Avodah Mailing List

Volume 30: Number 182

Wed, 26 Dec 2012

• 1. Re: Polygamy (was: Isha raah) (T6...@aol.com)
• 2. LH about poskim (Eli Turkel)
• 3. Re: Polygamy (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Polygamy (Akiva Miller)
• 5. Re: Polygamy (Zev Sero)
• 6. Re: Polygamy (Lisa Liel)
• 7. The lifetime of Shammai. What are the dates? (Eliyahu Grossman)
• 8. Re: Polygamy (Zev Sero)
• 9. Re: LH about poskim (Zev Sero)
• 10. Re: Polygamy (Zev Sero)
• 11. Re: Polygamy (Lisa Liel)
• 12. Re: Polygamy (Zev Sero)
• 13. Re: Polygamy (Ben Waxman)
• 14. Re: Polygamy (Micha Berger)
• 15. Re: Polygamy (Ben Waxman)
• 16. Re: Polygamy (Zev Sero)
• 17. Re: Polygamy (Micha Berger)

 
From: Daas Books <i...@daasbooks.com>

Maybe a different  way of asking your question is: what's the Torah hashkafa
behind the  permission of polygamy on the one hand and the prohibition
against polyandry  on the other?

....R' Tarfon married 300 wives (Yerushalmi Yevamos 4).  There was a famine 
and
as a Cohen he had plenty of food.

But the  question remains -- why this heter exclusively for  men?






>>>>>
 
The main reason is that men and women are different, and a woman feels a  
loyalty and an attachment to her husband -- as well as an emotional, social 
and  financial dependence on him -- that simply could not work with two or 
more  husbands.  The Torah is an Owners Manual written by our Manufacturer and 
 accords with human nature.  
 
Closely related to what I have said about the inbuilt nature of a woman is  
the simple fact that if a woman had more than one husband, paternity would 
be  difficult if not impossible to establish.  Men would shirk their duties 
to  their offspring, and to the women who must necessarily go through months 
of  pregnancy and many more months of nursing and caring for those 
offspring, if  they did not know that the little tykes were in fact their own.
 
You have to forget that women nowadays can easily avoid pregnancy, that  
they compete with men in the workplace, that they can buy formula in the  
supermarket and don't have to nurse, that they have baby warehouses aka  daycare 
centers to store inconvenient babies while Mommy works, that most  jobs 
aren't physically strenuous anymore, that DNA can prove paternity.   You have 
to forget the developments of the last fifty years and think of the  last 
five thousand or so years of human biology and human nature.
 

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



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<<Are you claiming that a Rabbi cannot even give a hechsher to a local
restaurant without a team of top experts?>>

I would modify my poisition because in a restaraunt one really only uses
products that already have a hasgacha
(except perhaps for inspecting vegetables which doesnt need a chemist).
I recently flew and the food was under the hasgacha of the Volvolver Rebbe.
I don't absolutely nothing about the hasgacha but in practice the hasgacha
means he chose products that had multiple hasgachot already.

What I am claiming is that a rabbi cannot give a hechsher to the production
of a food (i.e. the original hechsher and not just the distribution of
products that already have a hechsher) without a team of experts.

-- 
Eli Turkel
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On Tue, Dec 25, 2012 at 05:37:53PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
> That's very simple: it's the definition of "marriage".   A woman is married
> to a man, and what that *means* is that she is forbidden to all others.

So then the question is just: Why do we have qiddushin, and not some other
basis for family structure?


>                                     But a man is not married to a woman;
> an attempt to force that meaning on a marriage invalidates it, because
> it means the parties don't understand what marriage *is*...

By sticking to English, this statement overreaches.

Yes, it's "harei at mequdeshes li" -- a man is not mequdeshes to a woman.
And leqadeish is to set aside for a specific purpose. So had you used
the word "qiddushin", I would agree. But...

The qinyan of qiddushin is that of taking on achrayus, akin to appointing
someone to sell youe chameitz via a qinyan suddar. We could equally define
the English word "marriage" to refer to that acharayus as much as to refer
to qiddushin. And in common parlance, we do.


Three proofs that the qinyan of marriage is acceptance of achrayus, not
assumption of property:

1- Property does not have to agree to be baught. Qiddushin requires her
   consent. (Even her guardian's consent can be vetoed upon reaching
   majority.)

2- Money received for a qinyan does not itself require a qinyan, but
   the ring the chasan gives a kalah does.

3- Onaas mamon doesn't apply to qiddushin -- any amount of money (above
   a minimum shiur for it to be "money") is acceptable.

