Avodah Mailing List

Volume 11 : Number 019

Thursday, May 29 2003

• Re: FW: Interesting question
• Re: Ben Franklin's "cheshbon ha-nefesh"
• Re: Ben Franklin's "cheshbon ha-nefesh"
• Re: Persian chronology
• Re: Bar Ilan Torah U mada lectures
• Re: Persian Era
• Re: Rabbi Schab's article onf Jewish Chronology
• Re: Persian Era
• Re: keverim -Rambam
• RE: FW: Interesting question
• Musar of Rashi
• Isur for Goya with a Jew?
• Re: Persian Era
• Re: Ben Franklin's "cheshbon ha-nefesh"
• Re: Persian Era
• Re: R Schwab's article on Jewish chronology
• Re: FW: Interesting question
• Re: Isur for Goya with a Jew?
• Re: Persian chronology
• Re: Persian Era
• Re: Persian chronology
• Re: persian era
• Re: Persian Era
• Re: Persian chronology
• Re: FW: Interesting question
• RE: Interesting question
• Re: Chaburos:Avodah Archive from AishDas Forum
• An interesting question

On Sun, May 25, 2003 at 07:28:50PM +0300, Akiva Atwood wrote:
: The Gemara in Shabbos 108b states that one cannot make strong saltwater on
: shabbos, which the gemara defines as 2/3 salt and 1/3 water. Rav Shlomo
: Zalman zatza"l pointed out that one cannot make a saltwater solution of
: greater than 36% salt- the salt will not dissolve...

At room temperature and normal pressure. I'm not sure you can get the
solubility up high enough to 2:1 without the water boiling. But I also
don't know that you can't.

-mi

On Wed, May 21, 2003 at 01:25:51PM +0300, Danny Schoemann wrote:
: 1. Perishus is not chastity.

I would have thought it's temperance. As RSShkop defines it
<http://www.aishdas.org/shaareiyosher.pdf>, perishus is the means
to avoid distraction from one's tafkid.

(Which implies that chol which one is capable of harnessing and being
meqadeish is fine, it's that which becomes an end in itself which
requires separation.)

: 2. Chastity does not belong in a daily heshbon hanefesh.
: - Chastity is so elementary to religious yidden that if you he has
:   to remind himself about it on a regular basis he's obviously missing
:   something a lot more elemetary than RYS's "13"....

As opposed to emes or anivus?

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger                 Today is the 39th day, which is
micha@aishdas.org            5 weeks and 4 days in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org       Netzach sheb'Yesod: What is imposing about a
Fax: (413) 403-9905                              reliable person?

I wrote:
: 2. Chastity does not belong in a daily heshbon hanefesh.
: - Chastity is so elementary to religious yidden that if you he has
:   to remind himself about it on a regular basis he's obviously missing
:   something a lot more elementary than RYS's "13"....

RMB replied:
> As opposed to emes or anivus?

Yes. If I need to remind myself daily not to chase my neighbor's wife then
it's time to do a major heshbon hanefesh. Maybe it's time to enroll in
a mussar-type yeshiva full-time for a few months, or go on an intense
Tshuva-fasting-icy mikva-malkus regime. This should not be on the
"temptation short-list" of things I may inadvertently do if I don't
remind myself.

But, sometimes its convenient to bend the truth, or even to bluff
myself. I need a daily reminder that Emes may be uncomfortable yet
preferred. As to Anivus - the better I get, the more often I succeed
with the 13, the more I need to be reminded not to feel better than the
next guy who doesn't seem to be doing so well.

Besides which, if I spend 30 seconds on Emes and I think "Danny, don't
lie anymore. Danny, tell the truth, next time admit to .... instead
of pretending .....". I think it would help me become more truthful. I
think it may even have a positive affect on my next Amida.

But imagine the affect of "Danny, stop flirting with Jane. Danny,
concentrate on your wife, not on her best friend. Stop looking at
improperly dressed women." I don't think I'd be in any shape to daven
at all after 30 seconds of such "mussar".

