Avodah Mailing List

Volume 38: Number 50

Mon, 22 Jun 2020

• 1. Re: : Yehareig? (Zev Sero)
• 2. Re: Just walk away (Rich, Joel)
• 3. Re: BAmidbar or BEmidbar? (Zvi Lampel)
• 4. Re: free public transport on Shabbos/Yomtov (Chana Luntz)
• 5. Re: Accounting for a Minyan, by R Gil Student (Micha Berger)

On 18/6/20 12:56 am, Rich, Joel via Avodah wrote:
> If  a ben noach (noahide) Is being forced to abrogate one of their 7
> mitzvot, does He have a requirement To give up his life rather than
> abrogate?  Assumedly he is not directly covered by vchay bahem (you
> shall live in them). If in general he doesn?t have to give up his
> life what about for murder whose exception for Jews is based on a
> logical inference
Bnei Noach are not commanded in kiddush haShem.  We learn this from an 
explicit pasuk in Melachim, where Elisha gave Naaman permission to serve 
whenever he accompanied the king to the temple and had no choice but to 
join in his worship.

I have never seen it stated that this does not apply to murder, so I 
assume it does apply, though your argument against it seems sound. By 
way of comparison, the Common Law recognises necessity as a defence to 
any crime except murder, for the same reason that the halacha makes this 
exception.

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

> 
> ?
> In the given situation we obviously don't know what he wants; if we did,
> we'd simply follow it. So the bystander has two choices: assume he wants
> you to stay which will result in his death or assume he wants you to leave
> which will result in his living. You may want to, and may have the right,
> to give up your life in such a situation. I don't think you have the
> right to give up someone else's life 
> ?//////??-
This really raises the other question I was thinking about, whose  is final
decision is it?  For example If you want to a poseik What would he say?  I
also wonder if this is not related to the debate between the Rambam and
baalei tosfot as to whether one can voluntarily give up his life when it?s
not demanded
Kt
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From: Michael Poppers <michaelpopp...@gmail.com>
> RaShY's last 13:21 phrase ("b'farashas 'Eileh Mas-ei'"). ... this implies
> RaShY would label the first
> sedra of the fourth chumash as "b'midbar Sinai" (i.e. with the full phrase,
> not just one word).

Which is how Rashi does indeed label it in BMDBR 5:2.

Zvi Lampel

>>Nor does he say "*only* in streets...". 

Nor does he say "only" driven by a non-Jew, and yet that is clearly what
he means. He says driven by a non-Jew in streets in which the majority
dwellers are non-Jewish.

<<I think the expression "in streets" refers to the whole line, not to
each individual stretch of road along it. Because I don't see how it
matters why the bus is going along that stretch of road when it could
have been rerouted to go along a parallel road; what matters is why the
bus is running from the beginning of the line to the end of the line at
all, and that is for all the people who have occasion to travel along
any part of it.>>

Rav Uzziel explains why he thinks it is important, because the non-Jewish
driver will, if the relevant street is majority Jewish, or the area is a
Jewish area, which is what he means when he talks about a Jewish yishuv,
see himself as servicing Jews. He clearly doesn't mean a Jewish yishuv
in the Israeli sense, because he starts the teshuva by rejecting those
people who have disallowed such transport on the grounds of "lest it
might go outside the techum shabbas". He says
???? ???? ????? ???? ??? ??? ??? ??? ?????, ????? ??????? ??? ???????
?????? ???? ???? ????? ?????? ???,
And there is no place to forbid because they go out in them outside of
the techum, since these wagons are specifically to go inside the city,
in an area that is specific for them.

So we are discussing a city, and a city in which there might or might not
be "Jewish settlements". But clearly there are also non-Jewish areas,
and bus lines run by non-Jews, for non-Jews, and not a Jewish majority.

>Wait a minute. He doesn't say anything about where it stops. Just where
it goes.

