Avodah Mailing List

Volume 29: Number 1

Sun, 01 Jan 2012

• 1. Re: emuna and seichel (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: emuna and seichel (Zev Sero)
• 3. binyamin as werewolf? (Saul.Z.New...@kp.org)
• 4. Re: Amein and Amein Yesomah (kennethgmil...@juno.com)
• 5. The disadvantages of pushing for avoiding autopsy (Shalom Berger)
• 6. Vayigash (cantorwolb...@cox.net)
• 7. The Importance of Secular Education (Prof. Levine)
• 8. Re: Vayigash (Liron Kopinsky)
• 9. Re: spitting / sinat chinam (Ben Waxman)
• 10. yosef's dreams............ (Harvey Benton)
• 11. Re: yosef's dreams............ (Micha Berger)
• 12. my mistake: re: yosef's dreams (Harvey Benton)
• 13. On Ways of Making a Living (Prof. Levine)

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 08:13:49AM -0800, Saul.Z.New...@kp.org wrote:
: http://onthisandonthat.blogspot.com/2011/12/sacred-nonsense.html    to 
: achieve ideal  emuna, must one set aside seichel?

http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2004/11/emunah-peshutah-vs-machashavah.shtml

> I found a variety of opinions:

> 1- The Rambam seems to belittle emunah peshutah. Yedi'ah is the key to
> olam haba....

> 2- The Baal haTanya invokes a mystical resolution...

> 3- At the other extreme, Rav Nachman miBreslov discouraged the study of
> theology, placing all value on having a relationship with HaQadosh barukh
> Hu....

> 4- The Brisker approach is to avoid the whole subject...

> 5- When thinking about this further I realized that I assumed a
> different stance when writing AishDas's charter....
> As for our contradiction, the question is one of finding unity between
> mind and its ability to understand and explain, to philosophize about
> G-d and His governance of the universe, and the heart and how we feel
> and react toward Him.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A cheerful disposition is an inestimable treasure.
mi...@aishdas.org        It preserves health, promotes convalescence,
http://www.aishdas.org   and helps us cope with adversity.
Fax: (270) 514-1507         - R' SR Hirsch, "From the Wisdom of Mishlei"

On 29/12/2011 11:13 AM, Saul.Z.New...@kp.org wrote:
>
> _http://onthisandonthat.blogspot.com/2011/12/sacred-nonsense.html_
> to achieve ideal emuna, must one set aside seichel?

Set aside, not abandon.  Because one must have yedi`ah as well as
emunah.  Ideally yedi`ah helps emunah, by giving one logical reasons
to set ones seichel aside.  But yes, ultimately if one accepts only
because it makes sense, then when it stops making sense one will stop
accepting.  And in the end it *will* stop making sense, if only because
one reaches the limits of ones brain's physical capacity.


-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
z...@sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
                 are expanding through human ingenuity."
                                            - Julian Simon

http://www.rationalistjudaism.com/2011/12/was-rachel-imeinu
-killed-by-werewolf.html 
opinion of a rishon

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R' Micha Berger asked:

> On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 12:39:12AM -0500, R Rafi Hecht wrote to
> Avodah, in reply to a discussion about a number of rabbis who
> said amein to a "barukh ata Hashem E-lokeinu" (prounounced that
> way) "berakhah" on neir chanukah made during the day:
> : Amen = Kel Melech Ne'eman. I don't see why one cannot say that
> : at any given time.
>
> And we often say it to emphatically agree to informal berakhos:
> "May your husband have a refu'ah sheleimah!" "Amein!"
>
> OTOH, there is the amein yesomah, which implies one cannot just
> say "amein" willy-nilly. Anyone understand how to fit the two?
> Why are "amein yesomah" or "amein chatufah" so terrible, and
> when is this wrong-ness limited to?

For many decades, I wrestled with a problem which seems similar. Namely,
what is so terrible about a beracha l'vatala? For example, if I would thank
Hashem for giving us the mitzva of eating matza, and I would use the full
and proper text of Al Achilas Matza to do so, what would be so terrible?

I am so happy to be Jewish! I am so happy to have these mitzvos! Baruch
Hashem, King of the universe, Who made us holy with His mitzvos, and
commanded us about eating matzah! What could be wrong with that? And why is
it considered taking Hashem's name in vain? It was NOT in vain if I
sincerely meant it!

