Avodah Mailing List

Volume 31: Number 4

Wed, 02 Jan 2013

• 1. Tell the Truth for Peace (Meir Rabi)
• 2. Re: What date was the Torah given? (Lisa Liel)
• 3. Re: What date was the Torah given? (Zev Sero)
• 4. Re: What date was the Torah given? (Lisa Liel)
• 5. Re: What date was the Torah given? (Zev Sero)
• 6. Re: What date was the Torah given? (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: Why Lie When Truth Can Also Achieve Peace (Arie Folger)
• 8. Re: Why Lie When Truth Can Also Achieve Peace (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: Why Lie When Truth Can Also Achieve Peace (Arie Folger)
• 10. Perspective on Homosexuals - HaRav Aharon Lichtenstein (Prof. Levine)
• 11. Re: In revolutionary ruling, rabbis allow gender selection (Akiva Miller)
• 12. Is Panentheism Heresy? (Prof. Levine)
• 13. Re: Is Panentheism Heresy? (Lisa Liel)

Seems like the discussion has lost focus.

It is obvious that Gd would not communicate information that serves no
purpose but to cause grief.
Being a Navi or having RHaKodesh does not grant access to all the files.
Although it is curious that they approached the Navi when they were seeking
their lost donkeys. I think RaMBaM mentions this in his intro to Mishnah.

The main issue is -
Why did the brothers lie?
Why does the Gemara suggest their lies were permitted or a Mitzvah because
they were pursuing peace?
They were pursuing their comfort, not peace.
Had they been interested in peace they would have made attempts to mollify
Yosef.
Had they thought their lives were in danger they would certainly be
permitted to lie, so that's not the issue, it is no Chiddush.

And the peripheral question is WHY did they not attempt to seek forgiveness
from Yosef?
Were they too embarrassed or did they think they were right?
If they thought they were right THEN we would have a proof if they DID seek
Yosef's forgiveness - because one is permitted to tell a lie in order to
make peace, and that would certainly have made peace.





Best,

Meir G. Rabi
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avod
ah-aishdas.org/attachments/20130103/8985738d/attachment-0001.htm>

On 1/2/2013 12:35 PM, Zev Sero wrote:
> On 2/01/2013 11:30 AM, Akiva Miller wrote:
>> Shtaros? The practice of dating all legal documents seems quite ancient.
>
> But no more ancient than the calendar itself, which was only two 
> months old
> at the time.
>
>> So if they knew Asher's birthday, the date of Matan Torah would
>> presumably be even more memorable, as R' Marty Bluke asked.
>
> They knew the date of matan torah with no less certainty than they knew
> the date of Asher's birth!

Why?  Matan Torah is dated relative to Pesach.  Asher's birth wasn't 
relative to anything.  So there'd have been a reason to remember the 
date of Asher's birth, and no need to remember the date of Matan Torah.

>
> On 2/01/2013 12:28 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
>> 8:4,5,14. I assumed, though, that dates before HQBH handed Benei Yisrael
>> control of the luach, there was an objective and automatic definition
>> of these dates.
>
> Or even that these dates are all arrived at by projecting the calendar
> backwards, just as we speak of dates BCE.  (Have you heard about the coin
> that was found, dated "50 BC"? :-) )

Encyclopedia Brown, yes?

Lisa

On 2/01/2013 2:47 PM, Lisa Liel wrote:
> On 1/2/2013 12:35 PM, Zev Sero wrote:
>> On 2/01/2013 11:30 AM, Akiva Miller wrote:


>>> So if they knew Asher's birthday, the date of Matan Torah would
>>> presumably be even more memorable, as R' Marty Bluke asked.

>> They knew the date of matan torah with no less certainty than they knew
>> the date of Asher's birth!

> Why?  Matan Torah is dated relative to Pesach.  Asher's birth wasn't
> relative to anything.  So there'd have been a reason to remember the
> date of Asher's birth, and no need to remember the date of Matan Torah.

The same Chazal who -- with whatever degree of confidence -- give us Asher's
birth date, give us the date of Matan Torah with no less confidence, and a
good deal *more* textual backing.  Therefore the question's entire premise
is fallacious.