Goes and returns might be better literally, but I think that makes it
worse for you. Ie that means it is forbidden when- hen holechet ushuvot
b'makom sheyesh bo yishuv Yehudi, if it merely goes and returns in a
place where there are Jews dwelling, even when the Jews there can't even
get on. I assume though he means it has to have a potential to stop,
since the next line says "because for sure that the non-Jew will intend in
this journey of his (note the singular, it is what the particular non-Jew
driving is deemed to intend) to cause Jews to travel. ????? ??? ???? -
????? ????? ??????? ??? ???????? ??????? The driver is not worried
about how far they travel, or the rest of the line. He is intending
(well hoping) for Jews to travel. And he can't cause Jews to travel if
he doesn't have a stop for them. But if you want to have it that Rav
Uzziel would forbid even an express bus that passes through a Jewish
area without a designated stop, because other people might think the bus
is servicing the Jewish area (even though the driver knows it doesn't),
then that is another potential interpretation. I don't think Rav Uzziel
was going that far, however.

<< There's nothing about stopping in that passage, or in anything you've
quoted. And by ???? ????? I think he means a Jewish population. >>

Not sure what you mean here. In Israel, every city where you have no
worry about going outside the techum has, as far as I am aware, a Jewish
majority of the total population (Jerusalem, Haifa, etc) even where
they have non Jewish areas in them and private Arab bus companies. If
that is what is meant by Jewish population, ie majority population of
the city in total is Jewish and we are talking about Eretz Yisrael,
then the permitted transport would be a null set, and there would be no
need for caveats, or suggestions of permissibility. In chutz L'aretz,
you have cities where the majority of the total population is non Jewish,
but local areas where the majority is Jewish. But if all we are worried
about is the total population of the city, then there is no reason for
any of the caveats either - it is all generally permissible in chutz
l'aretz, as the majority population of every city outside Israel in the
world, including, I think New York, is not Jewish. This I think is your
position, but you don't need any of the detail of this teshuva.

But, if you hold, as it seems to me straightforward that Rav Uzziel
holds, that even within a city you need to look at the local areas,
then you need to distinguish between streets (which I believe is why he
specifically used the term) where the majority are Jewish, and streets
where the majority are not. As you point out, using the term street
dwellers might leave one to think that it is only when people live on
the specific street that count, to exclude streets that are just Jewish
shops, and no dwellers, whereas I understand Rav Uzziel to be including
the surrounding areas that are serviced by that bus, and that is why he
sometimes uses the term place ??? ????? ???? ?? ??? ????? ("and even
in a place where the majority is not Jewish" ...) . And that leads to
a nuanced psak, which needs all these caveats. Even where the majority
of the city is not Jewish, while the bus is running in the Jewish area,
it is considered by the driver, and the bus company, to be servicing
Jews, since the majority of that area is Jewish, even if no Jews are
actually serviced at all. And that makes use of such a bus forbidden.

<<That's why it's certain that the bus must be running for that
population. Also when he says "all the residents are not Jewish" I
don't think he can possibly mean that literally; he means the majority.>>

I agree with you that the use of "all" in his summary clearly doesn't
mean all, as he modifies it in the earlier parts of the teshuva by
frequently using the word majority (and otherwise the summary and the
teshuva would conflict). But I think it inescapable that his view is
that if the bus is running in Jewish areas, ie areas where the majority
are Jewish, then the bus is considered at that point to be running for
the Jewish population there, regardless of where it runs before or after.

> If the line exists to serve Jews, then it is not a non-Jewish line.

<<Sure it is. If it's owned and run by non-Jews, as is the case
everywhere in chu"l (except the frum community buses, which obviously
don't run on Shabbos so they're not an issue), then it's a non-Jewish
line, even if it exists primarily to serve Jews.>>

