Avodah Mailing List

Volume 29: Number 19

Wed, 15 Feb 2012

• 1. LH about myself (Micha Berger)
• 2. Re: LH about myself (Samuel Svarc)
• 3. Re: Halacha is about sources. Lo BaShamayim hi. (kennethgmiller@juno.com)
• 4. Re: Halacha is about sources. Lo BaShamayim hi. (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: Halacha is about sources. Lo BaShamayim hi. (Rich, Joel)
• 6. Re: Halacha is about sources. Lo BaShamayim hi. (Zev Sero)
• 7. yitro (Eli Turkel)
• 8. Re: Being an Eved to an Eved (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: Being an Eved to an Eved (Zev Sero)
• 10. Re: why stop learning? (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: LH about myself (Daniel Eidensohn)
• 12. Re: LH about myself (Samuel Svarc)
• 13. strange names in Hebrew (Lisa Liel)
• 14. Re: strange names in Hebrew (Simon Montagu)
• 15. Gezeira's Tach V'Tat (cantorwolb...@cox.net)
• 16. Re: Gezeira's Tach V'Tat (Micha Berger)
• 17. Gezeira's Tach V'Tat (Gershon Dubin)
• 18. Should we be davening for R' Elyashiv to live? (Marty Bluke)

On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 02:44:43AM -0500, Moshe Y. Gluck wrote to Areivim:
: R'n TK:
:> A person is also not allowed to talk loshon hara about himself.

: As best as I can tell, this is incorrect.

Someone near the CC on a train ride home struck up a conversation and
found out that this older gentleman was was from Radun. He was traveling
to see the great CC, and was excited that he found someone who must know
all about him, and perhaps could share some stories. So, the man asked
him all about the tzadiq in his town (not knowing he was talking to the
CC himself). When the CC said something like, "You must be mistaken,
he isn't much of a talmid chakham or a scholar", the man was enraged and
slapped him. Well, they get to Radun, the guy goes to see the famous CC
and was obviously mortified to learn who he slapped! He cried and begged
mechilah. But the CC said there is no reason for it, the slap was worth
it in order to learn the din that you aren't allowed to speak LH even
about yourself.

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 07:10:14PM +0200, Doron Beckerman wrote again, to
Areivim, after the list had discussion of the historicity of that story:

: Speaking LH about yourself is one of those urban myths or embellishments.
: We don't really know if the story is true, but the ostensible lesson that
: one may not speak LH about oneself is surely not correct. According to the
: Sefer Chofetz Chaim (klal 2:13) the heter of b'apei tlasa is as Rashi to
: Arachin 16 explains it, i.e., if one says LH about oneself in front of
: three people, it shows he does not mind that it be known, and it is
: therefore muttar to tell it over. If the hetter is based on the fact that
: the subject allows *others* to tell it over, he may certainly tell it about
: himself.

CC 2:13 appears to be saying that anything someone says about themselves
in front of 3 isn't "ra" in the opinion of the speaker. If I would take
the implication RDB suggests, it would mean that it's impossible to say
LH about oneself. Not that it's mutar, but that anything I would tell
others about myself must not be something I consider negative. I don't
think that such a deduction is true (which is different than whether or
not I am indeed 2nd guessing the CC).

In either case, the point of the story is that the CC reversed his
position from what he wrote. So you can't deduce from the book whether
or not the story is consistent with the CC's position.

I took the story to mean it's "assur", IOW, bad mussar because the
likelihood of causing a fight was too high, not literally assur. As for
actual issur veheter, the issue in the story would be motzi sheim ra, not
LH -- the CC wasn't fully honest. But "meseches" (claiming to know less
than you really do) is one of the reasons why one is permitted leshanos
es ha'emes (mislead without actually lying). BM 23b-24a. So I can't see
how it would be assur without the quotation marks around the word.


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Despair is the worst of ailments. No worries
mi...@aishdas.org        are justified except: "Why am I so worried?"
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
Fax: (270) 514-1507


On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 07:10:14PM +0200, Doron Beckerman wrote to Areivim:
: Speaking LH about yourself is one of those urban myths or embellishments.
: We don't really know if the story is true, but the ostensible lesson that
: one may not speak LH about oneself is surely not correct. According to the
: Sefer Chofetz Chaim (klal 2:13) the heter of b'apei tlasa is as Rashi to
: Arachin 16 explains it, i.e., if one says LH about oneself in front of
: three people, it shows he does not mind that it be known, and it is
: therefore muttar to tell it over. If the hetter is based on the fact that
: the subject allows *others* to tell it over, he may certainly tell it about
: himself.

