Avodah Mailing List

Volume 37: Number 67

Tue, 20 Aug 2019

• 1. Re: Boray M'oray Ha'esh on Tisha B'Av (Zev Sero)
• 2. Re: 15 Av (Akiva Miller)
• 3. Re: Boray M'oray Ha'esh on Tisha B'Av (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: 15 Av (allan.en...@gmail.com)
• 5. 15 Av (Akiva Miller)
• 6. Re: Boray M'oray Ha'esh on Tisha B'Av (Ari Zivotofsky)
• 7. Incarceration in Mesorah (Micha Berger)

On 15/8/19 6:10 pm, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> And after maariv... I am guessing that would qualify as tosefes 9 beAv.

Is there such a thing?  I don't think so.  There's no toesefes Pesach; 
as soon as the stars are out on motzaei pesach one can break out the 
chametz, even if one is still assur bimlacha.  I assume the same would 
apply to tisha b'av

-- 
Zev Sero            A prosperous and healthy 5779 to all
z...@sero.name       Seek Jerusalem's peace; may all who love you prosper

.
I had a question over Shabbos. When I researched it later, I found that I
had this same question 19 years ago, and I asked it in this very forum. At
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol06/v06n015.shtml#14 R' Joel Rich offered
an answer according to "The yesh mfarshim in tosfot", but I have not yet
heard an answer which would follow Rashi. In hopes that perhaps someone can
answer, I'll ask it again:

Near the bottom of Taanis 30b, Rashi tells the story that in the Midbar, on
each Erev Tisha B'Av, everyone would dig a grave for himself and sleep in
it that night. Most people woke up in the morning, but not all. (Other
seforim do the math: 600,000 were to die each of the 40 years, which comes
to 15,000 each Tisha B'av.) In Rashi's words:

"They did it in the 40th year, and the next day, everyone got up alive.
When they saw that, they were amazed, and they said, 'Perhaps we made a
mistake in calculating the month.' So they lay down in their graves on the
nights until the night of 15 Av. When they saw that the moon was full on
the 15th, and not one of them had died, they realized that the calculation
of the month had been correct, and that the 40 years of the gezera were
already complete. That generation established that day as a Yom Tov."

Here's my question: If someone says 'Perhaps we made a mistake in
calculating the month,' then that person is clearly rejecting the halacha
that a declaration of Rosh Chodesh is valid even if the "wrong" day was
declared. Even if the "wrong" day was declared to be Rosh Chodesh Av in
that particular year, there is absolutely no need to worry that any day
other than the ninth was the "real" Tisha B'av. I imagine that anyone who
*would* have had such feelings would have been guilty of apikorsus or
something similar.

And yet, it seems (according to Rashi) that the entire People did in fact
go back into their graves for several more nights. I have not heard that
Moshe Rabenu or anyone else objected to this, and I'm trying to figure out
why.

I did come up with one possible solution. I noticed that Rashi never used
the phrase "Kiddush Hachodesh". Rather, he used the phrase "cheshbon
[ha]chodesh", and (perhaps significantly) he used it *twice*. Is it
possible that the Beis Din did not declare any particular day to be Rosh
Chodesh of that month? I have always thought that the Beis Din declared
every single month, from Nisan 2448 until some time after Churban Bayis
Sheni, and this would obviously include the time in the Midbar. But if this
did not actually happen, and rather each individual "calculated" the month
on their own, then Rashi could make sense.

Any thoughts? Did we do Kiddush Hachodesh in the Midbar? Or do you have a
different explanation?

Thanks!
Akiva Miller

POSTSCRIPT: Some might want to respond that the story as told by Rashi is
only a mashal of some sort, and not intended as a historical record. This
was answered by R' Micha Berger on this thread at
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol06/v06n015.shtml#12 where he wrote: <<<
mishalim need to be halachically sound. ... the medrash wouldn't have
coined a mashal that is kineged halachah. >>>
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On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 12:17:27AM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
> On 15/8/19 6:10 pm, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> > And after maariv... I am guessing that would qualify as tosefes 9 beAv.
> 
> Is there such a thing?  I don't think so.  There's no toesefes Pesach; as
> soon as the stars are out on motzaei pesach one can break out the chametz,
...

