Avodah Mailing List

Volume 31: Number 177

Tue, 22 Oct 2013

• 1. Re: YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS (Kenneth Miller)
• 2. Re: YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS Avodah Digest, Vol 31, Issue 176 (Ezra Chwat)
• 3. The Special, Elevated Nature of the Kaddish in Nusach Ashkenaz (Prof. Levine)
• 4. Quote is from the most recent insi...@nishma.org (cantorwolberg@cox.net)
• 5. Re: Quote is from the most recent insi...@nishma.org (Ben Waxman)
• 6. The Righteous Man in Sodom (Prof. Levine)
• 7. 50,45,40 (saul newman)
• 8. Re: Mesorah (Zvi Lampel)
• 9. Sotah 12a (cantorwolb...@cox.net)
• 10. Re: Sotah 12a (Zev Sero)
• 11. Re: Sotah 12a (Micha Berger)
• 12. Re: Torah and Quantum Mechanics (Micha Berger)
• 13. Defining "Ra" (Micha Berger)
• 14. Re: Torah and Quantum Mechanics (Lisa Liel)

Cantor Wolberg asked:

> The following flies in the face of the midrashim dealing with
> G-d going to the different nations and their refusing the
> Torah but finally the Jews accept it:
>
> Rashi ... states that Abraham observed the entire Torah, even
> though it was not revealed until centuries later to Moses,
> including even rabbinical prohibitions that weren't enacted
> until a millennium later.The Ramban adds that the afore-mentioned
> sources say that the other Israelite ancestors also observed the
> Torah before it was revealed.
>
> So how can you say the Jews were offered it when they already
> were observing it from the moment  the first Jew enters the
> scene. How then, can you explain that G-d went to the different
> nations offering them something already observed by the Jews?
> In addition, if the ovos were observing Torah, then it was a
> fait accompli.

I was taught that the answer to this is that the avos did these mitzvos,
but because they chose to, not because they were obligated. This can be
demonstrated by the times when they chose *not* to follow these "laws",
such as when Yaakov married two sisters.

If so, then what happened at Sinai can be explained in terms of "Up to now,
you have known of these things, but henceforth they will be obligations.
Can you accept that? And *do* you accept that?"

I concede, though, that I do not have any answer to the related question.
Namely, when Hashem offered the Torah to the other nations, and they asked
for examples, the examples He gave were of prohibitions that already
applied to them, and that I presume they were surely aware of. Their answer
should not have been "No! We *need* to steal!", but rather their answer
should have been, "Yeah, so? What's new here?"

Akiva Miller
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The problem of offering the Torah to the non-Jews, as raised in this Midrash, is dealt with in Zohar Bamidbar 192a-b

Ezra Chwat

 From http://tinyurl.com/kgrh8a2

Upon examination, it seems reasonable to conclude 
that the Ashkenaz kaddish is unique in how it 
expresses and preserves the basic, essential, and 
original theme/idea of the kaddish ? namely 
exalting, elevating and praising the Great Name of Hakodosh Boruch Hu

It does so by maintaining a clear focus on the 
whole point of kaddish ? which is magnifying and 
sanctifying the Great Name of Hakodosh Boruch Hu 
? by excluding certain later additions made in 
other nuschaos. Other nuschaos contain 
additional, added components, that were inserted 
over time, for example ones asking for Moshiach 
and/or asking for health, parnassah, etc. As 
important as they are (and nusach Ashkenaz 
incorporates them prominently elsewhere in the 
davening) in nusach Ashkenaz, the focus of 
kaddish being a , a special holy prayer, where we 
exalt the great name of Hashem, is considered to 
be critical, and something that needs to be 
guarded, and not confused or diluted. The focus 
needs to be maintained.  Including other things 
diminishes that focus and leads to a diminution 
of the strength and kavannah of the tefilloh.

See the above URL for more. YL
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   "Torah Temima, Bereishit 22:1,  After Yitzchak was born to Avraham and Sarah at such an old age, rumors developed that he was not really their child."

   When this type of comment is made I would be interested in knowing WHO developed the rumors and to whom were they spread?
   You're talking about a time with no radio, no television, no newspapers, no magazines, etc. So how were these rumors spread?
   And how many people were the recipients?

   

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If you go to any African village or small Arab town, you'll find that 
conversation is how people spend their time. Everyone knows everything 
about their neighbors.

Ben

On 10/20/2013 4:44 AM, cantorwolb...@cox.net wrote:
>
>
>    "Torah Temima, Bereishit 22:1,  After Yitzchak was born to Avraham 
> and Sarah at such an old age, rumors developed that he was not really 
> their child."
>
>    When this type of comment is made I would be interested in knowing 
> WHO developed the rumors and to whom were they spread?
>    You're talking about a time with no radio, no television, no 
> newspapers, no magazines, etc. So how were these rumors spread?
>    And how many people were the recipients?