CC 2:13 appears to be saying that anything someone says about themselves
in front of 3 isn't "ra" in the opinion of the speaker. If I would take
the implication RDB suggests, it would mean that it's impossible to say
LH about oneself. Not that it's mutar, but that anything I would tell
others about myself must not be something I consider negative. I don't
think that such a deduction is true (which is different than whether or
not I am indeed 2nd guessing the CC).

In either case, the point of the story is that the CC reversed his
position from what he wrote. So you can't deduce from the book whether
or not the story is consistent with the CC's position.

I took the story to mean it's "assur", IOW, bad mussar because the
likelihood of causing a fight was too high, not literally assur. As for
actual issur veheter, the issue in the story would be motzi sheim ra,
not LH -- the CC wasn't fully honest. But meseches (claiming to know less
than you really do) is one of the reasons why one is permitted leshanos
es ha'emes (mislead without actually lying). BM 23b-24a.


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Despair is the worst of ailments. No worries
mi...@aishdas.org        are justified except: "Why am I so worried?"
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:
> I took the story to mean it's "assur", IOW, bad mussar because the
> likelihood of causing a fight was too high, not literally assur....

Bottom line, R' Shmuel Kaminetzky told me that one is not allowed to speak
LH about himself.

KT,
MSS

R' Micha Berger wrote:

> LAD, this is because halakhah is a legal process. As long as an
> answer is a valid result of that process, it is just as "right".
> The better answer is the one that has more authority, not the one
> that is more logical.

I'd like to cite a story in support of the above, namely, how the Baalei
Masora took their three most reliable Sifrei Torah and compared them. Where
any differences were found, they followed whatever was found in the
majority of the three. When they were done, their newly reconstructed
kosher Sefer Torah automatically invalidated all three of the others.

The story (assuming I remember it correctly) is not only illogical, but
with all due respect, it borders on absurd. But because it was the valid
result of a legal process, it has more authority, and is followed even
today.

(On a practical level, however, nowadays we are very confused about which
processes are legal and valid, and which are not. This has led to a very
wide disparity among the poskim concerning how they arrive at their
decisions. At one extreme, a posek might simply tally up the votes of every
major and minor posek who ever voiced an opinion; at the other extreme, a
posek might dare to go against the rishonim if he thinks his logic is
sound. And so it goes...)

Akiva Miller

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On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 06:02:16PM +0000, kennethgmil...@juno.com wrote:
: I'd like to cite a story in support of the above, namely, how the
: Baalei Masora took their three most reliable Sifrei Torah and compared
: them. Where any differences were found, they followed whatever was
: found in the majority of the three. When they were done, their newly
: reconstructed kosher Sefer Torah automatically invalidated all three of
: the others.

Had it recently in daf. Ymi Taanis 4:2, vilna 20b.

    Three sefarim were found in the azarah: Seifer Me'oni, Seifer Zatuti,
    and Seifer Hi.

    In one [Me'oni] they found written "ma'on E-lokei Qodesh" and in two
    it was written "me'onah E-lokei qedem" (Devarim 33:27). They established
    [what was in two] and were mevatel one.

    In one [Za'atuti] they found written "vayishlach es ta'atutei BY" and
    in two it was written "vayishlach es na'arei BY" (Shemos 24:5). They
    established [what was in two] and were mevatel one.

    In one [Hi] they found "hi" [as opposed to hiw hei-vav-alef] 9
    times, and in two it was written "hi" 11 times. They established
    [what was in two] and were mevatel one.

So our current mesoretic text doesn't match any of the sefarim they
found in the azarah upon the return from Bavel.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             None of us will leave this place alive.
mi...@aishdas.org        All that is left to us is
http://www.aishdas.org   to be as human as possible while we are here.
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Anonymous MD, while a Nazi prisoner

So our current mesoretic text doesn't match any of the sefarim they
found in the azarah upon the return from Bavel.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
I vaguely remember a shiur quoting someone as saying it was the hashgacha that this result matched the original version at Sinai.
KT
Joel Rich

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On 14/02/2012 1:02 PM, kennethgmil...@juno.com wrote:
> I'd like to cite a story in support of the above, namely, how the
> Baalei Masora took their three most reliable Sifrei Torah and compared
> them. Where any differences were found, they followed whatever was
> found in the majority of the three. When they were done, their newly
> reconstructed kosher Sefer Torah automatically invalidated all three
> of the others.
>
> The story (assuming I remember it correctly) is not only illogical,
> but with all due respect, it borders on absurd. But because it was the
> valid result of a legal process, it has more authority, and is
> followed even today.

What's absurd about it?  They were trying to reconstruct the original
text, from three independent sources, *each* of which was subject to
the usual problem of sofrim making mistakes.  So wherever one of the
three differed from the other two, it was more logical to assume that
the one sofer had made a mistake, rather than that the two other sofrim
had each independently made the same mistake.  Thus all three originals
were indeed determined to have contained mistakes and to have been passul.
Why do you have a problem with that?  It's not as if any of those three
were attributed to Moshe or anything like that.  They were simply sfarim
that had been found in the BHMK, and thus as reliable as one could get.

