Avodah Mailing List

Volume 28: Number 48

Mon, 28 Mar 2011

• 1. kol isha (Joseph C. Kaplan)
• 2. Terumot U'Ma'aserot (Shoshana L. Boublil)
• 3. Re: Nisht Yoshon/Not Yoshon (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 4. Baruch Mordochai (was re:sobering thoughts for Purim) (Elazar M. Teitz)
• 5. Re: Baruch Mordochai (was re:sobering thoughts for Purim) (Micha Berger)
• 6. TIDE, Rabbeinu Tam style (Micha Berger)
• 7. Maharil & Maharam miRutenburg -- two views of Minhag (Micha Berger)
• 8. Dating the Zohar (Jonathan Baker)
• 9. Re: Dating the Zohar (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: who is going to Gehenim (Eliyahu Grossman)
• 11. Re: TIDE, Rabbeinu Tam style (Akiva Blum)
• 12. Re: The incident at Bavel (was "who is going to Gehenim") (Eliyahu Grossman)
• 13. car alarms and shabbat (Eli Turkel)
• 14. Re: kol isha question (Chana Luntz)
• 15. Re: colors in the gemara (Micha Berger)
• 16. Women and Tallis (Moshe Y. Gluck)

"Which is why the producer had no choice but to
withdraw it from the film festival.  And why the film festival should
have made that unnecessary, by complying with the actresses' wishes."

I think this was a case of conflicting principles: the women's principle of
not wanting men to see it, and the film festival's principle of having
their movies open to both men and women.  So ISTM, both sides had no choice
if they were going to abide by their principles and neither side should
have done anything other than what they did.

Joseph Kaplan  
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Following a discussion a while ago about Hafrashat Terumot U'Ma'asserot, I
have found the following websites that give "for dummies" instructions and
explanations on what to do.

The reason I have set out to discover this data is b/c I have started to
raise my own herbs on my windowsills.  I found this Purim, as I prepared
salads for Mishloa'ch Manot using herbs I had grown myself (after following
the instructions for Hafrashat Terumot U'Maasserot), that it added a special
value to the mitzvah.

The following gives step-by-step instructions:

http://www.kipa.co.il/ask/show/2369

Also visit Mochon HaTorah VeHa'aretz website for further details on Ma'asser
Sheni/Ani etc.

Shoshana L. Boublil

> A different question is, how they can print a label whose
> accuracy will be undermined by the mere passage of time??
> In a few weeks it will be yoshon.

It is true that the truth of the label will be undermined. When the second
day of Pesach comes, the "Not Yoshon" will become false, as the contents of
the package *will* be yoshon.

But is this a problem? As I see it, if it is a problem at all, it is a small one, because the passage of time will make this food *more* acceptable.

I think it is very admirable that the manufacturer is warning the consumer
that it is chadash and people might not want to purchase this product. But
the lack of an expiration date on the warning doesn't bother me. What harm
is there?

The worst that could happen is that there might be some people who think
that the food is *permanently* chadash, and therefore they won't eat it
even after Pesach. While I do feel bad about their lack of knowledge and
their loss of a good food product, I think there are bigger problems to
worry about.

Akiva Miller

____________________________________________________________
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1 ridiculously huge coupon a day. Get 50-90% off your city's best!
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avo...@lists.aishdas.org
     R. Micha Berger wrote:      <I mean "Mordochai", with a chataf-qamatz under the dalet, transliterated
with an "o" because the chataf-qamatz appears to be related more to the
qamatz qatan.>	I claim no expertise in dikduk, but it is my
understanding that there is no such thing as a chataf other than under a
guttural; that the chataf-kamatz in words such as "hal'lu," "bar'chu,"
ush'ka," et al., are actually no more than an indication of a sh'va na,
written that way since those who did so pronounced every sh'va na as though
it was a chataf (see Bach, siman 582); and that the chataf kamatz under
non-gutturals is the sign of a kamatz katan in a setting other than its
normal one of a closed, unaccented syllable, as in e.g. "tzipporim" or the
Aramaic "kodam" (as in kaddish shaleim), where the syllable is an open one.
      If this is correct, then those who have a chataf-kamatz under the
dalet in Mord'chai should read it as a full kamatz katan, not as a chataf
kamatz. EMT
 