(I might even suggest that this is the definition of qinyan in general,
and qinyan as accepting baalus is "only" because baalus derives from
achrayus. Unlike Western notions of property. See
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2007/03/qinyan-and-baalus.shtml> for more
of my thoughts on this tangent's tangent.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "The most prevalent illness of our generation is
mi...@aishdas.org        excessive anxiety....  Emunah decreases anxiety:
http://www.aishdas.org   'The Almighty is my source of salvation;  I will
Fax: (270) 514-1507      trust and not be afraid.'" (Isa 12) -Shalhevesya

R"n Lisa Liel wrote:
> Of course, that's a non-answer, because it simply begs the
> question: why is that the definition. Why is kiddushin a man
> being koneh a woman? And the question was, what's the hashkafa
> behind it being that way? Or, presumably, is it just a chok?

R' Zev Sero responded:
> I don't think you can question definitions. Why is that the
> definition of marriage? You might as well ask why is "three"
> the number between two and four, or why the definition of
> "tzon" is sheep and goats, but not other livestock. That's
> just what the word means.

Okay, then I'll rephrase the question in RZS's terms: Why is there
something called "marriage" under which a woman nay have no more than one
male spouse, but the Torah did not institute any parallel procedure by
which a man would be limited to no more than one female spouse? Is that
clearer?

My personal attempt at an answer is this: It is a sort-of-chok. Let's compare it to kashrus and shaatnez.

Why may I eat deer but not horse? I've been taught to believe that there is
something harmful about horse, which is not so by deer. It is probably
something spiritual rather that physical, meaning that medical researchers
will probably never find the poison, but we believe horse to be harmful
nevertheless. It has something to do, perhaps, with animals which are
carnivores and predators, or something along those lines, depending on who
one reads.

I feel confident in suspecting that HaShem *probably* didn't prohibit horse
merely on a whim. Prohibiting it to train our self-control is a
possibility, but I tend to think that there is a real problem with eating
horse. It's probably not a biological poison, but perhaps "psychological
incompatibility" might be a better description.

Ditto for why I can wear a combination of wool and cotton, but not wool and
linen. And it is possible that someday the scientists will discover some
physical basis for this incompatibility, but even then, we won't be *sure*
of Hashem's reasoning. (At least, no more than yesteryear's connection
between pork and trichinosis.)

So too with the subject at hand. I suspect that there is something (or some
things) about the psychological makeup of male and female which makes it
intolerable for a woman to have two husbands, while it is tolerable for a
man to have two wives.

The Creator knows His creations in all their details, and our having been
created this way is no more arbitrary than the fact that humans don't chew
their cud. He certainly *could* have created us in manner by which neither
gender could tolerate multiple spouses, or such that both genders could
tolerate it, just as he could have made horsemeat tolerable to us. But that
wasn't His plan.

Call that a "chok" if you want, but I'm satisfied that there's a certain
amount of logic to it, even if I don't know the psychological principles
well enough to detail the differences between men and women in this regard.

Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
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On 25/12/2012 9:54 PM, Lisa Liel wrote:
  
> That's a little silly.  We aren't talking about an object; we're talking
> about a process.  Chazal learn kicha kicha.  Without that, they wouldn't
> necessarily even have a source for lekichat isha being an actual kinyan.
> There's a dynamic involved here that has no parallel when it comes to
> defining tzon as one thing and not another.

Different subject.  "Kicha kicha" is about kiddushin, not marriage.
They are not the same thing, and marriage does *not* involve an act of
kinyan, or nay other ceremony or ritual; as the Rambam says, a man meets
a woman in the street, they agree that she should be his wife, she moves
into his house, and she's married to him.  When one of them decides to
end the marriage she moves (or is thrown) out, and she's no longer married
to him.

Kiddushin is something on top of that, a mitzvah given to us, a requirement
that we formalise the marriage with some act.  How do we know what act?
Kicha kicha.  But what it is that we are formalising derives from the basic
definition of marriage, which exists unchanged since the beginning of the
world.  There's no dynamic, and there's no need for a reason, though of
course there could always be one, and at some level everything derives
from something else, and therefore has an explanation if not a reason.


-- 
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

On 12/26/2012 7:33 AM, Zev Sero wrote:
> Different subject.  "Kicha kicha" is about kiddushin, not marriage.
> They are not the same thing, and marriage does *not* involve an act of
> kinyan, or nay other ceremony or ritual; as the Rambam says, a man meets
> a woman in the street, they agree that she should be his wife, she moves
> into his house, and she's married to him...