It is only in the past year or so that I've come to understand that a
bracha is not just another sort of tefilah, like a bakasha or hodaah. For
reasons which I don't really understand (but I do accept), a bracha is
considered to be a sort of oath.

Oaths come in many kinds. You can find a whole list of synonyms in Kol
Nidrei. And corresponding to that list, there's also a wide range of
methods with which one can swear or vow or make an oath. If I'm not
mistaken, halacha considers local custom in this definition. If so, then it
seems to me that in our culture and society, if a person says something and
follows it with "So help me G-d", that would be considered an oath by
halacha, at least to some degree.

Now we must move from the mindset and idiom of modern Anglophones to the mindset and idiom of Chazal.

It is noteworthy that they specified that any bracha which omits Shem and
Malchus is NOT a bracha. I suspect that what they meant by this was to
teach us that if this formula IS used, then it is essentially an oath, to
the effect of however they instituted that particular bracha. Thus, when
one recites a bracha, he is not merely *acknowledging* the subject of the
bracha, but he is *swearing* that he acknowledges the subject of the
bracha.

If I am correct so far, then I would suggest that "Amen"'s meaning is
similarly powerful. "Amen" has a very specific meaning. Take a look at
where it appears in Torah and Nach. Its use is not as tightly controlled as
a bracha is (for example, in Tehillim where it is repeated, or one says it
to his own Tehillim) but it is still a very serious matter.

Just as one cannot pretend that Al Achilas Matzah is an ordinary tefilla
which could be said at any time, so too, one cannot pretend that Amen is an
ordinary word which one might say when the inclination (however sincere)
might strike: "I believe! I believe!" is a no-no.

I hope that this explains why one should not say Amen except in response to
a genuine tefilah. This would include formal brachos and informal tefilos,
but only according to the rules established by Chazal, which is to exclude
both an Amen Yesomah and an Amen Chatufah, and certainly an Amen on a
bracha which was deliberately altered to be non-genuine.

Akiva Miller

____________________________________________________________
53 Year Old Mom Looks 33
The Stunning Results of Her Wrinkle Trick Has Botox Doctors Worried
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/4efd1a8c6eb68facb65st06vuc

Actually, there was an autopsy mentioned in today's daf yomi, where
Rabbi Yishmael's students perform one in order to clarify the number
of eivarim in a person.

Brief discussion on it appears at
http://www.steinsaltz.org/learning.php?pg=Daf_Yomi&;articleId=2570

(Full disclosure: I have been writing these essays for the Alef
Society for some years now.)

Shalom

Rabbi Shalom Z. Berger, Ed.D.
The Lookstein Center for Jewish Education
Bar-Ilan University
http://www.lookstein.org

46:7 Banav uv'nei vanav eeto B'NOSAV uv'nos banav v'chol zar'o...
Yaakov had only one daughter, Dinah. Apart from her, we do not know
of any other daughters in Leah's family. The Torah's use of the plural for
"his daughters" cannot be justified unless there was at least one additional
daughter who arrived in Egypt. This conceivably could be Yocheves but the 
Torah did not include Yocheves in the names of the people who journeyed to
Mitzrayim with Yaakov. So what is meant by "his daughers?"

45:23 "To his father he sent the following...mi'tuv Mitzrayim..." Mituv Mitzrayim,"
"the best of Egypt" which was a rather nebulous term, something which the Torah
had not identified but rather referred to the quality of the various other items listed.
In Megillah 16, "mi'tuv Mitzrayim" is described as referring to wine which had been
aged for a long time. Bershis Rabbah 94:2 identified "mi'tuv Mitzrayim" as some kind
of special white beans, a medication with anti-depressant properties. As a person who
suffers from serious depression, I am going to purchase white beans and see if it indeed
works. If so, perhaps a new medicinal cure from white beans can be developed. Stranger
things have happened. (Perhaps, this is why cholent is so successful as a Shabbos meal.
Its properties take away depression and hence, makes Shabbos so much better. Some of
you may think I'm joking; but I'm NOT).
 

The following is from RSRH's essay  The Relevance of Secular Studies 
to Jewish Education that appears in Volume II of Rav Hirsch's 
Collected Writings.

Now if the Judaism for which we are educating our young need not 
shrink from contact with the intellectual elements of any other true 
culture, it is essential for the future of our youth as citizens, and 
there ore it is a true religious duty, for us to give them a secular 
education. A secular education is a most beneficial help to our young 
in understanding the times in which they live and the conditions 
under which they will have to practice their life's vocation; hence 
it is most desirable also from the Jewish religious viewpoint and 
consequently deserving of warm support. But at the same time, and 
even more important, a good secular education can give our young 
people substantial new insights, added dimensions that will enrich 
their religious training. For this reason, too, secular education 
deserves the support of the religious educator.