____________________________________________________________
Groupon&#8482 Official Site
1 ridiculously huge coupon a day. Get 50-90% off your city&#39;s best!
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4d8bc1e8a472a33fd3ast03vuc
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On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 10:11:58PM +0000, Elazar M. Teitz wrote:
: I claim no expertise in dikduk, but it is my understanding that there
: is no such thing as a chataf other than under a guttural...
: in kaddish shaleim), where the syllable is an open one. If this is
: correct, then those who have a chataf-kamatz under the dalet in Mord'chai
: should read it as a full kamatz katan, not as a chataf kamatz.

The Ish Matzliach has it that their minhag (Djerba) is "Mordochai" (chataf
qamatz) for Esther 5:12 and 5:13 only and otherwise, "Mordechai". The
Minchas Shai (2:5) says that Ashkanzim have "Mordochai" except when
part of the double name "Mordechai haYahudi", but Sepharadim always have
"Mordochai".

I expected you to end with "should reach it as a sheva na". That's what
R Mordechai Breuer concludes in one of the appendices to his Tanakh.

In any case, the name probably isn't Hebrew -- why assume it follows
Hebrew rules of niqud?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
mi...@aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
http://www.aishdas.org         - Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz, Alter of Novarodok
Fax: (270) 514-1507

A sichah by RYAmital recently sent out by Gush pointed to Hagahos Maimonios
Hil TT 3:2. The Rambam there is the famous bit raised whenever we discuss
kollel.

The HM quotes Rabbeinu Tam that "X im Y" means "with Y, the iqar, there
is also X". E.g. "Yechlequ yoreshei habaal im yoreshei ha'av", and
many other examples. Such that here, R' Tam holds that "derekh eretz"
is the iqar, and it is yafeh to have some learning with it.

Rabbeinu Elchanan (who I believe is another baal Tosefos) says the
more obvious -- that Torah is the iqar, and relates it to "harishonim
asu Torasam qeva umelakhtam arai."

I could see two ways of understanding Rabbeinu Tam:

1- In the same terms as R' Elchanan. DE means parnasah, and iqar means
which gets more time. In this understanding, R' Tam would still be saying
that Torah outranks DE, but lemaaseh most of one's day goes to parnasah.

2- DE is meant in the sense of middos, like DE qodmah laTorah. In which
case, R' Tam could really being saying that DE is the iqar, not just
in time.

After all, the self-description of the first chapter of the Gra's "Even
Sheleimah" is "Explaining all the ways of breaking the middos ra'os in
general, for that is the shoresh of all of avodas H' yisbarakh."

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
mi...@aishdas.org        your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
http://www.aishdas.org   and it flies away.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter

The Maharil famously championed the notion that the accepted practice
is the cornerstone of pesaq. Contrast this to the shitah of R' Meir
miRotenburg, as described in an email shiur by R' Elyakim Krumbein
from Gush <http://vbm-torah.org/archive/gaon/04gaon.htm>:

    The Tosafot on the Talmud that have come down to us, are built,
    in the great majority, on the Torah of two giants [Rabbeinu Tam
    and the Ri -micha], even though they were only written generations
    after their passing. But over time the spread of the Torah of Spain,
    and the awareness that "it is possible to argue otherwise" shaped
    matters to the point that the last of the Tosafists -- R. Meir of
    Rotenburg -- maintained that one ought not to rely simply on the
    accepted Ashkenazi traditions.

    In many of his rulings and customs, this same Maharam expressed
    the belief that the Halakha is in doubt, and therefore one should
    be careful and try to act stringently in accordance with all
    opinions. Let us take an example from the laws of zimmun. According
    to the Tosafot, if two people ate bread, and one drank wine or
    ate vegetables, they may join for zimmun, as opposed to the Rif who
    requires that they all eat bread. Maharam was careful about the matter
    when he ate with another person -- "he would not allow another person
    to drink unless he was able to get him to wash hands and eat with them
    grain in the size of an olive," and only when this was impossible
    "would he rely on the Tosafot and recite zimmun together with the
    person who drank."[1] As stated, the same phenomenon is evident in
    many of his other rulings.