On the front end, though, Pesach is a poor example because issur chameitz
doesn't start at nightfall.

Closer to our case:
If you daven maariv at pelag, you are not permitted to wear tefillin
afterward.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

What compels you to believe that every derasha (in this case Atem afilu
shogegin etc) was already known in the desert? Or, in fact, to any
generation prior to the derasha being expounded?

The paradigm that allowed new derashos on pesukim (until 'sof mishna' -
presumably the end of the era of Tannaim) explicitly allows for changes in
halachic practice on the basis of new derashos.


On Sat, 17 Aug 2019 at 08:43, Akiva Miller via Avodah <
avo...@lists.aishdas.org> wrote:

> Here's my question: If someone says 'Perhaps we made a mistake in
> calculating the month,' then that person is clearly rejecting the halacha
> that a declaration of Rosh Chodesh is valid even if the "wrong" day was
> declared. Even if the "wrong" day was declared to be Rosh Chodesh Av in
> that particular year, there is absolutely no need to worry that any day
> other than the ninth was the "real" Tisha B'av. I imagine that anyone who
> *would* have had such feelings would have been guilty of apikorsus or
> something similar.
>
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.
R' Allan Engel wrote:

> What compels you to believe that every derasha (in this case Atem
> afilu shogegin etc) was already known in the desert? Or, in fact,
> to any generation prior to the derasha being expounded?
>
> The paradigm that allowed new derashos on pesukim (until 'sof
> mishna' - presumably the end of the era of Tannaim) explicitly allows
> for changes in halachic practice on the basis of new derashos.

I had not thought of that, probably because I'm so very used to the
opposite, that Moshe Rabenu knew everything. A good example of what I am
used to would be "Moavi v'lo Moaviah", which (as explained to me) was NOT a
new drasha of Boaz's, but was simply a little-known halacha that had been
kept hidden until Boaz publicized it.

New drashos were indeed propounded now and then, but I'm used to a
presentation similar to that of Ben Zoma in the Haggada, where a specific
person is credited with darshening the drasha. I don't see such
accreditation in this case, so I'm a bit hesitant to accept this as an
answer to my problem. RAE may be correct, but I'd like to see more evidence
for it.

For those who want to learn more about the drasha that RAE is referring to,
it is on Rosh Hashana 25a, and is cited by the Torah Temimah Vayikra 23:4,
#18 and #19.

I had posted:

> I noticed that Rashi never used the phrase "Kiddush Hachodesh".
> Rather, he used the phrase "cheshbon [ha]chodesh", and (perhaps
> significantly) he used it *twice*. Is it possible that the Beis
> Din did not declare any particular day to be Rosh Chodesh of that
> month? I have always thought that the Beis Din declared every
> single month, from Nisan 2448 until some time after Churban Bayis
> Sheni, and this would obviously include the time in the Midbar.
> But if this did not actually happen, and rather each individual
> "calculated" the month on their own, then Rashi could make sense.
>
> Any thoughts? Did we do Kiddush Hachodesh in the Midbar?

I spent much of Shabbos discussing this with several friends, and I now
thank them for their input, which helped greatly with the rest of this post
--


in the Midbar, Kiddush Hachodesh must have been Al Pi Cheshbon, and not Al
Pi R'iyah, because the moon (and sun) could not be seen for that entire
time, because the Ananei Hakavod were blocking the view. This shows me that
we DID do Kiddush Hachodesh in the Midbar, and it also provides a simple
answer to why Rashi used the word "cheshbon".

A friend raised a question: If the moon could not be seen, how could they
have seen the full moon on the night of 15 Av? Someone else answered that
the Ananei Hakavod left when Aharon Hakohen passed away, and someone else
pointed out that he died on Rosh Chodesh Av of that same year -- nine days
before the Tisha B'av in question.

