Avodah Mailing List

Volume 27: Number 82

Tue, 23 Mar 2010

• 1. Sifsei Chaim: How to fulfill sipur yetzias Mitzrayim (Yitzchak Schaffer)
• 2. Re: Selling whiskey/bourbon (Zev Sero)
• 3. Re: popcorn (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 4. Re: Ratzuy l'Rov (Hankman)
• 5. Re: Ratzuy l'Rov (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: popcorn (Raz Haramati)
• 7. Re: popcorn (rabbirichwol...@gmail.com)
• 8. Re: popcorn (David Riceman)
• 9. Re: Selling bourbon before pesach (rabbirichwol...@gmail.com)
• 10. Re: Selling whiskey/bourbon (rabbirichwol...@gmail.com)
• 11. Democracy and the Beit Din (Michael Makovi)
• 12. kitniyot (Eli Turkel)
• 13. Re: Democracy and the Beit Din (rabbirichwol...@gmail.com)
• 14. Re: popcorn (Zev Sero)
• 15. Re: kitniyot (Zev Sero)
• 16. Re: Selling bourbon before pesach (Ben Waxman)

How to fulfill the mitzvah of Sipur Yetzi?as Mitzrayim
Rabbi Chaim Friedlander
Published in Sifsei Chaim, Mo?adim, vol. 2
Translated by Yitzchak Schaffer

As the festival of Pesach approaches, we find ourselves engaged in many 
preparations to greet it, particularly destroying chametz and baking 
matzos. The mitzvah of sipur yetzi?as Mitzrayim, recounting the Exodus 
from Egypt, requires just as much preparation, as it is a mitzvah whose 
goal is heartfelt feeling. It often happens, however, that we do not pay 
it enough attention. Even many who see to it that they delve into the 
Haggadah and its commentaries do not do so in the proper way. They 
principally prepare pilpulim and diyukim, keen inferences, on the text 
of the Haggadah?for example, whether the correct reading is ??? ???? 
????? or ???? ???? ????,? and the like.

Similarly, when they prepare expositions of the content of the Haggadah, 
it is very common to go on at length about the passages at the beginning 
of the Haggadah, which are only an introduction to the sipur itself. 
These are there to explain the parameters of the mitzvah, such as, 
?????? ???? ?????, even if we were all chachamim, wise ... it would be a 
mitzvah for us to recount ... and whoever increases the recounting ... 
and they recounted ... all that night;? and the manner of the obligation 
of recounting?to the four sons; and its proper time??one might think 
from Rosh Chodesh.? But when they reach the the essential story with the 
passage of ?Arami oved avi, a wandering Aramean,? they speed through so 
that they will have enough time to complete the night?s mitzvos before 
chatzos?and it is here that we find the mitzvah to prolong, and not 
regarding the opening sections. As the Rambam writes: ?... one should 
expound from ?Arami oved avi? until he completes the entire section, and 
whoever adds in and draws out the explanations of this passage is 
praiseworthy? (Chametz and Matzah 7:4).

The cause of this incorrect approach and slackening in the fulfillment 
of the mitzvah of sipur is the fact that they do not know the defining 
characteristics of the mitzvah. In order to rectify this, we will need 
to get to know these characteristics: the essence of the mitzvah, and 
its shiur (required quantity).

Continued at
http://yitznewton.org/torah/sipur_yetzias_mitzrayim.html

-- 
Yitzchak Schaffer
Systems Manager
Touro College Libraries
33 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10010
Tel (212) 463-0400 x5230
Fax (212) 627-3197
Email yitzchak.schaf...@tourolib.org

Access Problems? Contact systems.libr...@touro.edu

Tal Moshe Zwecker wrote:
> I may have misunderstood but I think the issue here is that what we have 
> is a taaruvos chametz - a mixture of chametz and other ingredients

But whiskey is *not* a taaroves, it's chametz itself.


