Avodah Mailing List

Volume 25: Number 408

Mon, 08 Dec 2008

• 1. Re: Questions as a Result of the Flatbush Lakewood Shabbos (Harry Maryles)
• 2. menorah on a plane (Eli Turkel)
• 3. Re: R' Akiva (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 4. Re: R' Akiva (Moshe Y. Gluck)
• 5. Re: Questions as a Result of the Flatbush Lakewood Shabbos (Harry Maryles)
• 6. Questions as a Result of the Flatbush Lakewood Shabbos (Cantor Wolberg)
• 7. Re: Questions as a Result of the Flatbush Lakewood Shabbos (Gershon Dubin)
• 8. Questions as a Result of the Flatbush Lakewood (Prof. Levine)
• 9. Re: Questions as a Result of the Flatbush Lakewood Shabbos (Rich, Joel)
• 10. Re: Sephardi-ism: some food for thought (Chana Luntz)

--- On Sun, 12/7/08, Yitzchok Levine <Larry.Lev...@stevens.edu> wrote:

I davened with the Maariv minyan at which the Rosh Yeshiva davened...When it came to Shemoneh Esrei, it took the Rosh Yeshiva a long time to daven. 

From The Mussar Movement, Volume I, part 2, pages 224 - 225.

R. Israel?... When he prayed with a congregation that would wait for him to finish, ...he would be among the first, "so as not to burden the public

I am not in anyway trying to disparage this Rosh Yeshiva. Any constructive insight you can supply will be appreciated.
?
====================================================
?
Yuhara???
?
I don't want to cast any aspersions on him either but I can think of no
better model of Bein Adam L'Chavero than R'? Yisroel Salanter. I'm sure his
level of Yiras Shamyim was as good as this RY's is. But?RYS nevertheless
put people first. This RY OTOH put his own Frumkeit first.? 
?
IIRC one need not wait for a RY visiting your Shul to finish his Shemonah
Esreh before Shatz begins Chazras HaShatz or - in the case of Maariv -
Kaddish. In fact I believe that?the Shatz?need not even wait for the Rav of
the Shul if he takes too long. If this RY would have?tol the Shatz?not to
wait for him, I'd have a lot more respect for his frumkeit.
?
HM

Want Emes and Emunah in your life? 

Try this: http://haemtza.blogspot.com/




      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avod
ah-aishdas.org/attachments/20081207/d8fea5f2/attachment-0001.htm>

According to the psak of R' Yosef Sholom Elyashiv one should not light
a Menorah on a train, or airplane, even if permitted to do so by the
service staff.
Kovetz Mevakshei Torah Kislev 5756 205:5, Halichos Yosef 677:1

-- 
Eli Turkel

Cantor Wolberg wrote:
> We are told that it was once revealed to one of the Sages in
> a dream how to spell the name Akiva from the pasuk "or zarua
> latzadik ul'yishrei lev simcha" from Psalm 97. The last
> letter of Or ends with a reish which stands for Rebbe, ...

R' Micha Berger wrote:
> In the Y-mi the spelling is (usually? always?) with a hei.
> However, straight grammar... Aqiva is an Aramaic variant
> of "Ya'aqov". Aramaic uses alef for the mater lexionis of a
> final qamatz. A hei would be Hebrew.
> And straight history.... The Y-mi was closer in date and
> geography to Rabbi Aqivah. Their spelling is more likely to
> reflect the same culture as R' Aqivah himself.

A personal note: During my Y.U. days, I had not just one, but several
questions about my Hebrew name. I've unfortunately forgotten which rav I
asked, but it was almost certainly either rabbis Besdin, Siff, or possibly
Fulda. (If you knew YU in the '70s and don't know those names, it's because
you weren't in JSS.) Anyway, whoever it was told me to spell it with a heh
at the end, and I have done so ever since.

I had long known of the idea of taking the last letter of each word from
that pasuk, but I never gave it any more significance than a cute gematria.
If there is actually a medrash or other source which mentions a dream as
the source for a correct spelling, I'd love to know where it is.

I asked *why* to use the heh, and his answer was simply that it is "more
Hebrew". I figured he was referring to the "final kamatz" described by RMB.
That's good enough right there, but RMB's additional info about the Gemara
Yerushalmi and the historical dating is very welcome news. Thanks!

Akiva Miller

____________________________________________________________
TOP Chart Ringtones
Get top ringtones on your cell phone. Click here now!
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/
u4MuScMwqumVFeopT8k2Z7SCXoWAcruJGorqNYyGKigr0fJwilMTI/

> On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 07:32:55AM -0500, Cantor Wolberg wrote:
> : It's brought down that there was a question how to spell Rabbi Akiva's
> : name. Do you spell it with an aleph at the end or with a hay at the end?
> In
> : the gemara it is spelled ayin, kuf, yud, veis, aleph....
R' MB: 
> In the Y-mi the spelling is (usually? always?) with a hei.

