Avodah Mailing List

Volume 32: Number 9

Thu, 16 Jan 2014

• 1. Re: Chief Rabbinate Says No To Religious Women in IDF (Liron Kopinsky)
• 2. Re: Daf Yomi raises doubts about the mesora (Marty Bluke)
• 3. Re: Daf Yomi raises doubts about the mesora (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Daf Yomi raises doubts about the mesora (Rich, Joel)
• 5. Sheim Shakai on Tefillin, Mezuzah and maybe Shema in general (Micha Berger)
• 6. Daf Yomi raises doubts about the mesora (Prof. Levine)
• 7. Re: Daf Yomi raises doubts about the mesora (Marty Bluke)
• 8. Re: Daf Yomi raises doubts about the mesora (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: Daf Yomi raises doubts about the mesora (Zev Sero)
• 10. Re: Daf Yomi raises doubts about the mesora (Lisa Liel)
• 11. Re: Food for thought or Manna from Heaven (Liron Kopinsky)
• 12. Re: Daf Yomi raises doubts about the mesora (Lisa Liel)

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 8:35 PM, Zev Sero <z...@sero.name> wrote:
> On 14/01/2014 2:59 AM, Liron Kopinsky wrote:
>> Why should this be prohibited in a non-combat role?

> Apart from the reasons given by R Eliezer Melamed in this article,
> http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14346
> which apply to soldiers in any role, AIUI all soldiers have to train with
> and carry weapons; is this not so?  And if so, we don't have to get into
> the other arguments,since the issur on women bearing arms seems clear.
> In fact I'm surprised he didn't mention it.  Unless it's the case that one
> can serve in the IDF without bearing arms.

FYI R' Melamed does mention bearing arms, as an aside.

    "Indeed, there is room to propose that military representatives meet
    with the leading rabbis to examine the possibility of serving in
    home-front units, such as the Intelligence Corps, while attempting
    to establish programs similar to the *hesder yeshivot *that would
    be suitable for girls to serve in a*halakhic *framework. In such
    meetings, everything must be laid on the table, including the
    halakhic question of women carrying weapons, and the gender separation
    of units."

R' Melamed basically argues that it is not "assur" for women to join
the IDF, but rather "wrong". What his main argument is that since
a large percentage of girls joining the army will lose themselves
religiously doing so, we should make a blanked rule that all girls
don't join. This, then, is not a blanket issur, but really dependent on
the facts-on-the-ground at the time. If the army was able to create an
environment that would be sufficiently supportive of frum girls, then
this problem wouldn't exist.

So I think I need to rephrase my question:
Assuming women didn't have to carry guns at all, is there any outright
issur to being in the army, or is this just a matter of the times that
the army could, in theory, remedy?

Lisa Liel wrote:
> There's no prohibition of women bearing arms in the case of a milchemet
> mitzvah, which any reasonable understanding of halakha describes the
> State of Israel at the current time.

I think one has to distinguish between two types of Milchemet Mitzva, but
I would love to know if there are any sources to support what I am going
to say. When we say that women are allowed to bear arms in a "Milchemet
Mitzva" this would presumably be talking about a case where having
that particular woman armed is important for the war effort. Assuming,
however, that there are enough men that are able to fight, why would we
automatically usher in a woman into a man's fighting role just because
the war has a classification of "Milchemet Mitzva"?

Kol Tuv,
Liron

-- 
Liron Kopinsky
liron.kopin...@gmail.com

On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:
> You presume your conclusion. I don't know why you assume MRAH did indeed
> instruct us on the order of the parshios. A number of halakhos leMosheh
> Misinai (hlMmS) are related to how to make tefillin, and this isn't one
> of them.

> Of the Rambam's list of 31 HlMmS (and I know his position on HlMmS is
> difficult, I just don't know of any other lists) the following are all
> that relate to tefillin:
> ...
> The order of the parshios would logically be on that list if it were
> given to Moshe, but it's not there.

