Avodah Mailing List

Volume 38: Number 92

Fri, 06 Nov 2020

• 1. Re: The Delet Hakodesh and Lot (Ari Zivotofsky)
• 2. Re: The Delet Hakodesh and Lot (Arie Folger)
• 3. Pagan Names (Jay F. Shachter)
• 4. Re: The Tahom (Micha Berger)
• 5. Teaching your child a trade (Prof. Levine)
• 6. Re: The Tahom (Brent Kaufman)
• 7. Re: The Delet Hakodesh and Lot (Brent Kaufman)
• 8. Re: The Delet Hakodesh and Lot (Zev Sero)
• 9. Re: The Delet Hakodesh and Lot (Arie Folger)
• 10. Re: The Delet Hakodesh and Lot (Rena Poppers)

Brent Kaufman via Avodah wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 4, 2020, Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:
>> But he took it for granted they would fight to defend their wives.
>> They didn't

> The girls he offered were virgins. The sons-in-laws were married to 
> daughters, that aren't mentioned, lived elsewhere and Lot had to go 
> out to speak to them....

Rashi says that the daughters he offered had kiddushin already but were
virgins before nissuin.

RCBKaufman wrote:
> 1) the door of Lot?s house is mentioned 3 (THREExxx) times. That in itself
> is unusual, but the second time, when Lot is between the mob of thousands
> and the door, the mob is pushing soo hard that the Torah tells us that
they
> were about to break down the door. Anyone have an obvious question?
> Before they even get to the door, they would have had to completely crush
> Lot to death, but the Torah is more concerned to tell us about the poor
> door that almost broke. What?s up with that?

The Torah is pretty explicit. The door is closed, Lot is outside, and they
begin abusing him, perhaps violently so. The angels then suddenly open the
door, obviously fighting off anyone who's right there, pull Lot back and
close the door again. Once the door would break, everyone would be
condemned to violent death. And then the angels perform teh miracle of
hitting the people outside with "sanverim".

> 2) Lot offers his daughters to be gang raped and killed by an unimaginable
> number of brutal animals rather than hand over his guests, whom he just
> met, to the same fate.

I forgot who it was, but famous enlightenment thinkers struggled with the
question of whether one is morally obligated to family more than to
strangers, and the argument was made that ideally justice and virtue should
be so blind that it doesn't matter if one is close or not. Lot considers
justice and sees that he owes the strangers protection because they sought
protection under his roof (or rather because Lot insisted that they do).
His daughters, as citizens of Sedom, would not have that additional claim
against Lot, unless one posits, as you do and to which Torah would agree,
but which isn't the only or most obvious enlightened position, that being a
parents obligates you to your children (and them to you).

The opposite claim is that parenthood is accidental and thus does not give
rise to any special moral claims. Obviously, we reject this argument (kibud
av va'em being a case in point), but the argument should suffice not to
make into a rasha someone who calmly considers competing moral arguments,
seeking to do the right thing.
-- 
Mit freundlichen Gr??en,
Yours sincerely,

Arie Folger,
Visit my blog at http://rabbifolger.net/
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> 
> And why doesn't R Hirsch discuss contemporary month names? Are
> Janus, Mars, Maia, or Juno less pagan than Woden, Thor, Tiw or Frig?
> (Saturday is named for Saturn via the planet, so I'll cut that one a
> little more slack.)
> 
> Off-the-cuff, I am thinking it's the fact that he is in Germany that
> gave the names of Teutonic gods a little more grouding in the
> surrounding culture, and thus the name's origins less forgotten.
> 

Pedantic correction: the pagan origin of the English word "Wednesday"
does not belong in this list.  The German-speaking people among whom
Hirsch lived did not call Wednesday "Wednesday".  In the German
language that day has something of a numeric name, like the names we
Hebrews use for the days of the week (every speaker of Yiddish knows
this).

(On the other hand, the popular etymology attributing "Dienstag" to
"Dienst" -- thus making the name of the day something like the French
"vendredi" -- is incorrect.  If anything, the etymology goes in the
other direction.)

This is, as I said, a pedantic correction.  But we are Jews, and we
love pedantic corrections.