IIRC, the Shaalos Uteshuvos Min Hashamayim also (in a Teshuvah) spells it with a Hei.

KT,
MYG

--- On Sun, 12/7/08, T6...@aol.com <T6...@aol.com> wrote:

In a message dated 12/7/2008, R' Yitzchok Levine writes: 


RLL:? >> When it came to Shemoneh Esrei, it took the Rosh Yeshiva a long time to daven.?<<
?
TK:???He probably concentrates on his own tefilla to the extent that he was
not aware that others were waiting for him.? And maybe it does some baale
batim good just once in a while to see a person take his time to say each
and every word with care.? 
?
===================================
?
What does this say about R. Yisroel Salanter who hurried his Teffila so he wouldn't be a Tircha D'Tzibura?
?
HM

Want Emes and Emunah in your life? 

Try this: http://haemtza.blogspot.com/




      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avod
ah-aishdas.org/attachments/20081208/0e04316d/attachment-0001.htm>

"One of the Roshei Yeshiva eloquently spoke about the years that
Yaakov spent studying in the yeshiva of Shem V'Ever. (As we all know,
these years are not mentioned openly in the Chumash.) However, he
failed to make any mention that the Torah tells us in considerable
detail how Yaakov worked diligently for Lavan for 20 years. It would
seem to me that years of work in order to support a family are
considered of some importance, given that the Torah mentions them."

It would seem that was exactly why he spoke about the years that Yaakov
spent studying in the Shem V'Ever Yeshiva -- because it is NOT in the  
Torah.
Therefore, we need to hear about it. We already know about the details  
of Yaakov
working for Lavan, therefore he didn't have to expand on that.

"I davened with the Maariv minyan at which the Rosh Yeshiva davened.
(This Shtiebel has a practice of making several minyanim for Maariv
on Motzoei Shabbos.) When it came to Shemoneh Esrei, it took the Rosh
Yeshiva a long time to daven. Indeed, the Rov of the shul as well as
all of the others who davened with this minyan finished well before
the Rosh Yeshiva and therefore had to wait a good few minutes for the
Rosh Yeshiva to finish. In light of the piece below, I can only
wonder if what he did was appropriate.:

It might very well be when the R"Y davens privately, his shemoneh esrei
would take twice as long as it did last Shabbos. Secondly, the man is
not looking around while davening and not being too conscious of his
surroundings, it seems unfair to attribute inappropriateness to him. Dan
l'chaf z'chus also refers to a Rosh Yeshiva.
ri
P.S. I must say that I was embarrassed to see a R"Y criticized publicly.





  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avod
ah-aishdas.org/attachments/20081208/275be948/attachment-0001.htm>

<<And maybe it does some baale batim good just once in a while to see
a person take his time to say each and every word with care.  And in the
words of the famous Milton poem, "They also serve, who only stand and
wait."	They watched the Rosh Yeshiva daven and they waited for him to
finish -- that is kovod haTorah.>>

I can't speak to the Milton quote, but the Mishna Berura (124:13)says
essentially the same thing;  those who finish sooner are in error and they
should therefore wait for the one person davening properly.

Gershon
gershon.du...@juno.com

Please note: message attached



____________________________________________________________
Free information on becoming a Graphic Designer. Click Now!
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/
PnY6rw3huIRY4iLzDbIBYzIpJQuBEms9HyfLrdaN5QN8uZkzWEOgy/

At 06:06 AM 12/8/2008, you wrote:
>Yaaqov was punished for not leaving a message home while at Lavan's. He
>was away at Yeshivas Eiver for 14 years, and at Lavan's for another 22.
>Note that Yoseif didn't contact him for 22 years, the same length of
>time as his time at Lavan. Not contacting Yitzchaq and Rivqa while
>learning appears to be more justifiable.
>
>It would seem that the importance isn't comparable. Also, the first 14
>of the 22 years weren't for money.

I ams sure that here is typo in the above, since the Chumash openly 
says that Yaakov was with Lavan for 20 years. (Bereishis 31:38)

I fail to see what difference it makes that Yaakov worked for money 
or not for money. The point I tried to make was that he did work in 
Lavan's house for 20 years. In addition, he continued working after 
he left Lavan's house.

Does not the fact that the Torah makes no mention of Yaakov learning 
in yeshiva telling? If these years were more important, then I would 
have expected the Torah to mention Yaakov's learning explicitly. I am 
sure there is an answer, but I do not know it.