-- 
Zev Sero               A citizen may not be required to offer a 'good and
z...@sero.name          substantial reason' why he should be permitted to
                        exercise his rights. The right's existence is all
                        the reason he needs.
                            - Judge Benson E. Legg, Woollard v. Sheridan

On 1/2/2013 2:05 PM, Zev Sero wrote:
>> Why?  Matan Torah is dated relative to Pesach.  Asher's birth wasn't
>> relative to anything.  So there'd have been a reason to remember the
>> date of Asher's birth, and no need to remember the date of Matan Torah.

> The same Chazal who -- with whatever degree of confidence -- give us Asher's
> birth date, give us the date of Matan Torah with no less confidence, and a
> good deal *more* textual backing.  Therefore the question's entire premise
> is fallacious.

And yet, there's a machloket.

Lisa

On 2/01/2013 3:26 PM, Lisa Liel wrote:
> And yet, there's a machloket.

And there's no machloket about Asher's birth.  What does that tell you?
Think about it.

On Wed, Jan 02, 2013 at 03:29:28PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
> And there's no machloket about Asher's birth.  What does that tell you?
> Think about it.

Too many possibilities. The easiest:

- Not as many of Chazal cared enough about Asher's birth date to bother
  form a position.

- The date of Matan Torah was intentionally left more obscure, because
  (as RPTeitz put it) we don't even want to pin Matan Torah down to
  a single time.

- We care more about timing Matan Torah as a process from Pesach than as
  a date. And therefore 49 vs 50 vs 51 days has aggadic import. (Kind of
  a blending of the prior two possibilities.)

Etc...

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Like a bird, man can reach undreamed-of
mi...@aishdas.org        heights as long as he works his wings.
http://www.aishdas.org   But if he relaxes them for but one minute,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      he plummets downward.   - Rav Yisrael Salanter

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 9:02 PM, Zev Sero <z...@sero.name> wrote:
> What's more, Elisha himself characterised Naaman's healing
> as something that will "let him know that there is a navi in Israel".

That actually proves my point. It was exceptional, but it should
happen so that people will recognize that G"d annoints true prophets,
presumably so that people will follow their spiritual guidance.

> But that is a navi, and we are not discussing nevu'ah at all.  We're
> discussing ruach hakodesh, which is a completely different animal.

Nu, you have not harnessed a single source to support your contention
that sundry tzaddikim have x-ray vision of sorts. What is ruach
hakodesh and who has it? Please cite Chazal or Rishonim.

--
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Schnellkurs im jdischen Grundwissen: I. Der Schabbat (Audio)
* Warum beschneiden Juden ihre Knaben -- Multimedia-Vortrag
* Beschneidung, die aktuelle Rechtslage -- Multimedia Schiur
* Was mir in Holocaust Museen fehlt
* Beschneidungslerntag -- Schluworte (Multimedia)
* Paneldiskussion zur Beschneidung -- Audio-Datei
* Welche Bnde gibt es zwischen Mensch und G"tt? (Multimedia)
* Rckblick Gedenkfeier Frstenfeldbruck

On Wed, Jan 02, 2013 at 04:45:50PM +0100, Arie Folger wrote:
: So you claim that ruach hakodesh is a kind of X ray vision...

Ruach hakodesh is apparently a minor form of nevu'ah. Different
in quantity and not (as Zev has been insisting) different in
kind. See the Moreh 3:45 - "kisharon hanevu'ah bimqoro, qodesh shehu
mespaseiach bimlo'o, harei hu ruach haqodesh". On the other side of the
scholastic-vs-mequbal aisle, it is implied by the Ramban on BB 12a, where
he uses "ruach haqodesh" for what the gemara calls the nevu'ah held by
chakhamim since AKhG. The Kuzari 6:12 discusses this at length. Later in
history, the Seifer (6:10 in some translations, because 6:11 was the king
saying "go on" or some-such, and was lost, so the division is up to the
translator.) As open-n-shut as the Rambam -- ruach haqodesh is a partial
attainment of nevu'ah by a soul not ready for the full thing.



As I already noted, there is a machloqes between R' Saadai Gaon and
the Rambam on one side and most other rishonim on the other about the
3 mal'akhim who visited Avraham avinu which the Abarbanel relates to
a parallel machloqes about the Man in the Throne at Har Sinai (and
presumably also in the Merqavah). According to his explanation of that
machloqes:

Rambam, RSG: nevu'ah is a kind of "X ray vision" (as RAF put it).

