Avodah Mailing List

Volume 16 : Number 105

Saturday, January 28 2006

• Re: whatever happened to havineinu?
• RE: women, mitzvot and sachar
• Pascal's Wager
• Fw: 38-page essay in Otzar Ha-Beris vol. 4
• Tzeduki Tefillin
• Re: Shiras hayam
• Re: Pas Akum
• Re: Pas Akkum - Kashrus
• Re: Why is Honey Kosher?
• RE: Emunah, Perakim and the Mabul
• (no subject)
• Re: Pascal's Wager
• Re: the Torah's response to sex offenders
• Re: the Torah's response to sex offenders
• Re: the Torah's response to sex offenders
• Re: the Torah's response to sex offenders
• Re: the Torah's response to sex offenders
• Re: the Torah's response to sex offenders
• Re: Sending Food to Someone Sitting Shiva

R' David Riceman asked:
> We were chatting about havineinu at dinner last night. We
> had no trouble finding the text in a Hebrew siddur, but
> somehow none of the siddurim with English translation
> we checked included it. Why not?

Page 97 in Birnbaum.

R' Samuel Svarc wrote:
> So, even if I would grant that those categories garnish
> no schar (which I emphatically do not) it is of little
> consequence to the place where the schar counts, the
> afterlife, where they will share equally THEIR schar.

It *may* be of little conseqence to a married woman, but for a single
woman, there is no "their".

Akiva Miller

It seems to me that there is a very simple answer to ANY emunah question,
one that is virtually irrefutable as far as I can tell. This is Pascal's
Wager.

Pascal (you may have heard of him in science or mathematics classes)
proposed that faith should be based on a bet: If the atheist is right
then both he and I will lead reasonably decent lives and then go *poof*
and that's it. If I'm right, then I'll spend eternity enjoying the
unimaginable bliss of Olam Habah while he goes through the unimaginable
agony of hell. So how much are you willing to bet? Are all of your
issues and questions and perceived lack of proofs for our mesorah
so compelling that you'd be willing to risk eternal torture of an
unimaginable magnitude? Are you really THAT sure of yourself?

Now, the Christians don't like this proof too much because according to
this you'd have equal reason to listen to any crackpot who gets up on
a soapbox and starts preaching that if you don't listen to him you're
gonna burn. But we don't have this problem. Even if, for whatever reason,
you don't really like the proof people bring for Torah min Hashomyim
from the fact that there were 2 million witnesses, etc., Judaism is
still the clear winner over any other religion. This is because (a)
we can eliminate as "not worth the risk" any belief system that doesn't
give great reward to its followers and condemn unbelievers to eternal
torment [this basically only gets rid of atheism and "personal god"
belief systems as far as I know]; and (b) since every religion that
remains claims some sort of revelation, it therefore becomes very,
very reasonable to believe the Torah's account over the other choices -
we at least have a bit more than the word of a single person to go on.

Some may notice a possible fallacy in this argument: There are no clear
statements in the actual Torah that say there is eternal reward for
the faithful and eternal damnation for the unbelievers. Just look at
the proofs in Perek Chelek for Techiyas Hamaysim min HaTorah - they're
either from drashos or from Nach. But the reason we have suggested
for choosing Torah over other religions l'chora only validates what
the multiple witnesses actually witnessed - the Asseres Hadibros. So it
comes out that we have no good reason to believe the Torah itself (which
doesn't claim heaven and hell, at least not straight out) over atheism,
or the traditions of the neviim (which do not have multiple witnesses
to their validity) over any other religion!

But IMO there is a mistake in this argument. The Torah does say that you
must listen to neviim. So if the neviim said there is heaven and hell,
then the Torah is saying you must listen to that and believe it to be
true. We can therefore say that the Torah itself claims the existence of
heaven and hell. Furthermore, that part of the Torah which says to listen
to the neviim is supported by the multiple witnesses claim because if they
are claiming that this revelation did happen, it therefore places Moshe
Rabbenu in a position of "Divinely appointed" which obviously confers
on him a great deal of reliability. So it turns out that the claim of
eternal reward and punishment IS supported by multiple witnesses. Hence,
Judaism trumps both atheism and other religions.