There is no need to cite specific evidence that most of the secular 
studies taught at higher educational institutions, including our own, 
are essential to the future vocational careers of the students. There 
seem to be no differences of opinion in this respect. However, any 
supporter of education and culture should deplore the fact that when 
these secular studies are evaluated in terms of their usefulness to 
the young, too much stress is often placed on so-called practical 
utility and necessity. Under such circumstances, the young are in 
danger of losing the pure joy of acquiring knowledge for its own 
sake, so that they will no longer take pleasure in the moral and 
spiritual benefits to be obtained from study.

There is only one point we believe we must mention in support of the 
utilitarian view of secular education: the training of the young in 
skills that will earn them a respectable livelihood as adults is a 
sacred duty also from the Jewish religious point of view. According 
to Jewish tradition, a father who fails to give his child such 
training himself, or fails to provide for such training, is to be 
considered as one who teaches his child to become a dishonest adult. 
Thus, the general education of our youth should be conducted with 
religious punctiliousness even from the viewpoint of his future vocation.

But it seems to us that no thinking Jew, aware of his mission as a 
Jew, should deny that, quite aside from considerations of vocational 
and professional education, it is also essential that young Jews, 
particularly those of our own times, should learn about the factors 
that influence the life of modern nations; in other words, that they 
should be introduced to those branches of study that will enable them 
to acquire this knowledge.

<Snip>

     Even if our present-day contacts with general culture were 
merely passive, as they were in the days of our parents, it would be 
of vital religious importance for us to see that our young people 
should be guided toward that high level of insight which would enable 
them to evaluate, from the vantage point of truth and justice, all 
the personal, social, political and religious conditions under which 
they would have to discharge their duties as Jews and as citizens. 
But now that our young people will be given an opportunity to 
participate in the public affairs of the land in which we live, how 
much more important is it that they should receive the education they 
will need in order that they may enthusiastically embrace all that is 
good and noble in the European culture of our day, within whose 
context they will have to perform also their own mission as Jews. 
Only knowledge, the ability to realize when we have erred in judging 
our fellow men, can guard us from prejudice. Lack of knowledge always 
breeds illusion and prejudice.

----------
Note the last two sentences in particular.  I think it is most 
applicable to some of things we see going on today in some circles of 
the O world.  YL

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On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 4:29 PM, <cantorwolb...@cox.net> wrote:

> 46:7 Banav uv'nei vanav eeto B'NOSAV uv'nos banav v'chol zar'o...
> Yaakov had only one daughter, Dinah. Apart from her, we do not know
> of any other daughters in Leah's family. The Torah's use of the plural for
> "his daughters" cannot be justified unless there was at least one
> additional
> daughter who arrived in Egypt. This conceivably could be Yocheves but the
> Torah did not include Yocheves in the names of the people who journeyed to
> Mitzrayim with Yaakov. So what is meant by "his daughers?"
>

There is a midrash which says that each of the shevatim was born with a
twin daughter. So now you just need to figure out why those daughters were
not counted among the 70.


>
> 45:23 "To his father he sent the following...mi'tuv Mitzrayim..." Mituv
> Mitzrayim,"
> "the best of Egypt" which was a rather nebulous term, something which the
> Torah
> had not identified but rather referred to the quality of the various other
> items listed.
> In Megillah 16, "mi'tuv Mitzrayim" is described as referring to wine which
> had been
> aged for a long time. Bershis Rabbah 94:2 identified "mi'tuv Mitzrayim" as
> some kind
> of special white beans, a medication with anti-depressant properties. As a
> person who
> suffers from serious depression, I am going to purchase white beans and
> see if it indeed
> works. If so, perhaps a new medicinal cure from white beans can be
> developed. Stranger
> things have happened. (Perhaps, this is why cholent is so successful as a
> Shabbos meal.
> Its properties take away depression and hence, makes Shabbos so much
> better. Some of
> you may think I'm joking; but I'm NOT).
>

So presumably drinking a good aged wine is an anti-depressant too?

