Avodah Mailing List

Volume 32: Number 21

Sun, 09 Feb 2014

• 1. Tetzaveh (twenty) (cantorwolb...@cox.net)
• 2. Sephardiot Wearing Tefillin (Micha Berger)
• 3. Re: yeshivish vs acadenic (Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer)
• 4. Why does Moshe use logical arguments when davening to save Bnei Yisrael? (Marty Bluke)
• 5. A Rasha or Tzadik from the womb? (Marty Bluke)
• 6. Re: Sephardiot Wearing Tefillin (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: Sephardiot Wearing Tefillin (Chana Luntz)
• 8. Re: Why does Moshe use logical arguments when davening to save Bnei Yisrael? (Liron Kopinsky)
• 9. Re: Why does Moshe use logical arguments when davening to save Bnei Yisrael? (Marty Bluke)
• 10. Re: Why does Moshe use logical arguments when davening to save Bnei Yisrael? (Liron Kopinsky)
• 11. Re: Why does Moshe use logical arguments when davening to save Bnei Yisrael? (Lisa Liel)
• 12. Re: A Rasha or Tzadik from the womb? (Zev Sero)
• 13. Re: Why does Moshe use logical arguments when davening to save Bnei Yisrael? (Micha Berger)

Very interestingly, in this week?s Sidra, there is no mention whatsoever of the name Moshe.

This is the only Sidra from the beginning of Moshe?s birth where his name is omitted.

I saw a clever commentary regarding verse 32:32: ?And now if You would forgive their sin ? but if not, erase me please from Your book which You have written.?

The Hebrew word ?from Your book? is misif?r'cho.

The commentary points out it could be read misafer chof, which would be translated ?from Book 20.?

(Tetzaveh is the 20th parsha in the Torah).  
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On Fri, Feb 07, 2014 at 2:19am PST, R Simon Montagu wrote on Areivim:
: I'm also curious of the implications of relying chiefly on the Rema here.
: If a Sephardi community whose general policy is davka not to follow the
: Rema declared that they were happy to allow women to lay tefillin, would
: you have no objection?

: If a Sephardi community whose general policy is davka not to follow the
: Rema declared that they were happy to allow women to lay tefillin, would
: you have no objection?

(First, I don't think there's a "davqa" about Sepharadim not following
the Rama. The Rama's whole point was simply to preserve Ashkenazi pisqa
in the face of the rapid spread of the SA. The davqa went the other way.)

The Rama is quoting the same Kol Bo the Beis Yoseif (OC 38) does.

I believe Yabia Omer quotes Chakham Yishaq and both holding like the
Rama. See also the Ben Ish Chai, yr 1 Lekh Lekha, #13, who invokes
"beged ish", an entirely different argument, but also one that actually
invokes issur rather than mochin beyadam.

And the Kaf haChaim (R' Chaim Sofer, a talmid of the BIC) #38 and Chakham
David Yosef (Halakhah Berurah) both follow their rabbeim).

And finally a late Sefaradi rishon (refugee from Spain who ends up in
Italy) who actually makes the argument that's the elephant in the room
today. The Sh'iltei haGiborim (RH 9) says it is assur for women to wear
tefilling it because it's miderekh hason'im -- outright "don't do it
because that's what the anti-O do".

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Rescue me from the desire to win every
mi...@aishdas.org        argument and to always be right.
http://www.aishdas.org              - Rav Nassan of Breslav
Fax: (270) 514-1507                   Likutei Tefilos 94:964

On 02/07/2014 04:49 AM, Eli Turkel wrote:
> The gemara is on Baba Metzia 62a in a famous story of 2 people lost in
> the deset with enough water for only one to reach new water. Ben
> Peturah says they should split the water while Rav Akiva says the
> owner of the canteen gets all the water

I don't know why people don't notice Rashi's critical comment:

"??? ???? ???? ???? ?????" - ????? ???:

["Ve'im yishteh ha'echad, magia' liyshuv" - and he will find water.]

Isn't that obvious? What is Rashi adding?

V'duk.

KT,
YGB

In next weeks Parsha, after the Chet Haegel Hashem tells Moshe that he is
going to destroy Bnei Yisrael, and Moshe then davens to Hashem to save Bnei
Yisrael. One of Moshe's arguments in his tefila is what will the Egyptians
say if you kill Bnei Yisrael in the desert? We also find in the Haftora
that Eliyahu Hanavi makes an emotional argument in his prayer to Hashem,
accusing Hashem of causing Bnei Yisrael to sin. We also find Avraham making
similar types of arguments when he davened for Sdom. These kinds of logical
and/or emotional arguments in Tefilla raise a very troubling question:

