Avodah Mailing List

Volume 26: Number 212

Thu, 29 Oct 2009

• 1. children at a wedding (Eli Turkel)
• 2. Children at a wedding (Prof. Levine)
• 3. Question (Richard Wolberg)
• 4. mei marom (Eli Turkel)
• 5. Re: Pizza - is it Pashtida? (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 6. Children at a Wedding (Prof. Levine)
• 7. Re: mei marom (Zev Sero)
• 8. Re: Children at a Wedding (Zev Sero)
• 9. Re: Children at a Wedding (Ben Waxman)
• 10. Re: Children at a Wedding (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: Children at a wedding (Ilana Sober Elzufon)
• 12. The plot against the Nasi (L Reich)
• 13. Re: [Areivim] Halacha of speeding/Jewish ethics curriculum de velopment help (Micha Berger)
• 14. Re: [Areivim] Halacha of speeding/Jewish ethics curriculum de velopment help (Rich, Joel)
• 15. dinosaurs (Saul.Z.New...@kp.org)
• 16. Re: dinosaurs (Harry Maryles)
• 17. Re: [Areivim] Halacha of speeding/Jewish ethicscurriculum de velopment help (rabbirichwolpoe@gmail.com)
• 18. open on shabbos (Saul.Z.New...@kp.org)

See Shut. Dvar Yehoshua 2:113 second paragraph>>

Dovid Kaye kindly sent to me the teshuva and it only applies
to the mother getting remarried and not the father

-- 
Eli Turkel

At 03:50 PM 10/28/2009, Eli Turkel wrote:

>A relative of  mine is getting married for a second time after a divorce.
>One rabbi advised  the grown children not to attend the chupah ceremony but
>only
>come to the  dinner afterwards
>
>Is this custom mentioned by  poskim?

Rav Avigdor Miller told me that neither my children not my wife's (to 
be) children should be at the chupah when we got married. After the 
Chupah the children participated in the Seudah and other festivities.

Yitzchok Levine 
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R' Micha wrote:
I suggested that it's because the first sin, regardless of its content,
showed humanity that sin is possible. Naaseh lo keheter doesn't
get started until there is a first occurance. And so, the YhR was
internalized.   The first murder lacks that element.


Your response sounds logical but there is only one problem with that.
The first sin was bein adam laMakom.
The sin of murder was bein adam l'chaveiro.
So there are two categories of sin here.
Therefore, since murder was the first sin of the second category, your
argument is not as strong.

ri

<<I don't see how this is relevant, though.  His Olam Haba was not the
result of teshuvah, but rather a reward from RChbT for helping him
("tzadik gozer, veHKBH mekayem").  IOW he got it despite his sins,
not because they had been wiped away>>

Rabbi Yehuda haNasi said said some get their olam haba after many years
and some get it immediately.
RYBS assumes that means the hirhur teshuva that the executioner did and
that is obviously simple pshat. The executioner jumped into the fire as a sign
of his teshuva. Had he just saved RChbT  and returned to his sins he would
have been entitled to nothing special except for one mitzvah against many sins

-- 
Eli Turkel

R' Micha Berger wrote:
> I think current norms simply didn't catch up with the fact that
> the basis of the pesaq of saying mezonos on one slice was based
> on a reality that since changed. Few people snack on pizza today
> compared to in the 50s and 60s.

We could probably have a long discussion on what the current norms are, and what realities have changed, if any.

My feeling is that the biggest change (in these inyanim) relates not to
what people consider a snack, or what they consider a meal. Quite the
contrary. I think the biggest change is that nowadays people tend not to
bother even thinking about whether the food they are are eating is a snack
or a meal.

Especially when people are alone, they often eat whenever it is convenient,
and as much or as little as they're in the mood for, with little regard for
whether or not it is a "meal". Actually, I suppose this could apply to
groups too: I remember a job I once had, where if there was a staff meeting
called for anywhere between 11 and 3, they would order pizza (with assorted
toppings) for the staff. I occassionally paid attention, and I found little
consistency in regard to whether or not people would also have lunch that
day. Some would, some wouldn't. I never actually did this, but I often felt
that *IF* I'd ask them "Are you having this as a lunch or a snack?" most
would have to think before answering, and that I'd get a wide variety of
answers, including things like, "It's a snack, and I'll have another snack
later" or similar things.

> Few people snack on pizza today compared to in the 50s and 60s.

I have no idea whether or not I agree with this. It's not unusual for me to
be eating pizza on a Motzaei Shabbos while sitting at the computer reading
Avodah Digest. Is that a meal or a snack? I really don't know. My brain
will give a predictable answer after figuring out how-many-slices and
what-else-is-there, but I have no idea what answer my heart and stomach
would give.