(This sudden visibility of the moon after 40 years in which no one saw it,
is a great answer to the first question I posed in this thread, in Avodah
6:13. Namely: To most of us modern city folk, the night sky is a mystery.
But 3300 years ago, even children could probably have seen the difference
between a 9-day-old moon and an older one; they certainly could have
figured it out by the 13th or 14th, and should not have needed to see the
entire circle on the 15th. But now I understand. Many of those people had
never seen the moon before in their lives, and for the rest, it had been 40
years ago. They were less familiar with the night sky than we are! So, yes,
I can easily believe that their safek lasted all the way to the full moon.)

The sequence of events seems to be: The molad of Av occurred while the
clouds were still obscuring the moon, so the Beis Din were mekadesh it
based on their calculations. Then, on Rosh Chodesh, Aharon died and the
clouds left. The moon was probably visible (depending on local weather) on
the night of Tisha B'Av, but that doesn't really matter, because people
were unfamiliar with what a nine-day-old moon should look like. All they
had to go on was that fact that Rosh Chodesh was declared based on
mathematical calculations rather than physical evidence. So the next
morning they figured the calculations must have been in error. Ditto for
several more days, until Tu b'Av, when even people who were unfamiliar with
the moon's appearance were able to figure out what happened.

All of this is neat and reasonable, except the part about how Kiddush
Hachodesh is valid even in the case of an error. I'm tentatively accepting
RAE's suggestion, and if anyone else has any other ideas, I'm all ears.

Akiva Miller
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regarding making havdalah on shabbos and thus being able to drink the 
wine. the Rosh (Taanit ch. 4) raises the suggestion and says that once a 
person makes havdalah they have accepted the fast. The Magen Avraham (OC 
556) also mentions this.


Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:

> On 15/8/19 6:10 pm, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
>
>> And after maariv... I am guessing that would qualify as tosefes 9 beAv.
>
>
> Is there such a thing?  I don't think so.  There's no toesefes Pesach; 
> as soon as the stars are out on motzaei pesach one can break out the 
> chametz, even if one is still assur bimlacha.  I assume the same would 
> apply to tisha b'av
>

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

Much has been made of the fact that halakhah doesn't mandate incarceration
as a punishment. R' Avi Shafran did just a couple of days ago, so I was
finally motivated to pull out sources.

Honestly, though, to me it just seemed obvious. We know they had kippot,
that these are used as jails for holding people before trial, and as a
means of back-handed execution of murders and a subset of repeat offenders
where halakhah had no solution in terms of mandatory oneshim. So how
likely was it that they just released the criminal in the majority of
cases involving someone you can't let lose in society but had no onesh
-- or a ganef with a long record who didn't have to sell themveles
into avdus?

We have little question that halakhah neither requires of prohibits it.
So the question would be whether beis din did indeed commonly use prison
as punishment. Thus my "in mesorah" rather than "in halakhah" in the
subject line.

Yad, Hilkhos Rozeiach 2:5. The context is set up in halakhah 4, we're
talking about a murderer who wasn't subject to onesh, and whom the king
didn't punish, and at a time when BD didn't need to reinforce observance
in the general community. Halakhah 5 says they are to be lashed to near
death and then le'ASRAM BEMASOR UVMATZOQ SHANIM RABOS (emphasis mine,
of course).

Also, see Bamidbar 11:28 and Rashi's davar acheir ad loc. Eldad and
Meidad are speaking nevu'ah in the encampment, and Yehoshua says to
Moshe, "Kela'eim."

Rashi's first shitah is that the word is the same as "kileim" (without
the alef) -- "finish them!"
Davar acheir the shoresh is kela (kaf-lamed-alef) -- "imprison them!"

The Bartenura ad loc favors the latter peshat, and says the superfluous
alef was why Rashi was looking for something better.

The davar acheir implies that they had a prison (or at least a jail)
in the midbar.

And the very existence of the possibility implies that Rashi was
comfortable with the idea of imprisonment as a punishment. It wasn't
some newfangled idea that the Torah has an ideological or tactical
problem with.

The Ramban ad loc also talks about a beis hakela, like one would lock
up a crazy person. Exactly what I took for granted -- prison as a means
of protecting potential victims.

(Especially given the Rambam.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   G-d as King of the entire cosmos and all four
Author: Widen Your Tent      corners of the world, but sometimes he forgets
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    to include himself.     - Rav Yisrael Salanter


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