According to every conception of Tefilla that I know of, there is no place
for logical or emotional arguments with Hashem. Hashem is all knowing,
perfect and unchanging, and therefore logical and/or emotional arguments
make no sense. An all knowing perfect God has already considered every
logical and/or emotional argument and made his decision based on all of the
information. Can a human being really think that he is going to change
Hashem's decision with logical/emotional arguments?
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At the end of Maseches Yoma the Gemara discusses when a person is allowed
to eat on Yom Kippur. The Mishna on 82a states that a pregnant woman who
smells food and has an irresistible craving is allowed to eat as it is
considered pikuach nefesh. The Mishna attributes the craving to the fetus
and in fact the language of the Mishna is "Ubra shehiricha". On 82b the
Gemara says that before you feed her, you should whisper to the pregnant
woman/fetus that today is Yom Kippur in the hope that she/it will be able
to abstain from eating. The Gemara then brings 2 stories, in 1 case the
woman had to eat and in one case the woman managed to abstain from eating.
The Gemara states that in the case where the woman was able to abstain the
fetus was a tzaddik (who turned out to be R' Yochanan). In the case where
the woman ate, the Gemara calls the fetus a Rasha and in fact a Rasha was
born. We find a similar medrash quoted by Rashi at the beginning of Parshas
Toldos on the words Vayisrotztzu habanim b'kirba, that Eisav in the womb
was a rasha who wanted to go out and worship avoda zara.

How does this fit in with free will? How can a fetus in the womb be a rasha
or a tzadik?
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On Fri, Feb 07, 2014 at 10:21am EST, I wrote:
: The Rama is quoting the same Kol Bo the Beis Yoseif (OC 38) does.
: 
: I believe Yabia Omer quotes Chakham Yishaq and both holding like the
: Rama....

I should point out that the fact that Yabia Omer invokes the Rama and
thus ends up holding like the Ben Ish Chai over the SA is noteworthy.
You can read R' Ovadiah as having a program to unwind what the spread
of the BIC did to Sepharadi practice to reassert the authority of Maran
Bet Yosef.

Perhaps this is mitigated a bit by the Beis Yoseif also quoting the
Kol Bo, but the SA, the masqanah, doesn't say anything against women
wearing tefillin.

This is something R' Ovadiah gelt strongly enough about for the particular
convern to overpower his general approach.

Also, I found the Yalqut Yoseif Tzitzis uTefillin, he'arah #38, who cites
the Yefeh Leleiv who cites the Shomer Emunim about tefillin being keli
gever (like we saw in teh She'iltei haGiborim), but adds that this is
because al pi qabbalah tefillin are "sod alma dedikhra",

Michal's infertility was due (presumably in part) by having a soul that
was also me'alma dedikhra. And she was ablr to feel that her wearing
tefillin would thus cause great tiqunim. I say "presumably in part"
because the Ari said the same thing about Beruriah choosing to wear
tefillin -- and we know she had two sons (who die on Shabbos while still
boys r"l).

I'm too lazy to quote every source in the YY, but this deepening of the
keli gever argument was interesting.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It is harder to eat the day before Yom Kippur
mi...@aishdas.org        with the proper intent than to fast on Yom
http://www.aishdas.org   Kippur with that intent.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rav Yisrael Salanter

On Areivim (but I have responded here, to pre-empt the moderators who will
no doubt claim there is too much Torah content in this post) RSM wrote
responding to RMB:

> I'm also curious of the implications of relying chiefly on the Rema here.
> If a Sephardi community whose general policy is davka not to follow the
> Rema declared that they were happy to allow women to lay tefillin, would you
> have no objection?

This of course also raises the question about the extent to which
Ashkenazim actually follow the Rema. On the Sephardi side, Rav Ovadiah,
a big proponent of following the Shulchan Aruch (Maran), claimed that
there were only three exceptions where the minhag is against Maran which
may be followed, but Sephardi poskim less of the Maran is the mara d'asra
school argue for a number more.

In the case of the Rema, while I have not seen anybody do a systematic
study of the nature claimed by Rav Ovadiah for Maran, my sense is that
there are many many more cases where Ashkenazi practice is against
the Rema. Off the top of my head (and of course any individual family,
such as RMB's may be different) but most Ashkenazi women I know say bris
and torah in benching, against the Rema in Siman 187 si'if 3 (BTW this
psak is also from the Kol Bo), or to get away from women (but not from
the Kol Bo), it might be RMB's custom for all I know, but most Ashkenazi
men I know are not makpid to noticeably turn their face away from the
Sefer Torah to the side (the Rema says the left side) when making birchos
hatorah (the chashash from the Kol Bo is that it might appear that the
brachos are written in the Torah - presumably a form of ziyuf hatorah)
(Rema siman 139 si'if 4). My sense is that there are lots and lots of
other cases, however, not merely a handful.