    The Maharam applied the same principle in cases of monetary matters,
    and this caused a major revolution. Until his time, courts would
    decide the law according to certain judicial traditions, even if the
    tradition was the subject of a controversy. Maharam made extensive
    use of the principle of "kim li" ("my opinion is") as an argument
    that can be made by the defendant in a suit. When the earlier
    authorities disagree about a certain point, and according to one
    opinion the defendant is free of liability, he cannot be forced to
    pay based on judicial tradition, for he can argue that in his opinion
    the other viewpoint is correct, and we cannot prove that he is in
    error, and the rule in such a case is that the burden of proof falls
    upon the plaintiff. In practical terms, money cannot be collected
    from the defendant unless he is liable according to all opinions,
    a situation that is very rare. Many today lament this situation,
    which to a great degree paralyzes Rabbinic courts.

    For many generations there was nobody who could challenge this deeply
    rooted tradition of doubtfulness, until R. Eliyahu of Vilna appeared
    on the scene....

    [1] Hagahot Maimuniyot, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Berakhot, chap. 5,
    no. 7.

The Gra is then described as instead replacing minhag with a different
sort of textualism, one of confidence in one's conclusions.

In any case, the question of how to weigh the various factors that go
into pesaq is an old one.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "'When Adar enters, we increase our joy'
mi...@aishdas.org         'Joy is nothing but Torah.'
http://www.aishdas.org    'And whoever does more, he is praiseworthy.'"
Fax: (270) 514-1507                     - Rav Dovid Lifshitz zt"l

RMi: 
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 11:05:41AM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
> > I just noticed that the reference to the Amoraim is in capitals, i.e.
> > the translator's interpolation.  So the entire premise of the post
> > collapses.  There is no problem to be resolved.  Move along, nothing
> > to see here.
 
> However, the previous paragraph, Tzav 29, refers to "tannaim va'amoraim",
> so the unnamed rabbanim here who "pasqin lon bekhamah pesaqos" (30) and
> "kemah de'iqemhuha zeh chaser min hamishnah (31) are most plausibly
> the amoraim who came after "HAmishnah" (hei hayedi'ah emphasized for
> a reason) and who are recorded invoking CMVHK on that compilation.

Further, that previous passage is an explanation of the term Teiku.
Teiku appears 3x in the Zohar (thanks to Bar-Ilan via Spertus), here
and two other places, all in what are called the "later strata of the
Zohar" - here in Raya Mehemna, elsewhere in Tikunei Zohar and in the
Tikunim of Zohar Chadash.  Also, the word Amora does not appear at 
all in the Mishnah - why should it?  it's Aramaic, and the Mishnah is
a Hebrew text.

I suppose this would also support a middle ground, such as that espoused
by R Yaakov Emden - that certain passages post-date Rashbi.  Yaari's 
quote also comes from a Raya Mehemna section - also later than the main
text.  So none of this disproves R' Y Emden's approach.  But some, I guess,
believe the whole thing to be from Rashbi.

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjba...@panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 08:54:08PM -0400, Jonathan Baker wrote:
: I suppose this would also support a middle ground, such as that espoused
: by R Yaakov Emden - that certain passages post-date Rashbi.  Yaari's 
: quote also comes from a Raya Mehemna section - also later than the main
: text.  So none of this disproves R' Y Emden's approach.  But some, I guess,
: believe the whole thing to be from Rashbi.

I think something akin to the misnamed "Kuzari Proof" would argue
for something like this. There was no time for a gradual increase of
credibility between R Moshe de Leon's document and accepted mequbalim
believing its authenticity. Enough of it most have already been familiar
or matched what they heard of indirectly.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

Actually, Berashit 11:1 does says that "kol". That the entire (kol) earth
was of a single purpose (united in a common goal) and that THEY migrated and
THEY found and THEY settled and THEY said. So it's like a mass migration
before they get wacked. Ok, one could separate "kol", but one can also
retain it. 