Kol Tuv,
Liron
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On 12/28/2011 12:33 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> Hating someone out to destroy you or your fealty to the Torah, which
> motivates one not to emulate them, and to actively fight them.
>
> You are allowed to hate someone guilty of hating the Borei, for example.
> (I write "guilty of" rather than "who hates", to avoid tinoq shenishba
> tangents.)
BW: The second one I find problematic because you can always say that 
the other guy hates God, that the way he does mitzvot proves that he is 
a rasha l'hachiss.

I don't want to get too much into current events, but a prominent 
Chareidi rav declared the candle lighting ceremony at the demonstration 
to be a "teqes reformi". Since a woman (Naama Margolis) participated, 
she violated his interpretation of "kavod bat melech". Therefore the 
cermony wasn't mehadrin and ipso facto it is reformi.  This is what he 
said. So going from there to declaring that these people hate the Borei 
is a very very small jump, maybe not a jump at all.

Ben

when yosef was approached in prison, didn t he say.....
to Hashem belong the interpretations??? (or something
llike that???
but then, he was the one who gave Pharoa teh inter-
pretations of his dreams.......????? 

hmz
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On Sun, Jan 01, 2012 at 12:53:42PM -0800, Harvey Benton wrote:
: when yosef was approached in prison, didn t he say.....
: to Hashem belong the interpretations??? (or something
: like that???
: but then, he was the one who gave Pharoa teh inter-
: pretations of his dreams.......????? 

I don't know what you mean. See Bereishis 41:16, 25, 28 -- where does
Yosef claim anything but the pitaron coming from HQBH?

"Bil'adai -- E-lokim ya'aneh es shelom Par'oah."

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

my mistake, the quotation was to the butler and baker:
from mechon mamre:
'Do not interpretations belong to God? tell it me, I pray you.'  9 And the
chief butler told his dream to Joseph, and said to him: 'In my dream,
behold, a vine was before me;  10 and in the vine were three branches; and
as it was budding, 
its blossoms shot forth, and the clusters thereof brought forth ripe 
grapes,  11 and Pharaoh's cup was in my hand; and I took the grapes, and 
pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's 
hand.'	12 And Joseph said unto him: 'This is the interpretation of it: the
three branches are three days;	13 within yet three days shall Pharaoh lift
up thy head, and 
restore thee unto thine office; and thou shalt give Pharaoh's cup into 
his hand, after the former manner when thou wast his butler.  14 But have me in thy remembrance when it shall be well with thee, and sho
?
hmz
















________________________________
 From: Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org>
To: Harvey Benton <harvw...@yahoo.com>; The Avodah Torah Discussion Group <avo...@lists.aishdas.org> 
Sent: Sunday, January 1, 2012 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: [Avodah] yosef's dreams............
 
On Sun, Jan 01, 2012 at 12:53:42PM -0800, Harvey Benton wrote:
: when yosef was approached in prison, didn t he say.....
: to Hashem belong the interpretations??? (or something
: like that???
: but then, he was the one who gave Pharoa teh inter-
: pretations of his dreams.......????? 

I don't know what you mean. See Bereishis 41:16, 25, 28 -- where does
Yosef claim anything but the pitaron coming from HQBH?

"Bil'adai -- E-lokim ya'aneh es shelom Par'oah."

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
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In some circles work seems to be frowned 
upon.  The selections below show that this  is 
not a Torah true attitude. I have quoted from 
RSRH at length to show that those who oppose 
religious Jewish men working are advocating 
something that does not seem to be in consonance 
with the Torah and the Talmud.  YL

The following is from RSRH's essay Talmudic 
Judaism and Society  The Relationship of the 
Talmud to Judaism and the Social Attitudes of the 
Talmud's Adherents that appears in Vol VII of his Collected Writings.

Note the sentence below "The passages quoted 
above, which represent only a small selection 
from among many others, should be sufficient 
evidence to refute the  notion that the Talmud is 
hostile to honest toil, especially farming."