So as far as I can tell this is a really good reason to believe in
Yiddishkeit. The problem, however, is that this doesn't really seem to
be emunah. If you're just believing because you're not sure but you'd
like to err on the side of caution, then is that truly emunah? I don't
think so. But I do think that it's still a fine "proof", because even
though at first you might not have real emunah by going with this way
of looking at things, after a little while of getting used to it you
will stop thinking about "why am I doing this" and will simply *believe*
that Hashem exists without needing to search for proofs. I'm pretty sure
this falls into the category of emunah peshuta, so that's fine. Also,
since your new-found belief actually requires you to believe, and if as
we said this way of thinking is not actual belief, than you MUST start
believing without any real reason - your reason to do this might be
because of erring on the side of caution, but the actual belief is not
based on proofs but on simple *belief*. Others might disagree with me,
however, and say that this is not emunah peshuta and/or is still not
considered real emunah.

Aryeh L. Englander

From: "SBA" <areivim@sba2.com>
To: "areivim" <areivim@aishdas.org>
> From: Gil Student <>
>> I had the opportunity to go through the 38-page essay in Otzar
>> Ha-Beris vol. 4 on the "metzitzah war."  My take is the following:
>> The majority of poskim hold that metzitzah should be done be-peh with
>> a minority not requiring it. Some of these hold so because it is a
>> halachah, others because it is a minhag, and others because the Reform
>> wanted to do stop it.

> If there is an established danger to either the mohel or the baby, the
> majority of poskim hold to do metzitzah with a utensil.

One additional important point is that nearly all poskim who allowed
doing Not bepeh, say that it is a 'bedieved' [or at least that bepeh
is better]. And the reason for their approval was usually associated
with the Mohel having health problems or the threat that no metztitzeh
at all will be done.

The Shu"t Be'er Moshe [vol 2, 72 and several further teshuvos there]
paskens to delay BM on the 8th day if the mohel won't do MbP. He writes
about the poskim who insist on it - 'yotzeh midivreihem' that MbP is
'mide'orayseh'.

He adds that there is a 'klall migedolei haposkim' that where the gemara
isn't cholek on the Zohar befeirush, [even more so in this case where
the gemara's psak is unclear in its meaning], we follow the Zohar.
Which in this case is quite explicit that it should be bePeh.

SBA

> (And I don't think Tzeduqim ever wore physical tefillin, never mind ones
> that fit a requirement that appears only in TSBP.)

What about Megillah 24b, which describes sectarian Tefillin? If Lawrence
Schiffman is right, and Qumran was a Tzeduqi settlement, it would follow
that at least some Tzeduqim read the various parshiyos of Tefillin in
an non-metaphoric way.

Daniel Yolkut 

From: Micha Berger <>
>: And what about "Hashir shehaleviyim hoyu "OMRIM"  beBHMK"?
>: Seems to indicate that 'shir' can be 'said' and not sung.

> I think the shoresh refers to the lyrics -- and therefore includes both
> song and poetry.

No one has commented re Shir Hashirim..

If it 'Shir' indeed meand lyrics or poetry, then the common translation
calling it Song of Songs is lechoreh wrong...

SBA

From: Arie Folger <afolger@aishdas.org>
> In Europe, you can actually find in many countries kinds of bread which
> are OK. French baguettes are an example, provided they benefit from the
> app?=A9lation pain traditionel (did I misspell this, oh my, I don't even
> know. I rarely write in French), which distinguishes it from what you
> called "frankenbread". You would still have to find out if lard was used
> to grease the pans, though.

Rabbi Edilitz in one of his supermarket tours said B'shas Hadchak one
can rely of French baguettes if it has corn meal on the bottom and no
pattern on the bottom. He said those breads are baked directly on the
hearth and not in pan and thus have no problem of pan grease, I don't
know if that is still accurate.

RDK wrote:
> Dayan O Steiner, of the Manchester Beth Din, informed me that is no
> longer the case, and that one may not eat a "stam" baguette in France
> any more. I am not sure when this changed.

One needs to check what kind of pan is used for the baguette. A baguette
moule'e is likely smeared with lard, a baguette non-moule'e isn't. Then,
one must be sure that he isn't buying frankenbread. Therefore, one can
only buy in the small bakeries, not in the supermarket. One shops of
the baguette that is recognized as a traditional baguette.

Arie Folger (who lives 5 minutes from the French border)

RYL wrote:
>>If an enzyme needs supervision, why is honey kosher?

>  From http://www.jewishcooking.org/kosherfood/honey.html and
> http://www.ohr.org.il/ask/ask018.htm
> Why is honey Kosher?

The question that was asked implied IIUC "so why are enzymes problematic,
since bee honey is nectar collected by the bee and transformed with the
help of an enzyme the otherwise tame bee secretes".

Arie Folger

> Rashbo's comments about those who claim that Avraham and Sara were
> chomer and tsurah and the 12 Shevatim represent 12 segments of the
> Zodiac are well known. Extreme allegorizations seems to have been
> rejected long ago and we need to find other answers for the problems
> of archeological evidence.

