Avodah Mailing List

Volume 28: Number 59

Fri, 15 Apr 2011

• 1. Re: R. Chaim Volozhiner and Putting on Rabbeinu Tam T'fillin (Elazar M. Teitz)
• 2. Re: live bird and dead bird (Elazar M. Teitz)
• 3. Re: popcorn (Meir Shinnar)
• 4. Where we are holding (Micha Berger)
• 5. kitniyot (Eli Turkel)
• 6. Re: Chometz milking question (Danny Schoemann)
• 7. Re: HaShem HaMelech (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 8. lirot et azmo (Eli Turkel)
• 9. Re: HaShem HaMelech (Micha Berger)
• 10. translation request (David Riceman)
• 11. Re: translation request (Micha Berger)
• 12. Re: kitniyot (Daniel M. Israel)
• 13. Re: : Chometz milking question (Daniel M. Israel)
• 14. Re: kitniyot (Zev Sero)
• 15. Re: HaShem HaMelech (Daniel M. Israel)
• 16. Re: kitniyot (Ben Waxman)
• 17. D'zabin or Diz'van? (Simon Montagu)
• 18. Re: D'zabin or Diz'van? (Micha Berger)

<<<< Someone sent me the following:
 A famous story about R. Chaim Volozhiner, when asked why he didn't put on
 Rabbeinu Tam t'fillin: "The din says that unless one is a chosid, he
 shouldn't, because it's mechazei k'yuhara....">>>>

<<< Does this mean the Gra, who his talmidim (including RCV) called "HaGaon
 haChassid" (sometimes "haGaon haChassid haAmiti", in true misnagid style),
 *did* wear Rabbeinu Tam tefillin?>>>

<< Certainly his talmidim called him a chassid, but what makes you think he 
 would not have hesitated to call himself a chasid?>>

<My point was that RCV thought his rebbe was a chassid, and that it's
appropriate for chassidim to wear R"T tefillin. It would therefore be
consistent if he actually saw the Gra in R' Tam tefillin.

<BTW, it's not RCV's chiddush, it's the SA OC 34:3. It must not only be
a chassid, but someone well known to be one -- "mi shemuchzaq umfursam
bachasidus".>

      Of course the halacha is not RCV's chiddush -- he _quoted_ the halacha ("The din says . . .").

<Lemaaseh, further CD Rom search turned up that the Vilna Gaon held that it
was pointless to wear R' Tam tefillin (Biur haGra 34:1 "uminhag"). Keser
Rosh (#13), R' Chaim Tiktiner's notes of things he learned from RCV (his
rebbe), repeats that the Gra said this was because there are numerous
different machloqesin about how to make tefillin (and something like
2^n possible combinations of opinions). Why stop at two pair?

<Which means that RCV might have disagreed with the Gra about whether the
machloqes Rashi vs R' Tam is unique. Thus, haGaon haChassid miVilna not
wearing them was not a statement for those who hold there was a specific
"runner up" for meaningful-but-not-yotzei tefillin.>

     That's reading too much into a simple sentence. RCV, for the reason he
     gave, would not have worn RT t'fillin in any event; thus, any
     conclusion as to whether or not it he held it was a unique machlokes
     is unwarranted.  In point of fact, it is indisputable that there are
     other machlokos.  For one, the Shimusha Rabba's opinion is that the
     order of the parshios is a mirror image of Rashi's regarding
     left-to-right orientation.

EMT


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha



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 R. Micha Berger wrote:

<YK is for a kaparah between man and HQBH.

In contrast, tzaraas is to spur teshuvah on a list of issues that come
up bein adam lachaveiro. (Most famously LH, but R' Shmuel bar Nachmani
(Eirukhin 16a) also lists retzhichah, shevuas shav and shevuas sheqer,
gilui arayos, gaavah, geneivah and tzarus ayin. All bein adam lachaveiro.>

     Sh'vuas shav is never bein adam lachaveiro.  Sh'vuas sheker can be,
     but its most common manifestation is sh'vuas bituy, which generally is
     not.  Ga'ava need not have an effect on anyone else.  If by aveira
     bein adam lachaveiro one means an act committed against another, then
     giluy arayos is not an aveira bein adam lachaveiro; it is an aveira
     bein adam lamakom whose commission requires two people.

