Avodah Mailing List

Volume 39: Number 68

Sat, 07 Aug 2021

• 1. Re: changes in circumstances (Marty Bluke)
• 2. Techum Shabbat (Arie Folger)
• 3. Re: Should Artscroll Be Worried? (Marty Bluke)
• 4. Re: Techum Shabbat (Micha Berger)
• 5. Hechsheirim and issues other than kashrus (cantorwolberg)
• 6. Re: Techum Shabbat (Arie Folger)
• 7. Re: Hechsheirim and issues other than kashrus (Micha Berger)
• 8. Being M'karev ha Geulah (Prof. L. Levine)
• 9. davening speed -tircha d'tzibbur vs tircha ha-aveilim (Avram Sacks)

Regarding tefilas haderech RYBS was of the opinion that Tefillat Haderech
is only to be recited on journeys that may arouse some fear or hesitation ?
not for a routine commute. Another example of where a change in
circumstances causes a Halacha to be become pretty much irrelevant
nowadays.
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RMB wrote in a different thread: >>Truth is, if you look at hilkhos techum
shabbos with all the clauses I added in the previous paragraph, I may be
living in a "city" that includes the a rectangle that goes beyond Boston in
the NE and Washington DC in the SW! Techum under these changed
circumstances...<<

Actually,  wether a ribua' of te'hum is ever made that large is a matter of
controversy. Arguably,  once it gets fairly large, the rule of a city like
a keshet kicks in and we no longer have a major ribua', but rather a
polygon made up of many large squares.

There are views on both sides,  but the sanity check inherent in your
posted comment makes the more restrictive view more reasonable.
--
Yours sincerely,
Mit freundlichen Gr??en,

Arie Folger

Blogging at http://rabbifolger.net/
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Torah learning has evolved so much over the past almost 2000 years and the
amount of sheer information has exploded.  It is hard to see how we could
go back to an oral tradition, there is simply to much information to
preserve orally.

This really raises the question of what will Torah look like when Mishpscha
comes? Will we still learn Gemara with rishonim and acharonim? Or will
things become so clear that we won?t need the words of the rishonim and
acharonim and maybe even the Gemara. Moshe Rabenu didn?t. Ideally as the
Rambam writes there is no machlokes, the Beis Din Hagadol decides and that
is it.
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On Wed, Aug 04, 2021 at 10:49:55AM +0200, Arie Folger wrote:
> RMB wrote in a different thread:
> Truth is, if you look at hilkhos techum
>> shabbos with all the clauses I added in the previous paragraph, I may be
>> living in a "city" that includes the a rectangle that goes beyond Boston in
>> the NE and Washington DC in the SW! Techum under these changed
>> circumstances...

> Actually,  wether a ribua' of te'hum is ever made that large is a matter of
> controversy. Arguably,  once it gets fairly large, the rule of a city like
> a keshet kicks in and we no longer have a major ribua', but rather a
> polygon made up of many large squares.

> There are views on both sides,  but the sanity check inherent in your
> posted comment makes the more restrictive view more reasonable.

My point of raising the topic of techum, and of the example before it,
Tefillas haDerech, was to suggest just the opposite!

How can a modern situation serve as a "sanity check" of a din made before
that situation was remotely possible, never mind commonplace? 

I wrote:
>> Why would that be a problem? If the situation doesn't arise, then the
>> chiyuv is not chal.

>> I am reminded of the AhS saying that there were few reshuyos harabbim
>> deOraisa anymore...

>> What I do see similar is the discusion on the thread about Tefillas
>> haDerekh from Lakewood to Monsey. Maybe today's urban sprawl means there
>> are far fewer opportunities to say tefillas haderekh.

I was suggesting that today's reality can have norms Chazal didn't write
their din for. And therefore the fact that a mitzvah now has little
applicability may NOT mean we're misunderstanding the limits Chazal set
to it.

When Chazal made the reduced measure for techum, there was nothing
similar to today's metropolis, never mind a chain of them in one big
Megalopolis like Boston-Washington.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 You are not a human being in search
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   of a spiritual experience. You are a
Author: Widen Your Tent      spiritual being immersed in a human
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    experience. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

> it became a problem that people would be going around
> without tzitzis all day, and what would become of the "uz'chartem".

I always thought it was because of Ur'i-sem first

> so a restaurant with shatnes chairs
> could have a hechsher that warns that "you can eat here but only
> standing up".

I've always learned that shatneyz applies to something you wear.
I've never seen anyone wear a chair.

And yet, the situating you highlight demonstrates a certain tension. That
observation doesn't change the din, but it does prompt is to ask either the
parameters we observe are indeed correct. That is what I meant with sanity
check. And it turns out that for many Poskim, indeed we had misunderstood
the sin by forgetting the limiting factor of the din of 'ir shehi kekheshet.