Rov Rishonim: nevu'ah is the reception of a message from HQBH, which
the mind in the usual state of prophetic awareness naturally envelops
in metaphor.

Applying this machloqes to RhQ as "mini nevu'ah"...

According to this majority opinion, would mean being granted information,
and thus also that one doesn't necessarily know everything relevant
to them.

According to the Rambam, then, nevu'ah is seeing more of reality than
the empirical layer, and ruach haqodesh would be a lesser version of
the same. So yes, "x ray glasses" but only because nevu'ah is too.

Still, this would not guarantee that by default someone with ruach
haqodesh knows everything relevent with only exceptional things being
withheld by HQBH. In a universe run through hester panim, it seems quite
plausible that He may be concealing most things.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When we are no longer able to change a situation
mi...@aishdas.org        -- just think of an incurable disease such as
http://www.aishdas.org   inoperable cancer -- we are challenged to change
Fax: (270) 514-1507      ourselves.      - Victor Frankl (MSfM)

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 10:44 PM, Zev Sero <z...@sero.name> wrote:
> There are enough references to "seeing with ruach hakodesh".  Do your
> own Googling.

Actually, googling for that phrase brings up - after a Wikipedia
article - 12-14 Christian sites, then a site mentioning R' Aryeh
Kaplan's writings on the topic (which does not mention seeing). The
next link is actually very interesting, bringing sources on RhK, and
none of them AFAI could see while skimming, says anything about seeing
with RhK. Rather, different sources, including Ramban, Ritva and
Divrei Chaim, all understand RhK as a kind of deeper intellect which
allows to better be guided, better understand.
http://parsha.blogspot.de/2011/07/divrei-chaim-about-or-hachaims-ru
ach.html

The only site I found which has ruach hakodesh as anything approaching
your definition is a Chabad site quoting the late RMMS.

Could it be that you assumed matter of factly that the statements from
Baati leGani are uncontroversially accepted by all and taken directly
from Chazal in such a manner as to not leave any reasonable
possibility to disagree?
--
Arie Folger

 From http://tinyurl.com/afnp54h

This post is based on the second part of a session held with Rav 
Lichtenstein on Friday, 17 Marcheshvan, 5773, November 2, 2012.  In 
response to some of the feedback following the last session, I 
decided to integrate [bracketed] translations into the text rather 
than marking them as notes.  Once again, I tried to maintain the 
original formulations whenever possible [any bracketed comments are 
my insertions].  While I consulted and confirmed with Rav 
Lichtenstein on a few of the details, he did not review the text.

-Dov Karoll

See the above URL Rav Lichtenstein's actual comments.

Yitzchok Levine 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avod
ah-aishdas.org/attachments/20130102/5ab5f993/attachment-0001.htm>

R"n Toby Katz wrote:

> I really have a hard time believing that anyone has a "deep
> psychological need" to have a son rather than a daughter, or
> vice versa.

Here are some relevant quotes from the Shulchan Aruch and Mishne Brurah:

Mechaber 223:1 - if one's wife gave birth to a male he says the bracha HaTov v'HaMeitiv...

Mishneh Brurah 223:2 - Male: The conclusion of the poskim seems to be that
even if he had "kamah" (some? several? many?) sons, and he desired that a
daughter should be born to him so that he would fulfill the mitzvah of
Piryah V'Rivyah, even so, if a daughter is born a bracha is not said on
this. Nevertheless it seems "pashut" (clear? obvious?) to me that on the
first time that he sees her, he does say the bracha Shehecheyanu, for this
is no less than one who sees his friend after 30 days and is happy to see
him, who says Shehecheyanu, as below in 225:1.

Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
Woman is 53 But Looks 25
Mom reveals 1 simple wrinkle trick that has angered doctors...
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/50e4c6ab171ea46aa411ast01vuc

 From http://tinyurl.com/bah5lbo

After an impostor posing as the Vilna Gaon's son claimed that his 
"father" had reversed his negative evaluation of Chassidus, the 
elderly sage issued a letter in 1796 denying a change of heart. After 
the authenticity of this letter was questioned, the Vilna Gaon in 
1797 issued another letter detailing his problems with the movement. 
The letter was circulated and published the next year in the Slutzker 
Maggid's book and many times since. I take it from Mordechai 
Willensky's Chassidim U-Misnagdim (Mossad Bialik, 2nd ed. vol. 1 p. 
187ff.). In the middle of his list of accusations against Chassidim, 
written in flowery rabbinic Hebrew, the Vilna Gaon states (p. 188, in 
loose translation):

Oh how the generation lifted its eyes and spoke words directed above: 
"This is your god, Israel" (Ex. 32:8), every tree and rock. They 
reveal the Torah contrary to law in the verse: "Blessed is the glory 
of God from His place" (Ez. 3:12) and in the verse: "And you preserve 
them all" (Ne. 9:6).

As Willensky points out in his footnotes, these are accusations of 
heresy. The Vilna Gaon charges Chassidim with believing in 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism>panentheism, that God is 
present in everything, even inanimate objects. The Tanya (2:Yichud 
Ve-Emunah:1) states that God is present in inanimate objects and in 
this next chapter explains Ne. (9:6) similarly. It also explains 
(1:42) Ez. (3:12) in this manner.

It is not clear how the Vilna Gaon knew the contents of the as-yet 
unpublished Tanya. Historians suggest he saw an unpublished draft or 
an early printing. It is irrelevant because his understanding of 
Chabad philosophy was confirmed by the Ba'al Ha-Tanya. In an undated 
letter, first published in 1857 and then many times since, the Ba'al 
Ha-Tanya explains his philosophical disagreement with the Vilna Gaon.

<Snip>

We see that the Ba'al Ha-Tanya accepts the Vilna Gaon's description 
of his views as panentheism. However, he defends this theological 
view as authentically Jewish while the Vilna Gaon rejects them as heresy.

In particular, the Ba'al Ha-Tanya portrays himself as the defender of 
tradition and the Vilna Gaon as the radical philosopher, the 
innovative theologian trying to determine on his own the nature of God

See the above URL for the entire post.

Yitzchok Levine 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avod
ah-aishdas.org/attachments/20130102/31ea2fb6/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
Areivim mailing list
Arei...@lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/areivim-aishdas.org

On 1/2/2013 9:56 AM, Prof. Levine wrote:
> From http://tinyurl.com/bah5lbo
>
>     Oh how the generation lifted its eyes and spoke words directed
>     above: "This is your god, Israel" (Ex. 32:8), every tree and rock.
>     They reveal the Torah contrary to law in the verse: "Blessed is
>     the glory of God from His place" (Ez. 3:12) and in the verse: "And
>     you preserve them all" (Ne. 9:6).
>
> As Willensky points out in his footnotes, these are accusations of 
> heresy. The Vilna Gaon charges Chassidim with believing in panentheism 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism>, that God is present in 
> everything, even inanimate objects. The Tanya (2:Yichud Ve-Emunah:1) 
> states that God is present in inanimate objects and in this next 
> chapter explains Ne. (9:6) similarly. It also explains (1:42) Ez. 
> (3:12) in this manner.

Saying that they reveal the Torah contrary to law refers to the decision 
of Chassidim to teach Kabbalistic concepts publically, which was 
prohibited by the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah.  It isn't that panentheism 
(or something similar) is heresy; it's that expressing it publically, 
when it can so easily be misunderstood, is forbidden.

>
> We see that the Ba'al Ha-Tanya accepts the Vilna Gaon's description of 
> his views as panentheism. However, he defends this theological view as 
> authentically Jewish while the Vilna Gaon rejects them as heresy.

I don't think he rejects them as heresy.  I think his objection was to 
publicizing them, contrary to halakha.

Lisa
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-ai
shdas.org/attachments/20130102/76abf899/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
Areivim mailing list
Arei...@lists.aishdas.org
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/areivim-aishdas.org

------------------------------


Avodah mailing list
Avo...@lists.aishdas.org
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah
http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org


End of Avodah Digest, Vol 31, Issue 4
*************************************

Send Avodah mailing list submissions to
	avodah@lists.aishdas.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	avodah-request@lists.aishdas.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
	avodah-owner@lists.aishdas.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Avodah digest..."


A list of common acronyms is available at at
        http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/acronyms.cgi
(They are also visible in the web archive copy of each digest.)