Volume 43: Number 72
Tue, 02 Dec 2025
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Message: 1
From: Jay F. Shachter
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2025 23:22:15 -0600 (CST)
Subject: [Avodah] And so the game continued
>
> Not an answer to the question but a related story. A shul received a
> set of clafs for haftorot and decided that they should be used every
> Shabbat. But since most people couldn't say a haftorah from a claf,
> the procedure was to call up the oleh, he would make the brachot for
> the haftorah, the ba`al koreh would read the haftorah from the claf,
> and then the oleh would say the ending brachot.
>
> Sounds like a good compromise. Yes, except the ba`al koreh didn't
> know all the haftorot from the claf so he had a Chumash on the side
> which he would use, a bit (but only a bit) surreptitiously, to read
> many of the haftorot. And so the game continued for many years.
>
Why? Why didn't the ba`al qri'ah just write in the vowels? We are
obliged to read the book of Esther from a parchment (which is,
parenthetically, a better term than "qlaf"; books of the Bible aren't
supposed to be written on qlaf, although they can be, they're supposed
to be written on gvil) and yet we are allowed, lkhatxilla, to write in
the vowels if we need to. A fortiori, we are not obliged to read,
e.g., the book of `Ovadya from a parchment, so if we do we should
certainly be permitted to write in the vowels. Am I missing something?
I haven't studied these laws (just enough to make that pedantic
correction about "qlaf" and "gvil"), does it say anywhere that it's
forbidden?
By the way, as long as I am making pedantic corrections, because we
are Jews and we enjoy pedantic corrections, please don't call him the
"ba`al koreh". Call him the "ba`al qri'ah" or the "qoreh", but a
"ba`al qoreh" is a to`evah, even though it is now legal in all 50
states.
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.
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Message: 2
From: Jay F. Shachter
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2025 12:43:34 -0600 (CST)
Subject: [Avodah] Normal People Don't Care About Those Things
In Avodah v43n70 someone wrote:
>
> Just listened to an interesting podcast interviewing Charles Murray
> author of the recently released "taking religion seriously".
>
> He is an 83-year-old former agnostic who said that he changed his
> mind due to weight of evidence, not that he is convinced but he
> thinks that God has a better than 50% chance of being the
> explanation for our existence.
>
> It's my understanding that post-modern philosophy does not believe
> you can prove with 100% certainty just about anything. When I read
> modern Jewish philosophy when it often seems grounded in tradition
> or personal feeling which is not easily transferable. Question how
> would we categorize an orthodox individual who made the same
> statement as Dr Murray?
>
Normal people don't care about beliefs. Normal people care about
observable behavior. Reality is that which can be seen and felt.
I was once romantically involved with a woman who believed in
homeopathy. It wasn't a passive belief; she went to homeopaths and
gave them money. I didn't care. She didn't give them so much money
as to be unmarriageable, so what do I care what she believes about
homeopathy, as long as I get to take her clothes off every night? In
the end she broke up with me (although I'm not exactly sure what "she
broke up with me" means, when you are talking about Torah-observant
Jews) and we married other people. During all the years when I was
married, I never asked my wife about her political beliefs. After she
got her citizenship (I married an alien) and she was able to vote, I
never asked her whom or what she voted for. I didn't care. I cared
whether she was a good mother and a good wife. Like all normal Jews.
If you could go back in time, and you told Yehoshua, or Dvorah, or
David, or even Shlomo, the wisest of men, that the only thing he knew
with certainty was the existence of his own consciousness, and that
although he believed he was eating a pastrami sandwich it could all be
an illusion and he was really a brain in a vat, he would have looked
at you like you were crazy, and rightly so. The part of Judaism that
cares about abstract beliefs that do not manifest themselves in
observable behavior is entirely post-Biblical. It probably results
from our ancestors' encounters with Greek philosophers (although the
Indian philosophers were just as bad, our ancesters just met the
Greeks first). We worship the God Who created the world, and Who took
us out of Egypt (and more for the latter reason than the former
reason, judging from the number of Biblical references to it), not
some philosophical abstraction made up by foreign thinkers. Greeks
made important advances in mathematics, but their philosophers' heads
were twisted into bizarre shapes, and often ended up in the wrong
places. Weirdos like Plato, with their preference for the noumenon
over the phenomenon (yes, I know I am using anachronistic terminology)
are foreign to Judaism.
When Christianity and Islam arose and spread over the world, they made
things worse. Christianity and Islam are religions of belief
(actually, they are religions of faith, which is even more messed up).