EMT

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>
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 10:23:58PM +0300, Ben Waxman wrote (just approved
> a moment ago):
>> way that it doesn't sit or contact water... is not prohibited, since
>> the tafeil can not be more strict than the ikkar.
Micha
> It was to avoid this objection that I phrased things as I did:
>>> I thought the parallel was between qitinyos and chametz, not qitniyos
>>> and grain. IOW, qitniyos is itself an issue, not wet qitniyos.
>
> Returning to the CD, SA haRav (454:5) and the Chayei Adam (127:1) hold
> that qitniyos that was treated in ways that wouldn't produce chameitz
> in grains is not within the ban. (Although I guess that being the SAhR,
> he would have you avoid gebochts for such qitniyos too...)
>
> That said, qitniyos oil is an issue of mei qitniyos, and thus depends on
> your own locale's version of the minhag, even though oil will always be
> made without water. I think this indicates that at least those of you
> who don't consume corn oil don't hold this way. And no raayah either
> way for those of us who would consume mei qitniyos (if a hechsher would
> certify such things).
My recollection was that when RAYK zt"l kashered a kitniyot oil
factory for pesach, one of the requirements he put into place was that
it was dry pressed - the kitniyot could not touch water - and this
required modifications in the plant - and also suggests that this is
(or wasn;t) the standard.  So while some who assur mei kitniyot also
assur dry pressed, that is not all.......



BTW, the badatz used that hechsher as a means of attacking RAYK for
being meikil - and I have a theory that one of the reasons for
tremendous humrot on kitniyot today is a left over from the campaign
against RAYK...

Meir Shinnar

A story from Ami Magazine (written by a R' Rafael Borges) via RYGB's blog:
    The story is told that when the Telzer rosh yeshiva, Rabbi
    Eliyahu Meir Bloch, zt"l, once found a comic book in the dorm in
    the Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland, he began crying. The person who
    was accompanying him downplayed the severity of the find, saying,
    "It's just a comic book."

    Rabbi Bloch replied, "In Europe, the bochurim who 'went off'
    were interested in intellectual subjects. They followed communism
    or Zionism, and we could deal with them by reintroducing them to
    the intellectual world of Torah. But if they are interested in the
    foolishness of comic books, they are very far away from intellectual
    matter of any kind."

FWIW, this sentiment has echoes in RAYK as well. R' Kook saw the often
misplaced idealism of the youth of his generation as a first step to
the return of Torah in the Messianic Age. He then expected those ideals
would slowly shift to be more in line with Emes.

(I already posted here my belief that RAYK's expectation that he was
living in the dawning of yemos hamashiach has major problems since a
couple weeks after his petirah the Nazis came to power. How can one speak
of seeing a progression to ge'ulah with such a trough in the middle?)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Live as if you were living already for the
mi...@aishdas.org        second time and as if you had acted the first
http://www.aishdas.org   time as wrongly as you are about to act now!
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Victor Frankl, Man's search for Meaning

> 2. Mei kitniyot is another level of chumra. In fact the Rama never
> explicitly outlaws it. It is an inference since he talks about oils
> dripping

Zev wrote:
The "inference" is very clear.  It's impossible to read him any other
way, so it's exactly as if he wrote it explicitly. >>

Even though it is impossible that is the reading of the Marcheshet who says
the
Ramah is only talking about oils that were not checked before Pesach.
As such he concludes that oils are "ze-ah be-alma" and are kosher for Pesach
for Ashkenazim if made before Pesach.
It is the Chaye Adam who makes the inference the inference from the Ramah
and as
I  wrote not everyone agrees

The Ohr HaChaim states in Pri Tohar YD:39b that in takanot and certainly in
minhagim
any safek goes le-kula.
Rav Lior and R. Ariel explicitly allow Canola oil (with a hechsher for
Pesach).

Furthermore since kitniyot ae batel be-rov it means that many commercial
items
that contain kitniyot are allowed for Ashkenazim if it is less than 50% of
the ingredients.
Of course there is no problem for the company to make these products since
50%
of Israelis are sefardim who have no problem.

-- 
Eli Turkel
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On 9/04/2011 2:43 PM, Eliyahu Grossman wrote:
> Ok, here in Israel, starting this week, all cows will be given only kitniyot
> to eat - no chometz.
>
> Around the rest of the world, they don't do that.

The KSA in 117:13 says:
????? ???? ????? ???? ????? ?????? ??? ???? ?? ?????? ??? ??????,
????? ???? ????? ????? ????? ????? ?????, ????? ?????.

In English:
"Drinking milk from a non-Jew's animal which eats Chometz on Pessach;
some forbid it and others allow it, and a Shomer Nafsho should be
stringent, and specifically in locations where the custom is to forbid
it, Chalila to allow it."

