Avodah Mailing List

Volume 30: Number 163

Tue, 04 Dec 2012

• 1. Re: Maharal; Brain is the Soul, Service to HKBH is but Talmud (Micha Berger)
• 2. re Goebekli Tepe (martin brody)
• 3. Re: re Goebekli Tepe (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: Is there a Reshus Harabim D'oraysa nowadays? (T6...@aol.com)
• 5. Re: Is there a Reshus Harabim D'oraysa nowadays? (Zev Sero)
• 6. Re: preparation for war (T6...@aol.com)
• 7. Beit Hillel - Rules to be followed when eating at secular person's home (Ben Waxman)
• 8. Re: re Goebekli Tepe (Zev Sero)
• 9. toda lae-l (saul newman)
• 10. Re: toda lae-l (Ben Waxman)
• 11. Re: Tuesday Evening begin Prayer for Rain (Akiva Miller)
• 12. Re: Is there a Reshus Harabim D'oraysa nowadays? (Marty Bluke)
• 13. Re: Is there a Reshus Harabim D'oraysa nowadays? (Zev Sero)
• 14. Re: Is there a Reshus Harabim D'oraysa nowadays? (Marty Bluke)

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 02:14:51PM +1100, Meir Rabi wrote:
: 1) The RaMBaM and Tur seem to disagree with him since they compiled
: Seforim that provided rulings which lead one away from Talmud Gemara.

: 2) What is to happen these days [in the life of the Maharal] that we
: are no longer Baki in Talmud - how are we to Pasken Halacha?

: If the Maharal was concerned about the Poskim, and not about the ordinary
: individuals - these questions would not have troubled him. The Maharal
: was not addressing some rabbi who is paskening for his Kehilla from a
: Kitzur or from the web.

The SA was published in 1565 in Venice (completed two years earlier
in Tzefas). Nesivos Olam was published in 1595. When the Maharal talks
about people who rely on codes rather than thinking through the sugyos
themselves, he was almost certainly writing with the SA in particular
in mind. That's what was new in "these days", and yes, it changed how
rabbanim pasqened, not just the hoi paloi decided things for themselves.

To which he wrote (tr. off Wikipedia, emphasis mine):
    To decide halakhic questions from the codes without knowing the
    source of the ruling was not the intent of these authors. Had they
    known that their works would lead to the abandonment of Talmud,
    they would not have written them. It is better for one to decide on
    the basis of the Talmud even though he might err, FOR A SCHOLAR MUST
    DEPEND SOLELY ON HIS UNDERSTANDING. As such, he is beloved of God,
    and preferable to the one who rules from a code but does not know
    the reason for the ruling; such a one walks like a blind person.

To the Maharal, relying on the SA rather than developing a feel for the
halakhah is very parallel to someone today relying on the Chayei Adam
or Qitzur. And yes, he invokes a phrase that is historically applied to
dayanim and rabbanim.

The Maharsha has a similar piece in his CA on Sotah 22a.

: The Maharal is troubled by the change in attitude across the entire
: community. HKBH, he says, is principally concerned about our engagement
: with Torah - that means one thing and one thing only - TALMUD...

The "and one thing only" is yours.

...
: When this pursuit becomes detached from TALMUD, then the very activities
: which we deem to be our service to GD are in fact DESTROYING HKBH's plan
: and purpose for this universe...

The Maharal doesn't say this either. He says that what is wrong with
the SA isn't what the mechaber set out to do, but that the SA de facto
led to not studying the talmud behind the codified.

...
: Furthermore, Reb Chaim does not suggest that this battle and questioning
: and prohibition/refusal to accept one's Rebbes ideas is limited only
: to those who have Semicha. On the contrary he applies the imagery of
: small kindling, the students and the insistent, relentless heat of their
: questions, being required in order to set the large log ablaze...

In lomdus, ie understanding existing halakhah and giving them a
theoretical structure, not sevara -- doing the same in order to produce
new halakhah. R' Chaim didn't teach how to pasqen. (This being a big
weakness in the Lithuanian yeshiva movement in general.)

...
: To suggest that Reb Ch Voloshiner is urging us to use our brain to argue
: in theory but that we should nonetheless in practice follow the guidance
: of our Rebbe, is just pure fantasy. It is a mind bending exercise to
: suggest that we MUST follow but not follow blindly. That's like telling
: someone to shower but not get wet.