                        Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
                        6424 North Whipple Street
                        Chicago IL  60645-4111
                                (1-773)7613784   landline
                                (1-410)9964737   GoogleVoice
                                j...@m5.chicago.il.us
                                http://m5.chicago.il.us

                        "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur"

On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 08:08:57PM -0500, Brent Kaufman via Avodah wrote:
>> The most exact translation of "yam" is "seabed", not "sea". As in
>> "mayim bayamim".

> Do you have a source to translate it like that? In English we say "...all
> of the water in the sea." and still sea doesn't mean seabed.

I thought that this is why the term for a bottom grindstone is also "yam".

Also, the "miqveih mayim" of day 2 was "miqveh" in the pi'el (and
semichut, thus the tzeirei). There were two things named in Bereishis
1:10, "E-lokim called the dry land 'eretz', and the gatherers of the water,
He called 'yamim'."

See also the Tur (ad loc, "ulemiqveih hamayim qara yamim"):
     Explanation, "yam" for water. Becasue the qara of the mayim is called
     yam, as it says "kamayim layam mechasim".

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 When memories exceed dreams,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   The end is near.
Author: Widen Your Tent                      - Rav Moshe Sherer
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF

At 02:10 PM 11/5/2020,R. Akiva Miller wrote:

>I don't know what reasons Chazal gave to this principle, but I can see many
>practical reasons why such a father should make sure that his kids have
>some sort of job so that they don't need to rely on their inheritance.

First of all, I think that in the time of Chazal the requirement to 
teach a child a trade applied to boys,  not girls. So I think the 
subject should read "Teaching you son a trade."

>For
>example:
>
>- How can one be sure that the money will last?
>- How can he be sure that the child won't just waste the money?
>- What kind of role model will the grandchildren have?

After we learned the sugya about this in one of R. Avigdor Miller's 
shiurim I asked him privately,  "Why don't fathers do this today? 
They let their sons learn in yeshiva and do not make sure they get 
skills to earn a living."  He relied, "Look at my shul.  they are 
doctors, lawyers, accountants,  and yet their sons have no training 
to earn a living.  My son Shmuel has a wealthy father-in-law, so 
there will be enough money for his children,  but what will happen to 
Shmuel's grandchildren?"

For the record,  he never said anything like this publicly.

Today there are programs that give men have been learning in Kollel 
job skills when they want to (have to) leave Kollel.  The Agudah has 
such programs. For example, Daniel Soloff  is

National Director at Professional Career Services, a division of 
Agudath Israel which functions in Lakewood. While not overtly 
supported by BMG, it is known that many who have learned in BMG get 
job skills through this organization.

YL


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That is very interesting. I hadn?t understood it this way, but to lend
support your idea, the Yam Shel Shlomo was the name of a kli that held
water.

Also, b?derech CHei?N, the word ?yam? in TaNaCH and Chazal, always alludes
to Malchus, which has no essence of its own, but is rather a kli that is
the sum of all that it contains.

cbk


-- 
*- "When life gives you lemons, shut up and eat your lemons."*
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>>The Torah is pretty explicit. The door is closed, Lot is outside, and
they begin abusing him, perhaps violently so.

I disagree. They aren?t abusing him. Their concerned with what?s inside the
house. They aren?t concerned with Lot and tell him to ?Step aside? (?Gash
hal?ah?).

The crowd is pushing its way forward, like Europeans at a football/soccer
game, by shear force of the crowd. Nothing here implies abuse towards Lot,
himself.

>>open the door, obviously fighting off anyone who's right there,

Then the Malachim stick their hands outside the door; only their hands
(vayishlachu... their hands...). Again, there is no implication of them
fighting with anyone. They grabbed Lot and pulled him inside.

But this doesn?t address my question. I often express myself poorly. I
apologize. I meant that this is not just your average door. It is mentioned
3 times. The narrative could have been told without drawing any attention
to the logistics of goin to speak to, and calm, the mob.

The first few psukim in the parsha mention the words ?Avraham saw? twice,
and a lot of Torah is learned, and taught, based on the repetition of these
two words. This door is mentioned 3 times, so I think it?s clearly telling
us something special.

I did find what I was looking for in the name of the Arizal; unfortunately
it?s difficult to break it down into a simple idea.