If it is true that I rarely snack on pizza today compared to in the 60s, it
is because nowadays I would never bother to bake a pizza or go to a pizza
shop unless it was mealtime and I was hungry. But in the 60s I wasn't
kosher yet, and if I was out shopping, snack pizza was an easy option. Come
to think of it, snack pizza was an easy option when I was zocheh to live in
Yerushalayim, too.

Like I said in the first paragraph, this could be a long discussion.
Personally, I think the 1-slice vs. 3-slice rule is as good a way to
resolve the question as it ever was. Provided we hold Pashtida to be Pas
Habaa B'kisnin, of course!

Akiva Miller

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At 03:50 PM 10/28/2009, Rn Katz wrote:
>(btw when my husband further asked him if it made a difference whether  the
>parents were widowed or divorced, he said, "Divorced?  Who ever got
>divorced?")


The S'redei Aish for one.  And, IIRC, the Beis HaLevi, but I am not
100% sure of this.

True, divorce was rare, but it did occur. Of course, divorce was rear 
even in gentile society at this time.

YL


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Eli Turkel wrote:
>> I don't see how this is relevant, though.  His Olam Haba was not the
>> result of teshuvah, but rather a reward from RChbT for helping him
>> ("tzadik gozer, veHKBH mekayem").  IOW he got it despite his sins,
>> not because they had been wiped away>>

> Rabbi Yehuda haNasi said said some get their olam haba after many years
> and some get it immediately.

There are three stories about which Rebbi said this.  One was a goy,
not necessarily a rasha, who died in order to save the Jews, and who
circumcised himself at the last minute.  There's no indication that
he did teshuvah, or even had anything from which to do teshuvah.
Technically he wasn't a ger, because there was no beit din, and no
tevillah or kabalat hamitzvot, but a bat-kol announced that he would
go straight to olam haba, and Rebbi commented "yesh koneh olamo
besha'ah achat".  The second story is that of Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya,
who got his OHB "besha'ah achat" through teshuvah.  And the third story
is the executioner of RChbT, who got it without either doing teshuvah
or attempting to convert, but simply through the gift of a tzadik.
I don't see how you can mix the stories.


> RYBS assumes that means the hirhur teshuva that the executioner did
> and that is obviously simple pshat.

Really?  It's not at all obvious to me.  Where do you see that he
did any kind of teshuvah?  What words in the gemara indicate any
such thing?


> The executioner jumped into the fire as a sign of his teshuva.

Where do you see that?  The most obvious reason he jumped in is to
save himself from being tortured to death for his "crime".


> Had he just saved RChbT  and returned to his sins he would
> have been entitled to nothing special except for one mitzvah against
> many sins

And what would have been with RChbT's promise?  It seems clear to me
that this guy had a free pass to OHB, and if he could have persuaded
the Romans not to kill him he could have gone on to do as many averot
as he liked, and when he died all he would have had to do was invoke
RChbT's name and demand payment.  What could he have been told?  An
oath is an oath.


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
z...@sero.name                 eventually run out of other people?s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher

Prof. Levine wrote:

> True, divorce was rare, but it did occur. Of course, divorce was rear 
> even in gentile society at this time.

Among goyim divorce didn't exist at all.  They weren't allowed it.
But among yidden it certainly did exist, and it wasn't all that rare.
Just look at the volume of teshuvot about gittin; that tells us how
many problematic gittin there were.  Now extrapolate from that how
many *un*problematic gittin there must have been, which didn't raise
any she'elot and didn't require any teshuvot.  There were also plenty
of men who simply left their wives and disappeared, thus generating
a plethora of teshuvot about heter agunah.  Of course many people
didn't live long enough to get divorced.


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
z...@sero.name                 eventually run out of other people?s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher

Some were, some weren't. Protestants could and Catholics who lived in the 
US/non-Catholic countries could get a divorce.

Ben
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Zev Sero" <z...@sero.name>


Among goyim divorce didn't exist at all.  They weren't allowed it.

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 09:25:45AM +0200, Ben Waxman wrote:
: Some were, some weren't. Protestants could and Catholics who lived in the 
: US/non-Catholic countries could get a divorce.

Except that we're talking about what was done in "the old country",
and what was established minhag. Sepharadim and Yekkes come from lands
where the dominant religion allowed divorce. Most Ashkenazim come from
countries that were either Catholic or Russian Orthodox. Russian Orthodoxy
has divorce, according to http://www.oca.org/QA.asp?ID=139&;SID=3 . And in
Poland, where Catholicism held sway, we were granted strong autonomy --
including divorce.