And so, I suppose, those that interpret this as an evil act would certainly
want to exclude Avraham (and Noach and his sons too!), while those who do
not see it as anything but a righteous act, a people united in one purpose,
don't have that kind of problem with it. And of those who see it as an evil
act, you end up having to discard "kol", or put it aside to just mean
"initially" (insertion), and then you can have the cute midrash of little
Avraham breaking his father's idols and skipping out on the project, or you
can discard that midrash and accept the one where he is far older and the
time of the tower is over where he discovers.

They all work, depending on what you are trying to teach. I can go along
with any of them - Although I do have a problem with Pharaoh being the king
of Ninveh and doing tsh'uvah, but hey, it could have happened! ;) 

I wasn't familiar with Yonah Rabbah - thanks for that.

Eliyahu Grossman


<----[Snipped Original]-------------------->
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:06:13 -0400
From: Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org>
Subject: Re: [Avodah] who is going to Gehenim

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 09:26:43PM +0200, Eliyahu Grossman wrote:
: While there are some Midrashim that say that the Tower of Bavel was built
as
: a rebellion, the actual language of the text in Berashit doesn't say it at
: all...

But in terms of drawing a lesson for ourselves, this is a distinction
without a difference. Both are sources.

:      Would one say that Avraham was rebelling against Him, since it says
: that EVERYONE was participating, so Avraham was making those bricks just
: like everyone else?

If you're working with the text itself (as you did before), the word "kol"
isn't there. So it needn't have been all the "benei adam".

If you're drawing lessons from maamarei Chazal, see the first paragraph of
Yonah Rabba. According to this, two patriarchs didn't participate in Migdal
Bavel -- Avraham and Ashur. Ashur was rewarded in two ways: First, the gift
of the holy script, Kesav Ashuris, was given to the nation he founded.
Second, that nation was given a second chance when Hashem sent Yonah to
their capital, Nineveih.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

> From: avodah-boun...@lists.aishdas.org 
> [mailto:avodah-boun...@lists.aishdas.org] On Behalf Of Micha Berger
> Sent: Friday 25 March 2011 3:18 AM
> 
> A sichah by RYAmital recently sent out by Gush pointed to 
> Hagahos Maimonios
> Hil TT 3:2. The Rambam there is the famous bit raised 
> whenever we discuss
> kollel.
> 
> The HM quotes Rabbeinu Tam that "X im Y" means "with Y, the 
> iqar, there
> is also X". E.g. "Yechlequ yoreshei habaal im yoreshei ha'av", and
> many other examples. Such that here, R' Tam holds that "derekh eretz"
> is the iqar, and it is yafeh to have some learning with it.
> 
> Rabbeinu Elchanan (who I believe is another baal Tosefos) says the
> more obvious -- that Torah is the iqar, and relates it to "harishonim
> asu Torasam qeva umelakhtam arai."
> 

I see Rabeinu Tam not as saying that DE is the ikar of chaim, rather, the
ikar of the sentence. The maamar is saying that DE is yafe when it has Torah
with it. No discussion of which one is more chashuv than the other. All the
examples he brings are in this vein. 

However, the lashon of the HM implies that there is a machlokes RT and
Rabbeinu Elchanan. vtz"i.

Akiva

On a related note, I posted at:

http://www.kosherjudaism.com/page.jpg

A page from Seder HaQorot B'Tanach, which shows the ages and the generations
who lived before and through the Tower of Bavel incident (refer to the
horizontal dotted line going across the page closer to the bottom). The
book, by Eliezer Shulman is great, hand-written (well, originally), while he
was in prison for quite some time (gave him something important to do!) with
just a few books. (Sorry about the scan quality, but the page is bigger than
my scanner!)