You have never sat in shiur and learned a lot of theoretical halakhah
just to understand shas and posqim, with no lemaaseh intended? The
concept that people do such things is "mind bending"?

: It is truly remarkable that the very Mishnah that is the poster
: Mishnah for Bittul HaYesh, [cast yourself at the dust of their feet]
: for sublimation of one's identity to the supreme authority of a Master,
: [Aseh LeCha Rav] is in fact, according to Reb Chayim VeLoshiner, a
: testimony to the opposite. Because Bittul HaYesh means Bittul to HKBH,
: not to a human...

I refer again (2nd time this week) to the Rambam's haqdamah to the Yad,
"halakhos" 26-37. Halachic authority comes from what dinim the people
accept and who they accept to be their rabbis. (The latter being with the
possible exception of Sanhedrin, which may not need public acceptance,
depending on how one understands the Rambam.)

Your version of the Maharal would never have allowed for the concept
of the geonim. How could you ask those guys out in Babylon rather than
think for yourself?

...
: The Maharal clearly differentiates the MeVaLey Olam from the Chachamim who
: have not served Torah Sages [Lo ShiMesh]. Such people the Gemara says,
: are a Boor, an Am HaAretz but they are NOT MeVaLey Olam - destroyers of
: the world. And why not? Because they are still engaged with Talmud.

But they aren't allowed to pasqen. To pasqen requires shimush.

You also have yet to explain the concept of yoreh yoreh and heter horaah
if every Jew is supposed to decide for himself without such a heter.

As I said, I see nothing in the Maharal against
- requiring a heter horaah and valuing the answers of those who have one

- the binding nature of established ruling rather than following what
  seems more logical (but isn't accepted halakhah)

All he says is that the SA was a net loss because the added precision
in pesaq (something the Bach questions, shu"t 80) doesn't offset the
loss in talmud torah. But it is, at the end of it all, added precision.

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

Because the Adam story is just that, a story. Part of out sacred narrative,
but not part of our sacred history, because it never happened  There's a
difference.
From sacred narrative we learn lessons on how to live. From history we
learn how people lived.From sacred history, we learn how our ancestors
lived. The real ones, not the mythological ones. There lies the rub of
course, which ones existed and which ones are myth.
I am stunned that anybody with only minimal knowledge of, God's wisdom,
that is, science, history and anthropology would begin to take the early
Genesis narrative literally. That does exclude those that do not study
anything other than the Torah, Talmud and associated seforim.
Martin Brody

"Anyone want to play Torah-and-Archeology on this one? We're talking about
religion and art that carbon-dates to millenia before Adam. Even if you
define Adam as the first homosap to have been blessed with a soul, not
the first of the biological species, this is still a stickler.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha"

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On Tue, Dec 04, 2012 at 10:52:25AM -0800, martin brody wrote:
: Because the Adam story is just that, a story. Part of out sacred narrative,
: but not part of our sacred history, because it never happened  There's a
: difference.

There is a difference between saying the stories involving Adam or Noach
are described using heavy doses of metaphor, and saying there was no Adam.

It also gets into a methodology question... When scientific findings
conflict mesoretic claims, how do you decide which to believe as
historical? IOW, what's your criteria for denying Adam but not Maamad
Har Sinai? Saying that one is obligated to believe in the latter is
begging the question. It just means that there are times you'll pick
the mesorah and not how you personally decided the mesorah's version of
events are more historically accurate. (Unless the decision is irrational;
that one accepts Shemos onward as historical because the alternative is
unthinkable, heresy, not because of any argument one way of the other.)

And where do the avos sit in relation to the resulting methodological
line?

In my own life, I am an absolutist on mesorah. Not on literalism or
maximalism, but on not questioning historical claims made in the
mesorah on the basis of anything but questions raised by studying
the mesorah. Do chazal or rishonim question the idea or raise
alternatives? Do they reach conclusions in their study of other statements
that compellingly force me to say that not everything could be as it
seems with the historical claim in question?

But if there is "just" a scientific problem I would prefer to live with
the question, confident that an answer exists even if I don't know what
it is, than to impose new understandings on the Torah on that basis. To
my mind, it would be denying the temimus of the Torah.

So there is strong basis that I can rest on that Bereishis 1, and probably
also through the eviction from Gan Eden, is describing something I can't
relate to well enough to understand, and therefore the literal level
is closed to me. I could even accept that thereis no literal level,
although I lean more to the first position.

