Avodah Mailing List

Volume 36: Number 123

Sun, 28 Oct 2018

• 1. Baptized Jews and the Law Of Return (Eli Turkel)
• 2. Kim lei bdraba minei: (Rich, Joel)
• 3. Re: Bereishit (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Non Jewish harvesters (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: Apparently conflicting Stam Mishna (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: Two witnesses (Micha Berger)
• 7. Reading Newspapers and Other secular Literature on Shabbos (Professor L. Levine)
• 8. Re: Reading Newspapers and Other secular Literature on Shabbos (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: Reading Newspapers and Other secular Literature on Shabbos (Prof. Levine)
• 10. Re: Reading Newspapers and Other secular Literature on Shabbos (Harry Maryles)
• 11. Re: Reading Newspapers and Other secular Literature on Shabbos (Prof. Levine)

<< RAL offers three different approaches to resolution. He ends up siding
with
#3, that the convert in Yevamos is someone who reverts to the rituals of
his old religion. But someone who goes beyond that to give up their
Jewish identity would indeed not be Jews. >>

RAL is the most persuasive essentially after several generations. It is
hard to believe that someone who converted to Xtianity in the middle ages
would have descendants who are Jewish through the mothers when all
connection to the Jewish world is lost. I once read that there are 80
million descendants today from the Jews in Spain that left Judaism. While
we only count those through the maternal side this would still give a lot
of "halachic" Jews for people who might be strong anti-semites today.

-- 
Eli Turkel
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Kim lei bdraba minei: Given the difference in the requirements for
accepting testimony in capital and civil cases, could one be found not
guilty for the death penalty for an act with capital implications but have
to pay damages for the monetary damages from that act, or do we say lo
palginon (we don't split)?
KT
Joel Rich

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On Fri, Oct 05, 2018 at 11:40:01AM -0400, Alexander Seinfeld via Avodah wrote:
: 2. We know that Adam HaRishon was created 5,779 years ago. There is no
: significant debate about that.

Quibble: +/- 168 years during Galus Bavel, and perhaps other issues.

Also, the Seder Olam, R' Yossi bar Chalafta (acc. to Yavamos 82b &
Niddah 46b), is only one tanna among many. For that matter, he is "only"
the primary author, as it quotes people who lived later than RYbH. Of
course there are machloqesin about many of his positions.

(Our calendar is Sefer Olam chronology with a different year 0. Seder
Olam numbers the year of Adam's creation as 0, and we use year 1
for the week before Adam, so that our numbers are SO + 2. But the
same age.)

But in a much smaller scale than you intended to, there are numerous
debates.

I have a pet theory that these factors are the reason why shetaros,
and in particular gittin, explain the year is only as "beminyan she'anu
monim kan ba'ir Ploni-ville..."

But in any case, since lemaaseh no din relies on the year, pesaq doesn't
apply, and machloqesin neither have to be nor even can be resolved.


: 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.

The Ramban is clear -- a yom was 24 hours on a hypothetical clock, the
way we measure time now.

R' Dessler explains the Ramban as equally saying that a yom was 1,000
years. Which wouldn't be long enough to help, but it gets weirder --
not just any 1,000 years, but a millennium of the 6,000 of world history.

According to REED, the Ramban correctly holds that time is non-linear.
(Michtav meiEliyahu vol II pp 150-154, Yemei Bereishis veYemai Olam,
I paraphrase it paragraph by paragraph at
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/rav-desslers-approach-to-creation>)

R' Dessler writes that the arrow of time and the whole concept of a
time-line is specific to how human beings perceive reality, and even
that only as people have done so /after/ the cheit.

Which gives him the room to say that the scientific age of the universe
is not so much wrong as choosing a less than optimal way of viewing a
problem that doesn't admit any one answer. The age of the universe is
6 millenia or so plus 6 days as seen from the perspective the Torah
advises us to adopt. But that doesn't make some other answer less
correct, or less useful for some other purpose.


: 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....

Well, the Ramban on bara mentions hyle, which is the Greek for chomer
in chomer vertzurah (which they called hylomorphism). So Hashem first
made substance without form. Or maybe, less hard to imagine, the current
substance, but in forms that no longer exist.

Now, Quantum Mechanics is nothing at all like hylomorphism, but...

According to Big Bang theory, in the first fractions of a second after
yeish mei'ayin, things were so hot that individual particals had no
identity. What now appears to be four kinds of particles, for kinds
of fields, mediating forces was just one mush, not so mention the
particles we think of as matted. As things cooled, the symmetry split
again and again until the types of particles and forces we know today
differentiated.

Does sound like chomer beli tzurah.


: - 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.

How do we explain "Shakai"? That He said "dai" and the expansion ended, no?


: 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...

But there is no way to disprove "the universe is young and Hashem had
His Reasons for doing it that way", reasons we can't identify.

