Avodah Mailing List

Volume 33: Number 106

Tue, 28 Jul 2015

• 1. Re: Sources for Not Covering Hair? ()
• 2. Mesora only through Rashi (Sholom Simon)
• 3. Re: De-Chokifying Arayos ()
• 4. Re: Mesora only through Rashi (Gil Student)
• 5. Re:Sources for Not Covering Hair? (Meir Shinnar)
• 6. Re: miryam bat batus (Lisa Liel)
• 7. Re: miryam bat batus (Zev Sero)
• 8. Re: Sources for Not Covering Hair? (Zev Sero)
• 9. Re: miryam bat batus (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: Kaddish Yasom (Micha Berger)

 
From: Micha Berger via Avodah <avo...@lists.aishdas.org>
:  ... I would hope that the practice of these women, including the
: wife of R.  Yosef Dov Soloveitchik would be respected, and not regarded
: as  ignorance...[--Dr. Noam Stadlan]

To do that would be to disagree with her  husband.


....There are other such quotes that make it clear that RYBS  disagreed with
his wife's practice, but either didn't fight the issue or  didn't win.

-- 
Micha  Berger              




>>>>
 
A similar quote (third hand):  Someone told me he once asked RYBS if a  
married woman is obligated to cover her hair, and RYBS replied in a somewhat  
sideways fashion, "You are not obligated to divorce her if she does not do  
so."
 
You have to understand that it was an era in which most American Jews were  
throwing away the Torah with both hands.  It was hard enough to find a wife 
 who was frum; demanding that she cover her hair was almost impossible in 
many  cases.  RYBS was not the only Torah scholar whose wife failed to cover  
her hair. I have to assume that this was simply one nisayon that was too  
difficult, given those times.  After the post-war influx of chassidim  
arrived in America, kisui rosh, like so many other neglected mitzvos, became  much 
more acceptable and common.
 
R' Michael Brody in his article on the subject says that the Chofetz Chaim  
railed against the practice of women in Vilna, even those married to big  
talmidei chachamim, to go about with their hair uncovered.  Although the CC  
is completely, vehemently, opposed to this practice, R' Brody deduces (I am  
paraphrasing) that "This proves that many talmidei chachamim did not demand 
 that their wives cover their hair, from which we may deduce that they held 
kisui  rosh was not required, and we may rely on them."  
 
This line of reasoning is reminiscent of the joke, "How do we know that  
Yakov wore a yarmulka?  Answer:  It says 'Vayetzei Yakov' -- would  Yakov have 
gone out without a yarmulka?!"  But at any rate it does indicate  that this 
was a largely neglected mitzva even in Vilna, in the early 20th  century -- 
though neglect of a mitzva does not make the obligation go  away.
 
I for one do not hold it against RYBS.  What he would have preferred  and 
what was actually obtainable, in that time and place, were not the  same.  
For that time and place, for a woman to be Torah observant was  already a 
madreiga.  To have been the wife of such a man -- his rebetzen  must have had 
extraordinary zechuyos.
 

--Toby Katz
t6...@aol.com
..
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The below (and, btw, R Nachum Lamm makes an interesting point in the
comments there) leads me to a different, but related, question: 

We
trace Rashi's mesorah pretty easily back to Rabbeinu Gershom -- but
where did _he_ get _his_ mesorah from? How did it get from Bavel and the
Gaonim to northern Europe? 

> RGS makes the claim that we would not
have TSP & our Mesora without Rashi & the Tosafists.
>
http://www.torahmusings.com/2015/07/who-was-greater-than-rambam/ [1]
>
Our *Torah shebe?al peh* is based on Rashi and the Tosafists. If Jewish
history had not included Maimonides, the Jewish world would have missed
a great deal. Maimonides enriched our thinking and world view
tremendously, but the *Torah shebe?al peh* would have survived without
him. However, without Rashi and the Tosafists, there would not have been
any *mesora*, any chain of tradition; we could not teach *Torah shebe?al
peh* today.

 

Links:
------
[1]
http://www.torahmusings.com/2015/07/who-was-greater-than-rambam/
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From: Kenneth Miller via Avodah  <avo...@lists.aishdas.org>

>> We have discussed the idea that  a posek may sometimes choose a psak 
based on what "seems right" to him, and then  he will find sources to support 
that conclusion. But if I remember correctly,  this is usually done in the 
case of *new* questions, where there is little  precedent to draw upon.

But that's not what's happening here. This is a  case where the Shulchan 
Aruch paskened very clearly in one direction, and this  approach went 
uncontested through centuries of acharonim. Then something  changed.... 

