Avodah Mailing List

Volume 36: Number 115

Sun, 07 Oct 2018

• 1. Bereishit (Alexander Seinfeld)
• 2. RSRH on Marriage (Professor L. Levine)
• 3. Re: Longevity of Minhag haMakom (was: Simchas Torah & a Lost Minhag of the Gra) (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Bereishit (Rabbi)
• 5. Re: Geshem or Gashem?! (Simon Montagu)
• 6. Re: Bereishit (Rabbi)
• 7. Re: Geshem or Gashem?! (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: Geshem or Gashem?! (Isaac Balbin)
• 9. BDE Moras Shulamith Bechhofer (Saul Guberman)

7 things every Jew should know about Ma?aseh Bereishit, even if it was not
taught in BY:

1. The Torah is not a history book. It is not Historia. It is Toras
Chayim. If it says something that sounds historical but contradicts
scientific History, that?s not a kasheh on the Torah, it?s more like a
sha?elah - ?Why did HKBH write this? What?s He teaching me here??

2. We know that Adam HaRishon was created 5,779 years ago. There is no
significant debate about that.

3. We don?t know for certain the meaning of the 5.9 days before Adam
HaRishon. The sun was created on Day 4, so what was the meaning of a day
before that, if there was no sun? Not clear.

4. Learn the Ramban on the first perek ? sounds a lot like the
descriptions we have of the Big Bang.

5. There are things in this world that look millions of years old. To deny
that they look that way is like denying that the Earth is round. They
really do look that way. So either HKBH made them looking old for some
reason, or they really are old. A person can ignore the question and say,
?It?s enough for me just to believe,? but the Gemara (and plenty of
Rishonim and Acharonim) says that we have an obligation to study Nature to
the best of our ability.

6. There are plenty of things that the smartest scientists admit they
don?t know. For instance, they think that right after the moment of
creation (Big Bang), the entire universe inflated instantly, like someone
blowing up a balloon. Just to make this clear. There are patterns in the
universe that defy logical explanation. In order to explain these
patterns, it has been proposed (and accepted by many but not all
cosmologists) that from
1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 second until
1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 second after the Big Bang,
the universe expanded at an exponential rate (in that short moment it got
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times bigger), and then the expansion
slowed down. They have good reasons for believing this theory. It helps
explain some of the bizarre things that we see when we look through our
telescopes, chiefly, the fact that the universe appears to be the same in
all directions. Yet they have no idea what could have caused this
inflation. Worse for them, the current rate of expansion has been proven
to be accelerating, but again they have no idea what invisible energy
source could be causing this. It would be far simpler to say, ?It looks
the same in every direction because it was created at the current size;
there was no Big Bang and no expansion and no inflation.?


But wait, we see that it is indeed currently expanding. Doesn?t that prove
the Big Bang?
- Expansion doesn?t prove anything. It?s a fact that requires a theory to
explain it. We know and believe that for some reason when HKBH made the
world 5,779 years (+ 6 days) ago, he decided to make it continuously
expand. 
- Maybe this bizarre things accelerating expansion that we see, along with
hypothetical inflation, are just the artist?s signature on His artwork?
For after all, the only thing that can cause acceleration is more energy.
The best rational explanation for this invisible ?dark? energy is that
Hashem continues to be mashpia on the world and wants us to know it,
without being too obvious.

But wait, we also know that the stars are zillions of miles away from us,
and given the known speed of light, their starlight should have taken
millions or even billions of years to reach us. Doesn?t that prove at
least that the universe is mighty old?
- No, it doesn?t: see #5 above.

7. Yet to constantly answer, ?Hashem just did/does it that way" is a bit
facile and reminds me of young people who give this answer when asked,
?What causes a hurricane?" If we dismissed every question with ?Hashem
does it? without looking into the mechanism that HKBH uses to do it, we
would be much poorer, and possibly less safe and healthy. Besides giving
us practical wisdom (how to predict hurricanes, how to fight cancer, how
to build stronger bridges), knowing the details about how these things
work should increase our sense of wonder and our Emunah.

So what?s the answer to point #5 above? Is the universe vastly ancient, or
was it just made to look that way?

I don?t know, but I?m personally completely comfortable with either
answer. Neither answer can (to my understanding) be proven nor disproven.
I suspect they are both true.

That, as my grandfather z??l would have said, is my 2-bits. Your critical
feedback welcome.

Good Shabbos
Alexander Seinfeld
jewishspirituality.net 

The following are excerpts from RSRH's commentary on Bereishis 1:28


28. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply
and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and
over the fowl of the sky and over all the beasts that tread upon the earth.


