Avodah Mailing List

Volume 40: Number 84

Mon, 19 Dec 2022

• 1. Tamar Not Embarrassing Yehuda (Brent Kaufman)
• 2. Tamar Not Embarrassing Yehuda (Rabbi Meir G. Rabi)
• 3. Re: Tamar Not Embarrassing Yehuda (Jay F. Shachter)
• 4. Re: Tamar Not Embarrassing Yehuda (Zvi Lampel)
• 5. Re: Tamar Not Embarrassing Yehuda (Yisrael Herczeg)
• 6. Ben PeKuAh - is there an Issue ReViAh? (Rabbi Meir G. Rabi)
• 7. Is there any obligation to make a seudah (meal) in honor of Chanukah? (Prof. L. Levine)
• 8. Re: Conditions upon a gett (David Riceman)

>>The pesukim do not say that any of the remarks of Tamar or Yehudah were
made publicly! They say that Tamar ''SENT THE MESSAGE'' to Yehudah.

Wow. I also didn't notice this until this year, and it changed my view on
the
incident. However, Why wouldn't Yehudah need to give a reason for halting
the din? Also, was it only that she remained ???? ?????, to the family of
Yaakov
and Yehuda and being Shem's daughter, that made her guilty? If not, she
wasn't required to remain chaste, correct? But, even still, isn't this only
according
to the opinion of the Ramban, who says that this is considered Yibum,
because
it's any close relative that would receive ????? from her husband that can
be
???? her? Whereas, all (or most) mefarshim say that a father isn't ???? a
daughter-in-law
and thus, to them, his admission would only implicate them both to acting
incorrectly?

I've also been bothered by part of this story that when Chazal, and
therefore everyone
else, looks at what Onein did, they only point out the issur of ????? ?"?
that bothers
everyone. Whereas every since I was younger, couldn't believe that that was
why he
was considered evil, but what I see, everytime I read it, is a brothers
selfishness to
not give his own brother this holy gift (or even if it's not that holy, but
it is still the
common custom of kindness and honoring one's dead brother), which is the
actual
evil going on here? But was this a one time incident, for which HKB"H
killed him? Since
does H' enact din right away?

P.S. Another problem I've had is the explanation of the Abarnanel on this,
and why
Yehudah went with Tamar, was because he was lonely after losing his wife.
That
doesn't seem to follow the traditional way to explain the big failings of
our '??????? ???.

thank you all, and ????? ??? ???
Chaimbaruch Kaufman
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Rabbi Lampel makes very interesting observations, thank you.

When Y said, She is more righteous than I, who was he speaking to? HKBH?
Himself?

It also remains to be explained why Tamar did not submit her evidence to
Yehudah i.e. render herself completely defenseless, not AFTER it became
public knowledge that she was with child, but after 2 or 3 weeks when she
alone would have known?
Had she done so she would have given Y the opp to marry her himself or to
Sheilo [or send her away to return later with a husband and child, or not]
and completely sidestep any humiliating public awareness of her
'indiscretion' and Y's activities.

Does the Halacha permit putting oneself in danger - meaning constructing a
situation in which one is prepared to lose their life in order to prevent
humiliating another?

It seems her actions are not criticised by Chazal, as a lack of trust in
HKBH. Why not?
Same as to our praising Yael for her selfless actions - why is that not
seen as a lack of Bitachon?

Did Y act correctly in deceiving T by suggesting she will marry Sheilo
sometime in the future?
Is that not OnoAt Devarim? is it not a violation of Midvar Shekker TirChack?

Best,

Meir G. Rabi

0423 207 837
+61 423 207 837
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> 
> We are told that Tamar risked execution rather than publicly
> embarrassing Yehuda.
>

Can we please stop taking these rhetorical statements literally?
I do not minimize the sin of publicly embarrassing someone (as you
may perhaps have inferred from my last posting to this mailing list),
but no one is obliged to risk execution rather than publicly embarrass
someone.  You are not even allowed to risk execution rather than
publicly embarrass someone (there are minority opinions that disagree).
And Bney Noax -- remember, we are talking about Bney Noax here -- are
not even obliged to martyr themselves to avoid committing idolatry, or
gilluy `arayoth.

(Also, as has been mentioned before on this mailing list, I think the
pshat of the psuqim is that Tamar was about to be branded, not burnt
alive.)

               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

               When Martin Buber was a schoolboy, it must have been
               no fun at all playing tag with him during recess.

On Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 3:39 PM Yisrael Herczeg <yherc...@gmail.com> wrote:

> ...if Yehuda never divulged his sin, he did not do teshuvah optimally
> according to the Rambam, Hilchos Teshuvah 2:5, who says that someone who
> sins bein adam lechavero should confess publicly. So according to the
> Rambam, it would be easier to say that Tamar did send the message to Yehuda
> privately, as you suggest, but Yehuda confessed publicly. Tamar is not held
> accountable for the embarrassment that Yehuda chose to bring upon himself
> with his viddui.
>
> Yisrael Herczeg
>

Thanks for your point. But this brings everything back to my problem: To
avoid putting Yehuda in the embarrassing position of publicly confessing a
sin, she could have said nothing to anyone. (He would then have no
incentive to make an embarrassing confession, and she would be thereby
''throwing herself into a fiery furnace'' to save him from that.) Instead,
she put him into the position--be it through an explicit or implicit
accusation with supporting evidence--of deciding between letting her be
unjustly executed, and making an embarrassing public confession. I can see
that she should want him, for his own good, to do voluntary teshuva, but
that would be accomplished by an explicit accusation as well as by an
implicit one--either of which he could deny. Again, I see a lesson in
framing accusations that lead to embarrassment in lashon nekiya, but not in
refraining from causing embarrassment.

