Avodah Mailing List

Volume 25: Number 308

Fri, 29 Aug 2008

• 1. Re: Birkas haChama (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: Birkas haChama (Zev Sero)
• 3. Re: rov and karov (Rich, Joel)
• 4. Re: Birkas haChama (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: Birkas haChama (Zev Sero)
• 6. Women Davening with a Minyan (Prof. Levine)
• 7. What is special about the blood of a redeemed sacrifice? (Meir Rabi)
• 8. Re: Women Davening with a Minyan (Rich, Joel)
• 9. Re: Women Davening with a Minyan (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: KSA, MB, AhS, Chayei Adam and other codes (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: What is special about the blood of a redeemed sacrifice? (Micha Berger)
• 12. Re: Geirut (Micha Berger)

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 11:19:48PM +0000, kennethgmiller@juno.com wrote:
: The Artscroll "Bircas Hachama" goes into it. As I recall, there were
: two views in the gemara on how to calculate these cycles, one being
: more accurate mathematically, and the other being the one we use. It
: seems that Chazal deliberately opted for a less-accurate calculation,
: because it has the advantage of being more useful to the average person,
: who would be unable to calculate the other one.

(We discussed this in 2005. RET hit it in Daf Yomi in
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol15/v15n006.shtml#14 (

When it comes to pi or the solar year WRT tal umatar, the issue is
one of precision. There is no perfect answer, and thus the question is
simply how precise need we be. RAM's presentation makes Shmuel's tequfah
inferior in kind. I'm trying to show that it's necessary to approximate --
one differs from the other only in degree.

In this case, I would agree with RAM that when making a shiur choosing
between orders of precision, why be more precise and less easy to
implement? I /would/, if the mitzvah is derabbanon, or if someone can
show me a ra'ayah that these things are or aren't halakhah lemosheh
misinai like other shiurim.

In the case of birkhas hachamah, it's not just a matter of calculation,
it's a matter of whether the mitzvah would be done once in 28 years
or using R' Ada's year of 365d 5h 997c 48r and only doing it once in
2,068,417 years -- ie not at all. Even rounding to the nearest cheileq
we would only be making it once in 907,201 years -- still effectively
not at all.

There is no other approximation that we tended to use that would allow
us to commemorate maaseh bereishis in Nissan at all that is more precise
than Shemu'el's.

Which ties into my insisting one not confuse relying on tequfas Shemu'el
with relying on the Julian Calendar. If one can leverage secular calendars
for this, the Gregorian calendar's approximation of the year would have us
saying birkhas hachamah every 401 years. May be too far apart to preserve
the custom, but still multiple times during the course of human history.

Other questions may be in either of these two categories, or may be in
a third one... The human mind's "gut instinct" isn't always all that
mathematical. Who said the din is about the physics of the situation,
rather than our perception of it? Long timers here know it wasn't me.

: Other examples include:
: - Urine is diluted with a reviis, regardless of how much urine it is.
: - Halachos about eating in the afternoon on Erev Shabbos and Erev YT
:   totally ignore how much one ate in the morning, or what time one expects
:   to finally eat at night (at the seder, for example).

The mius-keit of urine, as to whether one may daven near it, is clearly a
psychological issue, not one of the chemistry of urine. And how full you
are after a meal, and whether you are slighting Shabbos or YT, is as well.

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 09:57:52PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
: You're missing the point, which is that nothing special happens that
: morning, so what is it exactly that we're making the bracha on?

According to the berakhah, Oseh Maaseh Bereishis. Which is said on
numberous things that remind people of creation -- from the "yehi or"
suddenness of lightning to the motion of the yabashah of an earthquake
to birkhas hachamah. The berakhah is on the recollection, not the event.

Is it a birkhas nehenin that requires the trigger be real? Shoulnd't a
takanah made to artificially recall the creation of the sun count as well?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I long to accomplish a great and noble task,
micha@aishdas.org        but it is my chief duty to accomplish small
http://www.aishdas.org   tasks as if they were great and noble.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                              - Helen Keller 

Micha Berger wrote:

> In the case of birkhas hachamah, it's not just a matter of calculation,
> it's a matter of whether the mitzvah would be done once in 28 years
> or using R' Ada's year of 365d 5h 997c 48r and only doing it once in
> 2,068,417 years -- ie not at all. Even rounding to the nearest cheileq
> we would only be making it once in 907,201 years -- still effectively
> not at all.

