Avodah Mailing List

Volume 02 : Number 157

Monday, February 8 1999

• Re: Moshe
• pisuk raglayim, zmanei tefilah
• Re: hair as ervah
• Re: pisuk raglayim
• synthesis
• CROSSCURRENTS Vol. 1 No.3 (fwd)
• keriyas hatorah
• Re: Avodah V2 #156
• Rav and Tefilla
• Re: Hair Covering and Textualism
• Tarto desasri
• Passaci Poskim
• Hair Covering

Furthermore what I said about Moses understanding everything except 
infinity, I think was really said about King Solomon. ( I think I 
learned this in elementry school and my memory may be somewhat faulty.) 
Again, my apologies.

HM

>>>this is because there is a ma'alah, objectively, in wearing long garments
because pisuk raglayim is not tzanu'a even for men. ...(One is still
encouraged to wear frocks/tisch bekeshes on Shabbos :-)<<<

Can you please explain what this means??  The pants we all wear with our short
jackets should obviate the pisuk raglayim - no?  Quite frankly I never
understood the bekeshe/frock idea, unless you enjoy clothing styles of a
century ago, but to each his own fashion tastes : - ).

>>>BTW the point I was making is that GRAniks will be mevatel tefillo
betzibbur 
based upon the GRA's shitos of zmanim, and despite the fact that other poskim 
hold that you CAN daven maariv after plag and mincho after sunset...<<<

Yes, but do you daven ma'ariv after thr R"T zman as well?  Otherwise, you face
the tartei d'sasrei!

>>>IOW, even in the case of a machlokes as to the correct zman they would
prefer 
the more lechatichilo zman.<<<

Actually, the GR"A he;d that his zman was correct b'toras vadai, not as a
l'chatchila.  As the GR"A wrote - look outside and you will see R"T was wrong.

-Chaim

Appreciate your analysis, however, still waiting on the kisui palms
source!

On Mon, 27 Aug 1956, David Riceman wrote:

> The Baal HaTurim (and, I presume, many other rishonim) holds that Sear
> b'Isha Ervah applies to married and unmarried women.  While his opinion
> 

YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila

On Sun, 7 Feb 1999 C1A1Brown@aol.com wrote:

> Can you please explain what this means??  The pants we all wear with our
> short jackets should obviate the pisuk raglayim - no?  Quite frankly I
> never understood the bekeshe/frock idea, unless you enjoy clothing
> styles of a century ago, but to each his own fashion tastes : - ). 
> 

No, they cause pisuk raglayim - they highlight that we have two distinct
legs, in contradistinction to skirts or the bigdei kehuna that obscure
that point.

As a matter of fact, I do enjoy clothing styles of a century ago!

YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila

>>>I'm not sure the Rav, though, who was precise in terminology
(and who probably couldn't hear the word synthesis without connotations of
Kant vs Hegel) would ever have been comfortable standing behind the
expression.<<<

(1) Can you please elaborate on why Kant brings to mind the notion of
synthesis?  (2) Why do you assume the Rav was a Hegelian - I cannot recall
offhand any explicit references to Hegel.  (3) The word synthesis has meaning
even to those who have never read Hegel.  Is there any evidence you have that
the Rav was uncomfortable using the word because of its specific meaning
within Hegelian jargon?  Perhaps there were any number of other reasons the
Rav didn't address the topic or use the term.

-Chaim

In case someone missed the US News essay. True, the periodical below
attributes to us one more child than we actually have, but otherwise it is
fairly accurate. R' Adlerstein's journal deserves a plug independent of
his kind words about my wife, and you might want to consider
subscribing...

Kol Tuv,
YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1999 17:03:14 -0800
From: distribution@cross-currents.com
To: Crosscurrents <distribution@cross-currents.com>
Subject: CROSSCURRENTS Vol. 1 No.3 

Message from "Yitzchok Adlerstein" <ravadlerstein@torah.org>:



				CROSSCURRENTS
			A Journal of Torah and Current Affairs
				Vol. 1 Issue 3

In This Issue….

Articles
	Rousing The Sleeping Giant - the turmoil within the Reform movement, and how we 		should react.