The rashba's comments indicate that that was a thread - which is far more
extreme than anything proposed - and we know that it was held by major
rabbanim in Provence (the Meiri defended them against the rashba, even
though he doesn't himself necessarily advocate that). Dismissing people
as aristotelians doesn't mean they don't count....

Of course, bringing the rashba into the thread does point out something
else - that recent attempts at declaring threads of interpretation as
kfira and being ruled out of the mesora do hark back to the attempts to
ban the rambam - something that is essentially being tried again..

I do not use the terms Aristotelean perjoratively and apologize for
any implication that it my be. Rambam was a moderate Aristotelean and
I am currently teaching a shiur in the Moreh in Monsey, with great
respect. I meant strict Aristoteleans which must of necessity lead to
denial of Creation, miracles, Divine knowledge and Providence (whether
they fully grasped that or not). We know who the individuals in Provance
who held such views were from their surviving works, b'mchilas kvodom -
you can find a discussion of this in Sirat Colette's book on Medieval
Jewish Philosophy ( Sirat, Colette, A History of Jewish philosophy in
the Middle Ages, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985 ).

It seems to me that Rambam was already aware of the shittos that Rashbo
criticizes and also rejected them. This is implicit in Moreh I, 17 where
he starts off speaking about the need to hide Maaseh Breishis because
of the possibility of misinterpretation and then immediately segues into
a discussion of chomer and tsurah.

M. Levin

He (Menachem Kellner) seems to be taking the stance that disagreeing
with a non-ikkar is "mutar" and not "patur aval assur".

He goes much farther in his book, "Must a Jew believe anything" where
he discusses his life-long commitment to Rambam as the most open and
accepting of the Non-Jewish world, until the realization that Rambam is
also the strictest and least welcoming to possibly heretical opinions.

Hapeh shhitir, hu hapeh sheosar.
M. Levin

From: "Aryeh Englander" <iarwain1@earthlink.net>
> It seems to me that there is a very simple answer to ANY emunah question,
> one that is virtually irrefutable as far as I can tell. This is Pascal's
> Wager.
> <snip>
> (b) since every religion that
> remains claims some sort of revelation, it therefore becomes very,
> very reasonable to believe the Torah's account over the other choices -
> we at least have a bit more than the word of a single person to go on.

No; infinity times 2 million is no larger than infinity times one.
Pascal's point is that the gain of believing in Catholicism is infinitely
greater than the only alternative he could imagine. If you can imagine
several alternatives you no longer have the feature of incommensurability,
and you're left with an argument over weight of evidence.

David Riceman 

RGSeif wrote:
> We've been learning sefer hachinuch and he recently learned
> that a man who rapes a woman has to marry her (if she agrees) and pay
> a fine. This halacha upset him very much. He wanted to know what if he
> raped a very young minor? What about jail time? What about rehabilitating
> the offender? Does the Torah do anything about the fact that this man
> will be back on the street doing it again and again?

AFAIK, the woman doesn't have to accept the proposal. This mitzvah
protects the woman in that, since in earlier times, a woman that had
been raped would have had major difficulties finding a mate, this man
was now required to pay the price and marry her, lo yukhal lesha'hah
kol yamav. What has been bothering me, however, (caveat: I never studied
this mitzvah in depth) was that once they are married, it seems forbidden
for him to divorce her even if she so desires.

Vos zogt ihr?

Regarding the question of punishing the offender so that he will not
endanger others, even nowadays beit din has the power to meet out corporal
punishment to sexual offenders as an ad hoc measure.

Arie Folger

From: "Gershon Seif" <gershonseif@yahoo.com>
> ever. We've been learning sefer hachinuch and he recently learned
> that a man who rapes a woman has to marry her (if she agrees) and pay
> a fine. This halacha upset him very much. He wanted to know what if he
> raped a very young minor? What about jail time? What about rehabilitating
> the offender? Does the Torah do anything about the fact that this man
> will be back on the street doing it again and again?

I would respons as follows to such a question. It is pretty clear to me
from the existence of "love-sickness" in antiquity, (i.e. the story of
Amnon and Tamar and halacha of Yehoreg v'lo taavor in relation to love
sickness) that the usual situation was someone who desired a specific
woman, not someone who would attack potentially any woman. ti also is
possible that aprt of this psychological syndrome was that love turned
to dislike once the goal wa attained and the fantasy gave way before the
reality. In such a situation the victim must be protected by imposition
of consequences. The halacha is designed for that situation. Love-sickness
as a defined illness no longer exists, just like hysteria has become much
less common from Victorian times to now. The Torah designs a halacha to
that time. It does not apply now as we don;t have authority to judge
these cases. When the Mashiach comes, this will be sorted out as well
as other such issues.

