Avodah Mailing List

Volume 29: Number 7

Sun, 15 Jan 2012

• 1. Re: who avoids whom? (T6...@aol.com)
• 2. Re: animals and bechira?? (harchinam)
• 3. Re: animals and bechira?? (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Kimchis (was Who avoids whom) (Elazar M. Teitz)
• 5. Re: Do we Owe Respect to Old Bones? (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 6. Re: Do we Owe Respect to Old Bones? (Lisa Liel)
• 7. Re: animals and bechira?? (Harvey Benton)
• 8. previous calculations of pi (Harvey Benton)
• 9. Re: previous calculations of pi (Zev Sero)
• 10. Re: previous calculations of pi (Yitzchok Zirkind)
• 11. Re: sarah/127/loshon rabim?? (Yitzchok Zirkind)
• 12. dovid and midos (us/them) (Harvey Benton)
• 13. Re: animals and bechira?? (harchinam)
• 14. Re: animals and bechira?? (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 15. Re: animals and bechira?? (Lisa Liel)

 

From: "Chana Luntz" _ch...@kolsassoon.org.uk_ 
(mailto:ch...@kolsassoon.org.uk) 

>>  Thirdly of all there is the practicality of the matter.  Where and how  
did
she prepare for eg tevila if she kept the plaits of her hair always  covered
(and presumably plaited).   <<
Regards

Chana

 
>>>>>
 
I have thought about this question before and can suggest several possible  
answers:
All depend on reading "the walls of her house never saw her hair" very  
literally:
 
1.  She bathed in a public bath-house (the one for women of course),  not 
in her own home.
2.  She bathed in a private bath-house, like an outhouse, not attached  to 
her house.
3.  She erected a tent above and around her bathtub so that she could  
bathe without the walls of her house seeing her.
 
BTW it seems to me that if you want to emulate her, you should never leave  
your hair uncovered in your house -- EXCEPT in the bathroom -- which I take 
to  be not really part of your house.  Your bathroom, although attached to 
your  house, has the status of an outhouse or bath-house.  (PS I do not want 
to  emulate her, personally -- I consider it hard enough nowadays to cover 
your hair  in public, without adopting any chumras -- don't know if others 
would agree that  her custom was a chumra -- or does it have some halachic, 
i.e.,  prescriptive, status?)
 

--Toby  Katz
=============
Romney -- good  values, good family, good  hair


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



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>
> do animals have bechira??
> eg bilaam's donkey (apparently they
> can see angels (at least in this case)
> and have thoughts
>

Why would it seem that Bilaam's donkey had bechira? If an animal sees
someone in his path, he will try to avoid him, especially if whoever he saw
had a sword and was standing in his path. Animals act out of instinct
without much conscious thought.

The miraculous thing in this case would seem to be that the donkey seems to
have had ruach hakodesh to see what Bilaam could not, but how do we know
that all animals don't see angels? According to Rashi, this is the case.
Rashi holds that animals are allowed to see spiritual beings that humans
cannot because people would live in constant fear if they could
actually perceive everything around them.

Ramban holds on the other hand that since angels are not physical beings
they can only been seen when they take on human form, as in the angels that
visited Avraham. Ramban holds that the donkey did not really *see* the
angel, but rather sensed that it was in danger; that there was figuratively
a being with a sword drawn standing in front of its path.

The donkey did speak to Bilaam but this was also a miracle so there is no
reason to assume anything other than that Hashem just put words into the
mouth of an animal who "seemed" to speak but really did not have the
ability to form thoughts. Ramban holds that the purpose of the donkey
speaking was that Hashem was showing Bilaam that the power of speech comes
only through Him and if a beast could speak intelligently then surely
Bilaam could only say what Hashem allowed him to say.

