Avodah Mailing List

Volume 31: Number 178

Thu, 24 Oct 2013

• 1. Re: 50,45,40 (Samuel Svarc)
• 2. Torah and QM (Eli Turkel)
• 3. Re: The Special, Elevated Nature of the Kaddish in Nusach Ashkenaz (Arie Folger)
• 4. Torah and Hirayon (Micha Berger)
• 5. Re: Torah and Quantum Mechanics (Micha Berger)
• 6. Beit Yosef's Algorithm (Rich, Joel)
• 7. limits to a computer check (Eli Turkel)
• 8. Re: Pasuk in Lech Lecha 17:19 (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: The Righteous Man in Sodom (Micha Berger)
• 10. Re: 50,45,40 (Micha Berger)
• 11. Re: The Special, Elevated Nature of the Kaddish in Nusach Ashkenaz (Micha Berger)
• 12. Re: Mesorah (Micha Berger)
• 13. Re: The Special, Elevated Nature of the Kaddish in Nusach Ashkenaz (Arie Folger)

Sent from my mobile device

On Oct 20, 2013 5:39 PM, "saul newman" <newman...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. when avraham gets buyin for 45, does that mean that the other
> numbers are as follows-- 40, [36], 30, [27], etc

No, see below.

> 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]

This answers the above. Ten is a minyan, the minimal amount that
constitutes a community. Singular tzaddikim can't change a city, so Sedom
was lost when there wasn't a group that could be built on.

> 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....

It means facing, not actually touching. He placed his head on top of the
child's, where the parts lined up, not that they touched.

KT,
MSS

<<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.


If this were true, then doesn't the clock of history begin at Maamad
Har Sinai? .>>

I am confused by the whole discussion do Wigner and Wheeler claim that
according to science that nothing existed before humans appeared on the
planet ot at least mammals?

Much of modern astronomy deals with the first few seconds after the big
bang.
According to this theory this did not exist because there wer no conscious
observers.
Not being an expert in the area I suspect that this theory is being
misrepresented.

-- 
Eli Turkel
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RProf YL wrote about 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, ...

Arguably, that is a general feature of Nussach Ashkenaz, to keep liturgy
simple and focussed. Personally, I find that more beautiful, but there is
another way to look at it, which is arguably typical of Nussach Edot ha
Mizrach and copied by Nussach Sefard: A prayer is an opportunity not to be
wasted, maybe now is an eis ratzon, for that, indeed, for any prayer,
formulae and emphatic precision is necessary. Thus, other themes are always
mixed in with the main theme (example: addition of marom ve kadosh in the
closing paragraph of birkat yotzer or, which is really about G"d's deeds,
not His nature, so to speak), and include the formulae tovim, meheira,
kadosh, etc.

However, that doesn't make Ashkenaz historically more correct, at least
regarding the kaddish. The kaddish itself is a product of historical
development that included also additions akin to an Aramaic mi sheberach.
What one could say is that Ashkenaz aims for focus, brevity, poetic beauty
and focus on the ancient kernel and raison d'etre of liturgical segments, a
kind of return to basics.

--
mit freundlichen Gr??en,
with kind regards,
Arie Folger

visit my blog at http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
sent from my mobile device
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I wrote someone off-list a "did you see my reply..." in which I added this
last paragraph, which not only wasn't in the Avodah reply I was checking
about, but not even on-topic for the thread we were on.

I suggested that the whole point of the medrash about Hashem's offer of
the Torah to the various nations is that there is no value to getting the
Torah if you aren't willing to engage in "lekh lekha mei'artzekha". Saying
that one's essense is set by one's ancestor's actions denies the whole
concept of growth, and therefore the whole point of getting the Torah.

When writing that email, I speculated that the shoresh of the word Torah
(or moreh) /yrh/ and the shoresh of herayon /hrh/ could well be related,
at least in the Hirschian sense. Torah-as-growth might be inherent in
the choice of using /yrh/ instead of /lmd/ to call it a teaching.

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 Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 12:09:22PM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote:
> I don't see how Hashem isn't an observer.

Because then everything is observed and there would never be quantum effects.