-- 
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

Why didnt Moshe call right away for his sons and wife to come after
crossing the Red Sea and only
wait until Yitro came himeslef (before or after Sinai) there obviously was
no shortage of messengers

Also what happened to his children. It seems that Tzippora was divorced or
returned to Midian. Why didnt the children stay?
It seems the end was a grandson becoming a priest to AZ

-- 
Eli Turkel
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On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 01:12:47AM +0000, kennethgmil...@juno.com wrote:
: My question is this: In the case where he voluntarily chose to sell
: himself, why is the ear-piercing prescribed only at the end of the siz
: years, and even then only when he prefers to stay on longer? Shouldn't
: Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai's logic apply at the very beginning as well?

Until then, he didn't sell himself, he only rented himself out.

Just thinking out loud.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

On 14/02/2012 4:05 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 01:12:47AM +0000, kennethgmil...@juno.com wrote:
> : My question is this: In the case where he voluntarily chose to sell
> : himself, why is the ear-piercing prescribed only at the end of the siz
> : years, and even then only when he prefers to stay on longer? Shouldn't
> : Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai's logic apply at the very beginning as well?
>
> Until then, he didn't sell himself, he only rented himself out.
>
> Just thinking out loud.


And now he's also renting himself out, but for a longer period, until
the yovel.

However, note that lechatchila one may not sign even an employment
contract for more than 3 years, because it's most of the term of a
6-year avdus and transgresses "ki li benei yisrael avadim".

-- 
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

On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 06:30:59PM +0000, Allan Engel wrote:
: The gemoro that I alluded to earlier in this conversation states that
: the actions of a child can cause benefit to a parent, but not the
: reverse.

: This would seem to contradict the assumption that anyone can engender
: schar to anyone else at will.

There is another way to explain davening for another rather than imparting
zekhus to that person's account.

From http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2008/03/mi-shebeirakh.shtml

    When someone is found guilty of a crime, he may be sent to jail. But
    that person isn't the only person who gets punished. His wife loses
    his companionship. His children lose access to their father. They and
    his parents are shamed. His employer loses out on an employee, and
    his customers on his services. The person he used to say "Hello!" to
    on the way to work every morning gets that much less joy in the
    morning. For that matter, the people they meet get impacted because
    the employer faces these people when he is more stressed. The impact
    of one person's imprisonment ripples outward.

    We are only human beings. We can't take all that into account when
    deciding when and how to punish someone.

    However, Hashem can. Every person impacted by some tragedy are
    impacted in some customized way appropriate for their life story.

    Rav JB Soloveitchik uses this idea to explain how a "Mi sheBeirakh"
    works. It is hard enough to understand how someone's own prayer
    can cause their fate to be modified. But how would we explain how
    a sick person's health would be improved in response to the prayers
    of people he might not have ever met or ever learn of their prayer
    or perhaps never even know of their existence?

    Rav Soloveitchik answers that the tefillah turns the personal tragedy
    into a communal one. Across the community, someone does not deserve
    to hear of the tragedy. ...

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I have great faith in optimism as a philosophy,
mi...@aishdas.org        if only because it offers us the opportunity of
http://www.aishdas.org   self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                              - Arthur C. Clarke

On 2/14/2012 8:33 PM, Samuel Svarc wrote
> Bottom line, R' Shmuel Kaminetzky told me that one is not allowed to speak
> LH about himself.
>
> KT,
> MSS
>
>
I think you need to decide whose version of lashon harah. According to 
the Maharal - there is would be no prohibition of lashon harah about 
yourself

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 6:34 PM, Daniel Eidensohn <yadmo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/14/2012 8:33 PM, Samuel Svarc wrote
>> Bottom line, R' Shmuel Kaminetzky told me that one is not allowed to speak
>> LH about himself.

> I think you need to decide whose version of lashon harah. According to the
> Maharal - there is would be no prohibition of lashon harah about yourself

I can only repeat that I asked a practical question and received a bottom
line answer. Take it for what it's worth.

KT,
MSS

I teach a class on the kings of Judah and Israel, and last week we were 
talking about the structure of Semitic names.  Most Semitic names take 
the form stem-DN or DN-stem, where DN is a divine name, and the stem is 
a noun, or a verb, or an adjective.  This is true of us as well as of 
other people who spoke Semitic tongues.  For us, usually the DN is 
either as in Dani_*el*_ or or Yirmi_*yahu*_.  Sometimes a stem-DN name 
also appears as DN-stem, the classic example being Yehoyachin king of 
Judah, who is called Yechoniah in Megillat Esther.