There is also an English edition at
http://www.amazon.com/Sequence-Events-Old-Testament/dp/9650502688

But the Hebrew version is way less than $80 USA!

Shabbat Shalom
Eliyahu Grossman
Efrat, Israel

-----Original Message-----
From: Eliyahu Grossman [mailto:Eliy...@KosherJudaism.com] 
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 8:41 AM
Subject: RE: who is going to Gehenim

Actually, Berashit 11:1 does says that "kol". That the entire (kol) earth
was of a single purpose (united in a common goal) and that THEY migrated and
THEY found and THEY settled and THEY said. So it's like a mass migration
before they get wacked. Ok, one could separate "kol", but one can also
retain it. 

And so, I suppose, those that interpret this as an evil act would certainly
want to exclude Avraham (and Noach and his sons too!), while those who do
not see it as anything but a righteous act, a people united in one purpose,
don't have that kind of problem with it. And of those who see it as an evil
act, you end up having to discard "kol", or put it aside to just mean
"initially" (insertion), and then you can have the cute midrash of little
Avraham breaking his father's idols and skipping out on the project, or you
can discard that midrash and accept the one where he is far older and the
time of the tower is over where he discovers.

They all work, depending on what you are trying to teach. I can go along
with any of them - Although I do have a problem with Pharaoh being the king
of Ninveh and doing tsh'uvah, but hey, it could have happened! ;) 

I wasn't familiar with Yonah Rabbah - thanks for that.

Eliyahu Grossman

can one turn off a car alarm on shabbat

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4030099,00.html

-- 
Eli Turkel
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I wrote:

> there is a concept at the beginning of Baba Basra as to whether hezek riya
shmei hezek or lav shmei hezek, ie does
> violation of a right to privacy constitute a form of damage or not?
> That is, if you can see into my courtyard does that damage me, and can I
act
> to prevent this.  However, I am not aware of this concept ever being used
> beyond questions of physical property 

So I was thinking about this further over shabbasn and thought Ok, let's try
another tack.  The mishna in Baba Kama 90a-b discusses the damages category
of busha, including liability for taking off somebody's clothes or
uncovering the head of a woman.  And while the subsequent gemora makes clear
that as a damages category there needs to be an actual act, even humiliating
with words not being enough (and so one would have thought, kol sheken, if
all one is doing is merely seeing or hearing, that could not be enough to
give rise to damages) - the Shulchan Aruch brings in Choshen Mishpat siman
420 siman 39 that even though one who humiliated somebody with words is not
liable to pay it is a great sin (and then quotes that anybody who whitens
the face of somebody kosher from Israel does not have a chelek in olam
haba).

So, could we say something similar in such a case?  That is, if somebody (ie
a woman) would feel humiliated in being seen or heard by a man, and a man
goes out of his way to see or hear her (eg in a film) could this be
considered in the same category if it was reported back to her (because
surely humiliating somebody with words doesn't have to be to their face, if
somebody says something nasty behind their back and it is reported back, and
it embarrasses them, would it not be in the same category?) - and see also
the discussion there in Baba Kama about what if somebody was humiliated
while sleeping and then dies, where there is uncertainty whether in fact
they should be able to recover or not (with the Shulchan Aruch ruling that
the heirs cannot recover if they sue, but if they seize the property, we
cannot take it out of their hand).  How far does my right not to be
humiliated according to my lights extend?

On the other hand, a mandatory requirement vis a vis liability for
humiliation is intent - as the Mishna specifies in 86b for the category of
busha one is not liable unless there was intent (and as the Shulchan Aruch
rules in Choshen Mishpat siman 421 si'if 1).  So if one does not think
something is embarrassing,  but you know that the other person would be
embarrassed by it, does that characterise the necessary intent?  Or is the
question of intent objective? Especially if your intent was to enjoy a good
film, and incidentally you were doing something that caused embarrassment to
others.  On the other hand, people's faces can go white for things that
other people would consider to be completely innocuous, how careful do you
have to be?

