Avodah Mailing List

Volume 30: Number 130

Fri, 21 Sep 2012

• 1. Re: Rav SR Hirsch and the Raavad on Anthropomorphism (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: Psikei halacha regarding separate graves (Ben Waxman)
• 3. HeChalil (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Psikei halacha regarding separate graves (Ben Waxman)
• 5. Re: [Areivim] Rabbi strikes against iPhone (Prof. Levine)
• 6. Re: Beris Milah with Metzitza 6 days of the week (Akiva Miller)
• 7. Re: Beris Milah with Metzitza 6 days of the week (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: Beris Milah with Metzitza 6 days of the week (Arie Folger)
• 9. Re: Psikei halacha regarding separate graves (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: Can a Rasha do Teshuva? (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: Can a Rasha do Teshuva? (Micha Berger)
• 12. Mitochondrial DNA and the Mabul (Arie Folger)
• 13. Re: Mitochondrial DNA and the Mabul (Micha Berger)

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 02:53:21PM -0400, R Zvi Lampel wrote:
> RSRH writes similarly in his Chumash commentary on Breishis, end of 6:6  
...
>        This is also the view of the /Ra'avad/, the distinctively Jewish
> thinker: Belief in the Personality of G-d is more important than the
> speculations of those who reject the attribution of material features to
> G-d.

I think "Personhood" is probably more on target than Personality. At
least, as most people usually use the latter word.

Personhood: that Hashem is Someone, not a "something".

Personality: that the middos we ascribe to HQBH are literally part of
His emotional makeup.

> The view RSRH attributed to the Raavad has also been described as the  
> real point the rishon R' Moshe Taku meant to make (as opposed to an  
> actual belief in Hashem's corporeality, attributed to him by some).

That wasn't the point I took away from the extant pieces of his
Kesav Tamim.

Here's a relevent quote (pp 79-80):

    We cannot compare Him to any image, and we, who are fetid drops,
    cannot think about His nature. When it is His will to show Himself
    to the angels, He shows Himself standing straight, as much as they
    are able to accept. Sometimes He shows them a strange light without
    any form, and they know that the Divine Presence is there. He has
    movement, which can be derived from the fact that His fetid creations
    have movement. He created the air which provides life to the creations
    and created the place of the world.... He furthermore made known to
    them the acts of the chariot and the acts of creation. But without
    the wisdom of the Torah, it is impossible for any person to recognize
    the greatness of the Holy One, blessed is He, through intellect.

And (pg 85):
    A wise person will understand that according to the reasoning and
    intellect of those 'outside' viewpoints that we mentioned above,
    one must deny the statement of the Rabbis (Bereishit Rabba 88) that:
    "'I will be faithful for them' -- for three thousand years before
    the creation of the world God created the Torah and was looking
    in it and learning it." According to their words that there is no
    movement or motion and no speech all the words of the Torah and
    of our Rabbis must be analogies and metaphors. Heaven forbid that
    anyone with a soul within his body should believe in what they say,
    to lessen the honor of our Creator, and to deny the greatness of
    what our Rabbis have told us! They have also written, "Does He sit
    on an exalted and high throne? Originally was it possible for Him
    without a throne and now He need a throne? Furthermore anyone who
    sits on a throne has the throne surrounding him, and we can't say
    such a thing about the Creator, about Whom it says that He fills the
    heavens and the earth." These are [their] words of blasphemy, that He
    doesn't need the throne! They have forgotten... what the Men of the
    Great Assembly established in our prayers, "To God who sits... on
    the seventh day He ascended and sat on His throne of glory..." We
    see that He created the world and sat on the throne of glory, and
    not that He created other forms and sat them on the throne. Such a
    form was never created and these are words of blasphemy.

My take:

The Rambam (Moreh I) argues that HQBH is so Other, so Unique, that we
can't say anything about what He Is. Only about what He Isn't, and what
He does.