We might want answers that feel less facile, but that doesn't make it
false. Might just be human hubris, to need a universe we can understand.

That is different than what you're talking about, which is more similar to
separating a scientific study of cause with a Torah study of purpose. But
it does raise the question of whether "a bit facile" is a meaningful
RELIGIOUS problem. You want to know the science, fine. But life's values
doesn't rest on it. Nor should you assume science can't his a wall.


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

REED says both. Because, in his typical Kantian perspective, he has
science address the world as humans perceive it, believing the world
as it exists "out there" is actually unknowable.

And so, the world before eitz hadaas and observation by human
consciousness of our sort is amenable to different descriptions.
Each capturing a different shadow of the basic unknowable.


On Mon, Oct 08, 2018 at 09:26:27AM -0400, Zvi Lampel via Avodah wrote:
: Know that G-d brought out these creations, all of them, to physical reality
: during the six days of *Breishis* by Himself, in His Own Glory -- not by means
: of an agent, meaning Nature. Creation was contrary to the way things are
: after the conclusion of the six days of *Breishis*, wherein *Hashem
: Yisborach* conducts His world by means of the agent, i.e. *Nature*.

While the Rambam treats nature as a hypostatis, the Ramban famously says
there is no "it" to nature. That natural is just a term we use to describe
the patterns by which Hashem usually acts. It is all "by Himself".

From RZL's quote of the Rambam:
:> + When any one of us is deprived of breath for a short time, he dies, and
:> cannot move any ?longer. How then can we imagine that any one of us has
:> been enclosed in a bag in the ?midst of a body for several months and
:> remained alive, able to move??

Which doesn't mean that creation happened by miracles we could understand
either. It justifies the Michtav meiEliyahu's position that creation is
incomprehensible by any means. And instead we pick which simplified model,
which perspective, we choose to explain the unknowable from.

See pereq 30. There was no time, no 6 days. Just 6 steps in logic.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A pious Jew is not one who worries about his fellow
mi...@aishdas.org        man's soul and his own stomach; a pious Jew worries
http://www.aishdas.org   about his own soul and his fellow man's stomach.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rav Yisrael Salanter

On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 08:02:52AM +0200, Ben Waxman via Avodah wrote:
: Rambam, Matanot L'anayiim [2]:10: Do not hire non-Jewish workers to
: harvest because they are not experts in leket and pe'ah.
...
: What is the issue then? The farm owner tells them "Harvest up to here
: and leave areas A, B, & C alone". If needed, the owner does it once or
: twice with them.

I assume you're llimiting your question to pei'ah. Because leqet requires
getting out of a habit when you're in the middle of gathering. And for
the same reason, why not worry about shikhechah? I would think that even
with instructions, it's leqet and shikechah that's hard to get used to
and get right.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 10:20:01AM -0400, Looking ForInspiration via Avodah wrote:
: Up until the end of the 4th Perek of Baba Kama, Stam Mishna holds that
: when there is doubt, Hamotzi Mechavero Olov Horaayah. In the 5th Perek,
: it holds that when in doubt, you divide the money in doubt. Does this
: mean that Shisha Sidrei Mishna does not have just one author?

It didn't. The mishnah took a 3 generation process: R' Aqiva, R Meir
and Rebbe. Stam mishnah is usually like R Meir, although the gemara
at times proves a different maqor, not even the final redactor.

(Stam Sifra keRabbi Yehudah, even though the Sifra is not by Rebbe,
but by his student, Rav.)

You have statements like on RH 19b, where you're told the mishnah is not
in accord with R" Yehudah haNasi. So the notion that the opinion of the
mishnah is necessarily the opnion of the redactor is not a given. Nor
is the stam mishnah always R' Meir. Therefor conflicting opinions isn't
proof of multiple redactors. (Although,as I wrote, redaction was one
school, not one person.)

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You will never "find" time for anything.
mi...@aishdas.org        If you want time, you must make it.
http://www.aishdas.org                     - Charles Buxton
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 12:10:21PM +0000, Joseph Kaplan via Avodah wrote:
: Zev Sero commented:
:> As evidenced by the fact that if the witnesses recant after the verdict,
:> even if their recantation seems credible we execute the person anyway.

: What, if anything, does this teach us -- about Halacha or morality or
: the value of human life or anything else? Or perhaps to paraphrase Joel

Perhaps it tells us that more die when the appeals process is endless?
And thus, once the case is closed, it's closed. And we trust G-d
to insure that any miscarriage of justice in the case is just in the
broader context.

Just thinking out loud to keep the topic going... It needs more discussion.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Please see http://personal.stevens.edu/~llevine/Reading%20Newspapers%20on%20Shabbos.pdf


The author points out that many are unaware of these halachas.