On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 09:17:41AM +0300, Eli Turkel wrote:
: I am confused by the whole discussion do Wigner and Wheeler claim that
: according to science that nothing existed before humans appeared on the
: planet ot at least mammals?

Without an observer, everythying is in a superposition of
states. Schroedinger's Cat is both dead and alive until you peek in on
it. According to one interpretation of QM, which is currently declining
in popularity BTW, observation requires consciousness.

So, everything that happened before maaseh bereishis wasn't actually forced
to assume any one particular history among the various superposed states
until there were people around to observe it.

Thus, the universe wouldn't be any older than Adam.

If that's what we mean by 5774, fine, but I wonder how one explains the
week of creation that way. It too is before Adam.

R/Dr Morris Engelson has a book in which he plugs numbers into the
relativistic formula to show that given what we now know of the universe,
the density of matter-energy at the time when symmetry breaks to produce
the particles we both know and love is in the range of values that would
plausible contract 13.7bn years down to 6 days under General Relativity.
Thus giving a relativistically sounder variant of R' Gerald Schroeder's
take on Bereishis 1.

(That said, I don't buy into either of R/DME's theories. I just find them
interesting to play with.)

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

The Beit Yosef in his introduction provides his algorithm for arriving at
psak. The first step is to look at Rambam, Rif and Rosh and go by the
majority.  He then states what to do in cases where one of the 3 has no
opinion etc.   I was wondering if anyone has ever done a study of all or a
subset of the Beit Yosef's rulings to see what percentage of the rulings
support the claimed algorithm.	 I have a specific example in mind where
all 3 of the amudim omit a particular requirement/ruling and yet the Beit
Yosef follows the Tur who does quote/require  the ruling.
KT
Joel Rich
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Today sifrei Torah are computer checked. However there areno limts to the
error a sofer can make
-------------------


home of Hgr"ch Kanievsky on Rashbam Street in Bnei Brak the Sefer Torah was
found to be invalid.

It was during the fourth Aliyah for the great grandson of Hgr"ch who is
getting married next week. The Baal Koreh continued reading from Bereishis
straight to Parashas Noach, the congregation stopped him and then they
realized a page is missing.
The Sefer Torah went through computerized check but the Sofer forgot to sew
the page to the Sefer Torah.

Hgr"ch quickly instructed to take out another Sefer Torah, and read the
parsha from the beginning.

Recall, since the passing of the Rebbetzin Batsheva Esther Kanievsky a"h,
Hgr"ch davens on Shabbos at his home and not at the Lederman shul.

see
http://www.bholworld.com/Article_EN.aspx?id=59632&;cat=18
http://www.bholworld.com/Article_EN.aspx?id=59632&;cat=18

-- 
Eli Turkel
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On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 10:33:40PM -0400, hankman wrote:
: Why does this promise by HaShem to Avrohom not make bechira for Yitzchok
: an impossibility? It would be hard to imagine the fulfillment of the bris
: with Yitzchok if he were cholila to turn out badly, as say Esau did....

Why is that?

The beris requires that Yitzchaq's children would be the am hanivchar
via a 400 year process of shibud and ge'ulah. If it restricts Yitzchaq's
bechirah, it would only be on Yitzchaq's decision whether or not to have
children. We couldn't get to 400 years without his deciding "yes".

Is it that different in kind than the restriction in our bechirah caused
by the promise of mashiach? Just as there are numerous ways the future
nevu'ah would play out, depending on our choices, the same is true of
the original beris, no?

:                   Others wanted to say that this was like a contract,
: with HaShem ready to keep His end of the deal if Yitzchok kept his end
: of the contract (ie., being worthy to be a party to the bris) but the
: language in this pasuk shows no conditional language or requirement for
: Yitzchok to fulfill for the bris to be upheld.

I too would have a problem with this idea, as only promises of bad
events carry implied conditionality. E.g. "Od arba'im yom, veNineveih
nehepeches". (Although the gemara there says the conditionality was in
interepretation -- overturned destructively, or turned over in teshuvah.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The thought of happiness that comes from outside
mi...@aishdas.org        the person, brings him sadness. But realizing
http://www.aishdas.org   the value of one's will and the freedom brought
Fax: (270) 514-1507      by uplifting its, brings great joy. - R' Kook

On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 06:18:46AM -0400, Prof. Levine wrote:
> The following is from RSRH's commentary on Bereishis 18:23 - 25
...
> This is not the righteous man for whose sake Sodom is to be saved.

