it first on themselves.  On the contrary, since
they got it from Hashem and not from other people, nobody else has any
claim on it at all.  The `aniyim whom they help "mishulchan gavoah ka-zachu".

> And organ transplant is an area where maybe we can change it because it
> is new so we have some control over how it is developing.  We've set up
>  a system in the US that seems to be better; why defend someone who
> violated it.

Because you have no right to impose such a system on people who don't
consent to it.  The organs don't belong to you, and you have no right
to dictate who should get them and on what terms.  Hashem gave my organs
to me, not to you, and only I can decide whether to give them to someone
else, and for what reason.  If I decide to do it for money, that's my
business, and if you try to interfere by force then you are no better
than a highwayman.


On 2/11/2011 12:08 PM, Rich, Joel wrote:
> It's not so clear to me that "ownership" is the issue. For example, a
> poor talmid chacham/kohain and a wealthy woman/convert/am haaretz are
> drowning and you can only save one, the wealthy one offers a million
> dollars to save them. Can you do halachically do that?

Not only that, but even if nobody is offering money and you are donating
your water, you can give it to whomever you like. "Ve'ish es kodoshov lo
yihyu".  There are no rules.  How much more so that which you are not
makdish but are selling.  (Selling the water for a profit may reduce
your mitzvah but it doesn't erase it.  The person who goes fishing on
Shabbos and quite by accident happens to save a person still gets the
credit for hatzolas nefashos, i.e. his intended avera turns into a mitzvah.)

-- 
Zev Sero        If they use these guns against us once, at that moment
z...@sero.name   the Oslo Accord will be annulled and the IDF will
                 return to all the places that have been given to them.
                                            - Yitzchak Rabin


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