Halacha L'Moshe Misinai  generally means that the halacha's only source is
from Moshe Rabenu and that there is no sevara or pasuk that we could learn
it from. However, it would seem obvious that when the first person started
to make tefillin rifght after Matan Torah he would ask Moshe Rabenu what
was the order of the parshiyos and Moshe would tell him the order even if
the order is able to be derived from a sevara or pasuk. In other words, it
was not a halacha l'moshe misinai in the technical sense, but it seems
obvious to me that Moshe Rabenu would have explained all of the halachos to
the tefillin makers including the order of the parshiyos. Do you really
believe that in the midbar someone would use their own sevara to decide
what order the parshiyos should be in when Moshe Rabenu was around to ask?

> And I don't know why you have to go to the beginning of the period in
> question. It's imposssible that in Rashi's day (a more historically
> verifiable proposition), people didn't have tefillin they could open
> up and check against, that he and Rabbeinu Tam could come up with two
> answers.

How could they not have tefillin to open up? Did Rashi not wear tefillin?
Did his father not wear tefillin? My father has 250 year old tefillin
parshiyos passed down through the generations, why would you think that
Rashi wouldn't have any access to old tefillin?

> Rather, from Moshe's day it was known misevara that the Shemos parsshios
> should be in some sense to the right of the Devarim ones. How you
> made sense in that way, and whether for you or for someone looking
> at you was indeed left up to the wearer.

Even if I agree with your assumption, as soon as the Torah was given they
had to start making tefillin and they would certainly have asked Moshe
Rabenu how to make tefillin and what is the order of the parshiyos? Do you
think Moshe Rabenu answered them it is up to you to decide? Clearly Moshe
Rabenu would have given a concrete psak and everyone would have followed
it. If so, how does a dispute ever crop up unless there is a significant
time period where people didn't wear tefillin (see my comments later about
tztitzis).

> Those who wear murex dyed strings (which are now technicaly
> Haxpalex trunculus dyed -- the taxonomists renamed it) face a similar
> situation. Rashi and the Rosh give up trying to make sense of how to tie
> tzitzis according to both the Sifrei and the gemara. They conclude that
> the concept of chulios -- groups of 3 windings perhaps set off by knowts
> -- is a din in tekheiles and thus we tie according to the Sifrei alone
> (dividing the 39 windings among 5 knots, none of them separating off a
> group of only 3).

> But if one is trying to wear tekheiles all bets are off.

I don't understand the relevance here at all.  Techeles was not worn for
over a thousand years so why should it surprise you that there is a dispute
about how to tie the the tzitzis. We have no mesora and no examples
precisely because there has been a break of well over a thousand years
since people last wore techeles. However, I assume that you would agree
that Tefillin have been presumably worn without a break by Jewish men since
Matan Torah and therefore the machlokes is very hard to explain, simply
take a look at your father/grandfathers tefillin.

> ...
> That would be true of the majority opinion among rishonim as well,
> the constitutive approach. Only the geonim's retrieval model would fit
> your assumption.

> Which is why I wouldn't share that assumption. Nu, so each tefillin or
> tzitzis must be made one way or the other. And eventually we standardize
> on one way over the other. But does that mean Moshe had to have spelled
> out the one true way, that it alone was correct from Sinai on?

Wouldn't that make the most sense? Do you really think an Amora would
argue with Moshe Rabenu about how to interpret a pasuk? Would he think
that he knows better then Moshe Rabenu how to make tefillin? Moshe Rabenu
got the Torah directly from Hashem.

You may answer the famous agaddata with R' Akiva but in truth that
agaddata never made sense to me, how can R' Akiva say the source of
what he was teaching was halacha l'moshe misinai if Moshe didn't even
understand what he was saying? As an aside, where did all of those
tili tilim of halachos that R' Akiva was darshening from the tagim go,
we don't seem to have any of them.

On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 01:54:46PM +0200, Marty Bluke wrote:
:> You presume your conclusion. I don't know why you assume MRAH did indeed
:> instruct us on the order of the parshios. A number of halakhos leMosheh
:> Misinai (hlMmS) are related to how to make tefillin, and this isn't one
:> of them.

:> Of the Rambam's list of 31 HlMmS...
:> The order of the parshios would logically be on that list if it were
:> given to Moshe, but it's not there.