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The following is from RSRH's commentary on Bereishis 18:23 - 25

The righteous man in Sodom ? as visualized by
Avraham and for whose sake the whole community of sinners is to be
saved ? does not, in haughtiness and arrogance, abandon the masses.
He does not idly look on at the moral ruin of his fellow citizens. Nor
does he isolate himself within his own four walls and say: ?What have
I to do with others? troubles? I, for my part, have saved my own soul.?
For if he does act this way, by this very behavior he excludes himself
from the category of the righteous, since he does not fulfill the serious
responsibility that devolves upon him in his particular environment. In
fact, of all people he is least worthy to be one for whose sake the community
is saved. He, who had long abandoned the people to their bitter
fate ? what does he care about the suffering of the multitudes? The
demise of the sinners does not touch his heart; perhaps even with a
feeling of satisfaction he justifies the harsh judgment that falls upon
them.

This is not the righteous man for whose sake Sodom is to be saved.
Avraham?s righteous man dwells b'soch ha'ir, ?in the midst of the city,? in
lively connection with his whole environment. He never ceases admonishing
and teaching, objecting and warning, rectifying and saving, as
much as he is able. He is attentive to everyone, and never tires of trying
to right things ? even if hope for success is slight. He never despairs
of man, and hastens to undertake any action for the sake of man.
Like a gardener who lovingly tends a seedling, so does the righteous
man perceive his task of righting and saving his fellow man. How can
he bear to see the destruction of those he nurtured, to whom his soul
is so attached! For the sake of fifty such men, who are found b'soch ha'ir,
all of Sodom might be spared.

Our Sages say that, in the destruction of Yerushalayim, the righteous
ones ?who kept the Torah from aleph to tof? were the first to be slaughtered,
because they had not been b'soch ha'ir, ? they had not protested and had
not brought people back to the right path, where possible (Shabbos 55a
commenting on Yechezkel 9:4-6).
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1. when avraham gets buyin  for 45,  does that mean that the other numbers
are as follows--  40 , [36]  , 30 , [27], etc

2. why is the assumption [according rashi's derech ]   that 40=4 x10  ,
30=3 x10 etc  ;  why could it not be  40= 8 x5   30=   6  x5       ie
 defining how many tzaddikim minimally in   -each- city would work ; rather
than assuming it must be 10 [9]

3. also someone asked me in the haftora ,  how physically can one be
eye-to-eye and mouth-to-mouth simultaneously---  both the child and the
navi must have had either very small or very flexible noses....
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Reviewing parshas Va-yeirah brought to mind something brought up in a
past thread under this subject title: The Rambam's citation (MN 2:42)
of Rebbi Chiya regarding his principle that narratives describing humans
seeing angels are referring to visions and not physical occurrences. I
would like to clarify that, as I understand it, Rebbi Chiyya's statement
is not actually the Rambam's basis for his thesis.

The Rambam had based his thesis on proofs he brought in previous
chapters of that work (1:49, 2:6) and in Maamar Techias HaMeisim (Sheilat
pp. 344-5), from pesukim that demonstrate that angels by definition are
incorporeal. The Rambam argues that logic impels us to conclude that
they are unperceivable by physical organs, but only in visions, which
are of course subject to the characteristics of visions (which include,
according to the Rambam, the fact that the prophet the prophet is not
awake, with the exception of Moses).

Crescas agrees to the Rambam's logic, but concludes therefrom that the
three "melachim" that visited Avraham were therefore not angels but human
prophets. (Ralbag is of the same opinion.) Abarbanel invokes a kabalistic
concept of incorporeal angels being "mislabeish" into corporeal beings,
a concept evidently foreign to the Rambam.

Rambam's citation of Rebbi Chiyya is for an additional point: Given that
a narrative describing a human being seeing an angel must be describing
a vision, we have a detail to clarify: When instead the narrative tells
us that someone saw a person, and only later describes the being as an
angel, at what point did physical occurrences end and the vision begin?
Was it at the point that the narrative makes it clear that an entity
was an angel, or perhaps even before?

In other words, did Avraham's vision of three angels first begin after
seeing three physical men, or was the sighting of three men from the
beginning part and parcel of the vision, those three men being angels
all along? Or, was it that Yaakov was fighting a physical man, and at
the end of the fight had a vision of a conversation with an angel --
because that is where the narrative indicates the presence of an angel;
or was the entire fight one with an angel, and therefore a vision from
the beginning?

