Avodah Mailing List

Volume 38: Number 37

Mon, 18 May 2020

• 1. FW: Plants in Cities Coronavirus Curfew (Chana luntz)
• 2. Re: Street Minyanim (Chana Luntz)
• 3. Re: Simchas Torah, post-covid19 (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Simchas Torah, post-covid19 (Michael Poppers)
• 5. The importance of statistics (Chana Luntz)
• 6. Re: Mumcheh Kemeia (Moshe Koppel)
• 7. Re: Street Minyanim (Akiva Miller)
• 8. Re: Funeral of a married Bas Kohen (Akiva Miller)
• 9. Re: Street Minyanim (Zev Sero)
• 10. Naming a Girl when there are no minyanim (Prof. L. Levine)

RMB writes:

<<The Kesef Mishnah says the source it BQ 82b, which explains why. So I went
there.

The problem with gardens, orchards and crop fields (Rambam: ganos, padeisim,
ve'einah nizr'as...) are the smell (sircha), which Rashi says is from either
weeds decaying after they were pulled or fertilizer.>>

...
<<Ula says because noy ha'ir, which Rashi back on the mishnah quotes and
says because it is pretty for a city to have free space in front of it.
Nothing about IN the city.

Seems to me that aside from Y-m there is nothing there against plants in the
city>>

Something that might suggest that planting trees might in fact be acceptable
is Rashi's second explanation on Ta'anis 14b.  The gemora there is
discussing what kinds of planting should not be done after we have had the
13 fasts for rain, and not been answered, and when, while fasting by the
community is to be discontinued, people should  be considered "k'bnei adam
hanezufin LaMakom".  And along with engagements and weddings is
constructions of joy and plantings of joy.  And the gemora asks: what are
plantings of joy? and answers, one who plants an "abvarnaki" of kings.  And
Rashi  d"h abvarnaki gives two explanations - the first is a tree planted
when the son of a king was born, so that it could be used for his throne
when the time came, and the second is that it is a big tree that was put so
that the king could stroll under it - and refers us to Eruvin 25b, where the
Reish Galusa had one.  And Rashi seems to go with the second opinion in his
next section; d"h "shel melachim": - saying that it was the way of kings to
plant it for shade, and that others who did so for shade it was considered a
planting of simcha.  

The point being that this is not a necessary planting, it is for pleasure,
and therefore prohibited during times that simcha is forbidden.  Now if you
then look at the discussion in Baba Basra 25b about what the Reish Galusa
had, it seems reasonably clear that it was close to his home, but also that
his orchard was right by his home (but that the enclosed orchard was more
than two beis seah, and had not been enclosed for dwelling).

And while the Reish Galusa may have lived in Bavel, and hence not been
subject to planting halachos that only apply to cities in eretz Yisrael, are
the kings generally being referred to in the Mishna in Ta'anis on Jewish
kings?  Because otherwise surely we are talking about kings planting in
Yerushalayim?  And while the Mishna prohibits the general population from
planting trees for shade or pleasure strolling during a time when no rain
has fallen, surely that implies that at times when one can have weddings and
other construction of simcha, one can have these plantings of simcha as
well, and this is talking about eretz Yisrael?  And just as the Reish Galusa
wanted his tree to sit under it on Shabbas, close by, surely the planting of
simcha falls into the same category?

And looking at the gemora in Baba Basra 82b, it says gardens and orchards,
not "abvarnaki" - so maybe trees lining the streets are OK, so long as they
are trees of simcha, ie used for shade only, and not for fruit (certainly it
because it is true that fruit, if not harvested tends to rot and can smell,
and also there are more issues about cutting down fruit trees, if there
planting becomes problematic).  So maybe the gemora there is davka,
orchards, and *not* trees planted for shade or strolling under.

>-Micha

Shavuah tov

CHana

RZS writes:

<<Where there are mechitzos of 10 tefachim, there's no question that for
hilchos eruvin we consider them separate places. But the question is where
do we see that this matters for the purpose of tziruf minyan?  Who says that
just because they're in different *reshuyos* they are therefore also in
different *mekomos*?