*** Rena
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On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 09:32:04AM +0200, harchinam wrote:
: > do animals have bechira??
: > eg bilaam's donkey (apparently they
: > can see angels (at least in this case)
: > and have thoughts

: Why would it seem that Bilaam's donkey had bechira? If an animal sees
: someone in his path, he will try to avoid him, especially if whoever he saw
: had a sword and was standing in his path. Animals act out of instinct
: without much conscious thought.

: The miraculous thing in this case would seem to be that the donkey seems to
: have had ruach hakodesh to see what Bilaam could not, but how do we know
: that all animals don't see angels? ...

I don't think it's constructive to consider Bil'am's hinny an example
for discussion.

The "pi haason" was created separately from the creation
of animals in general (Avos 5:6), including Bil'am's hinny's
great-to-the-nth-grandparents. It's like trying to deduce the nature of
food in general from the mun.

But there is also an implication we can make here when we view what
the execption (rather than example) is... The ason's speech was a
stand-alone item, a different creation than the rest of the ason. This
*may* imply that:

1- This particular ason itself lacked free will even while speaking. The
speaking mouth wasn't even the same creature as the rest of the ason,
really.

2- The neis was not considered to be in the ason seeing the angel, but
in the ason's response to the angel. Implying that animals generally
can see mal'akhim.

The Rambam wouldn't make this implication, since he holds that seeing
mal'akhim is only possible within nevu'ah, which in turn requires major
intellectual refinement and (if you aren't Moshe Rabbeinu) being in a
special mental state.

Nor the Ramban, RnRF portrays his shitah:
: Ramban holds on the other hand that since angels are not physical beings
: they can only been seen when they take on human form, as in the angels that
: visited Avraham. Ramban holds that the donkey did not really *see* the
: angel, but rather sensed that it was in danger; that there was figuratively
: a being with a sword drawn standing in front of its path.

Where do you see the first clause? I didn't understand the Ramban that
way. Seeing a mar'eh maqom would help -- I find I don't unlearn mistaken
understandings without the effort of looking it up myself.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Life isn't about finding yourself
mi...@aishdas.org        Life is about creating yourself.
http://www.aishdas.org                - Bernard Shaw
Fax: (270) 514-1507

     RMicha Berger asked,

 > why was Kimchis rewarded by having all 7 sons merit becoming
kohanim gedolim for ensuring that "the rafters of my home have never 'seen'
>the plaits of my hair" (Yuma 47a)?<

     Who, other than Kimchis herself, said that was the reason for her
     reward?  It was the response she gave when asked to what she
     attributed it -- but the chachhamim did not accept her answer (harbei
     asu kein v'lo ho'ilu), nor did they offer an alternate explanation.

 
>I don't understand one element of that story... He son R' 
Yishmael was metamei through the roq of a nakhri, and so the backup had to
serve on YK.  This is how his brother Yeshvav served as KG. I
find it odd, because this seems like an odd part of a reward -- one of her
sons got to be KG through the other's mishap?<

     Actually, it happened not once, but twice, with his brothers Y'sheivav
     and Yoseph.  The reward was not that the mishaps occurred so that the
     brothers could serve, but that when the mishaps occurred (which might
     have been an onesh for his having left the mikdash to go to the shuk),
     the ones found most fit to serve as replacements were her sons, and
     not some other kohein.


On the same topic, RChana Luntz wrote,

> First of all, the question can be asked, how do the chachamim know that it
is in her merit that all her sons were kohen gadol, maybe it was in the
merit of her husband, their father?<

     The most obvious likelihood was because the chachamim knew the father,
     and felt that he was unworthy in his own right for such a z'chus. 
     After all, he was not chosen to be a KG.  The fact that Yishmaeil was
     referred to by his mother's name -- ben Kimchis, not ben Whatever his
     father's name was -- would indicate that.	Furthermore, the z'chus was
     that she saw them serve (v'ra'asa iman sh'nei kohanim g'dolim b'yom
     echad), and the father may not have had that z'chus; he may have
     passed away before it happened.
 
