Avodah Mailing List

Volume 23: Number 80

Tue, 17 Apr 2007

• 1. Re: R Asher Weiss (Michael Kopinsky)
• 2. Re: Driving Miss Daisy to Chometz (Akiva Blum)
• 3. Re: The Heter of Davar She Eino Mischavin by a Star-K Oven (Dov Bloom)
• 4. Re: The Heter of Davar She Eino Mischavin by a Star-K Oven (Harry Maryles)
• 5. Re: Peanuts and other Kitnios (kennethgmiller@juno.com)
• 6. Re: not working on chol hamoed (Chana Luntz)
• 7. Re: Peanuts and other Kitnios (Danny Schoemann)
• 8. Re: The Heter of Davar She Eino Mischavin by a (kennethgmiller@juno.com)
• 9. When do the malachim come (Akiva Blum)
• 10. Re: The Heter of Davar She Eino Mischavin by a Star-K Oven (Elliott Shevin)
• 11. Mincha (Galsaba@aol.com)
• 12. Behab and Yom Haatzmaut (Marty Bluke)
• 13. Re: Peanuts and other Kitnios (Zev Sero)
• 14. Re: R Asher Weiss (Zev Sero)

On 4/15/07, saul mashbaum <smash52@netvision.net.il> wrote:
>
>
> Consider the following scenario: a poor person, let's call him
> Moishie gives his friend, Shloimie, also a poor person, $100 as tzedaka
> (even though Moishie owes many times that amount). Shloimie promply gives
> the $100 to Moishie as tzedaka. The friends continue to give the $100 to one
> another, doing this dozens of times. Ultimately Moishie sees that Shloimie
> will not keep the $100, although he wants him to, and puts it in back his
> wallet. Now Moishie and Shloimie are each exactly as impoverished as before,
> but each has the tremendous zchut of having given thousands of dollars to
> tzedaka!
>
> I doubt that this really "works" in the heavenly beit din,  but not being
> privy to the proceedings of this most Supreme Court of all, I can't really
> be sure.
>
> Saul Mashbaum
>
>

See SA OC 696:4 (talking about Mishloach Manos): "V'im ein lo, machlif im
chaveiro, zeh sholeich l'zeh seudaso v'zeh sholeiach l'zeh seudaso k'dei
l'kayem umishloach manos ish l'rei'eihu."
Not a complete parallel, but there is a similarity...

Michael
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Michael Kopinsky wrote:

   >On 4/11/07, A & C Walters <acwalters@bluebottle.com> wrote:
   >>
   >> Presumably if she is not so makpid on Chometz on Pesach r"l which is
   >> chayav
   >> chatos, she is also not so careful on kashrus the whole year. So: mah
   >> nishtana this time to every time????
   >
   >
   >I imagine that you mean Chayav Kares.  You are Chayav Chatas for eating
   >treif as well.  (You are also chayav kares for some treif in the stores, if
   >it has blood.  But I doubt that you would find a shiur issur (revi'is?) in a
   >package of unsalted meat.)
   >
No, no. Chatos is for shogeg for a lav that the maizid has koreis. Therefore, chometz is chatos for shogeg and koreis for meizid.
Treif (treifos, neveilos, beheimo tmei'o) is malkos for meizid, nothing for shogeg.

Akiva

>Some say that an oven's "window of opportunity" for it not to be a Psik Reisha is almost nil making it impractical to apply the " Fridge door heter"  to an oven. I believe it remains an open Shiala.
>   
>  HM

I am not familiar with the specifics of the Star-K ruling but I recall a answer of RMF in R Shimon Eider's Halachos of Shabbos Tishrei 5735 p. tet-vav question lamed-gimel (my translation) 

Question of SE to RMF: In our ovens that have a thermostat when the heat button is turned on the fire heats up until it reaches a certain temperature and afterwards turns off by itself until the temperature goes down to a certain temperature and then it turns on by itself. I wanted to know if one can open the door of the oven on Shabbat to remove food when the fire is in the off mode, since I tried (experimented) opening the door and taking out a pot when the fire was off and it took about 8 times taking food out until the fire went on. It would  seem in such a case it a davar she-eino mitkavein and not a psik reisha.

RMF's answer : It seems there is no psik reisha and it is a davar she-eino mitkavein and there is no reason to forbid it ["ein la-asor"]

In the English halachot RSE states : Opening an oven door to remove food is permissible. Even if the oven is regulated with a thermostat it may be permissible if it is not a psik reisha  for the fire to be lit (e.g. if the dial is set at "low" and he does not open the door for a long time) or the fire is on.