And notice this is NOT kiruv. Sodom's inhabitants weren't benei beris,
they weren't even Ivrim or Benei Sheim.

RSRH takes the notion of mamlekhes kohanim as very central and very
literal. We are the world's priesthood, being an "or lagoyim" and
"vehilkhu ammim rabim... ki miTziyon teitzei Sorah" are not some messianic
promise that will happen on their own.

Torah im Derekh Eretz is not just that yaft E-lokim leYefes provides the
substance for Sheim to be meqadesh. It's also that veyishkon be'ohalei
Sheim is a calling for us to contribute back to society, to be the voice
of G-d and morality in the world.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             If you're going through hell
mi...@aishdas.org        keep going.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - Winston Churchill
Fax: (270) 514-1507

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 09:22:18PM -0400, Samuel Svarc wrote:
:                          Singular tzaddikim can't change a city, so Sedom
: was lost when there wasn't a group that could be built on.

On a very balebatishe level, I wonder how true this is. I know of people
who came to cities larger than Sedom (never mind the three smaller cities
of the plain) and did change it for the good. With well less than a minyan,
sometimes just Avraham and Sarah are enough for "ve'es hanefesh asher asu
veCharan".

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 10:49:34AM +0200, Arie Folger wrote:
: RProf YL wrote [quoting] 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

: Arguably, that is a general feature of Nussach Ashkenaz, to keep liturgy
: simple and focussed. Personally, I find that more beautiful, but there is
: another way to look at it, which is arguably typical of Nussach Edot ha
: Mizrach and copied by Nussach Sefard: A prayer is an opportunity not to be
: wasted, maybe now is an eis ratzon, for that, indeed, for any prayer,
: formulae and emphatic precision is necessary....

I am not sure I 100% agree. Although you'll see I'm far from altogether
disagreeing as well.

Another difference between Ashk and Seph is that Ashkenazi piyutim are
harder for the masses to follow. They instead use poetic phrasings that
include complicated turns of phrase and more rare shorashim, and pull
clauses from medrashim, shas and pesuqim to create a text that packs
layers of meaning like an onion. Compare that to the simplicity but raw
emotion of a piyut by either Ibn Ezra.

So it might be more along lines of intellect vs emotion or even siddur
as a means of reaching ideal prayer vs siddur as means of expressing
ourselves on our current level... Ashkenazim embellish in layers of
meaning, so that each word can be a work of meditation and mined for
reading Hashem's will for what He wishes we would ask of Him. Sepharadim
see themselves as standing before the RBSO, as you put it, in an eis
ratzon, and therefore one makes an impassioned plea making sure to use
every adjective and adverb in our arsenal.

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 Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 12:06:49AM -0400, R Zvi Lampel wrote:
> 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...
>                                        ... Abarbanel invokes a kabalistic
> concept of incorporeal angels being "mislabeish" into corporeal beings,
> a concept evidently foreign to the Rambam.

I want to focus on the Abarbanel for a moment. I don't know where the
Abarbanel gives this opinion. On the Moreh 2:42 he gives a very different
explanation, but it could be that that's his take on the Rambam, and
not what the Abarbanel himself believes. The Abarbanel says that HQBH could
give bodies to mal'akhim if He so desired, but it would seem from his
commentary on Vayeira he appears to reject the idea that HQBH did indeed
accomlish these visions that way. To me it looks like the peirush on
the pasuq ends up in the same place as his explanation of the Rambam.
But I am not sure enough to say I am disagreeing with you.

According to the Abarbanel, the Rambam holds that things seen in prophecy
really occur. They are visions of events happening in higher planes
of reality. The prophet's mind and pen may make sense of the vision
by interpreting its contents as things familiar from normal sensory
experience, but the event seen is real. This is consistent with the
Rambam's position on the Man in the Throne in Mishpatim and the Maaseh
haMerkavah. Since G-d does not have a body in any plane of existence,
their vision had to be of kevod Hashem, something created to be a
stand-in for them to see.

