Avodah Mailing List

Volume 34: Number 145

Thu, 10 Nov 2016

• 1. Re: Matana Al M'nas L'hachzir (Daniel Israel)
• 2. tefillin (Eli Turkel)
• 3. questions about krias hatefillah (Eli Turkel)
• 4. Re: Practice During the First and Second Bais Hamikdash (was Questions about Krias Ha Torah) (Akiva Miller)
• 5. torah she be al peh (Eli Turkel)
• 6. minhag (Eli Turkel)
• 7. Re: tefillin on chol hamoed (Isaac Balbin)
• 8. Re: Questions about Krias Ha Torah (Isaac Balbin)
• 9. Re: questions about krias hatefillah (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: questions about krias hatefillah (Zev Sero)
• 11. Re: tefillin on chol hamoed (Zev Sero)
• 12. torah she be al peh (Eli Turkel)

[As recently noted on list, too recently for RDI to have seen, but this
gives me a chance to remind the chevrah anyway, the digest software
can't handle Hebrew. Please save me time and transliterate rather than
emailing Hebrew letters. -micha]

On Oct 31, 2016, at 4:50 PM, Akiva Miller via Avodah <avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
> I had another idea a few days ago. I would like to suggest that
> mitzvas chinuch does NOT require us to concoct halachic mechanisms to
> enable the katan to do the mitzvos with all its details. Rather, it
> is totally acceptable for a child to do a mitzvah in a partial manner,
> and the parent is doing his chinuch thereby, provided that the parent
> explains this to the child...

> I'll give two examples of where we do exactly that: Older children who
> do a partial fast on Yom Kippur. And children of any age who say a partial
> Birkas Hamazon....

You may want to look at Chagiga 2a tosafos d"h ???? ??? ??? [eizeh hu
qatan -mb] where they say that a katan has to bring a korban nadava as
part of chinuch for mitzvas re'eah, since he's not actually chayiv in
a korban re'eah.

--
Daniel M. Israel
d...@cornell.edu

<<Again, you're arguing against archeological evidence. We know as
a scertainty that both versions were in common use for well over a
millennium, at least. that is a plurality, a range of options, not
a dispute.>>

I doubt that we have so many ancient tefillin to say anything was in common
use.
Besides there are several ancient tefillin which are quite different from
what we do today. The problem is we don't usually know who these tefillin
belonged to ie what sect they belonged to

-- 
Eli Turkel
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<<And even at the end of the 2nd Beis haMiqdash, the chasimos of Shemoneh
Esrei were established, but the bodies of each berakhah was pretty
free-form. Just make sure that the body closes with me'ein hachasimah. >>

minor quiblle - I would put it a little later. Rabban Gamliel and Shmuel
Hakatan after churban habayit are still working on the nusach. Lamalshinim
is added later

As to piyut - my experience is that there are loads of different customs as
to which piyutim are said. Many machzorim have piyutim in the midst of
berachot kriat shema but that seems to have fallen by the wayside. As I
previously pointed out our present piyutim on RH/YK are an amalgam of
different piyutim. Whatever common ones exist are only because of the
printing press. I would assume that for rishonim every town had their own
set of piyutim

-- 
Eli Turkel
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R' Micha Berger wrote:

> It wasn't a machloqes until someone decides that one ordering was
> preferred, and someone else decides that a different one was.
> When there are a variety of equally good ways to implement the
> desiratum in Menachos 34b-35a that is a plurality, a range of
> ways to do something, not a dispute.

R' Yitzchok Levine asked:

> Are you asserting that Torah shel Baal Peh was not given with
> precision and definitiveness?  If so,  then this is a chidash to me.

One could write an entire book on this, and in fact, listmember Rabbi Zvi
Lampel did exactly that. I highly recommend his "The Dynamics Of Dispute -
The Makings of Machlokess in Talmudic Times", published by Judaica Press.