So this is not a new concept...

- Danny

R' Micha Berger wrote:

> We were discussing the new Maxwell House Haggadah and its use
> of gender neutral language. I commented that I found that "the
> four children" is more accurate than "the four sons" since that
> better describes the mitzvah of sippur yetzi'as Mitzrayim.
>
> That pasuq is a simile, not a metaphor. IOW, Hashem isn't called
> a Mother, Hashem says "Like a person who is comforted by his
> mother, so I will comfort you." The comparison is made without
> elevating Mother to a title.
>
> But in any case, even if I agreed with this example, it would
> reinforce the idea that the metaphor of Father and Mother are
> distinct, and the non-specific Parent is thus not identical to
> the original.

The problem we have here is that we are translating from a language which
has only masculine and feminine into a language which also has a neutral
gender. So it seems to me that in every case, the translator must carefully
examine the context and ask, "Is this Hebrew word masculine because it is
referring to a male person, or because it is just using the default form?"

For this reason, in the translation of the Hagada that I wrote for my
family, the Arba Banim are "children". But if I were translating the Shema,
"b'neichem" (Devarim 11:19) would be "sons" -- and not "children" --
because it refers only to males (at least according to Rashi there, though
I'm not aware of any dissenters).

In the example in question, do people expect more mercy from a queen than
from a king? I don't think so; the main idea of both is that of absolute
rulership. Thus I would argue that the best translation would be one that
does not carry any gendered baggage. Unfortunately, "monarch" is not nearly
as common a word as "king", and has the potential for sounding stilted.

This gets more complicated with Father and Mother. It isn't always clear
which aspect of Hashem we're referring to. Sometimes we even go in opposite
directions at the same time: In "Avinu Malkenu" we appeal both to Midas
Harachamim and Midas Hadin. But "our Mother, our King" just sounds too
weird, and if someone thinks that "our Parent, our Monarch" is a better
compromise, I'm not going to say they're wrong.

Akiva Miller

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moved from areivim

<<I quoted from R. Meidan that the basis of the hagada is applications
to each generation and not a history lesson

Yosef Skolnick responded.

Sorry while that is a wonderful idea, I can't really see it coming from this
idea/concept.  It says kiilu hu yatza meimitzraim. Nothing about
comparisons.  I humbly submit that it is a lesson in the power of imagery.>>

I later saw similar ideas in the hagada Exalted Evening based on shiurim of
RYBS.

On "bchol dor vedor" he says
Li-reot means to experience to feel to re-experience the slavery and Exodus
It should not be an ancient event lying in the dawn of history and having no
relevance to us.
I am to re-experience. Memory in Judaism means not just to remember
tecnically but to
relive the event

On the 5 sages in Bnei Brak he brings the Maggidim that connect it to the
Bar Kochba revolt.
it was not only the story of the past ...;it was the story of the present
and what was going to happen tomorrow. The study of the Exodus was supposed
to guide them in their revolt...
They studies Yetziat Mitzrayim not only as an event of the past but also as
a clue
and a key to the future.
...
They spoke of the Exodus "the whole night" not only the night of Passover
but also the
great night of the Galut, of Jewish exile.
...
If a man leaves his fate to the principles of blind mechanical causality and
circumstantial
determination he can never attain salvation and redemption.

Rav Meidan also interpreted the long night as the exile and expanded on
passages in
Yoel and about Chezkiyau demonstrating that the leeson of the exodus was
used
in all generations to address contemporaneous problems.



-- 
Eli Turkel
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On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 01:31:28AM +0000, kennethgmil...@juno.com wrote:
: The problem we have here is that we are translating from a language
: which has only masculine and feminine into a language which also has a
: neutral gender...

Not for words denoting people. E.g. people are "he" or "she", it's
insulting to refer to someome as "it". And similarly, I wouldn't call HQBH
"It" in a translation -- because we believe in a G-d Who has something we
can call a "Will". Until feminists introduced the notion of sensitivity
to using gendered language, "he" was routinely used to mean "he or she",
rather than "it". When it came to people, English was once much like
Hebrew. It was the people clamoring for gender free grammar who /created/
the problem. But we can't turn back the clock. English has been altered,
and so we have to translate to the current dialect.

...
: For this reason, in the translation of the Hagada that I wrote for
: my family, the Arba Banim are "children". But if I were translating the
: Shema, "b'neichem" (Devarim 11:19) would be "sons" -- and not "children"
: -- because it refers only to males (at least according to Rashi there,
: though I'm not aware of any dissenters).