So why not do it every year at the March Equinox, when the sun returns
to its initial position?  There's nothing objective to distinguish
next year's March Equinox from any other year's.

Or if once a year is too frequent, why not do it whenever the March
Equinox falls on a Wednesday?  The days of the week may not correspond
to anything that we can observe with our eyes or instruments, but at
least we believe that they are objectively real in ruchniyut.  The
Julian calendar was only ever a human invention.


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

Another area that has always bothered me is rov versus karov.
In real life it obviously makes a difference if we have something an
inch further away but 10 times the population or something miles closer
but a slightly smaller population.
However the discussion of rov and karov doesn't account for how big the
rov or karov is

--
Eli Turkel
======================
See my earlier comments on halachik reality - it does not seem to be an
attempt to take in all possible information to create a "most likely"
result (e.g. topographical differences in distance etc.) but "rough
justice" (e.g. why not require dna sampling to determine source of meat)

KT
Joel Rich
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On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 04:12:05PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
: Or if once a year is too frequent, why not do it whenever the March
: Equinox falls on a Wednesday? ...
: to anything that we can observe with our eyes or instruments, but at
: least we believe that they are objectively real in ruchniyut.  The
: Julian calendar was only ever a human invention.

1- Please stop insisting we used the Julian calendar. Most achronim
(RMMS excepted) that it would have been assur for chazal to use it --
violates "hachodesh hazeh lakhem".

Rather, Shemu'el happened to use the same 365-1/4 estimate that the
Romans did. It's a logical enough estimate. Common cause with the Julian
calendar, not ancestry from it.

2- Tequfas Shemu'el is simply an approximation to the nearest 5 digits
for computing the March Equinox. And birkhas hachamah IS when that
approximate date is on Wed. I'm missing why you insist that we either
figure out when it was to more digits precision, or there is no point
to the berakahah at all.

Or are you asking why we're told how to compute it rather than left to
whatever computation or obserrvation we had at our disposal. That would
mean that nowadays we would have a more accurate birkhas hachamah date,
but in the Middle Ages, Ashkenazim (whose neighbors went back to thinking
the world was flat and few of them had a mill capable of producing flour
for bread in their town) might have gotten it way off.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is equipped with such far-reaching vision,
micha@aishdas.org        yet the smallest coin can obstruct his view.
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
Fax: (270) 514-1507

Micha Berger wrote:

> 1- Please stop insisting we used the Julian calendar. Most achronim
> (RMMS excepted) that it would have been assur for chazal to use it --
> violates "hachodesh hazeh lakhem".

The fact is that people who interact with goyim have always had to
be aware of those goyim's calendar.

 
> Rather, Shemu'el happened to use the same 365-1/4 estimate that the
> Romans did. It's a logical enough estimate. Common cause with the Julian
> calendar, not ancestry from it.

For those who are going to calculate it themselves, cheshbon R Ada
is almost as easy.  The advantage of cheshbon Shmuel is that you
don't need to calculate it, you just need to look at a goyishe
calendar, or ask a goy what date it is.  Which is why the date for
switching to Tal Umatar, which each person needs to determine for
himself, follows cheshbon Shmuel.  Most people can't be expected
to make the calculation themselves, so it would be unreasonable for
the minhag to depend on them doing so.  Determining the keviut of
Rosh Hashana is not given to each person; even with no communication
and no printed calendars, only one person per community has to
perform the calculation, and so it uses the more complicated (though
still inaccurate) cheshbon R Ada.  A more accurate calculation than
R Ada's would have made it still more complicated, enough that there
might not be anyone in a community capable of it, so no such scheme
was ever attempted.  (That's assuming Hillel's Sanhedrin realised
that R Ada's calculation wasn't accurate.)


> 2- Tequfas Shemu'el is simply an approximation to the nearest 5 digits
> for computing the March Equinox. And birkhas hachamah IS when that
> approximate date is on Wed.

No, because that would happen on average every 7 years, not exactly
every 28.  The 28-year cycle is an artefact not of the 365.25 day
calculation, but of a human-constructed calendar *based* on that
calculation.