RMT's position appears to be that HQBH is so Other, so Unique, that we
cannot make any deductions about Him altogether. Take logtic and reason
off the table. And so, if the Torah says "Yad Hashem", what tools do we
have to argue? It may not make sense to say Hashem has a Guf, but not
fitting human sense is a given. In a way, his point isn't to assert that
Hashem has a body as to attack the notion that we can deny it. We have
to leave the question of G-d's Body unanswered and unanswerable.

Notice there is no more room in [my understanding of] RMT's hashkafah
for a personal relationship with G-d or Divine Immanence, than there is
in the Rambam's. Both deal in purely transcendent terms.

(No comment about the Raavad, because I don't know RSRH's source either.)

GCT!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             For a mitzvah is a lamp,
mi...@aishdas.org        And the Torah, its light.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - based on Mishlei 6:2
Fax: (270) 514-1507

I think that the argument between the two rabbanim can be summed up
differently:

Rav Schwarz: We have a halacha in the SA which can and frankly should
be applied, even if the application is difficult for social reasons,
how to do it, etc.

Rav Meidan: First of all the cost of applying this halacha is simply
too high and secondly we have no way what so ever of deciding anything
in these matters in this day and age.

Ben

We are used to thinking of the chalil of Tanakh and the BHMQ as a flute,
because that's the translation in modern Hebrew. But no of he musical
instruments are all that clearly identified.

The word itself probably tells us that it's hollow; a chalil probably
had a chalal. OTOH, the gemara (Eirachkhin 10b) says it's dechali qalei,
and that it's also called an "abuv" which is an "abuv shel qanah" (mishnah
ibid).

In Sukkah 5:1 the entire music of Simchas Beis haSho'eivah is nicknamed
"hechalil". Also, the chalil was played before the entourage bringing up
the bikurim -- Bikurim 3:4. So whatever sound it made, it was something
that would be prominant in celebratory or party music.

But in Kesuvos 4:4 (4:6 in an upcoming daf Y-mi), we learn that the
least funeral arrangements a widower must provide for his late wife
accoding to R' Yehudah is "2 chalilim umeqonenes". (Side-comments about
female public performers being acceptible to the mishnah are an obvious
distraction from my inquiry.) So a chalil can also have a funereal sound.

So when I got to this mishnah, I started wondering once again just what
a chalil could be. 

According to 2:3 the chalilim could be heard all the way to Yericho.

Bikurm 3:4 would seem to tell you it's not a flute: Hechalil MAKAH
lifneihem. It's a precussion instrument. It's also "makah" lifnei
hamizbeiach in Eirakhin 10a.

Rashi on Eirukhin 10a says "mishensi chalilin: chalil qlml"sh bela'az".
The French chalumeau (read: shallimow; plural chalumeaux) is like a modern
chalil with a clarinet-like reed mouthpiece instead of the whistle-like
one of a modern chalil. I don't know what Rashi does with "makah
lifneihem", and he even has on d"h "ve'avdei kohanim hayu" -- "osam
hamakim bechalil"!

Does Rashi have a broader definition of the root /mkh/?

Without Rashi, just looking at Chazal blank slate:

I would look for a hollow branch that is used in a percussion instrument.
Since it's "iqar shirah", it was probably something on which you could
play a melody (or if once chose, harmony? -- the mishnah often talks of 2
chalilim). Not just a percussion instrument giving rhythm.

We know it's a centerpiece instrument, not just knocking on one hollow
branch for rhythm.

So I would have concluded a chalil was something like a tubular xylophone
with cane tubes rather than the more usual (for today) separate bars
and resonators. But with two problems: I'm not ready to dimiss Rashi;
and I can't picture how anything in the xylophone family would be a
choice for a funeral.

GCT!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Like a bird, man can reach undreamed-of
mi...@aishdas.org        heights as long as he works his wings.
http://www.aishdas.org   But if he relaxes them for but one minute,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      he plummets downward.   - Rav Yisrael Salanter

Actually there is another machloqet within their machloqet:

Rav Meidan implicitly said that if an achron, even one as great as the 
Chatam Sofer, is the first to postulate that a certain halacha is 
Halacha l'Moshe m'Sinai, we don't have to accept that postulate, with 
all the attending nafqa minot.