>Secondly, one of the miracles of the  beis hamikdash was that the kohanim
gedolim did not become metameh - although one can answer that this was only
in relation to tumas keri<

     Why "one _can_ answer"?  It is explicit in the mishna in Avos that the miracle was "lo eira keri l'chohein gadol b'Yom haKippurim."

EMT

____________________________________________________________
53 Year Old Mom Looks 33
The Stunning Results of Her Wrinkle Trick Has Botox Doctors Worried
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R' Arie Folger wrote:

> I never suggested that it would have been permitted to murder a
> pre-Adam homo sapiens sapiens. That would have been a gaping
> ethical hole in any theory suggesting Adam was not the first
> homo sapiens sapiens, just the first to be endowed with a tzelem.
>
> However, given that pre-Adam homo sapiens sapiens (and
> reasonably, any homo sapiens, be it a neanderthal or whatever,
> too) would still be protected by the prohibition on murder, and
> nonetheless, unlike later humans, his bones would still not
> convey tum'a ...

I am getting confused by the mixing of scientific terms and halachic terms.
I'd like to rephrase the above in purely halachic terms, simply to insure
that I'm understanding you accurately.

Suppose there was a creature whose appearance and behavior was
indistinguishable from Bnei Adam. However, we were somehow able to
determine that this creature did NOT possess a Tzelem Elokim. 

You seem to be saying that it would be assur to murder such a creature, yet at the same time, its bones would not be m'tameh.

I do not understand that nature of such a creature. Is it a Ben Adam or a
Baal Chayim? If a creature is in the category of a Ben Adam, then it is
assur to murder him, and his bones are m'tameh, and Tzaar Baalei Chayim is
irrelevant although Chesed and Nezikin are very relevant. If a creature is
in the category of a Baal Chayim, then it is mutar to kill it for a good
reason, and its bones are not m'tameh, and Tzaar Baalei Chayim is very
relevant while Chesed and Nezikin do not apply.

I had always thought that Tzelem Elokim is what distinguishes a Ben Adam
from Baalei Chayim. Perhaps I was mistaken. It seems that there is a third
category, that of Adnei Hasadeh, creatures which appear to be Bnei Adam,
but have no Tzelem Elokim. I would have expected appearances to be
irrelevant, and that the halacha would be determined by our knowledge that
it has no Tzelem Elokim, thus placing it in the Baal Chayim category.

You seem to be saying that despite our knowledge that it has no Tzelem
Elokim, the mere fact that it LOOKS like a Ben Adam is enough to create an
issur against murdering it. Can you explain to me why this should be so?
Thanks.

Akiva Miller

____________________________________________________________
53 Year Old Mom Looks 33
The Stunning Results of Her Wrinkle Trick Has Botox Doctors Worried
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/4f12e3e764cdc150f991st05vuc