>> famous enlightenment thinkers struggled with the question of whether one
> is morally obligated to family more than to strangers, .......His
> daughters, as citizens of Sedom, would not have that additional claim
> against Lot, unless one posits, as you do and to which Torah would agree,
> but which isn't the only or most obvious enlightened position,
>

However, no; just no.  There was no apparent moral dilemma before Lot
brought up the idea of substituting his daughters. Before that it was
either giving over the men, or not.

A parent protects his family, young women, girls, his wife. This isn?t a
moral dilemma. The Torah tells us to prioritize how we give tzedaka; those
who are closest come first. This is human nature and decency. Regardless of
how Xian Enlightenment philosophers discuss the issue. I am not, in the
slightest bit, obligated to take their opinions into consideration when it
comes to any moral decision, nor to refer to their ideas as enlightened
when compared to the Torah and basic human instinctual decency. Every
parent knows what not to do when given the option to hand his daughters to
be raped and killed.

>
> >>The opposite claim is that parenthood is accidental and thus does not
> give rise to any special moral claims.
>
> It is only accidental for people who are promiscuous or that live in
> promiscuous cultures.
>
> >>, but the argument should suffice not to make into a rasha someone who
> calmly considers competing moral arguments, seeking to do the right thing.
>

 The Torah?s teachings are certainly not competing with the moral arguments
outside of Torah. But, I don?t even think that the Torah weighs in on this
issue explicitly.

I have no qualms about calling Lot?s actions here cartoonishly over the top
evil; not in this specific case.

Seriously, knowingly offering your daughters to a mob of barbarians to
raped and killed is is not a moral dilemma in any situation.

I hate having to be so black and white on a moral issue in any situation
that I?ve ever encountered. But this one is so absurd in its extreme, that
it would be far more absurd to even ponder the morality of offering girls
to be raped and brutalized, especially when Lot himself raised the issue.


-- 
*- "When life gives you lemons, shut up and eat your lemons."*
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There is no indication that the girls (or for that matter the men) were 
to be killed, or harmed in any way other than by being used as an object 
of giluy arayos.

And whatever modern attitudes are, the Torah

(1) Does not regard rape as a crime in itself -- it regards it merely as 
a combination of giluy arayos and an ordinary assault to be dealt with 
just like any other, assessing the five categories of damages as 
appropriate;

(2) Does regard it as not nearly as big a deal for a woman, let alone a 
single woman, as it does for a man.  "Darkan bekach". It's not what she 
prefers, but if it happens it happens.  Cf the story of the 400 girls 
and boys who committed suicide rather than submit to a lifetime of this; 
the girls took the initiative, and then the boys reasoned that it was a 
*kal vachomer* that they must follow their example.

So from the point of view of a reader whose values are derived entirely 
from the Torah, Lot's decision doesn't seem to need much explanation, 
which is why Rashi doesn't offer any.

Also, I see nothing in the pasuk to indicate that a "mob of thousands" 
was "pushing soo hard that the Torah tells us that they were about to 
break down the door", "like Europeans at a football/soccer game, by 
sheer force of the crowd".  All the pasuk says is that "they approached 
to break down the door".  The mob was probably no more than a few dozen 
(how big was Sedom?); not enough to exert that sort of physical force. 
Rather, having been denied what they were demanding they were 
threatening to break down the door and take it.  Lot, standing in front 
of the door, was now in danger, so the angels pulled him in and shut it.


-- 
Zev Sero            Wishing everyone a *healthy* and happy 5781
z...@sero.name       "May this year and its curses end
                      May a new year and its blessings begin"

On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 5:24 AM R Brent Kaufman wrote:

> >>The Torah is pretty explicit. The door is closed, Lot is outside, and
> they begin abusing him, perhaps violently so.
>
> I disagree. They aren?t abusing him. Their concerned with what?s inside
> the house. They aren?t concerned with Lot and tell him to ?Step aside?
> (?Gash hal?ah?).
>

I context, that's a threat.

>
> The crowd is pushing its way forward, like Europeans at a football/soccer
> game, by shear force of the crowd. Nothing here implies abuse towards Lot,
> himself.
>

Have you ever faced hooligans at a football game? They can be pretty scary;
the Sodomites were similar but worse.