And if we do say that, then even within a shul would we say that there must
not be a mechitzas esser between the members of a minyan?  Are those
standing on the bima, which is traditionally enclosed by a mechitzas esser,
not counted in the minyan?!>>

This is exactly the question that was asked and answered by the Rashba in
the key teshuva ( Chelek 1 siman 96).  The question that was asked was, the
common design of shuls was that  the chazzan stands on a bimah with walls of
ten tefachim surrounding him,  and on what basis (given the gemora in
Eruvin) can he be considered part of the congregation?

The Rashba's main argument is that when the gemora in Eruvin (92b)was
discussing areas (where the chazan in the large cannot exempt a minyan in
the small, but a chazzan in the small can exempt a minyan in the large, and
similarly that nine in the large can be joined together with one in the
small, but nine in the small cannot be joined to one in the large) the
question only arose where each of the areas was made for its own independent
use (?? ???? ???? ????? ???????? ??? ???? ????) .  But the bimah was not
made for its own use, it was made to serve the shul, and hence it didn't
matter that it had mechitzos and was technically a separate reshus.  That I
think is undisputed (although there is much discussion in the various
rishonim and achronim about whether the same applies to a woman's gallery,
especially when, as was often the case in those days, the walls went up to
the roof, but that is not relevant for our purposes).  

The controversy is about the last paragraph of the Rashba, where he adds to
this by saying that "perhaps" if everyone can see one another, then, just as
with zimun, they can all be joined even where, say, there is a nine in the
small and one in the large, and that that Gemora in Eruvin (despite making
no mention of it) is only talking about a case where the two groups cannot
see one another.

As everybody in a porch minyan is standing in their own garden or porch, and
clearly those gardens and porches were built for their own independent use,
the first justification of the Rashba cannot allow for the members of porch
minyanim to be joined together.  One can only say that they can be joined if
one follows the perhaps of the Rashba, and holds that seeing allows for
joining even where there are in different areas.

BTW The second relevant gemora is Pesachim 85b, which is discussing at what
point a korban pesach is invalidated by being considered that it has been
taken out of Yerushalayim, and the mishna says from the door jam (and
outwards), and then there is an additional line which says " Rav Yehuda says
in the name of Rav: and so for prayer. " and the Gemora then adds, and he
disagrees with Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, as Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says:
even a partition of iron does not divide between Israel and their father in
heaven.".  Tosfos there (d"h v'chen l'tefila ") brings the gemora in Eruvin
and says that therefore RYBL can't be talking about joining for a minyan,
but only answering kedusha and kaddish etc - ie that outside the door jam
you can still answer kedusha and kaddish, but cannot be joined to the
minyan.

Note however that in the discussion regarding zimun as found in the Shulchan
Aruch it says as follows (Shulchan Aruch Orech Chaim siman 195 si'if 1): Two
groups that ate in one house or in two houses, if a few of them see each
other, they are joined for a zimun, and if not, they are not joined, and if
there is a shamash between the two of them, they are joined, like they
entered initially with the intention of being joined together, and there are
those who say that if there is a reshut harabim dividing them, they are not
joined in any manner.

This can be contrasted to the Shulchan Aruch in Orech Chaim siman 55 si'if
13 which says " There needs to be all ten in one place, and the shalich
tzibbur with them, and one who stands inside the doorway from the door jam
and outside, that is when they close the door from the place inside, the
thickness of the door and outside is like the outside", although it can be
argued that this is somewhat modified by si'if 14 which says " One who
stands behind the synagogue and between them is a window, even if it is many
stories high, even if it is not four wide, and he shows his face to them
from there, he is joined with them to the ten Rema: roofs and upper stories
are not in the general rule of a house, and if he stands on them he is not
joined.  It is the understanding of the Magen Avraham and other achronim in
these two si'ifim, by use of the analogy to zimun, that is the justification
for minyanim where everybody is in different houses but see one another
being joined.