Again, though, my main question is why we don't say Birkat Hachama
every year.

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

We just came back from spending a few days in Brookline, MA. On 
Monday and Tuesday mornings I davened at the YI of Brookline at the 
first minyan. Much to my surprise, on Monday there were two women in 
the ladies section and on Tuesday there was one. This got me to thinking.

I know that a woman is not required to daven with a minyan. Indeed, 
here in Brooklyn it is not uncommon to see women davening on buses 
and subways. However, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minyan says:


According to Maimonides in his 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishneh_Torah>Mishneh Torah (Hilkhot 
Tefillah 8.1):

The prayer of the community is always heard; and even if there were 
sinners among them, the Holy One, blessed be He, never rejects the 
prayer of the multitude. Hence a person must join himself with the 
community, and should not pray by himself so long as he is able to 
pray with the community. And a person should always go to the 
synagogue morning and evening, for his prayer is only heard at all 
times in the synagogue.

Now I am sure that women want their prayers to be heard. Therefore, 
it occurred to me,  "Why aren't women who are able to go to shul 
(women without children, women whose children are no longer at home) 
encouraged to go to shul to daven regularly (daily) with a minyan?"

[This could lead to a new question for the parents of a boy who is 
redd a shidduch to ask. "Does she daven daily with a minyan?" >:-}]

Yitzchok Levine 
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Rashi [Devarim 12:16]explains that we would have considered the blood of a
Korban that has been disqualified through a permanent blemish and
subsequently redeemed, to now be permitted for Kosher consumption.
Why is this so?

Now I am sure that women want their prayers to be heard. Therefore, it
occurred to me,  "Why aren't women who are able to go to shul (women
without children, women whose children are no longer at home) encouraged
to go to shul to daven regularly (daily) with a minyan?"

        Yitzchok Levine   

        ================================== 

          

        Thanks for asking a question which I have asked about over the
years.  I'll limit myself to the most common response I got concerning
younger women - "It's better they not get used to this because once they
have kids they won't be able to and may have trouble psychologically
adjusting" 

          

        KT
        Joel Rich 

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On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:57:04 -0400, "Prof. RYL"  wrote:
> Now I am sure that women want their prayers to be heard. Therefore,
> it occurred to me,  "Why aren't women who are able to go to shul
> (women without children, women whose children are no longer at home)
> encouraged to go to shul to daven regularly (daily) with a minyan?"


From the Igeres haGra (to his wife and mother, when he left on an attempt
to make aliyah):
> One must seal his lips as tight as two millstones. Idle words are like
> powerful weapons which can reach from one end of the world to the other.
> Now this is true concerning mere excessive speech. Where forbidden speech
> is concerned - e.g. lashon hara, mocking, swearing, vowing, fighting and
> cursing - especially in the synagogue, and on Shabbos and Yom Tov - for
> every utterance of this type it is impossible to imagine the pain and
>  suffering one will receive (Zohar)!
...
> Concerning solitude, the main thing is to remain at home. Even your visit
> to the synagogue should be very short. IN FACT, IT IS BETTER TO PRAY AT
> HOME, FOR IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BE SPARED FROM JEALOUSY OR FROM HEARING
IDLE
> TALK OR LASHON HARA IN THE SYNAGOGUE [emphasis mine -micha]. And one
> receives punishment for this, as we find (Shabbos 33a), "Also one who
> hears and is silent...." This is even the more so on Shabbos and Yom Tov
> when they gather to talk - It is then better that you don't pray at all.
> Refrain also from going to the cemetery (especially women), as it leads
to
> all kinds of sorrow and sin. It is also advisable that your daughter not
go
> to the synagogue, because she'll see beautiful clothes there, become
jealous
> and talk about it at home. This will lead to lashon hara, etc. She should
> rather cling to Mussar and not become jealous of anything in this world,
> where everything is vanity and illusions, appearing and disappearing
> overnight (Yonah 4:10).

(So we know the Gra was poorer than most of Vilna's Jews, and couldn't
afford a dress for his daughter of the quality the other girls in shul
would have.)

Perhaps this set a norm that wasn't changed even in shuls where the ezras
nashim improved?