To repeat RAM's point in different words:
The chiyuv of talmud Torah is only to boys, not so sippur yetzi'as
Mitzrayim. Therefore in one case "banim" is "sons", in the other case
"children".

: In the example in question, do people expect more mercy from a queen
: than from a king? I don't think so...

As I wrote on Areivim, we don't really have the ability to recapture
the baal hagadah's intent. Because none of us grew up under an absolute
monarchy, in a world where "king" and "queen" create visceral responses.

We can't turn back the clock on this either.

There is simply no mapping from calling HQBH "Melekh" to anything in
contemporary English. A translator has to choose what elements of the
original ambiguity -- King vs Monarch -- he will omit.

I had suggested that since we often pair "Avinu Malkeinu", and since
Hashem /is/ more like an Av than an Eim (imahos are more present during
childhood), we should keep "Melekh" in the same gender as "Av". But as
I just said, any such decision is really about which wrong choice to
make.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I thank God for my handicaps, for, through them,
mi...@aishdas.org        I have found myself, my work, and my God.
http://www.aishdas.org                - Helen Keller
Fax: (270) 514-1507

How would you translate "mashgiah ruhani" for a reader who knows nothing 
about contemporary yeshivos?

David Riceman

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 09:06:54AM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
> How would you translate "mashgiah ruhani" for a reader who knows nothing  
> about contemporary yeshivos?

My Avodah answer: Spiritual Influencer

An Areivim answer: Spiritual Guidance Counselor
But better would be something with the word "dean" in it to connote the
right level of prestige.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Feeling grateful  to or appreciative of  someone
mi...@aishdas.org        or something in your life actually attracts more
http://www.aishdas.org   of the things that you appreciate and value into
Fax: (270) 514-1507      your life.         - Christiane Northrup, M.D.

Quoting Eli Turkel <elitur...@gmail.com>:
> Furthermore since kitniyot ae batel be-rov it means that many commercial
> items
> that contain kitniyot are allowed for Ashkenazim if it is less than 50% of
> the ingredients.
> Of course there is no problem for the company to make these products since
> 50%
> of Israelis are sefardim who have no problem.

For the record, I am not from the fans of extending these minhagim- I  
remember eating peanut oil on Pesach when I was younger, and I am not  
that old!  OTOH, looking for the kulos that TTBOMK were never used in  
previous generations doesn't strike me as correct either.  Why can't  
we just keep the minhag, after all that is what a minhag is.  Why do  
we have to have a new improved version every year.

That said, something strikes me as not quite right about the above  
argument.  By the same logic, in a majority Ashkenazi community a  
sh'chetia that has at least a 50% glatt production could throw all  
their meat into one production line and Sephardim could eat from it-  
after all pieces of meat are also batel b'rov.

-- 
Daniel M. Israel
dan...@cornell.edu

Quoting Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org>:
> The SA (YD 142:11) holds that shnei hagoremim is "mutar bekhol maqom".

> The Magein Avraham (445:5) and the Taz say that this doesn't apply to
> chameitz, where we uniquely worry about less than a kezayis.

> The Shach, the Gra, the SA haRav (445:10) and the Bi'ur Halakhah (s"q 2)
> are meiqilim.

Perhaps it is the MA and the Taz who are being machmirim?

Not a trivial nitpick. I'm suggesting that the baseline psak that we all
should follow should be to not be concerned about it, and we should view
the common custom these days of buying milk (and eggs) before Pesach,
and all the practices surrounding KP milk to be chumros.

This is very relevant l'ma'aseh for the family that runs out during chol
hamoed in a community where KP milk is not available. (And I've never
seen KP eggs altogether.)


Quoting Eliyahu Grossman <Eliy...@KosherJudaism.com>:
> Yesterday I used Kosher for Pesach (!!!) liquid drain cleaner...

I'm not sure if the Rabbonim who sell heksherim to bleach manufacturers
do it purely for the money; certainly no one ever got rich by giving
hasgacha. But it does raise an interesting question. On the OU webcast,
RHS mentioned how Rav Breur didn't want to give a Pesach hechsher on
toothpaste, because he was afraid it might create the misimpression that
toothpaste required Pesach hashgacha. However, a hechsher on shelf-paper
is not meaningless- someone is certifying that they checked to make
sure no chametz came in contact with it, whereas by buying uncertified
(and I have no hesitation doing so) you are relying on general knowledge
of paper manufacturing to conclude that there is no risk.