> While we certainly do not eat taaruvos chametz on Pesach there are 
> opinions that one who owns taaruvos chametz as opposed to chametz gamur 
> is not transgressing the prohibition of bal yerah and bal yimatzeh and 
> therefore while you cant eat it you wouldnt need to sell it

According to the SA, taaroves chometz can be kept, and benefit may be
had of it, if and only if it's not eaten by normal healthy people.


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

R' David Riceman wrote:
> I think this is a source of a lot of confusion.  "Kitniyos"
> and "legumes" are not synonyms (neither rice nor corn, for
> example, is a legume).

I started a longish post on this, but then I realized that I ought to
verify some basic historical information. Specifically: Were legumes banned
at the same time as the non-chometz grains, or was this ban in two or more
stages? And if it was in stages, what was the sequence?

My guess has been that they were either banned together, or the grains were
banned first. But I would imagine that the legumes were certainly not
banned prior to the grains. If someone is motivated to expand the Pesach
prohibition to other species beyond the Five Grains, it seems to me that
the first expansion would be to include other grains, such as rice and
maize. It's hard for me to imagine why someone would ban legumes while
continuing to allow grains.

To get back to RDR's question, when one says that Ashkenazim don't eat
Kitniyos, I don't take the word "Kitniyos" to be an exhaustive list of what
it avoided. Rather, it is the name of the minhag. Perhaps there was a time
when it was said that Ashkenazim avoid all sorts of grains. But when the
ban was expanded to include legumes, that's when the minhag became referred
to as "Kitniyos" -- not because it describes what is banned, but because it
describes the *least* *obvious* of the things which are banned.

It is an application of the colloquial phrase "needless to say". Banning all grains is so obvious that it does not need to be mentioned.

That's my guess, anyway. Rice is not a species of the kitniyos family. But rice is banned as part of the kitniyos minhag.

Akiva Miller


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R' Micha, I am confused by your response to R'nTK. If her dates and representation of Daas Mikra is correct,
 (" Ester occurred in 482 B.C.E., 478 B.C.E., and 473 B.C.E., long  after Cyrus permitted
Jews to return to Eretz Yisrael (539  B.C.E.) and the Beit Hamikdash
was completed (515 B.C.E.).  (This follows the approach of the Daat Mikra")
then your response ("Esther's son is usually taken to be Darius II, the king who permitted
the completion of the BHMQ after the construction began under Cyrus
was interrupted.
But if what "sounds right" is against the Daas Miqra, then perhaps it
is worth trying to rethink one's mental image...
Or perhaps, it just requires rethinking the return to Israel.") does not
jibe with the Daas Mikra. Clearly Darius II could not yet exist in 515 BCE
according to the Daas Mikra chronology.

What exactly are you saying?


Kol Tuv

Chaim Manaster
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On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 10:25:42AM -0400, Hankman wrote:
: R' Micha, I am confused by your response to R'nTK. If her dates and
: representation of Daas Mikra is correct...

That's where your confusion stems from. RnTK doesn't give dates nor cite
the Daas Miqrah. I cut-n-pasted something from R' Chaim Jachter who did.

RnTK thought that Purim was before Cyrus, who was Achaschveirosh's son.
However, it was Darius who was Achashveirosh's son, placing Purim in the
period between our first attempt to build bayis sheini under Cyrus (which
the Samaritans got stopped) and our second and successful completion of
the bayis.

I suggested therefore that if RnTK finds that Purim occuring during
galus "sounds right", there are two basic possible solutions:

First, her mental image may simply be wrong. It is based on an error WRT
the history, after all.

Or perhaps, we need to realize that being in Israel but in a position
where shibud malkhiyos could keep us from building bayis sheini IS galus.
Galus Yavan was entirely during bayis sheini. And for only a small part
of it, 2 years from the time Antiochus or the Misyavnim erected a statue
of Zeus in the BHMQ until Chanukah (167-165 BCE), was there even a lack
of avodah!