>Zev Sero            Wishing everyone a *healthy* and happy summer

Shabbat Shalom

Chana

On Sun, May 17, 2020 at 12:45:50AM -0400, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
> Here's another question: The indvidual obligation of Shmo"s is "lehashlim
> parshiyosav *im hatzibur*.  If the tzibur is not reading the parsha, does
> the individual obligation still apply?

Define "tzibbur". The local miyan (or the local minyan he usually
attends)? Or the community of all minyanim that follow the same minhag
of sedros.

Can we prove whether or not the nursing homes, hospitals, army bases,
etc... all the minyanim that have no motive to halt during a pandemic, are
enough to carry kelal Yisrael forward for shenamyim miqra ve'echad targum?

(Note, I learned about "shemo"s" as an acronym for shenayim miqra from
a chassidishe rebbe in Jr High. Personally, I have only encountered that
acronymn inside the chassidish veldt.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Today is the 38th day, which is
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   5 weeks and 3 days in/toward the omer.
Author: Widen Your Tent      Tifferes sheb'Yesod: How does reliability
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF         promote harmony in life and relationships?

In Avodah V38n36, RZS asked:
> Here's another question: The indvidual obligation of Shmo"s is
"lehashlim parshiyosav *im hatzibur*.  If the tzibur is not reading the
parsha, does the individual obligation still apply? <
Fn2 at
https://halachipedia.com/index.php?title=Shnayim_Mikra_V%27Echad_Targum
tells me that l'chulei alma, individuals are obligated even when there's no
communal reading.

--Michael via phone
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Just been listening to R' Asher Weiss in:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdM2reEtHkU
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdM2reEtHkU&;feature=youtu.be>
&feature=youtu.be

 

And while  I fully agree with his response on the pandemic,  in the course
of his shiur, he brought up one of my bugbears, in that he compared a Magen
Avraham on the risk of women dying in childbirth to a Magen Avraham on the
risk of a spider falling into one's food and one choking on it and dying,
and in each case the Magen Avraham lists the risk as one in a thousand, but
in the spider case says one cannot kill the spider on Shabbat, but in the
case of the woman, one can violate all of hilchos shabbas to attend to her
needs.  And RAW posits it as a contradiction, and explains that in certain
cases the statistics don't matter.

 

And while I have no problem with the distinction he draws out of this for
the pandemic, the problem I have, that I have had over and over again, is
that people misquote the risks of women dying in childbirth without modern
medicine.  The reality is that without modern medicine, the risk of a woman
dying in childbirth is much, much, higher than one in a thousand.

 

For example for some real statistics, here is the rate of deaths of women in
childbirth in England starting in the 1700s:

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/

 

And as you can see, the figure there with only eighteen century medicine is
not one in a thousand, but more than one in a hundred live births.  Ie that
is for each birth, and the risks get higher as a woman gets older and has
more children.

 

And again, looking at statistics today, in some parts of the third world the
risk of a mother dying in childbirth is 6%, see:

 

https://ourworldindata.org/maternal-mortality

 

We do not have accurate statistics from further back in history, but joining
together what we know about the risks in the third world today, with the
risks as it was in the earliest time we have reasonable statistics, ie the
eighteenth century,  have heard it estimated that it might have been at high
as one in three women dying in childbirth (not necessarily with the first
child, or the second, but over the course of her childbearing) in or around
the time of the gemora.  

 

And even if it is not quite that high, the Magen Avraham in this case still
has to be seen as lav davka one in a thousand, or at best what could be
achieved with maximum care in his day. Today, we can do better, the best
performing countries Finland, Greece, Iceland, and Poland have that for
every 100,000 births, 3 mothers die.  But I think it is important to
understand that this sort of rate will occur only so long as we continue to
push aside Shabbas prohibitions for any needs of a woman in childbirth.

 

That said, the statistics if you are elderly of surviving coronavirus are
not great either, and, even if you are a young adult, with a relatively low
risk profile, the statistical risk of passing it on to someone with a much
higher one if you are out meeting people is very high, because this thing
is so infectious.