"????????????? ?????? ????????? ?????????? ?????? ????????? ???????
???????? ?????????? ???????????? ???????????? ???????? ????????? ???????
????????? ???????????? ??????????????? ???????????? ????????????:


28 God blessed both of them, and He made both of them responsible for
the fulfillment of mankind?s mission.

???????
refers to marriage, the union of the sexes for production of human
fruit ? children. Just as the choice energies and saps of the tree become
?free? in its fruit as an independent germ (see above, v. 11), so the
noblest traits of godliness and humaneness of the father and mother
unite to produce an independent human germ.

??????
refers to the family. r'vah = to multiply. Begetting children is not
sufficient in order for the human species to multiply. Even in the case
of many species of animals, increase of the breed is dependent on care
of the young; and in the case of the human species, such care is absolutely essential ? even if viewed only from a physical standpoint. A
human child has no chance of survival at all, if his parents do not
provide him with care from the moment of his birth and do not continually
promote his bodily well-being and development. Not the birth,
but the care is the true cause of human increase.

But r'vah includes more than this. The parents are obligated to reproduce
themselves through their children: They must recur in the image
of their children; and the children are to resemble their parents ?
not only physically, but spiritually and morally. The parents are to plant
and nurture in their children the best of their spiritual and moral powers.
In short, their duty is to form and educate their children spiritually
and morally. Only then will they recur in the image of their children
and fulfill the mitzvah of ??????  .

??????????
refers to property (see Commentary, v. 26). Man is commanded
to master the earth and subdue it. His task is to acquire the products
of the earth and to transform them, so that they become fit for his
purposes. Acquisition of property is prerequisite for the tasks of home
and society. Property serves as an instrument with which home and
society achieve their aims. Thus, the acquisition of property becomes
a moral duty.
The mitzvah of ??????, however, is written here last, which implies
a limitation: There is no moral value to property, unless it is devoted
to home and society. It is a person?s duty to acquire material assets, in
order to build a home and to further the society. He should not build
a home and support the society in order increase his assets and his
wealth.

The mitzvah of ???????????? is given at once to both sexes; they are to
collaborate in harmony so as to fulfill this mission of man. Nevertheless,
before establishing his home, man must first acquire material assets,
and this duty ? subduing the earth, so as to further man?s aims ? is
primarily incumbent only upon the male. For this reason the duty of marriage and
of establishing a home is assigned directly only to the man, and only
to him is it given as an unconditional duty. To the woman it is given
as a conditional duty; it applies to her, only when she joins her husband.
(See Yevamos 65b.)

These commands place the Divine imprint on every aspect
of familyand communal life. The Torah does not recognize the compartmentalization
of life into God-oriented or ?religious,? on the one hand, and
profane, untouched by things Divine, on the other. God claims all of
life for His service and for the fulfillment of man?s mission as adom. This
applies, first and foremost, to family and communal life.








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On Wed, Oct 03, 2018 at 02:46:37PM -0700, RMR wrote:
: It seems that, despite the simple Halacha, when a large exodus (when they
: vastly outnumber the original community) of people land in a new country,
: they keep their Minhag and drown out the old Minhag.

: So Ashkenazim who landed in the US kept their minhagim from the Alter
: Heim (and didn't become Sefardi), and when Sefardim who landed in the
: Ottoman Empire after the expulsion stayed Sefardi and didn't adopt the
: original Minhag.

I think it's more that minhag hamaqom is about the community, not the
geography. If so many new people move in that they overhwelm the old
community, they also overwhelm the old minhag.

However, when Edot haMizrach got to the US in the late 20th century, many
of them moved into existing communities and neither drowned out the old
minhag nor did they adopt it. I think they should have done the latter,
since minhag avos is only a "thing" when there is no minhag hamaqom.
(Except in places like Deal, NJ, which is predominantly Syrian)

And for many minhagim, the existing community -- from Yekkes to
Vizhnitzers -- did have a single practice.

This gets me to an issue left unresolved in a previous discussion of
minhag hamaqom:
Does minhag hamaqom apply piecewise, or only when there are so many
practices that are consistent that there is a general feeling of unity
of pesaq.