During the years of Purim, the percentage of Jews in Israel was
miniscule anyway.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
mi...@aishdas.org        I awoke and found that life was duty.
http://www.aishdas.org   I worked and, behold -- duty is joy.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Rabindranath Tagore

See Harav Kook's quntres regarding Sesame Oil to which he gave a
hekhsher for Pesah when he was the Rav of Tel-Aviv/Yafo.

http://www.hebrewbooks.org/34836

He states categorically that raw or roasted qitniyot are 100% mutar on
Pesah for Ashkenazim and that only boiled qitniyot (or other liquid
processed) are assur. Of course, the more chareidi Rabbanim of
Yerushalayim did not agree with him.

Kol tuv,
Raz

kennethgmil...@juno.com
> I realized that I ought to verify some basic historical
> information. Specifically: Were legumes banned at the same time as the
> non-chometz grains, or was this ban in two or more stages? And if it
> was in stages, what was the sequence?

> My guess has been that they were either banned together, or the grains
> were banned first.

My gut tells me that dochan and orez were the first to be banned
or limitted - Why? because R Yochanan ben Nuri considered them as
"hametzable"

I even blogged this as follows

We have a vestige of a RYBN EVEN THOUGH we don't pasqen like him.

Namely we pasqen like R Aqiva that Malchuyyos is in q'dhushas HaYom and
NOT in q'dhushas HaSheim.

Nevertheless, we still say the "uvcheins" and the v'simloch in q'dhushas
HaSheim - Despite it being apparently NOT aliba d'hiclchessa.

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


- while RYBN was rejected l'halachah re: orez and dochan,
- nevertheless a minhag/humra/harchaqah did develop anyway.

And perhaps later extended to qitniyyos.
Admittedly, I have little evidence other than a strong hunch.

But RAM's 2nd point does match this, Viz. grains before legumes

I hope this helps
ZP
RRW
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

kennethgmil...@juno.com wrote:
> Rice is not a species of the kitniyos family. But rice is banned as 
> part of the kitniyos minhag.

See "Minhagei MaHaRYL", ed. Spitzer, H. Ma'achalos Assuros B'Pesach 16 
(p. 134) "The MaHaRaSh says that we prohibit cooking all species species 
of kitniyos on Pesah ...."  There is no additional mention of rice.

I don't have a copy of the MaHaRaSh or the SMaK immediately available.

Also see SA OH 453:1 "rice and other species of kitniyos ...."

David Riceman

Micha:
> Beer is so similar to bread, that Scientific American once carried an
> article theorizing that bread originated as a failed attempt to make
> beer; perhaps during a water shortage. Something crudely like beer can
> occur naturally, when grain gets wet and the mixture ages enough to get
> the local animals tipsy. So, the theory suggested that beer was refined
> off that discovery, and bread an accident off that side-line.

My daughter reported at a seder several years ago that
1. Hametz Bread
2. Beer
3. honey on bread

Were all Egyptian delicacies

And that Semites naturally consumned matzah [think of Lot!]

If "K'maaseh Eretz Mitzrayim" was indeed so appaling to the Torah -
then it is no wonder that these items were prohibited during Passover
AND in the process of Qorban Minchah [last Shabbos's laining!]

Now there is a spiritual dimension to hametz, too. But it is also easy
to see the beer-bread connection in Mitzrayim and why The Torah had to
wean us off an Egyptian "timtum" ;-)

ZP
RRW

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

RZS
> But whiskey is *not* a taaroves, it's chametz itself.

B"H eureka I found sources - see:
- SA O"Ch 442:1
- Baer hetev 2,3
- Shaarei Teshuva 3
Besheim Hacham Zvi
20
"Yash made from Malts is assur d'var Torah ... Even though the tatse of
the Malts changes..."

Note: This is the M'qor for my earlier post for R' Akiva Miller

Also see
- Hoq Yaakov 3 in the name of Mas'eis Binyamin

Also embedded there is an entire length shu"t about unsold whiskey
belonging to my namesake Re'uven ;-)

There is a possible Hiluq between Yash made from grain as opposed to
"sh'marim"

Also "Qayma lan Yash is hametz gamur and NOT zei'ah b'alma.."