 

Why aren't we rejecting these revisionist poskim out of hand? 
 
--Akiva Miller

 
 
 
>>>>
 
It seems to me we are using the words "psak" and "poskim" too  loosely.  If 
it's psak you want, I think all sources, rishonim and  acharonim, agree 
that marital intercourse is always mutar (assuming  the usual, the wife is not 
a nidah, it's not forced, it's not Yom  Kippur, etc).  What we are really 
talking about here is hashkafa, not  psak -- even if it is in the Shulchan 
Aruch.  What frequency is  optimum?  Surely that is at least partly subjective, 
and any of the various  sources that apparently disagree with each other 
can be drawn upon when  you're looking for something to back up what your gut 
tells you is right.   I can easily see a modern day rav or Torah mentor 
varying his answers depending  on the circumstances of the wife and husband who 
are asking him for advice, as  well as accepted societal norms.  Also it 
seems to me that with all  the talk about minimizing this-worldly pleasure -- 
which in general is a  Torah-dik thing to do -- we are also losing sight of 
the husband's obligation of  onah.  For a wife, physical closeness is tied to 
emotional closeness and it  is often not, strictly speaking, a this-worldly 
pleasure but a real  emotional need, which a husband has at least some 
obligation to fulfill.
 
 
 

--Toby Katz
t6...@aol.com
..
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Prof. Haym Soloveitchik has a theory of the origin of the German mesorah.
He calls it the third yeshiva of Bavel. Prof. David Berger disagrees with
the entire thesis, with arguments I find convincing.

However, that said, Prof. Soloveitchik makes extremely good arguments
against the conventional wisdom that Germany's tradition comes from
Palestine. His essay and response to Prof. Berger can be found in volume 2
of his Collected Essays.


Gil Student

Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2015 10:10:59 -0400
From: Micha Berger via Avodah <avo...@lists.aishdas.org>
> : ... I would hope that the practice of these women, including the
> : wife of R. Yosef Dov Soloveitchik would be respected, and not regarded
> : as ignorance...
> 
> To do that woud be to disagree with her husband.
> 
> See "Thinking Aloud", pg 113:
...
> There are other such quotes that make it clear that RYBS disagreed with
> his wife's practice, but either didn't fight the issue or didn't win.

WADR, Micha misunderstands the issue. The issue is not whether RYBS agreed
with his wife's practice -- there are sources (albeit most of them from
long after her passing) which would suggest that he may ave disagreed,
and paskened otherwise) -- but that is a different issue of whether he
viewed it as ignorance -- and for sure not out of the pale of halacha.

That is the crux of the issue -- not whether we wish to pasken that this
is muttar for ourselves (or for those who listen to us..) -- but how we
view those who follow a different shitta -- and anyone who suggests that
RYBS viewed his wife as nonobservant or not fully halachically committed
is motsi la'az and needs to go to her kever( you can ask R Seth Mandel
his opinion how the rav would have viewed such a person)

Several related stories:

1) The rav was the posek for a community, who knew that his wife did not
cover her hair. The vast majority of that community, even those close
to the rav, who followed his every word, did not think that he viewed
this as being problematic -- and he had plenty of opportunity to let it
be known....

2) I knew a talmid who was close to the rav in the 70s (shiur many
years, rav was measured kiddushin -- unfortunately niftar early. when
getting married, he told me that he asked the rav all his shailos --
except about head covering for his wife (she did) -- he said that it
was thought problematic to ask him because of the rav's wife

3) Another talmid was once invited, late 70s, to Rav Schwab's shabbes
table. Topic got around to data's torah, and rav schwab said that many
have it wrong -- there is not one da'as torah -- but da'as torah is the
opinion of someone who is wholly torah -- rav kotler is da'as torah, rav
feinstein is da'as torah,the satmar is da'as torah. My friend jumped in
and asked what about RYBS? Rav Schwab was no fan of RYBS, and he hemmed
and hawed and then said that as his wife did not cover her hair, he was
not da'as torah. At that point Mrs. Schwab interjected, but you know
that none of the litvische rebbitzens covered their hair. At which point
R Schwab agreed to that, and then agreed that RYBS was da'as torah.....

That issue about the rav's wife not being unique is important -- it
was a shitta in lita -- even if one the rav may have disagreed with,
it was not one that was hutz lamachane. That is the crux of the issue.