(I'll get back to you on the first point - I want to look up a few
things.)

- Danny

On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 02:04:37PM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
: As I said in my previous post you have two options if you want to accept
: his dates:

: 1. All the Greek historians from Thucydides on were engaged in a vast
: conspiracy to invent lots of non-existent years and events after the
: Persian invasion of Babylonia, and in fact Herodotus wrote at least 100
..

1b. T erred, and historians since had relied n his and derivative dating
    systems. Therefore all are off by the same amount, no conspiracy.

-mi

> At 02:52 AM 5/16/03 +0300, Daniel Eidensohn wrote:
>> I had a discussion concerning R' Schwab's original assertion that the
>> Persian kings lasted much longer than 54 years [he later retracted due

> FYI, RSS visited Basel a number of years ago (20+?) and stayed with a
> distant relative of his who is TC. I have personal connections with the
> TC and he told be he asked RSS about the retraction. RSS told him that
> the retraction was only to ward off the attackers on his right, but that
> it was clear that the gmara in AZ 9 is not to be interpreted literally.

Just mentioned this assertion to a serious talmid chachom who is married
to R' Schwab's granddaughter. He said he never heard R' Schwab make such
an assertion concerning the gemora AZ 9. He said R' Schwab's attitude
was that it was necessary to honestly ask questions and if a genuine
answer could not be found to live with the question. He said that R'
Schab said that this was the approach found in the Rishonim.

It is quite obvious in his article that chazal are meant to be understood
literally.The problem is the consequence that secular chronology is also
meant to be understood literally. Since they contradict each other one
of them is wrong. His original hypothesis was that the secular dates
were correct and that Chazal had covered up this reality by deliberately
making misleading statement to conceal how close the final redemption
is. His final position was that at the present time the contradiction
has not been resolved.

                                    Daniel Eidensohn

> 2. Our count m'brias haolam for the past two thousands yers is incorrect
> and would have to be amended. Intellectual honesty would require that. Can
> you imagine doing that and changing dating of all shtoros?

I had thought that counting from "brias haolam l'minyan sheanu monim kan"
began only in the middle ages, and that the standard in the times of
Chazal was minyan shtaros. Do you have any evidence that Chazal used
anno mundi on shtaros?

> 3. The chain of the msora from Avos 1,1 snaps between Men of Knesses
> Hagdolah and Shimon Hatsadik, who was, as we know, form the remnants
> of knesses hagdola (unless you say that it was a supreme body that was
> constantly repopulated over 160 years)

One of my rebbeim said just that (to harmonize an apparent contradiction
between the Bavli and the Yerushalmi about the number of members of the
Knesses HaGedolah).

David Riceman

Daniel Eidensohn wrote:
> Excerpts from
> Comparative Jewish Chronology (pp177-197) in Jubilee Volume for Rav Yosef
> Breuer
> by Rabbi Simon Schwab

> 6. The gravity of this intellectual dilemma posed by such enormous
> discrepancies must not be underestimated.... This should be quite like
> assuming that some group of recognized historians of today would publish a
> textbook on medieval history, ignoring all the records of, say, the
> thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of the Common Era. Would this not seem
> inconceivable even for those who, unfortunately, do not possess the
> necessary emunas chachomim to accept the world of our Sages?

I find the analogy a little overblown (perhaps because I was born in the
United States and Rabbi Schwab was born in Europe). In all my reading
I have never encountered a history book which lists any details of the
thirteenth and fourteenth century rulers of the Eastern Coast of North
America. Historical Amnesia is actually quite common: it is historical
memory which is unusual and requires explanation.

All of us, no doubt, recall the Rambam's condemnation of the study of
history. The puzzle is not Chazal's ignorance, it is chazal's apparently
mistaken assertions. Furthermore, as we all know, the alternative girsa
in Seder Olam harmonizes well with what we know from other sources, so
the puzzle reduces to why Chazal preferred the apparently mistaken girsa.