 

So the message that RAW is putting out is, IMHO, greatly needed, but the
reference to the statistics keep bothering me.

 

Regards

 

Chana

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On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 2:31 PM Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:
> ...Shabbos 61a yesterday, and what defines a kemeia mumcheh.
> Chazal appear to define expertise in the same terms as chazaqah
> -- it it works three times.
>
> Double blind studies weren't invented yet. So, if the kemeia works
> 3 times out of 40, it's a kemeia mumcheh? ...

> Anyway, I wish I could tie this train of thought in with a sad piece
> of news from yesterday, the passing of R Nachum Eliezer Rainobitch...

Apologies for not getting to this sooner. See what RNER z"l wrote in Yad
Peshutah on Hil. Shabbos 19:13-14, where Rambam discusses the issue. He
doesn't get into your statistical question there at all, but says what
you'd expect him to say about quackery. (You can navigate there in Otzar
Hachochma, but I can't get a direct link to work.)

Moish

.
R' Zev Sero wrote:

> I think the only way we can understand "sh'as had'chak" is that
> we *don't* consider these minyanim "halachically dubious".
> Rather, we hold that me'ikar hadin they are acceptable minyanim,
> even if not ideal. When we have alternatives we try to
> accommodate the stricter opinions as well.  But when we have no
> alternative we can't daven without a minyan just because there
> are opinions that don't like it; bish'as had'chak we fall back
> on what we believe is at the end of the day a valid opinion
> that can be relied on. "Kedai hu lismoch alav bish'as had'chak."

That's not my understanding. To me, even when we are accustomed to
accommodating the stricter opinions, we can follow the ikar hadin when the
stricter views are merely inconvenient or difficult. You don't need a "no
alternative" situation to justify following the ikar hadin. Why on earth
*would* you?

Let's focus on the phrase "Kedai hu lismoch alav bish'as had'chak." In
particular, the words "kedai hu". It seems clear to me that this refers to
an individual, i.e., a daas yachid, but one of sufficient stature that he
can be relied upon bish'as had'chak. Why on earth would we need to rely on
this individual if his views were that of the ikar hadin? Rather, when the
ikar hadin puts you in a "no alternative" situation, *that's* when one
might fall back on a minority opinion.

Getting back to the thread's topic of "street minyanim", I remember once
asking, many decades ago, about a particular shita which allowed a child to
be the tenth for a minyan, but only if it was a sh'as had'chak. I asked
what "sh'as had'chak" means in this context; wouldn't it apply to *every*
case of where only nine show up? And if so, then haven't we redefined the
minyan henceforth and forevermore? How would one distinguish between a
normal case of nine men and a boy being a non-minyan, versus a sha'as
had'chak case where nine men and a boy *is* allowed to be a minyan?

The answer I got (which the chevra may or may not agree with) is that not
all such cases are the same: If, for example, the weather was very bad and
only nine adults arrived, then, nu, nu, rov poskim say that there's no
minyan, so we'll daven b'yechidus and better luck next time. But if too
many people have been moving out of town, and the minyan is in danger of
collapse, this is a sha'as hadchak, and we can rely on minority opinions
lest the shul close up; when more people move to town we can return to
following the ikar hadin.

If one does agree with that distinction, I still don't know how to apply it
to today's situation. On the one hand, I see no reason to rely on minority
opinions here; if the street minyanim are valid, then good. But if they
don't meet the ikar hadin criteria, I don't see the sha'as had'chak. What's
so terrible about davening b'yechidus? But perhaps I'm being too
shortsighted about the long-term effects, and/or perhaps I don't even
appreciate the short-term effects. These are questions far bigger than me.

Akiva Miller
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.
R"n Toby Katz wrote:

> There are other halachos that seem to indicate a father-daughter
> bond is stronger and more permanent than a brother-sister bond.
> For instance, a father can kiss his daughter but a brother can't
> kiss and hug a sister who is married. ...

My understanding is that the brother can kiss his sister when she is young,
but not if she is older. See Even Haezer 21:7 for details, such as the
definition of "young" in this context. It does *not* hinge on her being
married.