Perhaps another thread should be started discussing the Rambam you cited.
Truth is, I have never heard of gedolim (even in gedolim stories), not to
mention others, making public confessions of specific or even non-specific
sins bein adam lechaveyro. In fact, from the way we are taking the Rambam,
one would expect that there would have developed a formal exercise of this
together with Hataros Nedarim and personal asking of mechilah.

Zvi Lampel
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That's a very interesting take you have on Yehuda and Tamar, but if Yehuda
never divulged his sin, he did not do teshuvah optimally according to the
Rambam, Hilchos Teshuvah 2:5, who says that someone who sins bein adam
lechavero should confess publicly. So according to the Rambam, it would be
easier to say that Tamar did send the message to Yehuda privately, as you
suggest, but Yehuda confessed publicly. Tamar is not held accountable for
the embarrassment that Yehuda chose to bring upon himself with his viddui.

Yisrael Herczeg
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Ben PeKuAh is to the Halacha what the Platypus was to the botanists.
as per the Meshech Chochmah - beginning of Vayera - its meat may be cooked
with milk and there is not even a problem with Maris HaAyin.

Furthermore, aside from all the 'normal' food prohibitions that it
sidesteps, it may be harnessed to and interbred with other animals -
including bestiality, or is at least suspected of being exempt from these
prohibitions.

Tosafot [s.v. lime?utei 74b] explain that although the prohibition of cross
breeding applies even to a beheimah that is about to but has not yet
expired,
nevertheless, we might suspect that it does not apply to the ben pekuah
which is an even lesser status and for this reason the Gemara must clarify
that it is prohibited.

Do Tosafot mean it is less ?alive? than a beheimah that is about to expire?
Or perhaps they mean it is less of a beheimah?

The Ma'asai LaMelekh [Mishneh Torah, Issurei Mizbeach 4:2 - HebrewBooks ?
https://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=7438&;st=&pgnum=158 ] explains:
the shechted beheimah is/was a beheimah whereas the ben pekuah never was.



Best,

Meir G. Rabi

0423 207 837
+61 423 207 837
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From today's OU Kosher Halacha Yomis


Q. Is there any obligation to make a seudah (meal) in honor of Chanukah?

A. Although there is no specific obligation to eat a meal on Chanukah, Rama
(Orach Chaim 670:2) writes that it is nevertheless proper to prepare such a
meal to recall the re-dedication of the Temple and to sing zemiros (songs
of praise and thanks) to remember the miracles. If one does so, the meal is
elevated to the status of a seudas mitzvah (i.e., there is a mitzvah to
partake of such a meal). Additionally, there is a minhag to eat cheese on
Chanukah, to remember how Yehudis (the daughter of Yochanan Kohen Gadol)
was able to behead the Greek general Holofernes after serving him milk
products. There is also an ancient minhag to eat foods fried in oil, such
as doughnuts, to remember the miracle of the oil. The Rambam?s father, Rav
Maimon HaDayan ben Yosef, writes that in his days this was already an
established minhag, and that one should not treat it lightly.

Professor Yitzchok Levine
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RM:

> However my question concerns something I have not heard of before -
> whether it is halachically valid for a bet din to unilaterally impose
> a condition on a gett, requiring the parties to the gett to agree to
> it in advance by including it as a clause on the application form that
> the parties must sign as a prerequisite to initiating gett proceedings
> at the bet din.

I misread this the first time through.	Your second and third "it"s in that
sentence refer not to the get, but to the unspecified clause.  It seems
like you're asking us to play a guessing game.	Is the clause intrinsic to
a normal get, is it a local custom, or is it something that the particular
Beit Din in question is trying to set as a new standard?

I'm certainly no expert, but it seems invalid because there's no kinyan at
the time of signature, and there's no reciprocal consideration.  In general
the western custom of signing contracts to indicate an agreement does not
have a neat parallel in Halacha.

> 
>  (If the above link does not work for you on first attempt, close the browser tab and try a second time.)

I think you're obscuring details, probably for very good reason, but that
leaves your question vague enough to be incomprehensible (though maybe not
to an expert).	And I didn't see a link in the post.
> 
> This is not a hypothetical question. There is a gett application
> pending before that bet din in which one of the parties has crossed
> out the offending clause in the application form. This occurred in the
> presence of the bet din's registrar, presumably at the signing and
> submission of the application form, which must have been done in
> person. I don't have any information as to whether this will result in
> the bet din refusing to take on the case or whether it will proceed
> regardless of that party's rejection of the offending clause.
> 
> I would like to know: (a) if the bet din would be halachically
> justified in taking the former course and, (b) whether, if a couple
> signed the application form without protesting that clause, but, after
> the gett was executed, one or both of them violated the terms in that
> clause, the bet din could, halachically, rescind the gett? My insinct
> tells me that the answer to (b) is most likely no. I am not so sure
> about (a).

If this mysterious clause represents an attempt of the Beit Din to
legislate, then details matter a lot.  The custom of the Jews of Eastern
Europe was that the kehillah, representatives of the households, could
legislate, but the courts could not.  The Jews of Central Europe, and most
other places, were more authoritarian.	Is this the only court in the
region? What is its halachic lineage? Talmudic law does not require a court
for a get; suppose this couple found a sofer and two eidim and executed a
get without the offending clause (EH 123).  Lechatchila we in New Jersey
would expect them to go before a Beit Din, but would the get be invalid
b'diavad? Would the court in question consider the get invalid?

David Riceman





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