On Ways of Making a Living
The Talmud attaches great importance to a 
person's earning an independent living so that he 
will not need charity. The Talmud stresses that a 
person must seek to achieve economic independence 
by every means with in his power, as long as he 
attains it in an honest manner. One should not be 
ashamed of any work one may have to do and should 
be willing to suffer any amount of hardship in 
order to avoid becoming dependent on others.
The Talmud holds work in high esteem, citing the 
principle, "Great is work, for it honors the 
worker" (Nedarim 49b). If you see an animal that 
fell dead in the street, get to work and skin it 
then and there, so that you may earn some money. 
Do not say, "I am a priest, or an important 
person; this work is beneath my dignity" 
(Pesachim 113a). "Live on the Sabbath no better 
than during the week rather than to be dependent 
on others for help" (Pesachim II2a). "Accept work 
that you would normally find repulsive rather 
than be in need of help from your fellow men" (Baba Bathra I l0a).
The Sages of the Talmud had such high regard for 
their scholarship that they refused to "make it a 
spade to dig with," as they put it (Chapters of 
the Fathers 4:7). They taught without 
remuneration and supported themselves mainly with 
other work: handicrafts, farming or small 
business. Just as they themselves did this kind 
of work for their  livelihood, the Sages urged 
others to do likewise (Kiddushin 30b). As much as 
it is a father's duty to instruct his son in 
Jewish religious law, it is his duty to teach him 
a craft. According to one view, any type of 
honest work was as good as a manual skill, but 
others held that a father should see to it that 
his son learn a manual skill even if he were to 
choose some other type of work, for only the 
manual trades can assure a steady income 
(Kiddushin 30b). The Talmud holds manual skills 
in high esteem. Manual skills will always be 
needed in this world; therefore, "fortunate he 
who has acquired a good craft" (Kiddushin 82b). 
"A famine may last for seven years, but it will 
not pass through the door of a skilled artisan" 
(Sanhedrin 29a). "Love work and do not aspire to 
a high position" (Chapters of the Fathers 1: l0). 
"He who fears God and lives from the work of his 
hands is doubly fortunate, for he will be happy 
in this world as well as in the world to come" 
(Berachoth 8a). A father should teach his son a 
trade that is least likely to lead to wrongdoing 
and also will leave him sufficient time for study 
(Kiddushin 82a). A father should also not teach 
his son an occupation which will bring him into close contact with women.
The Talmud also thinks highly of farming, even 
though it is aware that some people prefer to 
enter business. The Talmud tells of one sage who 
passed a field where the ripe ears of corn, 
swaying in the breeze, seemed to wave to him in 
greeting. Said the sage to them good humoredly, 
"You can wave to me all you want, but it is still 
better to be in business than to work with you" 
(Yebamoth 63a). But the view generally found in 
the Talmud is different. A person who does not 
have a field of his own is not considered a 
proper man, for it is written (Psalms 115,16), ?? 
[God] gave the earth to the children of men." 
Grow your own produce instead of purchasing it 
from others. Even though the cost may be the 
same, the produce you have sown yourself brings more blessings (Yebamoth 63a).
In the enumeration of Divine punishments in 
Deuteronomy 28,66 the words, "Your life will 
always hover at an uncertain distance," are 
interpreted as referring to one who purchases his 
supply of grain from year to year. The words that 
follow, "You will live in apprehension night and 
day," refer to one who buys his supply of grain 
from week to week, and the final words of the 
verse, "You will have no faith in your life," 
refer to one who has to go to a bread dealer for 
his daily supply of bread (Menachoth 103b). "He 
who tills [literally, "serves"] his own  soil 
will have his fill of bread" (Proverbs 12,11); 
this is explained to mean that only one who works 
his own soil like a farmhand will have enough bread to eat (Sanhedrin 58b).
 From all the above we can clearly see how 
strongly the Talmud urges that every person 
should possess and till his own soil and obtain 
his food supply from his own farmland. In 
accordance with agricultural conditions in the 
Talmudic era, a farm was considered prosperous if 
it was divided into three equal portions devoted 
to cereals, olives and vines (Baba Metzia 107a).
We are told in the Midrash Rabbah to Genesis 12,1 
that when God commanded Abraham to go to the land 
that would belong to him and to his descendants, 
and he saw the inhabitants of Mesopotamia eating, 
drinking and making merry, Abraham said, "May it 
be God's Will that my portion should not be in 
this land." But when he came to the hilly terrain 
of Tyre at the border of Palestine and saw the 
inhabitants busily weeding their fields at the 
right time and working their soil diligently at 
the proper season, he said, "May it be God's Will 
that my portion should be in this land." 
Thereupon God said to him, "To your descendants will I give this land."
These words indicate how keenly aware our Sages 
were of the moral value of farming, which 
required regular working hours. In the same 
spirit, Jewish religious law is centered on the 