In the case of the Sephardim, there is/was a sense that nobody could
really touch Maran - the Birchei Yosef maybe, the Ben Ish Chai perhaps
more recently, but there has been around his time or since nobody really
on his level. Whereas with the Rema, there is more of a sense that he
was just one amongst equals (eg the Bach and the Taz and various others).
The place of the Rema thus seems if anything more of a position holder for
the whole Ashkenazi corpus of halacha - ie allowing more room for the Rosh
than the Shulchan Aruch gave him (where he is consistently outvoted by
the Sephardi Rif and Rambam), for Tosphos (and even sometimes for Rashi)
and of course for the Trumas HaDeshen and the Mordechai and similar
Ashkenazi later rishonim (who are virtually ignored by the Shulchan
Aruch). If you took the attitude towards the Rema that the Sephardim
take towards Maran, it would seem you would have ended up with a body
of Ashkenazi practice radically different to that which it actually is.
It would be fascinating if somebody with an encyclopaedic reach did go
through and work out what percentage of times Ashkenazi practice does
not follow the Rema, but it is clearly far, far more often than the
perhaps few dozen cases that even the critics of Rav Ovadiah claim vis
a vis Maran.

Regards
Chana

PS regarding tephillin specifically, it would seem that indeed there
would be no objection to women putting them on from the Shulchan Aruch,
and hence for Sephardi women (the Kol Bo and Rabbi Meir not carrying
any weight in such circles), but of course there is the issue of making
brachos over them - unless the woman in question were follow the Birchei
Yosef/Sde Chemed line of psak which permits women to make brachos on
mitzvos aseh shehazman grama. This is one of the cases where Rav Ovadiah
vehemently objected to deviating from Maran, but note the Birchei Yosef's
argument, which was that if Maran had seen the teshuvos min hashamayim,
he would surely have poskened that women can make brachos over the
performance of such mitzvos (ie the reason to deviate from Maran was due
to Maran's absence of complete information). Here being a classic case
where a least certain Sephardi psak, and, at least according to the Sde
Chemed, widespread Sefardi practice differed from Maran, but where Rav
Ovadiah has been arguing to return the situation to the classic Maran
psak. On the other hand, note that one of the few exceptions to the
psak of Maran that Rav Ovadiah was prepared to accept as legitimate is
the custom for Sephardi single (ie never married) girls to go out with
their hair uncovered, against Maran.

I really like this question, and would like to suggest a few approaches.

One approach is to say that we have to logically make an argument for "why"
in order for our tefillot to be effective. When Avraham davens for Sedom,
Hashem has to "go down and check how many tzaddikim are there"? Of course
he knew in advance and knew it wasn't going to be saved, but the tefilla
has to have a reason or a purpose. Just davening "please do it, because"
isn't going to be effective. We have to have reasons for why we're davening
for what we want.

(A different question that can be asked is why Moshe used those particular
arguments, and whether using this argument vs. that argument is going to be
a more effective tefillah.)

Rabbi Akiva Tatz says that Tefillah in general isn't about "changing
Hashem's decision", but rather about changing ourselves into a person who
would deserve that particular thing we're davening for. I think this means
then, that when davening for others, the goal is to change ourselves into a
person who really, truly wants that thing for the other person, so that
Hashem grants it to them, so-to-speak on our own merits. Without some
logical reason *why* we believe the other person deserves/needs what we're
davening for, can we truly believe it ourselves?

Kol Tuv,
Liron


On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 11:02 AM, Marty Bluke <marty.bl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> In next weeks Parsha, after the Chet Haegel Hashem tells Moshe that he is
> going to destroy Bnei Yisrael, and Moshe then davens to Hashem to save Bnei
> Yisrael. One of Moshe's arguments in his tefila is what will the Egyptians
> say if you kill Bnei Yisrael in the desert? We also find in the Haftora
> that Eliyahu Hanavi makes an emotional argument in his prayer to Hashem,
> accusing Hashem of causing Bnei Yisrael to sin. We also find Avraham making
> similar types of arguments when he davened for Sdom. These kinds of logical
> and/or emotional arguments in Tefilla raise a very troubling question:
>
> According to every conception of Tefilla that I know of, there is no place
> for logical or emotional arguments with Hashem. Hashem is all knowing,
> perfect and unchanging, and therefore logical and/or emotional arguments
> make no sense. An all knowing perfect God has already considered every
> logical and/or emotional argument and made his decision based on all of the
> information. Can a human being really think that he is going to change
> Hashem's decision with logical/emotional arguments?
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Avodah mailing list
> Avo...@lists.aishdas.org
> http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org
>
>


-- 
Liron Kopinsky
liron.kopin...@gmail.com
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On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 2:36 PM, Liron Kopinsky <liron.kopin...@gmail.com>wrote:
> I really like this question, and would like to suggest a few approaches.