M. Levin

Gershon Seif <gershonseif@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I want to hear what the olam has to say about this question in relation
> to what is now a given (at least in every country that I know of) - that
> there are psychological illnesses that people have. The Torah seems to
> be treating this as if it is just a simple crime, and the only issue is
> the punishment.
> I think he's asking a fair question. How should I respond?

I have always had problems with this Halacha. Rape... is merely fined?!

Our modern sensibilites tell us that rapists should be severly
punished, not just fined. But I guess the Torah doesn't look at it this
way. Certainly the Maaseh with Dinah and Schem brough out more than just
a fine in how her brothers treated it. They mass murdered the entire town.
So it can't just be that attitudes about rape were looked at differently.

I don't get it.

HM

From: "Gershon Seif" <gershonseif@yahoo.com>
> I was learning with someone who is not afraid to speak his mind,
> ever. We've been learning sefer hachinuch and he recently learned
> that a man who rapes a woman has to marry her (if she agrees) and pay
> a fine. This halacha upset him very much. He wanted to know what if he
> raped a very young minor? What about jail time? What about rehabilitating
> the offender? Does the Torah do anything about the fact that this man
> will be back on the street doing it again and again?

The Torah prescribes five forms of financial penalties for assault.
IIUC the fine of having to marry a rape victim is for bosheth, and does
not replace the other four types of fines.

Jail time is a more general question. Biblical law doesn't prescribe
jail as a punishment for anything. Halacha gives a lot of discretion
to beth din to anticipate dangers to the community, but I have no idea
to what extent jails were actually used. Any historians out there?

David Riceman 

> I would respond as follows to such a question. It is pretty clear to me
> from the existence of "love-sickness" in antiquity...

Are you saying that there was no such thing as sex offenders in antiquity?
Only emotionally stable people stricken with Love-sickness? Does that sit
well with you? 

Or are you saying that the Torah only addresses love-sickness and never gave
a punishment for the other type of sex offense? If the latter is true, are
you comfortable with that? How could the Torah be aware of a societal danger
and not address it?

There were surely people who carried out all kinds of unspeakable acts
in antiquity but what their pathology, clinical or moral had been and
whether they can be classified as "sexual predators" cannot ever be
known. So you can't ask questions on situation which we don't understand;
the presumption is that Torah had the best prescription of personal and
societal illnesses current at
 that time.

M. Levin

RMB writes:
> But is the lack of gift giving Ashkenazi pesaq or minhag?

Well the Rema himself quotes a Teshuva of the Maharil (siman 31) - and
since nobody else seems to give a source in the nosei kelim, you would
presumably need to look there. However, various achronim discuss it in
connection with shlach manos on Purim, and the Rema himself (presumably
based on this Maharil) links it to the prohibition on Sheilas shalom,
so I think you would probably have to say it is Ashkenazi psak on the
definition of sheilas shalom(nor does appear to be any dissent from
people like the Taz).

I have, however, now finally had a chance to look up the source so kindly
provided by RSB from Iggeros Moshe on the question - and the teshuva
is, as RSB intimated, directly on point (and I must say left me feeling
quite chuffed).

The biggest difference between the discussion we are having and the
situation described by Rav Moshe is, oddly enough, the metzius. Rav Moshe
starts from the premise that nobody did this in previous generations,
and it is not done amongst talmidei chachimim. He acknowledges that
it was indeed the custom hundreds of years ago but its reappearance
he treats it as a new fangled practice. His bottom line is therefore,
while he cannot see any halachic problem with it, he doesn't recommend
people start taking it on because maybe there was a reason that previous
generations hadn't done it for hundreds of years. Whereas while I can
hardly speak for what talmidei chachmim do, my impression is very much
that the hamon am, around the world, do it - and I was certainly not aware
it was new fangled or had been stopped for a period in the way described.

The second big difference in metzius is that Rav Moshe seriously discusses
the question as to whether there is a problem with sending food to an
avel on the basis of chukas hagoy! He concludes there is not, based
on an analysis of the Rema in Yoreh Deah siman 178 that since there
is no inyan of pritzus, and there is no connection to matters of their
beliefs and also it is not a chok without a reason because indeed the
reason is for consolation and to show friendship and support in a time
of trouble. And even according to the Gra in si'if katan 7 there,
who holds that there can be chukas hagoy problems even if if there is
a legitimate reason for the minhag it is only if we learn from them to
do it. And in the circumstances there is at most a safek that this is
the case. And since it is vadai OK by the Rema and only a safek by the
Gra there isn't an issur in it.