They define a Christian and a Moslem, respectively, as someone who
believes in certain things. In contrast, the Bible does not anywhere
contain a list of doctrines in which Jews must believe, and even the
post-Hellenistic Talmuds do not. However, Jewish sages who lived in
Christian and Muslim societies had to address Jews who were influenced
by them, which is why they formulated articles of faith; but there are
many ehrlikhe yidden who have lived their entire lives without ever
studying any of them. Normal people know that observable behavior is
the only thing that we have access to. If Charles Murray's wife was a
Jewess I would be perfectly willing to marry his daughter, and if I
was the gabbai of a synagog in which he worshiped and his mother was a
Jewess, I would be willing not only to give him an `aliyya to the
Torah, but also to ask him to be the shliax tzibbur.
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.
Go to top.
Message: 3
From: Micha Berger
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2025 15:39:59 +0200
Subject: Re: [Avodah] (no subject)
On Wed, Nov 26, 2025 at 05:46:04AM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> Does hkbh give one a nisayon that one cannot pass? I guess the answer
> depends a lot on how you define the terms but in its strongest sense
> doesn't this imply that anyone who ever sins hasn't tried hard enough?
I think you asked this one some months back already.
If you are defining an opportunity to sin as a nisayon, then you would
have to say every tinoq shenishba would be given nisyonos they could
not pass.
And of another kind of nisayon -- every person who had a nervous
breakdown was given a nisayon they couldn't pass. Unless you think
they actually chose letting go of sanity while still in a state of full
bechiras chofshi.
I think passing is something you need to be HQBH to define. Perhaps
someone who struggles and still sins, but struggles more than they did
yesterday "passed". Or someone who did the wrong thing, but had more
positive -- even if erroneous -- motives than they used to.
I think we should leave this question to Hashem and His Accountants,
and for ourselves just try our hardest, and when watching others - dan
lekaf zekhus. The question doesn't matter as much at it seems.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger "I hear, then I forget; I see, then I remember;
http://www.aishdas.org/asp I do, then I understand." - Confucius
Author: Widen Your Tent "Hearing doesn't compare to seeing." - Mechilta
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF "We will do and we will listen." - Israelites
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Message: 4
From: Micha Berger
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2025 10:24:57 +0200
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Belief?
On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 10:58:40AM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> Just listened to an interesting podcast interviewing Charles Murray
> It's my understanding that post-modern philosophy does not believe you
> can prove with 100% certainty just about anything. When I read modern
> Jewish philosophy when it often seems grounded in tradition or personal
> feeling which is not easily transferable. Question how would we categorize
> an orthodox individual who made the same statement as Dr Murray?
Who
> he thinks that God
> has a better than 50% chance of being the explanation for our existence.
>
> It's my understanding that post-modern philosophy does not believe you
> can prove with 100% certainty just about anything....
Going back earlier, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason argues that you cannot
prove anything beyond the world as experienced, what we called the
"phenomenal world".
... what things may be in themselves, I know not, and need not know
because a thing is never presented to me otherwise than as a phenomena.
Thus the title of the work. Existentialism takes this further, and
Post-Modernism is just the same trend.
The Rambam's concept of emunah was definitely cerebral. He even says it
*must* be based on proof, and not merely on accepting truths from reliable
sources.
Whereas the Kuzari ch 1 famously argues that proofs are unreliable and all
you have are reliable sources.
Kant would have you reason from sensory perception (I couldn't figure out
how to limit the quote, so I put it at the end so that people won't be
skimming or skipping the next paragraph.
Personally, I think Emunah is a middah. Look at other uses of the word
"ne'emanus" is realiability. Mordechai is "omain es Hadassah". In my book
if you rely on idea when making decisions, you're a Maamin.
Here's the promised quote from Kant's CoPW:
That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no
doubt. For how should the faculty of knowledge be called into
activity, if not by objects which affect our senses and which,
on the one hand, produce representations by themselves or on the
other, rouse the activity of our understanding to compare, connect,
or separate them and thus to convert the raw material of our sensible
impressions into knowledge of objects, which we call experience? With
respect to time, therefore, no knowledge within us is antecedent to
experience, but all knowledge begins with it.
But though all our knowledge begins with experience, is does not
follow that it all arises from experience. For it is quite possible
that even our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we
perceive through impressions, and of that which our own faculty
of knowledge (incited by sense impressions) supplies from itself,
a supplement which we do not distinguish from that raw material
until long practice and rendered us capable of separating one from
the other.
It is therefore a question which deserves at least closer
investigation and cannot be disposed of at first sight: Whether
there is any knowledge independent of all experience and even of
all impressions of the senses? Such knowledge is called 'a priori'
and is distinguished from empirical knowledge, which has its source
'a posteriori', that is, in experience...`
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Here is the test to find whether your mission
http://www.aishdas.org/asp on Earth is finished:
Author: Widen Your Tent if you're alive, it isn't.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF - Richard Bach
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Message: 5
From: Micha Berger
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2025 10:11:14 +0200
Subject: Re: [Avodah] lev bet din matneh
On Wed, Nov 12, 2025 at 06:28:50AM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> Is lev bet din matneh a nice way of saying it's "impractical" to apply the
> letter of the law in a particular situation (so chazal, HKBH?) must've had
> this situational caveat in mind?