For those who stay up all night doing Hilchos Pesach - 442 and this
Shu"t is. Good place to start the evening! ;-)

ZP
RRW
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Re: the democratic nature of batei din

If taxes levied by a Jewish community are somehow contrary to the
Torah (I don't know what exactly this would mean, but just bear with
me), then the taxes may surely be ignored, and if dayanim are not
worthy of being trusted to uphold the Torah, etc., then their rulings
are to be ignored. As the Gemara says in Sanhedrin daf zayin, a false
dayan is like an asherah.

Ein shaliah b'davar `averah dictates that if the dayanim or parnasim
violate the Torah, that their non-Toraitic rulings or policies are not
binding on anyone. A beit din has power only to rule according to the
Torah, but not against the Torah. No matter who you are, the Torah is
our constitution, and no one, no matter how powerful or influential,
has power to contradict it.

A taqana or gezera is valid only if the people accept it and turn it
into minhag ha-maqom, and so no dayan or beit din has the power to
foist unpopular laws on the people. Also, if a layman promulgates a
new minhag and the people accept it, then it is a binding minhag
ha-maqom, even though no dayan promulgated it. Also, if the minhag
violates the Torah, then it is null and void, regardless of whether a
layman or dayan promulgated it. In the end, only the Torah-true (or
Torah-false) nature of the ruling or minhag or taqana or gezera, and
the people's acceptance, matter, and not the personality of the
promulgator.

If the law or ruling is a Torah law, however, then of course anyone,
dayan or not, may certainly foist it onto the people, and the people
cannot complain.

A beit din is a community institution, and presumably, just as the
parnasim are appointed by the people, so too the dayanim. Rambam, in
Hilkhot Sanhedrin 1:1, implies that the mitzvah to appoint dayanim
devolves onto each individual, and the language in the Torah implies
the same; it says YOU will appoint shoftim and shotrim, but it doesn't
say any one special person will appoint judges. Presumably, this means
that if the community didn't appoint someone as a dayan, then he has
no power; one cannot install himself tyrannically as a self-appointed
dayan.

If this is not federal ( = Latin for "covenant") Locke-ian democracy,
then there is no such thing as democracy on earth.

Michael Makovi

<< And who says rapeseed wasn't in the original minhag, at least in theory,
as something that we wouldn't eat on Pesach if it were edible?
 And who says rapeseed
wasn't in the original minhag, at least in theory, as something that we
wouldn't eat on Pesach if it were edible?>>

RMF says peanuts and cottenseed oil  were not prohibited.
Why should rapeseed be different than cottenseed both are inedible and
used in modern oils only by new technology (canola oil goes back to the 1970s)

Besides there never was a formal gezera to outlaw kitniyot as we see rishonim
like Rabbenu Yechiel from Paris and others wouldn't have disagreed.
Since this is just a minhag that developed over time how could it
include nonedible
foods? ie there cant be a minhag to not eat inedible foods.


-- 
Eli Turkel

Michael:
> Ein shaliah b'davar `averah dictates that if the dayanim or parnassim
> violate the Torah, that their non-Toraitic rulings or policies are not
> binding on anyone.

This certainly gives license for l'mashal BD X to retroactively reject
conversions of BD Y - if/when BD X deems BD Y's methods as inauthentic.


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



Suppose a community wants to DEFY the Torah and - as a result - the
Beth Din then imposes tyrannical methods to enforce the Torah - Who
wins? Who trumps?

[EG Think of Reform Judaism and the reaction against it]

Given Any BD that fails to follow Torah has gone beyond its mandate.
Just who is the arbiter that a given BD has failed to live up to Torah's
dictates? [As with the giyyur controversy above]

ZP
RRW
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

kennethgmil...@juno.com wrote:
> R' David Riceman wrote:
>> I think this is a source of a lot of confusion.  "Kitniyos"
>> and "legumes" are not synonyms (neither rice nor corn, for
>> example, is a legume).