: Halacha L'Moshe Misinai  generally means that the halacha's only source is
: from Moshe Rabenu and that there is no sevara or pasuk that we could learn
: it from. However, it would seem obvious that when the first person started
: to make tefillin rifght after Matan Torah he would ask Moshe Rabenu what
: was the order of the parshiyos and Moshe would tell him the order even if
: the order is able to be derived from a sevara or pasuk...

Again, what you call "obvious" is exactly what I am denying.

What if somebody did need more direction. Picture someone asks,
"Should I do ABCD [Rashi], ABDC [R' Tam], DCBA [Shimusha Rabba] or CDBA
[Raavad]?" And maybe others. Why need Moshe tell him that only one over
the other is valid? Maybe Moshe would have answered, "You just need
Shemos before Devarim, and whether you intend that from your side or
the other side, as long as that's your intent. They're all good." Then
one can have a hashkafic discussion of why the wearer might choose one
over the other based al pi darko.

(Shimusha Rabba is a qunterus on tefillin that was written during the
geonic period, some think by the Behag, but redacted by the Rosh with his
pesaqim. I do not know how old this particular pesaq is. But basically
Shimusha Rabba and the Raavad hold like Rashi and the Raavad in terms
of Shema vs VeHayah im Shamoa, but disagree about who is supposed to
be seeing Shemos to the right of Devarim -- the less famous pesaqim say
it's from the perspective of someone facing you.)

And then these styles (and perhaps others), kept on being made. Maybe
different shevatim had preferences, maybe not. Until millenia later, four
survived, and if you looked into zeidi's or saba's tefillin when they
were being checked, you could have found any of the four. The rishonim
I inserted in brackets voiced their preferences. And (for reasons I
admittedly can't explain) consensus built around Rashi's preference, and
during the period from the 11th to 14th centuries a consensus coalesced --
eilu va'eilu divrei E-lokim Chaim, vehalakhah keRashi.

So although why I can't say why Kelal Yisrael suddenly needed a pesaq
rather than allowing autonomy or minhag select among valid shitos,
that's what fits the data. As you ask:

: How could they not have tefillin to open up? Did Rashi not wear tefillin?
: Did his father not wear tefillin? My father has 250 year old tefillin
: parshiyos passed down through the generations, why would you think that
: Rashi wouldn't have any access to old tefillin?

People in Rashi's day, his father's day, his grandfather's day, ... David
haMelekh's day ... all the way up Rashi's male line to Nachshon ben
Aminadav Nesi Yehudah's day simply didn't have a single shitah. And
lemasseh that's what we find archeologically, multiple shitos, eilu
va'eilu.

...
:> Those who wear murex dyed strings (which are now technicaly
:> Haxpalex trunculus dyed -- the taxonomists renamed it) face a similar
:> situation. Rashi and the Rosh give up trying to make sense of how to tie
:> tzitzis according to both the Sifrei and the gemara. They conclude that
:> the concept of chulios -- groups of 3 windings perhaps set off by knowts
:> -- is a din in tekheiles and thus we tie according to the Sifrei alone
:> (dividing the 39 windings among 5 knots, none of them separating off a
:> group of only 3).

: > But if one is trying to wear tekheiles all bets are off.

: I don't understand the relevance here at all.  Techeles was not worn for
: over a thousand years so why should it surprise you that there is a dispute
: about how to tie the the tzitzis...

The relevence wasn't to your original question, how can machloqesin
arise, but I was giving my firsthand experience of the idea that there
could be no one exclusively valid shitah to show how I imagine it was
like before nispasheit bekhol Yisrael (quoting the haqdamah to the Yad)
to hold like Rashi. Yes, the geonic, retrieval, model of machloqes could
explain tzitzis tying -- if Rashi and the Rosh are correct that we could
ignore the concept of chulios if one is only wearing lavan. And it cannot
explain our question WRT tefillin.

But the experience I think Jews during the days of the rishonim had when
it came to parshiyos in tefillin -- where there was no pesaw saying
only one shitah is usable -- is what I imagine based on my experience
deciding how to tie with (likely) tekheiles. One can live with diversity.
Moshe didn't have to tell the guy one way to the exclusion of the other.

