Avodah Mailing List

Volume 30: Number 148

Thu, 01 Nov 2012

• 1. BELIEF (cantorwolb...@cox.net)
• 2. medical care for goyim (M Cohen)
• 3. Re: medical care for goyim (Eli Turkel)
• 4. eivah (Eli Turkel)
• 5. medical care for goyim (M Cohen)
• 6. Re: medical care for goyim (Lisa Liel)
• 7. medical treatment for goyim (Eli Turkel)
• 8. Re: eivah (Lisa Liel)
• 9. Re: What is Se'or? (Simon Montagu)
• 10. Re: BELIEF (Lisa Liel)
• 11. Re: BELIEF (Ben Waxman)
• 12. Re: BELIEF (Simon Montagu)
• 13. Re: BELIEF (Micha Berger)
• 14. Re: BELIEF (Lisa Liel)
• 15. Re: BELIEF (Lisa Liel)
• 16. is this muttar? (saul newman)
• 17. Re: Uv'chen Ten Pach'd'cha (Micha Berger)

I have a question which has always troubled me.
One of the quintessential mitzvot is belief in G-d.
How can you legislate belief if you don't believe?

RET writes ... In his last shiur haRav Zilbersetin mentioned the importance
of giving medical care to nonJews including Shabbat and claimed it was a
Deoraisa
When Lianado hospital was formed item number 1 in its charter is that it was
available for all people independent of religion.
The Klausenberger Rebbe explained that he lost everything in the Holocaust
he was once wounded. 
When trying to put a bandage on the wound a Nazi ripped it off and said Jews
don't deserve medical care. 
He then vowed that if he was saved he would set up a hospital that would
serve all people.

This is a nice story, but what was the Klausenberger rebbe's sevarah in
halacha to allow item #1 above?

Eivah?  And if so, then it's only a b'farhesia issue. But privately, he
agrees it would be asur..

mc

<<.This is a nice story, but what was the Klausenberger rebbe's sevarah
in halacha to allow item #1 above?

>
> Eivah?  And if so, then it's only a b'farhesia issue. But privately,
> he agrees it would be asur..>>
>

From the story he obviously felt you treat others (including goyim) as you
would want them to treat you.
After being mistreated by the Nazis  even in private he was not willing to
do the same to another human being
Call it menshlicheit


-- 
Eli Turkel
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Hypothetical case:

You are alone on an island with only on other goy.
On friday he saves your life but on shabbat now his life is in danger

Do you tell him thanks for saving my life yesterday but I am not allowed to
save your life today
especially since no else will know

-- 
Eli Turkel
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RET writes ..from the story he obviously felt you treat others (including goyim) as you would want them to treat you.

After being mistreated by the Nazis  even in private he was not willing to do the same to another human being

Call it menshlicheit


that?s exactly my point. The story can?t be the reason for his heter.

menshlicheit can?t matir an issur d?oraisa of melacha on Shabbos!

 

mc

 

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On 10/30/2012 8:30 AM, Eli Turkel wrote:
> <<.This is a nice story, but what was the Klausenberger rebbe's 
> sevarah in halacha to allow item #1 above?
>
>
>     Eivah?  And if so, then it's only a b'farhesia issue. But
>     privately, he agrees it would be asur..>>
>
>
> From the story he obviously felt you treat others (including goyim) as 
> you would want them to treat you.
> After being mistreated by the Nazis  even in private he was not 
> willing to do the same to another human being
> Call it menshlicheit

Which is understandable.  But given what Chazal say about it, claiming 
that treating non-Jews is a d'Orayta obligation seems problematic.  
Certainly, the actual medical treatment can't be, and to say it is could 
be a violation of bal tosif.  Maybe he meant that given the particular 
situation, there's a d'Orayta obligation to avoid conflict with the 
non-Jews.  Pikuach nefesh, maybe.

Lisa
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Let me make clear that our entire discussion is hypothetical. In practice

1) The declaration of principles of Laniado hispital says that the hospital
is meant for all humankind.
It does not discuss shabbat at all

2) The general psak in Israel is that there is no such thing as privacy in
a public hospital. What you think is private
the bird will carry to everyone. Hence, eivah applies to all operations in
an Israeli hospital.

R Zilberstein brought the Meshech Chochma on Yefat Toar to demonstrate that
the concept of eivah is biblical
and applies even to the enemy in the battlefield since ultimtately there
are always some dealings of Jews with
every country.