	Yossi Sarid, Hypocrite - setting the record straight on hate-mongering in Israel

Roundup - brief reviews

	Bais Yaakov Principal Wows US News
	Finding Affirmation of Torah Values in Down Syndrome
	Duke Researchers Find that Prayer Works Clinically

Coming in future issues:

Welcome concessions about the strength of American Orthodoxy /  A tale of two ALS patients /Susannah
Heschel's folly / Burying the phony annulment issue


=============================================================
Administrative stuff:

1) We continue to grow at a healthy rate.  My thanks to all whose identities I do not know who
circulate CROSSCURRENTS to their friends, who then turn around and subscribe!

2) Recent subscribers who missed past issues and would like copies, should please send a message to
this effect to yitzchokla@aol.com.   Sometime in the future,
we hope to archive past issues on a website.
=============================================================
			Rousing The Sleeping Giant
				Yitzchok Adlerstein

Everyone has heard the old joke, the one about the fellow with a new Lamborghini Countach who asks
his rabbi whether he need recite a  beracha for his new acquisition.

"What's a Lamborghini?" asked the old Orthodox rabbi.

"Good question," opined his Conservative counterpart.

"What's a beracha?" queried the Reform cleric.

Through the courage of Rabbi Richard Levy, current head of the  Central Conference of Amrerican
Rabbis [and a personal friend of this author - YA], the joke may change from dated to inaccurate.

Rabbi Levy spearheaded the writing of a remarkable document entitled  "Ten Principles for Reform
Judaism."    The sixth of these offers, in part, that  "In the presence of G-d, we may each feel
called to respond in different ways; some by offering traditional or spontaneous blessings, others
by covering our heads…"

In other words, it should now be entirely acceptable for Reform Jews to recite a traditional beracha
before munching on a potato chip, if they are so moved.

"Ten Principles" is touted in its introduction as a reflection of the many changes that have taken
place within Reform in the last generation.  It is a "proposed Statement of Principles of Reform
Judaism," drafted in the hope that it would take its place among several other position papers of
liberal Judaism, beginning with the Pittsburgh platform of 1885.

The surprises keep coming.

Samuel Holdheim badly mauled three millennia of Jewish practice with one horrible formula at the
Brunswick conference of 1844.  "We say merely this: Anything which upon unbiased, careful criticism
contradicts the religious consciousness of the present age has no authority for us."

"Ten Principles" claims that this formula cuts both ways.   "We know that beliefs and practices
which may seem outdated in one age may be redemptive in another."  Parts of Torah, it seems, have
stirred from their long quiescence to become relevant once again.

Those who dined at the infamous "Treif Banquet" in 1883 would turn over in their graves  to hear
that kashrus is now an option for Reform Jews.  (The menu at that repast read like a review sheet
for Chumash Vayikra,  including as many prohibitions as could be contained on a single leaf.)

There is more.   The paper opens the doors to other mitzvos that were long read out of Reform
practice.  "We commit ourselves to observance of the mitzvot of Shabbat, which our tradition has
seen as mey-en olam ha-ba…through shamor, the mitzvot of refraining from ordinary weekday acts, as
well as zachor, the mitzvot of welcoming the special Shabbat rituals into our lives."   Some people,
we are told, "may wish to utilize the mikvah or other kinds of spiritual immersion not only for
conversion, but for periodic experiences of purification."

Is the Reform movement about to reverse its long "tradition" of rejecting the binding nature of
halacha?  Hardly.  Even the snippets I have provided stress the voluntary nature of forays into the
murky waters of traditional observance.   Members are free to dine at a new Reform smorgasbord,
which includes the very old, as well as the creative and new.  There is no kabolas ole, as we know
it.  The autonomy of the individual is preserved throughout.

The document, however, does have major significance.  Proof of this comes from the magnitude of the
struggle surrounding it.  If we do not recognize that something important is happening within
Reform, those within its ranks certainly do.

To begin with, the proposal  was not written easily.  Four versions are extant the product of
feedback from different interests.  Comparing just the most recent two is enlightening.

· Draft Three speaks of "our standing together at Sinai."  The fourth substitutes a revelation which
was "initiated with our Sinai experience."  Presumably,  "standing together" was too unequivocal a
term for those who prefer to see the Bible as historiography, rather than history.