So HM's "open shiala" was clearly answered by RMF 32 years ago. Of course someone could argue with RMF but who - of what stature  - and on what basis? Here we saw a psak based on experiment, not theory. 

Dov Bloom <dovb@netvision.net.il> wrote:
   
  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>In the English halachot RSE states : Opening an oven door to remove food is permissible. Even if the oven is regulated with a thermostat it may be permissible if it is not a psik reisha for the fire to be lit (e.g. if the dial is set at "low" and he does not open the door for a long time) or the fire is on.

So HM's "open shiala" was clearly answered by RMF 32 years ago. Of course someone could argue with RMF but who - of what stature - and on what basis? Here we saw a psak based on experiment, not theory. <<<<<<<<<<<<

--------------------------
   
  The problem is that it is still a Gramma. The oven will still turn on sooner than it would if you never open the door at all.
   
  HM




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R' Dov Bloom wrote:
> In general, other posters mentioned that 40-30-20 years ago
> peanut oil was "mehudar" for Pesach, so where was there a
> location in the US that one could claim in America they had
> an established minhag that it is kitniot?

Back when peanut oil was mehudar, there was indeed no such location 
where peanuts were kitnios. Or, more accurately, there were not many 
such places. But for some reason or other, they stopped making the 
peanut oil for Pesach. I don't know why this happened. For all I 
know, it might have been for a reason as mundane as cottonseed being 
cheaper, and peanut oil was no longer profitable, or no longer *as* 
profitable, so they stopped manufacturing it. But the consumers are 
not privy to these sort of management decisions -- all the consumers 
know is that it is no longer available. With the abundance of 
information available to the average person :-) it was a forgone 
conclusion that the hechsher was pulled for kitnios violations.

This is not a whit different than the typical person's belief that we 
are required to eat only Glatt meat. After all, if non-glatt were 
allowed, why isn't any available with a reliable hechsher? :-)

A generation has now grown up which never saw Pesachdik peanut oil, 
nor reliable non-glatt meat. Which brings us to the question: Given 
that even 50 years ago, there *were* some groups who had a genuine 
minhag to avoid peanuts on Pesach, and also some groups who had a 
genuine minhag to eat only glatt meat, if a captive audience ends up 
following these practices only because of economic or availability 
reasons, does that mean that this has become their minhag? 
Personally, I doubt it. But go try to tell that to them!

Akiva Miller

> 

RDI writes: 
> Obviously a Jewish employer can't require (or even allow) a Jewish 
> employee to work on shabbos, but your arguement above seems to 
> imply that the Jewish employer is obligated to give _paid_ 
> vacation. 

I don't believe that the employer is required to give paid vacation.
But I also don't believe that anyone would describe requiring the
employee to take chol hamoed as unpaid leave as "heavily penalized".
Thus my assumption is (and I agree it is an assumption) that the
employee asked for it either as part of her regular vacation or if not
as unpaid leave and that request was refused.  And not only was it
refused, but that more serious consequences were threatened by the
employer should she fail to show (loss of job, more substantial loss of
pay - ie for days that she had indeed worked, loss of an otherwise
deserved promotion or something of that nature).

 (Use the example of Yom Tov instead of Shabbos, and the 
> case is clearer.)  In this case she is getting paid, not using up 
> any allocated vacation time, and also not working.  Perhaps a beis 
> din would consider that a reasonable knas, but the halacha doesn't 
> necessarily impose it.
> 
> As a practical issue, if she is in danger of losing her job for not 
> coming in (as opposed to simply losing a day's pay, which is 
> exactly what she is mechuyav in) then there is a practical problem: 
> if she refuses to accept payment for that day, she effectively 
> informs on herself resulting in her being fired. 

Exactly.  And if one holds that it is in fact assur to work (eg again
think of shabbas, or if you prefer, yom tov), then that is what you are
requiring.

 But that doesn't 
> remove the CM issue of accepting payment for work she didn't do.

I am not sure that is right, see below.