Another example might be the menorah. There is the whole discussion,
reopened by RMMS (the LR) taking one position, as to whether the
arms in the menorah were curved or straight. There is actually a third
possibility -- both are kosher, and it's left up to the artist's
preference both hashkafically and aesthetically which way to make it.
AFAIK, there is no source for actually prohibiting or even considering
devi'eved one or the other. Such that the machloqes is historical, what
indeed did the menoros look like, not in pesaq. And my "third position"
would be that perhaps it wasn't consistent each time the menorah
needed replacement.

I also explained why this solidification from eilu va'eilu to vehalakhah
ke- makes sense to me philosophically. A diversity of shitos would be okay
in one generation and not in a later era. The gemara explains nisqatnu
ledoros in terms of mesiras nefesh, and I could see trusting people with
more mesiras nefesh with more leeway in their avodas Hashem. People with
less mesiras nefesh are more likely to be swayed by other factors. R/Dr
Moshe Koppel likens it from halakhah as language as understood by native
speakers vs the rule-based system taught in English as a Second Language
courses. Those with less of a feel for what "sounds right" need more
rules. A different answer than mine, but far from mutually exclusive.

As I said, I cannot explain though on a historical or sociological
level why we stopped being able to live with the diversity of tefillin
parashah ordering and there was a drive to publish pesaqim and come
to consensus.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The purely righteous do not complain about evil,
mi...@aishdas.org        but add justice, don't complain about heresy,
http://www.aishdas.org   but add faith, don't complain about ignorance,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      but add wisdom.     - R AY Kook, Arpelei Tohar

2 things to think about:
1. There may have been a time when there was not one set approach but
rather alternatives that were just as acceptable (this is the answer given
by the Ran iirc to the same type of question about tekiot)
2. The gemara mentions that tfillin went through time periods where its observance was weak.

KT
Joel Rich
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Discussion on the thread "Daf Yomi raises doubts about the mesora" included
my paraphrase of the subset of the Rambam's list of the HlMmS that relate
to tefillin. Among them, the shin on the tefillin, and the need for the
knots to represent dalet and yud respectively.

So one appearance of the sheim Shakai when wearing tefillin is deOraisa.

It seems to be a universal minhag to make another instance among the shel
yad's retzu'ah's windings.

And all but the Bal'adi Teimanim AFAIK have Shakkai written on the back
of their mezuzah.

Another possible data point: there is a minhag among the Sepharadi
qehillos more influenced by the Ben Ish Hai (maybe some Chassidim do
this too? it's al pi Qabbalah) to do so with the hand covering the eyes
for shema as well. Bending the thumb to place the tip on one eye makes
a dalet, middle three fingers touching the forehead for a shin, and the
pinky straight on the other eye for the yud.

Anyone know the connection?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A person must be very patient
mi...@aishdas.org        even with himself.
http://www.aishdas.org         - attributed to R' Nachman of Breslov
Fax: (270) 514-1507

At 06:24 AM 1/15/2014, Marty Bluke wrote:

>Midrashim was just an example, my point was that we see from the Gemaras
>in Yoma (and other places) that the Mesorah is not as strong as we are
>led to believe.

Led to believe by whom?

YL
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On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:07 PM, Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:
> What if somebody did need more direction. Picture someone asks,
> "Should I do ABCD [Rashi], ABDC [R' Tam], DCBA [Shimusha Rabba] or CDBA
> [Raavad]?" And maybe others. Why need Moshe tell him that only one over
> the other is valid? Maybe Moshe would have answered, "You just need
> Shemos before Devarim, and whether you intend that from your side or
> the other side, as long as that's your intent. They're all good." Then
> one can have a hashkafic discussion of why the wearer might choose one
> over the other based al pi darko.

Have you ever heard a posek answer a question like that?  What about lo
tisgodedu?  The Gemara in Sanhedrin states that until Hillel and Shamai
there was no little or no machlokes because the Beis Hadin Hagadol would
give a final psak on any question that came up. Why would Moshe and his
Beis Din be any different?

According to you why does the Gemara ever come to a halachic conclusion, we
should always say d'avid k'mar avid.

> ...
> So although why I can't say why Kelal Yisrael suddenly needed a pesaq
> rather than allowing autonomy or minhag select among valid shitos,
> that's what fits the data.