YL
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avod
ah-aishdas.org/attachments/20081208/dcc4aeda/attachment-0001.htm>

<<And maybe it does some baale batim good just once in a while to see a
person take his time to say each and every word with care.  And in the
words of the famous Milton poem, "They also serve, who only stand and
wait."  They watched the Rosh Yeshiva daven and they waited for him to
finish -- that is kovod haTorah.>>

I can't speak to the Milton quote, but the Mishna Berura (124:13)says
essentially the same thing;  those who finish sooner are in error and
they should therefore wait for the one person davening properly.

Gershon
gershon.du...@juno.com

======================================
IIRC the Milton quote has a totally different meaning (as only a former
benchwarmer can understand). I'm pretty sure that the logical conclusion
of the 2nd paragraph is that whoever davens longer is "more better"
davening, is not necessarily so.

KT
Joel Rich
THIS MESSAGE IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE USE OF THE 
ADDRESSEE.  IT MAY CONTAIN PRIVILEGED OR CONFIDENTIAL 
INFORMATION THAT IS EXEMPT FROM DISCLOSURE.  Dissemination, 
distribution or copying of this message by anyone other than the addressee is 
strictly prohibited.  If you received this message in error, please notify us 
immediately by replying: "Received in error" and delete the message.  
Thank you.

RMB writes:

> IOW, the Sepharadim are complaining that the typical Ashk
> methodology is different than theirs. More development of one 
> idea and its justifications than of the list of shitos.

Well it is more than that, because, stepping back from the
Askenazi/Sephardi divide, the question really becomes - to what extent
is it appropriate to ignore what has previously been said.  The argument
for those who list shitos is that we stand on the shoulders of giants,
so how can we not take what they say into account - and so even if you
want to disagree based on lomdus, it is important to grapple with those
of your forebears and contemporaries who appear to say differently (or
to find comfort from those that disagree).

Hence as you can see the two do not need to be mutually exclusive - you
could easily do both, a survey of what has previously been said and the
lomdus.  BUT, and here is where the question really bites, if in fact
doing a survey of what has been said would inhibit the lomdus, what does
that say about the lomdus?  And if certain poskim do not feel the need
to cite what various achronim have said can we concluded that that is
because they feel that they are on the same level and free to disagree -
so it doesn't really matter what these achronim have said?  Whereas
others more willing to cite have a greater respect/deference for those
who may be achronim, but are still from earlier generations or
recognised as great in Torah.

I also, as I keep repeating, am not convinced, I confess, about the
Sephardi/Ashkenazi divide on this.  A number of Ashkenazi poskim cite
extensively.  You might perhaps want to argue that somebody like Rav
Henkin in Bnei Banim, who also cites quite a bit, while being Ashkenazi,
perhaps has been influenced by living in Israel and ROY.  And perhaps
similarly, although from a previous generation,  read the Tzitz Eliezer,
- I am thinking for example of his psak on abortion, - he cites very
extensively, numbers of achronim, Sephardim as well as Ashkenazim, in
total contrast to Rav Moshe, who cites the Rambam and Rashi and that is
about it.  So unless you want to say that he too was influenced by the
mileu, I don't think you can generalise like that (and I have already
said that the Ben Ish Hai strikes me as more sevara and less citation
based). 

In some way the contrasting abortion teshuvos are good ones to look at
for the purpose of this discussion.  Rav Moshe is convinced that
abortion is murder, and appears to see no reason to even cite, much less
discuss, the weight of achronic opinion which appears to hold
differently.  The Tzitz Eliezer in contrast bases his psak very much on
the weight of achronic opinion on the subject, and hence does indeed
cite extensively.  But while you can argue that, at least on this point,
the Tzitz Eliezer is in many ways a survey, that is because there is so
much lomdus cited in the many achronim he cites, that he does not feel
the need to add.  When faced with a much newer shiala (such as whether a
woman can go ahead with a pregnancy even if it threatens her life) there
is more lomdus - I presume because there is less precedent.

> : Not quite sure how you get to a sfek sfeka, but that
> usually leads to
> : greater leniency, not greater strictness.
> 
> I also await RSZ's explanation, he went faster than I followed.
> 
> However, the second part of your sentence isn't necessarily true.
> 
> Say you have a din derabbanan. Safeiq derabbanan lehaqeil. If
> you have a second safeiq breaking the tzad heter on the first 
> one, you would have a sefeiq sefeiqa lechumera.
> 
> Until RSZ fills me in, I don't know if my example applies to
> what he's describing.

I don't think this is usually what is meant by a sfek sfeka (although I
do agree that even a classic sfek sfeka can lead to a greater
strictness, which is why I carefully used the word *usually*).