> One approach is to say that we have to logically make an argument for
> "why" in order for our tefillot to be effective...

Do we ever do this in our davening? When people get together and say
tehilim for a sick person do they offer justifications as to why Hashem
should heal the person? The nusach hatefila that we have doesn't offer any
justifications for our requests, we just ask for refua,parnassa, etc. we
don't offer Hashem logical arguments as to why he should grant them to us.

...
> Rabbi Akiva Tatz says that Tefillah in general isn't about "changing
> Hashem's decision", but rather about changing ourselves into a person who
> would deserve that particular thing we're davening for...

I heard a slightly different explanation that we need to feel the other
person's pain so that their troubles bother us and therefore because Hashem
will not punish us he will grant the other person a refua, etc. Of course
if this is the explanation then simply getting together to daven for some
unknown person would have no effect. The only way davening for other people
would work is if we truly felt their pain.

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 3:42 PM, Marty Bluke <marty.bl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 2:36 PM, Liron Kopinsky <liron.kopin...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Do we ever do this in our davening? When people get together and say
> tehilim for a sick person do they offer justifications as to why Hashem
> should heal the person? ...

"Ase L'maan Shemecha etc."
"Im Lo L'maaneinu, l'maancha pe'al"

Kol Tuv,
Liron

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

On 2/9/2014 3:02 AM, Marty Bluke wrote:
> In next weeks Parsha, after the Chet Haegel Hashem tells Moshe that he 
> is going to destroy Bnei Yisrael, and Moshe then davens to Hashem to 
> save Bnei Yisrael. One of Moshe's arguments in his tefila is what will 
> the Egyptians say if you kill Bnei Yisrael in the desert? We also find 
> in the Haftora that Eliyahu Hanavi makes an emotional argument in his 
> prayer to Hashem, accusing Hashem of causing Bnei Yisrael to sin. We 
> also find Avraham making similar types of arguments when he davened 
> for Sdom. These kinds of logical and/or emotional arguments in Tefilla 
> raise a very troubling question:

> According to every conception of Tefilla that I know of, there is no 
> place for logical or emotional arguments with Hashem. Hashem is all 
> knowing, perfect and unchanging,...


I understand why it's a question. I don't understand why it's a "very
troubling question". Why should we have to daven out loud at all?
Tefillah is a reflexive noun. We're clarifying our own position and
requests when we make them. I mean, your question would apply to just
about all tefillot; certainly any that contain the word "ki". "Ki Goel
chazak Ata," for example. Is that supposed to be reminding Hashem that
He's a strong redeemer? No, it's reminding ourselves, and it's putting
our request in the context we would like it considered.

Lisa

On 9/02/2014 4:16 AM, Marty Bluke wrote:
> How does this fit in with free will? How can a fetus in the womb be
> a rasha or a tzadik?

Why not?  It's learning Torah, why should it not have free will?

> The Mishna attributes the craving to the fetus and in fact the
> language of the Mishna is "Ubra shehiricha".

Mistranslation. A foetus is an "ubar", not an "ubra". Since its sex
is unknown, it's always referred to in the masculine. If it smelled
something it would be "shehiriach". "Ubra" is a pregnant woman, it's
identical with "me'uberes", and she is the one smelling. It's clear
throughout the sugya that she, not the ubar, is the subject. Rashi is
merely explaining how this works; *why* her smelling something means
she has to eat it. And note that Rashi refers to the foetus in the
masculine throughout.

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

Another 2 pence... 

There are two answers to "why?" -- cause and purpose.

The rock flew because David flung it.
The rock flew in order to kill Golias.

Ki is causal, lemaan is purposive.

So "ki Go'el Chazaq Atah" is different in kind than "asei lemaan
shemekha". Although both are giving logical reasons for our request,
they are different kinds of reasons. I also think RMBluke's problem is
only with "lemaan" reasons, rather than "ki" -- why do we need to tell
G-d which outcome best serves His Plan?

When we ask Hashem and say "ki", we are saying (IMHO) "I am asking
you because I know You Are..." "Forgive us... because You are Mokheil
veSoleiach." And more to the point, tryig to become the kind of person
who will get the positive outcome by reminding ourselves of the point
and further inculcating it.

When we ask and say lemaan, we are (again, IMHO) reminding ourselves the
reason for which we ought to be asking for it. Placing Hashem's Plan
ahead of our own desires and perception of our own needs. Again, as a
transformative way of getting a different outcome by being a different
person. But in this case, because we step out of the way, fulfilling
"asei Retzono kirtzonekha".

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "And you shall love H' your G-d with your whole
mi...@aishdas.org        heart, your entire soul, and all you own."
http://www.aishdas.org   Love is not two who look at each other,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      It is two who look in the same direction.


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