Meir Shinnar

On 7/27/2015 2:49 AM, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
>
> Therefore this Yannai Malka was not that Alexander Yannai.  As Tosfos
> in both places points out, for precisely that reason.
>
Which is odd, because we don't have a single source, anywhere, of there 
having been a second king named Yannai or Yonatan or any permutation 
thereof.

Lisa

On 07/28/2015 09:52 AM, Lisa Liel wrote:
> On 7/27/2015 2:49 AM, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:

>> Therefore this Yannai Malka was not that Alexander Yannai.  As Tosfos
>> in both places points out, for precisely that reason.

> Which is odd, because we don't have a single source, anywhere, of
> there having been a second king named Yannai or Yonatan or any
> permutation thereof.

Except this memra of Rav Assi, which is quoted twice in the gemara
with the same language, so it's unlikely to be a mistranscription.
Either Rav Assi was mistaken about the king's name, or there was a
short-reigned later king of that name whom Josephus didn't bother
mentioning, or one of the later kings had Yannai as one of his names,
and Josephus didn't bother mentioning it.

-- 
Zev Sero               I have a right to stand on my own defence, if you
z...@sero.name          intend to commit felony...if a robber meets me in
                        the street and commands me to surrender my purse,
                        I have a right to kill him without asking questions
                                               -- John Adams

On 07/27/2015 10:55 PM, Meir Shinnar via Avodah wrote:
> At that point Mrs. Schwab interjected, but you know
> that none of the litvische rebbitzens covered their hair. At which point
> R Schwab agreed to that, and then agreed that RYBS was da'as torah.....
>
> That issue about the rav's wife not being unique is important -- it
> was a shitta in lita -- even if one the rav may have disagreed with,
> it was not one that was hutz lamachane. That is the crux of the issue.

No, it was *not* a shita in Litte, it was a makas medinah.  It was an
aveira that was prevalent among women, and the best the rabbonim could
do was not talk about it to the women, in the hope that they were
shogegin.

Even in an earlier generation, no less a person than R Akiva Eger had
no control over his wife and daughters' mode of dress:
http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=31632&;pgnum=300

  

-- 
Zev Sero               I have a right to stand on my own defence, if you
z...@sero.name          intend to commit felony...if a robber meets me in
                        the street and commands me to surrender my purse,
                        I have a right to kill him without asking questions
                                               -- John Adams

On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 08:52:45AM -0500, Lisa Liel via Avodah wrote:
: Which is odd, because we don't have a single source, anywhere, of
: there having been a second king named Yannai or Yonatan or any
: permutation thereof.

Need a Hasmonean who calls himself "Jannus" in Latin necessarily go
by the same name or even a phonetically related name in Aramaic and
Hebrew?

400 years prior, having two names was common and the civil names we
know of (Mordechai, Esther, Shadrach, Meshach, Aved-Nego, etc...)
bore no relation to their Jewish names.

Alternatively: Chazal could have thrown in the timing problem to flag
to the historian that they were not speaking historically. After all,
we know from the other narratives quoted that they knew the dates
for Alexander Yannai wouldn't work.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When memories exceed dreams,
mi...@aishdas.org        The end is near.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - Rav Moshe Sherer
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 11:09pm EDT, RnTK wrote:
: with their friends, "You can't say kaddish for your Ima or your Abba 
: today, someone else has kadima"? Correct me if I am mistaken but my impression
: is that kaddish yasom is really mainly for genuine yesomim, i.e., those who 
: lose their parents while they are still children.

Rather than correct you, let me provide a mar'eh maqom: Rama YD 376:4,
quoting the Mahariq. Both of us probably remembering R Michael Poppers
posting this.

The Rama says that Qadish Yasom was established for Qetanim, because
they cannot be Chazan.

BUT... the Rama is clear that this ended before the custom of multiple
people saying Qaddish at once began.

When writing the above, I started wondering about areas like Vilna,
where a daughter would say Qaddish for parents who had no sons. Did this
minhag begin back when only one person said Qaddish at a time? If so,
she would get the same priority for Qaddish Yasom as a qatan, no? But
cold you picture such a scene in early 19th cent Litta, a woman saying
Qaddish by herself on one side of the mechitzah or by the doorway, and
all the men of the minyan answering? So my instinct is that this minhag
post-dates group Qaddish. But my instinct might be based on revisionist
history, for all I know.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Fortunate indeed, is the man who takes
mi...@aishdas.org        exactly the right measure of himself,  and
http://www.aishdas.org   holds a just balance between what he can
Fax: (270) 514-1507      acquire and what he can use." - Peter Latham


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