But you need to explain why such a shift took place. Already in the time of
the Mishna/Gemara  we have definitive psak.

...
> As I said, I cannot explain though on a historical or sociological
> level why we stopped being able to live with the diversity of tefillin
> parashah ordering and there was a drive to publish pesaqim and come
> to consensus.

The Gemara in Sanhedrin seems to say that that is the function of teh Beis
Hadin Hagadol to come to consensus and a final psak so that there won't be
many torahs. Why would Moshe Rabenu's Beis Din be any different?

On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 10:32:08PM +0200, Marty Bluke wrote:
:>                     Maybe Moshe would have answered, "You just need
:> Shemos before Devarim, and whether you intend that from your side or
:> the other side, as long as that's your intent. They're all good." Then
:> one can have a hashkafic discussion of why the wearer might choose one
:> over the other based al pi darko.

: Have you ever heard a posek answer a question like that?  What about lo
: tisgodedu?  The Gemara in Sanhedrin states that until Hillel and Shamai
: there was no little or no machlokes because the Beis Hadin Hagadol would
: give a final psak on any question...

Only if the question *needed* resolution.

Vehara'ayah, the shofetim had their own batei din that often reached
different conclusions. They didn't go to beis din hagadol in the BHMQ
on everything. Only on things that became looks-like-two-Toros issues.

As I said, I don't know why the question of tefillin parashah order
wasn't such an issue until the rishonim dealt with it. But so the
evidence indicates.

: According to you why does the Gemara ever come to a halachic conclusion, we
: should always say d'avid k'mar avid.

Which the gemara at times does. And other times says Teiqu. And yet other
times none of the systems for deducing the masqanah actually arrive at
one. Not to mention the many many machloqesin that survive for centuries
through Chazal's era.
: 

And in MRAH's day, many many more questions would be kemar avid. The
process of eliminating them accumulates with time. So, at the beginning
of the halachic process, there would be far fewer.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You cannot propel yourself forward
mi...@aishdas.org        by patting yourself on the back.
http://www.aishdas.org                   -Anonymous
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On 15/01/2014 4:07 AM, Marty Bluke wrote:
> The tefillin question has always bothered me so let's take a look at it for
> a second. Bnei Yisrael received the mitzva of tefillin at Har Sinai and
> presumably started to make hundreds of thousands of pairs of tefillin to
> wear and Moshe Rabenu presumably instructed them exactly how to make the
> tefillin including the order of the parshiyos. After that initial period,
> everyone who became Bar Mitzva needed a pair of tefillin and you would
> think that they would simply copy/pattern an existing pair. So how could
> there ever evolve a different order of parshiyos, unless there was a period
> of time when people stopped wearing tefillin and the mesora was lost. What
> other answer can you suggest?

Indeed this seems to pose a great difficulty, if one takes the classical
view, the view the rishonim themselves took, that only one of the opinions
is correct. Both Rashi and Rabbenu Tam only wore one pair of tefillin,
and held that the other's tefillin were passul. But the author of ShuT
Min Hashamayim, who was himself one of the baalei hatosfos, asked Heaven
about this machlokes, and the answer he got was that both tefillin were
correct and kosher, and the view that only one could be correct was
itself incorrect. And accordingly the AriZal taught that they should
both be worn, not out of safek but because each has a different effect.
The reason a bracha is said only over Rashi and not RT is not because the
halacha is not like RT, but because RT's tefillin draw from a level which
is higher than a bracha can reach, and which it's impossible for us to
reach without the preparation of Rashi's tefillin. Shimushei Rabba/Raavad
tefillin reach even higher, to places that ordinary people can't go,
so they should only be worn by those who know themselves to be up to
the task.

If we take this view seriously, then the question goes away.
Moshe Rabbenu, according to this view, wore four pairs of tefillin,
and while he taught everyone to wear Rashi's, he taught many people to
also wear RT's, and some to wear SR/Raavad as well. Therefore when the
knowledge slowly began to get lost, people who copied their father's
and grandfather's tefillin would have had different models to work from,
and thus some ended up thinking that only RT was correct, etc.