--
Yours sincerely,
Mit freundlichen Gr??en,

Arie Folger

Blogging at http://rabbifolger.net/

On Wed, Aug 4, 2021, 17:38 Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 04, 2021 at 10:49:55AM +0200, Arie Folger wrote:
> > RMB wrote in a different thread:
> > Truth is, if you look at hilkhos techum
> >> shabbos with all the clauses I added in the previous paragraph, I may be
> >> living in a "city" that includes the a rectangle that goes beyond
> Boston in
> >> the NE and Washington DC in the SW! Techum under these changed
> >> circumstances...
>
> > Actually,  wether a ribua' of te'hum is ever made that large is a matter
> of
> > controversy. Arguably,  once it gets fairly large, the rule of a city
> like
> > a keshet kicks in and we no longer have a major ribua', but rather a
> > polygon made up of many large squares.
>
> > There are views on both sides,  but the sanity check inherent in your
> > posted comment makes the more restrictive view more reasonable.
>
> My point of raising the topic of techum, and of the example before it,
> Tefillas haDerech, was to suggest just the opposite!
>
> How can a modern situation serve as a "sanity check" of a din made before
> that situation was remotely possible, never mind commonplace?
>
> I wrote:
> >> Why would that be a problem? If the situation doesn't arise, then the
> >> chiyuv is not chal.
>
> >> I am reminded of the AhS saying that there were few reshuyos harabbim
> >> deOraisa anymore...
>
> >> What I do see similar is the discusion on the thread about Tefillas
> >> haDerekh from Lakewood to Monsey. Maybe today's urban sprawl means there
> >> are far fewer opportunities to say tefillas haderekh.
>
> I was suggesting that today's reality can have norms Chazal didn't write
> their din for. And therefore the fact that a mitzvah now has little
> applicability may NOT mean we're misunderstanding the limits Chazal set
> to it.
>
> When Chazal made the reduced measure for techum, there was nothing
> similar to today's metropolis, never mind a chain of them in one big
> Megalopolis like Boston-Washington.
>
> Tir'u baTov!
> -Micha
>
> --
> Micha Berger                 You are not a human being in search
> http://www.aishdas.org/asp   of a spiritual experience. You are a
> Author: Widen Your Tent      spiritual being immersed in a human
> - https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    experience. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
>
>
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On Wed, Aug 04, 2021 at 07:49:19AM -0400, cantorwolberg wrote:
>> so a restaurant with shatnes chairs
>> could have a hechsher that warns that "you can eat here but only
>> standing up?.

> I've always learned that shatneyz applies to something you wear.
> I've never seen anyone wear a chair.

MiDivrei Soferim*, anything that directly supports your weight is also
assur. Assuming it has any "give", not something hard, like a saddle. Or,
as the mishnah puts it (Kilayim 9:2), "Pillows and blankets have nothing
to do with [the prohibitions of] mixture, as long as his flesh doesn't
touch them."

This is the topic of SA YD 301.

So, if the chair back goes higher than your shirt, you lay on your couch,
you walk on your carpet barefoot and your carpet is plush, they should
really be shaatnez checked. (Not that I ever heard of someone doing so.)



(* MiDivrei Soferim is a subcategory of derabbanan that is effectively
a middle-ground between regular derabbanan and deOraisa. The Soferim
are the generation of Ezra haSofer and the period when rabbis could
pass a law that the nevi'im tell them Hashem approved of. Men hearing
Megillas Esther is midivrei soferim; women hearing it may be a regular
derabbanan. The difference is sufficient that it could keep a man from
being yotzei hearing a woman read the Mefillah.

(Extending shaatnez beyond clothing is described as midivrei soferim,
e.g. in se'if 1 of our siman in SA.)


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 You are not a human being in search
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   of a spiritual experience. You are a
Author: Widen Your Tent      spiritual being immersed in a human
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    experience. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The last words that Rav Joseph Breuer heard from his father were, "I am
fully convinced that Rav Hirsch's way will be m'karev ha-geulah" - bring
the redemption closer.

Question: When was the last time you studied some of the writings of RSRH and did your part to bring the geulah closer?

YL

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A common refrain that I hear in response to my pleas for shlichei tzibbur
to slow down is that it is a tircha d'tzibbur to go slow. But, among
nearly all shlichei tzibbur at our shul, very few go "slow." Rather it
is fast, and more fast. After witnessing yet another ma'ariv where
one of the current regular shlichei tzibbur with chiyuvim finished the
shmoneh esrai and went into kaddish shalem while I still hadn't reached
shma koleinu, I began to wonder about this issue of tircha d'tzibbur and
davening speed. Aside from the issue that it is not really possible for
most people to whip through the shmoneh esrai in less than four minutes
if one truly enunciates each word, the question really becomes whose
tircha is more important: that of the tzibbur to finish davening a few
minutes more quickly, or that of those who are in shul to say kaddish, but
can't because the shaliach tzibbur decided - and yes, it IS a decision -
to daven at a speed that makes it nearly impossible to properly enunciate
the words of the shmoneh esrai, much less to have any kavannah?

Stated differently, is there a halachic obligation for the gabbaim of a
shul to ensure that a shaliach tzibbur davens sufficiently slow so that
all those who are saying kaddish, are able to do so. One woman who was
present in shul this evening told me that she stopped davening shmoneh
esrai in order to say kaddish for her mother. Rather than focus on
the halachic problem of interrupting one's shmoneh esrai in order to say
kaddish, I would prefer to focus on the lifnei iver issue of setting up
such a situation where someone who is not so well versed is inclined to
interrupt their shmoneh esrai to say kaddish. The shul rav was not
in shul, but since the beginning of the pandemic shlichei tzibbur have
been instructed to not wait for the rav, anyway.

To be clear, we are not talking about an early morning shacharit filled
with those anxious to get to work, but an evening minyan or a late
shacharit minyan filled with retirees. From a halachic perspective,
whose tircha deserves more consideration and what is the source for
that opinion?

Avram Sacks
Skokie, IL


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