Ben

At 09:02 AM 9/21/2012, R. Harry Maryles wrote on Areivim:
>I have to say that RSRH devotee Dayan Grunfeld - as interpreted 
>below is not the mainstream understanding of Yahdus in my view. To 
>say that one does not believe in God but instead "knows' God sounds 
>almost like Apikursus!

[I am posting my response on Avodah where I think it belongs.  YL]

When I told an erudite friend what Dayan Grunfeld had said to his 
son,  he replied,  "In one place the RAMBAM says one has to believe 
in Hashem and in another he says that one has to know Hashem."  I do 
not recall where he said this was written.

 From http://www.mhcny.org/pdf/Holidays/Shavuoth/7.pdf

Is Belief in God a Mitzvah? Maimonides on the First Commandment

It behooves us, then, to explore what led our great teacher the 
Rambam to count belief as a
mitzvah, especially since the plain meaning of the Biblical verse 
does not contain an element of
commandment. In addition, the later commentators and philosophers 
raise two string objections
to the Rambam's interpretation. Rav Hasdai Crescas, in the 
introduction to his philosophical
masterpiece Or Hashem, points out that it is circular reasoning to 
speak of God commanding us
to believe in God. No one can believe in God because God commanded 
him to do so, for if he
obeys God's command, that means that he already believed in God 
anyway. And if someone
doesn't already believe in God, then telling him that God commands 
belief is irrelevant.
Therefore, concludes Crescas, it is illogical for God to command that 
you believe in Him.

In addition, Crescas points out that commandment only applies to 
volitional acts, and belief is
decidedly involuntary. If you are convinced by the evidence, you are 
forced to believe
something, and if you have not found convincing evidence, you cannot 
believe it with certainty.
No threat, sanction, or command can make you believe something if you 
are not convinced that it
is true. To illustrate this objection with a contemporary example, I 
cannot command you to
believe the world is flat if you are not actually convinced by the 
evidence I present, and even if I
threaten you with the death penalty for disbelief, you may decide to 
lie and say that you believe
the world is flat, but you will never succeed in making yourself 
actually believe it.

 From footnote 4

In the Mishneh Torah, the only major work in which Rambam chose his 
own Hebrew terminology,
he consistently uses the root "de'ah" in this context and never 
"emunah". On this basis, both
Rav Chaim Heller and Rav Yosef Kafah (in their respective editions of 
Sefer HaMitzvot) argue
compellingly for the translation "leida" in place of "lehaamin" in 
the Sefer Hamitzvot.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avod
ah-aishdas.org/attachments/20120921/5c167a1e/attachment-0001.htm>

R' Micha Berger asked:

> (1) Why does metzitzah qualify as minhag if people were doing
> it solely because of Aristotilian medical theory?
> ...
> (2) Why would RSRH, RYESpektor, etc... require metzitzah bepeh
> (even if through a tzinor), if Aristotle didn't give reasons
> for such a preference?

How did Aristotle get involved in this? Do any poskim mention him in this context?

Even if you can show that Aristotle's medical theory preceded that of
Chazal, that doesn't prove causality. Chazal may well have come to similar
conclusions independently.

For all I know (and, for the record, I suggest this about most or all of
Chazal's medical and scientific comments) Chazal's belief in the need for
metzitzah came not via any sort of scientific or empirical research or
observation, but via revelation or ruach hakodesh.

Akiva Miller

____________________________________________________________
Woman is 57 But Looks 27
Mom publishes simple facelift trick that angered doctors...
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/505c60d2c422c60d21012st02vuc

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 12:42:40PM +0000, Akiva Miller wrote:
: R' Micha Berger asked:
: > (1) Why does metzitzah qualify as minhag if people were doing
: > it solely because of Aristotilian medical theory?
: > ...
: > (2) Why would RSRH, RYESpektor, etc... require metzitzah bepeh
: > (even if through a tzinor), if Aristotle didn't give reasons
: > for such a preference?