On 15/01/2014 4:07 AM, Marty Bluke wrote:
> The Rambam
> himself writes in Hilchos Shofar (Perek 3) based on the Gemara (RH 34a)
> that Bnei Yisrael forgot what sound a terua is because of all the trials
> and tribulations of Galus. Again, this is very difficult, my 5 year old
> son knows the difference between a shevarim and a terua and shofar and
> can make the different sounds and it is a public mitzva done in front of
> everyone. How can it be that everyone forgot the sound unless there was
> a long period when teh mitzva was not observed

I think Rav Hai Gaon writes that the reason we do all three versions is to
demonstrate that all three are valid teruos, and thus that those who only
do one are yotzei, no matter which one it is.


On 15/01/2014 6:54 AM, Marty Bluke wrote:
> You may answer the famous agaddata with R' Akiva but in truth that
> agaddata never made sense to me, how can R' Akiva say the source of
> what he was teaching was halacha l'moshe misinai if Moshe didn't even
> understand what he was saying?

1. Rashi on the spot says that Moshe was satisfied when he heard R Akiva
cite him as the source for what he was teaching "even though he had not
yet received it". In other words, Hashem did eventually teach Moshe that
particular halacha, but at the time of the vision He had not yet done so.

2. Without the Rashi, it seems to me that there is no difficulty in the
text at all. The story says that Moshe didn't understand how R Akiva was
deriving all these halachos from tagin and other hints in the chumash.
Note that R Akiva did *not* attribute those halachos to Moshe. But when
it came to one halacha that R Akiva couldn't prove from a tag, and instead
said cited Moshe Rabbenu as the only source for it, it *doesn't* say that
Moshe didn't recognise it. Rashi seems to assume this, and so do many
casual readers, but if you look at the text this is simply not there.
It seems to me that the simplest read is that Moshe *did* recognise it,
and that's why he was satisfied. He was upset in the first place because
he felt useless; if all these halachos could be derived directly from the
chumash, why was he needed? Once he heard that there were halachos that
even R Akiva couldn't derive from the chumash, and that without him they
would not be known, and therefore his contribution would remain vital
forever, he was satisfied.


> As an aside, where did all of those tili tilim of halachos that R'
> Akiva was darshening from the tagim go, we don't seem to have any of
> them.

Lich'ora all of what we know as TShBP, minus the few HlMmS, are R
Akiva's drashos. "And all of them were following R Akiva."

-- 
Zev Sero
z...@sero.name

On 1/15/2014 11:07 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> People in Rashi's day, his father's day, his grandfather's day, ... David
> haMelekh's day ... all the way up Rashi's male line to Nachshon ben
> Aminadav Nesi Yehudah's day simply didn't have a single shitah.

Male line? I thought his Davidic descent was through Hillel, no?
Which according to R' Sherira Gaon would make his patrilineal line be
from Binyamin.

Lisa

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 4:22 PM, <cantorwolb...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> The word Minhag in reverse is Gehinnom. To me, that could say that if we
> reverse our practices and customs, they (the customs) will surely go to
> hell.  :-)
>

Isn't it Gei Hinnom (?? ???)? Thus the reverse of Gehinnom is Manhig.
Kol Tuv,

-- 
Liron Kopinsky
liron.kopin...@gmail.com
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On 1/15/2014 5:42 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
>: Have you ever heard a posek answer a question like that?  What about lo
>: tisgodedu?  The Gemara in Sanhedrin states that until Hillel and Shamai
>: there was no little or no machlokes because the Beis Hadin Hagadol would
>: give a final psak on any question...

> Only if the question *needed* resolution.

> Vehara'ayah, the shofetim had their own batei din that often reached
> different conclusions. They didn't go to beis din hagadol in the BHMQ
> on everything. Only on things that became looks-like-two-Toros issues.

I'm sorry, but that's just your own theory. You can't just state it
as though it's a fact, and you certainly can't use it as a ra'ayah for
something else.

I think the answer is that the fact that chunks of mesorah went
missing due to the oppression and wars was precisely why R' Yehudah
HaNasi codified the Mishnah. So yes, there are holes in the mesorah.
We know this. And the Beit HaMikdash, which was the topic we started
with here, is almost certainly going to be the piece with the most holes,
since it wasn't something most Jews had experience with.

Lisa


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