· "In the worldview of Reform Judaism's founders, modernity was the center, the scale on which we
measured what was valuable and enduring in Jewish practice and belief… We proclaim that the mitzvot
of the Torah are our center."  This remarkable reversal of Reform position, contained in Draft
Three, was beaten back in the current draft.

· Individuals should choose individually which mitzvos to embrace "out of …understanding of what is
holy in our time."   In Draft Four, holiness as a touchstone gives way to "what is right for our
time."

· The explicit invocation of kashrus and mikvah mentioned above disappear in Draft Four;  zachor and
shamor in that draft are accepted only through the lens of  their "creative interpretation."

The battle only begins with these changes.   While a national convention of Reform rabbis is poised
to vote on the proposals in May, the public battle won't wait.

"My G-d," says Rabbi Barnett Brickner in J.J.  Goldberg's column
(http://www.jewishjournal.com/jjgoldberg.12.4.8.htm), "when I've got a bar mitzvah boy named
Donohue, and a McCurdy coming up, do you think they're going to seriously consider kashrut?"  Many
have threatened to leave the movement if the proposals are accepted.

Reform interest in tradition has far-flung implications.  It  may mean the hastened demise of
Conservative Judaism.   Still plagued by the lack of a consistent platform, Conservatism is marked
by what it is not, rather than what it is.  To most within its fold, Conservatism means that
tradition need not be fully eliminated, as Reform implied for so long,  while also not demanding the
commitment of authentic Judaism.  If Reform begins to offer the same minimal (or greater!)
involvement with the appurtenances of tradition that the Conservative laity is comfortable with,
many may bolt lethargic Conservative congregations for more dynamic Reform ones.

Reform, ironically,  may offer these people something that Conservatism cannot: rabbinic leadership.
Marshal Sklare wrote in his classic Conservative Judaism: An American Religious Movement (pg. 237)
that, "covertly the rabbis now recognize that they are not making descisions or writing responsa,
but merely taking a poll of their membership."   Ironically, we may be seeing a Conservatism of
rabbis slavishly devoted to the minimalist standards of their congregants, while parts of a Reform
rabbinate urge their congregants to more serious involvement with tradition!

Notably,  it is the new, young rabbis who are experimenting with observance.  Hebrew Union College,
Reform's rabbinic training school, is the "undeclared headquarters" for the traditionalists,
according to the Jerusalem Report (Feb. 1).  "In recent years, HUC students say, every graduating
class has had four or five rabbis who are so traditional that they are considered 'pulpit
unemployable'…'Some of us are trying to daven three times a day and observe Shabbes (sic), and you
can imagine how that would be so radically different from a Reform congregations' expectations of
its Reform rabbi.' "  Sheldon Zimmerman, the 11th generation rabbi who heads HUC has marked the turn
by beginning to refer to himself as Rosh Yeshivah!  Says Zimmerman, "Without the grounding in
tradition and text and religious search, we will be empty."

We should find in all of this both encouragement and a challenge to Torah-true Jews.  We have, on
the one hand, yet more evidence for the durability of the Jewish neshama.   After decades of
estrangement from authentic practice, many Jews somehow sense the need for more involvement with
mitzvos.   To be sure, none of the proposals remotely resemble the system of mitzvah observance that
we know.   But we can watch with pride as some Jews give up the arid desert from which mitzvos have
been banished, to at least get their toes wet.  Those who then decide to fully jump in will no
longer  be hitting their heads on the sand.   We should be prepared to help, encourage, and welcome
them.

We should also be prepared to change our attitudes towards Jews outside of Orthodoxy.  Many of us
lump all non-Orthodox together.  If they don't keep mitzvos, they must be Reform.  Mostly through
ignorance, we have failed to acknowledge the difference between secular Jews, and affiliated Reform
ones.  Within the ranks of the latter are many people who are serious about their religion.  They
may be off-base - completely off-base! - but they are serious nonetheless.   For some time, our
refusal to take note of the energy and passion of these people has been an obstacle in our
relationship with them.