Tir'u baTov! 
-Micha

 -- 
Micha Berger             Man can aspire to spiritual-moral greatness
micha@aishdas.org        which is seldom fully achieved and easily lost
http://www.aishdas.org   again. Fullfillment lies not in a final goal,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      but in an eternal striving for perfection. -RSRH

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 01:01:51AM -0400, Richard Wolpoe wrote:
: YOU missed my point. her LATER discovery was of a character trait that
: WAS ALWAYS THERE and did not change, it was just masked. the Mikash
: Ta'us is that had she been aware of the pathology of the person day one
: she would nto have agreed to the marriage.

I didn't miss it, I showed that's not how mekach ta'us works, and no one
used mekach ta'us to include latent rather than unknown flaws. The flaw
must be known to others -- Qiddushin 11a. And that's true for fields too
-- if you buy legume-bearing land thinking it could support wheat but
it turns out the nitrogen level is insufficient, it's not a meqach ta'us.
(Most qitniyos put nitrogen /into/ the soil; wheat consumes it.)

...
: Unless the husband suffered a trauma and afterwrds it manifested as a
: NEW character flaw, Rachkman has every rigth to say that the falw was
: there. all along

I disagree with the metzi'us. A guy can get progressively crotchety or
lazy with age without any trauma.

Later, RRW writes:
: > He did! He may have not meant to, but the agunos who came to him didn't
: > need eid echad, eid mipi eid, or any of the other super qulos in birur
: > Chazal allowed to permit remarriage.

: Well than maybe Rackman went fartehr than I am aware of. But I am nto
: aware of this.
: I am ONLY referring to the lemafrei'a hafaka'ah point not to other
: "kvetches" or abuses.

Hafka'as qedushin doesn't require any of these things. Why couldn't she
come to RER's beis din, say "I didn't realize he would turn out to be
a lazy bum who won't earn a paycheck", and get the marriage declared a
meqach ta'us.

Jumping back:
: BD under extreme circumstances can ignroe precedent. This is clear

Ediyos 1:4-5 all that stuff about gadol mimenu bechokhmah uveminyan.
Where does it make an exception for she'as hadechaq?

...
: I don't accept Rackman. But I fail to see how you cannot! He is far
: less radical than many of the shitos that you DO accept. Therein lies the
: inconsistency! Fater all there IS an imperative to be mattir agunos! So
: his heuristic wieghing MSUT be kosher even w/o a defeinte precedent.

...
:> No maqor means no senifim. Not by implication, by identity. If there
:> were senifim, they would each be pieces of a maqor. Here, there is just
:> reasoning that was never used before that would provide a more derekh-noam
:> solution that thousands of pages of gemara, rishonim and acharonim.
:> Saying that reasoning must be wrong, not a factor to be added, is quite
:> strongly supportable.

: HUH? The misgeres says KSA has not maqor. what does sniffim ahve to do
: with it! My sniffim comment was irrelveant.

There are no pros or cons to way about an option that doesn't exist. A
pro or a con to choosing one action or the orhter /is/ a senif. Which is
what I pointed out back near the top of this dicussion, 10 months ago --
the fact that teshuvos are often decided in senifim is explicit weighing
of pros to add up to a conclusion, rather than having a single rule
that says A & B imply pesaq X (to try to imitate computer algorithmic
type language).

This is why I do not accept RER's BD as within eilu va'eilu. There
is nothing to weigh the merits of. Pesaq requires applying different
considerations to the viable alternatives. If the notion isn't divrei
E-lokim chaim then there is no way to say "vehalakhah ke-"moso.

: I am saying this, SO WHAT if there is not maqor? How is that a flaw?
: If precdent can be ignroed it can be ignroed!

One would have to know (1) when can precedent be ignores; (2) what kind
of weighting has it historically been given. (That's self-referential,
but not circular.)

:> This is what I'm talking about, that your algorithm doesn't include the
:> majority of baalei mesorah. Look through Otzar haPoseqim in YD.

: Who is this?

A survey of shu"t by a group founded by R' Isser Zalman Meltzer. Organized
to follow the Tur/SA sequence. (EhE 17 (Agunah) alone is numerous
volumes. In case you ever need to deal with a "rabbinic will -> halachic
way" argument, this is a useful factoir.)

:> "A snif
:> here and a snif there" is lemaaseh the normal way to do things. Either
:> you accept the concept, or you have to exclude the majority of shu"t
:> from your notion of the halachic process. I would faster conclude your
:> model is wrong.