Well, in that case, you're wrong. Because marriage is not unidirectional.
There've been societies where polyandry is acceptable and polygyny not.
There've been societies where both are acceptable. To say that the
*definition* of marriage is unidirectional is simply a falsehood.

Lisa

Hello all,

I can find the source for the generally used birth/death dates of Hillel (a
Sifre to Devarim, 357 combined with a gemara in Shabbat 15a).

But I have been unable to find the generally accepted source for Shammai
(50BCE-30CE). 

I am just looking for the source of this. Does anybody know?
 
Thanks.

Eliyahu Grossman

On 26/12/2012 9:15 AM, Lisa Liel wrote:
>
> Well, in that case, you're wrong.  Because marriage is not unidirectional.
>  There've been societies where polyandry is acceptable and polygyny not.
>  There've been societies where both are acceptable. To say that the
> *definition* of marriage is unidirectional is simply a falsehood.

It is unidirectional, by definition; that there have been a few societies
that have perverted the concept, or who forgot the concept altogether and
then came up with their own parallel institution, doesn't change that.
The definition that Adam and Chava knew, and that Noach and his family knew,
was a unidirectional relationship.

The only polyandrous society I know of is in Tibet, where it's driven by
sheer poverty, but I wonder whether they have any concept of exclusivity
at all, except that driven by lack of choice.  Does a man who shares a
woman with others, because he can't afford to support one on his own, feel
constrained from sleeping with any other woman, should he find one?  Does
the woman who is being supported by several men feel bound to them? (Or is
that irrelevant, since they will prevent any stranger from taking advantage
of their woman without chipping in for her support?)

-- 
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

On 26/12/2012 3:56 AM, Eli Turkel wrote:
>
> What I am claiming is that a rabbi cannot give a hechsher to the production
> of a food (i.e. the original hechsher and not just the distribution of
> products that already have a hechsher) without a team of experts.

Sure he can.  He can require that any manufactured ingredient that he isn't
100% sure of must have a hechsher, and then he can call the machshir of the
ingredient to find out what's in it, what potential pitfalls there might be,
and *then* make up his mind whether to allow it.   This is not at all the
same as simply trusting another hechsher, or attaching his name to someone
else's work.  He's the one making all the decisions; he's just turning to
other rabbonim *as consultant experts*, for information to feed his decisions.
So he doesn't necessarily need a dedicated team of his own.

-- 
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

On 26/12/2012 4:08 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 25, 2012 at 05:37:53PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:

>> That's very simple: it's the definition of "marriage".   A woman is married
>> to a man, and what that *means* is that she is forbidden to all others.

> So then the question is just: Why do we have qiddushin, and not some other
> basis for family structure?

This is not about kiddushin, but about marriage.  It comes long before
there was any such thing as kiddushin.  Kiddushin is only useful in
this discussion as an example, showing what the underlying marriage is.
Marriage has existed, with the same definition, since Creation; kiddishin
only since Sinai.  But since kidushin is merely a formalisation of the
preexisting institution of nisu'in, its forms are useful for illustrating
what that institution consists of.

-- 
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

On 12/26/2012 9:49 AM, Zev Sero wrote:
> On 26/12/2012 4:08 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 25, 2012 at 05:37:53PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
>
>>> That's very simple: it's the definition of "marriage".   A woman is 
>>> married to a man, and what that *means* is that she is forbidden to 
>>> all others.
>
>> So then the question is just: Why do we have qiddushin, and not some 
>> other basis for family structure?
>
> This is not about kiddushin, but about marriage.  It comes long before 
> there was any such thing as kiddushin.  Kiddushin is only useful in 
> this discussion as an example, showing what the underlying marriage 
> is. Marriage has existed, with the same definition, since Creation; 
> kiddishin only since Sinai.  But since kidushin is merely a 
> formalisation of the preexisting institution of nisu'in, its forms are 
> useful for illustrating what that institution consists of.

You know, making the same unsupported claim over and over again doesn't 
actually add to it.  You don't have any idea what the definition has 
"always been".  We read of Adam and Chava, and we don't see either one 
of them taking a second spouse.  You're inventing a definition in order 
to prove itself.  That's circular reasoning of the worst kind.

Lisa

On 26/12/2012 11:07 AM, Lisa Liel wrote:
>
> You know, making the same unsupported claim over and over again
> doesn't actually add to it.  You don't have any idea what the
> definition has "always been".  We read of Adam and Chava, and we don't
> see either one of them taking a second spouse.  You're inventing a
> definition in order to prove itself.  That's circular reasoning of the
> worst kind.