We can - we must - remain skeptical of any involvement with mitzvos that does not come from a bowing
of the knee before the expressed command of G-d.  We will be amiss, however, if we do not take note
of the cri de coeur of  an increasing number of our brethren. "Critics say that Levy simply doesn't
know Reform laity.   A career Hillel rabbi, he's spent his life working with students in search, not
surly bar mitzvahs."   So writes J.J. Goldberg.  What separates the old guard from the new may
simply be the element of search and struggle.  If some Jews are looking for religious significance,
we know where they can find it.  We must insure that the stereotypes and mistrust that keep them
from approaching us are erased.  We always had the willingness to reach out.  Now, we may have both
a window of opportunity, as well as a common vocabulary with which to converse.


[You can find the third draft of the "Ten Principles for Reform Judaism" at
http://www.ccarnet.org/platforms/tenpri.html ; and the fourth draft at
http://www.ccarnet.org/platforms/tenpri4.html ]

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Yossi Sarid, Hypocrite
Jonathan Rosenblum

One of the many charming aspects of life in Israel that never ceases to
amaze is the alacrity with which the self-styled defenders of civil
liberties move to suppress speakers of whom they do not approve. Typical was
the reaction to a recent column by Yisrael Eichler charging that many of the
stereotypes used by the Nazis against Jews have been translated into Hebrew
and employed to delegitimize the haredi public.

Yossi Sarid and Anat Maor of Meretz immediately demanded that the Attorney
General prosecute him for his words. MK Ophir Pines (Labor) filed a police
complaint against Eichler and urged that he be barred from journalism and
the media. Even with the move into yuppiedom, the Israeli Left seems unable
to shake its Bolshevik roots. For them, all is permitted; for their
opponents nothing.

``Eichler is not a Jew. No Jew in the world would tar a fellow Jew with the
label of Nazi,'' Sarid solemnly assured us.

 Really, Yossi?

When David Ben-Gurion wrote to Haim Guri in 1963, ``Begin is clearly a
Hitler type, [who would] rule as Hitler ruled Germany,'' did he cease to be
a Jew?

When Professor Yeshaya Leibowitz labelled Israeli soldiers in the
territories Judeo-Nazis, did Yossi Sarid howl with anquish? Did he lead
those protesting the subsequent award of the Israel Prize to Leibowitz?

When Haim Cohn, former justice of the High Court, charged at an
international legal conference that ``the Nazi's Nuremburg racial principles
have become the law of the State of Israel,'' did Sarid scream for his scalp?

When General (Res.) Shlomo Gazit said in a public speech that the knitted
kippot on the heads of IDF soldiers remind him of the Iron Cross worn by
Nazi soldiers, did Sarid protest and call for his prosecution.

When Meretz founder Shulamit Aloni described the haredi population
``suck[ing] from the same sinister passions which nurtured the Nazis,'' did
Sarid demand that she resign from the party?

Could it be that what enraged Sarid about Eichler's remarks was not so much
the metaphors he chose as it was his long peyos and the use of those
metaphors to defend a populace that Sarid despises?

And if the great champion of ``free speech'' and ``artistic expression,''
is so selective about which speech and speakers should be prosecuted, has he
not provided one more example of a process of delegitimization of haredim in
this country not unlike that waged against Jews in Germany from 1933 on?

Interviewed by Yediot Aharonot in the wake of Eichler's accusations,
Professor Moshe Zimmerman of Hebrew University's German History department
admitted that Eichler's charges were well-founded and that ``many of the
images of haredim found in the secular press are drawn from classical
anti-Semitic sources, including the Nazis.''

Fantasies of violence against haredim abound. Not just anonymous
wall-posters in Kfar Saba proclaiming, ``Exterminate the haredim at birth,''
in response to the opening of a religious kindergarten, but articles in the
mainstream media by Israel's leading journalists and academics. ``We have to
storm Mea Shearim with machine guns and mow them down,'' recommends
left-wing darling Uri Avneri.``I would take all those wierd people from
Shas, Aguda, and Degel HaTorah and tie all their beards together and light a
match,'' says Popolitika's Amnon Denker. Yonatan Gefen announces his
willingness to cast the first stone in the intifada against haredim, and
Professor Uzi Arnon tells a Kol Ha'ir interviewer, ``Haredim should be
suspended on an electric pole.''