-- 
Eli Turkel
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It depends.  How committed are you to doing what Hashem commands, as 
opposed to what you feel obligated to do on a personal level?  I think 
that in our society, saying "Oops, sorry" would be considered appalling 
and immoral.  But if Hashem actually forbade us to violate Shabbat in 
order to preserve the life of a non-Jew, what *halakhic* justification 
could there be for violating that?

Because remember, Someone else *will* know.

Lisa


On 10/30/2012 9:05 AM, Eli Turkel wrote:
> Hypothetical case:
>
> You are alone on an island with only on other goy.
> On friday he saves your life but on shabbat now his life is in danger
>
> Do you tell him thanks for saving my life yesterday but I am not 
> allowed to save your life today
> especially since no else will know

On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 7:29 PM, Akiva Miller <kennethgmil...@juno.com>wrote:

> My wild guess is that in the process of dough becoming sourdough, it
> becomes *so* sour that it is nifsal me'achilas kelev, and thereby no longer
> subject to the halachos of chametz.


The gemara in Beitza 7b asks why the Torah had to forbid both se'or and
hametz, and answers that we couldn't have deduced se'or from hametz because
se'or is like super-charged hametz (himutzo kashe); and we couldn't have
deduced hametz from se'or because hametz is edible (raui leachila).
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I'm not sure what you mean by "legislate".  Nor am I sure that you're 
right about belief in God being a commandment.  The Rambam says there's 
a positive commandment to *know* that God exists.  So I guess I'm not 
sure what you mean by "belief", either.

The more a discussion approaches heavy philosophical/theological issues, 
the more important it is to define our terms ahead of time, so that 
we're all speaking the same language.  But even without definitions, the 
question "How can you legislate X if you don't X" is a little 
ambiguous.  Do you mean "How can you demand that others X when you don't 
X yourself", or do you mean "How can you require people to X if they 
don't X"?

For my part, I don't accept that "belief" is a correct translation of 
emunah, if that's what you're referring to.  Emunah is related 
philologically to emet (the nun assimilates into the tav).  Amen is an 
affirmation that what was just said is true.  To have emunah is to be 
convinced of the truth of something.  Conviction and belief are two 
different concepts.

Lisa

On 10/30/2012 6:54 AM, cantorwolb...@cox.net wrote:
> I have a question which has always troubled me.
> One of the quintessential mitzvot is belief in G-d.
> How can you legislate belief if you don't believe?
> _______________________________________________
>
>    
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In Sefer HaMitzvot, Mitzva Aleph is belief in God.

Ben

On 10/30/2012 6:03 PM, Lisa Liel wrote:
> I'm not sure what you mean by "legislate".  Nor am I sure that you're 
> right about belief in God being a commandment.  The Rambam says 
> there's a positive commandment to *know* that God exists.  So I guess 
> I'm not sure what you mean by "belief", either.

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On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 6:03 PM, Lisa Liel <l...@starways.net> wrote:

> **
> To have emunah is to be convinced of the truth of something.  Conviction
> and belief are two different concepts.
>

Doesn't this make the question stronger? Belief perhaps you can legislate,
but how can you legislate conviction? Surely either you have it or you
don't?

BTW, "to have emunah is to be convinced of the truth of something" is true
for the Hebrew of the medi?val philosophers like the Rambam, but not for
Biblical Hebrew or Hazal. Emunah as in "tzaddik be'emunato yihye" or
"vayya'amen [Avraham] beHashem" is more like "trust" or the Yiddish
"bitochen".
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On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 07:54:41AM -0400, cantorwolb...@cox.net wrote:
: I have a question which has always troubled me.
: One of the quintessential mitzvot is belief in G-d.
: How can you legislate belief if you don't believe?

Worse problem: Recall Who the "You" doing the legislating is! In order
to accept the mitzvah of emunah in H', the person had to already accept
that there is a Metzaveh. Meaning that as a mitzvah, it would only
be meaningful to people for whom it is pointless. A number of rishonim
exclude emunah from the count of 613 on these grounds. They would consider
emunah mandatory as a prerequisite to the mitzvos, not as one of them.

Still, it would seem from Yesodei haTorah 2:1 that what the Rambam counted
as the first mitzvah was doing things that lead to belief.