But there are three other DNs used in Jewish names.  Or maybe not DNs, 
but they serve the same purpose in the construction of names.  These are 
Av, Ach and Am, or father, brother and nation.  We have Ammihud and 
Rechavam, Achiezer and Avichayil.  And I can understand how Av serves as 
a DN, since Hashem is Avinu she'ba-shamayim.  But the other two puzzle 
me.  And I wondered whether anyone here has ever come across any 
discussion of names like that.

As a cute bit of trivia, the name Rechavam (Rehoboam) is a Hebrew 
cognate of Hammurabi.  The DN "hammu" is usually translated by 
Assyriologists as "the divine kinsman", but that's no good for us.

Lisa

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On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 4:54 AM, Lisa Liel <l...@starways.net> wrote:
> But there are three other DNs used in Jewish names.? Or maybe not DNs, but
> they serve the same purpose in the construction of names.? These are Av, Ach
> and Am, or father, brother and nation.? We have Ammihud and Rechavam,
> Achiezer and Avichayil.? And I can understand how Av serves as a DN, since
> Hashem is Avinu she'ba-shamayim.? But the other two puzzle me.? And I
> wondered whether anyone here has ever come across any discussion of names
> like that.

Ach is also no problem, since KBH refers to us as "achoti kalla". IIRC
from university, Am as a name element is believed to mean "uncle"
rather than "nation", so it may be equivalent to Dod as a DN.

Or more loosely, any word for a close relation can act as a DN. Bear
in mind that names are often archaic, both linguistically and
theologically, and not representative of contemporary usage and
belief.

3006. The Tosfos YomTov writes that the 'Gezeira's Tach V'Tat' - when Jews were massacred en masse, 
was as a direct result of people speaking during davening and Krias Hatorah.  Piskei Tshuvos 151:3
I would be interested to know if I'm the only one on Avodah who is greatly bothered by the above statement.
To say that one is worthy of being massacred because of speaking during davening and k'rias haTorah is
a bit harsh; don't you think?
This is the same mentality as saying the holocaust was a result of irreligious Jews. I believe it is Rav Soloveitchik who had
said anyone who gives a reason for the Holocaust is a fool.
Thoughts?
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On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 01:33:56AM -0500, cantorwolb...@cox.net wrote:
: 3006. The Tosfos YomTov writes that the 'Gezeira's Tach V'Tat' -
: when Jews were massacred en masse,
: was as a direct result of people speaking during davening and Krias
: Hatorah. Piskei Tshuvos 151:3

Who are you quoting? I presume 3006 is some kind of paragraph number?

: I would be interested to know if I'm the only one on Avodah who is
: greatly bothered by the above statement.

I took him to mean that all the davening people did to be saved was for
naught because people who really think that prayer is a a chance to be
in the "presence" of the Almighty wouldn't be talking.

There is also a bit of context... R' Yaaqov Lipman Heller was the CR
of Krakow during the uprising, and niftar in 1654, 6 years after the
massacres. If his focus was on the past (and I don't think it was),
he was the head of a survivor community conducting introspection, not
someone else telling the sufferer why they suffered.

But, the TYT composed a Mi sheBeirakh to be said to bless those who don't
talk. I believe his campaign was focused on stopping future talking,
not really on explaining the recent massacres. IIEC, the theme doesn't
come up in his elegies. In RYBS's terms, he was taking a hermeneutical
lesson from the past, not engaging in theological explanations of
the tragic.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Weeds are flowers too
mi...@aishdas.org        once you get to know them.
http://www.aishdas.org          - Eeyore ("Winnie-the-Pooh" by AA Milne)
Fax: (270) 514-1507

Rav Matisyahu Solomon explained this to mean not that the talking caused
the gezeros per se, but that the only way that the gezeros could have been
avoided was through prayer.  People who trivialized prayer by talking
during davening showed that tefila meant nothing to them, so they were
devoid of the one thing that could have saved them.

Gershon
gershon.du...@juno.com
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R' Benny Lau wrote (http://bit.ly/wl25Tr) that maybe we should be davening
for R' Elyashiv to be freed from the yisurim that are affecting his body
(in other words to die). He based this on the Gemara Kesubos 104 where
Rebbe's shifcha sees the talmidim davening for him to recover while he is
suffering and therefore she davens for him to die and distracts the
talmidim. He points out that R' Moshe (Igros Moshe Choshen Mishpat 2:73
http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=921&;st=&pgnum=301) paskens
like Rebbe's shifcha and R' moshe quotes a Ran in Nedarimn as well in
support of this. As expected this did not go over well with the crowd at
Kika Hashabbat.
,
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