Akiva Miller
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<<Are you asserting that Torah shel Baal Peh was not given with
precision and definitiveness?  If so,  then this is a chidash to me. >>

On the contrary I take it for granted that torah she be al peh was some
general rules and little specifics. These rules were applied by chazal to
create the Mishna which still has many disputes about applying the rules

-- 
Eli Turkel
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<<You'll be unsurprised to learn that R Gil Student has a well laid-out
discussion of rolling back minhagim. Starting with a taxonomy of
kinds of minhagim (by type, by scope, by source). He doesn't discuss your
"why", but it's well worth a read
<http://www.torahmusings.com/2015/08/how-to-undo-a-minhag>.
He in turn is basing himself on R' Baruch Simon's Imerei Barukh: Tokef
haMinhag baHalkhah, ch 3-5. >>

I have a major problem with the whole topic. Minhag by definition is a
custom that an individual or community does. Almost by definition it is
dynamic. If one read through Sperber's series on minhagim one will find
loads of customs that no longer exist.

From the article
However, according to the *Pri To?ar*, there is also a concept of a family
custom. Even if you move to a place with an established custom, you still
have to follow your family customs. Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv rules this
way.

In practice, if one moves to a community with a different minhag the family
custom disappears within a generation or two. This was certainly the case
in the past. One finds many ashkenazi Jews with distinctly sefardi names
and vice versa. Their ancestors moved sometime in the distant past and over
time became part of the new community and old customs mostly disappeared.

 In Israel the large majority of shuls daven nusach sefard even though the
congregants are not descendants of chassidim. In Jerusalem many shuls daven
nusah haGra even though they are not descendants of talmidei haGra.  These
is what kids learn in school and thats what they do as adults. As Prof.
Levine points out there are a few shuls that keep the old German minhagim
and scattered places that insist on nusach ashkenaz (though including
ein kelokenu and other sefard additions) but these are the small minority.
Many have given up on gebrochs (though popular in hotels).
I would assume that with the many "mixed" marriages that the children grow
up with a mixture of ashkenaz and sefard customs.

In the past it was common in many families to fast on mondays and thursdays.
This is rarely done today even for behab. Many grandmothers said prayers in
yiddish like
"Gut fum Avraham" which have become lost. As I already p[ointed out piyutim
changed over the generations.

as another example see

http://matzav.com/the-forgotten-fast-day-20-sivan/
abbreviated

The *Shach*, was the first *rov* to institute a fast day on the 20th of
*Sivan* in commemoration of the ?*Gezeiros Tach V?Tat*?  It would seem,
that he had prescribed the fast day only for his family and descendants.
This would explain why, in 1652, the Council of the Four Lands also
declared a fast on 20 *Sivan*; they were establishing one for the public at
large. A very moving dirge commemorating the tragedy was also written by
Rav Yom Tov Lipman Heller,which was published in Cracow, 1650,. In it, he
lists by name twelve of the almost three-hundred communities that were
totally decimated during the massacres. It begins with the standard ?*Keil
Malei Rachamim*,? but then becomes very original and deserves proper
historical attention.

Today both the fast and the special keil malei rachamim have disappeared.
In summary the history of real minhagim don't follow the neat rules of the
article.

-- 
Eli Turkel
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[Micha:]
> And while I do not have an explicit source, it is implied by Nedarim
> 81b and the Ran ad loc who say that a minhag is a neder created through
> the mere action of performing it. Which derabbanan would be a binding
> neder. Similarly, the case we've revisited ad infinitum from Maqom
> sheNahagu (Pesachim 50b) is where the people of Baishan are apparently
> being told by R' Yochanan to follow minhagt because the parents did it.
> In Nefesh haRav, RHS cites R Moshe SOloveitchik saying that despite the
> above, the Rambam holds that breaking minhag is assur as perishah min
> hatzibur. A machloqes with the Ran, but still appears to be saying that
> a minhag is a minhag by virtue of common practice. Not formal enactment.

I wish I could recall the particular Minhag but Mori V'Rabbi Rav Hershel
Schachter did once pasken to me that a minhag that is simply Shtus,
has no status and one should abandon it as a mistake. In some cases
there could be issurim involved in keeping the minhag! This wasn't a
wide spread world accepted minhag.

Prof Levine:
> On 10 Nov. 2016, at 9:57 pm, via Avodah <avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
> 
> Are we to deduce the same for other practices,  namely,  that there 
> was no single standard? If so,  then the Yahadus we have today is a 
> far cry from what it was originally.  People did many different 
> things.  For example,  the format of tefillah was established by the 
> Anshe Knesses Ha Gedola.   Before this occurred,  presumably people 
> had widely different versions of, say, shemone esrei.  If so,  then 
> why is there so much emphasis in Judaism today regarding doing 
> mitzvas in a very precise and prescribed manner?