Yet another aspect I thought about over shabbas was the ruling (from the
gemora in Baba Basra 56b and as brought down in the Shulchan Aruch Choshen
Mishpat siman 161 si'if 5) that the one thing that partners in a courtyard
cannot prevent the other partners from doing even though it is not usually
the way to do such things in such courtyards was to do the washing, because
sheain derech bnos yisroel l'hisbazos al gav hanahar - and as the Rashbam
explains there, in order to do the washing in the river, it was necessary
for the women to expose their legs.   And the nosei kelim there on the
Shulchan Aruch all comment that even though today it is indeed the custom in
most cities for women to do the wash by the river, still, if a woman insists
that she does not want to expose herself like that and hence wants to do the
wash in the courtyard of the partnership, the partner cannot prevent her,
with the Beis Yosef seeming to suggest that this is because the chachimim
made a gezera to allow this particular thing, but eg the Shach understands
it to be because the minhag to do the wash by the river is a minhag garua
and hence one can overrule a minhag garua like this and go back to "best
practice".

But while this would seem to allow a woman who wanted to be more tznius than
the minhag the right to insist on this even at the expense of somebody
else's partial property, it is not clear how far this extends - the Beis
Yosef's formulation would seem to limit it to the particular case in the
gemora, while the Shach's would seem to allow it to extend further.  I
wonder what the halacha would be if, say, there was not acourtyard
alternative to the river, and the woman insisted that since the options were
the river only, her husband had to do the wash, would her husband be
compelled to respect her additional level of tznius, one that is stated as
legitimate in the gemora, or would he be entitled to say that the minhag in
the city was that the women did the wash by the river and he was not
stepping into the breach (or paying for somebody else, eg a non Jew to do
it, most likely)?  It would seem to me that the Beis Yosef's formulation
would allow the husband to refuse, but that he Shach's might well not.

And if we go back to the next portion of the gemora, which then discusses a
man going on a route that takes him past women doing the wash in the river
(and calls him a rasha if there is a derech achrina, but treats him as an
onus if there is not a derech achrina, although he is praised if he closes
or averts his eyes), it is not clear that if there was a derech achrina, and
even if he was a rasha, if that makes him have any level of obligation to
the women rather than to Hashem.

So while the halacha clearly contains a "right not to be humiliated" I am
struggling to find anything that would really support including in that a
case of a right not to be seen or heard - other than the right to privacy in
one's own courtyard that I brought initially. 

It might as RZS says be derech eretz, but can one legitimately insist on it?

Shavuah tov

Chana

Back in 2005, in a thread by this name, I quoted the following from
RSRH (Collected Writings III pg 126):
    We find only three terms to encompass the colors of the spectrum:
    adom for red, yaroq for yellow and green, and techeiles for blue
    and violet....

    Red is the least refracted ray; it is the closest to the unbroken ray
    of light that is directly absorbed by matter. Red is light in its
    first fusion with the terrestrial element: adom, related to adamah
    Is this not again man, the image of G-d as reflected in physical,
    earthly matter: "vatichsareihu me'at mi'Elokim" (Tehillim. 8,6).

    The next part of the spectrum is yellow-green: yaroq.

    Blue-violet is at the end of the spectrum: techeiles.

    The spectrum visible to our eye ends with the violet ray, techeiles,
    but additional magnitudes of light radiate unseen beyond the visible
    spectrum. Likewise, the blue expanse of the sky forms the end of the
    earth that is visible to us. And so techeiles is simply the bridge
    that leads thinking man from the visible, physical sphere of the
    terrestrial world, into the unseen sphere of heaven beyond....

    Techeiles is the basic color of the sanctuary and of the High Priest's
    vestments; the color blue-violet representing heaven and the things
    of heaven that were revealed to Israel... no other color was as
    appropriate as techeiles to signify G-d's special relationship with
    Israel. A thread of techeiles color on our garments conferred upon
    all of us the insignia of our high-priestly calling, proclaiming all
    of us: "Anshei qodesh tihyun li -- And you shall be holy men to Me"
    (Ex. 19, 6).