: How did Aristotle get involved in this? Do any poskim mention him in
: this context?

: Even if you can show that Aristotle's medical theory preceded that
: of Chazal, that doesn't prove causality. Chazal may well have come to
: similar conclusions independently.

True. The whole region believed in bloodletting. It needn't have come from
Aristo (or Hippocrates or Galen) in particular. I was using "Aristotle"
as shorthand for "medical theories we have experimentally shown to
be incorrect".

My point was that the sources do not compellingly state neither that
a- metzitzah was invented by Chazal rather than the Borei, nor
b- metzizah was instituted for specifically medical reasons (Aristo's
or otherwise).

So the question of whether current research both disproved the medical
basis and has shown direct MbP in fact increases medical risk presumes
ideas that are under contention. (It was in stating what I summed up in
the first clause of the prior sentence that Aristotle's name came up.)

: For all I know (and, for the record, I suggest this about most or all
: of Chazal's medical and scientific comments) Chazal's belief in the need
: for metzitzah came not via any sort of scientific or empirical research
: or observation, but via revelation or ruach hakodesh.

I agree this is likely as well. But I do not think that Chazal's medicine
is likely to be revealed knowledge. Just that I have no proof and little
reason to believe MbP is only about medicine. (Although, as R Papa
notes, neglecting metzitzah would also be medically harmful according to
then-current theories, and therefore one should fire a mohel who doesn't
do it.)

Lulei demitztafina to take on contemporary poseqim having this debate,
hayisi omer than until 5760, the overwhelming majority held that metzizah
is a din, not medical advice. The CS held metzitzah needn't be befeh,
Yekkes and Litvaks generally held that it did have to befeh -- but via
a tube is MbP. And while the idea was "out there" that MbP was based on
ideas about medical need, few if anyone were making halachic decisions
based on it being just medical (or minhag based on medicine).

(Just a side-note: Technically, proper Hebrew whould be to call the
practice Metzitzah beFeh, with a fei refuyah. I have been been using
the more common MbP because it has become a buzzword with a life of
its own meaning metzizah by direct oral suction [excluding metzizah via
RSRH's and RIES's looser definition of befeh].)

GCT and :-)@@ii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is equipped with such far-reaching vision,
mi...@aishdas.org        yet the smallest coin can obstruct his view.
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
Fax: (270) 514-1507

Rabbosai, when we question the medical permissibility of metzitza befeh,
those who reject it tend to combine two statements of which one does not
imply the necessity of the second. Practically, the Talmud states that not
doing metzitza is tantamount to endangering the child, which is why it it
is allowed on Shabbat. When fellow Oved R' Meir Rabi writes:
>  MR; This is irrelevant. We have no objection to Minhag unless it violates
> Shabbos. In this case Metzitza may be performed 6 days of the week,
> but not during Shabbos.

... he essentially assumes that once we understand metzitza befeh to be
exposing the infant to multiple infectino risks, we simply overrule the
Talmud's medical statemen t of metzitza befeh, and hence it should be
prohibited on Shabbat.

However, it really need not be that way. Metzitza being necessary for the
health of the baby and also endangering him are not orthogonal positions,
and hence, really, metzitza could both be prohibited and required at the
same time, even without resorting to classifying it as part of the qiyum
mitzvah of milah. Practically, this would mean that MbF is a problem, but
insofar as that problem is avoided, MbF is allowed and even required on
Shabbat.

That is actually the scientifically motivated opinion of IIRC R' Dr.
Mordechai Halpern. He discovered that a properly applied metzitzah is
medically indicated in the case of babies with hypospadias (an incompletely
formed urethra, with an incomplete  orla), as in such kids there may be a
smaller blood flow to the glans, which metzitza prevents from being
constricted by the sudden trauma of circumcision.

The solution? Unless one insists on metzitzah with direct oral contact, it
would require doing metzitza with a pipette that is applied in such a way
as to create a proper vacuum for several seconds. And that would be muttar
on Shabbat.