Toothpaste, which may or may not be roy l'achilah, and poisonous
cleanser, which is certainly not, are more complicated. In the latter
case, it might be more yasher and equally financially beneficial to the
manufacturer, for the Rav to authorize them to put a statement on the
label, "Poisonous cleaners do not pose any problem for Pesach use, and
do not require hashgacha." But the market is probably not interested
in that.

Also, if you are going to blame the manufacturers, who are only following
the market as you say, and the Rabbonim, who are only responding to the
manufactures requests, perhaps you should also blame the consumers, who
apparently would rather by something with an OU on it, then something
that the OU lists in a magazine as not needing an OU.

-- 
Daniel M. Israel
dan...@cornell.edu

On 14/04/2011 1:57 PM, Daniel M. Israel wrote:

> That said, something strikes me as not quite right about the above
> argument. By the same logic, in a majority Ashkenazi community a
> sh'chetia that has at least a 50% glatt production could throw all
> their meat into one production line and Sephardim could eat from it-
> after all pieces of meat are also batel b'rov.

Ein hochi nami, if they're not doing it for the purpose of bitul, why
not?  


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

Quoting "kennethgmil...@juno.com" <kennethgmil...@juno.com>:
> In the example in question, do people expect more mercy from a queen  
> than from a king? I don't think so; the main idea of both is that of  
> absolute rulership. Thus I would argue that the best translation  
> would be one that does not carry any gendered baggage.  
> Unfortunately, "monarch" is not nearly as common a word as "king",  
> and has the potential for sounding stilted.

Actually, I don't think "queen" carries that connotation at all.  If I  
said, "who do you think you are, the King of England," I think most  
people would hear that as a complaint about authority.  But if I said,  
"who do you think you are, the _Queen_ of England," I think that would  
be heard as a complaint about pickiness or something similar, and that  
in spite of the fact that the actual British Monarch has been a Queen  
not a King for almost six decades.

IOW, in spite of many historical examples of ruling Queens, we still  
associate "King" with authority and "Queen" with wife of the one with  
authority.

-- 
Daniel M. Israel
dan...@cornell.edu

The qulot weren't used because there was no occasion to use them. When 
everything according to the Askenazi spec sheet, than the question of bateil 
b'rov is essentially non-existant (except for the rare accident). That is 
not the situation today (at lease in Israel) so why not rely on the qulot?

Ben
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daniel M. Israel" <d...@cornell.edu>
>
> That said, something strikes me as not quite right about the above 
> argument.  By the same logic, in a majority Ashkenazi community a 
> sh'chetia that has at least a 50% glatt production could throw all  their 
> meat into one production line and Sephardim could eat from it-  after all 
> pieces of meat are also batel b'rov.
>

My family always sang "D'zabin abba bitrei zuzei, chad gadya-a-a-a,
chad gadya", but several haggadot today print it as "Diz'van abba".

Grammaticaly, "diz'van" is probably more correct, assuming that abba
bought the kid rather than selling it, and one of my haggadot brings a
text from a 13th-14th century manuscript (not part of a haggada) which
spells it that way. My question is, does anybody here have a masora to
pronounce it "diz'van", or is it a modern correction?

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 03:48:16AM -0700, Simon Montagu wrote:
: Grammaticaly, "diz'van" is probably more correct, assuming that abba
: bought the kid rather than selling it, and one of my haggadot brings a
: text from a 13th-14th century manuscript (not part of a haggada) which
: spells it that way. My question is, does anybody here have a masora to
: pronounce it "diz'van", or is it a modern correction?

My memory is of "dezabin", so you didn't really ask me.

I just wanted to tie this into the greater question. More important than
saying Chad Gadya correctly is saying Qaddish.

It's one thing to argue that when speaking Biblical Hebrew, being LhQ,
the grammar of the language is itself qadosh and Torah. But the whole
point of the choice of Aramaic for Qaddish, Shas or parts of the Hagadah
is because it was the vernacular.

So, do we care more about Aramaic as she is spoken -- as that's the
vernacular, or as she is /supposed/ to be spoken?

I could also see different answers when speaking of Qaddish, which is
tefillah or when learning gemara (I just can't get my head around saying
"bedi'avad") or sippur yetzi'as Mitzrayim, where the focus is on relaying
information.

Getting back to Chad Gadya: Is Nirtzah even sippur, or an elaboration
of Hallel?

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A person must be very patient
mi...@aishdas.org        even with himself.
http://www.aishdas.org         - attributed to R' Nachman of Breslov
Fax: (270) 514-1507


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