David Riceman

In a message dated 5/27/2003 9:11:44 AM EST, dr@insight.att.com writes:
>> 2. Our count m'brias haolam for the past two thousands yers is incorrect
>> and would have to be amended. Intellectual honesty would require that. Can
>> you imagine doing that and changing dating of all shtoros?

> I had thought that counting from "brias haolam l'minyan sheanu monim kan"
> began only in the middle ages, and that the standard in the times of Chazal
> was minyan shtaros.  Do you have any evidence that Chazal used anno mundi on
> shtaros?

You are correct;however, a shtar that we use has to also be
correct. L'minyan shanu monim kan comes to differentiate from minyan
shtoros; it does not come to allow incorrect count.

>> 3. The chain of the msora from Avos 1,1 snaps between Men of Knesses
>> Hagdolah and Shimon Hatsadik, who was, as we know, form the remnants
>> of knesses hagdola (unless you say that it was a supreme body that was
>> constantly repopulated over 160 years)

> One of my rebbeim said just that (to harmonize an apparent contradiction
> between the Bavli and the Yerushalmi about the number of members of the
> Knesses HaGedolah).

In terms of anshei knesses, Nachman Krochmal in Moreh Nevukhei Hazman
(sorry, can't provide a reference, I just remembe this) found that
the count of people returning with Ezra comes out to exactly 120. Even
without that, the poshut pshat and how rishonim learn implied in many
places is that anshei knesses hagdola were a one time event.

M. Levin

Eli Turkel wrote:
>I would be interested in hearing from Seth what gravesites
>are mentioned by R. Ovadyah.

You can see for yourself in Otzar Masa'os. It is available online and
catalogued in TorahNet (www.aishdas.org/torahnet) under General.

Gil Student

> At room temperature and normal pressure. I'm not sure you can get the
> solubility up high enough to 2:1 without the water boiling. But I also
> don't know that you can't.

The solubility of salt is (AFAIK) a constant 35.7% between 10 and 100
Celsius.

Akiva

From: Mlevinmd@aol.com
<<I think that one can understand the Rashi(71a) much simpler. Since
the yetser horah for Avodah Zarah is only minhag avoseihem biyadehem,
there is no yetser horah lnasech but for b'ilah there is yetser hora.>>

I was not addressing the reason that the Y'H for nisuch is less than
for beilah, although I would have assumed the reason is the relative
strengths of the Y"H.

What I was addressing was the simple equation of Rashi, that if you WANT
to do something, there's time to do it.

Gershon
gershon.dubin@juno.com

Here's a question that came up in an off-line areivim discussion:

  Is there actually an isur for a goya to be m'zanah with a Jew?
  I know Kazbi got shishkebabed for this, but I didn't think it was
  actually considered arayos in the context of sheva mitzvos.

  I'm not disputing the isur from the guy's perspective, obviously.

Any ideas?

- Danny

Please daven for a refua shleimah for Chaya bas Naomi Zehava.

>> 2. Our count m'brias haolam for the past two thousands yers is incorrect
>> and would have to be amended. Intellectual honesty would require that. Can
>> you imagine doing that and changing dating of all shtoros?

> I had thought that counting from "brias haolam l'minyan sheanu monim kan"
> began only in the middle ages, and that the standard in the times of
> Chazal was minyan shtaros. Do you have any evidence that Chazal used
> anno mundi on shtaros?