By the way, that is also how he explains the hetter to heat up water for
washing the recently circumcised newborn, a technique he has also brought
into emergency medicine when there is a risk of gangrene. The halakhah is
that where this is done, it is allowed even to heat the water on Shabbat,
while where there is no such minhag, one may not do so on Shabbat. How
could a piquach nefesh be dependent on minhag? Well, it could if the minhag
is to be trusted as indicative of the likelihood of certain risks in
certain subpopulations. He proves that the occurrence of hypospadias varies
vastly across populations.

Gmar chatimah tovah,

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* RCA Decries German Threats on Brit Milah
* Unterschriften-sammlung f?r einen offenen Brief zum Schutz des Rechtes
auf Beschneidung
* Plumbing the Depths of Aggaddic Exegesis
* Did the Talmud Suggest G?d Has a Head? Learning to Interpret Rabbinic
Legend
* Photos From Interfaith Meeting
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avod
ah-aishdas.org/attachments/20120921/dfdcedd5/attachment-0001.htm>

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 19:44:39pm +0300, R Ben Waxman wrote:
> Rav Schwarz: We have a halacha in the SA which can and frankly should
> be applied, even if the application is difficult for social reasons...

> Rav Meidan: First of all the cost of applying this halacha is simply
> too high and secondly we have no way what so ever of deciding anything
> in these matters in this day and age.

Burying suicides is the very related issue, if it isn't even a prior
case of the same issue. And lemaaseh, I don't know of a beis olam that
excludes the typical suicide from the main burial area.

GCT and :-)@@ii!
-Micha

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 12:23:29PM +0000, Akiva Miller wrote:
: Rambam, Hilchos Teshuva 3:3 -- "... on Rosh Hashana: One who is found
: to be a tzadik is sealed for life. And one who is found to be a rasha is
: sealed for death. And the beinoni is left hanging until Yom Kippur: If
: he did teshuva he is sealed for life, and if not he is sealed for death."
...
: Is teshuva ineffective for the rasha? A simple reading of this Rambam
: would seem to indicate that the rasha was already sealed for death on Rosh
: Hashana, and it is only the beinoni who needs to bother with teshuva. Is
: it impossible for the rasha's future to be improved by teshuva?

I thank RAM for asking these questions, because it started me thinking.
What does the chevrah think of the following chiddush?

A step back to REED's notion of a nequdas habechirah. My definition:

REED defines free will in a way that it only includes consciously made
decisions. On any axis, there is only a small range of situations
in which the side saying "yes" and the side saying "no" are similar
enough in strength that the issue becomes a conscious, free willed,
decision. This front where the yeitzer hatov and yeitzer hara battle is
called the nequdas habechirah (NhB), the decision point. Items beyond the
NhB are simply decided preconsciously -- before the person is consciously
aware of his options, he already knows what he's going to do. For most
people, robbing a back is simply not on the menu of choices. Sadly
for many people, being honest on their tax forms when it may cost them
significant money is also not on the menu. Etc...

For each person on each issue, the nequdas habechira is mobile. With each
good decision, the NhB moves over to make the next similar decision that
much easier. The yeitzer hatov becomes more powerful with exercise.

Now, back to the issue at hand...

This means that there are people for whom the necessary teshuvah for what
they have done is simply beyond their NhQ. Before they even reach the
point of choosing to do teshuvah, they already preconsciously decided not
to. The option couldn't be taken seriously. And while the NhQ does move,
there is a limit to how far the person can get in just 10 days.

Such a person is a rasha in the sense of someone who not only /does/
evil, but internalized the evil, they themselves /have/ that evil.

I therefore want to flip your first question on its head: It's not that
a rasha's teshuvah would be ineffective; it's that a rasha is someone
for whom it's impossible.

: Let's set that quesion aside for a moment, and ask a different
: question: What of a beinoni who is *exactly* in the middle and did not
: do teshuva. Would his fate really be sealed for death? ...