soil; all the Jewish festivals are associated 
with farm labor and agriculture. Yissachar, 
the  tribe celebrated for its intellectual 
prowess, was a tribe of farmers, The words of the 
Prophet Micah (4,4), "They shall sit every man 
beneath his vine and beneath his fig tree," 
describe the Jewish ideal of national prosperity.
This ideal survived even after the Jewish people 
had been driven from their land and forced to 
live in other lands as exiles. A glance into the 
voluminous Order of Zeraim, which contains the 
religious laws concerning agriculture, as well as 
into Tractates Baba Kamma, Baba Metzia and Baba 
Bathra, which deal with civil law but also 
discuss agricultural questions, should be 
sufficient to show how much the Sages of the 
Talmud knew about the characteristics of various 
agricultural species and about the requirem~nts 
for the care of crops, plants and trees, 
depending on such factors as the quality and 
location of the soil. Such familiarity with the 
problems of agriculture could have been gained 
only through personal experience in farming; it 
proves that the Sages not only preached the 
benefits of agriculture but actually practiced in 
their own lives what they preached. In fact, they 
and their disciples were so completely dependent 
on farming for their livelihood that one master 
of Rabbinic law considered it necessary to 
request his many students not to attend his 
lectures during the spring and fall seasons so 
that they could devote all their time during 
those seasons to sowing and reaping and have no 
worries about their food supply for the rest of the year (Berachoth 35b).
Needless to say, Jews were engaged in business 
and industry also during the Talmudic period. 
These pursuits were just as indispensable to the 
nation's prosperity as agriculture. The farmer 
himself was dependent on business. What would he 
have done with his produce if there had been no 
merchants to buy the products of his work and 
sell them elsewhere? This relationship of mutual 
benefit is already described in the Pentateuch, 
where we read of the fraternal, mutually 
beneficial ties between the tribes of Yissachar 
and Zebulun, the former devoted to agriculture 
and study, and the latter to business and commerce (Deuteronomy 33,18).
Nevertheless, the Sages of the Talmud cautioned 
against excessive involvement in business and 
trading activities. They said that "there is no 
blessing in money earned from trade with overseas 
countries" (Pesachim 50b). While farming affords 
some free time for study at the end of the day's 
work and particularly during the winter season, 
experience has shown that merchants and 
businessmen often stop studying altogether 
(Eruvin 55a), and that one who is too deeply 
immersed in business will not grow in wisdom 
(Chapters of the Fathers 2:6). Hence the 
admonition: "Limit your business activities and 
gain [more] time for continuing your spiritual 
education" (Chapters of the Fathers 4: 12). Only 
if you limit the amount of time you devote to 
business will you be able to add to your 
knowledge (Chapters of the Fathers 6:6).
We have already noted that the Sages did not make 
use of their scholarship as a source of income. 
Each of them therefore had to engage in some 
other occupation; hence they also pointed out: 
"An excellent thing is the study of the Law 
combined with an occupation that yields a living. 
Study of the Law without some kind of work cannot 
endure" (Chapters of the Fathers 2:2).
The passages quoted above, which represent only a 
small selection from among many others, should be 
sufficient evidence to refute the  notion that 
the Talmud is hostile to honest toil, especially 
farming. If, during the centuries that followed, 
Jews in European countries became strangers to 
agriculture and were more conspicuously drawn to 
business and commerce, it was not the fault of 
the Talmud, nor was it due to any inherent Jewish 
distaste or lack of aptitude for farming. The 
fault lay solely with the hostile attitude of the 
nations and peoples that either categorically 
forbade Jews to acquire land or else subjected 
land purchase and ownership by Jews to such 
severe restrictions as to make it virtually 
impossible for Jews to become farmers. In 
addition, farming, more than any other 
occupation, requires that those who engage in it 
enjoy a secure legal status. As long as Jews did 
not enjoy equal rights and equal protection under 
the law with their non-Jewish neighbors and had 
to live in constant fear of being driven from 
hearth and home by a willful bureaucracy or by 
the unleashed hatred of a bigoted populace, Jews 
were not free to devote their skills and energies 
to agricultural pursuits. This was the reason why 
Jews wen: forced to concentrate on acquiring 
movable goods that they could take with them 
wherever they might be forced to flee, and to 
cultivate skills with which they could make a 
living for themselves and their families, no 
matter where they might find themselves.
Unless we are very much mistaken, there is no 
question but that,  given freedom, equal rights, 
and the time needed to become adept at this 
particular occupation, which really requires 
training and habituation from early youth, Jews 
will ultimately return to agriculture, the 
ancestral pursuit which they loved and which was 
intimately linked with their original destiny as a nation.


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