: nve saw this technique in SA/Tur and primary nos'ei keilim.

But it's all over shu"t. Ad for primary nos'ei keilim, see the Shach YD
96:12 (and Biur haGra 96:9), who say one can use the minority rishonim
on a davar charif as a senif lehaqeil.

You mihgt also want to see the Radvaz (shut III 481) and the Tzitz Eliezer
VI 40:12:10-12 who declare the notion of a prodessional is consumed by
his work (AZ 20a) to be a senif lehaqeil usable in inyanei yichud. (But
only a senif lehaqeil, not a matir.)

As I wrote, your model of how halakhah works has a level of purity that's
elegent. But what you're left with carves the majority of responsa and
poseqim out of the mesorah.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Like a bird, man can reach undreamed-of
micha@aishdas.org        heights as long as he works his wings.
http://www.aishdas.org   But if he relaxes them for but one minute,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      he plummets downward.   - Rav Yisrael Salanter

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 01:48:48PM +1000, Meir Rabi wrote:
: Rashi [Devarim 12:16]explains that we would have considered the blood of a
: Korban that has been disqualified through a permanent blemish and
: subsequently redeemed, to now be permitted for Kosher consumption.
: Why is this so?

I see two Rashis there. The first says that even tough one doesn't have to
do zeriqas hadam, you still can't eat it. BTW, does this imply that the
problem with dam is that it's simply too sacred for people? Kind of like
the way everyone assumes shaatnez is something negative to be avoided,
but bidgei kehunah imply the problem is that it's simply not for chol?

The second Rashi says it doesn't require kisui or that one may use it
lehakhshir zera'im (which is from Chullin 33a too).

The Sifri adds mutar bahana'ah. If so, are you saying that achilah too?

Or perhaps you mean the Sifra Vayiqra 82), who says that dam from
pessulei hamiqdashim is only one issur. Where do you see that that one
issur evaporates with pidyon.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

PS: Research tool was he.wikisource.org , which has a great collection of
linked resources for Tanakh, chazal, and rishonim darshanim / parshanut.

-- 
Micha Berger             With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
micha@aishdas.org        G-d as King of the entire cosmos and all four
http://www.aishdas.org   corners of the world, but sometimes he forgets
Fax: (270) 514-1507      to include himself.     - Rav Yisrael Salanter

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 01:33:12PM -0400, Meir Shinnar wrote:
:> My own read of the Rambam is somewhat similar to yours, but I instead read
:> him as saying that we have a chazaqah that allows us to assume he's a
:> geir -- although we don't really know.
...
:> And therefore if another birur comes along, the chazaqah wouldn't
:> stand. (The chazaqah is already ika rei'usah, our case is "noda shebishvil
:> davar hu misgayeir.)

: The problem with your pshat is the end of the rambam - and the problem
: he is dealing with:
: he concludes that at the end; it was clear to everyone that the
: conversions of neshe shlomo and shimshon were insincere -they were
: only megayer to get married and they never had any intention of
: keeping the mitzvot, and they  didn't keep the mitzvot  as he says, -
: af al pi shenigla sodan.

I find the Rambam quite clear the reverse, that we conclude "ube'isuran
omedin" (IB 13:16, a/k/a 13). Rather, Shimshon and Shelomo erred thinking
that they were geirim kesheirim who later returned to their previous AZ
(halakhah 17/14). The only way I see avoiding a setirah in the Rambam is
if you take the first halakhah as describing the status of the women, and
the second as describing why the husbands did what they did -- in error.

: Why could they keep them? because once converted, even though
: dishonestly (nigla sodan), - meachar shetaval hare ze yisrael...

But 17 (or 14) is about a geir shechazar. One we believe never left is 16
(13). How we know when to invoke 16's "shehokhiach sofan al techilasan"
and when we invoke 17's "afilu chazar ve'oveid AZ" is a difficult metzi'us
all. So difficult, even Shelomo's chokhmah erred in it.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A sick person never rejects a healing procedure
micha@aishdas.org        as "unbefitting." Why, then, do we care what
http://www.aishdas.org   other people think when dealing with spiritual
Fax: (270) 514-1507      matters?              - Rav Yisrael Salanter


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