Yossi Sarid regularly hurls the term ``inciter'' like a thunderbolt at his
enemies, lectures us that words kill, and accuses the entire Right of
complicity in the murder of Yitzchak Rabin. Surely, then, he forcefully
decried these examples of respected public figures savoring the thought of
waging war on haredim. Perhaps, but we must not have heard the news that day.

Haredim are dehumanized every day, portrayed as an undifferentiated mass of
black. In Goebbel's propaganda films images of hasidim dissolved into images
of running rats, and today, in Israel, haredim are once again portrayed as
subhuman beasts, breeding like insects. They are ``black ants,'' ``humming
locusts,'' ``crass baboons,'' ``backward barbarians,'' ``forces of darkness.''

Once Jews were accused of killing Christian children and drinking their
blood. And today ``blood-sucker'' is a favored term for haredim. In place of
body-snatchers, Yoel Marcus accuses them of being ``soul-snatchers'' and
Gideon Samet calls the ba'al teshuva movement the ``most disgusting
phenomenon of our time.''

Hitler explained to the Hungarian leader Admiral Horthy that the Jews had
to be destroyed because they are like viruses that spread contagious
diseases and destroy the body's immunological system. And Kol Ha'ir solemnly
interviews an ``expert on contagious diseases'' to explain how haredim
spread and threaten all around them. ``Parasite'' has become used so
frequently in connection to haredim that the two terms have become virtually
synonymous.

Some have even found in the haredim retrospective understanding for the
Nazis. ``When I see the haredim surrounded by their large families, I
understand the Nazis,'' wrote sculptor Yigal Tumarkin -- a statement that
did not prevent him from being honored subsequently by Yad Vashem. And Tommy
Lapid sees the haredim as having usurped the traditional Jewish role of
``taking advantage of the gentile, trading in his blood and laughing at
him,'' only this time with the secular public in the role of the gentile.
One wonders whether he also sees the secular public in the traditional
gentile role of ``avenger'' of these outrages.

If Sarid and company had not been so eager to seize upon Eichler's column
as an opportunity to score more points against a prominent haredi spokesman,
they might have seen it for what it was: a desperate plea to take note of
the direction we are headed and how far we have already gone. But that would
have required taking a long look in some North Tel Aviv mirrors.

[This column appeared originally in the Jerusalem Post, and is reproduced by permission of the
author.]
==========================================================================

ROUNDUP

When we saw the cover of US News and World Report of January 18, few of us expected to see a frum
school featured in the cover story on "Outstanding American High Schools."  Yet, the Hanna Sacks
Bais Yaakov High School in Chicago came in for some effusive compliments.  More accurately, its
gifted principal, Shoshanah Bechhofer is praised for her vision, commitment and tenacity in taking a
lackluster secular studies department and turning it into a model of accomplishment - all within the
right-of-center community.

The turn-around that this mother of seven doctoral candidate, daughter of a mathematician, and wife
of a gifted Rosh Kollel [my good friend Rav Yosef Gavriel Bechoffer - YA] engineered is substantial.
When she tried to introduce an AP English class, the instructor found that the deficiency in skills
ran deeper than expected.  So Mrs. Bechhofer revamped the English curriculum of all four years.
Today, 35 of 37 seniors are enrolled in AP courses in English composition, calculus, biology,
psychology, or American history. Two thirds of her students take four years of math, and the entire
school takes four years of science.

How did she convince a clientele not always enamored of the need for quality secular studies, and
concerned about the already crushing work load on the students? "The more there is to a person, the
better she is able to serve God," she told the parents.  They listened.

For parents in our community who are uncomfortable with the state of secular studies education (or
lack thereof) in many of our schools, this article
(http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/990118/18chic.htm) is a must-read.   Print it, and send it
(anonymously) to your favorite local principal.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Another frum woman educator, Pessie Busel Novick, worked wonders of a different sort.  Writing in
Moment (December 1998), Mrs. Novick tells a particularly honest and  poignant story, suffused with
Torah values.