This is what the Rambam cites Rebbi Chiyya for, and the Abarbanel on
MN gives a very good explanation of the proof. In character, the Rambam
(along with other rishonim) gains his principle ideas from the pesukim
and the application of logic thereto, and then interprets Chazal in that
light. (Similar to his approach of gaining basic ideas of halacha from the
Mishna, and then seeing the Gemora in that light, rather than vice versa.)

Zvi Lampel

I'm curious why this is never taught other than learning it from
the gemara. As a child I never learned Sotah and never was taught
the following:

"And Pharaoh charged all his people.  R' Jose son of R. Hanina said: 
He imposed the same decree upon his own people -- namely, to kill the
male children, because the astrologers had warned him that a boy was soon
to be born who would overthrow him. R' Jose son of R' Hanina also said:
He made three decrees: first, 'if it be a son, then ye shall kill him';
then 'every son that is born ye shall cast into the river'; and finally
he imposed the same decree upon his own people."

Am I correct that very few people are aware of the fact that according
to this gemara, Pharaoh ordered his own first born to be killed also?
I am flabbergasted by this teaching and still can't understand how it
was never taught or talked about.

On 20/10/2013 10:19 PM, cantorwolb...@cox.net wrote:
> I'm curious why this is never taught other than learning it from
> the gemara. As a child I never learned Sotah and never was taught
> the following:
>
> "And Pharaoh charged all his people.  R' Jose son of R. Hanina said:
> He imposed the same decree upon his own people -- namely, to kill the
> male children, because the astrologers had warned him that a boy was soon
> to be born who would overthrow him. R' Jose son of R' Hanina also said:
> He made three decrees: first, 'if it be a son, then ye shall kill him';
> then 'every son that is born ye shall cast into the river'; and finally
> he imposed the same decree upon his own people."

It right there in Rashi, Shmos 1:22.


> Am I correct that very few people are aware of the fact that according
> to this gemara, Pharaoh ordered his own first born to be killed also?
> I am flabbergasted by this teaching and still can't understand how it
> was never taught or talked about.

There's no mention of his own first-born, or indeed of any of his sons.
Even if he had a son born that day, which we don't know, he wouldn't worry
about his own son overthrowing him, so he'd have no reason to kill him.

-- 
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 Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 10:19:01PM -0400, cantorwolb...@cox.net wrote:
: Am I correct that very few people are aware of the fact that according
: to this gemara, Pharaoh ordered his own first born to be killed also?

Why would you assume Par'oh's first born wasn't born yet, or that
having made the decree, he would bother to father a child until after
his astrologers told him the threat had passed? He didn't have every
firstborn killed, only the newborn firstborns.

Heqat was their goddess of childbirth and had the head of a
frog. Something to note in understanding makas tzefardeia. As RSRH
points out, the frogs emerging from the river they drowned the kids in
would be a pretty clear message to the Egyptians as to what they were
being punished for. (Although really Bes, the god of male fertility,
is more charged with protecting children once born.)

Anyway, even if he was dooming his own firstborn, sacrificing a child
to a god or goddess wasn't an outlandish concept in those days.

And unlike Zev, I think many monarchs did worry about their son doing
away with them in impatience for getting the throne. (Roman history
from Caligula onward is full of that kind of stuff, no?) But again,
I don't see any indication he had a child who would be a candidate
(about which Zev agrees).

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "The worst thing that can happen to a
mi...@aishdas.org        person is to remain asleep and untamed."
http://www.aishdas.org          - Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, Alter of Kelm
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 12:30:14PM -0400, M Cohen wrote:
: There was a fascinating article on Torah and Quantum Mechanics in the last
: issue of Kolmus (Mishpacha magazine insert)

R/Dr Morris Engelson (who is, BTW, former contributor and current lurker
R' Shlomo Argoman's father) writes (one point among many):

    All these sources establish that the universe was created for the
    sake of Israel and Torah and it continues to exist on account of
    Israel and Torah. But how does the actual connection work? There was
    an initial creation by way of Torah and there is an ongoing creation
    also by means of Torah. But the word "Torah" does not stand for an
    identical concept in both cases. There were no people in existence
    when the initial Creation took place and the Torah had not yet been
    brought down to this physical realm. This Torah was lodged in the
    intent, in the will, of Hashem, and the creation was in accordance
    with that will of Hashem.

    But this is no longer the case because lo ba'shamayim hi -- the
    Torah is no longer in Heaven. As an aside, "Heaven/shamayim in this
    context should not be confused with the "heavens" to which we look
    up and see the stars. Thus, the Vilna Gaon explains that the stars
    are in the physical rakiah, while shamayim is a spiritual creation
    beyond the rakiah. The Torah is now here with us.