>
> But this doesn?t address my question. I often express myself poorly. I
> apologize. I meant that this is not just your average door. It is mentioned
> 3 times. The narrative could have been told without drawing any attention
> to the logistics of goin to speak to, and calm, the mob.
>

I want to suggest that the focus on the door is to underline how precarious
the situation was. Once the door would be broken, they would commit a
massacre. That's what mobs often do.

But since you report seeing a teaching from the Ari which satisfies you,
please share it with us.

>
> >> famous enlightenment thinkers struggled with the question of whether
>> one is morally obligated to family more than to strangers, .......His
>> daughters, as citizens of Sedom, would not have that additional claim
>> against Lot, unless one posits, as you do and to which Torah would agree,
>> but which isn't the only or most obvious enlightened position,
>>
>
> However, no; just no.  There was no apparent moral dilemma before Lot
> brought up the idea of substituting his daughters. Before that it was
> either giving over the men, or not.
>

Not giving them up and they all probably die after being gang raped.

>
> A parent protects his family, young women, girls, his wife. This isn?t a
> moral dilemma. The Torah tells us to prioritize how we give tzedaka; those
> who are closest come first.
>

Very nice, so you agree that the Torah disagrees with those Enlightenment
thinkers. But the debate exists and those not impacted sufficiently by
Torah may think it virtuous to treat their guest better than family even
when that means sacrificing one for the other.

The thinker I was trying to quote is Montesquieu. "A truly virtuous man
would come to the aid of the most distant stranger as quickly as to his own
friend. If men were perfectly virtuous, they wouldn't have friends."

So Lot, who isn't Avraham, may have felt like Montesquieu.


>> >>The opposite claim is that parenthood is accidental and thus does not
>> give rise to any special moral claims.
>>
>> It is only accidental for people who are promiscuous or that live in
>> promiscuous cultures.
>>
>
No, accidental means that it happens without giving rise to moral
obligations (in the twisted thinking of people who think like Montesquieu).
Of course, kibud av va'em disapproves, but Lot wasn't keeping kol hatorah
kullah.

But there are also other possible solutions to your dilemma. Lot could have
been using sarcasm and implying "I am as likely to set you losoe on them as
I am to give you my daughters. Here they are, do you think I will let you?"
This is Rav Menachem Leibtag's interpretation.
-- 
Mit freundlichen Gr??en,
Yours sincerely,

Arie Folger,
Visit my blog at http://rabbifolger.net/
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Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2020 14:34:34 -0600
From: Brent Kaufman <cbkauf...@gmail.com>

> Regarding the narrative of Lot, I have 2 questions:

> 1) the door of Lot's house is mentioned 3 (THREExxx) times. That in itself
> is unusual, but the second time, when Lot is between the mob of thousands
> and the door, the mob is pushing soo hard that the Torah tells us that they
> were about to break down the door. Anyone have an obvious question?
> Before they even get to the door, they would have had to completely crush
> Lot to death, but the Torah is more concerned to tell us about the poor
> door that almost broke. What?s up with that?
...

To respond to the first question...

Last year a friend and I learned this parsha about Lot and we had the
same question about the door being mentioned so much, but I don't think
we found an answer. We did learn that regarding the apparent pushing
very hard against Lot - according to Malbim, when pasuk 9 says that they
pressed against Lot, it means that they were verbally "pressing" against
Lot, whom they now considered as only an ordinary person (an ish) and
not worthy of being a judge (as he had been appointed). This explains
the language of "va'yifztiru b'ish b'Lot". Also, Malbim's opinion
is that the mob pushed Lot aside from where he stood next to the door
(rather than crushing him).

Further support for the understanding of "va'yifztiru" as being pressuring
with words is the word "va'yiftzar" in pasuk 3, when Lot pressures the
malachim to stay as his guests - clearly a verbal pressuring. Also,
in Vayishlach, when Yaakov pressures Eisav to take his gifts (Genesis
33:11), "va'yiftzar" is used. (At the time, I think we looked this
word up in the concordance but I didn't write down if this word occurs
in any other places.)


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