On 1/15/2012 8:34 AM, kennethgmil...@juno.com wrote:
> R' Arie Folger wrote:
>    
>> I never suggested that it would have been permitted to murder a
>> pre-Adam homo sapiens sapiens. That would have been a gaping
>> ethical hole in any theory suggesting Adam was not the first
>> homo sapiens sapiens, just the first to be endowed with a tzelem.
>>
>> However, given that pre-Adam homo sapiens sapiens (and
>> reasonably, any homo sapiens, be it a neanderthal or whatever,
>> too) would still be protected by the prohibition on murder, and
>> nonetheless, unlike later humans, his bones would still not
>> convey tum'a ...
>>      
> Suppose there was a creature whose appearance and behavior was
> indistinguishable from Bnei Adam. However, we were somehow able to
> determine that this creature did NOT possess a Tzelem Elokim.
>
> You seem to be saying that it would be assur to murder such a creature, yet at the same time, its bones would not be m'tameh.
>    
I don't think that killing such a creature would be any different, 
ethically, from killing a chimpanzee.
> I do not understand that nature of such a creature. Is it a Ben Adam
> or a Baal Chayim? If a creature is in the category of a Ben Adam, then
> it is assur to murder him, and his bones are m'tameh, and Tzaar Baalei
> Chayim is irrelevant although Chesed and Nezikin are very relevant. If
> a creature is in the category of a Baal Chayim, then it is mutar to
> kill it for a good reason, and its bones are not m'tameh, and Tzaar
> Baalei Chayim is very relevant while Chesed and Nezikin do not apply.
>
> I had always thought that Tzelem Elokim is what distinguishes a Ben
> Adam from Baalei Chayim. Perhaps I was mistaken. It seems that there
> is a third category, that of Adnei Hasadeh, creatures which appear to
> be Bnei Adam, but have no Tzelem Elokim. I would have expected
> appearances to be irrelevant, and that the halacha would be determined
> by our knowledge that it has no Tzelem Elokim, thus placing it in the
> Baal Chayim category.
>    
Adnei Hasadeh... that's a fascinating term.
> You seem to be saying that despite our knowledge that it has no Tzelem
> Elokim, the mere fact that it LOOKS like a Ben Adam is enough to
> create an issur against murdering it. Can you explain to me why this
> should be so? Thanks.
>    
The only thing I can think is that it's as impossible to determine 
whether something that appears to be human has Tzelem Elokim as it would 
be to determine, chemically, whether a random piece of meat is kosher or 
not.

Lisa

animals in medrash like dogs (who did not bark) in mitzrayim, are rewarded
(by not withholding scraps from them). is this because they "consciously
chose not to bark?


the donkey spoke in first person. when he said "I would have done such
and such...." are we saying that Hashem was saying that on the donkey's
behalf (as Harchinam suggests) al pi Rambam???
why would we assume this??did Moshe Rabeinu or any other Novi speak in the
first person, when it was really Hashm or some other entitiy speaking??


what about the spiders that protected dovid hamelech during his flight
from shaul hamelech??
---we reward them nowadays also by not killing them because of that----
were they commanded by Hashem to do what they do??

some have complained that the rishonim were not accurate enought when
it came to their description of pi eg, they named it as being3 instead
of 3.14 etc.

however, when one divides 3.14 over 300, what is the resultant error
(and what real differentce does it make??

previous calculations of pi ( i may have entered some numbers incorrectly)
are as follows:

(numbers are from excel.....)
??? .14/3 
0.046667 

hmz

On 15/01/2012 2:27 PM, Harvey Benton wrote:
> some have complained that the rishonim were not accurate enought when
> it came to their description of pi eg, they named it as being3 instead
> of 3.14 etc.

No rishon says that pi is 3.  No acharon says it's 3.  The mishna can
easily be read as simply giving a number rounded to the nearest integer;
as the Rambam says, since pi is irrational it *must* be rounded at some
point, so why not at the integer level?  The only problem is the gemara
which insists that pi is precisely 3, without the slightest deviation;
tosfos asks the question and offers no answer, but somehow managed to
keep his emunah anyway and move on to the next sugya.


-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
z...@sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
                 are expanding through human ingenuity."
                                            - Julian Simon

2012/1/15 Harvey Benton <harvw...@yahoo.com>

> some have complained that the rishonim were not accurate enought  when
> it came to their description of pi eg, they named it as being3 instead
> of 3.14 etc.
>
> however, when one divides 3.14 over 300, what is the resultant error
> (and what real differentce does it make??
>

See Magid Mishna on Ramba"m Hil Shabbos 28:18 D"H Lfichuch im Riboh,
brought in S"A Horav O"C 399:13. (There are other Nafka Mina's as well)

-- 
Kol Tuv,
Yitzchok Zirkind
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On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 5:42 PM, Harvey Benton <harvw...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> sarah lived one hundred and twenty seven years, but in the chumash, imo,
> the loshon rabim/is not accurate, eg, sheva shanim is correct, but is one-
> hundred and twenty also not loshon rabim??