    What, then, is this Torah that is the basis of the ongoing
    Creation? As Rabbi Akiva Tatz explains in World Mask: "The Torah lives
    and makes contact with this world in the Oral Law. And the Oral Law
    lives only in the hearts and minds of the Sages of the Jewish people
    and of all those who learn it... This most profound idea means that
    Hashem's Torah is the consciousness of the Sages of Torah she'b'al
    peh. It has been given to us; it is no longer in Heaven, so to speak,
    and we are partners in Creation in the deepest sense possible." As
    we learn from Rav Chaim Volozhin (Nefesh HaChaim 4:11): "Therefore,
    the primary source of life, light, and existence of all the worlds
    is the involvement of the Jewish people in Torah study."

    An outsider to Torah would be highly dubious of the notion that
    our universe continues to exist by virtue of the consciousness of
    our Torah Sages. The claim would immediately be labeled a case of
    superstition and ignorance of science. But what then are we to make
    of a startlingly similar claim on the part of contemporary science. QM
    is full of paradox and ambiguity. One of the counterintuitive results
    is that all reality exists in a spread-out QM wave-function state, as
    illustrated by the double slit experiment discussed earlier. But we
    know that this is not so. We observe, we test and we measure plenty
    of single-location items. The answer provided by mathematician John
    von Neumann, in his 1932 book Mathematical Foundations of Quantum
    Mechanics, is that the wave-function is collapsed by the measuring
    apparatus. This would explain the peculiar results of the two-slit
    experiment where the electron appears to be a wave when we don't
    look or measure, and a particle when we do look and measure.

    Physicists Eugene Wigner, in Remarks on the Mind-Body Question,
    and later John A. Wheeler in Genesis and Observership, argue that it
    is not the measuring apparatus that collapses the wave-function, but
    rather the mind of the conscious observer who uses the apparatus. This
    understanding of QM posits that nothing exists in concrete physical
    form until it is measured or observed by a conscious mind. Nobody
    calls this superstition. Nobody claims that von Neumann or Wigner or
    Wheeler or the many other scientists who agree with this position,
    are ignorant of science. All agree that this is science at the
    highest levels.

    Torah also agrees, but takes things just a bit further. It explains
    why and how this result comes about. It is because the Torah
    requires it, and the conscious mind that maintains physical reality
    in existence is that of the Torah Sage.

If this were true, then doesn't the clock of history begin at Maamad
Har Sinai? Or, if you really want to stretch this point, the beris of 6
mitzvos Hashem makes with Adam? In which case, he not only eliminates
the 13.7bn years before Maaseh Bereishis as being reverse-cast from
the point in which Hashem created an obverver, R/Dr ME's idea equally
attacks the 6 days of bereishis.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             You will never "find" time for anything.
mi...@aishdas.org        If you want time, you must make it.
http://www.aishdas.org                     - Charles Buxton
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Sun, Oct 06, 2013 at 09:41:16PM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote on the thread
"There's Nothing Original About Sin...":
> I think "evil" is a really inaccurate translation of "ra" anyway.

RSRH writes that ra is from the shoresh /reish-ayin-ayin/, where the
doubled ayin collapses into one without a dageish, as an ayin never
takes a dageish. Ra'a' is to break or shatter.

I've also noted here and on scjm in the past that the parallel can be
said of tov. Tov not only refers to moral good, but also to functional
good. (The latter is "good" as in "This knife has a good blade.") Hatavas
haneiros is to make the lamps better functionally, not to make them
more ethical or moral. It would seem that we're defining moral good as
something that better fits its intended function.

So to me it seems that tov refers to an action in line with what the
universe was made for, whereas ra is destructiveness -- also in relation
to what the universe was made for. Taking down a hovel isn't destructive
if it's to build that family a solid house in its place. Whether
dismantling is ra or not also involves functionality.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It's nice to be smart,
mi...@aishdas.org        but it's smarter to be nice.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - R' Lazer Brody
Fax: (270) 514-1507

Except that there's no direct causation between our learning Torah and 
the continuation of the universe.  It's Hashem who continues the 
universe, dependent on us learning Torah.  He is an Actor between our 
actions and the results, so the analogy doesn't really work.

Also, there's the whole issue of Hashem not being inside time, which 
makes causality kind of moot.

Lisa


On 10/22/2013 10:42 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 12:30:14PM -0400, M Cohen wrote:
> : There was a fascinating article on Torah and Quantum Mechanics in the last
> : issue of Kolmus (Mishpacha magazine insert)
>    
[snip]
> If this were true, then doesn't the clock of history begin at Maamad
> Har Sinai? Or, if you really want to stretch this point, the beris of 6
> mitzvos Hashem makes with Adam? In which case, he not only eliminates
> the 13.7bn years before Maaseh Bereishis as being reverse-cast from
> the point in which Hashem created an obverver, R/Dr ME's idea equally
> attacks the 6 days of bereishis.
>    
I don't see how Hashem isn't an observer.

Lisa
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