Now it is not clear to me whether Rav Moshe indeed was certain that this
was a goyishe custom, or that the questioner had posited this as fact and
he was just analysing the halacha assuming this as fact. However that
assumption whereever it came from also astonished me, as I have never
heard of goyim sending food to mourners. Wreaths yes, flowers yes,
but food? Again I don't exactly hold myself out as an expert on goyishe
mourning customs, but working in the goyishe world as I do, I would have
thought I might have heard something if it was a custom in these parts.
Of course it might be that the reference is to Eastern Europe, or the
Arab world or somewhere similar, but I wondered about this, as sending
food seemed such a Jewish thing to me. And besides which, if this was
supposed to be something that had sprung up in America, then surely it
would be goyishe Americans doing it, and I thought American customs were
by and large based on the British ones.

In any event, and leaving aside the metzius (because it is also possible
that the metzius has changed in the last couple of generations), the
halachic analysis is very interesting.

Rav Moshe starts by rejecting the argument (which was indeed argued on
this list) that there is a necessary linkage between the impermissibility
of eating one's own food for the first meal and the bringing of food
by others - at least according to various rishonim by bringing a number
of cases which are discussed in these rishonim (such as when the avelus
falls on shabbas or yom tov) where it is not impermissible to eat from
one's own food, and yet in various circumstances it would seem that food
was to be brought by others (although you need to see the fullness of
the discussion re these days as it is quite complicated).

He then moves on to look at the various reasons given by various of
the rishonim for the seudah havra'ah and whether these apply to the
rest of the shiva. So that to for example his conclusion in relation
to the Rambam is that since the reason is because of tanchumin it is
similarly appropriate to bring from others the whole "moed l' tanchumin"
and in relation to the Rosh that since the reason is that the avel will
worry and grieve on the meis and there is concern tht he may not eat
as he will desire to die too, others should bring for him - and we can
derive from this that while the chiyuv of bringing is only for the first
meal as that is the bitterest day, the mitzvah is all seven days because
there is still the concern that he will not eat out of his great pain.

He then talks about the various recommendations (bringing various sources)
that more than the minimum should be sent for the seudah havra'ah,
and concludes from this that is no issur of sending gifts to an avel by
doing this (because otherwise there would be a problem on anything over
and above the minimum). And then goes on to say:

" v'hatam pashut d'yamim haelu shechayavin l'nachamu havei hava'as manos
m'inyan hatanchumin v'lo inyan sheilas shalom v'simcha"

And this can be seen by the fact that one of the problems with sending
such food on shabbas is because it is matter of publicising the fact of
the mourning ie it is a sign of the mourning which is the opposite of
shalom v'simcha. Further, according to Rav Moshe, while to bring such
gifts after the shiva is a problem because it is no longer a matter of
tanchumin but a matter of sheilas shalom, and therefore forbidden because
of the prohibition on sheilas shalom for an avel, "avel b'toch hashiva
hu aderaba inyan avelus shehu l'tanchumin v'ain b'zeh inyan sheilas
shalom, u'lechen ain l'isur m'tzud ze af shkvar harbe meos shanim shelo
nehago b'ze".

>The typical American isn't think about whether or not this constitutes
>giving a gift to an aveil. Rather, she's aware of the pain of someone
>else, and striving to find a way to alleviate the burden -- even if
>only by taking care of some of the logistics.

Well according to Rav Moshe, that is what makes all the difference,
- he contrasts this with shalach manos on Purim, which are in essence
"gifts of simcha" - and notes that these would indeed be assur during
the shiva, but to send gifts stam during the shiva "shehu inyan tanchumin
ain tze shilas shalom".

I think that that is precisely what your "typical American" intuits when
she sends.

>To be honest, klering shaylos over whether or not she is allowed to
>seems so much like chasid shoteh territory. Or, to put it another way,
>may my shtikl gehenom be with those who couldn't refrain from learning
>on Tisha beAv or giving food to aveilim.

Agreed.

Shavuah tov
Chana

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


[ Distributed to the Avodah mailing list, digested version.                   ]
[ To post: mail to avodah@aishdas.org                                         ]
[ For back issues: mail "get avodah-digest vXX.nYYY" to majordomo@aishdas.org ]
[ or, the archive can be found at http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/              ]
[ For general requests: mail the word "help" to majordomo@aishdas.org         ]