In short, nearly all of us come from communities where divorce was a
possibility. Which means that it was possible to have a minhag about
whether children attend their parents' remarriage.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "I hear, then I forget; I see, then I remember;
mi...@aishdas.org        I do, then I understand." - Confucius
http://www.aishdas.org   "Hearing doesn't compare to seeing." - Mechilta
Fax: (270) 514-1507      "We will do and we will listen." - Israelites

My daughters (ages 9 and 11 at the time) were at the chupah when I
remarried, two years after their father died. But my memories of all the
wedding preparations are such a blur that I don't even remember if we asked
a specific she'elah about this, although I think we did and were told that
the minhag is non-binding and can be adjusted to circumstances. On a
practical level, I think leaving them out would have been much more
stressful, and detracted from everyone's simcha (especially theirs),
significantly more than having them present. Judging from the photos, they
look like they were enjoying themselves (practical hint: we had them invite
several of their own friends).

I think there is a bittersweet element at any wedding under these
circumstances. Certainly there were many people at my second wedding who
knew my first husband - including his parents and his entire family, as well
as the many friends and neighbours all three of us had in common. And for
that matter, including my second husband, who was one of his closest
friends.

- Ilana
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The Talmud Bavli at the end of Horayos (13b) relates a remarkable tale. Two Tanoim, R' Nosson and R' Meir were unhappy with
the way the Nasi, Rabbon Shimon ben Gamliel, conducted his post (they
though him arrogant) and plotted to oust him. The plot was discovered and
resulted in the plotters being censured by being demoted. R' Nosson was
from then on referred to as "Yesh Omrim" (an opinion says) and R' Meir as
"Acherim" (others). (It is probably due to this that R' Nosson although
quoted by name in hundreds of Brysos, is very rarely mentioned in
Mishnayos, which were edited by Rabbon Shimon ben Gamliel's son, R Yehudah
Hanossi.)

May I draw your attention to an (probably unintended) irony. Our Siddur includes a collection of Brysos starting "Pitum
Haktores" relating to the preparation of incense used in the Beis Hamikdosh. It included a piece by Rabbon Shimon ben Gamliel.
Surprisingly this piece is sandwiched between two pieces by his arch rival, R' Nosson. 

Elozor Reich, Manchester
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On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 09:56:41PM -0400, Rich, R Joel wrote:
: WADR I understand R'MB's point - but while they may have simply "known"
: what is right, imho it is because they resonated to some underlying
: ratzon hashem. Are arguing that the underlying ratzon hashem is not
: reproducible by any algorithm (i.e. it is at some level random)? ...

Actually, I think you did miss R' Moshe Koppel's point, or my version
thereof. At least, that's what it implied by that parenthetic comment.
His whole thesis is that intelligence and Torah are neither algorithmic
NOR random. Yes, they went beyond anything we can do with an algorithm,
but that doesn't mean that "it is at some level random".

In the Artificial Intelligence debates, RMKoppel's position is that
intelligence can't be done in a computer program -- it's something more
than an algorithm.

His book Metahalakhah has a section using information theory to prove
that such a region exists, that there is a third choice. There are
sequences of output that can be described by a program shorter than
themselves for any subset of the data, but the program grows (at a
slower rate) as the output set does. So, it's not an algorithm as
a full algorithm describing the infinite set of possible outputs
would be infinite as well. And it's not random, because it can be
described by something shorter than the sequence of output itself. See
http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2008/01/neither-random-nor-predetermined.s
html
for a less short summary.

And so, when on Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 05:28:30PM -0400, Rich, R Joel wrote:
: Semantics perhaps, I would say they used one subconsciously that they
: could/did not articulate.

It's not just semantics. They didn't use an algorithm, they used
something far richer -- intelligence.

There is also a little overstating going on. It's not that we now
switched to algorithms for pesaq. Rather, we rely on more algorithm
than in the past. It's not all-or-nothing, but rather an increasing
reliance on algorithm as the feel for the material deminishes.

This fusion of algorithm and shiqul hadaas (weighing pros and cons) is
what I labeled a "heuristic" in my discussions with RRW. (And at this
point we jump from my understanding of RMK's position to discussing
my own extension beyond his ideas, based on how the thinking in shu"t
looks to me.) I was thinking of the Artificial Intelligence concept of
having rules for coming up with any "good enough" answer when finding the
ideal solution is impractical (eg could be done but would take too long)
or impossible.

A couple of minutes after that second email, at 05:30:50PM -0400,
Rich, R Joel replied to my post:
:> What I see is that the system becomes ever simpler and more rigid,
:> as more dinim transition from the looser "sounds right" to rules. I
:> would want you to produce evidence that the algorithm doesn't actually
:> describe halakhah pesuqah as it exists nor then use that to produce a
:> new pesaq still within the range of valid machloqes.