That might be your view, but it is not Rav Uzziel's view. He has three
criteria, not two. A) owned by non-Jews; b) run by non-Jews; c) doesn't
go in Jewish areas. The first two don't need much stating (although he
has a quick line at the beginning to make it clear that if the buses
are owned by Jews, then the fact that the drivers are non-Jews is not
enough. And in chul given that there are enough Jewish taxi companies,
there is no reason why there couldn't be a bus company owner who happened
to be Jewish). The last criteria takes a lot more explaining, because
clearly it is more complicated. He has to justify it and explain what
he means and how he got to it. BTW, this understanding would mean that
it presumably would be possible to catch an Arab bus that only ran
in Arab areas of say Jerusalem or Haifa (assuming anybody wanted to,
in order to go to shul, and they couldn't find a local shul). But I
really don't think that was the scenario he was thinking of, but rather
the common chul scenario of being too far from the only shul in town.
Because criteria d) is a mitzvah like going to shul (which presumes
that going to shul is a mitzvah, about which there is also some debate,
but it would seem Rav Uzziel is on the side that it is).

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

Regards
Chana

On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 03:08:15PM -0400, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
> Please see https://www.torahmusings.com/2020/06/accounting-for-a-minyan-2

Which says:
> Torah Musings
> Accounting for a Minyan
> by R. Gil Student
> Jun 5, 20
...
> The Netziv (Meishiv Davar 1:9) compares prayer to a sacrifice. The
> Gemara (Chullin 5a) says that we accept a sacrifice from a Jewish
> sinner but not from an apostate or a Shabbos violator. Similarly,
> argues the Netziv, we include a sinner in a minyan but not an apostate
> or a Shabbos violator. Rav David Tzvi Hoffmann (Melamed Le-Ho'il 1:29)
> writes that there is room to be lenient and count a Shabbos violator
> in a minyan. He suggests that Shabbos violators today have the status
> of a tinok she-nishbah, a child who was raised among gentiles, without
> a traditional Jewish education. Rav Yosef Zechariah Stern (Zeicher
> Yehosef, Orach Chaim 21:6) expands this approach slightly. The Gemara
> (Sanhedrin 26b) says that while normally someone who commits a sin is
> invalid as a witness, this does not apply if the sin is something that
> people mistakenly think is permitted. Similarly, he suggests, someone
> who lives in a community in which Shabbos violation is considered normal
> rather than a sin should still be counted for a minyan.

> However, Rav Yechiel Ya'akov Weinberg (Seridei Eish 1:7; 2:6 in old
> editions) was asked whether we can count someone intermarried for a
> minyan. He answered that someone intermarried should be excommunicated and
> therefore cannot be counted for a minyan, even though the excommunication
> cannot be done for technical reasons.

> IV. Conclusion

> I hesitate to draw any practical conclusions because these weighty
> matters need to be addressed by our leading rabbis. Preliminarily, it
> would seem, based on the above, that according to the Chakham Tzvi,
> people who repeatedly cheat the government, year after year, cannot be
> counted for a minyan (see also Minchas Yitzchak 3:65). According to the
> Seridei Eish, if the community believes that the chillul Hashem caused
> by government cheats merits excommunication, even just in theory, then
> those who commit this sin cannot be counted for a minyan. On the other
> hand, if--Heaven forbid--this sin is so common that people do not
> consider it forbidden, then people who violate it can count for a
> minyan according to the Zeicher Yehosef. Widespread sin is not
> permission but the opposite--recognition of a communal, rather than
> personal, spiritual illness. Additionally, Rav Moshe Feinstein (Iggeros
> Moshe, Orach Chaim 1:23) permits counting every sinner for a minyan,
> presumably aside from someone actually excommunicated. Therefore,
> according to Rav Feinstein, even government cheats can count for a
> minyan despite their theft, lies and chillul Hashem.

So, the question is, aside from RMF's heter, and assuming the community
would not put the person in cheirem or nidui...

It would seem to me that RGS assumes that RZYS's reasoning about
communally accepted sins would hold even where the sins are theft and
chilul hasheim. So, to me it raises a question:

Can we apply tinoq shenishba or tinoq shenishba-like reasoning to an
issur like theft that defies every natural system of morality?

:-)BBii!
-Micha

"Uqarasam deror ba'aretz lekhol yosheveha." - June 19, 1865.

-- 
Micha Berger                 Life isn't about finding yourself.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   Life is about creating yourself.
Author: Widen Your Tent               - George Bernard Shaw
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF


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