For example, we talk about there being a "minhag hamaqom" in EY about
things like saying Shir shel Yom after Shacharis even when there is a
Mussaf, or Hakafos after Hallel. But the list of things in which the
vast majority of the observant communities of Israel agree upon is
quite small. Heterogeneity is the norm.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I long to accomplish a great and noble task,
mi...@aishdas.org        but it is my chief duty to accomplish small
http://www.aishdas.org   tasks as if they were great and noble.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                              - Helen Keller

On October 5, 2018 8:40:01 AM PDT, Alexander Seinfeld wrote:
>7 things every Jew should know about Ma'aseh Bereishit, even if it was
>not taught in BY:

>1. The Torah is not a history book. It is not Historia. It is Toras
>Chayim. If it says something that sounds historical but contradicts
>scientific History, that's not a kasheh on the Torah, it's more like a
>sha'elah -- "Why did HKBH write this? What's He teaching me here?"

...
>4. Learn the Ramban on the first perek -- sounds a lot like the
>descriptions we have of the Big Bang.

The problem with this answer is that it really doesn't answer it, as the
chronology still doesn't work -- according to science, there were no
plants before the sun and the moon. So either it's all a parable (and
there doesn't need to be any correlation between Torah and science),
or you need another answer (such as the Lubavitcher Rebbe's answer that
the world was created old).


>7. Yet to constantly answer, "Hashem just did/does it that way" is a bit
>facile and reminds me of young people who give this answer when asked,
>"What causes a hurricane?" If we dismissed every question with "Hashem
>does it" without looking into the mechanism that HKBH uses to do it, we
>would be much poorer, and possibly less safe and healthy. Besides giving
>us practical wisdom (how to predict hurricanes, how to fight cancer, how
>to build stronger bridges), knowing the details about how these things
>work should increase our sense of wonder and our Emunah.

The question is if we're working within nature or without. So hurricanes
are natural, but Beriya very well may not (do you have a source that
nature started from day 1 vs day 6 or when Adam was evicted from Gan
Eden)?

On Fri, Oct 5, 2018 at 6:13 PM Mandel, Seth via Avodah <
avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:

>
> But in this case I do not have to send people to look at mss. We have
> at least one example in the davening, where all traditions agree that
> "pausal" forms are used, even though it is not the end of a phrase,
> and there is no difference between Ashkenaz, S'farad, Italy, or Teiman,
> in the first b'rokho before QS in the morning:


Is there any nusah that says "shelo `asani eved" and/or "mechin mitz`adei
gever" in birchot hashahar?
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1. Torah isn't a history book, but it also happens to teach history.?

2. The problem with this answer is that it really doesn't answer it, as the
chronology still doesn't work - according to science, there were no plants
before the sun and the moon. So either it's all a parable (and there
doesn't need to be any correlation between Torah and science), or you need
another answer (such as the Lubavitcher Rebbe's answer that the world was
created old).

3. The question is if we're working within nature or without. So hurricanes
are natural, but Beriya very well may not (do you have a source that nature
started from day 1 vs day 6 or when Adam was evicted from Gan Eden)?
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On Sun, Oct 07, 2018 at 06:22:12PM +1100, Isaac Balbin wrote:
: I was davening in a Chabad House on Succos and noticed that whilst they
: also say gEshem in Shemone Esreh, they say gAshem in the actual Tefilla
: for geshem.

I think that's the usual. After all, in Tefillas Geshem we don't just
continue the list "mashiv haruach umorid hageshem, mekhalkeil chaim
bechesed..."

The pause before "Livrakhah velo liqlalah" is less of a question.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When a king dies, his power ends,
mi...@aishdas.org        but when a prophet dies, his influence is just
http://www.aishdas.org   beginning.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                    - Soren Kierkegaard

I say Geshem (as per R' Soloveitchik et al)

I was davening in a Chabad House on Succos and noticed that whilst they
also say gEshem in Shemone Esreh, they say gAshem in the actual Tefilla
for geshem.

Information from RYBG on facebook:

Kevurah for my mother, Moras Schulamith bas Horav Dov Yehuda a"h,will be
at Har HaMenuchos. My brother, Horav Yochanan Meir shlita sitting shiva
for 2 days from Monday night after the kevura until Wednesday afternoon
in Ramat Shlomo, number 37 Shtefenesht Street by the Schaefer family.

Shiva for my mother, Moras Schulamith bas Horav Dov Yehuda a"h will be at
my mother's apartment 146 Beach 9th Street, apartment 4D, Far Rockaway,
New York. Beginning Monday morning, Shacharis at 7:30 am, Mincha and
Maariv at 6:05 pm. Please try to come be menachem avel before 10:00 pm.

I will be returning to Monsey for Mincha Gedola on Friday at 1:15 pm,
Maariv Motzoei Shabbos an hour after shekiah, and Shacharis on Sunday
morning at 7:30 am, at our house, 3 Zabriskie Terrace.

Besuros Tovos.
Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer


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