Akiva Miller
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On 17/5/20 8:15 pm, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> 
> That's not my understanding. To me,?even when we are accustomed to 
> accommodating the stricter opinions, we can follow the ikar hadin when 
> the stricter views are merely inconvenient or difficult. You don't need 
> a "no alternative" situation to justify following the ikar hadin. Why on 
> earth *would* you?
> 
> Let's focus on the phrase "Kedai hu lismoch alav bish'as had'chak." In 
> particular, the words "kedai hu". It seems clear to me that this refers 
> to an individual, i.e., a daas yachid, but one of sufficient stature 
> that he can be relied upon bish'as had'chak. Why on earth would we need 
> to rely on this individual if his views were that of the ikar hadin? 
> Rather, when the ikar hadin puts you in a "no alternative" situation, 
> *that's* when one might fall back on a minority opinion.

I think we are simply working from different definitions of the term 
"ikar hadin".  By that term I mean that when you get right down to it 
the halacha allows us to follow this opinion, but since there are so 
many who disagree with it we shouldn't unless there is no alternative. 
The stronger the opposition to it, the more we should avoid relying on 
it, and thus the narrower the circumstances in which we consider 
ourselves to have no alternative.  But if the bedrock halacha says "no, 
this shita is rejected and cannot be relied on", then lack of 
alternative can't change that to a "yes".


> Getting back to the thread's topic of "street minyanim", I remember once 
> asking, many decades ago, about a particular shita which allowed a child 
> to be the tenth for a minyan, but only if it was a sh'as had'chak. I 
> asked what "sh'as had'chak" means in this context; wouldn't it apply to 
> *every* case of where only nine show up? And if so, then haven't we 
> redefined the minyan henceforth and forevermore? How would one 
> distinguish between a normal case of nine men and a boy being a 
> non-minyan, versus a sha'as had'chak?case where nine men and a boy *is* 
> allowed to be a minyan?

In that case I have an easy answer.  Bearing in mind that I come from a 
tradition that does not rely on that shita *even* bish'as had'chak, my 
understanding of those who do is that sh'as had'chak means not only that 
there is no tenth man but that there is no prospect of getting one, even 
by waiting, or searching for one on the street, or going to people's 
homes to fetch them.  So long as one *can* get a tenth man, that is the 
alternative; if one can't, then it's an emergency.


-- 
Zev Sero            Wishing everyone a *healthy* and happy summer
z...@sero.name       Seek Jerusalem's peace; may all who love you prosper

From today's OU Kosher Halacha Yomis


Q. The minhag when naming a baby daughter is for the father to be called to
the Torah for an aliya. After the aliya, a Mi Sheberach is recited which
begins with a prayer for the mother?s health and concludes with a
declaration of the new baby?s name. The name is established with this
public announcement. Now that shuls are closed, should the parents wait to
give the name until shuls reopen?


A. Rav Schachter responded that the parents should not wait. Although there
is a minhag to name a baby after receiving an aliya, it is not mandatory to
do so, and it is clear that this is a more recent custom. The parents
should choose a name and immediately start using it. They should also let
others know her name. In this manner, the name is established.

When should the name be given? The Minchas Yitzchak (4:107) writes that
different communities have varied minhagim as to when to name a daughter.
The Bnei Yisaschar maintains that a daughter should be named at the first
opportunity, because a Jewish name infuses kedusha into the child. For a
boy, one must wait to give the name at the bris, but a girl should be named
as soon as the father receives an aliya. When no minyan is available, the
baby should be named as soon as possible.

However, many communities have the minhag to wait until Shabbos. This is
because it is appropriate for the family to make a special seuda/Kiddush in
honor of the naming of their daughter and most people do not have the
ability to do this during the week. Additionally, the kedusha of Shabbos
adds to the sanctity of the name.

In our current situation where the father cannot be called to the Torah, he
should follow the minhag of his community and either give a name as soon as
possible or on Shabbos day.

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