    If we now turn our attention to the pisil techeiles on our tzitzith,
    we will not that it was precisely this thread of techeiles color that
    formed the krichos, the gidil, the thread wound around the other
    threads to make a cord. In other words, the vocation of the Jew,
    the Jewish awareness awakened by the Sanctuary, that power which
    is to prevail within us, must act to unite all our kindred forces
    within the bond of the Sanctuary of G-d's law.

In RSRH's opinion, tekheiles is a color name, but argamon and tola'as
shani are names of specific wools.

RMYG sent me a photo of some lines from Artscroll's Daily Dose of Torah
(many of whose authors are familiar names from Avodah), parashas Tzav,
Tuesday (brackets theirs, transliteration sometimes mine sometimes
theirs):
    [The Steipler mentioned that tekheiles, argoman and tolaas shani are
    also the names of colors, and not of materials. Thus, we may ask,
    how do we know that the bigdei Kehunah must be specifically with
    these color wools, and not of other materials? Rashah points out
    that Rashi (Yevamos 4b d"h uskheiles amra) answers this question;
    he explains that the two primary materials of which the Torah speaks
    (and the verses in Yechezkeil [44:17-18] tell us are included in the
    bigdei Kehunah) are wool and linen. Thus, after the Gemara establishes
    that sheis is linen, we may understand that the other three colors
    of tekheiles, argoman and tolaas shani are specifically dyed wool.]

Note the machloqes WRT two of those terms.

Switching from biblical to rabbinic Hebrew, R' Hertzog's thesis (pg
92) states:
    For practical purposes the Talmudists divided color into four classes:

    1. Shachor, black
    2. adom, red
    3. yarok, green yellow and blue
    4. lavan, white

And thus in leshon Chazal, tekheiles is a type of wool, not a color.

The Amutat P'til Tekhelet is chosheish for the possibility that tekheiles
is a term for a specific wool of a specific dye, and therefore dye the
wool before spinning it. This way, one has a pesil made of already existing
tekheiles, and one avoids problems of "'ta'aseh' -- velo min ha'asui".

Radziner dying is generally done after spinning.

This difference in dying becomes quite obvious if one is following
the Rambam, who holds that only one of the 8 string-ends is to be
techeiles. This means you have a string that is one side white, one
side blue, switching around where the string runs thought the hole in
the beged. In the Amutah's strings, you can see where the blue fibers
are spun into the white, and the two half-strings generally don't do
so exactly the same. On my 4 qanfos, there is a half-inch (maybe only
a third of an inch) candy-stripe where the two colors meet.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Between stimulus & response, there is a space.
mi...@aishdas.org        In that space is our power to choose our
http://www.aishdas.org   response. In our response lies our growth
Fax: (270) 514-1507      and our freedom. - Victor Frankl, (MSfM)

This is from R' Aviner's weekly emails. I thought the story in the answer
(below) was interesting on many levels.

 

Question: But Ha-Rav Moshe Feinstein writes in Shut Igrot Moshe (Orach Chaim
4:49) that a woman is permitted to fulfill the Mitzvah of Tzitzit although
she is not obligated, with two conditions: 1. Her intention is not to rebel
against Hashem and His Torah, but  for the sake of Heaven.  2. The garment
needs to be different from a male garment to avoid the prohibition of "Lo
Tilbash".

Answer: In order for this to be for the sake of Heaven and not "Yuhara", she
needs to wear the Talit in private and no one should know.  And,  it needs
to be a Talit for women (It is told that a woman once asked Ha-Rav Yosef
Soloveitchik if she could wear a Talit during davening.  He responded to
her: "Since this is a major change in traditional practice, we must proceed
gradually."  He suggested that she wear a four-cornered garment without
Tzitzit for three months and then come back.  She returned after three
months and said that this was the most meaningful religious experience of
her life.  Ha-Rav Soloveitchik said: "For three months, you have been
wearing a garment without any religious or halachic value, it is thus clear
that your feeling comes from a source outside of the Mitzvah", and he did
not grant her permission to wear a Talit).      

 

 

KT,

MYG

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