The Ramban, on the other hand, understands prophecy to be the relaying of
a message by the medium of a metaphor. He, therefore, is not bothered
by the idea that the metaphor Moshe, Aharon, the zeqeinim at Har Sinai,
Yechezqeil and Yirmiyahu were given was an anthropomorphic one, that of
Hashem sitting on a throne.

But WRT nidon didan, it would be that Ramban took the Rambam's "seen in
a nevu'ah" to be a problem in understanding Vayeira. Did the events not
occur? How did Lot get saved if the mal'akhim weren't really there. But
the Abarbanel explains the Rambam as saying that it did indeed occur,
but Lot only saw the mal'akhim through a prophetic sense that can perceive
disembodied intellects, rather than literal physical vision.

As for the Abarbanel invoking a qabbalistic tradition, I find this notion
difficult. First, Rosh Amanah is a defense of the Rambam's iqarim against the
anti-Scholasticists such as R' Chesdai Crecas. Simply put, he was a
fan of interpretations that dovetailed with Greek Philosophy, not a
mequbal.

OTOH, I wouldn't consider the notion of mal'akhim being melubashim
begufos to require buying into qabbalah any more than the notion of
human neshamos being melubashim would.

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

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A wise man is careful during the Purim banquet
mi...@aishdas.org        about things most people don't watch even on
http://www.aishdas.org   Yom Kippur.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rav Yisrael Salanter

On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 7:02 PM, Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote:

> Another difference between Ashk and Seph is that Ashkenazi piyutim are
> harder for the masses to follow. They instead use poetic phrasings that
> include complicated turns of phrase and more rare shorashim, and pull
> clauses from medrashim, shas and pesuqim to create a text that packs
> layers of meaning like an onion. Compare that to the simplicity but raw
> emotion of a piyut by either Ibn Ezra.
>

Those two are not mutually exclusive. Think of the emotions pulsing through
the brief
ein lanu melekh ella ata vs. ein lanu melekh ozer vesomekh ella ata
or
umibal'adekha ein elohim vs. umibal'adekha ein lanu od elohim zulatekha
sela.

In both cases, the Ashkenazi version is brief and extremely powerful, while
the Sefard version makes a pedantic effect. I find the former more
emotional.

In fact I think that generally, Ibn Ezra is more pedantic and hews to the
formal grammatical structures with his poetry, while the Kallir uses a
measure of poetic freedom to convey more emotion.

But indeed, Ashkenazi piyutim are much more difficult to interpret. But
this is a contrarian feature: the same brief, compact Ashkenazi prayer also
allows for tremendous elaborations, even very difficult ones (the most
lomdishe is Ta Shma as a closing selicha on one of the ten days of teshuva).

Sefarad, instead, has a longer and more pedantic regular prayer that is,
however, much more precise, even redundantly so, and easier to interpret,
as are its piyutim, even at the expense of losing some of the raw energy of
intense poetry.

>
> So it might be more along lines of intellect vs emotion or even siddur
> as a means of reaching ideal prayer vs siddur as means of expressing
> ourselves on our current level...
>

Let me interrupt the flow of this paragraph.


> Ashkenazim embellish in layers of
> meaning, so that each word can be a work of meditation and mined for
> reading Hashem's will for what He wishes we would ask of Him. Sepharadim
> see themselves as standing before the RBSO, as you put it, in an eis
> ratzon, and therefore one makes an impassioned plea making sure to use
> every adjective and adverb in our arsenal.
>

The last part is undoubtedly true, but I don't see this as intellect vs.
emotion. I would rather say it is freer multilayerism vs. more constrained
singlelayerism.

Kol tuv,
-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Schechit? in Polen: Eine ORD-Delegation kn?pft Verbindungen mit der
polnischen Vertretung an
* Should we Give Up on Fighting Intermarriage?
* Pourquoi les diff?rentes listes de cacheroute diff?rent-elle les unes des
autres?
* My Article on Psalm 46 is Now Downloadable
* Die Herausforderung, G?tt als K?nig und Richter wahrnehmen zu lernen
* Would Bombing the Tracks to Auschwitz Not Have Mattered?
* Ein Pl?doyer f?r die einfachen Gebete
* Back From Hiatus
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