"Shuki" tells of her transformation in the 14 years of raising her Down Syndrome son.  She readily
admits that she did not quickly come to grips with the challenge that she was given.  "No amount of
reading, no amount of talking, no amount of logic could alleviate the pain that I suffered - not for
days, or months, but for years.  I am not proud of this fact, but I feel that I must make the point
clearly, so that the reader may better appreciate the end of my story."

She relates how she gradually came to find joy in her son, something she had thought was impossible.
"The pride he takes in his accomplishments - a sweet innocent pride, filled with happiness and
totally devoid of arrogance - is a pleasure to behold.  One wonders why we go to such  lengths to
teach our children to temper this joy…He has a talent for knowing how to please and bring joy to
those who are sad…Had I known Shuki 12 1/2 years ago, perhaps I would have learned more readily how

to let go of my own pain." To a curious older sibling, who wished to know whether the new baby would
ever be "early" for anything, like some of his precocious family members, she replied, "No, honey,
he won't be early for anything.  But you know what? He'll never say anything to hurt people's
feelings, and he'll never make anybody cry."

There is triumph here, not only for a frum family, but for Torah values in a world that increasingly
is confused about the value of human life.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

According to the Associated Press (no date), researchers at Duke University have demonstrated the
efficacy of prayer.  We are not talking about the positive psychological effect that prayer has for
the one doing the praying.  We mean prayer on behalf of the patient - with both the prayer and the
prayee unaware of the activities and identities of the other!

In a paper delivered at the annual scientific session of the American Heart Association in Dallas,
investigators Krucoff and Crater told how they had randomly divided 150 patients with acute heart
ailments into five groups.  All assignments were double-blind  -  neither the patients nor
practiotioners knew who was in the medicine only, or medicine-plus-prayer groups.  All five received
conventional medical intervention.  Three received additional nontraditional therapies.  The names
of a fourth group were sent to a group in Yerushalayim, so that their names could be placed in a
kvitel in the Kotel.  (They were also all sent to Buddhist monks in Nepal and France, to Carmelite
nuns in Baltimore, and to groups of Moravians and Fundamentalists - but we don't really have to
concern ourselves with them, do we?  All the religious targets prayed for the patients by name.)

The prayed-for patients did 50-100% better than the others.  The researchers, noting the small
sample size, would not rule out coincidence.  They are encouraging larger scale study.

The article did not mention whether mincha was an option at the conference.

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>>>I seem to remember a shiur in which the Rov described krias haTorah as
: needing to be ki'nsinosa,   so that every shva na and shva nach and
: mil'el and mil'ra was me'akev and needed to be corrected.

I find this hard to implement.<<<

Don't know about the lomdus, but the makor for the shitah is the RAmbam (what
else? : - ) See KS"M to Tefilah 12:6, Tur siman 142.  

-Chaim

>I find this hard to implement. For example, which havara did HKBH 
>"speak" in? Even if each sheivet heard in its own havaarah, we'd still
need to know the 13 (since we're both counting Levi and two for Yosef)
original havaros.
	I thought it fairly obvious that the Ribbono Shel Olom speaks in a
Litvishe pronunciation with a Brisker slant.  (And,  of course,  Klal
Yisrael wore shtreimlach when they came out of Mitzrayim:  just check
some contemporary coloring books.)  Seriously,  you are not expected to
do more than is possible:  if you cannot resolve the pronunciation
conundrum between Ashkenazi/Sefaradi/Temani,  at least you can learn how
to say mil'el and mil'ra properly,  and even take a stab at shva na and
shva nach. 
I don't believe the Rav had anything further in mind, LAD.

Gershon

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The selection that Joel Rich posted from the sichot of R'Lichtenstein
appears in Hebrew in the 5759 volume of Shana be-Shana, as already noted
by Sholom Carmi.
		Aryeh Frimer

R' YGB <ygb@aishdas.org> writes in v2n154:
: Your comparison - and underlying logic - would compel us to require
: unmarried women to cover their hair.
: 
: Clearly the enticing nature of hair does not change mystically from before
: to after the Chuppa.

No, if it's ervah, it's ervah. You're right.

However, the consequences of falling prey to ervah are much more grave by
eishes ish. Perhaps that's why one requires a heker, and the other doesn't.