Perhaps I am too influenced by ROY (although as we know, if he says
something there is always *a lot* to back it up in terms of earlier
citations).  I see somebody on this list referred us to an overview of
the klalei hora'ah by R' Berkovits.  Rav Ovadiah too has a list of kalei
hora'ah in the back of the first volume of Yacheve Daat - and while the
first of these is klalei safeka d'orisa (divided into four sub
principles) the second is klalei sfek sfeka - this time divided into 14
sub-principles (and note this is just by reference to Yacheve Daat).  I
confess that without reading the underlying teshuvos to which the
sub-principles refer, these, to my mind, come across as very cryptic -
but I think it gives a flavour of the extent to which the sfek sfaka
plays an important role in the way that ROY poskens.  In these teshuvos
there is a lot of discussion about what is a true sfek sfeka (do we hold
like a certain tosphos that holds that one can only have a genuine sfek
sfeka if it can be reversed, for example), can you have a sfek sfeka in
relation to a mitzvas aseh, or only a lo ta'aseh?  Do the sfekos need to
be equivalent, or only a kol shehu?  Differences in sfek sfeka in
relation to metzius versus halacha etc etc.

And of course the theme that seems to run throughout his discussions -
is the principle that a safek d'orita l'chumra a principle that is
itself d'rabbanan or is d'orita? (of course if it is d'rabbanan, the
mechanism vis a vis the safek sfeka is pretty straightforward, because
the first safek turns the situation from a d'orisa to a d'rabbanan, and
hence the second safek you follow the principle safek d'rabbanan l'kula
- whereas if safek d'orisa l'chumra is a principle from the Torah, then
this straightforward mechanism does not work).  As you can see from the
flavour of this, however, a safek sfeka is generally about getting to a
kula.

And I confess that it seems to me that most of the piskei halacha of ROY
that I would consider to be inovative involve sfekos and the sfek sfeka.
Ie in my view (and I know we keep getting this charge that he merely
lists opinions for and against and decides accordingly) it is the way he
works with and analyses the various sfekos that gets you to your
inovative psak.  If you start with the principle that if you have two
different forms of safek even in a din d'orita you will end up with the
thing being mutar (as I say, you have to also look at his analysis of
this to see how he gets to that), then the creativity and lomdus comes
in the analysis of what constitutes the sfekos which then allow him to
permit.  The three teshuvos which are at the top of my mind are: a) the
one about permitting someone Sephardi to eat at a typical Israeli hotel
where the food is only not bishul akum to Ashkenazi standards; b) the
one permitting a fellow who was machpid about glatt meat (as ROY holds
he is required to be al pi din as a Sephardi) to eat at the simcha of a
relative who was not so machpid (kovod habrios concerns being
important); and c) the teshuva permitting a pidyon haben to go ahead
despite the fact that the girl had previously had an abortion before she
was frum, so as not to tell the husband about that and perhaps destroy
the shalom bayis.
 
In a number of cases one does almost get the impression that he uses his
encyclopedic knowledge to generate sfakos in order to allow room to be
makil in situations where there are other halachic concerns to
necessitate this.  But it is not that he is not being mevarer the din,
although were the other pressing concerns not there, it is clear that he
would not necessarily be so keen on the shoel relying upon the heter.
Ie he is very explicit about the concerns such as kovod habriyos and
shalom bayis which are pulling the other way and perhaps making it
desirable that there be a safek sfeka in the din so as to make the
action fundamentally mutar.

> One thing about the MB, he tends to jump to laws of safeiq
> rather than trying to be mevareir the din far faster than 
> most other sefarim.

Well this is the odd thing of course.  The MB seems to be being accused
of what is here being described as being "typically Sephardi" - first
just listing shitos, and then going to the laws of safek. And yet it is
hard to think of somebody more Ashkenazi than the MB.  And it seems to
me that one can take the approach (ie ROY's approach) that the correct
way to be mevareir the din is to use the laws of safek.  Is this
specifically Sephardi?  I confess that if you read all of the sources
that ROY cites, one does not get the impression that it is, as he cites
many many others who use these principles, many many of them Ashkenazi.
The question is more when and how, and what are the sfekos identified.

RMB wrote a lot more on other things I have said - maybe I will have a
chance to discuss another time.
> 
> Tir'u baTov!
> -Micha

Regards

Chana



------------------------------


Avodah mailing list
Avo...@lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org


End of Avodah Digest, Vol 25, Issue 408
***************************************

Send Avodah mailing list submissions to
	avodah@lists.aishdas.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	avodah-request@lists.aishdas.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
	avodah-owner@lists.aishdas.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Avodah digest..."