R' Schwab states in his article page 191:
    4. In the spirit of the aforesaid, a new light is shed on the strange
    fact that - soon after Ezra and Nehemia - a new method of counting
    the years was introduced by our Sages, a method which was retained
    for well over 1200 years by our people. We are referring to the so
    called Greek Era. In Seder Olam 30 we are told that "in the exile"
    we are to write into our documents the date according to מנין
    שטרות אלפא. The term Minyan Sh'taroth means the "Era of
    Contracts" and refers to the so-called Seleucid era. This era, also
    sometimes called minyan yevanim, began on Rosh Hashanah 312-311
    BCE after the battle of Gaza and the conquest of the Holy Land by
    Seleucus Nikator, one of the generals of Alexander the Great. The
    Seleucid era was in use until the Middle Ages when the familiar
    terms l'bri'as olam was introduced, or re-introduced, by the latter
    Gaonim, such as R. Sh'rira (cf Rambam hilchos Gerushin 1:27). There
    are numerous Gittin still extant which carry the date according to
    minyan sh'taroth. We can very well understand the bewilderment of a
    tzadoki wondering why a non-Jewish date was admitted into the sacred
    documents (Yaddaim 4:8). For indeed minyan sh'taroth was not a Jewish
    date. It was employed by a majority of nations in the Near East and
    of the Mediterranean area for countless generations and still is
    in use in some Eastern groups. There were several calendar systems
    based on the Seleucid era: 1) The Syrians started in the autumn
    of 312 BCE 2) The Babylonians began in the spring of 311 BCE 3)
    The Persians began in the autumn of 311 BCE, etc. (see a.o. Frank,
    p 30). The Talmud (Avoda Zara 10a) mentions the "pedantic scribes"
    who start 6 years earlier that means 317 BCE.

    The Jewish people adopted the first system. This is meant by the
    strange term אלפא It just means ...method I. Why did chazal adopt
    the generally accepted non-Jewish calendar for all our documents
    instead of Jewish system? There seem to be only one satisfactory
    answer: Because it was part of the scheme to "close up the words and
    seal the book!" A certain period of time had to be hidden. This was
    accomplished effectively indeed by this switch to the Greek date.

Daniel Eidensohn

I promised, so here it is:

I wrote:
: 1. Perishus is not chastity.

RMB clarified:
>I would have thought it's temperance. As RSShkop defines it
><http://www.aishdas.org/shaareiyosher.pdf>, perishus is the means
>to avoid distraction from one's tafkid.

>(Which implies that chol which one is capable of harnessing and being
>meqadeish is fine, it's that which becomes an end in itself which
>requires separation.)

I'm amazed. I was going to double check the difference between the Chovas
Halvovos and the Mesilas Yeshorim and compare them to the above.

I discovered that both these sources agree fully with RMB's synopsis -
all I was missing was somebody to explain the underlying theme.

Thank you R' Micha!

- Danny

On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 03:18:19PM -0400, Mlevinmd@aol.com wrote:
: > I had thought that counting from "brias haolam l'minyan sheanu monim kan"
: > began only in the middle ages, and that the standard in the times of Chazal
: > was minyan shtaros.  Do you have any evidence that Chazal used anno mundi on
: > shtaros?

: You are correct;however, a shtar that we use has to also be
: correct. L'minyan shanu monim kan comes to differentiate from minyan
: shtoros; it does not come to allow incorrect count.

I would need proof for this. A simple reading of the words would mean
that we are only asserting what the commonly used count is, and not
what the correct one might be.

-mi

> Rabbi Scwhab's article onf Jewish Chronology

Read this article and R Schwab's article on Jewish history that was
discussed in a TuM Journal issue a few years ago about Haskallah and
Volozhin. In the TuM article. R Schwalb argues that reading history
"truthfully" is a danger to emunah because of all of the negative
events in Jewish history. In fact, R Schwab all but advocates that we
learn Jewish hagiography, as opposed to Jewish history. IMHO and WADR,
the article re the authenticity of Seder Olam and other similar sources
would appear to be completely consistent with this view. One can and
should ask whether we are bound to accept non halachic statements of
Chazal with regard to the dating of historical events in the presence
of data of non Jewish scholars that was contemporaneous with the events
in questions. What about the concept of accepting the truth, regardless
of the source, Jewish or non Jewish?

Steve Brizel
Zeliglaw@aol.com

On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 09:37:31AM +0300, Akiva Atwood wrote:
: > At room temperature and normal pressure. I'm not sure you can get the
: > solubility up high enough to 2:1 without the water boiling. But I also
: > don't know that you can't.