Why does change worry you? Mixing Fish and Milk is the Science of the Tannoim but it is wrong today. 
What hasn?t changed is that we must use the best science of our time e.g. in health matters.
We just can?t annul the old concern for technical reasons.
It might become Ossur to use any plastic in a micro wave. Does that bother anyone? Not me, if they find it?s bad for your health.

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 01:17:50PM +0200, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
:> And even at the end of the 2nd Beis haMiqdash, the chasimos of Shemoneh
:> Esrei were established, but the bodies of each berakhah was pretty
:> free-form. Just make sure that the body closes with me'ein hachasimah.

: minor quiblle - I would put it a little later. Rabban Gamliel and Shmuel
: Hakatan after churban habayit are still working on the nusach. Lamalshinim
: is added later

I was basing myself on Berakhos 33a, Megillah 17b, and the Sifre
(Devarim 343). The Rambam repeatedly mentions the significance of the
fact that the authors of the Amidah were 120 zeqeinim umeihem kamah
nevi'im.

What Berakhos 28b has
    Shim'on haPequli hisdir 18 berakhos
    lifnei Rabban Gamliel al haseder, beYavneh.
Which is when R' Gamliel asks for the writing of Birkhas haMinim, and
only Shemu'el haQatan was capable of it.

Given the other sources, it could mean that there were various opinions
about the order of the 18 berakhos, and he gave them a seder. "Al
haseder" could be taken to imply there was a pre-existing "right order"
that ShP [Shim'on the cotton salesman -Rashi) was trying to match.

Shemoneh Esrei was established enough in R' Yehoshua's day for him to
refer to "me'ein 18" -- Havineinu. And he is an older contemporary of
R' Gamliel! (Recall he's the one who RG insulted, leading to the
loss of his office.)

Also, in Bavel, Shim'on haQatan's addition was made into berakhah #19.
In EY, Bonei Y-m and Birkhat David were folded together. Still, we call it
Shemoneh Esrei, impying there was an 18 berakhah structure for centuries
before Shimon haQatan, not days. Although I guess it is technically
possible that we use the EY nickname for the Amidah even as we use the
Bavli nusach that belies it, I find it implausible.

Makes more sense to me to explain Berakhos 28b in light of the other
sources.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of
mi...@aishdas.org        greater vanity in others; it makes us vain,
http://www.aishdas.org   in fact, of our modesty.
Fax: (270) 514-1507              -Louis Kronenberger, writer (1904-1980)

Regardless of the details, for the purpose of the current discussion 
it's sufficient to point out that lechol hade'os, in the first Bayis 
there was no nusach hatefillah.  The mitzvah mid'oraisa is for each 
person to daven in his own words, and it was only at the beginning of 
the second Bayis that Chazal gave guidelines, which gradually took on 
more and more formality, and it wasn't until the Geonim that there was a 
fixed siddur so that everyone was saying the same words from beginning 
to end.

-- 
Zev Sero                Hit the road, Jack
z...@sero.name           but please come back once more

On 10/11/16 06:56, Isaac Balbin via Avodah wrote:
> I wish I could recall the particular Minhag but Mori V'Rabbi Rav Hershel
> Schachter did once pasken to me that a minhag that is simply Shtus,
> has no status and one should abandon it as a mistake. In some cases
> there could be issurim involved in keeping the minhag! This wasn't a
> wide spread world accepted minhag.

That there is such a thing as minhag shtus is an explicit Tosfos on the 
first amud of Bava Basra (dh Bigvil).  In general, to be binding a 
minhag must have been established with the consent of a talmid chacham; 
if it just arose organically it's not a minhag.

-- 
Zev Sero                Hit the road, Jack
z...@sero.name           but please come back once more

The Rambam inj his introduction to the Mishna lists 3 categories of Torah
she she be al pe

1) Things that have a hint in the Torah or through the 13 middot that are
part of tradition
2) wherever the gemara states that this is halacha mi sinai
3) things learned through the 13 middot without a tradition
which leads to the various disagreements in the gemara

category (3) is by far the largest portion and certainly does not contain
great details. In fact ,category (3) was developed from Moshe until at
least the conclusion of the Mishna a period of several thousand years

As the famous aggadata states when Moshe visited the bet midrash of R.
Akiva he didn't understand anything. This was because R. Akiva (and his
teachers) had developed new halachot based on the 13 middot.



-- 
Eli Turkel
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