The flipside of our NhB based definition of rasha is that a tzadiq is
someone in the enviable opposite position. Of course he regrets what
he did and wouldn't do it again! He internalized that tzidqus; not only
does he DO tzedeq, he IS a tzadiq.

Which would leave the remaining ground for the beinoni -- someone whose
teshuvah is within the range of his possible choices during the 10 yemei
teshuvah. They could merit either life or ch"v death within the decisions
that could reach their bechirah chafshi during those 10 days.


Continuing this stream of thought to an issue RAM didn't raise... I am
bothered by this notion of one's fate being written and sealed during
the 10 Yemei Teshuvah and yet we do teshuvah and daven during the course
of the year with the expecation that teshuvah then isn't only a mitzvah,
but can change how Hashem treats us.

Another step back: Itzumo shel yom mechaperes. What does that mean? The
rasha isn't getting kaparah despite Yom Kippur, even with a se'ir
hamishtaleiach -- his fate was already sealed. And the guy who grabs a
cheese burger for his lunch that day? YK works for him too?

(The whole notion that the day itself can atone despite the spiritual
state of the person in question also rubs my prejudice against
metaphysical mechanics the wrong way.)

I raised this question in 2007
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol23/v23n174.shtml#12>.

Li nir'eh the idea is that itzumo shel yom is mechaper someone who
internalizes itzumo shel yom. Not in and of itself.

Warning: Realize that anything I say beyond this point will be conclusions
based on accepting a pair of chiddushim! (1) That a rasha can't do
teshuvah means that a rasha is by definition someone whose NhQ can't reach
deciding to do a sufficient level of teshuvah to save themselves. (2)
That itzumo shel yom is about a person accepting the etzem of YK.

Yom Kippur, for someone who takes it seriously, makes the battlefront
more mobile in favor of tov. Knowing what's on the line makes it easier
to choose teshuvah. And thus itzumo shel yom mechaperes because itzumo
shel yom enables becoming a better person who deserves a better fate.

And r"l lehefech... Someone who is not only unaware, but suppresses the
opportunity to feel the awe -- ki hu nora ve'ayom! -- is greasing the
slide downward. Actively failing to take advantage of the feel of the
day is an aveirah goreres aveirah.

Yes, change is possible during the rest of the year. But "dirshu H'
behimatz'o" has the ability to create a whole different scale of personal
change.

GCT and :-)@@ii!
-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 Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 07:09:59PM -0400, T6...@aol.com wrote:
: There are some people whose sins are so bad that only death can atone, but  
: they can still do teshuva...

Along the lines of what I said before...

A rasha is someone who moved the NhB so far over that too much evil is
internalized for them to be able to change their fate.

But the experiences of losing one's body (and the nefesh), of chibus
haqever and of gehenom will also move the battlefront. Death is like
having most of the enemy's army all going AWOL.

GCT and :-)@@ii!
-Micha

Dear Ovedim,

I have been sitting on this post for a very long time (actually, I
just write it now, but I was planning to for several years). In the
past, we have often discussed how to understand the Mabul, whether the
Mabul was fully covering the earth, or whether, as IIRC Reish Lakish
has it, it excluded EY, or whether, as Rav Henkin the Younger, Shlita,
argues, only the mountains that are tachat kol hashamayim, to exclude
those that are too high for being tachat kol hashamayim.

Other questions were also raised, such as lack of sedimental layers,
of the two favorite objections our last master RMB likes to cite, tree
rings, continuous cultures before and after the presumed age of the
Mabul.

Most of the solutions however ultimately assume that even if the flood
was local or not totally global, it did wipe out humanity.

That does not answer the cultural objection I cite from RMB above, but
many people will consider archaeology a soft science and not consider
its evidence to weigh that heavily. After all, archaeologists really
do engage in much speculation with scant available evidence.

However, there is another kind of evidence that would very much
question the human discontinuity except for family Noach. Brian Sykes,
the geneticists who reportedly developed this kind of genetic
analysis, has studied the mitochondrial DNA of contemporary people. By
correlating know rates of mutations to the differences between
populations, one can make a fairly solid educated guess as to how
related different people are. As mitochondrial DNA is inherited from
the mother only (similar analyses with Y chromosome sequencing
confirms his findings on the paternal side), it implies that one can
guess when people had their last common great great n^x grandmother.