: The solubility of salt is (AFAIK) a constant 35.7% between 10 and 100
: Celsius.

If this is true, I need an explanation of personal experience.
When making salt water erev Pesach. I desolve salt in boiling water,
and there is a precipatant of salt on the bottom when I take the result
out of the fridge.

(In general, warm dissolves substances better. Which is why water
precipitates out of the air when the temperature drops suddenly.)

-mi

On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 03:43:01PM +0300, Danny Schoemann wrote:
:> Is there actually an isur for a goya to be m'zanah with a Jew?
:> I know Kazbi got shishkebabed for this, but I didn't think it was
:> actually considered arayos in the context of sheva mitzvos.

Kazbi was also mechalel H' befarhesia.

-mi

Micha Berger wrote:
> 1b. T erred, and historians since had relied n his and derivative dating
> systems. Therefore all are off by the same amount, no conspiracy.

There are allusions in Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Plato, to my
recollection, about the Persian wars taking place in their grandparents'
time (all three lived during the Peloponessian war). There may also be
similar allusions by others. Thucydides may be the most detailed source,
but he certainly is not the only source.

David Riceman

I have aproblem with R. Shcwab's approach that really troubles me. BTW,
I learned a great deal personally from him and this is meant with due
recognition of his stature compared to mine.

Once we admit into our methodology an expedient that can allow us to deny
the simple meaning of Chazal's teachings by claiming that "they wanted
to hide somethings", we can deny a lot of their teachings -in their face.

I recently came across an interesting site
(http://chaver.com/Articles/TenWrd1.html) that claims a totally different
arrangement than Chazal's for the 10 commandments on the luchos. To the
question of why had the Chazal not learned that way, it gave the answer:
because they were trying to hide from the minim the tri-partite structure
imbedded into its text. I think that we should labor to understand Chazal,
not to dispose of their words by such means.

M. Levin

At 02:04 PM 5/23/03 -0400, David Riceman wrote:
>Now some dates. Greek historians date Cyrus (=Persia)'s conquest of
>Babylon at 539, Darius's failed invasion of Greece at 480 (battle of
>Salamis - not a food fight), and the Peloponnesian war at 431-404.
>Herodotus, writing before the Peoloponnesian war, described these
>first two as events which occured in the past, and they are central,
>not tangential, to his book.

If I understand the core issue, this is the crux: Greek historians could
not have dated anything at 539 BCE, because they had no idea they were
counting down to year 1 (do we have extant checks and know how they
dated them?). Thus, whatever system they were using had to be converted
and correlated to all the other independent systems in use at the time.

Who is to say the correlations and conversions are correct?

Kol Tuv,
YGB
ygb@aishdas.org  or  ygb@yerushalmionline.org
essays, tapes and seforim at: www.aishdas.org;
on-line Yerushalmi shiurim at www.yerushalmionline.org

Yosef Gavriel M. Bechhofer wrote:
>>This comes back to a point thatI have mentioned before and has
>>bothered me for years. I recently heard a speaker who referred to it
>>as the conservation of people law in Chazal...

>>How much are we really supposed to take literally that Daniel was a
>>side actor in the Megillah and acted as a messenger many years after
>>his role in Bavel. Similarly Malachi is identified with others etc.
>>I know some achronim take it very seriously and learn halachot from
>>these identifications. However, others as noted take it less
>>seriously as only indicating personalities rather than historical
>>facts.

> Reb Tzadok says they are not necessarily the same people but reflect the
> same persona.

Thanks for the reference. However, I am pretty sure (have to look up
the quote) that the Brisker Rav took these gemaras quite literally and
learned halachot from them.

Eli Turkel 

> Once we admit into our methodology an expedient that can allow us to
> deny the simple meaning of Chazal's teachings by claiming that "they
> wanted to hide somethings", we can deny a lot of their teachings -in
> their face.
> I think that we should labor to understand Chazal, not to dispose of
> their words by such means.