WRT Richard Wolpoe's point: D'oraisah requires a married woman to cover her
hair, extended by a d'Rabbanan. The point of the d'rabbanan is "ervah". So,
even if the d'Oraisah would allow sheitlach, if "ervah" means what we
generally take it to mean (see below) the d'Rabbanan shouldn't.

(Or perhaps: The obligation is for men to absent themselves from the
presence of a married woman with uncovered hair. Is the chiyuv on her,
or on them? Similarly, "kol ishah". It was suggested on scj that the issur
is on men -- we may not listen, not on her singing.)

: Therefore, Ervah here is not a term of allurement at all.

I'm willing to accept that. Although I thought the word was pretty
open-and-shut. I take it from your earlier comment that you consider "ervah"
to describe an act, not a cause. So...

How do you define the word -- here, as well as in the last pasuk of Yisro? Are
a man's ankles, as he walks up stairs, "alluring"? (Someone noted to me that
Rashi doesn't mention anything about the kohein's ankles.)

: HUMOR ALERT! (May be semi serious!)
: Hey, Micha! That sounds chauvinistic to me! "Hashkafsi?" What about
: "Hashkafas ishtecha?!" I know you bavorned that in your Ps - but not
: completely!

Actually, I mentally left the case of sheitlach when I started replying to
your quote of Yeshaiah.

As I mentioned in a previous email, I do not consider sheitlach to be in the
pervue of "two shitos equally supported by the halachic process", and was
arguing only hypothetically. I agree that Ashkenazi consensus today permits
their use, and so I consider to be p'sak.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger (973) 916-0287    Help free Yehuda Katz, held by Syria 6084 days!
micha@aishdas.org                         (11-Jun-82 - 8-Feb-99)
For a mitzvah is a lamp, and the Torah its light.
http://www.aishdas.org -- Orthodox Judaism: Torah, Avodah, Chessed

R. Cima B. writes:>>
You are conflating different issues.  According to *almost* all Rishonim
davening mincha after plag and ma'ariv before shkiya is a tartei d'sasrei -
you are relying simultaneously on R' Yehudah that paskens zman ma'ariv begins
at plag and Chachamim who say zman mincha extends to shkiya, taking the kullos
of both opinions.   Aderaba - you will be hard pressed to find textual sources
to backup what has become the 'minhag' (and I use the term very loosely!) in
many shuls. <<
   
Clarification: No tarto desasri intended.  The kehillos I mentioned were 
diverse.  IE kehillo "A" davedned Maariv following plag, Kehillo "B" would daven
Mincho well niegh towards a Rabbeinu tam Tzeis...

My point was that the Gro'nicks would refrain from either kullo even at the 
price of Tefillo be'tzibbur.  And since there are poskim who meikle for either 
case, they felt that holding by the Gro's shito of zman superceded Tefillo 
be'tizbbur.

Regards, Rich Wolpoe

RYGB: writes:>> would like to take this idea a tad further. I would like to 
suggest that the list have an "official" Posek or Poskim. It would probably be 
easier for Micha to find one in Passaic than elsewhere, but I am sure wherever 
he finds one it will be a reliable one.<<

Hachi koro shmo Passaic because of its poskim <pun intended> Rich W. 

RYGB writes: >>BTW, I heard from my former Mahsgiach, R' Tzuriel of 
Sha'alvim, that the first several hunderd/thousand *men* to wear short 
jackets transgressed chukkos ha'goyim - this is because there is a ma'alah, 
objectively, in wearing long garments because pisuk raglayim is not tzanu'a 
even for men. But, eventually, the chukkos ha'goyim problem waned, as the 
short jackets became well nigh universal.<<

Dr. Hyman Grinstein many times reiterated he did not no the heter for Jews 
to change their clothing into modern garb...

BTW I recently heard a dvar torah (I think besheim R. Yaakov Kamenetsky) 
re: shelo shinu shmom leshonom umalubhsom...

Q: How is it we have goyishe names, speak English etc.?
A: After Matan Torah we have the Torah to distinguish us from Goyim.  Before 
Matan Torah they needed shmom, lshonon umalbushom....

Regards,
Rich W. 

*********************


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