Over time, some women have no kids, or only sons, and thus their
mitochondrial DNA line becomes extinct. Over hundreds of generations,
that extinguishes an awful lot of lines, and with his analysis, he
finds "seven mothers" of Europeans, hence the title of his book, the
Seven Daughters of Eve. The differences between those individuals are
fairly large, and hence it is useful to consider those women genetic
foremothers.

The number of genetic foremothers is irrelevant here for our purposes,
but it is relevant that this analysis argues, using hard scientific
facts, that there is human genetic continuity for much more than since
the Mabul, and too much diversity for it to have developed only since
then.

I was toying with the idea that the ladies of family Noach were each
very genetically diverse from the other, so that mitochondrial
diversity can be attributed to that, a Divine act of social
engineering, but AFAIU, this would be insufficient to account for the
full gamit of mitochondrial diversity, and doesn't explain
y-chromosome diversity at all.

I am hoping the responses will not only be fancy new ways of
understanding our trusted sources, but rather that scientists among
the chevre will point out where the above picture is wrong, or right.
Perhaps the book is a hoax debunked by other scientists, or perhaps I
misunderstood it, or perhaps the numbers are off, or perhaps it has
all been confirmed and is a solid question that needs solid answers. I
look forward reading your responses.

Gmar chatimah tovah,
Shabbat shalom,

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* RCA Decries German Threats on Brit Milah
* Unterschriften-sammlung f?r einen offenen Brief zum Schutz des
Rechtes auf Beschneidung
* Plumbing the Depths of Aggaddic Exegesis
* Did the Talmud Suggest G?d Has a Head? Learning to Interpret Rabbinic Legend
* Photos From Interfaith Meeting

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 06:31:16PM +0200, Arie Folger wrote:
: Over time, some women have no kids, or only sons, and thus their
: mitochondrial DNA line becomes extinct. Over hundreds of generations,
: that extinguishes an awful lot of lines, and with his analysis, [Sykes]
: finds "seven mothers" of Europeans, hence the title of his book, the
: Seven Daughters of Eve. The differences between those individuals are
: fairly large, and hence it is useful to consider those women genetic
: foremothers.

Sykes' is one theory among many. And he makes his income off offering
mtDNA tests that will tell you which haplogroup and which of these
daughters you descend from. So I'm not sure his is the most accepted.

I think it's worth checking out the dating of mtEve
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve#Impli
cations_of_dating_and_placement_of_Eve>
and of Y Chromosomal Adam
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam#Time_frame>.
We're talking 142,000 yrs since Y-Adam, and 150-200,000 yrs since mtEve.

All of which assumes things about mutation rates etc... that need not
have been true before the mabul.

BUT, there is one more person to identify... the MRCA (most recent common
ancestor) of all living humans. One person we all come from, even if he
isn't the father's father's father's father... or she isn't the mother's
mother's mother's mother... IOW, someone who was your mother's father's
father's mother's... and their father's mother's mother's mother's...

That person lived from 2,000 to 5,000 years ago. IOW, even without
questioning the science, we all could come from Noach, if there were
mountain top people, or residents of the future EY who survived the flood
whose DNA diverged from the Torah's Adam's genetic sources 142yrs ago.

One last note... The whole notion of DNA tracking is used to support
various theories about cultural evolution and human migration. They
aren't separable topics.

GCT and :-)@@ii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A person lives with himself for seventy years,
mi...@aishdas.org        and after it is all over, he still does not
http://www.aishdas.org   know himself.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter


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


Avodah mailing list
Avo...@lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org


End of Avodah Digest, Vol 30, Issue 130
***************************************

Send Avodah mailing list submissions to
	avodah@lists.aishdas.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	avodah-request@lists.aishdas.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
	avodah-owner@lists.aishdas.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Avodah digest..."