You raise a very important issue. There is no question it is critical to try
to understand the view of Chazal. There are two questions 1) If a statement
of chazal as traditionally understood is apparently irreconcilable with
other facts can it be given a new interpretation or rejected? 2) In issues
which do not touch on halacha can a view be advanced which is different than
what chazal said.

                                                        Daniel Eidensohn

"Yosef Gavriel and Shoshanah M. Bechhofer" wrote:
> If I understand the core issue, this is the crux: Greek historians could
> not have dated anything at 539 BCE, because they had no idea they were
> counting down to year 1 (do we have extant checks and know how they dated
> them?). Thus, whatever system they were using had to be converted and
> correlated to all the other independent systems in use at the time.

You should be familiar with this problem. It is discussed in some detail
in the first perek of Rosh HaShana, and recurs in several discussions
of dinei shtaroth.

> Who is to say the correlations and conversions are correct?

I don't understand this post. In my post I established two points of
contact: the Persian conquest of Babylon and the death of Alexander
the Great. According to the Greek historians these were several
hundred years apart, and according to the Jewish historians they were
around sixty years apart (the exact number is in my previous post).
In particular, Herodotus claimed that he lived two generations after
the Persian conquest, and we know from his successors that he lived more
than 100 years before Alexander's death. According to Jewish historians
there had been no Persian conquest 100 years before Alexander's death.

David Riceman

Akiva Atwood wrote:
> The solubility of salt is (AFAIK) a constant 35.7% between 10 and 100
> Celsius.

Could we be faced with a confusion between volume and weight here? I'd
expect rabbinic sources to use volume and scientific ones to use weight.

David Riceman

http://www.physchem.co.za/Kinetic/Solutions.htm

which shows (in the chart) that solubility of NaCl is constant between 0 and
100 Celsius.

http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~cchieh/cact/tools/solubility.html

Akiva

On Sun, May 25, 2003 at 07:28:50PM +0300, Akiva Atwood wrote:
> The Gemara in Shabbos 108b states that one cannot make strong saltwater on
> shabbos, which the gemara defines as 2/3 salt and 1/3 water. Rav Shlomo
> Zalman zatza"l pointed out that one cannot make a saltwater solution of
> greater than 36% salt- the salt will not dissolve...

A simple suggestion - do we know the purity of their salt. An admixture
of other elements may make the difference.

M. Levin

Josh has invoked my name as a list chemist who might offer some
enlightenment on the subject of salt solutions. I, consequently, feel
duty-bound to at least render some opinion on the apparent discrepancy
between Abaye's statement that a strong salt solution consists of 2 parts
salt and 1 part water vs. the experimental solubility limit of salt in
water which is 36% (by weight). One possible way to account for this
striking difference is to assume that Abaye was thinking of a highly
impure salt that consisted mostly of minerals more soluble than sodium
chloride, such as magnesium and calcium chlorides. An example of such
a salt would be the solids produced when Dead Sea water evaporates to
dryness . I don't know, however, if there are bodies of water in Bavel
with a similar solids composition - assuming that Abaye is refering to
a contemporary measurement as opposed to a citation from a Tana'itic
(Israeli) source.
  Another possibility is to translate "milcha" in T.B. Shab. 108b as a
saturated salt solution. Then Abaye's definition of a strong salt
solution would be 24% (2/3 of 36%). It would be of interest to
compare Abaye's definition with that of Rabba who stated that a salt
solution dense enough to float an egg is considered a strong solution.
Abaye's statement appears to be a clarification of Rabba's, and should,
therefore, be consistent with it. One could, therefore, prepare a
concentrated water solution of a salt mixture, and a solution of 24%
sodium chloride in water to test the floatability of eggs. It should be
kept in mind, however, that eggs come in a range of densities such as 80 -
90 lb/cu. ft.with the larger eggs being less dense than the smaller ones.

I doubt that sodium chloride will readily form supersaturated solutions
since it's solubility varies little with temperature.

Yitzchok  Zlochower  

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


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