> compare to lshon in megillas esther do any meforshim talk about this??

See S"A HaRav 489:9 and M"B 489:9 (from the Chok Yaakovs"k 10 who quotes
the Shibolei Haleket Simon 234) that proper Loshon Hakodesn is to say
Plural "Yomim" from 2 through 10 nafter that it is singuler "yom" , see
also all the number of years at the end of Parshas Breishis and Noach etc.
(the last Possuk in Chumosh Breishis is no contradiction perhaps as the
syntex is changed by "ben").

-- 
Kol Tuv,
Yitzchok Zirkind

dovid cursed the ____ [cutheans???] that since they did not have the
midos of rachamim by accepting his apologie(s-)? of what his army did
(killing x numbers of thier soldiers, they were no longer (forever??) able
to enter into k'hal yisrael?
?

my questions are:
1. what the army or generals do or don't do do not represent every member
of a cuthean or other society. what if generations down the line areue
converts???

2. we seem to have the same issues nowadays with certain other peoples
(not to be named) that they kill us and commit other atrocities
against us, while we accept their wounded and even accept their special
children/needy hospital cases into our country (while our own people go
hungry and even homeless (3 killed by fire in Haifa a few years ago.......

hmz

>
> 2- The neis was not considered to be in the ason seeing the angel, but
> in the ason's response to the angel. Implying that animals generally
> can see mal'akhim.
>

How do you come to this? The ason's reaction seems to me to be less than
miraculous; any animal might normally stop or walk in a different direction
if it saw a person that it perceived as a threat -- and it is common that
animals perceive humans as a threat at times, especially one holding a
weapon [if animals do indeed see malachim]. In this case, the donkey first
turned away from the path, smooshed his rider up against something to avoid
danger, and then stopped completely. It just doesn't seem like unusual
behavior for an animal at all.

*** Rena
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R' Harvey Benton asked:

> do animals have bechira??
> eg bilaam's donkey (apparently they 
> can see angels (at least in this case)
> and have thoughts (

I am not going to dispute R' Micha's response to this, which focuses on
self-awareness, mostly because I don't understand it. But it certainly well
thought-out and can be found somewhere in the archives.

My view is similar to that of R"n Lisa Liel, who wrote:

> No, animals do not have bechira chofshit.  Only Bnei Adam, who
> have Tzelem Elokim, have bechira chofshit.

In other words, as I understand it:

As a person who grew up with a dog as the family pet, I strongly believe
that animals *do* have thoughts, and *can* make choices. But when we talk
about "bechira" in a Torah context, the word cannot be translated simply as
"choice".

Rather, it is a code word for a basic concept which might be abbreviated as
"free will to choose between right and wrong". Alternatively, if we want to
include Adam and Chava, in the period of their life after they were endowed
with Tzelem Elokim, and prior to their learning about right and wrong, then
perhaps we can describe bechira as free will to choose between abstract
concepts. (This may come close to R' Micha's concept of bechira.)

With this understanding, it becomes easier to see how an animal can make a
choice which does not demonstrate Bechira Chofshis, because it is merely
choosing the food it prefers, or responding to some stimulus, but not doing
anything which relates to right or wrong or any other abstractions.

I do concede that there are cases of angels disobeying their commands, and that does pose a problem in this regard.

Akiva Miller

____________________________________________________________
53 Year Old Mom Looks 33
The Stunning Results of Her Wrinkle Trick Has Botox Doctors Worried
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/4f138053f1491532b03st03vuc

On 1/15/2012 11:40 AM, Harvey Benton wrote:
> animals in medrash like dogs (who did not bark) in mitzrayim, are rewarded
> (by not withholding scraps from them). is this because they "consciously
> chose not to bark?
>    
Midrash isn't necessarily to be taken literally.

> what about the spiders that protected dovid hamelech during his flight
> from shaul hamelech??
> ---we reward them nowadays also by not killing them because of that----
>
>    
I don't.

Lisa


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