I see leiv beis din matneh to be the application of hefqeir beis din
hefqeir to qodshim. WHich would explain why on Shavuos 10b R Shimon says
that it only works for qedushas mamon, not qedushas haguf. And while we
don't hold like R Shimon, I think this underlying sevara is what Tosafos
say on Kesuvos 105b.
So if we follow Tosafos, then arguably yes... BD is given the power to
rearrange finances to be more to everyone's benefit.
But the Rambam (Pesulei Muqdashim 12:6) and the Mishneh laMelekh (ad loc)
must have a more limited rationale, because they say it only works for
the heqdeish of the tzibbur. Which makes sense, since the Sanhedrin
represents the tzibus in purchasing qorbanos (and Qiddush haChodesh,
and probably for their usual job of pesaq in general).
And if you look at examples among acharonim -- they are all about
communal property. Like the way (nearly?) every shul nowadays really
has qedushas beis medrash instead. Or the Rama's case of using a shul
paroches for a chupah. Or using the aron as things of lesser qedushah.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger Every second is a totally new world,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp and no moment is like any other.
Author: Widen Your Tent - Rabbi Chaim Vital
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF
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Message: 6
From: Micha Berger
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2025 13:34:41 +0200
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Right to haftara
On Wed, Nov 19, 2025 at 10:55:01AM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> R' H Schachter reported
> that R'YBS held that a yahrtzeit has a "right" to say the haftara.
>
> Fascinating interplay of priorities -- if saying from a claf is
> lchatchila, then what is "the right" being discussed that overpowers it?
None of the below matters, since we are talking about a citation of
RYBS and thus how /he/ would prioritize reading from a kelaf. And to
a Brisker, it's pretty etched in stone. (Pardon my wordplay.)
But historically speaking, there isn't much reason to require a kelaf,
and calling it a "lechatchilah" is overstatement. I certainly wouldn't
invest a shul's money in it when there are other expenses. Unless the
donor has his heart set on this cause and therefor that's what
motivates the gift.
Reading from a full sefer on Kelaf is comparatively new. Originally
we read from just a collection of haftaros, a Sifra deAftera, with
a machloqes emerging as printing became more common about whether it
needed to be a scroll on gevil (although we make kelaf that is held to
be kosher as either and as duchsista). The Levush, for example, insisted
on writing it in a scroll, with diyo, Ashuris, etc..
The origin is Gittin 60b, which says that reading from a SdA was allowed
because it was unrealistic to expect everyone to get a scroll for every
navi we read from.
And Sifrei deAftera (? guessing at the plural) often had niqud and
trop written in. But now I am in territory RJFS already covered.
The AhS explains how the existing norm evolved in OC 284:2-6, including
a Rashba that pointedly doesn't discuss needing a scroll for haftaros,
and the SAhR (se'if 4, cited in the AhS's se'if 6) explaining the gemara
in Gittin as saying that from day 1, they never expected us to lein
haftaros from a kelaf.
So who changed that? Earliest source is the Gra.
If you can find R Binyamin Hamburger's Shorshei Minhag Ashkenaz (vol 3
"Sifra deAftarta", it can explain all of the above in more detail.
--
We know haftarah as a whole preexists the mishnah, as it was read before
R Eliezer ben Hyrkeus (Megillah 25a) who lived through the chorban (and
was R Aqiva's rebbe). One theory is that it was a response to Antiochus
prohibiting Qeri'as haTorah.
Lehavdil the Christian Bible (Acts 13) alleges that Paul was asked to
give a sermon after the haftarah, and that would be before Churban
Bayis. Although I have no idea when Acts was actually written, could
be an anchronism.
RSRH says it was instituted as a bulwark against those sects that denied
that Nakh was canon. (Related tangent: The Ethiopian Orit is an Octateuch:
Chumash, Yehoshua, Shofetim, Rus. The do use Tehillim which they call
"Dawit". Much of their liturgy, like ours, is from there.)
We do not know if it was universal yet. Parshiyos weren't. Haftarah
may be minhag, albeit a minhag as old as Chazal and universally accepted
isn't all that less than a derabbanan.
Which really deranks it compared to someone wanting to honor a parent.
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
--
Micha Berger In the days of our sages, man didn't sin unless
http://www.aishdas.org/asp he was overcome with a spirit of foolishness.
Author: Widen Your Tent Today, we don't do a mitzvah unless we receive
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF a spirit of purity. - Rav Yisrael Salanter
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