We can prove the exact definition, because the Torah tells us.  Having
established that, we know that it must be the definition that Adam and
Chavah, and Noach and his children passed on to their descendants.
Others without the Torah would have received the same definition, but if
they were to question it they would have no way of proving it; that
doesn't mean they didn't know what it was.

-- 
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

How did he have plenty of food? 11% of next to nothing isn't much.

Ben

On 12/25/2012 7:12 PM, Daas Books wrote:
> Polygamy (was: Isha raah)
> R' Tarfon married 300 wives (Yerushalmi Yevamos 4). There was a famine 
> and as a Cohen he had plenty of food.

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On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 07:12:16PM +0200, Ben Waxman wrote:
> On 12/25/2012 7:12 PM, Daas Books wrote:
>> Polygamy (was: Isha raah)
>> R' Tarfon married 300 wives (Yerushalmi Yevamos 4). There was a famine  
>> and as a Cohen he had plenty of food.

> How did he have plenty of food? 11% of next to nothing isn't much.

It's Y-mi Yevamos 4:12, vilna daf 29a. Given as an example of laudible
ha'aramah (use of a loophole). It was not that R' Tarfon got 11% of
the food a farmer would get. For that matter, a famous kohein like R'
Tarfon probably could have received more terumah than other kohanim. Had
he needed it -- R' Tarfon was rich.

The women didn't actually live in Chez Tarfon, which is why it's
ha'aramah. Instead, this was a way for poor women during a famine to
take their meager incomes (or tzedaqah -- recall he was a gevir) and
buy terumah which sells at lower prices than other food.

With that many neshei kohanim running about town, though, I wonder how
much lower those prices remained. He increased demand while the supply
remained the same.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Mussar is like oil put in water,
mi...@aishdas.org        eventually it will rise to the top.
http://www.aishdas.org                    - Rav Yisrael Salanter
Fax: (270) 514-1507

I'm trying to think of how much terumah could be on the market. Kohenim 
could sell their portions but why would they sell an extremely valuable 
commodity at a bargain rate in a famine? A Yisrael who inherited terumah 
could sell it but how much could there be?

Ben

On 12/26/2012 7:44 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> Instead, this was a way for poor women during a famine to take their 
> meager incomes (or tzedaqah -- recall he was a gevir) and buy terumah 
> which sells at lower prices than other food. With that many neshei 
> kohanim running about town, though, I wonder how much lower those 
> prices remained. He increased demand while the supply remained the 
> same. Tir'u baTov! -Micha 

On 26/12/2012 12:44 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> With that many neshei kohanim running about town, though, I wonder how
> much lower those prices remained. He increased demand while the supply
> remained the same.

It depends how big an area we're talking about.

It also allowed their fathers to simply feed them the terumah that they
would otherwise have had to give to a kohen.

-- 
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

The topic of Noachide marriage is in Hilkhos Melakhim 9:5,7-8.

9:5 defines Noachide arayos, which includes eishas ish. He expounds on
"vedavaq be'ishto veyahu levasar echad":
    Al kein yaazov ish es aviv -- his father's wife
    ve'es imo -- his mother
    vedavaq be'ishTO -- and not someone else's wife
    ... beISHTo -- and not a zakhar
    vehayu lebasar echad -- and not bestiality.

When it moves on to defining the wedding, the Rambam (9:7) turns to
Hashem's admonition to Avimelekh for taking Sarah -- "vehi be'ulas ba'al"
(Bereishis 20:3). Notice it's not marriage, a state of the couple,
it's ishes ish / be'ulas ba'al -- a state of the woman. Similarly 9:8
defines divorce as when she's no longer living under his roof. But
then, a gett also has a clear subject vs object -- it's something done
to the woman, not with her.

OTOH, it's not so simple. Because if we turn back to the source of the
actual issur, "al kein yaazov ish ... vehayu lebasar echad" does imply
that the man is being wed, that it's not only a chalos on the woman.

Which is the assymetry originally raised -- why is there no parallel
state for men. There are a two obvious causes for it:

The pragmatic one was already raised by RnTK. A woman is biologically
tied to mothering in a way that mandates a mechanism for the father to
be responsible for her food, clothing, and intimate needs.

The emotional one wasn't raised yet. But it's Chavah, not Adam, who is
punished with "ve'el isheikh teshuqaseikh". This can be understood in
pragmatic terms, but such emotional dependency appears to be presumed
by halakhah even without parentage being an issue. AFAIK, "tav lemeisav
tan du" applies to an ailonis r"l.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I always give much away,
mi...@aishdas.org        and so gather happiness instead of pleasure.
http://www.aishdas.org           -  Rachel Levin Varnhagen
Fax: (270) 514-1507


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