YL
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On Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 12:04:29PM +0000, Professor L. Levine via Avodah wrote:
: Please see http://personal.stevens.edu/~llevine/Reading%20Newspapers%20on%20Shabbos.pdf
: The author points out that many are unaware of these halachas.

And yet, the Netziv spend Friday night reading the haskalishe newspapers.
One of the things in My Uncle the Netziv, a translation of excerpts from
the Torah Temimah's Meqor Baruch, that got BMG to recall a mailing of
them a couple of decades ago.

Add to the list of issues with rewriting the past that it can cause an
artificial evolution of halakh.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

At 11:19 AM 10/28/2018, Micha Berger wrote:
>On Sun, Oct 28, 2018 at 12:04:29PM +0000, Professor L. Levine via 
>Avodah wrote:
>: Please see 
>http://personal.stevens.edu/~llevine/Reading%20Newspapers%20on%20Shabbos.pdf
>: The author points out that many are unaware of these halachas.
>
>And yet, the Netziv spend Friday night reading the haskalishe newspapers.
>One of the things in My Uncle the Netziv, a translation of excerpts from
>the Torah Temimah's Meqor Baruch, that got BMG to recall a mailing of
>them a couple of decades ago.
>
>Add to the list of issues with rewriting the past that it can cause an
>artificial evolution of halakh.


I have  been told that R. Baruch Epstein was not known for the 
accurateness of his writings. The person who told me this claimed 
that RYBS said this.

In any event see

http://traditionarchive.org/news/originals/Volume%2035/No.%201/Rayna%20Batya%20and.pdf

 From there

The findings in this article seem to confirm the judgment of some
scholars that the rabbinic sources cited by R. Epstein should not be
taken as accurate and that they require independent confirmation from
the original sources.61 Certainly the inconsistencies found in MB cast
serious doubt as to its value as a completely accurate historical account.
We will never know what lies behind the puzzling inaccuracies in R.
Epstein's oeuvre, nor is it for us to speculate. R. Menachem Kasher,
after setting severe strictures about the reliability of R. Epstein's 
citations, nevertheless expresses a charitable
understanding of the circumstances that may have brought this about. 
Noting R. Epstein's statement in MB
  that he lived a "life of suffering" (hayyei tsa)ar), R. Kasher
writes that R. Epstein was a "great man" (adam gadol) whose )) is "a
monumental work" (avoda anakit), and he attributes the many inaccuracies
  in the work to R. Epstein's difficult and inordinately busy life
which did not permit him to check his sources as carefully as he should
have.

One old lesson emerges reinforced from all this-a lesson for
researchers in any field, especially the field of Torah scholarship.
Primary material must be carefully examined, and if only secondary
sources are available, their veracity must be meticulously ascertained.
Rayna Batya seems to have been an extraordinary woman, but the inaccuracies
  in R Epstein's telling of her story cloud our ability to know her
and her absorbing story.

We close this article, which is written in sadness rather than glee, by
noting one final irony. When Mesorah Publications published a translation
of R. Epstein's MB, tided My Uncle the Netziv, it deleted certain
key words.64 The passage in which we learned of Rayna Batya's scholar-
ship was one of the changed passages. The original passage, for example,
mentioned the venous books she used and included, among others,
Mishnayot and books of aggada. In the English translation, these books
were deleted from the list, causing much indignation in the scholarly
world at this attempt to revise history.

How ironic it is that this effort to "sanitize" R. Epstein's reputation
should have inadvertency hit upon the truth: that the story of Rayna
Batya lie many other elements in MB and Torah Temima are in fact in
need of serious revision.

_________________________________
In light of all this can we really be sure that the Netziv read 
newspapers on Shabbos?

YL

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On Oct 28, 2018, at 12:09 PM, Prof. Levine via Avodah <avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
> I have been told that R. Baruch Epstein was not known for the
> accurateness of his writings. The person who told me this claimed that
> RYBS said this.
> 
> In any event see
> http://traditionarchive.org/news/originals/Volume%2035/No.%201/Rayna%20Batya%20and.pdf 

FWIW RAS strongly defended the Mekor Baruch and was highly critical of
its critics. He referred to Them basically as midgets compared to R'
Baruch Halevi Epstein. Of which the author of this Tradition article
would Certainly qualify.

HM

At 05:25 PM 10/28/2018, Harry Maryles wrote:
>FWIW RAS strongly defended the Mekor Baruch and was highly critical 
>of its critics. He referred to Them basically as midgets compared to 
>R' Baruch Halevi Epstein. Of which the author of this Tradition 
>article would Certainly qualify.

IIRC  Rabbi Meir Fund is the one who told me that RYBS said that 
there are many inaccuracies in the writings of the Torah Temima.

Did you take the time to read the Tradition article?  It seems to be 
well documented.

YL


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