Similarly, the beginning of Hil' Teshuvah implies that the actual mitzvah
of the Taryag is Vidui, not teshuvah.

Thought can't be legislated. bit attempts to shape it cam.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When a king dies, his power ends,
mi...@aishdas.org        but when a prophet dies, his influence is just
http://www.aishdas.org   beginning.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                    - Soren Kierkegaard

On 10/30/2012 3:59 PM, Simon Montagu wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 6:03 PM, Lisa Liel <l...@starways.net 
> <mailto:l...@starways.net>> wrote:
>
>     To have emunah is to be convinced of the truth of something. 
>     Conviction and belief are two different concepts.
>
>
> Doesn't this make the question stronger? Belief perhaps you can 
> legislate, but how can you legislate conviction? Surely either you 
> have it or you don't?

Have you ever been convinced of one thing and then convinced of 
something else instead?  So you can change your convictions.  If your 
current knowledge base doesn't allow it, you need to expand it.

> BTW, "to have emunah is to be convinced of the truth of something" is 
> true for the Hebrew of the medi?val philosophers like the Rambam, but 
> not for Biblical Hebrew or Hazal. Emunah as in "tzaddik be'emunato 
> yihye" or "vayya'amen [Avraham] beHashem" is more like "trust" or the 
> Yiddish "bitochen".

I'm not sure I agree.

Lisa
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On 10/30/2012 1:34 PM, Ben Waxman wrote:
> In Sefer HaMitzvot, Mitzva Aleph is belief in God.

Only if you think that the Hebrew "emunah" is congruent with the English 
"believe".  I don't.

http://lifeinisrael.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-parking-ticket-gmach.html
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On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 10:26:12AM +0000, Akiva Miller wrote:
: 1) The Pachad of G-d should be on all that He made (al kol maasecha).
: 2) The Aymah of G-d should be on all that He created (al kol mah shebarasa).
: 3) All of the maasim (all that was made) should fear Him.

Notice that "vekhein tein" applies to pachad and eimah, but yir'ah comes
from the ma'asim ourselves.

Li nir'eh this reflects hakol biydei Shamayim chutz miyir'as Shamayim.

As for the difference between the three, see Rashi on Shemos 15:16 (in
Az Yashir), "tipol aleihem eimasah vafachad".

    Eimasah: (Mekhilta) al harechoqim
    vaFachad - al qerovim...

And Rashi on Yeshaiah 33:18, "libekha yehgeh eimah: ayei sofeir? ayei
shoqeil?"

It would seem that pachad comes from something near at hand and immediate.
In contrast to eimah which refers to the remote and fear of the unknown.

Yir'ah, however, flows from re'iyah, as described just before Az
Yashir. As opposed to terror of immediate danger and panic about the
unknown, it actually flows into emunah and buttresses joy. "Vayir'u
ha'am es H', vaya'aminu baH' uvMoshe avdo." "Gilu bire'ada".

This is why yir'ah covers a territory English splits between awe and
fear. It comes from knowing you're dealing with something greater than
ourselves, and thus yir'as Shamayim expresses itself both as fear of
making a mistake (yir'as hacheit, which is NOT yir'as ha'onesh) and as
awe of His Majesty (yir'as haromemus).

And why the obligation of yir'ah for one's parents isn't prescribing a
road to the psychiatrist.

: Is there a difference between that He *made* and what He *created*? (I
: tend to distinguish these verbs as "created from nothing" and "made from
: something else".)

Eimah, being a feeling associated with the Unknowable, is more related
to beri'ah yeish mei'ayin than pachad is. Similarly, yir'ah refers to
people WRT bekhirah, the tzelem Elokim, so again we're ma'asim, but
hishtachavayah is subseviance so we return to beri'ah.

On the other axis, looking at the lines with the same root for describing
people:

Whereas pachad can be said of Hashem's ma'asim (ma'asekha), when we speak
of yir'ah we are speaking of free-willed creatures, so we're described
with the ownerless "ma'asim".

Similarly, Hashem places eimah on "that which You were borei", but when
we speak of people responding by bowing, we deemphasize the "You" with
"haberu'im".

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The Maharal of Prague created a golem, and
mi...@aishdas.org        this was a great wonder. But it is much more
http://www.aishdas.org   wonderful to transform a corporeal person into a
Fax: (270) 514-1507      "mensch"!     -Rav Yisrael Salanter


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