But until the archeology questions, did anyone question the existence
of a first couple who were fully human in the sense that we are? Since I
don't know of a mesoretic argument against it, I personally cannot find
room to seriously consider that they did not exist.

But I'm curious to know where you and others of our chevrah place the
line between "ein dorshin maaseh bereishis" and the obligation to accept
Torah miSinai in terms of where one is willing to reconsider their Torah
positions in light of science.


: From sacred narrative we learn lessons on how to live. From history we
: learn how people lived. From sacred history, we learn how our ancestors
: lived....

From the Torah we learn lessons on how to live. Even the "sacred history"
is only about how to live, not how they did.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             If a person does not recognize one's own worth,
mi...@aishdas.org        how can he appreciate the worth of another?
http://www.aishdas.org             - Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye,
Fax: (270) 514-1507                  author of Toldos Yaakov Yosef

From: Marty Bluke <marty.bl...@gmail.com>
"

R' Micha  Berger wrote:

>I think what changed, though, wasn't the number of  people, since as you
> note in the past few hundred years the change has  been grossly in the
> other direction. But the other criterion, the width  of our public areas,
> did shrink compared to old norms. We no longer have  a public square in
> every city where everyone from that city and  neighboring towns (as per 
the
> first mishnah in Megillah) would gather,  eg on Mon and Thu market days.



>> The populations were so much smaller then and  transportation so much 
more
difficult that it is hard to believe that they  ever had 600,000 people
gather in the public square.  <<
 

>>>>>
 
 
I googled Jewish population and found varying estimates but there were  at 
least two million Jews and possibly 7 million or more in E'Y at the time  of 
the bayis sheni. If most of them went to J-m for sholosh regalim there  
would have been 600,000 people in the city at that time.  All in one place  at 
one time?  Think of korban pesach, how many people?
 
 


--Toby Katz
=============


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On 4/12/2012 10:01 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> I think what changed, though, wasn't the number of people, since as you
> note in the past few hundred years the change has been grossly in the
> other direction. But the other criterion, the width of our public areas,
> did shrink compared to old norms. We no longer have a public square in
> every city where everyone from that city and neighboring towns (as per the
> first mishnah in Megillah) would gather, eg on Mon and Thu market days.

On the other hand in the past century our streets have got much wider.
There is nowadays almost no such thing as a street that is not 16 amos
wide, which according to our girsa in Shas, and the minority of rishonim
who follow it, makes every one of our streets a RHR.

-- 
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

 

From: saul newman <newman...@gmail.com>

>> seen  online--

On the contrary, he sent gifts to his brother, and prepared for  war, which
included dividing the camp into two parts in case one was lost. He  did not
simply trust that "everything would be okay."

--- i have   seen this  a few times  in that  'preparation for war '   
sounds
like not  going into battle, but  preparing  for   defeat.  is  that
what milchama means?  <<




>>>>>>
 
Preparation for war means making efforts to minimize casualties.   Don't 
put all your forces in one place at one time.
 

--Toby Katz
=============



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http://www.beithillel.org.il/show.asp?id=56061

Beit Hillel, a rabbinic organization, has come out with guidelines as to 
what can be eaten at the home of a secular person's home.  The article 
includes topics such as:

  *   heating up food (use a microwave or wrap it in aluminum foil),
  * serving plates & utensils (use disposable or eat stuff that isn't
    too hot),
  * bugs (you don't have to investigate how the lettuce was checked),
  * fruit and vegis (this is a no brainer - as long as it came from a
    regular with a heksher, no problem; if not, get permission to take
    terumah),
  * shimittah (don't eat stuff from their garden),
  * wine (no problem if it is Jew pouring it),
  *   dairy (no worries here),
  * meat (if you are really maqpid on glatt, than try not eat it)
  * home cooked stuff (don't eat it unless  you can verify that the food
    and pots are OK).

Truth be told, these don't see like such amazing qulot. IMO the big 
chiddush is the very idea that, yes you can eat in a secular person's 
home. The details aren't that startling.

Ben
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> On Tue, Dec 04, 2012 at 10:52:25AM -0800, martin brody wrote:
>  Because the Adam story is just that, a story. Part of out sacred narrative,
>  but not part of our sacred history, because it never happened  There's a
>  difference.

Tell me, was there such a person as Lotan, and did he have a sister
called Timna?