> Daniel M. Israel


RMB writes:

> She is being forced to choose between being "greatly 
> penalized" (which I am assuming is a hefseid merubah, since 
> that's pretty much a translation, though I don't know the 
> penalty) and being forced to violate geneivah.
> 

See I am not totally sure it can be described so easily as geneivah.  An
employer does not have a carte blanche to require an employee to do any
and every form of work he/she can possibly think of.  For example, if my
employer tells me to do something that is illegal (eg according to dina
d'malchusa dina) and I refuse to do it, am I engaging in geneiva vis a
vis my employer? (let us say there was nothing else that I could do at
the time for my employer instead).  In many countries, in fact, what the
employer here has required the employee to do, ie violate their
religious beliefs and practices, would indeed be against the law (it is
certainly against international law and various of the UN treaties).
But I am no expert in Israeli law, and I do not know if it is in fact a
violation of the law to require work on chol hamoed (I do know it is a
violation of the Israeli law to require work on shabbas).  So let us say
there is no dina d'malchusa aspect. Still, we have here a situation
where it would seem (according to these poskim) that the employer is
requiring the employee to act in violation of the halacha.  And the
employer is not giving an option (again my assumption) to take the day
as unpaid leave and not show.  Is it really geneivah if the employee
shows but does not work?   

> Is geneivah in such a case huterah or dechuyah?
> 
See my instinct is that a better way to understand it is that it is not
geneivah at all.  An employer is entitled to require certain legitimate
things from an employee.  He/She is not entitled to require illegitimate
things and these cannot be considered to be part of the employee's work
no matter how often he tries to write them into the contract.  To the
extent that the actions are illegitimate, then there is no genivah in
the employee not performing them.  If the employee can legitimately find
other things to do for the employee, they may be required to do them (in
this case, maybe make up the time after hours on non chol hamoed days),
but if he/she cannot, then effectively it seems to me that the scope of
the employment has been limited to, in this case, showing up (ie giving
up the time with her family to come in).

If anything the geneivah I see here is not so much about not working for
her pay, but about genivas daas - because one can assume that the
employer is thinking that because the employee showed up she is working.
That I think is an issue.  On the other hand, I struggle to see how
threatening a hefsed meruba is a legitimate action on behalf of the
employer (is that not geneiva in reverse - the employee has presumably
legitimately worked all the rest of the time, having her salary docked
for more than the days of chol hamoed, or losing her job or losing a
promotion to which she would otherwise be entitled seems to me to
involve the employer taking away from the employee something to which
the employee is entitled, why is that not geneiva, or actually gezela?)
The assumption here seems to be that an employer has carte blanche to
punish an employee for asking for time off - whereas my understanding of
the simple halacha of employer/employee relationships is that we
acknowledge that employees are not avadim, and are free to take off even
in the middle of  a day and a job, and just lose the pay for the time
they take off (unless the employer thereby suffers a hefsed meruba,
which it would seem clear is not occuring here).  So it seems to me that
in this particular instance, the employer can better be understood as a
ganav and in order to deal with listim and ganavim, a certain degree of
subterfuge is permitted if there is no other way, and I struggle to see
any other way here.  If the employee can get away with saying, OK I will
show, but I won't work, then that is clearly a better option.  But I am
again presuming that the big stick would continue to be waived by the
employer if he was told of this fact.

> I ask because being forced to violate geneivah is also an 
> undesirable. I'm trying to understand if it qualifies as a 
> hefseid merubah.
> 
> Tir'u baTov, and Gut Shabbos or Gut Voch!
> -mi

Regards

Chana

As noted by some posters, I did not translate Sharvit when discussing
the criteria for Kitnios.

This is because I have no idea what it means - and I don't seem to be
the only one.

I see no correlation between: beans, barley, peanuts, mustard and canola

Beans grow in a long pod - many to each pod on bushes or vines

Barley grows on a stalk - each kernel in it's own bran, in  2, 3 or 6
rows per stalk.

Peanut pods (as R' Dov Bloom pointed out) grow underground in bean-like fashion

Mustard grows in flowers with seeds about 1 mm in diameter

Canola seems to look like mustard, but the seeds aren't as tiny, I think.

I'll discuss this with my cousin at Opa's Yahrzeit siyum on Thursday
night, and also find out how people can get hold of his Kuntras (as
many list members have asked.)

- Danny

Someone quoted from "39 Melochos p. 112":
> "Simple, non-strenuous activities that are done routinely
> and effortlessly by people as a matter of course  (without
> any conscious thought that the act is a beneficial act of
> preparation) are in fact not Hachono, even when intended
> for post-Shabbos needs." ...
> He brings Shmiras Shabbos K'hilchasa 28:81 as a makor.