: Listen to any of the YUTORAH smicha/practical halacha series and you
: will invariably find something like "normally we would say the halacha is
: x, but here we are choshesh for the deiah of Y" (even though "normally"
: we wouldn't and even though no reason is given as to why we are here)

For the above reason, it's not a counter-example.

The algorithm rules out some possibilities outright. But in many cases,
most of the ones requiring a moreh hora'ah, the algorithm only defines
weightings, it only goes as far as giving material for someone to apply
shiqul hadaas. And therefore if the effort or price isn't too high, or the
consequences of doing the wrong thing are major, intelligence (rather
than algorithm) takes over.


On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 03:06:37PM +0000, RRW rabbirichwol...@gmail.com
added the tangent:
: Tangentially, what sefarim would be the bests text for teaching the
: language of Poskim"?

A historical survey of Shu"t.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You will never "find" time for anything.
mi...@aishdas.org        If you want time, you must make it.
http://www.aishdas.org                     - Charles Buxton
Fax: (270) 514-1507

 


On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 09:56:41PM -0400, Rich, R Joel wrote:
: WADR I understand R'MB's point - but while they may have simply "known"
: what is right, imho it is because they resonated to some underlying
: ratzon hashem. Are arguing that the underlying ratzon hashem is not
: reproducible by any algorithm (i.e. it is at some level random)? ...

Actually, I think you did miss R' Moshe Koppel's point, or my version thereof. At least, that's what it implied by that parenthetic comment.
His whole thesis is that intelligence and Torah are neither algorithmic NOR
random. Yes, they went beyond anything we can do with an algorithm, but
that doesn't mean that "it is at some level random".

In the Artificial Intelligence debates, RMKoppel's position is that intelligence can't be done in a computer program -- it's something more than an algorithm.
===============================================
Funny, right after I wrote the post I regretted using the word random instead of arbitrary.

In any event, aiui you are positing that chazal's " intelligence" as iiuc
you call it later, is not uniquely reproducible by rational reasoning based
on the written and oral law and rules given at sinai.  If so, we can
conclude the discussion.

KT
Joel Rich
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http://www.beyondbt.com/2009/10/28/dealing-with-a-rebbes-com
ments-about-dinosaurs/

what would you tell the BT  how to handle  , when his kid's  rebbe says 
dinosaurs didnt exist......


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--- On Thu, 10/29/09, Saul.Z.New...@kp.org <Saul.Z.New...@kp.org> wrote:


http://www.beyondbt.com/2009/10/28/dealing-with-a-rebbes-com
ments-about-dinosaurs/ 

what would you tell the BT ?how to handle ?, when his kid's ?rebbe says ?dinosaurs didnt exist......
--------------------------------------------
?
I wrote a post about it yesterday. It has thus far generated 121 comments. The discussion going on there is excellent.
?
HM

Want Emes and Emunah in your life? 

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




      
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> RRW rabbirichwol...@gmail.com
> added the tangent:
>: Tangentially, what sefarim would be the bests text for teaching the
>: language of Poskim"?

> A historical survey of Shu"t.
> -Micha

Agreed! That would be along the lines of my own answer.

Here are a few supplements to the above

Beth Yosef and AhS who use methodology

Collections of Shu"T on the SA itself EG
1 Shaarei Teshuva, which is BH printed in the MB
2 corresponding Pischei Teshuva on YD etc.
3 the monumental and encyclopedic Darchei Teshuva on YD
-----------------


I recommend Rif-Rosh-Ran and maybe Mordechai, Yam shell Shlomoh etc.

+++++++++++++++

RE: heuristics, I kinda agree that human intelligence factors into the mix

What I advocate [at least] to be more objective is to make an algorithm of
what sources to research. IOW Create a hierarchy of authoritative sources

EG
For issur v'heter that might look like

Toras habbayis
Tur BY Darchei Moshe
SA-Rema shach + Taz

Must be seen first

For Hilchos Shabbos it might look like

Tur BY Darchei Moshe
SA-MB
Chayei Adam
Shemiras Shabbos kehilchessa

For Choshen Mishpat
Maybe
SA-Rema SMA Schach
Ketzos and or Nesivos

If a poseiq chooses his own set of heirarchy, let him declare it

EG A Sephardi might choose Rif-Rambam-BY-SA-Pri Chadash

KT
RRW
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/19932/

the irony here is that  a private business has to compete against  a large 
market , that can carry an OU on its baked goods  while open on shabbos. 
He, in order to do the same, has to lose his O hashgacha ....what other 
option did he have?


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