-- 
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

in english  we say  thank Gd .  in   jewish  we  say  baruch hashem . in
israel the man on the street  says  toda lae-l.
do frum israeli people  use  that expression ?  if  so  , do they say  toda
 lakel?  if  they say  toda  lael   is  that  a problem
of saying  Gd's name ?
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I think that it is more of "Sefardi Misurati" thing to say, and no, they 
don't say "Todah laQel".

Ben

On 12/4/2012 10:08 PM, saul newman wrote:
> in english  we say  thank Gd .  in   jewish  we  say  baruch hashem . in
> israel the man on the street  says  toda lae-l.
> do frum israeli people  use  that expression ?

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R' Ari Meir Brodsky wrote:

> This is a friendly reminder to Jews outside of Israel that our
> daily prayers should include the request for rain, beginning
> with Maariv this Tuesday evening, December 4, 2012, ...
> ...
> I encourage everyone to remind friends and family members of
> this event, especially those who may not be in shul at that
> time. ...

This - especially the latter portion of what I quoted - reminds me of a question I've had for a while:

It is very important that the community begins Mashiv Haruach at the same
time. This is so important that we delay it from the beginning of the
calendar day (which, by rights, ought to be Maariv on the evening of Shmini
Atzeres), and push it off, even past Shacharis, and begin saying it only at
Musaf, when the shul is at its fullest and all can begin together. (See,
for example, Mishna Berurah 114:2)

Why is this so important then, and so (apparently) UNimportant when it
comes time to begin Tal Umatar? We begin it at an ordinary weekday Maariv,
arguably one of the least-attended minyanim of the week. Why not at
Shacharis, which is better-attended? Or at Mincha, when a hefsek-free
announcement can be made immediately before Shemoneh Esreh? Or, if it must
be at a weekday Maariv, then why not choose a Motzaei Shabbos?

We've often mentioned on these pages that many halachos are designed to be
practical and efficient, even if they are less than perfectly accurate.
Examples include the height of sechach or a menorah, or many halachos
involving the length of a solar year. It almost seems like the beginning of
Tal Umatar is an except to that, deliberately designed to test whether
we've been paying attention to the calendar.

Any ideas?
advTHANKSance!

Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
Woman is 53 But Looks 25
Mom reveals 1 simple wrinkle trick that has angered doctors...
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/50be5bd520aaf5bd11b62st04vuc

R' Zev Sero provided a bunch of links which point to the source of
requiring 600,000 for a reshus harabim.

While the links were very interesting they had absolutely nothing to do
with the question I asked. I asked a very practical question. It is very
clear from all of the gezeras that Chazal made that there was a real
concern that people would violate the issur d'oraysa of carrying in a reshus
harabim. This means that in the time of Chazal  reshus harabim doraysas had
to have existed in many places, otherwise why make so many gezeras for a
situation that never occurs. My question is very simple. How is that in the
time of Chazal when populations were much smaller and cities were much much
smaller Chazal there seemed to be reshus harabims d'oraysa everywhere,
while today we basically cannot find one anywhere?
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On 4/12/2012 3:54 PM, Marty Bluke wrote:
> R' Zev Sero provided a bunch of links which point to the source of
> requiring 600,000 for a reshus harabim.

> While the links were very interesting they had absolutely nothing to
> do with the question I asked. ... My question is very simple. How
> is that in the time of Chazal when populations were much smaller and
> cities were much much smaller Chazal there seemed to be reshus harabims
> d'oraysa everywhere, while today we basically cannot find one anywhere?

The links had everything to do with your question; the makor in Shas
that the author found is a gemara that has Ulla saying there is no reshus
horabim in Bavel!

As for EY, we know there were certainly more than 600K people in Y'm on
Shabbos Chol Hamoed.

-- 
Zev Sero
z...@sero.name

R' Micha Berger wrote:
"Tacitus said J-m had 600,000 people at the time of churban bayis.
Josephus who I think we could agree tended toward hyperbole said 1.1mm,
with 115,800 killed between Nissan and Tamuz of that year, and 97,000
sold into slavery."

In 2012 the city of Jerusalem has a population of about 700,000. The old
city is but a fraction of the city. Is it really plausible to believe that
there was a population of 600,000 in the tiny area of the old city?  In
1905 the population of the old city was 32,000. Is it plausible to believe
that in the time of the Mishnayos the population was 20 times as large?

Additionally, there is not a single other city in Israel with a population
over 400,000 people(including Tel Aviv, Haifa). Does it really make sense
that 2000 years ago the cities were so much bigger then today?

Do you have any idea of how difficult it is to get 600,000 into and out of
a small area?
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