To which R' Joel Rich asked:
> This is consistent with what I was taught but have always
> had a hard time drawing a circle around.  For example, is
> the measure "people" or the individual involved?

The distinction is actually even more subtle than that. Look at the 
SSK there (it's a long paragraph, with seven different examples), and 
you'll see that in some cases, he specifies that the act is done 
without any THOUGHT of it being for after Shabbos (as quoted above), 
but in other cases he specifies that it is done without SPEAKING 
about it being for after Shabbos. The nafka mina being a case where 
one is mindful of the hachana, but still careful not to say anything 
aloud.

I have not done this myself, but still, I'd suggest that interested 
parties should learn the SSK's makoros for a better understanding of 
these criteria.

Akiva Miller

Now that summer time is upon us all, I know a number a people that daven mincha and kabolas shabos with an early shabos minyan, go home for the seuda, and after finishing the seuda, or most of it, they return to shul to join the late- shabos maariv (to avoid early maariv).
My question is: when is the best time for singing shalom aleihem? When do the malachim come? After kabolas shabos, or after maariv?
What should someone do if he decided to say kabolas shabos at home?

Akiva

I wrote:> >> >> > If anything, putting food in the refrigerator is more likely to be> > hachana, since you> > want to preserve leftovers you won't be eating that day; you're much more> > likely to> > be consuming what you've left in the oven on the same Shabbos.> > Michael Kopinsky responded:> > See 39 Melochos p. 112:> "Simple, non-strenuous activities that are done *routinely and effortlessly> by people as a matter of course* (without any conscious thought that the> act is a beneficial act of preparation) are in fact not Hachono, even when> intended for post-Shabbos needs."> [brings fridge as example]
 
Agreed. I only brought the point up to suggest that opening/shutting the oven door and the refrigerator door are equivalent--and if anything, you could make a (bizarre) case for the refrigerator being MORE of a problem. I use the fridge every Shabbos and don't give it a thought.  <g> Elly"Striving to bring Torah Judaism into the 58th century"
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What it the Halacha about davening Mincha after Plag Mincha, and then Arvit 
before Tzeit Kochavim
specially on Fridays during daylight saving time?
 
thanks
 
galsaba



************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
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This year the first day of Behab falls out next Monday which also
happens to be the fifth of Iyyar, Yom Haatzmaut. I am very curious as
to what people who usually observe both (e.g. say selichos on Behab
and say Hallel on Yom Haatzmaut) will do next Monday when the 2 clash.
Will you say both selichos and Hallel? Skip selichos?

Danny Schoemann wrote:

> I see no correlation between: beans, barley, peanuts, mustard and canola
>
> Beans grow in a long pod - many to each pod on bushes or vines
> 
> Barley grows on a stalk - each kernel in it's own bran, in  2, 3 or 6
> rows per stalk.

Barley isn't kitniyot, it's dagan.


> Peanut pods (as R' Dov Bloom pointed out) grow underground in bean-like fashion

But they're still pods, just like pea pods.  Hence the name "pea nuts".


> Mustard grows in flowers with seeds about 1 mm in diameter

The seeds are inside pods.  I know because I once grew some.


Zev, posting from Singapore.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas

saul mashbaum wrote:

> Consider the following scenario: a poor person, let's call him 
> Moishie gives his friend, Shloimie, also a poor person, $100 as tzedaka 
> (even though Moishie owes many times that amount). Shloimie promply 
> gives the $100 to Moishie as tzedaka. The friends continue to give the 
> $100 to one another, doing this dozens of times. Ultimately Moishie sees 
> that Shloimie will not keep the $100, although he wants him to, and puts 
> it in back his wallet. Now Moishie and Shloimie are each exactly as 
> impoverished as before, but each has the tremendous zchut of having 
> given thousands of dollars to tzedaka!
>  
> I doubt that this really "works" in the heavenly beit din,  but not 
> being privy to the proceedings of this most Supreme Court of all, I 
> can't really be sure.

Only a few days ago, I heard a true story about two chassidim of the
Tzemach Tzedek who, after hearing him talk about the importance of
gemilut chassadim, did exactly what you suggested - each day they
would borrow money from each other, and the next day they would repay
the debt and borrow again.  The next time the Tzemach Tzedek saw them
he said that such a bright light shone from their faces that he hardly
recognised them.  So it seems that it does work, so long as it's done
leshem shamayim, and not as a "kuntz".


-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev@sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas


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