Nor are they called "kitniyos" in Hebrew, although they are included in
the gezera against kitniyos on Pesach.


> Were legumes banned at the same time as the non-chometz grains

Yes.  Otherwise the gezera wouldn't be known by the name "kitniyos".
From the name we can know that they were the ikkar of the gezera, and
the non-leguminous species that were included were the tafel.

Also, if the reason is that they are cooked as a porridge ("daysa",
"maaseh kederah"), then all species that are cooked in that way would
have been banned at the same time.


> That's my guess, anyway. Rice is not a species of the kitniyos family.
> But rice is banned as part of the kitniyos minhag.

Rice *may* have been banned earlier, to be choshesh for R Yochanan ben
Nuri's opinion.  This *may* also explain those Sefardi communities that
ban rice but not kitniyot.  (A more popular explanation is the difficulty
of checking rice, and that may well be the correct one, but this is at
least a possible alternative explanation.)


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

Eli Turkel wrote:
> << And who says rapeseed wasn't in the original minhag, at least in theory,
> as something that we wouldn't eat on Pesach if it were edible?
>  And who says rapeseed
> wasn't in the original minhag, at least in theory, as something that we
> wouldn't eat on Pesach if it were edible?>>
> 
> RMF says peanuts and cottenseed oil  were not prohibited.

Cottonseed is completely out of the question, because it grows on a
tree, and everyone agrees that tree fruit are not included.  And on
peanuts RMF's opinion is not universally accepted, because it has a
big flaw: corn, which *all* the poskim (including him) accept is
included even though it wasn't known at the time of the original
gezera.


> Why should rapeseed be different than cottenseed both are inedible and
> used in modern oils only by new technology (canola oil goes back to the 1970s)

Rapeseed was certainly a known crop, although inedible to humans.
The original gezera did *not* ban individual species, but rather whole
classes of species; mustard is explicitly included only because it
grows in a pod, rather than for its own properties.  Nobody cooks
mustard as a porridge, and yet it's forbidden because of how it grows.
Therefore the gezera was against: 1) anything that is cooked as a
porridge; and 2) anything in the same families even if it isn't used
that way.  If you'd asked a Jewish rapeseed farmer 500 years ago whether
his crop was kitniyos he'd have agreed that it was, and so would his rov,
even though it was only a theoretical question.

As for peanuts, how do you distinguish them from mustard?  They too grow
in a pod, of course, since they're just funny-shaped peas.  And in fact
they *are* boiled as a porridge in the Southern USA, just like peas.


> Besides there never was a formal gezera to outlaw kitniyot as we see
> rishonim like Rabbenu Yechiel from Paris and others wouldn't have
> disagreed.

On the contrary, the poskim all assume that there must have been an
actual gezera at some point, even though we don't know when.  R Yechiel
either disagreed with it or was unaware of it.


> Since this is just a minhag that developed over time how could it
> include nonedible foods? ie there cant be a minhag to not eat inedible
> foods.

There can, if it covers a broadly defined class of plants, or rather
several classes (legumes, cereals, as well as plants such as buckwheat).

By the way, try coming up with a logical distinction between quinoa and
buckwheat (which is lechol hade'os forbidden), and which also explains
the universally accepted issur on corn.

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

What Rav Rappaport found was that today, the first thing the manufacturers
do is to boil the wheat/barley. Only after this step do they begin the
traditional process described below. Rav Rappaport read the patents which
describe the process and this is how he came to his conclusion.

I did a few quick searches for whiskey in some patent search engines and
came up with nothing. This is not the type of info one can easily find.

Ben
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Micha Berger" <mi...@aishdas.org>

>
> A mash is made of grain and water. This is then consumed by yeast, which
> converts the carbs in the grain to alcohol and carbon dioxide. In sparking
> wine and bear, that CO2 is kept in, which is why they have bubbles.
>



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